#New York City Human Rights Law

[fatehbaz]

Some updates from the past twelve-ish months:

-- Late 2022: Portland and its mayor (Wheeler) started a major push to ban "street camping". Headlines in major media outlets also described "Portland's first sanctioned mass homeless camp" and how "Portland moves forward with $27 million plan to build mass shelters". In December 2022, Portland-area authorities used the so-called "aggressive landscaping" tactic, installing hundreds of hostile architecture boulders to prevent sitting/sleeping. Also in December, homeless advocates and Disability Rights Washington advocates attempted to halt Spokane's (Washington) clearing of a major camp for hundreds of people, and a federal judge sided with advocates to put a temporary restraining order on the sweep.

-- January 2023: Even in the immediate aftermath of historic cold as far south as Miami and Monterrey, sub-freezing temperatures across the Deep South, and sub-zero-Fahrenheit blizzards sweeping North America for a week or longer around Solstice/Christmas 2022, convenience stores "in Texas, California, New York use classical music to shoo homeless".

-- By March 2023: "Portland Mayor Wheeler unveils first location for city-run homeless camp".

-- April 2023: San Francisco and Mayor Brand announce a major "five-year plan" costing over 600 million dollars "to cut the number of unsheltered homeless in half". (Not a plan to put people in homes or find stable housing, but just to technically put them under the roof of shelter, keeping them out of sight, therefore qualifying them for the strange designation of "the sheltered homeless".) At the same time, San Francisco opened a "long-term homeless shelter on Treasure Island", pushing homeless people onto an isolated island mostly composed of concrete and asphalt.

-- Summer 2023: In May, the city of Phoenix (Arizona) began its project to clear and eliminate its largest homeless camp, known as the Zone, a refuge for hundreds of people. During the record-breaking heat of the summer of 2023, Phoenix cleared the camp systematically, block by block. At the beginning of September 2023, as "Phoenix breaks heat record as city hits 110F [110 degrees Fahrenheit] for the 54th consecutive day", the city cleared the block of the camp where most seniors and the elderly lived.

-- January 2024: About one week ahead of winter holidays (Solstice/Christmas), the City of Edmonton pursued plans to sweep 130 homeless encampments as part of what has been described as a "shocking" eviction plan. In January, the city was clearing camps amidst sustained deadly severe weather, during a polar vortex event with temperatures of negative 50 degrees Fahrenheit and daytime highs of negative 25F. When a court case presented by Coalition for Justice and Human Rights tried to slow the sweeps, a judge sided with them and shut down the evictions.

-- March 2024: Florida's governor signs a new law. NPR describes: "law that seeks to move unhoused people off public property altogether and into government-run encampments".

-- April 2024: The U.S. Supreme Court begins hearing a case from Grants Pass (Oregon) with major implications and potential to incite nationwide "banishment race" and "homelessness crackdown". Lower courts have previously said that city policies (like Grants Pass, Boise, and others) were "cruel and unusual" for fining and/or jailing people for sleeping on public land if no adequate accessible shelter is available. But now?

[dandelionsresilience]

Dandelion News - November 1-7

Like these weekly compilations? Tip me at $kaybarr1735 or check out my Dandelion Doodles on Patreon!

1. Climate Initiatives Fare Well Across the Country Despite National Political Climate

“[California voters approved] a $10 billion bond measure to boost climate resilience across [the] state[…. Hawai’i] voters cast their ballots in favor of establishing the [climate] resiliency fund, with money for the project coming from existing property tax revenue.“

2. ‘You have to disguise your human form’: how sea eagles are being returned to Severn estuary after 150 years

“[… To avoid imprinting,] the handlers will wear long robes and feed the young eagles chopped rabbit and other meat with bird hand-puppets. […] Williams hopes that restoring eagles to the top of the food chain in the estuary will create a more balanced, thriving ecosystem.”

3. 10 states voted on pro-abortion referendums. 7 of them passed

“New York voters overwhelmingly approved the Equal Rights Amendment, adding [… among other characteristics] gender expression, pregnancy, and pregnancy outcomes to anti-discrimination laws. […] In deep-red Missouri and Montana, voters also enshrined abortions protections in their state constitutions.”

4. Giant rats could soon fight illegal wildlife trade by sniffing out elephant tusk and rhino horn

“”Our study shows that we can train African giant pouched rats to detect illegally trafficked wildlife, even when it has been concealed among other substances[.…] They can easily access tight spaces like cargo in packed shipping containers or be lifted up high to screen the ventilation systems of sealed containers,” Szott explained.”

5. Sarah McBride wins Delaware U.S. House seat, becoming the first out trans member of Congress

“McBride spearheaded Delaware’s legislation to ban the “gay and trans panic” defense as a state senator [… and] helped to pass paid family and medical leave, gun safety measures, and protections for reproductive rights.”

6. Critically endangered Sumatran elephant calf born in Indonesia

“Indonesian officials hailed the births and said they showed conservation efforts were essential to prevent the protected species from extinction. […] Sumatran elephants are on the brink of extinction with only about 2,400-2,800 left in the world, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature.”

7. Sin City is Going Green

“[Hotels there] have conserved 16 billion gallons of water since 2007, thanks to […] replacing grass with desert-friendly landscaping, installing water-efficient taps across all properties, and reusing water at aquariums and in the Bellagio Fountain.”

8. Gray squirrel control: Study shows promise for effective contraceptive delivery system

“[… T]he feeders have a very high level of species-specificity. […] The bait and monitoring system developed and tested in the study demonstrated that […] “spring was the only season tested where female squirrels were more likely to visit bait feeders than males. Spring coincides with a peak in squirrel breeding and is therefore a good time to deliver a contraceptive."”

9. Returning Grazing Land to Native Forests Would Yield Big Climate Benefits

“[… S]trategically regrowing forests on land where cattle currently graze […] while intensifying production elsewhere could drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions, with little hit to global protein production, a new study shows.”

10. Interior Department Strengthens Conservation of American Bison Through New Agreement with Canada and Mexico

“Approximately 31,000 bison are currently being stewarded by the United States, Canada and Mexico with the goal of conserving the species and their role in the function of native grassland systems, as well as their place in Indigenous culture.”

October 22-28 news here | (all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.)

[book--brackets]

Summaries under the cut

The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander

Taran wanted to be a hero, and looking after a pig wasn't exactly heroic, even though Hen Wen was an oracular pig. But the day that Hen Wen vanished, Taran was led into an enchanting and perilous world. With his band of followers, he confronted the Horned King and his terrible Cauldron-Born. These were the forces of evil, and only Hen Wen knew the secret of keeping the kingdom of Prydain safe from them. But who would find her first?

The Trumpet of the Swan by E. B. White

Louie is very popular. Who wouldn't love a swan who can read, write, and play the trumpet? When Louie goes to camp, he meets a boy named A.G. who doesn't like birds, and since Louie is a bird, that means he doesn't like Louie. When A.G. pulls a dangerous stunt out on the lake, he realizes that Louie is a hero, after all.

My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George

Every kid thinks about running away at one point or another; few get farther than the end of the block. Young Sam Gribley gets to the end of the block and keeps going--all the way to the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York. There he sets up house in a huge hollowed-out tree, with a falcon and a weasel for companions and his wits as his tool for survival. In a spellbinding, touching, funny account, Sam learns to live off the land, and grows up a little in the process. Blizzards, hunters, loneliness, and fear all battle to drive Sam back to city life. But his desire for freedom, independence, and adventure is stronger. No reader will be immune to the compulsion to go right out and start whittling fishhooks and befriending raccoons.

The Black Stallion by Walter Farley

Alec Ramsay is the sole human survivor of a devastating shipwreck. Trapped on a deserted island, Alec finds his only companion is a horse, beautiful, unbroken, and savage . . . a horse whose beauty matches his wild spirit.

The Magisterium by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare

All his life, Call has been warned by his father to stay away from magic. To succeed at the Iron Trial and be admitted into the vaunted Magisterium school would bring bad things. But he fails at failing. Only hard work, loyal friends, danger, and a puppy await.

The Two Princesses of Bamarre by Gail Carson Levine

Twelve-year-old Addie admires her older sister Meryl, who aspires to rid the kingdom of Bamarre of gryphons, specters, and ogres. Addie, on the other hand, is fearful even of spiders and depends on Meryl for courage and protection. Waving her sword Bloodbiter, the older girl declaims in the garden from the heroic epic of Drualt to a thrilled audience of Addie, their governess, and the young sorcerer Rhys.

But when Meryl falls ill with the dreaded Gray Death, Addie must gather her courage and set off alone on a quest to find the cure and save her beloved sister. Addie takes the seven-league boots and magic spyglass left to her by her mother and the enchanted tablecloth and cloak given to her by Rhys - along with a shy declaration of his love. She prevails in encounters with tricky specters (spiders too) and outwits a wickedly personable dragon in adventures touched with romance and a bittersweet ending.

Bunnicula by Deborah and James Howe

Before it's too late, Harold the dog and Chester the cat must find out the truth about the newest pet in the Monroe household -- a suspicious-looking bunny with unusual habits... and fangs!

Beka Cooper by Tamora Pierce

Beka Cooper is a rookie with the law-enforcing Provost's Guard, commonly known as "the Provost's Dogs," in Corus, the capital city of Tortall. To the surprise of both the veteran "Dogs" and her fellow "puppies," Beka requests duty in the Lower City. The Lower City is a tough beat. But it's also where Beka was born, and she's comfortable there.

Beka gets her wish. She's assigned to work with Mattes and Clary, famed veterans among the Provost's Dogs. They're tough, they're capable, and they're none too happy about the indignity of being saddled with a puppy for the first time in years. What they don't know is that Beka has something unique to offer. Never much of a talker, Beka is a good listener. So good, in fact, that she hears things that Mattes and Clary never could - information that is passed in murmurs when flocks of pigeons gather ... murmurs that are the words of the dead.

In this way, Beka learns of someone in the Lower City who has overturned the power structure of the underworld and is terrorizing its citizens into submission and silence. Beka's magical listening talent is the only way for the Provost's Dogs to find out the identity of this brutal new underlord, for the dead are beyond fear. And the ranks of the dead will be growing if the Dogs can't stop a crime wave the likes of which has never been seen. Luckily for the people of the Lower City, the new puppy is a true terrier!

Fairest by Gail Carson Levine

In the kingdom of Ayortha, who is the fairest of them all? Certainly not Aza. She is thoroughly convinced that she is ugly. What she may lack in looks, though, she makes up for with a kind heart, and with something no one else has-a magical voice. Her vocal talents captivate all who hear them, and in Ontio Castle they attract the attention of a handsome prince - and a dangerous new queen.

Trickster's Duology by Tamora Pierce

Alianne is the teenage daughter of the famed Alanna, the first lady knight in Tortall. Young Aly follows in the quieter footsteps of her father, however, delighting in the art of spying. When she is captured and sold as a slave to an exiled royal family in the faraway Copper Islands, it is this skill that makes a difference in a world filled with political intrigue, murderous conspiracy, and warring gods.

[odinsblog]

🗣️ Please pay attention

Amazon argues that national labor board is unconstitutional, joining SpaceX and Trader Joe’s

Amazon is arguing in a legal filing that the 88-year-old National Labor Relations Board is unconstitutional, echoing similar arguments made this year by Elon Musk’s SpaceX and the grocery store chain Trader Joe’s in disputes about workers’ rights and organizing.

The Amazon filing, made Thursday, came in response to a case before an administrative law judge overseeing a complaint from agency prosecutors who allege the company unlawfully retaliated against workers at a New York City warehouse who voted to unionize nearly two years ago.

In its filing, Amazon denies many of the charges and asks for the complaint to be dismissed. The company’s attorneys then go further, arguing that the structure of the agency — particularly limits on the removal of administrative law judges and five board members appointed by the president — violates the separation of powers and infringes on executive powers stipulated in the Constitution.

The attorneys also argue that NLRB proceedings deny the company a trial by a jury and violate its due-process rights under the Fifth Amendment. (source)

ICYMI, this is a case of corporations going, “7th Amendment Protections for me, but not for thee.”

It is strongly worth noting that in 2018 the John Roberts Court ruled 5-4 that companies can use forced arbitration clauses to stop people from joining together to fight workplace abuses - in effect denying individuals their 7th Amendment protections.

Subsequently, binding arbitration clauses used by corporations has proliferated; sneaking into all manner of common legal documents: personal banking applications, ordinary car loan applications, furniture purchases, and more. This is, unsurprisingly, a direct violation of the 7th Amendment that guarantees HUMAN BEINGS AND PEOPLE the right to a jury trial in certain civil cases and inhibits courts from overturning a jury's findings of fact. Republicans and SCOTUS are perfectly okay with corporations having more rights than workers and using forced arbitration to block people from having access to jury trials—but God forbid if corporations don’t have their right to a jury trial.

This legislative push to bestow corporations with more rights than people, while simultaneously taking away rights from human beings, has been nothing if not thoroughly and methodically done. At this rate, no corporation will ever need to fear a class action lawsuit again.

Amazon, SpaceX and Trader Joe’s are union busting.

But this latest case against the NLRB isn’t just an attack on labor and worker’s rights, it’s a fascistic attack on the very heart of fairness and democracy itself.

[gael-garcia]

Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG) is an ad hoc coalition committed to solidarity and the horizon of liberation for the Palestinian people. Drawing together writers, editors, and other culture workers, WAWOG hopes to provide ongoing infrastructure for cultural organizing in response to the war. This project is modeled on American Writers Against the War in Vietnam, an organization founded in 1965.

Statement of Solidarity

October 26, 2023

Israel’s war against Gaza is an attempt to conduct genocide against the Palestinian people. This war did not begin on October 7th. However, in the last 19 days, the Israeli military has killed over 6,500 Palestinians, including more than 2,500 children, and wounded over 17,000. Gaza is the world’s largest open-air prison: its 2 million residents—a majority of whom are refugees, descendants of those whose land was stolen in 1948—have been deprived of basic human rights since the blockade in 2006. We share the assertions of human rights groups, scholars, and, above all, everyday Palestinians: Israel is an apartheid state, designed to privilege Jewish citizens at the expense of Palestinians, heedless of the many Jewish people, both in Israel and across the diaspora, who oppose their own conscription in an ethno-nationalist project. 

We come together as writers, journalists, academics, artists, and other culture workers to express our solidarity with the people of Palestine. We stand with their anticolonial struggle for freedom and for self-determination, and with their right to resist occupation. We stand firmly by Gaza’s people, victims of a genocidal war the United States government continues to fund and arm with military aid—a crisis compounded by the illegal settlement and dispossession of the West Bank and the subjugation of Palestinians within the state of Israel.

We stand in opposition to the silencing of dissent and to racist and revisionist media cycles, further perpetuated by Israel’s attempts to bar reporting in Gaza, where journalists have been both denied entry and targeted by Israeli forces. At least 24 journalists in Gaza have now been killed. Internationally, writers and cultural workers have faced severe harassment, workplace retribution, and job loss for expressing solidarity with Palestine, whether by stating facts about their continued occupation, or for amplifying the voices of others. These are instances that mark severe incursions against supposed speech protections. Specious charges of antisemitism are leveled against Zionism’s critics; political repression has been particularly aggressive against the free speech of Muslim, Arab, and Black people living in the US and across the globe. As was the case following the September 11th attacks, Islamophobic political fervor and the widespread circulation of unsubstantiated claims has galvanized a US-led coalition of military support for a brutal campaign of violence.

What can we do to intervene against Israel’s eliminationist assault on the Palestinian people? Words alone cannot stop the onslaught of devastation of Palestinian homes and lives, backed shamelessly and without hesitation by the entire axis of Western power. At the same time, we must reckon with the role words and images play in the war on Gaza and the ferocious support they have engendered: Israel’s defense minister announced the siege as a fight against “human animals”; even as we learned that Israel had rained bombs down on densely populated urban neighborhoods and deployed white phosphorus in Gaza City, the New York Times editorial board wrote that “what Israel is fighting to defend is a society that values human life and the rule of law”; establishment media outlets continue to describe Hamas’s attack on Israel as “unprovoked.” Writers Against the War on Gaza rejects this perversion of meaning, wherein a nuclear state can declare itself a victim in perpetuity while openly enacting genocide. We condemn those in our industries who continue to enable apartheid and genocide. We cannot write a free Palestine into existence, buttogether we must do all we possibly can to reject narratives that soothe Western complicity in ethnic cleansing. 

We act alongside other writers, scholars, and artists who have expressed solidarity with the Palestinian cause, drawing inspiration from the Palestinian spirit of sumud, steadfastness, and resistance. Since 2004, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) has advocated for organizations to join a boycott of institutions representing the Israeli state or cultural institutions complicit with its apartheid regime. We call on all our colleagues working in cultural institutions to endorse that boycott. And we invite writers, editors, journalists, scholars, artists, musicians, actors, and anyone in creative and academic work to sign this statement. Join us in building a new cultural front for a free Palestine.  

Signed,

WAWOG Interim Organizing Committee

Hannah Black

Ari Brostoff (Senior Editor, Jewish Currents)

Elena Comay del Junco

Kyle Dacuyan (Executive Director, Poetry Project)

Kay Gabriel (Editorial Director, Poetry Project)

Kaleem Hawa

E. Tammy Kim

Shiv Kotecha

Wendy Lotterman (Associate Editor, Parapraxis)

Muna Mire

Perwana Nazif

Brendan O'Connor

Alex Press (Staff Writer, Jacobin)

Sarah Nicole Prickett

Dylan Saba

Zoé Samudzi (Associate Editor, Parapraxis)

Jasmine Sanders

Claire Schwartz (Culture Editor, Jewish Currents)

Janique Vigier

Harron Walker

Chloe Watlington

Gabriel Winant (Department of History, University of Chicago)

Audrey Wollen

Hannah Zeavin (Founding Editor, Parapraxis)

Signed, In Solidarity

Fatimah Warner (Noname)

Saul Williams

Susan Sarandon

Janeane Garofalo

Gael García Bernal

Danez Smith

Ocean Vuong

Aria Aber

Saidiya Hartman

China Miéville

+ full list here

[thatsonemorbidcorvid]

“Forced marriage — in which one or both parties do not give full, free consent — is recognized globally as a form of modern slavery. My story is far from unique: Around the world, 22 million people were in a forced marriage as of 2021.

Yet, even though the United States acknowledges that forced marriage is a human rights abuse, few laws and policies are in place to prevent or punish it, and the nation has paid such scant attention to this issue that we do not even know how often forced marriage happens here. 

What’s more, child marriage remains legal in most U.S. states, even though it is recognized as a form of forced marriage and a human rights abuse. Some 300,000 children were married in the U.S. between 2000 and 2018, mostly girls wed to adult men. At least 60,000 marriages occurred at an age or with a spousal age difference that should have been considered a sex crime.”

Note: The following essay contains descriptions of sexual assault and abuse.

They sent me off to be raped, with a party and a tube of K-Y Jelly.

The lubricant was to reduce the intense physical pain they explained I would endure while being penetrated by a stranger-turned-husband, without foreplay, without consent. Every month. Until death do us part.

The party — a low-budget wedding in 1995 at a Brooklyn venue aptly nicknamed Armpit Terrace — was to distract me from the horrific reality of my forced marriage to the stranger.

“Mazel tov!” they told me, beaming.

In the reclusive Orthodox Jewish community in New York City where I grew up, choices about whether, when and whom I would marry did not belong to me. At home and at the all-girls religious school I attended, where I learned to cook and sew and keep house, I was groomed from early childhood to expect a teen marriage to a stranger my family and a matchmaker would choose for me.

I was allowed to meet the stranger several times before my engagement, but I was not allowed to be alone with him nor to have any physical contact with him. I was a clueless 19-year-old who had never been allowed to “talk to a boy,” and suddenly I was given a matter of hours, over a period of a few weeks, to answer my family and his family and the matchmaker and everyone in the community standing there, tapping their feet, looking at their watches, waiting for me to tell them: You’ll marry this man we chose for you, right?

“No” was never really an option.

During my six-week engagement, I still was not allowed to be alone with the groom nor to have any physical contact with him, which left more time for me to begin experiencing the myriad other abuses that come with a forced marriage.

First, a virginity exam. The groom’s rabbi sent me to an Orthodox Jewish gynecologist, where I was instructed to disrobe, get on the examination table and put my feet in the stirrups. The doctor inserted her gloved fingers into my vagina and confirmed that my hymen was intact.

“Mazel tov!” she told me, beaming.

I attended one-on-one bridal classes, where the curriculum centered on the requirement that I have unprotected sex with my husband on my wedding night and on a monthly basis thereafter. A lifetime of rape.

Yes, the rapes probably would hurt, the bridal class teacher explained. Hence the K-Y Jelly.

“Mazel tov!” she told me, beaming.

My stranger-turned-husband turned out to be violent and abusive. I learned this exactly one week after our wedding, when he became enraged because he had woken up late, and he punched his fist through the wall — hard enough to leave a sizable hole. 

His first threat to kill me came only days later. Soon these threats became more frequent, specific and gruesome. He was brimming with creative ideas for how he would end my life, and he took the time to describe them to me in vivid detail. A lifetime of fear.

Yet I was trapped.

My forced marital sex was carefully timed each month for when I was ovulating. The reason for this was obvious: My first child was born 11 months after my wedding, and soon I had a second child.

I love my daughters, but I did not consent to having them. A lifetime of forced parenthood.

This denial of sexual and reproductive rights was not the only shackle preventing me from leaving my marriage. My husband did not allow me to have my own bank account or credit card, and I was taught that, under Orthodox Jewish law, if my husband allowed me to work, any money I earned belonged to him. A lifetime of domestic servitude and financial dependence.

I had limited legal rights too. Under Orthodox Jewish law, only a man can grant a divorce. I, as a woman, did not have the legal right to end my own marriage. A lifetime of being locked in unwanted wedlock.

One escape route for me would have been to move back in with my family as an agunah, a “chained woman” who is bound to a husband who refuses her a divorce. The life of an agunah is brutal; she is shamed for her powerlessness, blamed for her failed marriage and treated as an outcast. 

But even this dreadful escape route was closed to me, because my family refused to take me back in. A lifetime of betrayal.

So I remained trapped in my abusive forced marriage. In accordance with Orthodox Jewish law, I was considered “unclean” every time I menstruated. While I was “unclean,” I was prohibited from having physical contact with my husband, sleeping in the same bed as him, handing him anything or undressing or singing in front of him. A lifetime of shame.

Once my period ended, I needed to count seven “clean” days without any menstrual blood, during which time the rules against physical contact continued. To make sure I stayed “clean” for the full seven days, I was required to wear white panties and, twice a day, to insert a white cloth into my vagina, swish it around and inspect it in sunlight to make sure it did not have blood spots. If I found questionable marks on my panties and could not tell whether they were blood, the rabbi would inspect them and give his pronouncement.

And the rabbi would keep my panties. A lifetime of extreme patriarchy.

Each month, after the seven “clean” days, I was forced to strip naked in front of an attendant who watched me immerse in a mikvah, or a ritual bath of rainwater, which frequently left me with a yeast infection and always left me shaking uncontrollably. A lifetime of violation. 

All I wanted, every time I left the mikvah, was to take a hot shower and scrub the violation off me. That was prohibited. Instead I was required to go home and have nonconsensual sex with the man who had spent the day describing to me in graphic detail how he was going to murder me. The man who would not let me close the door when I used the bathroom, because “what was I hiding from him in there?”

No matter. I had to get on the bed and spread my legs and forget what had happened to me at the mikvah and ignore the pain while I waited for him to finish, and I had to remind myself how lucky I was that he usually was done after only three or four thrusts. A lifetime straight out of Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

Forced marriage — in which one or both parties do not give full, free consent — is recognized globally as a form of modern slavery. My story is far from unique: Around the world, 22 million people were in a forced marriage as of 2021.

Yet, even though the United States acknowledges that forced marriage is a human rights abuse, few laws and policies are in place to prevent or punish it, and the nation has paid such scant attention to this issue that we do not even know how often forced marriage happens here. 

What’s more, child marriage remains legal in most U.S. states, even though it is recognized as a form of forced marriage and a human rights abuse. Some 300,000 children were married in the U.S. between 2000 and 2018, mostly girls wed to adult men. At least 60,000 marriages occurred at an age or with a spousal age difference that should have been considered a sex crime.

My husband would regularly search through my personal belongings in front of me, including in the pockets of the clothing in my closet and in my bag of tampons under the bathroom sink. A lifetime of subjugation. When I finally realized at age 27 that I was the only person who would help me leave my abusive forced marriage alive and I decided I would secretly save up cash for my escape, I found the only safe hiding place in the house: a box of Whole Grain Total in the pantry.

I saved more than $40,000 in that cereal box over the next five years.

During those years I also defied my community and did something no one in my family had ever done: I became a college student. My husband forbade me from attending classes. I informed him, calmly, that nothing he did to me would stop me from getting my education.

And I did something no one I knew had ever done: I threw out the limp, ugly wig I was required to wear as a married woman to cover my own thick, healthy hair. I walked outside with my uncovered head held high — the equivalent, in that community, of walking outside naked.

My family retaliated immediately by shunning me. One of my sisters notified me that my family was planning to sit shiva — or observe the Jewish mourning ritual for me — as if I had literally died. I have had almost no contact with my family since that day. A lifetime of being dead.

But I graduated from Rutgers University (as commencement speaker, the equivalent of valedictorian) at age 32, and I escaped my abusive forced marriage on my own, with my daughters and my box of Total. I fled the Orthodox Jewish community too, and I rebuilt my life.

In 2011 I founded a nonprofit organization, Unchained At Last, to combat forced and child marriage in the U.S. through direct services and systems change.

The U.S. is one of 193 countries that agree forced and child marriage are harmful practices, particularly for women and girls, and have promised to eliminate these abuses by year 2030 to help achieve gender equality, under the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Yet the U.S. is not on track to keep its promise. 

I refuse to accept this. Not after I escaped my lifetime of oppression.

We at Unchained are fighting back by providing crucial wraparound services to a long-ignored population: those who are fleeing an existing or impending forced marriage in the U.S. To date we have provided legal and social services, always for free, to nearly 1,000 individuals, to help give them a lifetime of dignity, safety and hope.

We also started a national movement to end child marriage. In the last few years, our groundbreaking research and relentless advocacy have allowed us to help change the law in 10 U.S. states to ban child marriage — a stunning victory for the 7.5 million girls who live in those 10 states — and we are working on the other 40.

A lifetime of preventing other lifetimes of rape.

“Mazel tov!” I now tell myself, beaming, with each triumphant step closer to ending forced and child marriage in the U.S.

Fraidy Reiss is a forced marriage survivor turned activist. She is the founder and executive director of Unchained At Last, a survivor-led nonprofit organization working to end forced and child marriage in the U.S. through direct services and systems change. Fraidy’s research and writing on forced and child marriage have been published extensively, making her one of the nation’s foremost experts on these abuses. She has been featured in books (including as one of the titular women in Hillary and Chelsea Clinton’s “The Book of Gutsy Women”), films and countless television, radio and print news stories.

Need help? Visit RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Online Hotline or the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s website.

Do you have a compelling personal story you’d like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we’re looking for here and send us a pitch.

[leaves-lilies-and-esther]

Why being against trans rights as a feminist is bull

Generally I fall pretty neatly into line with the radfem line of thinking about things (anti surrogacy, anti sex industry, pro choice, anti beauty industry etc). And I don't think that radical feminists who disagree with me on this are evil or anything, but I do believe that it shouldn't be a priority and that this whole effort will be remembered badly.

"But the bathrooms-"

Letting trans women into female bathrooms does not increase sexual assault. According to Media Matters, "...the fear is baseless- completely unsupported by years of evidence from states that already have non-discrimination laws on the books." To give examples:

Rhode Island reported "no increase in sex crimes due to 2001 law"

Karen Richards of the Vermont Human Rights commission said she is "not aware" of any problems from a 2001 law

Jim O'Neill said he was "unaware of any sexual assault as the result of the CT gender identity or expression law" in Connecticut

If you search "Debunking the Big Myth about Transgender Inclusive Bathrooms" from Media Matters you can see the other twelve state level examples

There's also a very well written article from Time called "Transgender Bathroom: Advocates Say 'Predator' is a Myth" . They detail several locations like New York City and California which protect trans rights without seeing a spike in sexual assaults, the fact that school officials and police departments have not seen a spike either, and that several organizations dedicated to stopping violence against women all agree that bathroom rights aren't a threat.

Moreover, according to Vox's article "Anti-transgender bathroom hysteria, explained"- all of the incidences commonly cited of men dressing up as women or posing as a woman in order to commit sexual assault happened before a non-discrimination bathroom law was passed. Meaning that these laws don't cause sh*t.

But to add onto another point, there's a very good reason why we cannot simply say that women's bathrooms must be defined by sex alone. Which is that we end up exposing transgender or nonbinary youth to extremely avoidable violence instead.

According to an article from Harvard entitled "transgender teens with restricted bathroom access at higher risk of sexual assault", quote, "Transgender and non-binary teens face greater sexual assault in schools that prevent them from using bathrooms or locker rooms consistent with their gender identity." 36% of trans or nonbinary youth with restricted access had been sexually assaulted in the past year. In no world is that an acceptable number. Not only does restricting bathroom access not solve anything for cis women, it actively inflicts male violence on transgender women.

And even in the outlandish world where this wasn't enough of a reason, it also leads to cis women being policed on their appearance and how feminine they present in order to avoid looking trans. In Las Vegas a woman named Jay was kicked out because they mistook her for trans according to Advocate article 'cis woman mistaken as transgender records being berated in bathroom'. Aimee Toms in Danbury was similarly harassed, as was Jessica Rush in Dallas. There's several videos in the Vox article "Women are getting harassed in bathrooms because of anti-transgender hysteria". And guess what? This sort of policing what a cis woman can look like is only going to get worse as people continue to advocate against trans women in bathrooms.

And women's sports-

Any physical advantage that transgender people have in sports goes away several years after medical transition. According to the NBC article "trans women retain athletic edge after a year of hormone therapy"

(1) "For the Olympic, the elite level, I'd say probably two years is more realistic than one year" - namely, trans people have standard hormone levels if they wait two years after medical transition. "After two years, Roberts told NBC News, 'they were fairly equivalent to cisgender women'".

There were some limitations to the Roberts study, but there's also a 2015 Harper study backing this up.

(3) Joanna Harper, a medical physicist in Portland, already ran a study on this. "...found that trans women ran at least 10 percent slower after beginning hormones. And, relatively speaking, they did no better against cisgender female runners than they previously done against cisgender men".

Namely, as long as there's been a medical transition for several years, it's still a totally fair competition.

But laws which ban transgender women from sports have had the incidental effect of allowing for state-sanctioned genital inspections on minors. This sounds fake, right? But in Ohio Republicans have passed a bill which "...has a verification requirement, if someone is 'accused' or 'suspected' of being trans... she must go through evaluations of her external and internal genitalia, testosterone levels and genetic makeup." And believe it or not, they only had one transgender girl who was an athlete in high school. One! This is according to the Ohio Capital Journal's article "GOP passes bill aiming to root out 'suspected' transgender female athletes with genital inspection."

Similarly, Florida has just passed a ban on transgender students in sports in April 2021, with provisions similar to the Ohio law. "A dispute regarding a student's sex shall be resolved by the student's school or institution by requesting that the student provide a health examination... provides for 'routine sports physical examination' of students' reproductive organs, genetic makeup, or testosterone levels." This is according to Changing America, titled "Florida's new ban on transgender students in sports would allow schools to subject minors to genital inspections."

I don't know about you, but as someone who has enjoyed track, swim team, and basketball all through educational institutions- I don't want the government in my pants.

Beyond the creepy implications of the state demanding invasive inspections on literal children, this also goes back to the point I made on bathrooms above- that when we take spaces away trans people, we take spaces away from any woman or girl who society deems as presenting too 'masculine'.

As feminists we can absolutely support trans rights without compromising our integrity. And not only can we, we should.

Edited August 24, 2023: I wanted to add a section about the provisions of these bills for literal genital inspections. I regret that it wasn't in the original, but I remembered these articles earlier and thought that it was important to add here.

The other thing I did later the same day was take out the part referencing women like Caster Semenya competing in the Olympics and being removed because of high testosterone levels. Someone has kindly pointed out that these are intersex women, which the original article I had read referred to as cis. I feel that intersex women in athletics deserve their own discussion, and I haven't (a) read enough on the issue or (b) learned enough about the intersex community as a whole to take part.

[interactyouth]

interACT Files Supreme Court Amicus Brief Opposing Healthcare Ban that Endorses Invasive Medical Interventions on Intersex Children

interACT has filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court case U.S.A. v. Skrmetti, opposing a Tennessee ban on gender-affirming healthcare that endorses invasive medical interventions on intersex children. Because every state law to date that bans gender-affirming care also contains an explicit “intersex exception,” the Supreme Court’s decision in this case will have far-reaching implications for the medical autonomy of transgender and intersex young people across the United States. interACT is the nation’s only organization dedicated exclusively to advancing the legal and human rights of youth born with intersex traits. Our core mission is to empower intersex youth in the charge to end the practice of nonconsensual and medically unnecessary medical interventions that have for generations been carried out on the bodies of intersex babies and children. This amicus brief was a collaboration between interACT, the Harvard Law School LGBTQ+ Advocacy Clinic, and the New York City-based law firm Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler, LLP. interACT is deeply grateful for the skillful contributions of our colleagues, and their generous support of this underserved community.

[coochiequeens]

Another TIM with a history of domestic violence is using the courts to to play victim

By Anna Slatz January 12, 2024

A trans-identified male is suing the City of New York after he was placed in a men’s detention center while awaiting transfer to another state on charges related to domestic violence. Ali Miles, formerly known as Dylan Miles, is demanding over $22,000,000 in compensation for discrimination on the basis of his gender identity.

Miles, who identifies as a Muslim woman, was incarcerated at the George R. Vierno Center on Rikers Island from June to July of 2022. His custody was a holding prior to his transfer to another state, as he had warrants for his arrest in the state of Arizona. He was then transferred to Yavapai County Jail where he was ultimately tried and found guilty of two counts of aggravated harassment per domestic violence, a Class 5 felony, for instances dated in November 2021 and February 2022.

He was also found guilty of disorderly conduct, harassment, threatening or intimidating, and false reporting to a law enforcement agency, which are all Class 1 misdemeanors.

In October of 2022, he was placed on supervised probation for a period of three years and sentenced to 312 days in jail, with credit added for the 132 days he had already been held there. Miles was also subject to a domestic violence assessment.

But Miles is now taking to the court to sue to the City of New York for detaining him with other males while he was awaiting transfer to Arizona. The suit argues that Miles faced discrimination, assault, and human rights violations after being placed with men.

From the lawsuit filed by Miles on August 24, 2023.

While asserting that he “wears women’s clothing and in all appearance expresses as a person of the female gender,” the filing argues that Miles was housed in a male facility at Rikers despite allegedly having a court order directing his placement to the female unit.

The suit reveals that following his arrest, Miles informed a judge that he was transgender, and required special housing accommodations to which a judge reportedly agreed. The court file and orders were then marked to notify the prison and their Intake Personnel that Miles was to be housed in the female section of Rikers, but he was not.

��As Miles approached the inside of the building, Miles realized it was a male jail which caused shock, panic and fright to Miles,” the suit reads, referring to Miles using feminine pronouns. “Miles requested and pleaded … that as an LGBTQIA+ individual who was transgendered, she required and needed an accommodation, and that she should not be placed in a male population jail.”

Miles then alleges that a prison staff member said “we don’t do the trans thing here.” He was then strip-searched by a male guard he alleges told him that he had “nice tits” and “one hell of a pussy.” This is despite Miles not having had any known genital surgeries.

Miles continues that he was routinely harassed, “misgendered” and subjected to humiliation during his detention at the George R. Vierno Center. In particular, Miles emphasizes his “sexual victimization” by multiple “African American male” inmates as a result of his placement in a male facility, one of which he alleges sodomized him using butter as lubricant.

Miles is seeking a minimum of $22,000,000 in compensation for the various mistreatments he claims, arguing that the prison’s “unlawful conduct was a direct result of Rikers’ pervasive practices, and customs of discrimination, deliberate indifference, against transgender people.”

Miles is a prolific litigant, and, as previously reported by Reduxx, has filed a number of suits alleging discrimination by various businesses.

In May of 2023, Miles filed a lawsuit against a New York yoga studio seeking compensation of $5,000,000 after employees reportedly asked him to use the men’s restroom instead of the women’s.

In the suit, Miles alleged that the personnel at Chelsea Yoga “deprived [him] of his civil rights because he is gay, undergoing a gender transition, and because Miles does not conform to … gender-based preferences, expectations, or stereotypes about how a man/woman should dress and conduct himself/herself.”

But shortly after that suit was launched, Reduxx learned that Miles had filed at least four other lawsuits, making similar claims of victimization in each.

Dylan Miles. Photo Credit: X / TWITTER.

In February of 2022, Miles filed a civil action for $75,000 in compensation against Sedona Soul Adventures, an Arizona-based business he had previously worked for. Miles alleged that the tourism company had wrongfully terminated his employment shortly after he was hired after subjecting him to “gender identity-based harassment and discrimination.” The suit was dismissed after an out-of-court agreement was reached.

One month later, Miles filed two separate civil actions — one against Planet Fitness and one against Bagel Point, both, again, on the basis of “gender identity-based harassment and discrimination.” In both, Miles represented himself, and failed to use consistent pronouns, often calling himself “Mr. Miles.” 

In his poorly-written civil action, Miles alleged that staff at a Planet Fitness threatened to sound the “lunk alarm” on him for entering the women’s facilities, and used a slur when referring to him. The “lunk alarm” is a fixture seen at most Planet Fitness gyms intended to provide a humorous “warning” to those being too loud or obnoxious in the gym.

Miles demanded compensation of $10,000,000 from Planet Fitness, but the suit was ultimately dismissed after he failed to file the appropriate paperwork and pay $402 in filing fees as requested by the court.

In his action against Bagel Point, a cafe in Brooklyn, Miles sought $75,000 in damages alleging he had been wrongfully terminated and subjected to verbal abuse on the basis of his gender identity.

Miles had been an employee of Bagel Point for a short period of time, during which he claimed the owner, a Muslim woman, had referred to him using slurs and mocked his gender identity, as well as crafting “unsubstantiated” complaints about his performance. The action, which was poorly written and rife with spelling errors, was dismissed by the court once again after Miles failed to file the appropriate paperwork and pay $402 in filing fees.

In yet another suit, Miles sought compensation from New York Presbyterian Hospital, once again claiming to have faced discrimination on the basis of his gender identity. The suit was dismissed and an appeal was not filed.

Though it is unclear when Miles began to identify as a woman, he appears to have converted to Islam around the same time. On his social media pages, he has alluded to learning Arabic and following various Islamic teachings.

While Miles’ past cases were quickly snuffed out of the court system, his most recent suit against the City of New York appears to be proceeding. Having previously represented himself unsuccessfully, Miles has retained an attorney for this suit who has requested the case be referred to the court’s Alternative Dispute Resolution Program (ADR). The ADR is an alternative mediation-style arrangement targeted at speeding up settlement.

On January 10, the lawyers for the City of New York requested a time extension to review the details of the case, with the next hearing being set for February 22.

[kumeko]

A/N: For the @ichiruki-auzine! I think they’d be a lot of fun in a Men in Black world, and wanted to explore another way they could have met for the first time. 

…

…

…

…

Rukia was good at her job. Perhaps not as great as her brother—almost no one could reach Byakuya’s level—but good nonetheless. There was a reason the Men in Black recruited her straight out of university. Just like the FBI or CIA, they only wanted the best.

Best was her middle name. 

Intelligence? She was the top of her class. Every class, for the past five years. 

Fitness? Despite how short she was, Rukia had been on both the soccer and volleyball teams throughout university. She could run laps around her coworkers.

Adaptability? Rukia had lived on the streets for a few years. If she couldn’t adjust to anything after that, then no one could.

Any skill they needed, she had in spades. The top brass agreed: there was a reason she was the only agent on her level who worked alone.  

Rukia grinned as she roared down the highway, swerving her motorcycle in and out of traffic. There were no other motorcycles tailing her as she searched New York for her latest target. She wasn’t forced to sit in a car, making small chat to her partner as they fought traffic.

No, it was just her and the open wind. Rukia took a deep breath of her city’s smog-filled air, listened to the angry honks and screeching tires, and pressed the gas. Her motorcycle jumped forward, and she leaned down closer, hugging the turn as she exited the highway. Her tie flapped in the wind and she felt a feral sort of joy from it all. It was funny how her suit didn’t feel restricting at all as she drove—maybe it was the alien fibers used to make it.

“In two miles, turn right,” her watch declared. A small, green holographic map temporarily floated above the watch, a blinking red dot indicating her destination. 

So close, she thought. No matter where she went, New York was a bright, loud disaster. It was almost eleven and if Rukia didn’t know the time, she’d assume it was day. Buildings jutted out every square inch possible, towering above them and flashing neon lights until it was impossible to see the stars. Pedestrians crowded the well-lit street and she glanced at them as she passed. 

Just how many were human? Alien? At one point, the latter hadn’t even been a question, but now she knew better. She’d opened Pandora’s box and there was no turning back. Not only did aliens exist, but there was an entire economy built off them. There was an immigration system in place, special laws on handling them, and even few presidents had been aliens.

Of all the things Rukia had expected after chasing her brother’s footsteps, joining what was basically an FBI for aliens wasn’t one of them. She glanced at the pedestrians as she drove by. This area wasn’t part of her usual patrol, so for as far as she knew, the hot dog seller could be an alien. Even that schoolgirl skipping eagerly with her friends could be one. 

Alien disguises were too realistic these days. A small scar could hide a zipper, a beard the buttons of a robotic body.

Rukia turned the corner, finally leaving the city proper; the lights were spaced out more, the groups of people decrease to a few stragglers here and there. Even the buildings started to show some variety, houses mixing in between the apartments.

“What’s his name?” she asked, slowing down to match the speed limit.

“Fishbone D., of the Hallow system,” her watch recited immediately. While it looked like any other smart watch, hers was a good deal smarter. “Considering his affinity for water, he is generally found at the docks. He spends his days as a fisherman.”

“The docks?” Rukia snorted. They were nowhere near the ocean now. “What’s he doing all the way over here?”

“He has not checked in with his corresponding agent for the past two weeks,” the watch continued, ignoring her as usual. “He should be somewhere in the next neighbourhood.”

“Probably stumbled in the wrong place.” Rukia turned another corner, slowing down further. The streets here were empty, fortunately. However this went, the less witnesses the better. If she was lucky, Fishbone D.—

“Oh.” Rukia braked hard. Her grip on the handlebars was the only thing that kept her in her seat, gravity trying to jerk her forward and into the eight-foot-tall behemoth in front of her. “Does Fishbone look like a giant shark?”

“Yes,” her watch cheerfully replied, pulling up a hologram of the very alien standing in front of her. “In his original form, he has a skull—”

“Don’t bother, he’s right in front of me.” Rukia sighed as she surveyed the scene.

Not bothering with his human disguise, Fishbone was in his full alien form. It was like looking at a humanoid shark: a sleek grey body with a fin sticking out the back. He had humanesque legs and arms, though his arms were disgustingly long. To top it of, this Frankenstein of a creature had a white, bone-like mask for a face. She wasn’t sure if that was better or worse than having a shark head or even a human head.

Still, there was no way of changing the fact that a giant shark-man was standing in the middle of a rather ordinary suburb, clearly visible for anyone who looked outside. Fishbone also didn’t care about being discrete as he rocked an empty parked car back and forth. Well, it wasn’t like he could be discrete, considering his size, but still. The point was Rukia needed to do a lot of mind-wipes after this was over. It was hard work as is keeping society from knowing about aliens without all of this added to the mix.

Sighing, she dismounted her bike. “Hey, Fishbone.” 

He didn’t look at her. Instead he rocked the car again. This time, it flipped on its side. 

“Great. Property damage too.” Rolling her eyes, Rukia came to a stop in front of him. “Hey. Big guy. You know what comes next, right?”

“She broke up with me,” he whined, his voice oddly deep and guttural.

Rukia could just smell the alcohol clinging to him. “Great, a drunk alien. I don’t care about your life story, you’re still in trouble.”

Fishbone kicked the car. “She left!” 

“I’d leave too.” Tapping on her watch, she shook her head. Honestly, days like these were the worst. There was always too much clean up. “Now you’re going to have to—”

He turned, his right arm whipping back and smacking her right in the stomach with the force of a sledge hammer. As she flew through the air, her only thought was shit.

-x-

Ichigo was drunk. Sure, his body didn’t feel heavy, his brain was particularly unfuzzy, and he didn’t even have that warm tingle that happened after a few too many shots, but he was drunk. It was really the only explanation for the monster that was blocking his walk home.

Though, considering how much the monster stunk of beer, maybe they were both drunk. 

“How do you even drink?” he muttered to himself, squinting at the monster’s face. Despite his black body, his face looked like a white skull. Did that mouth even open? How did he even lift the can, he didn’t look like he had proper hands.

There was a short woman standing next to him, and if the monster was huge, the woman was tiny. She was like one of those fairies his sister liked to draw. Her black suit didn’t make her look at all imposing, and he wondered just what it said to him that he was dreaming about Beauty and the Beast. 

Before he blinked, the monster swatted the woman in his direction. Flying through the air, she shot past him and onto the hood of a car. Loud beeps blared through the quiet night and Ichigo pulled out his stupor. He wasn’t drunk. He wasn’t dreaming. That was a real monster in front of him.

And that lady needed help. Quickly, he sprang into action, dropping his backpack as he sprinted to the car. The woman groaned as she sat up and rubbed her head. “Fuck,” she swore. 

“You okay?” he asked, quickly scanning her for injuries. Enough years watching his father’s medical practice had left him with just enough knowledge to know what to look for. There wasn’t any blood, fortunately, and she looked more annoyed than in pain.

“I’m fine.” She swatted his hand away, climbing off the car on her own. Somehow, she looked even tinier now; he had to be at least double her height. “You should get going.”

“Get going?” Ichigo snorted, gesturing at the monster. “We should call the cops.”

She shot him a glare. “Don’t. God, the cleanup would be—just don’t, okay? Run along now, idiot.”

“Idiot?” he gawked. Before he could get any further than that, she sprinted toward the monster once more.  

There was a gun in her hand. He had no idea where she’d been hiding that. Were guns even useful against monsters? Ichigo could feel his brain overloading from it all. Maybe he should go; she seemed to know what she was doing.

Yet…he watched as she shot. Two short, white bursts of energy exploded out of the gun and smacked the monster in the back. The monster cried—it was weird how human-like that sounded—before whirling around and attacking her. She looked more than capable of fighting the monster; in fact she looked oddly used to it. He could get in the way.

The monster’s feet swept at her and while she jumped, she couldn’t dodge the monster’s claws coming from the opposite direction.

“Watch out!” 

She turned and crossed her arms over her chest just as she got hit, flying into yet another car. 

“Shit!” Ichigo ran toward her, not caring anymore. She clearly needed help; this thing was far too strong for just her to take care of. 

“Not again.” The woman coughed, blood dribbling down her lips. Whatever got hurt, it was internal, and those were the worst types of injuries.

“Shit, shit, shit.” The monster was still ambling toward them. There was no time to do anything but scoop her up in his arms and run. If she broke something else, well, she’d at least be alive to complain about it. 

“What’re you doing?” she gasped. Despite her pain, she smacked his chest with an open palm. “Let go of me, you idiot.”

“You’re injured, moron,” Ichigo growled back. She was even lighter than he’d expected. Glancing over his shoulder, he noticed the monster was oddly slow on its approach. Instead of focusing on them, it was hitting random cars along the way. 

“I’m not.” She groaned as she tried to move. “Fine, a little.”

“A little?” Incredulous, Ichigo tore his eyes off the street and onto the slip of a woman in his arms. He had never seen anyone so stubborn before, it was like everything she was lacking in height, she made up for in attitude. “You’re coughing up blood!”

“All in a day’s work.” She winced as she peeked around his arms. “That fucking drunk idiot.”

There were many words Ichigo would have used on the monster, but none of those were it. And especially strung together like that. “What?”

“Nothing, ignore it.” She studied him. “You’re pretty strong.”

Ichigo raised a brow. “You’re not that heavy.”

The woman’s jaw dropped and she smacked him. “No, you idiot—look, there’s an easy way for all of this to end.” She pointed behind him. “I need you to get me to my motorcycle.”

“And run past that thing?” Ichigo slowed down to look over his shoulder again. It was odd, the monster didn’t look interested in them anymore, more content to wreck a garbage can than to eat them. Suddenly, he understood drunk though he wasn’t sure why a monster of all things would be.

She nodded, not missing a beat. “And then I need you to distract him long enough for me to shoot him.”

“What?” If he hadn’t been holding her, he would have rubbed his brow. As it was, he stopped running. “Are you an idiot?”

“That’s still you,” she growled. “Look, either we do this together, or I do it alone.”

He stared at her.

“It’s my job, I know what I’m doing.”

Job. Ichigo took a deep breath. “None of this makes sense,” he mumbled. It wasn’t like he could leave her alone to face this, and even if he ran away, other people could be hurt by it. Reluctantly, he nodded. “Fine, but you’re explaining everything after.”

The woman snorted, as though there was something hilarious about that. “Sure, I’ll explain everything. Now don’t get hit.”

“I don’t need you to tell me that, shorty,” Ichigo hunched forward slightly and took a deep breath. 

Three—

The monster perked his head up.

Two—

Its skeletal head turned to them.

One—

The monster dropped the garbage bin.

Go!

Ichigo sprinted down the road, trying not to scream. Noticing his approach, the monster bounded toward them, its overly large arms hitting parked cars and setting off several alarms. From the corner of his eyes, he could see blinds pulling back, doors opening; the whole neighbourhood realizing that a monster stood on their front lawn.

But there wasn’t time to think of that. As long as the monster was focused on him, it wouldn’t turn to them. Its hand curled around a trash can and hurled it at him. Ichigo barely dodged in time. The gap between him and the motorcycle was slowly decreasing. It was the size of a football field now.

Unfortunately, the monster stood at the halfway point, and he was only coming closer. 

Ichigo glanced at the woman. Her eyes were fixed determinedly on the monster. “Hey.”

“Yes?” She didn’t look at him.

Ichigo angled toward the lawn on his right. “Can you run?”

“Huh?” She looked at him, curiously. “What do you mean?”

“Can you?” he repeated insistently. There was only a car length between them and the monster now. 

“Y-yes,” she replied quickly. “Why?” 

“Great.” And without warning, he deposited her on the grass. Before she could gather her bearings, he ran straight at the beast.

-x-

Rukia lay flat on the ground, more confused than hurt. No, that was a lie: her chest very much hurt whenever she took a breath. She’d probably cracked a rib or two. “What was that?” 

Gingerly, she sat up, wondering if that guy had just ditched her. She wouldn’t blame him if he did. It was hard enough learning about aliens, let alone facing one that looked like that. Rubbing her head, she glanced back up the street. It was empty. And on the other side…

On the other side, the idiot was taunting the alien. “You—” Rukia cut herself off. He was playing bait and unfortunately, she couldn’t deny that she needed it. In the state she was in, she wouldn’t be able to knock out Fishbone on her own. The entire neighbourhood was awake, families huddling on their doorsteps as they watched in fear, and it was only a matter of time before the cops came. She’d have to scrub the whole place after this.

Rukia clambered to her feet carefully. The stranger at least had some idea of what he was doing, baiting Fishbone to the left side of the street and dodging behind cars. Quickly, she made her way along the right, ducking under cars as she moved. Her chest felt like it was on fire. 

Her motorcycle wasn’t too far, fortunately. She all but sprinted the last few feet, clenching her teeth at the pain. Miraculously, Fishbone hadn’t noticed it in his rampage, leaving the whole thing in once piece. Pressing a button on the handlebars, she impatiently watched as the seat opened up to reveal several small guns.

It was tempting to take the lethal ones, but Fishbone was just drunk and not an actual danger. Grabbing a tranquilizer, she drew it on the alien. His back was toward her. His claws were raised. Without hesitation, she pulled the trigger and shot. A small dart pierced his skin and he stumbled forward as he passed out. 

“Good.” Rukia sighed, resisting the urge to sink to her feet. If she sat down now, she wasn’t going to get back up. 

The stranger stared at Fishbone before kicking him once. When he didn’t move, the man jogged over to her. “Is he dead?”

“No, just asleep.” Rukia put her gun back in the rack and pushed it close. 

“What the—” The guy looked at the bike, at her, at the monster. “What is that? All of this?”

“He’s an alien,” Rukia explained easily, slipping on her sunglasses. She pulled out her neutralizer, a slim, metal device that would make all her worries go away. All she had to do was flash it, and her witnesses would forget anything that happened here tonight. “I need you to do one last thing for me.”

“What?” The man stared at her confused. “And why are you wearing sunglasses at night?”

“I’ll explain in a moment.” Raising her neutralizer, she smiled. “Just look at the light.”

“The light?” The second the stranger looked, she activated it. A bright light flashed and the man recoiled. “Good, now you were on your way home and were distracted by all the honking cars.”

“What?” The man shielded his eyes. “I’m more distracted by that fucking monster!”

Now it was her turn to be surprised. Rukia stared at him. “You remember?”

“Of course I remember. It was two seconds ago.” The stranger rubbed his eyes. “What the hell was that light for?”

Rukia had never heard of a neutralizer not working. She’d used it just earlier today, so it couldn’t be the device. No, there was just something really off about the ginger-haired man in front of her, still rubbing his eyes pitifully. 

Somehow, it hadn’t worked on him.

“Hey watch,” she said, not taking her eyes off him. “Tell the boss we have a problem.”

[the-bramble--patch]

I'm in a class on climate and art rn and I wanna share with you guys the art we're looking at, starting with Swale, a piece by Mary Mattingly. I listened to her talk the other night and it was really cool. And this piece actually created real-world change beyond the scope of the project.

Swale is a barge harboring a food forest that docks at different areas in New York City--to avoid the strict anti-foraging laws in New York City as well as to reach food deserts. From her website:

"At its heart, Swale is a call to action. It asks people to reconsider industrial food systems, to confirm a belief in healthy food as a human right, and to pave pathways to create public food in public space.

As a direct result of Swale and the support of community groups, the New York City Parks Department opened their first land-based pilot in 2017 – a public “Foodway” at Concrete Plant Park in the Bronx."

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

LGBTQIA+ Pride Day: Fight for rights in Brazil goes back a long way

In the 1990s, parades showed pride and demanded rights

“Visibility” is a word that permeates the history of the LGBTQIA+ struggle in Brazil. Not even during the most violent and authoritarian times—such as the military dictatorship—was there silence or inertia. In the attempts to form national meetings from 1959 to 1972, in the creation of Grupo Somos and the newspapers Lampião da Esquina and Chanacomchana in 1978, in the lesbian uprising at Ferro’s Bar in 1983 and in the years-long pressure to remove homosexuality from the list of diseases—which finally came to fruition in 1985—rights activists took the lead in mobilizing and putting up a fight.

It comes as no surprise, therefore, that the main date for celebrating sexual diversity in Brazil is June 28, in reference to a riot that took place in New York City in 1969. On that occasion, regulars at the Stonewall Inn, one of Manhattan’s popular gay bars, resisted a violent police raid. The protest became a milestone in the LGBTQIA+ movement for rights in the US and is now celebrated in many other countries, including Brazil, as International LGBT+ Pride Day.

“These dates can and should be celebrated. But not everything began at Stonewall and not everything was settled there. Many other episodes need to be remembered so that we have a more collective, plural, democratic, and diverse memory of the struggles of the LGBTQIA+ community,” said Renan Quinalha, law professor at the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp) and head of the LGBTQIA+ Memory and Truth Group, under the Ministry of Human Rights and Citizenship. “We end up being influenced by North American cultural imperialism. This makes some national milestones invisible, which we also need to celebrate as advances, achievements, and references for memory in this political construction of the community.”

Historian Rita Colaço, an LGBTQIA+ activist and director of the Bajubá Museum, argues it is necessary to direct less attention to the US as a reference point and more to elements within the Brazilian movement.

Continue reading.

[themculibrary]

Steve and Peggy (Steggy) Masterlist 3

part one, part two

Ain't Love a Kick (ao3) - roboticonography M, 33k

Summary: Steve wakes up after the crash to find his life has changed dramatically - the main change being, he's married to Peggy Carter.

A Lot of Issues (ao3) - linascribbles T, 66k

Summary: Peggy Carter is a Fashion Editor at Sakaar magazine. She’s used to juggling egos, drama queens and ridiculous assignments from her boss all the time. She's even used to dealing with gorgeous six foot blonds on the regular. But none of that really prepeared her for Steve Rogers, his fumbling charm, or the gorgeous way he blushes.

Steve Rogers is a graphic designer who only models to make ends meet. New York is the perfect city for that, but just as NYC's fashion word is prolific, it is also... bizarre. In his line of work Steve's gotten used to losing significant chunks of his dignity quite often (He has a photo album about it, lovingly curated by the one and only Bucky Barnes), but maybe, just this once, he could avoid making a mess of himself in front of that beautiful model on this shoot. No such luck.

Certain I'm Yours (ao3) - Spacecadet72 G, 1k

Summary: Steve wasn’t suspicious, at first.

The Howling Commandos are less than subtle in their attempts to matchmake Peggy and Steve using a gift exchange.

church bells ring, carry me home (ao3) - mybestgirl T, 18k

Summary: A how-to guide on getting Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter married: step one, bachelor party. Step two, wedding. Step three, honeymoon.

Coffee Talk (ao3) - indiefic G, 1k

Summary: Jack Thompson is sick of Peggy Carter thinking she can do whatever she wants.

Don't Miss a Moment (ao3) - agentofvalue T, 40k

Summary: The war has been over for years. After five years, Steve even came back from the dead. Peggy married him and that should be the happily ever after. But, they are still Captain America and Agent Carter. With them, nothing ever goes according to plan. Not even impending parenthood.

I Just Keep Falling For You (ao3) - BuckyWithTheGoodHair86 G, 10k

Summary: Steve is starting to make a habit out of unexpected falls and sticky situations. Fortunately, Peggy always arrives in time to get him out.

In Bourbon Veritas (ao3) - doctorhelena T, 3k

Summary: There were actually two beds. Peggy just didn’t seem interested in getting in the other one.

International Incident (ao3) - linascribbles E, 112k

Summary: Peggy Carter rose through the diplomatic ranks in the midst of the Incident and in her short career already stablished herself as a skilled and well-connected negotiator. Stationed in the Washington DC embassy, she's right on the front lines of the fallout of Project Insight. Governments get purged, new and unexpected doors open, and Peggy Carter is nothing if not resourceful.

As she gets plunged into a world of spies, mad scientists and superheroes, familiar faces start to pop up. Particularly one pesky Captain America, who seems to have no idea what international law entails and considers country borders mere suggestions.

in the heat of battle (ao3) - littlereyofsunlight M, 42k

Summary: “After this is over,”—and wasn’t that everyone’s favorite pastime, here in relative safety, playing After the War as though one could even pretend to make plans for a life, as though this blasted conflict hasn’t already completely changed everything in this world, forever—

Peggy Carter has always been a fighter.

Just In Case (ao3) - captaindoritoes G, 2k

Summary: Hope you enjoy this a bit of angst, a bit of comfort fanfic - four times Steve and Peggy share a kiss, just in case it’s their last one. Their love language is touch - in this essay I will -

Letting Agent Carter In (ao3) - cadkitten E, 4k

Summary: Steve is still learning to draw the human form and when he finds the perfect solution in his head, he's not sure he can actually ask for it in person. But he'll be damned if he won't give it a try.

Pin Curls (ao3) - SomewhereApart T, 3k

Summary: Peggy Carter has imagined how she’d feel at the return of Steve Rogers a hundred different times. Still, she's unprepared for the reality of him, standing on her porch on a Sunday afternoon.

She Wanted (ao3) - TriplePirouette E, 3k

Summary: Peggy wants to eat Skinny Steve alive.

The Shops on Shield Street (ao3) - fluffernutter8 G, 5k

Summary: Running a small business is already hard enough without someone trying to sabotage things.

Time and Again (ao3) - Beshter N/R, 163k

Summary: When an insane man who claims he can travel through time appears out of nowhere, Peggy Carter agrees to go with him to save the world, little expecting the strange new life she'd be stepping into on the other side.

We Still Talk (ao3) - roboticonography M, 9k

Summary: Newlyweds Steve and Peggy take a holiday to get away from it all - but the great outdoors might hold more challenges than they bargained for!

we were born to be national treasures (ao3) - meidui G, 1k

Summary: “I’m back,” he chokes out artlessly into her shoulder, into the soft dark waves of her hair and the spiced floral of her perfume. He stopped believing he would ever get to go home after the war a long time ago, or that there would ever be an after the war for him, but—

“Right on time,” Peggy whispers, her voice shaking, and Steve’s next breath breaks on a sob.

Where poppies grow (ao3) - beautifulwhensarcastic T, 1k

Summary: The night preceding the procedure Steve can't sleep, which leads him to a surprising, touching discovery.

you can count on me (ao3) - sokovianaccords (thesokovianaccords) N/R, 5k

Summary: A Christmas mission for Agent Rogers and Agent Carter brings some things to light

[mads-nixon]

100th Bomber Boys: Major Robert 'Rosie' Rosenthal: Pt. 1

Ahead of the show's release, I bought Donald Miller's book and am reading it! Here is a little bit about Major Robert 'Rosie' Rosenthal (played by Nate Mann) from the prologue of Masters of the Air (pg. 13-14)!

Lt. Robert "Rosie" Rosenthal had not trained with the Hundredth's original crews. He and his crew had been assigned to the group that August from a replacement pool in England, to fill in for men lost on the Regens-burg raid. "When I arrived, the group was not well organized," Rosenthal recalled. "They were a rowdy outfit, filled with characters. Chick Harding was a wonderful guy, but he didn't enforce tight discipline on the ground orin the air." Rosenthal didn't fly a mission for thirty days. "No one came around to check me out and approve me for combat duty. Finally, my squadron commander, John Egan, had me fly a practice formation. I flew to the right of his plane. I had done a lot of formation flying in training and I was frustrated; I desperately wanted to get into the war. I put the wing of my plane right up against Egan's, and wherever he went, I went. When we landed, Egan told me he wanted me to be his wing man." Rosenthal had gone to Brooklyn College, not far from his Flatbush home. An outstanding athlete, he had been captain of the football and baseball teams, and later was inducted into the college's athletic hall of fame. After graduating summa cum laude from Brooklyn Law School, he went to work for a leading Manhattan law firm. He was just getting started in his new job when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The next morning he joined the Army Air Corps. He was twenty-six years old, with broad shoulders, sharply cut features, and dark curly hair. A big-city boy who loved hot jazz, he walked, incongruously, with the shambling gait of a farmer, his toes turned inward and there wasn't an ounce of New York cynicism in him. He was shy and easily embarrassed, but he burned with determination. "I had read Mein Kampf in college and had seen the newsreels of the big Nazi rallies in Nuremberg, with Hitler riding in an open car and the crowds cheering wildly. It was the faces in the crowd that struck me, the looks of adoration. It wasn't just Hitler. The entire nation had gone mad; it had to be stopped. "I'm a Jew, but it wasn't just that. Hitler was a menace to decent people everywhere. I was also tremendously proud of the English. They stood alone against the Nazis during the Battle of Britain and the Blitz. I read the papers avidly for war news and listened to Edward R. Murrow's live radio broadcasts of the bombing of London. I couldn't wait to get over there. "When I finally arrived, I thought I was at the center of the world, the place where the democracies were gathering to defeat the Nazis. I was right where I wanted to be." Rosie Rosenthal didn't share these thoughts with his crewmates, simple guys who distrusted what they called deep thinking. They never learned what was inside him, what made him fly and fight with blazing resolve. Later in the war, when he became one of the most decorated and famous fliers in the Eighth, word spread around Thorpe Abbotts that his family was in a German concentration camp. But when someone asked him directly, he said "that was a lot of hooey." His family-mother, sister, brother-in-law, and niece (his father had recently died) were all back in Brooklyn. "I have no personal reasons. Everything I've done or hope to do is strictly because I hate persecution... A human being has to look out for other human beings or else there's no civilization."

Rosie was part of the 'Bloody 100th' Bombardment Group of the 13th Combat Wing, of the 'Mighty Eighth' Air Force with John 'Bucky' Egan and Gale 'Buck' Cleven (played by Callum Turner and Austin Butler) His plane was called Rosie's Riveters, and him and his crew were an integral part of the bombardment group.

On October 8th, 1943, the 100th went on a bombing run to Bremen, Germany, and Buck Cleven was shot down. Two days later, Egan and the rest of the 100th went on a supposedly "easy" mission to Münster, accompanied by P-47 Thunderbolts almost all the way to the target. Rosenthal and his crew were not flying their beloved Rosie's Riveters due to damage from their two previous missions in Bremen and Marienburg. Instead, they flew Royal Flush.

Rosie's crew was worried about flying a brand new plane, and became incredibly nervous. Bringing them together under one of the wings, he calmed the boys down and lifted their spirits. This mission proved disastrous, and Royal Flush was the only one in the 100th to make it back to Thorpe Abbotts (the 100th's air-base in East Anglia).

Needless to say, I love Rosie already!! I've read up to chapter 6, and I feel like my brain is going to explode with all the information I've taken in :3

lmk if y'all want more posts like this one or would like to be tagged in them!!

[alwaysbewoke]

Last summer, as a spike in violent crime hit New Orleans, the city council voted to allow police to use facial-recognition software to track down suspects. It was billed as an effective, fair tool to ID criminals quickly. A year after the system went online, data show the results have been almost exactly the opposite. Records obtained and analyzed by POLITICO show the practice failed to ID suspects a majority of the time and is disproportionately used on Black people. We reviewed nearly a year’s worth of New Orleans facial recognition requests, sent for serious felony crimes including murder and armed robbery. In that time, New Orleans PD sent 19 requests. Of the 15 that went through: 14 were for Black suspects 9 failed to make a match Half of the 6 matches were wrong 1 arrest was made While it hasn’t led to any false arrests, police facial identification in New Orleans appears to confirm what civil rights advocates have argued for years: that it amplifies, rather than corrects, the underlying human biases of the authorities that use them. U.S. lawmakers of both parties have tried for years to limit how police can use facial recognition, but have yet to enact any laws. Some states have passed limited rules, like those preventing its use on body cameras in California or banning its use in schools in New York. A few left-leaning cities have fully banned law enforcement use of the technology. For two years, in the wake of the George Floyd protests, New Orleans was one of them. “This department hung their hat on this,” said New Orleans Councilmember At-Large JP Morrell, a Democrat who voted against lifting the ban and has seen the NOPD data. Its use of the system, he says, has been “wholly ineffective and pretty obviously racist.” (NOPD denies that its usage of facial recognition is racially biased). Politically, New Orleans’ City Council is split on facial recognition, but a slim majority of its members — alongside the police, mayor and local businesses — still support its use, despite the results of the past year.

x

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Ten years ago this August, a white police officer killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. What happened on Canfield Drive that day sparked a nationwide movement to save Black lives, end police brutality, and make safety a reality for all people. As a registered nurse, pastor, and local activist, I spent over 400 days protesting alongside thousands of my fellow community members. I will never forget the brutality we faced in response to our calls for humanity. Police used tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, noise munitions, batons, shields, fists, and boots against us. The Missouri National Guard called us “enemy forces.” Our government labeled us “Black identity extremists.” Many politicians condemned us. Those of us on the front lines were traumatized, but we knew that time would prove we were on the right side of history — and it did. Time will prove the same for the students currently protesting across the country. From Columbia University in New York City to Washington University in St. Louis to The George Washington University in Washington, DC, thousands of students, faculty, staff, alumni, and their allies of different faiths, ethnicities, and backgrounds have engaged in overwhelmingly nonviolent civil disobedience in support of Palestinian human rights and an end to their universities’ complicity in violation of those rights. For years, politicians, university administrators, and media figures across the political spectrum have professed their commitment to free speech, diversity, and inclusion. They have feigned concern about the state of free speech and dissent on college campuses. Yet when presented with organized, disciplined, nonviolent protest in support of a moral cause that is routinely stigmatized, many of those same people have championed violent, repressive crackdowns intended to crush dissent. We have all seen the footage of armed officers using pepper spray, rubber bullets, fists, and boots against students, faculty, and their allies without provocation. We have all witnessed the cowardly response from too many university administrators, some of whom would rather risk or inflict violence on their own community members than grapple with calls for divestment. We have all heard the stories of students arrested, assaulted, suspended, evicted, banned, smeared, humiliated. Despite knowing what happened nearby in 2014 and expressing support for the Ferguson protesters, Washington University administrators in St. Louis summoned dozens of law enforcement officers to a protest where students, faculty, and other community members were peacefully gathered. Some were brutalized. Officers were filmed beating and body slamming a 65-year-old professor at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Steve Tamari, who was later hospitalized with multiple broken ribs and a broken hand. Steve is my friend and I am thankful he’s alive. I met him and his wife, Sandra, both Palestinian-Americans, when they joined us in the streets during the Ferguson Uprising. Protesters are now being smeared as violent and antisemitic. Let me be clear: Trespassing, setting up tents, and carrying signs are not violent. Condemning a government that has killed more than 14,5000 children in seven months and created a humanitarian catastrophe is not antisemitic. Beating, tackling, pepper spraying, and shooting rubber bullets at people is violent. The January 6 insurrection was violent. Denying the humanity of the many Jewish people who are participating in the encampments is antisemitic.

Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) for Teen Vogue on police and government repression of social movements such as the Ferguson protests and the campus protests over the Gaza Genocide (05.14.2024).

Rep. Cori Bush wrote an insightful op-ed in Teen Vogue calling out police and government's role in creating violent crackdowns on social movements such as the campus protests against Israel's genocide campaign in Gaza and the Black Lives Matter movement. https://www.teenvogue.com/story/cori-bush-student-protests