#i advocate for free/actually affordable housing for everyone who needs it because we ALL deserve a safe secure stable home

[frogeyedape]

I am so unbelievably pissed off. FUCK HOAs

Oh, my trash/recycling bin can't be visible except on pickup day? Ok whatever fine I hate you but I can deal with this

Weekly inspections?????? FU FU FU FU FU

SECOND NOTICE ALSO WE'RE CHARGING YOU MONEY TO SEND YOU CERTIFIED MAIL OF THIS TOTALLY LEGIT TOTALLY SECOND NOTICE OF WHAT IS ACTUALLY A VIOLATION cue me: checks notes. Hmm. My recycling bin was. on the curb. on recycling pickup day. You know. The day it has to be out. The day it is motherfucking ALLOWED TO BE FUCKING OUT AND VISIBLE.

so. 1) not a violation

I have sent them the trash AND recycling pickup schedules, which are DIFFERENT, btw

I have disputed the fact of the violation

I have disputed the linking of this "violation" to a previous violation MONTHS AGO--their "first notice" in this case was a "Courtesy Notice" LITERALLY 5 MONTHS AGO and they've done so many inspections since then and my bin CLEARLY WASN'T OUT IN THOSE INTERVENING MONTHS so WTMFH

So I am posting like a crazy person here instead of sending the absolutely deranged email I almost sent (I did send a slightly less deranged version with the disputes, and requesting a hearing)

OMG. It has been. Less than one hour since I learned this fun fun news. My bin was out YESTERDAY, y'all. YESTERDAY. I am going to blow a gasket

[torispn15]

Warning long post ahead:

I have heard a lot from the news and from articles today. It can drive you crazy. So, I´m channeling my energy into explaining a couple of things about our (the US) political and economic system. It´s not perfect, as I put more emotion into this post than just straight logic. I have taken a politics 101 course and did a lot of studying and I am using basic common sense and empathy. At first I am talking about the Capitol incident and then it expands into more detail. If you don´t want to read, that´s cool. (I am not really gonna branch out into other countries on this topic. The main focus is the US) Anyways, here it is:

"A political philosophy and movement that is sceptical of authority and rejects all involuntary, coercive forms of hierarchy. Anarchism calls for the abolition of the state, which it holds to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful."

Does this sound like the behavior of the people that stormed the Capitol? No. It sounds like the opposite of what they want. I´ve seen a lot of news networks such as NBC, call the fascists, anarchists. That, above, is the description of anarchism.

Anarchists reject any hierarchy. They, the fascists, want government and they want Trump. So, calling them anarchists is very very not accurate.

"A form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition and strong regimentation of society and of the economy. They believe that liberal democracy is obsolete and regard the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state as necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and to respond effectively to economic difficulties."

Does this sound more like the behavior of the people that stormed the Capitol? Yes. It does. That is the description of fascism.

"A fascist state is led by a strong leader such as a dictator and a martial law government composed of the members of the governing fascist party to forge national unity and maintain a stable and orderly society."

Remind you of anything??

Now, read this:

"Advocates the abolition of the state, capitalism, wage labour, social hierarchies and private property (while retaining respect for personal property, along with collectively-owned items, goods and services) in favor of common ownership of the means of production and direct democracy as well as a horizontal network of workers' councils with production and consumption based on the guiding principle "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"."

This sounds way better than the first two, right? This is the description of anarcho-communism. Which is what I, personally, align with most.

What about this:

"An economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics include capital accumulation, competitive markets, a price system, private property and the recognition of property rights, voluntary exchange and wage labor. In this market economy, decision-making and investments are determined by every owner of wealth, property or production ability in capital and financial markets whereas prices and the distribution of goods and services are mainly determined by competition in goods and services markets."

This is the description of capitalism, which is what we have now. But, what you have to understand is that capitalism usually leads to fascism. Late-stage capitalism is fascism. One core idea of fascism is capitalism. Which is one of many reasons why it´s terrible. Also, you live here. You know how bad capitalism is. It´s why you can´t afford to buy medicine or go to the doctors. It´s why people die of starvation. It´s not because people don´t work hard enough. There are people who work three jobs who are still low-income individuals and families. It´s because of capitalism. It doesn´t give you any freedom. It is the opposite of freedom. In the "land of the free" we have a political and economic system that enslaves us. Think about that. Think about how much freedom you actually have.

When all of this is put into frame, what are your thoughts? What sounds like a place you want to live in?

The way we are now, the reason why most of the garbage in this country happens, you can connect that to capitalism. You can trace what happened at the Capitol today to fascism and capitalism (Which are basically the same thing).

A lot of Americans work minimum wage jobs. Minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, on average in the US. Assuming you work 40 hours a week, that equals 2,080 hours in a year. Your hourly wage of 7 dollars would end up being about $14,560 per year in salary. Even if you got $15 an hour, working 37.5 hours a week, you would still only make $29,250 a year. $15 an hour isn't enough to secure affordable housing in most US states. Nationally, someone would need to make $17.90 an hour to rent a one-bedroom apartment or $22.10 an hour to cover a two-bedroom home. In order to live comfortably, you´d have to get extra hours or a better job. Extra hours, is just slaving more of your life away to the point where it won´t matter how much money you earn. And it is very hard to get a job. Even if you go to college, you aren´t owed or guaranteed a job. You slave you life away. And none of this takes into consideration family members. None of this takes into consideration any children or people living in the household. You have to struggle all the time under capitalism.

You are in the top 1.8% of americans if you make more than 400k a year. So, no, not everyone or anyone can be rich or live nicely here. America loves to brand itself as a free country and the land of opportunity but, it has shown that is anything but. 30 million people in America, do not have health insurance. Do you know how much medical care costs without insurance? No one should struggle for basic medical care. Every human being deserves the basic necessities to stay alive. Every single one of us shouldn´t have to pay for food or water. We shouldn´t struggle to afford putting food on the table working two jobs while the millionaires and billionaires who sit on a yacht all day, who don´t earn a single cent, never have to worry about that. You wanna know how they make that money, you wanna know who gives them that money? You do. Your hard work and nights away from your family, earns them that money. That is your money. The system is set up for people like that to succeed and keep succeeding. The rich keep getting richer while you stay the same or even lose money. Does that sound fair or just to you? Life isn´t fair, no, but this isn´t life. This is a man-made system that we can fix. We built this and we can tear it down.

So stop being a bootlicker and sucking off capitalism just because there´s a small chance that, maybe, you will get rich. If you´re black in America, you have a 15.1% lower chance of becoming a millionaire than a white person in America. If you are white or asian with a college education, you have around a 20% chance of being a millionaire. But, if you can´t afford college, and you only have a high school diploma, your chances drop to a 2% chance. And most people who are rich in this country didn´t start out with a start-up company and worked hard. No. No. The majority of millionaires and billionaires did either one of these things or all of them:

⬤ Got lucky. By means of gambling, lottery, ⋆cough⋆ making a sex tape and it getting traction ⋆cough⋆...... things like that.

⬤ Scamming someone. By means of ponzi scheme, pyramid scheme, advance-fee scam, credit fraud, identity theft... things of that nature.

⬤ Other illegal shit. By means of embezzlement, hacking, robbing, selling counterfit goods (which can also fall into the scamming someone section), etc... you get the point.

And that doesn´t include being born into money and not paying any taxes as well. It usually doesn´t have shit to do with working hard. If working hard made you a millionaire, a hell of a lot more people would be rich af.

There´s also a lot more factors and circumstances to take into account. Even if I had time to explain, I probably couldn´t because, well, frankly, it´s impossible to go into every factor or circumstance especially since, I couldn´t possibly know every single one. This is a very basic and general post and I tried my best to explain some stuff. (some of the figures and percentages might be off by a percent ot two but, that´s easily searchable)

I do encourage researching, actual research. Because I, nor, anyone on this app are the authority for any topic. Never take anyone´s word for anything, especially not on this app of of all places. Please study and research. When you research, it is very important to check out the websites and sources for too much bias and make sure to fact check, such as comparing it to other websites and sources. Or maybe you could read different books about economics or politics and things of that nature. But, even for books, always fact check and check for too much bias. You can easily fall into traps if you don´t. I just started listening to an audio book titled: Anarchism and Other Essays by Emma Goldman. I am trying to learn more about anarchism and other political philosophies as well. I am most certaintly not a "political person" but, I do love to learn and I do love human beings and believe that human beings deserve basic rights which makes me interested in learning about different ways to improve our way of life.

So... that´s it.... I hope y´all have a goodnight/evening/morning! 💛

[latoyajkelson70506]

Controversy Continues Over SF Restaurant Serving $200 Meals in Private Domes

Last month, California governor Gavin Newsom announced the mandatory closure (or re-closure) of all indoor restaurant dining rooms throughout the state. After investigating its options, Michelin-starred sushi restaurant Hashiri announced that it had purchased three miniature geodesic domes so it could provide a "unique outdoor multi-course dining experience." At the time, the domes seemed like a novel means of providing increased privacy safety for diners during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

A few days ago, after a brief hiatus, Hashiri was allowed to start seating customers in its three outdoor geodesic domes again after the staff cut the plastic sides off to bring them into compliance with current public health requirements. Slicing several feet of soft PVC from the Garden Igloos seems to be a satisfactory resolution—at least for now—after two straight weeks of controversy that started when they were assembled on a San Francisco sidewalk.

Hashiri general manager Kenichiro Matsuura told the San Francisco Chronicle that he had previously attempted outdoor dining (pre-plastic bubbles) but it hadn't worked out, due to the restaurant's location in the Mid-Market section of the city. "We wanted to continue offering the fine-dining experience—and safety and peace,” Matsuura said. (The restaurant also offers a swanky to-go menu, including a $500 Ultimate Trifecta Bento box and a $160 takeaway Wagyu Sukiyaki kit, but it is best known for its five-course Kaiseki and Omakase tasting menu.) “Mint Plaza is a phenomenal space, it’s just sometimes the crowd is not too favorable,” he said. In an interview with ABC7, he again emphasized that "it's not the safest neighborhood." 

The entire Bay Area has an estimated 35,000 people who are unsheltered or experiencing homelessness and, at the beginning of the pandemic, there were more than 8,000 unhoused individuals in San Francisco alone. In mid-March, when the city issued its first stay-at-home order, homeless residents were encouraged to "find shelter and government agencies to provide it” but that was easier to type than it was to do. The Guardian reports that shelters stopped taking new residents due to concerns of overcrowding or inadequate social distancing, and more than 1,000 people put their names on a futile-sounding waitlist to get a bed. 

In April, the city's Board of Supervisors unanimously passed emergency legislation directing the city to secure more than 8,000 hotel rooms to accommodate all of the unhoused people in the city, but the order was denied by Mayor London Breed. It eventually acquired 2,733 hotel rooms for vulnerable individuals but, as of this writing, only 1,935 of them are actually occupied. As a result of the pair of public health crises that the city is enduring—the pandemic and widespread homelessness—the number of unhoused people has increased, as have the number of tents and other makeshift structures that comprise a homeless encampment near Hashiri.

"This is a difficult and upsetting issue," Laurie Thomas, the Executive Director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, told VICE in an email. "In San Francisco there are areas in the city where there are real concerns about negative street behavior and cleanliness and how that affects both workers and customers of restaurants relying on outside dining [...] Our restaurants have a strong desire to provide a safe and welcoming outdoor dining experience, especially without the ability to open for indoor dining, and this is so critical to their ability to stay in business and keep staff employed." 

It's easy to sympathize with just about everyone in this scenario. The pandemic has caused an ever-increasing number of challenges for restaurant owners, who are doing whatever it takes to keep their doors open for another day, while the essential workers who prep to-go orders and serve outdoor customers are doing so at great risk to their own health and safety. But still: the optics of serving a $200-per-person tasting menu to customers sitting in plastic bubbles a few hundred yards from people who are struggling for basic human necessities...well, they're not great. 

"I think what really gets people going about the dome is that it’s a perfect symbol of the complete inadequacy of our social safety net: In a queer reversal, the dome is a shield against, not for, the ones who need sheltering the most," the Chronicle's restaurant critic Soleil Ho wrote. "An unhoused person’s tent is erected in a desire for opaqueness and privacy, a space of one’s own, whereas the fine dining dome invites the onlooker’s gaze as a bombastic spectacle [...] for the housed, being seen eating on the street or in a park is a premium experience, especially now." 

Last week, the city's Public Health Department paid Hashiri a surprise visit, and ordered them to remove the domes over concerns that they "may not allow for adequate air flow." According to current regulations, outdoor dining enclosures are required to be open on the sides; the soft structures each have two windows and a door that can be opened, but those features were deemed insufficient. 

Matsuura said that he has received hate mail about the domes and he has been accused of making discriminatory comments about the city's most desperate residents, so he believes that someone reported him to the city (though, perhaps the Health Department just saw some of the nationwide media coverage of Hashiri's sidewalk igloos). Regardless, he still says that the domes are there to keep his customers safe… from interacting with the people living on those same streets. "There are people who come by and spit, yell, stick their hands in people’s food, discharging fecal matter right by where people are trying to eat,” he said. “It’s really sad, and it’s really hard for us to operate around that.”

The criticism that Hashiri has faced is similar to what the organizers of a pop-up restaurant in Toronto encountered when they set up their own heated glass domes last year. The Dinner with a View experience, complete with a three-course gourmet meal prepped by a Top Chef winner, was assembled under the Gardiner Expressway, just over a mile from the site of a homeless encampment that had been cleared out by the city. 

Advocates for the unhoused said that the meal and its location just further emphasized the ever-increasing gap between the Haves and the Have Nots. More than 300 demonstrators showed up to protest outside the event, and the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) served a free 'counter-meal' that it called Dinner with a View of the Rich. 

"On the one hand you have homeless people whose tents were demolished and who were evicted with nowhere else to go," OCAP wrote. "On the other hand you have people with sufficient disposable income to splurge over $550 on a single meal and who’re facing the possibility of their luxurious dining spectacle being tainted [...] Do they deserve to be mocked for their obliviousness to the suffering around them? Absolutely." 

Back in San Francisco, Hashiri is not the only Mid-Market restaurant to express concern about the safety of its patrons, or about the city's ineffective attempts at addressing the social and economic conditions that have contributed to the homelessness crisis. Last month, a group of residents and businesses in the neighborhood sued the city for negligence, alleging that homeless encampments, criminal activity, and unsanitary conditions combined to make Mid-Market a dangerous area. 

"The City has created and perpetuated these conditions through its pattern and practice of tacitly treating Mid-Market as a ‘containment zone’ that bears the brunt of San Francisco’s homelessness issues, and its failure to take action to address these issues," the lawsuit said. Two of the restaurants that are among the plaintiffs, Montesacro Pinseria and Souvla, said that if the situation doesn't improve, they could be forced to move to a new neighborhood, or to close their doors for good. 

"We are deeply concerned that property owners have taken to suing the city to 'remove tents' without anywhere for [those experiencing homelessness] to go. Worse, these lawsuits would have the courts decide the fate of people who have no seat at the table where 'justice' is being served," Jennifer Friedenbach, the executive director of San Francisco's Coalition on Homelessness, told VICE.

"These situations can be resolved by working collaboratively with the unhoused person to address the issues, while pressing the city, state and federal government to ensure there are dignified housing options available. If the restaurant owner can afford to sue, they can afford to hire someone to advocate successfully for solutions." 

Laurie Thomas is also working on behalf of restaurants, sharing their concerns and working toward positive changes and respectful solutions for all involved. Last week, she was among the hospitality and small business leaders who sent a letter to Mayor London Breed, the President of the Board of Supervisors, and the co-chairs of the City's Economic Recovery Task Force. 

"We are writing today because we are gravely concerned about the condition of our streets. We are devastated to see so many unsheltered neighbors struggling each day in unfathomable and treacherous conditions," their letter read. "These conditions will prohibit businesses of all sizes from reopening. More companies will leave San Francisco for safer and cleaner places to operate [...] Additionally, with outdoor dining and shopping options being the primary avenues for businesses to survive, the intersection between the unfortunate conditions on our streets and this new heavy reliance on public spaces for commerce will result in disastrous outcomes." 

The letter also made a number of recommendations that "should be prioritized" by city officials, including additional housing options, making mental health and substance abuse resources available to those experiencing homelessness, and establishing a 24-hour crisis response team that can respond to "urgent mental health and/or drug induced episodes." 

Meanwhile at Hashiri, the DIY-ed, now open-sided domes are back out on the sidewalk. "Signed, sealed and delivered," the restaurant wrote on Facebook. "With small modifications we are back in business." 

via VICE US - Munchies VICE US - Munchies via Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network

[relationshipsandpolitics]

On My Privilege

People don’t really understand what being “privileged” really means.  From a certain perspective, you might think it’s a buzz word meant to de-legitimize any success you’ve ever had.  From a different point of view, it might mean that your race and gender prevent you from attaining success.  Both are oversimplifications of the word, though the latter perspective is way closer to the truth.  The thing about us white guys is we have a hard time holding up a mirror to ourselves. We fear being told that maybe we aren’t as awesome as everyone in our lives tells us.  Accepting our privilege is admitting we aren’t special, that we aren’t worthy of the material things we have.  

But how does privilege manifest itself when you’re not an obvious embodiment of it?  On the surface, I might not feel so privileged. I don’t have a million dollar a year job because of who my father was.  I’m not Draco Malfoy.  But if I think about how I got to the point I’m at, modest as it be, I must rectify with the fact that I was privileged in many ways.  Let me demonstrate typical white middle class privilege.

My parents were state workers who were doing well enough by the time I was in high school to afford nice trips around the world.  We didn’t take those trips and instead they dragged me antiquing in Maine with them, but technically we had the means.  I went to a good public school from elementary through high school where the teachers cared and there were enough extra-curricular activities to keep me engaged. They even had programs that allowed working parents to drop off and pick up their kids after school hours. My parents showed an interest in my education and could afford to get me a tutor for chemistry, which was a waste of money because I was never understanding chemistry.   If I didn’t do my homework, there were consequences because my parents had jobs that allowed them time to be around enough to care.

Those good jobs allowed them to pay for me to attend a great state university.  Without needing to worry about working while attending school, I was able to focus on my studies and develop some decent friendships.  

During my junior year I was able to get an internship because my mom knew someone who heard they were looking for interns for some Congressman. The internship was easy (I barely did anything substantial), but now I had some actual work experience on my resume.  I also was a camp counselor for two summers, which gave me enough money for beer and weed. I lived rent free with my parents during breaks from college.

When I graduated and couldn’t find a job in politics, I stayed with my parents and waited tables. I had no experience in the restaurant industry when I applied, but I was a decent-looking white kid where the customers were almost all white. They hired me that day and I made good money at an easy job.  Most of the black employees worked in the back of the house.  At the time, I never questioned it.  

Eventually I met my now-wife, who lived thirty minutes away in the city.  I regularly gave up lucrative shifts to see her on the weekends because I didn’t have any bills.  I used my tip money to pay the tolls, take her out to dinner occasionally, and overall be a good boyfriend.   Eventually I landed a low-paying job with a politician in the city. I got that job because I had just the right amount of education and experience for the position.  That do-nothing internship I got because my mom knew someone came in handy.

I commuted in for free with my parents, sleeping in the car while they drove.  Eventually, because I had virtually no bills, I was able to afford an apartment in the city that was luckily vastly below market rate.  Thanks rent control!

I worked hard and was good at my job, but I wasn’t some type A go getter. I just got lucky that my position allowed me to grow and develop new skills.  Eventually, though, we left and moved across the country for an opportunity with my wife.  Because we had some good savings, due in part because our families helped a lot with the wedding and we got more back in gifts, I had the luxury of being unemployed for several months before finding a job that paid quite well.  At this job I didn’t feel like I worked hard, but I had developed enough connections through my previous experiences to have some success.  In fact, my biggest achievement is largely due to knowing a Senator from our days at the Congressman’s office.

That brings me to the right now.  My wife and I both have good salaries and can afford to invest in ourselves to further increase our value and overall enjoyment of life.  When we have kids, we’ll be able to afford day care or for one of us to quit.  They’ll grow up going to good public schools, getting into good colleges, and getting good jobs.  If they want to go into acting or become a musician, we’ll probably financially support them as best we can.

This is all thanks to my privilege and the privilege of my parents.   My privilege wasn’t solely the result of my race, gender or economic status, but of all three, plus a good helping of luck. If my parents were poorer, I would have been in a crappier school system with less resources to help me succeed.  I would’ve needed a job much earlier and that would’ve cut into my time at school.  I would have to take student loans to pay for college, and perhaps I wouldn’t have been able to afford the low salary at the politician’s office.  I may have never been able to meet my wife, let alone give up weekend shifts and still afford the bridge tolls to see her.  My privilege is why we are married today.  

Of course, others are more privileged than me.  The rich trust fund kid probably got to spend less effort to go to a better university and land a nicer position out of college.  The big movie star had famous parents that opened doors for them, and now has so much free time and money to vacation in Monaco.

But this all misses the point.  There will always be structural unfairness built into our systems that benefit people of certain demographics over others. And those structural biases generally hurt minorities, women and other historically-oppressed groups more than white men.  Having privilege means having a wider margin of error for life.   If I got fired for coming in late to the restaurant, I still had a roof over my head and food in my belly.  A poor person doesn’t have that margin for error.  They can still achieve the same success as me, but they can’t make nearly as many mistakes as I could.

What aggrieved white people don’t understand is they are not being asked to give it all back or shout from the rooftops that they don’t deserve any of their success.  As someone who benefited from privilege his whole life, it’s not about giving all my money away or publicly flagellating myself for having it easier.  It’s about acknowledging my advantages and working to make things easier for others. It’s about supporting policies that level the playing field as much as possible. I never had to worry about having a place to go after school, so I support funding those types of programs in places where students do have that challenge.  I never had to worry about making rent while juggling student loans, so I advocate for increased affordable housing and free college.

Recognizing your own privilege is about having empathy for others. Our successes and failures are both our own and society’s.  We don’t need to go back and change our pasts, but we need to be better at changing other people’s futures.

[librabinight-blog]

Hiring a Therapist is Like Hiring a Math Tutor

Dear friendbugs, I know it sounds oversimplified but putting my therapist search in this frame has helped me become a better advocate for myself. Let me explain...

I’ve been battling depression at varying levels for roughly 10 years now. Hi! Nice to meet you. 👋🏻 lol Honestly it’s not something I’m proud of but I’m also not ashamed to say it. Mental health is stigmatized enough by society without its sufferers getting down on themselves. You wouldn’t judge someone for having the flu, so why judge an equally uncontrollable diagnosis? I could do a whole separate post on that, but let’s stay focused. 🤨 The fact is that therapy is something ANYONE could benefit from and I’m a firm believer that everyone should try it once.

The problem is that finding a therapist when you really need one is exhausting and difficult and stressful and all those other fun adjectives you want when you’re already feeling enough anxiety and/or depression to need help in the first place. It would be like telling someone who broke their arm that to get a cast they have to do push-ups first. Like bro, if I could do the push-ups, I wouldn’t need the cast! 🙄 Just a few things I personally had trouble finding in my therapist search were as follows:

- Someone with evening or weekend hours since I work full-time

- Someone who took my insurance or offered affordable sliding scale options

- Someone who was taking new patients

- Someone who specialized or had experience treating depression

- Someone within driving distance of my home

- Someone who even called or emailed me back

It’s not easy. It’s not fast. It’s not fun. I don’t speak for everyone of course, but for me it felt as though I was begging for help and no one was listening. We tell people not to commit suicide but we make it nearly impossible for them to get assistance to prevent it. Even crisis hotlines are overburdened but, again, we’re getting off topic. On top of how hard it was to find someone, I didn’t know if I even deserved the help in the first place. It’s part of my illness to have low self-worth. As a result, I was asking permission to be treated rather than demanding what I needed.

Fast-forward through 1 in-patient stint, 1 out-patient stint, 5 private therapists and 1 therapy app and here I am now finally understanding the problem. You see I had a couple of good therapists in my life but overwhelmingly they’ve been disappointing. I had one therapist that took appointments in her home and was late to our sessions every time because she would do her grocery shopping right before. There’s a special awkwardness in sitting outside your therapist’s house waiting for her to come home.😅 Then I had one who would spend our sessions frequently checking her phone or showing me 10-minute YouTube videos. Were they relevant? Sure. But maybe I could have just gotten the link from her for later rather than paying her hourly rate for a free video. 💸 Then I had the therapist that spoke from minute one all the way through to the end. I used to count how many words I could actually get in during the hour with him and never got above 20. Even one of the two good therapists I had would almost always cut our sessions short because she overbooked all the time. I never got my time made up for any of this stuff. Therapist after therapist came and went and often I felt worse and more depressed than when I came in. Like I said earlier, though, I didn’t think I deserved better. I thought I was lucky these people were even listening to me in the first place.

The final straw for me was the therapy app. The subscription promised 2 check-ins (text messages) each day Monday-Friday from a licensed professional in my state. You had a chatroom in the app with your therapist and you were free to send whatever messages whenever you wanted. Feeling anxious? No need to wait til your session to vent. You just send everything you’re thinking in the moment to your person. The theory was that the therapist would spend roughly 10 minutes a day reading and responding to you during the 2 check-ins. That would amount to 50 minutes by the end of the week which is like having a full in-person session. I liked the concept and I’ll admit that I did find some help...until the check-ins stopped coming. First it was a day here or there where she only checked in once instead of twice. Then it was a day of no check-in at all. Then it was two days in a row with no word.😕 I didn’t want to push her because I thought “This person is busy. This person is trying. What right do you have to be so demanding?” Well the fact is that I had every right. Eventually I confronted her but I was also very aware of how attached I’d gotten to this new support, so I didn’t blame her directly. I told her I understood she was busy but maybe she just needed someone less needy as a client. Looking back on it, I was being a pushover. I told her I knew I was asking quite a lot (by asking for what I paid for) and I was being difficult (for again, asking for what I paid for) but perhaps she could check-in more. She told me she completely agreed that she needed to check-in more and that it looked like we both had some work to do. Well, bugs, I bought it. I told her that I’d love to keep working.... and then the next day she didn’t check in. So I quit.

Me quitting came after the realization that she was right. I had A LOT of work to do but the thing I needed to address first was the way I looked for help. This is where the metaphor comes in, bugs! How is a therapist like a tutor? Every tutor knows the same fact and formulas, but the way they teach them varies. Therapists are similar in that way. You might see a therapist who is more dynamic and engaging or one who more reserved, “just hear to listen” style. They could both be treating the same problem just in different ways. Additionally, tutors are going to push you. They’ll assign you homework and force you to practice skills you might prefer to just avoid. Therapists are no different. A good therapist will push you past what you thought your own limits were because that’s how you grow. The most important piece of my metaphor though (and the point of all this) is that both therapists and tutors are people you hired. They work for you. You don’t owe them anything beyond their fee (and maybe some respect as a fellow human). If your tutor was late every time, you’d fire them. If your tutor spoke to you in a way you didn’t like, you wouldn’t go back. If your tutor only used verbal explanations when you’re a visual learner, why waste your money?🤷🏻‍♀️

After I put things into that frame, I realized how ridiculous I was to have ever put up with the treatment I’d had. 🤔 The truth is that it’s so hard to find a therapist in the first place, we sometimes settle for any help we can get. I know I did. Now that I’m advocating for myself, I feel like a stronger more worthwhile person. It won’t be easy to find someone new and it’s especially not easy to leave someone old even if they’re no good for you. You have to do it, though. Talk to your therapist and see if they can change the things you don’t like (a good therapist will work WITH you) but if they don’t respect your needs, you have to respect them enough for both of you. Never forget that like a tutor, your therapist needs to earn your business. You’re paying for a service. Get your money’s worth, bugs. 😘

[logan-after-dark]

Law of Attraction

Or abundance or whatever it is :P Going to talk on that today since it’s been on my mind.

A few weeks ago now, I signed up for this free webinar that was advertised on one of the ASMR YouTube videos I use to fall asleep. The only reason I signed up for the webinar was because it was free, and because I’ve been in a rough spot financially for a long time now and figured I had very little to lose. An hour out of a Wednesday afternoon seemed like an okay trade for something that I could maybe potentially use.

My attitude towards folks who promote or advocate for this idea of an abundant universe and the law of attraction and things like that has been rather negative in the past. Oftentimes they strike me as snake oil salesmen - folks who sell books titled ‘how to get rich quick’ and things like that where the answer is ��write and publish a book titled “how to get rich quick” and wait for gullible saps to buy it’. My ex had a few of those books on topics like how to become a millionaire through real estate and the like, and his mother was a realtor so, he had no shortage of support there. But, like I said, in the process of pursuing those kinds of get-rich-quick schemes, you’re really just lining someone else’s pockets while obtaining information that may not even be useful to yourself in your specific situation. So I viewed folks pushing this idea of the law of attraction in a similar way - just very sketchy, negative, snake oil peddlers that really just wanted to sell me on more such talks and line their own pockets while mine became increasingly more barren.

Well, let me tell you how the webinar actually went down.

It was on a website called Mindvalley.com, with Harv Eker and Vishen Lakhiani. I decided that, it seemed to have a sort of spiritual/psychological bent to it from the ad seemingly, so that if it had advice that would help me build up my self-esteem or something like that, just overall improve my mental state by a fair margin through this talk, then it would 100% be worth my time. And like I said before, I had very little to lose spending an hour watching a free webinar on abundance.

At the end of it, they did offer some courses - extremely pricey ones that had been ‘discounted’ like 95%, but 5% was still something like three hundred dollars. I had little doubt in my mind that those might help someone else watching, but I was not interested and I wanted to come away from this having invested only my time anyways. And I didn’t, and still don’t, have a spare $300 lying around.

But I felt amazing by the time the webinar wrapped up.

Literally amazing. Spiritually empowered, ready to take on anything, incredibly emboldened and like nothing could stop me, nothing could hold me back anymore. It was an exhilarating feeling that rocked me to my core. I went into it having spent nothing and came out of it feeling like I’d just won the lottery, in spite of my bank account still showing negative digits. Nothing could crush me at that point - the reality of my situation hadn’t left me, but I felt markedly different about it.

I had to get on Discord and tell Mike about it right away. Mike, though he’s my best friend for life and I love him dearly, instantly had some negativity of his own to share re: the american political system and how the rich get richer while the poor get worse all the time - And that’s real life, unfortunately, and I’m not going to dismiss that. But that’s entirely the wrong attitude to have.

Here are some key concepts/key ideas that I took away from the webinar and would like to share with you folks:

1. Your attitude towards money is all wrong.

I’m being totally serious, and I think that this is something that a lot of people struggle with throughout their lives. If you aren’t born with it then you feel like you’re constantly scraping by. Your parents are always talking about debt and how they’re always scraping by too - I know mine were. I could write a book about all the wrong things my parents did just relating to money. Maybe someday I actually will :)

Your relationship with money is a major factor in how much you receive or what you have to do to get it. If you believe you can only make a lot of money by working hard, then that’s what you’ll have to do. If you feel like you’re always drowning in debt, then you will always be drowning in it. If you believe deep down that you’re unworthy of a lot of money, then you’ll never have a lot of money. You subconsciously reject money if you believe deep down that you’re not worth it. This can manifest in refusing a job promotion because you don’t think you’ve earned it, not applying for a job in the first place because you don’t meet the qualifications, or deciding against some action related to business (current or one you haven’t started yet) because it’s a lot of time investment, will keep you away from your family, a lot of money invested, etc. etc. etc. These really are excuses, because there are always affordable business loans, way to maintain work/life balance and family time, or accepting that promotion because it may just be a stepping stone towards something even better. You can’t know where it’ll take you until you try.

We make excuses to refuse money all the time, even if we don’t realize it. What about flipping the script for once and reasoning out with ourselves why we deserve money instead?

2. Jealousy and envy will do nothing but hold you back.

This is a tough one, but it ties into point one that attitudes about money are all wrong. If you hold it inside yourself that people who have a lot of money don’t deserve it, and spite and scorn them for having it, then you will never have it for yourself.

Harv said something that I thought was rather beautiful - “If you see someone with a big beautiful house, bless that house.” How wonderful that that family should have such a nice place to live, no? How wonderful that they have new, safe cars to drive for them and their children. No sarcasm involved. If you think positively about it for them, then this allows you to open yourself up to having those beautiful things as well.

3. Money is not evil.

Think about it. We talk (and Mike talked) about how guys like Jeff Bezos have enough money hoarded away when they could instead just snap their fingers and solve global poverty just like that.

If a construction worker decided one day to brain his coworker with a hammer, would you blame the hammer? No. Money is like the hammer - nothing but a tool to be used by the person wielding it. Money cannot make conscious decisions for itself, is not sentient, and is in fact entirely neutral as to whose hands it comes into.

It is completely possible to be rich and be a good person. One of my favourite random sayings that I carry with me when I’m looking for my next course of action is “Be the example”. Get your well-deserved money and then demonstrate it. Help you, because you probably need it, and then help those in need. You can absolutely be a good person with money because the two are not mutually exclusive, but of course don’t set yourself on fire to keep others’ warm. You can’t pull people up and out of their troubles if you’re still standing on unstable ground. Believe me, I’ve tried XD

4. Unfortunately, you don’t just magically get this money. You still have to do something for it.

In the webinar they talked about finding your life’s purpose and then living your purpose - something I still struggle with in spite of my elevated feelings immediately following said webinar. I am still not quite sure what my purpose is - I have a feeling, and I think it’s a good one (trying to build understanding between people and groups of people for everyone’s health and happiness), but I have other struggles that still block me.

The examples they gave related to business primarily. Harv was trying to start up businesses that didn’t work and were geared towards one thing, and Vishen was just struggling with his existing business. I think the important takeaway from their individual talks about it though is this: Work your passion. Find out what your passion is, get good at it, and then live and work your passion. They say that if you love your work then you’ll never work a day in your life, right? This idea is basically that in practice.

5. There is no such thing as having too much money.

Least of all when it comes to yourself :P

I used to do this thing where I’d play the lottery (yes I still play every week, shut up) and I would think to myself “I only need a million dollars to live comfortably the rest of my life. Anything beyond that is too much.” That was because I couldn’t appreciate the scope of having more than a cool mil. There is a factor of scale that just boggles my mind. A million dollars is already a lot of money, an almost unfathomable amount. The only frame of reference is that my house is probably worth about a quarter-mil right now. I could buy four of my house with one million dollars.

Well, I refuse to impose limits on myself like that anymore.

Bring on the 60 million dollar grand prize! This is my attitude now. There is still a part of me that sort of recoils at the idea of that money, but then I internally try to push that back with a follow-up thought of ‘just think about the number of people I could help with that money’. If Jeff Bezos won’t single-handedly solve poverty world-wide, then maybe I can. Give me that cool 60 mil, I am open to it and down to receive any sort of excess the universe wants to throw at me. I’ll make use of every single cent :D

6. I saw immediate results after embracing this way thinking.

This is absolutely true, and I have witnesses who can attest to that :)

After watching this seminar, within a few days of doing so, I had a room listed for rent online on a local classifieds website. My inbox exploded. I can’t even fathom how many responses I got, but it was easily upwards of fifty different people replying to my ad. Not only did I get the room rented, I got a second room I didn’t even list rented as well.

I also received some amazing and generous donations to my main blog’s Kofi from some amazingly generous friends of mine from here on Tumblr. I didn’t even ask, they just showed up and I was so thankful I cried.

A good long-time friend of mine was also generous enough to offer me a loan of $1000 USD in order to cover my bills and some other upcoming expenses. Initially I refused the loan, but after taking a second look at my finances, I decided to accept it and hope to pay it back in full by Christmas.

Now, I’m not sure how I feel about the idea of an abundant universe - I went into this as a skeptic and I came out still a bit skeptical - but there are definitely attitudes within me that can change so I can provide myself with more opportunities to find abundance in my own life. I went into this thing looking to boost up my esteem and got that in spades.

It all exemplifies something I already believed going into this, to be entirely fair; What you believe becomes reality. I have a few beliefs about my character that have helped to shape me as a spiritual person that initially may not have been true. I am confident, strong, and powerful. All of those things are absolutely true about me today. Put another way, you could say that manifesting abundance is very similar to the idea ‘fake it ‘til you make it’ XD

If I can find out whether they’re still running the webinar (I feel like it was definitely pre-recorded, but I doubt there’s a video just laying around), I’ll share it with you folks on here <3

Thanks for coming to my TED talk XD

[thewestmeetingroom]

TWMR Ep 48 No Body-Mind Left Behind

SPEAKERS

Alex Locust, Jheanelle Anderson, Beau Hayward, Alisha Krishna, Janine Al Hadidi,

Facilitated by Day Milman

 Janine  

Hello, and welcome to the West Meeting Room. We are broadcasting on CIUT 89.5 FM at Hart House. My name is Janine and for this week's episode, we'll be sharing a recording from November 19, 2020 of a panel discussion about Disability Justice titled No Body/Mind Left Behind. This event was a partnership between Hart House and the annual Diversity and Equity conference from U of T Sport and Rec and the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education. My colleague Day Milman facilitated this conversation between U of T students, recent alumni and special guest, Alex Locust, where they explored how Disability Justice creates a framework for society that benefits everyone. More information about this event, and all of its panelists will be available in our show notes. We hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we did.

 Day Milman  

Welcome, everybody tonight. My name is Day Milman. I am the manager of Learning and Community at Hart House, which is the community center of the University of Toronto. And I am so excited to be here as part of this event tonight. Thank you so much for joining us for what promises to be a rich intersectional conversation grounded in lived experiences of people with disabilities. Tonight we'll explore Disability Justice and how this lens can radically alter how we navigate the world and support each other on this journey. Tonight's conversation is a panel discussion between U of T students recent alumni and our special guest Alex Locust, also known as The Glamputee. So Alex is a certified rehabilitation counselor and a proud multiracial glamputee spreading the word about social justice one workshop at a time. Whether on the runway, or in a counseling session, Alex aspires to emulate the tenacity of the trailblazers before him and fiercely advocates for equity in all community spaces. Thank you, Alex, so much for coming tonight. And I'd also like to invite our panelists to introduce themselves tonight starting with Jheanelle Anderson.

 Jheanelle Anderson  

Thank you Day, I'm Jheanelle, I am a recent graduate, just completed my MSW at the Faculty of Social Work at U of T. I sit as a co-chair of the Disability Justice Network of Ontario, in Hamilton. Yeah, and I'm a research assistant with the Center for Research and Innovation for Black Survivors of Homicide Victims. Really excited to be here tonight and have this discussion, much needed discussion. Thank you.

 Alisha Krishna  

Hi, everyone. My name is Alisha Krishna, I use they them pronouns. I have lived experience with learning disabilities, mental illness, physical disability. So identifying as disabled is my identity. I'm a first year law student at U of T and also the treasurer of Students for Barrier Free Access, which is a levy funded group on the U of T campus. And we're run by and for disabled students, advocating for the removal of barriers in education. And I also am very excited for tonight.

 Beau Hayward  

Hi, all my name is Beau Hayward, pronouns are he and him. And I am part of the Diversity and Equity team as the Equity Initiative Student Lead, a student leader and I'm looking to work with the university and develop some accessibility around athletics and physical education. And very excited to have this conversation with Alex and the rest of the panelists.

 Day Milman  

Thanks, everybody. Thanks so much for being here tonight and for sharing your energy and your experiences. So let's just start off with a question for Alex. In a previous conversation, you said to me that Disability Justice is like a north star in the work that you do. Maybe not everyone here is familiar with Disability Justice, and I'm wondering if you could just start off by giving us a bit of a grounding in what Disability Justice is and how it plays out in your life.

 Alex Locust  

Absolutely. I am just so happy to be here. And after our conversation last week, I was just like, humming and so it's just always wonderful to be in conversation with other people with disabilities and so I'm really happy to share what Disability Justice means to me and explore that in relationship with each other. I also just want to quick pause and offer an invitation if the other panelists are interested in just offering an image description for those who who are tuning in and don't have the ability to see us right now. I'm biracial, as Day mentioned, I've got my big curly mane back in a, in a little ponytail, very much in my pink paradise with my "She's All Fat" shirt that I'm very happy to be wearing. Lots of lots of scruff, it's been a long week. So just offering that really quickly, just so, you know, model access, right, that's a huge part of Disability Justice is that collective access piece, but as a north star for me, you know, I came into an understanding or awareness of Disability Justice through Sins Invalid, in the Bay Area, Patty Burn as the director of Sins Invalid, the performing arts group of queer and trans, black and brown disabled people performing beautiful pieces about about their bodies, their minds, their sexuality. And what I came to learn was that Disability Justice was an evolution of disability, civil rights, much like, you know, reproductive justice is an evolution of reproductive rights, you know, environmental justice, right, these frameworks that are acknowledging that, champions, changemakers, these advocates, came before us and really broke open a dialogue, broke open space, to acknowledge that, you know, in this case, disabled people were not being afforded the rights that they deserved. And then Disability Justice is acknowledging that rights are great, you know, as a bare minimum, but when we're thinking about what liberation feels like, what freedom feels like, we have to attend to the nuances within the community. You know, there are black and brown disabled people, there are queer disabled people, you know? As a as a black, queer, disabled person, I feel very seen by that. And, you know, it's about exploring the liberation of disabled people from an intersectional lens, and from one that's by led by the most impacted, right, so Patty Berne, Mia Mingus, LeRoy Moore, Sebastian Margaret, Eli Claire, the late Stacey Park, right, these amazing people came together and proposed these 10 Principles of Disability Justice, which are saying, you know, this is how we collectively, everybody, not just disabled people, you know, Disability Justice isn't just for disabled people, it's for everyone. That's, I think where that title really speaks to me, it's no body left behind. It's not about how you identify or what your label is. This is this is for all of our freedom.

 Day Milman  

Yeah, absolutely. That's where the title for this conversation came in was. "No body, no mind left behind" was directly from the principles which were developed by Sins Invalid, which you can look up. And I'm wondering if we can ask some of the other panelists to sort of talk a little bit about their experience and how Disability Justice works in their lives.

 Alisha Krishna  

And I can go first, just image description, I'm in my bedroom in Toronto. I'm Indian, Canadian, I have long black hair, I'm wearing a hoodie. And I have glasses as well. Discovering Disability Justice, it's taken me a long time. So I've been with SBA for three years. And I've really been in this for three years. And it's never a finished process. Like I still go to events that we host and workshops and stuff, and I still always learn something about myself and the way I relate to people. But in terms of what I have learned, instead of what I have yet to learn, what I hold on to most is the fact that, you do as much as you can, and that's okay. They tell you this in law school a lot, where it's very high pressure and people have a lot of trouble with this and I understand it completely. But living as a disabled person, you actually just do what you can, and it turns out that disabled people are so good at negotiating these boundaries, that what you end up doing is amazing anyways, right? Just objectively speaking, so  there's there's a lot to be said for taking care of yourself, taking care of others around you. Others like being able to ask for help when you need it. And looking at the long term sustainability of things, I think that's really powerful, and I think that underpins a lot of what I try to do in my practice, but what I think everyone is attempting to do, at least in my law school Disability Justice circles.

 Jheanelle Anderson  

So, Disability Justice was quite a new concept for me. And, you know, it was like, Alex framed it, liberating, you know, engaging in that work. Prior to that, you know, I held on to a lot of internalized ableism, I am a black, immigrant and disabled woman. And, you know, a lot of my journey to Canada was traumatic, but also resulted in me having to lose a leg to come here, in a sense. And then, you know, over the years, I developed a chronic illness. And, you know, just drawing back to what Alisha said, just being able to not see yourself as a burden. Moving away from what society has, like, you know, ingrained in me growing up as a kid with disability, trying to, like, not look different, or trying to prove myself was always that constant struggle. Um, but, you know, learning and confronting that internalized ableism, you know, I, I should be valued, you know, we should move away from this deficit view of disability, because, like, it's the external factors that exacerbate how I like, I'm able to participate in society. So that's definitely one way. Disability Justice has, like, influenced me. And in my work, you know, I am a member and co-chair of the Advisory Committee for the Disability Justice Network of Ontario. And it's exactly what, as Alex described it, you know, Disability Justice is not just for disabled folks, it is for everyone. You know, everyone benefits from accommodation, everyone benefits from accessibility. It's not just for disabled people. Mutual aid, you know, what came from this Disability Justice movements, you know, care mongering, is a response to the shortages from COVID. You know, that mutual aid, again, disability, like ran by disabled folks. And just like another point, I'll just mention the site with COVID, it really did lay bare, all the disparities, all the inequities, but more so, you know, what disabled folks have been advocating for was always like, looked as at as a burden. Like, no, we can't do that, you know, you know, it factors in, because probably because they can't surveil employees as well. But it was always a barrier for institutions to implement these things. But then with COVID, you know, the capitalists are like, oh, or money. So, you know, these things that disabled folks have been advocating, and getting shut down for has now been implemented, like at the switch just like that. So, you know, these are things that are addressed, and can be addressed with Disability Justice. Thank you.

 Beau Hayward  

Thank you so much, Jheanelle, I think that you, you know, with remote education and remote work, coming to the forefront due to COVID. Luckily, I just started going back to school, so I was able to kind of get right into the swing of things that way. But definitely think that because people are isolated due to COVID, it brings attention to these things that disabled folks have been working towards for a long time. I'd like to ask Alex a question. Alex, we talked about this previously, but on your website, it said, you have a quote saying that "it's high time we leave disability awareness and etiquette conversations in the past." Moving forward, the Diversity and Equity Sports and Rec, we're looking to implement like a ski day, which I know we talked about last time and we're doing like a bocci team event and we're just trying to implement some new sporting initiatives, so intersectionality and leaving behind that disability awareness and etiquette, do you have any suggestions for us moving forward?

 Alex Locust  

Yeah, you know, hearing that that quote of mine, again, I realized that that quote was kind of almost like a self-drag, you know, I used to, when I was doing the workshop years ago, have a section called, like, disability etiquette, or I would, you know, market what I was doing is like a disability awareness training, you know, so, I was a part of, you know, Jheanelle talked about internalized ableism, like, I was a part of that machine. And I think what I realized over time is like, why am I perpetuating this idea that disabled people are people that we should, like, become aware about? How are you unaware? What, I just  want to know, like, how anybody can be in a state at this point in time, you know, and be like, I didn't know that disabled people existed, I didn't know that we needed access features. You know, I mean, in the US, the ADA was signed days after I was born. And so I'm like, I'm the ADA years old, you know,, when people say, "Oh, you know, this place is inaccessible, we're having a hard time" I'm like, times ticking, like, it's been three decades, you know, and, and that's just for legislation. So, when you hear people quote the census data or things that are like disabled people are like a quarter or a fifth of the population in the US, it's like, disability is such a normal, inherent part of the human experience, that to categorize the need to like become more inclusive as an awareness effort, or etiquette is so othering and it's so divorced from like, the reality of what's going on. It's just almost, it's kind of playing into this game that people can keep, like, saying. Well, I had no idea, you know, like, I need you to get an idea. I saw someone in the chat mentioned, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha work, and Leah has, you know, that that conceptualization of like, that you need to figure it out, because you're going to become disabled someday, if you get old enough. The four of us, we're already at the party. You know, people are outside waiting in line, you know, we got the VIP passes. We're already in, we're in the booth, right? To your question, about moving past etiquette, past, awareness, like we, we just need to baseline, like, focus on efforts, like, you know, Alice Wong's accesses love campaign, like, everything should just be accessible period, that should be the bare minimum, we shouldn't be putting out events, we shouldn't be doing gatherings, we shouldn't be creating community spaces that are inaccessible anymore. It's just, it's,  you know, unforgivable. And I think for people tuning in, if you are non-disabled, and you're looking to like, earn that ally-ship card, this is a time to be like, "Hey, friend, you're hosting a really cool party. I don't see any mention of access here" or like, "hey, this gathering looks really amazing. Can you put some access features in in the description?" How are you showing up for that, and then to elevate beyond just the bare minimum access, you know. Disability Justice invites us to lead by the most impacted. So if you're starting a space from scratch, are disabled people involved in the planning or their voices, you know, if you're doing community advisory boards, if you're having people contribute, if there are no disabled people present, it's very likely that you will not succeed at making it as accessible as it needs to be. And I just think that, you know, representation matters. You know, we talked about that last week, like not just at the beginning, but throughout the process. If you're doing a ski day, having disabled ski instructors, if you're, you know, in a fitness center having disabled personal trainers and coaches. I think they're really communicate to the people you're inviting into this space. It's not just this like you know, little feather in your cap that you're like, Look, we did it, like "wink", we got we got the logo or you know, it's like, no, we will not survive as a community unless we integrate the lived experiences of the people that we're trying to reach out to and last piece about, you know, that Leah inspired me, in that piece, they have a piece,  like Surviving the Trumpocalypse and like Wild Disability Justice Dreams, they talk about relationship building with the disability community, right. And so, you know, Beau, you're embarking on these really amazing opportunities where you are a disabled person leading that. And I think that that can communicate to other disabled people that that might be a more trustworthy opportunity than, you know, an institution or an organization, all of a sudden being like, we're doing a Disabled Sports Day. And I'm like, I've never heard of you, I don't see any disabled people involved, you know, and then they do everything they're supposed to. And disabled people don't show up. And they're like, what's that about? And, you know, it's like, we don't trust you, even like you haven't earned that sense. So it's like, this is a years long process. And I think people want overnight results. And that's just not how it works with people who've been harmed routinely and systemically by institutions.

 Alisha Krishna  

I also just want to add something to what Alex, you were saying before about, about everyone eventually becoming disabled. I think awareness of disabled people is premised on this idea that non-disabled people can do everything all the time, which is not true. What you were talking about accommodations being for everybody, I think that's fundamentally true. Because in this world of capitalism, and all the productivity requirements, and things like that, the requirements that are required of anybody are ridiculous half the time. Case in point, most of my childhood was spent sitting in a desk for eight hours. Who decided children would be fine sitting in a room for eight hours all day for years on end? right like that, that makes no sense to me now, and  I probably would have asked for an accommodation to like, move around, or switch classrooms or something like that. But for any child, it's the same story. So it's not like, my disability is something to be aware about it's just that the entire situation is ridiculous. And I think understanding that lets you see accommodations, both asking for them and implementing them, in a different light, for instance, by asking them I mean, some people don't feel like they can ask for accommodations, like they're, they're burdening people or like, asking for too much, but you are actually entitled to that, like, both legally and as a person. So yeah, that's what I wanted to add in there.

 Alex Locust  

You know, Alisha, you're, you're really highlighting the, the social model, right? The disabling features of society, it's so easy to focus on like a physical impairment, right? Or something visible even on non-apparent, right, we're talking about chronic illness and mental health disabilities learning disabilities. But when you focus on that impairment, you're like, individualizing, you know, when other people focus on these things, you're individualizing it and so I hear what you're saying can feel like, I, Alex, I'm asking for too much. Right? Or like in the USA, ADA is phrased as like a lot of like reasonable accommodation was just shitty, right? Why are there unreasonable accommodation? And so to flip that script, and to say, how is this society creating these inaccessible experiences? Again, when we look at the intersection of these things, you know, TL Lewis has done beautiful work around how racism, you know, anti-blackness can create a sense of disability, right? And so if we think about like, intelligence, and the pressures of the norms around intelligence, and the racial stereotypes around intelligence, if you have a black child who can't sit for eight hours, you know, it's this compounding of people making gross, you know, assumptions about black people's intelligence and their worthiness in the space. And so then, of course, that child is deemed as special needs, right? Or they need remediation, or they have an issue, they have a learning disability. And it's like, what would it be like, just like you said, if it the school day was broken up, if it was, you know, on their own time, I can say, you know, I think, somebody mentioned, you know, COVID and working like, right now working from home with the emotional labor that I do, I get so zonked at midday. I have, (I'm not sending this to my co-workers...)  I eat lunch, I take a nap. And then I just like get up early, now. Do you know what I mean? Like I just do work, I get up, at 6. I go to bed at like 10 or 11. And then I'm so much more capable of doing the work that has been assigned to me. Rather than being like I have to work 9 to 5, that means I'm a good worker. It's like, my brain needs rest, my heart needs rest. And that's not about disability, that's just this situation is not accessible.

 Jheanelle Anderson  

I just wanted to add something around like disability awareness.  I feel like where it lands is like an inspiration-porn,  kind of, at least that's where I feel like awareness is. We mentioned representation. And I think a majority of the representation for disabled people, if there is ever any, i s either tokenized, and barely ever shows disabled people as people.  We all look different, you know, the intersectionality of it all, like, you know, sexuality, race, etc. So it's barely ever represented like that, like, you're a person. It's more of like, just an inspiration; a disabled person doing what they have to do, because of the structural factors around that, they're limiting them,  that people like, go like applauding and just like, "Oh, my God, if they can do it, what's your excuse?" Horrible. I do want to commend Holland-Bloorview Kids Rehab, they have a campaign out,  where  it's, they're arguing for our presentation, like, they're advocating for representation. Kids need, like, I wish when I was growing up, I saw like myself represented in media, and just, like a person. Like, that's what we are, you know, why can't we just exist the way we are without being like, made a poster child, an inspiration, poster child. You know, just that representation, just as humans, is very important. And I think there's that one aspect of it, and we talked about it last week, where the movies... there's a movie out called "Witches" with Anne Hathaway, where they portrayed disability, deformity, as like, inherently associated with evilness, and scary. And I think, you know, that kind of pushes back, strides that, you know, people have made for kids to feel comfortable in their bodies. Or  for a kid to see a body that looks different, to not feel scared of it, or to not look at it as weird. And you know, I think society has , like social media, this is like a constant thing where I know on TikTok, there was like, a viral challenge where they showed, like, parents during COVID, showed like a image of a disabled person to their kids saying that this is their new teacher, and recorded kids reaction for laughs and like, we need to move beyond this, you know?

 Alex Locust  

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I you know, the pop culture-junkie representation is such a part of how I process the world around me. And, you know, I can't remember if I mentioned this last time we talked, but, you know, my roommate was watching Howl's Moving Castle, and it has Mr. Turnip, who's like, basically a scarecrow that just  hops a lot. And I'm like, why am I feeling more represented by an animated scarecrow than I typically do? In most media? You know, what I mean? And, as a kid, I was really drawn to Tigger, you know, cuz he hopped a lot. It's a reach, either to me, like, I'm going to these characters that aren't even human, just to feel seen. And I think that's why Sins Invalid, like, struck such a deep chord in me because their approaching the work from an intersectional lens. And so it's not just about disability, it's about how the queerness and disability come together. How do race and disability interplay? You know, generally, you're talking about inspiration porn, and it's like, man, I'm just trying to get bare minimum, like good disability representation. I'm not even out here being like, Can we get good queer disability representation? Am I gonna see a queer BIPOC disabled person, like, slow down, even though I mean, like, I feel like that's how much I am at a point where I don't feel like we're afforded these things typically, but then there's really amazing work like Superfest which celebrates international perspectives of disability, right? And it's a film festival for and by disabled people. So it does exist, right. It's just like, these things don't get caught up in the mainstream. And then, like you said, these mainstream images continued to reinforce either inspiration-porn or this vilification of disabled bodies in a way where it plays out in society. You know,  I went to a wedding, it was two years ago,  and you know, it's a queer wedding, I'm having a good time. I'm drinking, it's an open bar, right]? I danced, had a great night, the next day, somebody walked past me, and he was like, "hey, you're my hero." And I'm like, for why? Right? Because I was dancing and having a good time? Like, is that how little you think of disabled people that you're like, "Whoa, he's like, having a good time and enjoying himself." I'm like, No, I'm drunk, like, Who are your heroes, you know?

 Jheanelle Anderson  

And you're not locked away in a closet somewhere, like being hidden from the world because of your disability!

 Alex Locust  

Right, laying in bed.

 Day Milman  

Alex, we chatted awhile ago, just about, you know, when we go on to your website, for instance, which I encourage everybody to do that, you know, there's no separating out of your professional work as a mental health counselor, or your work as, you know, an activist or a person who puts workshops on. And I wonder if you could just chat a bit about that decision, to not separate all these different parts of yourself out.

 Alex Locust    

It's been a very intentional process,  it feels very precarious, to be honest. The more that I immerse myself in the working world, the more that I hear how people talk about work, right? And they're like, "in my personal life", or "in my professional life", and I think, the pandemic examples that we're talking about... you know. I mean, literally,  these lives are happening there together.  Working at an AIDS nonprofit, where we're, we're trying to, like, center racial justice, we're having uprising around George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and all of these black lives that have been lost.  You can't ask black people to just come into work and be like, no, this is your work life, leave your personal life out. And so I'm really working to integrate those selves to model the importance of, of exploring how those things impact each other, how they can nourish each other. I live both and at the same time. Your energy is not allocated separately. They cause an impact on each other. I know, Alisha, during the planning call, brought up really great themes around sustainability and longevity of the work, how do we take care of ourselves. And I think the more that I explore my activism as like, art, as self-expression, as healing, unless it was like work, you know, it's just like a part of the way that I exist, I think I take it more seriously as something that needs tending that needs respect and needs reverence. And also for myself, to not overdo it because then, you know, I can't I can't show up long term. Disability Justice is inviting us to do this work sustainably. So how do I listen to my body and my mind, and my foot is such an interesting alarm bell, right? If I stand on my foot for too long, it starts to hurt. And it will get to a point where I need to sit down. And and I think, to me, that's what Disability Justice is teaching us, it's like, my, my foot is being like, "Girl, sit down, stop, you know, take a breath, slow down." And if I listened to that, then why am I not listening to like, I'm tired, I need to go to bed early. I can't take another gig this week. I facilitated too many times in one day, you know? I think there are so many invitations there and I'll just close with, you know, my exploration of pleasure activism, you know, adrienne maree brown, proposing this theory or this way of embodying activism as this irresistible practice. We should find activism to be deeply pleasurable, like, I think work, you know, professionalism is so devoid of pleasure. It's so devoid of joy most time, you know? I'm starting to zoom calls, I'm playing disco, if you're with me, it's not gonna be like a really dry day because this is hard work, you know? And so  we have to have fun. I partake in substances, right? I have sex. I'm a person, and I want to experience those things. And so as an activist, I want to, I want to talk about my sexuality, I want to talk about how I employ harm reduction in order to let off some steam, but do so in a way where it works for me, and I'm taking care of myself. And I think if we act like those things don't exist if I, if I do those things, and it replicates this idea that professionals are people who come in, and they're wearing nice clothes, and they say nice words, and they don't ruffle anybody's feathers, and it's like, No, I want to go into a space and be like, you know, obviously don't lead with , I had a slutty weekend, but like, if we want to talk about it, and that's related to how I'm finding agency and autonomy in my  queer, you know, BIPOC, disabled, body, that feels very ripe for this conversation.

 Alisha Krishna  

I also just want to add what you said about the professional thing, I'm obsessed with this lawyer out of BC right now, she's indigenous and amazing Myrna McCallum. She is spearheading this awareness movement in the legal profession, called trauma informed lawyering. And a lot of it has to do with like, knowing how trauma manifests, and people just interacting with the legal system. But a lot of it comes from the fact that people tend to separate their, like personhood and professional life. And there are created barriers between, like effective representation. And like you, if you put up this wall of like, I'm wearing a suit, I'm behind a desk, I'm, you know, like here to just do my work and just leave. So it's really about bringing yourself back in to the space and it actually just makes you a better professional. Because you're able to, like, deal with, like, interact with your clients in a much more fruitful way. And I yeah, I just, I really responded to what you're saying, Alex,

 Day Milman  

One of the themes that we've been sort of touching on a little bit here, and there is just sustainability. And I wonder if anyone else wants to talk about that aspect of their experience and how you're learning to navigate working with sustainability in mind in terms of your own energy and what you can bring to this work.

 Beau Hayward  

I'll talk a little bit about productivity and maintaining a good healthy work cycle, we're talking about we we've been discussing having some check ins, about particularly physical, physical health, during the, during the pandemic, and for people with disabilities and without. And you know, I think we've been given this opportunity where we are working and studying from home where we can really identify the hours in the day while more productive and, and put those two best used. And so I know for myself, it's been really good learning experience, being able to learn remotely and utilize these hours of the day when I'm most attentive, and, you know, dedicated to that, and then when there's time to do physical work to get in shape and stay in shape, um, you know, devoting that time to that task. So, I think it's really interesting that we get this opportunity, and hopefully, that'll carry on past COVID, whenever at the end of this virus is, but hopefully we can take those lessons and move forward with them.

 Jheanelle Anderson  

For sure, everyone mentioned it's really like being attuned to your body. And, like really recognizing and being aware. Um, you know, for me, when I'm burnt out, or when I'm tired, I get really irritable. If I start noticing that I'm irritable, I say like, I need to take a break. Like, stay off social media, you know, minimize your intake of my intake of news, and just do nothing. And I think Alisha last week, I mentioned it, just reframing this whole idea of the lazy day or laziness. But yeah, just have rest and being comfortable having rest being comfortable relaxing, like for the longest time I've always felt guilty because I was like, Oh my god, I have so much to do or like oh my god, I don't have anything to do I need something to do. So you know, that's that whole like capital system just kind of ingrained in our psyche of like, our bodies being tied to or bodies or value being tied to like how like our labor and how how much we can use it. So just being comfortable, like not judging yourself for needing rest. It's normal. So like, I binge watch some shows like Netflix has girlfriends and Sister Sister. Yeah, so I'm just like reliving my childhood. And just not judging myself for that. So it's definitely being aware. It's like, you know, Alex mentioned like, you know, physical like physically, like, you know, when it you have to stop. But, you know, mentally it's like we don't draw boundaries. And you know, I think Bo just mentioned how how the lines have been blurred now more than ever, with remote work, where people just feel like they have access to you all the time. So it's just really dry, saying no, just having hard boundaries, and do what works best for you really.

 Alisha Krishna  

I think also, I second everything that has been said, but I think also, maybe my context is different because I come from, like community like SBA is run by a board. So I'm always in working with other people. One of the tenants of Disability Justice is recognizing wholeness. I interpret that to mean, like, you always,  well, it's in the they've written it, but like, you always have worth, and it's sort of led to this unique understanding of ability and talent and capacity. And I think recognizing that opens you up to a whole set of resources that you may not have realized you had. So then you can sort of rely on other people, while meeting them in the middle sort of thing, and you don't have to take on everything by yourself. And so you can, you know, take that brass when you need it and feel like you're not letting anybody down, because you are you've shared the work.

   Alex Locust  

Absolutely, I really appreciate that. You bringing in recognizing wholeness, you know, Jheanelle, speaking to like, anti-capitalism, you know, as another Disability Justice principle, which, by the way, I really didn't know you were talking about like the capitalists like having their money or freaking out and I just love this idea of like a bunch of like, older white men being like our body. But, you know, I just want to as Alisha brought in like that, that lazy idea or interrogating and pushing back against from that intersectional lens who's called lazy, right? Who gets to get away with being lazy, right? Is it like, you know, white, affluent influencers on Instagram, like in their mansions being like, I'm having a lazy day, you know, it's like, okay, cool, like you're being glorified for that, you know, black and brown people are vilified if they need to, like, rely on benefits in order to make ends meet, because the systems have created these inaccessible spaces for them to like, thrive, right. And then so they're like, lazy because they're depending on the system. It's like, that's why Disability Justice is about interdependence is because the system, the state creates a state where like, we have to depend on each other because that's not going to give us what we need. So, I think just, it's not just about laziness and being like this ablest concept, it can also be racist, it can be classist. And, you know, both speaking to like, what works for your body, what you need, it's like that, I think it's so important. It's not that you should be working out because you should be working out, it's like, does that feel good for you? Do you like want to feel that in your body, then that's how you should approach this. And that's not anti-capitalist approach. It's like, Where's their value and what you want to do not because you should be doing it, so you're productive. You know, how do you especially in the time, right, like Beau, so beautifully put, it's like, the things that we're learning now should carry us through this pandemic. So many people are clawing to like, I wish it was back to normal, I want to go back to how it was. It's like, girls of color coming from inside the house, that's how we got here. You know, so like, we can't go back there. We need to take what we learned forward and really challenge, like, why a pandemic struck, and we're like, I need to learn Spanish, now's the time! You know, it's like, if you didn't know it, then like, just focus on you, like, take care of yourself. And then maybe you can get those payments. But like, I think, yeah, the wholeness that Alisha brought up like, I've had to reckon with that in my house. Feeling like I don't contribute as much because I'm like, I'm not doing things in the garden, or it's harder for me to clean. But then I'm like, I'm like a reservoir of emotional labor. Like, try me a process. Anyway, you know, so that's also a value and if we move away from like, only these things are valuable or that there's like a hierarchy. Then it breaks up in this like, this entire constellation of ways that everybody can be in community and like, contribute and be collective as opposed to like this independent like, I'm gonna do everything and I'll take care of myself because that's, that's how I get through at the end of the day.

 Day Milman  

Yeah, I think that U of T has a particular kind of culture around valuing overwork, performative busy-ness, and that kind of thing. I wonder, you know, I wonder how students and Jheanelle, you just graduated last year, you know how you managed to navigate that and put Disability Justice principles, forefront in trying to navigate those kinds of things, and the systems that we have in place at U of T.

 Jheanelle Anderson  

So, for me, I, like other than getting over like those, like Alisha mentioned, a feeling like badly for requesting accommodations. I also think that the culture and like having professors who are also like, I say, disability aware, but you know, like accessibility aware, are just really thoughtful, and accommodating professors, because I like I was fortunate in my Faculty of Social Work. They were pretty accommodating, they were very understanding, they understood like, accessibility means they understood the pressures of school, and think a lot of other departments are like that. So the culture of like you mentioned, like performative, like busy-ness, the culture of pressure, that, you know, if you're not like studying, you're doing nothing, like your worth is tied to how wrapped up in schoolwork you are, how late you're staying up. So, I had a really great experience, you know, dealing with accommodations, which helped break that barrier down for me with asking, because it was just embedded in the culture of the faculty. And the professors were also very thoughtful, recognizing, like, not only disability needs, but that's the whole point too, is that, you know, these accommodations weren't just for students with disabilities, like, you recognize us school, junior masters, or just doing any degree is very stressful. There's also your life outside of school, like, there are lots of demands on you. And like, maybe you have to hand that paper in like a like a week or so later. But it's just like developing that partnership to work. Just so you know, you can complete the tasks that you need to do.

 Beau Hayward  

I think, I'd like to just say that my experience at the university has been incredible. I mean, I do a huge shout out to everyone at Accessibility Services, who has made this, you know, going back and get, you know, pursuing higher education possible for me. Also, when I brought it to the attention of my accessibility advisor that I wanted to play sports, she directed me to Robin and getting a position and being able to speak on panels and having these opportunities. The university, I believe, is doing a great job of unexpected, like Accessibility Services and diversity and equity. It's all this collective effort is just really great. And I'd like to say that my experience has been fantastic. And not say that, obviously, things can always improve, because they definitely, definitely can improve. And that's, that's what we're working towards.

 Day Milman  

Alisha, do you want to add anything to that?

 Alisha Krishna  

Yeah, yeah. So first of all, Jheanelle said something along the lines of like, you have a life outside of the university. And I, that's totally the truth. But in my personal context, so I actually did both my undergrad and my, like, I'm doing my law degree, both at U of T. So I've had wildly different experiences. The undergrad here is very large. So you kind of feel like you're lost. I was in the cinema faculty, and I learned a lot of valuable self-advocacy skills. So we actually do like workshops on this. The, the Accessibility Services, they're great. But sometimes the way they interact with students requires a certain kind of articulation that I feel like is not inherent to many disabled students, like, especially ones who are just coming to terms with it. So like, I know people who are just accessing accommodations right now and they, they explained to me like what they're going to ask for and they sort of couch it in like this explanation and like justification for it. Like, in my experience, that has been exactly the opposite of what you need to do, you sort of need to go into your appointments with doctors, accommodation, people, anyone who's asking you anything and sort of be firm and what you know, to be true, just from your lived experience you, like, obviously explain if they ask you to explain and provide documentation, whatever, but there's no reason to sort of, like need to provide a justification. And I feel like, that took me a really long time to learn.

 Jheanelle Anderson  

I'm also like, just an extension of like, within the school, I was part of my degree, I needed to do field education. And I think that was something that was lacking with regard to attitudes towards disabled people. And, you know, just accessibility, like, yeah, on paper there is like, you know, this former Yeah, if you need accommodations, but like, the attitudinal barriers that I've experienced when I was doing my field placement was huge. And I somewhat felt, you know, a lack of support. Because maybe people just didn't take it as seriously as other forms of oppression, which is, like, I think is a constant theme for like people with, like disabilities, like people will just gaslight you and like, wasn't like that. So, like, you know, that's just something else to like, consider with, like, the culture, not like, just at U of T, but just like, by extension, like the world, lets me just like during my field placement, and not feeling accommodated. Or just like, you know, my first field placement was in a hospital, and because of my experiences in a hospital and conveying that, you know, I felt like, they, you know, the educators are judging me, thinking that I can handle it, because of my previous experiences. So just kind of like, telling me what I can handle, like that paternalization, happens a lot. And then, you know, not being taken seriously, when you like, call out the ableism. So there's like, that kind of twofold thing where one like the culture of like, not accommodating people or not considering, like, the pressure that like your actual, like life outside of school, but also like minimizing or dismissing, like, your experience of ableism. But, you know, I will say that I had a really great accessibility counselor. And I wish I went to her about like, my concerns, because like, you know, she went hard for me after and was able to implement, like, um, like, workshops on ableism, on disability, for field educators, because I think that's important, as well.

 Day Milman  

Absolutely, yeah, this has been a really amazing and rich conversation that's given us lots to consider. And I think Disability Justice is it's just such a robust framework, that for me is a non-disabled person has really kind of opened my eyes up to how nested all these different forms of oppression are. And so, you know, for me, I'm just so like, my mind is really just working through constantly like how I can incorporate these principles into my work and the platform that I have as a facilitator at U of T. And so maybe, you know, we can end up on that question is just how is Disability Justice in the forefront for you, as you move forward as organizers on campus? And how can we kind of hold accountable? That same principle for, you know, the administrators and the deans and all the folks that were, that are decision makers at U of T?

 Alisha Krishna  

Yeah, I think so. There are a lot of things that you have two students that have been advocating for of the admin, most notably better mental health supports for students. And, and especially, I mean, I don't know if the conversation is as live as it was a little while ago, but the mandated leave of absence policy has also been very contentious. I think a lot of it comes from on the admin side, and this is pure speculation, I have no like, background knowledge of this or I'm not speaking for anybody when I say this, but I think a lot of it is coming from fear of liability. Especially the lap, like, essentially, it's just like, you're not UMTS problem, you're someone else's problem, but you're not U of T's problem. And I think it clearly has not worked. And they're clearly liable for things now, like, maybe not legally, but at least morally speaking, like, the recent tragedies that have happened on campus, no one's gonna look at them and say: yeah, you did, like, all you could do you did your due diligence. That's not. So I think there,  I think more attention needs to be paid to student demands, and in a way that doesn't see them as inherently conflicting. Like, we're not student activists are not inherently against the admin just because like, we often come into conflict like that, but it's not. We don't have to be we don't want to be really, that would be the perfect thing would be for me not having to do this. You know.

 Day Milman  

Thank you. Anyone else want to add to that, before we wrap up? Janine?

 Janine  

Thank you so much. This was first of all, so informative. Secondly, a fresh of breath of air.  Sorry, bilingual brain. But I just, I wanted to sort of ask you guys more about this concept of self care and community care, and how you guys have engaged with community care during this time, whether it's advocacy, for accessibility, kind of helping out people in the community, but also taking that time for yourself. So what was that looked like for you guys to have that balance of being part of the community and being active in the space, but also having that downtime for yourself and taking care of yourself, because I can imagine it, it gets overwhelming. Sometimes just hearing a lot of stories, especially during COVID.

 Beau Hayward  

I think, for myself, taking care has been maintaining some semblance of a schedule, that's just my personal way of keeping myself in line. Just you can see the calendar in the background, I just, you know, kind of have everything regimented. And that's, you know, obviously, not everybody's thing and also finding a way to stay active in the house. For a lot of physically disabled people staying physically active, super important. So well, it's important for everybody, but it's important because at least in my case, body deterioration, atrophy happens really quickly. So maintaining that level of fitness definitely as has been a stabilizer,

 Alex Locust  

I can add,you know, that that question of self-care, taps really into what I find Disability Justice to be another invitation to look to interdependence. Right. And, and how can I, you know, you mentioned community care, right? Like, how can I get out of my own head that like, I have to be the like, first and last off on like, how to take care of myself? How can I turn to community and offer these this care mutually, I mean, there are certain things that I'm trying to practice about, kind of my own boundaries, my own limitations, you know, like a shout out to Day and Robin for having patience with I put like a email, an auto reply on my email that's like, hey, just going down, give me like a week or two to reply to you, you know, which I had never done before. And I feel like it really communicates, it's just being transparent, right? Because I couldn't have just been like, I'll reply in a week or two. And not tell people, that's what I'm doing. Because, in essence, a lot of people reaching out to me, has not paid me yet to earn that kind of response time. So you know, but, you know, there's also that that piece where you're modeling like, Hey, we need to make, I think somebody mentioned like social media breaks, like making it known, like, I'm not just available, like, I'm going through a lot, you know, and I'm trying to take care of myself and reorient my focus and my energy. So when you let other people know that your practice I think it helps them reorient with you, as opposed to just kind of keeping it inside. And I'll just offer one last thing that I've seen. Several people do really beautifully, particularly around like surgeries, or intense like medical procedures as well, like create the disabled people in Excel sheets was just like, like, just you'll see some real magic and it's like, you know, this community care thing where it's like, who is able to bring me a meal to is down to hang out, you know, I had a friend where their experience meant that they were like, you know, it was during COVID. They got top surgery and so like, who wants to do zoom calls, you know, like, we'll do karaoke nights, you know, and, and so people just like fill in what you can do. And I feel like if we were more as a culture and a practice of it, that's a beautiful response to like a medical procedure but like what if you're like, you know, Alisha's gonna go through like exams, you know, what if it's like, a bad breakup? What if it's, you know, these kind of circumstances where it doesn't have to be I just moved, you know, how do we kind of create this thing where it's like, I need help. And I'm asking for it. And that doesn't mean we could actually means I'm really strong to name that I need help. And to ask for that, I would love to see more practices like that.

 Alisha Krishna  

I also have one other thing to add very practically, I started doing this year in like mid-September, I actually have an app on my phone that tracks my hours and it tracks my hours for each like class I'm taking each project I'm taking is the greatest thing I've ever done. Because if I'm feeling behind or something and I like cognitively, I just can't do it anymore, I can still look back at my like week of work and be like, I put in all that time already. Like this is totally valid for me to take a break now. And it's really, it lets me do things that I would never have done otherwise.

 Day Milman  

So I'm just gonna say, let's call it a conversation for the ages. I loved being part of this. And I really just want to give each and every one of the panelists, my heartfelt thanks for all the energy, your honesty and for sharing what you've learned, and for being vulnerable. I know that's really tough. But I think it does a lot of good for people to see how you are navigating these experiences in life and, and making a party out of it and making yourself shine and sparkle. And yeah, so thanks to Beau, and to Alisha to Jheanelle, and thank you so much to Alex for bringing your special brand of magic and gorgeousness to this conversation and to the world that we're in now. And I just want to say thank you so much, and wish each and every one of the people who attended tonight, you know, kindness to yourself and patience and just to take some of these learnings that we've had tonight and apply them to your own life as we move forward into the winter and to a bit of the unknown.

 Janine  

Thank you so much to all of our panelists for sharing their insights with us. And thank you to our partners for holding space for this essential conversation. Special thanks to the Hart House Student podcasting team for producing today's episode. You are listening to the west meeting room on CUIT  89.5 fm. We're here every Saturday at 7am. And you can find all of our episodes on our Hart House stories page on SoundCloud. We'd love to hear from you. We're on Instagram at hart house stories and twitter at hh podcasting. Thank you so much for listening, take good care of each other and we'll be back with you next week.

[maydei]

sociopolitical facebook rant on the 1% as requested you cannot compare the harmfulness of “stereotyping” the corporate elite and the 1% against the systematic harm and oppression of the lower class because of the corporation-protecting structure put in place by our “democratic” government, which serves the highest corporate bidder. you cannot compare poor people commenting on inequality and entitlement of super-rich people interacting with those in service-providing jobs to the inequality of those very same hiring practices, the increased taxation on minimum wage compared to the tax-breaks on those making billions. you cannot compare the shared experience of thousands of poor people commenting on the unfairness they’ve faced to the same sort of prejudices as racism and sexism, which benefit those who ALREADY IN POWER (see: Hollywood, and how sexism contributes to the rape culture that is obviously pervasive there), compared to the social commentary of those already oppressed by the system. those denied living wages and sick days. those employed only at part time so their employers do not have to provide health insurance or benefits. those whose part time jobs are so unpredictable with their scheduling that it’s almost impossible to find a second job to work just to make end’s meet, but if they just quit their job and looked for something else, they’d be out on the street. whose schedules are so demanding there’s no way in hell they could ever find time for an interview, and who haven’t had a day off between their multiple jobs in weeks, months, years. playing the devil’s advocate in favor of those who are in a position of power only shows how much they’ve manipulated the american public into thinking they deserve their wealth through hard work, when in reality it’s a combination of outsourcing labor to the cheapest bidder, destroying excess product that could otherwise be donated, and using tax shelters. by cutting taxes on the rich, we’re furthering the gap between the rich and the poor. those billions of dollars stay in their pockets instead of funding infrastructure, public education, and increased wages for the very people working for the CEOs who are getting a pay raise. i’m not talking about doctors who drive a nice car, who worked for a hospital for 30 years and made a million dollars doing it, who have a six bedroom house and a comfortable life that they worked hard to earn. i’m not even talking about those who make $500,000 a year in an urban area WORKING for a corporation. i’m talking about billionaires. people who make more money than we can even conceptualize, who have more money than they could literally ever possibly spend. people who, by existing and delegating their responsibilities to others, sit in an office and make in excess of $3000 per hour to culminate in their yearly salary.  people who could buy a yacht and a private jet and a mansion in one day and shrug, because they have that much more left to spare. people to whom five million dollars is a vacation home, not five thousand times more money than my entire life is worth and then some (and i’m lucky enough to have a semi-comfortable existence where i can live by myself and work a single job). the kind of people who don’t pay taxes because their NAME is a corporation and everything is a write-off, the kind of people who are getting enough of a tax break that they could fund free public college tuition for the country several times over with the money they’ll all be saving. what most of america conceptualizes as rich is actually upper-middle class. that’s how much of a disparity there is between the well-off and the 1%. those are the people i am talking about. those are the people who believe service people should pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get a real job, like the service they provide to society isn’t one that’s simultaneously being demanded by the public, and therefore categorically NOT worthless. those are the people who outsource their labor jobs to a place where they won’t even HAVE to pay minimum wage to the people who would desperately and happily stand in line for a chance at a job to work 40 hours a week. the fact that some of our own coworkers work multiple jobs should be proof enough that there is something fundamentally broken in our system. (from google)

“The American federal government requires a wage of at least $2.13 per hour be paid to employees that receive at least $30 per month in tips. If wages and tips do not equal the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour during any week, the employer is required to increase cash wages to compensate. Many waiters and waitresses are paid less than the federal minimum wage by their employers and rely primarily on tips to earn a living. Including both tips and wages, the average hourly rate of pay for a server in the United States was $10.05 as of May 2011. This is the equivalent of about $20,890 per year.“ “US companies are allowed to pay tipped employees pittance because customers are expected to tip well enough to surpass at least the federal minimum wage of $7.25, and, if they don’t, companies have to chip in the rest. But that’s not how things always work in the real world. “The servers who make ‘good money’ are in the minority,” says Maria Myotte, a spokesperson for Restaurant Opportunities Center United, which aims to improve conditions for workers in the industry. She notes that tipped workers are hit especially hard by “wage theft,” whereby restaurants don’t make up the difference when the tips aren’t rolling in. Between 2010 and 2012, the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor conducted nearly 9,000 investigations in the restaurant industry, and discovered that 83.8 percent had some kind of wage and hour violation.” “Like millions of Americans across the United States, 23-year-old Anna Hovland worked a waitressing job earlier this year to make ends meet. Her restaurant in Washington, DC, paid her the local minimum wage for tipped workers, $2.77 an hour, which meant that after taxes, her paycheck was usually zero. Her tips, never dependable, ranged from $20 to $200 a shift. “In a city as expensive as DC, I’ve been able to make ends meet by the skin of my teeth,” Hovland says. “Sometimes it will only be in the last week or two of a month that I’ll realize I’ve made enough to pay all my bills.” source one additional source one more for the books i’m lucky. i know i’m lucky. last year i was below the federal poverty level, and this year i’ll be above it. but because of being below the federal poverty level, i qualified for medical bill forgiveness through UVM. i still received a $400 bill for a procedure to find a problem with me that can’t be treated or made better. without that bill forgiveness, my bill would have been $3000. my deductible through my insurance provided by my job is $5000, which means i would have to pay that full $3000 by myself plus another $2000 before my insurance company would cover anything. $400 right before christmas still stung. $3000 would have been unimaginable. and in my current situation, i have no option to get better medical coverage through work. i get what i get, that’s my only option, take it or leave it, and without health insurance, i would be penalized on my taxes. i pay more then $200 a month to have the privilege of only having to shell out $5k in case of emergency, not covering my monthly medications, doctor’s appointments, blood panels (most of which is not covered! surprise), etc. and i am one of the lucky ones. i have a full time job. i have a car that rarely needs repairs. i can afford my rent (though i take a loss during the winter months because of my pay structure) and i can feed myself and my pets without having to ask for help. i don’t have to crowdfund insulin or hospital bills, because i’m fortunate enough to have some savings to mitigate my expenses. i certainly don't die because of it. i’m lucky. and it’s my duty as someone who is lucky to speak up for those who are not lucky. the people who work multiple part time jobs to make end’s meet and still don't have insurance. the people who end up with five-digit hospital bills that will bankrupt them. the people who come out of school with a four year degree and hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt who can’t find a job making anything more then $8 an hour, and who get slapped with $800 bills they have to pay back per month because they’ve graduated. this is to say nothing of those who are not able to be hired because of age, disability, or other outlying factors—the people whose medicaid and entitlements are about to be cut, who already live in low-income housing and rely on the assistance of the state to survive, and whose benefits are about to be hacked in half. is this meme about pizza drivers and bad tippers? yeah, it is. does it generalize that rich people are bad tippers? sure. but that’s not exactly news. if you were to mention it to someone else, they’d say “well that’s how the rich stay rich!” and we'd all laugh it off and go our separate ways. but we’re not talking about the people who live in a cul-de-sac or a gated community, we’re talking about a symptom of a much larger problem, which is the growing gap between the ultra rich and the ultra poor in america. and it’s not only college-aged kids. it’s single parents, it’s people who are laid off from their jobs of 30 years, it’s people who lose their jobs to outsourcing, it’s everyone. i haven’t even gotten into the systematic prejudice against POC. i'll leave that for another time. even though you and i are sitting here thinking “hey we have it pretty good”, the point stands that things are less than ideal in america right now, and having it pretty good is actually an incredible privilege. i have strong opinions that can be stereotyped pretty easily by saying “eat the rich”, but you should know which “rich” i’m talking about. and no, i don’t actually want to eat them. but i think it would be pretty nice if everyone could afford groceries (even with food stamps or SNAP cards, which don’t cover diapers, soap, vitamins, toilet paper, or any hygiene products), and if service workers could make end’s meet for a modest life on a single full-time job. if health insurance covered dental work and optical needs, because we’ll never need glasses any less. if public education funding didn’t depend entirely on the value of the property in the neighborhood, which presents a disadvantage to poor neighborhoods. if grad students wouldn’t now have to pay taxes on the tuition allowances they get from teaching as part of their degree, which was never actually cash they had in the first place--and undergrads wouldn’t now have to pay taxes on scholarships (see above). our financial system in a nutshell is highway robbery, and if we all had each others’ backs on a social scale, a lot of these problems wouldn’t even be problems we have yet to solve, they would be completely moot. assuming you’ve gotten to the end of my sociopolitical rant that’s gone wildly off-topic, here’s a youtube video.  it’s a really good one to watch. a bit old, yeah, but the figures he’s talking about certainly haven’t gotten any better. and here’s a newer one, just to be fair, that’s incredibly relevant to our current situation.  i guess that’s my contribution to the “thought experiment”.

[chicojimj]

Stacey Abrams Rebuttal to State of the Union 2019 Good evening, my fellow Americans. Happy Lunar New Year. I’m Stacey Abrams, and I am honored to join the conversation about the state of our union. Growing up, my family went back and forth between lower middle class and working poor. Yet, even when they came home weary and bone-tired, my parents found a way to show us all who we could be. My librarian mother taught us to love learning. My father, a shipyard worker, put in overtime and extra shifts; and they made sure we volunteered to help others. Later, they both became United Methodist ministers, an expression of the faith that guides us. These were our family values – faith, service, education and responsibility. Now, we only had one car, so sometimes my dad had to hitchhike and walk long stretches during the 30 mile trip home from the shipyards. One rainy night, Mom got worried. We piled in the car and went out looking for him - and eventually found Dad making his way along the road, soaked and shivering in his shirtsleeves. When he got in the car, Mom asked if he'd left his coat at work. He explained he’d given it to a homeless man he’d met on the highway. When we asked why he'd given away his only jacket, Dad turned to us and said, “I knew when I left that man, he’d still be alone. But I could give him my coat, because I knew you were coming for me.” Our power and strength as Americans lives in our hard work and our belief in more. My family understood firsthand that while success is not guaranteed, we live in a nation where opportunity is possible. But we do not succeed alone – in these United States, when times are tough, we can persevere because our friends and neighbors will come for us. Our first responders will come for us. It is this mantra - this uncommon grace of community - that has driven me to become an attorney, a small business owner, a writer, and most recently, the Democratic nominee for Governor of Georgia. My reason for running for governor was simple: I love our country and its promise of opportunity for all, and I stand here tonight because I hold fast to my father’s credo – together, we are coming for America, for a better America. Just a few weeks ago, I joined volunteers to distribute meals to furloughed federal workers. They waited in line for a box of food and a sliver of hope since they hadn’t received a paycheck in weeks. Making their livelihoods a pawn for political games is a disgrace. The shutdown was a stunt engineered by the President of the United States, one that defied every tenet of fairness and abandoned not just our people - but our values. For seven years, I led the Democratic Party in the Georgia House of Representatives. I didn’t always agree with the Republican Speaker or Governor, but I understood that our constituents didn’t care about our political parties – they cared about their lives. So, when we had to negotiate criminal justice reform or transportation or foster care improvements, the leaders of our state didn’t shut down – we came together. And we kept our word. It should be no different in our nation’s capital. We may come from different sides of the political aisle; but, our joint commitment to the ideals of this nation cannot be negotiable. Our most urgent work is to realize Americans’ dreams of today and tomorrow. To carve a path to independence and prosperity that can last a lifetime. Children deserve an excellent education from cradle to career. We owe them safe schools and the highest standards, regardless of zip code. Yet this White House responds timidly while first graders practice active shooter drills and the price of higher education grows ever steeper. From now on, our leaders must be willing to tackle gun safety measures and face the crippling effect of educational loans; to support educators and invest what is necessary to unleash the power of America’s greatest minds. In Georgia and around the country, people are striving for a middle class where a salary truly equals economic security. But instead, families’ hopes are being crushed by Republican leadership that ignores real life or just doesn’t understand it. Under the current administration, far too many hard-working Americans are falling behind, living paycheck to paycheck, most without labor unions to protect them from even worse harm. The Republican tax bill rigged the system against working people. Rather than bringing back jobs, plants are closing, layoffs are looming and wages struggle to keep pace with the actual cost of living. We owe more to the millions of everyday folks who keep our economy running: like truck drivers forced to buy their own rigs, farmers caught in a trade war, small business owners in search of capital, and domestic workers serving without labor protections. Women and men who could thrive if only they had the support and freedom to do so. We know bipartisanship could craft a 21st century immigration plan, but this administration chooses to cage children and tear families apart. Compassionate treatment at the border is not the same as open borders. President Reagan understood this. President Obama understood this. Americans understand this. And Democrats stand ready to effectively secure our ports and borders. But we must all embrace that from agriculture to healthcare to entrepreneurship, America is made stronger by the presence of immigrants - not walls. Rather than suing to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, as Republican Attorneys General have, our leaders must protect the progress we’ve made and commit to expanding healthcare and lowering costs for everyone. My father has battled prostate cancer for years. To help cover the costs, I found myself sinking deeper into debt -- because while you can defer some payments, you can’t defer cancer treatment. In this great nation, Americans are skipping blood pressure pills, forced to choose between buying medicine or paying rent. Maternal mortality rates show that mothers, especially black mothers, risk death to give birth. And in 14 states, including my home state where a majority want it, our leaders refuse to expand Medicaid, which could save rural hospitals, economies, and lives. We can do so much more: Take action on climate change. Defend individual liberties with fair-minded judges. But none of these ambitions are possible without the bedrock guarantee of our right to vote. Let’s be clear: voter suppression is real. From making it harder to register and stay on the rolls to moving and closing polling places to rejecting lawful ballots, we can no longer ignore these threats to democracy. While I acknowledged the results of the 2018 election here in Georgia – I did not and we cannot accept efforts to undermine our right to vote. That’s why I started a nonpartisan organization called Fair Fight to advocate for voting rights. This is the next battle for our democracy, one where all eligible citizens can have their say about the vision we want for our country. We must reject the cynicism that says allowing every eligible vote to be cast and counted is a “power grab.” Americans understand that these are the values our brave men and women in uniform and our veterans risk their lives to defend. The foundation of our moral leadership around the globe is free and fair elections, where voters pick their leaders – not where politicians pick their voters. In this time of division and crisis, we must come together and stand for, and with, one another. America has stumbled time and again on its quest towards justice and equality; but with each generation, we have revisited our fundamental truths, and where we falter, we make amends. We fought Jim Crow with the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, yet we continue to confront racism from our past and in our present – which is why we must hold everyone from the very highest offices to our own families accountable for racist words and deeds – and call racism what it is. Wrong. America achieved a measure of reproductive justice in Roe v. Wade, but we must never forget it is immoral to allow politicians to harm women and families to advance a political agenda. We affirmed marriage equality, and yet, the LGBTQ community remains under attack. So even as I am very disappointed by the President’s approach to our problems – I still don’t want him to fail. But we need him to tell the truth, and to respect his duties and the extraordinary diversity that defines America. Our progress has always found refuge in the basic instinct of the American experiment – to do right by our people. And with a renewed commitment to social and economic justice, we will create a stronger America, together. Because America wins by fighting for our shared values against all enemies: foreign and domestic. That is who we are – and when we do so, never wavering - the state of our union will always be strong. Thank you, and may God bless the United States of America.

[deborahaphillips54303]

Controversy Continues Over SF Restaurant Serving $200 Meals in Private Domes

Last month, California governor Gavin Newsom announced the mandatory closure (or re-closure) of all indoor restaurant dining rooms throughout the state. After investigating its options, Michelin-starred sushi restaurant Hashiri announced that it had purchased three miniature geodesic domes so it could provide a "unique outdoor multi-course dining experience." At the time, the domes seemed like a novel means of providing increased privacy safety for diners during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

A few days ago, after a brief hiatus, Hashiri was allowed to start seating customers in its three outdoor geodesic domes again after the staff cut the plastic sides off to bring them into compliance with current public health requirements. Slicing several feet of soft PVC from the Garden Igloos seems to be a satisfactory resolution—at least for now—after two straight weeks of controversy that started when they were assembled on a San Francisco sidewalk.

Hashiri general manager Kenichiro Matsuura told the San Francisco Chronicle that he had previously attempted outdoor dining (pre-plastic bubbles) but it hadn't worked out, due to the restaurant's location in the Mid-Market section of the city. "We wanted to continue offering the fine-dining experience—and safety and peace,” Matsuura said. (The restaurant also offers a swanky to-go menu, including a $500 Ultimate Trifecta Bento box and a $160 takeaway Wagyu Sukiyaki kit, but it is best known for its five-course Kaiseki and Omakase tasting menu.) “Mint Plaza is a phenomenal space, it’s just sometimes the crowd is not too favorable,” he said. In an interview with ABC7, he again emphasized that "it's not the safest neighborhood." 

The entire Bay Area has an estimated 35,000 people who are unsheltered or experiencing homelessness and, at the beginning of the pandemic, there were more than 8,000 unhoused individuals in San Francisco alone. In mid-March, when the city issued its first stay-at-home order, homeless residents were encouraged to "find shelter and government agencies to provide it” but that was easier to type than it was to do. The Guardian reports that shelters stopped taking new residents due to concerns of overcrowding or inadequate social distancing, and more than 1,000 people put their names on a futile-sounding waitlist to get a bed. 

In April, the city's Board of Supervisors unanimously passed emergency legislation directing the city to secure more than 8,000 hotel rooms to accommodate all of the unhoused people in the city, but the order was denied by Mayor London Breed. It eventually acquired 2,733 hotel rooms for vulnerable individuals but, as of this writing, only 1,935 of them are actually occupied. As a result of the pair of public health crises that the city is enduring—the pandemic and widespread homelessness—the number of unhoused people has increased, as have the number of tents and other makeshift structures that comprise a homeless encampment near Hashiri.

"This is a difficult and upsetting issue," Laurie Thomas, the Executive Director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, told VICE in an email. "In San Francisco there are areas in the city where there are real concerns about negative street behavior and cleanliness and how that affects both workers and customers of restaurants relying on outside dining [...] Our restaurants have a strong desire to provide a safe and welcoming outdoor dining experience, especially without the ability to open for indoor dining, and this is so critical to their ability to stay in business and keep staff employed." 

It's easy to sympathize with just about everyone in this scenario. The pandemic has caused an ever-increasing number of challenges for restaurant owners, who are doing whatever it takes to keep their doors open for another day, while the essential workers who prep to-go orders and serve outdoor customers are doing so at great risk to their own health and safety. But still: the optics of serving a $200-per-person tasting menu to customers sitting in plastic bubbles a few hundred yards from people who are struggling for basic human necessities...well, they're not great. 

"I think what really gets people going about the dome is that it’s a perfect symbol of the complete inadequacy of our social safety net: In a queer reversal, the dome is a shield against, not for, the ones who need sheltering the most," the Chronicle's restaurant critic Soleil Ho wrote. "An unhoused person’s tent is erected in a desire for opaqueness and privacy, a space of one’s own, whereas the fine dining dome invites the onlooker’s gaze as a bombastic spectacle [...] for the housed, being seen eating on the street or in a park is a premium experience, especially now." 

Last week, the city's Public Health Department paid Hashiri a surprise visit, and ordered them to remove the domes over concerns that they "may not allow for adequate air flow." According to current regulations, outdoor dining enclosures are required to be open on the sides; the soft structures each have two windows and a door that can be opened, but those features were deemed insufficient. 

Matsuura said that he has received hate mail about the domes and he has been accused of making discriminatory comments about the city's most desperate residents, so he believes that someone reported him to the city (though, perhaps the Health Department just saw some of the nationwide media coverage of Hashiri's sidewalk igloos). Regardless, he still says that the domes are there to keep his customers safe… from interacting with the people living on those same streets. "There are people who come by and spit, yell, stick their hands in people’s food, discharging fecal matter right by where people are trying to eat,” he said. “It’s really sad, and it’s really hard for us to operate around that.”

The criticism that Hashiri has faced is similar to what the organizers of a pop-up restaurant in Toronto encountered when they set up their own heated glass domes last year. The Dinner with a View experience, complete with a three-course gourmet meal prepped by a Top Chef winner, was assembled under the Gardiner Expressway, just over a mile from the site of a homeless encampment that had been cleared out by the city. 

Advocates for the unhoused said that the meal and its location just further emphasized the ever-increasing gap between the Haves and the Have Nots. More than 300 demonstrators showed up to protest outside the event, and the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) served a free 'counter-meal' that it called Dinner with a View of the Rich. 

"On the one hand you have homeless people whose tents were demolished and who were evicted with nowhere else to go," OCAP wrote. "On the other hand you have people with sufficient disposable income to splurge over $550 on a single meal and who’re facing the possibility of their luxurious dining spectacle being tainted [...] Do they deserve to be mocked for their obliviousness to the suffering around them? Absolutely." 

Back in San Francisco, Hashiri is not the only Mid-Market restaurant to express concern about the safety of its patrons, or about the city's ineffective attempts at addressing the social and economic conditions that have contributed to the homelessness crisis. Last month, a group of residents and businesses in the neighborhood sued the city for negligence, alleging that homeless encampments, criminal activity, and unsanitary conditions combined to make Mid-Market a dangerous area. 

"The City has created and perpetuated these conditions through its pattern and practice of tacitly treating Mid-Market as a ‘containment zone’ that bears the brunt of San Francisco’s homelessness issues, and its failure to take action to address these issues," the lawsuit said. Two of the restaurants that are among the plaintiffs, Montesacro Pinseria and Souvla, said that if the situation doesn't improve, they could be forced to move to a new neighborhood, or to close their doors for good. 

"We are deeply concerned that property owners have taken to suing the city to 'remove tents' without anywhere for [those experiencing homelessness] to go. Worse, these lawsuits would have the courts decide the fate of people who have no seat at the table where 'justice' is being served," Jennifer Friedenbach, the executive director of San Francisco's Coalition on Homelessness, told VICE.

"These situations can be resolved by working collaboratively with the unhoused person to address the issues, while pressing the city, state and federal government to ensure there are dignified housing options available. If the restaurant owner can afford to sue, they can afford to hire someone to advocate successfully for solutions." 

Laurie Thomas is also working on behalf of restaurants, sharing their concerns and working toward positive changes and respectful solutions for all involved. Last week, she was among the hospitality and small business leaders who sent a letter to Mayor London Breed, the President of the Board of Supervisors, and the co-chairs of the City's Economic Recovery Task Force. 

"We are writing today because we are gravely concerned about the condition of our streets. We are devastated to see so many unsheltered neighbors struggling each day in unfathomable and treacherous conditions," their letter read. "These conditions will prohibit businesses of all sizes from reopening. More companies will leave San Francisco for safer and cleaner places to operate [...] Additionally, with outdoor dining and shopping options being the primary avenues for businesses to survive, the intersection between the unfortunate conditions on our streets and this new heavy reliance on public spaces for commerce will result in disastrous outcomes." 

The letter also made a number of recommendations that "should be prioritized" by city officials, including additional housing options, making mental health and substance abuse resources available to those experiencing homelessness, and establishing a 24-hour crisis response team that can respond to "urgent mental health and/or drug induced episodes." 

Meanwhile at Hashiri, the DIY-ed, now open-sided domes are back out on the sidewalk. "Signed, sealed and delivered," the restaurant wrote on Facebook. "With small modifications we are back in business." 

via VICE US - Munchies VICE US - Munchies via Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network

[cyberpoetryballoon]

Controversy Continues Over SF Restaurant Serving $200 Meals in Private Domes

Last month, California governor Gavin Newsom announced the mandatory closure (or re-closure) of all indoor restaurant dining rooms throughout the state. After investigating its options, Michelin-starred sushi restaurant Hashiri announced that it had purchased three miniature geodesic domes so it could provide a "unique outdoor multi-course dining experience." At the time, the domes seemed like a novel means of providing increased privacy safety for diners during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

A few days ago, after a brief hiatus, Hashiri was allowed to start seating customers in its three outdoor geodesic domes again after the staff cut the plastic sides off to bring them into compliance with current public health requirements. Slicing several feet of soft PVC from the Garden Igloos seems to be a satisfactory resolution—at least for now—after two straight weeks of controversy that started when they were assembled on a San Francisco sidewalk.

Hashiri general manager Kenichiro Matsuura told the San Francisco Chronicle that he had previously attempted outdoor dining (pre-plastic bubbles) but it hadn't worked out, due to the restaurant's location in the Mid-Market section of the city. "We wanted to continue offering the fine-dining experience—and safety and peace,” Matsuura said. (The restaurant also offers a swanky to-go menu, including a $500 Ultimate Trifecta Bento box and a $160 takeaway Wagyu Sukiyaki kit, but it is best known for its five-course Kaiseki and Omakase tasting menu.) “Mint Plaza is a phenomenal space, it’s just sometimes the crowd is not too favorable,” he said. In an interview with ABC7, he again emphasized that "it's not the safest neighborhood." 

The entire Bay Area has an estimated 35,000 people who are unsheltered or experiencing homelessness and, at the beginning of the pandemic, there were more than 8,000 unhoused individuals in San Francisco alone. In mid-March, when the city issued its first stay-at-home order, homeless residents were encouraged to "find shelter and government agencies to provide it” but that was easier to type than it was to do. The Guardian reports that shelters stopped taking new residents due to concerns of overcrowding or inadequate social distancing, and more than 1,000 people put their names on a futile-sounding waitlist to get a bed. 

In April, the city's Board of Supervisors unanimously passed emergency legislation directing the city to secure more than 8,000 hotel rooms to accommodate all of the unhoused people in the city, but the order was denied by Mayor London Breed. It eventually acquired 2,733 hotel rooms for vulnerable individuals but, as of this writing, only 1,935 of them are actually occupied. As a result of the pair of public health crises that the city is enduring—the pandemic and widespread homelessness—the number of unhoused people has increased, as have the number of tents and other makeshift structures that comprise a homeless encampment near Hashiri.

"This is a difficult and upsetting issue," Laurie Thomas, the Executive Director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, told VICE in an email. "In San Francisco there are areas in the city where there are real concerns about negative street behavior and cleanliness and how that affects both workers and customers of restaurants relying on outside dining [...] Our restaurants have a strong desire to provide a safe and welcoming outdoor dining experience, especially without the ability to open for indoor dining, and this is so critical to their ability to stay in business and keep staff employed." 

It's easy to sympathize with just about everyone in this scenario. The pandemic has caused an ever-increasing number of challenges for restaurant owners, who are doing whatever it takes to keep their doors open for another day, while the essential workers who prep to-go orders and serve outdoor customers are doing so at great risk to their own health and safety. But still: the optics of serving a $200-per-person tasting menu to customers sitting in plastic bubbles a few hundred yards from people who are struggling for basic human necessities...well, they're not great. 

"I think what really gets people going about the dome is that it’s a perfect symbol of the complete inadequacy of our social safety net: In a queer reversal, the dome is a shield against, not for, the ones who need sheltering the most," the Chronicle's restaurant critic Soleil Ho wrote. "An unhoused person’s tent is erected in a desire for opaqueness and privacy, a space of one’s own, whereas the fine dining dome invites the onlooker’s gaze as a bombastic spectacle [...] for the housed, being seen eating on the street or in a park is a premium experience, especially now." 

Last week, the city's Public Health Department paid Hashiri a surprise visit, and ordered them to remove the domes over concerns that they "may not allow for adequate air flow." According to current regulations, outdoor dining enclosures are required to be open on the sides; the soft structures each have two windows and a door that can be opened, but those features were deemed insufficient. 

Matsuura said that he has received hate mail about the domes and he has been accused of making discriminatory comments about the city's most desperate residents, so he believes that someone reported him to the city (though, perhaps the Health Department just saw some of the nationwide media coverage of Hashiri's sidewalk igloos). Regardless, he still says that the domes are there to keep his customers safe… from interacting with the people living on those same streets. "There are people who come by and spit, yell, stick their hands in people’s food, discharging fecal matter right by where people are trying to eat,” he said. “It’s really sad, and it’s really hard for us to operate around that.”

The criticism that Hashiri has faced is similar to what the organizers of a pop-up restaurant in Toronto encountered when they set up their own heated glass domes last year. The Dinner with a View experience, complete with a three-course gourmet meal prepped by a Top Chef winner, was assembled under the Gardiner Expressway, just over a mile from the site of a homeless encampment that had been cleared out by the city. 

Advocates for the unhoused said that the meal and its location just further emphasized the ever-increasing gap between the Haves and the Have Nots. More than 300 demonstrators showed up to protest outside the event, and the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) served a free 'counter-meal' that it called Dinner with a View of the Rich. 

"On the one hand you have homeless people whose tents were demolished and who were evicted with nowhere else to go," OCAP wrote. "On the other hand you have people with sufficient disposable income to splurge over $550 on a single meal and who’re facing the possibility of their luxurious dining spectacle being tainted [...] Do they deserve to be mocked for their obliviousness to the suffering around them? Absolutely." 

Back in San Francisco, Hashiri is not the only Mid-Market restaurant to express concern about the safety of its patrons, or about the city's ineffective attempts at addressing the social and economic conditions that have contributed to the homelessness crisis. Last month, a group of residents and businesses in the neighborhood sued the city for negligence, alleging that homeless encampments, criminal activity, and unsanitary conditions combined to make Mid-Market a dangerous area. 

"The City has created and perpetuated these conditions through its pattern and practice of tacitly treating Mid-Market as a ‘containment zone’ that bears the brunt of San Francisco’s homelessness issues, and its failure to take action to address these issues," the lawsuit said. Two of the restaurants that are among the plaintiffs, Montesacro Pinseria and Souvla, said that if the situation doesn't improve, they could be forced to move to a new neighborhood, or to close their doors for good. 

"We are deeply concerned that property owners have taken to suing the city to 'remove tents' without anywhere for [those experiencing homelessness] to go. Worse, these lawsuits would have the courts decide the fate of people who have no seat at the table where 'justice' is being served," Jennifer Friedenbach, the executive director of San Francisco's Coalition on Homelessness, told VICE.

"These situations can be resolved by working collaboratively with the unhoused person to address the issues, while pressing the city, state and federal government to ensure there are dignified housing options available. If the restaurant owner can afford to sue, they can afford to hire someone to advocate successfully for solutions." 

Laurie Thomas is also working on behalf of restaurants, sharing their concerns and working toward positive changes and respectful solutions for all involved. Last week, she was among the hospitality and small business leaders who sent a letter to Mayor London Breed, the President of the Board of Supervisors, and the co-chairs of the City's Economic Recovery Task Force. 

"We are writing today because we are gravely concerned about the condition of our streets. We are devastated to see so many unsheltered neighbors struggling each day in unfathomable and treacherous conditions," their letter read. "These conditions will prohibit businesses of all sizes from reopening. More companies will leave San Francisco for safer and cleaner places to operate [...] Additionally, with outdoor dining and shopping options being the primary avenues for businesses to survive, the intersection between the unfortunate conditions on our streets and this new heavy reliance on public spaces for commerce will result in disastrous outcomes." 

The letter also made a number of recommendations that "should be prioritized" by city officials, including additional housing options, making mental health and substance abuse resources available to those experiencing homelessness, and establishing a 24-hour crisis response team that can respond to "urgent mental health and/or drug induced episodes." 

Meanwhile at Hashiri, the DIY-ed, now open-sided domes are back out on the sidewalk. "Signed, sealed and delivered," the restaurant wrote on Facebook. "With small modifications we are back in business." 

via VICE US - Munchies VICE US - Munchies via Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network

[carolrhackett85282]

Controversy Continues Over SF Restaurant Serving $200 Meals in Private Domes

Last month, California governor Gavin Newsom announced the mandatory closure (or re-closure) of all indoor restaurant dining rooms throughout the state. After investigating its options, Michelin-starred sushi restaurant Hashiri announced that it had purchased three miniature geodesic domes so it could provide a "unique outdoor multi-course dining experience." At the time, the domes seemed like a novel means of providing increased privacy safety for diners during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

A few days ago, after a brief hiatus, Hashiri was allowed to start seating customers in its three outdoor geodesic domes again after the staff cut the plastic sides off to bring them into compliance with current public health requirements. Slicing several feet of soft PVC from the Garden Igloos seems to be a satisfactory resolution—at least for now—after two straight weeks of controversy that started when they were assembled on a San Francisco sidewalk.

Hashiri general manager Kenichiro Matsuura told the San Francisco Chronicle that he had previously attempted outdoor dining (pre-plastic bubbles) but it hadn't worked out, due to the restaurant's location in the Mid-Market section of the city. "We wanted to continue offering the fine-dining experience—and safety and peace,” Matsuura said. (The restaurant also offers a swanky to-go menu, including a $500 Ultimate Trifecta Bento box and a $160 takeaway Wagyu Sukiyaki kit, but it is best known for its five-course Kaiseki and Omakase tasting menu.) “Mint Plaza is a phenomenal space, it’s just sometimes the crowd is not too favorable,” he said. In an interview with ABC7, he again emphasized that "it's not the safest neighborhood." 

The entire Bay Area has an estimated 35,000 people who are unsheltered or experiencing homelessness and, at the beginning of the pandemic, there were more than 8,000 unhoused individuals in San Francisco alone. In mid-March, when the city issued its first stay-at-home order, homeless residents were encouraged to "find shelter and government agencies to provide it” but that was easier to type than it was to do. The Guardian reports that shelters stopped taking new residents due to concerns of overcrowding or inadequate social distancing, and more than 1,000 people put their names on a futile-sounding waitlist to get a bed. 

In April, the city's Board of Supervisors unanimously passed emergency legislation directing the city to secure more than 8,000 hotel rooms to accommodate all of the unhoused people in the city, but the order was denied by Mayor London Breed. It eventually acquired 2,733 hotel rooms for vulnerable individuals but, as of this writing, only 1,935 of them are actually occupied. As a result of the pair of public health crises that the city is enduring—the pandemic and widespread homelessness—the number of unhoused people has increased, as have the number of tents and other makeshift structures that comprise a homeless encampment near Hashiri.

"This is a difficult and upsetting issue," Laurie Thomas, the Executive Director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, told VICE in an email. "In San Francisco there are areas in the city where there are real concerns about negative street behavior and cleanliness and how that affects both workers and customers of restaurants relying on outside dining [...] Our restaurants have a strong desire to provide a safe and welcoming outdoor dining experience, especially without the ability to open for indoor dining, and this is so critical to their ability to stay in business and keep staff employed." 

It's easy to sympathize with just about everyone in this scenario. The pandemic has caused an ever-increasing number of challenges for restaurant owners, who are doing whatever it takes to keep their doors open for another day, while the essential workers who prep to-go orders and serve outdoor customers are doing so at great risk to their own health and safety. But still: the optics of serving a $200-per-person tasting menu to customers sitting in plastic bubbles a few hundred yards from people who are struggling for basic human necessities...well, they're not great. 

"I think what really gets people going about the dome is that it’s a perfect symbol of the complete inadequacy of our social safety net: In a queer reversal, the dome is a shield against, not for, the ones who need sheltering the most," the Chronicle's restaurant critic Soleil Ho wrote. "An unhoused person’s tent is erected in a desire for opaqueness and privacy, a space of one’s own, whereas the fine dining dome invites the onlooker’s gaze as a bombastic spectacle [...] for the housed, being seen eating on the street or in a park is a premium experience, especially now." 

Last week, the city's Public Health Department paid Hashiri a surprise visit, and ordered them to remove the domes over concerns that they "may not allow for adequate air flow." According to current regulations, outdoor dining enclosures are required to be open on the sides; the soft structures each have two windows and a door that can be opened, but those features were deemed insufficient. 

Matsuura said that he has received hate mail about the domes and he has been accused of making discriminatory comments about the city's most desperate residents, so he believes that someone reported him to the city (though, perhaps the Health Department just saw some of the nationwide media coverage of Hashiri's sidewalk igloos). Regardless, he still says that the domes are there to keep his customers safe… from interacting with the people living on those same streets. "There are people who come by and spit, yell, stick their hands in people’s food, discharging fecal matter right by where people are trying to eat,” he said. “It’s really sad, and it’s really hard for us to operate around that.”

The criticism that Hashiri has faced is similar to what the organizers of a pop-up restaurant in Toronto encountered when they set up their own heated glass domes last year. The Dinner with a View experience, complete with a three-course gourmet meal prepped by a Top Chef winner, was assembled under the Gardiner Expressway, just over a mile from the site of a homeless encampment that had been cleared out by the city. 

Advocates for the unhoused said that the meal and its location just further emphasized the ever-increasing gap between the Haves and the Have Nots. More than 300 demonstrators showed up to protest outside the event, and the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) served a free 'counter-meal' that it called Dinner with a View of the Rich. 

"On the one hand you have homeless people whose tents were demolished and who were evicted with nowhere else to go," OCAP wrote. "On the other hand you have people with sufficient disposable income to splurge over $550 on a single meal and who’re facing the possibility of their luxurious dining spectacle being tainted [...] Do they deserve to be mocked for their obliviousness to the suffering around them? Absolutely." 

Back in San Francisco, Hashiri is not the only Mid-Market restaurant to express concern about the safety of its patrons, or about the city's ineffective attempts at addressing the social and economic conditions that have contributed to the homelessness crisis. Last month, a group of residents and businesses in the neighborhood sued the city for negligence, alleging that homeless encampments, criminal activity, and unsanitary conditions combined to make Mid-Market a dangerous area. 

"The City has created and perpetuated these conditions through its pattern and practice of tacitly treating Mid-Market as a ‘containment zone’ that bears the brunt of San Francisco’s homelessness issues, and its failure to take action to address these issues," the lawsuit said. Two of the restaurants that are among the plaintiffs, Montesacro Pinseria and Souvla, said that if the situation doesn't improve, they could be forced to move to a new neighborhood, or to close their doors for good. 

"We are deeply concerned that property owners have taken to suing the city to 'remove tents' without anywhere for [those experiencing homelessness] to go. Worse, these lawsuits would have the courts decide the fate of people who have no seat at the table where 'justice' is being served," Jennifer Friedenbach, the executive director of San Francisco's Coalition on Homelessness, told VICE.

"These situations can be resolved by working collaboratively with the unhoused person to address the issues, while pressing the city, state and federal government to ensure there are dignified housing options available. If the restaurant owner can afford to sue, they can afford to hire someone to advocate successfully for solutions." 

Laurie Thomas is also working on behalf of restaurants, sharing their concerns and working toward positive changes and respectful solutions for all involved. Last week, she was among the hospitality and small business leaders who sent a letter to Mayor London Breed, the President of the Board of Supervisors, and the co-chairs of the City's Economic Recovery Task Force. 

"We are writing today because we are gravely concerned about the condition of our streets. We are devastated to see so many unsheltered neighbors struggling each day in unfathomable and treacherous conditions," their letter read. "These conditions will prohibit businesses of all sizes from reopening. More companies will leave San Francisco for safer and cleaner places to operate [...] Additionally, with outdoor dining and shopping options being the primary avenues for businesses to survive, the intersection between the unfortunate conditions on our streets and this new heavy reliance on public spaces for commerce will result in disastrous outcomes." 

The letter also made a number of recommendations that "should be prioritized" by city officials, including additional housing options, making mental health and substance abuse resources available to those experiencing homelessness, and establishing a 24-hour crisis response team that can respond to "urgent mental health and/or drug induced episodes." 

Meanwhile at Hashiri, the DIY-ed, now open-sided domes are back out on the sidewalk. "Signed, sealed and delivered," the restaurant wrote on Facebook. "With small modifications we are back in business." 

via VICE US - Munchies VICE US - Munchies via Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network

[melodymgill49801]

Controversy Continues Over SF Restaurant Serving $200 Meals in Private Domes

Last month, California governor Gavin Newsom announced the mandatory closure (or re-closure) of all indoor restaurant dining rooms throughout the state. After investigating its options, Michelin-starred sushi restaurant Hashiri announced that it had purchased three miniature geodesic domes so it could provide a "unique outdoor multi-course dining experience." At the time, the domes seemed like a novel means of providing increased privacy safety for diners during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

A few days ago, after a brief hiatus, Hashiri was allowed to start seating customers in its three outdoor geodesic domes again after the staff cut the plastic sides off to bring them into compliance with current public health requirements. Slicing several feet of soft PVC from the Garden Igloos seems to be a satisfactory resolution—at least for now—after two straight weeks of controversy that started when they were assembled on a San Francisco sidewalk.

Hashiri general manager Kenichiro Matsuura told the San Francisco Chronicle that he had previously attempted outdoor dining (pre-plastic bubbles) but it hadn't worked out, due to the restaurant's location in the Mid-Market section of the city. "We wanted to continue offering the fine-dining experience—and safety and peace,” Matsuura said. (The restaurant also offers a swanky to-go menu, including a $500 Ultimate Trifecta Bento box and a $160 takeaway Wagyu Sukiyaki kit, but it is best known for its five-course Kaiseki and Omakase tasting menu.) “Mint Plaza is a phenomenal space, it’s just sometimes the crowd is not too favorable,” he said. In an interview with ABC7, he again emphasized that "it's not the safest neighborhood." 

The entire Bay Area has an estimated 35,000 people who are unsheltered or experiencing homelessness and, at the beginning of the pandemic, there were more than 8,000 unhoused individuals in San Francisco alone. In mid-March, when the city issued its first stay-at-home order, homeless residents were encouraged to "find shelter and government agencies to provide it” but that was easier to type than it was to do. The Guardian reports that shelters stopped taking new residents due to concerns of overcrowding or inadequate social distancing, and more than 1,000 people put their names on a futile-sounding waitlist to get a bed. 

In April, the city's Board of Supervisors unanimously passed emergency legislation directing the city to secure more than 8,000 hotel rooms to accommodate all of the unhoused people in the city, but the order was denied by Mayor London Breed. It eventually acquired 2,733 hotel rooms for vulnerable individuals but, as of this writing, only 1,935 of them are actually occupied. As a result of the pair of public health crises that the city is enduring—the pandemic and widespread homelessness—the number of unhoused people has increased, as have the number of tents and other makeshift structures that comprise a homeless encampment near Hashiri.

"This is a difficult and upsetting issue," Laurie Thomas, the Executive Director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, told VICE in an email. "In San Francisco there are areas in the city where there are real concerns about negative street behavior and cleanliness and how that affects both workers and customers of restaurants relying on outside dining [...] Our restaurants have a strong desire to provide a safe and welcoming outdoor dining experience, especially without the ability to open for indoor dining, and this is so critical to their ability to stay in business and keep staff employed." 

It's easy to sympathize with just about everyone in this scenario. The pandemic has caused an ever-increasing number of challenges for restaurant owners, who are doing whatever it takes to keep their doors open for another day, while the essential workers who prep to-go orders and serve outdoor customers are doing so at great risk to their own health and safety. But still: the optics of serving a $200-per-person tasting menu to customers sitting in plastic bubbles a few hundred yards from people who are struggling for basic human necessities...well, they're not great. 

"I think what really gets people going about the dome is that it’s a perfect symbol of the complete inadequacy of our social safety net: In a queer reversal, the dome is a shield against, not for, the ones who need sheltering the most," the Chronicle's restaurant critic Soleil Ho wrote. "An unhoused person’s tent is erected in a desire for opaqueness and privacy, a space of one’s own, whereas the fine dining dome invites the onlooker’s gaze as a bombastic spectacle [...] for the housed, being seen eating on the street or in a park is a premium experience, especially now." 

Last week, the city's Public Health Department paid Hashiri a surprise visit, and ordered them to remove the domes over concerns that they "may not allow for adequate air flow." According to current regulations, outdoor dining enclosures are required to be open on the sides; the soft structures each have two windows and a door that can be opened, but those features were deemed insufficient. 

Matsuura said that he has received hate mail about the domes and he has been accused of making discriminatory comments about the city's most desperate residents, so he believes that someone reported him to the city (though, perhaps the Health Department just saw some of the nationwide media coverage of Hashiri's sidewalk igloos). Regardless, he still says that the domes are there to keep his customers safe… from interacting with the people living on those same streets. "There are people who come by and spit, yell, stick their hands in people’s food, discharging fecal matter right by where people are trying to eat,” he said. “It’s really sad, and it’s really hard for us to operate around that.”

The criticism that Hashiri has faced is similar to what the organizers of a pop-up restaurant in Toronto encountered when they set up their own heated glass domes last year. The Dinner with a View experience, complete with a three-course gourmet meal prepped by a Top Chef winner, was assembled under the Gardiner Expressway, just over a mile from the site of a homeless encampment that had been cleared out by the city. 

Advocates for the unhoused said that the meal and its location just further emphasized the ever-increasing gap between the Haves and the Have Nots. More than 300 demonstrators showed up to protest outside the event, and the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) served a free 'counter-meal' that it called Dinner with a View of the Rich. 

"On the one hand you have homeless people whose tents were demolished and who were evicted with nowhere else to go," OCAP wrote. "On the other hand you have people with sufficient disposable income to splurge over $550 on a single meal and who’re facing the possibility of their luxurious dining spectacle being tainted [...] Do they deserve to be mocked for their obliviousness to the suffering around them? Absolutely." 

Back in San Francisco, Hashiri is not the only Mid-Market restaurant to express concern about the safety of its patrons, or about the city's ineffective attempts at addressing the social and economic conditions that have contributed to the homelessness crisis. Last month, a group of residents and businesses in the neighborhood sued the city for negligence, alleging that homeless encampments, criminal activity, and unsanitary conditions combined to make Mid-Market a dangerous area. 

"The City has created and perpetuated these conditions through its pattern and practice of tacitly treating Mid-Market as a ‘containment zone’ that bears the brunt of San Francisco’s homelessness issues, and its failure to take action to address these issues," the lawsuit said. Two of the restaurants that are among the plaintiffs, Montesacro Pinseria and Souvla, said that if the situation doesn't improve, they could be forced to move to a new neighborhood, or to close their doors for good. 

"We are deeply concerned that property owners have taken to suing the city to 'remove tents' without anywhere for [those experiencing homelessness] to go. Worse, these lawsuits would have the courts decide the fate of people who have no seat at the table where 'justice' is being served," Jennifer Friedenbach, the executive director of San Francisco's Coalition on Homelessness, told VICE.

"These situations can be resolved by working collaboratively with the unhoused person to address the issues, while pressing the city, state and federal government to ensure there are dignified housing options available. If the restaurant owner can afford to sue, they can afford to hire someone to advocate successfully for solutions." 

Laurie Thomas is also working on behalf of restaurants, sharing their concerns and working toward positive changes and respectful solutions for all involved. Last week, she was among the hospitality and small business leaders who sent a letter to Mayor London Breed, the President of the Board of Supervisors, and the co-chairs of the City's Economic Recovery Task Force. 

"We are writing today because we are gravely concerned about the condition of our streets. We are devastated to see so many unsheltered neighbors struggling each day in unfathomable and treacherous conditions," their letter read. "These conditions will prohibit businesses of all sizes from reopening. More companies will leave San Francisco for safer and cleaner places to operate [...] Additionally, with outdoor dining and shopping options being the primary avenues for businesses to survive, the intersection between the unfortunate conditions on our streets and this new heavy reliance on public spaces for commerce will result in disastrous outcomes." 

The letter also made a number of recommendations that "should be prioritized" by city officials, including additional housing options, making mental health and substance abuse resources available to those experiencing homelessness, and establishing a 24-hour crisis response team that can respond to "urgent mental health and/or drug induced episodes." 

Meanwhile at Hashiri, the DIY-ed, now open-sided domes are back out on the sidewalk. "Signed, sealed and delivered," the restaurant wrote on Facebook. "With small modifications we are back in business." 

via VICE US - Munchies VICE US - Munchies via Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network

[carolinechanson97838]

Controversy Continues Over SF Restaurant Serving $200 Meals in Private Domes

Last month, California governor Gavin Newsom announced the mandatory closure (or re-closure) of all indoor restaurant dining rooms throughout the state. After investigating its options, Michelin-starred sushi restaurant Hashiri announced that it had purchased three miniature geodesic domes so it could provide a "unique outdoor multi-course dining experience." At the time, the domes seemed like a novel means of providing increased privacy safety for diners during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

A few days ago, after a brief hiatus, Hashiri was allowed to start seating customers in its three outdoor geodesic domes again after the staff cut the plastic sides off to bring them into compliance with current public health requirements. Slicing several feet of soft PVC from the Garden Igloos seems to be a satisfactory resolution—at least for now—after two straight weeks of controversy that started when they were assembled on a San Francisco sidewalk.

Hashiri general manager Kenichiro Matsuura told the San Francisco Chronicle that he had previously attempted outdoor dining (pre-plastic bubbles) but it hadn't worked out, due to the restaurant's location in the Mid-Market section of the city. "We wanted to continue offering the fine-dining experience—and safety and peace,” Matsuura said. (The restaurant also offers a swanky to-go menu, including a $500 Ultimate Trifecta Bento box and a $160 takeaway Wagyu Sukiyaki kit, but it is best known for its five-course Kaiseki and Omakase tasting menu.) “Mint Plaza is a phenomenal space, it’s just sometimes the crowd is not too favorable,” he said. In an interview with ABC7, he again emphasized that "it's not the safest neighborhood." 

The entire Bay Area has an estimated 35,000 people who are unsheltered or experiencing homelessness and, at the beginning of the pandemic, there were more than 8,000 unhoused individuals in San Francisco alone. In mid-March, when the city issued its first stay-at-home order, homeless residents were encouraged to "find shelter and government agencies to provide it” but that was easier to type than it was to do. The Guardian reports that shelters stopped taking new residents due to concerns of overcrowding or inadequate social distancing, and more than 1,000 people put their names on a futile-sounding waitlist to get a bed. 

In April, the city's Board of Supervisors unanimously passed emergency legislation directing the city to secure more than 8,000 hotel rooms to accommodate all of the unhoused people in the city, but the order was denied by Mayor London Breed. It eventually acquired 2,733 hotel rooms for vulnerable individuals but, as of this writing, only 1,935 of them are actually occupied. As a result of the pair of public health crises that the city is enduring—the pandemic and widespread homelessness—the number of unhoused people has increased, as have the number of tents and other makeshift structures that comprise a homeless encampment near Hashiri.

"This is a difficult and upsetting issue," Laurie Thomas, the Executive Director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, told VICE in an email. "In San Francisco there are areas in the city where there are real concerns about negative street behavior and cleanliness and how that affects both workers and customers of restaurants relying on outside dining [...] Our restaurants have a strong desire to provide a safe and welcoming outdoor dining experience, especially without the ability to open for indoor dining, and this is so critical to their ability to stay in business and keep staff employed." 

It's easy to sympathize with just about everyone in this scenario. The pandemic has caused an ever-increasing number of challenges for restaurant owners, who are doing whatever it takes to keep their doors open for another day, while the essential workers who prep to-go orders and serve outdoor customers are doing so at great risk to their own health and safety. But still: the optics of serving a $200-per-person tasting menu to customers sitting in plastic bubbles a few hundred yards from people who are struggling for basic human necessities...well, they're not great. 

"I think what really gets people going about the dome is that it’s a perfect symbol of the complete inadequacy of our social safety net: In a queer reversal, the dome is a shield against, not for, the ones who need sheltering the most," the Chronicle's restaurant critic Soleil Ho wrote. "An unhoused person’s tent is erected in a desire for opaqueness and privacy, a space of one’s own, whereas the fine dining dome invites the onlooker’s gaze as a bombastic spectacle [...] for the housed, being seen eating on the street or in a park is a premium experience, especially now." 

Last week, the city's Public Health Department paid Hashiri a surprise visit, and ordered them to remove the domes over concerns that they "may not allow for adequate air flow." According to current regulations, outdoor dining enclosures are required to be open on the sides; the soft structures each have two windows and a door that can be opened, but those features were deemed insufficient. 

Matsuura said that he has received hate mail about the domes and he has been accused of making discriminatory comments about the city's most desperate residents, so he believes that someone reported him to the city (though, perhaps the Health Department just saw some of the nationwide media coverage of Hashiri's sidewalk igloos). Regardless, he still says that the domes are there to keep his customers safe… from interacting with the people living on those same streets. "There are people who come by and spit, yell, stick their hands in people’s food, discharging fecal matter right by where people are trying to eat,” he said. “It’s really sad, and it’s really hard for us to operate around that.”

The criticism that Hashiri has faced is similar to what the organizers of a pop-up restaurant in Toronto encountered when they set up their own heated glass domes last year. The Dinner with a View experience, complete with a three-course gourmet meal prepped by a Top Chef winner, was assembled under the Gardiner Expressway, just over a mile from the site of a homeless encampment that had been cleared out by the city. 

Advocates for the unhoused said that the meal and its location just further emphasized the ever-increasing gap between the Haves and the Have Nots. More than 300 demonstrators showed up to protest outside the event, and the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) served a free 'counter-meal' that it called Dinner with a View of the Rich. 

"On the one hand you have homeless people whose tents were demolished and who were evicted with nowhere else to go," OCAP wrote. "On the other hand you have people with sufficient disposable income to splurge over $550 on a single meal and who’re facing the possibility of their luxurious dining spectacle being tainted [...] Do they deserve to be mocked for their obliviousness to the suffering around them? Absolutely." 

Back in San Francisco, Hashiri is not the only Mid-Market restaurant to express concern about the safety of its patrons, or about the city's ineffective attempts at addressing the social and economic conditions that have contributed to the homelessness crisis. Last month, a group of residents and businesses in the neighborhood sued the city for negligence, alleging that homeless encampments, criminal activity, and unsanitary conditions combined to make Mid-Market a dangerous area. 

"The City has created and perpetuated these conditions through its pattern and practice of tacitly treating Mid-Market as a ‘containment zone’ that bears the brunt of San Francisco’s homelessness issues, and its failure to take action to address these issues," the lawsuit said. Two of the restaurants that are among the plaintiffs, Montesacro Pinseria and Souvla, said that if the situation doesn't improve, they could be forced to move to a new neighborhood, or to close their doors for good. 

"We are deeply concerned that property owners have taken to suing the city to 'remove tents' without anywhere for [those experiencing homelessness] to go. Worse, these lawsuits would have the courts decide the fate of people who have no seat at the table where 'justice' is being served," Jennifer Friedenbach, the executive director of San Francisco's Coalition on Homelessness, told VICE.

"These situations can be resolved by working collaboratively with the unhoused person to address the issues, while pressing the city, state and federal government to ensure there are dignified housing options available. If the restaurant owner can afford to sue, they can afford to hire someone to advocate successfully for solutions." 

Laurie Thomas is also working on behalf of restaurants, sharing their concerns and working toward positive changes and respectful solutions for all involved. Last week, she was among the hospitality and small business leaders who sent a letter to Mayor London Breed, the President of the Board of Supervisors, and the co-chairs of the City's Economic Recovery Task Force. 

"We are writing today because we are gravely concerned about the condition of our streets. We are devastated to see so many unsheltered neighbors struggling each day in unfathomable and treacherous conditions," their letter read. "These conditions will prohibit businesses of all sizes from reopening. More companies will leave San Francisco for safer and cleaner places to operate [...] Additionally, with outdoor dining and shopping options being the primary avenues for businesses to survive, the intersection between the unfortunate conditions on our streets and this new heavy reliance on public spaces for commerce will result in disastrous outcomes." 

The letter also made a number of recommendations that "should be prioritized" by city officials, including additional housing options, making mental health and substance abuse resources available to those experiencing homelessness, and establishing a 24-hour crisis response team that can respond to "urgent mental health and/or drug induced episodes." 

Meanwhile at Hashiri, the DIY-ed, now open-sided domes are back out on the sidewalk. "Signed, sealed and delivered," the restaurant wrote on Facebook. "With small modifications we are back in business." 

via VICE US - Munchies VICE US - Munchies via Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network

[marijanafwspickardttp89insu-blog]

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[jordancat]

Stacey Abrams SOTU Rebuttal

STACEY ABRAMS: Good evening my fellow Americans and happy Lunar New Year. I’m Stacey Abrams and I’m honored to join the conversation about the state of our union.

Growing up, my family went back and forth between lower middle class and working class, yet even when they came home weary and bone tired my parents found a way to show us all who we could be.

My librarian mother taught us to love learning. My father, a shipyard worker, put in overtime and extra shifts. And they made sure we volunteered to help others. Later, they both became United Methodist ministers, an expression of the faith that guides us.

These were our family values. Faith, service, education, and responsibility.

Now, we only had one car, so sometimes my dad had to hitchhike and walk long stretches during the 30 mile trip home from the shipyards. One rainy night, my mom got worried. We piled in the car and went out looking for him, and we eventually found my dad making his way along the road, soaked and shivering in his shirt sleeves.

When he got in the car, my mom asked if he had left his coat at work. He explained that he’d given it to a homeless man he’d met on the highway. When we asked why he’d given away his only jacket, my dad turned to us and said, “I knew when I left that man, he’d still be alone, but I could give him my coat, because I knew you were coming for me.”

Our power and strength as Americans lives in our hard work and our belief in more. My family understood firsthand that while success is not guaranteed, we live in a nation where opportunity is possible.

But we do not succeed alone.

In these United States, when times are tough, we can persevere because our friends and neighbors will come for us. Our first responders will come for us. It is this mantra, this uncommon grace of community that has driven me to become an attorney, a small-business owner, a writer, and most recently the Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia.

My reason for running was simple. I love our country and its promise of opportunity for all. And I stand here tonight because I hold fast to my father’s credo.

Together, we are coming for America. For a better America.

Just a few weeks ago, I joined volunteers to distribute meals to furloughed federal workers. They waited in line for a box of food and a sliver of hope since they hadn’t received paychecks in weeks.

Making livelihoods of our federal workers a pawn for political games is a disgrace. The shutdown was a stunt, engineered by the president of the United States, one that defied every tenant of fairness and abandoned not just our people, but our values.

For seven years, I led the Democratic Party in the Georgia House of Representatives. I didn’t always agree with the Republican speaker or governor, but I understood that our constituents didn’t care about our political parties.

They cared about their lives.

So when we had to negotiate criminal justice reform or transportation or foster care improvements, the leaders of our state didn’t shut down. We came together and we kept our word.

It should be no different in our nation’s capital. We may come from different sides of the political aisle, but our joint commitment to the ideals of this nation cannot be negotiable. Our most urgent work is to realize Americans’ dreams of today and tomorrow, to carve a path to independence and prosperity that can last a lifetime.

Children deserve an excellent education from cradle to  career. We owe them safe schools and the highest standards, regardless of ZIP code.

Yet this White House responds timidly, while first graders practice active shooter drills and the price of higher education grows ever steeper. From now on, our leaders must be willing to tackle gun safety measures and face the crippling effect of educational loans. To support educators and invest what is necessary to unleash the power of America’s greatest minds.

In Georgia and around the country, people are striving for a middle class where a salary truly equals economic security. But instead, families’ hopes are being crushed by Republican leadership that ignores real life or just doesn’t understand it.

Under the current administration, far too many hard-working Americans are falling behind, living paycheck to paycheck, most without labor unions to protect them from even worse harm.

The Republican tax bill rigged the system against working people. Rather than bringing back jobs, plants are closing, layoffs are looming, and wages struggle to keep pace with the actual cost of living.

We owe more to the millions of everyday folks who keep our economy running, like truck drivers forced to buy their own rigs, farmers caught in a trade war, small business owners in search of capital and domestic workers serving without labor protections.

Women and men who could thrive if only they had the support and freedom to do so.

We know bipartisanship could craft a 21st century immigration plan, but this administration chooses to cage children and tear families apart.

Compassionate treatment at the border is not the same as open borders. President Reagan understood this. President Obama understood this. Americans understand this and the Democrats stand ready to effectively secure our ports and borders.

But we must all embrace that from agriculture to health care to entrepreneurship, America is made stronger by the presence of immigrants, not walls.

And rather than suing to dismantle the affordable care act as Republican attorneys general have, our leaders must protect the progress we’ve made and commit to expanding health care and lowering cost for everyone.

My father has battled prostate cancer for years. To help cover the cost, I found myself sinking deeper into debt, because while you can defer some payments, you can’t defer cancer treatment.

In this great nation, Americans are skipping blood pressurepills, forced to choose between buying medicine or paying rent.

Maternal mortality rates show that mothers, especially black mothers, risk death to give birth and in 14 states, including my home state, where a majority want it, our leaders refuse to expand Medicaid, which could save rural hospitals, save economies, and save lives.

We can do so much more, take action on climate change, defend individual liberties with fair-minded judges. But none of these ambitions are possible without the bedrock guarantee of our right to vote.

Let’s be clear. Voter suppression is real. From making it harder to register and stay on the rolls, to moving and closing polling places to rejecting lawful ballots, we can no longer ignore these threats to democracy.

While I acknowledge the results of the 2018 election here in Georgia, I did not and we cannot accept efforts to undermine our right to vote. That’s why I started a nonpartisan organization called Fair Fight to advocate for voting rights. This is the next battle for our democracy, one where all eligible citizens can have their say about the vision we want for our country.

We must reject the cynicism that says allowing every eligible vote to be cast and counted is a power grab. Americans understand that these are the values that our brave men and women in uniform and our veterans risk their lives to defend.

The foundation of our moral leadership around the globe is free and fair elections, where voters pick their leaders, not where politicians pick their voters.

In this time of division and crisis, we must come together and stand for and with one another. America has stumbled time and again on its quest towards justice and equality. But with each generation, we have revisited our fundamental truths, and where we falter, we make amends.

We fought Jim Crow with the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Yet we continue to confront racism from our past and in our present, which is why we must hold everyone from the highest offices to our own families accountable for racist words and deeds and call racism what it is, wrong.

America achieved a measure of reproductive justice in Roe v. Wade, but we must never forget, it is immoral to allow politicians to harm women and families, to advance a political agenda. We affirmed marriage equality, and yet the LGBTQ community remains under attack.

So even as I am very disappointed by the president’s approach to our problems, I still don’t want him to fail. But we need him to tell the truth and to respect his duties and respect the extraordinary diversity that defines America. Our progress has always been found in the refuge, in the basic instinct of the American experiment, to do right by our people.

And with a renewed commitment to social and economic justice, we will create a stronger America together.

Because America wins by fighting for our shared values against all enemies, foreign and domestic. That is who we are, and when we do so, never wavering, the state of our union will always be strong.

Thank you and may God bless the United States of America.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/05/us/politics/stacey-abrams-speech.html