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, $1589.82; Rural libraries, $321.62.
Edmonia Lewis: the first woman of African-American and Native American heritage to achieve international fame and recognition as a sculptor in the fine arts world.
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, $; Rural libraries, $321.62.
Quinisha Jackson-Wright: “While I’m sure they mean well, the difference between them and me is I don’t have the option to only think about race when it’s all over the news. Once the dust settles and the protests are over, I don’t get to breathe a sigh of relief and return to business as usual. I understand that the times in between this hashtag and the next are when racism is at its worst. It’s more subtle than a video of a cop taking away an innocent human being’s last breath but just as insidious.”
This article on COVID in this moment in June resonates. Thankfully we haven’t been getting invitations but we do see some folks out and about in ways that seem reckless and we are just not ready to risk that: “Because, what seems like five minutes ago, we were all on lockdown. Because people in every nook and cranny of the U.S. are still getting sick. Because even though it feels like we’ve aged 10 years since February, the coronavirus is still very new and we don’t know a lot about it. Because my number one job is to protect my family.
But it’s this “decision fatigue” that’s the new tired. Before, it was the holy-crap-what-is-happening-is-it-safe-to-get-the-mail daily fears that made us crash by 9 p.m. every night. Now, it’s the everyone-else-is-going-out-and-living-again-but-what-if-its-not-safe-and-there-is-a-new-spike-next-week fear that’s bringing me down.”
And while some people are having very mild or no symptoms, this COVID experience is more what I expect we need to be prepared for. Hattip to Nicole and Maggie.
A good framing for teaching someone how to stop and think before they react at work: “You’re very passionate about your job and you want this project to succeed at the highest levels, and that’s great. But keep in mind that the first response to a problem isn’t always the best solution. Sometimes we need time to absorb all the parameters of a situation and to listen to the perspectives of your teammates before moving forward.”
Dinnertime!
Seamus used to pull this kind of thing with me but he was much more emphatic and a little bit patronizing. After several weeks of banging his bowl, and incremental one hour changes, now dinner is at 2 pm and we have peace again.
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, $1589.82; Rural libraries, $321.62.
While I’m still not yet optimistic that we’ll see true and lasting changes in society after just two weeks of outrage and protests, I do feel like this time feels different and this article talking about protests in small towns across America is exactly why I sensed a difference. I don’t know if it’ll last, I truly hope it does, but I was startled by the number of people from small places I was familiar with coming out to protest. Even my predominantly middle class white suburban hometown turned out.
The ‘3.5% rule’: How a small minority can change the world – “Overall, nonviolent campaigns were twice as likely to succeed as violent campaigns: they led to political change 53% of the time compared to 26% for the violent protests.
Music’s week during the protests: “It’s hard to walk into a store knowing I may not get service because of the color of my skin, it’s tiring to remember to get a receipt because I don’t want to get stopped for shoplifting. It’s painful to think about my brother getting pulled over for a traffic stop and having guns pulled on him (which actually happened, in front of our house, when we were in high school). In my particular corner of the world, it’s hard to be many of my friends’ only black friend. It’s hard to ignore the Trump-supporting crap my in-laws post. It’s hard to surf social media (which I have to do for my job) and see the awful racist stuff people post, the whataboutism, the well-meaning but tone-deaf stuff from “allies.””
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
I’m glad Abby wrote this: Why I stand with the protesters. Property damage sucks, but preventing the continued injustice of taking human lives is far more important. I see counter protester types out there ready to and armed to protect Ross and Hobby Lobby – why don’t you folks care more about actual living breathing humans?
I’m glad to see Joe and Tawcan discussing racism, privilege, and inequity. I’m glad to see Deb choosing to speak up. I’m glad to see Jim seeing what he’s been missing all these years and speaking up. Same for JD. It matters, and it’s important for people who haven’t been seeing racism or seeing but not speaking up for fear of putting a foot wrong to try anyway.
Donate to These Orgs to Support Black Trans People: “Black trans people often face a specific set of structural, institutional, and personal barriers to accessing basic needs like housing, employment, and safety due to the intersections of their identities. According to 2012 data from Lambda legal, nearly one in two Black transgender people has been to prison, and Black trans people are also much more likely to face discriminatory policies and threats of sexual assault once behind bars.”
24 LGBTQ+ Organizations You Can Support Right Now: “After the unconscionable killings of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd at the hands of the police, LGBTQ+ advocates are using Pride 2020 as an occasion to speak out on against the racial injustices that still plague our country.”
Huge news that the Minneapolis PD is supposed to be disbanded. I’m waiting to see how this will really play out but in the meantime I’m blown away by these rates of ineffectiveness against crime they have been.
I feel for people with cat allergies but also I feel for this cat who just really wants to be in a library. I want to be in a library all the time too, Max.
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.
I was pretty mad that the founder of the biggest financial media conference could be so breathtakingly flippant and callous about current events. You may not agree with how the press covers everything, I most certainly don’t and I have critiques of them just like anyone else. But they are shining a lot on some serious corruption and abuse of power and letting us see SOME of the truth out there while we’re (if we’re not Black) safe in our homes (if you’re Black, I know you’re not even safe in your own homes and I would never gloss over that horrible reality). They are risking themselves, literally in many cases, as the police attack them. A photojournalist I know has been permanently blinded in one eye because of a police officer shooting a rubber bullet at her face. To dismiss their efforts as “media hype”, and saying that’s the cause of the issues we are facing as a society just hurts my stomach. He later issued a “I’m sorry you were offended” type of apology, but at that point, his other actions of bullying women into silence and even driving them out of the community came out: bullying Tori about calling out misogyny and demanding retraction of her tweets, coming after Melanie and undermining her financially by badmouthing her to her sponsors, keeping people silent through intimidation.
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.
I’m staring at Mt Emotional Health, feeling a bit unequal to the task. The days were very long but at some point it feels like the fast forward was pushed and I’m not ready to keep up with this pace.
I often feel like this hummingbird
My dad discovered today that one of the hummingbirds in their backyard made a huge mistake pic.twitter.com/LsuE2l4t83
permanently blinded in one eye because of a police officer shooting a rubber bullet at her face. To dismiss their efforts as “media hype”, and saying that’s the cause of the issues we are facing as a society just hurts my stomach. He later issued a “I’m sorry you were offended” type of apology, but at that point, his other actions of bullying women into silence and even driving them out of the community came out: