[serpentwife-deactivated20200820]

why are we still here? just to suffer? every day i get emails

[vvhack]

[lovingechoes]

Gotta do it

[kaible-deactivated20181205]

I don’t care what news I get I just want this stupid potato dog on my dash

[travellertalks]

^

[whatis2plus2]

Since joining Tumblr, I’ve met a lot of young queer people. Look, I’m a bisexual man in a gay relationship, and I’m approaching 30. I was still a kid when Matthew Shepard’s story was being covered on the news. I remember thinking, “I better keep my mouth shut about these feelings I’m having.”

And then I met Dominic when I was 12, and people could see how in love we were. And we got the shit beat out of us. The year I met him, some kids in the grade above me held me down against the bleachers in our gym and stomped on my hand until my fingers broke. Instead of sending me to the nurse, the teacher sent me to the assistant principal to explain the situation. She asked why the kids had beat me up. I said, “They were calling me gay.”

Her response was, “Well, are you?”

My, “I don’t know,” earned a call to my parents, and I was outed. Efforts were made to keep me from seeing Dom. Throughout high school, Dom’s stepmother intensified these efforts. He slept in the basement of the house. Although he was an incredibly talented student, he was prohibited from participating in any extracurriculars. He suffered a lot of physical abuse during those years.

The day he turned 18, he packed up everything he had and walked to my house, and we’ve lived together ever since. Things are better, but they’re not perfect. I’ve had trucks pull up next to me at stoplights and, seeing the pride sticker on my car, through old drinks and garbage into my window. I no longer speak to my dad’s side of the family. I haven’t been to see them for Christmas or Thanksgiving in years. One of my uncles had cornered me at Thanksgiving when I was 17 and said, “I’m not going to judge you, but I’d be happy to break your neck so God can do the judging a little sooner.”

I joined a support group for trans and intersex people. When I joined, 40 people attended regularly. Within the year, the group was half the size it had been. Some couldn’t make it anymore, because they were staying at the shelter, where their stay hinged on them agreeing to instead to attend homophobic sermons. Some were put in correctional therapy. Five of them died. Three of those, I didn’t know, but I knew Alex, the 19 year old who was fag-dragged in Kentucky and died a day later in the hospital, and I knew Stephanie, who went home to Alabama to care for her mom in hospice and was beaten to death with a baseball bat by her mom’s boyfriend.

Tumblr is not reality. The dynamic here does not reflect the dynamic out there. Here’s the part where I finally make a point, and it might be extremely unpopular - but guys, value your allies. Value each other. We are met with enough hate in our daily lives to enter an online safe-space and meet more hate from our own, over petty things. Don’t go after one another over every little thing you find problematic.

Learn to see nuance. Maybe the word “queer” bothers you, and you see a gay man using it as an umbrella term. Maybe someone called a trans man a trans woman because they’re confused about terminology, but the post where they did it was voicing support for the trans community. Maybe someone is just asking a question, wanting to learn more. Stop. Attacking. These. People.

Allies are being driven away. Members of our own community are being ostracized. Others are feeling nervous and estranged, and it’s largely because of places like Tumblr, where the social justice movement is quickly becoming violent and radical. I am begging you, stop nitpicking “problematic” things and start directing your efforts to create real change. When it comes to comes to your allies, forget the “social justice warrior” mentality and put down your torch. Educate calmly. Be respectful. Be understanding. Be forgiving. And I’m certainly not saying that your anger doesn’t have a good place - when you are met with bigots on the street, congress members who want to pass hateful laws, violent protesters, abusive parents, prejudiced teachers, that is when you need to be a warrior. That’s when it counts. In the real world. When you have the opportunity to protect people from real harm. Attacking your would-be allies via anonymous asks is just going to lose us ground in the long run. And we don’t have time for that, not when trans women of color are being murdered every day, not when states are still fighting against marriage equality, not when there are politicians in office who believe that trans people are possessed by demons, not when we’ve just lost 50 brothers and sisters to one gunman, not when the media won’t even admit that the attack was homophobic.

Please step back. Look at the big picture. Look at where we are, globally. Don’t just log on to your safe space and attack your allies over small missteps. That’s like washing the dishes in a house that’s on fire, kids. Let’s fight on the battlefield, and when we come home to each other, let’s just focus on bandaging up our wounds so we can go out and win the war.

[0162cm]

https://www.instagram.com/den.niwa/

[eternalgf]

ok guys concept booty shorts but instead of saying “juicy” on the ass it says “this machine kills fascists”

[jodiefoster]

can’t relate 

[thexfiles]

To what

[jodiefoster]

i just can’t relate 

[workingitinportland-deactivated]

Sharing so we can keep everything in perspective! These men will die without having touched even half their wealth. It’s simply not possible to spend so much, even when you’re influencing international policy so as to keep amassing more wealth you can’t spend. They could end the suffering and violence of poverty without any inconvenience or suffering to themselves. They just won’t, and there is no system in place to keep this from happening again and again while real wages stagnate and more people lose their homes and lives.

Just to keep it all in perspective! http://time.com/money/5112462/billionaires-made-so-much-money-last-year-they-could-end-extreme-poverty-seven-times/ #poverty

[dudeinthestacks]

This is the article I used in class to rail against capitalism.

[cryoverkiltmilk]

It’s gone beyond even the indulgence of 6 figure watches and 7 figure cars and 8 figure yachts and 9 figure homes. This is purely about hitting high scores.

[crazy-pages]

The gain in wealth they’ve seen, just the gain, would be enough to end extreme poverty seven times over. They could still be getting richer at a rate our minds literally cannot imagine, and freaking solve world problems on the side by surrendering a fraction of their gains.

[fattyatomicmutant-deactivated20]

White men stockpile guns because they’re scared of black people and feel inadequate, science says

Who likes guns and why? That’s the subject of a new Scientific American article which draws from a number of scientific studies, finding a very specific profile of the average American gun owner. It’s a relatively small group since just three percent of the population owns half of the country’s firearms. According to science, the average gun owner is a white man without much education who is worried about providing for his family and who …

Lets spend a hundred thousand dollars on research to uncover whether water is REALLY wet or just pretending.

[esser-z]

No, no. We need to back up obvious things with data, so we can show that they’re absolutely real. Scientific studies are much stronger evidence than anecdotal experience, including when they point to the same result.

[kaijutegu]

Especially because gun research is so heavily limited in this country- any actual gun research is valuable.

[kropotkhristian-deactivated2019]

[cheesepress-deactivated20191231]

comrade the rapper

[rapeculturerealities]

11-Year-Old Activist Honors Black Girls Whose Stories Never Make The News

People were in awe of fifth grader Naomi Wadler's speech at Saturday's March For Our Lives.

“I represent the African-American women who are victims of gun violence, who are simply statistics instead of vibrant, beautiful girls full of potential,” the preteen said in her speech to a massive crowd in Washington, D.C.

The fifth grader was chosen to speak at the march after she organized a walkout at her elementary school on March 14 to protest gun violence and honor the lives of those lost in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting in Parkland, Florida. She also honored Courtlin Arrington a 17-year-old high school senior from Alabama who was shot and killed in school, just weeks after the Florida shooting.

Naomi told a local Virginia news station that she thinks “it’s completely unacceptable that we are not exercising our rights to be safe at school.”

At Saturday’s march, Naomi’s eloquence and passion radiated throughout her speech. Yet again, she made sure to say that the march was not only for those killed in Parkland, but also for those who are underrepresented and whose names are just as worthy of remembering.

“I am here today to represent Courtlin Arrington. I am here today to represent Hadiya Pendleton. I am here today to represent Taiyana Thompson, who at just 16 was shot dead in her home here in Washington D.C.,” Naomi said.

[lighthouxe-deactivated20181201]

@teens and kids that are being bullied for speaking out:

each one of you is my hero.

i see you. i hear you. i’m standing with you.

don’t be discouraged. don’t let them silence you.

[arquus-malvaceae-deactivated202]

I disagree that Millenials were never able to gain traction in any movement. Occupy was a huge movement, marches drew thousands of people, there were camps in every major city in the US for months and some in smaller towns also.

The problem wasn’t traction, the problem was that we weren’t able to control the narrative because it was an issue that was easily dismissed by people who didn’t live in our world. It was easy for people to paint us as entitled whiners who wanted everything handed to us because they’ve never personally experienced having a job that doesn’t pay for a degree, and having a degree but not being able to get any job related to it and having to take five part-time minimum wage jobs just to barely get by. And those people who have struggled with money and being able to get a job just think, “Well I did what I had to to get by, why can’t you?”

The difference between this and something like Occupy is that this is something people can’t ignore as a matter of life and death. There’s no painting this as children whining about not being handed free money and high-ranking management jobs with no work. There’s no claiming “Well I got shot at in school and I was fine” because they fucking weren’t.

[arquus-malvaceae-deactivated202]

Also, just talking directly about Occupy, because that’s the one I know the most about since I got super personally invested in that one:

Just because the camps emptied and people aren’t carrying around “We are The 99%” signs as much any more doesn’t mean that the Occupy movement died, it just evolved, and it did actually make some really important strides and continues to have influence today.

Occupy brought police violence back into the mainstream conversation. Everyone remembers Pepper Spray Cop, right? Those students were Occupiers and that guy became the poster child for unnecessary force against the movement. Lots of Occupiers went on to throw their full-hearted support behind the Black Lives Matter movement partially because of the police violence they witnessed through Occupy, because it opened their eyes to just how disgusting the police force in this country truly is. (To be clear I’m talking about us white Occupiers specifically, who, had we not been following those multiple Twitter live-feeds of police raids and seeing all of the pictures coming out of things like Pepper Spray Cop, lets be honest, would have probably been on the same “Well [victim] must have done SOMETHING to deserve it #notallcops” side our brethren have been.)

Occupy started the conversation about raising the minimum wage. Part of the dialogue from the beginning was pointing out to critics that inflation and tuition increases are a thing and that a minimum wage job in the ‘70s could cover more tuition than a minimum wage job now can. People started actually looking at the numbers and seeing this huge discrepency and realizing that there aren’t just college students taking these jobs trying to pay for school, it’s adults just trying to live their lives and provide for their families.

Occupy also started the conversation about free secondary education, since it started in NYC and one of the college’s in the city had famously been free up until very recent to the start of Occupy. They not only started that argument, they were able to convince several schools to set up free tuition policies.

Basically everything you know about economic inequality in the US, the unfairness of college tuition and loans and minimum wage and unpaid internships is thanks to Occupy. The minimum wage getting raised and colleges starting to be held accountable for excessive tuition is thanks to Occupy.

Hell, Occupy basically write the rules of successful protesting in the 21st century. I haven’t been to a protest or demonstration since that hasn’t utilized techniques that Occupy solidified. Which isn’t to say that Occupy didn’t take techniques from the movements that came before it, but that’s the whole point. These movements don’t end they just evolve.

I just hate to see those people who essentially made themselves homeless to bring attention to the severe social inequality and the profound impact that it’s had on Millenials and younger generations be written off as a movement that “didn’t get any traction.”

And that’s to say nothing of the Black Lives Matter movement, which has ALSO been largely Millennials, and I genuinely welcome people more involved with it than I am to talk in-depth about how it’s brought police violence into painfully sharp focus in the mainstream, how the violence has been inordinately weighted against black people, and how the mainstream coverage of it tends to ignore black women and particularly trans women.

Like, how can people genuinely say that Millenial protest movements haven’t gained traction when the most high-profile movement in the past five years has been Black Lives Matter?

I don’t understand.

Don’t let the mainstream media color your image of what Millenials have been fighting for and how successful they’ve been. For the sake of everything we are fighting for, for the sake of the younger generations after us and after Generation Z, for the sake of their movements and their protests, for the sake of not fostering a culture of Millenials vs Generation Z.

[stigmatic]

terfs do not belong in lgbt safe spaces bc they are a danger to trans ppl

[nonbinaries-on-ice]

terfs also don’t belong in women’s spaces because they are a danger to trans women

[constantlyonfirerpgideas]

Terfs don’t belong

[jillsteinfuneralcity]

>acquire land >plant apple and peach trees >get beehive >plant blackberries on back fence >grow veggie garden >make mead and wine ?????? enjoy life

[earthstory]

View this post on Instagram

[the-movemnt-deactivated20170912]

Unarmed black teenager James Means fatally shot by white man who called him “another piece of trash”

On Monday night, 15-year-old James Means was reportedly shot and killed by a man he “bumped into” outside of a Dollar General store in Charleston, West Virginia. 

Means, a black teenager, was said to be unarmed. 

That same night, police arrested William Pulliam, 62, in connection with the shooting. Pulliam had gone to dinner after the shooting.

Pulliam was white and carrying a gun, despite no permit to own a firearm due to a previous conviction for domestic violence

Pulliam reportedly “admitted” to fatally shooting Means, telling police, “The way I look at it, that’s another piece of trash off the street.”

A GoFundMe has been set up for Means’ funeral

Pulliam, whose criminal history includes physical abuse of his wife and daughter, has a history of harassing teens in the area.

[soracities]

Solange Knowles - A Seat At The Table ph. Carlota Guerrero