#american activism

[shadowbrightshine]

If we really want to reduce plastic bottle useage we need to fix the pipe systems around America.

For a lot of people it isn’t pickiness. They cannot drink their own tap water because it's unsafe to consume.

If we really want people to stop buying bottled water, they need to have water safe to drink in the first place. And a reusable cup, no matter how good, does not fix your bad water supply. The people who need better water will not get it by filling these cups with more bad tap water.

If we want to get rid of these insane companies selling water, we should try to put pressure on fixing our pipes and our resiviors. Not just in America but worldwide.

Not only is there over buying of expensive cups for clout, but that doesn't help at all. I don't blame people for buying a cup or two. (The people who bought 30 Stanley's I am not happy but it's not a moral thing.) I have reusable bottles. I like the smaller ones.

Mentioning Stanley cups I don't like them for a few reasons but, I am autistic and I have trouble with spacial awareness. I am knocking these over all the time because they are big and bulky. And unlike my cylinder metal bottle, the Stanley is open, so the water spills everywhere. And they are too big. They hurt when they fall on my feet or hit me in the hallway.

I think we should try to put more focus on fixing the pipes and the water ways. Everyone is supposed to have a tap in their home, (where I live) and yet I have friends who can't use it for anything but showers and dishwashing. One of my friends brings jugs of water home from water fountains or taps in public places because they can't afford to buy bottled water, but they can't drink their own water.

Personal filters would help, we should use them. But it's another thing not everyone can afford.

If we have a right to drinkable water, why do so many of us not have a source of water we can drink from in our homes?

I'm not doing a "we MUST DO THIS or you're a bad person! You're doing activism wrong! You are looking at the BAD kinds of work and not doing this RIGHT ONE."

That's not what I'm doing.

I'm tired of plastic water bottles and of giant cups. I just want to be able to drink my water.

It would solve a lot of problems if people could just drink from their taps safely.

[beauty-funny-trippy]

Bishop asks Trump to show mercy to LGBTQ people and migrants He was simply asked to show mercy toward our marginalized groups of people. Yet being asked to treat vulnerable groups of men, women and children with some small amount of basic human decency made these MAGA Republicans visibly uncomfortable. To be clear, he wasn't asked to support these groups, or even show them a little kindness. He was simply asked to please treat them like human beings — to not single them out and treat them like subhuman "animals," as Trump has called them. There is something deeply and truly wrong with someone who views acting with even just a bare minimum of human decency is asking too much of them — as if things like Honor, Integrity and Compassion are repugnant to their very soul.

[goryhorroor]

“2000s horror movies had to adapt rapidly in the new decade. by 2005, the horror genre was as popular as ever. horror films routinely topped the box office, yielding an above-average gross on below-average costs. it seems that audiences wanted a good, group scare as a form of escapism.”

[bellaciao-ciao-ciao]

[politijohn]

Source

Is this really satire?

[jun-hug]

A final for one of my classes, my profesor said i should post this somewhere :)

words belong to Alanis Obomsawin,

an American-Canadian of Abenaki descent, a documentary filmmaker, though this is not where I first heard them.

When the Last Tree Is Cut Down,

The Last Fish Ate

The Last Stream Poisoned.

You Will Realize That You Cannot Eat Money.

Native American saying, first written in 1972. Still relevant when more than half a century old, and we can see how it manifests itself in real time. I personally came across a version of it in Aurora's song "The Seed," originally titled "Eat Money." Quoting her "It's about human history, about how we've co-existed in the world and how we've forgotten how to live with nature and the power we have."

❗️Do not upload / repost my art anywhere.❗️

[troythecatfish]

[ghost-37]

Black people have culturally subsidized this country since our arrival

[samualjennings]

The executive order to freeze federal aid funding was recinded after widespread interdepartmental confusion and pushback by government agencies across the country, international agencies, and citizen outrage.

"All that is required for tyranny is that good people do nothing"; but the inverse is also true. When people make enough noise, we can get Trump and would-be-Trumps to back down for fear of loss of power.

Do not comply in advance. Do not lose hope. Resist, resist, resist!

UPDATE: Please see my reblog of this post (or whatever news source you use) for more up-to-date information on the confusing nature of the freeze. Nonetheless, I believe my sentiments about resisting still apply.

[huariqueje]

Wave Swings - Patricia Chidlaw , 2024.

American , b. 1951 -

Oil on canvas , 32 x 24 in.

[heritageposts]

An Israeli influence campaign is using hundreds of online avatars and fake social media accounts to attack Democratic lawmakers critical of Israel and promote news articles disapproving of the United Nations Palestine refugee agency (Unrwa), according to a report by the Israeli online watchdog, Fake Reporter. According to the report, the targeted campaign has used more than 600 avatars, sending out 58,000 tweets and social media posts to circulate articles published by The Guardian, CNN and Wall Street Journal, among other major news outlets that amplify Israel’s position on the war. The campaign relies on three major social networks, UnFold Magazine, Non-Agenda and The Moral Alliance, which were created prior to the war in Gaza. But the Hamas-led 7 October attack on southern Israel sent the accounts into round-the-clock posting. The sites, according to Fake Reporter, are geared specifically to a “progressive audience”, publishing content on climate change, AI regulation, and human rights, in addition to the war in Gaza. They have more than 43,000 followers across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The avatars promoting the content talk up their identity with lines like, “As a middle-aged African American woman” and use hashtags like #FaithJourney and #AfricanAmericanSpirituality.

Some examples from the report:

And continuing,

The avatars were all created on the same day and their profiles were written with the same formula, subbing out just a few words. The declared gender and ethnicity of the avatars don’t match the profile photos, which have been taken from websites selling headshots. The campaign works to amplify news stories published by major media outlets. First, the fake news sites share the reports. Then, the avatars share them across social media, including on the official accounts of Democratic lawmakers. Avatars also shared social media posts showing video clips of what appeared to be Pro-Palestinian protestors calling for "massacres to be normalised" and calling for the US to "go to hell", contrasting that with peaceful protests of pro-Israel protestors.   In other cases, Avatars simply reshared widely published video clips of US lawmakers questioning the heads of Ivy League schools about antisemitism on campus.  [...] According to the report, around 85 percent of all the US politicians targeted by the campaign were Democrats, and 90 percent of them were African Americans. Ritchie Torres, a black Democratic Congressman with generally pro-Israel views, garnered the most social media engagement from the avatars. Other lawmakers targeted included Cori Bush; Lucy McBath; House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries; and Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock. Israeli news site Haaretz reported in January that the Israeli government had launched an online influence campaign to respond to pro-Palestinian content and reports about Hamas.  It’s unclear whether the campaign revealed by Fake Reporter is part of that initiative.

. . . continues at MME (20 Mar 2024)

[xmo-rmon]

Since yet another piece of media depicting the mountain meadows massacre as the most fucked up thing the mormon church has ever done just came out, I'd like to take another opportunity to direct everyone to the Timpanogos tribe website and encourage you to read about the black hawk war and the events surrounding and following it

brigham young literally ordered the mormon militia to "exterminate" the Timpanogos people - murdering the men and selling the women and children into slavery. The remains of Black Hawk were robbed from his grave and put on display in temple square until 1996

The full truth needs to be heard. It can't be minimized into something titillating but consumable. The Timpanogos people did not endure the grief and suffering brought by the mormon militia so people could both leave them out of the discussion and make money off a story they were erased from.

Again, please read for yourself on the Timpanogos website, spread the word, and donate if you can (there is a button for it on the site).

[jareckiworld]

Cliff Joseph (1922-2020) — Ancestral Affirmation [oil on canvas, 1987]

[inkskinned]

no, but really, we need to talk about the casual objectification that has become the fallback discourse of the internet: if you're pretty and dressed nicely, you're a slut. and if you're even vaguely outside of their body standard, you're fucking disgusting.

too-frequently, people position sex workers as being "the problem". they sneer you're addicted to pornography, you don't know what a real woman looks like. but real women are in pornography. the real bodies on display are not the issue here: the issue is that other people feel extremely confident when commenting on someone's physique.

2000's super-thin is slowly worming its way back into the public ideal. recently i saw someone get told to "go for a run", despite the fact she was on the thinner side of average. not that it would ever be appropriate to say that: but it's kind of like sticker shock when you see it. people think that is fat? holy shit. do they just have no idea about things?

but what are you going to do about it? that's the problem, right. because chances are - you're a normal person. we can say normalize carrying fat on your body, but we are not the billion-dollar diet industry. we are not the billion-dollar fashion industry. we are just, like. people. who are trying to make content on the internet, without being treated shittily.

as someone who has been on both sides of things: you are treated better when you are thin and pretty. this is statistically correct. i am not saying that you cannot be bullied for being thin; i'm saying there are objective institutional biases against certain bodytypes. there are videos of men and women who lost weight all saying: i now know for a fact exactly how much worse you're treated. in the comments, some asshole inevitably says something akin to you deserved to be dehumanized when you were fat.

which means that ... the easiest thing to do is be pretty and thin. it is the path of least resistance, because of course it is, because any time you post a picture of yourself without a thigh gap, someone immediately comments something like you need to try a diet.

the other half is also dehumanizing though, huh, just in a different way. when i put on makeup and nice clothes, i am told i slept my way to the top as a professional. do you know how many women in STEM have told me they purposefully dress to "unimpress" because they already struggle to be taken seriously and if they're ever considered pretty - it for some reason takes away from their authority.

so they make it seem like it's your fault. you, existing in a body - it's your fault! if you didn't want shitty comments, don't have a body. they position us against each other like chess pieces; vying for male attention we don't even need.

and i can be an authority on this unless you think i'm fat and unattractive. when i am pretty and thin, i'm an activist. when i am just a normal person who makes a good point: i am immediately dismissed. nobody fucking believes you if you're not seen as attractive. you literally lose value. you cease to exist.

but the whole time, it feels like - is anyone actually grounded the fuck in reality? the line of "pretty and thin" keeps shifting. nobody seems to understand what "a normal weight" even looks like, because it's not something that exists - you cannot tell a person's health by looking at their body. even if you think you could tell that, even if you're sure a person is dangerously overweight - people are not your dolls. they do not need to be dressed up or displayed properly to soothe your aesthetics. you aren't concerned for them, you're stealing their agency. you don't get to say if they're "allowed" to take pictures and post them on the internet - you don't get to tell them how to exist.

people hide behind "the obesity epidemic" without any actual qualifications. they crow things about "normalizing unhealthiness".

but it's bullshit. i have visible abs. there is a pair of parallel lines on my body, even when i'm relaxed; where my obliques meet my abdominal wall. i am proud of this because it means i'm strong, because i overcame an eating disorder only to be ripped as fuck. it is genetic and physical luck that i even get any definition, i'm pleased as punch.

but it does mean that my abdominal wall sticks out a little bit. the other day i posted a video of myself dancing, and, for a moment, my shirt slipped. you could see a little bit of my stomach. i was cartwheeling to the floor. moments before this, i'd had my foot over my head.

a guy slid into my DMs. a row of vomiting emojis prefaced: you should really lose some weight before you think about dancing.

i stared at it for a long time. there was a time when i would have been triggered by this, where it would have encouraged me to starve myself. i would have ignored the fact i'm flexible, agile, good at jumping: i would have lost the weight for a stranger's passing comment. i would have found myself and my body fucking disgusting.

and for what? to please what? because why? so that he can exist in this world without an unchallenged eyeball? what would my self-hatred even accomplish? usually i write paragraphs. obviously. on this particular occasion, in this body i've been at war with for ages: i just felt exhausted.

it shouldn't be even worth saying. it shouldn't be hard to explain. all of this emotional turmoil when he cannot even comprehend the most basic truth: i am not an object on display for him.

[beauty-funny-trippy]