DeadSparrow @captaindeadsparrow - Tumblr Blog

August 15 2019 - An ICE prison guard rams a blockade of Jewish antifascist protesters in Central Falls, Rhode Island, after which his colleagues come over to pepper spray them. An eyewitness account:

Tonight I planned to be arrested protesting at the Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls, RI. I wore comfortable layers. I made sure to not drink too much water. I left my phone and keys with a volunteer in a baggie with my name on it. The only things in my pockets were $40 and a photo ID. Four hours later, I watched the ambulances gather up the seriously injured.The action was organized by Never Again is Now. We marched from Jenks Park, singing, chanting, praying. We gathered outside of the facility, about 40 of us who had planned to get arrested, and large crowd of other protesters. We delivered a letter with demands, and when, as expected, the demands were not met, we lined up outside the two entrances to the Wyatt, one to block pedestrian access and the other to block vans. However, because they knew we were coming, they had rescheduled all prisoner transfers so there were no vans coming in or out.

So we decided to relocate to the adjacent parking lot, to block guards from leaving when their shift was over. There was a large entrance and a smaller entrance off to the side. At first I was with the big group at the front entrance. Then a car started heading towards the side entrance, so some of us broke off to block that exit. The person in that car was a woman, and she left her engine on the whole time during what followed.At the main entrance, at about 9:30pm, a guard in a black pickup truck roared down the street, and rammed directly into the line of protestors on that side. Two people were injured. Then, WITHIN SECONDS, a horde of guards came streaming out of the prison and pepper-sprayed the protesters, including the injured. Let me be clear: there is no way that they could have gotten there that fast unless there was some communication ahead of time from the guy in the truck about his plan. Many people were seriously injured by the amount and manner in which the pepper spray was used. Prison guards absolutely do not have the authority to use their pepper-spray, a weapon that is part of their job, against civilians outside a prison. And none of the protesters was on prison grounds; we were across the street in a parking lot, which was adjacent to a soccer and baseball field. Earlier in the evening, there had been kids playing there. On our side, we were sitting across the entrance to the parking lot, facing outwards. The woman was still behind us with her lights and engine on. We heard screams but could not see the other group. At that moment, the woman in the car behind us revved her engine several times, to intimidate us into moving. We stood up and faced her. We did not move, and we wanted her to look us in the eye if she was going to run us over. She did not move.This was a premeditated attack. There were both local and state cops in the area - they were there all night keeping an eye on things, but they would do loops, they were not always right in front. The guard watched and waited for a moment when none of the 3 cars that were patrolling were within line of sight to carry out his attack. But he did coordinate with his fellow guards inside so that they were ready in an instant to pour out of the facility and across the street with their pepper spray. When the local cops came back, it was pretty clear that they were PISSED at the guards - I do want to say that in fairness. I do not believe that the local cops were part of the conspiracy. Honestly, this is going to bring such a stream of crap to Central Falls in the coming weeks, and this makes their life very difficult. National attention. But at the same time, they did not immediately arrest the driver. All they would say is that there would be an investigation. When it became clear how seriously injured some folks were, the rest of the protest was cancelled, including our group on the far side of the parking lot. So I came home with the $40 still in my pocket.I joined this action because I’ve reached a point where I look at everything I’ve done so far and there’s no risk, no personal cost. If I look at this moment in history, and all I can say is that I posted some stuff and waved some signs, but was unwilling to take any risk or do anything that might cost me, I simply cannot live with that. ICE is perpetrating crimes against humanity. I will not be a person who looked the other way, who hoped it would go away. […] EDIT [the next morning when I can speak more clearly]: For clarity, I don’t think the Central Falls police were involved in the planning of the attack, but they were very involved in covering it up by not arresting the guard immediately and in the way they responded to witnesses. Earlier in the night, they blatantly lied to us about who the woman was in the car behind us in an effort to get us to leave. All cops are complicit. Also, by now I’m sure everyone reading this has seen the video and the other news coverage and they made it more clear: he was outside the parking lot, ramming inwards. It’s not like he was inside and frustrated with us blocking him. Please, if you talk about this story, make sure to ask the question: if they treated us with this level of violence, a group of civilian protesters with cops not that far away and everyone having a cellphone camera, what do you think they are doing to those detained in the facility who have no way to get the word out about their treatment? One of the items that Never Again is Now was protesting about this facility was the lack of transparency and proof that detainees rights are being met. After last night, it’s not enough for the Wyatt to just cancel the ICE contract. The whole facility needs to be shut down. Tell your RI senators and reps: No for-profit prisons in RI!

[video]/[article]

cartiercocaine-blog

wнαт тнe ғυcĸ ιѕ тнιѕ?

dont-touch-my-fandoms

Elmo’s voice saying “I’ll fuck u up” is the best and worst thing ever

blocboybucciarati

YO I SWEAR THIS SHIT IS TOO FUNNY😭🤣

lesbianskunkrat

I WATCH THIS EVERYDAY

blackness-by-your-side

this 👆🏾

thefingerfuckingfemalefury

Do these straight people just like

Not actually comprehend anything happening right in front of them

the-sunshine-cult-deactivated20

heteronormativity is a hell of a drug

bimbinis

May I add:

reverend-spines

Once on Facebook I mentioned getting married at a big mad max themed campout. One of the guys that regularly attends told me to take my wife to visit his camp for a drink. I told him my husband, actually.

And he then said “wow, I’m sorry, I’ve never met a girl named dave before! Now I’ve seen everything.”

This dude thought I was a girl name David before he thought I was a gay man. Straight people are wild.

liberal-memes

twinsfawn

watching this single second killed me

slutc0ven

I fucking laugh like this and relate

teathattast

princesstigerbelle

HE JUST WANTS KISSES

socialjusticesummoner

psssst the reason feminists don’t advocate for the drafting of women in the armed forces is because conscription in and of itself violates core feminist values such as bodily autonomy. the feminist position on who should or should not be drafted is not “everyone should be drafted equally”, it is “nobody should be drafted at all”.

and if your feminism is thorough, you’re opposed to the imperialist and militarist mindsets that create a conscription service to begin with but, you know, whatever

ndiecity-deactivated20241101

Another good post from God herself

procrastinating-polyglot

I don’t know how I didn’t figure this out but now that I have I don’t know what to do with this information

polyglotswede

This is some woke shit wtf

starlightespresso

gracklesong

My boyfriend is trying to explain cricket to me again. “He’s only got two balls to make 48 runs”, he says. The camera focuses on a man. Underneath him it says LEFT ARM FAST MEDIUM. A ball flies into the stands and presumably fractures someone’s skull. “There’s a free six”, my boyfriend says. 348 SIXES says the screen. A child in the audience waves a sign referencing Weet-Bix

gracklesong

The first time he showed me this I assumed he was pranking me

elodieunderglass

if people haven’t been exposed to cricket before, here is the experience. The person who likes cricket turns on a radio with an air of happy expectation. “We’ll just catch up with the cricket,” they say.

An elderly British man with an accent - you can picture exactly what he looks like and what he is wearing, somehow, and you know that he will explain the important concept of Yorkshire to you at length if you make eye contact - is saying “And w’ four snickets t’ wicket, Umbleby dives under the covers and romps home for a sticky bicket.”

There is a deep and satisfied silence. Weather happens over the radio. This lasts for three minutes.

A gentle young gentleman with an Indian accent, whose perfect and beautiful clear voice makes him sound like a poet sipping from a cup of honeyed drink always, says mildly “Of course we cannot forget that when Pakistan last had the biscuit under the covers, they were thrown out of bed. In 1957, I believe.”

You mouth “what the fucking fuck.”

A morally ambiguous villain from a superhero movie says off-microphone, “Crumbs everywhere.”

Apparently continuing a previous conversation, the villain asks, “Do seagulls eat tacos?”

“I’m sure someone will tell us eventually,” the poet says. His voice is so beautiful that it should be familiar; he should be the only announcer on the radio, the only reader of audiobooks.

The villain says with sudden interest, “Oh, a leg over straight and under the covers, Peterson and Singh are rumping along with a straight fine leg and good pumping action. Thanks to his powerful thighs, Peterson is an excellent legspinner, apart from being rude on Twitter.”

The man from Yorkshire roars potently, like a bull seeing another bull. There might be words in his roar, but otherwise it is primal and sizzling.

“That isn’t straight,” the poet says. “It’s silly.”

“What the fucking fuck,” you say out loud at this point.

“Shh,” says the person who likes cricket. They listen, tensely. Something in the distance makes a very small “thwack,” like a baby dropping an egg.

“Was that a doosra or a googly?” the villain asks.

“IT’S A WRONG ‘UN,” roars the Yorkshireman in his wrath. A powerful insult has been offered. They begin to scuffle.

“With that double doozy, Crumpet is baffled for three turns, Agarwal is deep in the biscuit tin and Padgett has gone to the shops undercover,” the poet says quickly, to cover the action while his companions are busy. The villain is being throttled, in a friendly companionable way.

An intern apparently brings a message scrawled on a scrap of paper like a courier sprinting across a battlefield. “Reddy has rolled a nat 20,” the poet says with barely contained excitement. “Australia is both a continent and an island. But we’re running out of time!”

“Is that true?” You ask suddenly.

“Shh!” Says the person who likes cricket. “It’s a test match.”

“About Australia.”

“We won’t know THAT until the third DAY.”

A distant “pock” noise. The sound of thirty people saying “tsk,” sorrowfully.

“And the baby’s dropped the egg. Four legs over or we’re done for, as long as it doesn’t rain.”

The villain might be dead? You begin to find yourself emotionally invested.

There are mild distant cheers. “Oh, and with twelve sticky wickets t’ over and t’ seagull’s exploded,” the man from the North says as if all of his dreams have come true. “What a beautiful day.” Your person who likes cricket relaxes. It is tea break.

The villain, apparently alive, describes the best hat in the audience as “like a funnel made of dove-colored net, but backwards, with flies trapped in it.”

This is every bit as good as that time in Australia in 1975, they all agree, drinking their tea and eating home-made cakes sent in by the fans. The poet comments favorably on the icing and sugar-preserved violets. The Yorkshire man discourses on the nature of sponge. The villain clatters his cup too hard on his saucer. To cover his embarrassment, the poet begins scrolling through Twitter on his phone, reading aloud the best memes in his enchanting milky voice. Then, with joy, he reads an @ from an ornithologist at the University of Reading: seagulls do eat tacos! A reference is cited; the poet reads it aloud. Everyone cheers.

You are honestly - against your will - kind of into it! but also: weirdly enraged.

“Was that … it?” you ask, deeming it safe to interrupt.

“No,” says the person who likes cricket, “This is second tea break on the first day. We won’t know where we really are until lunch tomorrow.”

And - because you cannot stop them - you have to accept this; if cricket teaches you anything, it is this gentle and radical acceptance.

jackironsides

As someone who Occasionally Enjoys Cricket, I am low key enraged that this is simultaneously utter nonsense and THE MOST PERFECTLY ACCURATE DESCRIPTION OF CRICKET

v-as-in-victor

This is cricket. And indeed, being raised on cricket teaches one that five days with a strong possibility of no decisive outcome is a fantastic amount of time to spend on a sporting fixture, provided the sport is played elegantly. Adelaide’s cricket ground is next to a cathedral, so during slow moments in play, the commentators would commentate weddings.

peashooter85

prokopetz

Concept: a monster-of-the-week show where every member of the core cast is a clown of some description in their day job – like, one of them is a mime, another works birthday parties, a third is a member of a commedia dell’arte troupe, and so forth – and the monsters they hunt are all evil clowns. Like, exclusively evil clowns. The show’s narrative framing and promotions play it up like it’s a completely serious “in order to hunt monsters one must become a monster” thing, but in the actual show their motivation mostly boils down to being offended that these asshole monsters are Doing Clowning Wrong.

prokopetz

The dramatic lead just beating the shit out of a demonic jester with a juggling pin like “clowns are supposed to bring joy what the fuck is wrong with you”.

kuipernebula

a quick question about the show: does the main cast fight monsters while wearing their full clown makeup, or are they like normal people who are also clowns and the evil clowns are constantly baffled to find the oddly attractive group of 20-something’s fighting them can juggle, squeeze into tiny cars, and have encyclopedic knowledge of clown props and history?

prokopetz

They’d wear their civilian clothes while on the hunt, obviously. There are specific rules about what activities a professional clown is allowed to don the makeup for, and monster hunting isn’t on the list!

rednecklight

How are they finding out about the monster clowns?

And: I’ll just cut straight to the chase, are they finding out through a central clown authority ala the Clown Egg Register and/or Clowns International? Because the idea of the series climaxing with the protags donning officially-sanctioned, Payday-esque armored clown masks to take down Eidolon Harlequin is pretty kickass.

prokopetz

The initial encounter is just a wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time scenario, but after successfully employing their knowledge of clowning to neutralise and destroy the first monster clown, they’re recruited by a mysterious benefactor who is implied but never confirmed to be a reformed/semi-benevolent monster clown himself, who puts them on the trail of their next target.

(The mysterious benefactor is, of course, played by Doug Jones.)

livebloggingmydescentintomadness

aziraphale, confessing: I… I’ve been in love with you for eighty years

crowley, who fell in love six thousand years ago: e i ght y

super-metroid

i wish real life had savestates

demilypyro

i agree. thank you, OP, for this great post.

super-metroid

i wish real life had savestates

demilypyro

we had an entire fairly odd parents episode on why this is a bad idea

super-metroid

wait which one was that?

demilypyro

magic watch lets timmy turn back time and try anything as many times as he wants

to be fair i dont remember what it was that made it go wrong

sharpieskunk

Vicky ended up getting CosmoWatch and Timmy has Wanda become a watch that only works for him as Vicky and Timmy repeatedly mess up the timeline to fuck with each other, usually involving cats. Vicky ends up hit by a school bus.

demilypyro

nvm i take it back. great idea

super-metroid

i just rewatched (pun intended) the episode to see what happened, so yeah as long as it only works for me we good. should we redo this post?

demilypyro

yeah, good idea, sorry for interrupting

super-metroid

star-anise

My girlfriend and I talk a lot about our different generations of queerness, because she was doing queer activism in the 1990s and I wasn’t.

And she’s supportive of my writing about queerness but also kind of bitter about how quickly her entire generation’s history has disappeared into a bland “AIDS was bad, gay marriage solved homophobia” narrative, and now we’re having to play catch-up to educate young LGBTQ+ people about queer history and queer theory. It gets pretty raw sometimes.

I mean, a large part of the reason TERFs have been good at educating the young and queer people haven’t is, in the 80s and 90s the leading lights of TERFdom got tenured university positions, and the leading lights of queerdom died of AIDS.

“Excuse us,” she said bitterly the other day, not at me but to me, “for not laying the groundwork for children we never thought we’d have in a future none of us thought we’d be alive for.”

freedom-of-fanfic

“the reason TERFs have been good at educating the young and queer people haven’t is, in the 80s and 90s the leading lights of TERFdom got tenured university positions, and the leading lights of queerdom died of AIDS.”

aphilologicalbatman-deactivated

thank you for giving me a good reason to finish my dissertation and try to make it in the academy

brs-love

Wait, idk LGBTQ+ history, but they died of AIDS cause, what, hospitals refused to treat them or…?

star-anise

Oh heck yeah.

When an epidemic happens, public health agencies spend millions of dollars trying to understand what happens: Why are people sick or dying? What caused it? Who else is at risk? Government health departments like the Centres for Disease control and private companies both invest hundreds of millions of dollars into preserving public health. This happened in 1977, when military veterans who all attended the same gathering began to get sick with a strange type of pneumonia, with 182 cases and 29 dead, and the CDC traced the illness to a bacterium distributed by the air conditioning system of a hotel they all stayed at, and in 1982, when seven people died of tainted Tylenol, and pharmaceutical companies changed the entire way their products were made and packaged to prevent more deaths.

Meanwhile, the AIDS epidemic took six years to be recognized by the CDC (1975-1981) because at first the only people dying were intravenous drug users, which is to say, heroin addicts; when it was recognized, President Reagan’s government pressured the CDC to spend as little time and money on AIDS as possible, because they literally didn’t think gay lives were important. So yes, hospitals refused to treat them and medical staff treated them as disgusting people who deserved to die, but also, there was very little funding for scientists to understand what this disease was, what caused it, where it came from, how it spread, or how to stop it. The LGBTQ+ community had to organize and fight to get hospitals to treat them, to fund scientific research, to be legally allowed to buy the drugs that kept them alive, and to have access to treatment. An effective treatment for AIDS wasn’t found until 1995.

And it’s ongoing; a lot of the difficulty of fighting AIDS in Africa is that it’s seen as “the gay disease” (and thanks to European colonialism, even African societies that used to be okay with us were taught to think LGBTQ+ people are bad). Even now that we have medications that can treat or prevent AIDS, they’re incredibly expensive and hard to get; in 2015, New York businessman Martin Shkreli acquired the exclusive right to make a drug that treats an AIDS-related disease, and raised its price from $13.50 a pill to $750 a pill.

Here’s one history on what it was like to have and fight AIDS, one history on how politicians responded to the epidemic, and if you can get a copy of the documentary How to Survive a Plague, it’s a good introduction, because it’s about how AIDS patients had to fight for their lives. A lot of these histories are imperfect and incomplete, because privilege played a big part in whose lives and deaths were seen as important–Poor people, people of colour, trans people, and drug addicts were less likely to be able to afford or access medical care, and more likely to die without being remembered; histories often tend to focus on straight people who got AIDS through no fault of their own, and then white cis gay men who seem more “respectable” and “relatable”.

I mean, people who will talk about how homophobia led to neglect of AIDS still find ways not to mention that AIDS isn’t just sexually transmitted; it’s hugely a disease of drug addicts, because sharing needles is a huge way the disease spreads. But because society always thinks, oh, drug addicts are bad and disgusting people and of course criminals, that often gets neatly dropped from the histories, and it’s still hard to get people to agree to things that keep drug addicts alive, like needle exchanges and supervised injection sites. But if you want my rant about how the war on drugs is bullshit used to control poor people and people of colour, and drugs shouldn’t be criminalized, you’ll have to ask for that separately.

systlin

So some dude got sent to the hospital with cyanide poisoning because he was eating cherries and decided, for some fucking reason, to crack the pits open and eat the meat inside.

“I didn’t think nothin’ of it. Thought it was just a seed.”

“Deep breath”

I SWEAR TO THE FUCKIN GODS…..

(cue 25 minutes of unintelligible yelling)

….and that is why being separated from our food’s origins and not knowing anything about botany is what is wrong with the world today goddamnit.

systlin

I bet some people would eat castor beans too. Or yew. Or just fuckin’ snack on some hemlock because it’s natural, man.

Fucking incredible.

systlin

LIKE IT TAKES SOME FUCKING EFFORT TO GET A CHERRY PIT OPEN FUCKING W H Y

arandomblackbook

Question: Is it the same with plums? I used to do that occasionally when I ate dried and seasoned Asian plums as a kid.

systlin

Yes.

Plum pits do not contain as much as cherry, but they do.

Do not eat stone fruit pits, people. Or bitter almonds.

They all have cyanide in them.

chesand

Oh boy, apricot kernels. The amount of people I see lauding those as a “cure for cancer” is… demoralizing. I can’t find it right now but I believe there was a mother in the past few years who was taken to court for child endangerment/neglect for feeding those to her very young child as a cancer treatment.

systlin

I saw this horror last year, and yelled for an entire hour.

To be fair, I bet if you die of cyanide poisoning the cancer won’t kill you.

dracota

I have been wanting to use these photos for months.

The recommendation is to only eat 3 in one hour. because that is just the most filling snack and of course they will stop at three.

But then they say DON’T EAT MORE THEN 10 A DAY.

It’s not even FDA approved. “may be toxic”.

systlin

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

beka-tiddalik

Just because it’s natural doesn’t mean it’s good for you.

Just because it’s food for another creature doesn’t mean it’s fine for you.

Best case scenario it’s like grass which is basically neutral- it’s generally not going to kill you but there’s no nutrition for humans in it, and enough will probably make you sick.

Worst case scenario it’s something like belladonna berries which taste sweet but will kill you stone cold dead.

Same for the wrong kind of mushrooms, other berries, leaves and barks. Before consuming, CHECK. If you can’t check, don’t put it in your mouth.

eeveedream

Just because it’s natural doesn’t mean it’s good for you.

I’ve been saying this for so long, oh my gosh.

scienceshenanigans

^^As a toxicologist, I approve this message.

golbatgender

Friendly reminder that the laws on supplement labeling in the US are super lax and haven’t been updated since 1994. That’s nearly 25 years ago!

ixhadbadxdays

This episode focuses on medical devices (obviously) but it does talk about the problems with “approved” and “reviewed.”

Just because it says the fda has looked at it, doesn’t mean they’ve actually approved it either. And sometimes their approval is based on the findings of similar studies or products rather than the new, individual item. A product can be approved without having ever been reviewed properly. And what happens then? People get hurt, sick, or die. That’s what happens.

Be careful.