in case yall been sleeping here’s a reminder that we just shut down Mall Of America, the largest mall in the USA, to protest the wrongful deaths of young black men by police. #blacklivesmatter
Tete Gulley was a 31-year-old Black trans woman in Portland who was found hanging from a tree, dead. The police department ruled her death a suicide, and did not investigate further. Her family found out she had died through Facebook. Officials won’t look into the case further because there is “insufficient public interest”, despite numerous people of the homeless community witnesses contradicting that ruling. Someone even allegedly has a video. But due to negligent policing and, apparently, lack of public interest, the family hasn’t seen justice, let alone the autopsy.
We’re the public. Let’s show our interest.
Here is the petition demanding investigation into Tete, as well as accountability for the negligent behavior of the authorities. It also goes into further detail about her story.
so i’m sure by now most of you have seen the news story about the patriots using their team plane to fly ppe into massachusetts from china (or at least if you’re local to new england you probably have).
it’s being shared on the news as a heartwarming story of a football team stepping up for their local area, but it’s also absolutely a sign of how truly and deeply fucked the federal response to this has been.
some background: massachusetts has received somewhere in the neighborhood of 17% of the ppe requested from the federal stockpile, and not one single ventilator. we requested 1000 of those and have now had to up our request to 1400. we have repeatedly been outbid by the federal government and now, most recently, had shipments of ppe that we ordered straight up seized by the feds in new york.
so, in desperation, our governor set up A SECRET DIPLOMATIC BACKCHANNEL to essentially beg china to send us badly needed equipment and make sure the federal government couldn’t seize it this time
florida has received multiple shipments of supplies in this same time frame, on time and unmolested by federal authorities. the difference? governor ron desantis is buddy buddy with trump and florida is a big swing state for the election. states that get on trump’s shit list are having to beg, borrow, and steal so that more people don’t die.
this is deeply, incredibly fucked and i don’t want anyone to ever forget it.
also just want to highlight that the us federal government is not only stealing from states trump doesnt like, but also other countries. we are literally seizing necessary PPE from other nations. The ones listed here are France, Germany and Brazil. Also Barbados. Trump has also ordered American companies to not manufacture PPE and ventilators for export to countries in Central America and Canada. (same article as the first, mentioned later down.) The term used by Germany was literally “modern piracy.”
If after everything we’ve seen in our lifetimes hasn’t convinced you that the US is a failed settler colonial state that does not deserve to exist, I hope this does. To me, it seems like the purpose of a federal government is to do what smaller units of governance can’t do on their own – like buy PPE in bulk and distributing it to states rather than encouraging a bidding war amongst states that are also competing against other nations and driving up the collective price of PPE and ventilators globally. The US can’t even get that shit right. And no, I don’t think the shamelessness of US capitalism will fundamentally change if Trump is replaced. Regardless of the party in power this country, founded on stolen land, has done nothing but terrorize the majority of the people who live in it, and the majority of people who live outside of it.
honestly fuck viruses they’re not even alive they’re just strands of punk ass DNA that go around fucking up us normal and god fearing life forms you don’t even have a nucleus you stupid bacteriophage looking horizontally transmitting RNA clump
Saw an op-ed that was on the surface a complaint about kids not wanting to take on family heirlooms but read like an elegy to dying traditions. The hardest part was the anxiety without recognizing that they didn’t pave the way for the decisions they assumed their kids would make.
(This is written entirely within the dominant white/western culture - about traditions that have neglectful stewardship rather than those actively suppressed)
The anxiety makes sense. You’re seeing, too late to do anything about it, that there’s no foundation - no space - for the traditions you expected to pass on. Your kids _can’t_ take your mom’s fine china. So now instead of enjoying what you have you worry about its future.
I see a pattern in these op-eds though - a pattern in what’s left unsaid. There were responsibilities tied to these traditions. You collectively assumed they _would_ be passed along. So collectively, what did you do to ensure those traditions _could_ be passed along?
Op-eds never speak for everyone, but it’s worth acknowledging the pattern in what speech is deemed worth sharing widely. And in this particular pattern, there’s an answer: that answer looks like “nothing.”
You want the china passed down but your kids have no room in their rentals. You want grandkids but your kids don’t have the financial stability. You want that cross-country RV neverending road trip but you’ve had decades of wanting lower taxes more than you wanted infrastructure.
The bleak outlook for traditions is a direct result of the unmaintained foundations for them.
The second best time is always now - if it’s important enough to op-ed about, what are you willing to change to get it back? What will you give up or re-prioritize?
I kinda think that world-defining assumptions are always gonna break without maintenance. So rather than getting mad at whoever’s next for not carrying on the norms we didn’t do upkeep on, when it’s my turn, I hope I’m introspective enough to help instead of externalize & blame.
This.
The bleak outlook for traditions is a direct result of the unmaintained
foundations for them.
The second best time is always now - if it’s important enough to op-ed
about, what are you willing to change to get it back? What will you give
up or re-prioritize?
I follow a Facebook group of “Memories of …” for my hometown - a rustbelt community that has gone from a thriving hub of industry to a much-less-thriving place.
The group is a collective lament. Decades-old pictures of well-kept churches. Aerial shots of the main intersection downtown, lined with big cars. Scanned advertisemetns from local stores featuring pictures of their interiors. These alternate with the drumbeat of news: the Catholic diocese is closing churches. Selling them. Tearing them down. STores downtown are closing. The traffic light has been replaced with a four-way-stop.
“That’s the church my parents were married in!” “How could they tear down that beautiful building. Such memories!” “All the businesses are closing. It must be the taxes.” ”They’ve sold the old lodge downtown.” “They’re not opening the skating rink this year. We always used to go.”
And sometimes I chime in.
“Do you attend that church? Do you give? Or do you just want the building to look pretty for you? “ “Do you volunteer at that park? Why not?” “Did you vote for that recreation bond issue?” “Are you a member of that Lodge? Why not?” “Do you shop downtown? Or did you start shopping at Walmart and Amazon to save a few bucks?”
If you feel something is worth preserving, why do you not participate in its preservation?
