Tag Marc Lamont Hill

Originally posted: http://www.good.is/post/picture-show-real-life-super-heroes/
By Patrick James

In the real world, no man can outrace a bullet. No woman commands storms with her mind. No one spins webs from his wrists or flies across continents or shoots lasers from his eyes. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t super heroes among us. Inside every human is the capacity to do something kind, brave, and strong for our fellow humans; some among us simply choose to do so in secret. In the spirit of the heroes who fill the pages of comic books, an unlikely assortment of men and women have been donning masks and costumes, and venturing into their respective neighborhoods to feed the hungry, comfort the sick, and protect the innocent.
The Real Life Super Hero Project is the photographer Peter Tangen’s attempt to document the work of these loosely affiliated individuals; it’s also a gallery exhibit designed to raise money for the causes with which these men and women are affiliated. Highlighting the people who do good under the secrecy of masks with no hope for personal gain, the Real Life Super Hero Project is a call for all of us to engage with and help those around us.
“Celebrate and honor them,” says Tangen. “And find the hero in all of us.”

Originally posted: http://kotaku.com/5611331/nerdy-real-life-superheroes-to-keep-city-safe-from-bullies-jocks

They walk among us—average citizens who don capes and masks at night to battle evil-doers. They call themselves Real Life Superheroes, and they are, of course, deeply nerdy.
A visit to the World Superhero Registry – the apparent home of this movement on the web – reveals images of adult men and women in full-on superhero garb with invented monikers like “Death’s Head Moth”, “Master Legend” and “Dark Guardian”. Their mission? To rid the city of crime and help those in need. Honorable goals, but they seem to be most successful at taking themselves waayyy too seriously and confusing the hell out of the criminals they encounter.
Dark Guardian, for example – whose only superpower seems to be his heavy Staten Island accent – records an encounter where he attempts to chase a hulking drug dealer out of Washington Square Park. When it is revealed that Dark Guardian isn’t actually a cop nor does he possess any sort of legal authority to tell the guy to move, things get kinddaaaa awkward. It’s like he’s just come to the stunned realization that he can’t shoot laser beams out of his eyes, and the drug dealer, towering over Dark Guardian, feels too bad for him to even bother roughing him up.
Then there’s Shadow Hare, a 21-year-old whose intimidating Venom-style getup is belied by some B-roll footage of our hero flouncing down a fire escape. Such is the problem for real life superheroes: life is just a little too real sometimes to pull off wearing tights.
“Citizen Prime” spent $4,000 on his custom body armor suit – and spends most of the time wearing it doing common household chores like watering the lawn and vacuuming. He lives in a pretty quiet neighborhood, which reveals itself to be another obstacle for our real life superheroes.
But life isn’t always so cushy for our real life superheroes. “Master Legend” demonstrates his Iron Fist, for use when drastic measures need to be taken (against defenseless load-bearing walls):
Local news anchors, of course, love these sort of stories because they get to do the reports in that bemused, sing-songy tone that lets us know that this is a story about “colorful local oddballs” who shouldn’t be “taken too seriously”:
It’s sad and hilarious and kind of touching. I suppose they’re heroes, in a way. They’re not exactly rescuing people from burning buildings… but they are wearing capes. And that’s gotta count for something, right?