#they are engaging with racism and the toll it takes to deal with white people who mean well but don't get it yet

[knowlesian]

i was chatting about this over messages and hadn't seen anyone else post about it, so i figured what the hell: why my fourth favorite joke might be izzy’s pissy little ‘i do this, i do that, you're so erratic’ rant, and the subversion/setup/foreshadowing it provides. 

(third: montezuma’s revenge joke via izzy the metaphor colonizer. e5 setup, e9 punchline. now that’s some next level comedy writing.)

anyway! let’s take it line by line. 

For years, I’ve followed your every whim. I’ve managed your increasingly erratic moods, I’ve massaged this crew when they were worried about your judgment.

Mmm. Sounds stressful, Izzy.

so! it would be very easy to just take izzy at his word and create scenarios to suit, where izzy is a reliable narrator and actually doing all these things.

(and just as a structure nerd note while i’m at it, since i think that term gets used colloquially so often that much like filler, it needs clarifying sometimes: unreliable narrator doesn't mean never right or always lying. it just means unreliable, and their ultimate narrative purpose is to force an audience to think critically and examine the text as a whole to try to find what is empirical reality and what is not, instead of sorting them into liar or honest and leaving it there, thanks for coming to my tedtalk & etc) 

izzy himself is urging an audience to fill in those gaps, to create pre-canon scenarios that support izzy and silence ed. to make us imagine an ed who is out of control and in need of a constant exasperated minder; to implicitly and thematically render him a violent, angry child and not a full man in his own right. an ed who cannot face the world or make his own choices, unless izzy is there to guide him and set boundaries so he does not ruin his own life.

and izzy feels so, so burdened by this. he tells us so! 

hmmm. a burdened white man... which would make ed a white man’s burden.

now, where have i heard that before? it’s on the tip of my racist system of genocidal white people of all classes rolling up into places where people are living and dying and making good choices and bad choices alike all on their own just fine thanks and saying, party’s over kids. daddy’s home now, and you better listen up because father knows best tongue.

that’s izzy’s purpose in the narrative, at least when it comes to the specific angle of implicit bias and the stressful and constant unavoidable racial power dynamics that come into all our social interactions whether we like it or not. because if we are honest and genuinely want to dismantle white supremacy, we need to name the beast so we can fight it. that means admitting even when class is figured into the matter, white men of a certain age who act like izzy acts and say the things he says are unconsciously processed as being logical and in control no matter what, and people who are not white get the exact opposite treatment.

it’s the rule of who would the cops believe. (or, in this case, his majesty’s royal navy.)

izzy holds social power ed does not, alongside institutionalized power. this show is playing out very modern racial dynamics with izzy, so he’s blind to this power— we as an audience can’t be, or we’re... izzy.

and to be very blunt, because i feel i need to be: if you think being izzy is a good thing, then oh boy. time to think about why a white man who makes the black crew members do hard labor and none of the white ones is someone you are cool making excuses for.

i do not believe izzy cannot change his ways; i do believe he very, very much needs to change them.

which brings me to the undercover joke.

so, the first line is doing a lot, right out the gate: izzy says he's followed ed’s every whim.

first layer: izzy, hon, this is ed’s ship. he’s captain. his whims are what you literally signed up to follow. if you don’t want to follow them... go find a different captain, or be your own captain! these are very, very easy things to do, especially as the things canon backs izzy up on is that he’s a competent sailor and a fantastic fighter, when he's fighting people who actually play by traditional rules and not stede and his hijinks-heavy style of fighting.

(and just to say it: izzy losing to stede does not make him a bad fighter. it makes him an inflexible one, who is not good at improv’ing solutions outside blunt force ‘uhhhh we could kill things about it????’ type answers, and one who didn't see that cherrywood mast coming when he popped stede’s getting stabbed cherry. skilled people fuck up sometimes even before you get to not being able to predict new factors in situations you think you have thoroughly prepared for; it’s not impossible to lose, even when you are very very good at something and you prepared as well as anybody could. even serena williams has off days, and izzy hands you are no serena.)

second layer: uhhhh, do you follow his whims iz? because we see you push back, all the time forever, several times to the point of just saying fuck you, i won't let you make this choice and i am gonna make it for you. 

third layer, crunchiest of all? actually, ed ends up where he's at by the end of the finale because he decides to follow izzy’s whims, and just give that sad little man the blackbeard he asked for: a cartoon legend who cuts off toes for a laugh.

then we get to the next claim: he's managed ed’s ‘increasingly erratic moods’. 

now, don't get me wrong— we see ed respond to bad situations with sometimes outsized despondency, he gets real mad at racists and yells at nature/snakes, and when specifically triggered by very literally his worst memory that was also the moment that convinced him he's a bad person he cries in a bathtub and decides he’d rather not repeat that action, especially not when this time he’d be directly killing a man he's starting to love.

so i’m not like, ah yes. edward teach: famously always on an even keel and doing just fine.

but what's actually erratic about those things? erratic means unpredictable, not dramatic. he’s responding to bad situations in ways that indicate he's nearing the end of his desire to keep juggling all the plates he’s got in the air and that weariness combined with a certain amount of arrogance is making him stop double-checking for mistakes, but we see nothing that says he’s losing the ability.

only izzy tells us that. izzy, who is constantly being managed by ed throughout the run of the series. izzy, who seems to exhibit somewhat erratic behavior and mood swings of his own; izzy, who calls down the royal navy upon them all because he's butthurt and jealous and all his cds are in the car, regardless of what he tells himself about protecting ed from ruin.

izzy is shocked ed would sign the act of grace, but if he actually knew ed that would be a somewhat predictable action; anybody can see that ed really fuckin’ likes stede. he tried to stop izzy from the duel, and then when stede won he stuck to his guns and kicked izzy off the ship. ‘i wonder if he’ll just give up on this guy if i track down his crafty frat boy ex and get him to do a reverse parent trap’ is sort of a stupid plan, unless you’re assuming ed is genuinely just longing to go back to the old days and need to be shocked back into reality.

you know what i’d argue is actually fairly erratic, because erratic actually means unpredictable? that fucking plan of his.

how on earth would anyone be like, ah yes. jack was sent by izzy to break them up and lure ed off the ship so the royal navy can come crashing down on all their heads. nobody could have immediately predicted that, right after the sandwich bonked izzy on the noggin.

because izzy expresses horror that ed would lick the king’s boots: the unspoken there is there would be no boots to lick if izzy had not gone and fetched said jackboots and licked them to a shiny gleam first himself.

so when izzy is like, ewwww ed. you'd work with the KING??? we as an audience need to remember: izzy is a textual hypocrite. izzy still has the taste of bootleather on his tongue, and he’s got the gall to get all snotty at ed about the act of grace— a choice ed makes under duress with a literal gun to stede’s head, where izzy made a choice of his own free will out of misplaced emotions and a condescending colonizer mindset that tells him he has the fucking right to look at ed and see a burden to be shouldered and a man who is half-insane, not a fucking genius at the top of his game who keeps telling izzy to please just knock it off and stop being so fuckin rigid.

which brings us to the third part, and the text’s subtle confirmation that everything izzy says he does for ed in that speech, ed actually does for izzy.

he’s massaging the crew when they doubt ed’s judgement, izzy says.

we know that’s not true. fang and ivan don’t respect him for a myriad of reasons, and anytime ed is gone and they can express it they do.

then, once they think ed is gone for good— it's curtains for ol’ izzy. fang and ivan would rather sail under the leadership of one oluwande boodhari, Genuinely Good Captain Material than spend one single more second dealing with izzy’s version of the same.

what saves izzy from meeting the devil at the bottom of the deep blue sea?

ed’s arrival, and ed’s desire to have a familiar face bring him tea. because he'd rather it be stede, but he doesn’t want to be alone; and izzy is still there while stede is gone, potentially forever as far as ed knows.

so, the text tells us: if there was any massaging of the crew going on, it was ed’s legend and the idea of what ed would do if he woke up and somebody had shoved his purse dog overboard keeping izzy afloat.

we know that, because they showed us. 

so what the text shows us is ed, keeping him around even though nobody else has faith in him, managing izzy and knowing his mind well enough to do so successfully. we see ed ask izzy for tea once; to make up scenarios where izzy did that for so long he’s just tired of taking care of ed at long last is to ignore what we see, and just listen to what izzy tells us.

because what does ed say? that sounds stressful, izzy. sounds; not is. 

i just wanna TALK to these writers, you know? jesus fuck.

he’s mocking izzy, because ed knows what the fuck is going on. he knows everything izzy claims to do and wants to take credit for, ed is actually doing and deserves the credit for. this is what it is, to exist in the world and look like ed: there is always, always a white person ready to take credit for your labor while they devalue you and say it's for your own good.

heartbreaking part loud: most of the time, they fucking believe it is. racism is also an unconscious reflex action, floating along in the cultural bloodstream, popping up in ways people don't often see in themselves, or care to investigate at all when someone points it out to them.

to wit: we know ed asked izzy to bring him lucius. he did not want izzy for comfort; we do not see izzy witness him cry, not once. pointedly: ed cries alone, once lucius is gone.

to ignore that and to assume izzy has been watching that happen, over and over and over because ed is erratic and lacks control and surely could not hide things from izzy, World’s Least Emotionally Intelligent Man, is to ignore ed’s version of events— and the version of events we see play out in front of our eyes— because we heard izzy’s point of view before we got the truth of the matter.

to take izzy at his word at first is understandable; he literally spoke first, and the action then showed his version of history to be untrue afterwards, episode by episode. these are careful writers and subtle ones to boot, so it’s easy to forget this is not a show where the curtains are just blue, leave the matter there and then filter all future action through what izzy told us to see. 

and beyond that, we are all trained to see men like izzy as reliable sources and arbiters of empirical reality and history via the dominant culture set by those who most benefit from these assumptions. sadly, most media has at best a surface desire to break that narrative pattern. i very much know that in most shows, izzy would be reliable and ed would be erratic, and it would be a pattern repeated on accident without malicious will or conscious intent ever entering the chat— that’s what makes defeating it so hard to do. people genuinely do not mean to do these things, so they tell themselves they could not be doing it at all.

antonio espera (aka, poke) gives a whole speech about this in generation kill, another piece of media that considers these issues and (due to the subject matter and the real men it portrays) has the approach of presenting us a rainbow of izzys to understand, see them as fellow complicated humans worth empathy who have a specific history that made them what they are, then hold them to narrative account for the horrible things they do, anyway.

white man’s gotta rule the world, says the conventional wisdom via a us marine who combines dark humor and honesty when discussing his lack of ability to be a powerful white man and his job enforcing a broken fucked up power system for them. it’s just a job; and that’s just destiny.

on ofmd, they’re far more interested in building a world where none of that is the case at all.

#our flag means death #i want to be super measured and understanding on this one #but people who take izzy at his word and defend him and ignore canon to create a world where ed is literally a white man's burden? #it's just Not It #and i love the text in part for knowing that #seeing so much of fandom ignore it lowkey breaks my heart #also makes it an unfriendly space for poc fans #which ...sucks! very much sucks #this show is the rare show that knows implicit bias exists in the everyday #and not just in huge outsized monsters #they are engaging with racism and the toll it takes to deal with white people who mean well but don't get it yet #i really wish fandom could do more of the same #my ofmd meta

[hoodoobarbie]

Contemplative, Critical Analysis of Social Division within the Black Community.

A research paper by Hoodoo Barbie - published 6/8/21

Prelude 

I am a neurodivergent, spiritual black woman who lives with high functioning  adhd and chronical illness while living in America.  This condition means i’m prone to moments of constantly fluctuating mental agility which makes me able or intensely disabled, at random. A part of this experience is dealing with consistent hyperactive analysis of in my daily life. This can be extremely debilitating at times and has taken years of labor, intensive training and other various resources, to stop seeing this condition as impairment, and begin using it to help myself and others in my professional and private life.  

Lately the nuance of divisive minutiae of racial experiences,  has become increasingly fascinating to my neurodivergent brain. Making me eager to use my gift to clarify these aspects, for the betterment of the collective. This contemplative analysis is currently limited to the American black experience but this may change in the future. In the meantime its important to highlight it is not intended to generalize the black collective globally. My hope is to bring more clarity and light to our systemic issues, by spreading this through out this system, to unravel system racism. 

Non black POC who read this, have permission to use this discourse as educational tool for themselves and their communities. This is not a invitation to speak over, invalidate, or hinder discourse between black individuals. The commentary of non black poc is encouraged, but with the realized expectation that you are a guest in this space. 

White individuals can reblog or spread this discourse, to educate their own peers, but do not have my consent to invalidate, interact, engage, antagonize or offer argumentative discourse with other poc in this space. On this post white social commentary is intentionally limited to discourse and engagement with each other.  

Violators of these expectations should expect to be blocked, bound and handled spiritually by my religious custom.   

Critical race theory always requires mental labor and takes a extreme toll on mental and physical health. Compiling this paper was a monumental, exhaustive act within itself. Therefore, I reserve the right to ignore or block anyone, for any reason as a self respected individual. 

Thesis of Intentional Systemic Division in the American Black Collective 

The collective dialogue on systemic division is currently out of date. This discussion, is heavily reliant on the shared knowledge of previous generations and hasn't reflected the current nuisances of the new generations, our social progress and its changes. It’s important to highlight the experience of previous generations  and not invalidate them, while also consistently update the social evolution of this divide, for each each generation. While this research paper is intended to be educational, may it also serve as a call to action. Systemic racism is always consistently evolving. It’s important to educate each new generation of this expectation, to encourage consistent dialogue to promote our continuous evolution and self reflection and understanding our own experiences.

The current intentional divisional systemic divide of the two groups within the American black collective, has become become unbearable tense and stagnant. This corrosive toxicity worsens communal relations and the growing divide.

 The purpose of this paper is to explain, educate and provide a simple working solution for this issue, for the intent of betterment and unification of our community. 

Understanding The Social Divide - Cause & Effect

The black American collective, is separated by two main social groups, the mainstream insulated black adjacent and the hidden isolated white adjacent.  Each group is socialized to experience whiteness differently within the system, so whiteness can protect itself. A atmosphere of confusion and distrust is consistently fostered, to keep everyone at each other throats. This is blatant ‘psychological warfare’.   

The insular mainstream black adjacent community is given the privilege of being the voice of the entire community, within whiteness. This is done intentionally to cause further division between the suburban white adjacent who silenced and  hidden. This leaves a critical question to be asked. Why ? Looking back historically, we know whiteness will systemically oppress, gaslight and repress any group that poses a potential threat to its construct. 

It’s important to note this nuance because while everyone within the system is oppressed, everyone is not also repressed. If everyone continuously experienced the same thing systemically, it would make it easy to destroy the system. Whiteness survives by perpetuating two means of confusion, to confuse and destabilize everyone. 

Oppression is actively conscious, while Repression is unconscious. This results in creating two marginalized groups, one who is socialized to be consciously socially aware of their subjugated oppression and oppressor and another who is socialized to be unconscious of their subjugated oppression and oppressor which also actively represses them. 

Whiteness consistently weaponizes these subtle psychological tactics, to control the narrative by manipulating and dividing each collective of POC.  This begs a further question, does whiteness see the black adjacent community as less threatening when compared to the suburban white adjacent ?

Regardless these two groups are actively systemically divided, one group is mainstream while being simultaneously is oppressed and the other issue intentionally silenced while being oppressed and repressed.

Whiteness always rewards the mainstream oppressed group by socializing them to contribute in the repression of  silenced repressed. Whiteness rewards the silenced repressed group when they allow themselves to be weaponized against mainstream oppressed. This tricky little tactic leads to a never ending circle of division and gleefully manipulation while whiteness chuckles quietly in the background.

Analysis of the Collective Social Divide of the Oppressed Mainstream &  Repressed Hidden Collectively.

‘Socially Oppressed and Mainstream - Influential, Popular and Hated The Voice of The Black Adjacent Community

The mainstream black community exists in a black adjacent bubble, separate from the full glare of the white gaze. This has considerable pro’s and con’s, in it’s group. This group is socialized to expect potentially deadly macro-aggressions any time at random, so they are constantly on guard. There is also a implied expectation of possible community support and safe places, which may provide a degree of privacy from whiteness. Macroaggressions are influenced by class, especially in lower income communities. Class levels fluctuate continuously due to systemic economic racism. A middle class insulated community, can easily become poor overnight.  Great examples of this include cities like; Ferguson and Flint, Michigan. Middle, upper and wealthy black communities also exist under this threat.  Upper class black communities, that are more stable; live with fear of being completely victims of genocide and total annihilation. Great examples of prosperous black establishments that were destroyed, are Tulsa, Seneca village and Bruce Beach. Microaggressions are barely processed at all in comparison and if they are, they usually seen as less threatening.

Inherited genetic and ancestral bias, is heavily prevalent when dealing with mental health. The lack of acknowledgment, within this is rooted in unhealed trauma and valid mistrust of the racist medical establishment. Unfortunately this breeds a lack of social awareness and education, perpetuating a horrible collective cost and socialized ignorance, when confronted with these issues. The black adjacent community is processed as the only experience in the valid experience within white social construct and is rewarded when they reinforce this ideal, contributing to the repression of silenced suburban white adjacent voices. Black adjacent individuals can make strides against this narrative, encouraging more black medical professionals within their spaces.

Whiteness benefits from this narrative, so it encourages and rewards those who contribute to it. This enforced predatory reward system is intended to to control, manipulate and abuse people, especially those existing in a state of financial disadvantage. This breeds a perfect atmosphere of division and confusion, that destroys everything within it’s path. Intentionally, black adjacent mental health issues are ignored, to influences their control over mainstream black adjacent narrative and media. The white monopoly of the economic resources is constantly used to antagonize, distract and bait. Whiteness doesn't benefit from healthy discourse on the collective mental health issues of the black community because it  contradicts their narrative. This is why unhealthy poisoned distractions are monetized intentionally in black adjacent communities, to influence white and other poc’s perspective of that specific community. This is intended to foster bias, cultivate ignorance, lack of empathy, make it harder to create alliances and poc solidarity .  Luckily more people in black adjacent spaces recognize or call out these effects while working on advocating, educating and deconstructing this narrative. However, this process will take to several generations to sort itself out, as it’s a fairly new development generationally. Since the black adjacent community is given the position of representing of the black American collective experience globally, it’s important  to understand this nuance. .

This is achieved confronting internalized social trauma and unpacking why we are socialized this way. This is done by creating more dialogue of our differences and highlighting the repressed suburban black experience. A great place to start is to observing how black adjacent folks process subtle microaggressions in in contrast to violent, potentially deadly macroaggressions, in comparison to suburban white adjacent. Black adjacent individuals are socialized to be on high alert for  violent macroaggressions, constantly. This creates a different processing experience. When microaggressions happen, these individuals might experience intense feelings of relief, apathetic numbness, subconsciously ignore or may not even recognize when it’s happening. This is drastically different in comparison to the suburban white adjacent.

‘Socially Repressed and Hidden. Silenced, White adjacent and Isolated - The Suburban Black Individual Without Community.’

There is no community for any poc in suburban white adjacent space. Suburban folks are socialized to believe in cooperative integrative existence and the false promise of safety spaces within these structures,  under every present threat of assimilation. There is no privacy place from the intensity of white gaze, as every day is constant masked performance, outside of their home. Suburban black communities within these spaces are myth, and do not actually exist. The suburban black individual experience is isolated and restrictive.  All forms of communal growth are processed as a threat within the system, because whiteness has no interest in actual integration outside of cultural theft.   To progress, individuals existing within these spaces must learn nuances o as a means of survival and to assimilate. White adjacent exist in state of oppression, while also being heavily repressed. Their experiences are often invalidated because whiteness refuses to the same standing as those who are black adjacent. Here, whiteness prefers passive pretense of social tolerance so it can vehemently deny it’s aggressive. This drastically differs from it’s more openly aggressive stance with dealing with black adjacent individuals or their communities.  Black adjacent folks who are not socialized to be familiar with this drastic adjustment may be lulled into a false sense of security, while experiencing feelings of irritation, confusion, and jealousy when dealing with suburban black individuals who are white adjacent or in their spaces.  

Microaggressions in the white adjacent space, are intended passively tone police while gaslighting and disguising the veiled threat of a potentially deadly macroaggressions.  White adjacent individuals who are aware of this, are socialized to be on high alert for both micro and macroaggressions constantly. They are also more consistently micro aggressed, then their black adjacent peers in these environments due to their proximity to whiteness.  The mental health toll of this is massive and contributes to a culture of shame, repression and silence. However there is some hope! Because of this some white adjacent individuals may be more prone to reach out for help when it comes to their mental health, as a survival mechanism. Unfortunately this experience can also be very traumatic due their proximity to whiteness because often the mental health professionals they seek are only available in black adjacent communities, which isolates them even further.

 Meanwhile White people, in these spaces are socialized from birth, to feed into a state of ignorance and historical revisionism, which forms a bubble, to seduce, isolate, infantilize, brainwash, confuse and foster attitudes of cognitive dissonance, creating a perpetual state of aggravating white fragility.  This mindset isolates and punishes white individuals who attempt to break free of it  within the system and also gaslights POC who attempt calling it out. This creates a state of plausibility deniability as a means of distancing itself from responsibility. As a daily occurrence that suburban black folks experience differently individually, while lacking real communal structure, it’s destabilizing and demoralizing. Generally white adjacent are socialized to have no social defense and may not even recognize micro or macroaggressions, while experiencing them simultaneously. This may seem incredulous to black adjacent folks, who have been trained to be on high alert from birth.  Adding insult to injury this is further weaponized by whiteness and often these unassuming white adjacent people are used as violent pawns, against the black adjacent. The few white adjacent individuals who do become socially aware of this, then experience the violent consequence of awakening within the system, while enduring increased stress of white proximity. This usually results in a inevitable mental breakdown where these individuals are then forced to pick a path.

They are forced to choose or deal with the following, 

1) Assimilation for economic benefit, furthering the social divide and becoming more isolated as they are weaponized against the black adjacent collective. This usually results in massive mental breakdowns and the possibility of various physical ailments due to the stress of keeping up this façade. This always ends horrifically without a positive outcome.

2.) Mentally ill social advocates. These people are often aware of the nuances of their social experiences and want to bring more awareness by deconstructing and unpacking them. Their proximity to whiteness often gives them crucial insights black adjacent people may miss or lack. These people may or may not assimilate into whiteness.

3.) The stagnant, who exist in a state of confused neutrality. These are people who’s mentally health issues in white proximity may have become so severe they are mentally trapped. The people don’t possess the means to do anything about this situation, because they are so severely disabled by whiteness. 

In Conclusion - Presenting  A Solution

The social division of these two groups in the black American collective, is obviously intentional. The division of their social differences is weaponized by whiteness as a protective mechanism, sowing seeds of distrust, to prevent the total unification of the collective. 

Insulated black adjacent communities, do not understand their value as their voice within black American community, while being actively oppressed. They have a responsibility to uplift the suburban black voices, while confronting their own internalized biases of the hidden white adjacent suburbia. They need to call out and dead harmful perspectives, while actively contributing to their repression and silence. Gaslighting, needs to be called out and unlearned especially they have been socialized do this as reflex by whiteness.

White adjacent black individuals must learn to speak up and find their voice, while being actively repressed. They cannot expect the black adjacent to understand them automatically. They must overcome their own systemic naivety and fragility by understanding why they are distrusted. They also have a responsibility to educate other white adjacent individuals, so they aren't weaponized by whiteness. 

All of this labor is extremely exhausting but necessary to completely deconstruct the systemic structure. 

Both sides need to understand that whiteness fears this discourse and change because it will lead to the complete unification of the black collective, which is why whiteness has a vested interest in the continued social division of these two groups.

#racism #white supremacy #social justice #black bloggers #microagressions #macroagressions #flint #tulsa #black wallstreet #ferguson #blacklivesmatter #activism #black girl magic #mental health #neurodivergent #adhd #disabled #chronic illness #ADOS #hoodoo #witchesoftumblr #intersectional activism #bipoc lgbtq #lgbtq #black lgbt #womanism #intersectional feminism #sjw

[positively--speculative]

Loki fandom, here is another call out...

I didn't want to do this, Loki fandom. I really, truly, honestly didn’t...but here we are again.

Honestly, I’m surprised that I’m surprised that one of you took a post I made that breaks down why Loki’s abuse is not an excuse for his behavior and reblogged it with your comment about how Thor isn’t really all that great. Like, that was all that person got from that. This was a post that detailed the type of abuse he and Thor received from their father, related that abuse to my own, and explained that others and myself work hard to avoid being similar to our abusers (unlike Loki), and they just...skipped over all that to make it about how I was “wrong” about Thor...and that person, along with everyone who reblogged with that person’s input does not see anything wrong with it.

I’ve said this before, but I don’t really like getting too personal on this blog. This blog is supposed to be about comics and their adaptations on the big and small screen...but somehow, it always tends to get here. I’m going to warn some of you in advance...it might get a little triggering here as I detail the shit I’ve gone through so far this year.

Also, to my followers, you are all sweet, caring, and supportive and I always get such nice messages from you when I get personal...but this is something I don’t really wish to discuss with anyone after this post.

TRIGGER WARNING: ABUSE, RACISM

For all of my life, I have had an adoptive parent raise their voice at me when things didn’t go their way, call me names (“ugly,” “stupid,” “lazy”), and sometimes even get physical. The abuse had kind of been in a dormant state for the past couple of years with a blow up here and there, but maybe it’s because of the passing of my sister that it has gotten worse. This parent hates seeing my brother and I do our own things and illustrate our independence because they have a desire to be in control. I have listened as she has called my brother a “disgrace,” and just a few weeks ago, I was pushed. Not metaphorically either. I was literally pushed down when I tried to step in between their argument. I’m doing my best to work on getting out of here. I’m running some numbers and evaluating my best options, but I have a lot of things to consider and it’s all been taking its toll on me. Still, I will never ever stop checking myself each and every day to make sure I’m not modeling the behavior of my abuser when interacting with the people around me who I care about. To top it all off, I was diagnosed with mental illness/disability at a young age, and this abuser wrote it off and insisted it was something I could push through with the help of their tough love.

Fandom is something I use to escape and Loki is one of the few characters in the MCU I can relate to because I know what it is like to receive such toxicity from an adoptive parent. I know what it’s like to be in a family where people view you as an “other” (I’m biracial and the family I grew up with is mostly white which means I had to deal with a lot of microaggressions that contributed to some internalized racism that I’m still working on unlearning to this day. I’ll never be done). There is a good lot of the Loki fandom that has made enjoying his character difficult. I cannot venture into the Loki tag without seeing posts about how if you enjoyed Ragnarok (I did. It’s my favorite of the Thor movies), you support abuse. I have to see posts where white fans try to make their dislike for Ragnarok some social justice movement by theorizing that Taika Waititi holds self-hate for himself and projects internalized racism on Loki (get the hell out with that shit). And even when I engage with these people with more calm and collectiveness than they deserve, they still continue on with this bullshit. I have had one Loki fan apologize to me when I revealed that I am a victim of abuse. The rest of you have twisted the situation around to make yourself out to be the victims or ignored the fact that your way of defending Loki has been problematic and kept on doing it.

But you know, whatever. I considered blocking the Loki tag, but decided against it. I figured I’d just block those I saw on my dash behaving this way, and I figured since a lot of you like to preach about “staying in your tags,” that you’d actually practice what you preached and stay out of ours. I wrote the last call out of the fandom hoping that maybe at least just a couple of you would see it and examine yourselves, but I guess that was asking too much of you. I don’t think it would be so bad if your fandom didn’t try to parade your dislike of Ragnarok and your apologism as something more than what it really was, but I guess your love for your fave outweighs the well-being of other fans just trying to enjoy one of their favorite characters in peace without the lot of you acting self-serving, racist, and abusive.

I’m still not going to block the Loki tag, but in case any of you wonder why I block you without warning...this is why.

#loki #loki fandom #toxic fandom #fandom racism #tw: abuse #tw: emotional abuse #tw: physical abuse #tw: mental abuse #thor: ragnarok #taika waititi #internalized racism #racism #discourse theft

[tespuco]

PotC Liveblog: Dead Man’s Chest

I’d been looking forward to rewatching DMC for some time. It was the movie that canonized my OTP and inspired so many amazing Sparrabeth fics. I fondly recalled seeing it in theaters with my family, my eyes and shipper heart growing bigger and wider with every subtext-laden appearance of Jack’s compass. I remembered feeling personally betrayed by Elizabeth’s death-kiss, like the writers had deliberately buoyed my hopes only to ruthlessly crush them. Unlike CotBP, I had only seen DMC once before, and I couldn’t wait to appreciate the complicated Jack/Elizabeth dynamic with more mature eyes.

Boy, was I disappointed. Not by the Sparrabeth, thank the gods, but by literally everything else.

Is it just me or was this movie composed of a bunch of standalone scenes and set pieces strung together? Did they bring in Tim Burton just to direct the visuals of the interrupted wedding scene? Why does the Turkish prison sequence look like the opening cutscene to a high fantasy RPG videogame with the brightness setting turned down to zero?

OK I laughed at Jack popping out of the coffin and using a femur as a paddle, but I’m confused about everything else

Oh look, the crew’s on the verge of mutiny again, and this time it is Jack’s fault

Listen, I have Ted Elliott’s compass meta tattooed on my heart, but in retrospect the “Why is all the rum gone?” scene was probably too subtle. The audience doesn’t even know at this point how the compass is supposed to work. Maybe if they had the balls to actually include the deleted Sparrabeth scenes in CotBP, Jack’s emotional turmoil wouldn’t have seemed so opaque!

Still, a character being Vexed about their affections/feelings and doing a poor job of managing that vexation is my idea of high romance

(and both Jack and Elizabeth are quite vexed with each other indeed)

I CANNOT believe I had to sit through an uninterrupted half hour of racist filler that does absolutely fuck-all to advance the plot while ticking at least four boxes on my postcolonial bingo card what the fucking fuck

Let’s tally the cinematic sins: unfunny physical comedy in a style that would’ve been more suited to animation; indigenous cannibals speaking in unrealistic, buffoonish gibberish; said cannibals worshiping our hero (and later a dog) as a deity; and worst of all--

All the brown men that Gibbs hired as extras additional crew for the Black Pearl in DMC were put into a separate cage from the recurring white characters from CotBP (btw Anamaria is absent without even a throwaway line of explanation) because apparently even barbaric islanders know and practice segregation

And so segregated, the crew enters the stupidest, most contrived rat race up a cliffside with each other that ends with the brown people’s cage falling into the ravine THEREBY GETTING RID OF ALL THE CHARACTERS OF COLOR IN ONE FELL SWOOP

Also egregious racism aside, I’m put off by the film’s rather cavalier attitude towards gratuitous loss of life? Idk I feel like in the midst of all the action and adventure CotBP knew how to handle death and violence with the appropriate modicum of gravity and horror

Meanwhile on the island Gibbs is just like “oiya we’re standing in cages built from the bones of our former shipmates ha ha”

As for Jack - Jack has yet to save a cat or anything else besides his own skin, so he’s rapidly losing the goodwill he accumulated in the first film

holy shit yet another Elizabeth Swann-related realization about my sexual awakening: her look as a cross-dressing stowaway - pretty, delicate features in a boyish, flat-chested, slender form - is literally my sexuality 

She’s literally pulling the strings of all the men on that ship! What a puppet-master queen

Tia Dalma’s interest in Will and the “touch of destiny” line is an interesting bit of foreshadowing that doesn’t get any payoff in this film. DMC and AWE have been criticized for being impossible to watch as standalone films, but I think there’s something to be said for a universe that strives for internal continuity and demands more than a casual investment in its proceedings (a related but distinct model from the MCU)

If you gave me half a reason to I would ship Jack Sparrow with anybody and everybody. Look at the flirtatious lines and looks he exchanges with Tia Dalma!! Give me that story! (Actually, artaxastra did, twice: once in her standalone Creole!Jack origin story, And All of Them True, and once again in Gods and Heroes, a Jack/Calypso interlude in her Outlaws and Inlaws ‘verse)

Tia Dalma’s acceptance (and release) of Jack’s payment for her services tells me two things about her that I really like: (1) she’s like a magpie that collects interesting miscellany (witty tricksters, cunning pirate lords, undead monkeys). and (2) she’s not interested in caging creatures (the foreshadowing!!)

FINALLY WE GET SOME JACK/ELIZABETH INTERACTION

God bless Keira’s face and acting choices!! The chemistry!! All the little smiles and smirks they share!!

How doth she look at thee? Let me count all the ways: her amused, tentatively credulous smile at Jack’s storytelling and posturing over a magical compass and chest, while Norrington scoffs disbelievingly in the background; her having to bite her lips and walk away before Jack notices her giddiness because she literally cannot handle their flirting; her little laugh as he gently rebuffs the idea that he’s a good man

Also “I have faith in you. Both of you,” were her parting words to Will and here she gets a chance to tell Jack in person yay

Their little dance of “persuasion” is hot and all (Jack literally looks like he has to bite back a groan and whimper), but I’m really here for the banter (“Friendly?” / “Decidedly not.”); they get each other, and, under the right conditions, can communicate so effortlessly

“Why doesn’t your compass work?” - alright so ofc I love the legendary “curiosity” exchange, but I’m so confused by the abrupt transition in their conversation here? Like why didn’t she follow through and tug on that line of inquiry?? The “Because you and I are alike” line that follows makes no logical sense in context (ETA: I guess it could suggest that Elizabeth already knows why the compass doesn't work for him, because he's torn between doing the right thing and the selfish thing... But at this point she doesn't suspect him of lying to her, so...idek)

“You’d never put me in a position that would compromise my honor” - my god what a TEASE my queer heart

Oh, Norrington, what’s happened to you?? What happened to serving others, not just himself?? :(( It kinda confuses me that he goes on about the “dark side of ambition” and the “promise of redemption” when he’s the one who voluntarily resigned from his post...

Norrington carrying both shovels while Jack just poses prettily though lol

JACK’S COMPASS FINALLY WORKS FOR HIM BECAUSE THE TWO THINGS HE WANTS MOST IN THE WORLD--THE CHEST AND ELIZABETH--ARE IN THE SAME PLACE AND HE KNOWS IT

idk I guess some people find the three-way swordfighting scene hilarious but I’m with Elizabeth on this one: men are stupid 

ugh this script makes no sense

I’m so fucking confused by the narrative logic here: if Jones is dead, there’s no one to call off the Kraken?? But isn’t Jones the one calling the Kraken in the first place, to settle Jack’s debt? So if they killed Jones, wouldn’t the debt be null and void? NO JONES, NO KRAKEN, DUUUH.

OK but Jack is really unlikable in this film, last-minute “heroic” acts notwithstanding. Give me fix-it fics please

I mean it’s rather telling that by the time Jack returns to the Pearl there are only enough survivors to fill a single longboat. Oh yes he “saved them all” - the few that were left!!

This script has more holes in it than the Pearl does right now: everyone unquestioningly follows Will’s orders like he’s the captain (what happened to the dork who shouted, “Aye! Avast!”?? And there’s no evidence that since his engagement post-CotBP he’s practiced any sailing)

I mean it’s like no one but Elizabeth even noticed Jack was gone; the moment he comes back Gibbs chirps, “Captain, orders?” as if he never left. This coward just abandoned you all!!!

“It’s only a ship, mate.” - This is actually just the saddest line, and I’m glad Elizabeth was there to witness it because if there’s one thing she took away from their fireside conversation in CotBP it’s that the Black Pearl is more than a ship to Jack; what it really is is freedom, and here Jack’s set to lose both

And that’s what Elizabeth--not the Kraken--definitively takes from Jack: his freedom. Not just his ability to run away from his fate, but also the chance to take a stand and face it. (I like to think that, more than the murderous act itself, is what he finds so hard to forgive post-DMC. The darker Jack in salr323′s oneshot, Perfidy, written post-AWE, articulates this eloquently: “You know nothing of my debt, love, nor of my payment. But had you allowed me a nobler death, my account might have been lighter.”) His last act of defiance entails reclaiming what choice he has left: slipping slickly out of his shackles, hat on, “hello beastie,” into the monster’s maw.

Ugh they could have given Jack’s whole arc with Davy Jones such PATHOS instead of waiting until the very end--he struck a deal with the devil in all his youth and despair and hubris; now the bell is tolling and he realizes 13 years is nothing, no time at all, and he’s not ready to die; not today, not ever--yes it’s selfish and dishonorable (Will’s willing to square the debt of a father he hardly ever knew; he wouldn’t have blinked at paying his own) but how human is that? to fight and run even as the flames lick your heels? 

omg Jack is the jackrabbit

The irony of that eulogy still gives me feelings tho: “Guess that honest streak finally won out.” Elizabeth wrested away Jack’s control over his own story, so now she has to write it for him. When she toasts, “He was a good man,” it’s in both unearned homage and recompense. 

“And the world is a little less bright.” - OK but that’s too much. Moving words from Gibbs, but here it’s like he’s speaking directly to/for the audience, and not in a good way. It’s too obviously meta, and especially out of place in a film where Jack did not shine very bright at all

In-universe, it’s not very believable that two pirates like Pintel and Ragetti--who mutinied against Jack before, without a hint of remorse!--would now risk their lives to save him

Honestly if Disney wanted to include familiar faces/fan favorites in the supporting cast for AWE, they could’ve easily written a more realistic line like, “what the hell do we have to lose?” or some more selfish motive, none of these panegyrics

btw who are the native people standing in the swampwater? holding candles with mournful tears in their eyes?? no seriously who are they??? (I dearly hope such a striking tableau was meant to hint at Jack’s history with Tia Dalma and the residents of this bayou, but the more cynical part of me thinks: “Now hiring: extras of color, to play the part of human candlesticks lit in exaltation of an ambiguously white man” The writers get no benefit of the doubt from me after forcing me to sit through that cannibal island act)

It sounds sadistic of me but seeing how anguished Elizabeth is after claiming she’s not sorry gives me life

She keeps crying, and can’t even bring herself to drink Tia Dalma’s concoction against cold and sorrow! She just fakes a sip, which is such a great little character beat, because it shows she doesn’t think she deserves the remedy! She’ll just have to live with it...

That is, until Will decides he can’t stand the sight of her grief, and opens up Pandora’s box for her despite just catching her passionately kissing another man: “If there was anything to be done to bring him back, Elizabeth...” He really is too good for this world

And Elizabeth MUST know there’s a price, that she’d be staking not just her own life and happiness but her betrothed’s, and yet selfishly, always selfish, she says, “Yes” 

BARBOSSA!!! Still the most epic character reveal ever. I still remember the theater bursting into gasps and applause, good times

#i've had this in my drafts folder for too long along with a whole bunch of dmc reblogs #it's time to air them out they're starting to stink #tl;dr i could've watched the youtube videos compiling the 12 minutes of jack/elizabeth interaction instead of the entirety of dmc #and i don't think i would've missed out on much #t-recs #the long and short of the meta #pirates of the caribbean

[korrasera]

I do agree on what you say about things like fiction won't make you a murderer, but i believe pedophilia and abuse are not something as badly seen in society as murder, even if in an "undertones" kind of way. Things like women having partners double their age in dilms, the teen category in porn being one of the most populars, a lot of abuse tactics and bad boys being considered romantic in books and movies. just like your example, these validate real life people that already think like this

The things I was talking about before are stereotypes. The reason that we perpetuate them through media is because some people think that they're true.

When you're raised in a white supremacist society, as we all are, you get taught that black people are inferior. Some people accept that stereotype out of ignorance, but other people take that to heart and believe it seriously. To them, a tokenized black person makes sense because that stereotype is already part of their existing belief system. To them, a good world in one in which there exists a hierarchy that puts white people on top and black people at the bottom. To a white supremacist, that's not just acceptable, that's good!

The stereotype validates their world view and makes them feel like they're right. And people who are bigots and xenophobes are heavily invested in feeling right and good and safe. Stereotypes help them do that and we can propagate those stereotypes in a variety of ways, from the fiction we read to the stories we see on the nightly news.

Are you with me so far?

Society hates pedophilia and abuse. None of us like it. Like, at a certain scale, no one. Because we all internalize the lessons that harming children is bad and that abuse is bad. The people who go on to do these terrible things have to rationalize it to themselves because the rest of society has spent a long time telling them that doing actual harm to actual people is bad. Some of them might rationalize abuse by appealing to the authoritarianism that white supremacy taught them, in which a social hierarchy is good and only their needs are important, but they have to build that rationalization.

So you get nazis who will go attack Jewish people because they think that Jewish people are a direct threat to their safety. The nazi, who is an authoritarian to the core, is fundamentally afraid because they never grew up and learned how to control that fear. And just like a child jumping at shadows, they will cast about looking for a suitable victim to see as their enemy, looking to the people most marginalized in society. They settle on Jewish people, partly because Jewish people have faced racism and xenophobia longer than pretty much anyone else (seriously, the two longest lasting forms of racism on the planet are racism against Jewish people and Romani people) and partly because Hitler's Third Reich re-invigorated antisemitism across the planet and left a blueprint for every shitheel that followed him. Their target chosen, they then set about attacking Jewish people in order to feel better.

It's quite literally a power fantasy. Invent an enemy, accuse them of crimes they have not committed, and then attack them to make yourself feel safe. To make you feel like a hero.

A book doesn't do that. An inability to deal with the real psychological toll of fear and the problem of emotional immaturity in adults did that. Antisemitism and the toxic, virulent nature of it's followers did that. Yes, Mein Kampf is a disgusting book that Hitler wrote to talk about himself, but his book didn't bring the antisemitism. He did. And he did it by tapping into people's fear and the undercurrent of antisemitism that the world hasn't and still hasn't dealt with.

The psychology that goes into someone doing something terrible is extensive and it isn't determined by what ship you like or what book you read. It isn't determined by the kind of art one might browse while engaging in sexual behavior. It's much more powerful and much more deep seated than that.

So yeah, society already teaches people that pedophilia is bad. The problems we have with pedophilia in culture at large aren't problems with people not being disgusted by it enough, it's with people not being willing to upset the status quo or attack entrenched power structures to root it out. Go watch the film Spotlight and then understand that the crisis described in that film had absolutely nothing to do with fanwork, TV, or films. It didn't have anything to do with Lolita, or the Bible, or a stack of Stephen King books and Dario Argento films. Be disgusted with fanwork all you like, but don't confuse your disgust with actual moral reasoning.

As one last example, women in films don't wind up with partners twice their age because people are accepting of pedophilia. They wind up with partners twice their age because of the stereotype that men are always in charge and that women are a prize. That's not something that was caused by the portrayal of women in film and getting rid of that practice in film isn't going to stop it. We fight to get rid of that stuff because it really sucks to grow up as a woman and realize that the world thinks you're an object. Because you see the stereotype all around you, not just in the fiction that you consume.

That's really what it comes down to.

Fiction isn't responsible for this behavior. Real people are. Fiction doesn't tell you to behave, it's just a mirror that you hold up to better understand the human condition.

Some people are afraid of that and don't want us to understand ourselves better. Those people are antis and they're only going to feel safe as long as we believe exactly like they do, try to mimic purity exactly like they perform it.

Fiction isn't our god. Fiction is our mirror.

#korrasrsly #antis #authoritarianism #Anonymous

[dailynewswebsite]

World Children’s Day: Young people deserve to be heard during COVID-19

Adults want to concentrate to kids's voices and picture a special future — not for youngsters however with them. (Shutterstock)

This Nov. 20 marks 66 years for the reason that United Nations established World Youngsters’s Day. On the identical day in 1989, the United Nations Common Meeting adopted the worldwide human rights treaty often called the United Nations Conference on the Rights of the Youngster.

But a current UNICEF report card, Worlds Aside, ranks Canada 30 out of 38 developed nations when contemplating the state of kid happiness, well-being and talent.

Learn extra: Canada’s woeful observe report on kids set to worsen with COVID-19 pandemic

This 12 months, as a consequence of COVID-19, World Youngsters’s Day should be celebrated just about, which may imply its significance is neglected. However 2020 is likely to be important in relation to kids’s futures.

COVID-19 has impacted the lives of billions of kids everywhere in the world and has created an enormous disruption in schooling. The pandemic has additionally led to a major enhance within the variety of kids dwelling in multidimensional poverty, which signifies that they lack entry to elementary assets resembling schooling, well being, housing, vitamin, sanitation and water.

As a cultural theorist of childhood, I imagine this World Youngsters’s Day presents an vital alternative for adults to concentrate to the voices of kids and picture a special future — not for youngsters however with them.

Folks protest the circumstances within the Kashechewan First Nation college on Parliament Hill in Ottawa in September 2018. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

The realities of childhood in 2020

In Canada, as a brand new examine exhibits, the pandemic has created a psychological well being disaster that’s disproportionately affecting racialized and Indigenous kids.

This 12 months has additionally seen the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter motion in response to police violence in opposition to Black individuals and anti-Black racism. Protesters have denounced police violence and racism in opposition to Black, Indigenous and racialized communities, bringing better widespread consciousness of the lethal toll of systemic racism.

Collectively, these occasions of 2020 are elevating issues around the globe in regards to the current circumstances of childhood. Additionally they current pressing questions on what the longer term might maintain if their prices for youngsters should not addressed.

Learn extra: Most white mother and father do not speak about racism with their children

Imagining a special future

As I’ve argued earlier than, the western excellent of childhood that focuses totally on defending kids’s innocence is an outdated cultural delusion that’s not in keeping with the precise experiences of kids’s lives.

How may our understanding of childhood change if we took critically what kids are saying about their lives on this time of serious problem and alter?

Listed below are 3 ways we would reimagine childhood by means of kids’s views.

1. Youngsters are educated

Western beliefs about childhood are sometimes targeted on preserving innocence, and are additionally embedded with exclusionary classist and racist assumptions. These assumptions serve to insinuate that “understanding” kids (kids in poverty, homeless kids, those that have skilled trauma) aren’t entitled to innocence.

Though mother and father might want to defend kids from tough realities in order that they gained’t really feel unhappy or afraid, doing so reinforces the concept that kids shouldn’t know issues.

And but, maybe now greater than ever, kids know and perceive a lot about our world, and are wanting to share. One nice instance is UNICEF’s current Be taught With Me video collection, which options kids from everywhere in the world describing their experiences throughout quarantine and sharing their suggestions for studying new abilities. After we take note of what kids know, we honour them as vital contributors to our group, our society and our world.

‘Brazil: Dancing with Gabriel and Sofia’ Be taught With Me video from UNICEF.

2. Youngsters are skilled

Trying to protect childhood innocence additionally means defending kids from tough experiences. However as COVID-19 has actually proven us, kids should not exempt from adversity and wish to have the ability to speak about what they’re going by means of. UNICEF gives a collection of video diaries that present how kids globally are dealing with the impacts of the coronavirus.

These movies present perception into the impacts of lockdowns, college closures and bodily distancing. Though it may be tough for adults to just accept that kids are combating worry or grief, acknowledging and speaking about these challenges helps us see kids as people with distinctive experiences.

‘Hannah’s Residence Diary’ from the youngsters’s video diary collection from UNICEF.

3. Youngsters are succesful

After we acknowledge kids’s data and experiences, we acknowledge their vital contributions to our households, our communities and our society. This 12 months has offered many examples of kids’s talents to advertise change, act responsibly and defend the well-being of others.

Youngsters have been important companions in combating the unfold of COVID-19. In Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has typically addressed kids straight, calling on them to do their half.

This 12 months, kids have additionally supplied inspiring examples of their engagement and management in protest and activism, resembling eight-year-old Nolan Davis of Missouri, who organized a Black Lives Matter march for teenagers.

These examples remind us that kids are succesful. If our total society acknowledges kids as competent, they is likely to be embraced as valued members of our society.

This 12 months has proven us that kids should not, as they’re typically depicted, naïve, inexperienced or helpless. Greater than ever, as cultural historian Robin Bernstein writes, “it’s time to create language that values justice over innocence.” As Bernstein explains: “All kids deserve equal safety underneath the legislation not as a result of they’re harmless, however as a result of they’re individuals.”

In the identical manner, kids need to be acknowledged as understanding, skilled and succesful human beings. Adults can honour that proper by inviting kids into conversations, listening to what they need to say and taking their ideas and emotions critically. Rethinking childhood by means of a justice lens acknowledges kids as elementary to our world, not merely for what they could develop into, however who they’re and what they will do, proper now.

Julie C. Garlen has obtained funding from The Social Sciences and Humanities Analysis Council of Canada.

from Growth News https://growthnews.in/world-childrens-day-young-people-deserve-to-be-heard-during-covid-19/ via https://growthnews.in

#Growth News

[christheodore]

By Chris Hedges

Donald Trump’s ideological vacuum, the more he is isolated and attacked, is being filled by the Christian right. This Christianized fascism, with its network of megachurches, schools, universities and law schools and its vast radio and television empire, is a potent ally for a beleaguered White House. The Christian right has been organizing and preparing to take power for decades. If the nation suffers another economic collapse, which is probably inevitable, another catastrophic domestic terrorist attack or a new war, President Trump’s ability to force the Christian right’s agenda on the public and shut down dissent will be dramatically enhanced. In the presidential election, Trump had

81 percent of white evangelicals behind him.

Trump’s moves to restrict abortion, defund Planned Parenthood, permit discrimination against LGBT people in the name of “religious liberty” and allow churches to become active in politics by gutting the Johnson Amendment, along with his nominations of judges championed by the Federalist Society and his call for a ban on Muslim immigrants, have endeared him to the Christian right. He has rolled back civil rights legislation and business and environmental regulations. He has elevated several stalwarts of the Christian right into power—Mike Pence to the vice presidency, Jeff Sessions to the Justice Department, Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, Betsy DeVos to the Department of Education, Tom Price to Health and Human Services and Ben Carson to Housing and Urban Development. He embraces the white supremacy, bigotry, American chauvinism, greed, religious intolerance, anger and racism that define the Christian right.

Click here for a 2007 video of Chris Hedges speaking about his book “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.”

More important, Trump’s disdain for facts and his penchant for magical thinking and conspiracy theories mesh well with the worldview of the Christian right, which sees itself as under attack by the satanic forces of secular humanism embodied in the media, academia, the liberal establishment, Hollywood and the Democratic Party. In this worldview, climate change is not real, Barack Obama is a Muslim and millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 election.

The followers of the Christian right, like Trump and his brain trust, including Stephen Bannon, are Manicheans. They see the world in black and white, good and evil, them and us. Trump’s call in his speech in Poland for a crusade against the godless hoards of Muslims fleeing from the wars and chaos we created replicates the view of the Christian right. Christian right leaders in a sign of support went to the White House on July 10 to pray over Trump. Two days later Pat Robertson showed up there to interview the president for his Christian Broadcasting Network.

If the alliance between these zealots and the government succeeds, it will snuff out the last vestiges of American democracy.

On the surface it appears to be incongruous that the Christian right would rally behind a slick New York real estate developer who is a very public serial philanderer and adulterer, has no regard for the truth, is consumed by greed, does not appear to read or know the Bible, routinely defrauds and cheats his investors and contractors, expresses a crude misogyny and an even cruder narcissism and appears to yearn for despotism. In fact, these are the very characteristics that define most of the leaders of the Christian right. Trump has preyed on desperate people through the thousands of slot machines in his casinos, his sham university and his real estate deals. Megachurch pastors prey on their followers by extracting “seed offerings,” “love gifts,” tithes and donations and by selling miracle healings along with “prayer clothes,” self-help books, audio and video recordings and even protein shakes. Pastors have established within their megachurches, as Trump did in his businesses, despotic fiefdoms. They cannot be challenged or questioned any more than an omnipotent Trump could be challenged on the reality television show “The Apprentice.” And they seek to replicate their little tyrannies on a national scale, with white men in charge.

The personal piety of most of the ministers who lead the Christian right is a facade. Their private lives are usually marked by hedonistic squalor that includes mansions, private jets, limousines, retinues of bodyguards, personal assistants and servants, shopping sprees, lavish vacations and sexual escapades that rival those carried out by Trump. And because they run “churches,” in many cases church funds pay for their tax-free empires, including their extravagant lifestyles. They also engage in the nepotism found in the Trump organization, elevating family members to prominent or highly paid positions and passing on the businesses to their children.

The Christian right’s scandals, which give a glimpse into the sordid lives of these multimillionaire pastors, are legion. Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s Praise the Lord Club, for example, raked in as much as $1 million a week before Jim Bakker went to prison for nearly five years. He was convicted of fraud and other charges in 1989 because of a $158 million scheme in which followers paid for vacations that never materialized. As the Bakker empire came apart, there also were accusations of drug use and rape. Tammy Faye died in 2007, and now Jim Bakker is back, peddling survival food for the end days and telling his significantly reduced television audience that anyone who opposes Trump is the Antichrist.Paul and Jan Crouch, who gave the Bakkers their start, founded Trinity Broadcasting, the world’s largest televangelist network, now run by their son Matt and his wife, Laurie. Viewers were encouraged to call prayer counselors at the toll-free number shown at the bottom of the TV screen. It was a short step from talking with a prayer counselor to making a “love gift” and becoming a “partner” in Trinity Broadcasting and then sending in more money during one of the frequent Praise-a-Thons.

The Crouches reveled in tasteless kitsch, as does Trump. They sat during their popular nightly program in front of stained glass windows that overlooked Louis XVI-inspired sets awash in gold rococo and red velvet, glittering chandeliers and a gold-painted piano. The network emblem, which Paul Crouch wore on the pocket of his blue double-breasted blazer, featured a crown, a lion, a horse, a white dove, a cross and Latin phrases among other elements. The Crouches would have been at home in Trump Tower, where the president has a faux “Trump crest”—allegedly plagiarized—and has decorated his penthouse as if it was part of Versailles.

The Crouches were masters of manipulation. They exhorted viewers to send in checks for $1,000, even if they could not afford it. Write the check anyway, Paul Crouch, who died in 2013, told them, as a “step of faith” and the Lord would repay them many times over. “Do you think God would have any trouble getting $1,000 extra to you somehow?” he asked during one Praise-a-Thon broadcast. Viewers, many of whom struggled with deep despair and believed that miracles and magic alone held them back from the abyss, often found it impossible to resist this emotional pressure.

Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) is home to many of the worst charlatans in the Christian right, including the popular healer Benny Hinn, who says that Adam was a superhero who could fly to the moon and claims that one day the dead will be raised by watching TBN from inside their coffins. Hinn claims his “anointings” have cured cancer, AIDS, deafness, blindness and numerous other ailments and physical injuries. Those who have not been cured, he says, did not send in enough money.

These religious hucksters are some of the most accomplished con artists in the country, a trait they share with the current occupant of the Oval Office.

I wrote a book on the Christian right in 2007 called “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.” I did not use the word “fascist” lightly. I spent several hours, at the end of two years of reporting, with two of the country’s foremost scholars on fascism—Fritz Stern and Robert O. Paxton. Did this ideology fit the parameters of classical fascism? Was it virulent enough and organized enough to seize power? Would it go to the ruthless extremes of previous fascist movements to persecute and silence dissent? Has our deindustrialized society replicated the crippling despair, alienation and rage that always feed fascist movements?

The evangelicalism promoted by the Christian right is very different from the evangelicalism and fundamentalism of a century ago. The emphasis on personal piety that defined the old movement, the call to avoid the contamination of politics, has been replaced by Christian Reconstructionism, called Dominionism by some. This new ideology is about taking control of all institutions, including the government, to build a “Christian” nation. Rousas John Rushdoony in his 1973 book, “The Institutes of Biblical Law,” first articulated it. Rushdoony argued that God gives the elect, just as he gave Adam and Noah, dominion over the earth to build a Christian society. Their state will come about with the physical eradication of the forces of Satan. It is the duty of the church and the elect to “rescue” the world so Christ can return.

This is an ideology of death. It promises that the secular, humanist society will be physically destroyed. The Ten Commandments will form the basis of our legal system. Creationism or “Intelligent Design” will be taught in public schools. People who are considered social deviants, including homosexuals, immigrants, secular humanists, feminists, Jews, Muslims, criminals and those dismissed as “nominal Christians”—meaning Christians who do not embrace the Christian right’s perverted and heretical interpretation of the Bible—will be silenced, imprisoned or killed. The role of the federal government will be reduced to protecting property rights, “homeland” security and waging war. Church organizations will be funded and empowered by the government to run social-welfare agencies. The poor, condemned for sloth, indolence and sinfulness, will be denied government assistance. The death penalty will be expanded to include “moral crimes,” including apostasy, blasphemy, sodomy and witchcraft, as well as abortion, which will be treated as murder. Women will be subordinate to men. Those who practice other faiths will become, at best, second-class citizens and eventually outcasts. The wars in the Middle East will be defined as religious crusades against Muslims. There will be no separation of church and state. The only legitimate voices will be “Christian.” America will become an agent of God. Those who defy the “Christian” authorities will be branded as agents of Satan.

Tens of millions of Americans are already hermetically sealed within this bizarre worldview. They are given a steady diet of conspiracy theories and lies on the internet, in their churches, in Christian schools and colleges and on Christian television and radio. Elizabeth Dilling, who wrote “The Red Network” and was a Nazi sympathizer, is required reading. Thomas Jefferson, who favored separation of church and state, is ignored. This Christian propaganda hails the “significant contributions” of the Confederacy. Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who led the anti-communist witch hunts in the 1950s, is rehabilitated as an American hero. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, along with the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya, is defined as part of the worldwide battle against satanic Islamic terror. Presently, nearly 40 percent of the U.S. public believes in Creationism or “Intelligent Design.” And nearly a third of the population, 94 million people, consider themselves evangelical.Those who remain in a reality-based universe often dismiss these malcontents as buffoons. They do not take seriously the huge segment of the public, mostly white and working class, who because of economic distress have primal yearnings for vengeance, new glory and moral renewal and are easily seduced by magical thinking. These are the yearnings and emotions Trump has exploited politically.

Those who embrace this movement need to feel, even if they are not, that they are victims surrounded by dark and sinister groups bent on their destruction. They need to elevate themselves to the role of holy warriors, infused with a noble calling and purpose. They need to sanctify the rage and hypermasculinity that are the core of fascism. The rigidity and simplicity of their belief, which includes being anointed for a special purpose in life by God, are potent weapons in the fight against their own demons and desire for meaning.

“Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty,” Simone Weil wrote.

These believers, like all fascists, detest the reality-based world. They condemn it as contaminated, decayed and immoral. This world took their jobs. It destroyed their future. It ruined their communities. It doomed their children. It flooded their lives with alcohol, opioids, pornography, sexual abuse, jail sentences, domestic violence, deprivation and despair. And then, from the depths of suicidal despair, they suddenly discovered that God has a plan for them. God will save them. God will intervene in their lives to promote and protect them. God has called them to carry out his holy mission in the world and to be rich, powerful and happy.

The rational, secular forces, those that speak in the language of fact and evidence, are hated and feared, for they seek to pull believers back into “the culture of death” that nearly destroyed them. The magical belief system, as it was for impoverished German workers who flocked to the Nazi Party, is an emotional life raft. It is all that supports them. The only way to blunt this movement is to reintegrate these people into the economy, to give them economic stability through good wages and benefits, to restore their self-esteem. They need to live in a society that is not predatory but instead provides well-funded public schools, free university education and universal health care, a society in which they and their families can prosper.

Let us not stand at the open gates of the city waiting passively for the barbarians. They are coming. They are slouching towards Bethlehem. Let us shake off our complacency and cynicism. Let us openly defy the liberal establishment, which will not save us, to demand and fight for economic reparations for the poor and the working class. Let us give all Americans a reality-based hope for the future. Time is running out. If we do not act, American fascists, clutching Christian crosses, waving American flags and orchestrating mass recitations of the pledge of allegiance, united behind the ludicrous figure of Donald Trump, will ride this rage to power.

[justicedemocrats]

It’s time to rebuild the Democratic party from scratch and make it represent the American people.

WE WILL:

PASS A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT TO PUT AN END TO WASHINGTON CORRUPTION AND BRING ABOUT ELECTION REFORM.

Super PACs should be banned, private donations to politicians and campaigns should be banned, and a clean public financing system should be implemented to end the takeover of our government by corporations and billionaires. Americans deserve free and fair elections — free from the corruption of big money donors. The Supreme Court has effectively legalized bribery. It’s time for an Article 5 convention to take our Democracy back from the brink of Oligarchy. Prior to passing this amendment, all Justice Democrats should reject billionaire and corporate donations when running for office to show the American people we don’t just talk the talk, we walk the walk. Ranked choice voting should also be implemented to make smaller parties a viable option. All provisions of the Voting Rights Act should be reinstated, and gerrymandering for partisan gain should be eliminated.

RE-REGULATE WALL STREET AND HOLD WHITE-COLLAR CRIMINALS ACCOUNTABLE.

Despite engaging in systemic fraud and causing a subprime mortgage meltdown and the great recession, you can count the people from Wall Street who are in prison for their crimes on one hand. It’s time to prosecute the criminals, bring back Glass-Steagall, and re-regulate Wall Street to prevent another crash. Prison is not just for the poor and the middle class anymore. We will have cops on Wall Street, not just Main Street.

END BILLIONAIRE AND CORPORATE TAX DODGING, FIX THE SYSTEM TO BENEFIT MIDDLE-CLASS AND POOR PEOPLE.

Corporations dodge $450 billion a year in taxes by using offshore tax havens. We should end this injustice, as well as chain the capital gains tax to the income tax, increase the estate tax, and implement the Buffet Rule so that no millionaire CEO pays less in taxes than his or her secretary. It’s time for a tax system that benefits the middle-class and the poor, and makes the top 1% and multinational corporations pay their fair share.

DEFEND FREE SPEECH AND EXPRESSION.

We support the right to express unpopular opinions without fear of censorship. We support free speech on college campuses. The marketplace of ideas should be embraced. A vibrant debate is healthy for democracy, and we should cherish our first amendment. We also support net neutrality for a free and open internet.

OPPOSE BIGOTRY.

We must speak out against racism, sexism, xenophobia, and all forms of bigotry. Non-discrimination protections that currently apply to race, religion, and gender should be expanded to include the LGBTQ community and the atheist community. Making all Americans equal is not asking for special privileges, it’s asking for the rule of law — justice and equality for all as outlined in the United States Constitution.

MAKE THE MINIMUM WAGE A LIVING WAGE AND TIE IT TO INFLATION.

This is about justice and basic human decency. If you work hard and you work full time you shouldn’t live in poverty. Furthermore, we support strong unions and collective bargaining.

ENSURE UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE AS A RIGHT.

The United States should catch up to every other modern nation and implement a single-payer, medicare-for-all system. There’s no reason we can’t be #1 in the world instead of #37. It’s time to end the destruction of American healthcare by rapacious, price gouging, for-profit, private health insurance middlemen.

ENSURE UNIVERSAL EDUCATION AS A RIGHT.

Educating the citizenry of a nation pays dividends in the long run, with the economy getting back much more than is initially put in. Crushing student debt for higher education would no longer burden young men and women trying to improve their lives through hard work. We should strive to have the best education system in the world.

END UNNECESSARY WARS AND NATION BUILDING.

The United States maintains 800 military bases worldwide at a cost of $100 billion a year, this is money that can be spent at home creating jobs, rebuilding infrastructure, and investing in the future of the people. The disastrous war in Iraq cost trillions, the war in Afghanistan is 15 years in with no end in sight, and we’re currently bombing 7 different countries. We spend more on our military than the next 8 countries combined. Despite countless lives lost and destroyed, terrorism has only gotten worse. It’s time to end the wars and the perverse monetary-incentive structure that makes politicians flippant about sending young men and women to die. Unilateral U.S. military force should only be used as a last resort to defend the nation. The current budget could be cut drastically if we used our department of defense for what it was intended — defending us, instead of waging interventionist wars.

END THE FAILED WAR ON DRUGS.

The goal is legalization, taxation, and regulation. Prohibition only makes drug cartels more powerful, increases crime, and makes drugs more dangerous due to lack of enforced safety standards. What you put in your body is your own business, and your right. A free society should allow individuals to make their own choices about their bodies. While most users are recreational and moderate, rehabilitation and treatment should be provided for people struggling with addiction. Additionally, those serving time for non-violent drug offenses should be pardoned.

CREATE THE NEW NEW DEAL.

Our infrastructure gets a grade of D from the Society of Civil Engineers. The government should invest trillions in rebuilding our crumbling roads, bridges, schools, levees, airports etc. There’s no reason why we can’t have the world’s #1 infrastructure.

CREATE THE RENEWABLE ENERGY REVOLUTION.

Scientists are sounding the alarm on climate change. In order to avoid the worst case scenario and a dystopian future we need a massive green revolution. It’s time to drastically and immediately move away from fossil fuels and develop the technologies of the future. This will be a giant boon to both the private and public sector, as well as a necessary response to a global crisis. We can and we must be #1 in sustainable energy production in the world.

BLOCK BAD TRADE DEALS LIKE THE TPP AND OPPOSE OUTSOURCING THAT WILL FURTHER DAMAGE THE MIDDLE-CLASS.

As a result of NAFTA, CAFTA, PNTR with China and the WTO, Americans have lost millions of decent paying jobs. It’s time to end the race to the bottom and renegotiate these rigged deals that only benefit elites. We should not sacrifice our sovereignty, the only people who are allowed to make laws for the United States should be the American people, not multinational corporations.

END CONSTITUTIONAL OVERREACHES.

Ban the NSA from bulk data-collection and warrantless spying. Shut down Guantanamo Bay and all extrajudicial prisons. Prosecute torturers and those who violated the Geneva Conventions, Nuremberg Tribunal, International law and US law. Return habeas corpus and due process. Pardon whistleblowers like Edward Snowden. We shouldn’t be leading from behind on human rights, we must be the home of liberty. We should practice the values we preach.

NO LONGER SELL ARMS TO HUMAN-RIGHTS VIOLATORS.

Ban arming human rights violators. We recently gave Saudi Arabia billions in weapons and watched the civilian death toll in their vicious bombing campaign in Yemen tick up. We continue sending Egypt arms as they violently crack down on peaceful protesters. Israel received $38 billion in aid and promptly announced new settlements. The first step to peace is not enabling nations who regularly violate international law. We must be bold enough to stand up to human rights violators who aren’t just our enemies, but our allies. We don’t weaken our allies by holding them accountable, we strengthen them.

DEFEND AND PROTECT WOMEN’S RIGHTS.

We support the Paycheck Fairness Act. We oppose Republican cuts to Planned Parenthood and women’s health clinics all across the country. In 2016 alone, 60 TRAP laws targeting abortion were passed in 19 states. We will vigorously oppose all efforts to dismantle reproductive rights.

ENSURE PAID VACATION TIME, SICK TIME, FAMILY LEAVE, CHILDCARE.

The United States is one of just three countries in the world that doesn’t offer paid maternity leave, the others being Oman and Papua New Guinea. We are the only industrialized nation that doesn’t offer paid vacation time. This should be changed immediately.

PROTECT SOCIAL SECURITY, MEDICARE AND MEDICAID.

Republicans have been trying to privatize and cut earned benefit programs for decades. Corporate Democrats have been willing to go along with them under the guise of a ‘grand bargain’ and ‘reform’. We pledge to staunchly oppose this. Social Security reduced the elderly poverty rate from 35% to 10%. 3.4 million Americans would immediately fall into poverty without Medicaid. Gutting these vital programs is not an option.

IMPLEMENT COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM.

We won’t give an inch in our opposition to Trump’s outrageous proposals. Ideas like a ‘total and complete’ shutdown of Muslim immigration and deporting all undocumented immigrants are anathema to America. We will fight for comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship. America is a proud nation of immigrants.

ENACT POLICE REFORM.

We believe in the core idea of policing — to serve and protect the community. Police are a vital part of American society and that is why it’s so important to reform the system to make it serve all Americans. For-profit policing and for-profit prisons should be abolished. Police training should be retooled to emphasize deescalation tactics, and body cameras should be mandatory on all officers. Furthermore, community oversight boards should be created and broken windows policing should be eliminated. Stop & frisk — which disproportionately targets blacks and latinos 87% of the time — has a 97% failure rate. On top of being discriminatory and ineffective, it’s also unconstitutional and should be ended. Special prosecutors must also be appointed to hold police accountable.

COMBAT HOMELESSNESS.

More than 600,000 Americans are homeless on any given night, including over 57,000 veterans. Studies show the cost of leaving a homeless person on the streets is $30,000 while the cost of housing them is just $10,000. Addressing this crisis is both the moral and fiscally responsible thing to do.

ENACT COMMON-SENSE GUN REGULATION.

92% of Americans want expanded background checks, 54% want a ban on assault weapons, and 54% want a ban on high capacity magazines. We agree with the majority of the American people and support these measures. Over 30,000 Americans die every year from gun violence, including over 10,000 homicides. The time to act is now to address this public health crisis.

ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY.

Humans are fallible, we’ll never get the right answer 100% of the time. 4% of the people on death row are not guilty of a crime and have been wrongly convicted. A system that puts innocent people to death is indefensible and should be reformed. We want justice for the American people but killing innocent people on death row is the exact opposite.

THESE IDEAS REPRESENT WHAT THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY WAS SUPPOSED TO REPRESENT ALL ALONG.

Opinion polls in the United States demonstrate that these policy positions are overwhelmingly popular. Indeed, throughout the industrialized world these ideas are considered moderate. This is a movement about freedom and justice. And it’s a movement by and for working people. If the Democrats refuse to embrace this platform, they’ll continue to lose, either to Republicans or to us. The future of the Democratic party is the Justice wing, not the establishment wing.

#justicedemocrats #justice democrats #politics #democracy #liberal #progressive

[berniesrevolution]

FULL Justice Democrats Platform

It’s time to face the facts: the Democratic Party is broken and the corporate, establishment wing of the party is responsible. Republicans now hold most state legislatures, most governorships, the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the presidency. So in 2018, hundreds of Justice Democrats will run a unified campaign to replace every corporate-backed member of Congress and rebuild the party from scratch. This is our plan.

Pass a constitutional amendment to put an end to Washington corruption and bring about election reform. Super PACs should be banned, private donations to politicians and campaigns should be banned, and a clean public financing system should be implemented to end the takeover of our government by corporations and billionaires. Americans deserve free and fair elections — free from the corruption of big money donors. The Supreme Court has effectively legalized bribery. It’s time for an Article 5 convention to take our Democracy back from the brink of Oligarchy. Prior to passing this amendment, all Justice Democrats should reject billionaire and corporate donations when running for office to show the American people we don’t just talk the talk, we walk the walk. Ranked choice voting should also be implemented to make smaller parties a viable option. All provisions of the voting rights act should be reinstated, and gerrymandering for partisan gain should be eliminated.

Re-regulate Wall Street and hold white-collar criminals accountable. Despite engaging in systemic fraud and causing a subprime mortgage meltdown and the great recession, you can count the people from Wall Street who are in prison for their crimes on one hand. It’s time to prosecute the criminals, bring back Glass-Steagall, and re-regulate Wall Street to prevent another crash. Prison is not just for the poor and the middle class anymore. We will have cops on Wall Street, not just Main Street.

End billionaire and corporate tax dodging, fix the system to benefit middle-class and poor people. Corporations dodge $450 billion a year in taxes by using offshore tax havens. We should end this injustice, as well as chain the capital gains tax to the income tax, increase the estate tax, and implement the buffet rule so that no millionaire CEO pays less in taxes than his or her secretary. It’s time for a tax system that benefits the middle-class and the poor, and makes the top 1% and multinational corporations pay their fair share.

Defend Free speech and expression. We support the right to express unpopular opinions without fear of censorship. We support free speech on college campuses. The marketplace of ideas should be embraced. A vibrant debate is healthy for democracy, and we should cherish our first amendment. We also support net neutrality for a free and open internet.

Oppose bigotry. We must speak out against racism, sexism, xenophobia, and all forms of bigotry. Non-discrimination protections that currently apply to race, religion, and gender should be expanded to include the LGBTQ community and the atheist community. Making all Americans equal is not asking for special privileges, it’s asking for the rule of law — justice and equality for all as outlined in the United States Constitution.

Make the minimum wage a living wage and tie it to inflation. This is about justice and basic human decency. If you work hard and you work full time you shouldn’t live in poverty.

Ensure universal healthcare as a right. The United States should catch up to every other modern nation and implement a single-payer, medicare-for-all system. There’s no reason we can’t be #1 in the world instead of #37. It’s time to end the destruction of American healthcare by rapacious, price gouging, for-profit, private health insurance middlemen.

Ensure Universal education as a right. Educating the citizenry of a nation pays dividends in the long run, with the economy getting back much more than is initially put in. Crushing student debt for higher education would no longer burden young men and women trying to improve their lives through hard work. We should strive to have the best education system in the world.

End unnecessary wars and nation building. The United States maintains 800 military bases worldwide at a cost of $100 billion a year, this is money that can be spent at home creating jobs, rebuilding infrastructure, and investing in the future of the people. The disastrous war in Iraq cost trillions, the war in Afghanistan is 15 years in with no end in sight, and we’re currently bombing 7 different countries. We spend more on our military than the next 8 countries combined. Despite countless lives lost and destroyed, terrorism has only gotten worse. It’s time to end the wars and the perverse monetary-incentive structure that makes politicians flippant about sending young men and women to die. Unilateral U.S. military force should only be used as a last resort to defend the nation. The current budget could be cut drastically if we used our department of defense for what it was intended — defending us, instead of waging interventionist wars.

End the failed war on drugs. The goal is legalization, taxation, and regulation. Prohibition only makes drug cartels more powerful, increases crime, and makes drugs more dangerous due to lack of enforced safety standards. What you put in your body is your own business, and your right. A free society should allow individuals to make their own choices about their bodies. While most users are recreational and moderate, rehabilitation and treatment should be provided for people struggling with addiction. Additionally, those serving time for non-violent drug offenses should be pardoned.

Create the new New Deal. Our infrastructure gets a grade of D from the Society of Civil Engineers. The government should invest billions in rebuilding our crumbling roads, bridges, schools, levees, airports etc. There’s no reason why we can’t have the world’s #1 infrastructure.

Create the renewable energy revolution. Scientists are sounding the alarm on climate change. In order to avoid the worst case scenario and a dystopian future we need a massive green revolution. It’s time to drastically and immediately move away from fossil fuels and develop the technologies of the future. This will be a giant boon to both the private and public sector, as well as a necessary response to a global crisis. We can and we must be #1 in sustainable energy production in the world.

Block the TPP and all outsourcing deals that will further damage the middle-class. As a result of NAFTA, CAFTA, PNTR with China and the WTO, Americans have lost millions of decent paying jobs. It’s time to end the race to the bottom and renegotiate these rigged deals that only benefit elites. We should not sacrifice our sovereignty, the only people who are allowed to make laws for the United States should be the American people, not multinational corporations.

End Constitutional overreaches. Ban the NSA from bulk data-collection and warrantless spying. Shut down Guantanamo Bay and all extrajudicial prisons. Prosecute torturers and those who violated the Geneva Conventions, Nuremberg Tribunal, International law and US law. Return habeas corpus and due process. Pardon whistleblowers like Edward Snowden. We shouldn’t be leading from behind on human rights, we must be the home of liberty. We should practice the values we preach.

Ban arming human rights violators. We recently gave Saudi Arabia billions in weapons and watched the civilian death toll in their vicious bombing campaign in Yemen tick up. We continue sending Egypt arms as they violently crack down on peaceful protesters. Israel received $38 billion in aid and promptly announced new settlements. The first step to peace is not enabling nations who regularly violate international law. We must be bold enough to stand up to human rights violators who aren’t just our enemies, but our allies. We don’t weaken our allies by holding them accountable, we strengthen them.

Enact common-sense gun regulation. 92% of Americans want expanded background checks, 54% want a ban on assault weapons, and 54% want a ban on high-capacity magazines. This should be implemented along with a federal gun buyback program to cut down on the 300+ million firearms in circulation. Over 30,000 Americans die every year from gun violence, including over 10,000 homicides. The time to act is now to address this public health crisis.

Ensure paid vacation time, sick time, maternity leave, childcare. The United States is one of just three countries in the world that doesn’t offer paid maternity leave, the others being Oman and Papua New Guinea. We are the only industrialized nation that doesn’t offer paid vacation time. This should be changed immediately.

Abolish the death penalty. Humans are fallible, we’ll never get the right answer 100% of the time. 4% of the people on death row are not guilty of a crime and have been wrongly convicted. A system that puts innocent people to death is indefensible and should be reformed. We want justice for the American people but killing innocent people on death row is the exact opposite.

Defend and protect women’s rights. We support the Paycheck Fairness Act. We oppose Republican cuts to Planned Parenthood and women’s health clinics all across the country. In 2016 alone, 60 TRAP laws targeting abortion were passed in 19 states. We will vigorously oppose all efforts to dismantle reproductive rights.

Enact police reform. We believe in the core idea of policing — to serve and protect the community. Police are a vital part of American society and that is why it’s so important to reform the system to make it serve all Americans. For-profit policing should be abolished, police training should be retooled to emphasize de-escalation tactics, and body cameras should be mandatory on all officers. Furthermore, community oversight boards should be created and broken windows policing should be eliminated. Stop & frisk — which disproportionately targets blacks and latinos 87% of the time — has a 97% failure rate. On top of being discriminatory and ineffective, it’s also unconstitutional and should be ended. Special prosecutors must also be appointed to hold police accountable.

JusticeDemocrats.com

#politics #Justice Democrats #populism #grassroots #progressive #progressive movement #bernie sanders #political revolution #democrats #democratic party #tyt #The Young Turks #secular talk #berniecrats

[warninggraphiccontent]

12 June 2020

Tangfastic

Audrey Tang, Taiwanese digital minister, was fizzing with energy and insight when I interviewed her for the IfG this week.

We covered how Taiwan has kept its coronavirus cases astonishingly low (partly through quarantine and 'digital fences'), how it has fought misinformation, its innovative work on digital government and public engagement in general, and the most poetic job description you'll ever encounter.

Watch the whole thing here, and read/watch much more here.

In other news:

On the subject of job descriptions, a good selection of jobs this week. MoJ's Sam Tazzyman - you may remember him from an excellent Data Bites presentation - and the ESRC asked me to highlight theirs, while Full Fact also have an excellent opportunity - you'll find them all at the end of the Meta data section below. And an irregular reminder that if you're looking for data/digital jobs, Jukesie's newsletter is still the best place to look.

On the subject of Data Bites (any excuse), the next one will be at 6pm on Wednesday 1 July, supported by ADR UK. It's a great line up - full details shortly. Catch up on previous ones in the meantime.

Honestly, what is it with the completely unnecessary secrecy? The government is storing up serious problems for itself when it comes to earning trust in how it's using our data.

It was a bright cool day in June, and Nineteen Eighty-Four was celebrating 71 years since it was first published.

There are some good #BlackLivesMatter-related links from FiveThirtyEight below. But you should read this first.

See you next week

Gavin

Today's links:

Tips, tech, etc

Employees must be consulted on technologies monitoring the return to work (Computer Weekly)

MPs and their offices during lockdown - how we've helped (Parliamentary Digital Service)

Ten tips for facilitating online workshops (NPC)

Elephant safaris: organising meetings that help us grasp complexity (Geoff Mulgan)

Graphic content

Viral content: cases

How the Coronavirus Compares With 100 Years of Deadly Events* (New York Times, via Marcus)

Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Global Outbreak (New York Times)

Coronavirus cases are surging in Latin America* (The Economist)

Is the world making progress against the pandemic? We built the chart to answer this question (Our World in Data)

This chart compares the outbreaks of coronavirus in four parts of Wales (David James)

Coronavirus: Looking for R is about the geography as well as the maths* (The Times)

Brazil stops releasing Covid-19 death toll and wipes data from official site (The Guardian)

As coronavirus cases rise nationwide, public health experts urge caution* (Washington Post)

Viral content: consequences

Business impact of coronavirus, analysis over time, UK (ONS)

How to avoid the virus as the world reopens (FT)

What to Make of the Rebound in the U.S. Jobs Report* (New York Times)

The Economic Pain That the Unemployment Rate Leaves Out* (New York Times)

EUROPEAN SOLIDARITY TRACKER (ECFR)

That CNBC chart (CNBC, via everyone)

Psychopathic charts, lines that should be bars, and picking cherries (Alberto Cairo)

GDP monthly estimate, UK: April 2020 (ONS)

UK’s virus recovery lags behind European peers* (FT)

#BlackLivesMatter

#StolenSeriesbyAB (Adrian Brandon)

How Public Opinion Has Moved on Black Lives Matter* (The Upshot)

US boardrooms fail to reflect country’s demographics* (FT)

Protests spread over police shootings. Police promised reforms. Every year, they still shoot and kill nearly 1,000 people.* (Washington Post)

Charts that Count: how badly are African Americans affected by police brutality?* (FT)

Do You Know How Divided White And Black Americans Are On Racism? (FiveThirtyEight - but also, read this)

Why would you want to honour this? (Mona Chalabi)

BME deaths in custody, 1991-2014 (Institute of Race Relations)

Coronavirus fuels black America’s sense of injustice (FT)

George Floyd is remembered around the world* (The Economist)

Experience the sights and sounds of a historic protest in the nation’s capital* (Washington Post)

Patterns Of Death In The South Still Show The Outlines Of Slavery (FiveThirtyEight, April 2017)

Extensive Data Shows Punishing Reach of Racism for Black Boys* (New York Times, March 2018)

US politics

What to remember about polls as Trump continues to disparage — and invent — them* (Washington Post, via Marcus)

Forecasting the US elections* (The Economist)

Will protests help Donald Trump as they did Richard Nixon in 1968?* (The Economist)

Everything else

Services and Brexit (UK in a Changing Europe)

Ministerial directions (Oliver for IfG - being updated today)

A virtual parliament was well equipped to make progress on the government’s legislative agenda (Alice/Hannah for IfG)

A U.S. Secret Weapon in A.I.: Chinese Talent* (New York Times)

A study names firms who buy products from areas with deforestation* (The Economist)

Explore connected papers in a visual graph (Connected Papers)

A national aggregator for current and historical planning information (UK PlanIt)

#dataviz

A journalist’s introduction to network analysis (Paul Bradshaw)

How We Accidentally Wrote Our Most Popular Story Yet and What We Learnt in the Process (NZZ)

Meta data

Viral content: trace-y island

Boris Johnson’s patience wears thin over tracing app* (FT)

Coronavirus: Ministers consider NHS contact-tracing app rethink (BBC News)

NHS Covid-19 data store doc raises questions about link to contact tracing app (NS Tech)

Under pressure, UK government releases NHS COVID data deals with big tech (openDemocracy)

Revealed: Trump backer’s spy firm lobbied Gove, Hancock before winning key NHS contract (openDemocracy)

No, coronavirus apps don’t need 60% adoption to be effective* (MIT Technology Review)

Matt Hancock says the Test and Trace system is on its way to being “world class” Is that justified? I've spent the day trying to find out (Rowland Manthorpe)

Babylon Health admits GP app suffered a data breach (BBC News)

DHSC 'satisfied' after investigating Serco contract tracers data breach (Civil Service World)

Most data sent to Greater Manchester by national test and trace system 'was so rubbish it had to be returned' (Manchester Evening News)

Coronavirus: Police planning their own contact tracing system over concerns about government's version (Sky News)

Viral content: everything else

How Taiwan became a coronavirus success story: in conversation with Audrey Tang (IfG)

Struck (again) by how much lack of data on social care made this crisis hard to respond to (NAO via Graham)

Brazil reports 679 new coronavirus deaths amid controversy over data (Reuters)

How geospatial data is supporting the UK’s response to the coronavirus pandemic (Geospatial Commission)

DVLA and HMRC – working together during the coronavirus pandemic (DVLA)

Using detailed, frequently updated health data in a secure database, providing up to date information about patient care during the COVID-19 pandemic (DECOVID)

What data and digital stuff have you seen working really WELL during Covid? (Ben Goldacre)

Overload in the time of Covid (The Occasional Informationist)

Volte face?

IBM will no longer offer, develop, or research facial recognition technology (The Verge)

Although... (Olivia Solon)

We are implementing a one-year moratorium on police use of Rekognition (Amazon)

Microsoft won't sell police its facial recognition technology, following similar moves by Amazon and IBM* (Washington Post)

Identity parade

Meet the Identity and Attributes Exchange – GDS’s future for digital identity after Verify (Computer Weekly)

Digital Identity: The Missing Piece of the Government’s Exit Strategy (Institute for Global Change)

AI

Academics call on nations to work together on A.I. and ensure it benefits all of humanity (CNBC)

Microsoft's robot editor confuses mixed-race Little Mix singers (The Guardian, via Alice and Tim)

The ‘dark matter’ of visual data can help AI understand images like humans (The Next Web)

Big tech

Oral evidence: Online Harms and Disinformation - YouTube, Google, Facebook, Twitter (Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Sub-Committee on Online Harms and Disinformation)

Google got rich from your data. DuckDuckGo is fighting back* (Wired)

Wendy Liu: “Silicon Valley didn’t create the pandemic, but they’re profiting from it”* (New Statesman)

Everything else

New advice to help councils fight procurement fraud (MHCLG)

Liz Truss launches future trade strategy for UK tech industry (DIT/DCMS)

How data-driven democracy both helps and hinders politics (LSE British Politics and Policy)

Data firms pitch profiling tools at UK councils* (FT)

A Moment of Change: Challenges and Opportunities When Covering Hate Speech and Mis/Disinformation (MIT Media Lab)

Rendering Knowledge (Dave Snowden - old, but resurfaced via Glyn)

Selected Readings on Open Data Legislation and Policy (Open Data Policy Lab)

Storytelling with data podcast

Introducing the GOV.UK Data Labs (GDS - see also relevant Data Bites)

Best practice guidance and tools for geospatial data managers (Geospatial Commission - Owen's take)

Opportunities

EVENT: Launch of the UK's Geospatial Strategy (Geospatial Commission)

EVENT: Data, the Global South and the NHS: risks from new digital trade rules (Trade Justice Movement)

EVENT: Data, power, and the pandemic (Benchmark Initiative)

JOB: Head of Policy and Advocacy (Full Fact)

JOBS: Senior Data Engineer in the Data & Analytical Services Directorate and Lead Data Engineer in the Data & Analytical Services Directorate (MoJ)

JOB: Head of Data and Search (UK Parliament Digital Service)

JOBS: Citizens Advice is hiring into our technology team (James Plunkett)

JOB: Director, DDaT Function Strategy (GDS)

JOB: Deputy Director for Public Policy (ESRC)

And finally...

A behind-the-scenes glimpse into the making of our @instituteforgov charts (Cath/Alice)

Animal Crossing’s massive popularity has made it less like paradise and more like Wall Street* (Washington Post)

The #opendata on every vineyard in France and which AOC wine grows in it (Tom Forth)

[thisdaynews]

Black journalists push media to cover ‘hyper-racial’ moment in politics

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/black-journalists-push-media-to-cover-hyper-racial-moment-in-politics/

Black journalists push media to cover ‘hyper-racial’ moment in politics

Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery told POLITICO about the emotional toll discussions on racism in politics can take on reporters of color. | Kris Connor/Getty Images

media

‘Race and politics,’ one reporter said, ‘is really the story of our time.’

The Associated Press earlier this year shifted a national race and ethnicity reporter to its 2020 election team, an acknowledgment that race has become a defining element of President Donald Trump’s campaigns.

That beat, assigned to reporter Errin Haines Whack, is fairly unusual among major news organizations. And media outlets’ approach to covering race is frustrating some prominent journalists of color at a time when Trump’s language — including calling a civil-rights leader a “con man” and referring to a majority-black district in Baltimore as a “disgusting rat and rodent infested mess” this week — is threatening to define the campaign.

Story Continued Below

Some nonwhite journalists are growing increasingly vocal in their push for media outlets to take race head on in political coverage — and they are publicly highlighting the ways they say Trump’s words and the semantic debates over whether to call them “racist” weigh on them personally.

CNN anchor Victor Blackwell, a Baltimore native, went viral over the weekend for a reported and emotional segment Saturday in which he detailed how the president uses words like “infested” to refer to people of color.

“The president says … no human would want to live there,” Blackwell said of Trump’s tweets about the district represented by Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings. “You know who did, Mr. President? I did, from the day I was brought home from the hospital to the day I left for college, and a lot of people I care about still do.”

New York Times reporter Astead Herndon said last week during a Buzzfeed News panel that reporters of color sometimes feel they have to be “the black public editor of our newsrooms.” Axios’s Alexi McCammond recently said on MSNBC that it is “an incredibly difficult time to be a person of color, to be a woman of color, to be a journalist.”

And New York Times Magazine correspondent Nikole Hannah-Jones tweeted Saturday that “while some of y’all reporters are out here talking about how reporting on Trump is ‘fun,’ your black and brown colleagues are having to deal with the psychic impacts of his racism.”

“Sometimes we as an industry don’t understand how psychologically and emotionally tolling these conversations can be,” Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery told POLITICO, adding that white colleagues are “having a high-minded conversation about things that impact your life every day.”

Lowery wasn’t in the room two weeks ago when Post senior editors concluded that Trump’s tweet telling four Democratic congresswomen of color to “go back” to their native countries was racist. But hours before that decision became public, he tweeted to accuse the media of cowardice and journalists of contorting themselves to avoid using the word.

Lowery told POLITICO he hoped decision-makers in his newsroom and others got his message.

“Social media provides an important outlet for minority journalists to speak clearly and decisively about how they see things and create external pressure that forces institutions not only to respond, but to consider perspectives they might not hear,” he said.

On Saturday, he also tweeted that Trump’s Baltimore comments were racist: “Racism often manifests as subtext and implication,” he wrote. “Black & brown ears can hear the racism clearly while our white colleagues engage in fruitless, if earnest, pedantic games.”

He said that news outlets’ hesitance to label as racist Trump’s tweets about the four congresswomen known as “the Squad” — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar — was part of a larger phenomenon. “Institutions and media organizations have been slower over the course of Trump’s entire political career, his political rise, to accurately describe how he’s used racial grievance and racial prejudice for his own benefit,” he said.

Tanzina Vega, who covered race for the New York Times and CNN and currently hosts “The Takeaway,” wrote in late 2017 that one of the biggest media mistakes in the previous election “was underestimating the power of racist rhetoric” and noted “a disconnect between what journalists of color were seeing and what white reporters were seeing.”

Vega told POLITICO there has been incremental improvement in covering race and politics since the 2016 campaign, citing both Whack’s and Herndon’s work this cycle as examples.

The Times reporter wrote in March that some white Pennsylvania voters fear “the replacement of traditional, white American culture,” and he has said that part of his job was to show that “it’s not only marginalized groups who view their identity as an important lens for their political choices, but white voters also.”

But Vega said “the leading voices” on race heading into the 2020 election are largely the same as they were in the last campaign. She said news organizations should be covering race on a more sustained basis, with reporters — and not only journalists of color — able to report on the issue effectively.

“You can have a race beat. You can not have a race beat,” Vega said. “But your reporters need to be versed in dealing with the sensitivities and nuances and comfortable with the language being used.”

“It is a myth that calling an action or speech or stereotype racist is an indictment of that person’s soul,” Herndon said at the BuzzFeed event. “It is a myth that people have used to stop us from accurately describing words or actions or things that we know.”

Whack, the AP reporter and a veteran on the race beat, said journalists “need to get past our discomfort in talking about and covering race” and honestly and accurately describe what is happening.

“We’re in a hyper-racial moment in the country,” she said. “To cover politics right now means to have an understanding of that.”

“Race and politics,” she said, “is really the story of our time.”

Read More

#Foreign #moment #Politics

[megrimlocke]

How The Second Amendment Fails Us Regarding Tyranny

The argument that the second amendment is necessary to resist a tyrannical government is without practical merit, and I intend to demonstrate this by utility rather than arguing that the government is not out to get you or that it is morally wrong to kill people.  As such, this essay takes a somewhat dispassionate and analytic attitude towards murder.

Indeed, there are several cases we can document in which the government and its citizens have been at violent odds both locally and at a federal level.  The second amendment has not only failed to allow the citizens to overthrow the will of the government in these cases, it has in fact gotten them killed.  I will not therefore argue that violence is not the answer because I would like to have everyone join in a peace circle and sing Welcome Christmas, but rather I will argue that it is not the answer because it doesn’t work.  Then I will demonstrate the ways in which the second amendment enables and amplifies the curtailing of liberties for the American people.

The Waco Siege began with an initial FBI raid in which 4 agents and 6 Branch Davidians were killed.  Following this was a 51 day siege that ended with the Branch Davidian building burning down, killing 76 people inside.  Of the surviving Branch Davidians, of which there were eleven, all were arrested upon fleeing the flames.

The astonishing loss of life aside, the survivors still didn’t get their way.  For all their guns and the four FBI agents they killed, they either went to prison anyway or else died a horrifying death by fire.  The people stood up to the government for the sake of their (deviant) religious beliefs and they were prepared with violent means and they died or went to prison.  The second amendment failed to allow these people seeking religious freedom to resist the government.

More recently, the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge also failed.  In this case an armed militia seeking to assert land ownership rights over the government took possession by force of a national parks facility and engaged in a standoff with federal officers for a total of 40 days.  At the end of this time, seven of them, including Ammon and Ryan Bundy who led the expedition, were tried and acquitted of federal charges.  Most of the people they led into this crusade to enrich themselves did not fare so well.  Six were sentenced to 1-2 years of probation, some of those on house arrest.  Two were given 366 days in prison, with one of them given a further three years probation, another two were given 21 and 18 months in prison respectively.  One man got off with no sentencing and indeed no trial, for the perfectly sensible reason that he had already been shot to death.

Once again, a group of armed people in a relatively remote facility against the federal government purchased less than two months of resistance with their guns and paid toll in blood and prison time.  

And that’s just how it goes down if you’re white and dealing with the feds.

In 2016, we all watched a video with a good deal of tyranny in it.  Philando Castile was shot to death by a Minnesota officer who requested of him information about what arms he was carrying and asked him to present documentation for the weapon.  Mere possession of the firearm got Castile killed by the government, but the bloodletting did not end there.

Outraged as many of us were Mr. Micah Xavier Johnson decided to do something about his tyrannical government using his army training and some firearms.  To his credit (if one can credit a murderer), this is the case from my review in which the number of government agents killed exceeds the number of non-government citizens killed, perhaps owing to his training or perhaps the MOUT environment in which he fought.

Mr. Johnson succeeded in killing a total of 5 police officers and injuring a further nine officers.  Of all the anti-government combatants in my review, his is the only case in which there was not a person who believed that they were receiving instructions from God and also the only case in which claiming resources for himself in the form of child wives or land was not the goal.  To incite open armed rebellion against the government and overthrow it by force of arms and invert a longstanding system of racism, enabled by the second amendment, was his goal.

Mr. Johnson’s otherwise fairly successful attempt to injure if not destroy the government was brought to a historical end.  The local police force in Dallas killed Mr. Johnson by taping an explosive to a bomb removal robot and having the automaton hand-deliver the weapon to Mr. Johnson.  He is the first US citizen to be killed by police by robot.  It seems that anti-personnel assault rifles and MOUT tactics are not effective against a government killbot.

Bear in mind by the way that this was a local police force.  Had the same mentality been at play among federal agents a UAV missile strike would seem the scaled up analog.

What can we take from these case studies?  By taking up arms against the government you at a minimum ensure that you will be involved in a protracted legal battle, the chances of escaping that legal battle with your liberties intact are slim, and there is a very good chance that you will simply end up dead.

You cannot use the second amendment to beat the government and secure your liberties, no one ever has.  If you would argue that these case studies are not the same as the wave of citizen uprisings you think you could incite, let me remind you that the Bundys and Mr. Johnson intended to lead such uprisings themselves and failed to get them off the ground, and that further the only occasion of armed uprising on the scale you propose ended with the federal government on top on April 9th 1865 at Appomattox.

This isn’t a matter of opinion, it’s a matter of record.

Yet, there are more ways in which the second amendment inhibits our liberties.  As already mentioned, Philando Castile was killed because he possessed a firearm, but you don’t even need to possess one for the police to kill you.

Tamir Rice, 12, of Cleveland Ohio possessed a water pistol or the like and was shot by police twice, dying the following day.  The police officers suffered no penalty becuase the grand jury did not indict them because the video shown to them showed Tamir drawing his water pistol, which the officers involved believed to be real.

Because of the second amendment, there is a reasonable possibility that police officers will face armed assailants anytime and everywhere, and as such, the courts regularly give them the benefit of the doubt because officers are not necessarily wrong to fear for their lives when facing down a 12 year old boy.

The second amendment and the companies that benefit from it have flooded our country with firearms, and as such police can shoot people with impunity because of their reasonable concern of being shot themselves.  Who they are shooting largely comes down to a discussion of racism, but don’t imagine that fair skin will save you, as discovered by Australian Justine Damond.  It was in fact she that summoned the police to begin with, and she is now dead.  That her police killer was arrested is perhaps a matter of her being white, but there is also the possibility that it had to be done to attend to what was an international incident.  Australian citizens get more justice than American ones do in the matter of police shootings in our own country, it seems.

When a policeman can gun down a 12 year old boy and suffer no jail time, we are living in tyranny.  When a man can reach for his papers in his car and be gunned down we are living in a police state, and when we declare that the legal device by which these things are possible is critical to preserving our freedoms, we are wrong.

[ruubzway-blog]

Becoming a black man: as more people of color transition between genders, the ways that racism is different for men and women come to the surface.

He also believed in which God created miracles. 7 train in Queens, she realized that she was becoming followed by a man. they [Black trans men] can speak with us concerning being women, along with we could talk to them about DWB." Mitchell concurs. What he we had not counted in had been changing the means by which he drove. Within a number of months involving starting male hormones, "I got pulled over 300 % a lot much more than I had in the prior 23 many many years of driving, almost immediately. in Brazil, a court ruled within August 2007 that sexual-reassignment surgery will be covered by the particular constitution as being a healthcare right. "More than the actual usual trans man, I'm any Black man," Mitchell says. so he had been somewhat surprised about the changes that will came after he began taking injections with the hormone testosterone--the degree in order to which in turn he became any target as well as the emotional changes he felt like a Black man. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Near the finish involving 1970, when Mitchell was 18 a extended time old, he hitchhiked with a pal in order to Corpus Christi. Finally, he could be taken seriously through the guys at House Depot. Regarding example, your woman says, there is actually lots of hostility within the white transgender neighborhood towards Christianity, and some of the will be justified. Talking to Mitchell, it's straightforward to imagine him in the pulpit. With the actual chronilogical age of three or perhaps 4, he knew that he would become a boy, no matter having been born into a girl's body. "Many with the items that I notice in the globe and lots of of the items that I react to in the world have an overabundance to accomplish using how I am treated as a Black man as opposed to how I am handled as a trans man." Roberts also highlights yet another tiny however important detail associated with trans life for folks involving color: There's any amount of animosity between trans ladies as well as men inside the white community that does not are present to the identical diploma inside the Black community. "We had been almost all raised inside a church." Trans men of colour are finding which some things stay the same on both facets in the gender equation. "I'd maintain intensive treatment by the time these people realized I was a new trans man." She concedes your woman knew which Asian women had been exoticized, but "it's a essential factor reading with regards to some thing in the guide and another to end up being operating along the street." Mitchell furthermore finds in which he's inside a special situation now to mentor small Black men. Gomez says that a guy would phone him a new "bitch" and then leave it from that. Regarding example, several a lengthy time before transitioning, he ended up questioned by a cop for simply sitting in his own car late at night. Cultural expectations, with regard to example, are hard to shake. Inside typical men's locker-room humor, his sergeant produced a penalty jar where the cops needed to deposit 0.25 if they referred to Ward by method of a female pronoun. At the conclusion of the day, Roberts furthermore says, "People don't see me like a trans woman. This ended up being the first occasion the health-related clinic in the United States performed the particular surgery, and thus while it remained uncommon in order to be approved with regard to surgery, it was at least a possibility. Listening to always be able to Monica Roberts, it's difficult to imagine a time when she wasn't a new leader. She's adamant which Black trans people need their own spaces. "She sees here is man, nevertheless your woman understands this man can be the girl daughter." [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Prado Gomez, the 33-year-old Chicano that transitioned throughout 2001, describes the actual circumstance along with racism and also violence as a "trade off." Now Park finds herself occasionally the target around the subways inside New York City, where the lady lives. "At a few point they would discover I was female" as well as that might diffuse your situation. At the actual time, a Black transsexual woman had already been the first person to be able to undertake sex reassignment surgery in John Hopkins University, according for you to Joanne Meyerowitz's classic book How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Avon Wilson's transition in 1966 with John Hopkins marked any turning point pertaining to the transsexual community. Your transition around the job had been no small feat, since it meant relocating for the men's locker space along with showers. But Ward's coworkers and supervisors, like his family, accepted him. He didn't want to run the risk of drawing awareness of himself as a Black man and the girl as a mixed-race Latina that sometimes is actually perceived as white. . I can't be likely 90 miles an hour or so along the highway. Maybe it was due for the toll that living in the "tranny closet" had taken on the girl self-esteem. Texas, in which the legal drinking age group was lower than within California. Left largely unexamined, however, has been your issue regarding racism and how trans men and some women encounter it. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] He fulfilled several Black trans men at a conference nevertheless took many many years to think concerning his own transition. "Cops known as me an asshole until they will noticed the particular F on my license," he recalls, and small verbal fights on the trail back then didn't escalate. It's difficult to say how many regarding these tend to be individuals of color, yet 1 on your internet group pertaining to Black trans people called Transsistahs-Transbrothas features about 300 members, and another group specifically regarding Latino trans men provides 98 members. It's distinct with regard to Black transsexuals, Roberts says. "There's a new great deal of information sharing ... while trans women inside many cultures get been marginally accepted, they will have been mostly limited to traditionally feminine roles as caretakers--a scenario which is changing now throughout places like Ixhuatan, Mexico, where Amaranta Gomex, any muxe, or even trans woman, ran for political office throughout 2003. Whenever he and the wife moved via California in order to the East Coast, Mitchell refused to allow the woman's drive around the cross-country trip. "She drives too fast," he says, chuckling and also adding, "I didn't want to get pulled over. He anticipated which he'd develop a beard, which usually he eventually would and enjoys now. she got positive reactions, your woman says, "because I was basically doing the actual classic perform involving Black females inside the community in terms associated with uplifting the race." Experiencing racism as a Black man, though, doesn't necessarily give Mitchell and also Ward the bond with their peers, which grew up in Black male bodies, experiencing racism as Black boys after which men. He finds that people now look at him along with concern in bars and restaurants where he when utilized to go for a excellent time. As somebody who came regarding get older inside the lesbian community and it has feminist politics, Mitchell jokes with Black boys who talk about "fags" and also reference women as "bitches." He pulls the teenagers aside as well as uses a little reverse psychology, telling them that will it's okay if they're gay. I became the enemy." Targeted pertaining to "driving while Black" wasn't new to Mitchell, who is 46 years old. "It is much more with regards to integrity and a a sensation of becoming the truest individual I could be," he says, adding that his gender transition has been concerning "having my insides and my outsides match finally." Rather than see himself as joining a bunch associated with men that are perpetual targets, he feels he's joined a new community associated with men which are strong however, not embarrassed with their tenderness. The transgender neighborhood provides experienced any boom inside visibility in the final decade. Louis Mitchell is the type of man who right away puts folks at ease as he advises them about how exactly inexpensive the housing is within Massachusetts. He calls himself "a large Black man" (he's 5 feet 9 inches tall and also 250 pounds). Several involving this originates with regards to through well-liked culture, including the particular acclaimed 1999 film Boys Don't Cry plus more recently with Mike Penner, the actual Los Angeles times sports columnist that arrived on the scene as transgender and it is now referred to become able to as Christine. Several of that is due for the fact that white trans females in many cases are dealing using a loss associated with energy within public life, while white trans men tend to be coming in order to positions involving energy and all its ensuing emotions and also consequences. Now, Mitchell finds which he doesn't engage within small transgressions similar to jaywalking or even spitting about the sidewalk. Inside 2006, after much soul searching, he began attending divinity school. "You may use a minister up here pontificating about the pulpit about Sunday," your woman says, "but the particular real energy at the rear of the throne will become the women's auxiliary that's meeting on Tuesday." Trans people involving color are usually discovering which they come along with an extremely different relationship to become able to gender transition when compared with white people. In case I'm going 56, I want being concerned." "More when compared with I'm the trans man, I'm a new Black man," he says. He knew his voice would deepen and that his relationship along together with his partner, family along with friends would change in subtle and, he hoped, good ways, all involving which in turn happened. Monica Roberts, who is 45 many years old, transitioned in 1994. Once the teens protest that will they're not, Mitchell says, "You have no respect for women, and you're simply fixated about gay men. It was astounding," says Mitchell, who's Black and transitioned while living inside the Bay Area region along with now resides in Springfield, Massachusetts. In short, individuals associated with color know that racism functions differently for men and women, as well as transgender folks such as Mitchell and also Ward are generally getting to experience this coming from each facets with the gender equation. "I perform a great offer of online shopping now," says Ward, that got tired of getting followed within e-book as well as garments stores. In the final 4 years, there's in addition been an boost in the number of individuals seeking top surgeries, or even elimination of their own breasts, according to Michael Brownstein. most of the particular leadership within the Black community is actually made up regarding very powerful women. she ran house and slammed the doorway shut. "I often wear shoes I may operate in," Park says. Johnnie Pratt, any Black trans man who lives in the San Francisco area, additionally jokes he now enjoys certain perks. "What I did not prepare for had been becoming a new Black man," he says. http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Becomingablackman:asmorepeopleofcolortransitionbetween...-a0173677740 However, Mitchell continued to spot as being a butch, even though he felt he has been masquerading as a lesbian. They Will observe me as Black ... There, he satisfied drag queens, and in which he felt hopeful for the really first time. Throughout the particular cross-country trip along using his wife Krysia, he refrained from being affectionate with asian tranny her throughout public. He will be simultaneously warmhearted along with sure of himself. The Actual widespread use of the World wide web and additionally the new on the internet social networks may additionally be helping to break the isolation that will trans individuals usually feel inside their own communities. Being an effeminate Asian male, Park says, "tends to--if anything--put an individual either in invisibility or derision, ridicule [and] harassment. but in the wedding it arrives for you to Black trans folks, she says, it's impossible to merely disappear from your church. "You can't omit Christians in the wedding you want individuals of color" from a conference, your woman says. The idea just is. He could offer a new two-bedroom condo just as easily as convincing a congregation to become honest using God. Roberts as well as the woman's Black trans-women pals possess experienced something else since transitioning: "We've noticed the power shift," your woman says. a small exchange associated with words could lead for you to more violence. A 44-year-old police officer, Ward began hormone treatment options inside 2004 and transitioned although operating for the LAPD, where he's now an instructor with law enforcement academy. The Lady in addition writes these days for a nearby LGBT outlet and also sites at transgriot.blogspot.com. and that's the thing that folks notice. Just what am I supposed to think?" Her father, any nearby radio commentator, attemptedto groom Roberts for leadership as his eldest child. "I didn't feel regarding it therefore much," he says with regards to cops. She didn't determine it had been as they observed the woman's as an Asian woman as well as a transgender Asian woman. The Lady understood the influence of Black women. I am a new Black man, and therefore if one thing can be stolen although I'm in the neighborhood, then I am the suspect." These social and also political changes possess ushered inside a period when it is increasingly suitable for men and a number of women to improve their physical bodies to complement his or her gender identity. He had grown used to ladies clutching their purses at the sight of him. Yet Roberts furthermore noticed a difference within the responses the girl received using their own company individuals to her leadership as a Black woman. but in case an individual are perceived being an Asian woman, what happens will be the exact opposite, which is sexual fascination and also even harassment." Mitchell already had a goatee without getting hormones along with had been used to getting followed in stores. "I never know if they're just awaiting one thing to occur in order to roll up, and also I do n't need locate myself in custody. There's a lot of this during my hometown." As Well As consequently as Roberts transitioned, she has stepped into that role. "I am the only one my mother trusts," he says. It's similar to gravity. "When people are afraid of you, a person quit wanting for you to hang out in these places," Ward says. Growing up within West Covina in Southern California, Mitchell attended church together using his mother and also devoured history books. That Will would be just precarious along with dangerous throughout so many ways." Ward, similar to Mitchell as well as Gomez, felt he had planned pertaining to just about each and also every adjust that will belly using transitioning. In certain countries, trans activists are going in order to court as well as winning crucial changes in public policies. Therefore he prayed which he'd develop into a boy's body when he reached puberty. but "he did certainly not really sweat me too much once he came up towards the automobile as well as divined that I was female," Mitchell recalls. Just as crucial continues for you to be the task regarding transgender individuals themselves, who have transitioned due for the a lot more widespread availability of hormones and surgeries. Park is currently 46 years old along with a founding member of the particular The Huge Apple Association regarding Gender Rights Advocacy, which in turn got legislation passed throughout The Huge Apple Town to protect transgender folks through discrimination within housing and employment. Mitchell says his manhood isn't concerning the racism he encounters. In transitioning via living as an Asian man to an Asian woman, Park found that she ended up being finally capable of have "the joy regarding actualizing something I've often wished to be," Yet the lady additionally finds that they has gone coming from invisibility to a visibility that's at times unwelcomed. When living in San Francisco, he moved out in the historical gay neighborhood of the Castro while he got tired of being followed in stores. While is common with regard to Latinas, Gomez features raised his brother's 2 kids together using his partner, Mariah, and is now taking care associated with his mom, which suffers via Alzheimer's disease, Gomez sees no contradiction inside the fact that like a man, he bathes his 60-year-old mother. Now in the Black male body, however, Mitchell may be pulled aside for little infractions. Her mother is a teacher, and he or even she has been surrounded by females who were historians and leaders in the community. The Actual important thing is, we're Black first." Pauline Park additionally found that transitioning to become able to become a woman of color altered the woman's place within the world. "I'll become capable of walk down the trail and never end up being raped, unless they are totally aware my status [as a new trans man]", he says. Inside 2006, she took over as third Black individual for you to get your Trinity Award, which recognizes individuals with regard to their contributions for the transgender community. A Korean adoptee who had been raised in the Midwest, Park transitioned in 1997 yet made a selection to not necessarily physically alter your ex body. The idea required a bit bit longer [to drive cross-country] 'cause I had to drive like a Black man. "It's will simply no longer some strange factor that they notice. Recently, when she got off the actual No. "But there's any various type of threat coming from men." LOUIS MITCHELL EXPECTED the great offer of adjust when he started taking injections regarding hormones eight years back for you to transition from a female body to the male one. London Dexter Ward, an LAPD cop who transitioned within 2004, sums it this way: a white person who transitions to a male physique "just became a man." Through contrast, he says, "I became the Black man. in current years, there's also been the developing number of memoirs, such as the Testosterone Files by the particular Chicano as well as American-Indian poet Max Valerio, as well as more academic publications on the subject, similar to the Transgender Research Reader. Roberts was raised throughout Houston, Texas, and in the Black church. Yet, it absolutely was merely following transitioning that Roberts felt in a position to adopt on this kind of leadership role. Now, Gomez is aware of he offers to be a lot more careful. Rather when compared with passing as heterosexual, an escalating number of these inside the final decade have got identified as "trans" and begun support, advocacy and also legal-rights groups. Then, 15 years ago, any friend of his began the complete procedure of transitioning into a male body. As more people regarding colour transition, Mitchell's experience is becoming an increasingly typical one. The exposure to racism is actually flipped in any few ways pertaining to Black trans women. In 2005, Roberts and other transsexual along with transgender activists started the initial conference with regard to Black trans people. "Black culture will be matriarchal-based ... Since a Black woman, she is satisfied for you to will simply no longer become considered, as the girl says, "a suspect." Since transitioning, she's got certainly not been pulled over for "driving while Black," although the lady rapidly adds that it has happened in order to a buddy whom can also be the Black trans woman. "It's a few living with regard to them, at this point," Mitchell says. that didn't happen, significantly to always be able to his surprise. While it's incredibly difficult to say how many individuals identify as transgender, your National Middle with regard to Transgender Equality has estimated that will around three million people are transgender nowadays in the United States. Prior To transitioning, he says, "They'd always be considering me like, 'Shut up girl.' Now they want to talk to me." Before transitioning, Gomez was utilized to getting pulled over within the car along along with his brothers simply by cops within San Francisco. any well-known physician specializing in gender surgeries throughout San Francisco. He can with regards to four for you to six top surgeries any week, and the particular man notes which although 3 decades ago, trans people would come to his office alone, these people are actually arriving together with partners, siblings and also buddies with regard to moral support. He didn't consider a lot of about racism. "That lit a new fire which I couldn't place out," he says now. The racism in which Black trans men encounter is just section of the story, regarding course. He considered the particular consequences of transitioning, which includes your impact on his mother, who he's very attached to, as well as the loss regarding him associated with his lesbian community. Daisy Hernandez is actually managing editor involving ColorLines. London Dexter Ward in inclusion has seen his lifestyle change because involving the ways in which racism is gendered. In Asia, Latin America and also Africa, the actual place associated with transgender people is likewise changing. In case your queens might be women, his thinking went, then there may be options for him to live as being a man. Before transitioning, Mitchell recalls becoming "cavalier and reckless" by what he would in public areas along with with regards to his interactions with police officers. The idea happened in Louisville, Kentucky, exactly where she now lives