Lies are often much more plausible, more appealing to reason, than reality, since the liar has the great advantage of knowing beforehand what the audience wishes or expects to hear.
The labor movement can’t ask the next generation of workers to change how they earn their living to fit our model of trade unionism. No! We have to change our approach to organizing and representation to better meet their needs.
What kind of labor movement do we need? A younger labor movement. A greener labor movement. A labor movement that can project its power–to defend workers anywhere in the world. A labor movement that’s organizing the unorganized.
A labor movement that’s winning healthcare for every family–and, yes, a labor movement that stands by its friends, punishes its enemies, and challenges those who can’t decide whose side they’re on.
The subject of catastrophe invites the high eloquence of writers, the explanatory power of historians, and the deepest empathy of ordinary people. But the aftermath of catastrophe–that is not yet a subject to which many people kindle. Most of us prefer to back away from the scene of torment, with its inconsolable survivors and its insoluble problems. The survivors, though, cannot back away. They continue to live where the others died. Jean Améry, tortured at Auschwitz, wrote powerfully about the world’s readiness to isolate the survivor, who is unable to join in “the peace chorus all around him, which cheerfully proposes: not backward let us look but forward, to a better, common future.”
“The Land Where Rapists Go Free” is part of a series called Global Diaries that the journalist Mariane Pearl does for Glamour magazine. (Marianne Pearl is the wife of Daniel Pearl who was killed in 2003 by terrorists in Pakistan, she wrote the book A Mighty Heart that was later adapted into film). Global Diaires are amazing peieces written profiling women in the US and around the world. In the series Pearl usually focuses her attention on a problem that is disproportionately affecting women and then profiles a local female leader trying to make a difference.
When I first read the title for the piece, “The Land Where Rapists Go Free”, I thought the piece would be on the topic of victims of rape in a low-income country such as the Congo but instead found myself reading about this horrible injustice here in the US:
But I’ve come here to report on another tragedy that gets far too little attention: According to U.S. Justice Department figures, more than one in three Native women will be raped in her lifetime, and they are two and a half times more likely to be sexually assaulted or raped than non-Native women. And these estimates are widely assumed to be low because so many rapes go unreported. “We found anecdotally that the rates could be much, much higher,” says Trine Christensen, a senior researcher with Amnesty International, which published a groundbreaking report on Native women and sexual violence last year. As Charon Asetoyer, an activist on the Yankton Sioux reservation, puts it, “The bottom line is that it’s open season on Native women. Nearly every woman on the reservation has been affected.”
The Queen of England plans to count swans at the end of the month due to some random tradition that says she owns most of them, not that she actually cares about that part of it anymore.
Stressing yourself out during pregnancy can result in kids who have emotional problems, which is some fucking bullshit right there and where can I find those god damned doctors again to give them a piece of my mind?
I’m going to start a new category of posts, “no.shit” where I’ll post things that are plain batshit crazy.
The GOP’s Fake Climate Scandal | Mother Jones. I was watching FOX as they were claiming this…one of the many moments where you can picture me on the treadmill flipping out–silently, but with large lateral movements.
The female leg is an erotic oddity: non-genital, and nearly identical in structure to the male limb, there is no obvious reason why it should be eroticized.
This is so true, its not funny [even on an all male website]:
I’ve had a couple days away from my computer, really away from it. I went to MA Dance training after my classes this week, then spend the weekend with Liz and Laura. Back to the usual updates [maybe a podcast this week finally?]
From Feministing: “NYU grad Elly Park, made an amazing film called Sea Woman about a community of women in South Korea who have made their living for generations by diving (no scuba gear!) for precious metals. The fact that they were the breadwinners in their families gave them societal power, but as this area because more touristy, and the men in the families began working in hotels and cafes, the power dynamic shifted. Fascinating stuff. Here’s an eight minute excerpt of Elly’s movie:”
And now some comments on President Obama’s speech [I will never get tired of saying PRESIDENT OBAMA]:
“…words alone cannot meet the needs of our people, these needs can be met only if we act boldly in the years ahead…”
must be spoken, made verbal, and shared. 