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queenaryastark · 4 years

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George RR Martin: dragons are weapons of mass destruction, they're symbols of destruction and not of rebuilding, it's why the targaryens lost their power because their rule was built on fear and when the dragons died it only took a small spark to cause a rebellion, daenerys should read fire and blood so she can learn how not to use dragons daenerys herself: dragons plant no trees, If they are monsters than so am I Yall: i cant read suddenly i dont know

LMAO! I can’t even call that paraphrasing since this jumble of out of context gibberish completely misinterprets GRRM’s words and intent.

First off, no one said dragons weren’t weapons of mass destruction. Them being powerful weapons is pretty obvious. Them being weapons does not erase the violence and cruelty of characters who do not have them. The mass destruction the Starks and Lannisters have wrought against the Riverlands and Westerlands was done without the aid of dragons. So was the mass destruction the Greyjoys and Boltons wrought on the North. The Tyrells were able to commit mass murder by cutting off food supplies, which led to mass starvation, which was their specific intent.

Dragons are dangerous. Obviously. So are people, as George R. R. Martin goes out of his way to tell us in every chapter of his work. The man literally depicts Robb, Stannis, Balon, and Joffrey as equally as violent toward the common people and the land of Westeros. He even gives Dany this metaphoric image of the four of them:

“In one room, a beautiful woman sprawled naked on the floor while four little men crawled over her. They had rattish pointed faces and tiny pink hands, like the servitor who had brought her the glass of shade. One was pumping between her thighs. Another savaged her breasts, worrying at the nipples with his wet red mouth, tearing and chewing.” -- A Clash Of Kings

And that is far from the only time he frames them in an equally negative light given their level of mass destruction.

when the dragons died it only took a small spark to cause a rebellion, daenerys should read fire and blood so she can learn how not to use dragons

You think Dany should read Fire and Blood? I agree. I hope she gets a copy once she arrives to save Westeros from the warlords, opportunistic politicians, and the Others. Though you should probably try to find someone who can read it to you and explain what all the big words mean. If you look in that book, you will see that the Targaryens became extremely popular and loved. They decreased the amount of war and destruction, they streamlined the laws, they established roads, and they removed a couple of the abuses that were the norm. They were far from perfect. But in that imperfection, Dany could learn from them too.

As for a “small spark” causing a rebellion as soon as they didn’t have dragons... *sighs* If you don’t know about a topic, that’s fine. Not everyone can be an expert on every topic. But you Sansa stans (yes I know you’re a Sansa stan and you probably have that hideous image of ST with her trademark vacant expression and that ugly ferret crown as your icon) should actually fact check yourselves before trying and failing to present yourselves as an authority on anything. The last dragon died in 153 AC. The Targaryens were overthrown in 283 AC. Even before 153 AC, the dragons that lived either weren’t under their control, were pretty young, or were deformed. In other words, they continued to rule Westeros without dragons for a significant amount of time. In that time, not only did they rule, but they were able to bring Dorne into the realm peacefully.

Even the wars they had were far fewer than the amount of constant wars that happened while the kingdoms were separate. The Blackfyre Rebellions were sparked by Westerosi racism and xenophobia against the Dornish, as well as the greed and opportunism from the Andal/First Men supporters of the Blackfyre claimant. Notice how in those rebellions the people of Westeros supported either the Targaryens or the Targaryen blooded Blackfyres? No matter which side the lords took, they were supporting a Targaryen because they support that family. Like in real life civil wars, they just supported different members of that same royal line. It wasn’t because they feared them. They wanted their rule. They just wanted the rule of a specific claimant over another based on their own values or what they thought they could gain from a change in Targaryen leadership.

Even with the Baratheon rebellions, they were still Targaryen blooded claimants. With Lyonel Baratheon, he felt his family was insulted when an engagement between the crown prince and his daughter was broken so the prince could marry a peasant. This might seem like a “small spark”, but this would have been considered hugely offensive by the classist nobility. Note how this rebellion was resolved incredibly easily to the point where I don’t even think it warrants being labeled an actual rebellion. It seems more like it was set up for the next Baratheon rebellion since it resulted in that House gaining even more Targaryen blood than it already had. That’s the thing, the nobility wanted their children to marry Targaryens. Doesn’t sound very fearful, does it?

Robert’s Rebellion wasn’t set off by a “small spark”. The kidnapping and rape of the Lord of Winterfell’s daughter and the betrothed of the Lord of Storm’s End is not insignificant. It also didn’t set off the rebellion. The murders of multiple lords and their heirs is also not a small thing. It didn’t set off the rebellion either. What set it off was the combination of those two events with the demand for the executions of the new Lord of Winterfell and the Lord of Storm’s End. Those events taken separately are not small sparks and they certainly aren’t small when put together. It took something HUGE to make a big part of the realm turn on the Targaryens. Even still, the rebels were in the minority since most of the other regions either stayed out of the conflict waiting to see how it played out or stayed loyal to the Targaryens. If Tywin had continued to stay out of the conflict, the Rebellion could have lasted indefinitely with either side winning since the Crown’s forces outnumbered them and occupied the Stormlands.

You also seem to miss the fact that quite a few people in Westeros are still Targaryen Loyalists and want to restore them to the throne. You even miss the fact that Robert, Joffrey, and Tommen’s claim comes from their Targaryen blood.

So no, the Targaryen rule was not based purely on fear. They clearly retained loyalty and love without the benefit of dragons as weapons.

daenerys herself: dragons plant no trees, If they are monsters than so am I

It’s funny how you can try to quote the book while having no understanding of the passage you’re quoting. Here’s the paragraph you’re referring to:

Mother of dragons, Daenerys thought.Mother of monsters. What have I unleashed upon the world? A queen I am, but my throne is made of burned bones, and it rests on quicksand. Without dragons, how could she hope to hold Meereen, much less win back Westeros?I am the blood of the dragon, she thought.If they are monsters, so am I. -- ADWD

This takes place in Dany’s second chapter of A Dance With Dragons after she has captured and chained two of her dragons and failed to capture the third. Why is she trying to chain them? Because Drogon killed one (1) child. That’s right. Not only is Dany compensating the people for the sheep her dragons were eating. She has no tolerance for them killing innocents. The quote above is not her glorying in the destructive power of the dragons. Nor is she going around without an ounce of guilt for terrorizing, maiming, and murdering innocents the way Robb, Balon, Stannis, Joffrey, Tyrion, Cersei, and every other leader in Westeros does. That is what this passage is PROVING. Seriously, using the “If they are monsters, so am I” quote is proving that Dany has guilt over the life her dragon has taken and that she has taken steps to prevent that from happening again. Compare that to Tyrion’s complete lack of care when it comes to the mass murder his family is causing:

"A lordling down from the Trident, says your father's men burned his keep, raped his wife, and killed all his peasants."

"I believe they call that war." -- Tyrion, ACOK

While Dany is trying to preserve lives, the mass murdering leaders of Westeros see murder and rape as the norm and completely acceptable. Even the noble Robb Stark tried to move the carnage that he and Tywin were inflicting on the Riverlands into the Westerlands and was upset that his plan to do so was partly thwarted by Edmure. His issue wasn’t with the common people suffering and dying. He just wanted the suffering and dying to happen to the common people of the Westerlands (the ones who hadn’t been forced into service as arrow fodder by the Lannisters yet) instead. Yet, you’re trying to use Dany’s guilt at one (1) child being killed by her dragon as proof of...something?

As for Dany not planting trees, yes, she fears that’s something Targaryens can’t do. But the text shows that her ancestors could and did. Dany is also planting trees in ADWD and was in the process of making Vaes Tolorro bloom in ACOK before she was invited to Qarth. The Golden Company (who wants to put her and Aegon on the Iron Throne as a pair) are even upset because they think she’s only interested in planting trees in Meereen.

When analyzing a literary work you have to understand that what the characters fear and the guilt they feel are not signs of their permanent situations. They’re signs of their internal obstacles that will be overcome in their arcs. Dany fears her dragons and fears herself and fears that she won’t be able to achieve peace and positive societal growth. Its good that she fears these things because this shows she acknowledges these issues so they can be overcome. The current Westeros leadership don’t see the issue in their mass murdering, which is an issue all on it’s own.

Its alright if this series is above your comprehension level. There are books out there for you to read that are better suited for your capabilities, like Hop on Pop or Green Eggs and Ham. It’s probably best if you stick to those.

#this is why sansa stans shouldn't have access to keyboards #fandom wank #Anonymous

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dreamerwriternstargazer · 4 years

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In Defence of Team Purple Lion

Voltron: Legendary Defender and its final season remains as one of the most poorly received children’s shows in the past decade. The show was a reboot from DreamWorks of the popular Voltron franchise owned by WEP LLC (World Event Productions) who were responsible for the first version of the show Voltron: Defender Of The Universe (1984), an adaptation of the anime show GoLion by Toei Animation. It initially started strong when released in 2016, with a premise that of a typical mech-centric kids’ show; 5 pilots of 5 robot lions coming together to form one big robot (Voltron) to fight against a big bad alien villain in space, however despite the formulaic appearance it proved to be a captivating watch with detailed and beautiful animation as well as surprisingly deep subject matter. The themes and messages of the show touched on darker topics such as racism and genocide with the backdrop of a complex portayal of war while still balancing it with the light-hearted and goofy dynamics of the diverse main characters, played by a diverse cast. Produced by Lauren Montgomery and Joaquim Dos Santos, both of whom had worked on the acclaimed Avatar: The Last Airbender and Legend Of Korra, the story set up promised an equally deep and intricate story for VLD as had been the case for ATLA and LoK, as a result the show attracted a large and varied fan base beyond just children, many fans adults eager to see how the story and darker themes would be resolved as well as how the minority representations would be treated.

The final season released on Dec 14th 2018 came as a great shock to fans, not only were they intensely dissatisfied with the ending, virtually no one from any area or sub fandom was happy with the season as a whole and at the time of this article’s writing it has lower than a 6% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The show and its producers faced massive criticism over insensitive representations of minorities, an unsympathetic and condemning end for an abuse victim despite redemption for their abusers and a disempowering arc for the main woman of colour character in which she was sidelined and dismissed by her male counterparts up until her sacrifice. The core themes and messages of love, forgiveness and acceptance regardless of race were completely subverted, instead conveying to an impressionable Y-7 and above audience the opposite; heritage and race define a person rather than their own actions. As well as fans, many parents of kids who watched the show expressed unhappiness with the final season due to the toxic and regressive messages it sent. Soon after the season dropped a petition emerged to “free the original season 8 of Voltron” due to the belief that the final season was in fact an edited product of what the creators originally planned. This belief was sparked by visual inconsistencies in the season itself, the audio description not lining up with the action on screen (now fixed), one character not being played by her voice actor but her voice actually another character’s with the pitch turned up as well as comments from the cast and animators, now deleted. The strongest claims of edits were made by Tumblr user Leaking Hate in her initial meta Chasing The Ghosts Of Season 8 and the follow up, a more detailed breakdown, Seek Truth In Darkness in which she presented an alternative story that had been edited and cut down for reasons then unknown, with narrative and visual evidence from the season itself to support her argument. She and a few other fans officially came together in February 2019 to form Team Purple Lion, a team of analysts dedicated to finding the truth behind the disaster of the final season. However, since the fandom had had a poor history of harassing the show’s creators over ships (romantic relationships between characters) most attributed the poor story and resolve to an attempt to keep things neutral romantically between characters in a poor bid to please everyone. As a result the petition and campaign were merely linked to lack of shipping satisfaction for the fandom and dismissed as more toxic fandom behaviour that had been displayed previously by many fans.

Petitions and campaigns like these are not uncommon after a show or film’s ending, similar situations might be the HIMYM backlash in which fans were so unhappy with the ending of the show that there was a petition for an alternative ending, as well as the petition to Warner Bros regarding the Snyder Cut of Justice League. Both of these have actually succeeded with the Snyder cut of Justice League set to release in 2021 and the HIMYM DVD box sets containing the alternative ending, however what makes the Free VLD s8 campaign now led by Team Purple Lion unique is its claim that there’s an original finished product that the creators intended for release but was edited after completion to produce the poor final season that was released on Netflix. Often corporate meddling in creative works is common but it has not been documented before as a post production occurrence changing the finished work, it’s always taken place pre-production as was the case with Disney and Colin Trevorrow’s original script for ep. IX or during production, in the case of Justice League and Zak Snyder.

Since the start of the campaign in Dec 2018 there’s been continuous investigation and action taken by TPL to provide proof for their claims and the movement has evolved into a fight for creators’ rights, still active now a year and a half on. Their investigation early on resulted in discovering the IP holder (those who own the trademark) WEP as the ones with control over the show and therefore responsible for the released edited season 8. They’ve since defended DreamWorks and the showrunners from criticism in favour of requesting WEP and specifically President Robert Koplar, self proclaimed “steward of the property” for the original season 8 by the showrunners that was not released. There’s also been strong advocation from TPL to keep the protest against WEP’s interference with the creative team’s work peaceful to avoid dismissal and belittlement due to prior instances of the VLD fandom’s toxic behaviour that often included harassment of showrunners and toxic fan behaviour ranging from abusive remarks online to death threats, after the final season rumours were flying and the EPs faced abuse from upset fans so there was an active effort to stay civil on TPL’s part.

TPL and the #FreeVLDS8 movement has continuously faced criticism and backlash since its start regardless, the response from fellow fans ranging from supportive to downright disbelief and even the showrunners stating publicly [March 28th 2019 Let’s Voltron podcast] that there’s no “alternate cut of Voltron” branding the idea as a “conspiracy theory”. Claims of harassment have been attributed to TPL and the legitimacy of their allegations questioned, one fan questioning the possibility of the edits’ execution as well as others categorizing them as fans creating a theory based on shipping fulfillment. The controversy and consistent campaign a year and a half on interested me greatly, therefore after being led back to the movement by the very comments discrediting them I approached Team Purple Lion for comment on the aforementioned claims as well as conducting my own research and investigation into them. 3 members of the team, Crystal Rebellion, Dragon Of Yang and Leaking Hate spoke to me openly about their campaign and my own research produced some interesting results as well.

The basis of their argument is set on the show’s final season being an edited product, when I asked about what pushed her to this conclusion and writing her initial meta Leaking Hate explained that a mutual friend of Crystal and her’s drew their attention to it through the story saying:

“It’s interesting, nearly ALL of the episodes had a moment or two in them where Lotor [male villain] COULD have reappeared, and didn’t. Do you think he was written in to be the savior all along, and it was the higher ups that said no, good boy Lance [one of the main characters]? It seems like, given the narrative, and even given this season, it should have been Lotura [Lotor and Allura ship name], and all that wasn’t just feels… off. And not as a Lotura stan, I mean in general.”

“And YES I had. There was a narrative gap where Lotor should have fit, but for some reason wasn’t.” Hate said, “The initial conclusion we jumped to was that Lotor had been removed in the writing stage.”

It wasn’t until another friend mentioned a key scene out of place in the story and she went back to view it that she started to suspect the season had been changed from its original state. The scene in question was one in which Lotor says “Follow me!” at the end of Allura’s dream sequence in s8 ep8 Clear Day, despite his death being established before and after this point in the story. “There was no reason for that Follow Me shot to be there,” Hate explained, “unless the action of the viewer following Lotor had been removed.” Having studied a Fine Art degree and therefore well versed in animation and visual art she was able to recognise scenes that had been edited unusually throughout the season once she actively searched for other visual evidence. The Follow Me scene as well as others she found are displayed in her Ghosts meta, all indicating a different story from the one told in the show, along with the evidence Leaking Hate presented some initial ideas on what the story was (a redemption arc for Lotor and several sub arcs for the main characters that resolved their stories and previously set up story beats).

[Image Description: A close up of Prince Lotor’s face from season 8 on Netflix, staring directly out of the picture at the viewer. There are subtitles showing his speech at the bottom of the image, saying “Follow me!” End ID]

After Team Purple Lion’s formation Leaking Hate went on to publish a part two to her initial Ghosts meta, a 21k word meta entitled Seek Truth In Darkness which contained all visual evidence of edits found in the season as well as an extrapolation of the initial story indicated by said edits. The original story appeared to resolve unfinished narratives and arcs that the released s8 dismissed and the treatment of the representations in the show better, from respect towards minorities to an empowering arc for Allura, the main female character. Despite the original season having a more positive story, negative feedback from fans has been more common than positive. When I questioned the team members on it Leaking Hate mentioned “most people who believe we’re wrong tend to think we’re wrong in our premise” Dragon of Yang confirming that “it’s usually the premise of “VLD was edited after completion” that people disagree with”. However the screenshots they present as visual evidence hint at some truth in their argument, the first screen cap shown below indicative of some poor edits made to the animation since 3 characters are essentially cropped out of the picture.

Likewise this screen cap shows a split screen visually unbalanced with 2 characters at the bottom partially cropped out as well as the character on the left side with a much larger screen space than the other characters.

[Image description: A split screen from season 8 on Netflix, featuring from left to right: top left Shiro, below him is Keith in a larger section and Allura in a small triangular section below and to the right of Keith’s section. In the middle is a section showing Honerva’s mech stabbing the Voltron-Atlas mech with purple lightning shooting out. On the top right is Hunk, below him is Pidge, and below her the top half of Lance’s face. End ID]

Seasons prior to the final had always had visually balanced split screens with each character centred in their frames appropriately, indicating these and other s8 shots like them as an anomaly.

Hate reconstructed both screencaps based on what she believed they were originally:

[Image description: A split-screen from season 8 on Netflix, featuring from left to right: an Altean pilot, Merla, Keith, Hunk’s shoulder, Pidge, the top half of Allura’s face, and the top half of Lance’s face. On the top, right, and bottom of this screencap is dark pink background with the black lines of the split-screen extending to the edges of the colors, marking out where the rest of Hunk, Allura, and Lance should be visible if the view had not been cropped. With the lines extending out, Keith’s portion of the screen is also extended, leaving a completely removed section of the split-screen remaining, which is highlighted purple in this image. End ID]

[Image description: A split-screen from season 8 on Netflix, featuring from left to right: top left Shiro, below him is Keith, below and to the right of Keith is Allura in a small triangle section, the bottom of her face slightly cut off. In the middle is a section showing Honerva’s mech stabbing the Voltron-Atlas mech with purple lightning shooting out. On the top right is Hunk, below him is Pidge, and below her the top half of Lance’s face. On the left, right and bottom of the screencap is a dark pink background with the black lines of the split-screen extending to the edge of the colours, marking out where the rest of Lance and Allura should be visible if the view had not been cropped. Keith’s portion of the screen is smaller and a small dark pink section to the right separates his portion from the middle. Below him where his portion originally extended to is a section coloured dark purple that extends a little further to the left of Allura’s portion. End ID]

Other noticeable examples include scenes with the female lead Allura where her proportions do not match with any prior drawings of herself indicating that she was another character redrawn, Leaking Hate suggested Lotor as his proportions fit each instance.

[Image description: 2 pictures of Allura in the Blue Lion from a front and centre angle side by side. On the left Allura has her eyes closed and her arms stretched out holding onto the controls, the entire cockpit is glowing blue. On the right Allura’s eyes are open with a determined look on her face, she’s slightly hunched with her arms gripping the controls, the cockpit is coloured normally. End ID]

The image on the left is of Allura from s8 ep13 and the one on the right from the same episode a few minutes later, scaled so the interiors (which are unchanging 3D models) are the same size. She is notably taller in the one on the right with her head reaching above the seat and her frame bigger, with wider shoulders and thighs.

These are just a few out of the many examples of edits made that Leaking Hate presents in her metas along with her reconstruction of the original season based on what each edit indicates. While the reconstruction is to some point subjective, the visual inconsistencies are clear and can be easily checked by watching the show at each point said to be edited.

The timeframe and possibility for the edits’ execution, called into question by a fan on a twitter thread (now deleted) stating “it’s not physically possible to make that many edits in 2 months and with leftover budget”, was also addressed by the team and their work. Leaking Hate clarified that “it wasn’t 2 months” that they took place in, “it was 6. The edits began in mid July”, a fact determined by voice actor Jeremy Shada mentioning in an interview released on July 23rd that he had gone in to record new lines at the time. Hate also said, “It’s less of a question of would they have time than it is, well. They did do it. It was nearly impossible. But the fact that it is done shows that they did.” She went on, “I think people misunderstand when we claim it was ‘edited’. They hear “it was reanimated”, but it wasn’t reanimated. There is NO new animation in the edited s8 at all. As far as I can tell, 99% of the edits are composed of tracing, clever cuts and sleight of hand.” This is backed up by all the visual evidence they present as well as their work, claiming absence of animation (making the story disjointed and incoherent in places) rather than new, additional animation changing it.

Crystal Rebellion added, “One thing that strikes us (I feel pretty confident speaking for everyone in this case) is that Studio Mir [responsible for animating the show] is impeccably flawless with their work. Their previous work before Voltron: Legendary Defender, and even Seasons 1-6 and most of 7 are beautifully animated. Stunning. Season 8... is not. Studio Mir also had a viewing party for VLD: S8 - and they reported that they loved the final product; so the animators saw Season 8 after it was completed. The season, however, that aired, was really shoddy animation, rough transitions, music mistakes, and what appear to be alterations to still images - it isn't their usual quality of work, and moreover, the animators have stated that they don't recognize what aired. Often we've been asked something like 'Maybe they just didn't know what scenes they were animating' or 'Didn't know the intended finished product' but in this case, it is documented that they saw the final season and that it's different from what was aired. The poor workmanship in what we see from S8 - all the edits Hate goes through to find and explain, coupled with Mir's disbelief, is indicative that the animation studio had no idea this happened. That means it 1) Happened post-production and 2) It wasn't the Studio that changed anything. Dos Santos mentions in an interview [March 4th ABTV] that they were cut and pasting mouths and moving frames around - no time, no budget, and no staff left. It was all them, after it had been completed - after Mir had seen the original rendition and loved it, that all this happened. The parallel point to that to further support it is, had this been written in the script from the beginning, we would've seen a flawlessly animated season with a painful storyline. We don't see that.”

Although Mir’s reaction to the season they viewed in October (before its official drop) has since been deleted, one animator’s response to the season 8 that was released on Netflix is still online, comparing the show to a house and stating that “every single brick of the last season is very upsetting” but “everything else is good” (translation can be found here), making it clear he was not pleased with the final product. Joaquim Dos Santos does also mention in the interview Crystal references that changes were made to season 8 after season 7 dropped, stating, “You can probably see it in the animation. If you really pay attention it’s like, it’s literally our editor cutting out mouths and puppeting different dialogue.” It’s documented that the epilogue was added to s8 late after s7 dropped however it does not have any dialogue, this statement paired with Shada’s about “still recording on Voltron” begs the question, what change was made besides the epilogue? Hate shows in her Darkness meta that Shada’s character Lance was used to replace Lotor as well as Allura in key scenes, if Shada was still recording lines (unusual since audio recording is done very early in animation production) then it would have been for these moments.

Not all criticism has been based on the editing premise however; the story they present as the original has garnered negative comments as well since it featured Lotor, a divisive character due to his moral ambiguity and previous condemnation as a killer, and predominantly focused on his redemption as well as relationship with Allura. The narrative makes it clear that Lance, the blue paladin and one of the main characters popular with fans, would not have been the focus as he was in the released season and would have been replaced by Lotor as Allura’s partner. When I brought up the claims of bias in their reconstruction Leaking Hate pondered on it.

“Do I love the story because it is Lotura, or do I love Lotura because the story makes me love it?” she mused, “I think it's all the same. I was able to pick out the original story because of my bias in favour of Lotor, Allura, and Lotura. Had I not been invested in those characters, and that ship, I would have had no reason to look. I am not reconstructing based on wish fulfillment, or what I want to see,” she asserted, “but the story I am finding happens to be a story that I love.” In regards to Lance and her analysis on him she stated bluntly, “I HATE Lance. Were I reconstructing based on wish fulfillment I would have him alone and miserable. But that is not a good story. The real story of OGS8 has Lance coming to love himself and to learn to accept Allura's friendship as equally worthy as her romantic affection. It has him grow into a good man, and it has him become Allura's right hand when he helps her save the man she loves. It is an uplifting and wholesome message for little boys and grown men alike. And I think it is equally important that we save S8 for Lance as it is that we save it for Lotor and Allura.” When I mentioned that some would find her dislike of Lance an argument against her she also added that “they are right to.”

“I would not trust someone claiming to have found the 'real' story if I knew they hated Lotor or Allura.” However she admitted, “I don't hate him all the time. I think, if the Lance we get in OGS8 is the Lance I believe is there, then I will find him tolerable, if irritating.”

While it’s true that Hate is critical of Lance and his character, the reconstructed story she presents in Seek Truth does reflect her words, giving him an empowering and sympathetic arc growing from his previous immature and womanising character into a selfless, respectful friend. The team have also put their efforts into creating and realising the story in their reconstruction of the original s8, Rise and Atone, and so far it has stayed true to what they’ve promised, addressing characters and their arcs, the only deviation made being a romance free conclusion in a bid to stay ship-neutral. Dragon of Yang explained the narrative decisions they made with R&A stating clearly, “If this was wish fulfillment, we would have stopped at one detail or another. Every character’s arc was halted and destroyed beyond reconciliation or catharsis. Every character deserves their story to be done justice, and open-endings give that catharsis VLD originally had while remaining respectful to everyone’s shipping preferences. VLD is a story of hope and growth, to deny that a character has grown since day 1 is to deny that there is a story there to be told, and that in turn denies a person out there - who likely identifies with that character - the feeling of being seen. The best thing we can do as scholars and as activists,” she concluded, “is try to recreate the vision the staff had originally made and do so with care and attention to the work they put into every line.”

As for the harassment claims attributed to Team Purple Lion by both fans and The Voltron Store on twitter, there’s not much to support them, and in fact a great deal to disprove them. The team has maintained a level of professionalism in both their work and in their conduct online, consistently citing sources and providing proof for claims as well as campaigning respectfully. Hate commented, “they seem to be conflating our protest with the general hatred being thrown around in the fandom. We've made a point to emphasize polite but firm protest and advocate reaching out through official channels.” While there is a lot of anger and hate from fans towards the show and the producers, none of it has been from Team Purple Lion. Their protest has continuously avoided and often defended the producers and voice actors, who have been regularly attacked by other fans during the show’s airing and since due to the poor conclusion, all of whom TPL have made clear are under NDAs and cannot comment freely (although it’s worth noting, they stopped actively promoting the show on their social media after the season 8 release). Instead their questioning has focused on WEP, the company who own the Voltron trademark, after discovering through a meta analysis of a VLD episode signs that they were meddling with the creators’ vision of the show and ordered them to change it against the producers’ wishes. While it was only a speculative piece, WEP’s quick reaction to the release of said meta by claiming through their Voltron Store twitter that they “do not have any influence over the creative direction of the show” despite ignoring fans for months after the season release suggests some truth to it. Twitter user Eros compiled all evidence of their involvement since then in a Twitter thread and the majority of it is damning, their denial directly contradicting statements from the voice actors and producers prior to and after s8 that confirmed they were the controlling party and had creative input, as well as the creators’ desire to tell a progressive and empowering story however not being able to because of “other controlling parties” outside of DreamWorks. WEP have also made contradictory statements to fans about the season, saying that “nothing was edited” yet agreeing with a fan that a lot was left out and a director’s cut would sell well, as well as mocking another who left a Facebook review (March 16th 2019) complaining of being hung up on, replying to them that an “imposter” answered their phones:

[Image description: A facebook review of The Voltron Store. Text from the top reads as:

Reviewer (name coloured out) doesn’t recommend The Voltron Store.

Review reads: Terrible customer service. They literally hung up on me mid sentence and it was clearly not a case of a call accidentally being dropped. Extremely disappointed by the lack of professionalism!

The Voltron Store’s reply to the reviewer: if you actually talked to us you would find we are very nice people! And we never hang up on anybody EVER - unless they make outrageous claims like Power Rangers is better than Voltron!

The reviewer’s reply: The Voltron Store I did speak to a woman who identified herself Stephanie briefly, but I will never speak to your company again. Thank you for the response but I don't appreciate being called a liar. Please see the attached screenshot for proof of my abruptly ended call back in January. I desire to have no further communication with your company now, I simply decided finally other people deserved to know my personal experience.

Below is a screenshot showing the reviewer called The Voltron Store’s number.

The Voltron Store replied: We do not have a Stephanie here. That must be the issue: you dealt with an imposter! We would review the security cam footage but it does not go back 2 months. End ID.]

In stark contrast to WEP, Team Purple Lion has responded to criticism and addressed it, as well as reaching out to media outlets to clarify and correct poorly sourced claims, however have been faced with no response. Their questioning of WEP and their requests for the original season 8 on social media have been civil; their replies to the Voltron Store posts on Twitter containing no insults or cruel remarks, the harshest only critiques on the company’s lack of tact promoting a show and its merchandise that many considered offensive and toxic due to the last season. “At no point did we set out as some kind of campaign to “attack WEP” or “demand a new season”,” Crystal Rebellion said. “We were a handful of people looking at what amounted to, to use a metaphor, a puzzle that had technically been assembled but most of the pieces didn’t match up properly. We eventually decided to take the pieces that didn’t line up and look at what the picture was supposed to be. There was no ulterior motive - we just wanted the truth. When we realised the truth and it became obvious early on that Mir had seen the original season, we became convinced there was an unedited s8, perhaps in Mir’s backup drives. People saw it, which means it was a completed product, so it became a campaign to ask for it, it’s what the fandom wants, it’s what is profitable.”

In the face of all the negative response and disbelief, Team Purple Lion have gathered an overwhelming amount of evidence to support their case, not only from the show itself but also corroborating statements from the production team and cast as well as WEP’s conduct in response to the campaign. As a result TPL have gained a great amount of support and followers from the Voltron fandom, and are still gaining more a year and a half later. “I gotta give a shout out to Cosmic Royalty,” Leaking Hate said, “a group of Russian fans who reached out to us asking if they could do translations of our work. We host their translations on our website now and there’s apparently a group 500 strong on the Russian social media site VK that supports the work we do together!” Violet Howler on Tumblr has also been a big supporter as well as new fans, recently revealing themselves in the wake of good news, the fight to get the original season seemingly won as Leaking Hate displayed in her most recent meta. In it Hate outlines evidence for the franchise’s ownership changing hands from WEP to DreamWorks and therefore the release of the original season, based on the recent repromotion of the show through articles, new merchandise from the store and the new store designs that all suggest the release, since there would be no other reason to promote a show that was a PR disaster, so universally hated. Regardless of all the opposition and discredit they have faced, confirmation of the truth of Voltron’s original season 8’s fate is expected this summer before the official art book is made available, in the form of the season’s release itself. Whether the fans will be happy with it is another story, however Leaking Hate emphasised firmly that fan satisfaction was not the point, or at least not entirely. “Nothing is perfect, and nothing will please everyone. Especially a show like VLD, with almost 35 years of legacy and fans behind it. There are people who will not like the original season, there are even some who will prefer the edited one - I’m sure the WEP executives are some of them. But it will be the season it was supposed to be, the one that was a labour of love. There is so much love and care poured into every frame of VLD, this was a story that the people working on it wanted to tell; it was more than just a job to them. It was created with love, and it was with love that we fought for it, and when it comes down to it that’s what VLD’s meta narrative was about: love.”

#articles #fandom #fandom culture #team purple lion #voltron #voltron legendary defender #vld fandom #freevlds8 #dreamworks

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beneaththetangles · 3 years

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Newman’s Nook: The Parable of Hatchan

Hatchan the Villain

It’s during the Arlong Park Arc of One Piece that readers are first introduced to a group of fishmen who, led by Arlong, have taken over Cocoyasi Village, the home of Straw Hat navigator Nami. It’s a distressing development, as Nami had spent years trying to raise the funds to free her hometown from the clutches of Arlong the Pirate and his band of fishmen troublemakers, including an octopus fishman by the name of Hatchan.

As one of Arlong’s cronies, Hatchan was a willing accomplice to the group’s crimes. He seems like a dimwitted fool, willing to do whatever Arlong asks of him. This leads Hatchan into direct conflict with Luffy and the Straw Hats as they come to the aid of Nami and her entire hometown.

Hatchan as a villain fights hard against our heroes, proving to be an incredibly powerful swordsman who, for a time, is able to hold his own against even Zoro.

But upon losing, Hatchan accepts defeat gracefully. He is later found leaving town as Arlong’s crew leaves. At that point, in a series so vast and featuring so many characters, the expectation might be that we’ll never hear from this octopus swordsman again.

But then, the Straw Hats reach Sabaody Archipelago.

Hatchan the Chef

At the Sabaody Archipelago, One Piece introduces readers to a mermaid who is trying to save a friend she refers to as Hachin. Ever the friend to those in need, the Straw Hats follow along to find that a foolish gag character named Duval (long story, but it’s funny) had kidnapped the mermaid’s friend and kept him in a cage. They free Hachin only to discover who he is—their erstwhile enemy and former Arlong Pirate crewman, Hatchan.

Since leaving Arlong and his men, Hatchan has tried to move on with his life and currently runs a restaurant ship named Takoyaki 8.

He’s also been trying to repent for his past sins, and so when he sees Nami, Hatchan recognizes that he deserves her scorn for life. He knows he has warrant any anger or hatred she might send his way. Hatchan even says that he entirely does not expect her to forgive him. After all, he committed terrible crimes against her family and her homeland. All he wants now is to be able to serve her and the Straw Hats.

At this point, Nami even response by saying that she doesn’t forgive him. However, she adds, they can both move on as individuals and work alongside one another going forward. And honestly, that was more than he could have hoped.

As the crew work their way through the Sabaody Archipelago, Hatchan becomes an important asset. He knows his way around, the players, and the cultural norms of the Archipelago. He is able to give advice and assistance to the entire crew all along the way so they can all keep themselves safe and be on their way. What he does not expect is to have his mermaid friend, Camie, kidnapped while they’re on the island and sold off into slavery.

Hatchan convinces most of the Straw Hats to not rock the boat and see if they can pool their resources together to buy Camie at auction. This entire section of the story is horrific. As you watch other races of beings (giants, fishmen, mermaids) treated as sub-human, you see the inherent, systemic racism these people face every single day. None of them are safe doing everyday things like going to a market or visiting an amusement park, where Camie was kidnapped. Fishmen and mermaids are not co-equal with humans in this society, but less than.

In Paul’s letters to the Colossians and Galatians, he points out that arguments over race are irrelevant (Galatians 3:27-29, Colossians 3:10-11). We are all co-equal in the Lord and our lineage has no impact as to whether the Lord loves us. We should be lucky to see each other that way.

When the Straw Hats fail to save Camie, Luffy goes ballistic and tries to rush at the vile Celestial Dragon who had purchased her as a trophy. Hatchan over and over again stands between them to stop the fight. However, this does not go well.

Hatchan the Martyr

What the Celestial Dragon sees is a sub-human fishman in his way, potentially preventing him from securing his new property. So what does he do? He doesn’t think. He doesn’t talk. He simply pulls out a gun and shoots Hatchan.

As Luffy tries to march up to the Celestial Dragon who shot down his friend, Hatchan calls to him from the ground and takes the blame for every issue they have had.

Hatchan knew he was a sinner. He knew he was a failure. He knew he did wrong. He knew that eventually his evil would catch up to him and, frankly, when it happens, he deserves it. He deserves punishment for his crimes.

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells the story of two men (Luke 18:9-14). One is a Pharisee who publicly announces his prayer. He is larger than life and important above all. The other is a tax collector who recognizes his own weakness and sin. He has his head down low and is begging the Lord to have mercy upon him for all his failings.

In this scenario, Hatchan is the tax collector. He knows his own failings and that he is undeserving of mercy. Yet, unlike the tax collector, he sees the cruel world around him and does not ask for anything. He expects the world to remain evil. He is fine suffering if his friends can be saved by his sacrificial death.

The Parable of Hatchan

Before we get too far, I want to say one thing up front—Hatchan does not die here. He survives this encounter and Camie is freed from slavery by the power of her friends. I just want to make that clear before delving any further.

With that said, what can we learn from the Hatchan’s story?

All Fall Short

Various passages in the Bible point to the fact that all humans are sinners, but nowhere is it more obvious than in Romans 3:23. In this passage, Paul explains that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. When he says “all,” he means everyone. He means himself. He means the apostles. He means you. He means me. Everyone has sinned at some point and may sin again in the future.

Hatchan shows us this through his actions and his statements. He freely admits that he was a failure and a sinner who sinned against the Straw Hats, but especially against Nami and her hometown. He recognizes and acknowledges that he falls short.

Evil is Around Us

Evil is a real presence in the world. I am not talking some physical incarnation of evil we see as monsters in fairy tales. I am talking about deep rooted evil that exists in the hearts of man.

I am speaking about the racist evil that led to human beings of African descent created in God’s image to be bought and sold as chattel in the United States.

I am speaking about the evil of police officers who abuse their authority to harm those they are sworn to protect.

I am speaking to the evil of eugenicists who sought to wipe out entire races of people.

I am speaking of the everyday evil of people who lie to their friends or gossip about their enemies.

I am speaking of even the passive evil of ignoring the plight of our fellow man.

Evil is all around us and can be overwhelming. While we cannot dwell on it at all times, we also should not ignore it or pretend it does not exist. Hatchan tried to convince the Straw Hats to turn a blind eye to the evils at the Sabaody Archipelago. They refused. And we, too, have the choice to refuse to ignore the evil happening around us.

All Can Be Forgiven

Hatchan was a fallen criminal, but he was also able to move toward a better future and create a new life despite his past. While Nami does not accept any apologies at first, by the time this arc in Sabaody Archipelago concludes, Hatchan has transformed from a former enemy to an ally of the Straw Hats. All can be forgiven, and forgiveness can be offered.

Christ commands Christians to do just that. We are called to love our neighbors as ourselves. This includes those we may despise. It feels hard to want to forgive those who have wronged us, but let us not forget that the Lord does just that for us. In Romans 5:8, Paul reminds us that while we continue to sin, the Lord loves us anyway and gave His only begotten Son to free us from Sin.

As the Lord forgives us, we are to forgive.

As the Straw Hats forgive Hatchan, we are to do the same.

There is Hope

While there is evil and sin in the world, there is still hope! It becomes easy to lose sight of it, but it nonetheless remains. The Lord provides us with an eternal hope that one day He will make all things right.

In the meantime, though, we can see the world being restored bit by bit. We see it in the compassion of Mary Johnson who forgave the man who murdered her son and helped him get back on his feet after he got out of prison. We see it in the examples of public repentance of the Southern Baptist Convention, a convention which was founded by white slaveowners in support slavery in the United States, over their racist roots. We see it in the stories of the Lost Boys of Sudan who worked together to protect one another after losing their families in the Sudanese Civil Wars.

Things can get better and the Lord is here to help. Yet He requires us to be active participants in changing things for the better. He wants us to be like the Straw Hats. He desires for us to see evil, and then to do the only thing we should—to stand up for what’s right.

=====

One Piece is published by Viz Media

#Manga #Christianity #One Piece #Hatchan #Newman's Nook #Forgiveness #Repentance #Articles #Author: MDMRN

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firelord-frowny · 3 years

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I’ve talked a little bit about how at least one ~negative aspect~ of white supremacy/racism that impacts white people is that it can be SO DIFFICULT to avoid being Accidentally Racist over something that really shouldn’t have been that deep, and WOULDN’T have been that deep if not for the pervasiveness of white supremacy in america, and this bit about the lil country band Lady Antebellum and the controversy surrounding their name illustrates that pretty well, I think:

The band members have always said that the band's name was chosen arbitrarily, complaining about the difficulty of choosing a name. Inspired by the "country" style nostalgia of a photo shoot at a mansion from the Antebellum South, they said, "one of us said the word and we all kind of stopped and said, man, that could be a name"[40] and "Man that's a beautiful Antebellum house, and that's cool, maybe there's a haunted ghost or something in there like Lady Antebellum."[41] Haywood concluded, "[We] had a lady in the group, obviously, and threw Lady in the front of it for no reason. I wish we had a great resounding story to remember for the name, but it stuck ever since."[40] The name was always controversial, with a critic in Ms. Magazine writing in 2011 that the band's name "seems to me an example of the way we still — nearly 150 years after the end of the Civil War, nearly 50 years after the Civil Rights Act; and in a supposedly post-racial country led by a biracial president — glorify a culture that was based on the violent oppression of people of color".[41][42]

On June 11, 2020, joining widespread commercial response to the George Floyd protests,[41] the band announced it would abbreviate its name to its existing nickname "Lady A"[43] in an attempt to blunt the name's racist connotations.[1] The band members stated on social media that, never having previously sought the dictionary definition of the word "antebellum", they now consulted their "closest black friends and colleagues" so that their "eyes opened wide to the injustices, inequality and biases black women and men have always faced and continue to face every day. Now, blind spots we didn't even know existed have been revealed."[44] Fan response was mixed, with many decrying virtue signaling or even disparaging the protests.[41]American Songwriter said, "Given that the world knows what that A stands for, to many this change does little more than add extra insult to this ongoing injury."[45]

The next day, it was widely reported that the name "Lady A" had already been in use for more than 20 years by Seattle-based African American activist and blues, soul, funk, and gospel singer Anita White. The band again admitted ignorance of any prior use, which White called "pure privilege". Interviewed by Rolling Stone, White described the band's token acknowledgement of racism while blithely appropriating an African American artist's name: "They're using the name because of a Black Lives Matter incident that, for them, is just a moment in time. If it mattered, it would have mattered to them before. It shouldn't have taken George Floyd to die for them to realize that their name had a slave reference to it. It's an opportunity for them to pretend they're not racist". A veteran music industry lawyer observed that such name clashes are uncommon due to the existence of the Internet.[46][47] The band members contacted White the next week to apologize for having inadvertently co-opted and dominated her name,[48] saying that the Black Lives Matter movement had inspired them to a collaborative attitude. They nonetheless required retaining the same name, though she believed dual-naming is inherently impossible.[49]She said "We talked about attempting to co-exist but didn't discuss what that would look like"[48] because the band members would not directly respond to that explicit question three times during the conversation or in two contract drafts. She soon submitted a counteroffer that either the band would be renamed, or that her act would be renamed for a $5 million fee plus a $5 million donation to be split between Seattle charities, a nationwide legal defense fund for independent artists, and Black Lives Matter.[49]

On July 8, 2020, the band filed a lawsuit against White, asking a Nashville court to affirm its longstanding trademark of the name. The press release read: "Today we are sad to share that our sincere hope to join together with Anita White in unity and common purpose has ended. She and her team have demanded a $10 million payment, so reluctantly we have come to the conclusion that we need to ask a court to affirm our right to continue to use the name Lady A, a trademark we have held for many years."[50]

On September 15, 2020, White filed a counter-suit asserting her claim to the Lady A trademark and rejecting the notion that both artists could operate in the same industry under the same brand identity. She is seeking damages for lost sales and a weakened brand, along with royalties from any income the band receives under the Lady A moniker.[51][52]

Like????????? this REALLY didn’t need to be a thing.

And one thing I think black folks and other poc need to chill out with is dismissing any white person’s attempt at Being Better in how they move through a white supremacist world in a way that seeks to undo or at least not exacerbate white supremacy. I can TOTALLY believe that, in their white ignorant bliss, this band really did choose their name without realizing for a moment that it might leave a fucked up taste in some people’s mouths. Honestly like... antebellum IS a cool sounding word lmfao and if it wasn’t so heavily associated with slavery-era america, i’d wanna name something antebellum, too!

And like, yes, it’s true that it ~shouldn’t have taken george floyd’s death~ for anyone at all to suddenly decide that they want to go a little bit out of their way to denounce or at least not seem to promote racism in some small way. But it did. And it does. And every fucking time there’s a gross act of violence and injustice acted out on a person of color in front of the world, there’s always going to be a brand new white person out there who Sees The Light for the very first time. That doesn’t mean their new perspective isn’t genuine, and it doesn’t mean it happened All Of A Sudden. If anything, it was something they’d been thinking about for a long time, but didn’t know how to address it, or what to say, or who to say it to, or how to talk about it in their own community. OBVIOUSLY that problem is WAY LESS BAD than, ya know, actually experiencing racism, but it’s still a real thing that some white folks go through, and being mad about it isn’t going to make it NOT a real thing. it shouldn’t have taken george floyd’s death. it shouldn’t have taken trayvon martin’s death. it shouldn’t have taken the instatement of one of the most vile human beings to ever assault the face of the earth for This Person or That Person to finally want to make a positive and public change, BUT IT DID. It always does. That, unfortunately, is How It Works.

And so, this band adjusts it’s name in an effort to not seem hostile. OBVIOUSLY it’s not a grand show of solidarity. OBVIOUSLY it’s not meant to convince anyone that they’re Super Amazing White People Who Will Stop At Nothing For Racial Equality. It was literally just a small, simple gesture. They’re just modifying their image, because they were no longer comfortable with knowing how that word makes a lot of people feel. Bc like... let’s be real: probably a solid ZERO of their fanbase would have given a shit if they’d just left the name as it was. Nobody who’s going to a Lady Antebellum concert was pouting about the name. And if anything, they prolly stood a better chance of LOSING fans for ~being politically correct~ than gaining fans for changing their name to something less annoying.

And it JUST SO HAPPENS that the slight lil adjustment they made to their name steps on the toes of an existing artist, and it JUST SO HAPPENS that this artist is black, and is also an ACTIVIST in social and racial justice.

Oops.

And so, obviously people don’t interpret it as an honest mistake. Instead, it’s a result of white privilege. And I mean like??? ok, maybe it is. But I ALSO had never heard of Anita White until I read this fucking wiki page lmfao. So like... my ignorance isn’t due to no white privilege on my part. Maybe it’s a consequence of a white supremacist culture that wouldn’t glorify her and celebrate her and put her name everywhere... but that’s a different thing from privilege.

So now not only are the bands efforts to adjust to a world that’s becoming more aware of racial injustice being dismissed as disingenuous or too-little-too-late, but now they’re ALSO being accused of Using Their White Privilege to trample all over an artist they’d never heard of.

i DO think that after finding out the name was already taken, and after talking with her about it and determining that she wasn’t interested in sharing - as is her right - they should have just said “ok, sorry, thanks for talking with us about it” and picked something different. i think it’s kinda ridiculous that they think they should sue her and i think she’s HELLA right for suing their asses right back, and I hope she gets her damn money.

But I’m also cognizant of how emotionally/psychologically upsetting it can feel to have to just Change Your Name after so many years of living with it. It makes sense that despite their desire to adapt and choose a new name that doesn’t make people cringe, they still want to try to hold on to the feeling that THEY associated with their own name. “Lady A” seemed like a happy medium: They can remain Who They Are while also showing that Who They Are is someone who’s not trying to glorify a disgusting era of history. But if “Lady A” isn’t an option... what’s left? What else could they call themselves that wouldn’t feel like a totally new, alien identity??

So, I understand how, on an emotional level, they want to fight to keep it.

But uh. They really need to just Be Sad about it and let it go. Just consider it one of the small, upsetting sacrifices that white folks may sometimes have to make as we ALL struggle and stumble through this fuckin long-ass road of Making The World Less Terrible For People Of Color, and move on.

But yeah, like.

It’s fucking ridiculous that this was even an issue, and it was only an issue because of racism!!!!! If white supremacists didn’t manufacture a culture that oppresses people of color and glorifies the pre-civil-war era SPECIFICALLY for the good ol slavery, then perhaps people could wax poetic about the artistic and environmental aesthetic of that era without it being assumed that they Must Be Racist. Bc like??? idk if yall know this lmfao but i LOVE????? colonial american music. like, the kind of stuff with that Ashokan Farewell vibe. I think it sounds beautiful. And i really fuckin love the black spiritual music that was developed in that time. and i think so much of the architecture and fashion was so???? Nice. Just pleasant! But I can’t even get myself to fully enjoy it because of all the fuckin connotations that have been stuck to it.

A band should be able to name theirself a name without it being such a goddamn fucking cultural crisis.

But they can’t! And it is!

Thanks, White Supremacy!

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reading-writing-revolution · 3 years

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December 30, 2020

Heather Cox Richardson

Dec 31

And so, we are at the end of a year that has brought a presidential impeachment trial, a deadly pandemic that has killed more than 338,000 of us, a huge social movement for racial justice, a presidential election, and a president who has refused to accept the results of that election and is now trying to split his own political party.

It’s been quite a year.

But I had a chance to talk with history podcaster Bob Crawford of the Avett Brothers yesterday, and he asked a more interesting question. He pointed out that we are now twenty years into this century, and asked what I thought were the key changes of those twenty years. I chewed on this question for awhile and also asked readers what they thought. Pulling everything together, here is where I’ve come out.

In America, the twenty years since 2000 have seen the end game of the Reagan Revolution, begun in 1980.

In that era, political leaders on the right turned against the principles that had guided the country since the 1930s, when Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt guided the nation out of the Great Depression by using the government to stabilize the economy. During the Depression and World War Two, Americans of all parties had come to believe the government had a role to play in regulating the economy, providing a basic social safety net and promoting infrastructure.

But reactionary businessmen hated regulations and the taxes that leveled the playing field between employers and workers. They called for a return to the pro-business government of the 1920s, but got no traction until the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, when the Supreme Court, under the former Republican governor of California, Earl Warren, unanimously declared racial segregation unconstitutional. That decision, and others that promoted civil rights, enabled opponents of the New Deal government to attract supporters by insisting that the country’s postwar government was simply redistributing tax dollars from hardworking white men to people of color.

That argument echoed the political language of the Reconstruction years, when white southerners insisted that federal efforts to enable formerly enslaved men to participate in the economy on terms equal to white men were simply a redistribution of wealth, because the agents and policies required to achieve equality would cost tax dollars and, after the Civil War, most people with property were white. This, they insisted, was “socialism.”

To oppose the socialism they insisted was taking over the East, opponents of black rights looked to the American West. They called themselves Movement Conservatives, and they celebrated the cowboy who, in their inaccurate vision, was a hardworking white man who wanted nothing of the government but to be left alone to work out his own future. In this myth, the cowboys lived in a male-dominated world, where women were either wives and mothers or sexual playthings, and people of color were savage or subordinate.

With his cowboy hat and western ranch, Reagan deliberately tapped into this mythology, as well as the racism and sexism in it, when he promised to slash taxes and regulations to free individuals from a grasping government. He promised that cutting taxes and regulations would expand the economy. As wealthy people—the “supply side” of the economy-- regained control of their capital, they would invest in their businesses and provide more jobs. Everyone would make more money.

From the start, though, his economic system didn’t work. Money moved upward, dramatically, and voters began to think the cutting was going too far. To keep control of the government, Movement Conservatives at the end of the twentieth century ramped up their celebration of the individualist white American man, insisting that America was sliding into socialism even as they cut more and more domestic programs, insisting that the people of color and women who wanted the government to address inequities in the country simply wanted “free stuff.” They courted social conservatives and evangelicals, promising to stop the “secularization” they saw as a partner to communism.

After the end of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, talk radio spread the message that Black and Brown Americans and “feminazis” were trying to usher in socialism. In 1996, that narrative got a television channel that personified the idea of the strong man with subordinate women. The Fox News Channel told a story that reinforced the Movement Conservative narrative daily until it took over the Republican Party entirely.

The idea that people of color and women were trying to undermine society was enough of a rationale to justify keeping them from the vote, especially after Democrats passed the Motor Voter law in 1993, making it easier for poor people to register to vote. In 1997, Florida began the process of purging voter rolls of Black voters.

And so, 2000 came.

In that year, the presidential election came down to the electoral votes in Florida. Democratic candidate Al Gore won the popular vote by more than 540,000 votes over Republican candidate George W. Bush, but Florida would decide the election. During the required recount, Republican political operatives led by Roger Stone descended on the election canvassers in Miami-Dade County to stop the process. It worked, and the Supreme Court upheld the end of the recount. Bush won Florida by 537 votes and, thanks to its electoral votes, became president. Voter suppression was a success, and Republicans would use it, and after 2010, gerrymandering, to keep control of the government even as they lost popular support.

Bush had promised to unite the country, but his installation in the White House gave new power to the ideology of the Movement Conservative leaders of the Reagan Revolution. He inherited a budget surplus from his predecessor Democrat Bill Clinton, but immediately set out to get rid of it by cutting taxes. A balanced budget meant money for regulation and social programs, so it had to go. From his term onward, Republicans would continue to cut taxes even as budgets operated in the red, the debt climbed, and money moved upward.

The themes of Republican dominance and tax cuts were the backdrop of the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001. That attack gave the country’s leaders a sense of mission after the end of the Cold War and, after launching a war in Afghanistan to stop al-Qaeda, they set out to export democracy to Iraq. This had been a goal for Republican leaders since the Clinton administration, in the belief that the United States needed to spread capitalism and democracy in its role as a world leader. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq strengthened the president and the federal government, creating the powerful Department of Homeland Security, for example, and leading Bush to assert the power of the presidency to interpret laws through signing statements.

The association of the Republican Party with patriotism enabled Republicans in this era to call for increased spending for the military and continued tax cuts, while attacking Democratic calls for domestic programs as wasteful. Increasingly, Republican media personalities derided those who called for such programs as dangerous, or anti-American.

But while Republicans increasingly looked inward to their party as the only real Americans and asserted power internationally, changes in technology were making the world larger. The Internet put the world at our fingertips and enabled researchers to decode the human genome, revolutionizing medical science. Smartphones both made communication easy. Online gaming created communities and empathy. And as many Americans were increasingly embracing rap music and tattoos and LGBTQ rights, as well as recognizing increasing inequality, books were pointing to the dangers of the power concentrating at the top of societies. In 1997, J.K. Rowling began her exploration of the rise of authoritarianism in her wildly popular Harry Potter books, but her series was only the most famous of a number of books in which young people conquered a dystopia created by adults.

In Bush’s second term, his ideology created a perfect storm. His administration's disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina, which killed more than 1,800 people and caused $125 billion in damage in and around New Orleans in 2005, revealed how badly the new economy had treated Black and Brown people, and how badly the destruction of domestic programs had affected our ability to respond to disasters. Computers permitted the overuse of credit default swaps that precipitated the 2008 crash, which then precipitated the housing crisis, as people who had bet on the individualist American dream lost their homes. Meanwhile, the ongoing wars, plagued with financial and moral scandals, made it clear that the Republicans optimistic vision of spreading democracy through military conflict was unrealistic.

In 2008, voters put Black American Barack Obama, a Democrat, into the White House. To Republicans, primed by now to believe that Democrats and Black people were socialists, this was an undermining of the nation itself, and they set out to hamper him. While many Americans saw Obama as the symbol of a new, fairer government with America embracing a multilateral world, reactionaries built a backlash based in racism and sexism. They vocally opposed a federal government they insisted was pushing socialism on hardworking white men, and insisted that America must show its strength by exerting its power unilaterally in the world. Increasingly, the Internet and cell phones enabled people to have their news cater to their worldview, moving Republicans into a world characterized by what a Republican spokesperson would later call "alternative facts."

And so, in 2016, we faced a clash between a relentlessly changing nation and the individualist ideology of the Movement Conservatives who had taken over the Republican Party. By then, that ideology had become openly radical extremism in the hands of Donald Trump, who referred to immigrants as criminals, boasted of sexually assaulting women, and promised to destroy the New Deal government once and for all.

In the 2016 election, the themes of the past 36 years came together. Embracing Movement Conservative individualist ideology taken to an extreme, Trump was eager enough to make sure a Democrat didn't win that, according to American intelligence services, he was willing to accept the help of Russian operatives. They, in turn, influenced the election through the manipulation of new social media, amplified by what had become by then a Republican echo chamber in which Democrats were dangerous socialists and the Democratic candidate, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was a criminal. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision which permitted corporate money to flow into election campaigns, Trump also had the help of a wave of money from big business; financial institutions spent $2 billion to influence the election. He also had the support of evangelicals, who believed he would finally give them the anti-abortion laws they wanted.

Trump lost the popular vote by almost 3 million votes but, as George W. Bush before him, won in the Electoral College. Once in office, this president set out to destroy the New Deal state, as Movement Conservatives had called for, returning the country to the control of a small group of elite businessmen who, theoretically, would know how to move the country forward best by leveraging private sector networks and innovation. He also set out to put minorities and women back into subordinate positions, recreating a leadership structure that was almost entirely white and male.

As Trump tried to destroy an activist government once and for all, Americans woke up to how close we have come to turning our democracy over to a small group of oligarchs.

In the past four years, the Women’s March on Washington and the MeToo Movement has enabled women to articulate their demand for equality. The travel ban, child separation policy for Latin American refugees, and Trump’s attacks on Muslims, Latin American immigrants, and Chinese immigrants, has sparked a defense of America’s history of immigration. The Black Lives Matter Movement, begun in July 2013 after George Zimmerman was acquitted of murdering teenager Trayvon Martin, has gained power as Black Americans have been murdered at the hands of law enforcement officers and white vigilantes, and as Black Americans have borne witness to those murders with cellphone videos.

The increasing voice of democracy clashed most dramatically with Trump’s ideology in summer 2020 when, with the support of his Attorney General William Barr, Trump used the law enforcement officers of the Executive Branch to attack peaceful protesters in Washington, D.C. and in Portland, Oregon. In June, on the heels of the assault on the protesters at Lafayette Square, military officers from all branches made it clear that they would not support any effort to use them against civilians. They reiterated that they would support the Constitution. The refusal of the military to support a further extension of Trump's power was no small thing.

And now, here we are. Trump lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden by more than 7 million votes and by an Electoral College split of 306 to 232. Although the result was not close, Trump refuses to acknowledge the loss and is doing all he can to hamper Biden’s assumption of office. Many members of the Republican Party are joining him in his attempt to overturn the election, taking the final, logical step of Movement Conservatism: denying the legitimacy of anyone who does not share their ideology. This is unprecedented. It is a profound attack on our democracy. But it will not succeed.

And in this moment, we have, disastrously, discovered the final answer to whether or not it is a good idea to destroy the activist government that has protected us since 1933. In their zeal for reducing government, the Trump team undercut our ability to respond to a pandemic, and tried to deal with the deadly coronavirus through private enterprise or by ignoring it and calling for people to go back to work in service to the economy, willing to accept huge numbers of dead. They have carried individualism to an extreme, insisting that simple public health measures designed to save lives infringe on their liberty.

The result has been what is on track to be the greatest catastrophe in American history, with more than 338,000 of us dead and the disease continuing to spread like wildfire. It is for this that the Trump administration will be remembered, but it is more than that. It is a fitting end to the attempt to destroy our government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 years

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* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

December 30, 2020

Heather Cox Richardson

It’s been quite a year.

In America, the twenty years since 2000 have seen the end game of the Reagan Revolution, begun in 1980.

And so, 2000 came.

As Trump tried to destroy an activist government once and for all, Americans woke up to how close we have come to turning our democracy over to a small group of oligarchs.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #quotes #poltical #history #election 2020 #21st century #corrupt GOP #criminal GOP

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revlyncox · 3 years

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Dreamers (2021)

Working toward a better world, a world of racial justice and an end to interlocking oppressions, requires imagination. On this weekend when we remember the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., let's also consider both the history of civil rights and the unbounded creativity of speculative fiction by writers of color as sources of inspiration.

Expanded and revised for the Washington Ethical Society, presented January 17, 2021.

“We are creating a world we have never seen,” writes Adrienne Maree Brown in Emergent Strategy. On this weekend, as we remember the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., support a peaceful transfer of power, and recommit to his legacy and the work of civil rights yet to do, it may seem like a luxury or a distraction to engage with imagination. It is not. Just like we cannot allow oppression to steal our joy, we cannot let it steal our imagination. Neither threats of violence, nor attempts to push us into re-creating a fictional and regressive society of the past, nor manufactured austerity preventing relief from reaching working people, nor white supremacy in any form should be allowed to steal our imagination. Our ability to dream of a better world is a matter of collective survival.

What does it take to dream big? What fuels our ability to imagine a future without limits like racism, classism, and sexism? Entering a dream state where equality is possible takes some practice. Music can get us there. Listening to activists who are moving our society forward can help us get into that frame of mind. Great art can invite us into that kind of transformational trance.

Dreaming is important. Dreaming gives us creativity, energy, and a warm vision around which we can gather a community. Dreaming is not enough. Once we have imagined a better world, we have to (we get to) build it, to keep building it, and to rebuild the parts that got torn down when we weren’t paying attention. The next step is to use those dreams as a doorway to action.

Dr. King’s words and actions demonstrated connections between systemic racial inequality, economic injustice, war, threats to labor rights, and blockades to voting rights. All of those forces are still relevant. He and the other activists of his era left a very rich legacy, for which we are grateful. We are not done.

I’ll be drawing today from Dr. King’s 1963 work, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” (Also available as an audio file from the King Institute.) I think the critiques he offered in that letter are still valid, especially for us in this community that strives to be anti-racist and yet must acknowledge that we are impacted by the norms of what King calls, “the white moderate.” His letter was a response to Christian and Jewish clergy, who had written an open letter criticizing nonviolent direct action. Though Ethical Culture uses different language and methods than our explicitly theist neighbors, I think it is incumbent upon us to hold on to the accountability that comes with being part of the interfaith community. So I believe this letter is written to us as well. Dr. King wrote:

I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the … great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises [us] to wait until a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I would like to think that, in this community, we have made some progress since 1963, and that majority-white communities have stopped explicitly trying to slow the pace of civil rights. Indeed, WES can be proud that racial justice has been woven into its goals from the beginning, though we must also be honest that a perfectly anti-racist history is unlikely. At the same time, I see people who claim to be progressive rushing to calls for “civility” or “unity” without accountability. Understanding the direct link between the intended audience of this letter and the people and communities with which we have kinship today is an act of imagination that we must embrace in order to learn from the past and to continue Dr. King’s legacy. “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” can help us understand why we need to dream of something different in the world.

We need dreams and we need plans. We seek inspiration as we continue to work toward bringing a dream of economic and political equality fully into reality.

One place I turn for inspiration is toward socially conscious science fiction. Looking at how the art form has offered critiques of what’s wrong and pathways to what’s right, I see suggestions for how we can nurture the dream of a better world.

Science fiction has even helped me understand spiritually-connected social movements, such as the one depicted in Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler. The series depicts a self-governing poetic community that tries to live sustainably in an environment affected by catastrophic climate change, and that maintains an improbable vision of exploring the stars. The poetry uses the word God, but not in the way that it is normally used. Recognizing that WES is not a community that makes use of theism, I hope you’ll be able to hear how that metaphor is used in the world of the story. In Parable of the Talents, the main character, Lauren Olamina, writes a poem for her community:

God is change

And hidden within change

Is surprise, delight,

Confusion, pain,

Discovery, loss,

Opportunity and growth.

As always, God exists

To shape

And to be shaped

(Parable of the Talents, p. 92)

In the book, the community that reflects on change in meditation and song is able to use that energy to maintain resilience, even in the face of white supremacist violence and criminalization. Butler imagines an inclusive community led by People of Color who strengthen and encourage one another, inject their strategic planning with an expectation for backlash, and still imagine and make their way toward a better world. Her books provide inspiration to those who know that the negative extremes of the world of the story are possible.

Socially conscious science fiction spins dreams that are extreme, that challenge us in good ways. In science fiction and in practical experience with progressive movements, we learn that dreams need help to become reality.

The alternate universe where justice rolls down like water may seem too fantastic to believe, it may be cobbled together in ways that seem mis-matched to mundane perceptions, and it will certainly take work to achieve. Nevertheless, like Dr. King, I believe “we must use time creatively.”

Dreams Are Extreme

The first thing to note about dreams, whether sleeping or socially conscious, is that they are extreme. Things that would be totally absurd or unthinkable in everyday reality are woven into the fabric of a new vision. The dream might be a positive one, in which we imagine what it would be like to live in a better world. On the other hand, dystopian dreams can also be effective at stirring us to action. In an imagined world, we are met with the possibility that a flaw in our current society might go too far. Absurdity comes uncomfortably close to the truth.

Dr. King spoke about the role of discomfort in “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” saying that nonviolent direct action is meant to bring that discomfort to bear so that those in power will sit down and negotiate, to recognize people of good conscience. This is different from using violence as coercion, which is destructive to democracy; this is using peaceful means to declare the right of people to have a voice in what concerns them. Dr. King writes:

Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has consistently refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. I just referred to the creation of tension as a part of the work of the nonviolent resister. This may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, but there is a type of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth.

Tension has a place in literature and drama that can also be used for racial justice. I once served as an intern at a regional theater. In one of the plays we presented that year, the plot hinged on something unexplainable and highly improbable, which is one definition for science fiction. It was the 1965 play Day of Absence by African American playwright Douglas Turner Ward. In the story, white citizens of a racist town awaken one day to find that all of the African American residents have mysteriously disappeared. They slowly come to realize that they cannot function without the neighbors they mistreated and took for granted. Rather than try to solve their problems, they spend the rest of the play panicking and blaming each other in comedic ways.

Between the satirical script, the exaggerated makeup, and the abstract set, the show turns reality inside out in an effort to alter the audience’s collective conscience. Day of Absence shines a spotlight on the links between racial oppression and economic oppression, and is an incitement to join a movement for change. Consistent with the Revolutionary Theatre aesthetic, the play is meant to make people uncomfortable. We should be uncomfortable with the real systems of inequality parodied in the play.

It worked. Audiences were uncomfortable. Some patrons were able to take that discomfort and use it to grow. Some patrons were not ready to deal productively with their discomfort. For art or spirituality or dreams or anything else to offer the chance for transformation, creating the opportunity can’t wait until everyone is equally ready to begin the journey.

One goal of satire is to take something that is true and to exaggerate it until the truth cannot be ignored. When that something is oppression, making art that can’t be ignored and suggesting a justice-oriented overhaul to society is going to seem extreme to some people.

Speculative fiction by writers of color, even when not satirical, can also use exaggeration for a positive effect. The 2019 HBO Watchmen series explored this, creating an alternate history that lifted out problems with racism and policing in our own timeline. The Broken Earth trilogy by N.K. Jemisin explores extremes of climate change and identity-based exploitation, and weaves in glimpses of generational trauma between parents and children trying to survive in a society that rejects their wholeness. Extremes in literature can reflect back to us the plain truth.

Similarly, a dream that draws people together for the hope of a society that is very different from what we have, a dream that re-imagines the future of justice and economic opportunity, is going to be considered extreme, which is not a good thing by some standards. Every time there is a popular movie or TV show in the science fiction/fantasy genre that uses multiracial casting, and every time a speculative fiction novel by a writer of color receives sales or awards, there are claims that social justice warriors are running amok, or that trends have gone too far. Allowing for multiracial imagination is considered a violation of balance, a bridge too far. Inclusion is considered extreme, rather than a tool for bringing imagined futures into being.

Dr. King explored this critique of extremism. In “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” he expresses some initial frustration at being labeled an extremist for his peaceful methods. It seemed that any movement toward change was too radical for the white moderate clergy. But the status quo was not and is not acceptable. Dr. King writes:

So I have not said to my people: "Get rid of your discontent." Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being termed extremist. But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." … (Dr. King gives a few more examples before he goes on.) So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? … Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists. (paragraph 24)

I believe the nation and the world are in need of creative extremists. We need dreamers. We need bold playwrights, courageous writers, and artists who cannot be ignored. We need the power to imagine a more just and radically different future.

Dreams Need Help to Become Reality

Another point that connects science fiction with visions of equality is that dreams need help to become reality. We hear often that “the arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” but the unwritten part of that is that actual people have to do some bending. Dr. King wrote about that, too; though he uses “man” in a way that was common at the time to mean people of all genders, and he invokes his own religious tradition, we can all hear the collective responsibility in this passage. In his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Dr. King wrote:

Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity. (paragraph 21)

We can and should have hope. We still need to act according to our values. No act of encouragement, no vote cast, no letter written is a wasted effort. We must use time creatively. In the case of arts, literature, and entertainment, we must also use time travel creatively. Progress does not happen by accident.

Nichelle Nichols, who played Lieutenant Uhura in the original Star Trek series, spoke about the creation of her character and why she chose to stay on the show. None of it was an accident. When she first met with Gene Roddenberry, she was in the middle of reading a book on Uhuru, which is Swahili for freedom. Roddenberry became more convinced than ever that he wanted a Black woman on the bridge of the Enterprise. Nichols said:

When the show began and I was cast to develop this character – I was cast as one of the stars of the show – the reality of the matter was the industry was not ready for a woman or a Black and certainly not the combination of the two (and you have to remember this was 1966) in that kind of role, on that equal basis, and certainly not that kind of power role.

Nichols was also an accomplished singer and stage actress. The producers never told her about the volume of fan mail she was receiving. She was considering leaving the show to join a theatrical production headed for Broadway, when she was at an event (probably a fundraiser for the NAACP, but Nichols doesn’t remember clearly) and was asked to meet a fan. The fan turned out to be the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He told her how much he enjoyed the show, and that it was the only show he and his wife allowed their children to stay up late to watch. She told him that she was planning to resign. “You cannot!” he said. Nichols goes on:

Dr. King said to me, ‘Don’t you understand that you have the first non-stereotypical role in television in a major TV series of importance, and you establish us as we are supposed to be: as equals, whether it’s ethnic, racial, or gender.’ I was breathless. ‘Thank you, and Yes, I will stay.’

Nichols’ decision to stay had a ripple effect. Whoopi Goldberg said that the first time she saw Lieutenant Uhura on television was a major turning point for her as a child. Mae Jemison, the first African American astronaut in space, spoke about Uhura as an inspiration. Stacey Abrams is a fan.

The inner workings of a TV show with cheesy special effects, beloved as that show may be, might seem inconsequential to the future of human rights. I maintain that anything that expands our ability to dream of a better world is necessary. Stories that give us building blocks for change make a difference. And representation matters. People are hungry for diverse, respectful, innovative stories. Representation increases the chances that someone from a marginalized group can get the resources to tell their own stories rather than relying on the dominant group to borrow them. In this age of communication, it is possible to engage people from all over the planet in a conversation about our shared future. The trick is that we have to work to make sure all of the voices are included. The dream of a better world needs people who can make it a reality.

Imagination is key, and it is a starting point. In Emergent Strategy, Adrienne Maree Brown writes:

Science fiction is simply a way to practice the future together. I suspect that is what many of you are up to, practicing futures together, practicing justice together, living into new stories. It is our right and responsibility to create a new world. What we pay attention to grows, so I’m thinking about how we grow what we are all imagining and creating into something large enough and solid enough that it becomes a tipping point.

Earlier, you heard another quote from the book, in which Brown names the Beloved Community that we can use imagination to grow ourselves into. She names “a future without police and prisons ... a future without rape … harassment … constant fear, and childhood sexual assault. A future without war, hunger, violence. With abundance. Where gender is a joyful spectrum.”

Brown frames this imagined future world, this Beloved Community, as a project of both imagination and community organizing. A better world is possible.

Conclusion

The arts, in particular science fiction, can ignite a kind of a dream state. By using time and time-travel creatively, we can envision a world of justice, equality, and compassion. We have yet more ways to craft stories and plans that respect the inherent worth and dignity of every person. The dream of economic equality, the dream of equal voting rights, the dream of equal protection under the law all need foundations built under them.

If we wish to count ourselves among the dreamers, let us take action. We can continue to build coalitions with partner organizations of other faiths and cultures. We can send representatives to workshops and meetings, and listen carefully to their findings when they return. We can read about dismantling oppression and share what we find with each other.

This community is a place where we can dream freely. Let us use time effectively. Let us enter into the powers of myth, creativity, and art to imagine a better future. And then let us work and plan to make that better future come to pass. May our dreams refresh us and energize us for the tasks ahead.

May it be so.

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ucsdhealthsciences · 4 years

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Public Health Students Graduate and Enter the Workforce During Unprecedented Times

The first graduating class of the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science listened, on June 12, 2020, to the school’s founding dean and the university’s first Black, female dean Cheryl Anderson, PhD, MPH, during a commencement ceremony conducted by video conference.

“This is such an important time to be going into public health,” said Anderson. “Our students are beginning at a time when we have a public health crisis, a social crisis and an economic crisis, all at the same time. Now, our students get to see all the things that they’ve trained for coming alive right here in their community.”

At commencement, the school’s vision of prevention, equity and optimal health for all citizens reverberated in messaging to the inaugural class of 180 graduates, who enter a world wracked by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and global civil unrest spurred by efforts to address systemic racism.

“The public health community knows all too well that there is a deep and long-standing public health crisis of racism,” said Anderson. “We see it not only in the disproportionate impact of police brutality upon Black American citizens and other historically marginalized groups, but also in disparities regarding chronic diseases, the impact and treatment of COVID-19, nutrition and healthy lifestyle behaviors, exposure to pollution, maternal and child health, and other contemporary public health issues.”

Anderson impressed upon the students to use this time as an opportunity to become advocates for change, voices for those without and to create demand for a strong public health infrastructure. Here are three students’ stories.

Personal Experience Propels Compassionate Care

During her first year of college, Aina Guatno’s mother passed away after coping with diabetic complications for several years. The moment impacted Guatno’s perspective on academics and cemented her decision to focus solely on her major in public health. Her time at UC San Diego provided Guatno with the opportunity to reflect on how her own family experienced obstacles to receiving adequate health care, and inspired her to make a difference.

“I grew up in a low-income community, so there were a lot of challenges to gain access to financial services and barriers to basic health care, but my parents always found a way to care for us,” said Guatno. “Through this personal experience, my passion for public health grew stronger.”

According to Guatno, her Introduction to Public Health course opened her eyes to the field’s possibilities, from working with the county to effect policy changes and educational programs to interacting with hospitals and patients to ensure appropriate health care.

“Public health is the best first step toward making a positive change in providing equitable health care access,” said Guatno. “Many people are not treated fairly when it comes to health care, and my goal is to work in those communities, like the one where I was raised, to help address such inequities.”

Driving Systemic Change

For Nathaniel “Zall” Badii, graduating during such uncertain times sparked a vision of creating systemic change within the health care industry as a whole; focusing on laws pertaining to access, quality and cost.

“We don’t have equity in health care, and it’s particularly tragic because it truly is life or death,” said Badii. “Public health is unique because it sits at the intersection of politics, medical science and defense. I’m really excited to enter the field during this time and hope to bring about a transformational change.”

Badii’s plans to gain both Masters in Public Health and Juris Doctor degrees. Growing up in a multi-ethnic home in San Diego, he relies upon his Iranian and Mexican heritage to provide care for others and uses that as a driving force for his career goals.

“I’ve personally seen how a person’s race directly affects their health outcomes and believe that medical science hasn’t gotten us there on its own. This work must be guided by a strong sense of justice in order to properly safeguard the health of our communities.”

Utilizing Health Care as a Public Service

Focusing on prevention and legislation as a tool to help people avoid hospitalization is what led Jose Gonzalez to public health as a career.

“I want to do something that is going to help others, and public health is the outlet that will,” he said.

Propelling his decision to go into the legislative side of public health was Gonzalez’s experience with the University of California Washington Program (UCDC), which provides UC students with an opportunity to intern in the nation’s capital while continuing their academic course work. Last year, Gonzalez was the UC San Diego student representative and a general legislative intern for Senator Kamala Harris. Gonzalez said he was exposed to many different facets of public health and discovered how legislation can affect thousands, perhaps millions, of people in need.

“It’s a very scary time and there’s so much uncertainty globally, but we have to remain positive,” said Gonzalez. “A positive perspective helps me know that we can be the change we want to see in this world, and times like what we’re facing provide us with an opportunity to start making changes for the betterment of all.”

‘Public Health Students Graduate and Enter the Workforce During Unprecedented Time’

#public health #medicine #students #graduation #community service #communities #activism #health disparities #health equity #minorities #bipoc #healthcare #ucsd #uc san diego

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things2mustdo · 3 years

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Last week I expounded the idea that we should take the time to ponder about emotions. These matter much in prompting us to take action or not to, to think about something or not to. Sustained emotional states can lead us to pedestalize girls, ignore our own needs, or refraining from caring about our own interests, whereas others push theirs every day. They can also allow said girls to go shamelessly after short-term pleasure, or be complacent to rapefugees while shrieking and finger-waving against men of their own kin.

Pondering passions and emotions does not mean getting led by them at the expense of critical thinking. Rather, it is the exact opposite, as it allows us to spot the shrewd ones who want to push our emotional buttons, as well as being freer to take more thoughtful and actually less emotion-determined actions. Once we have gained awareness of passions, we can decide which ones we want to stimulate and why.

Following this idea, I made some suggestions of how and in whom we could stir positive emotions such empathy, hope, and love. Today I will do the same with four other passions or emotions: admiration, shame, humility, and fear.

1. Admiration

Society, I think, should admit some victimhood to those who were raised as weaklings or acted cluelessly out of good intentions. Women in particular should be more empathetic and nurturing towards nice and beta males—as long as their empathy does not extent out of admitted boundaries—hence taking an opposite direction from the egotistical, uncaring orientation a lot of them currently harbor. Of course, this should not equate to validating too much the unhealthy, unmanly men: women should also be trained into validating more manlier men. And here admiration comes into play.

As Nassim Taleb put it, we are living more and more in an “extremistan” where those at the highest level take the lion’s share while the resources diminish quickly down the ladder. Girls today tend to admire only the most famous or high-status people, which leads them to despise the ninety-nine per cent. This exasperated hypergamy should be tamed so that the average man, as long as he achieves the minimum and/or is upstanding and dutiful, gets his fair share. A more “democratic” but still conditional distribution of girls’ admiration would reward actual good behaviour for men and decrease the intramasculine competition.

Girls should also admire—and not mock—proper feminine role models. Upstanding mothers, females taking proper care of themselves and so on ought to be at least esteemed by the average girl.

2. Shame

Shame arises from measuring our actions against moral standards and discovering that they fall short. If our actions fall short and we fail to notice, we can ‘be shamed’ or made to notice… Shame is normally accentuated if its object is exposed, but, unlike embarrassment, also attaches to a thought or action that remains undisclosed and undiscoverable to others. (Neel Burton, Heaven and Hell, chap.4, p.38)

A particularly strong emotion, shame usually comes as a blow, makes one lose face or composure, to eventually feel guilt or remorse. Just like other strong emotions, it has been used with consumed malignancy by the Left.

Leftists created a narrative where whites are held entirely responsible for dreadful historical phenomena such as slavery, the Holocaust, an oppression of “minority” groups, or “racism.” As these phenomena are constantly talked about and expanded, whites are also supposed to feel a correspondingly boundless guilt. The sheer power of guilt can explain why so many whites have been afraid to stand up: being shamed as a “racist” or “Nazi” can be enough to endure rejection from one’s family, lose reputation and employment.

Shame can be aroused through two levers: the standards one agrees with, and one’s purported responsibility. Both levers have been skillfully used to unshame the liberal-favored groups. As for the standards, feminists attacked what they called slut-shaming while also shaming relentlessly manly behavior, and as for the responsibility, pretty much all those who claim to identify with a “minority” tend to deny all by slipping it over the majority’s shoulders.

This is how you get persistent offenders or Jihadi families expressing neither shame nor remorse, whereas the productive, working, and normally sociable person gets nagged for being white. In the Current Year, better be a true rapist who can evade responsibility and shame by invading Europe than a young virgin of European descent.

What we should do here sounds pretty obvious in theory though it will be much harder to carry on in practice, as people evidently hate being shamed, especially when they have been accustomed of blaming everything on the others.

Shame the fatties, shame the arrogant snowflakes whose unwillingness to respect is all too obvious, recall the self-determination of anti-white liberals and criminals. They all made free choices. They should carry all associated responsibility.

As for us, we must keep our face straight, never make clueless concessions to skillful framers or hysterical SJWs. If they appeal to moral standards, put forth your own as legitimate. If they appeal to your purported actions or responsibility, emphasize theirs—and how it cannot be boiled down to external factors.

Even dogs and cats are considered responsible by their caretakers so they can be punished for bad behaviours and learn: likewise, granting certain people or groups a constant de-responsabilization amounts to give them a free pass for destroying everything. Criminals of said groups have agency, and the liberals who gave them a pass to plunder and kill whitey are responsible as well.

Shame can also arise from being associated with something or someone deemed as despicable. The liberal policy of distinguishing sharply between terrorists and documented aliens, in spite of how much the latter to house the former, allows for the latter going without shame even when they are closely associated with terrorists—whereas every white is threatened with shame if he has a “-ist” or “-phobic” acquaintance.

Turn the table. Shake off the burden from the disenfranchised majority, and put it back on those who have been acting with impunity for too long.

3. Humility

Current Year girls’ overinflated ego is enough, notwithstanding economic or racial factors, to explain a host of social problems. Blinded by it, girls ignore how much they are determined by their own cravings, short-term desires, or by the latest fashions around. They drink loads of booze, fuck with random strangers, reframe their story as a “rape” later so they can blame it all on the guy. They never learn to cook, clean, take care of something else than their Instagram account and corporate career. (Speaking of corporate: isn’t it striking that so many men are badly in need of employment, sex, and have almost nothing, whereas spoiled corporate drones believe they can have—take—it all?)

Ego makes one lose any sense of proportion or balance. It leads to complacency, merciless exploitation of others, refusal to take responsibility, and open despise.

Augustine of Hippo wrote that humility was at the foundation of all other virtues. This makes sense. If one’s ego is inflated, one does not feel the need to practice virtues and feels entitled to never be ashamed of her shortcomings—that are easily denied or blamed on someone else. Ego also leads to wasting resources on luxury, parce que je le vaux bien, as says a famous brand of cosmetics, instead of focusing on self-improvement or caretaking.

Though girls should be the first to have their ego smashed, as the survival of basic family units depends on it, bloated ego is a general disease in our age. Men too can be sold the idea that, say, being a smug urban elf is a proof that one sides with progress and civilization whereas they are actually weak, dependent and unable to fix anything by themselves. It’s not all about our individual selves.

4. Fear

Readers asked for it, so, here it is. Fear is a very powerful emotion, to the point of prompting one to freeze, flee, abandon a previously planned course of action, or never even think to consider an idea or an action. The Left has been using it in two different, albeit complementary, ways.

First, it has constantly accused conservatives to “play on fears,” implying irrational or unjustified fears, when they dared to ask serious questions or making realistic assessment. When the 1965 Immigration Act was voted, democrat senators pretended that opening up the borders would not change the ethnic mix of America and that any suspicion it might happen was “highly emotional.” In France, the socialists and mainstream righters alike have been carrying the same accusations. Here the Left accused any doubt to be a hint of unjustified and intolerable “fear.”

Well, what happened since? Doesn’t it look like every “fear” from the right was justified—especially since the post-WW2 Right has always been incredibly wary, not to say coward, when it came to criticize the Left’s moral high ground?

Second, the Left has also been keen on doing exactly what it accused the conservatives to do, namely, stirring fear about political bogeymen. Liberals invented “rape culture” or “patriarchal oppression” when men actually became weaker. They associated to “Nazism” any white person who assumes his race should basically survive. They shamelessly bludgeoned whom they could call “white supremacists” as if defending one’s right to live in peace against hordes of thugs and violent parasites was equal to being Hitler himself.

Whites were led to fear their own supposed “authoritarian” tendencies, as the shrewd Jews who intrigued through the Frankfurt school put it (see Kevin MacDonald, Culture of Critique, chap.5). Whites were led to fear some of their fears—better have one’s daughter killed by Muslims than expressing concerns about them to other whites, because racism is so evil, boo.

When I was younger, I noticed the local thugs had a huge advantage over us normal people: they were much more fearless. They had this devil-may-care, provocative attitude, which made them potentially dangerous to the bourgeois prude beta male and attractive to females. Not incidentally, the first movie of the French essayist Alain Soral Confessions d’un dragueur (“Confessions of a Womanizer”) shows a young Arab with decent pick-up experience taking a young middle-class white boy under his wing as to help him escape from virginity.

Feeling fear is a necessary step in life. Fear appears greatly useful when there is something to flee from or watch as a potential hazard, but being too fearful or afraid of the wrong things can be a serious liability. Never trust a liberal who either points finger at you for being “fearful” or tries to paint you as dangerous and justifying his own fear-mongering.

On the flip side, being feared by others is not always a negative. Some people need to be afraid to respect you: if you try to treat them correctly or let free rein to your innate generosity, they will harm and exploit you. Such people, just as everyone around who may be tempted to disrespect, should be kept in check by a minimal fear. Better be feared and respected than getting tread upon.

Conclusion

Frame and unframe whatever matters when you have to, as you have to. The left cursed us by locking us into an always negative framing: when we fail, whatever the reason, we are despised as weak or “losers,” and when we succeed they say we are “privileged” and “oppressive.” In both cases, the chosen framing leads to negative emotions associated to us—no matter what we actually do.

Fortunately, it is always possible to turn the tables, provided we keep a tight frame, and change these emotions as well. For example, when we are weak, we should elicit empathy, be noticed for our good intentions or noble infirmities, and when we are strong, we should elicit admiration and trust.

Think, frame, feel positive about us and about what we do. Get rid of those who won’t.

Read Next: 3 Emotions Men Should Master

https://www.returnofkings.com/99453/3-more-emotions-men-should-master

Passions and emotions are an almost bottomless pit. Start digging there and you will find new ones, or new relations between this and that tidbit of emotional content. So-called Enlightenment philosophers who tried to theorize the passions—something that had been done at greater length, actually, by Thomas Aquinas—could never agree on how many there were or even how much they exactly mattered in the course of life.

Whether or not you have been reading my last two pieces on the topic, remember this is about mastering passions in the most general sense. This is not only about emotional restraint or seduction. Our own emotional states are the first in line, but mastering the passions is also about spotting what other people are feeling, how they can be led to a specific course of action, and what tends to make them tick. Mastering the passions is far from evident, it rather takes times and experience: the concepts and directions I am providing here aim at giving some conscious clarity about things that are by nature a bit muddy.

Artists, though they often suffer from mental problems, are skilled at painting a particular vision in vivid colours, allowing their public to share a specific point of view and emotional state. This is something the elite know very well. Critics trashed Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged because they could see themselves painted there as passive-aggressive cultural parasites. Rand’s novel was more cogent, and attracted more heat, than her barely original “philosophical” pieces today sold at the cheapest price on the second-hand book market.

More recently, the movie The Fall (2004) got backlashed by some of the mainstream media on the grounds that it depicted Hitler as “too human.” While seeing actor Bruno Ganz pondering, eating, talking to his closest company or getting angry, the viewer could perhaps feel a bit of empathy to him. Which is, of course, unacceptable to a Left that clings to the idea of a crazy, careless, “inhuman” dictator to be forever cast as an embodiment of evil. Hollywood directors do not like witnessing others competing with their own emotional mastery.

We need artists, as well as qualified cultural critics, to take some distance from the mainstream propaganda disguised as entertainment and expand an alternative culture and artworks. Emotions explored in the present series can be used just that way.

1. Gratitude

Gratitude denotes a trained and refined disposition. Being graceful means “recognizing that the good in our life can come from something that is outside us and outside our control” (Neel Burton, Heaven and Hell, chap.8, p.61). It focuses on positive things we already have and that cannot be ascribed to our sole merit or efforts.

The traditional world, whatever the particular cultural or religious form it was embodied into, always emphasized the necessity of being grateful. You owed your existence to God, to your family and your community. None of these goods were actually deserved, which meant you had to be grateful for them and repay them by being a dutiful member of the community as well as a dutiful father for your own children. A lot of prayers and ancient rites imply a thanksgiving for what one already has.

Moving later in time, it is striking to see that modern progressivism breeds the exact opposite mindset. The ideology of rights make many goods granted, not a “thank you for” but an “I have a right to.” Neophilia (the relentless pursuit of novelty) always casts a bad shadow on what has been around for some time, as if what was coming later was always better.

Advertisement, gossip culture, economic growth pressure, quest for victimhood lead to envy and always being more or less frustrated with what one already has, regardless of what it is. By leading us to always want more, progressivism makes us oblivious to what we already have or how it does not stem from pure individual merit—and, when it flatters the ego, it makes us complacent and far from cultivating the art of being thankful.

Turning our backs from the modern, ungraceful mindset is easier said than done. To start with: loud-mouthed girls should be remembered they owe their nice, luxurious workplaces to the men who built them, LGBTBBQ should thank their heterosexual parents and ancestors for their very lives, anti-white black activists should remember they would not even exist had their ancestors not benefited from their white colonizers healthcare technology. Feel free to expand the list. Ultimately, I think, every person who is modern or westernized enough can be outed as ungraceful for something.

2. Trust

A famous study showed that multiculturalism was closely correlated with defiance and a lack of trust in each other. Provided that we enlarge a bit our definition of multiculturalism, this absolutely makes sense. Some ethnic groups are especially prone to violence, and some “minority” groups are rewarded for freely accusing the silent majority, but the hegemony of political correctness made it a taboo. Communities have been fragmented by individualism, i.e. each person looking to take as much as she can, and by an “antiracist” white guilt that soon became an intra-white generalized suspicion of “racism.” People do not identify anymore with the larger society and often cannot even identify with a smaller community—which makes everyone else a potential enemy.

Yet, without trust, life becomes unbearable. If you can’t go to the streets without the possibility of getting mugged by, say, BLM activists, or go to a family meal without the prospect of a lukewarm struggle with aging leftist parents, or have a relationship with a girl without the possibility of her making a false rape accusation, there aren’t a lot of things you can do on the long run. Without trust in other people, you have to trust the complex of big corporations, NGO, and State institutions we call the system—and be dependent from it for things as basic as food and shelter.

Only trust in each other can make life sustainable and long-term projects workable. To re-create trust, we have to make people accountable and bound to precise rules, reward good behaviours while punishing bad ones. Actions must bear consequences. But before neomasculinity gets into power, men should strive to establish a reputation through reliability, persistence, and a strong mindset. I could wager you have been more trusting of your Facebook friends last years than of the mainstream media, the former conveying more trustworthy information than the latter.

3. Desire

Modern capitalism and progressivism always ran on desire. Want cheaper prices? More goods? Better goods? More TV channels to watch? More monies? More ego and thinking you are the hot shit? Well, just buy in X or do some work for Y, and here it is… um, nah, you just have to do some more, and some more, and some more. In the end, you forgot why exactly you are doing what you’re doing, or why you started to watch TV. But it all started with you led to perform something, no matter how surreptitiously framed as spontaneous or normal it was.

The system plays on desires in three ways. It sets things to be desired, things to be feared or never desired at all, and things to be consummated without end. Things to be desired include everything the advertisement wants you to desire, like a revolving credit, a new sofa, an SUV or whatever, as well as the next step of “progress” as it has been elaborated on the top of the pyramid.

Things to be feared are where the system wants you to be resigned and fatalistic: did you ever feel sad to see all these girls losing themselves into a sea of fat, bitching, and SJW-propaganda spouting? Too bad, that’s globalization, resistance is futile, move on! At last, things to be consummated are mainly produced to keep you busy and programmed though you are not really practising anything beyond staring at a screen.

Lately, an important shift has been happening between the first and third ways to play on desires. Decades before, the average consumer had to desire owning more junk or being part of the “progress”: the system needed him to work and monitor his peers. Today, the junk is already everywhere, PC culture is already hegemonic, and the average American worker is no longer needed. Active desire is not needed anymore.

Thus, the system has shifted into making the average Joe more passive. Instead of actually desiring more, the consumer should be content with surrogates of everything—pseudo-group identity with team sports, pseudo-sports with football and basket on TV, pseudo-sex with porn, pseudo-life with video games, pseudo-family life with animals, pseudo-expertise when the average libtard obnoxiously parrots the media on everything. This is Brzezinski’s tittytainment in a nutshell.

Even if you don’t give up on having a real life instead of a surrogate, the system will still want you to desire things only for yourself, thus retreating into individualism, instead of trying to actually weight on the world. Either you surrender to “the progress” or you try to ignore it before it comes for you. As if nothing could change.

Don’t let the elite frame the world according to its own interests. Desire self-realization and weighting on the course of the world. Of course, our female counterparts should desire being loving, caretaking, and definitely on our side.

To conclude this series

Once again, it is hard to sketch in a few words what could be done with passions or emotions. What I have mostly dwelled into is how those already in power manipulate them and what we could do as to take them back. If you find the topic worthy of interest, you can expand it in two directions: first, documenting yourself on a particular passion or emotion, and second, using some by stirring it with a certain aim in mind.

In the former case, I would recommend Neel Burton’s Heaven and Hell (quoted several times in the course of this series) as a point of departure. In the latter, being creative or simply assertive is up to you. Whether this looks more like efforts or self-persuasion or artistry does not matter much.

Here, as well as in seduction, a tight framing is key. Whatever the topic, no vocabulary and no picture are really neutral, which is a problem as our perception and thinking orientation are often conditioned by these. The mastery of emotions is reinforced—and reinforces—the mastery of representations. If this sounds far-fetched, let me provide some examples of use, examples you are absolutely free to expand as it suits you.

In the comments space, several guys here have been giving a very negative portrayal of the nice guy: he would be a fake, a “sneaky bastard,” a “jerk.” So guys who want to get laid or have their own interests, just as everyone else, are jerks? This looks like internalized feminist thinking. In my opinion, nice guys should elicit empathy, which goes through a positive portrayal emphasizing their willingness to respect the girl or how they were likely raised by an unmanly culture.

A recent ROK piece about mainstream media has shown how these are making a conscious effort to hide and de-legimitate white victimhood: they paint vividly any crime where the victim is non-white and the perpetrator is, but mention no detail or do not mention at all any crime perpetrated by non-white(s) on white(s).

The same pattern appears in the movie Elysium (2013), when the (of course) white villain mentions children she wants to protect from a mass of brown invaders, yet these children are never shown and consequently stir no empathy from the average watcher, whereas the brown-skinned are vividly depicted as humane and not responsible for their own poverty.

Analyzing these phenomena is fine, but ultimately insufficient. Creative people on our side have to provide an alternative that includes mastered emotions. Picking up girls is part of, and gives some experience in, this wider game.

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girlactionfigure · 4 years

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A farmer's daughter, she was "born in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., when Woodrow Wilson occupied the White House and rotary dial telephones were still brand-new," according to the Washington Post. Her mother was a former teacher and her father, aside from being a farmer, also worked extra jobs as a janitor. Her father, Joshua Coleman, had quit school after the sixth grade. But, "considered education of paramount importance for Katherine and her older siblings . . . Since the local schools only offered classes to African Americans through the eighth grade, he enrolled his children in a school that was 125 miles away from their home." "As an African American and a girl growing up in an era of brutal racism and sexism, [she] faced daily challenges. Still, she lived her life with her father’s words in mind: “You are no better than anyone else, and nobody else is better than you,” according to Junior Library Guild. “I don’t have a feeling of inferiority. Never had. I’m as good as anybody, but no better,” she said. "Career options for black women were limited at the time," according to the Charleston Gazette-Mail. After majoring in mathematics and French, she decided she "was going to be a math teacher, because that was it,” she said. “You could be a nurse or a teacher.” She married, left her teaching job and enrolled in a graduate math program, becoming the first African-American woman to attend graduate school at West Virginia University . When she got pregnant, however, she quit to focus on her family. In 1953, she accepted a job as a research mathematician. At a very young age, Katherine, says she counted everything. “I counted the steps. I counted the plates that I washed.” And, “I knew how many steps there were from our house to church.” In her job, she had to overcome racism and sexism, but she would eventually make a name for herself. In one of the most important projects, she would be called to verify some calculations. "Get that girl," astronaut John Glenn said. The rest is history. Katherine Johnson had arrived. Margot Lee Shetterly, author of "Hidden Figures: The Untold True Story of Four African American Women who Helped Launch Our Nation Into Space," stated, "So the astronaut who became a hero, looked to this black woman in the still-segregated South at the time as one of the key parts of making sure his mission would be a success." "For more than 30 years, [Katherine] Johnson worked as a NASA mathematician at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., where she played an unseen but pivotal role in the country’s space missions. That she was an African American woman in an almost all-male and white workforce made her career even more remarkable," according to writer Victoria St. Martin. "For many people, especially African Americans, her tale of overcoming racism and sexism is inspirational." "Her work was instrumental to some of NASA’s most important missions, including the flight of Alan Shepard, the first American in space, and the Apollo 11 and 13 missions to the moon," according to the Los Angeles Times. When Neil Armstrong took his first step on the moon in July 1969, many Americans did not know that Katherine Johnson had calculated the trajectory for the Apollo 11 flight to the Moon and was even given, along with her fellow team members, a souvenir flag that made the trip with Armstrong and his crew. She remained a "hidden figure", however, until Shetterly wrote her book, which eventually became the movie, “Hidden Figures”. Shetterly explained "the reason Johnson and her co-workers’ stories were 'hidden' was complex. Some of it was rooted in racism (the African American women were relegated to a separate office), some of it was sexism (calculations were considered “women’s work”), and some of it was simply that Johnson and her co-workers were wives and mothers as well as mathematicians." In 2015, Johnson was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Nation’s highest civilian honor - given to individuals who have made “especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.” President Obama noted, “Black women have been a part of every great movement in American history — even if they weren’t always given a voice.” Most will think of this in the context of the civil rights movement, where black women helped plan the March on Washington, but were largely absent from the program, or perhaps even in the fight for women’s rights, from suffrage to the feminist movement. Very few, however, may know the role that women, particularly women of color, have played as innovators and leaders in the domains of science and technology." "Johnson’s recognition by President Obama marks a proud moment in American history because until recently, Johnson’s critical technical contributions to the space race were largely unknown to the world. The contributions and leadership of countless scientific and technical women and people of color who have been tremendous innovators have been left out of American history books, unfortunately," according to Knatokie Ford, Senior Policy Advisor at the Obama White House Office of Science & Technology Policy. In 2016, a new building was named after Katherine Johnson at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, then renamed the Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation Facility in 2019. “I am thrilled we are honoring Katherine Johnson in this way as she is a true American icon who overcame incredible obstacles and inspired so many,” Jim Bridenstine, the administrator of NASA, said. The New York Times said that Johnson's fight for equality in the workplace increased awareness and called her a trailblazer. "Johnson was integral to developing human spaceflight in America," according to Scientific American. She was "an unstoppable force and a role model to young African-American women." Johnson, Shetterly said, “has given us a way to shine a light on a lot of women who have not been talked about. None of these women really got the recognition they deserved and .?.?. now an entire group of women are being recognized for the work that they did.” "Her father’s determined effort to send his children to school and her own resolution to pursue her dreams overcame race and gender discrimination and led to an extraordinary life of personal fulfillment and professional achievements," according to Visionary Project. Johnson, born on August 26, 1918, turned 101 last year. She published her autobiography, “Reaching for the Moon,” for young readers last year. “I want young people to feel the same way when reading my story,” she said. “I want them to see that it doesn’t matter where you came from, what you look like or what your gender is. You’re no better or worse than anyone out there and there’s nothing you can’t do as long as you put your mind to it. You can be a doctor or a lawyer or even help put a person on the moon.” Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson remembers as a young girl when she had to travel to an area known for its racism. Her mother would warn her. Not afraid, young Katherine responded back, “Well, tell them I’m coming.” After "a half-century, six manned moon landings, a best-selling book and an Oscar-nominated movie," Katherine Johnson is no longer a hidden figure. [Photo from Makers]

The Jon S. Randal Peace Page

#black history month #Katherine Johnson

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historian--in--training · 4 years

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Unsung Heroes: The Societal and Historical Suppression of Black Women Activists During the Civil Rights Movement

by Sarah Slasor

I asked my boyfriend what he knew about Rosa Parks, to which he replied, “she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white guy, right?”

While he is not wrong, his response got me thinking, why is this all he knows? Why is this all I know? Is this obliviousness a product of my own ignorance, or is something larger at play? I decided to dig deeper.

The involvement of female activists, specifically Black women, during the civil rights movement has been historically distorted and simplified. Important figures tend to be remembered for singular aspects of their extensive contributions, while male activists are promoted as representatives of the movement and, in turn, are studied in greater depth. Historical studies often mention Black women, but fail to include details about their activism or political thought.[1] Rosa Parks, who is known for her role in the Montgomery bus boycott, and Coretta Scott King, who is typically remembered as the widow of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK), have both made significant contributions to the movement that are seldom discussed. Both women are national icons, yet their lifelong efforts to achieve racial, economic and gender justice remain largely unknown.

The suppression of the voices and legacies of Black women in the civil rights movement is largely a result of the intersection of racism, sexism, and classism, as well as the nature of scholarship and the way history is digested. Women activists, having taken on the title of “invisible unsung heroes and leaders,” are often ignored by academia, as the history of the movement tends to focus on men as leaders while feminist scholarship tends to focus heavily on white women.[2] This essay will highlight the extensive accomplishments of Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King, and Ella Baker, and will then explore the factors contributing to the suppression of their legacies and how the issue can be resolved.

Portrait of Rosa Park at Mrs. Anne Braden’s home, May 31, 1960.[3]

Rosa Parks is best known for her role in the Montgomery bus boycott, in which she denied a bus driver’s orders to give up her seat for white passengers. It was not that moment that initiated her fight for justice, but instead her entire life that had been leading up to it. Parks’ passion and love of learning was instilled in her by her mother and grandfather, whose examples Parks followed in dedicating her life to racial justice.[4] Before the bus boycott, Parks was elected secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and founded the Montgomery NAACP Youth Council, where she worked with the community and encouraged voter registration.[5] Parks led training sessions on desegregation following the Brown v. Board of Education decision, advocating against racial and sexual violence both nationally and throughout Alabama.[6] Following the boycott, Parks relocated to Detroit and pushed for Black freedom, helped elect John Conyers, a Democratic Michigan Congressman, in 1964, for whom she worked until her retirement in 1988.[7] In the 1980s, she co-founded the Raymond and Rosa Parks Institute for Self-Development to bring young people into the freedom movement. Parks, often described as quiet and meek, dedicated over sixty years of protest to the fight for justice.

Coretta Scott King at the Vietnam-In-Peace Rally, Central Park, New York, April 27, 1968.[8]

Of everyone I asked, those who actually knew of Coretta Scott King knew her as the wife of MLK. As it turns out, when Coretta Scott King met MLK in the 1950s, she was the political activist and influenced his decision to become involved. Like Parks, King claimed more than 50 years of activism before her death in 2006. During her career, she was a member of both Women Strike of Peace and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom; led a campaign in support of school desegregation; met with Reagan to urge American divestment in South Africa and was later arrested during her protest at the South African Embassy in Washington; brought attention to Black poverty and the HIV-AIDS crisis; and worked to end discrimination against LGBT communities.[9]

From 1968 onward, King led the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, in which her husband’s papers were archived and educational community projects took place.[10] King spearheaded lobbying campaigns to recognize her husband’s birthday as a national holiday, and later lobbied for the passage of the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Bill that promoted full employment and fair compensation to combat rising poverty levels. In the last two decades of her activism, King served on the boards of the Black Leadership Forum, the National Black Coalition for Voter Participation, and the Black Leadership Roundtable, and was present at the signing of the Middle East Peace Accords and South Africa’s first free elections in the 1990s.[11] King was not simply the wife of MLK. Her activism was present from early stages of her life, and she used her platform to make extensive contributions to social change, the fight for freedom, and racial and economic equality. In doing so, King kept her husband’s legacy alive, and established herself as an unstoppable force in the fight for justice.

Ella Baker on September 18, 1941.[12]

Ella Baker is another name I admittedly had never heard. In the 1930s, Baker addressed the stigmas of gender, race, and poverty in her exposé, “The Black Slave Market.” In 1940, she was hired by the NAACP to organize branches throughout the South, and by 1945, Baker had helped the NAACP grow from 50,000 to over 450,000 members.[13] By 1958, she was the President of their New York branch.[14] Baker partook in leadership conferences throughout the 1940s, and in 1957, became the executive secretary of MLK’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), though she never obtained a leadership role. Baker disapproved of the SCLC’s male-dominated hierarchy, and of its centralized structure around MLK as a singular charismatic leader, as she felt that “group-centred leadership” would have been more effective than a “leader-centred group.”[15]

During the sit-in movement of the 1960s, Baker brought together student demonstrators to form the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which became known as the “shock troops” of the civil rights movement.[16] Through the SNCC, Baker created a “classroom without walls,” in which she educated young proteges and organized protests with the aims of non-violent action and voter registration.[17] Though the SNCC disbanded in 1972, its leaders continued to work toward Baker’s ideals with different organizations, and Baker joined the African liberation movement and fought for civil and human rights in her final years.[18]

Black Women: The Backbone of the Civil Rights Movement from medium.com.[19]

These women, among countless others, have incredible stories that go largely untold. The fact that these women are not the primary faces of the movement and their accomplishments go unrecognized at the surface-level of academia is the product of the three interlocking systems of oppression: racism, sexism, and classism. During the civil rights movement, societal attitudes toward Black women suppressed their voices. Today, social movement scholarship’s focus on men and elites as leaders, along with feminist scholarship’s focus on white women ignores the accomplishments of Black women in history.

Attitudes toward Black female activists, in the rare instances that they are actually studied, have been historically negative. Under the patriarchy, many looked to males for leadership, which, at the time, largely stemmed from religious traditions of having a male leader.[20] This was evident in the experience of Ella Baker, who was never given a permanent position in SCLC nor a salary comparable to any man who replaced her.[21] Many organizations, such as the Black Panther Party, maintained a male-heavy image, as their intention was to appeal to the “brothers on the block.”[22] While this attracted members, it shut out many female activists who struggled to be heard.

This male-dominated arena is perpetuated by historical scholarship, which tends to focus on formal organization and membership and ignores women’s radical protest and activism. As a result, history commemorates formal leaders and overlooks women, as leadership positions were often unattainable for women activists. Women of colour are frequently viewed as uninvolved in feminist organizations, and therefore unconcerned with women’s rights.[23] This was not the case, as pointed out by historian Gerda Lerner, who remarked that women’s liberation meant different things to different women during the mid-20th century, and emphasized that while the mainstream societal ideology of women’s primary place was in the home, Black women’s place was in the white woman’s kitchen.[24] Liberation was different for Black women than for Black men, and the repression of many women’s voices during the civil rights movement is reflected in the way scholarship digests history.

According to historian Bernice McNair Barnett, there are three major biases that influence the way that Black women’s history is construed: (1) Black women are stereotypically connected with “pathologies” within the family, such as female-headedness, illegitimacy, teen pregnancy, poverty, and welfarism; (2) there is a middle-class orientation that ignores poor and working-class women, a large percentage of whom are Black; and (3) there is an apolitical, non-leadership image of Black and poor women as political passivists as opposed to movement leaders.[25] In turn, the roles of Black women have been ignored in research of modern social movements. As such, it is generally assumed that the women involved were white, and the men were Black.[26] While the “great man” theory of leadership is often critiqued by sociologists, this perspective is perpetuated by history, as the leaders were predominantly male, and history loves leaders.

One of the foremost exceptions is Rosa Parks. Parks’ story is included with that of Malcolm X and MLK in history classes, but, in actuality, students only know of her for one event, despite the rest of her activist career being of equal importance. Along with Parks’ lifelong activism, history often fails to mention Jo Ann Gibson Robinson, Alabama State College English professor and president of the Montgomery Women’s Political Council, where Robinson had been actively planning a boycott of city buses months prior to Parks’ arrest.[27] History also ignores the hundreds of women, like Robinson, who were forced to resign from their positions at Alabama State University and other workplaces across the United States for making noise about equality.[28] Society has excluded, ignored, and oppressed Black women; and historical scholarship is no different.

The civil rights movement, though perceived to be led by men, was heavily bolstered by Black women. Though not typically recognized as leaders, Black women initiated protests, formulated strategies, and mobilized other resources necessary for collective action. Racism, sexism, and classism created an environment in which women were silenced, and, as a result, frequently go unnoticed in historical scholarship. Rosa Parks, largely known for her actions on one day in her sixty years of activism, Coretta Scott King for her marital status, Ella Baker for her association with the NAACP, and countless others are the unsung heroes of the civil rights movement. It is imperative that we recognize their accomplishments to cease history’s glorification of male leaders when Black women were integral to the success and legacy of the movement, and look past what history wants us to believe.

All sources cited in this essay are written by women.

_____

Notes

[1] Dayo F. Gore, Radicalism at the Crossroads: African American Women Activists in the Cold War, New York; London: NYU Press (2011): 161.

[2] Bernice McNair Barnett, “Invisible Southern Black Women Leaders in the Civil Rights Movement: The Triple Constraints of Gender, Race, and Class,” Gender and Society 7, no. 2 (1993): 163; Ibid, 164.

[3] Portrait of Rosa Parks at Mrs. Anne Braden’s home, May 31, 1960. Photograph. 3.5 x 5 inches. Louisville, Kentucky. Highlander Research and Education Center: Highlander Research and Education Center Records, 1917-2005.

[4] “Rosa Parks Interview, 1992 February,” Connie Martinson.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid; Christina Greene, “Women in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements,” Oxford University Press (November 2016): 3.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Coretta Scott King at the Peace-In-Vietnam Rally, Central Park, New York, April 27, 1968, photograph.

[9] “Women in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements,” 3; Vicki Crawford, “Coretta Scott King and the Struggle for Civil and Human Rights: An Enduring Legacy,” The Journal of African American History (January 1, 2007): 112.

[10] Ibid, 114.

[11] Ibid, 116.

[12] Ella Baker on Sept. 18, 1941. Photograph. Afro Newspaper/Gado/Getty Images, from Time Magazine.

[13] “Women in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements,” 5.

[14] Anne Romaine, “Anne Romaine Interviews, 1966-1967: February 1967; SCEF Office, New York; Ella Baker Interviewed by Anne Romaine,” 11.

[15] Britta Waldschmidt-Nelson, “Ella Baker: A Leader Behind the Scenes,” FOCUS: Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies (August 1993):4.

[16] “Women in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements,” 5.

[17] Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press (2003): 284; “Anne Romaine Interviews, 1966-1967: February 1967; SCEF Office, New York; Ella Baker Interviewed by Anne Romaine,” 12.

[18] “Ella Baker: A Leader Behind the Scenes,” 5.

[19] Black Women: The Backbone of the Civil Rights Movement. Photograph.

[20] “Invisible Southern Black Women Leaders in the Civil Rights Movement: The Triple Constraints of Gender, Race, and Class,” 175.

[21] Ibid, 176.

[22] “Women in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements,” 9.

[23] “Invisible Southern Black Women Leaders in the Civil Rights Movement: The Triple Constraints of Gender, Race, and Class,” 164.

[24] Ibid.

[25] Ibid.

[26] Ibid, 165.

[27] Allison Berg, “Trauma and Testimony in Black Women’s Civil Rights Memoirs: The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It, Warriors Don’t Cry, and From the Mississippi Delta,” Journal of Women’s History (2009): 89.

[28] “Invisible Southern Black Women Leaders in the Civil Rights Movement: The Triple Constraints of Gender, Race, and Class,” 174.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Baker, Ella. “Interview with Ella Baker, April 19, 1977.” Interview by Sue Thrasher. Documenting the American South, n.d. Retrieved from https://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/G-0008/G-0008.html

Black Women: The Backbone of the Civil Rights Movement. Photograph. Retrieved from https://medium.com/@nadiarising411/black-women-the-backbone-of-the-civil-rights-movement-618b9859a5c

Coretta Scott King at the Peace-In-Vietnam Rally, Central Park, New York, April 27, 1968, photograph. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2013/08/23/us/coretta-scott-king-fast-facts/index.html

Ella Baker on Sept. 18, 1941. Photograph. Afro Newspaper/Gado/Getty Images, from Time Magazine. Retrieved from https://time.com/4633460/mlk-day-ella-baker/

Parks, Rosa. “Rosa Parks Interview, 1992 February.” Interview by Connie Martinson. The Drucker Institute, February 1992. Retrieved from https://dp.la/item/81d0ae423e14a2f67d20fdb34b3b0cc3

Portrait of Rosa Parks at Mrs. Anne Braden’s home, May 31, 1960. Photograph. 3.5 x 5 inches. Louisville, Kentucky. Highlander Research and Education Center: Highlander Research and Education Center Records, 1917-2005. Retrieved from https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Image/IM52893

Romaine, Anne. “Anne Romaine Interviews, 1966-1967: February 1967; SCEF Office, New York; Ella Baker Interviewed by Anne Romaine.” Recollection Wisconsin, Wisconsin Historical Society, 1960-1968. Retrieved from https://dp.la/item/5493d0d6be916f0b12a9cc57534d3906

Waldschmidt-Nelson, Britta. “Ella Baker: A Leader Behind the Scenes.” FOCUS: Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, August 1993.

Secondary Sources

Berg, Allison. 2009. “Trauma and Testimony in Black Women’s Civil Rights Memoirs: The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It, Warriors Don’t Cry, and From the Mississippi Delta.” Journal of Women’s History21 (3): 84-107.

Crawford, Vicki. “Coretta Scott King and the Struggle for Civil and Human Rights: An Enduring Legacy.” The Journal of African American History 92, no. 1. January 1, 2007.

Gore, Dayo F. Radicalism at the Crossroads: African American Women Activists in the Cold War. New York; London: NYU Press, 2011.

Greene, Christina. “Women in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements.” Oxford University Press: Oxford Research Encyclopedia, American History, November 2016.

McNair Barnett, Bernice. “Invisible Southern Black Women Leaders in the Civil Rights Movement: The Triple Constraints of Gender, Race, and Class.” Gender and Society 7, no. 2 (1993): 162-181.

Ransby, Barbara. Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2003.

#civil rights movement #essay #rosa parks #ella baker #coretta scott king #BLM #black lives matter

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novareign · 3 years

Text

December 30, 2020 (Wednesday)

It’s been quite a year.

In America, the twenty years since 2000 have seen the end game of the Reagan Revolution, begun in 1980.

And so, 2000 came.

As Trump tried to destroy an activist government once and for all, Americans woke up to how close we have come to turning our democracy over to a small group of oligarchs.

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science-fiction-is-real · 4 years

Text

STOP TRYING TO GET ME TO VOTE FOR BIDEN.

Okay. Look. If you plan to vote for Biden, I won’t stop you. And I understand.

But I would like to make a few points as to why I personally will NOT be voting for Biden.

We do actually have other options. Biden is evil, not just “less than perfect,” but actually evil. Donald Trump is not the cause of our problems, and this becomes especially clear when you look at the behavior of past Democratic presidents and when you apply a little Marxist theory regarding the State. Also A Biden victory is in itself a form of harm, not harm reduction.

1) WE DO ACTUALLY HAVE OTHER OPTIONS BESIDES VOTING FOR BIDEN.

First of all, the fact that you can even mention 3rd and sometimes even 4th and 5th party candidates indicates that: Yes, we LITERALLY DO have other options. Are they LIKELY to win?

No. But only because people don’t vote for them. We are not trapped in a two party system, though we may be trapped psychologically. It IS actually possible to create new political parties, and for existing small parties to grow into large parties. This is a long-term goal, and probably not something that will happen by November. But the first step is to realize that the democratic party are not our friends.

Second, and most important, voting is a tiny plastic water gun in the vast nuclear arsenal we have at our disposal when it comes to political activity. Historically speaking, even the most nasty and reactionary asshole presidents suddenly start acting REAAAAAL progressive when they are faced with mass populist movements causing civil unrest. This also applies to senators, congresspersons, and members of the court. Remember Richard Nixon passing landmark Women’s Rights legislation? In fact, the level of political activity of the masses is 8 millions times more important than who is in the Whitehouse.

Where we should really be focusing our efforts is in organizing and movement building. Protest. Go on strike. Propagandize. Obstruct. Disrupt. And most importantly:

JOIN AN ORG! Join an org. Join an org. Join an ORG! Join labor unions. Join political parties. Join non-profits. Becoming a dues-paying member of a Socialist organization is worth a thousand votes. You will meet experienced comrades who know the ins and outs of political activism, who will show you the ropes, and will put you to work doing something productive.

Join the Democratic Socialists of America. Join the Industrial Workers of the World. I’m a member of a political party called the Socialist Alternative.

2) BIDEN ISN’T “LESS THAN PERFECT.” HE IS A MUSTACHE TWIRLING SUPERVILLAIN.

Biden is not a Liberal. He’s a center-right conservative. He embraces Neoliberal policies that leave working class people to die in poverty and debt. He has made no serious attempts to cater toward Bernie’s base. He is unspeakably Racist, and actually wrote the bill that created Mass Incarceration as we currently know it.

As part of the Obama Administration he was complicit in all of Obama’s abominable atrocities. From the drone strike program which killed countless civilians, to the escalation of a draconian surveillance state, to the mass deportation of 3 million immigrants. Obama created the structures that Trump is currently using to terrorize immigrants, minorities, and protestors. And he created them for the very purpose Trump is using them for. Biden was there every step along the way. Biden has espoused violent rhetoric about doing violence against protesters, arresting people with certain political beliefs, and condoning police brutality.

Biden is better MAAAAYYBE better only on 2 issues. Abortion rights and LBGT rights. And while those issues are important. I highly doubt he will make any progress on those issues.

Biden has said over and over again that he would pander to the republicans and compromise with them every chance he gets. He certainly has stated callous disregard for the lives of working class people. And we can only assume that he will betray women’s rights and LBGT rights the moment he finds it politically convenient.

And don’t give me crap about RBG. Biden will not replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg with another liberal. He will replace her with a centrist, or do what Obama did and let the Republicans pick the replacement for him. And also the supreme court is a tyrannical, undemocratic institution anyway and should probably just be abolished full-stop.

Joe Biden’s rhetoric isn’t even less fascistic than Trump's either. He says his racist, sexist, anti-working-class sentiment out loud.

And with his billionaire and corporate backers, he certainly can’t be trusted to act on climate change.

He will not respond positively to the pandemic either. He has expressed out loud no plan of how HE would handle the pandemic, and if his democratic colleagues in congress give us a clue… well, the Dems have been incredibly stingy with their money, refusing funds for relief for the working class. They have not put up a serious fight for any measures to actually stop the Virus’s spread.

If he’s the “Lesser of Two Evils.” He is just evil.

3) IT DOESN’T ACTUALLY MATTER WHO THE PRESIDENT IS.

Trump is not actually the cause of our problems. He isn’t. Donald Trump is a fat asshole with a desk job. Donald Trump did not invent racism. He did not invent sexism or xenophobia or hatred against the LBGT+ community. If Donald Trump died tomorrow, the forces of reaction would carry on their merry way. Donald Trump is in office because he is willing to carry out policies that are favorable to the ruling class. And the moment he stopped doing that, he would be quickly disposed of, either by impeachment or by a military coup.

And in fact, the violence we are seeing from the Trump administration comes from the way the government itself is constructed. Not from some diseased ideology unique to the American Right Wing.

So let’s think about this a little more carefully. Why do we have a government in the first place? You know, a government, the “state,” the law itself? It’s not to negotiate peace between different conflicting segments of society, because they are obviously very bad at that. It’s not to ensure the public good and protect the rights of the citizens. Because the government doesn’t really do that either.

And this isn’t just a problem when Republicans are in power. See my previous examples of Obama’s unspeakable atrocities.

The reason we have a government is to enforce and maintain class based society. The State is nothing more than Armed bodies of men who exist for the purpose of allowing one class to suppress another class. The government’s job is to suppress uprisings, control the working class, assume risk on behalf of the capitalist class, and to fight wars on behalf of the capitalist class. That’s why the Feds are kidnapping protestors. That’s why immigrants are being put in cages. That’s why the police harass and intimidate Black people. To maintain and enforce the power structure.

All of these bad things happened when Obama was president. And All of these bad things will continue to happen if Biden is elected. This violence we’re seeing isn’t the result of Trump. You can’t even call this violence Fascism, because this is NORMAL. Fascism is a specific political phenomena that occurs under very specific circumstances . This violence is literally just the government doing its job. It’s worse now because the economy is going through a rough patch, which isn’t the government’s fault, it’s just because Capitalism is unstable.

The Right and Left Parties represent different segments of the ruling class, and the election process is about the ruling class negotiating differences among itself. The democratic party does not represent the interest of regular people like You and me, and you DO NOT OWE THEM YOUR VOTE.

2) VOTING FOR BIDEN ISN’T HARM REDUCTION. IT IS ITSELF A HARM.

A Biden Victory could have several negative consequences.

The democratic party will continue its decades-long drift toward the right. The democratic leadership will see once and for all that they can get away with running any evil sleazy candidate they want who will serve the interest of their corporate benefactors, and that the public will remain loyal as long as they coat their sleeziness with “Woke” rhetoric. If the Democrats learn that you will vote for them no matter what they do, then your vote loses all of its power.

It could trigger violent backlash from Trump’s far-right base.

It gives legitimacy to an ultimately UNdemocratic system which is breaking at the seams.

It could pacify a lot of the militant, but less educated segments of the working class who have swallowed the rhetoric that Biden is their ally. They will disperse from the streets, meanwhile Biden is free to continue the violent, racist, war-hawkish, neoliberal agenda that Trump, Obama, and Bush did before him.

CONCLUSION

Joe Biden is not our friend. The Democratic Party are not our friends. Trump is awful, and he sucks. If we DON’T vote for Biden, Trump may very well win the Presidential Race. But considering that Biden himself is very evil, and that Trump is not the true cause of the violence and hatred we see coming from our government, the stakes in this race are a lot lower than you have been led to believe.

A protest vote could send a strong message to the Ruling Class that we are not satisfied with racist, violent, neoliberal leadership, and that we want real change.

Also, we actually are NOT stuck in a two party system. There is a growing movement within the United States to create and grow a worker’s party that represents truly progressive ideas, one where regular people hold party leadership directly accountable, and the party is forced to serve our interests instead of those of the ruling class. The first step in building such a party is to let the Democrats go, and stop placing our hopes in people who do not care about us.

But the most important thing to remember:

The ballot box is not the end-all and be-all of political activity. The ruling class has created this little ceremony of “voting,” inviting us working class folks to come and play their little game of “pick the dictator,” and giving us the illusion that this makes a real difference. But we have no way of holding politicians in office accountable when they break their campaign promises, and we are only allowed to vote for options the ruling class allows us to see on the ballots.

We DO have power to change the system, but we have to do it outside the ruling-class’s terms. We have to be organized and active and militant enough that the ruling class believes we pose an actual threat to their authority.

We have to do the type of things we currently see American’s doing in the streets right now. Causing a major disruption, threatening the capitalists’ profits, and threatening the politicians’ sense of authority and control.

But we have to remain organized and militant even after the current wave of protests dies down. And we do that by building left wing institutional power -- by JOINING ORGS.

JOIN A GOD DAMN ORG YOU COWARDS.

#Joe Biden #Democrats #republicans #donald trump #2020 election #politics #U.S. politics #american politics #socialism

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