#i know its longer but its also not going to be mistaken for a racial slur

[milf-harrington]

being australian on tumblr means having mini alarm bells going off multiple times a week bc someone used "a/b/o" as shorthand for omegaverse

[ladyloveandjustice]

The Westing Game Chapter 21

The Fourth Bomb

In a wacky misunderstanding, Theo thinks Alice is the bomber and tries to blackmail her with the info so he can borrow her bike (Yes, really. Go big or go home is Theo’s motto) but of course Alice thinks he means he knows ANGELA is the bomber.

And in what might be the most touching moment in the book so far, Alice responds to this by setting off a bomb and writing a thing indicating that she is the bomber in order to throw all suspicion off Angela. She eve loses her trademark braid in the process.

It really is incredibly sweet. Alice is very caustic toward her sister, but this isn’t the first time she’s indicated she’s ride-or-die when it comes down to it (she got rid of the evidence for Angela and warned her not to say anything to the lawyer), and it’s also a very lovely response to Angela’s early sacrifice- where she took the bomb she made to her face rather than have it explode to her sisters. But while Angela’s sacrifice was spur-of-the-moment motivated by guilt and panic as well as love (not that it makes it less meaningful), Alice’s is one she planned out and considered. She had time to consider the consequences. She knew that Angela willingly put herself in this position. But she still chose to take the fall anyway, and set off a bomb after seeing what the same thing did to her sister’s face.

She already feels meaningless to her family in general, and maybe on the surface she feels her standing (with her mother in particular) can’t get any lower. “I’m already the troublemaker, I’m already the unwanted one, I have nothing to lose, but Angela would lose everything” was how she convinced herself. (in addition to being aware as a minor she wouldn’t be punished as harshly, smart girl that she is).

But it’s also clear that Alice DOES long for her mother’s love and approval, and I think she also had to contend with a deep fear that after this action, there’d be no going back for them, that she’d doomed herself to be the ‘bad one’ forever. Yet she still did it.

And the loss of her braid is of course, incredibly significant. Angela said earlier that the braid is her “crutch”- she bases a lot of her personality around it. It was her excuse to spend time with her mother and now her excuse to spend time with Flora, it’s the trademark thing people can pull on and she can then she gets excuse to kick them and get in fights and form connections, it’s how she gets attention and relationships for herself without exposing her own vulnerability. But she sacrificed what little that makes her stand out, what little social currency she has to protect the same sister who she envies for being in the spotlight- because that bond is more important than her jealousy and her need for attention. Just like her sister sacrificed one of the things that bring her adulation- her looks- to protect her. Love is more important than those petty things.

Alice is forced to talk to Judge Ford afterwards and, sharp as ever, Ford guesses that she’s protecting Angela.  This quote especially gets me:

The judge was astounded (…). Angela could not be the bomber, that sweet, pretty thing. Thing? Is that how she regarded the young woman, as a thing? And what had she ever said to her except “I hear you’re getting married, Angela” or “You’re so pretty, Angela”. Had anyone ever asked about her ideas, her hopes, her plans? If I had been treated like that, I’d have used dynamite, not fireworks; no, I would have just walked and kept on going. But Angela was different.

There’s a fascinating theme in this book about being marginalized, and the different ways these marginalized people both are pitted against each other and can overlook even each other while also finding connections and comradery with each other… I think I’ll have to wait until the end to fully get my thesis on the whole thing together, but I really find it interesting and appreciate it. Ford’s struggles as a black woman, Alice being overlooked for not performing femininity (thus envious of Angela despite knowing how shitty she has it), Angela being boxed because everyone wants to mold her as the perfect feminine ideal (thus feeling envious of Alice despite knowing how shitty she has it), Sun feeling out of place as a Chinese immigrant, Hoo knowing he’s looked down upon as a Chinese-American (yet still not considering the pain of his own wife), Chris struggling as a disabled kid, many people who are financially disadvantaged and/or feeling limited to the role of caretaker, Sydelle feeling overlooked in general and appropriating others’ struggles in her bizarre quest to get noticed- it’s all very interesting and pretty deftly handled, especially considering the time period the book was written in. 

And our antagonist is quintessential exploitative Rich White Man (obsessed with American Exceptionalism to boot), though it’s casually mentioned he’s the son of immigrants, an identity he seems to have actively shed, going so far as to change his name (if that’s why he changed it), so there’s even complexity there.

But the thing with Ford here is an interesting demonstration of that. Despite being smart and socially aware and having an even more fraught history of being dismissed and belittled, she didn’t give much thought to Angela and subconsciously went along with the same objectification everyone else does, putting her on a pedestal. (There’s a lot to be said about how Angela’s veneration and perceived “purity” by the others might interact with her whiteness, and how Ford realizing she bought into that narrative subconsciously might feel to her as a black woman, but I’m not really the person to discuss that. Anyway!)

The other important development here is that Alice also finally confesses that she saw Westing the night of his murder but mentions that the Westing she saw didn’t look dead, but asleep and like a wax dummy. This sets off alarm bells for both me and Ford.

So, I think its safe to say my earlier theory Sam Westing isn’t dead is probably true. What of the corpse that was present at the will-reading? I think people would have noticed it was a wax dummy, but a disguised corpse from his coroner friend still makes some sense. So where is Westing now? Considering Barney Northup doesn’t exist, could he be Barney?

But speaking of Westing, if we need further confirmation the man is the scum of the earth, he’s a union buster and he fired Sandy for trying to organize one in the paper plant.

We also learn Ford’s backstory with Westing at last: Her parents were household staff at Westing’s mansion and she grew up there as a result. She played chess with Westing frequently as a child, but not only would he brag and take pride in beating a goddamn pre-teen, he mocked her with racialized insults. She never won, but Westing ended up financing her education (that’s the ‘debt’ she owes him). She believes he did this to get a judge he could control, but has refused to play along, removing herself from any case involving him.

I can’t help but think Westing would have known Ford wouldn’t play ball, though. So he may have had another motive for sending her to school. It could be something even more sinister. Or… in his own twisted way, did he actually like her? He obviously realized she was incredibly intelligent during those matches, even if he sadistically enjoyed mocking her, enough to know she’d do well with an education. Did he play chess with her so much not just because he enjoyed tormenting her, but enjoyed her as a person as well? It obviously does not excuse what a racist sadistic shithead he is, and I’m not saying he’s secretly nice- just that it could be he was incapable of relating to anyone in a healthy way. I actually think sending Ford to school could have just been an extension of his desire to torment her AND the only way he knew that would guarantee he remained important in her life. He didn’t ever plan to cash in on her debt, but knew it would kill her just to BE in his debt, and got pleasure out of that alone. He probably just thought it was funny and it was also a way to guarantee he’d live in her head rent free- and because deep down he knew she was a cool kid, he also wanted that. He didn’t want her to forget him, maybe, which is sick! But much more interesting than simply “he wanted a judge he could manipulate”.

But it’s also worth noting this is Ford’s (perhaps) final chance to win against Westing in the ultimate chess match. And I can’t help but think he is well aware how smart she is, so he invited her here specifically because he knew she could be his undoing, the one who unravels everything. So- if we go with the ‘Westing is seeking atonement’ theory- did he invite her to give her that satisfaction of finally beating him, like he always knew deep down she could? Because he WANTS to be beaten, to be found out and knows she deserves to be the one after all the hell he put her through? Or in the ‘Westing is still a complete monster’ theory- is his intention to torment her one last time, to show her she can’t win against him? (if it is, I think he may well find he’s gravely mistaken there).

I don’t think Westing can truly achieve “redemption” with this “game”, nor am I one to easily believe the Ultimate Shitty Capitalist can change easily, but if one thing can shake someone’s worldview and make them reevaluate how they live their life, the death of their child WOULD be a big one. So “this will actually be Westing’s weird twisted attempt at atonement” is a possibility I just can’t stop thinking about. If it is, it’s kind of funny and incredible he can’t stop being manipulative and traumatizing even when he decides he wants to do something good.

On top of all that, Angela and Sydelle get more clues and finally figure out the ‘America the Beautiful’ connection. God, so much to chew on this chapter! I really fear for these last nine chapters. I might end up writing a novel longer than the actual novel analyzing and recapping them if I’m not careful. But that’s how you know it’s a compelling story, so hats off to Ellen Raskin!

[jamr0ck83]

If Nobody is Racist, Then Who Exactly is Keeping Systemic Racism Going?

Everybody seems quick to insist that they’re not the ones who are racist.  So, then who is?  If it’s only the people you say, then why are we like this as a country?

Recently, someone with which I somewhat briefly attended grad school for education (And no, I don’t want to talk about what happened with that whole endeavor) posted the following image to their Facebook profile.

On its face, it seems like a completely reasonable and acceptable statement, and as such, it was generating some likes.  At the time I first saw it, I think there were 6.  But before I, too, submitted my approval of this image, I thought a little more about it, and its implications.  And I realized that I didn’t really agree with it.  I knew the person who posted it had no ill intentions, and I think they even found the image on the profile of another POC.  But the more I reread the sign featured, the more I was sure that it was not a true statement.  I knew that my stance was not going to garner nearly as many likes or other accolades as if I had posted a phrase like “Black Lives Matter”, which at this point, it seems like all reasonable people are able to agree that they do (or at least it’s the obvious appropriate thing to say in this moment).  I knew I might receive some pushback or criticism, and while that did admittedly make me nervous, I knew that I needed to speak up in this way and in this moment.  And I was willing to deal with whatever consequences came my way.  I decided it was that important for me to make a case for a diverging opinion.  So, I typed out the reply below and posted it.

I want to agree with this, but I'm not sure if I do. Please hear me out. It is entirely possible to be a Trump supporter and not be a person who has ever uttered a racial epithet or been otherwise explicitly or overtly racist. However, I do believe that there are degrees of racism, and if you're someone who has responded that "all lives matter" or "blue lives matter" when another person asserts that black lives matter, I would argue that you are on the spectrum of holding onto or entertaining some form of racist ideology. If you watched the video of George Floyd having his life choked out of him and then watched the footage of riots from that first night in Minneapolis and thought "It's a shame that guy died, but what they're doing now is uncalled for", this might indicate that you prioritize law and order (no matter how unjustly they are being enforced) over the life of a man whose only transgression was that he was black, and that, too, places you on that spectrum of racism. Racism isn't always waving a confederate flag and yelling at POCs to go back to where they came from. Sometimes, it's knowing that the politician you support will turn a blind eye to or even praise people who march around with tiki torches yelling, "Jews will not replace us" and wanting to vote for him anyway. Sometimes, it's hearing black people beg to have full access to the citizenship rights that are due them but deciding it's more important for you to vote for the guy who advocates for you to keep your semiautomatic rifle. If you are deciding that your wants (not needs) have priority over the humanity of POCs, then I would argue that you are on the spectrum of racism. And that demands some self-reflection. Complicity is part of what makes racism so destructive. What's the point of knowing better if you refuse to hold others accountable for doing better?

And then I waited.  I waited for blowback.  I waited for pushback.  I waited for agreement.  I waited for literally anything anybody might feel compelled to say.  But the only feedback I received was a single “like” whereas the post itself had garnered six additional since the posting of my comment.  So, people obviously disagreed with my stance but couldn’t bring themselves to make that known in any kind of direct fashion.  And frankly, that concerns me.  A great deal, in fact.  And there are a couple of reasons why.

Firstly, and this is something of which I was starting to become more aware even months before the death of George Floyd and these subsequent protests, white people are very quick to assert that they, themselves, are not racist.  They are also quick to assert that most people who look like them are not racist.  According to them, hardly anybody is really, truly racist.  But if that’s actually true, then why is this country such an absolute mess, and why have we been that way for centuries?  It’s as if the term “racist” is being reserved for truly egregious and over-the-top cases.  And everything else is just the way people are.  White people seem to have a very specific and narrow idea of what racism looks and sounds like, and that allows them to never truly have to consider whether they, themselves, might be racist.  Or if their family members are racist.  Or if the politicians they actively support are racist.  Under their definition of that word, it barely applies to anyone. And as a black woman who considers herself knowledgeable of both history and current affairs, I will confidently say that this is wrong.  

I have had people who cloak themselves under the banner of liberalism say some things to me that would make me raise an eyebrow if I knew at all how to move that particular facial muscle. And no, it’s not the times when the racial epithets and slurs are used that I feel compelled to do this.  It’s actually the times when I’ve made some sort of assertion about the impact of oppression on the lives of black people today, and I am met with sentiments such as “It’s not fair that we keep getting blamed for everything” or “You weren’t a slave, so the legacy of that institution doesn’t create any modern-day problems for you” or “Slavery ended over a hundred years ago, so why do you keep wanting to bring it up? Why can’t we all just move on?  Life is hard enough”. (That last phrase is a direct quote from a white woman who replied to something I said on Instagram regarding the role that white women have historically played in the role of oppressing black bodies.  She objected to my assertion that this is an issue that is rarely discussed, because dwelling on it would cause white women to feel discomfort, and that is in direct opposition to this silent societal code we all seem to follow that says that we must do whatever we can to prevent white women from feeling uncomfortable.  Ironically, she was shutting my argument down, because it made her uncomfortable.) Also, I’ve been told that the ways in which I have experienced oppression throughout my life just aren’t true, that I must be mistaken and that I am making something be all about race when it’s not about race at all.  And finally, I’ve been told the oldie but goodie “I don’t see color; I just see people”.

To the people that are brave enough to read this right now, I will submit to you that these statements and sentiments all reek of racism.  Every single one of them.  And every single person who uttered these phrases would have gone to the grave denying that they could be considered racist.  And sorry, people who made these statements, but this assertion by you would be wholly incorrect.  By so narrowly defining what racism is, we have given many people permission to absolve themselves from any responsibility for how it continues to thrive in American society. Nobody needs to look inward; nobody has to come to terms with any mindsets they might harbor that are truly problematic. And if nobody is willing to deal with anything or even acknowledge it, how are we going to change anything?  If we can’t even recognize and talk about what racism is, how are we going to put an end to it?  And the short answer is, we’re not.

My second concern is that, while it seemed like almost no one who saw my comment agreed with it, no one felt compelled to say anything, give any sort of reason for WHY they disagreed with it.  Maybe it’s because I’m black that they felt like they should just let me get on my soapbox and say what I needed to say, and that would be their form of allyship (even though at the end of the day, them doing this was just a dismissal of everything I said so they could go on with their lives, which kind of flies in the face of being an ally).  When these protests first started, I think many black people were reasonably skeptical about the degree to which we could rely on non-black allyship for the duration of however long we needed it.  We wondered if the outrage and fervor exhibited was sustainable.  And we wondered if white allies, specifically, were truly willing to endure discomfort if it would eventually lead to the advancement of our movement.  And I hate to say it, but I feel like the instance of this post about racism and who it applies to gave me substantial reason to believe that they are not.  The fact that there are people aligning themselves publicly to the BLM movement who are already seemingly unwilling to settle in their discomfort in order to be a more effective agent of change greatly concerns me.  It indicates to me that for some people (not all, but some) a lot of what’s going on right now is an exercise for them in anti-racism theater.  To put it simply and bluntly, they are not “in it to win it”, because “winning it” requires that they sacrifice more comfort than they are ready to do.  And while that’s certainly not everybody who calls themselves an ally, I worry that it represents a substantial number of people who we are currently relying on as allies who really aren’t.  And when they start drifting away from the protests and the posting of hashtags because this movement is no longer the fun, new thing we’re all doing, the people who remain are going to have to pick up the slack and work even harder to account for their absence.

To be clear, I’m not trying to knock anyone who wants to be an ally or make it seem like I want to nitpick at everyone and that there isn’t anything that any non-black ally can do that would truly please me.  If that’s what you are thinking now as you read this, I would implore you to reconsider. Because that perspective is one that stems directly from the notion that we are trying to hurt people’s feelings. It stems from this idea that it is our responsibility to make our white allies feel good about what they are doing right now so that they will continue to feel encouraged, or else they will walk away.  But this movement is not about pacifying white people’ feelings, whether they consider themselves to be allies or not.  We are not here to make you comfortable.  We are here to seek the justice that we are due.  We are here to seek the rights of citizenship that we have been routinely denied.  We are here to put an end to systemic racism.  Catering to allies’ feelings is nowhere on that list.  It’s not even a close fourth.  We need people to put their own individual feelings aside (discomfort, guilt, or whatever else) and help do what needs to be done.

And I realize this might be a harsh reality check, I do, because I know that many black Americans have spent a significant portion of their lives doing whatever they could to make white people comfortable.  During slavery, we performed their backbreaking hard labor so they wouldn’t have to but could still reap the financial benefits.  In modern times, many of us deliberately hold back a lot of ourselves in white people’s presence, because it’s always been an expectation that successful black people who have properly assimilated in the larger American society need to make sure that nothing we do resembles anything that might make them remember that we are not the same color.  For many black women, this means stifling their voices and hiding their frustrations, because nobody wants to deal with an angry black woman.  For many black men, this might mean being keenly and constantly aware of their physical stature and proximity to other people, because they don’t want anyone to find them intimidating in any way.  I think white people take these acts for granted because we’ve always done them, but they are not “just the way we are” or “just the way we like to be”.  They are a series of survival skills that we have been forced to adhere to, because to refrain from doing so would allow others to perceive as people they’d rather not deal with, if possible.  That means, we wouldn’t be the ones who get into the good school or get the good job or even get to keep our lives.

I have been deemed a quiet person my entire life, and while some of that is due to my genuine introverted nature, the majority is supplemented by the fact that, in most situations, if I am given the choice between being the quiet and unassuming black girl who nobody really has a problem with or the more vocal and passionate black woman that asserts herself but then has to deal with the consequences of nobody really wanting to be around her, I choose the former.  And I started choosing it at a very young age; I was definitely still in elementary school.  It starts that early.  Because we know that early.  We know that this country was not designed with us in mind unless it was to depend on our labor or our ability to entertain.  We know that the system is literally rigged against us in such ways that, if we were to inform white people of all those facets of oppression, they would accuse us of being paranoid.  Actually, that is precisely what happens when we try to tell people about our experiences of being black in America.  There are a lot of people out there who are masterful at gaslighting and being utterly dismissive of our struggles.  And that is a response that is literally for the sole purpose of driving the other person to the point of insanity.  So, for the most part, we stopped telling you things, because you weren’t really listening, anyway.  And we realized that, if we were going to make it in this country, then we really did have to work twice as hard, be twice as amiable in demeanor, and twice as resilient. Was that fair, for that to be put on us? Of course not.  But we shouldered that burden.  Because what was the alternative?  So, we did it, and we’ve done it fairly quietly for a very long time.

But we’re tired.  And we’re angry.  Because no matter what we do, people keep killing us for little to no reason and then justify it to say that we must have done something to deserve it. “Well, you should’ve known that wearing a hoodie makes you look threatening.”  “A toy gun could look a lot like a real gun, so that’s an honest mistake on the officer’s part.” “Oh, wait.  You were minding your own business sitting in your apartment when somebody shot you?  Well, were you really living beyond reproach and therefore entitled to keep your life? You sure you’ve never done anything wrong? Don’t you smoke weed sometimes?”  These are the ways people have justified our deaths.  And I would argue that all those statements and sentiments are couched in racism.  All of them. None of it is okay, and it all needs to end.  And we need everyone we can get to commit to joining us in this fight.  But if you’re really going to sit there and maintain the party line that racists are really few in number and that you, the non-black ally, don’t need to consider the ways in which you might harbor some racist ideology, then you’re not ready to be an ally.  And you can’t help us.  And you won’t help us.  Because as soon as things get a little less trendy or a little more uncomfortable, you will prioritize that over our humanity.  And that, in itself, is pretty damn racist.

[maybeyoumissthisf-kingpost]

Feminism and gender equality: Why does it suck?

First of all, this article is for Feminists, and is not contraindicated for women who are drawn into the Feminism movement without understanding the political tricks of the wire-pullers behind. I respect every woman. They are half of this world. I bet you'll agree with me on one thing: Women have always been honored for their direct and indirect contributions to human civilization. Because of that, I feel I have a responsibility to protect them from the malicious conspiracy of the Feminism movement.

In Vietnam, the liars call Feminism Feminism. But what RIGHTS? Where is the RIGHT? Which word in “Feminism” has RIGHT in it?

I call Feminism the Supreme Feminism

The press, as well as the simps with their pussy on their heads, praised this toxic choleraism, making the sisters think that this was a movement to fight for equal rights for women. I say,

My body is like a drop of rain. Seeds go to the castle, seeds go to the field to plow

Even if the raindrops don't have the same starting point, how can there be equality in this world? Can anyone try to name an equal country for me? There is no right. The leftists always do not draw two words EQUALITY to attract losers in society. Gender equality, income equality, racial equality, class equality? An all-too-familiar scenario for shepherding stupid sheep.

Want to know toxic feminism? Ask the Feminists!

Going back to the Mao or Bolshevik era in the mid-twentieth century, also with the scenario of class struggle for equal rights, a series of bourgeoisie were denounced, executed and executed [1][2]. Today, gender equality has the same color. There will be a day when the men - the object of attack by the struggle group - will fade away like the bourgeois in the revolutionary era. Of course, similar massacres are hard to come by in the modern world, but it will be done more delicately, instilling slowly and killing you like a Poison Mushroom. Remember, there is NEVER a struggle for equality that stops at the balance of interests, but it is always directed towards the exclusion and elimination of that object from society. If you think I'm taking it too seriously, you can check with the hashtag #KillAllMen on social media to see if it's terror enough. Too obvious for the toxicity of the modern feminist movement!

Looking back at Feminist's harsh words to men, plus the cheers of the left-wing media, do you see the danger? They inject young girls with the image of men as scum – lustful, slutty, wretched, etc. ALL MEN ARE WRONG is the mindset you can easily see in young girls these days. .

I know many female friends who have suffered a lot of hurt, even humiliation when going through toxic relationships with some assholes. I'm not defending those fuckboys. But women, the gender that is dominated by negative emotions [3][4][5] , after the breakup of a love affair is often easily lured into movements that boycott men with extreme arguments such as :

1. Women suffer many disadvantages when getting married and having children. Men do not have pain in childbirth, so they never appreciate this sacrifice of women.

2. All men are rapists [6] .

3. Women in the past could not study, could not participate in elections, so they always lost compared to men; Moreover, women are bound by many strict dogmas, marriage must be completely dependent on their husbands.

However, NO ONE told them:

1. The man carries the national responsibility on his shoulders. He could die, be stabbed by swords, shot by bullets, burned alive, dismembered, etc. on the battlefield to protect women and their children at home.

2. Even if two people have a completely voluntary relationship, if the girl accuses the boy of raping, he will still have to go to prison to schedule a schedule [7] . On the other hand, if a man alleges that he was raped by a woman, guess what percentage of him will win the case?

3. A man is by default the one who provides and protects his family for the rest of his life, and at the same time is the one who bears all the responsibilities – that is an inescapable destiny. He will be despised by people and despised by society if he cannot afford to take care of his wife and children. More than 150 years ago, if the wife committed a crime, it was the husband who would be punished or imprisoned under Coverture laws. Also in the old society, women can't vote, and men... can't vote anyway?! In feudal times, was the potato gourd? Kings follow the tradition of passing from father to son, but there is no election. Only in Western society do women have the right to vote, but under Coverture law, the husband will be the representative of the will of both.

No school, school, or newspaper tells today's boys and girls about these things. And young people are easily attracted by the new radical movements, resulting in society spawning the following groups:

The conspiracy behind the cover of gender equality: Breaking the gender line

The interests of men and women are inherently balanced, only when Feminism movements arose, that balance gradually tilted to one side. Worth mentioning, this bias is NOT beneficial to women, but only to benefit the policies and voting of the left. By taking advantage of the image of the LGBT community, Feminists argue that there is no difference between men and women, thereby breaking down gender boundaries. What is the result? It's the FEMALE, I'm not mistaken, the WOMEN are the recipients.

When it goes beyond the limits of the laws of nature, breaking the gender line has dire consequences for women.

Typically, Fallon Fox, a male MMA fighter (transgender) allowed to compete in the women's category, caused female boxer Tamikka Brents to break her skull and brain injury in just the first round. Another example is Mary Gregory, a transgender man who broke the record of four female weightlifters in a single day [8] .

So, does this movement really bring equality to women, or does it only increase social injustice? Of course, the madness of these guys won't stop, just think that one day when the genders are no longer distinguished, men will be able to enter the women's toilets!? Oh what a disaster!

Men and women are inherently different

Back in the beginning of the world, Eve was born from the body of Adam. She was not born from the bones of Adam's head so that she would rule over Adam; nor was she born from the bones of Adam's feet to be trampled upon by Adam; that she borne from Adam's rib that the two might be equal, under Adam's arm that she might be sheltered, near Adam's heart that she might be loved.

Both men and women are born different, taking on different roles in life. There are areas for men to control, and there are areas for women to control. Although there are many studies that have shown differences in brain thinking in both sexes, Feminists still try to deny this difference. Again, this distinction is a FACT (truth). Therefore, to deny this difference is to bend the truth.

Correct. Bend the truth is what Feminist is doing.1. Feminist: “Women must be treated like men”

There's a saying that goes, "Women can do anything a man can." However, history has always shown the opposite. Women rarely choose to confront, take responsibility for key decisions. This is easy to see that even in family relationships, the wife always gives her husband the right to decide when there is an important issue. To emphasize, this behavior is NOT BAD at all. Because it is the NATIONAL, the divinity of a woman.

I am not saying that men or women are better, but since ancient times, men have been identified as the ones who take the lead. He must be RESPONSIBLE and stand to solve his own and the woman's problems.

Therefore, women need to be treated like EVERYONE, not LIKE MAN. Again, I respect every woman. But if you want to win the respect of society, you must learn to be responsible… like a man.

2. Feminist: “Women must have the same salary as men”

In fact, it is not men who are paid more, but women who always choose lower paying jobs [9] . However, how to choose a job, it is completely the freedom of each person. Feminists want to force girls to work against their wishes, it can be said that it is an unethical behavior.

3. Feminist: “Women should be allowed to do men's jobs”

Everyone is given equal opportunities, but each gender has qualities that make us superior to the other half in some areas. For men, it's physical health, hard work is naturally suitable for men. For women, it is the ability to care, so women dominate the nursing field. Such division of labor is to ensure the highest economic efficiency for society. So, women don't need to do the work of men, they just need to do the work that they feel LIKE and DO GOOD.

4. Feminist: “Women must be treated by law in the same way as men”

The law is now “favoring” women, that is the reality, due to pressures from far-left movements. Specifically, we have women's rights, children's rights, but not men's rights. Even in the US, when it comes to legal protection, men even lose to dogs and cats. That is the imbalance caused by the Feminist and the leftists.

There is a funny story like this: “Oranges look both beautiful and delicious, so they are often used as juice; and the bitter melon is both bitter and rough, so no one has ever forced it to drink. Then one day the bitter melons rebelled to overthrow Orangeism. Proponents of bitter gourd believe that oranges can make juice, so can bitter melons. As a result, after years of struggle, the government passed the Plant Equality law, according to which anyone who drinks orange juice but does not drink bitter gourd juice will be jailed.”

Sounds absurd right? In short, men and women are inherently different. Both sexes are born to DO BETTER what the other cannot be in charge of. Orange has its own application, so does bitter melon. We cannot use others to measure ourselves. Doing so only shows that you are lowering your self-worth.

If you're not equal, don't be equal

It is ironic that Feminists are always anti-men, but covet their values. Value is something that takes effort to build, but cannot be asked to be recognized or given by others. To me, the value of a person lies in their usefulness. So be useful to family, friends and society; study and work kindly; serve and love the community. Don't compare yourself to others. Also, don't put others down, because it doesn't raise your self-worth. Because only what you do shows who you are in this world.

All credit goes to trantuansang.com.

[furederiko]

Sheeesh!!! It's happening again. All these huge news came out just a day after I posted the last Random-News-Digest. I could've included them in that post instead!!! Personal ranting aside, let's get right through the news then... PS: Yeah, this one arrives a little early than usual, because I have to go off the grid for a while. At least until I return from embarking another exploration to the far off galaxy this week... ;D

Disney Live Action

Guy Ritchie is doing the live action adaptation for "Aladdin"? I'm sure you've already heard about that. The movie is going to be an action musical with Middle Eastern leads who have natural talents in singing and dancing? You've heard this before early last month? Well, it's a first for me, but of course... hell yes! That's GREAT news. But did you know which actor Ritchie is currently approaching to play the magical Genie? The answer is... much to everyone's surprise: Will Smith!

Okay, this casting? I'm not too sure about. The last time we had an African-American as a geenie was Shaquille O'Neal in "Kazaam", and that was... uhm, how do I put it? ODD? Not saying I don't like the idea, or that Smith's a bad actor, nor that I'm being racist or anything. I guess I just can't see the "Fresh Prince of Bel Air" in this role. And if we're indeed going about race, why couldn't we get another Middle Eastern actor, or at least an Indian for the job? Someone who's more 'racially appropriate'. Of course Smith's appeal is understandable. He's an actual singer so he'll nail the musical part nicely, a natural Oscar-darling for dramatic moments, and has comedic chops that might rival the late Robin Williams. Even if I feel Williams is pretty much irreplacable in this role.

The problem with Smith however, is that he has turned down Tim Burton's "Dumbo" before. That was due to scheduling issue with "Bad Boys 3". That Michael Bay movie had just lost its director, thus putting it on an uncertain delay, yet Smith hasn't walked back to "Dumbo". Thus suggesting that he's probably just not 'keen on' the project. If that's any indication, could we even expect Smith to take a higher coveted role like the Genie instead? Many seems to doubt it. Beside, the current situation is, he's just in "early talks" for this role, and we know that in Hollywood, that means 'nothing is yet set in stone'. Or legal papers, if you prefer to be more modernly accurate. LOL.

If I have a voice in this movie's production, I say just let Genie become a fully CG character. You know, like those household members in "Beauty and the Beast"? Thus they can get practically anyone who's NOT Will Smith to voice the role. Someone who has strong comedic timing, and is equally masterful at singing. Hmmm... why am I suddenly reminded of Seth McFarlane? Perhaps, because he was a standout in Illumination's "Sing!" last year? He can even be a prolific Broadway actor. What about Jamie Fox, Hugh Jackman, Nathan Lane, or... LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA? I think those names are much better choices than Smith. Here's a completely random suggestion though: Timothy Omundson, or Ben Presley from "Galavant"!!! They live in UK, have worked with Alan Menken before, for a Disney's ABC series, and CAN totally sing. Anyway, we can expect confirmation to this pretty soon, because apparently the casting call explicitly stated that: "Rehearsals begin April 2017. Shooting July 2017-January 2018 in the UK.". And April is about to end pretty soon! LOL.

DC Films

Here's a quick one from Warner Bros and DC! Because as we all should understand by now, they won't ever let Marvel take the whole week of spotlight onto themselves, right? They just need to sneak a completely random news of development here and there. This time, it's from Joss Whedon, whose name has been kindly talked about recently thanks to Kevin Feige kindly mentioning him during Marvel Studios' open house. And this news came from a very ironic place too: The red carpet premiere of the new Guardians movie! LOL to that.

The news was, well, Whedon is NOT looking for a big name to fill in her lead actress for "Batgirl". He said clearly, "I don’t have my eye on anyone. I’m creating this character, I’m in a dialogue with her, and then we’ll see who joins that later on. I doubt it’ll be a name.", which means she can be anyone. Whedon had a soft spot for Oscar-nominee Saoirse Ronan before ended up going with Elizabeth Olsen for Wanda Maximoff in "Avengers: Age of Ultron". And his TV works have always involved a strong female lead, like Sarah Michelle-Gellar in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". So he can practically choose any actress for the character, including a relatively unknown. The big question though, how does WB feel about this? And considering the studio's really BAD habbit of pointlessly putting reference, will this actress debuted in "The Batman" before her solo movie? Which means she needs to be cast right away. We'll have to wait and see how this develops.

Wait a sec... turns out this news didn't really come from WB after all. But due to Variety asking Whedon about the project, when they bumped into him at the premiere. So not WB's intentional spotlight-hogging trick this time around. LOL. Sorry WB, my bad. This is why you shouldn't do that to other studios, as people would easily assume you're doing it again and again eventhough you're guilty of charge. Ahahahaha... *sigh*.

Fast and Furious

"The Fate of the Furious", which is a dumb title albeit a nice little twist on 'F8', raced through the box office and conquered the winning lane ever since it debuted. It has even amassed a record breaking global opening of all time, beating 2015's "Star Wars: The Force Awakens"! But with the franchise started getting a little... tiring, the question is, for how much longer it has the engine to keep on running? If the latest statement by producer Neal Moritz is to be believed, we're going to see this drug race-inspired movie - at least - up to "Fast and Furious 10". Which might be dumbly named "Fasten Your Seatbelt". Get it? LOL. That's already one more than the previously reported "Fast and Furious 9" by the way. Remember when Lucas Black was approached to do it until 9, but ended up a no-show in 8?

It certainly ain't stopping anytime soon though. Why? Because already, a plan is in motion for a... spinoff. Yikes! Yes, because apparently, due to the much publicized rift (is it real or fake? That has been settled though, I think... *sigh*) between lead actor Vin Diesel, and new regular Dwayne Johnson, it seems fans are now shipping Johnson's Luke Hobbs with Jason Statham's Deckard Shaw. Yep, the bad guy who killed Sung Kang's Han Seoul-Oh. Seriously, will Han's death ever be avenged? I haven't seen the eighth movie yet, but it sounded like Hobbs and big bro Shaw (while lil bro Shaw was singing his way in "Beauty and the Beast") actually had... great chemistry together?

It's currently 'in talks' stage for now, but I can already see it happening. Particularly considering The Rock would do any film, while Statham is in need of another franchise after his participation in "The Expendables 4" is put into question. Chris Morgan is expected to write, and the timeline would put it between the 8th and 9th movie. I'm not too sure about this idea, but perhaps, somewhere along the line we might be seeing a Han and Gal Gadot's Giselle "Mr & Mrs Smith"-esque movie along the way? Especially after Gadot's profile will get another significant boost following this year's "Wonder Woman". I'd certainly would watch that.

X-Men Universe

Now here's what I consider a rather 'dumb' report serving the headlines for "Deadpool 2". Actress Leslie Uggams is set to reprise her role as Blind Al in the sequel. Why is that dumb? Duh... because she's an important element of the first movie, stealing scene every single time she showed up. It would be a crime to not have her back! Not to mention, he's Wade's roommate. What I'm curious to know however, is whether Morena Baccarin will indeed reprise her role as Vanessa as well. I sure hope she will, otherwise it would mess up continuity... not that FOX have actually cared about it. Then again, Deadpool could've gotten away with it by turning it as a mockery excuse towards FOX. While at the same time, punching jabs towards Marvel Studios' case of Pepper Potts and Jane Foster. Ain't that a good idea, right?

Oh yeah, by the way, FOX has announced the official release date for the movie! Eventhough the first movie opened in February, its success has apparently warranted this sequel to change gears into a Summer movie. Yes, it will now open in June 1st, 2018. Which is a rather crowded spot, since Disney has "Han Solo: A Star Wars Movie" to open in the previous week, and the following week has WB's all-female "Ocean's 8" and Paramount's "Bumblebee" movie. Is this a wise move, then? I doubt. That's the way it is with FOX though, they don't give a damn about things like this. They've also set up Josh Boone's "New Mutants" to arrive on April 13th, 2018. Which is, a few months... AHEAD. Huh?

And a little movie called "X-Men: Dark Phoenix" that will arrive in November 2nd, 2018. Squaring off directly against Disney's "Mulan" live action revisit, this news just came in several hours ago (thank Jesus I can add it before this post goes up *sigh*)! Nope, don't be mistaken, it's not "X-Men: The Last Stand" that practically ruined the franchise the first time. It's a... reboot of said movie? Meaning it has the ultimate potential (same story, same WRITER) to do the same? LOL. Need I remind you, these are 3 different movies, set in an entirely 3 different timeline/universe, right? Once again, LOL to that.

Aaaaanyway. With the uncertainty of WB to produce any DC Films earlier than December's "Aquaman", looks like FOX is snatching all the empty superhero slots, eh? The only empty space is in January, March, and August to October, with SONY's "Venom" already dated in the last one. So NICE move to FOX....!!! I guess? *sigh*

Avatar

This is a direct follow up to the above paragraph. Remember the James Cameron's sequel that was supposed to open on December 2018, but got delayed and thus became occupied by "Aquaman"? Yep, I know what you're thinking. This whole release date business already sounds like a confusing game of chess! Well, brace yourself, because "Avatar 2", the sequel we never even asked, will now open on December 18th, 2020. Eeeeh? Not kidding. But what took Cameron so long to get one done? The answer is, because he's doing all FOUR sequels altogether. Yes, "Avatar 3" has been scheduled to open on December 17th, 2021, while "Avatar 4" and "Avatar 5" are coming in December 20th, 2024 and December 19th, 2025 respectively. Ain't that a mouthful to write! Those, if there's any among you, who are waiting for these... sequels, should be really happy to hear this news. You have 5 years of Avatar-time! You've got to hand it to Cameron though. This here is risky business. VERY risky. I can't even imagine what would happen if the 2nd movie is a bomb.

Marvel Studios

Let's start with the juiciest part! Just last week, I speculated that Marvel Studios will announce the female director for "Captain Marvel" when they return to Hall H of this year's San Diego Comic Con. Well, this is Marvel Studios, a studio known for catching people off guard, and they've done it again. Not just for one, but a double surprise at the same time.

Yes, the director for their first female-led female-centric movie has indeed been selected. And it's not one, but TWO of them! Marvel Studios officially announced (first reported by Variety) that Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck have been assigned to helm the project. So to you who wanted a female director, you get one. And those who prefer a male director, also get one. Fair and square!!! Intriguingly, their names weren't even part of the frontrunners list, so it certainly caught almost everyone by surprise. According to The Hollywood Reporter, apparently Marvel Studios met with several female directors since last summer; from Niki Caro (who has been hired to do "Mulan" instead), Lesli Linka Glatter, Lorene Scafaria, to Lucia Aniello, and Quicksilver's real life wife Sam Taylor-Johnson, with Jennifer Kent and Jennifer Yuh also in the early mix; before ultimately settling in on this "Mississippi Grind" duo. Turns out, they've managed to impress the studio with their vision for the movie, which put focus on elevating character's journey beneath all the spectacle. Sounds like something right up on Marvel Studios' alley, huh?

Just like the Russo Brothers, Boden and Fleck have done more TV based project, instead of big features. Does the similarity to Anthony and Joe feels more than mere coincidence? Clearly Marvel is taking their first female-led superhero VERY seriously. I wouldn't be surprised if Carol Danvers will be taking Steve Rogers' important role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe going forward. To be honest, I'm not at all familiar with the duo's work, not on movies ("It's Kind of a Funny Story", "Sugar", "Half Nelson"), nor TV ("The Affair", "Billions"). But I'm hearing good things about them, and considering Marvel Studios has a powerful knack in choosing who they partnered with (particularly ever since they no longer serve under Ike Perlmutter), I've completely put my trust in their decision. Lest we forget, people doubted that Joss Whedon, James Gunn, and also the Russos would deliver before. And now their movies are considered among MCU's best. With the smart and loveable Oscar-winner Brie Larson more than excited to front, a script currently in progress by Nicole Perlman and Meg LeFauve, and an official production targetting a February 2018 start, "Captain Marvel" will arrive on March 8th, 2019.

After debuting their first worldwide tour in Tokyo, Japan, the Los Angeles Red Carpet Premiere for "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" has been held on Friday. As always, the glamorous event took place at the El Capitan Theatre. Unlike previous movies, I couldn't catch the live stream of this premiere, because I'm running out of data charge on my internet! After all, when you're saving up money to watch the movie (tickets' pre-ordered by the way, yaaaay! XD), you have no choice but to wait until early next month to get it reinvigorated. Whoops, let's get back on track. Most of the cast attended the celebration. Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige, co-president Louis D'Esposito, VFX producer Victoria Alonso, and director James Gunn were obviously leading the pack. They were joined by returning actors Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel, Karen Gillan, Michael Rooker, and Sean Gunn, as well as new cast members Pom Klementieff, Chris Sullivan, Elizabeth Debicki, and Tommy Flanagan. Veteran actors Kurt Russel and Sylvester Stallone were also in attendance, with a surprise appearance of one David Hasselfhoff! Okay, I didn't even know he has a part in this movie. I thought his name in the recently released Original Soundtrack was just pure coincidence. By the way, said album's tracklist could potentially be considered spoilerish, so you might want to avoid it the way I do.

Another press junket was held following the premiere, and the folks behind this movie has been spilling additional details here and there. The kind of information that you would want to steer away and avoid, if like me, you don't want to be spoiled ahead of the game. This could range from the simplest bit like: - Various critics' reviews as well as the first accumulated RottenTomatoes score can be expected to arrive very soon. So check your favorite entertainment sites in the next 24 hours or more, to see what their journalists have to say about this movie. I'm personally avoiding the internet after this to avoid spoilers, and will get back once I've seen the movie. 3 days from now! YAAASSS!!! \(^o^)/ - The fact that the movie's core theme is about family. Sean Gerber of Modern Myth Media, even said that the movie was "pure love", and something that should be watched together with their family. Gunn even dedicated this movie to his parents during the LA premiere. - That baby Groot is the star of the movie! Even fellow Marvel Studios director Peyton Reed thought he could win an Oscar! - New official images released on Entertainment Weekly that hinted towards various plot points. - A supposed Nathan Fillion's cameo that got edited out. Complete with proof by the actor himself, that turned out to nothing but a... prank? LOL. Though it's possible he's indeed the actor that Gunn openly admitted had to cut during post production. - About "the collector’s museum"-level Easter-Eggs-filled scene that went out in the cutting room... and might not be available as the Deleted Scenes. - About a surprise pop star cameo. - To the more complex one, like the removal of one character by the name of... *drumrolls* Adam Warlock!

Yes, turns out the Warlock was originally a major part of "Vol. 2"! Confirming that it was indeed his cocoon we saw in the first movie, but was decided to be saved for later movies. Once again, Gunn has been pretty open about this before, as he said that the script originally had 'one other' member of the team that he unfortunately had to let go. Yes, he WAS talking about Warlock, as the decision to omit him was because "it was one character too many and I didn’t want to lose Mantis and Mantis was more organically part of the movie anyway. So I decided to save him for later.". Gunn expressed his love for him though, eventhough we also shouldn't expect to see Warlock in "Avengers: Infinity War" as well, much to fans dismay. Nevertheless, Feige gave assurance that we will definitely see this important cosmic being in future movies.

By future, I believe we can expect this important character to show up later in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3", or even earlier in the UNTITLED 2019's Avengers movie. As I've always said, Adam Warlock is an amazing character because he's basically serving as both protagonist and antagonist due to his alter-ego Magus. And the prospect of having him playing a crucial role in future Marvel cosmic universe is enough as an excuse for me. Gunn stated to EW, that the "the three movies work together as a whole, they’re going to tell one story,". Which is exactly the reason why he agreed and excited to continue with "Vol. 3". Don't forget, we're getting Warlock's comic-book's 'sister' Ayesha and her golden-skinned race in this second movie. It would be very obvious, if Warlock will indeed take the follow up spotlight on "Vol. 3". One more thing, Gunn's collaboration with Marvel Studios won't be stopping after "Vol. 3". Birth.Movies.Death speculated, that Gunn is basically the architect of Marvel Studios' future cosmic universe, and I'm inclined to agree on that. Which his role important going forward. After all, Feige himself stated that Gunn "could easily oversee additional stories beyond Vol. 3.". I honestly can't wait to see what we can expect next in the massive galactic side of MCU, considering some of its more popular properties like Galactus, or Silver Surfer, are owned by FOX.

With one movie of 2017 out of the way, when can we expect the 2nd one then? The Los Angeles premiere for "Spider-Man: Homecoming" has been set for June 28th, 2017. Similar to the case of "Vol. 2", we can expect first screening reactions, critics reviews, and all the information dump related to Tom Holland's solo movie, beginning on early June. Or perhaps, much earlier? Yep, L.A. Times shared a new official photo of Spidey inside a pipe, accompanied by a breakdown of what his VERY convenient suit can do. After all, it's Tony Stark's creation! LOL. There's another one from EW, included in an article that focused on director Jon Watts' and Holland's experience with the production, considering the two "were in the same boat". In case you forget, "Homecoming" is the only MCU movie this year that takes place on Earth! So in that sense, it could be considered an important movie, because it's one of two that will directly lead up towards "Infinity War".

The other one is of course, Ryan Coogler's "Black Panther" that will arrive February 16th next year. A movie that had just wrapped production in Atlanta, but already sounds stunningly promising in many delicate ways: first female cinematographer in Rachel Morrison, dashing 'tribal-modern fusion' costumes by Oscar nominee Ruth E. Carter, fully imaginative high-tech metropolitan Wakanda, and stellar supporting cast, among others. Both Holland's Peter Parker and Chadwick Boseman's T'Challa debuted in "Captain America: Civil War" to critical acclaimed last year. We know that the two has officially joined the MCU's shirtless club, that even the bigwigs at Marvel Studios thought as something brag-worthy (LOL!!!). Yet the biggest question for them, is whether their stand-alone features will perform as good, or even better as the hype. Whether the directorial visions of Watts and Coogler are the right ones to catapult each solo title into their own franchises. Because if they are, then they will be joining the likes of Peyton Reed and Scott Derrickson who are moving forward with their second MCU movie.

Meanwhile, production for "Infinity War" is still ongoing in Scotland. And the latest sighting will make fans of the comics glee with joy. Why? Actor Paul Bettany was seen filming a romantic scene with Elizabeth Olsen, confirming that the relationship of his Victor Sha... I mean Vision and her Wanda Maximoff actually have progressed significantly since their encounter in "Avengers: Age of Ultron". There's something more to the scene though, because Bettany is NOT in his thick Vision makeup! Thus many have been assuming this could be either a dream-scene, or an alternate reality caused by one of the Infinity Stones. In fact, it makes sense to be the movie's happy ending too.

Speaking of 'happy ending', don't assume that this scene is part of the 2019's UNTITLED Avengers movie. Why? Eventhough the Russos DID plan to film both movies concurrently, apparently what might have sounded possible in theory, didn't work out so well in practice. Feige revealed to Collider, that the studio has decided to change course, and film both movies as back-to-back but entirely separate productions. "It became too complicated to cross-board them like that, and we found ourselves—again, something would always pay the price", he admitted, which might point out various issues like technical requirements of making sure both movie would be different from one another, actor's scheduling, and others. Which means, every behind the scenes candid images we've seen so far, are all part of "Infinity War". Feige then confirmed that they expect filming for the first movie to wrap in July, before moving on with the next one in August. Think of it like how Peter Jackson worked on his "The Lord of the Rings" or "The Hobbit" trilogies.

Last but not least, Feige also teased that while they are focusing on the seven ongoing tasks at hand, the MCU might be 'evolving' into a different form/route beginning in Phase 4. If... it can even be called that way, of course. "Certainly as we get to Infinity War there is a sense of a climax if not a conclusion to, by the time we’re at untitled Avengers 4, the 22 movies that will have encompassed the first three phases of the MCU. And what happens after that will be very different. I don’t know if it’s Phase 4, it might be a new thing.", he openly said to Collider. Intriguing, because if we observe closer, two of the confirmed titles ("Vol. 3" and "Homecoming 2") have their own separate and unique timelines; one probably mere months apart, while the other taking the "Harry Potter" yearly approach. A third that has been unofficially confirmed, the next chapter to "Doctor Strange", isn't likely to be bound by time and space either. Feige summed up that after 2019's Avengers movie, the MCU is "gonna be very, very different.". Hmmm... let's just say, I won't be at all surprised if the official title for Avengers 4 is called... "AVENGERS: SECRET WARS"! *wink*

Marvel TV

As Marvel's "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." closing in on its 4th season finale, the fate of this ABC network series remains a huge question. Will it be renewed for a 5th year? And will it serve as the final season, as Entertainment Weekly has predicted before? Fans of the show, however small and numbered it might be, are anxious to find out. But while we're waiting for the answer, Marvel TV isn't stopping anytime soon. Instead, they are moving forward with their two Freeform projects.

The first one is Marvel's "New Warriors", as the former ABC family network officially announced its main roster! As speculated, it's a combination of actual "New Warriors" members from the comics, as well as ones from "Great Lake Avengers". The characters were revealed last week, complete with a catchy comic book art to accompany the announcement. They are (in list, because I love one): - Doreen Green, or Squirrel Girl. Well, duh? Obviously she's part of the show! Because it's the character that Freeform has always wanted to get from the beginning. According to Freeform, Doreen is an empowered girl, and a natural leader. Fitting to her power of acrobatic, and as such, she is bouncy and energetic. She will be accompanied by her pet squirrel Tippy Toe, everywhere she goes. - Craig Hollis, or Mister Immortal. True to his superhero alias, he's practically unable to die. Problem is, the lazy guy hasn't made use of this ability at all, and tends to be cocky and grumpy instead. Freeform calls him as the team's troublemaker. Or as I would see it... the jerk whom I would easily hate. - Dwayne Taylor, or Night Thrasher. He doesn't have any super ability, but he's a... Youtube artist? Huh? Ain't that something that the millenials would dig, right? He's rich kid who's pretending he's not, because he's a local celebrity 'hero' who is... shamelessly full of himself. Wow, our first two guys both sound annoying already. - Robbie Baldwin, or Speedball. His ability is to launch kinetic balls of energy, which of course would require CG work. His character description is kind of important, because it confirms that the show takes place in the MCU. Yes, because he's a fan of the Avengers Tower. Unfortunately, he's "impulsive and immature people-pleaser with a misplaced sense of confidence". My oh my, why do all the guys are characterized like this? - Zack Smith, or Microbe. This guy might already be my favorite, because he's a shy and sweet big guy who... talks to germs? Huh? Yep, his ability practically turns him into some kind of telepath, as he can tell everything from the millions germs scattering in the planet. Considering the MCU has very few people who can be categorized as an actual telepath (Scarlet Witch, and Mantis?), this is a good excuse to make Zack be another one. Judging from the character design, it seems like an Asian-American is going to be cast for this character. - Deborah Fields, or Debrii. This lesbian African-American is proud, and has a sharp tongue. Always unafraid to say what she thinks, and calls out people on their BS. Sounds like an amazing frenemy to either Craig, Dwayne, or Robbie, right? She has the power of telekinesis, and also acts as some sort of trickster.

If you ask me, I think these characters are good, and also wise choices because they represent diversity. No actor has been announced just yet because the casting process is said to commence very soon. But considering how fast this show is moving forward since it was greenlit, I wouldn't be surprised if we're getting cast announcement next week! I'm still not sure if I can see this show, considering it's airing on Freeform, but the idea of a 30-minutes 10-episodes only live-action comedy is too good for me to miss out. Obviously, if there's one main concern I have for it, is whether they can nail the VFX for show or not. And how much practical effects that will be utilized. Like the case of Tippy Toe, will an actual squirrel plays the rodent? Or a completely CG character? Of course, having characters like Mister Immortal, Night Thrasher, and Microbe is a beneficial cheat, considering their abilities can all be done practically. Even Debrii's power can also be done through simple camera tricks. The biggest challenge would be Speedball's, and the appearance of Squirrel Girl. Let's hope showrunner Kevin Biegel, and Marvel TV can work these out. Marvel's "New Warriors" is expected to arrive in 2018, which means, plenty of time to get the VFX done.

The first trailer for Marvel's "Cloak and Dagger" has been released! I did NOT see this coming. After all, the series won't premiere until Winter 2018, right? Unless, that literally means January or February, since both months are still regarded as winter. Hmmmm. Anyway, as soon as I'm done with the trailer, I'm 100% certain that this show is NOT for me. Not saying it's bad, because the whole teenage romance thing is, well, certainly new for Marvel. So a 'good job' for them is at hand? I don't know why, it just doesn't work for me. The lack of special effects, perhaps (that practical one looks... weak, and fake)? Too soap-opera for my taste, probably? Or is it because a conservative soul like me and some others just couldn't get the charm of it. Maaaaan, I feel old *sigh*. As I said before, as much as I liked the characters in the comics, I'm going to give this series a pass. It's definitely a no go for me. The only thing I liked about this is the logo... and that's saying much.

I can't help but wonder if these lovers would somehow, in some way, have a crossover with the "New Warriors". Both are running in the same network, and the age gap between their characters aren't too big. Of course, we must not forget that "Cloak and Dagger" takes place in New Orleans, while "New Warriors" will be in... hold on, they haven't mentioned where the setting will be, huh? Character description for Speedball mentioned 'Avengers Tower' though, so it likely takes place in New York. If that's the case, now I'm wondering if Squirrel Girl and her friends will bump into any of the Defenders, or Doctor Strange, or even Spider-Man? Aaargh.... this whole #itsallconnected thing is confusing.

Netflix

Would you look at that! Marvel's "Luke Cage" has... begun production for its 2nd season? Wowzers... Marvel is certainly firing on all cylinders, attacking on all front last week, huh? However, just like Marvel's "Jessica Jones", this report didn't arrive from Marvel, who usually posted an official announcement for a start of production. Instead, this silently came into public's attention through some keen-eyed fans who spotted the working title of "Luke Cage" being set up in Port Washington, New York. Add to that, Simone Missick's tweet about her training for the new season, and many can easily come into the same deduction.

Intriguingly, assuming this report IS true, "Luke Cage" going into production at the same time as "Jessica Jones" feels a little suspicious, eh? If I recall correctly, "Jessica Jones" showrunner Melissa Rosenberg did teased about Mike Colter's Luke's appearance in the series. So I'm secretly wishing this is the case, because his presence did wonder in the 1st season. Don't forget, Colter was cast due to his chemistry with Krysten Ritter! As for "Luke Cage", we need to remember that showrunner Cheo Hodari Coker actually wanted to do a "Heroes for Hire" show. But we all know how it turned out right? He was hired to do the solo series instead. With Scott Buck being occupied with Marvel's "The Inhumans", and the uncertainty of his Marvel's "Iron Fist" getting another season (sad to say, it's Netflix and Marvel TV's worst-reviewed show so far), could we be seeing Finn Jones' Danny Rand and Jessica Henwick's Colleen Wing entering the world of Luke Cage instead? I certainly hope so, because that would be the WISEST decision for both series. Coker would get what he have always wanted, and Marvel fans can finally see these two lead characters turning into that charming best buddies we've always seen in various other medias. Not to mention, Missick's Misty Knight can pair up with Henwick's Colleen as well. Once again, just like in the comics! To be honest, I don't have any interest to see new season for both series at this moment, but a pleasant twist like that would totally alter said plan completely... XD

Of course, that's merely a random speculation on my part. And a wishful thinking too. If the recent exclusive on MCU Exchange is also true, then well, such fantastic crossover already sounds unlikely. Which means, there goes my excitement level...

As for Marvel's "The Punisher", Tyler Bates who has done work for James Gunn's MCU movies, will be lending his hand to score the series. Possibly hinting towards a more rock and roll, or heavy metal vibe to the music. One more thing, actress Rosario Dawson had openly stated that she won't be showing in the series. Not really a surprise, because her Claire Temple never really interacted with Jon Bernthal's Frank Castle before. I think her role will specifically be taken over by Deborah Ann Woll's Karen Page this time. She did remark that she would love to be in it, but scheduling conflict somehow prevented her from doing so. Marvel's "The Punisher" is expected to premiere this Fall.

Kamen Rider Shally

Tokusatsu scooper Dukemon, posted some reports regarding the next Kamen Rider season following "Kamen Rider Ex-Aid". According to him, the rumored title will be "Kamen Rider Shally", and as previously hinted before, is a SUSHI-themed. Shally will be using the Shally Driver, and Neta Units to transform. He added that Shally will have three forms, obtained through the Neta units: Maguro, Ika, and Tamago. These are all obviously named after variants of Sushi that uses tuna, squid, and roll-egg respectively. For now, we need to consider this rumor with a huge grain of salt. But Dukemon is reliable, as many report he posted ended up becoming a fact. So I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Persona

"Persona 5" is still taking the main attention of many Persona-fans until now, but it seems Atlus is already moving forward with new projects for the franchise. According to Gematsu, Ryu's Office, the company who worked with Atlus to register domain names, has submited several Persona-related ones on April 18th. These names include: P3D, P5AG, P5D, P5R, P5U, Persona-Dance, PQ2. Three more were submitted on April 4: Persona8, Persona9, and Persona10.

Since they have created a crossover title between "Persona 4" and "Persona 3" before in form of "Persona 4 Arena", it seems likely that one of said domain might be a continuation to said title. Perhaps, the P5U one stands for "Persona 5 Ultimax/Arena"? I hope that's the case, because the possibility of the Phantom Thieves of Heart crossing path with the Inaba Investigation Team is too good to ignore. The notion of a Persona title from 8 to 10 is also intriguing. I don't recall we have heard any rumble of a "Persona 6" just yet, but they already book the spot up to 10! That's... WOW, right? Nevertheless, if Atlus can continue building better and better game like what they have done with P5, I don't see why there can't be a "Persona 10" somewhere in the franchise's bright future...

[ufcw]

26 labor heroines you should know for Women’s History Month

Women’s History Month is celebrated in order to promote the significant contributions women have made to the labor movement and beyond that are often left out of the history lessons taught in our classrooms or promoted in society.

The following women are just some of the major players who have had a major role in the fight for equal rights, who made (and are still making) history by exposing horrible labor conditions and acted to change them, and inspired a generation of activists and leaders today.

*the following is adapted from the Zinn Education Project*

1. Louise Boyle

Photographer Louise Boyle is best known for the images she captured, documenting the devastating effects of the Great Depression on American workers. In 1937, at the height of a wave of labor militancy, Ms. Boyle was invited to photograph the living and working conditions of the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union members from several Arkansas communities. Her provocative recording depicted courageous people linking their futures together despite devastating poverty, physical hardship, and brutal police-endorsed reprisals. Most portray African American farmers in their homes, at union meetings and rallies, or at work with their families picking cotton. Boyle returned in 1982 to rephotograph some of the people and places she had documented earlier.

2. Hattie Canty

A Las Vegas transplant in rural Alabama, legendary African American unionist Hattie Canty was one of the greatest strike leaders in U.S. history. Her patient leadership helped knit together a labor union made up of members from 84 nations.  During her time as an activist, she saw first hand how the labor and civil rights movements were intrinsically linked: “Coming from Alabama, this seemed like the civil rights struggle…the labor movement and the civil rights movement, you cannot separate the two of them.”

3. May Chen

In 1982, May Chen helped organize and lead the New York Chinatown strike of 1982, one of the largest Asian American worker strikes with about 20,000 garment factory workers marching the streets of Lower Manhattan demanding work contracts. “The Chinatown community then had more and more small garment factories,” she recalled. “And the Chinese employers thought they could play on ethnic loyalties to get the workers to turn away from the union. They were very, very badly mistaken.” Most of the protests included demands for higher wages, improved working conditions and for management to observe the Confucian principles of fairness and respect. By many accounts, the workers won. The strike caused the employers to hold back on wage cuts and withdraw their demand that workers give up their holidays and some benefits. It paved the way for better working conditions such as hiring bilingual staff to interpret for workers and management, initiation of English-language classes and van services for workers.

4. Jessie de la Cruz

A field worker since the age of five, Jessie knew poverty, harsh working conditions, and the exploitation of Mexicans and all poor people. Her response was to take a stand. She joined the United Farm Workers union in 1965 and, at Cesar Chavez’s request, became its first woman recruiter. She also participated in strikes, helped ban the crippling short-handle hoe, became a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, testified before the Senate, and met with the Pope. She continued to be a political activist until her death in 2013, at the age of 93.

5. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn once said, “I will devote my life to the wage earner. My sole aim in life is to do all in my power to right the wrongs and lighten the burdens of the laboring class.” In 1907, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn became a full-time organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World and in 1912 traveled to Lawrence, MA during the Great Textile Strike. She became “the strike’s leading lady.”

6. Emma Goldman

In 1886, year after her arrival from Lithuania, Emma Goldman was shocked by the trial, conviction, and execution of labor activists falsely accused of a bombing in Chicago’s Haymarket Square, which she later described as “the events that had inspired my spiritual birth and growth.” A born propagandist and organizer, Emma Goldman championed women’s equality, free love, workers’ rights, free universal education regardless of race or gender, and anarchism. For more than thirty years, she defined the limits of dissent and free speech in Progressive Era America. Goldman died on May 14, 1940, and buried in Forest Park, Illinois amongst the labor activists that first sparked her life’s work as an activist. Throughout her career, she fought against the corporate powers that tried to dehumanize the people that worked for them: “Still more fatal is the crime of turning the producer into a mere particle of a machine, with less will and decision than his master of steel and iron. Man is being robbed not merely of the products of his labor, but of the power of free initiative, of originality, and the interest in, or desire for, the things he is making.”

7. Velma Hopkins

Velma Hopkins helped mobilize 10,000 workers into the streets of Winston-Salem, NC, as part of an attempt to bring unions to R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. The union, Local 22 of the Food, Tobacco, Agricultural and Allied Workers of America-CIO, was integrated and led primarily by African American women. They pushed the boundaries of economic, racial and gender equality. In the 1940s, they organized a labor campaign and a strike for better working conditions, pay, and equal rights under the law. It was the only time in the history of Reynolds Tobacco that it had a union. Before Local 22 faced set-backs from red-baiting and the power of Reynolds’ anti-unionism, it gained national attention for its vision of an equal society. This vision garnered the scrutiny of powerful enemies such as Richard Nixon and captured the attention of allies such as actor Paul Robeson and songwriter Woody Guthrie. While it represented the workers, the union influenced a generation of civil rights activists.

8. Dolores Huerta

Before becoming a labor organizer, Dolores Huerta was a grammar school teacher, but soon quit after becoming distraught at the sight of children coming to school hungry or without proper clothing. “I couldn’t stand seeing kids come to class hungry and needing shoes. I thought I could do more by organizing farm workers than by trying to teach their hungry children.” In 1955, Huerta launched her career in labor organizing by helping Fred Ross train organizers in Stockton, California, and five years later, founded the Agricultural Workers Association before organizing the United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez in 1962. Some of her early victories included lobbying for voting rights for Mexican Americans as well as for the right of every American to take the written driver’s test in their native language. A champion of labor rights, women’s rights, racial equality and other civil rights causes, Huerta remains an unrelenting figure in the farm workers’ movement.

9. Mother Jones

Marry Harris “Mother” Jones made it her mission to stand up for the rights of the children who worked in factories and mills under horrible conditions in the early 1900’s. “I asked the newspaper men why they didn’t publish the facts about child labor in Pennsylvania. They said they couldn’t because the mill owners had stock in the papers.” “Well, I’ve got stock in these little children,” said I,” and I’ll arrange a little publicity.” On July 7, 1903, Jones began the “March of the Mill Children” from Philadelphia to President Theodore Roosevelt’s Long Island summer home in Oyster Bay, NY, to publicize the harsh conditions of child labor and to demand a 55-hour work-week. During this march she delivered her famed “The Wail of the Children” speech, even though Roosevelt refused to see them.

10. Mary Lease

“Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street.” These words, which eerily echo some sentiments today, were spoken more than 120 years ago by Mary Lease, a powerful voice of the agrarian crusade and the best-known orator of the era, first gaining national attention battling Wall Street during the 1890 Populist campaign. As a spokesperson for the “people’s party,” she hoped that by appealing directly to the heart and soul of the nation’s farmers, she could motivate them to political action to protect their own interests not only in Kansas but throughout the United States. “You may call me an anarchist, a socialist, or a communist, I care not, but I hold to the theory that if one man as not enough to eat three times a day and another man has $25,000,000, that last man has something that belongs to the first.” Mary spent most of her life speaking out in favor of social justice causes including women’s suffrage and temperance, and her work reflected the multifaceted nature of late nineteenth-century politics in the United States. Many female leaders today, such as Elizabeth Warren, still fight against Wall Street and the 1% as inequality has reached exorbitant levels.

11. Clara Lemlich

“I have listened to all the speakers, and I have no further patience for talk. I am a working girl, one of those striking against intolerable conditions. I am tired of listening to speakers who talk in generalities. What we are here for is to decide whether or not to strike. I make a motion that we go out in a general strike.” These were the words of  Clara Lemlich, a firebrand who led several strikes of shirtwaist makers and challenged the mostly male leadership of the union to organize women garment workers. With support from the National Women’s Trade Union League (NWTUL) in 1909 she lead the New York shirtwaist strike, also known as the “Uprising of the 20,000”. It was the largest strike of women at that point in U.S. history. The strike was followed a year later by the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire that exposed the continued plight of immigrant women working in dangerous and difficult conditions.

12. Luisa Moreno

Luisa Moreno, a Guatemalan immigrant, first got involved in labor activism in 1930 at in Zelgreen’s Cafeteria in New York City, when she and her co-worker protested the employer’s exploitation of its workers with long hours, constant sexual harassment, and the threat, should anyone object, of dismissal. Hearing that workers would picket the cafeteria, police formed a line on the sidewalk that allowed customers to pass through. Luisa, in a fur collar coat, strolled through the cordon of policemen as if she was going to enter the cafeteria. When she was directly in front of the door she pulled a picket sign from under her coat and thrust it in plain view, yelling, “Strike!” Two burly policemen grabbed her by the elbows. They lifted her off the sidewalk and hustled her into the entrance way of a nearby building. She came out with her face bleeding and considered herself fortunate that she was not disfigured. Moreno spent the next 20 years organizing workers across the country. Her story serves as a reminder of just how dangerous the conditions were in those days to simply make one’s voice heard, but her bravery helped change those conditions for the better.

13. Agnes Nestor

“Any new method which the company sought to put into effect and disturb our work routine seemed to inflame the deep indignation already burning inside us. Thus, when a procedure was suggested for subdividing our work, so that each operator would do a smaller part of each glove, and thus perhaps increase the overall production—but also increase the monotony of the work, and perhaps also decrease our rate of pay—we began to think of fighting back.” This reminiscence by Nestor described how the oppressive conditions of the glove factory pushed her to take a leading role in a successful strike of female glove workers in 1898. Soon she became president of her glove workers local and later a leader of the International Glove Workers Union. She also took a leading role in the Women’s Trade Union League, serving as president of the Chicago branch from 1913 to 1948.

14. Pauline Newman

Pauline Newman, a Russian immigrant, began working at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in 1903 when she was thirteen years old. Finding that many of her co-workers could not read, she organized an evening study group where they also discussed labor issues and politics. Newman was active in the shirtwaist strike and the Women’s Trade Union League. She became a union organizer for the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) and director of the ILGWU Health Center. “All we knew was the bitter fact that after working 70 or 80 hours in a seven-day week, we did not earn enough to keep body and soul together,” she said.

15. Lucy Parsons

On May 1, 1886, Lucy Parsons helped launched the world’s first May Day and the demand for the eight-hour work day. Along with her husband, anarchist and activist Albert Parsons, and their two children, they led 80,000 working people down the Chicago streets and more than 100,000 also marched in other U.S. cities. A new international holiday was born. Parsons went on to help found the International Workers of the World, continued to give speeches, and worked tirelessly for equality throughout the rest of her life until her death in 1942.

16. Frances Perkins

On March 4, 1933, Frances Perkins became the U.S. Secretary of Labor from 1933 to 1945, and the first woman appointed to the U.S. Cabinet. Having personally witnessed workers jump to their death during the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, Perkins promoted and helped passed strong labor laws to try to prevent such atrocities from ever occurring again.

17. Rose Pesotta

When Rose Pesotta arrived in Los Angeles in 1933 to organize employees in the garment industry, the workforce of which was 75% Latina, the local leadership of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), consisting of mostly white men, had no interest in organizing female dressmakers, feeling that most would either leave the industry to raise their families or shouldn’t be working in the first place. On October 12, 1933, a month after Rose Pesotta arrived, 4,000 workers walked off the job and went on strike. Their demands included union recognition, 35-hour work weeks, being paid the minimum wage, no take home work or time card regulation, and for disputes to be handled through arbitration. The strike ended on Nov. 6 with mixed results, but the workers gained a 35-hour workweek and received the minimum wage. Although not a complete victory, the message sent was a powerful one. What Rose Pesotta knew all along was now clear to the garment bosses and her male union counterparts; women, specifically women of color, should not be discounted. When it came to the demands of dignity and respect, these workers would not be ignored.

18. Ai-Jen Poo

When Poo started organizing domestic workers in 2000, many thought she was taking on an impossible task.  Domestic workers were too dispersed–spread out over too many homes. Even Poo had described the world of domestic work as the “Wild West.” Poo’s first big breakthrough with the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) happened on July 1, 2010, when the New York state legislature passed the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. The bill legitimized domestic workers and gave them the same lawful rights as any other employee, such as vacation time and overtime pay. The bill was considered a major victory, and the NDWA expanded operations to include 17 cities and 11 states.

19. Florence Reece

Florence Reece was an activist, poet, and songwriter. She was the wife of one of the strikers and union organizers, Sam Reece, in the Harlan County miners strike in Kentucky. In an attempt to intimidate her family, the sheriff and company guards shot at their house while Reece and her children were inside (Sam had been warned they were coming and escaped). During the attack, she wrote the lyrics to Which Side Are You On?, a song that would become a popular ballad of the labor movement.

Song Lyrics

CHORUS: Which side are you on? (4x)

My daddy was a miner/And I’m a miner’s son/And I’ll stick with the union/‘Til every battle’s won [Chorus]

They say in Harlan County/There are no neutrals there/You’ll either be a union man/Or a thug for JH Blair [Chorus]

Oh workers can you stand it?/Oh tell me how you can/Will you be a lousy scab/Or will you be a man? [Chorus]

Don’t scab for the bosses/Don’t listen to their lies/Us poor folks haven’t got a chance/Unless we organize [Chorus]

20. Harriet Hanson Robinson

At the age of 10, Harriet Hanson Robinson got a job in textile Mills of Lowell, Massachusetts to help support her family. When mill owners dropped wages and sped up the pace of work, Harriet and others participated in the 1836 Lowell Mill Strike. Later as an adult, Harriet became an activist for women’s suffrage and would recount her mill work experience in Loom and Spindle or Life Among the Early Mill Girls. In her book, Harriet concludes: “Such is the brief story of the life of every-day working-girls; such as it was then, so it might be to-day. Undoubtedly there might have been another side to this picture, but I give the side I knew best–the bright side!”

21. Fannie Sellins

Fannie Sellins was known as an exceptional organizer that also made her “a thorn in the side of the Allegheny Valley coal operators.” The operators openly threatened to “get her.” After being an organizer in St. Louis for the United Garment Workers local and in the West Virginia coal fields, in 1916 Sellins moved to Pennsylvania, where her work with the miners’ wives proved to be an effective way to organize workers across ethnic barriers.  She also recruited black workers, who originally came north as strikebreakers, into the United Mine Workers America. During a tense confrontation between townspeople and armed company guards outside the Allegheny Coal and Coke company mine in Brackenridge on August 26, 1919, Fannie Sellins and miner Joseph Strzelecki were brutally gunned down. A coroner’s jury and a trial in 1923 ended in the acquittal of two men accused of her murder. She is remembered for her perseverance and bravery.

22. Vicky Starr

“When I look back now, I really think we had a lot of guts. But I didn’t even stop to think about it at the time. It was just something that had to be done. We had a goal. That’s what we felt had to be done, and we did it,” said “Stella Nowicki”, the assumed name of Vicki Starr, an activist who participated in the campaign to organize unions in the meatpacking factories of Chicago in the 1930’s and ‘40s.

23. Emma Tenayuca

“I was arrested a number of times. I never thought in terms of fear. I thought in terms of justice,” said Emma Tenayuca, born in San Antonio, Texas on Dec. 21, 1916. Later, she would become to be known as “La Pasionaria de Texas” through her work as an educator, speaker, and labor organizer. From 1934–1948, she supported almost every strike in the city, writing leaflets, visiting homes of strikers, and joining them on picket lines. She joined the Communist Party and the Workers Alliance (WA) in 1936. Tenayuca and WA demanded that Mexican workers could strike without fear of deportation or a minimum wage law. In 1938 she was unanimously elected strike leader of 12,000 pecan shellers. Due to anti-Mexican, anti-Communist, and anti-union hysteria Tenayuca fled San Antonio for her safety but later returned as a teacher.

24. Carmelita Torres

On Jan. 28, 1917, 17-year-old Carmelita Torres led the Bath Riots at the Juarez/El Paso border, refusing the toxic “bath” imposed on all workers crossing the border. Here is what the El Paso Times reported the next day: “When refused permission to enter El Paso without complying with the regulations the women collected in an angry crowd at the center of the bridge. By 8 o’clock the throng, consisting in large part of servant girls employed in El Paso, had grown until it packed the bridge half way across. “Led by Carmelita Torres, an auburn-haired young woman of 17, they kept up a continuous volley of language aimed at the immigration and health officers, civilians, sentries and any other visible American.”

25. Ella Mae Wiggins

Ella Mae Wiggins was an organizer, speaker, and balladeer, known for expressed her faith in the union, the only organized force she had encountered that promised her a better life. On Sept. 14, 1929, during the Loray Mill strike in Gastonia, NC,  Textile Workers Union members were ambushed by local vigilantes and a sheriff’s deputy. The vigilantes and deputy forced Ella Mae Wiggins’ pickup truck off the road, and murdered the 29 year-old mother of nine. Though there were 50 witnesses during the assault and five of the attackers were arrested, all were acquitted of her murder. After her death, the AFL-CIO expanded Wiggins’ grave marker in 1979, to include the phrase, “She died carrying the torch of social justice.” Also a song-writer, her best-known song, A Mill Mother’s Lament, was recorded by Pete Seeger, among others.

26. Sue Cowan Williams

Sue Cowan Williams represented African-American teachers in the Little Rock School District as the plaintiff in the case challenging the rate of salaries allotted to teachers in the district based solely on skin color. The suit, Morris v. Williams, was filed on Feb. 28, 1942, and followed a March 1941 petition filed with the Little Rock School Board requesting equalization of salaries between black and white teachers. She lost the case, but then won in a 1943 appeal.

from 26 labor heroines you should know for Women’s History Month

[thesnhuup]

Pop Picks – October 15, 2018

What I’m listening to:

We had the opportunity to see our favorite band, The National, live in Dallas two weeks ago. Just after watching Mistaken for Strangers, the documentary sort of about the band. So we’ve spent a lot of time going back into their earlier work, listening to songs we don’t know well, and reaffirming that their musicality, smarts, and sound are both original and astoundingly good. They did not disappoint in concert and it is a good thing their tour ended, as we might just spend all of our time and money following them around. Matt Berninger is a genius and his lead vocals kill me (and because they are in my range, I can actually sing along!). Their arrangements are profoundly good and go right to whatever brain/heart wiring that pulls one in and doesn’t let them go.

What I’m reading:

Who is Richard Powers and why have I only discovered him now, with his 12th book? Overstory is profoundly good, a book that is essential and powerful and makes me look at my everyday world in new ways. In short, a dizzying example of how powerful can be narrative in the hands of a master storyteller. I hesitate to say it’s the best environmental novel I’ve ever read (it is), because that would put this book in a category. It is surely about the natural world, but it is as much about we humans. It’s monumental and elegiac and wondrous at all once. Cancel your day’s schedule and read it now. Then plant a tree. A lot of them.

What I’m watching:

Bo Burnham wrote and directed Eighth Grade and Elsie Fisher is nothing less than amazing as its star (what’s with these new child actors; see Florida Project). It’s funny and painful and touching. It’s also the single best film treatment that I have seen of what it means to grow up in a social media shaped world. It’s a reminder that growing up is hard. Maybe harder now in a world of relentless, layered digital pressure to curate perfect lives that are far removed from the natural messy worlds and selves we actually inhabit. It’s a well-deserved 98% on Rotten Tomatoes and I wonder who dinged it for the missing 2%.

  Archive

September 7, 2018

What I’m listening to:

With a cover pointing back to the Beastie Boys’ 1986 Licensed to Ill, Eminem’s quietly released Kamikaze is not my usual taste, but I’ve always admired him for his “all out there” willingness to be personal, to call people out, and his sheer genius with language. I thought Daveed Diggs could rap fast, but Eminem is supersonic at moments, and still finds room for melody. Love that he includes Joyner Lucas, whose “I’m Not Racist” gets added to the growing list of simply amazing music videos commenting on race in America. There are endless reasons why I am the least likely Eminem fan, but when no one is around to make fun of me, I’ll put it on again.

What I’m reading:

Lesley Blume’s Everyone Behaves Badly, which is the story behind Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and his time in 1920s Paris (oh, what a time – see Midnight in Paris if you haven’t already). Of course, Blume disabuses my romantic ideas of that time and place and everyone is sort of (or profoundly so) a jerk, especially…no spoiler here…Hemingway. That said, it is a compelling read and coming off the Henry James inspired prose of Mrs. Osmond, it made me appreciate more how groundbreaking was Hemingway’s modern prose style. Like his contemporary Picasso, he reinvented the art and it can be easy to forget, these decades later, how profound was the change and its impact. And it has bullfights.

What I’m watching:

Chloé Zhao’s The Rider is just exceptional. It’s filmed on the Pine Ridge Reservation, which provides a stunning landscape, and it feels like a classic western reinvented for our times. The main characters are played by the real-life people who inspired this narrative (but feels like a documentary) film. Brady Jandreau, playing himself really, owns the screen. It’s about manhood, honor codes, loss, and resilience – rendered in sensitive, nuanced, and heartfelt ways. It feels like it could be about large swaths of America today. Really powerful.

August 16, 2018

What I’m listening to:

In my Spotify Daily Mix was Percy Sledge’s When A Man Loves A Woman, one of the world’s greatest love songs. Go online and read the story of how the song was discovered and recorded. There are competing accounts, but Sledge said he improvised it after a bad breakup. It has that kind of aching spontaneity. It is another hit from Muscle Shoals, Alabama, one of the GREAT music hotbeds, along with Detroit, Nashville, and Memphis. Our February Board meeting is in Alabama and I may finally have to do the pilgrimage road trip to Muscle Shoals and then Memphis, dropping in for Sunday services at the church where Rev. Al Green still preaches and sings. If the music is all like this, I will be saved.

What I’m reading:

John Banville’s Mrs. Osmond, his homage to literary idol Henry James and an imagined sequel to James’ 1881 masterpiece Portrait of a Lady. Go online and read the first paragraph of Chapter 25. He is…profoundly good. Makes me want to never write again, since anything I attempt will feel like some other, lowly activity in comparison to his mastery of language, image, syntax. This is slow reading, every sentence to be savored.

What I’m watching:

I’ve always respected Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but we just watched the documentary RGB. It is over-the-top great and she is now one of my heroes. A superwoman in many ways and the documentary is really well done. There are lots of scenes of her speaking to crowds and the way young women, especially law students, look at her is touching.  And you can’t help but fall in love with her now late husband Marty. See this movie and be reminded of how important is the Law.

July 23, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Spotify’s Summer Acoustic playlist has been on repeat quite a lot. What a fun way to listen to artists new to me, including The Paper Kites, Hollow Coves, and Fleet Foxes, as well as old favorites like Leon Bridges and Jose Gonzalez. Pretty chill when dialing back to a summer pace, dining on the screen porch or reading a book.

What I’m reading:

Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy. Founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, Stevenson tells of the racial injustice (and the war on the poor our judicial system perpetuates as well) that he discovered as a young graduate from Harvard Law School and his fight to address it. It is in turn heartbreaking, enraging, and inspiring. It is also about mercy and empathy and justice that reads like a novel. Brilliant.

What I’m watching:

Fauda. We watched season one of this Israeli thriller. It was much discussed in Israel because while it focuses on an ex-special agent who comes out of retirement to track down a Palestinian terrorist, it was willing to reveal the complexity, richness, and emotions of Palestinian lives. And the occasional brutality of the Israelis. Pretty controversial stuff in Israel. Lior Raz plays Doron, the main character, and is compelling and tough and often hard to like. He’s a mess. As is the world in which he has to operate. We really liked it, and also felt guilty because while it may have been brave in its treatment of Palestinians within the Israeli context, it falls back into some tired tropes and ultimately falls short on this front.

    June 11, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Like everyone else, I’m listening to Pusha T drop the mic on Drake. Okay, not really, but do I get some points for even knowing that? We all walk around with songs that immediately bring us back to a time or a place. Songs are time machines. We are coming up on Father’s Day. My own dad passed away on Father’s Day back in 1994 and I remembering dutifully getting through the wake and funeral and being strong throughout. Then, sitting alone in our kitchen, Don Henley’s The End of the Innocence came on and I lost it. When you lose a parent for the first time (most of us have two after all) we lose our innocence and in that passage, we suddenly feel adult in a new way (no matter how old we are), a longing for our own childhood, and a need to forgive and be forgiven. Listen to the lyrics and you’ll understand. As Wordsworth reminds us in In Memoriam, there are seasons to our grief and, all these years later, this song no longer hits me in the gut, but does transport me back with loving memories of my father. I’ll play it Father’s Day.

What I’m reading:

The Fifth Season, by N. K. Jemisin. I am not a reader of fantasy or sci-fi, though I understand they can be powerful vehicles for addressing the very real challenges of the world in which we actually live. I’m not sure I know of a more vivid and gripping illustration of that fact than N. K. Jemisin’s Hugo Award winning novel The Fifth Season, first in her Broken Earth trilogy. It is astounding. It is the fantasy parallel to The Underground Railroad, my favorite recent read, a depiction of subjugation, power, casual violence, and a broken world in which our hero(s) struggle, suffer mightily, and still, somehow, give us hope. It is a tour de force book. How can someone be this good a writer? The first 30 pages pained me (always with this genre, one must learn a new, constructed world, and all of its operating physics and systems of order), and then I could not put it down. I panicked as I neared the end, not wanting to finish the book, and quickly ordered the Obelisk Gate, the second novel in the trilogy, and I can tell you now that I’ll be spending some goodly portion of my weekend in Jemisin’s other world.

What I’m watching:

The NBA Finals and perhaps the best basketball player of this generation. I’ve come to deeply respect LeBron James as a person, a force for social good, and now as an extraordinary player at the peak of his powers. His superhuman play during the NBA playoffs now ranks with the all-time greats, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, MJ, Kobe, and the demi-god that was Bill Russell. That his Cavs lost in a 4-game sweep is no surprise. It was a mediocre team being carried on the wide shoulders of James (and matched against one of the greatest teams ever, the Warriors, and the Harry Potter of basketball, Steph Curry) and, in some strange way, his greatness is amplified by the contrast with the rest of his team. It was a great run.

May 24, 2018

What I’m listening to:

I’ve always liked Alicia Keys and admired her social activism, but I am hooked on her last album Here. This feels like an album finally commensurate with her anger, activism, hope, and grit. More R&B and Hip Hop than is typical for her, I think this album moves into an echelon inhabited by a Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On or Beyonce’s Formation. Social activism and outrage rarely make great novels, but they often fuel great popular music. Here is a terrific example.

What I’m reading:

Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad may be close to a flawless novel. Winner of the 2017 Pulitzer, it chronicles the lives of two runaway slaves, Cora and Caeser, as they try to escape the hell of plantation life in Georgia.  It is an often searing novel and Cora is one of the great heroes of American literature. I would make this mandatory reading in every high school in America, especially in light of the absurd revisionist narratives of “happy and well cared for” slaves. This is a genuinely great novel, one of the best I’ve read, the magical realism and conflating of time periods lifts it to another realm of social commentary, relevance, and a blazing indictment of America’s Original Sin, for which we remain unabsolved.

What I’m watching:

I thought I knew about The Pentagon Papers, but The Post, a real-life political thriller from Steven Spielberg taught me a lot, features some of our greatest actors, and is so timely given the assault on our democratic institutions and with a presidency out of control. It is a reminder that a free and fearless press is a powerful part of our democracy, always among the first targets of despots everywhere. The story revolves around the legendary Post owner and D.C. doyenne, Katharine Graham. I had the opportunity to see her son, Don Graham, right after he saw the film, and he raved about Meryl Streep’s portrayal of his mother. Liked it a lot more than I expected.

April 27, 2018

What I’m listening to:

I mentioned John Prine in a recent post and then on the heels of that mention, he has released a new album, The Tree of Forgiveness, his first new album in ten years. Prine is beloved by other singer songwriters and often praised by the inscrutable God that is Bob Dylan.  Indeed, Prine was frequently said to be the “next Bob Dylan” in the early part of his career, though he instead carved out his own respectable career and voice, if never with the dizzying success of Dylan. The new album reflects a man in his 70s, a cancer survivor, who reflects on life and its end, but with the good humor and empathy that are hallmarks of Prine’s music. “When I Get To Heaven” is a rollicking, fun vision of what comes next and a pure delight. A charming, warm, and often terrific album.

What I’m reading:

I recently read Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, on many people’s Top Ten lists for last year and for good reason. It is sprawling, multi-generational, and based in the world of Japanese occupied Korea and then in the Korean immigrant’s world of Oaska, so our key characters become “tweeners,” accepted in neither world. It’s often unspeakably sad, and yet there is resiliency and love. There is also intimacy, despite the time and geographic span of the novel. It’s breathtakingly good and like all good novels, transporting.

What I’m watching:

I adore Guillermo del Toro’s 2006 film, Pan’s Labyrinth, and while I’m not sure his Shape of Water is better, it is a worthy follow up to the earlier masterpiece (and more of a commercial success). Lots of critics dislike the film, but I’m okay with a simple retelling of a Beauty and the Beast love story, as predictable as it might be. The acting is terrific, it is visually stunning, and there are layers of pain as well as social and political commentary (the setting is the US during the Cold War) and, no real spoiler here, the real monsters are humans, the military officer who sees over the captured aquatic creature. It is hauntingly beautiful and its depiction of hatred to those who are different or “other” is painfully resonant with the time in which we live. Put this on your “must see” list.

March 18, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Sitting on a plane for hours (and many more to go; geez, Australia is far away) is a great opportunity to listen to new music and to revisit old favorites. This time, it is Lucy Dacus and her album Historians, the new sophomore release from a 22-year old indie artist that writes with relatable, real-life lyrics. Just on a second listen and while she insists this isn’t a break up record (as we know, 50% of all great songs are break up songs), it is full of loss and pain. Worth the listen so far. For the way back machine, it’s John Prine and In Spite of Ourselves (that title track is one of the great love songs of all time), a collection of duets with some of his “favorite girl singers” as he once described them. I have a crush on Iris Dement (for a really righteously angry song try her Wasteland of the Free), but there is also EmmyLou Harris, the incomparable Dolores Keane, and Lucinda Williams. Very different albums, both wonderful.

What I’m reading:

Jane Mayer’s New Yorker piece on Christopher Steele presents little that is new, but she pulls it together in a terrific and coherent whole that is illuminating and troubling at the same time. Not only for what is happening, but for the complicity of the far right in trying to discredit that which should be setting off alarm bells everywhere. Bob Mueller may be the most important defender of the democracy at this time. A must read.

What I’m watching:

Homeland is killing it this season and is prescient, hauntingly so. Russian election interference, a Bannon-style hate radio demagogue, alienated and gun toting militia types, and a president out of control. It’s fabulous, even if it feels awfully close to the evening news. 

March 8, 2018

What I’m listening to:

We have a family challenge to compile our Top 100 songs. It is painful. Only 100? No more than three songs by one artist? Wait, why is M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” on my list? Should it just be The Clash from whom she samples? Can I admit to guilty pleasure songs? Hey, it’s my list and I can put anything I want on it. So I’m listening to the list while I work and the song playing right now is Tom Petty’s “The Wild One, Forever,” a B-side single that was never a hit and that remains my favorite Petty song. Also, “Evangeline” by Los Lobos. It evokes a night many years ago, with friends at Pearl Street in Northampton, MA, when everyone danced well past 1AM in a hot, sweaty, packed club and the band was a revelation. Maybe the best music night of our lives and a reminder that one’s 100 Favorite Songs list is as much about what you were doing and where you were in your life when those songs were playing as it is about the music. It’s not a list. It’s a soundtrack for this journey.

What I’m reading:

Patricia Lockwood’s Priestdaddy was in the NY Times top ten books of 2017 list and it is easy to see why. Lockwood brings remarkable and often surprising imagery, metaphor, and language to her prose memoir and it actually threw me off at first. It then all became clear when someone told me she is a poet. The book is laugh aloud funny, which masks (or makes safer anyway) some pretty dark territory. Anyone who grew up Catholic, whether lapsed or not, will resonate with her story. She can’t resist a bawdy anecdote and her family provides some of the most memorable characters possible, especially her father, her sister, and her mother, who I came to adore. Best thing I’ve read in ages.

What I’m watching:

The Florida Project, a profoundly good movie on so many levels. Start with the central character, six-year old (at the time of the filming) Brooklynn Prince, who owns – I mean really owns – the screen. This is pure acting genius and at that age? Astounding. Almost as astounding is Bria Vinaite, who plays her mother. She was discovered on Instagram and had never acted before this role, which she did with just three weeks of acting lessons. She is utterly convincing and the tension between the child’s absolute wonder and joy in the world with her mother’s struggle to provide, to be a mother, is heartwarming and heartbreaking all at once. Willem Dafoe rightly received an Oscar nomination for his supporting role. This is a terrific movie.

February 12, 2018

What I’m listening to:

So, I have a lot of friends of age (I know you’re thinking 40s, but I just turned 60) who are frozen in whatever era of music they enjoyed in college or maybe even in their thirties. There are lots of times when I reach back into the catalog, since music is one of those really powerful and transporting senses that can take you through time (smell is the other one, though often underappreciated for that power). Hell, I just bought a turntable and now spending time in vintage vinyl shops. But I’m trying to take a lesson from Pat, who revels in new music and can as easily talk about North African rap music and the latest National album as Meet the Beatles, her first ever album. So, I’ve been listening to Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy winning Damn. While it may not be the first thing I’ll reach for on a winter night in Maine, by the fire, I was taken with it. It’s layered, political, and weirdly sensitive and misogynist at the same time, and it feels fresh and authentic and smart at the same time, with music that often pulled me from what I was doing. In short, everything music should do. I’m not a bit cooler for listening to Damn, but when I followed it with Steely Dan, I felt like I was listening to Lawrence Welk. A good sign, I think.

What I’m reading:

I am reading Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Leonardo da Vinci. I’m not usually a reader of biographies, but I’ve always been taken with Leonardo. Isaacson does not disappoint (does he ever?), and his subject is at once more human and accessible and more awe-inspiring in Isaacson’s capable hands. Gay, left-handed, vegetarian, incapable of finishing things, a wonderful conversationalist, kind, and perhaps the most relentlessly curious human being who has ever lived. Like his biographies of Steve Jobs and Albert Einstein, Isaacson’s project here is to show that genius lives at the intersection of science and art, of rationality and creativity. Highly recommend it.

What I’m watching:

We watched the This Is Us post-Super Bowl episode, the one where Jack finally buys the farm. I really want to hate this show. It is melodramatic and manipulative, with characters that mostly never change or grow, and it hooks me every damn time we watch it. The episode last Sunday was a tear jerker, a double whammy intended to render into a blubbering, tissue-crumbling pathetic mess anyone who has lost a parent or who is a parent. Sterling K. Brown, Ron Cephas Jones, the surprising Mandy Moore, and Milo Ventimiglia are hard not to love and last season’s episode that had only Brown and Cephas going to Memphis was the show at its best (they are by far the two best actors). Last week was the show at its best worst. In other words, I want to hate it, but I love it. If you haven’t seen it, don’t binge watch it. You’ll need therapy and insulin.

January 15, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Drive-By Truckers. Chris Stapleton has me on an unusual (for me) country theme and I discovered these guys to my great delight. They’ve been around, with some 11 albums, but the newest one is fascinating. It’s a deep dive into Southern alienation and the white working-class world often associated with our current president. I admire the willingness to lay bare, in kick ass rock songs, the complexities and pain at work among people we too quickly place into overly simple categories. These guys are brave, bold, and thoughtful as hell, while producing songs I didn’t expect to like, but that I keep playing. And they are coming to NH.

What I’m reading:

A textual analog to Drive-By Truckers by Chris Stapleton in many ways is Tony Horowitz’s 1998 Pulitzer Prize winning Confederates in the Attic. Ostensibly about the Civil War and the South’s ongoing attachment to it, it is prescient and speaks eloquently to the times in which we live (where every southern state but Virginia voted for President Trump). Often hilarious, it too surfaces complexities and nuance that escape a more recent, and widely acclaimed, book like Hillbilly Elegy. As a Civil War fan, it was also astonishing in many instances, especially when it blows apart long-held “truths” about the war, such as the degree to which Sherman burned down the south (he did not). Like D-B Truckers, Horowitz loves the South and the people he encounters, even as he grapples with its myths of victimhood and exceptionalism (and racism, which may be no more than the racism in the north, but of a different kind). Everyone should read this book and I’m embarrassed I’m so late to it.

What I’m watching:

David Letterman has a new Netflix show called “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction” and we watched the first episode, in which Letterman interviewed Barack Obama. It was extraordinary (if you don’t have Netflix, get it just to watch this show); not only because we were reminded of Obama’s smarts, grace, and humanity (and humor), but because we saw a side of Letterman we didn’t know existed. His personal reflections on Selma were raw and powerful, almost painful. He will do five more episodes with “extraordinary individuals” and if they are anything like the first, this might be the very best work of his career and one of the best things on television.

December 22, 2017

What I’m reading:

Just finished Sunjeev Sahota’s Year of the Runaways, a painful inside look at the plight of illegal Indian immigrant workers in Britain. It was shortlisted for 2015 Man Booker Prize and its transporting, often to a dark and painful universe, and it is impossible not to think about the American version of this story and the terrible way we treat the undocumented in our own country, especially now.

What I’m watching:

Season II of The Crown is even better than Season I. Elizabeth’s character is becoming more three-dimensional, the modern world is catching up with tradition-bound Britain, and Cold War politics offer more context and tension than we saw in Season I. Claire Foy, in her last season, is just terrific – one arched eye brow can send a message.

What I’m listening to:

A lot of Christmas music, but needing a break from the schmaltz, I’ve discovered Over the Rhine and their Christmas album, Snow Angels. God, these guys are good.

  November 14, 2017

What I’m watching:

Guiltily, I watch the Patriots play every weekend, often building my schedule and plans around seeing the game. Why the guilt? I don’t know how morally defensible is football anymore, as we now know the severe damage it does to the players. We can’t pretend it’s all okay anymore. Is this our version of late decadent Rome, watching mostly young Black men take a terrible toll on each other for our mere entertainment?

What I’m reading:

Recently finished J.G. Ballard’s 2000 novel Super-Cannes, a powerful depiction of a corporate-tech ex-pat community taken over by a kind of psychopathology, in which all social norms and responsibilities are surrendered to residents of the new world community. Kept thinking about Silicon Valley when reading it. Pretty dark, dystopian view of the modern world and centered around a mass killing, troublingly prescient.

What I’m listening to:

Was never really a Lorde fan, only knowing her catchy (and smarter than you might first guess) pop hit “Royals” from her debut album. But her new album, Melodrama, is terrific and it doesn’t feel quite right to call this “pop.” There is something way more substantial going on with Lorde and I can see why many critics put this album at the top of their Best in 2017 list. Count me in as a huge fan.

  November 3, 2017

What I’m reading: Just finished Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere, her breathtakingly good second novel. How is someone so young so wise? Her writing is near perfection and I read the book in two days, setting my alarm for 4:30AM so I could finish it before work.

What I’m watching: We just binge watched season two of Stranger Things and it was worth it just to watch Millie Bobbie Brown, the transcendent young actor who plays Eleven. The series is a delightful mash up of every great eighties horror genre you can imagine and while pretty dark, an absolute joy to watch.

What I’m listening to: I’m not a lover of country music (to say the least), but I love Chris Stapleton. His “The Last Thing I Needed, First Thing This Morning” is heartbreakingly good and reminds me of the old school country that played in my house as a kid. He has a new album and I can’t wait, but his From A Room: Volume 1 is on repeat for now.

  September 26, 2017

What I’m reading:

Just finished George Saunder’s Lincoln in the Bardo. It took me a while to accept its cadence and sheer weirdness, but loved it in the end. A painful meditation on loss and grief, and a genuinely beautiful exploration of the intersection of life and death, the difficulty of letting go of what was, good and bad, and what never came to be.

What I’m watching:

HBO’s The Deuce. Times Square and the beginning of the porn industry in the 1970s, the setting made me wonder if this was really something I’d want to see. But David Simon is the writer and I’d read a menu if he wrote it. It does not disappoint so far and there is nothing prurient about it.

What I’m listening to:

The National’s new album Sleep Well Beast. I love this band. The opening piano notes of the first song, “Nobody Else Will Be There,” seize me & I’m reminded that no one else in music today matches their arrangement & musicianship. I’m adding “Born to Beg,” “Slow Show,” “I Need My Girl,” and “Runaway” to my list of favorite love songs.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J from President's Corner https://ift.tt/2QMydSq via IFTTT

[blackchurchnewswire]

Bob Smietana's Book Review of 'Strangers and Friends at the Welcome Table: Contemporary Christianities in the American South' by James Hudnut-Beumler

In the spring of 2008, my wife and I loaded up a truck and moved to Tennessee, where I’d taken a job as the religion writer at a newspaper in Nashville. I’ve spent the decade since then covering religion in the South, first at the paper and later as a magazine writer and freelancer.

I thought I understood how things work here. But I was mistaken. A new book from Vanderbilt Divinity School professor James Hudnut-Beumler, Strangers and Friends at the Welcome Table, helps explain why.

Based on a lifetime’s worth of work—Hudnut-Beumler grew up visiting his mom’s relatives in Appalachia—the book winds its way from a slave cabin in Spring Hill, Tennessee (about five minutes from my house), to the storm-ravaged neighborhoods of New Orleans; from a Catholic monastery in the sticks of Alabama to the headquarters of the Sons of the Confederacy.

Along the way, we see the many splendors and the deep flaws of Southern religion. It’s a place where faith is always personal, where everyone knows your name, and where the Bible shapes everything. At the heart of this new book is the question of Southern hospitality. Who is able to “sit at the welcome table,” in the words of the old spiritual? Who is turned away? And why is the South—a place of such kindness—so divided and inhospitable at times?

Hudnut-Beumler answers these questions and more in a book that’s part pilgrimage, part history lesson, and part celebration of the many versions of Christianity in the South. He writes with grace about almost everyone he meets. At one point, he visits a table at a homeschooling convention that features tips on “food security”—how to plant your own garden and raise your own crops. An inferior writer might have mocked these people. Instead, he sees echoes of Wendell Berry in their desire to reconnect to the land. Still, Hudnut-Beumler doesn’t shy away from the deep divides and sins of Southern Christians.

Conditional Hospitality

One of the first questions a Southerner asks when meeting a stranger is “Who are your people?” In the South, hospitality is conditional. People want to know who you are—where you come from, where you go to church—before they know how to treat you.

There’s a superficial friendliness—think “Bless your heart” delivered with a smile. But Southerners keep their distance unless there’s a bridge between them and a stranger, no matter how tenuous. “Moreover, the newcomer who finds a bridge is no longer a stranger but a kind of kin,” writes Hudnut-Beumler. “The person asking the question is proffering a deep kind of enduring hospitality—conditionally.”

The hospitality is conditional, in part, because the South has been shaped by scarcity as well as by faith. There are Wednesday night church suppers full of fried chicken, biscuits, and Jell-O salads. But a surprising number of people struggle to put food on the table the rest of the week. And the South isn’t just the Bible Belt. It’s also the Meth Belt—a place where poverty and addiction are commonplace and opioid overdoses are among the leading causes of death.

These circumstances—and a sense that charity begins at home—make Southerners eager to help their kin but wary of helping strangers. “Although southerners will give to those they know, they hate being forced to help others, especially those beyond their gaze,” explains Hudnut-Beumler.

Southerners will rush to help each other when disasters strike. When a tornado or hurricane devastates a community, chances are a host of Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians will follow in its wake, bringing chainsaws, hammers, and hope. Months after Hurricane Maria, Southern Baptists were still cooking thousands of meals for disaster victims in Puerto Rico.

But they will raise hell when asked to send government aid to foreign countries or pay higher taxes. As one Southern Christian explains, “We hate the group but love the individuals, as opposed to other parts of the country, where they love the group but hate the individual.”

In one of his most hopeful chapters, Hudnut-Beumler retells the story of the faith-based response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and around the Gulf Coast. The chapter opens with a TV reporter standing outside a church in New Orleans, not long after the hurricane hit the city. One of the church members was setting up tables outside so that the church could feed neighbors who were without power.

“Are you doing this for your church members?” the reporter asked.

“No, this is for anybody who is hungry and needs food,” the church member replied. “It’s what we do as a church. We feed people.”

Southern Christians have remarkable confidence in what they can do to help their neighbors. When things go wrong, they get to work. And they don’t stop until the job is done. That’s the case for Ben McLeish, one of the founders of St. Roch Community Church, a Presbyterian Church in America congregation in New Orleans’s Eighth Ward. The church was planted after Katrina, and one of its early goals was to help the community rebuild. Now its members also run a community development organization.

The church, a multiethnic conservative congregation, links its development work to theology, McLeish told Hudnut-Beumler. Rather than focus on immediate charity, the church looks at long-term, holistic community development—something unexpected for a conservative Southern evangelical church.

“There’s a verse that haunts me about John the Baptist, about how he is called to make a way for Christ, but also to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children,” McLeish told Hudnut-Beumler. “If a man is not working or a single mom is not working and struggling, it’s really hard to keep your head up and have pride, have dignity about yourself, and deliberately raise your children. But if we can help create livable wage employment opportunities that count in this discipleship, mentoring model, then we can really begin to turn the hearts of fathers to their children, and that alone would revolutionize families in our neighborhood.”

Hudnut-Beumler sees the faith-based disaster volunteering after Katrina as a kind of penance—a way for Americans from North and South alike to make amends for the neglect that caused the levees to fail.

He also sees something more: “Disaster relief,” he writes, “is also a place where racial divisions seem more susceptible to being bridged because something is being built in this American society so divided by race and class, rather than being analyzed, argued over, or torn down.”

Click here to read more. Source: Christianity Today

[benchgenderstudies]

Letter to the Editor AJPH:..When government is the problem of public health. <Declined>

FOREWARD: 

The problem with scientific journals is they have no heart to confront politicians directly for being in debt of facts. IF republicans were provoked to debate the environment or gun violence matter with scientific journals they’d shatter under the vast weight of the featured authors and research among the journals volumes. The social sciences are often ignored because the results of their research reject the ambivalence towards racial and class privilege that keep washington dc a special interest group. 

Get-out-the-vote is a popular gimmick. The people have the right to reject the system when the options are also the author of the problems. dnc&rnc. Low voter turnout is also a political speech yelling for some time: this government isn’t worth its taxes.  scotus is too chickenshit to compare that angle against money. A congress full of overexpensive garbage. 

----------------------------------------------------------------

LETTER:

Calls to Regulate Fashion Models in the United States Haven't Had A Worthy Government Available to the Task of Accountability

By Michael Bench, MEP, GCERT

 Dear Editor

Approximately 2 years ago following France's announcement to regulate fashion, Dr's Bryn Austin and Katherine Record appeared in this very publication identifying OSHA as the particular agency due investigating the fashion industry. We have not at all seen OSHA produce results. We have not seen United States government move a very inch of where it was since 2007 when I began contacting OSHA while it was under Edwin Foulke Jr.  

 Foulke at least responded; he was leaving the regulation to the CFDA who likewise has done nothing and cannot be expected to enforce its policies even if it faked it for publicity. In 2007 when I contacted Council of Fashion Designers of America, they had no plans to regulate the industry while ' strongly concerned' about the models health. How emptily heart warming they care so much for other American's children.

I am addressing the federal government negligence, failure to protect American youth from targeted and fraudulent consumerist messages rendering the government accountability office, OSHA, Department of Labor OIG (Howard Shapiro,Scott Dahl), M Patricia Smith (former NY Comissioner of Labor), New York State, and FBI utterly complacent to the abuses, attempted suicides , depression and profitable pharmaceutical sales to the fashion industries and media's misled youth. Why hasn't this Journal been more forceful among colleagues in Government seats? When women raise the point it seems to go by the wayside. I'm a male Citizen of the United States calling on Donald Trump, His OSHA secretary Dorothy Dougherty , and Jean Bennett NIOSH/ Health and Human Services Department to recognize the hashtag MAGA is now their test to protect American youth from domestic consumer threats and classist eurotrash influence resulting of columns and pictures in publications like VOGUE, Cosmopolitan, and Seventeen.

 There is an error in Austin's and Record's account of the fashion industry. They're empathic for models. They treat the models like they're owed protection from the industry when really; for fame; the actual risk to health is entirely karmic up through and including dying for it.  The new models might not know their risks. Eventually the totality have protected the industry and not sufficiently protected each other from unreasonable conditions of employment. So unreasonable,parents of models who've stayed silent should be arrested for neglect. Female haute couture models have no integrity. They'd sacrifice their own body for the preferences of a homosexual designer under a delusion he designs women. He designs clothes and that’s it.  His lack of arousal is not an excuse of his accountability to the employees health. Body mass index has been coyly dismissed by the fashion industry claiming its arbitrary.  

 No, actually.Body mass index is only inaccurate for the overweight and athletic population unable to differentiate between muscle and fat. For the underweight population, body mass index is more than a formidable opponent to their breatherism and every other psychotic masking of anorexic idealism. BMI is very much accurate in defining liars, scam artists and every other term for fraud in crash diet or ideal dress size that can be summoned for the entirety of the London, Paris, New York and every other Caucasian centric runway. The women don't need to be seeking retail therapy to reward themselves for the cleansing diet tips that fluctuate a size unpredictably among the majority of female populace. The unreasonable thinness ideal is to promote shopping; To promote anxiety among women for a size they'll fluctuate in and out of. The truth is , it’s a size the model herself can't maintain for longer than the photo session and she has no legal foundation to prescribe thinness tips to anyone. If she isn't anorexic her self, a haute couture model has been and continues to be an enabler of the dysmorphic vision her designers conditionally employ her to portray. The dysmorphic is the designer, the disordered eater the model and her emulating fans and the government isn't worth saluting.  

 So Journal of Public Health, Are you going to care about public health of America's ad fed youth? Are you going to slink away like David Michaels of George Washington University? Even if I hadn't emailed him or wrote to him repeatedly for the entirety of 8years, where was his awareness to initiate his own evaluation of fashion? Or Tom Perez, He was awfully silent about the fashion models during a period it could've been a Hillary Clinton platform. In the time defense of marriage was a wedge topic, the republican party had adequate fuel with the fashion industry to declare homosexuality a mental illness. Instead, they did nothing; serving classism and wealth as if the gay designers declare for the (cis) wealthy whats fashionable or not. American Journal of Public Health, the fact that this is even unaddressed by the United States government this long illustrates an inept pair of parties completely untowards the task of designing a health care system or its reform.  

 The United States policy can't be a cut and paste procedure as Bryn Austin and Katherine Record have offered.  No. US Dress Size 8, at a body mass index no less that 19.2 ; a growth curve uninfluenced by employment, a duplication of all employment related exercises to be signed by the models parents , general physician and federal department of labor and shared liability between the parents and the fashion industry agency and designer for any requests unreasonable for any parent to make of their children; employed or not.  I have made conditions: Austin and Record shrugged it.

An American could've been credited with allowing America to be great again ever since 2007. I have no doubt there were females before me that were ignored to address the media's complicity. D

 uring the 1980s mainstream media slid headlines in like " teen body dissatisfaction is so frequent its considered normal". Never by the duress of fashion media it's not. By no hesitation should you be burning down Paris.  I'm not waiting on the us government to act accordingly. I'm Ordering the united states government to abide the oath they took in protection of the youth by threats of consumerism now identified and spelled out for them. FBI; utterly a shame of convenience.  The senate and house of representatives, the last two senior administrations of OSHA  AND the designers should all be dragged behind the same truck from a noose together.A cure for their mistaken sense of wellness and undeserved incumbency. Female Mixed Martial Arts fighters are the winners here of empowered women. The fashion models are merely lazy professional pedestrians. Anorexia is the effort to cleave identifiable gender characteristics of adipose tissue from the body to avoid classification of maturity. The fashion industry promotes an androgynous figure of women often younger than 18. There is no difference of couture's goals and anorexia whether the fashion model is above or below 18.5 BMI. Know for damn certain France's bar at 18.0 BMI is insufficient to curb their generally protected export industry. Don't imitate France. Prosecute them. It takes more to promote public health these days that just being editors and it apparently takes a better government than what Americans are being taxed each year to endure for ' authority". I'd question if Green Anarchists would've spotted this problem sooner?  

*

Americans have remained a great people among those demanding a fair go for all. When corporate wealth has determined Americans wants too inconvenient, Americans' greatness has been snubbed. What stopped being great was a government confused of its alliances; The people first , dipshit.  

[jfpark]

Prose of the Housing Question

paper presented on 13 October 2017 on the panel “This Side of Real: Renee Gladman’s New Narrative” at Communal Presence: New Narrative Writing Today

Though it was just a year ago this October 4th, I can no longer remember precisely how I came to read Robin Tremblay-McGaw’s post “Remembering Francesca Rosa” on the blog she edits, X Poetics. I strongly suspect David Buuck posted it on social media, but I’m not entirely sure; I don’t know which platform, and I didn’t consult the platform archives to write this. By way of this memorial post I first came to encounter the words of F.S. Rosa, in an interview with Tremblay-McGaw, also posted on X Poetics on the second day of January 2009, entitled “From The Angels of Light to New Narrative and Labor Activism.” I’ll get back to that interview in a moment, but suffice it to say that as I listened to software on a mobile device read it aloud to me while washing the dishes, it put enough suds in my soap to get me to later chase the books she published with San Francisco press Ithuriel’s Spear. The one I’ve thumbed most thoroughly so far is POST WAR and Other Stories, one of two books I’ll talk to you about today. 

The reading I’ll be conveying of POST WAR and Renee Gladman’s book To After That (or Toaf) extends a line most succinctly delineated in a sentence from Rosa’s “Author’s Note” to POST WAR, so it’s there I’ll start. Before dedicating the book to the founder of Small Press Traffic, James Mitchell, who also publishes Ithuriel’s Spear, a press at which Rosa was co-editor, Rosa writes, “I had thought of dedicating the book as a whole to all those San Francisco landlords who gave us all that cheap rent in the ‘70’s, thus making art (in big apartments) possible, but that of course is ridiculous.” While perhaps politically ridiculous to dedicate one’s book to a class enemy, I find the historical claim this considered but averted dedication offers to be fundamental, and it’s looping of cheap rent and weird art is one somewhat regularly threaded. Rosa mentions something like it in the interview that sudsed me, which I’ll quote at length.

In the 70s artists, writers, painters, musicians, underground filmmakers were swarming everywhere all over each other to get at that cheap San Francisco rent, not to mention that the city was so much nicer and freer and more fun than most other places.Gentrification was already happening.[...] But it was still possible to live here very cheaply if you weren’t one of the targeted working class communities or communities of color sitting on land the Redevelopment Agency or big Hong Kong real estate conglomerates et al, wanted. We were to a certain extent unwitting shock troops in the gentrification process, including in the Haight, but that is another story. Later it happened in the Mission, but much later. 

The role of what’s now sometimes called artwashing in the gentrification process will, like in Rosa’s interview, remain a detour not taken in this talk, but I do want to flag that this citation here is not the only intersection that artwashing and landlordage has with New Narrative today. Some of you, for example, may have followed the recent IRL and social media clashes between Semiotext(e) and Los Angeles’s Defend Boyle Heights / Boyle Heights Against Artwashing and Displacement regarding the eventually cancelled but would have been gallery boycott defying book release for Chris Kraus’s After Kathy Acker.

Meanwhile, a version of the history Rosa describes, suggesting some of San Francisco neighborhoods’ cheap rents as a necessary condition for San Francisco’s art production, including New Narrative, pops up in the Dodie Bellamy and Kevin Killian introduction to Writers Who Love Too Much: New Narrative Writing 1977-1997. Having noted the fact that in the late 70s / early 80s there was still a decent amount of state funding for artists (some of which came to Robert Glück for the famous SPT workshops), Bellamy and Killian write, “San Francisco was not then the most expensive place to live in America. Rents were fairly cheap” (viii).

As the child of a real estate developer, as a partisan of the tenants movement, as someone who came to involvement in the tenant struggle through dating a tenant organizer in undergrad, as a person who’s been involved with tenants’ organizations since shortly after moving to the Bay in summer of 2014, it will surprise few that I find the quotes I’ve thus far cited interesting. They pose of this prose an attention to what Engels called The Housing Question. But though I think they are interesting, it’s only so much to note that more than one New Narrative writer has been self-conscious about the extent to which affordable rent was among the social conditions that made their writing possible. That associates of a literary movement noted for among other things its leftist politics would have an awareness of historically relatively low rents in a city whose gentrification has been among the most notable in the US since the 70s seems a matter of course.

But these quotes pose, I think, more than just an attention to the housing question, but also, for me, one admittedly seeking precisely this, the possibility of a Prose of the Housing Question, a prose that doesn’t merely think that question as a condition among other conditions, but as an architecture of prose itself. For shape to the sense of housing and prose I’m after, I want to share with you another long quote. I first encountered the following paragraph in Gladman’s Toaf probably only a year before I encountered Rosa’s “Author’s Note.” Toaf, unless I’m mistaken, was first mentioned to me by Stephanie Young, whom recommended Gladman’s work while I studied with her in the beginning of my last year at the MFA at Mills College in 2015. I’d read Gladman before in undergrad, even studying small press publishing with her, but it wasn’t until Toaf that her books caught hold of me. It was Young too, that, in comments on the early drafts to my manuscript Every Breath You Take, drew my attention to New Narrative, a movement which at the time I’d studied relatively little. Toaf, as you may know, is an elegiac report about a novella called After That that Gladman began in San Francisco in 1998-1999, second drafted in Oakland in 2000-2001, and third drafted in, I believe, Brooklyn and Providence in 2003-2004, before in pronouncing After That lost and writing the elegy. Here’s the promised paragraph.

That city, that for lack of a better word housed my novella, remained—for the duration of the first draft—faithful to me. By faith, I mean that it kept its light on: I could see it as I had come to love it months after it no longer was itself. Thanks to the economic boom of the late nineties. The temperate climate kept me calm, but everyday I mourned the displacement of the city’s people. I saw my favorite streets overcome: apartment buildings, having stood a hundred years, demolished in a day to erect lofts, holes-in-the-walls restructured into     boutiques, and new money-laden citizens crowding the sidewalks. [20]

Gladman’s elegiac report, Toaf, is also an elegy for San Francisco, a city that Gladman had left “because I could not stand to see the demise of my old one, though I was aware that I had been living in its entrails for some time” (27). These entrails, as the long quote states, had housed the novella, before the late 90s boom unhoused Gladman and the book by way of an overwhelming affection for those displaced, a mourning many of us in Oakland, and many other places, now know well.

Before I share a brief historical summary of some the rental political economy and tenant resistance that condition the period in San Francisco spanning from the time Rosa was writing her stories to Gladman her novella, a history I’ll share before returning back to more closely discuss their books, I want to share a definition of the word prose Gladman offers in her essay “The Person in the World” from the 2004 New Narrative anthology Biting the Error: Writers Explore Narrative.

Prose[…]is the registering of the everyday, the phenomenon of life[…]using a kind of heightened language. Prose moves across genres, practices of thought, cultures, realities, bringing to both the writer’s and reader’s attention the blurred yet visible borders between.

The project of such a prose is informed by, Gladman continues, “a kind of semantic trauma,” and seeks to “reattach statements to their conditions” and “the habitability of those conditions” (46). Gladman’s particular sense of prose names a genre that distinguishes itself from the marketing and disciplinary distinction between fiction and non-fiction, and describes perhaps a general category to which much New Narrative might be considered specific.

So I want to say, after Gladman, that the registration of the everyday habitability, the living in, and the housing amid social meaning and the historical violence of displacement from one’s home, define a Prose of the Housing Question. The library of this prose is undoubtedly and unfortunately vast, since, as Friedrich Engels notes, the housing question is not one formulated only under capitalism but under all class societies, (and—as I add to Engels) even as capitalism gives it a distinct form through the profit driven racialized displacement of gentrification, imperialism, and settler colonialism, a library within whose New Narrative sections Gladman’s book and Rosa’s are notable, as I’ll before long go on arguing.

Now an interlude of historical narrative.

I draw here extensively from Randy Shaw’s “Tenants Power in San Francisco” from Reclaiming San Francisco: History, Politics, Culture, a text I came upon after a poet-comrade, Lucy Asako Boltz, shared with me the link to Shaping San Francisco’s Digital Archive, Found SF.  In 1970s San Francisco “no laws stood in the way of landlord greed,” and the laws that would come were in large part products of tenant struggle. The books these laws are written in, could also be considered, I think, to populate the library I was just talking about. Plenty writers on the period, including Rosa in a passage I skipped over from the earlier quoted interview, mention the tenants movement begins to heat up in 1977 in reaction to the mass eviction of nearly 100 elderly Filipino tenants from the International Hotel, or I-Hotel. From 1975-1979 thousands of affordable single room occupancy rentals were gentrified away. The lack of local and state law combined with federal tax deductions for business expenses helped fuel gentrification’s search for profit through tenant displacement and real estate development, a search that was necessary for capital because of the limits to profit faced in industrial production and resource extraction in the US and around the world in the early 1970s.

Gentrification encouraged the formation of a coalition between the political struggles of those whose organizing emerged from black and brown, LGBTQ, and working class communities, communities which of course already multiply overlapped but insofar as their organizations were socially divided from one another had lacked context to overtly unite. As already discussed, in the early 70s San Fran had offered parts of these communities, in some neighborhoods, some housing security, but much less by the end of the decade. Under the newly created San Franciscans for Affordable Housing, the coalition organized for a 1979 ballot initiative on comprehensive housing protections including rent control, but, due to the passage of a weak Rent Stabilization Ordinance under Mayor Dianne Feinstein, their sails lost wind and their initiative was defeated. A dispute within the movement over a slow growth ballot measure led to organized labor splitting from the tenants movement.

The very tax deductions that helped motivate gentrification were eventually doubled by the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, raising the rate of return on investment, and consequently gentrifying pressures and average rate of rent increase. Tenant organizing responded by narrowing focus on strengthening rent control, a narrowing that contracted their capacity to continue pushing for the broader social transformations in the city their initial coalition envisioned, and thus also further narrowed movement participation, even as they won incremental reforms that established their political power. By 1991 the 1986 repeal of the 1981 Tax Act contributed to a further shrinkage in the tenants movement base as the reductions in profits from ownership and speculation reduced real estate prices, rent growth, and gentrification, taking the winds out of efforts to close remaining loopholes in the rent ordinance, most notably vacancy decontrol, i.e. the opening of rents to market rate when a unit was vacated by a tenant. In 1992, the movement recognized the effects of its political narrowing and organized neighborhood conventions to set a new agenda rooted in a broader analysis of the causes of urban crisis in the acute racist heteronormative profiteering of the Reagan-Bush era. This renewed broadness brought back together constituencies united in the earlier coalition while updating to the times, times by which the AIDS crisis was and had been on and the city had already lost the lives and residence of many. The renewed movement won, in 1992’s Proposition H, a huge cut in the allowable rates of rent increase. In 1995 Wille Brown, who campaigned as pro-tenant, was elected Mayor, though in office he failed to deliver the tenants’ movements agenda. As Shaw writes in words that echo the earlier paragraph from Toaf,

Brown’s abandonment of the tenant cause corresponded with the onset of a new wave of skyrocketing residential rents and property values. Fueled by the economic boom in neighboring Silicon Valley, San Francisco rents climbed 37 percent from February 1996 to February 1997.

Brown remained until 2004, tenants continued to lose housing, the rents just kept getting higher.

What interests me today about Rosa’s POST WAR and Gladman’s Toaf, as books of a Prose of the Housing Question, are both of their attentiveness to everyday life in late racial capitalism, reflecting on respectively earlier and later moments in San Francisco’s residential history.

In Rosa’s book, the stories regularly document their narrator, Lena Rossi, interacting in San Francisco with immigrants to the city, immigrants that include her, and her bohemian and post-bohemian friends. And when they do not take place in the city, they depict the narrator in motion elsewhere, moving toward or returning to the city, growing up in upstate New York, or traveling in Europe, the Middle East, and India in the 1970s. San Francisco remains a relatively livable center of the stories’ oscillating centrifugal and centripetal circulation. As things are elsewhere forced to fall apart by imperialism and revolt against it, San Francisco still largely holds and continues to pull peoples toward it.

In the story “Fred’s” Rossi makes friends with a college student named Ahmad that migrated from occupied Palestine. Ahmad works at her local Mission District liquor store in 1982. Through Ahmad she learns more about the Palestinian Liberation movement and the Israeli settler’s ongoing displacement of Palestinians, a movement and history we encounter Rossi first learning about in the preceding story in 1971 from her friend Jack. In the liquor store, among other things, they watch on television news the US and European military belligerence on behalf of Israeli and pro-Israeli forces in the Lebanese Civil War.

The title story, opening the book, narrates Rossi relating what she’s writing in April 1983—at first about pre-oil embargo 1972—to a friend while on the phone. The story loosely revolves around Z., a character of affluence and sexual violence, reported by way of another friend in 1983 to have jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge. In 1972 Z. shows up onto the scenes, where the scenesters are young and clinging to their avant-garde art making while pushing their physical limits with coke, ludes, and opiates, which by the 1980s Rossi has moved away from habitually consuming. The residential transience described is of a comparatively casual character.

On the home front, we were rare if we lived alone.[...] People lived with four or twelve other people.[...] Nomadic vestiges of feuding households roamed the streets and alleys. At night we could be heard screaming across airshafts as we fought over the PG&E and phone bills. The crash of disputed possessions flung from windows onto the street was a common sound. Any excuse to mount a production.[...] [T]he ephemerality of one’s home and the question of where one might find oneself from solstice to solstice led to the heightened state of     awareness that a lack of security sometimes brings, and a change to meet new and interesting people. [14]

Two paragraphs later, Z. appears and makes a reputation, aside from knowingly giving a sexual partner an STI, by bringing progressively interesting intoxicants to the parties. At the most elaborately described of the parties, this one with a guest list curated by Z. and held in a mansion, in 1976, the first party many of them had been at that had a butler, Rossi meets a stylishly dressed Vietnamese woman who laments the Communist takeover of Saigon. Rossi regrets having not told the woman her politics are disappointingly pro-capitalist, but feels for her when she sees a man at the party feel the woman up without apparent invitation.

Gladman’s book addresses and emerges from a different period of the housing question in San Francisco. In Toaf’s late-90/early-2000s San Francisco begins becoming the place we know today, the only San Francisco I’ve ever known, a city of increasingly less differentially popular condensations, as it was more so in Rosa’s 70s, 80s, even early 90s, and one more and more of popular displacement and especially black queer working class displacement. To After That is a book in which, through a mourning whose sorrow and celebration is made both clear and cloudy through flat reportage, we come to feel the absence of a thrice drafted novella about a day that gets messed up by a neighbor’s cell phone back when not everyone had cell phones, when a cell phone seemed to some a white-racialized thing to have, a day that’s ultimately okay because it ends with the narrator seeing the movie she wanted to see, a movie called Carla and Aïda set in San Francisco about two black lesbian painters living and working while listening to Alice Coltrane in their spacious apartment.

Though most of After That’s narrative would have taken place on the streets—streets that no one writes like Gladman does—it turns out the book would have been partitioned by titles that name spaces that internally divide urban habitation, titles naming spaces between the door of a person’s apartment and the door out onto the street. In order, the titles would have been “Corridor,” “Landing,” “Stairs,” “View,” and “Lobby.” I want to mention here that while all of Gladman’s books that I’ve read (which is all of them, except those out of print that preceded Juice, and the newest, Houses of Ravicka) write through architectures of urban inhabitance, this is to my present recollection the only, excepting Calamities, that substantially deals with living in apartments—the sometimes uncomfortability and often unpredictability of having roommates and having roommates let unexpected, cell phone carrying, waffle-making guests into one’s home; the novels of Ravicka, when dealing with residential buildings, are about houses, minus the first, where the traveling linguist -narrator’s residence is a hotel. While the housing question is one asked by perhaps every word of Gladman’s prose, in Toaf it is formulated as the iteratively drafted and displaced narrative of one person that doesn’t own their home and is for a limited time only faithfully housed to write a life in a given city.

Toward the end of the book, just before Gladman tells us the story of the novella she refers to as failed “but not quite buried” (52), we’re told how in 2000 she became “obsessed with identifying the tone of [her] sentences with that of other writers” (48). Reading Henry James she wished to fancy herself a Jamesian, but where his sentences were long and full of twists, hers were short and flat. In Hervé Guibert and Julio Cortazar she found a radical flatness that matched her sense that there was “something radical about walking down the street” (41), a kind of moving without going anywhere (50). This kind of flatness is a sort of transient intransigence that insists on being at home in an urban and urbanizing world, even as one and one’s communities are unhoused. Toaf, like the twisted plane of a möbius strip, begins and ends the same, with Gladman’s reaction upon returning home to consider again whether After That might have a future in the world after San Francisco. “Let me see it,” she writes. 

[infiniteinjury]

Legally Requiring Cross-Racial Adoptions And Sperm Donations

Based on their statements and revealed preferences it seems that many members of the public, and virtually all liberals, would judge some relatively minor restrictions on personal liberty (and a smidge of dented cultural pride and discomfort) to be a small price to pay to make serious inroads against the current level of racism in the United States. There is broad support for the non-trivial infringement on freedoms (despite the substantial economic costs of compliance, lawsuits and enforcement) imposed by anti-discrimination laws in hiring and public accommodations. Furthermore, the public rhetoric of most liberals and a decent chunk of conservatives suggests they would regard a mandatory two year term of military service (even if only in humanitarian/non-combat units) for American youth an acceptable price to pay in exchange for serious progress against racism in the US1. Provided we aren’t mistaken by multiple orders of magnitude about how bad the current level of US racism is it seems like we should be willing to consider relatively modest legal restrictions requiring all non-familial infant adoptions by white Americans to be of black children (and vice versa2) as well as requiring that sperm/egg banks only offer black individual’s sperm/eggs to whites and vice versa. Let me be clear I’m not at all sure I think this is even close to a good ideas but I think asking whether it is or isn’t and why raises some interesting questions.

Based on some quick googling it looks like something like 2% of all children in the US are adopted and about half of those are non-familial. Determining the rate of donor conceived children is harder given the lack of reporting but my eyeballing of the numbers from wikipedia (remembering that both total US population and use of donors is rising) page suggests that we are looking at another 2% or more donor conceived children. Putting these together it seems like such laws could ensure that something like 3% of children were raised by parents of a different skin color.

Of course, not everyone is either white or black but, according to the 2010 census about 73% of Americans are white and another 13% are black with relatively small percentages of other races. Given that whites are pretty strongly overrepresented among adopting parents as well as consumers of donor eggs/sperm and that black children are quite strongly overrepresented among children put up for adoption it seems plausible that such laws would ensure that something on the order of 1% of US children would be black children raised by whites provided we overcome the limiting factor of insufficiently many black children to be adopted by importing infants from abroad3 (and perhaps also incentivize black women to do more egg donation).

I suspect that such a policy would reduce black/white racism to a small fraction of what it once was within at most 25 years and within 40 teens will start doubting it was ever really a thing. Not only does the integration of a non-trivial percentage of blacks into white society undermine stereotypes but the close bonds of parental affection, childhood friendship and, inevitably , romantic relationships between the races ensures that both sides get an all-but first person perspective on the other, come to common understandings and leverage those relationships (as well as money and power and understanding of the system) to stamp out police bias and other kinds of institutional racism thousands of times more effectively than any social justice movement could.

Ultimately, I’m not really sure whether I see this as more of an argument that we are crazily overestimating the harmfulness of racism, hugely underestimate the harm from regulatory impositions on freedom or if its really something we should pursue.

I’m sure most people will think this is ridiculous to think about even as a thought experiment. Maybe its stupid and a bad idea. However, the space of social interventions to change attitudes is huge and people who care more about fixing the problems of racism than signalling how strong an ally they are should spend more time considering them.

Interracial Adoption Considered Harmful

Now there are any number of criticisms of interracial adoption so I expect a certain amount of resistance to the idea that it would be good to have so many black kids raised by whites.

However, these criticisms seem to break down into a few basic kinds of concerns.

White parents aren’t culturally/socially prepared to deal with the discrimination, stereotypes and other bad treatment that their adopted black children face and won’t know how to effectively advocate for their child, understand what they are going through or teach them how to live through police stops.

There are differences in hair care and other vaguely specified physical attributes and stuff that white parents will somehow have difficulty managing. Yes, I really found pieces suggesting this but it’s sufficiently absurd in the age of google not to be worth mentioning again.

The supposedly endemic microaggressions, racist language and assumptions and other supposedly racially hurtful things white people are doing all the time will make things uncomfortable.

Blacks adopted by whites are culturally and socially isolated from other blacks but aren’t really accepted by whites leaving them out in the cold.

Suggestions that the practice undermines Black cultural identity or of some kind of intrinsic badness when black children don’t know ‘their’ culture and only white culture.

Point 1 is certainly serious, but it is no longer so much of a big deal when blacks being raised by whites are 1% of the population. Not only will the frequent presence of kids with black skin who are otherwise WASPs in schools, sports teams and camps reduce the barriers and stereotypes these kids face but there will be a large network of other white parents of black kids to network, exchange tips and fight for their children. White parents may struggle when they are on their own but coming together in groups with likeminded mothers to drink wine and strategize about making the lives of recalcitrant officials/teachers/etc difficult is preciscely what Caucasian moms are culturally prepared to do.

As far as point 3 goes, I think these worries take insufficient account of the fact that children don’t enter this world with any conception of what things are racial subtext and it usually takes until well into adulthood to look back on one’s parents as real people with the usual package of strengths and weaknesses. Rather than seeing the normal behavior of their parents as microaggressions and glimpses of racism infants raised by whites from birth won’t even see (when they are there) these supposed microaggressions until they learn to do so as young adults and even then it will be that embarrassing, backwards, way mom talks not threatening racial animus.

Point 4 becomes largely a non-issue. As they would no longer be a rare sight white raised black kids would be more welcome in white circles and the large cohort of other white raised black kids provides a readily available set of people who share the same experience. Finally, point 5 is nothing but the type of attitude we should be eliminating. Having a certain skin color doesn’t make one heritage yours and another not yours. The whole point of the game is to build a world in which no one even distinguishes between BASPS and WASPS and we all assign cultural heritage based on your culture not skin color.

I’m not claiming there won’t be any difficulties. It will be hard and uncomfortable for many people. Even if I’m wrong on virtually every count here as parents matter far less to children’s future welfare than peer groups I’d be shocked if the effect of neighborhood these kids grow up in and school they attend doesn’t swamp any effect based on the color of their parents skin.

That is I think a majority of US voters would be willing to support the candidate pushing the mandatory military service, even knowing congress would give him the votes to pass it, if they believed that the candidates personal characteristics or policies meant having him in the whitehouse would result in real social progress regarding race. ↩

One could implement such a policy by making it illegal for any white family to adopt a non-black infant provided any healthy black infants are still unadopted and vice-versa. This ensures that no babies go unadopted if there are willing parents just because of numerical mismatch. ↩

International adoption my be hard now but if the US government made facilitating it a diplomatic and bureaucratic priority and imported those babies themselves it wouldn’t be. ↩

Legally Requiring Cross-Racial Adoptions And Sperm Donations was originally published on Rejecting Rationality