Here’s a call script for your Senators and/or representatives – scroll down to “Tell your members of Congress: Condemn the Trump administration’s separation of families.” This is especially important if you live in a red state.Trump is trying to claim that the separation of families is due to a “law” enacted by Democrats – there is no such law. This is a Trump administration policy. It’s important for Republicans to know we don’t believe his lies, and that we know exactly who is responsible for this. Calling Democratic members of Congress helps, too – even if they already support keeping families together at the border, it will help to continue to encourage them to take action.
Trump is notorious for his “filing system”: when he is finished with a
piece of paper, he tears it into tiny pieces and throws it away, which
is fine if you’re a CEO (maybe), but is radioactively illegal under the
Presidential Records Act, because the President works for the public,
and is required by law to archive their official papers and save them
for public scrutiny.
White House staffers gave up on trying to explain this to Trump, who
just kept on tearing up everything, from official letters from Senators
to letters from constituents to notes and other paperwork.
The staffers – paid nearly $70,000 year – ended up with full-time jobs
retrieving scraps of paper from Trump’s trash-can and piecing them back
together with clear tape so they can be filed in the National Archives.
Some of these staffers were eventually fired; they’ve spoken to
Politico about their year in the Trump administration as paper-tapers.
not voting isn’t refusing to play the game. You’re in this country, you’re subject to the game whether you like it or not. The only way not to play is to leave, and the vast majority of us don’t have that option.
Not voting is playing the game but saying ‘pass’ every time your turn comes up and then wondering why you lost.
Making young people not vote is actually a tactic used in politics to keep the satus quo. The young vote is always the one for change, so dissuading them from voting at all is actually a political tactic used by the people in charge to keep themselves there.
Voting is rebellion.
What do we say to people who say “gradually pushing our agenda forward via the electoral system won’t work for the far left”?
Today In Solidarity (6/12/18): As we remember the two year anniversary of the Pulse massacre, it is important that we reflect on narrative and who gets to write history. In the weeks following the tragedy, police were lauded as heroes for their response. In reality, they dragged their feet in responding to the shooting, sprayed bullets indiscriminately into the club, and have used the opportunity to muscle their way deeper into queer spaces, potentially threatening the safety of them. Survivors have recently filed a lawsuit around parts of this reality.
Intermittently, we must remember that the victims of this massacre were predominantly Latinx, some even with hazy immigration statuses. The reality is that to this day member of the Latinx LGBTQ community (in Orlando and across the country) experience xenophobia, racism, and classism at the hands of police/authorities. We must not allow the Pulse tragedy to be white-washed. We must demand accountability for the lives lost not just at the hands of terrorists, but due to the cavalier and reckless way police acted in response. #nojusticenopeace #noprideforpolice
Nothing like this has happened in human history. A combination of cultural preferences, government decree and modern medical technology in the world’s two largest countries has created a gender imbalance on a continental scale. Men outnumber women by 70 million in China and India.
The consequences of having too many men, now coming of age, are far-reaching: Beyond an epidemic of loneliness, the imbalance distorts labor markets, drives up savings rates in China and drives down consumption, artificially inflates certain property values, and parallels increases in violent crime, trafficking or prostitution in a growing number of locations.
Those consequences are not confined to China and India, but reach deep into their Asian neighbors and distort the economies of Europe and the Americas, as well. Barely recognized, the ramifications of too many men are only starting to come into sight.
This is an incredibly important global issue but one also clouded by a massive amount of racism, bigotry and misogyny. Anyone leaving a callous comment along the lines of “it’s what they deserve” will be instablocked.
The article is really good and I think it does a good job of explaining how we’re still only beginning to see the effects of this. In many ways the article’s too short, because what it’s trying to cover spans so much. Even the sections it’s divided into scream that they could easily have been twice as long and had way more detail (especially since the article focuses much more heavily on China).
I remember another effect of the one-child-policy that I read about way back around 05 were worries of how you would have smaller younger generations taking care of a larger elderly one. While it’s not directly addressed in this article, it was on my mind while it discussed how Chinese parents with sons often work themselves to the bone trying to come up with bride price, in the hopes of landing a bride for their son, and how having a son used to guarantee being taken care of in old age but now it’s practically the opposite. This is a policy that was in place for nearly 40 years, so the aftereffects will be just as far-reaching.
Japan is dealing with that right now: becoming a nation of senior citizens. Positive side effects include long life rate and cities becoming extremely disability friendly. Negative effects include importing senior care workers from less rich countries but not letting them become citizens thus increasing class inequality and draining the poorer countries’ healthcare systems. So like China and India’s problems, it has a global effect.
five days ago
the rohingya refugee camp at kalindi kunj, one of the oldest refugee camps in delhi, was burnt to ashes. refugees lost all their belongings, including their UNHCR identification and crucial documents. their makeshift shelters of asbestos sheets were gutted to the ground. the fire began at 3:10 AM. by 3:50 AM, only 2 fire engines had reached the camp. 60 families stood by and watched their lives go up in flames as the rest of the 5 fire engines reached by 7AM.
kalindi kunj was built on lands owned by the zakat india foundation, who are doing remarkable, massive on-ground organisation of shelter, dry foods, clothing and amenities like sanitary pads for the refugees right now. please click the link and donate if you can (there’s an option for american donors as well, to donate to one world children’s fund which is zakat’s global partner–your contribution would be tax deductible).
I’ve been talking about it a little in my previous posts, if you keep scrolling.
Amazon is supposedly restoring reviews and ratings to titles that got “mistakenly” removed from their search listings. Whether it was an actual mistake or the realization that their kdp is held up on the backs of the romance/erotica community who were being fairly vocal in their displeasure, who can say.
While it can be very scary to see these things unfolding, it’s important to not let that fear make you feel helpless. Attempts at censorship swing around every few years, which isn’t to say we should be blase about it and just let it run it’s course like a mild head cold, because that’s not actually how that works. People who dismiss changes in politics and social outlook as being only temporary downward swings, never see the work that goes on to make sure these regressions only ever remain temporary and not the accepted norm.
These legislative changes are still fairly new, and it’ll be interesting to see how things take shape. But don’t let them stop you from creating things or expressing yourself.
I know the temptation to curl inwards and pretend like you’re benign is tempting, but the only way this thing will truly win is if people let it. As is true with most things worth fighting for. Do as artists and writers have done before you, and make art. Draw the titties, write the smut, find and found new platforms that will support you and yours, rock the boat. And if you have to capsize it and drown a few mother fuckers in the process just remember, they started it.
But we get a say in how it finishes.
And also just cause it’s been brought to my attention that I might not have been clear enough: don’t throw sex workers under the bus to retain your own personal liberties when arguing against censorship and profanity laws.
Do. Not.
Don’t say “okay sure you can censor those people but not me because my porn is arty and therefore has more value because reasons”. That’s not how this shit works.
It’s either all or nothing when it comes to this, and you have to decide what’s more important to you. Solidarity for all, or complicity in the subjugation of others for the sake of your own sense of false moral integrity.
This includes full-service sex workers as well. The folks who [general] you pay to have sex with.
That’s the main target of this bill.
Support them. Their safety is in jeopardy, more than it has been in quite a while.
They can no longer screen clients, or access lists that contain the names of dangerous clients. Among other things.
(Do you want to know who the majority of sex workers are? Trans women of colour. Do you want to know who is most at risk for being hurt simply for existing? Trans women of colour. Another big section of sex workers are disabled folks. And they are also at high risk for being hurt just for existing.)
In the wake of the latest Facebook data breach catastrophe, Josh
Constantine rounds up more than a decade’s worth of major catastrophes
wrought by Facebook’s recklessness, greed, and foolishness, from Beacon
to the “Engagement Ranked Feed” to the “Engagement Priced Ad Auctions”
to the choices that created spamming games like Zynga’s offerings, to
the mass overwriting of privacy preferences, to “ethnic affinity” ad
targeting, to the Real Names policy and the stalkers it abetted to
Facebook’s global anti-Net-Neutrality campaigns; to self-serve ads; to
developer data access and the gift it handed to crooks like Cambridge
Analytica.
I’d actually forgotten about some of these; in some ways, Facebook is
the Donald Trump of Big Tech, such a font of shitty behavior that it’s
impossible to remember all of the scandals, or even all of the biggest
and worst ones.
Plot Designing 