Happy belated Labor Day!
If you weren't around last week - travel, school starting, heat-wave-induced-coma - I get it. But you should probably know that I started a new blog and you should go follow me over there. Thanks!
Friendly reminder for my Friday afternoon readers!
I'm over at thebicker.tumblr.com now. A pro-gun person just accused me of racism! You know you don't want to miss that. Go follow!
Follow me on my new blog -- now with a name you can say in front of your mom!
Oh and BTW
I will still be checking messages here from time to time. I know some people aren't on tumblr every day (or at least I've heard they exist/!?) and it'll take some time for everyone to learn about the move. So if you send me an Ask here, I will still see it.
Click through to find my new blog, The Bicker. Some people are saying they can't find the Follow button. It's some sort of problem with the site loading. It will appear in the upper right-hand corner, like on most tumblogs. Refresh and be patient - it'll get there eventually!
xoxo
Jess
My feminist fuckery has a new name and a new home: The Bicker, which you should all follow at thebicker.net. Would appreciate some reblogs to help me spread the word!
And before you ask: Wait, why the new blog?
Check it out, folks! Starting a new blog. Same news, same politics, new name and icon. See you there!
Immigration activists from the Arizona Dream Act Coalition were holding a vigil outside a Phoenix immigrant detention center when a bus filled with immigrants tried to leave the facility.
The DREAMers, undocumented youth brought to the country as children, and their mothers, ran towards the bus.
“It was weird, all of the families and moms everybody started running to get in front of the bus,” high-profile DREAMer, Erika Andiola, who was at the vigil, told BuzzFeed.
They surrounded the bus and didn’t let it go anywhere.
Many of them fell to their knees in prayer while the bus flashed its lights in their faces.
“There were people inside,” Andiola says. “Moms got on their knees and started praying.”
Photos were taken of prisoners inside the bus. A man held up his hands revealing he was chained.
Andiola, who’s mom was nearly deported earlier this year, before receiving prosecutorial discretion, couldn’t believe what she was seeing. “Seeing us chanting they started raising their arms and legs to show us their chains. My mom told me they chained her too but I didn’t think they were such big chains.”
Another woman wept while praying and waving to the DREAMers.
The standoff lasted for hours. Andiola says they were supposed to leave at 9 p.m. but stayed five hours longer.
Two DREAMers were arrested but later released.
The standoff lasted for five hours before the bus retreated back into the Phoenix detention center.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was contacted for a statement on the incident but did not respond.
Also, uh, one where I can get a fresh start on catching up on Asks. (These are just the ones I HAVEN'T responded to.)
Why the new blog?
I'm going legit! In September, this blog will be four years old. Four years! The "STFU, _____" thing has kind of passed. And frankly, it's starting to get embarrassing to spell out what that stands for to adults and coworkers. When I started this blog, I never thought it would be any part of my professional life - I just missed writing and working in news, and this was an outlet for that. My career trajectory ended up punting me back into news, and this blog does have some name recognition in certain corners of the evil liberal mediasphere. I want a name I could tell my mom and be proud of. And one you all can bring up in conversation without the person you're talking to going, "Oh, well that blog title has STFU in it, they hate the First Amendment and free speech and shit!"
A few clarifying points about the near future: This blog will remain in its entirety. I'm keeping the account and the URL and all of the content. It will live on as an archive. The new blog - launching Monday - is going to be more or less the same. Some more long-form pieces from me. A Twitter account that's active that I don't just blindly auto-post to. Maybe space out the posts a little more from time to time so I don't dominate everyone's dash when I'm online. All positive changes.
Check back Monday for more!
What are your thoughts on the measurements the TSA has taken to lower the risk of more terrorist attacks? o:
none of them have worked and they all invade our privacy. almost all of them line the pockets of the legislators who proposed the laws. they encourage racial profiling and public humiliation. they're pretty uneven compared to the complete lack of oversight for every other kind of mass transit. overall, not a fan.
brokenbalder-deactivated2014012
VERY important info. May not apply outside the US.
I meant to queue this for daytime, but accidentally published it when I was awake at 2 in the morning. Rebagling for the daytime crowd!
An increasing number of people think the poors should not be allowed to use their SNAP benefits to pay for nice food. Or junk food. And remember, you can neither be fat nor fit. Poverty: the ultimate no-win scenario.
Wow. He managed to get a DUI and injure seven people while driving a boat (which he had named, appallingly, "The Legislator"), and then another DUI driving a car. And then be blamed his fellow Republicans for betraying him on marriage equality by voting for it. He's also feeling "a tremendous amount of pressure in (his) family."
Finally! Republicans have an example of someone whose life was ruined by gay marriage!
Because it's only socialism when a Democrat does it, I guess.
It’s incredible that in 2013 we’re really arguing about this, but from Henry Louis Gates to Travyon Martin — when the conservative media made George Zimmerman the Real Victim of the supposed anti-white lynch mob — we should expect nothing else. And it’s equally striking, yet also not particularly surprising, that Fox and Limbaugh and the rest really don’t seem to comprehend why the Trayvon Martin case became a thing.
It’s not that difficult to understand so we’ll spell it out: It was not only that a light-skinned Zimmerman killed an unarmed black teenager — but also that police didn’t do anything about it. The killing was horribly tragic, as is Lane’s senseless murder, but if Zimmerman had actually been arrested for the shooting, the sad reality is that far fewer Americans would know his name. But that’s not what happened. Instead, police let Zimmerman go under Florida’s “stand your ground” law. It smacked of institutional, state-sponsored racial favoritism of the worst kind. It was only after public outcry that state prosecutors took over the case and pressed charges. Some could argue that Zimmerman didn’t need to be convicted for justice to be done, but he did need to stand trial.
Likewise with Henry Louis Gates, the famed black professor who was arrested while he was trying to get into his own home in Cambridge, Mass., after he misplaced his keys. That’s not how police are supposed to operate, and that’s why Obama weighed in.
Lane’s murder is an entirely different matter. It’s disgusting, but the police did their job. They arrested three suspects, and vowed to try to throw the book at them. That’s how it’s supposed to go. Murder is sadly quotidian in a gun-soaked America, and this is, sadly, another, if particularly senseless, one.
This entire article - "No, Chris Lane Is Not Trayvon Martin" - is great and you should check it out.
“I just don’t see how non-white characters would fit into my book. All the characters in my head are white.”
I see this excuse as a crisis of imagination. Particularly if you’re writing SF, often set in a future when anything can change. When everything can be different than it is now. We’ve already seen our first black president. We’ve seen women in ever more powerful roles. Gays and lesbians are coming out in nearly every corner of society, and universal marriage equality is becoming more and more imaginable.
You can’t imagine a black genetic engineer as your main character? An Hispanic lesbian piloting a starship? Then your imagination needs some revamping. You need to start thinking outside the box. Open up your corner of the world to more possibilities.
Karen Sandler discusses Five Wrong-Headed Reasons for Not Writing Diverse Characters in Science Fiction at Rich in Color. (via richincolor)
Wonder why benefit spending is rising? Simple: corporations get away with crappy wages, so government has to make up the rest.
Basically: All that evil spending on things like food stamps and welfare and Medicaid is increasing because we let corporations making record profits abuse the social safety net to their own economic benefit. And somehow, conservatives are still trying to blame poor people.