(no subject)
Oct. 14th, 2012 08:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwydion* Fighting back against Republicans Stealing the Vote in Ohio for African Americans.:
* Voter intimidation in Cleveland:
* Dear Clarence Thomas:
* "What Has Happened Since New York Legalized Gay Marriage:" http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/what-has-happened-since-new-york-state-legalized-g
* Romney's Bigot Base: http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2012/10/romneys-bigot-base.html
* "In Memory of Matthew Shepard: http://sparkindarkness.livejournal.com/482188.html
* "So ...on Coming Out Day:" http://neo-prodigy.livejournal.com/1096091.html
* Crap for sleep yesterday because we were told the plumber might be coming so I had to sleep in my clothes, lock in the cats who protested loudly, and had to get up and check every time there was loud yelling and banging in case it was the plumber. It wasn't, so I get to do this again Monday. I also got a long distance call mid sleep cycle and was too asleep to think to ask them to call back later. Crap for sleep today as it was too warm inside not to leave the window open and the wind was strong. I had to prop the bedroom door to prevent it slamming open and shut and possibly damaging a cat. Mid-sleep cycle, I discovered all my privacy sheets had been blown down, so I had to dress, feed Hector, do meds, feed Hector, and risk hanging all the sheets back p and ladders are dangers to someone as shaky as me. So of course, someone (likely the Butt, it's nearly always the Butt) pissed all over my interior door hanging. Luckily, I had a back up ready to hand. Then I had to feed Hector again, as he had been "helping" by howling at me the whole time. Sigh. He spent the rest of the sleep cycle randomly waking me to yell at me. Sigh. Tomorrow it's wait for the plumber day again.
* The Autumn winds are really here. I remember how the whole building used to shake when we lived further up this hill. Down near the base where we live, the trees shake, but or apartment doesn't. The cats find the sound alarming, as the wind wasn't this loud in our last place. Everyone wakes up and looks around, then forgets until the nest big set of gusts. I love this weather. I love the wild wind and the falling leaves. I've always been an October person by birth and temperament. (I was a whole month late. They were thinking of inducing when I finally came).
* I am pleased that when they made the Eyes on the Prize DvD set, they combined both series. I am almost at the end of this rewatch now, to the bits I was most interested in rewatching. Yesterday they did they year of assassination and riots. I kept wondering what the world would be like now if we'd had Kennedy instead of Nixon for President when I was born. I think I get now why it was such a big deal for the Boomers, maybe because I've now lived through the fixed presidential election of 2000 and how disastrous that was for not only my country, but the world.
Anyway, I always forget how comparatively small the Malcom X coverage is in the documentary. I think I'd have liked there to be a few more episodes so the black Muslims would get better coverage, but I know getting funding for series two was a Herculean task and if it's a choice between that and the Panther coverage, I'll take the Panther coverage on the grounds that one can easily find other excellent things on Malcolm X, but it's incredibly hard to find quality stuff on the Panthers that you can show to students. It makes me sad that we aren't showing this documentary in high schools, really. The districts I taught we showed them Roots and Glory in Middle School, but there was no Eye on the Prize in the High School teacher libraries. There should be. It infuriates me that we do all this Black history month stuff and all the kids get out of it is a Disnified version of MLK and Rosa Parks, but not much else. For sure, my favorite Middle School had Watsons go to Birmingham on the curriculum and we used that to talk about church bombings, but you miss so much else. You miss the nuance and the whys and wherefores. You miss SNCC vs. SCLC. You miss Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X, and Huey Newton. You miss the Poor People's campaign, the Memphis Garbage Strike, and all the stuff about trying to make the system fairer and create real opportunity. I think you need these things to understand where we are now, to read the coded racist language that's coming out in the current election, to see why the labour movement is important to lifting conditions for all workers, to understand why there's so much anger over police shooting after police shooting of unarmed black men and why that simply keeps happening without any real effort to punish the murders or stop it happening again.
All this stuff is sadly still pertinent to today's headlines in an election year where one party is arguing that we should limit the vote to wealthy white folks and using organized voter intimidation to enforce that belief. It seems all to pertinent in light of the argument that it's completely reasonable for police to shoot shackled unarmed prisoners, when random searches of young men of colour is somehow legal, when "Stand your ground" laws legalize the murder of unarmed youth of colour by white men. I look at file footage of little kids at the Black Panther breakfast program and think about the modern demonetization of community organizing designed to educate and feed children. I look at our de facto segregated school system in most of the country. I look at one party arguing that class room sizes of 60 children per teacher in schools is good enough for the children of the poor and that eliminating black middle class jobs will magically be good for the country when both things are patently not. I see one party doing everything in it's power to drag up back to 1850 and I shudder.
I don't want to have to refight the whole civil rights movement from scratch, and if slavery is such a good thing, why aren't these rich white Republican pro-Slavery politicians volunteering to be slaves? I love the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments and the Republican push to repeal them scares the fuck out of me. I don't want to go backwards; I want to go forwards.
* Greenwick found, "Sociopath test: How to spot them before they target you:" http://www.sociopathworld.com/2010/12/sociopath-test-how-to-spot-them-before.html
I usually go by scent and body language, honestly. Caveat: I think you need all or most of those things to count as individually and in small groups they can be signs of other things.
* On narrative and RTD vs. Moffat when it comes to long arc writing: http://loftkits.tumblr.com/post/27774127878/aha
* Spoilers through the 10th Doctor:
For the record, I've looked at the Time Lords askance ever since it dawned on me as a child watching classic Who that the Time Lords sent the Master out into the universe with a TARDIS on purpose. Think about it, they "banished" an incredibly powerful near immortal being with a time machine to the whole universe and didn't give a fuck what damage he did to other worlds and other timelines. Doesn't look like punishment to me. The labelled The Doctor a criminal for trying to stop him. (Later, they would do the same with the Rani). The thing we learn about the Time Lords and the Master in new Who makes it worse, but the fact that as a group the Time Lords are arrogant, selfish, and wildly destructive to everyone who isn't them. Folks like the Doctor and Ramona were the exceptions and looked at as rebels and disreputable criminals for caring about non-Time Lords. We already new that they loaded the gun that is the Master and aimed him at the universe, learning that they forged the gun as well isn't that big a stretch.
I am glad the Doctor did what he did to them. They are as bad as the Daleks, maybe even worse because the Daleks don't lie about their destructive nature the way the Time Lords (yes, including the Doctor) do.
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
* Voter intimidation in Cleveland:
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
* Dear Clarence Thomas:
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
* "What Has Happened Since New York Legalized Gay Marriage:" http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/what-has-happened-since-new-york-state-legalized-g
* Romney's Bigot Base: http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2012/10/romneys-bigot-base.html
* "In Memory of Matthew Shepard: http://sparkindarkness.livejournal.com/482188.html
* "So ...on Coming Out Day:" http://neo-prodigy.livejournal.com/1096091.html
* Crap for sleep yesterday because we were told the plumber might be coming so I had to sleep in my clothes, lock in the cats who protested loudly, and had to get up and check every time there was loud yelling and banging in case it was the plumber. It wasn't, so I get to do this again Monday. I also got a long distance call mid sleep cycle and was too asleep to think to ask them to call back later. Crap for sleep today as it was too warm inside not to leave the window open and the wind was strong. I had to prop the bedroom door to prevent it slamming open and shut and possibly damaging a cat. Mid-sleep cycle, I discovered all my privacy sheets had been blown down, so I had to dress, feed Hector, do meds, feed Hector, and risk hanging all the sheets back p and ladders are dangers to someone as shaky as me. So of course, someone (likely the Butt, it's nearly always the Butt) pissed all over my interior door hanging. Luckily, I had a back up ready to hand. Then I had to feed Hector again, as he had been "helping" by howling at me the whole time. Sigh. He spent the rest of the sleep cycle randomly waking me to yell at me. Sigh. Tomorrow it's wait for the plumber day again.
* The Autumn winds are really here. I remember how the whole building used to shake when we lived further up this hill. Down near the base where we live, the trees shake, but or apartment doesn't. The cats find the sound alarming, as the wind wasn't this loud in our last place. Everyone wakes up and looks around, then forgets until the nest big set of gusts. I love this weather. I love the wild wind and the falling leaves. I've always been an October person by birth and temperament. (I was a whole month late. They were thinking of inducing when I finally came).
* I am pleased that when they made the Eyes on the Prize DvD set, they combined both series. I am almost at the end of this rewatch now, to the bits I was most interested in rewatching. Yesterday they did they year of assassination and riots. I kept wondering what the world would be like now if we'd had Kennedy instead of Nixon for President when I was born. I think I get now why it was such a big deal for the Boomers, maybe because I've now lived through the fixed presidential election of 2000 and how disastrous that was for not only my country, but the world.
Anyway, I always forget how comparatively small the Malcom X coverage is in the documentary. I think I'd have liked there to be a few more episodes so the black Muslims would get better coverage, but I know getting funding for series two was a Herculean task and if it's a choice between that and the Panther coverage, I'll take the Panther coverage on the grounds that one can easily find other excellent things on Malcolm X, but it's incredibly hard to find quality stuff on the Panthers that you can show to students. It makes me sad that we aren't showing this documentary in high schools, really. The districts I taught we showed them Roots and Glory in Middle School, but there was no Eye on the Prize in the High School teacher libraries. There should be. It infuriates me that we do all this Black history month stuff and all the kids get out of it is a Disnified version of MLK and Rosa Parks, but not much else. For sure, my favorite Middle School had Watsons go to Birmingham on the curriculum and we used that to talk about church bombings, but you miss so much else. You miss the nuance and the whys and wherefores. You miss SNCC vs. SCLC. You miss Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X, and Huey Newton. You miss the Poor People's campaign, the Memphis Garbage Strike, and all the stuff about trying to make the system fairer and create real opportunity. I think you need these things to understand where we are now, to read the coded racist language that's coming out in the current election, to see why the labour movement is important to lifting conditions for all workers, to understand why there's so much anger over police shooting after police shooting of unarmed black men and why that simply keeps happening without any real effort to punish the murders or stop it happening again.
All this stuff is sadly still pertinent to today's headlines in an election year where one party is arguing that we should limit the vote to wealthy white folks and using organized voter intimidation to enforce that belief. It seems all to pertinent in light of the argument that it's completely reasonable for police to shoot shackled unarmed prisoners, when random searches of young men of colour is somehow legal, when "Stand your ground" laws legalize the murder of unarmed youth of colour by white men. I look at file footage of little kids at the Black Panther breakfast program and think about the modern demonetization of community organizing designed to educate and feed children. I look at our de facto segregated school system in most of the country. I look at one party arguing that class room sizes of 60 children per teacher in schools is good enough for the children of the poor and that eliminating black middle class jobs will magically be good for the country when both things are patently not. I see one party doing everything in it's power to drag up back to 1850 and I shudder.
I don't want to have to refight the whole civil rights movement from scratch, and if slavery is such a good thing, why aren't these rich white Republican pro-Slavery politicians volunteering to be slaves? I love the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments and the Republican push to repeal them scares the fuck out of me. I don't want to go backwards; I want to go forwards.
* Greenwick found, "Sociopath test: How to spot them before they target you:" http://www.sociopathworld.com/2010/12/sociopath-test-how-to-spot-them-before.html
I usually go by scent and body language, honestly. Caveat: I think you need all or most of those things to count as individually and in small groups they can be signs of other things.
* On narrative and RTD vs. Moffat when it comes to long arc writing: http://loftkits.tumblr.com/post/27774127878/aha
* Spoilers through the 10th Doctor:
For the record, I've looked at the Time Lords askance ever since it dawned on me as a child watching classic Who that the Time Lords sent the Master out into the universe with a TARDIS on purpose. Think about it, they "banished" an incredibly powerful near immortal being with a time machine to the whole universe and didn't give a fuck what damage he did to other worlds and other timelines. Doesn't look like punishment to me. The labelled The Doctor a criminal for trying to stop him. (Later, they would do the same with the Rani). The thing we learn about the Time Lords and the Master in new Who makes it worse, but the fact that as a group the Time Lords are arrogant, selfish, and wildly destructive to everyone who isn't them. Folks like the Doctor and Ramona were the exceptions and looked at as rebels and disreputable criminals for caring about non-Time Lords. We already new that they loaded the gun that is the Master and aimed him at the universe, learning that they forged the gun as well isn't that big a stretch.
I am glad the Doctor did what he did to them. They are as bad as the Daleks, maybe even worse because the Daleks don't lie about their destructive nature the way the Time Lords (yes, including the Doctor) do.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-15 04:56 am (UTC)Now I keep forgetting...are you in Oregon or Washington? I'll be in Seattle next week and can't wait. Have to stock up on my cold weather gear :) Never mind I saw you are in Washington on your profile user thingie.:)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-16 06:00 am (UTC)