#history is now

[anastasiaoftheironwood]

Now, this is how you do Veterans Day.

[historyandarthijinks]

Modern Day Shorts #18

This is the lovely Theresa Kachindamoto, Inkosi of the Dedza District in the country of Malawi. In current day times, and like she has always been, Kachindamoto is a woman on a mission. She's a women's and children's rights activist who advocates for the education of children, abolishment of child marriage, and equality of young women in several African nations.

She is the first female African chief. She was simply informed one day as a college student that she was made senior chief of the Dedza District. Returning home she witnessed first hand the chaos of child marriage and intense poverty plaguing Malawi. Malawi itself has one of the highest child marriage rates in the world.

Kachindamoto took her new role incredibly seriously, and got to work immediately. She's annulled thousands of child marriages in the past years, through commands, lawmaking, and cultural authority.

Education of children, especially young girls is very important to Kachindamoto. The woman has created parent ran networks that help keep children in schools as well, and her work doesn't stop in her home district. She is a strong activist. Despite receiving death threats and resistance, Kachindamoto refuses to back down.

She plans to be chief until her death, and fight until that happens.

[agoldenplum]

CRIP CAMP: A DISABILITY REVOLUTION | Official Trailer | Netflix | Docume...

[route22ny]

The scientific consensus about the SARS-Cov-2 virus is clear: It will continue to circulate and evolve, causing seasonal problems and occasional surges even as more pandemics due to other viruses also become more likely. The political consensus is equally clear: We’ll have to “live with” COVID-19, and presumably with the other bugs too.

To co-exist with such dangerous pathogens, we will need to train and recruit more nurses and doctors and open more hospitals. We will need a robust public health system, with solid funding and high morale. And, perhaps most crucially, we will have to think of ourselves as members of a larger society, indeed of the global population.

If that sounds impossible, it’s because we are living at the tail end of a 50-year attack on the very notion of a public. For most of our lives, we have been bombarded with the message that anything public infringes on personal freedom — and that Americans, or the real ones anyway, have always thought so.

But that’s not true. The United States was founded as a republic, literally “the public thing.” And during two long periods of American history, that ideal flourished.

The first republican age began with the rejection of British rule in 1776. The more radical revolutionaries wanted to repress selfish desires in favor of what they called “virtue,” or the willingness to sacrifice for the common good. The leading physician in the new nation, Dr. Benjamin Rush, even suggested in 1786 that young Americans were “public property,” in the sense that their “republican duties” outweighed their private ambitions.

More commonly, civic-minded leaders founded new schools, reform societies, and roads and bridges, all dedicated to “the public good.” These efforts continued through the 1820s and 1830s, with popular leaders establishing or at least proposing tax-funded schools, canals, a National University, and even a National Vaccine Institute.

Call it the First Republic, a sustained bloom of democratic energies that culminated around 1860 in the rise of Republican Party, which not only fought the traitorous slaveholders but also established land-grant colleges and called for equal rights to “all classes of men” so that each might contribute to “the physical, moral and social energies of the whole State.”

A second age of public spirit began around 1900. To confront the immense power of giant new corporations, Progressive reformers such as Jane Addams called for “a higher morality in our social relations” in which mean individualism gave way to a generous regard for “the larger whole.”

These visions prevailed during the later struggle against the Depression and fascism. Under FDR, the Democrats invested in public works, created Social Security, and brought electricity to rural communities. The Republican successor to the New Deal, Dwight Eisenhower, cut back on federal activism but also expanded Social Security and signed the Interstate Highway Act, a huge investment in transportation.

To fund it all, the richest Americans paid significantly higher taxes than they do now.

In the 1955 culmination of this age, Dr. Jonas Salk rebuffed the idea of patenting his polio vaccine while Ike directed that the vaccinations proceed “in keeping with our highest traditions of cooperative national action.”

Beginning in the mid-1970s, however, the economic theory of “neo-liberalism” demonized public institutions while starving them of resources.

“Government is not the solution to our problem; government is our problem,” Ronald Reagan scolded in 1981. “The era of big government is over,” Bill Clinton concurred in 1996, before offering vague hopes for “teamwork.” Privatizations and tax cuts fed off one another, leading to more tax cuts and privatizations.

When COVID arrived, one rural hospital in four was already at risk of closing, mostly in states that had refused to expand Medicaid during the 2010s. Threadbare governments could not even provide frontline workers with masks. Fearful of hidden bills, some underinsured Americans shunned vaccinations. National leaders struggled to articulate a vision of the public good, because they had no such vision.

To his credit, President Biden offered a step in the right direction with his Build Back Better plan. But that plan is all but dead, and last week Congress nixed common-sense funding for COVID tests and treatments. Evidently, we are just going to pretend that we are “done with” this virus and assume that Pfizer or Moderna will always bail us out and that our exhausted hospitals can always cope.

Instead, we need to remember the achievements of the First Republic (ca. 1780-1860) and of the Second Republic (ca. 1900-1955) and then update them for our daunting times. We must expand our capacity and willingness to care for each other, focusing not on ideological purity but rather on the practical necessity of rebuilding the institutions and ideas that make us citizens, not just individuals.

Long live the Third Republic.

---

J.M. Opal, who is American, is associate professor of History at McGill University. Steven M. Opal, his father, was a professor at the Alpert School of Medicine at Brown University.

[starw1sh]

History. Accurate, and yes ugly and garish, paint colors of 300 year old houses. Museums. Communities having the authority and sovereignty to teach about their histories and have ownership over what is there's. Public education on things that happened in the past that still impact today. Trail markers and brown road signs reminding you that you're not the first person to travel this way, that you're moving down the same path people have for centuries. An actual understanding of how people in the past lived rather than the mythology we have created of history.

[jewishmuseummd]

History is Now: JMM Collects Stories of the Pandemic

The Jewish Museum of Maryland is collecting stories of life during the COVID-19 public health crisis. We encourage you to submit your experiences - through words, images, or objects - to help us preserve the memories and experiences of Jewish Maryland for future generations. 

Your words can be in whatever format you prefer: written (poetry, a journal entry, a letter, an essay, or just some jotted thoughts) or recorded. Photos and drawings can be used to illustrate your words, or can stand alone.

Use this form to easily submit your work to the Museum. 

If you prefer to submit by mail or email, or have objects that you think might interest us, that's okay! Send your words and photos to Joanna Church, Director of Collections & Exhibits, at jchurch@jewishmuseummd.org or The Jewish Museum, 15 Lloyd Street, Baltimore, MD 21202.  If submitting this way, please be sure to include your name, hometown or location, and age, and let us know how you would like us to attribute and share your work, using the questions below as guidance.

[faithlovin]

[geogonzo]

SCIENCE AROUND THE WORLD

How an international research group  raced to understand a new virus.

... but it also has something good. For a very first time in human history, people, scientists from all parts of the world work together across borders to combat a danger to find a solution. This is hope for everything!

[dailyphotographs]

[anony-mouse-writer]

How many photos have you seen in history books of protests? Of people standing up for their rights to exist and the hate that surrounds these movements? We are literally living those moments in history.

[historyandarthijinks]

Imagine you're a young woman whose father and brothers have been sent to die in a war no one asked for. Maybe your gay, which your government made illegal. Maybe your poor and have nothing to really do. It's a hellscape outdoors anyway.

You know! You'll go online, escape from the death and war, and indulge with other queers to know there's nothing wrong with the uncontrollable factors of your life...

And then you see it

Post after post, line after line, of people making fun of your dead brothers, of your dead father. People are making new slurs for your people. They've completely left behind the idea of saving the lgbt people in your nation. They're doing all this in the name of righteousness too.

They say your people are inherently evil, do nothing but war...

It's just like the propaganda told you

The west is evil, they hate everything russian, and therefor everything about you

You are a Russian woman

....

And this is not how we should be trying to solve things. Don't attack the innocent people stuck in warmongering countries. Attack their governments. Their corrupt leaders, and commanders. Their unfair and discriminatory laws. Bring up the war crimes happening, keep the death count there, stand for the invaded...but don't attack the people who, no matter what they do have to wake up in a country that wages awful wars.

[agoldenplum]

Giliam de Carpentier -> Finished designing, building and assembling most components: Turns out my table can actually WALK as well as I hoped it would! Next steps: Implement remote control, connect a battery, and open up the throttle...

@decarpentier_nl

[setonfireinasilverdream]

Happy Home OpenerJays fans!! The Blue Jays are coming home!

[jewishmuseummd]

Tuesday, June 23, 2020 at 7:00 pm EST

Register Here

At the Jewish Museum of Maryland (JMM), we are storytellers. We’re also storyfinders, storykeepers, and storyprotectors. Through our latest collecting initiative, History is Now: The JMM Collects Covid 19, we trying to capture the impact of the current situation upon our community to help future generations better understand its impact.  Join us for a special Covid 19 inspired writing workshop where we will come together to record our experiences for future generations.

This program is designed for adults. Places are limited, so early registration is recommended. You will have the opportunity to donate your completed projects to the JMM for our project History is Now: The JMM Collects Covid 19.

[eat-play-read-run]

The NWHL sold 1,000 jerseys the first month they were available online. That's a lot of little kids who can wear their favorite player's sweater and pretend to be while making game winning shots in backyard hockey rinks, a lot of teenagers who have a great role model to look up to and aspire to be like, and a lot of adults who see something special with this league and what they're doing. That's also a lot of money going in the hands of hardworking and dedicated women who are getting paid to play professional hockey for the first time in North America. Don't you just love history?

[chira-hetalia]

APH- Histori is Now by xMarinePearlx

I love this video. It’s amazing.