#social justice just becomes the avenue for you to try and make others feel as shitty as you do | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lancerfay · 1 year

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A meditation on my experience with people who curate their online experience to “not have abusers and bad people” in it.

There's a tendency in online circles to demand total purity as a good person who's never done wrong (which to be clear is basically determined by your spawn point in life), and to be ever vigilant in the fight against abuse to a degree that it itself becomes a narratively ironic avenue for abusive behavior. Excommunicating someone from every social connection they have because they behaved poorly, branding every fight in a relationship to have an Abuser and a Victim with never having room for people to be mutually at fault, and labeling a person with everything you would apply to their worst friend, as if association, known or not, is the same as approval and support. This is not talking about harms such as if their friend is a proud nazi or if someone physically assaulted someone else in a relationship. Those are common sense to remove someone from your spaces for doing, super cut and dry.

As someone who for a time in my life lived like this, to be always on the lookout for and always pushing against anything that wasn't approved as Good Person Behavior, I needlessly ruined many, many friendships. I hurt people I loved and cared about because they wouldn't be perfect examples of a person made up to be modeled after. I harassed them about it, never let them have a single normal moment around me without me trying to evangelize to them about how they were basically evil people because they were friends with a person who was manipulative previously. In fact I had become a horrible person to be around because all this lifestyle did was make me bitter and hateful and immensely paranoid in the name of “curating my life to be Safe/The Best:tm:”. All that happened was I drove people away, I became paranoid and frankly unstable in how I acted about this cause, and eventually, whether because of that or something else, my fellow crusaders for being the most good and social-justice-aware person turned on me, and I had been violently removed in the exact same way we had done to others before.

I was left now with bridges I torched in the name of demanding only the best, and no one around me who cared. I realized only then that it was a mindset akin to purity culture, no different from an evangelical christian, simply with a progressive paint. To bludgeon others into fitting a mold we deemed acceptable and to feel superior when they understandably left because of it. I eventually in that loneliness mended one of those bridges, I hope to mend them all, but it's not my choice beyond trying, and with how I did behave, I do in fact deserve the bed I made in front of them. Thankfully, the first was more generous and understanding of how people change than I ever gave him credit for when I was advocating clear against him over gross exaggerations of the harm I had convinced others of and been convinced he was doing.

This is rambling, I've rewritten this several times to try and cut it down. The short version is, I learned in one of the hardest ways why to forgive people. What I found was people practicing violence that demanded an out-group, people that felt power in harming others but exercised this in the guise of social justice. Very very few people on this planet are beyond redemption, even the people that brought me down the path and eventually used it to crush me would be welcomed with a second chance by me without hesitation. The more that we label as beyond getting better, the more needless and cruel suffering we introduce to the world as a result. It's not making the world a better place to never give someone a chance to change, it's being hateful. Every one of the people that taught me this way of living, and eventually ostracized me through it, was themselves at fault for just as much as all humans are. Our ideal good person was impossible, unattainable, and all were eventually on the chopping block except those from the innermost circle. The only difference between me, our targets, and them is they wore the proverbial boot to stamp on others’ faces.

It was a lifestyle of hate disguised as cultivating care, and was masking toxicity at every turn. I hope they eventually get to learn the lesson they taught me in a much less damaging way, because I have become a much better person to both myself and others in the time since then. I still have people I find irredeemable, but that experience allowed me to learn why the bar for that must remain very hard to reach. Finally I hope that one day I can apologize to everyone I’ve hurt, and that if not mending the bridge, they can at least feel seen.

#internet socialization #self reflection #curious if anyone involved in my life's story will see this #this could have just stayed in my journal but I have the ego of a fiction author so Here You Go Internet

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unohanadaydreams · 3 years

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How would the captains react to catching their partner cheating on them? I’m feeling angst tonight

Finally some good fucking food. Angst; it’s what’s for dinner and I’m chowing down with you, anon.

Features: angst. Some violence and torture with Gin and Mayuri.

How The Original Captains React To Being Cheated On:

Genryusai Yamamoto:

There’s little to no reaction. You wouldn’t be the first and won’t be the last to use him for status or money or petty bragging rights. Just another day.

Quietly, behind closed doors, he does mourn. Not for the loss of you, but for the prospect of starting again. He caresses the pretty things he’s bought you, each touch a vote for or against bothering.

If you come to him, apologetic and willing to repent, he’ll look past the transgression. Less work for him to undertake, in the end, and the power of demanding this is that in the name of forgiveness suits him.

Shunsui Kyoraku:

He can’t help but laugh. All those years chasing girls and washing his hands of the consequences come to catch him now that he’s standing still with just one hand holding his.

Business goes on as usual, but he’s sloppier around the edges—spilling sake on paper work, falling asleep against Jushiro’s grave, and forsaking the frequent partying he’s known for in lieu of furiously scribbling down the perfect love story he didn’t get.

Honestly, he’s willing to forgive if it wasn’t done out of love for the other person and there’s a willingness to work on the relationship. Shunsui has played the unfaithful lover more times than he can remember; being black out drunk more often than sober will do that to you.

Soi Fon:

She can’t speak and doesn’t bother. Throat closed with anger, she lets her body tell you where your relationship lies—thrown off the bed and kicked outside.

There’s nothing but hatred for you and humiliation for herself. Not just personally, but professionally; a leader of the 2nd division being caught unawares is irony at the cost of her reputation.

People are always leaving her behind once she trusts them. After weeks, she’ll ask you why. Because that’s always the question burning in her chest. Why can’t she be a person someone stays for.

Gin Ichimaru:

Cute, how you think you can shuffle off and away from him after getting caught. He doesn’t flinch, talking with conversational tones. Hey, sweetie, who’s your little friend? Aww, they don’t talk or some thin’?

There’s two options; submit to grueling public humiliation or die. Gin loves to have fun, after all. And, isn’t it fun having to watch the person you cheated with get toyed with like a mouse under kitty claws? Aren’t you having fun kissing the corpse? Wasn’t your silly mistake worth it?

Gin has never forgiven, forgotten, or turned down an opportunity to make someone who cares about him regret feeling so. Your life is hell and the jailor can’t decide whether to keep your head under boiling water or kill you. Fun!

Retsu Unohana:

The impulse to leave as the only one alive is temptation incarnate. She is firm, restrained, and digs into her cheeks until her teeth pop through.

She keeps waiting to calm, for the situation to become objective instead of the turmoil in her gut. Retsu is especially brusque with everyone while working, making every stitch job a painful one. Why is there always something. Why can’t all the change finally stick; why is she still glad to feel the pain so she can inflict it back?

The betrayal was the end and there’s years of coping methods that keep you from spilling your guts on a sword, but it feels like a very near thing to her. Professionally, she’s less kind, and your next set of wounds healed by the 4th get infected. Poor thing.

Sosuke Aizen:

As far as you know, he’s stricken with heartbreak and disappointment. His voice is a touch too loud when telling you off—others hear. And disapprove greatly. He asks any bystanders for their discretion towards his privacy, adding a tear or two for effect.

Your relationship being over matters little; dime a dozen are the people who’ll fall over themselves to be his. The audacity of treating him, your better, with such unfairness? Affects him like an itch under skin.

Of course, he forgives you. He makes a show of it and the number of people out for your unhappiness grows. How could you cheat on such a gracious, loving man? You are punished with little action from himself, the many shinigami who view him with starry-eyes doing their work without needing explicit instruction.

Byakuya Kuchiki:

There’s little to say or do outside of making it clear he wants you gone in a permanent way. Reaction is the thief of dignity, so he saves any emotion for when he’s alone.

Self flagellation is his favorite dessert and he is convinced the bitter taste reflects his character somehow. In a way, it speaks to his lack of care and dignity as a clan leader; what fully aware man could let this happen?

For you, there aren’t any chances let alone forgiveness. You’ve stung his pride in multiple ways and only social norms keep you from dying in a duel over it. But as a shinigami—as a captain—he has avenues to vent his vindication until he feels the crime has been payed for. Too bad for you that pride is worth it’s weight in gold for a Kuchiki.

Sajin Komamura:

He runs away from the situation as soon as possible. Of course you cheated on him; how foolish to think anyone would not. At least he knows now and can get back to his normal.

Being alone isn’t all bad. There’s more time for his pets, his company, and his training. Comforting, familiar, he can pretend this is how it always was. Just him, alone.

His lack of self-esteem outweighs his want for justice. It was unfair to subject anyone to…himself, anyway. He can’t blame you for wanting someone untouched by the curse of the beast.

Kaname Tosen:

There’s more anger than even you expect. Injustice in anything, especially something so personal, enrages him. But he has the self control and sense to only send you packing.

Still, it’s all he can think about. Better to be consumed by this than the glacial pace his better world is taking. You’re one of the people holding that goal back, he’s sure. He insists on a talk that’s really just a long, painful lecture.

People like you, who disregard what’s right, don’t deserve forgiveness and the upset within him darkens. Maybe there is a way you can make things right. They’re so close to perfecting the Arrancar and he’d like to see how you’ve contributed once his eyes open, finally able to see.

Toshiro Hitsugaya:

There aren’t any dramatics or punishments or even words to give you other than ‘goodbye’. He sees the break and he cuts it cleanly. There’s no need for anything else.

Largely he copes by doing what he always does—working, training, meditating. There are a few sips of alcohol and punches to his pillow, but you’re no longer someone he cares about. The ice has holed over the spot you took just fine.

You don’t exist to him anymore. If you try to apologize, his eyes will pass over you and he’ll remind you once before ignoring you again: He’s a captain and he’s closed the conversation and now he’s getting back to work. Goodbye.

Kenpachi Zaraki:

So you’re fucking somebody. Is that a big deal or something? Should he be hurt? Because all he can muster is annoyance.

And then he thinks about it. He lets it sink in that somebody was touching you while you’re his. Kenpachi understands the want to play, but isn’t love when someone is the best in your heart and only them? Like, strength but more fucking confusing.

He’s still undecided if there’s anything to forgive. He tells you to give it another go with him in the mix and likes the feeling better than walking in uninvited. So maybe it was just play…and maybe he’s more rough with you two than intended. But he leaves more content than he came, so he figures everything’s fine. He can always kill somebody later, once he’s figured it out for good.

Mayuri Kurotsuchi:

You’re knocked unconscious and so is the person you were in bed with. That’s the last you see of them or the world beyond one lab room.

Congratulations, you are now confined to a pill that is swallowed by gigai after gigai designed in your likeness. Isn’t he generous, letting you take part in his research still? Don’t you feel honored to still feel any part of his touch as he takes you apart somehow more painfully than the time before?

Because it is just research. He didn’t care about you enough to still feel enraged about it. This is purely out of principle, a logical response to your base actions. Don’t worry, it’s just forever.

Jushiro Ukitake:

The discovery is emotional and he struggles keep his dignity, especially when a coughing fit starts soon after. He can’t even tell you off without sickness leaking into the moment.

The spiral begins. You’re awful one moment and justified the next. He’s the victim, then the one who should’ve known. There was no good reason and then he coughs again and there’s one.

He could forgive you if you’re genuine and forthright with a reason that isn’t the weight which holds him under blankets or pushes blood past his lips. As long as the illness isn’t what poisoned the relationship, he could forgive you.

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mfkinanaa · 3 years

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SUN IN GEMINI.

Gemini: Mutable Air

Ruler: Mercury

Keywords: Communication, Interaction, Exchange

Functional Expression: Lighthearted, cheerful, intelligent, adept, versatile, responsive, dexterity, sociable, engaged.

Dysfunctional Expression: Superficial, silly, gossip, unfocussed, nervous, unemotional, cold, erratic.

Communication is Key.

When the Sun is found in Gemini, the focus is on the exchange of information. The world of ideas – the intellect and mind – is Gemini’s natural domain.

Geminis are often motivated by a healthy curiosity, and consequent need to communicate. For these reasons, this sign is often characterized by highly sociable and interactive individuals.

This is a sign of adaptability, flexibility, and change. That may vary from changing associates, to changing outfits and changing their minds. At its core, the freedom to be flexible is an essential part of the Gemini journey. Those with the Sun in Gemini can easily switch between their thinking or feeling modes. They react immediately to any stimulation within their environment, swapping opinions and points of focus, depending on prevailing circumstances.

As mentioned, the principle of communication is prominent here. The Gemini individual can seem like a veritable social butterfly, moving from one topic or group of people to the next with ease. Geminis bring something to share with one group, at the same time as leaving a piece of information behind in their wake. They will move about, taking something else from one “experience-set” and sharing it with the next.

Accordingly, Geminis are often noted for a high degree of sociability, and those born with the Sun in Gemini can be quite refined, charming or gracious, knowing exactly how to quip and sparkle at just the right time to keep others entertained.

In many ways, they need the flexibility, freedom and choice to be constantly circulating or moving about. Versatility and adaptability is the key note of this sign, and Gemini is often happiest when able to jump from one situation to the next.

The Need for Variety.

Gemini is the sign of the Twins, and this is an important feature of the Gemini temperament.

The Twins embody the principle of duality, and so those born to this sign can be constantly aware of opposing points of view, divergent opinions, and the various options in any situation. They can shift or change as the moment does, depending on their mood.

The need for options is paramount, and even if the Gemini individual has no real intent on taking a certain path, they need to feel they could do should the opportunity arise.

Rather than choosing one career, one option, or even one partner, Gemini may feel more comfortable seeing themselves in a constant state of flux. Knowing that change is inevitable, Gemini will be more able to focus on current circumstances and relationships in their lives if they feel that there is room for other opportunities.

With the potential for surprise around every corner, they can then happily adjust to what is in front of them now. Trying to limit Gemini to a set number of outcomes can be problematic. This may be a source of nervous tension without knowing why.

Gemini is a sign which is highly prone to episodes of anxiety based on too much or not enough mental stimulation. At their best, Geminis stay balanced through experiencing a steady stream of stimuli without taking on too much.

Those with the Sun in Gemini like to have options, and need to feel the freedom to be able to choose. This then leads to the tendency to create numerous options for themselves, which can mean becoming scattered. Too many choices can lead to overwhelm, and sometimes they will find that less equals more.

This propensity to change their mind, or hold apparently contrasting opinions has lead Gemini to earning a reputation for being two-faced, unreliable or fickle. Whilst all of that may possible, it is often untrue, and does not do justice to the true motivation of this sign.

Geminis prefer to keep their options open, which can mean allowing for a multitude of possibilities to exist within any given circumstance.

Logic and Intellect.

As an intellectual and rational sign, Gemini is on the one hand likely to be concerned with analysis, figures and facts. Life is often approached from a detached and ‘reasonable’ point-of-view. They obtain a ‘fact’ then circulate it.

This concern for facts and figures can manifest at its simplest level through becoming a source of gossip. At a more refined level, it can operate through gathering of facts, data and information to be used for complex analysis further down the track.

Sun in Gemini can be the position of the researcher, writer or accountant – someone who gathers information for the benefit of all concerned. Commerce and trade also fall under the influence of this sign, and individuals who work with figures, finance and exchange may have strong Geminian influences in their chart.

Usually quick-minded, those born under this sign have a natural aptitude for keeping abreast of changing conditions, and can making lightning fast decisions based on logic and intuition when they are free of any emotional involvement or potential limitation.

Gemini has a natural wit and love of gathering facts that makes all forms of communication an easy avenue for self-expression. With a strong fascination for anything bright, shiny and new Gemini can find great delight in the latest gadget, headline or turn of phrase.

Many writers, promoters, marketers and agents are born under this sign, preferring to work in environments where the capacity to adapt and keep abreast of constant change are assets to be used on a daily basis.

Irrationally Rational.

On the other hand, Gemini can also be prone to episodes of irrationality with changeable moods that serve as counterbalance to such levels of analytical thinking.

As much as this is a sociable sign, the need to reflect and go within is also highly pronounced. There will be times when the social drawbridge must be closed in order to process complex states of mind. Reason can quickly follow eccentricity in the sign of The Twins.

Those with the Sun in Gemini individual are continually moving between rational and irrational reactions within their own psyche, internally exploring the myriad of possibilities across a spectrum of potential responses. Having analyzed all possible outcomes and responses from within, Gemini can then return to the bright and bubbly social mode of being that is their natural birthright.

With the accent on all things intellectual, the emotional side of life is often less pronounced. Gemini’s prefer to keep things light and bright and breezy, so avoiding the complexity and weight of deep, emotional scenes.

Unless other Watery influences appear in the birth chart, there may be a tendency to avoid commitments and obligations of an emotional nature, preferring to explore the options available ‘out there’ rather than get caught up in the web of someone else’s emotional ties.

Gemini can be strangely uncomfortable with emotional concerns, and will seek to find ways to analyse what in essence needs to be felt. This can lead to conflict within the self, as well as in relationships, if the tendency to detach is not recognized and actively worked upon.

Recognizing the value of feeling is an important component of effective communication.

On another level, this is also the sign of the flirt. Gemini may prefer the fun of endless possibilities and the excitement of “the chase” over the routine of traditional partnership roles. Consequently, sometimes the need for freedom and variety can undermine that ability to make commitments and create lasting structures.

Sun in Gemini: Your Solar Journey.

Born with The Sun in Gemini you are here to ask questions and find out. This is the sign most concerned with the exchange of information and ideas, and you may find your life experiences seem to work out so that you have the freedom and opportunity to do just that. The ability to communicate comes from the capacity to see every side of a situation. In time, your versatility and willingness to learn helps you become a valuable friend, source of fun and well-informed ally. Your challenge is to explore the realm of possibilities, whilst recognizing the support that structure brings. Then you can communicate all that you know with depth as well as conviction.

#astroworld #astrology #astrotips #aries sign #taurus #gemini #cancer sign #leo #virgo zodiac #libra #scorpio #sagittarius #capricorn #aquarius #pisces

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brightlotusmoon · 4 years

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"It is a truism that there are people, particularly on social media, with whom one simply cannot reason. Hell, some of them aren’t even actual people, but rather bots whose very existence makes every other interaction suspect. And so we could certainly take worse counsel than to avoid wasting our precious little energies on those who make it clear that they do not share our core values, particularly online, and particularly when the values in question are equality, inclusion, respect, and the most basic, fundamental rights of every human being on the planet.

But I worry. I worry that our wholly understandable refusal to engage with one another will ensure that the bifurcation of us as a people, both as a purposeful political strategy by those in power domestically and as a means for external forces to "sow societal chaos and discord*” becomes permanent. And I worry about what it will do to our ability to evolve, both as individuals and as a society.

I look back on my life and I remember a lot of moments that I’d prefer to forget, and that I hesitate to share. I remember when I was fresh out of college and just starting out in business and one of the senior-most guys on my desk, a man I admired greatly, would make fun of the support staff by saying, “We hire the handicapped; they’re fun to watch.” I remember that I laughed. Not because I thought that I had to to keep my job, not because I felt pressured to do so, but because I thought it was funny.

I remember when the girls were tiny and we bought Katie a doll house, and it came with a family of dolls. I remember that I hadn’t noticed that I’d bought the one with the Black family until I’d brought it home and decided it was a happy mistake. But I also remember that when a guest saw it one day, they laughed and said, “Oh, look, the house came with help,” I chuckled, rolled my eyes, and carried on.

I remember when I screwed something up and thought it was funny to mockingly say, “I”m special. I ride the little bus and wear hockey equipment every day.”

I remember raising inordinate amounts of money, making speeches, pleading for pity, all in the name of finding a “cure” for autism, with no idea that the vast majority of the people for whom I was supposedly fighting desperately needed help and support, but had no desire to fundamentally change who they were.

That was ME. The me that you know, the one who fights like hell for equality and dignity and respect, started out as a person who mocked disability and allowed racial jokes to stand unchallenged in her own home. Who effectively silenced her daughter’s autistic peers. And who desperately needed interaction with people who were light years ahead of me to get me to where I am now. And it scares me, on so many levels, to think of how different my behavior might be had I not had those interactions.

Now I want to be as clear as humanly possible that I don’t mean to imply that we owe our time and energy to anyone, particularly those who deny others’ lived experience or excuse brutality or withhold justice or actively fight against equality. And I want to be even clearer that it is absolutely, positively not the job of the oppressed and marginalized to educate their oppressors and marginalizers. A thousand times no, no, and, just for good measure, hell no. No one is entitled to your labor.

But I do want to take a pause to consider what happens when the vast majority of us, particularly those of us with relative privilege who claim to be allies in the fight, simply stop talking to anyone who isn’t already standing shoulder to shoulder with us. What happens to the folks who might just have taken up the mantle of advocacy had they been exposed to a wider variety of people and perspectives? What happens to the ones who are never challenged to examine their own role in perpetuating the systems that keep us separated in the first place? My behavior changed because I had the opportunity to interact with people outside of the bubble in which casual bigotry and degradation and punching down for a laugh were perfectly acceptable. But what if I hadn’t?

Years ago, I became facebook friends with a particularly radical disabled activist who had taken me to task here on diary a number of times. At the time, a close friend asked what the hell I was thinking bringing them into my inner circle. They said something I’ll never forget: “Aren’t you going to be, like, so uncomfortable knowing that they’re seeing all your personal posts? You’re going to have to watch *everything* you say from now on.”

It wasn’t until I’d heard the thought that had been rattling around in my own head out loud that I’d realized just how important it was to be made uncomfortable. How vital it was to be "aware of everything I was saying.” How desperately so many of us needed - and still need - to widen our circles to let in precisely those about whose lives and opinions and reactions we should deeply care.

We can’t take up every fight, particularly not on social media. But I do hope that at least in our brick and mortar lives, we will keep finding avenues to connect, to talk, to learn, and to grow. Because the absence of connection has proven to be fertile ground for nothing but fear, hate, and further division — and we’ve had enough of those to last a lifetime.

* Full quote: "One of the ICA’s most important conclusions was that Russia’s aggressive interference efforts should be considered ‘the new normal.’ That warning has been borne out, as Russia and its imitators increasingly use information warfare to sow societal chaos and discord.” - Republican Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, Chairman, Senate Intelligence Committee"

And now, me:

FYI, one of my mentors is the activist mentioned, Radical Neurodivergent K, who coined the term neurodivergence many years ago, who will indeed take you to task regardless of what your brain is. And it's only been since 2013 that I discovered I was autistic, but in that time I have experienced and listened to so many ways of thinking, I've put them all in a crucible, and I keep trying to explain that just because you know a thing it doesn't mean you have all the knowledge. You always have more to learn. Information changes, expands, updates, increases. It's really easy to be a hypocrite. You need to keep listening to yourself, and you can't just burst in to gatekeep no matter how you feel.

A good example might be: an "Aspie Supremacist" insisting I or other autistic fans can't make an autistic headcanon about a fictional character who displays autistic traits because, according to that gatekeeper, the character doesn't have all the "right" traits, meaning their own traits, because they still retain their Aspergers diagnosis. By itself this is deep internalized ableism, and now it's with the added insult of an outdated diagnosis connected to a eugenics program that makes me extremely uncomfortable. Because Aspergers Syndrome is autism full stop, and functioning labels don't work and are arbitrary. Nobody needs to be that haughty or condescending to another neurotribe member, especially when it comes to expressing very personalized imaginings. That's kind of what Headcanons are about.

Anyway.

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namelessblacksheep · 5 years

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WHY WE NEED A REVOLUTION

Growing up I recall a soft drink advert where they used to make the claim ‘the revolution will not be televised’. Given all the crap we see on TV these days I kind of hope that it is.

Don’t get me wrong, a revolution does not have to be a long series of riots or violence. It could be something completely different, but something that leads to a shift. Who knows maybe something akin to a revolution is actually taking place.

The reason I feel we need something akin to a revolution is that bubbling away under the surface of life is deep unhappiness. In the past decade or two so many things have been surfaced that have shocked us.

Across the globe, politics has quite frankly gone bat shit crazy. Unrest and discomfort in daily life are becoming the norm.

We had a global financial crisis that didn’t correct any of the wrongs that underpinned it.

On a weekly basis, we are learning that the people we celebrate and reward so highly, flout their positions and commit heinous harms. Justice is never likely to be served.

Huge corporations and powerful individuals continue to increase the divide between the haves and have nots.

It’s as if all of the rich and powerful have totally forgotten the concept of ‘with great power comes responsibility’. Failure is richly rewarded for some, irrespective of the cost it brings.

The masses though are placated with toys and avenues to keep them from rising up. I have never witnessed such a monumentally awesome age of great television. Fuck the real world problems out there, I’ve got several hundred hours of Netflix marathons to get through.

Then you feel a bit guilty that you are failing in your civic duty, so you decide to send an ironic GIF to Donald Trump – you know doing your bit.

You could cancel your Amazon Prime account and vote with your feet, but then you’d have to wait a few days for your deliveries.

You’d use a search engine to find a different provider, but you like Google. Google knows you so well that when you start typing shit it predicts what you want and you don’t need to hit another key.

It doesn’t scare you at all, not even the fact that you clearly have an Asian babes obsession or some of the suggestions are a bit worrying.

Sure, someone else could get right on that issue. Politicians for instance. They should be sorting this shit out, except they are far too busy trying to pretend to rule the world and avoid answering difficult questions.

Be honest. We are quite simply fucked right now. A revolution might be exactly what we need.

You may be in need of a little more convincing. You know as you are sat there skipping words and sentences for a quick fix that tells you whether this is worth your time or not.

5 minutes of your time, taking you from your busy life. The one where you're a battery plugged into a system that is fucking you every day. At least it all fits conveniently into your phone, I guess.

So, here it goes.

People have become weak

Everybody seems to be offended, like, all of the time. You can’t say shit anymore without someone either correcting you or reminding you of the new rules of engagement that nobody agreed to.

If you are one of these people, don’t be offended when I say that you are total Thundercunt. Seriously, I mean that from the bottom of my heart.

If you came here hoping to find something to annoy you, then you aren’t paying attention. Unplug your earphones and look at the world around you. It’s fucked. You could focus your efforts on doing something productive even if that’s being a better person, or a little less sensitive.

There’s plenty to be pissed about. People don’t want to focus on the big stuff that matters. They’d rather freak the fuck out about inconsequential nonsense that bruises their fragile egos.

We need a revolution so that we can all ‘man the fuck up’ (sorry feminazis) and start fixing shit like we’re Bob the Builder (or Betty if it makes you feel better).

We need to change the news narrative. Anyone else bored to tears with the daily Brexit coverage? Seriously, this storyline is more drawn out than the whole Ross and Rachael will-they-won’t-they saga.

For all the super-intelligent University educated geniuses that just graduated and have no fucking idea who Ross or Rachael are, go check out a TV show called ‘Friends’. It’s probably on the History channel these days anyway.

Brexit is like an un-flushable turd. A repetitive narrative that papers and broadcasters trot out every day. Seriously, this shite is more convoluted and contrived than the X Factor. It’s the epitome of the lowest form of entertainment and we need to change the record.

Whether you are for a Sunnyside-up Brexit or a Brexit with a side of Unicorn steak, I couldn’t give a damn. A revolution might at the very least give us all something new to get excited about and something we could all rally behind.

We need unity not division

Issues like politics, sport, and even mild banter have become so immersed in the underlying anger we're silently drowning in that no one seems able to have fun anymore.

I cannot remember a time when so many comedians couldn’t make a decent joke about the moronic state of the world and instead make sniping remarks to canned laughter.

Every decent sporting event seems to get overrun with people’s inability to enjoy the spectacle for what it is. Social media and chat forums are littered with petulant hatred and jingoistic tribal bullshit. The Brexit ‘have your say’ plays out like an anthem of bitterness with new vitriolic names invented every day.

We are descending into a bunch of spoiled children who express their pent up feelings through sending passive aggressive memes, angry hashtags and all manner of confusing emojis to make some innocuous point.

We are slowly becoming a mathematician with a broken calculator to solve all our problems. It can’t always be about division (see what I did there).

This diversity bullshit just isn’t working, let’s try something new like a bit of unity. You know: adding shit up to something bigger. I’m fairly sure Einstein would approve, and he was a smart guy.

Some folks need something better to do

If you spend most of your life sitting on your butt. You have all your stuff delivered to your door and your thoughts delivered to your phone or through your TV or laptop – you need a revolution.

We can call it a hobby or a social bonding activity. It’ll be a bit weird because all your new ‘friends’ might not look exactly like you, but you might learn a thing or two about the real world you live in.

Echo chambers are nice and safe because everyone in them thinks the same stuff. However, the real world is full of people ready to blow your mind in more than 140 characters or a 5-minute blog post. It could be exciting.

If you need convincing, watch the Matrix. Neo was simply sad old Thomas Anderson miserable as fuck, then he met Morpheus and learned to fly and loads of other cool shit.

If you already know what you think and it makes you comfortable to surround yourself with other people just like you, perhaps you should just join a cult and be done with it.

The system is broken

Seriously, guys, we have seriously screwed the pooch with the world at the moment.

The system’s broken and we are all just standing around waiting for inevitability to prevail.

The Avengers won't be coming to save us. Anyone who saw last year’s movie knows they are a bit down on their luck at the moment.

Thanos’ minions seem to be running the world and we all need to step up and become superheroes in our own right.

If you want to whip out the Lycra or Spandex – go for it. But do something, even if it’s just being better or not throwing hate out to the world because someone is different from you.

I don’t care if the revolution happens or even if it is streamed on Netflix or some other site. Change needs to happen and often that is as simple as everyone trying to be less of a douchebag than they might have normally been.

The only thing I can offer as a ‘reward’ or promise is that we might actually get some decent music back on the scene.

Revolutions tend to come out best in song. There has been no truly great era of music for decades now, and if ever there was a more compelling reason for a revolution this would be it.

Music is the anthem of the soul. It’s time for it to wake up and belt out something beautiful.

#writing #humour #revolution #quick #change

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crewhonk · 6 years

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Why Wonder Woman is Bomb as Fuck

heres that final feminism essay i wrote for my political science class in case any of you wanted to read it! Citations and shit are under the read more cut!

Before Wonder Woman was released in 2017, there was never a solid superhero movie for girls and women to watch and further find representation in— the hyper-sexualized ‘Catwoman’ movie released in 2004 caters mostly only to the male gaze; Halle Berry is dressed in leather straps for most of the movie, and forced to fight in a way that almost resembles pole dancing. Wonder Woman (2017) changed the game— it was about a strong woman of colour who was raised in a proud society of body-positive women, and leaves the safe confines of her home to do what she believes is right. While Wonder Woman is a god with supernatural abilities, the female viewers find themselves not needing to sacrifice their femininity to relate to male characters. There are huge surface elements to what kind of feminism the movie portrays, and there are huge underlying and background elements that really drive the idea home of what it means to be a woman. Wonder Woman is the feminism we need because Diana Prince (Wonder Woman’s alias) is a model feminist in this new form of feminism, the raw element of feminism that is incorporated into the very fabric of production, and the director herself making waves and blazing trails in Hollywood today, smashing any ceiling that had been previously constructed.

Diana Prince, an amazon the Themyscira and God Killer opens the film as a child, running through her paradise island to watch the over Amazon women train and spar together. Diana grew up around strong and intelligent women, and as a viewer myself, there was a sense of pride that this island now existed. The body positive representation from strong women who supported each other was something that made many female viewers (including me) tear up at the screen, and this feeling up representation on all levels carries throughout the movie. Now, this essay is not a movie review, but there are elements of the movie which need to be discussed to truly explain how much this movie has done and will do for modern day feminist movements. Diana Prince, upon hearing that Earth is in turmoil turns away from everything she has ever known to fight for those who don’t have the ability to fight for themselves. The bravery and faith she has. in herself is something that became and continues to become an element which most women try to adopt throughout their lives— whether it is in a job interview, or standing up for what they believe in in front of hundreds of thousands of people the faith in self that is taught is fundamental to furthering the movement. Her partner, Steve Trevor (played by Chris Pine) continues to try to subdue her from taking any action; whether it is active in a parliament meeting or action in furthering the front line of the war. In all cases, she chooses to ignore the demands of man— both refusing to submit to him to become a tool to the success of his own mission and refusing to conform to what it means to be a modern woman in 1918. “Wonder Woman truly acts like his equal, refusing to be less than she is just because he asks her to” (Miki Beach). She also continues to push boundaries by refusing traditional clothing in the fitting sequences at the beginning of the movie. This is a huge demonstration of subversion feminism (Zoe Williams)— she destroys the social constraints of the patriarchal society she lives within by choosing a disguise that is traditionally masculine in form— a suit jacket, long skirt and black journalism hat. However, when it comes to fighting she stays faithful to the culture she comes from and takes off her cloak and disguise to reveal her Amazonian garb. She takes “No Man’s Land” almost effortlessly (she is a god, anyway) and her strength and raw fighting style is choreographed, not for the infamous Male Gaze, but for realism and is orchestrated to give her a huge emotional fighting style— almost rejecting feminine fighting styles in media by flipping tanks, and screaming and crushing buildings under her raw strength. While she does show an impressive amount skin it is never deemed sexual or appealing, as she is too busy fighting and proving herself every second of this movie.

A huge part of Wonder Woman’s character is her empathy for humans— she puts herself in danger for the greater good, and she offers her life for the people she loves: she leaves Themyscira to protect her people, she takes “No Man’s Land” so save the people living in the seized town on the German side, and she offers to do what she needs to do to save Steve’s life— “whatever it is I can do it” (Wonder Woman, 2017). Her struggles with sticking to her morals and what it means to be good makes her an inherently flawed character and brings her down from a Goddess level to a level which hits home for many watching— not just cis women. Within this portrayal of her character, it allows women to not have to sacrifice a part of their identity to relate to a man, because it finally gives women a strong and inexplicably human form of representation in the form of Diana Prince. The reformation of feminism this movie demands is not that of any main stream of feminism we have today— it is not liberal feminism in the sense that a woman’s success is defined by mens success; Diana makes her own form of success and truly raises the bar of what success should be. It is not Marxist feminism in which inequality is rooted in the home; Diana is raised in an equal society where every woman is responsible for the same duties, and nobody is exempt from specific roles. Neither is it Radical feminism— there is the acknowledgment of physical inequality within the movie and within the production, but it is not a main part of what it means to be a Woman. Wonder Woman redefines what feminism is meant to be in the sense that the movement should be based on beliefs that movements should be created on what is right rather than what people ‘deserve’.

The main form feminism takes in the movie “Wonder Woman” and its production is mostly liberal. The male representation within character Steve Trevor and in producer Charles Roven and screenwriter Allan Heinberg. Having men within productions of female based media is not an issue— there needs to be an element of masculinity for the exposure that men can bring to such a production. However, the director, Patty Jenkins, who is a female in the highest position in production is genuinely groundbreaking and doesn’t define her own triumph by mens standards. She fights for the central concern of feminism— the political, and economic opportunities and recognition women deserve in comparison to men, but not limiting that recognition if it goes beyond that of any man. The higher level of women in the production of the 2017 movie is the new movement of feminism, and with social movements like #MeToo and #TimesUp women are finding more and more platforms to speak up and fight for that representation without the threat of sexualization and without having to constantly justify their positions in industries. Radical feminism has its place in the new movement as well. For example, in “Wonder Woman”, she has a confidence in her body and rejects conformity to conservative social structure— she refuses to be sexualized, and uses her body for heroism and strength. As she was raised in an all woman society, there was no sexualization of the body for a Male Gaze, and saying while men are essential for reproduction, they are unneeded in the name of pleasure (Wonder Woman). She was taught from the day Zeus gave her life that her body was simply a means for delivering justice to those who created injustice when others couldn’t do the same.

When Patty Jenkins, was announced to begin direction of “Wonder Woman” (2017) on April 15th, 2015 she immediately began blazing trails very few women have before her. She opened up avenues for others in higher film making positions. Sure, despite her huge success in acquiring the role, “only 7% of the top 250 movies were female directed” (Luscombe).

She brought to the table the idea that that specific statistics and standards need not continue to frame the industry any longer. Jenkins was unbending in her original contract regulations, as she fought for the proper wage she believed she deserved— the equal to a mans. She provided an ultimatum for Warner Brothers; either give her the same wage they would give to a male peer, or find another director. Jenkins fought hard for what she knew she deserved and it paid off, as she was rewarded with not only a $7-$9 million dollar contract, but her final product garnered over $100 million domestically and $800 million world wide in the opening weekend (Luscombe). This opening weekend was the highest profit for a female director in history, and the success opened many new doors for other aspiring female directors. Her own success in her career was a part of another history-breaking moment; her direction, along with Greta Gerwig (“Lady Bird”) and Dee Rees (“Mudbound”) were the first time that this high volume of women would have a chance to win an Oscar for their work (Sehtoohdeh). Jenkins and her female peers opened doors for those who needed help opening them, and changed the course of media history.

Jenkins’ timing was almost picturesque in her development of Wonder Woman. The iconic superhero movie was produced and released in a time of intense political climate— the candidate nobody wanted to see win the American election won by Electoral College vote. The production and release also preceded the social movements #TimesUp, and #MeToo that rocked Hollywood and exposed many men in power as sexual offenders. In these times, Wonder Woman rapidly became what it meant to be Woman— being Women meant that there was a certain strength in kindness, and empathy, and there was a strength in bravely standing up for what you believed was right. Woman around the world looked at this movie and saw a piece of work both relevant to the times but simultaneously timeless. The raging success of Wonder Woman brought a new level to feminism and the fight for equality and representation in media— because it was something that worked based on the widespread cultural belief that women were just as capable of their own success because “It’s not about ‘deserve’. It’s about what you believe” (Wonder Woman, 2017).

Works Cited

“Wonder Woman”. Directed by Patty Jenkins. Performances by Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Robin Wright, Danny Huston, David Thewlis, Connie Nielsen, and Elena Anaya. 2017.

Beach, Miki. “Why Wonder Woman is Exactly the Role Model Women and Girls Need”. Burlington VT Moms Blog. 27 June, 2017. https://burlingtonvt.citymomsblog.com/2017/06/27/wonder-woman-role-model/. Accessed 25 March, 2018.

Williams, Zoe. “Why Wonder Woman is a Masterpiece of Subversive Feminism”. The Guardian. 5 June, 2017. https://theguardian.com. Accessed 25 March, 2017.

Luscombe, Belinda. ‘’Short List: No. 7 Person of the Year Patty Jenkins”. Time Magazine. 4 December, 2017. http://time.com/time-person-of-the-year-2017-patty-jenkins-runner-up/. Accessed 24 March, 2018.

Setoohdeh, Ramin. “‘Wonder Woman’ Director Patty Jenkins on Equal Pay, Hollywood Sexism and James Cameron’s Nasty Words”. Variety Magazine. 10 October, 2017. http://variety.com/2017/film/features/patty-jenkins-wonder-woman-hollywood-sexism-equal-pay-james-cameron-1202583237/. Accessed 21 March, 2017.

#wonder woman #feminism

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openamenta · 6 years

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After Voa, Researchers Grapple With the Scientific Implications of a Tragedy

Want to make a social scientist uncomfortable? Corner them at a cocktail party and ask them “what’s an experiment that you’d desperately love the results to, but that is unethical to run?”

They’ll make a face at you. They might edge uneasily off along the wall. They might have a drink, or three, leaving it ambiguous whether they heard you. But usually they’ll eventually answer.

Almost all of the information we have about some of the most important questions of our world - how brains route around brain damage, how much harm is done to children conceived in dangerously quick succession, at what age the brain loses the plasticity for natural language development, how periods of acute stress affect us much later - are unanswerable with the research methods which have become the gold standard in this notoriously tricky field of study. Researchers instead use observational studies, finding cases where these disasters occur by accident and determining what insights can be gleaned from them.

And the appalling tragedy that overtook our world a year ago is brimming with such insights.

“I think that people find the idea - distasteful,” says Thal Tifalap, an economist at Afela University in Iltan. He does not look like the kind of person to involve himself with anything distasteful; his hair is cropped shoulder-length and he wears a fitted suit, and his office is full of glassware and pictures of the glass artist, who is six and his only child.

“Something like this occurs, and it’s horrible, and when it’s over people want it to be over, they don’t want to feel like zoo animals, they don’t want to answer questions about how often they ate polluted food, they wonder what we’re doing with the information - it’s something that has to be done with tremendous sensitivity, and I think historically some researchers have failed at that. It’s a challenge, you know, as a researcher you have to not let your biases seep into your questions but as a person you want to feel like you’re being engaged with as a fellow person, not as a curious artifact of data.”

So, Tifalap tells me, he’s really there to learn about the elasticity of demand for food - what do people do when food prices skyrocket? But these aren’t easy questions to answer, for his subjects, or are they questions about which one can be abstractly curious.

“People have asked me ‘did I suffer brain damage?’” says Khafa Tunimi, a medical researcher who has been involved in collecting data on the Voan crisis. “And all I can say is - I don’t know. That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

[the article continues in this vein for seven thousand words]

“The field of theology isn’t one which, historically, has had the opportunity for large-scale data collection,” says Nertel Istalni, a theologian with a background in fluid mechanics, sculpture, and research into 3D rendering (she can afford to dabble these days; her son is is Makel Alasi). “And we’ve had a tremendous wealth of discussion without it, almost all of which has held up marvelously now that there’s data to confirm it. What the information has mostly done for the field is opened up new avenues of investigation. The most obvious one is the dissipation of pollution by natural processes - people want to know how long until they’ll absolutely, definitely be clean.”

And that’s a hard question to answer. “Theologians answered the most important question of our field seventy years ago,” says Nertel (you pronounce it Neiwtel), “which was, is there a procedure we all agree definitely makes you clean after any kind of contact with a pollutant. On everything else, there are several schools of thought.”

Hers is the reassuring one - “I think it follows straightforwardly from some historical and well-agreed-upon conclusions about abdominal wounds and from equally-agreed-upon conclusions about decay that the process of cell creation creates clean cells, no matter what their immediate environment, and that the amino acids which make up cells are inherently clean individually.”

And that means that everyone who ate polluted food is okay by now? “Three seasons,” she says, “and they’re definitely fine - under this interpretation of the underlying principles. I did some modeling with medical researchers to determine that there was no way pollutants could remain longer than that, and we expect it to be less than three seasons but can be confident of three.”

When I meet some other theologians, though, I get precisely the dissent that I was warned about. “That is a way of thinking about it, sure,” says Mehitsa Sefin. “It’s gathered a lot of traction, because people like being able to watch a model and assure themselves that they’re clean. I just don’t think a new theory can be sufficiently credible, even if no one has a disagreement now. You have to give it time, let people poke holes and notice unexpected implications, before you can come to a verdict.”

Nertel laughs when I relay this to her. “I agree,” she says. “I agree. You’ve got to test it, you've got to challenge it, but at the same time - we make do with the best justice system we have in the absence of an optimal one, we don’t let all the criminals go free because we aren’t sure we’ve nailed it down. I think we ought to tell people what our current best model is, and let them run the simulation and see the effects given a few different assumptions. If the consensus changes what we tell people will also change. But we shouldn’t be silent because of uncertainty, not on something they so badly want to know.”

That instinct is also what drives prenatal development research Fote Kas. Fourteen and partial to brightly colored sundresses, she meets me for dinner at a rooftop cafe on the bay. Neither of us can afford it, but she knows the owner. “In principle, in vitro pollution exposure could be catastrophic,” she tells me. “I went into this research prepared to realize that these children might be - I’ve been told not to say this in a quotable way, you know -”

I have a try at reassuring her. “I’m not a journalist. I’m a think piece writer. I’m not in the business of pulling quotes out of context. I put them in context, if anything.” We’re having shrimp, cucumber soup, and a light white wine.

It’s not quite persuasive. She chatters about sample sizes for a while, instead. I get the powerful impression of someone who believes that the world narrowly averted a catastrophe and doesn’t quite want the world to catch on to how narrowly. But eventually she meanders back to the topic. “You have to brace yourself for anything, as a scientist. We’re loyal to the truth. And some models of how pollution might work could have implied that the body, if exposed to pollution sufficiently early in development, was not able to overcome it through natural processes, and we were terrified that we might find some people suffering not just the effects of brief pollution exposure but also the effects of much more extended exposure. But as far as we can tell, in vitro pollution exposure doesn’t affect you measurably. That, of course, points towards some conclusions about how pollution propagates - but I’ll leave that to the theologians. Personally - well, personally I ran the data and broke down crying. We can get through it - we can get through anything - if the kids are all right.”

“And they are?” I ask. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure. - I’m not sure they’ve suffered no impairments. I’m sure they’re clean.”

“It hadn’t even occurred to me to worry about that.”

“And a good thing,” she said. “Some things scientists need to worry about and journalists had best not consider at all. The topic is not suited to sensationalism.”

“Neither are our readers,” I promise earnestly, and win enough trust that she spends the rest of dinner talking me through her data while the sun sets over the bay.

[article continues in this vein for 7000 more words]

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ladystylestores · 4 years

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George Floyd: Thousands protest against racism in Washington DC

Media playback is unsupported on your device

Media caption“Fifty plus years later we’re still dealing with the same thing”

Tens of thousands are marching against racism and police brutality in Washington DC, as protests sparked by George Floyd’s death enter a 12th day.

Crowds gathered near the Capitol, the Lincoln Memorial and Lafayette Park, where security forces blocked any approach to the nearby White House.

Meanwhile, people paid their respects to Mr Floyd in North Carolina, where he was born, before a memorial service.

Large anti-racism rallies also took place in a number of other countries.

In the UK, Parliament Square in central London was filled with people supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, despite calls by the government to avoid mass gatherings for fear of spreading the coronavirus.

In Australia, there were major protests in the cities of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane that focused on the treatment of indigenous Australians.

Mr Floyd, an unarmed black man, died in police custody in Minneapolis on 25 May. Video footage showed a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, kneeling on Mr Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes while he is pinned to the floor.

Mr Chauvin has been dismissed and charged with murder. Three other officers who were on the scene have also been sacked and charged with aiding and abetting.

What is happening in Washington DC?

Tens of thousands of protesters, many of them carrying placards saying “Black Lives Matter”, gathered peacefully outside Lafayette Park, near the White House, at the newly renamed Black Lives Matter Plaza.

Mayor Muriel Bowser welcomed people, saying the crowds in the capital had sent a message to President Donald Trump. On Monday, federal law enforcement officers fired tear gas to clear a protest in the area ahead of a visit to a church by the president.

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption An area near the White House has been renamed Black Lives Matter Plaza

“If he can take over Washington DC, he can come for any state, and none of us will be safe,” she said. “So today, we pushed the army away from our city.”

Ms Bowser has requested the withdrawal of all federal law enforcement officers and National Guard troops from the city, saying their presence is “unnecessary”.

“Our soldiers should not be treated that way, they should not be asked to move on American citizens. Today, we say ‘no’; in November, we say ‘next’.”

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Demonstrators in Washington DC said they would not stop pushing for change

A 35-year-protester, Eric Wood, told the BBC: “I’m here because I really couldn’t afford not to be here. Racism has long been a part of the US.”

Crystal Ballinger, 46, said she felt hopeful about the movement this time. “I feel something different about this protest… I’m hopeful that the message of solidarity and equality is getting out.”

‘We’re just getting started’

By Helier Cheung, BBC News, Washington

The crowd was diverse – with people of different ethnicities, and families with children – and there was an upbeat, if determined, mood. Music was being played and food, water and hand sanitiser handed out, as protesters chant “George Floyd”, “Breonna Taylor”, and “No justice, no peace”.

Image caption Sarina and Grace Lecroy were among the crowd at Lafayette Park, near the White House

The protest’s movements appeared quite spontaneous – at one point, demonstrators did an impromptu march through the streets, walking down Pennsylvania Avenue before looping back towards the White House. At another point, the entire street of demonstrators dropped on one knee at the same time, in a mark of solidarity.

Sisters Sarina Lecroy, 20, and Grace Lecroy, 16, said they were protesting for the first time, and that they believed the extent of the public outrage and the nationwide nature of these protests could lead to police reforms.

“We’re just getting started this time, but it [the movement] does feel much more collective than in the past,” said Sarina.

Many placards also reflected the growing debate about how white people should help the cause. One placard held by a demonstrator read: “I may never understand, but I will stand with you.”

More on George Floyd’s death

What’s happening elsewhere in the US?

Hundreds of people paid their respects to Mr Floyd in Raeford, North Carolina, laying flowers at a public viewing of his body in a church near where he was born.

A private memorial service was then held for members of his family. Governor Roy Cooper ordered that flags be flown at half-mast from sunrise to sunset on Saturday in Mr Floyd’s honour.

Image copyright EPA

Image caption In North Carolina, George Floyd’s family held a public viewing and a memorial service

In the city of Buffalo, New York, two police officers were charged with second-degree assault after they were filmed shoving a 75-year-old protester, who remains in hospital in a serious but stable condition. The officers pleaded not guilty and were released without bail.

On Friday, the Minneapolis City Council and the Minnesota Department of Human Rights agreed to ban police neck restraints and chokeholds.

Seattle’s mayor banned the use by police of CS gas against protesters, and a federal judge in Denver ordered police to stop the use of tear gas, plastic bullets and other non-lethal force.

Meanwhile, the National Football League reversed its policy on protests against racial injustice by players during the national anthem.

What do protesters want?

An end to police brutality is undoubtedly at the forefront of protests nationwide.

But it is not the only concern. Repeated incidents of police brutality may have become the flashpoint, but issues with law enforcement are emblematic of the wider problem of systemic racism and inequality.

Media playback is unsupported on your device

Media captionWatch: ‘I remember George Floyd as me’

On social media and on the streets, those in support of the movement have called on elected officials to address these longstanding inequalities, from law enforcement to mass incarceration to healthcare.

Black Americans are jailed at five times the rate of white Americans and sentenced for drug offences six times more, often despite equal rates of drug use, according to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Black mothers die in childbirth at over twice the rate of white mothers, according to national health data. Decades of government-sanctioned segregation have also seen inequalities across school systems, housing and other public resources.

Media playback is unsupported on your device

Media captionThe US’s history of racial inequality has paved the way for modern day police brutality

A 2019 Pew Research Center study found more than eight-in-10 black adults say the legacy of slavery still affects black Americans’ position today. Half say it is unlikely America will ever see true racial equality.

As demonstrator Kyla Berges told BBC Minute: “The system has failed me for 300 plus years, so what do I have to do to make it change?”

US protests timeline

25 May 2020

Image caption Tributes to George Floyd at a makeshift memorial Image copyright by Getty Images

George Floyd dies after being arrested by police outside a shop in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Footage shows a white officer, Derek Chauvin, kneeling on Mr Floyd’s neck for several minutes while he is pinned to the floor. Mr Floyd is heard repeatedly saying “I can’t breathe”. He is pronounced dead later in hospital.

26 May

Image caption Demonstrators in Minneapolis Image copyright by AFP

Four officers involved in the arrest of George Floyd are fired. Protests begin as the video of the arrest is shared widely on social media. Hundreds of demonstrators take to the streets of Minneapolis and vandalise police cars and the police station with graffiti.

27 May

Image caption Protesters lie on the streets in Portland, Oregon Image copyright by Reuters

Protests spread to other cities including Memphis and Los Angeles. In some places, like Portland, Oregon, protesters lie in the road, chanting “I can’t breathe”. Demonstrators again gather around the police station in Minneapolis where the officers involved in George Floyd’s arrest were based and set fire to it. The building is evacuated and police retreat.

28 May

Image caption President Trump tweets about the unrest Image copyright by Reuters

President Trump blames the violence on a lack of leadership in Minneapolis and threatens to send in the National Guard in a tweet. He follows it up in a second tweet with a warning “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”. The second tweet is hidden by Twitter for “glorifying violence”.

29 May

Image caption Members of a CNN crew are arrested at a protest Image copyright by Reuters

A CNN reporter, Omar Jimenez, is arrested while covering the Minneapolis protest. Mr Jimenez was reporting live when police officers handcuffed him. A few minutes later several of his colleagues are also arrested. They are all later released once they are confirmed to be members of the media.

Derek Chauvin charged with murder

Image caption Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin after being charged over the death of George Floyd Image copyright by Getty Images

Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, 44, is charged with murder and manslaughter. The charges carry a combined maximum 35-year sentence.

31 May

Image caption Demonstrators set fire to rubbish in New York Image copyright by Reuters

Violence spreads across the US on the sixth night of protests. A total of at least five people are reported killed in protests from Indianapolis to Chicago. More than 75 cities have seen protests. At least 4,400 people have been arrested. Curfews are imposed across the US to try to stem the unrest.

1 June

Image caption Trump posing with a Bible outside a boarded-up church Image copyright by EPA

President Trump threatens to send in the military to quell growing civil unrest. He says if cities and states fail to control the protests and “defend their residents” he will deploy the army and “quickly solve the problem for them”. Mr Trump poses in front of a damaged church shortly after police used tear gas to disperse peaceful protesters nearby.

2 June

Image caption George Floyd’s family joined protesters in Houston Image copyright by Getty

Tens of thousands of protesters again take to the streets. One of the biggest protests is in George Floyd’s hometown of Houston, Texas. Many defy curfews in several cities, but the demonstrations are largely peaceful.

4 June

Image caption Mourners gather to remember George Floyd Image copyright by Getty

A memorial service for George Floyd is held in Minneapolis. Those gathered in tribute stand in silence for eight minutes, 46 seconds, the amount of time Mr Floyd is alleged to have been on the ground under arrest. Hundreds attended the service, which heard a eulogy from civil rights activist Rev Al Sharpton.

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alynonymousstuff · 4 years

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Ties: Tied to Untied

“The Great Unfriending Experiment”, a Reflection

• Sejeong (real life-close friend), Dayeon and Somi (not-so-close friends)

Christelle Agustin (BA COMM II) COM 120

Before a hundred points can draw a line, I admit, this is cliché in content. But I’ve heard this repeatedly from a lot of people and I have also dropped the same face of the dice identical to theirs; you can have more parallel and contradicting engagements with people you’ve known for a long time considering the framework given by time as a large avenue to craft structural experiences together. It’s like rubbing to each other’s surface and a productive friction dares to exist, and this scenario can ideally happen in social media podiums.

To be honest, I spent one and a half hour contemplating on my Facebook account, just constantly reviewing my friend list. At first, it was an easy round for me to identify those people who are close to me, but I had a rough dimension where I have to actually eliminate and trim down people in order to come up with the final participants of this experiment, thus, I also consider those people who are always reacting on my posts and those who I frequently talk to in messenger in a daily basis because they are the ones who would likely check my profile from time to time since it seems like we have this active conversation and maintaining connection policy in this particular medium even though we don’t disclose things to each other that much.

At the same time, I particularly chose the seven people because I don’t personally know them, we have zero or few mutual friends which led to my understanding that we really don’t have personal ties or even connections, their information shows they live in places I’m totally unfamiliar with, they share posts that are disgusting and not beneficial at all, the identity displayed in their accounts are affirmatively not their authentic self-presentation and others are old and inactive accounts I do not interact with.

I started unfriending at 8:00 PM and I ended at 8:25 PM. The whole duration of that made me imagine about the possible reactions simply because I am personally acquainted with their usual responses. For Sejeong as my real-life close friend, I was laughing inside my head knowing the fact that she’s a person of bluntness shaded with silly feedbacks, even her sudden outburst sometimes becomes comedic in kind. Meanwhile, Dayeon, who is one of my not-so-close friends and was my classmate in high school and now residing in California, I initially thought that she might be offended and her who can be easily annoyed is a plus. In contrast, I felt no worries to Somi because one of her characteristics that I appreciate the most is her being light and understanding.

The least person I expected to approach me after unfriending is Dayeon. But, surprisingly, she ranked first in messaging me with the content “Takte ka in-unfriend nak gayam oh! Main-inbox zone nak lang ngarud kanayon kenkan tapos nakarkaro pay toy in-unfriend nak ah.” At that juncture I felt a sign of success in a bit because I finally got a response after two days, so to go on, I asked her how did she discover it. Then she started telling me that she usually encounters news articles in her timeline because of my shared posts and in two days she noticed that I no longer appear whenever she scrolls in Facebook. She had this assumption that I just went inactive although I am always online but she still decided to check my profile and learned about it. After that, she sent me a friend request.

On the other hand, Somi and another friend unintentionally bumped into each other in the oval and we ended up walking to CHS to roam around the university. We’ve realized that it’s been a while since we last hangout together so we took a lot of pictures while walking. I was so tempted to tell her if she have seen my latest posts, to test if she already noticed that I unfriended her, but I refused to speak about it because it’s an experiment. At 7:00 PM that night, Somi popped up in chat, she informed me that she can’t tag me in her messenger story and went to check my profile to check if I deactivated my Facebook account. According to her, she got surprised but not shocked when she discovered that we are no longer friends. I did not respond to her immediately, I waited for more chats from her, fortunately, I received a message saying “Pero feel ko may purpose ka or experiment na naman ‘to noh? Di ka naman ganon ka-shallow kung trip mo lang hahahahaha”.

Lastly, Sejeong, who is a real-life close friend failed to notice it in six days. So, this Friday morning, I told her to kindly check my featured photos to see if they are still the same. She searched for my account and told me she got a technical error because there appeared “This Page isn’t Available Right Now”. Few minutes later she sent me a screenshot of my profile with the “add friend” button visually present in the screen. Being funny as always, she jokingly said, “Happy Halloween! Naar-arya’n sa pati FB tan ta di met agfriend’n lola.”

Whenever I make decisions or even selecting between options exclusively served for me, a part of the process is that I always try to figure out or visualize the probable outcomes of the things I weigh together in my hand. In relation to this, in choosing between two friends to unfriend, I choose who I think can provide me more essential or substantive responses despite being in its natural set-up. Moreover, I also take in consideration those who I am more comfortable with, where I can push myself to my greater limits when it comes to communicating.

These friends, I feel so lucky for they gave justice to my existence in their social media accounts as a friend because they noticed about the so-called disturbance of unfriending although it really took them for days.

A string can be tied again together but they will not be strong as the way they were connected before the incident of cutting. So, if there is a person I would never unfriend, it would be my mom. In a week, I spend five days in Batac, and only one and a half day at home, which means my mom and I dominantly talk virtually rather than in person. We always give update to each other, more on chats than texts because we are active when it comes to exchanging photos. According to Em Griffin’s Eight Edition of A First Look at Communication Theory, Joseph Walther’s Social Information Processing Theory indicates that Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) users can adapt online medium and use it effectively for close relationships. This applies to us, especially on the part of the theory suggesting that these people have the same warmth online and on face-to-face communication. I can never unfriend my mom, because it could be a sign of disrespect which may led to her disappointment and that’s the least thing I’d want to happen.

Yes, social networking sites can also be a real world.

While I was on the process of this experiment, I came to recognize the possibility that who I am offline massively affected my actions online. My personal preferences in real life influenced the decisions I’ve done in unfriending – I chose to eradicate those who I think do not have significant roles in my Facebook activities. Moreover, I can perceive my online behavior as the duplication or reflection of my offline behavior; I cut unhealthy and unnecessary ties. I’m an active multi-network user, on this context, I also saw the element of bonding social capital adapted from Williams (2006) that origins to Putman (2000), wherein, I was able to assemble the assurance that those people I chose not to unfriend are those who I could turn to in time of need and any other matters, more likely because we have built a certain degree of intimacy or closeness in our relationship. In the three behaviors of social capital, I only had a manifestation of maintaining relationship and information seeking in this experiment, completely disregarded the act of initiating.

Overall, this activity made me realize that the social networking sites I’m utilizing should be like an arena; open to some but not for everyone. There are seats inside it, and I think I should only allow those who have tickets to enter. Tickets, on this sense for me, are those who are deserving for strong ties, who can highly contribute on my social capital and those who delivers positivity and encouragement that can also enhance my offline behaviors. Because what I’ve learned the most is that, who I am offline and online are both interrelated to each other; and there should be careful parallelism, frequent contradictions are not always healthy.

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sableaire · 7 years

Note

Why do people complain about a white Light but not a black L? Seriously, they could have been both asian or white or black and the Netflix show would still fucking suck. Are even Death Note fans complaining about the fact that Light is now "a white kid" because tumblr logic. People give too much credit to live action adaptations these days.

Sorry for taking so long to get to this, Anon - had a busy Friday, aha.

I think ultimately the backlash against Light is that he’s, well… the face of the show. He’s the one we see in the trailer, and he’s the one we immediately see and go “Well, that doesn’t look right.” And seeing as a lot of people are already talking about this from a sociopolitical representation-in-media point of view, let me explain things from a storytelling point of view under the cut:

For me, the reason that a white Light isn’t working for me is because Light’s character at its core is so fundamentally Japanese. The idea of a ‘model student’ is so different between Japan and America, and Light Turner doesn’t fit the role Light Yagami is supposed to fill, in my head.

Further, the entire nature of Light Yagami’s motivation and drive depends upon the structure of the Japanese legal system, and how his ‘ascension to godhood’ should be interpreted changes if it’s shifted to America. His character was designed in and for a Japanese setting, so when it seems like Netflix just took “Light Yagami” as he is and threw him into an American setting with nothing but a name change to bolster it, it grates on me as a storyteller. To adapt a foreign work, you need to understand what environment the author was reflecting on when writing the work, and then you need to adapt it from that fundamental concept upwards, or the story will only ever pale in comparison to the original.

The reason The Handmaiden works so well as an adaptation of The Fingersmith is because it rewrote the setting, the characters, and the concepts from the ground up. If they just plopped the The Fingersmith into Korea, I don’t think I could have tolerated that.

Also, personal preference, but seeing Light out of uniform is really bothering me. Is Light Turner going to be in an academy or prep school or something, because if not, I take issue with that too. Speaking of which, the director of this live-action said that there’s going to be a ton of swearing and nudity?? Because let me tell you, Light Yagami prided himself on being Japan’s best and brightest, a true model student, so I really don’t know where they plan on slipping that in for Light Turner.

I recognize that in this review I am kind of torn between “they should have stuck closer to the original” and “they should have reinvented the original” but that’s basically the problem - Netflix doesn’t seem to have made the choice either. They wanted to be similar enough to use the name and just different enough to Americanize it a little. Like that, it’ll end up satisfying no one.

Anyway, L’s character, on the other hand, has not been featured as prominently in images or trailers. Heck, I didn’t know L was going to be black until I received this ask, but it doesn’t bother me, personally, as much because L’s character does not depend upon the Japanese culture or justice system. L’s character is a foil and antagonist to Light, and his motivations are pretty universal in it just being that he’s a world-renowned detective with one heck of a case, and he’s going to solve it. His character can exist in any form because, at heart, his character is a shared concept/drive between America and Japan.

Light’s entire sense of justice is the driving narrative of the plot, and that sense of justice is born out of Japan being a) a small nation with a number of densely populated cities, b) a highly collectivist society, and c) having an entirely different legal system and culture compared to the United States.

a) America is huge? I’m not quite sure how well Light Turner’s going to work as Kira because he won’t be able to strike fear into an entire nation. If he’s operating on one state in the east coast, to start out with, California isn’t going to be trembling in fear. Frankly, I don’t have a lot of faith that Netflix put thought into the adaptation in this regard, and if they did, I wish they released a little more information acknowledging that element of adaptation.

b) Japanese culture, similarly to Korean culture, has a lot of unspoken social rules, and the feeling of society as a whole differs greatly from the United States, which is a country built upon the idea that you’re “free to be who you want to be” and upholds the individual. The idea of Kira, and Light Yagami’s power-trip, take on a different role in a setting like Japan, not to mention how Light’s proclamation that he intends to become ‘God’ almost depends on the Japanese setting.

Consider this: God in America is typically the Christian God. When Light Turner proclaims that he intends to become ‘God’, he is saying this after being brought up in a highly Christian environment. He is saying this after attending a school system in which he pledges allegiance every day going “One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all,” and that colors the god-complex in a completely different way. The sheer egoism of a teenager ‘becoming God’ in a Christian-dominated society that proclaims the omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence of God since childhood is enough for me to lose interest in the character.

Light Yagami’s concept of godhood is, on the other hand, born from an environment dominated by Shintoism and Buddhism. I haven’t read or watched Death Note in years, mind you, so I can’t remember if Light seems to be Christian or not, but even if he is, that would make him a minority in Japan. Barely 2% of Japan’s population is Christian, and even with all the Roman-Christian symbolism in the manga, I can’t be sure without further research that it was all intentional, seeing as Neon Genesis Evangelion made use of Christian symbolism because they thought it looked cool.

In the end, the character of Light Yagami is constructed and placed in a culture where ‘godhood’ is equated with ‘divinity’ found in nature, and the ‘purity’ of the natural order of things (edit: the inherent purity of natural things; I realized belatedly that my initial wording could be read several different ways). Even if the character itself is based upon Christianity and Christian concepts, how the Japanese readership would have accepted this character and the in-story Japanese society would have accepted Kira differs greatly from it would in an American context. It makes me wonder if, in the original manga, there was a sense that Light Yagami was trying to become ‘the natural order of things’ by becoming ‘god’.

IfI have to wonder, did Netflix realize this? Is this a purposeful change in nuance? Because there is a way to do this right, and if they did it right it could be amazing! But I know that at heart, this is likely a cash grab, and they took the story and the name and spilled it into an American setting and expected fans to follow along. (And if not, if this is actually a reinvention, I am disappointed in their marketing team for failing to generate positive interest.)

See, as a storyteller, I feel as though if the staff of this adaptation didn’t consider at least as much as I am doing in this post, they’re not doing the original work enough respect, and bottom-line, the character of “Light Yagami” was fascinating. The character of “Light Turner” is far from novel.

Speaking of which, the name “Kira” came from the Japanese pronunciation for ‘killer’ so what the heck are they going to do with that?

c) Death Note was written at an interesting time, the original run going from 2003 to 2006. In the middle of that time period in 2004, Japan changed its legal system to include layman judges. That means that Death Note was conceptualized and written at a time where something akin to a jury system did not exist in Japan (and the current system still differs from a jury system anyway), and according to Wikipedia, the first notable lay-judge trial didn’t even happen until 2009. Even now, this system isn’t well-received because over 70% of Japanese people are uncomfortable with the idea of acting as a judge.

And it is in this kind of society, Light Yagami rises up. Light Yagami’s distorted pursuit of justice depends upon the closed-off legal system where solely the judges determine the guilt of the defendant, if the case even gets to court at all. I believe that at the time of Death Note’s writing, most cases in Japan were handled by a single judge unless it made it to at least the High Courts (which used three judges). Thus, when a criminal escapes conviction in this setting, it means that the existing evidence couldn’t legally convince, often, one individual.

In America, Light Turner is a teenage guy who hasn’t even sat on a jury yet, and I’m not sure why, but that changes things for me. Escaping a court conviction in America usually means that a jury, a panel of civilians, wasn’t convinced. The circumstances in which a guilty individual goes free is either a result of money (either bribes or a really good defense lawyer) or implicit biases in the jury (if the jury and the defendant are part of the same ‘in-group’ such as race, religion, etc.), so Light Turner’s dissatisfaction with existing legal avenues for crime needs a different angle, or it just feels… childish.

If the only reason Light Turner turns into an egomaniac is because he’s a decently smart teenage guy who gets a new, deadly toy, I won’t be able to find him interesting. Also, on that note, Light Yagami is pretty much one of the smartest guys in his nation - that’s part of his appeal. America as a setting has a disadvantage in that, both geographically and culturally, because it’s pretty damn hard to be ‘smartest teenager in the United States’, especially when there isn’t really a way to judge that in the American education system, and also because ‘super-smart’ in America still suffers from lingering connotations of ‘weak nerd’ rather than bringing you great social status amongst teens.

Basically what I’m getting at is that if Netflix was going to do this adaptation of Death Note, they had to have rewritten the character of Light from the ground up as well as completely reshaped the commentary within it, or we lose a lot of nuance to both Light’s character and the story. Sure, the show isn’t out yet, so maybe Netflix did rewrite the adaptation like that, but in that case I would disapprove of how they went with the marketing, and I would still question why they didn’t consider casting an Asian-American guy.

A lot of people are saying, “Well, it’s in America. Why can’t Light be white?” but to them, I ask, “Well, it’s in America, multicultural and diverse. Why can’t Light be Asian-American?” It would also be insight to an interesting cultural perspective which could potentially feed into the protagonist’s egoistic philosophy.

Anyway, if there are any glaring errors I made above, I apologize. I have not read or watched Death Note in many years, and I didn’t feel like doing so just to write this post, ahaha.

#death note #long #netflix #light yagami #light turner #representation in media #Anonymous

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rebelrouser · 7 years

Text

Remain Involved in Five Easy Steps!

Guest article written by Luke Patrick.

Original Article Here!

The Women’s March is over, and the numbers are still being tallied. However, it’s safe to say that a lot of people the world over went out into the streets and made their voices known. Whether or not you were one of those people, you’re now probably wondering: What’s next?

Now is the perfect time to seize the momentum and begin building. If you’re looking for some quick, effective ways you can make your views known, we’ve got your back. It’s easier than you’d think. Given only a few hours, you can achieve a lot. So let’s start achieving, step by step!

Article text under the “read more”!

1. Take Stock of the Situation

The very first thing we need to do is pause. Take a deep breath and try to come to grips with the reality of the next four years. Not just the scary parts. We’re also talking policy. There are plenty of reasons to be scared, and plenty of reasons to fight. But if we’re going to make it count, we have to focus on policy. And that only comes from our local legislatures and from Washington D.C.

This is a good thing. There are plenty of people in Washington that have our back. Policy also takes time, and is increasingly visible. All of this means that if we yell loud enough, we can affect change.

So to sum it up: We need to make sure politicians know how we, the populous, feel. If we fill the airwaves with support or dissent, that will be reflected in our nation’s capital. To voice that support, we need avenues and we need visibility for the law as it’s made. Those are things we can help with — even without leaving the couch. This is doable!

2. Support Journalism

Outside of a Daredevil episode, most of us don’t think about journalism. But it has a long, long history of sticking accountability to politicians and providing the public with information. Especially at the local level, journalism can be a powerful tool against corruption and harmful policies. There’s more to say here, but John Oliver has a much better summary.

How can you help? This one’s easy: First become a member of your local newspaper. Quality journalism takes a lot of time, and therefore a lot of money. It’s no secret that print media has lost market share over the last decade. The New York Times has a much larger readership than your local, and every dime created through subscriptions helps the wheels turn.

Most local papers now have online versions that cost much less than their print counterparts. Even if it’s just $5 a year, you’re still supporting your village voice. Plus, you get to read the funnies again — a novel experience these days.

After you’ve done that, go ahead and pick a few national outlets to support: The New York Times has a $0.99 trial period, which seems like a good place to start. For other great journalistic outlets, The Pen Center has a list of high-integrity papers here. Given the current climate, supporting PBS and NPR is also a fantastic idea.

3. Support Politically Active Organizations

Journalism is a key part of change, but to truly create justice, we need policy makers within the system to get to work. This kind of activity takes a long time, and involves a lot of nitty-gritty details: Lobbying, going to court, supporting individuals damaged by the legal system, setting up financial trusts, etc. These things are necessary, and provide a rigid backbone for the changes we want.

Basically, we’re going to need organizations like those listed here. It takes man hours and expertise to create change within our government. Those changes also need ground support for those affected by bad policy. By donating money to organizations that do these things, you are directly helping to either affect change or fight injustice.

You really should consider donating even a small amount to Planned Parenthood. Ensuring the organization can continue to provide high-quality women’s healthcare is vital, and the current administration is doing everything it can to prevent it.

If you don’t have money to spare, you can still help. In many urban areas, organizations like the Human Rights Campaign and Planned Parenthood will canvas the street for signatures. Signing a petition is another way to send a message to your lawmakers, both local and federal.

You can also immediately donate your John Hancock by visiting the White House petitions site. Petitions reaching 100,000 signatures in 30 days require a response from the White House within 60. For more signature gathering, also be sure to check MoveOn.org

4. Call Your Congressional Representatives

Cabinet confirmation hearings are still going on, and things have often bounced between the wacky and the downright disconcerting. This makes for a good reason to call your members of congress. In a lot of ways, calling a congressional member about an issue is like voting. It gets the message across, and with enough voices, we can do incredible things.

If like most Americans you’re not sure where to start, check this handy guide from CivilRights.org. Before you call, check who your congressional representatives are, and be prepared to succinctly explain why you’re calling. You likely won’t reach your actual representative, but every call is noted and counted. Personal stories of policy impact are also often prioritized. Flooding phone lines in opposition to the repeal of the ACA, or the nomination of unqualified cabinet picks, can and will have an impact.

5. Start Learning Today, and Don’t Stop

In order to improve the lives of every American, we need a solid educational baseline. No matter who you are (PhD candidate or high school dropout) there’s always something new to learn. And in an era where hoaxes can spread virally, you bet your boots a little knowledge can go a long way.

To help yourself and others, start reading books, news outlets, and reputable online resources. Educating yourself and others is every bit as important as staying informed. Use free resources like Khan Academy to brush up on a wide range of topics. By arming yourself with the right cerebral toolset, you’ll find it easier to argue for common abstract problems: limiting climate change, promoting hybrid socialist-democratic economic systems, advocating universal healthcare, etc. A lot of these topics may sound scary, but with 10 minute’s reading a day, you’ll quickly find them a lot more manageable.

Finally, YouTube can also be a great place to learn new things. Shows like CrashCourse offer socially conscious, fair, and fun analysis of history, physics, chemistry, philosophy, and video games.

Bonus Round:

If you’ve done as much as you can today, but you still want to help, take heart in the fact there’s one more option:

Basically, just sit on the couch with some Netflix.

By supporting art programs, watching independent films, and voicing a firm desire for better representation in the media, we can create a better world. CivilRights.org and NPR both have great resources on why the struggle for diversity in art is important.

How is Netflix and “chill” advocating for greater diversity in the arts? By supporting films that feature LBGT+ characters / plots, plays with minority casting, or books that have real, female characters, you’re sending a message to media companies that those things are desired. It all starts with numbers, though. Demand is already high, but by boosting it to unprecedented levels, we can make sure everyone in this country is guaranteed an inclusive culture.

#text #activism #womensmarch #women's march #rebel

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hjgale · 7 years

Text

Activism and Antisemitism in Seattle

I have been following the cluster-fuck that is the convergence of Omari Tahir-Garrett, gentrification, Seattle "radical" politics, antisemitism, and Seattle avoidance (aka "Seattle nice," passive-aggressive avoidance, etc.). There is a lot to struggle with here -- not in responding to the antisemitism, but in responding to others lack of proper response.

I have been an activist for a long time and, despite having spent 15-20 years each in NYC, Boston, and Seattle, it is only in Seattle that I have seen activists hesitate to condemn public displays of antisemitism in activist movements -- more on that later.

The silence and unwillingness to publicly criticize folks in the activist community is driven by many factors, some of which are exacerbated in, if not unique to, Seattle.

During the last 20 years I have been in Seattle I can only remember two occasions where I directly witnessed antisemitism being a significant problem on the left: on both occasions my trying to deal with it without going public and without shaming people mostly failed. That is why I applaud Sydney Brownstone’s (and here) and Ijeoma Oluo's courage to take this debate public. I am disheartened that only through public shaming do many folks on the left do the right thing when it comes to this (and other) issues.

Every public comment by activists -- save the ones noted above -- has involved some form of equivocation, including those from Cliff Cawthon for the first nine days ("We absolutely will not defend his statements"; confused much Clff? The targets of hate require defending and the perpetrators require condemnation). These equivocations utilize any one or combination of the following forms of sophistry:

(1) Hierarchy of Oppression: The belief that since one form of oppression is far worse than another, the lesser form of oppression can be ignored or "saved for another day." While there is a hierarchy of oppression -- worthy of academic study and analysis, and worth considering when strategizing certain actions -- it is not for any mortal to decide on any given day whose oppression comes first and whose can be ignored, certainly not when racist sentiments have been overtly expressed. There is also an aspect of antisemitism that exacerbates this belief in a "hierarchy of oppression": that Jews are immunized from the consequences of racism and hate, or possibly even deserving of it, since "they control so much."

(2) "They started it!": The belief that something worse preceded the antisemitism and explains or justifies it. If that notion doesn't work for kids it shouldn't work for adults.

(3) Trauma of the Oppressed: The belief that because of racism and oppression folks are traumatized and therefore lash out in seemingly irrational ways. As someone who grew up in, and has worked for years, in minority communities, this notion is both insulting, patronizing, and absurd when used to explain behavior like Omari's. Vast numbers of racists have probably been traumatized, or suffer from a mental illness, but I don't ever remember folks accepting such possibilities as anything beyond a factor that might mitigate the sanction or punishment meted out to the perpetrator.

(4) Only the non-righteous complain: The belief that those that cry antisemitism are racist themselves, they only take action when the racism is directed at them, or they are not true activists. Given that Jews make up an absurdly disproportionate percentage of social activists, the only proper response to anyone that might harbor that notion would be a "fuck you!".

Focusing on the specific individuals involved -- what Omari or Ian Eisenberg did or said -- also misses the point that the progressive community -- both those that were there and those who later heard about it -- have a moral responsibility to publicly and unambiguously denounce words which promote hate and are injurious to folks far beyond Eisenberg and the people present on April 1.

It should not have been difficult for people to parse four somewhat independent factors concerning the April 1 incident: (1) the specific words used by Omari; (2) the people immediately and potentially hurt by those words; (3) the wrong of allowing racism to appear tolerable by not immediately challenging it; and (4) Omari the person. Parsing those factors should have made it easy for folks to say something straightforward like:

Omari's words were hateful and hurtful, not just to Ian Eisenberg, but to all Jews in our community, and, hopefully, to non-Jews who struggle for justice. What preceded Omari's words is irrelevant. Further, we recognize that the lack of an immediate and public condemnation by those who heard the words adds to the hate and to the hurt: it makes these sentiments appear acceptable, and that the welfare and feelings of those hurt by these words are not worthy of respect and concern.

Omari as a person is someone who has a long history in Seattle's African-American community, he is... [here many thoughts could be inserted, ranging from "an important elder," to "a historical figure," to "one who has spent the last two decades bullying, disrespecting, threatening, and spewing racist rhetoric toward many"].

Somehow almost everyone who responded to this incident felt compelled to use this as an opportunity to return the focus to the original issues being protested, failing to recognize that Omari's behavior and words were what took public attention away from the original issues. It is not an apology if, when I hurt someone, I then proceed to explain how that hurt happened in the context of me doing something I believe was important: "I was rushing to the hospital to help a whole lot of people, so me hitting you isn't really important." Instead of focusing on Omari, his injurious behavior, and the people he hurt, the folks involved in the protest decided to bemoan those who were hurt taking focus away from the issue. Far too many people spent way the fuck too many words on what they believed to be the "important" issue, rather than on addressing and resolving the issue created by Omari.

There are many factors that lead to this sort of behavior, factors that also feed other dysfunctional behaviors among the left in Seattle. I'll note four obvious ones:

(1) Uncritical loyalty to a "principle" that folks from a dominant group must defer to the demands or actions of individuals from an oppressed group. This leads to a permissiveness for all kinds of fucked-up behavior, since this principle offers no guidance as to whose particular demands or actions we should accept, or how we should distinguish leaders from posers or provocateurs. Oftentimes this principle leads white folks to simply follow the loudest or most "radical" seeming person in the room. Many of us witnessed this during Occupy in 2012 when a "radical" People of Color (POC) caucus bullied their way into Occupy's (supposedly non-existent) leadership, nearly appropriating a six year tradition of May Day as a day for advancing immigrant rights, and trying to turn May Day into a confrontation with police. Of course the leadership of oppressed people must be central to any struggle for justice, but following the loudest and most provocative voice will often disrespect the voices of those who have been struggling the longest and hardest, and are often the more representative voice in the community.

(2) "The enemy of my enemy is my friend," where we make alliances with groups and folks we really shouldn't.

(3) Leaderless and coalitionless movements. The growing popularity of this style of organizing, which came to the fore in 1999 with WTO and has gained again in popularity since Occupy in 2011, exacerbates the two problems noted above. It allows for a single or a few individuals to reshape a movement, severely reducing its mass appeal and ultimately rendering it dysfunctional. In these cases you often hear folks remaining in the rump movement state "well, everyone here agrees," completely ignoring the fact that the de facto leadership, which isn't supposed to exist, has scared everyone else away and produced toxic groupthink.

(4) "Seattle nice", or an unwillingness to struggle openly and honestly with ideological and tactical differences. Combined with natural tendencies toward groupthink, this will often produce an unwillingness to confront shitty behavior and shitty ideas. This is not unique to the left in Seattle: it pervades all aspects of the social space here. It becomes easier to tolerate bad or offensive behavior rather than confront it. This exacerbates all the above issues.

I would be remiss to not recognize that antisemitism among the left has some unique underlying support in American society. The vast majority of commercial land on the four blocks surrounding the 23rd Avenue and E. Union Street intersection is owned, controlled, or developed by entities that have nothing to do with Jews or Ian Eisenberg, but rather by: private companies (Mount Baker, LLC and Lake Union Partners); city, state, and private non-profits (Capitol Hill Housing and Casey Family Programs); a protestant church (Mt. Calvary, with a homophobic pastor, owns five lots along 23rd Avenue, property tax free); and a Catholic family (the Bangassers). How is it that the one Jew, who owns one lot, becomes repeatedly publicly targeted? How is it that antisemitic rhetoric is heard, but not anti-religious, anti-Catholic, etc.?

(1) Pervasiveness of antisemitic stereotypes in American culture, especially the "positive" stereotypes

. One of the most unique characteristics of antisemitism is that some of its core tenets are, potentially, compliments. Recently someone told me "You guys (Jews) control banks, businesses, movies." When I started to object, they immediately interjected "No, no, no, that is a compliment, that is a good thing... look what you have achieved against all those odds!" It is extraordinarily rare for racist stereotypes to be based on achievement. This phenomenon is due to both the disproportionate success of Jews in a wide range of fields* and to the publication of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion over 100 years ago in Russia (though conspiracy theories involving the secret control of banks and governments by Jews preceded this). This completely fictitious document purports to uncover the Jewish plot to rule the world, providing "evidence" of Jews scheming behind every institution of political, social and monetary control. Its first American publication was in 1918 and was originally distributed in US government circles. In 1919 Philadelphia's most popular newspaper published it (replacing "Jews" with "Bolsheviks", though few in 1919 believed there was a difference), then, through most of the 1920s, Henry Ford printed 500,000 copies (renamed "The International Jew -- The Worlds Foremost Problem" so no one would be confused as to what was claimed) while also publishing antisemitic screeds in his Michigan newspaper. Ever since, "The Protocols" has been republished and sold by a variety of neo-Nazi, white supremacist, nationalist, and religious fundamentalist organizations, most notably, in repackaged form by the Nation of Islam (more on that below). It was sold by Walmart in the early 2000s, and continues to be sold on Amazon, where dozens of different versions are available. For a hundred years now, versions of this Jewish conspiracy have been at the core of not just overt antisemitism, but in conspiracy theories involving Illuminati, the New World Order (and other "one world government" conspiracies), Free Masons, Khazars, David Icke's reptile people, and on, and on. There is almost no conspiracy theory concerning secret government control that does not, at some point, connect to Jews.

(2) The role of the Nation of Islam in fostering antisemitism over the last quarter century. In a 1991 speech Leonard Jeffries (an African-American professor of Black Studies at the City College of NY) claimed that "rich Jews" financed and dominated the African slave trade (and, of course, also controlled the American film industry). Jeffries cited as a source "The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews" (1991), published by the Nation of Islam (NOI, which is now aligned with the Church of Scientology -- antisemitism goes better with more generalized forms of abuse and idiocy). Mainstream scholars consider the book nonsense, with noted Harvard historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. labeling the book "the bible of new anti-Semitism" and adding that "the book massively misinterprets the historical record, largely through a process of cunningly selective quotations of often reputable sources." The NOI is officially recognized as an organized hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

This book, along with two new volumes, remains available on the official NOI website, along with numerous other antisemitic publications (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here -- I'm sure I didn't catch them all). With at most around 50,000 adherents -- representing 0.12% of the African-American population -- NOI can seem insignificant, but their nine decade history, their high degree discipline and organization, and the fact that they often become involved with progressive causes and protests in the African-American community, give them outsized influence. NOI's quarter century of fostering a virulent variety of antisemitic narratives around Jewish control and exploitation of African-Americans, currently overwhelms any other historical tensions between African-Americans and Jews (which is usually facilely attributed to long-ago Jewish ownership of housing and businesses in African-American neighborhoods). Added on to the reality of a more generalized American antisemitism this can become particularly toxic.

(3) Israel and Zionism: All major mainstream American Jewish advocacy organizations (American Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Congress, and American Israel Public Affairs Committee -- though this last one is more accurately viewed as an advocacy group for a foreign power), mainline synagogues, and local Jewish federations have increasingly, and intentionally, confounded antisemitism with critiques of Israel and advocacy for Palestinian rights. It is important to consider three examples I confronted in Seattle over the last 15 years.

In April of 2002 I was working with the Church Council of Greater Seattle to organize a rally at Westlake opposing the ongoing war in Afghanistan and the possibility of war in Iraq. The rally was to have speakers on those topics, as well as on a variety of domestic and international human rights issues. The rally was scheduled for Saturday April 20. Some days prior to the rally we received a call at the Church Council from Rick Harkavy, the director of the American Jewish Committee chapter in Seattle. Harkavy warned us that April 20 was Adolf Hitlers birthday and that it would be inappropriate, and viewed as antisemitic, to have rally speakers criticize Israel. Before that day in 2002 I had never known when Hitler's birthday was, nor, as a Jew, could I ever imagine it being something I would care about. Harkavy's call went beyond "advisory": he made it clear that if Israel were criticized at the rally he would reach out to the media to make this issue public. I was shocked, but proceeded to organize the rally in ways that had already been planned. The day after the rally Harkavy was quoted in the Seattle Times saying "For people who claim to be progressives, to have a day in which they're highly critical and perhaps may also call ultimately for the destruction of the state of Israel on the same day as Hitler's birthday, I'm appalled" (Seattle Times, April 21, 2002, page B1). It was an egregious attempt to slander a rally for peace and justice -- there was, of course, no call for the destruction of Israel.

In December of 2010 controversy erupted around already purchased and printed King County Metro Transit bus ads that said "Israeli War Crimes. Your Tax Dollars at Work" above a picture of a bombed Palestinian building. Metro Transit was deluged with complaints claiming the ads were antisemitic, and they received supposed threats of violence (virtually all of which were from local Jews who had provided a name and contact information with their threat). Days were spent at Metro Transit trying to insure that buses possibly carrying the ads would not pass by the Jewish Federation offices or any synagogues: it was considered obvious that these ads would be considered antisemitic and offensive to Jews. In the end, King County Executive Dow Constantine pulled the ads, citing both safety concerns and claims that these ads were offensive to Jews in the community.

http://www.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2011/03/23/a-jewish-man-investigates-king-countys-decision-to-censor-bus-ads

It remains uncertain why the bus ads were pulled, especially since my investigation revealed that almost all (rather minimal) threats came from known members of the local Jewish community and these threats were likely received after Dow Constantine made his decision to pull the ads. What is certain is that major local Jewish mainstream organizations put severe pressure on Constantine.

This past January, House Joint Measure HJM 4009 was introduced into the Washington State legislature. This is (it was reintroduced into the special session on April 24) a bill condemning the movement for promoting boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel -- a movement using the only non-violent tool left to promote Palestinian civil rights -- as antisemitic. The bill contains outrageous statements such as "The international boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement is one of the main vehicles for spreading antisemitism and advocating the elimination of the Jewish state." Numerous local Democratic progressive state representatives have sponsored this bill. I talked to many of them: for non-Jewish representatives they felt they had to unquestionably support their Jewish colleagues at a time of rising antisemitism, and for Jewish representatives they felt there was no question that BDS, and much Palestinian civil rights advocacy, was inherently antisemitic. Both groups of legislators came under pressure from mainstream Jewish advocacy organizations, organizations which clearly provided the language for this legislative measure (based on the extreme hyperbole of the language and the inability on any legislator to explain it). BDS, as a modern organized movement, has been around now for 15 years. The recent sudden increase in antisemitic incidents, along with other forms of racism, is 100% attributable to Donald Trump and the forces he has unleashed over the last two years, and 0% attributable to BDS.

What the above three incidents have in common is obvious: a cynical abuse of the concept of antisemitism in order to protect a nation state from criticism. Attempts such as these have two disastrous consequences for those concerned with real antisemitism: (1) It confuses non-Jews as to what antisemitism is, as it confounds racism with beliefs based on human rights for Palestinians or anti-nationalism (or anti-colonialism, or anti-imperialism, etc.). It allows non-Jews to trivialize antisemitism as anything that goes against Jewish interests, buying into the antisemitic notion that Israeli and Jewish interests are identical; and (2) It fuels the widespread belief the Jews have inordinate control of economic and political systems: How else to explain such unwavering support for Israel? How else to explain the first time in over 35 years that bus ads were pulled by King County?

By watering down and confusing the meaning of antisemitism, and by perpetuating the notion that "Jews get their way" (versus a narrow interest group that joins together Jewish nationalists, Christian Zionists, the arms industry, and geopolitical interests in the Middle East) these mainline Jewish organizations actually perpetuate antisemitism. They sacrifice the safety of Jews for the (mistaken) belief that they are helping preserve a nation state.

* It is worth noting that Jewish over-representation in a field does not necessarily correlate with control by individuals, nor does it correlate with some imagined group control. For example, in prior years at the Georgetown University School of Medicine, a Roman Catholic (Jesuit) school, a notably disproportionate number of department heads are Jewish, yet they are the ones who will often implement Catholic ethical directives (e.g., avoiding talking about or training in abortion services) the most zealously. Similarly, as Jews became dominant in Hollywood they would often carry out the majoritarian agenda of anti-communism, racism, portraying America as a Christian country, etc. It is a common phenomena throughout history that minority group members that achieve success often advocate more zealously for the majoritarian agenda.

It is also worth noting another curious consequence of this myth of Jewish over-representation and supposed control. The stereotype focuses on the entertainment and banking industries, yet completely ignores the area of greatest Jewish over-representation: Nobel prize winners, where 22% are Jewish despite only being 0.21% of the world population, 105 times the expected rate. You can stoke people's fears by imagining Jews controlling monetary systems, but it's hard to be scared of scientific discoveries that save lives and actually help explain how the world really works.

#####

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constantreflection · 4 years

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Fostering Change Agents

Our youth continues to inspire me on so many levels especially during recent events around climate change, health, and social justice that are deeply rooted in history. In the thick of 2020, resiliency and perseverance are traits youth have been demonstrating through these very trying times. I am reminded on a regular basis through conversations with our youth that their voices have depth, meaning, and passion that need to be nurtured as they navigate through life, solidify their core values, and become change agents.

I am fortunate to be a parent of two teenagers who are starring at these major life events straight on. They are both provided an empty canvas to paint what they feel is true and color it with intent that is right for their family, friends, community, and the world.

I was reminded the other night through a conversation with one of my teen how current events are encouraging youth to critically reflect on these puzzle pieces of life, and to assemble them in a positive and forward thinking manner. We spent several hours flushing out our raw feelings and discussed the kinds of changes we were witnessing yet questioning the notion around progress.

Summer of 2020 for my teen was supposed to be filled with a once in a lifetime experience that was cut because of a health pandemic. Upon learning of this change, it was too late to enroll in various school programs because they were either completely full or canceled because of social distancing, which led to an opportunity with dual credit. Dual credit is an opportunity for high school students to enroll in college courses, whether on a college campus or college courses on select high school campuses.

I was fortunate to have opportunities to talk about the deeper purpose around dual credit and college, therefore I felt it was important to revisit this topic in light of the world’s current events. The recent conversation with my teen sent my thoughts soaring to which I reflected on two pieces that I submitted – one on Early College and another on preparing for college. In my piece about Early College I wrote, “Time and care needs to be spent understanding their journey to ensure they are moving confidently in a direction that is aligned with their interests” which is related to what I wrote about college saying, “More than ever we need to place our students at the center. We need to understand their interest, their favorite subjects, and other factors that provide meaning to them.” I feel those words still resonate today and perhaps I need to kick it into high gear.

My teen’s experience with dual credit thus far has been more about purpose and less about the credit. My wife and I make time to understand what our teen is learning and it has been fascinating how the content are linked to situations that are important and relevant in my teen’s life. These moments of inquiry are filled with questions around “why” and “what next”. This triggered me to reflect on how I have been fortunate to be with a team that promotes change in the area of sustainability through avenues such as dual credit, and who recently have been creating pockets of young change agents. In my podcast on Sustainability Part 1 and Part 2, you can feel the passion and commitment from these instructors who integrate “purpose” as the primary focus for students and it almost seems like the bonus byproduct are the college credits and a certificate in sustainability. I was fortunate to witness the development of a specific cohort of students through a dual credit project around sustainability. I learned through conversations with these students how they are creating purpose, addressing their “whys”, and executing their “next steps”.

Make no mistake that there are very important and critical issues being absorbed by the minds of our youth, therefore taking a leap of faith around “what is next” can appear to be overwhelming. My teen even added another layer and asked, “what now?” In my capacity of as a project coordinator, counselor, and educator for youth, it has always been my duty to provide an avenue of exploration that is safe, productive, and a place of purpose. I am to shed light on opportunities that fuels their passion for them to become change agents thus continuing the work of generations that preceded them.

In my lengthy discussion with my teen we talked about how these current events are really nothing new. Such as issues that were supposedly abolished in the 1800’s yet are still alive and well in our current century. Why? It is the pace of progress that continues to be a cause for concern but offers more reasons for youth to continue to push forward. Now this is just a small sample of our youths’ mindset, which stresses the importance of providing them a platform that fosters their belief system and opportunities to be surrounded by genuine support and guidance. They need to heard and embraced because they are indeed creating the new norm on a foundation created by the fearless people before them. Our youth right now, more than ever, need to be exposed to opportunities not barriers.

As my teen and I were going back and forth, we acknowledged how the various media outlets has illuminated the changes that have occurred but also the vast amount of work that needs to be done. We reflected on leaders, young and old, who starred adversity in the face and did something about it.

We all have a role in supporting our youth and as members to their larger team, we can bring more of these bright and talented change agents to the surface. At the end of the night, my teen and I thought of a new hashtag – historymatters, because as my friend shared with me many years ago, no history, no self that needs to changed to know history, know self.

#historymatters

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

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Political Crisis in Hong Kong Grows as Protesters Reject Leader’s Apology https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/16/world/asia/carrie-lam-hong-kong-protests.html

Once you experience FREEDOM you will FIGHT like HELL to KEEP it so WHY are the American people not in the streets FIGHTING for our FREEDOM.

Protesters Return to Hong Kong’s Streets, Rejecting Leader’s Apology

By Daniel Victor and Keith BRADSHER |

Published June 16, 2019 | New York Times | Posted June 16, 2019 |

HONG KONG — Protesters poured into the streets of Hong Kong on Sunday with renewed determination and a lengthening list of demands, rejecting the government’s retreat on a contentious extradition bill and extending the political crisis gripping the semiautonomous territory.

Hong Kong’s embattled leader, Carrie Lam, shelved the bill on Saturday and followed that up with a rare apology on Sunday evening, actions that pro-democracy activists dismissed as too little, too late. And the sheer size of the demonstration — organizers gave an unverified estimate of close to two million of the territory’s seven million people — made clear the public remained unsatisfied.

Many of the protesters said they were disappointed with Mrs. Lam’s statement, saying it seemed insincere.

“She only did it under pressure,” said Leo Cheng, a 19-year-old student.

The marchers’ resolve is sending tremors to Beijing, where President Xi Jinping’s carefully nurtured image of strength and competence is being put to the test.

“They want to send a message to Beijing,” said Willy Lam, an adjunct professor at the Center for China Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “If Beijing wants to do something that really infringes upon Hong Kong’s basic value, Hong Kong people will turn out in force, again and again, to pour out their discontent.”

The marchers filled broad avenues and ran the length of downtown Hong Kong, parents with their children, groups of students and numerous retirees. Reflecting their changing mood, most dressed in black, a stark change from the white most wore the previous week.

They chanted and carried signs listing their demands: the complete withdrawal of the bill, not just an indefinite suspension; an impartial investigation into the police use of force during Wednesday’s clashes with protesters; and rescinding the official description of that protest as an illegal riot, which could expose anyone arrested during the violent demonstration to long jail terms.

In contrast to Wednesday, police officers stood by on Sunday in a crowd-control role, with no altercations or arrests reported.

There were no immediate plans for another march. But labor unions, which tend to be weak in Hong Kong, have called for different sectors of society to take turns holding strikes of an hour or two on Monday, including a general strike by many businesses early Monday afternoon.

Perhaps most broadly, the demonstrators are increasingly demanding the departure of Mrs. Lam, the chief executive of Hong Kong. The many calls for her resignation — and increasingly, for those of her ministers for justice and security — seemed to put in question her continued viability as the territory’s leader.

“Some heads need to roll,” said Emily Lau, the former chairwoman of Hong Kong’s Democratic Party and still a leading voice in the territory’s democracy movement.

It is far from clear whether that will happen. China’s leaders want to avoid triggering the public selection process for a successor, as Mrs. Lam does not have an obvious political heir.

However, a commentary on Sunday in the People’s Daily, a news outlet run by the Communist Party, backed the Hong Kong government. But, in a departure from previous commentaries in the state news media, it conspicuously failed to mention Mrs. Lam.

In Mr. Lam’s estimation, that omission speaks volumes.

“Her days are numbered,” he said. “Beijing has totally lost confidence in her ability.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the United States is monitoring the protests in Hong Kong and said the situation would be “among the issues” discussed when President Trump meets with Mr. Xi at the end of June for the Group of 20 summit in Osaka, Japan.

“We see what’s happening, what’s unfolding in Hong Kong,” Mr. Pompeo said on “Fox News Sunday.” “We’ll see what Lam’s decision is in the coming days and weeks ahead.”

Over the weekend, Mrs. Lam, a no-nonsense civil servant who typically sticks to her positions, did not act as though she was considering stepping down. On Saturday, she said she would delay indefinitely a vote on the bill and on Sunday night issued an unusually apologetic statement, saying that she would “take on criticisms in the most sincere and humble way.”

But if those steps were aimed at mollifying the protesters, they seemed to have the opposite effect, half-measures that, paired with the harsh police conduct on Wednesday, further inflamed the crowds.

“I did not come out last Sunday, but today she forced me to come out,” Sze Li, a 30-year-old office worker, said of Mrs. Lam.

It was the third time in a week that masses of Hong Kongers had shut down the territory’s central roads over a proposal to allow extraditions to mainland China, a step that rights activists and others fear would chip away at their remaining freedoms by exposing them to China’s opaque legal system.

The bill has fed rising fear and anger over the erosion of the civil liberties that have long set this former British colony apart from the rest of the country. The local authorities have also rejected demands for free elections and ousted opposition lawmakers, and critics say Beijing’s supporters are diminishing the independence of the territory’s courts and news media.

It was a resounding statement that Mrs. Lam’s political crisis was far from over. Finding little support from her superiors in Beijing, Mrs. Lam is still trying to thread the needle of restoring order without making concessions that would weaken her standing.

Sunday night’s apology, distributed as thousands of protesters converged on the Legislative Council building more than six hours after the march began, was the first time she had acknowledged fault in the debacle.

“The Chief Executive admitted that inadequacies of the government’s job has caused major contradictions and arguments in Hong Kong society, making many citizens feeling disappointed and upset,” the government said. “The Chief Executive apologizes to Hong Kong citizens for this, and promises that she will take on criticisms in the most sincere and humble way, striving to improve and serve the general public.”

At this juncture, Mrs. Lam is no closer to passing her unpopular legislation, which she had pushed since February as necessary to address a murder case that could only be tried in Taiwan. Critics see it as a Trojan horse that would allow Beijing to target activists, journalists and others in Hong Kong with dubious charges.

And she is now facing an expanding list of demands from the protesters, who were outraged by the harsh police response last Wednesday when some marchers tried to storm a government building, with a few throwing bricks and other projectiles at officers in riot gear. The police pushed back, hitting the protesters with batons, rubber bullets, pepper spray and more than 150 canisters of tear gas.

On Sunday, marchers waved more signs about the conduct of the police than about the extradition bill. The chants were varied: “Carrie Lam step down!” “Withdraw the bill!” “We are not rioters!” “Release the arrested students!” Some carried blown-up photos of a bloodied demonstrator from Wednesday.

“Last week, there was only one thing we were marching against,” said Katherine Lam, a 39-year-old data analyst. “But this time, there are a lot more reasons.”

The protest on Wednesday, a mostly leaderless act of civil disobedience organized through social media, came together to prevent legislators from discussing the bill. Tens of thousands of demonstrators blocked roads near the Legislative Council building, filling the streets of the Admiralty neighborhood in a scene reminiscent of 2014 pro-democracy Umbrella Movement.

Last Sunday’s march, which organizers say was attended by more than a million people, was entirely peaceful, with no arrests reported. So was this Sunday’s, which the police said as attended by 338,000 people were in the march at its peak.

But that figure was limited to people who were on the roads of the original procession route approved by the police, while huge throngs marched down parallel roads.

The death of a man who fell from scaffolding after unfurling a protest banner late Saturday injected additional emotional weight into the demonstrations. Hundreds of people gathered on Sunday to remember the man, whom the police identified as a 35-year-old with the surname Leung.

The man has rapidly become a symbol of the movement, earning the nickname “Raincoat Martyr” for what he was wearing at the time of his death. Mourners lit incense and left white lilies and roses where he fell, while many marchers carried white flowers or ribbons.

“His sacrifice really does show that the government is still ignoring how the citizens, how the students feel,” said Anson Law, 17, a high school student. “The people want to show their will.”

It remains to be seen whether Mrs. Lam can regain the trust not just of Hong Kong’s residents, but among the business community that had supported her and in Beijing. Even her reliable allies as she pushed the bill have begun to splinter; one pro-Beijing lawmaker, Regina Ip, called for an apology hours before Mrs. Lam offered one Sunday night.

Mr. Lam, of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said Beijing would be unlikely to accept Mrs. Lam’s resignation if she were to offer it right now, but said the odds were rising quickly that she might not be able to finish the three years remaining in her five-year term.

At this point, Mrs. Lam’s departure would just be a starting point.

“I feel that Hong Kong can still be saved,” said Kris Yeh, a 20-year-old aviation student. “Through my anger, I feel a bit of hope.”

Reporting was contributed by Javier Hernandez, Mike Ives, Katherine Li and Tiffany May. Christopher Cameron contributed reporting from Washington.

#u.s. news #politics #politics and government #international news #world news #Asia News #hong kong #hongkong #hong kong protests #China #china news

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nrip · 5 years

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The social media dilemma

It was September 2018 when Jacqueline Harris, a fourth-year student at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, decided to change her social media presence pretty dramatically.

She took steps to make it harder to find her on Facebook and switched her Instagram and Twitter accounts to private.

Harris’s decision was sparked by her upcoming residency applications: While she has never made a habit of posting controversial material, she couldn’t risk having her career derailed by the wrong photo or comment.

“I’ve heard institutions will look you up to get a better sense of who you are as a person,” Harris says. “Who’s to say something I think is funny or that I like isn’t going to be taken the wrong way?”

She adds, “My biggest fear would be something that I perceive as empowering or impactful would be misconstrued by someone who has influence on my career and where I go.”

Social media is a difficult and risky world to navigate, and medical students face a slew of complicating factors. They must work to protect their professional personas and keep patient information safe. Still, many want the freedom to maintain their individuality and participate in online advocacy movements like #MeToo and “black men in white coats,” which works to diversify the medical community. They want to connect with patients, but they don’t want to be unprofessional. And to make matters more difficult, there are almost no hard-and-fast rules to guide them.

“My biggest fear would be something that I perceive as empowering or impactful would be misconstrued by someone who has influence on my career and where I go.”

Jacqueline Harris Vanderbilt University School of Medicine

“Students struggle with what the standard is. They want rules,” says Danielle Dickey, EdD, director of academic affairs for Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine. “But other than HIPAA, there really aren’t any.”

That’s why a growing number of medical schools nationwide are adding content to the curriculum to incorporate best practices around social media use, recognizing the unique position that medical students are in when it comes to protecting patient privacy and creating a professional web presence that upholds the ethical standards of the medical profession, while still allowing students to advocate for social justice issues.

Protecting patient privacy

The American Medical Student Association (AMSA) does provide social media guidelines on its website, though they are somewhat vague. The AMSA instructs medical students to: 1) Be professional, 2) Be responsible, 3) Maintain a separation from patients, 4) Be transparent and use disclaimers, 5) Be respectful, 6) Follow copyright laws, 7) Protect patient information, 8) Avoid politics, 9) Comply with all legal restrictions, and 10) Be aware of risks to personal privacy and security.

Of course, there is the HIPAA privacy rule, which was the first federal protection for the privacy of personal health information. The standards do apply to social media platforms, but HIPAA was enacted long before social media networks came into play, so there are no specific rules to serve as guidance.

Now, medical school instructors are taking it upon themselves to teach students the dangers of violating HIPAA when posting about patients.

Students at Harvard Medical School, for example, are told to ponder a question in their first week. Which is worse: posting a sweet patient story on Facebook that could lead to identification of the patient, or posting denigrating words about a patient that keeps him or her anonymous?

The correct answer? They’re both problematic.

“Even if the post is touching and shows empathy, it’s not the right forum to be doing that,” says Anthony Breu, MD, course co-director for the medical ethics and professionalism curriculum at Harvard. “And making denigrating comments, no matter how anonymous, reflects poorly on the profession.”

And while a student might understand this, there are other boundary issues to grapple with. For instance, is it ok to friend patients?

Most instructors answer this with a resounding “no.”

“We try to discourage students from engaging in social media with their patients,” says Gerardo Maradiaga, MA, a clinical ethicist at Wake Forest School of Medicine. That’s in part because connecting online with patients could trigger unanticipated privacy issues.

To drive home his point, Maradiaga poses a hypothetical scenario: A student becomes Facebook friends with a patient who says she has quit smoking. But the patient later posts a photo with a cigarette on her page. How will this information affect the way in which the student interacts with the patient?

“Is it ethical to access information that way?” Maradiaga asks. “And what does it do to the patient-student relationship? We talk about how that could feel like an invasion of their privacy and it can shake that trust.”

Maintaining professionalism

For some students, acceptance into medical school means a complete remaking of their social media presence. Perry Tsai, MD, PhD, national president of the AMSA, recommends that students create separate personal and professional Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts. He also recommends that students limit their posting to the medical field and advocacy initiatives on their professional accounts.

“I think promoting things that happen within your profession or within your institution is always great,” Tsai says. “Maybe professional achievements that your colleagues might have or research that’s come out.”

In addition to celebrating progress in medicine, students can use their social media accounts to connect with people who’ve had similar experiences.

“There are a lot of things that are challenging in the profession,” Tsai says. “While struggling with the stress of all the things we need to get done, we’re dealing with things like death and disability, dying and disease. Social media is sometimes a way to share those experiences in a general way.”

Texas A&M College of Medicine is working to steer students in the right direction. The college touches on social media issues both in the first and fourth years, encouraging students to evaluate their internet personas. In the first year, they hear from an ethicist and break into groups of 10 or 12 to discuss case examples. In the fourth year, they have a professionalism module that covers 10 musts and must nots, including social media topics. Internet practices also pop up at various times throughout the program, when ethics and professionalism are addressed.

All the while, instructors stress that judgments about what is and isn’t appropriate are almost entirely subjective, so it's better to be safe than sorry.

“We drill into their heads that professionalism begins the minute they step on campus. It doesn’t take a license.”

David Lambert, MD University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry

“The biggest underlying premise is there’s going to be a lot of judgment about what a person puts out there, and perception is reality,” Dickey says. “Their employers and their teams will have those judgements. If someone thinks there’s a problem, there’s a problem.”

At the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, students can ask questions about online behaviors through a school intranet site. The portal allows anonymous queries, so students don’t have to fear risking embarrassment.

Students also receive repeated instruction on internet conduct, starting during orientation week, says David Lambert, MD, senior associate dean for medical student education at the school.

“We drill into their heads that professionalism begins the minute they step on campus,” Lambert notes. “It doesn’t take a license.”

The upsides of social media

Despite the professional dangers it poses, the internet can be a place to form connections and dip into social justice advocacy work, says Jeanne Farnan, MD, MHPE, associate dean of evaluation and continuous quality improvement at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine.

“We don’t want to dampen their voice,” she says of students. “We just want them to use it in a professional way.”

“Our students are super active in issues around social justice. We don’t want to come at this conversation with ‘The 10 Commandments of Facebook.’ We just want them to recognize there can be consequences for what they post.”

Jeanne Farnan, MD University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine

Students and doctors have used social media to advocate for diversity in hospitals, gender equality, and universal health care, among other causes. There are Twitter chats specifically dedicated to uniting groups within the medical community, including a #WomenInMedicine chat. In addition, medical students have taken to social media to get their med school questions answered — Farnan says she’s advised students on Twitter whom she has never met. The @AAMCPreMed account helps aspiring doctors know what to expect from medical school and residency and uses hashtags to advocate for causes, including #BlackMenInMedicine.

“Our students are super active in issues around social justice,” Farnan says. “We don’t want to come at this conversation with ‘The 10 Commandments of Facebook.’ We just want them to recognize there can be consequences for what they post.”

On the whole, Farnan says, students seem to be moving toward a more productive approach to social media, often using it to become better doctors, more involved peers, and stronger patient advocates.

“It’s not as much a tool to post silly pictures,” Farnan says. “It’s more an avenue to unite as a group across the country.”

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