Just a little (link) love: boiling frog and America edition
June 18, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $1,570.70; Rural libraries, $321.62.
Three months after Breonna Taylor was murdered in her bed, there have still been no arrests. This is unconscionable. Beyonce’s open letter addressing the AG points out the utterly obvious fact this is unacceptable.
Sign a petition: Demand justice for Breonna Taylor. They’ve passed a law under her name to ban no-knock warrants (because as we’ve seen, the police are notoriously scrupulous about following the law since they’re also subject to it /sarcasm) but as of Monday, they STILL HAVEN’T ARRESTED HER MURDERERS.
Done by Forty is matching donations up to $1000.
Confessions of a Former Bastard Cop. There are so MANY good points in here that reinforce what the community and the statistics are telling us. One final idea: consider abolishing the police.
I know what you’re thinking, “What? We need the police! They protect us!” As someone who did it for nearly a decade, I need you to understand that by and large, police protection is marginal, incidental. It’s an illusion created by decades of copaganda designed to fool you into thinking these brave men and women are holding back the barbarians at the gates.
I had never heard of any of these Asian activists before and they did important work:
- Yuri Kochiyama: was interned during WWII, sued for reparations and won, used that to fight for further reparations, independence, and more.
- Guy Kurose, Richard Aoki, and Mike Tagawa were also interned and joined the Black Panthers
- Larry Itliong organized farmers’ protest,
- Grace Lee Boggs was an activist her entire adult life.
- Wong Kim Ark‘s fight for citizenship is why we have citizenship in the US if you’re born here.
Michelle’s life lessons during COVID are good reminders
Teachers Face A Summer Of Soul Searching. What Do They Do In The Fall?: “By August, elected officials will give themselves credit for discussing things, as if discussing a problem actually solved it. Some will insist that Corvid-19 is no worse than the flu and we have to put America back to work. Others will admit that the money they approved is not nearly enough to meet the demands. District administrators will complain that they don’t have the necessary resources, but they’ll still get no more help.
And by fall, individual teachers in individual schools will have to figure out how to do the best they can with the little that they’ve got. The district guidance they get will range from restrictively stringent to hopelessly non-existent. Mostly, they’re going to have to figure out how to cope on their own.”
Scalzi on Gen X and trans people. At the time I watched Ace Ventura, I didn’t know anything about trans people but I do now and I’m deeply uncomfortable with how comfortable that movie was in othering trans people. I’d also like to know why women are so deeply threatened by trans people having rights, and by trans activism. In what way does their having rights negatively impact women? Rhetorical question, other people having rights doesn’t take away my rights unless they have the right to harm others with impunity. Like cops and basically our justice system do. But that’s not a small minority of people having more rights, that’s a group of people opting into a system that’s set up to allow brutality. And I’m sick of the argument that trans people are the perpetrators of violence against women. The VAST majority of cases where a man who has abused a woman in my personal life or in the news, it’s a cishet man operating with impunity. He didn’t need to pretend to be a woman to do it. Hell, look at our president! FFS.
Nicole and Maggie reminded me of a cake memory / ritual I used to have. I suspect I got away with it because my parents were too busy to notice. What did you get away with because your parents were too busy to notice?
We are the boiling frog
Text of @IAmSyiDavies’s tweet: As someone from a country that has witnessed a civil war, totalitarian leaders, ethno-religious pogroms, state-sanctioned brutality & the slow eradication of human rights under the guise of criminality, I can frankly tell Americans: You don’t know what you’re playing with.
As someone from a country that has witnessed a civil war, totalitarian leaders, ethno-religious pogroms, state-sanctioned brutality & the slow eradication of human rights under the guise of criminality, I can frankly tell Americans:
You don't know what you're playing with.
— Suyi Davies Okungbowa (@IAmSuyiDavies) June 7, 2020
