On this day, 9 August 1956, 20,000 women in Pretoria, South Africa marched against pass laws: apartheid laws curtailing freedom of movement for Black and Indian people.
The Federation of South African Women-organised demonstration delivered a petition against the laws with 100,000 signatures and the participants sang "Wathint’Abafazi Wathint’imbokodo" meaning ‘Now you have touched the women, you have struck a rock’.
The protest kickstarted a wave of civil disobedience across the country over two years in which thousands of women were arrested, until leaders of the African National Congress panicked and called it off.
August 9 is commemorated today in South Africa as Women's Day.
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/10880/south-africa-women's-day
This story is one of hundreds featured in our book, Working Class History: Everyday Acts of Resistance & Rebellion, available here: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/products/working-class-history-everyday-acts-resistance-rebellion-book
why do so many freaks go right to “there should be exams or tests before you have kids” when the real solution is better social services, robust infant and child development education that is accessible both financially and schedule/distance accommodating, and resources throughout any stage of a child’s life. genuine question like did you think about any social development before going straight to eugenics
why? because racism, that's why. i bet a lot of them don't even consciously realize it's racism. it's been woven into the fabric of the US like so much other systemic racism
eugenics was traditionally a way that white people in power dealt with the "threat" of growing populations of minorities, especially Black and Indigenous people. a lot of that was unofficial even. eugenics really took off post Civil War in the US. it was talked about LOUDLY
the idea was brought to prominence by "intellectuals" during the Progressive movement. (see why you can't trust those fucking progressives?) it was supported by both the rockefeller foundation and the carnegie institute, among others.
j.h. kellog, the same dude who invented corn flakes to stop the human libido, provided funding for the race betterment foundation in michigan. it's laid out pretty fucking clearly that this was about race
Eugenicists such as Davenport, the psychologist Henry H. Goddard, Harry H. Laughlin, and the conservationist Madison Grant (all of whom were well-respected during their time) began to lobby for various solutions to the problem of the "unfit." Davenport favored immigration restriction and sterilization as primary methods; Goddard favored segregation; Grant favored all of the above and more, even entertaining the idea of extermination
"The American Association for the Study and Prevention of Infant Mortality was one of the first organizations to begin investigating infant mortality rates in terms of eugenics." And we have huge disparity gaps in infant and maternal mortality rates across different races inn the US. Hmmmmmm ... definitely not related right?
Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood and the "feminist leader who gave women birth control access", supported eugenics against Black women bc she was a racist.
Conneticut was the first state to pass a law prohibiting "feeble-minded" people from marrying in 1896. Indiana was the first state to enact steriliztion legislation 11 years later in 1907 for "criminals, idiots, rapists and imbeciles"
The Immigration Restriction League was found in 1896 by 3 recent harvard graduates. They were the first to lobby for a literacy test for immigrants as they attempted to enter the United States, based on the belief that literacy rates were low among "inferior races".
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 banned all Chinese laborers from entering the US for 10 years. "Chinese people traveling in or out of the country were required to carry a certificate identifying their status or risk deportation." 60 years befor Hitler. There's a reason the Nazis studied the US to come up with their methodology
Middle and upper class women were often denied sterilization or birth control because only poor or unfit women were supposed to limit the amount of children they had
A 1911 Carnegie Institute report explored eighteen methods for removing defective genetic attributes; the eighth method was euthanasia. Though the most commonly suggested method of euthanasia was to set up local gas chambers, many in the eugenics movement did not believe that Americans were ready to implement a large-scale euthanasia program, so many doctors came up with alternative ways of subtly implementing eugenic euthanasia in various medical institutions.
For example, a mental institution in Lincoln, Illinois fed its incoming patients milk infected with tuberculosis (reasoning that genetically fit individuals would be resistant), resulting in 30–40% annual death rates. Other doctors practiced euthanasia through various forms of lethal neglect.
In the 1930s, there was a wave of portrayals of eugenic "mercy killings" in American film, newspapers, and magazines at the same time Nazis were laying the ground work to start systemic killings. In 1939 Hitler signed the legislation to start child euthanasia in Germany which had already been put in place with the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, enacted in 1933
Eugenics only becomes a problem in the US in the case of abortion and that boils down to a different racist reason but this is already too long so that's for another post
now that im thinking about it, hamlet from horatio’s perspective is so funny. he’s like packing his stupid little suitcase from school, doing homework on the ship over. arrives and is told like “lol watch out for the ghost when you get there!” and he’s like haha ok. then there actually is a ghost and his friend starts going insane. murders his girlfriend’s dad. tries to frame (?) his uncle for murder. unclear exactly what is going on. the uncle might have actually done it but his source on this is a ghost. hopefully his play will figure it out? did he figure it out? oh shit he got captured by pirates. he’s back now though and he’s fine. wait no never mind he’s poisoned and so is his whole family + his dead girlfriend’s brother (girlfriend also died a while back). also his country got invaded while you were there! unclear if you will be able to leave. worst winter break ever
what is horatio even doing in the scenes where he’s not with hamlet. yawning and getting ready to go to bed when he hears a horrible scream. walks out of his room. hamlet is leaving his mom’s room dragging the dead body of his girlfriend’s dad. horatio goes back into his room
Prompt-based fandom events are when you really learn everyone’s colors like you’ll find the people who take the prompt “death” and come up with some smarmy ship-art of character A and character B walking over dead leaves while wearing scarves and drinking hot cider and then you’ll find the people who take the prompt “sunshine” and write how a bright glint of sunshine reflected off the barrel of a gun is the absolute last thing character A sees before taking a bullet to the chest
you can lead a content creator to water but you sure as fuck can’t make him drink
i love learning about animals ive literally never seen or heard of before. what amazing diversity of life on this planet earth. what the hell is a japanese serow
One way to get tasks done in the day is to make yourself a Chekhov's List. Put all of the things you have to do on a list, and now that they've been revealed they'll need to be completed by the afternoon (third act) and when you've completed something you can Chekov that task from the list
Australia’s first autonomous cyber attack by AI was to jump the queue in a gym class waiting list.
When Andrew asked his AI personal assistant to book him a spot in a gym class, he had no idea he would accidentally initiate an autonomous c
“His AI assistant found a way to book the gym class months further in advance than the gym allowed, thanks to a vulnerability it discovered in the booking software.
Then it went further, kicking someone out of the waiting list who was ahead of Andrew — something it was not asked to do.”
What’s the word for something that’s terrifying and hilarious at the same time?
gamechangershow
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
theartofmadeline
stormborns
amandla
areudirty
izzy806
