#and I don’t want empowered white supremacists in my country

[notherpuppet]

I’ve never had a big following before and it’s really important to me to try to use the platform I have to promote harm reduction:

@ the U.S. followers I have; VOTE HARRIS

[arpov-blog-blog]

Michael Moore thinks that despite the polling and the right leaning mainstream media that seems to regurgitate GOP talking points, there will be a 'Blue Tsunami' election day. Here is more on his thinking...."Blake Masters, the Republican candidate running against Democratic incumbent Senator Mark Kelly in Arizona, has a vision for America:

“Local control! Small empowered villages and towns would probably be… much better. Where our children would not get indoctrinated, but be brought up with the town’s values and the family’s values…”

So what would these “town values,” and these “family values” be in Masters’ villages? 

After listening to Masters speak for the last few hours — culling through various Twitter videos, podcast interviews, Fox News appearances, debates, and his own campaign ads — I’ve learned a few things as to where Blake Masters stands:

Critical Race Theory —

On the podcast Subversive with Alex Kaschuta: “Good luck criticizing me for saying Critical Race Theory is anti-white. It obviously is.”

Trans Rights —

Speaking to Tucker Carlson: “Tucker, the schools! They’re indoctrinating our kids. They’re teaching boys to cut off their… [leaves a pause so he doesn’t have to say “penis”]...I mean, my God!”

Affirmative Action —

On Twitter: “I can’t think of a single policy since the end of Jim Crow that’s been worse, or more divisive for race relations in this country. Race quotas are wrong. Gender quotas are wrong. They’re unjust, they’re illegal, but the Democrats are addicted to this kind of identity politics garbage. They just care about how you look, not whether you’re the best qualified, or whether you can do the best job. You know, if you want to see the Affirmative Action regime on display — just look at Biden’s White House. Biden promised that he would choose a woman for his V.P. Then, of course, he chose Kamala Harris — so incompetent she can’t even get a sentence out. But I’ve never spoken to anyone who can say with a straight face that Kamala was somehow the most qualified candidate for that job.” The Jeff Oravits Show (podcast): “I didn’t say she [Justice Jackson] didn’t go to a good law school. She’s probably like, you know, she’s probably got a high IQ. What I said was she’s the affirmative action candidate, and she just indisputably is…”

Gun Violence —

The Jeff Oravits Show (podcast): “We do have a gun violence problem in this country, and it’s gang violence, right? It’s gangs, it’s people in Chicago, St. Louis, shooting each other. Very often, you know, black people, frankly. And the Democrats don’t want to do anything about that. Look at San Francisco and L.A. — they’ve legalized crime.” He also added, “Republicans don’t want to talk about urban crime, right? Because they’re terrified of being called racist. And Democrats don’t want to talk about big city crime because they’re ok with it. You know they want Phoenix to look more like Chicago, more like Baltimore. And, I just have a problem with that. If you don’t have law and order, you don’t have anything.” 

Immigration —

Reported by the NYTimes: “What the Left really wants to do is change the demographics of this country,” Mr. Masters said in a video posted to Twitter last fall. “They do. They want to do that so they can consolidate power and so they can never lose another election.”  And on Twitter: “Illegal immigration is a disaster, and this mass amnesty is an electoral strategy for the Democrats.” He added, “So if you want to call me a white supremacist for that, that’s stupid, but go ahead and knock yourself out. Be my guest.” The Jeff Oravits Show: “Well, we know what a good piece of border legislation looks like — we’ve got to triple the size of border patrol, finish President Trump’s wall, re-implement Remain In Mexico, mandatory e-verify. I’m a tech guy, so I want technology to help us lock that border down, right? Infrared cameras to map every inch so we can tell where the tunnels are and blow ‘em up. We know what to do. The problem is we lack the political will. You know, the Democrats don’t want to seal the border. Quite the opposite — they want the open border, and too many Republicans get squeamish about it, right? They don’t want to be called racist.”    

On Democrats —

Speaking to Tucker Carlson: “It all goes back to the Democrats trying to destroy the family. You know, whatever the issue is that the Dems are shrieking about today — maybe it’s COVID, maybe it’s climate change, maybe it’s systemic racism — ultimately their goal is to separate, to drive a wedge between children and their parents. For the Left it’s about creating this new red guard, right? Training this new generation of activists who are going to go and try and erase our history, and destroy our country.” 

Taking all this into consideration, all the people overtly excluded from Masters’ vision of America, I can’t help but wonder — who are the people left to be Masters’ neighbors in these new perfect white villages?

Well, Andrew Anglin for one, founder of the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer, a site with a running “Demographic countdown” clock ticking down until non-white people outnumber the white people. He has also authored numerous articles with headlines like “Satanic Hindu of Color Kamala Says Only Blacks Will Get Hurricane Relief” and “Unfunny Mulatto Fa**ot Trevor Noah Finally Giving Up, Quitting Failed Daily Show”. And he has also said this, as reported by the Phoenix New Times:

“This is the Jews for you, people,” Anglin wrote in the first of a 30-article series that advocates genocide of Jewish people. “They are a vicious, evil race of hate-filled psychopaths. When you do something they don’t like, they will use the power of the media to come down on you, assassinate your character.” “Jews should be exterminated” and, “The day is coming when we’re going to tear down the hoax [Holocaust] memorial in Berlin and replace it with a statue of Hitler 1,000 feet tall."

[bigboysdrinkmilk]

The hypocrisy of the right on abortion is astounding. But we’ve seen it before, right-wing wives and right-wing mistresses pressured into abortion facilities or right-wing politicians sneaking themselves into one. And now Trump, supported by the pro-life movement, is taking therapies derived from fetal stem cells.

The justifications are always the same:

This time is different than when other people want it.

God hates abortion but he’s telling me to do this.

I have a pro-life voting record so even though I’ve pressured my 24 year-old mistress into having an abortion, it’s okay this time.

Let’s not mince words: How and when someone decides to give birth is deeply personal. Even people actively trying to have children may experience a thousand heart-wrenching complications. Giving birth isn’t easy. And it isn’t cheap. And even if you do everything right, something may go wrong that endangers the life of the pregnant person or the fetus.

Fetuses are alive. And anti-abortion measures threaten to imprison people who have miscarriages (and up to 15% of people who know they are pregnant will have a miscarriage) because of something that is entirely not their fault. These measures do this because they are confusing and equating the fetus’s alive-ness with a pregnant person’s, well, personhood.

If you truly believe abortion is wrong because you are “pro-life,” I encourage you to look at the issue you see and determine what the best approach is. Because supporting politicians like Trump who don’t actually care about this beyond finding an excuse to punish people with uteruses isn’t it.

Banning abortion is a purely “down the river” approach. At the bottom of the river you’re seeing abortion. And maybe it’s upsetting you. Maybe you want to punish the people getting it or benefiting from it. Maybe you want it to stop entirely. Maybe you see facilities like Planned Parenthood that perform abortions and want them to close to make it harder for people to get abortions.

But if you look up the river, you’ll see that the events floating your way had a myriad of causes. And there are real actual things you can do to reduce abortion rates upstream.

Support paid leave for both parents during and after a birth. Giving birth isn’t easy. But we can make it easier, helping families during one of their most important times.

Support universal healthcare. Giving birth isn’t cheap. But a person who is fully supported financially is not only more likely to have a child but also more likely to be able to care for them in the best ways.

Support reproductive health programs like Planned Parenthood. Despite what you might think, Planned Parenthood wants people to have healthy, happy babies, too! Just, at the right time. They provide services like birth control, condoms and dental dams, plan b, and so many more services for reproductive health to ensure that people are able to have children at the right time.

Support universal basic income. People who can afford to care for children are much more likely to keep a pregnancy and once they do, much more likely to be able to care for the child.

More and more policies could be listed here, but the common factor is treating abortion as what it really is—a last result that we can prevent by being compassionate instead of punitary. And they work better than restricting abortion, fundamentally and factually.

Colorado reduced its teen abortion rate by 42% by provided free or low-cost long-term contraception to teens and low-income women.

Hawaii reduced its abortion rate by up to 30% between 2010 and 2014 without restricting abortion. Instead, it introduced comprehensive sex education alongside many other tools the state could use.

Louisiana has seen a 12% increase in abortion rates since 2010, even as the number of abortions around the country decreased. Louisiana also has the fourth highest infant mortality rate in the country (up since 2012), and the sixth highest rate of teen pregnancy. Louisiana has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country, but few “upstream” solutions.

To my pro-life friends: You and I may disagree on the morality of abortion. That’s okay. Because we can and should agree on the solution for abortion. It is empowering people in their every day lives with upstream solutions that help all of us.

We can come together for that tomorrow. It’s time to stop voting in politicians that scare-monger by attacking things like Roe v Wade and start voting in politicians that are truly pro-life. Pro-life for starving children in our schools who just need a healthy lunch. Pro-life for black people assaulted on the streets by white supremacists. Pro-life from people whose lives may be saved from stem cell research. Pro-life for corona patients. Pro-life for LGBT people. Pro-life for poor people, disabled people, at-risk people. Pro-life for the pregnant woman who isn’t sure she can afford a new child and might not have the insurance to ensure her own medical safety during a pregnancy. Pro-life for all of us. Not just fetuses.

Accomplishing that means, for now, voting blue down the ballot. I hope you will join me this November in supporting Biden, Harris, and countless Democratic candidates down the ballot to show America what “pro-life” can really mean.

[ilblogdellamati]

Hey! I hope you’re doing well ✨ This isn’t usually how I message someone for the second time ever - so apologies in advance - but as a fellow generally concerned citizen I thought you’d maybe hear me out? You know that post about Biden’s horrific gun control proposal (how police don’t need a warrant)? I saw a version of that too and it got me thinking a lot! Then I saw you share the same post and figured you’d be like-minded enough to maybe discuss it? Totally fair to not engage either! You can decide - it is your blog! 💕👍

The version I saw had a little more info and talked about how gun control laws in general do more harm than good and have a history of being racist and used to take guns from BIPOC - even things like buy backs and background checks. And it was cool because honestly this is a huuuuge pill I just recently (like.... 3 days ago? but also like. years in the making, ya know?) learned to swallow because I HAAAAATE guns. I wish they didn’t exist/had never been invented. Guns are terrifying tools of mass destruction and it’s awful how easily they can take life. Especially when they’re used to prey on people with less power (BIPOC, women, queer people, children). So for a long time I really believed in heavy gun control and was a big advocate for it.

Then in the past few years I started to meet a more diverse group of people who owned guns. Like my Indigenous friend and fellow activist who bought a gun after known local white supremacists (including a sheriff) released her home address and she began to receive intense death threats. Or my young neighbor with two babies who’s abusive ex-husband still had a key to her apartment bc the landlords wouldn’t change her lock and she couldn’t afford to do it herself. It occurred to me the guns were the only things keeping them safe in a society that didn’t want to.

I began to realize I didn’t want to take their guns away - I wanted to create a society in which they didn’t need the guns in the first place. What I had to accept after I got there - and this was the hardest part for me - was that meant guns needed to be accessible to them until that safety was guaranteed. And the more I learned about mass incarceration and how, similar to drugs, consequences for white people using illegal guns are often minimal while heavily criminalized for people of color using legally owned firearms.... or about how biased the judicial system is and thus how background checks could disqualify innocent people who needed and deserved the protection of a gun.... I had to ask myself - are these gun control measures actually preventing harm or preventing self defense?

So I’ve started to do a lot of listening and a lot of learning from a lot of people. And I still honestly don’t know where I sit exactly. But these are some things I’ve come to accept about gun control:

Citizens owning guns is not inherently a bad thing. This country is full of white supremacists drenched in toxic-patriarchal ideals (including a lot of police/military) who use their guns to murder people. Guns are also an important and powerful tool oppressed people can use to fight back. If you take citizen’s guns without also disarming the police/military you are actively empowering an already racist, murderous system. And mainly: preventing gun violence in this country has more to do with challenging and addressing systemic and individual racism/white supremacy/entitlement, than it does with physically limiting who owns guns.

This is a really, really good thread on Instagram about this same topic that sites historical references. I thought I’d share it with you too cause it helped me really flesh out a lot of the abstract thoughts I had in my head! https://www.instagram.com/p/CMxDGGflwWy/?igshid=hm3uhtn27nno

And at this point I’ve gotten really carried away. Sorry! I got started and then it all just came spilling out!

All of this to say - wow what a complicated and nuanced issue! I hope you’re open to hearing this perspective. For me - I know there is still so much to learn and so many people who know more than I do. I’m sure my opinions will continue to change as time goes on, so I figured I’d share this stage of understanding with you! I feel like I know the source of the problem now, but have absolutely no idea how to go about solving it. LOL helpful, right? I do feel more prepared and knowledgeable about what routes minimize harm vs routes that only appear to! And I feel like that is super important at least!

Sending you love and also kudos for reading this ramble of a message! Thank you for doing your best to make the world a better place 💗 That’s all any of us can do, ya know? 🤗 Hope you have a good rest of your day!

Hey! The fact that you have to reach me like this is probably because tumblr decided at one point to remove the messaging feature from my blog and never gave it back despite me asking over and over again.

Just right off the bat the only reason I didn't reblog the same version as you is because it came off as unnecessarily abrasive, accusatory and inaccurate.

"This is what you asked for" yeah no this is not what I asked for at all.

Not growing up in the US I was brought up in my family to think guns were killing machines only to be used for hunting and even then only if the intention of the hunt was providing food. I despised the simple idea of them.

Moving to North America i had the eye opening realization that to many people owning a gun is in fact a safety precaution. I got to see with my own two eyes how warped the system is and how there is a need to reform it so that guns are not necessary. On that front I totally agree.

I do still believe in gun control though, I don't agree that there is nothing inherently wrong with a citizen owning a gun because ideally you wouldn't need it AND you wouldn't get gunned down in the street by a cop.

Overall it's a very complex issue and there are many fronts to it and as an immigrant all I can say is my opinion on how I find the police here a special brand repulsive. It's tragic that minorities have to resort to self defense and still have the narrative spun on them making them out to be the violent ones. I also think it's disgusting that 4 year olds know how to assemble and fire an assault rifle but hey maybe that's just culture shock.

The post i rebloged was about a dangerous bill passing disguised as "gun control" that ended up being nothing but a new loophole for the authorities to inflict violence on an already vulnerable group. I wanted to spead awareness about that.

The reason I didn't use that specific version was because it implied this is the outcome that all people pro gun control desired all along or that worse this is the only way to enforce gun control and we were dumb to even ask for it. That does not sit well with me.

A country where my 19 year old idiot brother is considering buying a gun "just for the clout" and would actually be allowed to do it is not a safe country.

[x-15]

Putting the main points of this post right here at the top so you can’t miss them. Various thoughts underneath it.

This blog is in support of BLM

Considering I’m transgender, and some of the most famous and influential trans activists are black, you’d be hard-pressed to believe I won’t stand in solidarity with black people and other poc

Readmored because this got long!

I’ve been quiet here because as a trans person, generally speaking I don’t want to hear about upsetting and sometimes genuinely triggering news from places I usually go to calm down, like space tumblr. I felt like, if I’m a positive influence on someone who needs it right now, especially if they’re a black person who doesn’t want to be reminded from every blog they follow how unspeakably awful it is to be black in my country, then I wanted to do what I could to cheer them up.

It was never my intention to stay quiet to pander to white fragility or anything like that tbh. I’ve seen firsthand how law enforcement act towards poc (though in my specific case, latinx, not black) versus white people. I was a fairly vocal activist offline when I was in high school. I’ve been in clubs that got disbanded after protests that ended in club members getting punched by white supremacists. I’ve marched in May Day parades in support of rights for immigrants and black people. I’m not nonpolitical here because I’m nonpolitical... I’m just not political here because that’s never how I’ve run this blog.

I think for a while I’m going to try to post more about black contributions to aerospace. I really do want this blog to remain a positive space for people who need it right now. But a lot of the most prominent figures in aerospace history are white, male, straight, and cisgender, and to be honest, as much as many of them are fantastic people... They’re not the stories that need to be heard right now.

This blog is mostly just for my own fun, but I am a professional science educator as my day job and I’ve been involved with museums since I was a senior in high school. I’ve worked both at museums in some very rich, either gentrified or historically expensive areas... and museums that first and foremost have always served the underrepresented people of their own, much less privileged communities. Having seen science education that targets both extremes, I’ve got a lot of thoughts about what it’s like to be an underrepresented individual in STEM that I’ve kept to myself for a long time because I’m not sure when I’ll be ready to share them. I really do believe that science & history education can be used as a tool to empower people who desperately need it, and that every STEM industry where I live at least needs more diversity. And finding people like yourself in history, for those of us who have been historically pushed out of industries like aerospace, is one of the most empowering feelings in the world, and it’s a part of why I think teaching the history of STEM alongside STEM itself is so important.

I’m going to finish this post off with a few resources and tips I haven’t seen traded around on Tumblr yet.

NYC Department of Health and Hygiene’s tips for staying safe while protesting

Screenshot photos you take and post the screenshot so the metadata of the original photo isn’t there.

And in case you’ve somehow avoided this tip, obscure faces of protestors to protect their identity.

Put your phone in airplane mode so that you can’t be targeted by StingRay, which forces your phone to connect to a cop car and triangulates your position, allowing police to track you. [Washington Post source about StingRay]

If you DO turn your phone off airplane mode, keep location services off... enough said.

DO YOUR RESEARCH BEFORE YOU SHOW UP TO ANY PROTEST. One of the ones closest to where I live was started by white supremacists in an attempt to draw black people to commit hate crimes against. It’s scary out there.

I’m going to be honest, based off what happened in Chicago where bridges were raised and lowered until only a short time before curfew... I would go home as soon as it starts getting even slightly late. More and more cities and counties are issuing curfews. This isn’t just a peaceful parade anymore, it’s becoming an actual state of martial law.

One more thing: I understand if you’re drained of money, can’t go outside for health reasons, and don’t know what to do. If I’m honest I’m still learning to navigate online activism myself considering most of my life, if I’ve been an activist, it’s been offline. If you’re broke, feeling helpless, and have an hour to kill, play this youtube video with adblock off. All ad revenue will go towards, according to the description: “the associations that offer protester bail funds, help pay for family funerals, and advocacy that are listed in the beginning of the video.”

Please stay safe and healthy everyone!

[cantgetoutofmyheda]

As most of you could imagine, I started this side-blog to dive deep into the Clexa fandom and community (one of the most awesome group of folks I’ve ever had the pleasure of e-meeting). All the content you’ve seen from me has primarily been focused on Clexa or ADC, with little bouts of Kelley O’Hara and the USWNT here and there. I don’t often share much about my personal views or much about my personal life, but in recent days, I’m sure you’ve noticed some of the content I’ve been reposting relating to Black Lives Matter and the murder of George Floyd.

Let’s be clear on one thing: we need to work together to do our part and fight for our black brothers and sisters.

As a non-black person of color, like many of my white friends and likely some of you, I have never taken the time to truly educate myself on the racial issues of this country and the system it was built off of. For that, I am telling myself that I need to do better. I will continue to learn and educate myself and those in my circle—whether through literature, film, music, reputable news sources, and through relationships with my own black friends.

I’m not here to preach, I’m here to remind everyone that follows this blog that we can ALL. DO. BETTER. I’m sure you’ve seen the resources below on various other social media channels, but I wanted to share them here as well.

Documentaries/Movies I’ve been watching:

LA92 (Netflix)

Time: The Kalief Browder Story (Netflix)

13th (Netflix)

The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson (Netflix)

When They See Us (Netflix)

BlacKkKlansman (HBO Go)

That Hate U Give (Hulu)

Books I am planing on reading:

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

Between the World and Me

The Hate U Give

How to be Antiracist

Books I have purchased for children of families and friends:

https://www.ordinarypeoplechangetheworld.com/Books/ (TBH, I bought a shit ton of the books about all POC and women)

Organizations to Research For Potential Donations:

Please note that the MN Freedom Fund has started directing donations to be made to smaller organizations that are in need of financial backing

Black Immigrant Collective - The Black Immigrant Collective amplifies and makes visible the voices of Black immigrants in Minnesota.

Black Table Arts -  Gathering Black communities through the arts, towards better black futures.

Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha - CTUL is a worker-led organization where workers organize, educate and empower each other to fight for a voice in their workplaces and in their communities.

Du Nord Riot Recovery Fund - Du Nord Craft Spirits is a Black-owned distillery with a building that was damaged. They’ve “received a tidal wave of love and support from across the nation and many have asked how they can help… Therefore, Du Nord is establishing this fund to support black and brown companies affected by the riots.”

Femme Empowerment Project- Venmo @femmeempowermentproject. Skill shares and discussions led by and for QTIIBPOC femmes in the twin cities. Creating space for cultural resiliency, healing and ancestral wisdom. Currently organizing supplies and medic trainings.

Isuroon - Isuroon is a grassroots nonprofit organization working to promote the well-being and empowerment of Somali women in Minnesota and beyond.

Little Earth Residents Association - Food and safety needs for residents of Little Earth of United 

Tribes.Migizi Communications - MIGIZI Communications advances a message of success, well-being and justice for the American Indian community. Support them rebuilding after fire.

Minnesota Healing Justice Network - We provide a supportive professional community and mutual aid network for wellness and healing justice practitioners who also identify as IBPOC (indigenous, black, or people of color).

Northside business support - support businesses on Minneapolis’s Northside that have been impacted by recent demonstrations.

Pimento Relief Fund - We’re partnering with Pimento to provide black business without insurance relief after white supremacists set them on fire during the protests. 

Powwow Grounds - send via paypal to angelswann2021@gmail.com - Native-run cafe, currently providing meals to elders, protectors and community, purchasing medical supplies, fire supplies, cooking supplies. 

Southside Harm Reduction- Southside Harm Reduction Services works within a harm reduction framework to promote the human rights to health, safety, autonomy, and agency among people who use substances. 

Spiral Collective - A volunteer full-spectrum reproductive options and support group comprised of doulas, birth-workers, and passionate reproductive justice advocates. based in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota, occupied Dakhóta territories.

Women for Political Change - Holistically investing in the leadership and political power of young women and trans & non-binary individuals throughout Minnesota.

Unicorn Riot - A decentralized media organization that has been live-streaming uprisings 

And don’t forget—you are one uncomfortable conversation away from helping to make a difference.

xx.

[mrmegamanfan]

I’m middle aged and fed up with people who say they won’t vote

I know I’m outside the target demographic for Tumblr, for music, for progressive activism, for caring about people who aren’t my age or have my portfolio. I have privilege and I own that fact. As such casting a ballot this November is in fact quite literally THE LEAST I CAN DO. I’ve voted in every election since I was 18 though (Bill Clinton’s first term) and I’m not about to stop voting now, or ever. As long I can draw a breath, I will cast a ballot, even from a hospital bed.

I’m sick and tired of hearing people in my demo say things like “I won’t vote in this election cycle because I don’t like either of the candidates” or “I’m firmly against the two party system” or “It’s not really a choice -- they’re both terrible.” No, NO, and NO!! You’re wrong on every account.

We are FIGHTING AGAINST ABSOLUTE EVIL in this election cycle. Trump has shown his true colors at every step of the way. He lies shamelessly and so frequently he can’t draw a breath without lying. He equates white supremacists and protestors trying to stop their domestic terrorism as both being “fine people.” That in itself is a vicious, dangerous, empowering lie. There’s nothing fine about people who campaign for “white pride” or “white rights” or “Aryan heritage.” None. Trump proudly panders to them and doesn’t hide it. He sucks up to horrible dictators like Putin and Jong-Un and wishes he could run this country like they run theirs. He claims to love our military personnel yet can’t be bothered to show up for the dignified transfer of those who died for our country, and doesn’t care that Russians paid the Taliban bounties for American heads.

You’re against the two party system? GREAT. So am I. That’s not even the issue here. There are plenty of other parties. Libertarian. Green. Reform. Socialist Workers. Dozens upon dozens of parties. Are any of them fielding a candidate who can take down the absolutely tyrannical reign of Trump? Don’t pretend they can. I’d love to see any of them get to a position where they can challenge the halls of power, but small party candidates are often only viable in local and regional elections. National elections take a different level of funding. For better or worse there are two parties with the resources, canvasing, fundraising and campaigning to make a go of it.

So you say you don’t think Biden is progressive enough to be a viable alternative? I’ve got news for you -- he’s not the best Democratic candidate and never was. He was the first to cross the threshold. I backed Bernie. I would have voted for Yang, Warren, or Buttigieg had they reached the finish line. I don’t view Biden as “a bad alternative” though -- I view him as THE ONLY RESISTANCE TO EVIL THAT MY VOTE CAN ACHIEVE. Unless we want four more years of inept bungling, with hundreds of thousands of Americans dying because of our climate change denying, pandemic lying, weather map falsifying, traitorous alligator tear crying President, VOTE HIM OUT.

Don’t vote for Biden because he’s the best candidate. Vote for Biden because nothing but getting Trump out of power matters. If you care about any of your freedoms -- speech, religion, assembly, fair trials, LBGTQIA rights, equal rights, if Black Lives Matter to you, TRUMP HAS GOT TO GO.

[qqueenofhades]

I love the term militant idealism from your last post. I wonder how you think about the ongoing removal of names on buildings and statues as Americans become woke about eugenics, systemic racism and sexism, and other fuck ups across white American history?

A couple years ago in August 2017, at the height of the furor over removing Confederate statues/imagery from public places, and after the Charlottesville white supremacist riots, I wrote this post in response to a similar question. It outlined extensively what the rationale for the “we should preserve history and keep those statues up!!!” defense is (i.e. racism and systematic amnesia). My position hasn’t changed much, and I think it demonstrates the depths of white fragility in this country and the utter inability of white Americans to think about what their history really consists of and what the construction of this geopolity has entailed, apart from all the fuzzy feel-good stuff and giant flags and slogans about Freedum!! and so forth. We… we realize that we live in a hyper-capitalist fasciso-patriotic militarized nightmare land, right? The giant flags and flyovers and the fact that the entire month of November in the National Football League is now “Salute to Service,” after they couldn’t stand one black man taking a knee for the national anthem? Where coaches wear camo on the sidelines and everyone acts like they actually give a crap about veterans aside from their use as convenient propaganda? We… we know this isn’t normal, right?

See, I do think there is a useful application and a genuine need for militant idealism. It just isn’t in throwing slogans or personal attacks at each other on the Twitter echo chamber, or any argument at all on social media about politics, culture, entertainment, fictional ships, etc. Most people picking fights on social media really aren’t doing a whole fuck of a lot of anything useful in the real world. The internet has brought a lot of use into our lives, and indeed we cannot function without it, which is a little terrifying (turn off the internet for 24 hours across the entire world and welp, nice knowing you civilization). But it’s also morphed into a giant, ravenous beast that you really, really have to approach with caution in a whole different way from the “oh no you might meet a pedophile” panics of the 90s. (And I mean, there are still trash men everywhere, so it’s just with extra Terrible now. Winning?) You are not going to change this overwhelming, violent, omnipresent system by holding hands, playing nice, and singing Kumbaya. Sometimes, a little violence and militancy is needed in return. You need to stand up and play hard and not back down. And since the general liberal ethos is that “violence is always bad!!!/if you use violence you’re Just As Bad As Them!!!”, that is cut off and stigmatized in the name of social order.

The thing is, this is the first time in American history that there has been even any kind of visible and sustained public debate on whether these things that we’ve just all gone with for so long are actually acceptable. That’s why we have “OK Boomer” and similar movements, because young people are taking a long hard look at what they’ve been left with and are understandably being like are you fucking kidding me. But as I have also been discussing, a certain subset of young people are also extremely insistent on having the Right Opinion and Only The Right Opinion, and that demonstrating any uncertainty or looking like they’re not sufficiently Woke is Unacceptable. This is why I can never get students to talk in class. They have been raised in a culture where they will be mercilessly punished for being Wrong, and it’s hard to conceptualize a space, i.e. a university classroom, where you’re allowed to start at zero and work your way up with dialogue and engagement. That just isn’t how it works anymore, and frankly, we have to blame social media for a lot of it. Especially when combined with CEOs (why yes, I am looking at you, Twitter not banning Nazis and just all of Mark Zuckerberg) who are more willing to cater to the alt-right in the name of “freedom” than to enforce any kind of standards for public discourse or try to tell 21st-century Americans that they can’t have something they want. Our society is built on the maxim that All Consumption Is Good Consumption, Consume More Now. And… that’s a problem.

I feel like I may be getting away from the point of what exactly you asked, but these things are all interconnected. If someone is going to actually translate internet outrage to real-world action, and actually put some skin in the game and fight against the terrifying normalization of these narratives: please. We need more people to do that. But real life is scary in a way that the internet isn’t. You might face immediate consequences for something. You might have someone tell you that you’re wrong and you can’t just block or mute them. How do you change someone’s mind without the two of you just yelling pithy, polarized slogans at each other? It’s fuckin’ hard work. So it’s easier to just retweet someone that you agree with, to other people who agree with you. And so the cycle goes.

Obviously, I 100% support any and all efforts to bring to the collective American conscience just how fucked up American history actually is. But I sometimes worry that the shortcomings in the methods used to do so make it easier for the tired old class of establishment bigots to dismiss as “snowflakes.” After all, I’ve just been ripping into the self-righteous infighting and tendency to rigid ideological purity and insularism in the left, and… what do we do about that? I don’t know. We can’t just immediately remove people from the entire contextualising framework in which they’ve grown up and made meaning and understood themselves. We can try to educate them, but presenting people who have already made up their minds with conflicting information really does not do much. It usually makes them double down on the positions they already hold, because they can feel unfairly victimized by the people who Just Don’t Get It. It can oftentimes feel hopeless, but we have to do it anyway.

So yes. We should take down statues of Confederate generals. This goes without saying. The “we shouldn’t pretend it never happened” defense is functional only to a point. As I said in the other post, Confederate statues can go into storage. They don’t have to be destroyed, if it’s really so vital that we keep them. But their enforced presence in public life is an act of white supremacist violence, and their defenders know it. Besides, how about, uh, we try goddamn being able to talk about what the Confederacy really stood for first, instead of clinging to it as a token that is specifically intended to deflect public debate or constructive discourse on the issue?

This also reminds me of the recent backlash happening on historic plantations in the South. These are often beautiful manor houses with grounds, and they are tourist attractions. They are also, brace yourself for grossness, popular locations for weddings. (I don’t know why, but White People.) The tour guides at these places have finally been empowered to talk somewhat more honestly about how all this beauty was built by slave labor, and white tourists hate it. They tie themselves into knots about how slavery wasn’t that bad or how the Civil War was about “states’ rights” or why are you bringing this up now, that was Just What Our Bad Ancestors Did. This… this is the level we are still at. It’s bad. The white tourists seem to feel that they can go to, again, a plantation in the South and just enjoy the beauty and not to be “forced” to hear about slavery. It spoils the illusion. They want to keep living this way, so they throw fits, and why shouldn’t they? The entire establishment of this country thus far has supported them. It threatens their whole identity. It must be destroyed. And I just… sigh.

Anyway. This has gotten away from me, and I’m still not sure if I answered your question. Sorry. But there you have it.

[grimnoire87]

So Biden is terrible. This isnt one of thise "vote blue no matter what" posts. But Trump and his cabinet need to go, that is not debatable, and I don't really think its going to hurt to take a second and vote against him if you are already going to the polls and plan to vote blue down the rest of your ticket. Voting IS important, especially for local offices, but it shouldnt be where you make or break your activism.

Biden voted for the Iraq war (true it was based on a lie created by Bush Jr's cabinet, but it is still something to talk about) but Trump would purposely wipe any brown country off the face of the earth just because,he feels insulted, he acts like a mob boss with a nuke (his treatment of Iran and Iraq should have been evidence enough of that). He might not back down next time.

He has a dictator mindset and he will and has scapegoated any minority he can. His cabinet is full of white supremacists and classists who are using this pandemic to pass agendas that could hurt us for generations. Stephen Miller is one of the worst of them (that immigration ban has him written all over it, he is setting the stage for something horrible). I do not want to see primarily brown and black people have to do "radical action" that will get us shot or rounded up (what a lot of white leftists would prefer over voting Trump out, and as history has shown they rarely take the same risks that they expect us to nor do they face the same consequences). Having to actively fight people (who were so emboldened by Trump that hate crimes went through the roof) who want an excuse to hurt us isnt preferable to a Biden presidency. I dont want a nation full of Ferguson and Standing Rock.

As an Afro Native person who was primarily affected by Biden's politics, and will be primarily affected by Trump's (and his Republican led Senate) I can honestly say that I am scared out of my mind and I dont have the privilege of acting like another Trump presidency wouldnt destroy my peoples (my communities have been devastated by Covid-19 thanks to racism and Republican incompetance, we cant survive an administration that is using this pandemic to cull us and strip away every public service and social protection that we have).

Trump needs to go. I would prefer challenging Biden at every turn and keeping him accountable over being surrounded by emboldened and empowered white supremacists who would use those next four years to put the nail in the coffin of every protection my people have.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

You have the right to remain encrypted

“You have the right to remain silent.”  We’ve heard the Miranda warning countless times on TV, but what good is the right to remain silent if our own cellphones testify against us? Imagine every incriminating and embarrassing secret our devices hold in the hands of prosecutors, simply because you’ve been accused of a minor crime.  This is the brave new world that Attorney General Bill Barr advocated when he recently addressed the International Conference on Cyber Security and called for an end to encryption as we know it.

Encryption is indispensable to modern privacy. Without it, every message might be read by a third party, and every phone and laptop easily copied by an intruder. Encryption is the digital lock which gives us the security to trust our financial data and inner-most thoughts to the cloud, and without which everything, and I mean everything, in our digital lives might be exposed.  Without strong encryption, police officers can potentially transform our cellphones and computers into a de facto government tracking device.

It’s odd hearing this call for surveillance coming from Barr of all people.  As general counsel at Verizon, he preached about the “freedom to innovate”, opposing net neutrality rules that would block internet service providers from shaking down websites and apps to get faster speeds and better access to potential users.  What could more stifle the innovation of every single American than the knowledge that anything we say or do on our devices can be monitored at the request of the police?

Barr described basic cryptography as a law-free zone, “insulated from legitimate scrutiny.”  But just how legitimate has law enforcement’s scrutiny been in the past? Here, in New York City, the answer is pretty damning. For years, the sprawling NYPD surveillance apparatus has operated with little oversight or transparency.  

Officers have used emerging tools like “stingrays”, fake cell towers that can track all the cellphone usage in a neighborhood. For years, the NYPD used these dystopian data-collection devices to track New Yorkers without ever establishing public privacy guidelines on how the tools can be used or when the data they collect can be retained.  Even more alarming, this sort of surveillance had been riddled with bias.

An OIG-NYPD report found that over 95% of NYPD investigations targeted Muslim New Yorkers and their allies, despite the fact that the majority of terrorist plots in the US come from right wing extremists and white supremacists.  Throughout the 2000s, the NYPD’s “stop-and-frisk” program targeted hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers, almost all of whom were New Yorkers of color. And the NYPD’s gang database is comprised of over 99% New Yorkers of color.

If Bill Bar gets his way and we equip local police with the ability to hack our phones on demand, we know that they won’t target everyone. No, instead, they will go after the exact same communities that have been over-policed and under suspicion for decades.

It would be bad enough if Barr’s plan empowered digitized stop-and-frisk, but it’s far worse: it’ll break the internet. We talk about encryption as if it’s a lock, but it’s not, it’s math. Incredibly complicated and, at times, fragile math.  When we talk about building-in “back doors” and “master keys” what we’re really talking about is compromising the fundamental strength of the cryptography upon which we all depend.

Encryption back doors are simply another way of saying “bad encryption.” By their very nature, these sorts of exploits introduced vulnerabilities that can be used by third parties to compromise our data.  Barr has talked about “Exceptional Access Keys” and “Layered Cryptographic Envelopes’, but the truth is that when you look past the jargon, there isn’t a single solution that experts would universally agree is just as secure as un-diluted encryption.

Even if a “back door” were cryptographically sound, and it’s not, we would still be creating a single point of failure. If you create a government repository of encryption keys, guess what the biggest target for global hackers and foreign governments will be? And its not like the US has a great record on keeping our own data safe. The DHS, NSA, DOD, all of the government agencies that we trust to safeguard our secrets have been hacked.

And to make matters worse (yes, it can actually get worse), the law wouldn’t even reach the people Barr really wants to target. A federal law that breaks crypto for Americans will be a paper tiger for those operating outside the U.S. Imagine a someone is sitting on a beach in India, Namibia, or the French Southern Territories (countries picked at random to avoid picking on the usual suspects). How much will they care about what Bill Barr says about encryption? Not one bit. They’ll just care about what the rest of us should focus on: does this product or service keep my data safe. If Barr blocks American firms from providing secure communications and data storage, competitors around the world will quickly fill the space.

The answer is clear. We don’t need a new encryption standard. We don’t need a new legal requirement for app developers. We need privacy. As things stand, the government already has an unprecedented ability to monitor what each and every American does in digital and physical space. This isn’t the moment to break down one of the few privacy protections we have, this is the chance to build on existing encryption to make sure that when we invoke our right to remain silent, we don’t have our own devices speaking against us.

Cahn is the executive director of The Surveillance Technology Oversight Project at the Urban Justice Center, a New York-based civil rights and police accountability organization. On Twitter @cahnlawny.

Zubair is a rising 2L at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law and a civil rights intern at The Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. On Twitter @AyyanicBond

https://boingboing.net/2019/08/02/you-have-the-right-to-remain-e.html

[bountyofbeads]

Why El Paso and other recent attacks in the US are modern-day lynchings

https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/17/us/lynchings-racism-new-era-blake/index.html

If you don't read anything else today READ THIS😭😭😭

Why El Paso and other recent attacks in the US are modern-day lynchings

By John Blake | Published August 19, 2019 | CNN | Posted August 19, 2019 |

(CNN) - Carol Anderson was scanning Twitter recently when she saw something that brought back a chilling memory.

Someone asked Latina women if they had changed the way they acted in public after a white man allegedly targeting Mexicans was arrested for gunning down 22 people in an El Paso Walmart. One woman said she no longer speaks Spanish when out alone, checks store exits and now feels like a marked person when among whites.

"The hate feels like a ball in my stomach, and a rope around my neck," the woman said.

For Anderson, the allusion to lynching wasn't just a metaphor. It was personal. She had an uncle who was almost lynched in the early 20th century for standing up to a white man in an Oklahoma store. She also is a historian who wrote about the lynching era in her book, "White Rage."

She says the white men who are driving a surge in white supremacist violence in places like El Paso today are sending the same message to nonwhite Americans that their counterparts did in the lynching era: You will never be safe wherever you go.

"The thing about the lynching era was the capriciousness of it -- no space was safe," says Anderson, an African-American studies professor at Emory University in Atlanta.

"Folks of color were never at ease.

You're looking all the time. You're wondering. Is this a place I can go? You could be walking down the street or in a store or you could be sitting on your front porch and you could get killed."

The term lynching evokes images of a bygone era: black men dangling grotesquely from trees, Southern whites posing proudly by charred bodies, Billie Holiday singing "Strange Fruit."

But Anderson and others warn that many of the same elements that spawned the lynching era are stirring once again in America. One commentator even described the El Paso shooter as "a lynch mob of one."

The result, Anderson says, is that more Americans -- Latinos, blacks, Muslims, Jews, anyone not seen as white enough -- are now experiencing the same fear of being murdered at random in public that their relatives faced during the lynching era.

"It is tiring. It is ridiculous. It is infuriating," she says.

Here are three parallels between the white supremacists of the lynching era -- roughly the late 19th century through the 1960s -- and today:

Both are driven by the same fear

There's a perception that lynch mobs were motivated by mindless violence. But they were primarily driven by fear.

White supremacists were afraid of losing their dominance and being replaced by blacks in positions of power throughout the South.

"It's a weapon of terror to say to the people you're attacking that you don't belong in the mainstream of our society, and we want you to stay back," says Gibson Stroupe, co-author of "Passionate for Justice: Ida B. Wells as Prophet for Our Time," a biography of the most famous anti-lynching crusader.

"You shouldn't have political rights, make demands on white people, and shouldn't have the same rights in courts."

One of the biggest fears of the lynching era revolved around sex -- white paranoia about black men doing to white women what white men had been doing to black women for years. White supremacists were obsessed with being replaced on a biological level and fixated on the notion of black men raping white women and creating a ''mongrel race."

Modern-day racists are also voicing fears about being replaced.

The white supremacists marching in Charlottesville in 2017 chanted, "You will not replace us,"and "Jews will not replace us." The Texas man suspected in the EL Paso shooting posted a document online saying he was "defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement."

Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh was recently criticized for saying Central America immigrants would "dilute and eventually eliminate or erase" what's distinct about American culture.

And the white supremacists of the lynching era were actually starting to be replaced -- at least briefly -- on a political level.

A dizzying set of reforms, called Reconstruction, briefly transformed the South after the Civil War. Newly freed slaves gained the right to vote, own property, and get elected to offices once reserved for white men. Two African-Americans were elected to the Senate in the late 19th century, and over 600 served in state legislatures and as judges and sheriffs.

Random racial terror was one of the ways white supremacists seized power.

White supremacists often went after people who were political leaders in a community: ministers, union organizers and people with wealth and property who could inspire others to demand their civil and economic rights, according to a report from the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit group behind the recent opening of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which is dedicated to the victims of lynching.

"Each lynching sent messages to blacks: Do not register to vote. Do not apply for a white man's job, according to one essay on the Jim Crow era.

It was racial politics by other means -- like today, Anderson says.

When elected leaders suppress votes, engage in partisan gerrymandering or decimate unions, they are doing what white supremacists did during the lynching era: trying to keep nonwhites in a subordinate position, Anderson says.

"Most of the lynchings were about black people who didn't know 'their place,' '' Anderson says. "They didn't get off the sidewalk when a white person was walking toward them. They looked directly at a white person instead of (at) their feet. They didn't show the proper level of deference -- 'place' was absolutely essential."

Both use the same language to dehumanize their victims

Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who murdered nine people in 2015 in a Charleston, South Carolina church, said he did it because blacks are prone to violence and white people were "being murdered daily in the streets."

This is a common theme of white supremacy -- reducing nonwhites to a subhuman level through language.

It's why critics point out the dangers of commentators and politicians referring to an "invasion" by Central American immigrants. It's why people criticized President Trump for calling some Mexican immigrants "rapists." USA Today recently published a story examining the language Trump uses to describe immigrants -- terms like "predator," "killer," and "animal" -- at his rallies.

The white supremacists of the lynching era used similar language to describe blacks. But they also went after other victims: Latinos were lynched, as were Chinese laborers and Jews.

Black men were a fixation, though. They were described as brutes, animalistic, rapists. One writer described the typical black man as "a monstrous beast, crazed with lust."

An estimated 4,700 people were murdered by lynching between 1882 and 1968, according to the NAACP.

They weren't only hanged. They were also shot, tortured, burned alive or beaten to death by mobs.

Random racial terror is what defined lynchings -- not a noose.

The cruelty is still hard to comprehend. Lynch mobs mutilated bodies and collected body parts as souvenirs -- all while taking pictures of the corpses and sending them as postcards to friends.

Stroupe, though, understands some of that hatred. He once absorbed some of it. He grew in a white family in segregated Arkansas during the lynching era. Today he is a civil rights activist who leads anti-racism workshops and previously led an interracial church that was recognized by Time magazine and the Christian Science Monitor for its work against racism.

But he remembers how he was taught when he was young to think of nonwhites.

"My earlier memory was that people of dark skin were not human beings like us," he says. "I was inculcated with it. We felt like lynching was like killing a dog. I hate to say it that way. It wasn't like we thought we were killing another human being. I never participated in it but I understood that black people had to be put and kept in their place because they couldn't do life like we could."

Both are encouraged by the same type of political leaders

He was a racist in the White House whose words empowered white supremacists and enraged civil rights leaders.

We're talking, of course, about Woodrow Wilson, the 28th President of the United States.

Wilson helped revive the Ku Klux Klan by praising one of the most racist movies ever made, "The Birth of a Nation." The film portrayed black lawmakers who came to power in the late 19th-century South as buffoonish, dim-witted men lusting after white women. The KKK was depicted as heroes.

"It's like writing history with lightning," he reportedly said of the film. "My only regret is that it is all so terribly true."

In celebrating the film Wilson endorsed its message "that black people were not able to have political power and needed white people to put them in their place," Stroupe says. "Like the President we have now, he sort of encouraged white supremacy."

Other politicians weren't much better. The NAACP and other groups spent decades urging federal lawmakers to pass anti-lynching laws. Congress debated more than 200 anti-lynching bills in the first half of the 20th century without passing any. Opponents of the bills often described them as an infringement on states' rights.

The Senate finally passed a law making lynching a federal crime -- last year.

Politicians then and now "feigned helplessness" when asked to stop white-supremacist violence or changed the subject, Anderson says.

"You had this crazy kind of both-siderism," she says. "So that when anti-lynching bills were coming through Congress, you would have Southern Democrats like James Byrnes out of South Carolina saying things like, 'Yeah what about murders in New York City? What about the violence in the North?' Stop me if this sounds familiar."

Today many Republican leaders have been criticized by those who say they enable white supremacist violence by refusing to confront race-based domestic terrorism or condemn Trump for his racist statements.

These white politicians are as morally bankrupt as overt racists because they know better but do nothing, Stroupe says.

"It's why Trump doesn't do it now -- that's where the votes are," he says. "Even if they didn't believe in white supremacy, they weren't going to lose votes over it."

The kind of America people want?

It's hard to imagine the random racial terror from the lynching era ever becoming routine again. But maybe it already has.

One former white nationalist told The Atlantic he is shocked to see the impact of racist thinking on American popular culture. And he said the worst is yet to come.

"I never thought we would have a social and political climate that really kind of brought it to the foreground," Christian Picciolini told an interviewer. "Because it's starting to seem less like a fringe ideology and more like a mainstream ideology."

In the past two years white supremacists have killed Muslim students in a North Carolina apartment, Jewish worshippers in a Pittsburgh synagogue and a South Asian man in a Kansas bar. And, of course, there's the recent shooting in El Paso. It's getting hard to keep up.

Anderson believes such violence will keep happening if Trump is re-elected.

"If he gets in power again it sends the signal that this is the kind of America that people wanted," she says.

If that kind of America sounds far-fetched, consider another tweet that showed up on the thread Anderson noticed. When a Latina woman was asked how her life changed after El Paso, she responded with two words: "Mississippi, Goddamn."

That's the name of a fiery protest song written during the lynching era by the black singer Nina Simone.

She sang:

Can't you see it

Can't you feel it

It's all in the air

I can't stand the pressure much longer...

Lord have mercy on this land of mine

We all gonna get it in due time

I don't belong here.

I don't belong there.

I've even stopped believing in prayer.

Simone wrote that song in part to protest the murder of four black girls by white supremacists in a Birmingham, Alabama, church. She wrote it in 1964, near the end of the lynching era.

Yet for many Americans who hear those words today, here is an awful thought:

She could have written that song yesterday.

[autismgavemychildvaccines]

Economic downturn, racism and war.

So, normally I’d be in some sort of non-sober state while writing this, and be full of my typical rash wit. But not today. Today I want to talk about what I (and many others) are seeing down the tube.  First, let’s go over the quick run of what’s going on. 1, we’re having concentration camps of both migrants as well as asylum seekers. This is inherently inhumane and a violation of various multiparty agreements that were made post world war 2 to not cock things up like Germany did with the Jews, or more locally relevant, what we did to fuck over the Japanese in the same period.  2, We’re in a trade war with China, who is itself trying to do a hostile takeover of Hong Kong (and don’t kid yourself for a moment, that’s exactly what the fuck that is), which happens to be the 3rd most important economic center in the world by most accounts.  3, Russia is fucking around with our politicians and buying them off to make for easier voter suppression and just bloody hacking the electronic voting machines, which oh by the way, an adequately caffeinated high-school nerd could probably do.  4, And finally, despite not technically being “in a war”, we’re not at peace, either. Hell, we haven’t been for as long as I can remember. Like many people on this website, one of my first memories was 9/11 and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I vividly remember the latter, as we sat in our living room watching the bombs drop and my mother in hushed tones said “Well.. This is it.” and my stepfather, an Army Ranger at the time, looked tired and said matter of factly “we’ll not be rid of this until you’re a grown man, and even then..”. And he was right.  Now, all of these things seem somewhat not related. Well, I guess I should say the 1st doesn’t exactly line up with the 2nd and 3rd, which have some geopolitical relevance to each other. But let’s take a history trip together, shall we? First, be sure to bring the hairspray, because we’re going into the Reagan-era and just before for a bit.  Imagine if you will the supposed dying throes of the Cold War. Bioweapons program supposedly being shut down, the Soviet Union splitting away, and the Americas? Well they’ve gone through hell, and by no small measure it was due to proxy wars, puppet governments and a complete disregard for “other” people for the sake of borders and protection. Panama, Nicaragua, Guatemala and other countries are having civil wars funded by both sides of that iron curtain, causing institutionalized violence, setting the development of these countries back fucking decades, and setting them up to fail.  [Note that when I say “setting the development back”, I do not mean they are in any way lesser to us due to this. In fact, in my wheelhouse of Public Health, they arguably do a better job of handling shit than we could dream of in the US. They’re damn fine people, and in some ways thriving, but to say we didn’t fuck with them would be a disservice. ] Part of this “setting up to fail” strategy was the use of drugs as a means of easy funding, which the U.S. government did wholly support to the point of screwing African Americans (and to a much lesser extent, poor people in general) in particular over by introducing things like Cocaine and Crack to poor neighborhoods (though it should be noted such drugs had been in the realm of public notice for the better part of a century before, just not as accessible).  Funny thing about using drugs to fuel wars. Wars can end. But the demand for drugs by a population that doesn’t have the ability to be treated due to some “moral outrage” against helping addicts? Well, that still remains a very profitable venue. So even after we stopped giving a fuck about any of these countries and their governments gave up the sale of illegal drugs, at least in the open, criminal elements showed up to do what they did best: manufacture and transport drugs to where the best demand was, the United States typically. And to protect this profitable enterprise, these groups would claim territory, claim children as recruits, commit other crimes to support the chain, etc. And these activities still go on today, wherein some cartels and gangs have gotten rich enough to effectively buy off governments and have their own fiefdoms, where those with any ability risk their lives to run. And yet, so many do. Also, it’s important to note that while countries like Mexico are arguably more stable than say, Honduras or El Salvador, they’re still pretty fucked from the radiation of these activities. So these families try to make it to the closest, arguably “most stable” country they can, ironically the one that set the stones for the foundation of where they found themselves. And they are treated as trash, as less than human, as animals. Because we refuse to see our own guilt. We refuse to see what we have done, not centuries ago, but less than 50 years ago. And who is egged on the most to hate these people? Well, if you look at it, it’s the least “most powerful” group that can easily be manipulated: Lower class white groups by a vast majority. Groups who themselves see hardships, certainly, but more than anything know two words: Fear and Authority. They are afraid of the “other”, the “jawb steelin’ immigunts”, the “criminals and rapists” as the person who inhabits the White House calls them. And they respect and adore those who can wield an iron first. Someone they can imagine being, whether it’s a business tycoon of a dictator they see as a near-messiah, who says it’s not their fault they are struggling, and then makes an easy, low effort “solution” for them to point to as to what could cure all those ills which are, at their root, legitimate.  [Note: This by no means excuses any White Supremacist or other racist ideologies. That shit needs to be fixed, and there is no excuse for that.] Let’s take a pause for a moment on that, as it’s significant. Is this the first time this has happened? Heavens no, in fact, many examples exist in history. But one stands out to me above all.  Go back with me again, if you’d be so kind. You feel the warmth of the sun on your face, you can hear the distant waves, and the not so distant hustle and bustle of a city. You smell a mix of salt water infused air with just a hint of smelted metal or gunpowder.  Perhaps you hear some music from The Andrew Sisters crackling out of a radio near an open window. You’re in San Francisco, not too long after the World’s Fair, where the hopes of Utopia were promptly shut off to be dismantled and loaded for the war effort of World War 2. In fact, as you look around, you see the strangest thing. There are clearly Japanese inspired markets and homes all around, but inhabiting them? No Japanese, surely, but the Shoe Shines and markets filled with a vibrant African American community. Some would one day call this the West Coast Harlem. And by their account, it was a wonderful community, of which I have no doubt. However.  Those who lived and worked and loved in these buildings just months prior were put into camps. In Utah, in Nevada, California, Washington. In fact, it pains me a bit to know one such place is but a very hearty stones throw from where I sit writing this. They were put there and made to stay due to risk of espionage, national security, or “for their own safety”. They were told to join the war effort as translators or soldiers, or remain there. The doctors of that community and the nurses too would end up working without pay, saving their own communities with limited supplies and truly working goddamned miracles in these camps to keep people alive, as politicians would brag “For every cent we spend on the Japanese, we spend a whole dollar on our boys out on the front!” That kind of shit sound familiar?  And that African American community? Well, while it was a positive thing for that demographic, certainly, and they had a valid right to be a community, that was by no means organic. The military spread out to places like Arkansas, Texas, Georgia, wherever there were large populations of blacks, whom the whites saw still as highly undesirables, and the military saw as cheap labour.  Well, the military found their people. And those people found cheap, effectively abandoned communities, and were able to live somewhat better than where they came from, all while building warships. However, just like with the previous example, this war wouldn’t last forever. But not just like that previous example, the demand for warships is rather... Specific, in both timing and transferable skills, shall we say? So, this cheap labour was made of a demographic that could be relatively easily discarded without them having enough of a voice to cause waves. And soon enough, the Japanese would return from their internment camps, and let’s just say things were... Tense, between these two groups. Two groups who were, by most accounts, politically undesirable, and if they were fucked, well who would care, right? If it caused generational issues, and exacerbated an economy that would make a good deal of trouble, as long as it’s not the demographic that matters... No worries. It’s not like they even really have good proof of who was really at fault, nor who profited from later real-estate scoop ups and other such economic trends. After all, they moved for the jobs, and the Japanese? Well that was a national security issue.... Don’t you love your country?  While this isn’t analogous to what we are seeing today, I hope you can notice the similar theme. Except this time, the demographic in question has to feel “empowered” in some way, and having who they want voted in anyways due to international meddling is more an afterthought to the “yay, we won!” mentality. And the expendables will have a bit more of a veiled attempt to undercut their work via a trade war with a nation who is admittedly, a scumbag (which we have collectively supported with corporate dollars for decades). This trade war will cause a lot of businesses, farms, and the like to close, making it easier for corporate groups to buy out the competition and profit all the more for it (despite some initial risk due to economic trends). All the while, a different, remarkably innocent group is being blamed and tortured for their “crimes”.   It would not surprise me if in the next 2 years, we will see a recession that will make 2008 look pretty alright. And make no mistake, it will not be due to the president at that time. The gears of the machine have been turned now and in the last year and a half. Likewise, we may well see a war. With who? I do not know. But I most certainly know who will profit from it. And who will die from it, and who will be dehumanized further to be the scapegoat.  We’re in incredibly dangerous times, and we need to be aware of why, if we have any hope of surviving. 

[schraubd]

New Congressional Black-Jewish Caucus Announced: Will It Go Anywhere?

Apparently brokered by the AJC, Rep. Brenda Lawrence (D-MI) announced the creation of a new bipartisan Congressional Black-Jewish Caucus. The other co-founding members are Reps. John Lewis (D-GA), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Will Hurd (R-TX), and Lee Zeldin (R-NY). Its stated goals are to:

Raise awareness of each community's sensitivities and needs, in Congress and around the country.

Provide resources to members of Congress to empower them to bring African-American and Jewish communities together, combating stereotypes and hate and showcasing commonalities.

Support stronger hate crimes legislation and advocate for increased government resources to confront the threat of white supremacist ideology.

Support legislation and work to expand access to democracy and protect election integrity.

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what to make of this. The concept is great, but I have to wonder whether initiatives like this ever do anything substantive beyond the press release.

I also find the list of founding congressmen and women to be interesting (are they seeking out additional members?). The list includes two Black Democrats (Lawrence and Lewis), one Black Republican (Hurd), one White Jewish Democrat (Wasserman-Schultz), and one White Jewish Republican (Zeldin).  Let's quickly run through who they are:

Rep. Brenda Lawrence (D-MI)

Lawrence is a third-term congresswoman from Michigan; holding the seat previously occupied by now-U.S. Senator Gary Peters. Prior to entering Congress, she was the first African-American woman to serve as mayor of Southfield. She also was a member of the unsuccessful Democratic gubernatorial ticket in 2010, serving as Virg Bernero's running mate. 

In Congress, she's a member of the Congressional Black Caucus and Congressional Progressive Caucus. I honestly don't know much about her, and don't think of her as a particularly high-profile member of Congress. But Lawrence's district has both a large Black and Jewish population, so it makes sense for her to try and take a leadership position on this question.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL)

Former head of the DNC, Wasserman Schultz is probably best known as the favored target of 2016 Bernie dead-enders after they level up. That made her a target for a primary challenge from Sanders-backed Tim Canova, which got pretty nasty actually, but she ended up prevailing with 57% of the vote. She is one of the most high-profile Jewish Democrats in the House, and has what I consider to be a pretty standard political posture for a Jewish Democratic politician -- generally progressive voting record, while also being "establishment-friendly". Unfortunately, the 2016 election history means she is positively despised by the insurgent wing of the Democratic Party.

Rep. John Lewis (D-GA)

One of the legends of American politics and a civil rights hero, John Lewis has massive respect within the Democratic caucus and within the CBC in particular. He's also, throughout his career, been a stalwart friend of the Jewish people -- there's probably no more common "go-to" in Congress for Jewish-Black relations than Rep. Lewis. If anyone was going to join a cause like this, it'd be him. Unfortunately, that cuts both ways -- it is in many respects less interesting that John Lewis joined this caucus, because "of course he would". It doesn't actually signal the sort of broader buy-in one would hope for.

Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY)

I was honestly surprised to see he was onboard with this, as Lee Zeldin is -- how to put this gently -- a monster whose spent the past year gleefully tossing molotov cocktails all over the "Black-Jewish relationship". Ideally, being part of an initiative like this will tame Zeldin's wilder instincts -- someone can perhaps explain to him why taking an antisemitic voicemail left at his office and randomly demanding Ilhan Omar (who is never cited, mentioned, or alluded to in the message) denounce it is not how we play nicely with others. More likely, Zeldin will simply end up blowing this thing up from the inside.

What's really going on here, I imagine, is a stark example of the limits of trying to form a bipartisan caucus of Blacks and Jews. If one is simply looking to foster healthy relations between the Black and Jewish community in Congress, Republicans are, with all due respect, kind of irrelevant. But if you absolutely insist on having a Jewish Republican in the mix, Zeldin has the almost singular virtue of, well, being one (the only other Jewish Republican in Congress is Tennessee Rep. David Kustoff. He's a right-wing extremist too, though I still suspect he'd have been a better choice).

Rep. Will Hurd (R-TX)

Speaking of slim pickings, Hurd is who you get when you decide you also need a Black Republican -- he's the only one in the House (swing over to the Senate and you've got South Carolina's Tim Scott as well). He is, to be fair, a much less offensive figure than Zeldin. He also barely squeaked out re-election last cycle against Gina Ortiz Jones, whose already gunning for a rematch, so he might not be around Congress next cycle.

* * *

What do we make of this set? Leave Hurd and Zeldin aside -- they're there for obvious reasons but otherwise are non-important. We'll even assume for sake of argument that Zeldin doesn't torpedo the whole deal.

Well, Wasserman Schultz is well respected in the Jewish community but also is a lightning rod for the Bernie-supporting wing of the party. With all due respect to the Florida Congresswoman, whom I actually rather like, she's carrying a lot of weight as the only Jewish Democratic Representative in the group, and I'm skeptical of the vitality of representing the "Jewish" side of Congress through her and Zeldin. Meanwhile, Lawrence is not high-profile, and I don't think really will do much to bring in more support from the CBC more broadly. Lewis is, of course, very high-profile, but he's also in some ways uniquely ill-positioned to signal buy-in from the CBC writ large for the reasons given above.

What's more interesting, then, is who isn't in the caucus. Now again, this was just launched, and so it's entirely possible more people will join. But the question is, who are the sorts of people who, if they did join, would signal that there might be a potential for success here?

On the Jewish side of the equation, you'd want to see both someone from new generation -- say, Elissa Slotkin or Max Rose, or perhaps Jamie Raskin -- and/or a less polarizing member of the old guard (like Jerry Nadler or Jan Schakowsky). Andy Levin -- newly-elected, but part of the Levin political dynasty in Michigan -- would be a great bridging figure here too. Another obvious name to look out for is Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee, who actually represents a majority-Black district. If he joins, it suggests that this sort of initiative is actually being viewed as a positive. If he doesn't, well, it sends a different signal.

With respect to prospective Black members, you'd want to see something similar: someone from the old guard beyond Lewis, and then someone from the new wave. On the latter, I won't even bother mentioning she-who-must-not-me-named (though again, what does it say that Zeldin can be a member but she can't). But Lauren Underwood, Lucy McBath, or (dare to dream) Ayanna Pressley would be outstanding additions. With respect to more senior figures, Karen Bass or Elijah Cummings or even my own Congresswoman Barbara Lee would be great. There's also a "middle seniority" group that contains some promising figures, like Andre Carson (he'd be a fantastic pick-up, as the other Black Muslim serving in Congress right now) and Hakeem Jeffries (Jeffries, sadly, seems to be at risk of becoming a new Wasserman Schultz or Tom Perez -- which is to say, someone with a solidly progressive voting record who gets identified as a barrier to the advancement of some further-left hero and therefore is transmogrified into a tool of the neoliberal neoliberalist's neoliberalism).

In particular: I see the point of a caucus like this as not just comprising of itself of people who already agree on everything, but also ones who can fairly and effectively communicate their respective community's "sensitivities and needs" -- a project which often will involve explaining why practices by the other community which might internally seem innocuous are actually hurtful. In the Omar dialogues, for example, this is where we get Jewish members explaining why Omar's comments -- perhaps seen as just making the anodyne point that "AIPAC has influence in Washington" -- were harmful and seemed to leverage antisemitic tropes; and also where we get Black members explaining why the unyielding fury of the backlash -- perhaps seen as just "calling out antisemitism" --  were harmful and seemed to reflect a minute policing of Black politicians.

In other words, if you're running through potential members of the caucus with a red pen and looking for all the heresies that should bar them from membership, I'd urge you to stop. Yes, some level of overt antagonism is probably incompatible with productively participating in a project like this (but then: see Zeldin, apparently). But not all disagreements are akin to "overt antagonism", and I don't think any of the names I've listed stand outside the realm of regular disagreement. A functioning caucus that is designed to be a space where both community's can communicate their respective concerns and sensitivities can and probably should have some people who do not start out on precisely the same page. Speaking from the Jewish angle, it is in particular not reasonable to expect this caucus be "Black politicians come into the room and agree that everything the Jewish community has been saying and doing vis-a-vis the Black community is correct and laudatory" (and, of course, neither vice versa).

Finally, I don't want to say any of the people I mentioned above are obligated to join this caucus, or that it reflects badly on them or signals they "don't care about Black-Jewish relationships" if they don't. Congress is a busy place, and these people have things to do. This is one cause among many -- it's one I happen to think is important, but there are lots of issues lots of people think are important. And of course, these Congressmen and women are almost certainly better positioned than I am to see if this caucus has even the potential to turn into something "real" beyond the press release. If it's going to be a waste of time anyway, there's no need for them to cede their limited time to be wasted.

All I am suggesting is that, for a caucus like this to actually succeed, it needs to gain a membership that signifies buy-in from a solid cross-sample of the relevant communities. I don't think the initial membership group does that on its own.

via The Debate Link http://bit.ly/2KpE6VI

[n666ick]

Maybe my heart is too big. I’m sorry that I don’t wanna see children drowning in lifeboats and being shot at schools. I’m sorry that I don’t wanna go to concerts fearing a bullet in my brain when I should be having the time of my life. I’m sorry that I want my friends of all gender-identities, races, sexualities, etc. to be embraced and empowered. I’m sorry that I believe people when they share their stories of sexual assault. I’m sorry that I think women should be able to control their own bodies. I’m sorry that I think religion is bullshit made up by heteronormative assholes with superiority complexes. I’m sorry that I don’t wanna see my transgender brothers and sisters murdered for living their truth. I’m sorry that I want a future where queer youth rules the fucking world. I’m sorry that I don’t wanna see innocent civilians having bombs explode in their faces because of corrupt politicans not getting their shit together. I’m sorry that I wanna see women and people of color making the same amount of money for jobs as their white, male counterparts. I’m sorry that I wanna live in a world where neo-nazis and white supremacists aren’t allowed to openly march in the streets. I’m sorry that I don’t wanna hear any more stories about innocent black men and women being murdered by cops and seeing no justice. I’m sorry that I don’t wanna see children tear gassed at the border because their parents are trying to provide them with a fair chance at life. I’m sorry that I don’t wanna see refugee children harassed and assaulted in countries that are supposed to be safe-havens for them. Maybe my heart is too big.

[antiracistkaren]

Post Hysterectomy Thoughts

CW/TW: Mentions of eating disorder, surgery, suicide, sexual assault/rape of trans people

I am at home with my family--meaning, I can hear every cry my girls make, every short answer from Jon, and every minute that goes by that I'm not studying. I feel it all.

I was at Dylan's this weekend for the first couple of days. I just went into a room and really didn't come out except to use the bathroom and have small talk when I was too restless to stay upstairs. I ate Oreos whenever I wanted and eggs scrambled up by Dylan in the mornings. I had one cup of coffee while I was there.

I watched all of The Crown, and have that fullness of feeling caught up on something. I finished Becoming right before my surgery, which has also extinguished my desire to read in general. It was my "easy" read, while The People's History of the United States is dense and must be read slowly. It's hard to speed read through history. It takes time to digest. And then there's This Little Light of Mine about Fannie Lou Hammer. Another dense biography with close writing and thick pages. I know the outcome of this one is not nearly as bright as Mrs. Obama's, so I am loathe to really get into it. However, I know that once I get going, I am able to polish off books rather quickly. It just takes me time to reach the halfway point--which is usually where I start to get invested in the rest of the book. I always have to fight to get to that "halfway" mark, where I bend the book and it no longer wants to snap shut on my hands, but falls beautifully open, having been appropriately used and doted on enough to break the spine.

So I just let my eyes enjoy some historical fiction. The quiet dialogue of The Crown would help me drift off the sleep when I became tired from my medication, and would be there when I woke with gentle British accents and sweet "arguments" occurring on screen.

It's hard watching Diana's eating disorder. It is not something that I personally struggle with--bulimia, but I do strictly control what I eat and when. You can always tell when I am super stressed out because I simply stop eating because I am too nervous or overwhelmed. The times when I have dropped weight suddenly are times in my life when I was at my worst, emotionally and relationally.

So I understand the Bulimia, the desire to have control at least, over what goes in and out your body. Especially when you have no control over how your mind feels, how your emotions are responded to, and even your every day movements are stilled and controlled. Post-surgery is a box, but it is one I do not mind inhabiting at the moment, because I know that once I emerge from this particular box, I will be free of cyclical pain and will be free to live as a man does: without concern or thought to when my period is coming and when I will be in pain.

Although it may sound small to most people... or to men especially, it is hard to describe the depth of thought and concern one's period brings. You hear about it a lot as a kid growing toward puberty, and then comparing severity among your peers becomes normal. Women talk about their periods to each other all the time: ways to avoid it, to skip it, to make it lighter, shorter, less painful. We use all of the strategies and tricks to attempt to act "normally" like a man does while we are mercilessly bleeding from a major organ.

It's really strange: how we treat women and their periods. Something that afflicts over half of the population on a roughly a monthly basis, and we're not even allowed to discuss it.

I want to talk about something that happened the day before my surgery, which still has me stewing and fuming a bit, and that was a Pregnancy Test.

I have not been sexually active with Jon in a way that would produce a baby since June. June, y'all. I know my life and I know my marriage, and we are hanging on by a thread, but I know this fact: I am not pregnant. I have gotten my period, often and heavily.

However, thanks to Texas state law, prior to my hysterectomy I had to prove that I'm not pregnant.

Basically, the law prevented me from "lying." And I can't help but think about... well, "what if?"

What if, after having three children and taking every single precaution I could, I was pregnant? It means I would either have to cross state lines to get an abortion and then have a hysterectomy, or carry that unwanted baby to term, furthering the pain and trauma on my body.

My body has been through enough at this point, y'all. That's what I was in the office to get this organ removed. Pregnancy is literally toxic to my body. Getting rid of my uterus was the last recourse I had, since birth control makes me suicidal and absolutely bonkers prior to my period. I'm not talking about PMS, I'm talking heavy mood swings that put me into suicidally sad places. I'm talking fits of rage that felt like explosions from my body. In short, birth control really aggravates by ability to manage my emotions at all levels. Which means, as an autistic woman that struggles to manage emotions anyway, I was absolutely psychopathic. I would come out from the fog and look backwards and see how irrational I was, how irritated I was. I found myself apologizing every few weeks for having huge breakdowns emotionally, physically around ovulation and then again around my period.

So I am telling the nurse that there is no way that I can be pregnant, and I'm mostly shrugging this off, but it really bothers me when I get to the paperwork: I must either consent to have this test, or risk not having the surgery if I won't take it. Classic catch-22: submit in order to get the thing I need to have a better quality of life, or stand up for my rights as a woman and risk being denied this surgery.

So I submitted, with great resentment. I stood up after my blood draws and asked if I needed to pee on a stick, and that I could leave a sample. The nurse informed me that no, they would run a blood test.

A blood test. Something far more accurate, detailed, and expensive. I am lucky enough to have hit my deductible, and so I will not personally pay for this bloodwork and this pregnancy test, but if I didn't have health insurance, I would have been required to do something because of my gender, and then been required to pay for it myself.

That's fucked up, y'all. Never mind that I was taking birth control. Never mind that my husband and I are basically abstinent right now. Never mind that I have three children already and if I don't want to have another one, that should be my RIGHT as a human being, I was required to take a test AND pay for it at the same time.

Smacked by two laws: one in which I do not have the right to free healthcare and pregnancy tests, and one in which I do not have the right to evacuate a toxic organ if it happens to house a mass of cells (because I just had my period, there's literally... no way that it could have been more than a mass of cells that that point), because my husband happened to catch an egg right before my procedure?

I was heartsick thinking about it. The amount of women who may try their best to get away from an endless cycle of pain or pregnancy being turned away because they caught an egg this month. Pregnancy is like being in prison for some of us. It is toxic to my body: I would get gestational diabetes without fail. That's my body telling me something: This isn't healthy for you. And yet I did it three times.

And I don't get to say when it's over without taking a test? Without proving to the medical community, to law-makers, that I am not pregnant?

What is the reasoning here? Do we somehow believe that women will, knowingly pregnant, go in for a hysterectomy? Really?

It's three days later, I still cannot get over it. I also think about Trans people, who want to have their uterus removed and are denied if they are under 30. That leaves Trans people open for getting pregnant via rape: trans people are far more likely to be sexually assaulted and raped (Source). If we refuse to allow trans people to remove their own uteruses when they deem fit, we are damning them to having to take hormones to suppress ovulation, or other chemicals that will fundamentally alter their mental state for the worse.

This isn't about oh poor suburban me--I am LUCKY I can do this. Luckily, I'm not pregnant. Luckily, we have paid out of pocket all damn year and got this surgery for free. It makes me angry that I have to feel like this is a damn gift that I got--this major abdominal surgery is a privilege that many do not have, simply because they are not a white, suburban mother whose husband has decent (not great!) healthcare through his employer.

I'm thinking about all of the women under 30 with endometriosis, cysts on their ovaries, and other conditions that make having this monthly cycle a NIGHTMARE. I'm thinking about trans people who want desperately to evacuate an organ that does not feel like part of their bodies. I'm thinking about homeless women who want to be rid of their pain on a monthly basis, who are just trying to survive and who have to make money just to be a part of society, to have money to buy sanitary supplies.

We are treating people with uteruses in this country as criminals if they want to alter their bodies. We have brought a Christian, white supremacist, doctrine into the patient/doctor relationship, and it is humiliating to women, especially those AFAB, and those women of color who cannot get access to this surgery at all.

It IS a gift, but I wish it weren't. I wish that women could take comfort in knowing that when they feel "done" with having children, they can choose to be done. Whenever they want. Empower women to take control over their own bodies and reproductive lives. You don't need to imprison us to make children--many of us want to, and will suffer in order to have children. But it shouldn't be forced on anyone simply because they have a uterus.

[concretelygay]

I’m Not Sure I Understand Protests

So there was a Back the Blue, Pro Trump Rally in my town. I was encouraged to show support of the counter protest. I couldn’t make myself stand outside just feet away from folks not wearing masks, so I decided to make two signs and drive around the block a few times. It was silly and pathetic compared to the real protestors but it will all I could muster. 

During the drive, I went around 5 times, I was terrified. A person on the speaker shouted my license plate number and said I support terrorist and pedofiles, and not to get in my Lyft. (Aside-I drove Lyft for 3 months 2 years ago and I leave the stickers on mostly to rebel against my parents because they didn’t want me driving Lyft). So I was feeling scared and then I was feeling so sad. Because the worst part of watching these people jeer at my neighbors and friends. Was that the Trump supporters were humans. I just wanted to talk to them and I didn’t know how. I wanted them to be in masks so I could walk over and say hi. I want them to put away the loud speaker so I could have one one one conversation. I wanted to join their group and get to know them. But that felt unacceptable to think or feel. So I drove and drove for about 20 mins I drove slowly around the block. And it felt like nothing.  I think I have done more good for this world walking down the block than I did on that drive. It honestly felt pointless on both sides. What were they trying to do? What were we trying to do? I don’t get the point and I want to so badly. How does screaming at each other from across the street do anything? I don’t understand. I want to know why they like Trump so much. I want to know it from their perspective. They were people that if I saw out of this context I would feel more comfortable with than the people on counter protest side. They looked like people who would attend my churches I’ve attended. They looked like my neighbors. They looked like my friends. I don’t understand what we anyone on those blocks wanted. I read one post that said the goal was to make them feel unwelcome. I guess I didn’t want them there like that. But I don’t want them to go away, I want them to change. I want them to see what their leader is doing and dislike it. Or at least I want them to think critically about their leader. 

Look I know you aren’t supposed to have sympathy for people who are so openly against things like Black Lives Matter, Masks, basic Human rights. But I can’t not look at a person and see that they are a person. To see that they feel things like I do and not want to add to their pain. Now I know the counter argument is do I put that much effort into the pain of Black people, Indigenous people, or People of Color. No, I haven’t. I am just starting to put more effort into learning how to be in community with those communities. But who is supposed to put effort into the Trump supporters. I present masculine, I have a beard, I’m white, I have deep voice, I am educated, I come from wealth, I am Christian, at this point I’m even in a straight passing relationship, I will never have to worry about a visual or an audio of me negatively affecting me. So why shouldn’t I spend time with these people. Why shouldn’t I get to know them and try to change their mind?  I don’t have the right answers. I know I’m wrong about protests. I know that protests are not pointless. I know that there are a lot of reasons to take to the streets that I can’t understand. I know that there are things I am doing in this very writing that will negatively impact the world and hurt the healing of others. But I am writing this for me. I need to work through this. I’m not going to tag, this on social media other than here, but I am going to post it publically. I am not going to hide my faults. Because I think that contributes to the issues. I am not perfect. I do not get this world we are living in. 

I want to be in community with Trump supporters and those who think I support terrorist because I had sign that says “Trump politics makes people unsafe”. I know that for many that makes me a part of the problem and probably truly makes me a part of the problem. I also want to DEFUND THE POLICE. I also do not believe that Trump should get to do some of things he has been doing (sending military to cities, bolster Columbus Day for political gain, inspire White Supremacists without at least claiming it wasn’t intentional, inciting hate). I also think there should be term limits, a universal wage, universal health care, universal mental health care, universal access to food, climate change regulation, a massive focus on how to empower the generations of Black people that are still suffering from slavery, a focus on creating jobs while still automating as much as possible, a shift away from capitalism, a shift away from the protestant church, gay/trans/lesbian/bi/and other sexual minorities should be able to raise children in all states, and that the American military is largely out of control.

But I know that me feeling sympathetic and like I want to reach out to the Trump supporters in my town is probably on the wrong side of history. I hope I figure out how to let go of the blocks that are so stuck in me that sees people and wants to reach out a hand no matter what they are doing. And I think this is even more so with white people. I think I want them not to disagree with me. I want them not to scare people. I want them not to make me look bad. I want them not be afraid and angry. I want them to see things the way I see them. I don’t want their views to be my views. I don’t want their president. I want to heal with them. I want them to stop doing what they are doing. I want I want I want.  I need to do better. Many people need to do better. Gosh I wish we were fighting about straws. I need to not worry about others. I need to heal myself. Why am I so upset over this rally? Why am I so ashamed? Is that telling me to do more next time? Is that telling me not to go? Is that telling me that I’m doing something wrong? That I am wrong? I know why I am sad. I am sad because I believe that many of the ideas that have been running this country since its inception are immoral and hurt people. From it’s bad to be a sensitive unique snowflake to people who are in pain should say their pain in a super calm way or their pain is invalid and not worthy of my help to police or bust mentality. All of these things make be sad. I don’t enjoy living in a society that supports these things. But I like my home. And I like people who believe these ideas. But it’s my belief that they might not have explored these different ideas. That statement is too prideful. Let’s reverse it. I don’t know why someone would support those ideas that I don’t like. I’ve tried to explore the reasons and I don’t agree. I don’t know why we can’t see it similarly or the same or even talk about it. How can nice people, kind hearted people not help me understand their perspective? Why? Why does it feel like they don’t want to listen to mine.

So I decided fuck it I’m gonna try to find the person who was yelling at me. So I went to Pioneer Valley Massachusetts For Trump 2020 and posted this:

Local Amherst person here. I drove past your demonstration a few times. I think this will probably get deleted because we don't share the same views, but as I was driving I really wished there was a way we could actually talk to one another instead of being so against and separate. Maybe I should have gotten out the car, but my partner asked me not to because of COVID. If the person saying he wants to have a debate into a mega phone actually does tell him to message me. I hope one day I can learn more about you all and your individual lives. Because at this moment I think I am missing something important. Though I don't support you cause I do want to understand more people as people. Hope one day that will come fruition. Best, "The Lyft driver who supports terrorists" (I think that's who I was)

So overall. I don’t get how standing on either side of the street does anything. How waving a flag and yelling and showing signs does anything. I don’t get any of it. I want to do the work to understand but I don’t know where to start. I guess I will google about protests and get back to you.