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drpepperhateblog · 1 year

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The Hogwarts Legacy boycott is the most counterproductive internet activism I’ve ever witnessed

Note: I’m not playing Hogwarts Legacy because I think the author is overrated and hasn’t been good in years. And well, again, feeling concerned about some of her opinions on transgender people.

With that said, finding it very interesting how everyone are harrassing anyone who dares to touch the game, whether by purchasing it or by playing a free copy or by pirating, due to the transphobic views of the author... On Twitter. Which is ran by Elon Musk. A transphobe.

Not just that, but Twitter most certainly on the regular hosts and spreads more antisemitic and transphobic views on their site than Hogwarts Legacy ever will...

I especially find it fascinating when tweets show they were sent from iPhones. You know, iPhones, primarily made in China, likely helping fund the genocide of Uighur Muslims.

If you choose to boycott the game for concerns over transphobia or antisemitism, then I do commend you for that. I’m a big proponent of the idea that people need to show their opinion with their wallets more often. Rejecting something you could’ve enjoyed because you don’t want to contribute to making the world a less safe to live is commendable. For the same reason I have a lot of respect for vegetarians and vegans. I could never do it. More power to you.

With that said, no one consumes cruelty-free in reality. You’ve probably eaten meat. Or used Twitter. Or had an iPhone. All things that you didn’t actually need to do in order to survive, but things you chose to do anyway.

Why did you? Likely because it’s impossible to care about all causes at once. No one is capable of doing so.

When deciding what to focus on, it’s likely a competition between what is easiest to give up and what cause you care the most about. Hogwarts Legacy is probably to most very easy to give up. To others, not so much. Which may sound silly, but then again, so is choosing Twitter (created by a transphobe) over going outside and touching some grass (created by Mother Earth who is likely not a transphobe). We all have something we’re attached to that we don’t actually need.

There’s an additional angle to this, though. Not only is it hypocritical to shame others for consuming in a way that could potentially fund something you consider harmful, but it’s also ineffective.

An aggressive approach is counterproductive.

Similarly to how you’re probably not going to make someone stop smoking by putting a cigarette out on their skin and yelling at them how they’re going to get cancer, sending death threats to people for playing a video game is unlikely to be effective either. Chances are they’ll double down. Note how some responses to this organized bullying has been “well then, I’m going to buy two copies”? Congratulations, the hydra grew two more heads and now the game earned even more money. Odd how you’d want to contribute to that if your concern is genuinely that buying the game could cause transgender people to die en masse.

Hogwarts Legacy became the best-selling game on Steam before even being released. Not just in spite of the boycott, but also in spite of the bad reputation of early access game releases.

Perhaps the biggest irony of it all is J.K. Rowling’s fear of transgender women surpressing cis women are now as a result of the boycott suddenly not looking so unwarranted. Women streamers have been pushed to tears. Girlfriend Reviews being an especially sad case, where a Jewish woman received a free copy of the game, donated any money earned from it to transgender charity, and yet was harrassed, threatened, blacklisted, and even had some accounts on social media shut down due to said boycotters making deliberately false reports of hate speech. I guess it wasn’t enough that J.K. Rowling herself got death threats and had a book written about her in which she dies a gruesome death. No, instead activists doubled down on the misogyny.

And it’s sad. It’s genuinely sad. A movement that should be about the freedom of loving and respecting people for who they are and who they choose to be has now instead become an authoritarian movement against wrongthink and a breeding ground for bullies and oppressors.

#hogwarts legacy #jk rowling #jkr #transphobia #lgbt #lgbtqiap #lgbt community #social justice

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allamericansbitch · 1 year

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Everything I've learned about Matty Healy has been deeply gross to me. I've liked Taylor Swift on and off throughout the years. And always liked her art. I don't call myself a Swifty because I don't agree with or defend all of her behavior. But I do follow her and know a lot about her and the fandom. So I feel like when I'm being critical of her, it's from an informed place, yk? But I see all these creators on Tik Tok, who aren't even fans, responding to this just for the content, and either saying things about her that aren't true, or responding with plain misogyny. So while I am just as troubled by her association with him and disappointed in her lack of vocal support for abortion rights and trans rights, I'm also concerned about people not being critical about the WAYS they are choosing to criticize her. Yes, she is very privileged. She and her family before her have benefited from capitalism and she makes being "a good business woman" part of her identity. She's benefited from this system. She surrounds herself with POC and queer performers on tour but then makes then share a stage with a bigot. She speaks out for social justice the loudest when she's effected by it, when the size of the platform she's worked to achieve and the values she's monetized in Miss Americana give her a responsibility to do more than that. (Tho I have my own opinions about celebrities not being the best demographic to be activists). All of this and more is worth approaching with critical thinking. But when people who only know surface level stuff about this and about her throw out misogynistic dog whistles like "she's Never been discriminated against" (she's been SA'd in her work place. That's definitely discrimination). Or she's "playing the victim" (a woman can make mistakes without being a calculated manipulator). Ultimately, while the situation is very different to 2016, I just don't want to see the same misogynistic dog pile we did back then. Where everybody that was already against her because they aren't comfortable with women being sucessful or talented jumps on top of valid criticism and dilutes it with bad faith vitriol. Ultimately I do want to see her showing the overt support at her concerts for the LGBTQIA community with her words as well as continued actions. Artists like Lizzo, Harry Styles, Panic! (back when they were touring), and so many others are speaking at their shows specifically about anti trans and anti abortion legislation and waving our flags. When people say it's a safety thing, I don't believe them because these other artists are doing it. Even if that's the intention, the effect is that space is being held at her shows for homophobes to buy a ticket and feel comfortable there. Again, I don't think celebrities make good activists. But I also think inadvertently catering to homophobia and racism goes against her stated values and I'd like her to address that. And for god's sake stop bringing Matty Healy on stage.

Asking anon jic somome wants to send me a death threat for not having the "right" thoughts about this.

yes! this is very well said and i agree. sadly there's always gonna be people who are just flat out sexist and will see the valid criticism she's getting and decide to join in their not-so valid narrative riddled with sexism and misogyny. the water always gets a little murky with these things.

this situation is 1000% different from the 2016 situation because that was powered by misogyny and the act of using her as a scapegoat for people's anger during the election, it wasn't really about her as a person but more of what she represented to people- which was a rich white person taking advantage of their privilege and not speaking on anything or using their platform for good. And I think the label they gave her as ‘always playing the victim’ was very aggressive for the time because while she had her moments, generally she wasn’t doing that and like you mentioned was a victim of many things.

However now I feel like we are very much inching too close to that and it’s making me nervous due to the amount of people who took that stance back then in 2016 and being like ‘I told you so! She’s playing the victim again’ because tbh I can totally see it being spun that way.

And to the great point you made about how bad people can feel safe at her shows, I’ve seen a few people point that out as well. I saw a video of someone who went to a show, saw people singing yntcd and then saying homophobic things in the parking lot after the show. I also understand the idea of her not speaking out as a safety thing… but her not speaking out makes others also not feel safe at her shows. Their safety is also important and, by Taylor not speaking out, she’s providing a space for them to feel threatened.

#answered #anonymous

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devalchineselitblog · 2 years

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10 novel about china

1.Wings of a Flying Tiger by Iris Yang

“World War Two. Japanese occupied China. One cousin’s courage, another’s determination to help a wounded American pilot. In the summer of 1942, Danny Hardy bails out of his fighter plane into a remote region of western China. With multiple injuries, malaria, and Japanese troops searching for him, the American pilot’s odds of survival are slim. Jasmine Bai, an art student who had been saved by Americans during the notorious Nanking Massacre, seems an unlikely heroine to rescue the wounded Flying Tiger. Daisy Bai, Jasmine’s younger cousin, also falls in love with the courageous American. With the help of Daisy’s brother, an entire village opens its arms to heal a Flying Tiger with injured wings, but as a result of their charity the serenity of their community is forever shattered. Love, sacrifice, kindness, and bravery all play a part in this heroic tale that takes place during one of the darkest hours of Chinese history.”

2.The Fat Years (Chan Koonchung)

The Fat Years is a science fiction book that tells of a dystopian future of China and its political landscape by Chinese author Chan Koonchung (陈冠中, 1952), and for many people, it’s one of the more important China fiction books that have come out the past decade. “After the world’s second financial crisis in 2013, the government clings to power only after it sends troops into the streets for a month of bloody killing. Finally, the government laces the water with a chemical that makes people feel happy and eager to spend money” (Johnson 2011). The book has never come out in mainland China. China columnist Didi Kirsten Tatlow said about The Fat Years: “Rarely does a novel tell the truth about a society in a way that has the power to shift our perceptions about that place in a certain way, but ‘The Fat Years’ does exactly that.”

3.Soul Mountain (Gao Xingjian)

In 1983 Chinese playwright, critic, fiction writer, and painter Gao Xingjian was diagnosed with lung cancer and faced imminent death. But six weeks later, a second examination revealed the cancer was gone, and he was thrown back into the world of the living. Faced with a repressive cultural environment and the threat of a spell in a prison farm, Gao fled Beijing and began a journey of 15,000 kilometers over a period of five months. The result of this epic voyage of discovery is Soul Mountain.

A bold, lyrical, prodigious novel, Soul Mountain probes the human soul with an uncommon directness and candor. Interwoven with a myriad of stories and countless memorable characters—from venerable Daoist masters and Buddhist nuns to mythical Wild Men, deadly Qichun snakes, and farting buses—is the narrator's poignant inner journey and search for freedom.

4.Red Sorghum: A Novel of China (Mo Yan)

Red Sorghum by Mo Yan (莫言, real name Guan Moye, 1955) is a novel that has become very famous both in- and outside of China, one of the reasons being that the renowned director Zhang Yimou turned the novel into a movie in 1988. The novel tells the story of a family’s struggles spanning three generations in Shandong from the 1920s to the 1970s, through the Japanese occupation and the Cultural Revolution. The sorghum fields are constantly present throughout the book – it is the heart of the home, the provider of food and wine, and the battleground of war. When Mo Yan became the winner of the 2012 Nobel prize in literature, some controversy erupted: Mo Yan is one of China’s most famous writers, but he is not a “social activist” or dissident, as many other internationally acclaimed Chinese artists and writers are. “Do cultural figures in China have a responsibility to be dissidents?” the Atlantic wrote in 2013. Perhaps the criticism was somewhat unfounded; after all, Mo Yan never asked to win the Nobel Prize. He said: “I hate partisan politics and how people gang up on opponents based on ideology. I like to come and go on my own, which allows me to look on from the sidelines with a clear mind and gain insight about the world and the human condition. I don’t have the capability or interest of becoming a politician. I just want to write, quietly, and do some charity work in secret. “ Mo Yan is also active on Weibo, where he sporadically shares his calligraphy.

5.WILD SWANS: THREE DAUGHTERS OF CHINA BY JUNG CHANG

The story of three generations in twentieth-century China that blends the intimacy of memoir and the panoramic sweep of eyewitness history—a bestselling classic in thirty languages with more than ten million copies sold around the world, now with a new introduction from the author.

An engrossing record of Mao’s impact on China, an unusual window on the female experience in the modern world, and an inspiring tale of courage and love, Jung Chang describes the extraordinary lives and experiences of her family members: her grandmother, a warlord’s concubine; her mother’s struggles as a young idealistic Communist; and her parents’ experience as members of the Communist elite and their ordeal during the Cultural Revolution.

Chang was a Red Guard briefly at the age of fourteen, then worked as a peasant, a “barefoot doctor,” a steelworker, and an electrician. As the story of each generation unfolds, Chang captures in gripping, moving—and ultimately uplifting—detail the cycles of violent drama visited on her own family and millions of others caught in the whirlwind of history.

6.Please Don’t Call me Human (Wang Shuo)

Wang Shuo (王朔, 1958) is one of China’s most popular and controversial authors, and is known as “the idol of rebellion for the youth” and a ‘celebrity writer’: most of his works have been turned into movies or TV series (Yao 2004, 432). Because of his cynism and bashing of literature elite, he became known as a “hooligan” writer who is quoted as saying things as: “The key is to make sure you f*ck literature and don’t let literature f*ck you.” Please Don’t Call Me Human is a satirical and surreal novel on “the worthlessness of the individual in the eyes of the totalitarian state” (Abrahamsen 2011) as the author writes about an Olympic-like Wrestling Competition where China is determined to win at any cost and where the so-called National Mobilization Committee strives to find a man to reclaim China’s honour and defeat the big western wrestler.

7.Imperial Woman by Pearl S. Buck

Imperial Woman is the fictionalized biography of the last Empress in China, Ci-xi, who began as a concubine of the Xianfeng Emperor and on his death became the de facto head of the Qing Dynasty until her death in 1908.Buck recreates the life of one of the most intriguing rulers during a time of intense turbulence.Tzu Hsi was born into one of the lowly ranks of the Imperial dynasty. According to custom, she moved to the Forbidden City at the age of seventeen to become one of hundreds of concubines. But her singular beauty and powers of manipulation quickly moved her into the position of Second Consort.Tzu Hsi was feared and hated by many in the court, but adored by the people. The Empress's rise to power (even during her husband's life) parallels the story of China's transition from the ancient to the modern way.

8.Monkey: The Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en

Probably the most popular book in the history of the Far East, this classic sixteenth century novel is a combination of picaresque novel and folk epic that mixes satire, allegory, and history into a rollicking adventure. It is the story of the roguish Monkey and his encounters with major and minor spirits, gods, demigods, demons, ogres, monsters, and fairies. This translation, by the distinguished scholar Arthur Waley, is the first accurate English version; it makes available to the Western reader a faithful reproduction of the spirit and meaning of the original.

The Chinese Bell Murders

(Judge Dee (Chronological order) #8)

by Robert van Gulik

Meet Judge Dee, the detective lauded as the "Sherlock Holmes of ancient China" — Fans of Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series will thrill to this reissue of the first volume in Robert van Gulik's classic Chinese Murders series. The Chinese Bell Murders introduces the great Judge Dee, a magistrate of the city of Poo-yang in ancient China.

In the spirit of ancient Chinese detective novels, Judge Dee is challenged by three cases. First, he must solve the mysterious murder of Pure Jade, a young girl living on Half Moon Street. All the evidence points to the guilt of her lover, but Judge Dee has his doubts. Dee also solves the mystery of a deserted temple and that of a group of monks' terrific success with a cure for barren women.

10.Fa Mulan: The Story of a Woman Warrior

by Robert D.

A retelling of the original Chinese poem in which a brave young girl masquerades as a boy and fights the Tartars in the Khan's army

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worlds-shortest-astronaut · 4 years

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Why continuing to support Ateez might actually be important/helpful for preventing cultural appropriation in the future

I would like to preface this by saying that I am a person of colour but I am not black. I can and do empathise with black Atiny though I also acknowledge that I cannot fully understand how this affects them. Pain and hurt is always valid and the black community have suffered in ways most of us have not.

At the same time, I am really sick and tired of ‘cancel culture’ and the lack of nuance when discussing issues such as cultural appropriation. They prevent us from having useful discussions and facilitating change. So let’s break down this issue:

The problem: In a promotional photo for their next comeback, Kim Hongjoong, the leader of Ateez, was styled with cornrows. This is a case of cultural appropriation.

The response: Fans emailed KQ Entertainment asking for this hairstyle to be changed and KQ responded saying a) this was not done with conscious effort to appropriate/insult another culture, but that they did it to fit with the concept, b) they cannot re-make any of the content that has been completed for album promotions, c) they will ensure that Hongjoong will not wear this hairstyle during album promotions and d) they will apply what they have learned to future comebacks and ensure that this will not happen again.

Reasons why KQ Entertainment was in the wrong:

Entertainment companies need to start putting resources into educating themselves and their artists. All you need is one (1) person who’s job it is to go over concept ideas. I don’t understand why RESEARCH INTO CONCEPT IDEAS AND THEIR ORIGINS isn’t an industry standard to begin with. It’s like when you’re writing a fictional story - you DO RESEARCH INTO STORY ELEMENTS. That should be a standard part of creating a ‘concept’ or styling any artist - where does this idea come from? is it COPYING or PLAGIARISING anyone? is it CULTURAL APPROPRIATION?

So, yes, KQ Entertainment made a grave mistake. Furthermore, their blunder is just the latest in a LONGGGG series of cultural appropriation and racism in K-pop. On top of that, this is a racially-sensitive time.

I did initially wonder why Hongjoong, who is an activist for multiple platforms and is very aware of how carefully they must navigate different cultures, didn’t point out that cornrows were not appropriate (esp since San said the members were very involved in this comeback). However, we have to remember that Hongjoong exists outside that culture, lives in a country/works in an industry that is notoriously racist/colourist, and would have seen other groups use that hairstyle (esp for Summer comeback - KoKoBop and Boom ring any bells?). I didn’t fully understand the problem with non-black people wearing cornrows (i just thought it was distasteful, fake and try-hard) until someone pointed out how every aspect of blackness has been stereotyped and criminalized. This is NOT something that most people are taught.

Reasons why people need to FUCKING SETTLE DOWN:

KQ Entertainment’s swift response to their fans was INCREDIBLE. Let me ask all you kpop multis: what did SM do in response to Kai’s dreadlocks and Chenle’s cornrows? There was no explicit apology. There was no attempt to explain themselves. There was no promise to change their behaviour in the future.

KQ Entertainment has shown that they are open to change and education. They have taken action in response to people calling them out. They have apologised for their actions and explained why changes to completed promotional changes cannot be made.

And now people are complaining that KQ haven’t done enough, sending death threats to Hongjoong and generally spreading a disgusting amount of hate.

Listen, regardless of how large an entertainment company is, it is highly unlikely that any of them would change promotional material that has already been completed this close to a comeback date. The money and time that requires is ridiculous. It would require pushing back the comeback date. A small company like KQ, whose world tour was recently CANCELLED, cannot afford to do that. And you may criticise them for choosing money over a ‘more important issue’ but let’s discuss how significant this issue is and the best way to facilitate change.

So we all agree that this is cultural appropriation and that cultural appropriation is bad. We also all agree that KQ has apologised and agreed to make feasible changes. Our response should be to welcome those changes.

If people just keep criticising the company and ‘cancelling’ them for their choices, then it becomes clear to the WHOLE INDUSTRY that trying to change things and negotiate with fans becomes pointless. They’re going to lose support regardless of what they do. This ‘all-or-nothing’ response is ridiculous.

Sensationalism and social media have made it really difficult to have a conversation that doesn’t involve two extremes at opposite ends of a spectrum. In reality, most issues should be viewed on a spectrum, in shades of grey. Responding with aggression and hate, labeling a company and their artists as racist because they’ve appropriated one aspect of a culture and publicly shaming them doesn’t help.

Anti-racism doesn’t mean being an “anti-fan”. EFFECTIVE anti-racism means calling out racists acts (which we’ve done), asking for change (done) and drawing attention to positive behaviours and alternative and reinforce these (WHICH WE ARE NOT DOING).

We have to give KQ Entertainment CONSTRUCTIVE criticism in response to their changes in order for them to recognise that THEY ARE DOING THE RIGHT THING.

Complications: The Harper Bazaar photo shoot - Hongjoong’s hair is styled in braids/cornrows for that photo shoot. It suggests that he was going to have that hairstyle for the majority of their promotions. However, these are still part of promotional material had been completed prior to the teaser photo being dropped. KQ Entertainment truly did not have the time to change it.

Yes, it looks bad. Yes, KQ Entertainment fucked up. But unless we continue to support Ateez and give them constructive criticism that they can REALISTICALLY APPLY, change will not occur. This is a first step. WE have given Ateez and KQ the opportunity to set a NEW PRECEDENT for the industry. WE have given Ateez and KQ to set a NEW STANDARD.

They can ONLY do this if WE continue to support them and give them a chance to SUCCEED.

(P.S. - if you’re sending hate to Hongjoong [and there HAVE been death threats] you are cruel and mean as well as implicit in preventing his education)

#ateez #thanks for coming to my ted talk #god this is ridiculous #kimg hongjoong #park seonghwa #jeong yunho #kang yeosang #choi san #song mingi #jeon wooyoung #choi jongho #kq entertainment

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terfetuloa · 3 years

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I recently 'peaked' and started doing feel how you do about libfeminism too. I still struggle with this fear that I'm buying into some kinda fascist rhetoric (even though there's no evidence for that) but it makes me happy that there's a community on here of women, many lesbians and woc, who are speaking their mind freely

Hey anon! Beforehand, lemme apologize for replying to you this late, the past days were a bit hectic for me. I sincerely hope for this reply to reach you somehow.

I'm glad you peaked! It's a hard and confusing process, mixed with disappointment over lots of stuff you've done before 'waking up' and towards people and discourses around you that consider your new opinions as something too extreme, hateful, or even devoid of serious analysis (as if you're just an irrational hateful person who can't think straight). When I first started to question my beliefs regarding gender ideology and trans rhetoric my immediate response to my doubts was to tell myself that I wasn’t a bad person.

When you're systematically conditioned to hate the evil terfs and to shudder at the mention of radical feminism and terms alike, it's hard to get rid of this impression once you start to realize you're probably one of the evil terves. I had feelings along the lines of "I'm probably leaning towards radfem, but I'm not like them, I can be gender-critical and be a good person". See the problem? Lots of women full of doubts will never approach radical feminism and gender-critical concepts because it's rooted on their very core that said ideas are essentially evil, regressive, even fascist.

I understand your fears, but after months interacting with radfems and TRAs I can assure you I never saw any radical feminist advocating for trans people to lose civil rights (like healthcare, housing, a job) or sending them rape and death threats, orchestrating campaigns for them to lose their jobs and to boycott their business... While all of this was already done by TRAs against women. As I said in my pinned post, I believe that there are trans people minding their own business, trying to live their best lives without claiming rights at the expense of female sex-based rights. But trans ideology on its political aspect is harmful. Harmful to women as their politics deny them their female-only spaces (like shelters, bathrooms, sports), erase language concerning female reality (by saying "people who menstruate", "people with wombs", "people with vulvas"), by hurting children, especially gender non-conforming young girls (by reinforcing the idea they have to get hysterectomies/mastectomies, puberty blockers that will ruin their physical development, testosterone with its everlasting effects)...

I see trans ideology as a selfish liberal agenda that only reinforces the ties within which patriarchy holds women submissive. Try to ask a trans activist about what's a woman and be ready to listen 1) circular definitions (a woman is a woman), 2) stereotypical aspects of femininity as equivalent to womanhood (women are fragile, delicate, they like pink and makeup), 3) the "lady brain" argument (neurosexism), 4) the transcendental argument (a woman is a feeling)... And we know that's not why we're women. We're women because we're adult human females. The material reality of my body explains why I was socialized a certain way, why I'm the target of some specific forms of violence. Yes, across cultures gender roles change and the perceptions of what "looks like" a woman or a man too. But the material reality of what is a woman and a man doesn't change.

What makes me a woman is the same thing that defines what's a woman in Sri Lanka, Ghana, Austria, or even in an isolated indigenous tribe in the middle of Bolivia. You know this, everybody knows this, even those too delusional to raise the trans flag know this. If they didn't they wouldn't be so eager to crucify women daring to say the truth, desperately trying to change the meaning or words, and coercively trying to change reality. To call out a woman for stating facts about her material reality accusing her of being a bigot, someone equivalent to a nazi is PURE MISOGYNY. Most of the time you don't even have to say "trans women are men" to receive your Evil Terf badge. You just have to say "women menstruate" or anything related to your experiences as a female. And the backlash is HUGE. So, who are the fascists here? Not the women raising their voices against a male-centered movement trying to pass as an oppressed minority whose tormentors are "privileged cis" women.

So don't feel afraid, you're not aligning yourself with a fascist movement. It's hard to act based upon what we feel in a world where critical women are haunted down like witches (side note: curious how "oppressed queer people" have such power under capitalism, right?), but you can try to see if you're lucky enough to have any of your irl friends agreeing with you, you can go anonymous and ask questions, you can create a side blog and make new friends... There are lots of smart women here to listen to your questions and share their experiences. Eventually, your fear will pass and you'll find yourself. Be safe, anon.

#drop the t #terf safe #terfs please touch #terfs please interact #peak trans #ask

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kidyeda · 4 years

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Here all in English > Filmmaker, professor and black panther veteran Jamal Joseph about the long tradition of police violence and structural racism.IT IS THE SAME MACHINE The former activist of the “Black Panther” Jamal Joseph is not surprised at the racism of the American police - and recommends lessons from the history of the protest movements

Police violence against African Americans has attracted worldwide attention and mass protests, according to a video that showed the brutal death of George Floyd during an arrest in Minneapolis. Before the current "Black Lives Matter" movement, the Black Panther Party organized the resistance in the 1960s and 1970s. The SZ spoke to the filmmaker, professor and black panther veteran Jamal Joseph about the long tradition of police violence and structural racism.

When you saw the video of a white policeman kneeling on the neck of handcuffed George Floyd until he died - were you shocked?

Jamal Joseph: It broke my heart, but it didn't surprise me at all. Historically, the police see themselves as an institution of occupation, the aim of which is to intimidate the African American population. Your job is to protect the ruling class and their property. Their racism is the legacy of slavery. At that time, it was taught that we African Americans were not fully-fledged people, and the police took over controlling the slaves and catching lost people.

And the police have not yet been able to free themselves from this mentality?

The policeman kneeling on George Floyd would not have shown this murderous behavior to a dog - for example, if the animal had bitten someone. What does it say about the appreciation of black life that you treat animals more gently?

Hundreds of thousands of African Americans and whites are taking to the streets. Did the protests hang solely on police violence?

No, the story is long: Police officers recently murdered a sleeping woman (Briona Taylor) in her bed after storming the wrong apartment. Another African American (Ahmaud Arbery) was unlucky enough to jog in the wrong neighborhood. The cases have one thing in common: a human being is denied all humanity because of his skin color. This racism reaches into the structures: It is no coincidence that the Covid 19 crisis has hit disproportionately many African Americans.

What could help defeat this age-old racism?

President Trump has instigated many of his followers, especially those from the poorer white underclass, to believe that their brown, black, Asian, or Spanish-speaking people are to blame for their problems. The rulers fear nothing more than cooperation across racial boundaries. This was done by, for example, the Black Panther leader Fred Hampton (murdered by the police in his sleep) in Chicago in the late 1960s: In his Rainbow Coalition, he led poor blacks, Latinos and whites to recognize that they all work under the same mechanisms of capitalism suffer and could only overcome them together. We will not be able to convert Trump fanatics. But I rely on their children who go to colleges and high schools to start a new Rainbow Coalition with them.

When you were a young leader of the Black Panther Party in New York, the FBI declared them terrorists and white-haters. Does the right-wing strive today against the same prejudices against the Black Lives Matter movement?

I have to think of my first day as a black panther recruit: I came to their office and expected them to hand me a gun to shoot a white man if necessary. But they handed me a stack of books: From Malcolm X to Frantz Fanon. And then they explained to me that it was not about skin colors, but about the common class struggle. In other words, the unequal distribution of property and power. And that the capitalist machinery benefits from the disunity of the exploited. That's why the Black Panthers were violently beaten, while racial segregation organizations like the Ku Klux Klan remained untouched.

Does Donald Trump continue this agenda today?

Yes, he wants to label the protesters as left-wing radicals, criminals and terrorists. Therefore, everyone who goes to demonstrate must be careful. Sometimes agents provocateurs want to tempt people to riot, some come from the anarchist camp and have no political agenda.

What is the difference between the protests today and the former organized resistance of the Black Panther?

Many of the youngsters who are marching today are angry and frustrated, but have virtually no political education. Their instinct tells them to see a chain of stores or a police station as symbols of oppression. But when they set fire to buildings, overturn cars, loot shops, they are stuck with the rage of the moment. I understand these rebellious instincts all too well. A long-term movement should go beyond the mere reaction.

What might it look like?

As Black Panther, we were present in the affected communities, launching programs such as breakfast for schoolchildren and vaccination campaigns. The fight against police violence was only point seven of our ten-point program. It's not enough to send a few Instagram messages when the police kill someone again. We were also there at the time, when the landlord threatened to put someone on the street, organized rent strikes, informed people about the causes of misery in the poor black neighborhoods and how they could organize themselves. Today more than ever, we need black leaders to take on these tasks.

Is that why you run your youth initiative called the Impact Repertory Theater in Harlem?

Our teenagers not only play theater, but learn to understand the problems in the community beyond mere symptoms - such as police brutality, racism and poverty. How can you promote change given the structures? We need programs that enable people to heal, live and work in dignity, while addressing major societal problems.

As for police violence: There are also pictures of police officers kneeling down with the demonstrators, expressing their solidarity. Doesn't that speak for the conservative media claim that all you have to do is sort out the bad apples?

I've seen a lot of decent police officers. Police officers who talk to people in the neighborhood and refer them to social workers instead of handcuffing them. However, the problem with police violence is institutional. Even President Obama was unable to reform racist institutions such as the police or the prison industry.

As a university professor, are you still being disrespected by the police because of your skin color?

As an African American, you always have to be on your guard. I recently witnessed a scene where police officers handcuffed and beat a young African American. I stopped and asked, as matter-of-factly as possible, why: It turned out that they suspected him of stealing the bike he was traveling on, although he could show that it was his own. In the end, I narrowly escaped arrest - even though everyone in the community knows me.

You are a karate teacher and once even trained the rap star Tupac Shakur, your godchild. What do you recommend to your youngsters to protect themselves against police attacks?

I always advise them to keep their emotions in check: do you want your name to be the next hashtag? In a boxing or karate fight, you also have to keep a cool head when your opponent hits you on the nose. So you need training and discipline to fall back on a learned technique in an emergency. As absurd as it may sound, we community leaders are responsible for teaching our young people how to best survive in the face of the threat of their own police force.

Can one at least credit Donald Trump's presidency for bringing the various protest groups together through his aggressive policies?

It is the oppression that brings us together. In the end, however, the solution will not come from above. No politician can fix this system. Rather, I rely on the strengthening of a new grass root activism. Because Black Lives Matter - despite all criticism - has had some success: Since then, many police departments have provided training on how to deal with suspects in a civil way. There are panels where police officers meet with community representatives. And there are prosecutors who are ready to indict. In the past, murders like the one against George Floyd would never have been atoned for. ★★★★★★★★★★★★★

Jamal Joseph joined the Black Panther Party in 1967 in Harlem when he was 15. In 1968 he was jailed and became one of the youngest Black Panther leaders. During another five-and-a-half-year prison sentence for escaping a robbery in which two police officers were shot, he earned two degrees and wrote several plays. The photo was taken fifty years ago, in June 1970.

RESISTANCE !

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freecityradio · 4 years

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Brian Aboud on pandemic, risk society and impacts for refugees

Today got the opportunity to speak with Brian Aboud, a professor at Vanier College, for the Free City Radio interview series. Brian stresses here the importance of thinking about how this pandemic will impact vulnerable communities, particularly Syrian and Palestinian refugees, as many families in Montreal are directly connected to communities in the impacted region. Also a note to say that Médecins Sans Frontières / أطباء بلا حدود في لبنان is sending doctors to the front lines in Iran and does provide direct health support for impacted communities in Lebanon, Turkey and beyond, for people who don't have access to health systems. I personally know people in the Beirut office at MSF, who are excellent, dedicated and extremely hard working, if you can donate, please do.

Brian is a community activist and researcher, who has worked for many years on issues of migrant justice, both contemporary and historic, including the documentation of the living history of Montreal's Syrian community, dating back to the late 1800s. Brian is one of the co-founders of Tadamon!

Over the years, when crazy events happen, I have really valued speaking with Brian, who always has meaningful, kind and pointed insights. Documented this exchange for the Free City Radio series on the pandemic.

Brian stresses here the importance of thinking about how this pandemic will impact vulnerable communities, particularly Syrian and Palestinian refugees. Also Brian highlights the ways that modern capitalist practices, in relation to the environment, will lead to more and more extremely dangerous scenarios. In this context highlighting the work of Mining Watch Canada which has been consistently documenting the malpractices of Canadian mining companies around the world and within Canada's colonial borders in regards to indigenous lands, all mining practices that contribute to the destruction of the environment and natural areas.

Stefan : How you feeling about what has been happening ?

Brian : This is a product of the last century.

I have been very influenced, in regards to interpreting threats and hazards within the contemporary time, by a German sociologist named Ulrich Beck, who published a book in the 1980s called "Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity." It has become a much bigger influence than expected. It was published right before the Chernobyl disaster.

It is an account of how societies were changing as a result of the impacts of modernization and industrialization, during the period of increased industrialization in the late 19th century and throughout the 20th century of course.

This book looks at the unintended consequences of this industrialization. So looking at the risk society, which was emerging throughout this time, replacing the scarcity society that emerged in the industrial period and the class society. Not that class is disappearing, not at all, the circumstances of most individuals today is still most strongly determined by class, but the vulnerability, exposure to unwanted occurrences of danger are shifting all over, facing many. Of course class circumstances expose you, working class are exposed to more vulnerability, especially now.

With the welfare state, the vulnerabilities lessened a little in the second half of the 20th century, as compared to the early 20th century, although major vulnerabilities still exist, especially in the global south, the production zone of the western world.

Stefan : But due to reckless policies that are expanding, risk is becoming larger in scale, first for the working classes there was these threats, but now that threat is becoming more across the board ?

Brian: Yes.

What is emerging, in late modernity, is the mass exposure to industrial risks, all the ways we are exposed to toxins, pollution and pesticides, are among the new risks related to industrial life.

The quintessential example is radioactivity, this was even before Chernobyl. These are unprecedented risks that human beings at large have no clear strategy of fully protecting themselves from. Chernobyl was the greatest disaster from industrialization in the 20th century.

Now we are seeing something on the same level, but global, although the impacts of the nuclear disasters also continue to impact.

Stefan : Like in Fukushima, Japan ?

Brian : Yes. Fukushima was also so highly destructive and dangerous, it continues to be actually. Chernobyl was far greater in proportion, but both incidents were bad, both disasters.

Today, COVID 19 makes me think about the ways that Chernobyl was experienced, because people today and in 1986 are facing death from a source that you can't face, you can't see and that you can't exactly understand. In Chernobyl the proximate zones of radioactivity equaled mass exposure to radioactivity and many were in very serious danger.

I keep thinking about how people faced the threat, Chernobyl, and how people are facing the threat now.

Stefan : How are they similar for you ? Why is this reference important ?

Brian : People have a similar emotional reaction, in a way, because you can't see the threat, but you know there is something out there.

Stefan : Both COVID 19 and Chernobyl being products of modern society. Well, of course radioactivity is much more lethal immediately and in the long term, obviously. With this virus it seems most people will survive, but many will not, while it is also truly a global situation.

Brian : Emotionally there is a connection, in terms of the social impact of an invisible threat.

Stefan : Thankfully today information is shared more quickly and people are more aware.

Brian : Yes, people are more aware of the threat than in April 1986.

Stefan : Why is it important to think about COVID 19 in regards to industrial society ?

Brian : My query is how this might be the product of industrial society. Trying to figure this out. What is different today is that COVID 19 is different from the general types of risks that we are use to in industrial society.

Stefan : This risk presents a different framework ?

Brian. Yes. Industrial societies that we have built, that we have constructed, they are impacting nature so deeply, but we don't have the biological defences now to interact with animals in this way.

Stefan : Also we don't have the social and institutional tools to adequately address situations like this pandemic.

Relating to urban areas encroaching into the natural world more and more, with so many areas on earth also becoming scenes of massive industrial scale projects, mines, industrial corporate farming, these projects are often done without regard to the surrounding environments that balance life.

MiningWatch Canada tracks in solid detail the ways that these types of malpractices are carried out by Canadian mining companies.

Brian : The unbalanced relationship between human beings and the natural world is at the root of this. Even though, the use of animals and plants, is related to the human production of culture, generally speaking, these frameworks of human culture are totally different in the last decades, as compared to any other point in history.

Stefan : This has consequences ?

Brian : Yes.

Stefan : It make think about the changes that happened to laws in China around the consumption of wild animals, there were actual changes around the ways that wild animals would be consumed, legally in the 1970s due to mass poverty. Vox had a good video on this, but don't fully trust Vox, obviously.

So the framework of time has changed, first trains, and now then planes. Human conceptions of distance, place and time have all changed, and this shift has become global, across all societies, and it just fells like this shift, shaped by contemporary capitalism, can't be sustained.

Brian : Yes, there is that recklessness in this cultural framework that is now global, in human beings dealing with the natural world. A pretension about the human relationship with the natural world and how the needs and desires of humanity should take precedent over everything.

Stefan : Given you have worked so much on supporting human rights and social justice in Syria, in Palestine. How do you think that this virus will impact communities so deeply impacted by war, in Syria and in Palestine, people in the refugee camps on the border of Turkey and Greece.

Brian : Today, there is this sense of worry in the western world, people wanting products, they don't want to run out of, products that make any life a little easier, I get that.

Stefan : But to prop up this system in the west, many communities globally are disregarded ?

Brian : Yes. Many populations are disregarded. The response here is totally understandable, so when people here are faced with this unknown, there is a massive reaction.

But. I keep thinking of the Syrians who have faced so much peril and much of the world hasn't acted to stop the war that also threatened people.

Stefan : In a life and death way, right ?

Brian : Exactly.

In Africa, the threat of Ebola, only became an emergency when it seemed that it might touch western borders, less when it impacted people in Africa, Western Africa particularly.

All the suffering that people in Syria, in Palestine, have faced is something to consider now.

Stefan : That threat of death has been constant for many ?

Brain : Yes.

Stefan : There is an institutional challenge, I feel the left is facing, a crisis of action, in dealing with institutionally and power.

Feel that Democratic Socialists of America are attempting to explore this question, the campaigns of Bernie Sanders / Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. How to deal with power, especially in a time of crisis. Not sure the response that is best, but the state, in Canada, even now, continues to work to bail out the banks and oil companies.

Finding ways to shift the motions of powerful institutions in society, to deconstruct them (banks + corporations), seems very important now. Also the importance of expanding and developing public institutions, like health care facilities.

#covid19 #syria #refugees #endgame #aoc #bernie

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ilovecandy97 · 5 years

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Fandom and Fan Activism

Alright everybody! A little late but still fabulous, here’s the topic for this week’s post; Fandom and Fan Activism!

In any context, it is safe to say that we are all fans of something where someone is obsessed with a popular star, pop singer, basketball player, vlogger etc. Similarly, fandom acts as an alternate social community allowing fans with the same preferences to collaborate and interact with each other.

I have always been a die hard fan of Taylor Swift, so lets talk about Swifties! Taylor Swift has been known as one of the most famous artists in the music industry and Swifties are known as her loyal fanbase as a social group. Whenever you think of Taylor swift, you imagine a country girl with the curls and the voice and us singing along to her infamous ‘Love story’ thinking about our high school crushes. The Swifties not only communicate offline through concerts and meet and greets but on online platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr. Individually most fans have subscribed to various channels representing her to be up to date on her latest news and whereabouts.

Not my best preference but lets move on to ‘Beliebers’ where his fan base assume that all his songs are perfection and are ‘bops’ and they start online wars with fans of the infamous One Direction. Fans of Justin Bieber of Belibers go as far as sending death threats to people who post negative comments about him or dislike his music. A very extreme form of fandom was seen was when his fans cut themselves or self harmed when they learnt about his weed usage.

Another example of an extreme form of fandom is where a tragic incident took place in Mendoza Godoy Cruz where a child committed suicide while listening to Linkin Park just a week after Chester Bennington hung himself, where the boy mimicked the same by hanging himself from a roof hook, (Lefler 2018).

There are positive impacts of of fan communities in society. Fans share the same fundamental psychological, social and cultural premises and consequences where they construct their own culture from content appropriated through mass media which allows fan to reshape them to satisfy their own line of interests. In general terms, many fandoms are formed around the concept of teen media such as Twilight, The Fault in our Stars . Fandoms allow fans to feel more involved through such fandoms to express themselves on an emotional level. Often these are considered to be quite performative fandoms where people express themselves more. It allows fans to feel a better sensef belonging as they are able to be identified among a larger community and provide a sense of identification within a larger community which is a psychological need for all humans which is apparent in fan groups.

Studies have shown that being identified with a sports team has shown to act as a tool to battle depression and estrangement where it allows them to be involved in discussions, common conversations to not succumb to peer pressure. Music fans have the benefit of dopamine which is released from their favorite music. Cosplay fans also benefits in ways of self appreciation and forming a sense of self confidence where a study revealed that cosplay fans are all about the initial excitement about how good they were going to look wearing costumes, (Sloat 2015).

Lastly fan activism is another ongoing trend that is popular among teens as of recent years. One such example is the Harry Potter Alliance, which was established in the year 2005 by an activist named Andrew Slack, who was inspired by the student activist organization Dumbledore’s Army in the Harry Potter narratives. This community claims to mobilize over 100,000 young people across the States not exclusively. Harry Potter fans to work for diverse causes including literacy, equality and human rights.

Invisible child is another community formed around a movie about rough cut documents on the civil war in Uganda which mainly focuses around the hardships faced by child soldiers in the Lord’s Resistance Army. Compared to HPA where it focuses on building on popular culture texts and existing fan community, this organization was created for an activist goal.

Therefore, fan and fandom, fan activism can be a really good thing for teens to get involved in if they use and adopt to it the right way, rather than getting too obsessed and causing themselves any harm due to an extreme amount of dedication towards a particular fandom.

References

Sloat, S, 2015, “Science Explains...Why Being a Fan is Good for you”, Inverse.com, viewed 3rd November 2019, <https://www.inverse.com/article/7120-science-explains-why-being-a-fan-is-good-for-you>

Lefler, R, 2018, “What’s Toxic Fandom, and What Creates It?”, Reel Rundown, viewed 3rd November 2019, <https://reelrundown.com/misc/5-Factors-that-Can-Cause-Toxic-Fandom-to-Arise>

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#mda20009 #week8 #weekly blog #bloggerlife

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berniesrevolution · 6 years

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JACOBIN MAGAZINE

Socialism is on the upswing right now. And whenever radicalism has been on the rise over the past century, that has also meant that something else has gone on the rise: state repression, often at the hands of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

That certainly was the case in the New Left era. In their book A Threat of the First Magnitude: FBI Counterintelligence and Infiltration from the Communist Party to the Revolutionary Union — 1962-1974, Aaron Leonard and Conor Gallagher tell a shocking and even gripping story of how the FBI did everything it could to destroy leftist groups emerging from the ferment of the student, civil rights, and antiwar movements. The book is a follow-up to their first book Heavy Radicals: The FBI’s Secret War on America’s Maoists and is based on a huge number of documents (many of which are included in the book) obtained from the bureau on a variety of left groups and activists.

At times, A Threat of the First Magnitude reads more like true crime than leftist history. The laundry list of FBI tactics for disrupting radical groups is incredibly long, and the reader often feels hot on the trail of infiltrators of these organizations — even at the highest levels of their leadership — as Gallagher and Leonard put together the pieces of how and why the FBI disrupted them.

At a recent event at the Seminary Co-op Bookstore in Chicago, Jacobin managing editor Micah Uetricht spoke with Aaron Leonard about what they found and what lessons leftists today can take from his book. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Micah Uetricht:

This book is a follow-up to another book that you wrote, Heavy Radicals, and both of them are about the FBI’s “secret war” on American radicals. Remind us what the FBI’s relationship to radicals in the United States has historically been.

Aaron Leonard:

The FBI serves the role of the secret police in the United States. It has some peculiar features. They are charged with maintaining internal security, ferreting out foreign spies, along with organized crime and things like that.

But really the history of the FBI in the twentieth century has been largely a battle with communism. J. Edgar Hoover cut his teeth in the twenties during the first red scare. Into the thirties and forties, the Communist Party became a big force and the FBI was the big counter. Then into the upsurge of the sixties with the New Left and then the Maoist and pro-Castroist New Communist Movement, it was the FBI that was on the job along with local police intelligence departments.

Micah Uetricht:

The FBI project that most are familiar with is Cointelpro. But this book isn’t about the kinds of actions we usually associate with Cointelpro.

Aaron Leonard:

Our book is actually about two things: informants that have elevated themselves to the very top of radical organizations, and about counterintelligence. The FBI invoked that term as a proactive way to undermine forces, to destroy and neutralize those organizations. The big example of Cointelpro from our book is the Ad Hoc Committee for a Scientific Socialist Line, later called the Ad Hoc Committee for a Marxist-Leninist Party.

What most people know about counterintelligence is this program that was developed in the mid to late sixties, which targeted groups like the Black Panther Party, the Puerto Rican Independence Movement, the New Left and other forces. It involved a lot of dirty tricks and it’s really creepy stuff. There’s the famous example of sending a phony letter to Martin Luther King encouraging him to kill himself.

It’s appalling stuff but it’s a very small fraction of what the FBI actually does.

We set out to give people a better picture what this counterintelligence stuff is. We got all these documents after writing our first book, which was focused more specifically on the largest Maoist group in the United States, the Revolutionary Union. The second book [came from] looking at these documents.

What we saw was that these informants had gotten to the very top of leftist organizations.

A revelation we had while researching the book was that wiretapping comes when there isn’t human intelligence. If you and I are having a conversation, and I’m an informant, I can give a much better recreation to my handlers. I can also maneuver you in the conversation. I can testify in court, theoretically, although many informants won’t.

We realized there was a kind of methodology. When there are not live people, there’s a premium on electronic surveillance.

Micah Uetricht:

Can you talk a bit about that methodology? When I was starting the book, I thought of a informant or an infiltrator as being a beefy guy in the back of the room. He’s got his aviator shades down. He’s sitting low. That’s not who you profile in the book. You profiled people at the very highest levels of these left organizations.

Aaron Leonard:

I was in the Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party for a very long time. I left and was in a position then of reflecting on it from the standpoint of an outsider. One of the myths among the New Communist Movement was you can’t really avoid informants. The best thing you can do is make them work for you.

That led us back to Roman Malinovsky, an informant in the Bolshevik Party. Malinovsky is referred to by Lenin in “Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder.” Lenin says, on the one hand, Malinovsky sent thousands of committed Bolsheviks to prison and death. On the other, tens of thousands were recruited to the party. He’s a template for why we don’t need to worry about informants. He’s on the central committee of the Bolshevik Party. He’s their representative on the international. He is one of three people charged with ferreting out spies in the Bolshevik Party. Yet he’s an informant.

Lenin saw in Malinovsky what he wanted to see: a working class guy who was an intellectual and was willing to fight for the cause. But I had to review [Lenin’s] logic.

If Malinovsky actually did more good than harm for the Bolsheviks because he was a good party member as well as an informant, then by that logic, let’s have twenty Malinovskys. Maybe we ought to just have all police informants because then, jeez, we can seize state power. The logic does not hold.

(Continue Reading)

#politics #the left #jacobin #jacobin magazine #FBI #mass surveillance

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newstfionline · 6 years

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‘There’s No Law’: Political Crisis Sends Nicaraguans Fleeing

By Kirk Semple, NY Times, Aug. 6, 2018

MANAGUA, Nicaragua--There is always a line outside the main passport office, often with several hundred people or more clutching documents and manila folders. It starts forming well before dawn. The demand is so great that it has bred a cottage industry of hustlers here in the capital who camp out on the sidewalk and sell places in line to the highest bidder.

It is one of many indications that something is gravely wrong here in Nicaragua.

With a violent political crisis that has ruined the economy and challenged President Daniel Ortega’s hold on power, people are fleeing the country in droves.

“It’s a terrible reality,” said Miltón, 36, who was far back in line, and asked that his surname not be published for fear of government reprisals. “It’s not a sustainable country.”

Nicaragua suddenly exploded in mid-April, when Mr. Ortega’s government announced changes to the social security program, setting off nationwide street protests that quickly turned violent. Demonstrators clashed with security forces and barricaded roadways across the nation, bringing commerce to a halt.

Human rights advocates contend that at least 300, and maybe as many as 450 people, have been killed and thousands wounded since the protests began, and that the vast majority were demonstrators shot by the police or by paramilitary forces working in concert with the authorities.

The government has also used torture and arbitrary detentions to crush dissent, according to officials in the Roman Catholic Church and members of the opposition, which has expanded to include business leaders angry at the president’s heavy-handed approach.

The Nicaraguan Pro-Human Rights Association, an advocacy group, said that nearly 600 people, mainly opponents to the government, had been kidnapped and that hundreds more were missing and possibly “disappeared.”

In the face of the government crackdown, street protests, once a daily occurrence, have subsided, replaced by the occasional peaceful march. But the crisis has entered a new phase, colored by widespread dread and a paralyzing uncertainty over what comes next.

“Total anxiety,” said Msgr. Carlos Avilés Cantón, the vicar general of the Archdiocese of Managua. “Every day waking up and asking, ‘How many deaths?’ Death, death, death. That’s what makes you sad.”

Talks between the government and the opposition fell apart last month, putting a political solution further out of reach. The government has continued to hunt down and jail opponents, and many observers, including the United Nations, worry that a new antiterrorism law is being used to criminalize members of the opposition, including those protesting peacefully.

“We’re in a very difficult stage,” said Álvaro Leiva, the director of the Nicaraguan Association. “It’s the stage of repression.”

Hundreds of protest leaders have gone into hiding or fled the country. Mr. Leiva said his team members had been threatened--it is unclear by whom--and forced to move out of their homes and sleep in a network of safe houses.

Mr. Ortega, who has refused the opposition’s demands to step down or hold early elections, has responded with a publicity blitz, giving interviews to several international news organizations, in which he has deflected blame for the bloodshed and sought to convey that the country is returning to normal.

But even some of Mr. Ortega’s closest allies acknowledge that Nicaragua is a mess. In an interview with The New York Times late last month, Paul Oquist, the minister private secretary for national policy, recognized the sense of fear and uncertainty in Nicaraguan society--on both sides of the conflict.

He seemed particularly concerned about the damage the nation’s economy had suffered, calling it “enormous.”

“We have to see what can be salvaged,” he lamented.

Tens of thousands of workers have been furloughed or laid off. Thousands of companies have closed. Foreign direct investment has nearly halted, and credit has been choked off.

The tourism industry has suffered widespread layoffs as the flow of international visitors has slowed to barely a trickle, and international airlines have slashed the number of inbound flights. About 80 percent of the country’s small hotels, which provide the vast majority of rooms, are closed, as are about a third of the country’s restaurants, said Lucy Valenti, the president of Nicaragua’s National Tourism Chamber.

“The first thing tourists look for is security,” Ms. Valenti said. “And we can’t guarantee that they will find security in Nicaragua.”

In Granada, a jewel of Nicaragua’s once-vibrant tourism industry, the colonial streets used to be full of visitors from abroad, visiting churches, tooling around in horse-drawn carriages or relaxing in its courtyard cafes. But on a recent afternoon, there wasn’t a tourist in sight.

Osman Guadamuy, languishing in the cab of his horse carriage in Granada’s central square, said business had never been so bad. In a week, he had been hired by tourists only once: a Mexican couple who wanted a tour of the city.

If he sold his horses, that might support his family through the rest of the year, at which he point, he said, he would probably have to migrate to Costa Rica.

The moribund state of affairs here in Nicaragua becomes most apparent at night, particularly in Managua and other cities, when fear of paramilitary forces and criminals taking advantage of the disorder drives Nicaraguans indoors.

Businesses start closing in the midafternoon and employees head home. By dusk, restaurants and bars have gone dark, and a de facto curfew goes into effect.

“We feel like prisoners in our houses,” said Xochilt Aguirre, the general manager of the Hotel Plaza Colón in Granada.

Throughout Nicaragua, lives have been turned upside down. At the beginning of the year, Laura Flores had a thriving yoga business and a new landscaping company. Then the crisis erupted.

Nearly all of her yoga clients fled the country, as did most of her closest friends. Her nascent landscaping business dried up, and as the body count mounted, she began to fear for her own safety.

“My independence went to hell,” she said. She has decided to join relatives in the United States.

José, a barber who was afraid to give his last name, said he had received death threats for posting criticism of the Ortega administration on his social media accounts. He closed his business and fled his home.

He said men disguised in balaclavas had appeared at his house, forced their way past his wife and two young children and ransacked the place, as well as his barbershop.

“I’m scared they’re going to do something,” he said. “They kill, they imprison, they torture.”

“There’s no law in Nicaragua,” he added. “There’s no law that can defend you.”

Most people seem to agree that the best way out of the crisis is through political negotiation, not weapons. Opposition leaders, government officials, human rights activists, international diplomats, people in the street--they all speak of the need for “dialogue.”

“Neither side can impose a settlement on the other, because that would not end the violence,” Mr. Oquist said.

It is hard to gauge how much support Mr. Ortega has. But those who do support him cite his arguments that he was legitimately elected, that the Constitution should govern whether he stays or leaves, and that the opposition is at fault for plunging the country into violence and disarray.

The longer the political impasse persists, many warn, the more likely that elements of the opposition may take up arms.

#Nicaragua #Nicaragua protests

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littlebigthingstosay · 3 years

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[Warning:long]

I hate to say it, but most of my broad experience with the LGBTQA+ community has been profoundly negative.

Now don’t get me wrong, people are amazing and strong for being bold and being who they are. One of my best friends is trans and he’s one of the toughest people I know for coming out. I myself am openly a member of the community to my friends and family, but not truly any farther thanks in part to the way I’ve been exposed to the community.

I’ve been in the questioning stage for a long time and in the story I want to tell here that's key. I tend to tell people I’m bisexual to get them to stop asking, or that I’m genderfluid. Nowadays, I can comfortably call myself asexual and non-binary(she/them).

There were a number of young trans kids at my highschool, my bestie was their elder in the group and they all fell in with a questionable crowd slightly. And it was always the same point of conflict from the very start.

Some of the group were very much “activists”, they fought for every cause they could and the community was at the top of this list. Which would be a great thing, is a great thing they helped for a GSA at our more or less conservative high school... until it became bullying. The older members left with the grades ahead of us but not before scarring me as an anxious and horribly introverted junior/sophomore.

As seniors my friend and I became some of the oldest and only overlap between the two different peer circles in the schools LGBTQA+ community. I believe the GSA at its height had fifty attendants last year. ‘

And then came February and everything went up in flames for both circles and the entire school bore witness to me on a rampage for twenty four hours. Remember the bullying I mentioned? The young trans kids decided that they needed to know their peers' identities.

And that those identities needed to suit their expectations.

Enter my straight ass little brother stage left, who absolutely loves Marvel and has all the actor trivia knowledge.

Snapchat gets banned from my house regularly because of how much of a hot head my brother is. And the conversation between my brother and(we’ll call him Marg) Marg was exactly that. A hot head being egged on.

It should also be noted that I am MEAN. I get nasty fast if I feel threatened or if someone I know is threatened.

I was approached by my own peers telling me to get my brother in line, and to stop spouting death threats at the queer kids. And was promptly shown cropped screenshots from snapchat posted on instagram by Ben. I requested them be sent to me and texted my mother that a Situation ™ was happening and I’d alert her if necessary. Then I texted my bestie to tell Ben that they needed to send me a screen recording(video) of the conversation going back to when they started talking up to two hours prior to the “threat”.

I also said in no uncertain terms that if I didn’t get said video by the end of my lunch(11:45) I would go straight to the principal and school counselors with a harassment and bullying complaint. Of which, with the said images and lack of prior report would get my brother in some trouble but nowhere near as bad as what would drop onto Ben. I know the system well.

That video didn’t come, but I ran into Ben at lunch and made him show me on his phone the convo and send it to me. I think at that point Ben had realized exactly what kind of terrifyingly polite nightmare I am, and that as a graduating senior he was not going to win on the social battlefield. (I believe that later his boyfriend who had tried to pull a similar stunt with me as the target but couldn’t egg me on before I got the game, expressed how much sway I have with the Speech and Debate coaches and various teachers who are friends with my mom. Connections y’all.) He took down his post and when my peers came to me to ask, I showed them the whole conversation and told them the same thing I’m going to say right now:

“Ben was picking a fight, Ben who is trans denied my brother his identity as a straight boy and insisted because he, like myself, is capable of identifying appealing bodies even if we aren’t attracted, must like men. Ben insisted past my brother’s denial that since I’m Bi he must be too. Ben was insisting that my brother wasn’t what he is and was going to set up dates for him without his consent. That is wrong. My brother isn’t queer as far as he knows and it isn’t anyone else's business if he is.

If anyone wants to argue this my brother will have a talk with my parents and will likely be grounded with no social media. If that isn’t enough for you I’ll take you to the principal for harassment over something that you have no right to be involved in no matter if you’re LGBTQ or not.”

And I think that's the whole of it right there.

Community or not people’s identities are theirs and no one else's, it shouldn’t matter to anyone but them. And I can’t express how utterly harmful it is to be around people that are isolated in similar ways to yourself only for them to shut you down for what you do or don’t know of/identify as. It’s wrong to force narratives onto others and something that should be addressed from both sides of the conflict. If you don’t want someone to force hetero normalcy, don’t force it the other way either. If someone says they don’t want to say or they don’t explicitly tell you of their own volition don’t press.

Please, for those like me in isolated mostly conservative communities with such limited support don’t make it more toxic by being bullies in all but name, to build a community or give support. Because I know this isn’t an experience isolated to my school or town.

PS. He did get grounded and lost all electronic privileges outside of school for a month dw

#rant #lgbtq community #lgbtq #it needs to be said #bullying mention #bullying is bad #don't force narratives #respect boundaries #think before you speak #think before posting stuff #i've had this in my drafts for a while #not main blog

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nancygduarteus · 6 years

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America’s Unending Tragedy

LITTLETON, Colo.—Evan Todd, then a sophomore at Columbine High School, was in the library on the day 19 years ago when Eric Harris appeared in the doorway, wielding a shotgun. Harris fired in his direction. Debris, shrapnel, and buckshot hit Todd’s lower back; he fell to the ground and ducked behind a copy machine. Harris fired several more shots toward Todd’s head, splintering a desk and driving wood chips into Todd’s left eye.

Todd listened for several more minutes as Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered their classmates, taunting them as they screamed. Todd prayed silently: “God, let me live.”

Then Klebold pulled back a chair and found Todd hiding underneath a table.

He put a gun to Todd’s head. "Why shouldn't I kill you?" he asked.

“I've been good to you,” Todd said.

Klebold looked at Harris. “You can kill him if you want,” Klebold told his teenage co-conspirator.

No one knows why—indeed, no one knows the “why” behind such violence—but that’s when Harris and Klebold left the library. Todd got to live.

Thirteen people did not, though. Today, that’s why Todd supports allowing teachers to have guns in schools. Teachers shouldn’t be required to be armed, he says, but if they already have a concealed-weapons permit, and they’re already comfortable using a gun, why not let them have it with them in school, the place they are most of the day, and the place where these attacks happen over and over again?

Today, Todd is a stocky, bearded manager of construction projects, and describes himself as a history buff. He grew up around guns, but after Columbine, he thought hard about whether easy access to them might have been what caused the shooting. No, he decided. “We've always had guns since the beginning of the founding of our country, but what we haven't always had are children murdering children,” he told me over coffee this week. “Something has changed.” Todd believes school shootings are motivated by a fundamental lack of respect for human life.

The way Todd sees it, “liberals like to control others and conservatives like to control themselves.” He glanced around the Starbucks where we were sitting. Statistically, he said, four people there were likely have guns on them. Being near four guns might scare many liberals. Many conservatives, though, would want to be one of the four with a gun.

The gun debate is an odd one because, at some level, everyone agrees on what they want: No more Columbines. No more Parklands. Most people affected by the Columbine massacre can even agree on what definitely didn’t cause it. After the shooting, Columbine developed a reputation as a toxic school where jocks tormented “geeks” like Harris and Klebold. But it’s a stretch to say the shooters were pitiable outcasts, bullied until they snapped. In reality, they were budding little fascists who wore swastikas on their clothes and spewed racial slurs as they gunned down black classmates. Kumbaya circles wouldn’t have fixed that.

The Columbine Memorial in Littleton, Colo. (Kirsten Leah Bitzer)

But, nearly 20 years later, not even people in Littleton can agree whether the best way to prevent another Columbine is more guns or fewer. Todd’s experience—a 15-year-old whose brush with death-by-gun led him to respect guns more—helps to explain why there have been so few new federal gun restrictions since Columbine.

There have been at least 10 mass school shootings in the years since, which have claimed at least 122 lives. On Saturday, hundreds of thousands of young people will march on Washington to show just how much this disgusts them. They believe they will be the ones to end the most calcified cultural stalemate of our time: that Americans fundamentally do not agree on whether guns are dangerous—or essential.

Todd worries that if more guns are removed from the hands of law-abiding citizens, a tyrannical government could take over—we could see an American Stalin or Mao. “More people would be murdered without the Second Amendment,” he said.

In the nearby town of Centennial, 64-year-old Carol Schuster said that’s one thing that keeps many conservatives from supporting gun control. “They’re afraid of the government,” she told me. She knows because she used to be one.

Schuster and her husband, Bill, own a company that sells big mobile filing cabinets, the kind that doctors use to store their patient records. Like many small-business owners, they long voted Republican.

The Schusters were terrified when Columbine happened, but they didn’t think it would keep happening. Those shooters were freaks, juvenile delinquents. “Another school shooting” hadn’t yet become a thing Americans say almost every month.

Carol Schuster at her home in Centennial, Colo. on March 20 (Kirsten Leah Bitzer)

Then came the Sandy Hook shooting, in which six- and seven-year-olds were mowed down as they cowered in their elementary-school bathroom. Schuster began to feel like her party wasn’t doing enough. (Just this week, Republican state legislators in Colorado rejected a ban on bump stocks, the devices used by the Las Vegas gunman that allowed his rifles to fire faster.) She attended a meeting of Colorado Ceasefire, a local gun-control group, and she was the only Republican there. “Oh,” she thought. “These Democrats really are nice people.” In 2016, Schuster voted for Hillary Clinton as a single-issue voter on guns.

Today, one portion of her office wall is devoted to photos of her family, another to pictures of dogs, and another to the front pages of newspapers covering all the mass shootings that have taken place since Columbine. “Important things,” she explained.

When she saw the Parkland shooting on TV, she decided she would go to Washington on Saturday to take part in the March for Our Lives. Her sign will read, “Former Republican for sensible gun laws.”

Schuster asked me where I was going next, and I told her I’d be interviewing Patrick Neville, a former Columbine student who survived the massacre and is now a Republican State Representative who supports concealed carry among teachers. Schuster said she had a lot of questions for him.

When I arrived at his office in the Capitol building in Denver, Neville looked red and tired. His press secretary seemed weary, too, from listening to dozens of voicemail messages, many of which wished to inform her that her boss was a “fucking asshole.” A bill Neville introduced, scheduled for a hearing just days after the Parkland shooting, called for allowing concealed-carry permit holders to bring their guns inside schools. “Get your head out of your ass!” one woman’s voice screamed on the answering machine. “Protect these children!” (Todd gets angry messages, too—including from people who tell him they wish he died at Columbine. The Schusters, meanwhile, say they get run off the road for their gun-control bumper stickers.)

Neville wasn’t inside Columbine when the shooting happened. He was just outside the building, skipping class to go smoke with friends. When he realized what was happening, he ran to a nearby house and called his mom. “I’m not going to be able to get to my next class,” he told her.

If Republicans are afraid of government overreach, then on the other side, “there’s an irrational fear of guns,” Neville said. Todd and Neville see guns as “tools” that can be safely used for fun or protection. Like Todd, Neville believes shooters target gun-free zones like schools because they know they won’t meet resistance. Not knowing which teacher might be armed is a “huge tactical advantage,” Neville argued. To protect his three young daughters, he plans to send them to a private high school, where teachers can carry guns.

This was the fourth time Neville sponsored the concealed-carry bill, and it failed like it always does, but he plans to introduce it again. Why? “Never a wrong time to do the right thing,” he said. The morning we spoke, another school shooting had taken place in Maryland.

Littleton, a Denver suburb, in many ways offers a typical middle-American landscape—dotted with drab office parks and Outback Steakhouses. Less typical are the striking, snow-streaked mountains, which loom in the background.

The light-beige Columbine High School building gets threats all the time. It’s the unholiest of holy sites: Several times a day, a security guard told me, random people stop by to take pictures or just to take a morbid look. The guard can’t allow them to do that; he can’t make the kids relive it that often.

Another security guard in the student parking lot kept a wary eye on me. But at 2:45, the glass doors swung open and perfectly normal students burst out of a perfectly normal school, laughing and asking each other about homework assignments. Among them was Kaylee Tyner, a junior who organized Columbine’s student walkout for gun control, which happened earlier this month.

Kaylee Tyner at her home in Littleton, Colo. (Kirsten Leah Bitzer)

The day I met up with Tyner, she had called a handful of her classmates to her house to make signs for Saturday’s march. Her friends plan to go to the local march in Denver, but Tyner will travel all the way to Washington with her mom. On top of her political advocacy, Tyner is in four AP classes, several clubs, and works as a waitress at a retirement home.

Tyner peeled a sticky note off the window of her Nissan—she’s in a club whose members leave encouraging messages for one another—and drove the four minutes from her school to her house. She put out some snacks and brought up tempera paints from the basement. The other girls trickled in a few minutes later. They huddled around Tyner’s dining-room table and laid out orange, black, and white poster boards. They’re Columbine’s core group of activists, and it’s something they’re surprisingly secure about. Once, a boy said something like “oh, there go the feminists” as they walked by, and one of them, 16-year-old Mikaela Lawrence, said simply, “Chh—yeah!”

The girls might get their news from social-media sites like Twitter, but, they tell me, they’re careful to check it against other sites to be sure it’s not “fake news.” Rachel Hill, a cheery 16-year-old, easily rattled off the gun measures she’d like to see: universal background checks, a ban on bump stocks, higher age limits and longer waiting periods. She painted a sign that read, “I have thought. I have prayed. Nothing changed.”

Kaylee and a few friends work on signs for March for Our Lives on March 21, 2018, in Littleton, Colo.

The day after the Parkland shooting, the halls of Columbine were unusually quiet. Despite all the security, kids at Columbine periodically worry about another shooting happening there. Some of their teachers have panic attacks when the fire alarms go off, the girls said.

“We’re not gonna stop fighting until laws are passed,” said 14-year-old Annie Barrows, laying down her paint brush and hammering her fist into her hand. “There’s blood spilling on the floors of American classrooms.”

Kids who go to Columbine rarely joke about the shooting, but students from other schools sometimes make crass remarks, the girls said. “Going to Columbine, we don’t get to pick the label for our school,” Tyner said. “We’re one of the most infamous schools in America. We’re trying to show people that this affects your community for decades.”

One day in early April 1999, Daniel Mauser, a blond-haired, bespectacled Columbine sophomore, came home and asked his father, Tom Mauser, “Did you know there are loopholes in the Brady bill?”—the national law that requires background checks for gun purchasers. Tom didn’t think much of it. Daniel was on the debate team; he and his conservative classmate, Patrick Neville, would sometimes argue about politics.

Two weeks later, the day of the Columbine shooting, Tom didn’t know whether Daniel was alive or dead for nearly 24 hours. Late that night, authorities called to ask what Daniel had been wearing, or if the Mausers had any dental records. They said the Mausers would hear more in the morning. The following day at noon, the sheriff came along with some grief counselors to tell Tom that Daniel had been shot to death.

The Mausers stayed in the area, but they couldn’t bring themselves to send their surviving daughter to Columbine. Instead, she went to the nearby Arapahoe High School. It, too, had a shooting, after she graduated.

Tom, who worked for the state’s transportation department, took on a second role as a spokesperson for Colorado Ceasefire. He and his son shared a shoe size; he began wearing Daniel’s black-and-gray Vans to testify at hearings. In 2000, he successfully helped push through a measure to close the state’s gun-show loophole. He’s one of the few Columbine parents who speaks out about guns; some others support him but find it too painful to talk about, he says.

Over lunch at Panera Bread, he told me he doesn’t support arming teachers—there’s too much of a risk of crossfire, accidents, or police not knowing who the true “bad guy” is in a hectic shooting situation, he said. And what, are we going to hold first-grade teachers accountable for acting as soldiers would in combat? Many Republicans, he argued, seemingly “cannot acknowledge the danger caused by guns.” (Many Republicans, of course, argue Democrats can’t acknowledge the danger caused by restricting guns.)

One of the most helpful gun measures, he thinks, would be a state- or nation-wide red-flag law, allowing family members or law-enforcement officers to ask a judge to temporarily take away the guns of someone who seems dangerous.

At this point, a woman approached our table to thank Tom for his efforts. “You’re welcome,” he said.

The following day, Tom planned to go for a bike ride in the 70-degree weather, enjoy his retirement a little. But for the moment, he went back to talking about his dead son with yet another reporter. Because Columbine High has a stain, but so does the whole country, and it will endure until there aren’t any more stories like this left to tell. So he tells it.

Like Evan Todd, Daniel Mauser was in the library. Eric Harris insulted him, then fired his rifle and hit Daniel in the hand. Then the mild-mannered Daniel fought back—he pushed a chair at Harris. Harris responded by shooting him in the face.

I sat there speechless as Tom Mauser calmly ate a spoonful of soup. “This is America,” he said.

(Kirsten Leah Bitzer)

from Health News And Updates https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/littleton-columbine/556358/?utm_source=feed

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megacircuit9universe · 4 years

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Uprising

SAT JUN 06 2020

Since I last wrote, the George Floyd protests that began in Minneapolis, and spread to other major US cities over many nights, has now turned into nothing less than a new civil rights movement, in 2020 going under the banner of, “Black Lives Matter,” which began as a hashtag in 2013 after the shooting of Trayvon Martin... and which was subsequently shouted down by two counter movements, “all lives matter,” and “blue lives matter.”

BLM had inspired some demonstrations in the 20-teens, but remained mostly a social media movement, occasionally getting some mainstream press.

At the time of my last entry, as I said, the protests were about George Floyd, and holding the four officers responsible for his death accountable. And there was progress when all four officers were not only fired, but arrested and charged, with varying degrees of murder or manslaughter.

But because these charges took so long to materialize, the anger of the crowds did not immediately evaporate. Protests continued, and continued to filter down to the smaller towns in every state... even as they grew bigger in Washington DC outside the White House.

Trump actually holed up in the bunker beneath the white house for a night or two, with all the lights off above decks, while men outside worked day and night to build a wall around the compound.

But, he was criticized for this massive act of cowardice in the media, and was given the nick name, “Bunker Boy,” which enraged him.

So... on Monday, June 1st, after giving a blood curdling speech about how all the protesters were basically terrorists, and how, if governors did not dominate them, he’d send in the military to do so for them... he unleashed a small army of law enforcement and paramilitary goons on Lafayette square, in the middle of the afternoon (broad daylight once again), hours before curfew, to brutalize and drive back the crowds so that he could walk across the square to Saint John’s Church for an unplanned and pointless photo op, in which he held up a Bible, weirdly, saying nothing.

Amazingly, that Bible did not burst into flames in his hand... which speaks to Yaweh’s restraint... though word is he did strike two national guardsmen with lightning just tonight.

The peaceful, law abiding protesters were gassed, pepper sprayed, beaten back by officers with shields and batons, and further intimidated not only by a cavalry of officers on horseback, but also by and extremely low hovering army helicopter, which could easily have crashed and burned at such a low elevation with so many obstacles like trees and power lines nearby.

Last entry, I had said that Trump and his junta were too shy to go full dictator, but this act, last Monday, demonstrated to the nation and the world, that, in his mind at least, full dictator is not off the table.

This move, on Trump’s part, was met with shock and horror on all sides, and lead to General Mattis, his former National Security Secretary, who resigned late last year, to publish a scathing op-ed, in which he not only called Trump a threat to the constitution and democracy, but reminded the US military they... need to not be taking unconstitutional orders from this ass hole.

His words were praised and echoed by many on the right, and many more on the left who normally don’t like to agree with Mad Dog Mattis.

Joe Biden’s numbers rose in the election polls, in all swing states, and turned a few solidly red states into swing states... just as Allan Lichtman’s keys would seem to have predicted.

And lastly, Trump’s dictatorial stunt, crystallized the protest movement into the full blown, new civil rights movement that it’s become today. The Black Lives Matter movement is now stronger, more organized, and more determined than ever to fight for systemic change.

It’s more than just George Floyd and four guilty officers now. This is about systemic racism, police brutality, and anti-fascism.

(It’s also secondarily about the wealth gap and the total failure of those in power to keep us all comfortable enough not to bother taking to the streets.)

Rather than backing down, people all over the country are going out in greater numbers... better prepared for the attacks of the police. And armed with their smart phones, videotaping events live, and streaming them to the cloud for the world to see in real time.

They are exposing the fact that most of the fires and property damage, such as broken storefront windows, are being done by the cops themselves... as helped along by white nationalist citizens trying to blend into the crowd to cause mayhem (shades of kristallnacht, but for two weeks and counting).

Much of the looting too, is being done by opportunists who are traveling long distances to exploit the mayhem in local municipalities they’ve never visited before in their lives, much less reside in.

Peaceful protesters are getting much more savvy, not only about exposing these bad players on video, but sussing them out before they can strike. And they’re getting more savvy about protecting themselves, with padded motorcycle jackets, goggles and other measures to mitigate teargas and pepper spray, bluetooth devices, scouts and lookouts to maintain situational awareness.

It’s definitely worth noting here that all the 2nd Amendment nuts, who for decades have justified their right to bear arms citing exactly the scenario we are now seeing, in which the government becomes tyrannical... are nowhere to be found in this confrontation. They, in fact, are siding with the fascists in power... because... racism.

Back to the BLM movement...

BLM has now (thanks to Trump) passed the tipping point at which it can be put down by force. Too many people are involved, and they have too much support, both at home and abroad (78% support domestically, as gauged yesterday).

To put it another way... the effort now required by those in power to quash this movement, is too drastic to be practical.

Why? Well, they are desperately clinging to a stock market bubble right now... which is being inflated by optimistic speculation in the face of all that’s beset the nation... that everything will get back to normal in a year.

Killing protesters, or disappearing them is out of the question... it will only bring more unrest. Confiscating smart phones, in order to quash the videos of police wrongdoing... out of the question, because smart phones are economic tools used to make purchases, view ads, pay bills, etc.

Internet black outs... out of the question, for the same reason.

Anything that threatens to pop that delicate stock market bubble is instant death for Trump and his junta.

And even if they don’t pop that bubble... every day the BLM movement gains more steam... with people out of work, out of money, stuck at home because no progress has been made with virus testing and contact tracing... the junta still moves ever closer to the end of their reign.

Talk now is not only that Biden’s numbers are climbing... but that Republican control of the Senate is also on the chopping block this November.

People have not forgotten who impeached this guy last November... warning us about the danger he posed... and who blocked his removal from office back then, just before Covid19 reared it’s ugly head in China.

Who voted to acquit Trump?.. the same ones who oppose stimulus checks now, and who continue to enable all of the needless suffering and hardship we, as a nation are enduring together in this moment.

Even if these Senators break from Trump... which most are yet unwilling to do... we still remember how they failed us at that critical juncture, when he could have been removed in advance of the national crisis.

We still remember how they brushed aside warnings about how history would remember them... at best, not giving a shit about history... but often with mockery, that such a warning had any teeth at all.

We still remember...

We...

...not just the political junkies who always pay attention... but now the ones who, at the time, had better things to focus on.

The Millennials, who though they’d finally recovered the ground they lost in the Bush years, and were about to try and settle down to own homes and start families.

The Zoomers (or GenZ) just graduating high school, and just starting college, thinking the economic nightmare suffered by their predecessors could not befall them too.

Together, these two youngest generations of voters, who had been the most apathetic, but have now become the most activist... outnumber, by percentage of population, the boomers in their own activist hayday of the 1960s.

And unlike the young boomers of old, who were at odds with some of the Silents, and all of the Greatests... Gens Y and Z have nearly full support of X, and growing support from the aging boomers, who, as of late, have been asked to sacrifice their lives for the economy.

This is a moment in American history like few before it, in which revolution is now pregnant.

But at the time of writing tonight, I still believe it will be a mostly peaceful revolution... sweeping Trump and his junta out of power this November, and establishing some meaningful and lasting reforms in the aftermath of the nightmare they visited upon us, these past four years.

That’s all I have to say about things for a Saturday night.

It’s time for bed.

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privateeyedarkie · 4 years

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Black History Month Mayhem Kickoff

Red Carpet Intake is back with the new juicy exclusive of this week as we begin Black History Month. This amazing month of celebrating estem African Americans has taken a turn for the worst as I have uncovered the worst news ever.An icon who truly impacted the NBA, Kobe Bryant has tragically died in a helicopter ride shocking the nation. His daughter also parished in the terrible accident along with friends that played basketball with her.This has caused an uproar as Americans are in disbelief! News outlets and social media are trending with information about Kobe Brayant as they post pictures and videos showing his greatest moments of how he became the person he was today. As well as, honoring him for his mamba mentality as Nike, the Grammys, and the Oscar honor him in their own ways.Yet,Gayle King, a reporter trying to make a name for herself; or in other words a person who receives handouts because her best friend is Oprah Winfrey (OMG !!!!I love you Oprah )stirred the pot as she brought up old rape allegations that he was never charged with, in an interview with Lisa Leslie.Now she is not able to take the heat as angry fans are sending her death threats, she fears for her life.If you can not stand the heat get out of the kitchen; or in other words Gayle King, just apologize for asking questions that should have not even been asked.It gets worst as Niki Minaj, an incredible female artist disrespects Rosa Parks, one of the all time greatest activist who paved the way for African Americas by making a disrespectful song and dropping the snippet on her birthday which happens to be Black Histotry Month. Niki Manji has stooped to a new low as she makes this diss song. Come on Niki Manji this is supposed to be a kumbaya moment for Black people and your ruining it. This is really unbelievable, this is how African Americans treat one another . I must be dreaming because it has been one terrible thing after another since the month started. Keep your eyes and ears locked for next weeks spicy info!

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yagirltey · 6 years

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Words of Wisdom Analysis: Part 1 Article #6

Tupac Shakur also known as 2pac or Makaveli is one of the most well-known and best-selling rappers of all time. Even though he made many hit records that we could bump to, music was also a way that he kept people woke to what was and still is going on in Amerikkka. Tupac was ahead of his time and realized early on in his life the changes that needed to be made in Amerikkka. Activism comes in many different forms, and Tupac demonstrates his activism by spilling all the tea on Amerikkka in his song “Words of Wisdom” that was released in 1991 on his debut album 2pacalypse Now. Tupac is well known for his later albums Me Against the World and All Eyez on Me released in 1995 and 1996; therefore, his debut album is often overlooked and slept on. However, this song “Words of Wisdom,” and his entire album calls attention to the things occurring both in Amerikkkan society and the Black community. After listening to the lyrics and reading the analysis of this song, you will understand why I spell Amerikkka the way I do.

[Intro] Killing us one by one In one way or another America will find a way to eliminate the problem One by one The problem is the troublesome black youth of the ghetto's And one by one We are being wiped off the face of this earth At an extremely alarming rate

Tupac is emphasizing that Black people walk around with this X on their back every day. Amerikkka is killing us one by one because we are seen as a problem. Because of the stereotypes developed against us, we are labeled as a “threat to society.” People are threatened by our skin color because of the way humans are conditioned in society. The Amerikkkan society conditions its citizens to create and believe false stereotypes so that Black people are feared. Because of the targets on our backs, police brutality, mass incarceration, drugs, and the deaths in our own communities, we are being wiped off the face of this earth every day. Current statistics show that Black people are 3x more likely to be killed by police than white people. Also, fewer than 1 and 3 Black people killed by police in Amerikkka were suspected by a violent crime and allegedly armed. This statistic further supports the argument that we are being killed simply because our skin color is a threat. Overall, Tupac is explaining that Black people are an endangered species.

At an extremly alarming rate And even more alarming is the fact That we are not fighting back Brothers, sisters, niggas When I say "nigga" it is not the nigga we have grown to fear It is not the nigga we say as if it has no meaning But to me it means Never Ignorant Getting Goals Accomplished, nigga Niggas, what are we going to do? Walk blind into a line or fight Fight and die if we must die, like niggas

Tupac says, “we are not fighting back.” When he says “we” he is referring to other Black people who are not woke to what is going on and throw things like police brutality and mass incarceration under the rug. Some Black people act like the oppression we face in Amerikkka is normal; therefore, they do not fight back to change the way we are being treated by society. Black people act like they don’t care about their own people being killed every day at an alarming rate unless it is happening to them or to someone they know personally. However, it should not be that way. We should fight for the rights of our people even if it is not affecting us personally. Tupac is stating that Black people need to start being activists for their brothers, sisters, and niggas. We need to support each other.

Tupac uses brothers, sisters, and niggas as words we should refer to each other as, as if we are blood-related. All Black people are connected by the racism we face in society. We all go through the same struggles just in a different way; therefore, we are brothers and sisters. Furthermore, Tupac changes the meaning of the derogatory term nigga into a positive term that we can call each other. Historically, the word nigga is seen as a racial slur; however, Tupac creates an acronym for the word so that it can be used as a word of endearment. The irony is that he changes the definition to the exact opposite of what it originally meant. The literal meaning of the word nigger or nigga is ignorant. However, Tupac states that nigga stands for Never Ignorant Always Getting Goals Accomplished.

Last, Tupac asks, “Niggas what are we going to do?” He has already stated before that we are not fighting back; therefore, he is asking how are we going to make changes. He is asking whether we are going to act as if we are blind to the injustice that occurs to our own people, or fight even if dying is the end result. In the end, when he says die like niggas, he is explaining that if we fight for our rights and end up dying, then we are truly niggas because we accomplished the goal of bringing awareness to social injustice by not being ignorant.

[Verse 1] This is for the masses, the lower classes The ones you left out, jobs were giving, better living But we were kept out Made to feel inferior, but we're superior Break the chains in our brains that made us fear ya

Tupac refers to how the government segregated neighborhoods, which left many Black families in the projects also known as low incoming housing. In the past, the government has passed laws and created redlining policies so the suburbs could be created. This left Black people in the inner city, which explains how the ghettos (a part of a city, especially a slum area, occupied by a minority group or groups.) were created. Tupac refers to the government redlining policies again when he states in his verse that Black people were left out and kept out, which left many Black families in the lower class.

` Moreover, Tupac explains that we were made to feel inferior, but we are superior. This society conditions Black people to think they are inferior. However, we are superior because despite all the barriers we come across in life as Black people in Amerikkka, we are unstoppable. This society has not been able to keep us down after everything we have faced.

Last, Tupac is telling Black people to be fearless and break the chains in our brains that make us fear people in society that have oppressed us. For example, we are conditioned to fear police because of how they oppressed us; however, Tupac is telling us to be fearless despite the feeling of fear we are conditioned to have.

Pledge allegiance to a flag that neglects us Honor a man that that refuses to respect us Emancipation Proclamation? Please! Lincoln just said that to save the nation These are lies that we all accepted Say no to drugs but the governments' kept it Running through our community, killing the unity The war on drugs is a war on you and me And yet, they say this is the Home of The Free But if you ask me, it's all about hypocrisy The constitution, yo, it don't apply to me And Lady Liberty? Stupid bitch lied to me

Tupac tackles the topic of being patriotic in a country that does not respect Black people. He is saying that we pledge allegiance to a flag/country that does not even show respect to Black people as citizens of the United States. We are treated as guests in our own country. Furthermore, Tupac is referring to historical figures such as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln as men that we honor in our history classes, but in reality, they did not care about Black people. Lincoln did not issue the Emancipation Proclamation because he cared about the slaves. As Tupac stated, Lincoln issued it to save the nation. Tupac explains these are all lies we have accepted by our educational system.

On the other hand, Tupac reveals the use of drugs in the Black community was caused by the government. Black people clearly did not bring drugs into their own poor communities. Drugs were clearly brought into the Black community as a set up to increase the incarceration of Black people. It is coincidental that the drug crisis appeared AFTER Nixon declared the war on drugs.

This is because the CIA allowed drugs to be smuggled into Black communities. This is why Tupac said, “the war on drugs is a war on you and me.” Ultimately, the war on drugs the Nixon administration issued was targeted towards Blacks and other minority groups.

Also, Malcolm X, in his autobiography, explains how we have been set up by the white people and the government to accept drugs and alcohol in our communities, and we didn’t even realize it.

This is what they do!

They send drugs in Harlem down here to pacify us!

They send alcohol down here to pacify us!

They send prostitution down here to pacify us!

Why you can't even get drugs in Harlem without the White Man's permission!

You can't get prostitution in Harlem without the White Man's permission!

You can't get gambling in Harlem without the White Man's permission!

Every time you break the seal on that liquor bottle, that's a Government seal you're breaking!

Oh, I say and I say it again, ya been had!

Ya been took!

Ya been hoodwinked!

Bamboozled!

Led astray!

Run amok!

This is what He does....

Furthermore, Tupac calls Amerikkka out on its hypocrisy. He explains that Amerikkka is supposed to be the home of the free, but Black people are not free in Amerikkka. We do not have any rights in this country. The constitution grants us our basic freedoms, but we are denied many of those basic freedoms because white supremacy reigns in Amerikkka. Last, Tupac says Lady Liberty lied to him. Lady Liberty is supposed to be another representation of Liberty and Freedom for all, but those are two things Black people still do not have in Amerikkka.

This made me strong, and no one's gonna like what I'm pumpin' But it’s wrong to keep someone from learning something So get up, it’s time to start nation building I'm fed up, we gotta start teach the children That they can be all that they wanna to be There's much more to life than just poverty

Tupac knows that some people are going to disagree with some the things he says in this song, but he knows it’s more important to educate others about the underlying issues in Amerikkka. Also, he refers to Black children not knowing anything to life except for being poor and Black; however, Tupac is saying there is so much more to life and Black people can have the same opportunities as everyone else in this country.

#tupacshakur #tupacforever #tupac #2pac #amerikkka #malcolmx #wordsofwisdom #staywoke #blacklivesmatter #blm

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