May This Life Be A Symphony Of Freedom

[3tears]

Here's what's happening.

This topic needs to be trending. People need to know about this. Please listen. People are dying.

40 years ago, Iran became an Islamic Republic. The country was taken by an oppressive regime, placing people under more strain every passing year.

It is illegal for women not to dress by their codes. Children are taught blatant propaganda. The economy falls further each day. The government started selling the water inside the country and the Caspian Sea, and deforested the country's own forests.

Learning English is banned in school.

People are prosecuted and tortured for speaking out against the government. Thousands of journalists are sentenced.

There is an environmental, social, and economic catastrophy.

A few days ago, in an already broken economy, the prices for fuel were then raised to a point where no one but the elite can afford to operate a vehicle (as much as 330%!). This was the last straw. Millions of people have flooded the streets in protest of the regime. This is still happening. In response:

the military and police began shooting protestors with machine guns. At least 200 are dead, but 600+ are said to be dead. 3000+ have been prosecuted. Many are held, some have been released after being forced to "confess" falsely that their children are criminals.

The internet shut down. Usage of the internet in Iran already depended on VPNs and proxies, since the government censors everything. But now, there is a complete communications shut down. There is no access to the internet. VPNs can't get past this. Almost all landlines are blocked from international calls.

Information is shared through direct reports to news channels by traditional radio, the few people who have access to twitter, and a loophole people found in Skype, which allows them to communicate for a few minutes overseas.

I have not been able to contact my family. The Iranian government is trying to keep this contained. They are succeeding.

THIS IS STILL LIMITED. SOURCE ARE LIMITED.

There is not a single word of this on western media. Persian people living outside post about it on Twitter under #Internet4Iran - this needs to reach international circles.

Other countries have done nothing to help.

People are dying. Young people are dying in the streets.

Please help. Please tell others, please tell everyone what is happening. This is a country with a population of 83 million people, suffering. Please listen.

[bezoarcureforpoison]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/19/un-urges-restraint-over-reports-of-multiple-deaths-in-iran-protests

November 2019

[but-maybe-i-am]

Marie knows how to get shit done. 

[lifeismufkinweird]

Get your life together on the low. No one has to know what you’re doing and how.

[herkind]

Allow me yet another unpopular opinion but the fight against filmed and photographed rape and abuse of children (sometimes refered to as “child pornography”) is infinitely more important than the freedom of Tumblr users to post “artistic nudity” or naked pictures in any other form. That some people won’t be able to post what they like because Tumblr bans adult content is of no importance whatsoever in light of what might be avoided and stopped because of it. The same goes for other forms of porn too, I might add - when Tumblr is full of filmed gang rapes of women I don’t give a damn about artistic nudity being banned along with it.

[idkwtpall]

💯

[idkwtpall]

Can’t deal with tumblr anymore with these ads. Going to pretty much deactivate this blog I think.

[lesbianherstorian]

from lavender woman: chicago’s lesbian/feminist newspaper vol. 2 no. 1, january 1973

[aaliyahbreaux]

me, a girl: *gets into an uber*

uber driver: “so, this address… is this where you live? is this ur house?”

me, wheels turning in my head: “Uh no haha its my boyfriends house”

[growthandsecrets]

Um…. what?

[aaliyahbreaux]

me, a girl: *gets into an uber*

uber driver: “so, this address… is this where you live? is this ur house?”

me, wheels turning in my head: “Uh no haha its my boyfriends house”

[queenoftherebels-deactivated202]

“And in 2017, we STILL refuse to be controlled by a sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot.” | Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton and Jane Fonda, Emmys 2017

[vladtheunfollower]

[afrodiaspores]

“No one disputes that white abolitionists were active in the Underground Railroad, but later scholars argued that [a white historian] had exaggerated both their numbers and their importance, while downplaying or ignoring the role played by African-Americans. Among religious sects, for example, the Quakers generally receive the most credit for resisting slavery, with secondary acknowledgment going to the wave of evangelical Christianity that spread across the United States during the first half of the nineteenth century, in the movement known as the Second Great Awakening. Yet scant mainstream attention goes to the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which was established in 1816, in direct response to American racism and the institution of slavery, and played at least as crucial a role in raising money, aiding fugitives, and helping former slaves who had found their way to freedom make a new life. This lopsided awareness holds not only for institutions but for individuals. Many people know of William Lloyd Garrison, one of the country’s leading white anti-slavery activists, while almost no one knows about the black abolitionist William Still—one of the most effective operators and most important historians of the Underground Railroad, whose book about it, published a quarter of a century before Siebert’s, was based on detailed notes he kept while helping six hundred and forty-nine fugitives onward toward freedom. Likewise, more people know the name of Levi Coffin, a white Midwestern Quaker, than that of Louis Napoleon, a freeborn black abolitionist, even though both risked their lives to help thousands of fugitives to safety. This allocation of credit is inversely proportional to the risk that white and black anti-slavery activists faced. It took courage almost everywhere in antebellum America to actively oppose slavery, and some white abolitionists paid a price. A few were killed; some died in prison; others, facing arrest or worse, fled to Canada. But these were the exceptions. Most whites faced only fines and the opprobrium of some in their community, while those who lived in anti-slavery strongholds, as many did, went about their business with near-impunity. Black abolitionists, by contrast, always put life and liberty on the line. If caught, free blacks faced the possibility of being illegally sold into slavery, while fugitives turned agents faced potential reënslavement, torture, and murder. Harriet Tubman is rightly famous for how boldly she faced those risks: first when she fled slavery herself; then during the roughly twenty return trips she made to the South to help bring others to freedom; and, finally, during the war, when she accompanied Union forces into the Carolinas, where they disrupted supply lines and, under her direction, liberated some seven hundred and fifty slaves. By then, slaveholders in her home state of Maryland were clamoring for her capture, dead or alive, and, in the words of her first biographer, publicly debating “the different cruel devices by which she would be tortured and put to death.””

— [“The Perilous Lure of the Underground Railroad”] (via rienfleche)

[enoughtohold]

there is no reason whatsoever to add a disclaimer when you reblog a post about an anti-semitic massacre. if you think that mourning jewish people is on any level contradictory to your values — if your values are somehow inconsistent with valuing jewish lives — you have anti-semitic values. if you’re worried that your friends will judge you if they see you acknowledging without a caveat that it’s wrong to murder jewish people, you have anti-semitic friends. it is an outrage that this even needs to be said.

[blackbitchenergy]

Kindergarteners learned to sign “Happy Birthday” song to Deaf custodian, Mr. James. And he was surprised 😭😭

[picass0trill]

Gosh can we start caring more about the people that are around our kids like this…. please?

[mostlysignssomeportents]

I’m suing the U.S. government for causing the climate change crisis, and I'm 22.

My name is Kelsey Juliana and I’m suing the United States government for causing and accelerating the climate change crisis. I’m 22 years old and I’ve been a climate activist for more than half of my life.

I know that young people like me, and others who have yet to be born, have a right to a safe climate system. The constitution guarantees all Americans the right to life, liberty, and property. But how is anyone supposed to live a life of freedom amid a climate crisis? My own government is violating my constitutional rights by its ongoing and deliberate actions that cause climate change and it’s not right.

I, along with 20 other young people from around the country, filed a lawsuit against the federal government in 2015, called Juliana v. United States.

We’re not asking for money. Instead, we’re asking the court to order the government to develop and implement a National Climate Recovery Plan based on the best available science.

This plan should end the reign of fossil fuels and quickly decarbonize our atmosphere so that we can stabilize our climate system before it’s too late.

The longer we go without climate recovery, the more we risk allowing our climate to spiral completely out of control.

And the climate is spiraling out of control, no matter how many politicians claim we’re experiencing normal fluctuations or, worse, a “hoax.” All of the expert witnesses in our lawsuit say that we are currently—already—in the “danger zone” and an “emergency situation” with only 1°C of planetary heating. Allowing the planet to heat up any more is not safe for our species, as well as so many others. And according to the Trump administration’s most recent environmental impact statement, the planet could heat as much as 7°F before the end of this century. We cannot allow this to happen because we simply will not survive.

We originally filed our lawsuit against the Obama administration. That administration tried to have the case dismissed, but the judge ruled in our favor and found that we should be allowed to go to trial.

In 2017, the Trump administration inherited the lawsuit and it has done everything in its power, employing every conceivable tactic, to deny my fellow plaintiffs and me our right to present our case in court. This administration is so fiercely attempting to silence our voices.

At this point, every level of the federal judiciary—the U.S. District Court, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the Supreme Court—has denied the Trump administration’s efforts to have the case thrown out. Yet it will not halt its efforts to avoid standard legal procedures and confront us, the nation’s youth, in court.

Our trial is officially scheduled to begin on October 29, 2018 in Eugene, Oregon.

What we’re asking for could change everything.

My fellow plaintiffs and I want you with us as we head into the courtroom to confront the United States government for knowingly violating our constitutional rights. Supporters will hold rallies in every state around the country, so if you can’t be with us in Eugene, find your local rally here.

Get regular updates by following @youthvgov on social media.

You can learn more about this case and get regular trial updates by tuning in to the No Ordinary Lawsuit podcast here.

Lastly, if you have the means, click here to make a donation to Our Children’s Trust, the nonprofit organization that supports our lawsuit and many others like it around the country.

https://boingboing.net/2018/10/23/our-childrens-trust.html

[fuckyeahpainting]

“Nobody sees a flower — really — it is so small — we haven’t time — and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time … ’So I said to myself — I’ll paint what I see — what the flower is to me but I’ll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it — I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers: ‘Well — I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flower, you hung all your own associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower — and I don’t.”

—Georgia O'Keeffe, Contribution (1939) to the exhibition catalogue An American place (1944)

[memewhore]

[i-hate-chick-fil-a]

It’s like ending network neutrality/fair peering arrangements for postage, basically??

[veryfunnymemes]

[starinyourhand]

imagine.

[maudgonnegirl]

(Much like most of what NDT says) I think this pretty brutally misses the pertinent issue which is that disenfranchising women for so long wasn’t a fluke and wasn’t arbitrary. an alternate history where women are always treated equally to men isn’t an alternate history with twice as many intellectual achievements because it’s an alternate history where men never got to use women as unpaid labor to raise them, raise their children, type their dissertations, cook their meals, proofread their work, soothe their egos, or throw parties to help them network. all of society’s accomplishments already belong to women and could not have happened without their (again, mostly unpaid and underacknowledged!) labor. “We would have so much more science!” is a shitty argument for women’s right to be treated as human.