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A semi-personal blog curated by a college student with too much free time and near constant access to wifi
33 
LGBTQ* (USA) Politics You May Have Missed
LGBTQ* Same-Sex Couples Dropped from Immigration Reform Bill This Week
If you haven’t heard, LGBTQ*individuals were dropped from equal protections under the newest immigration bill to move through congress. It is speculated that this was done to gain favor with more conservative members of Congress.
From the Washington Post:
“Today it became clear that our so-called ‘friends’ don’t have the courage or the spine to stand up for what’s right,” Felipe Sousa-Rodriguez, co-director of the social-justice organization GetEQUAL, said.
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The team at KNOWhomo will do their best to continue to update our family and friends on the progression of this bill. In the mean time, remember, if you are able to vote, it also means your voice is important to your state representatives. Send a message with sincere thoughts and feelings to your local representative and express your right to share your need for equal representation.
626 15545 
(Source: nativefunkk, via bbook)
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Judith Braun - Diamond Dust (detail). Drawn on wall with fingers dipped in charcoal, 12x48 feet (2013)
(via darksilenceinsuburbia)
483 
i have no problem with pointing out that anyone of any gender can be an abuser, rapist, pedophile etc because that’s absolutely true.
but the problem with always emphasizing “yes but it happens to everyone, not just women (or people of colour, or trans* people, etc)!” is that it depoliticizes the issue.
violence is not an accident, it is reflective of social power relations that permeate society at every level
(via hcstritz)
6909 
Andy Warhol
Silver Balloons
Helium-filled metalized plastic film
36 x 51 inches (each)
1966
(via thetruthismyredlipstick)
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Sakiko Nomura, ‘벗어버린 시간’ 연작 중에서 (Untitled, from the Series “Naked Time”), 1997
(via watabikimiwa)
143 When I read stories about disability scams [such as the recent Disney debacle] I shrug. The outrage expressed puzzles me. I have had my civil rights violated in a myriad of ways. For instance, I have been refused entry to restaurants in New York City; no wheelchairs I am told. I have had many a taxi pass me by to pick up a bipedal customer. I have had bus drivers lie to me and say the lift is not working or that they do not know how to use it. I have had rental companies assure me a car with hand controls is available only to find out the car is “lost” in transit. When such incidents take place non disabled people look away. I cannot recall anyone ever coming to my defense when I suffered gross inequities at let’s say an airport. I cannot recall a single person that expressed outrage when I was being denigrated by someone who clearly held power. Hence, I shrug about Disney and the angst expressed. It is misplaced emotion. I wonder where are these people when the school board decides not to put a lift on a bus? Where are these people when the special education budget is cut? Where are these people when Mayor Bloomberg selected an inaccessible taxi of tomorrow? Where are these people when technology for people with a vision impairment is deemed too costly? Where are these people when a new facility is constructed but does not meet ADA requirements? Where are these people? Nowhere to be found and silent.
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“Misplaced Outrage: On the Disney disability controversy” | Bad Cripple »
… In addition to a stunning level of ignorance about disability in general, I have an additional concern. As noted in my previous post about the Disney is the emergence of able bodied outrage. Here I refer to a multitude of stories that question what I would classify as a reasonable accommodation for people with a disability. The most well known story about what a treat it is to have a disability pertains to airport security lines. More often than not, people with a disability do not wait on line. We are shuttled off to a different and shorter line. This is a reasonable accommodation and mitigates a multitude of different disabilities. People see this and think oh man you are so lucky. Well I do not feel lucky when I am the very first person on the plane and the very last person off the plane. I do not feel lucky when my wheelchair comes back from the belly of the plane and is damaged. I do not feel lucky when a supposedly trained person asks me to “walk just a little bit”. This too is a reasonable accommodation one I find decidedly unreasonable
At issue for me is how do we raise the level of understanding. How do we get all people to think disability rights and civil rights are one in the same? Disability studies has been ineffectual. The disability rights movement has stagnated in recent years. ADAPT demonstrations are utterly ignored by the press. So how do we educate and make the bipedal masses see disability for what it really is? I have no clue. And that is problem number one.
(via socialismartnature)
(via queerandpresentdanger)
272 
setfabulazerstomaximumcaptain:
Prison Labor Exposed: From Starbucks to Microsoft - A sampling of what US prisoners make & for whom
May 21, 2013Tens of thousands of US inmates are paid from pennies to minimum wage—minus fines and victim compensation—for everything from grunt work to firefighting to specialized labor.
The breaded chicken patty your child bites into at school may have been made by a worker earning twenty cents an hour, not in a faraway country, but by a member of an invisible American workforce: prisoners. At the UnionCorrectional Facility, a maximum security prison in Florida, inmates from a nearby lower-security prison manufacture tons of processed beef, chicken and pork for Prison Rehabilitative Industries and Diversified Enterprises (PRIDE), a privately held non-profit corporation that operates the state’s forty-one work programs. In addition to processed food, PRIDE’s website reveals an array of products for sale through contracts with private companies, from eyeglasses to office furniture, to be shipped from a distribution center in Florida to businesses across the US. PRIDE boasts that its work programs are “designed to provide vocational training, to improve prison security, to reduce the cost of state government, and to promote the rehabilitation of the state inmates.”
And Each month, California inmates process more than 680,000 pounds of beef, 400,000 pounds of chicken products, 450,000 gallons of milk, 280,000 loaves of bread, and 2.9 million eggs (from 160,000 inmate-raised hens).Starbucks subcontractor Signature Packaging Solutions has hired Washington prisoners to package holiday coffees (as well as Nintendo Game Boys). Confronted by a reporter in 2001, a Starbucks rep called the setup “entirely consistent with our mission statement.”
Texas inmates produce brooms and brushes, bedding and mattresses, toilets, sinks, showers, and bullwhips.
In Texas, prisoners make officers’ duty belts, handcuff cases, and prison-cell accessories. California convicts make gun containers, creepers (to peek under vehicles), and human-silhouette targets.
A stitch in time: California inmates sew their own garb. In the 1990s, subcontractor Third Generation hired 35 female South Carolina inmates to sew lingerie and leisure wear for Victoria’s Secret and JCPenney. In 1997, a California prison put two men in solitary for telling journalists they were ordered to replace “Made in Honduras” labels on garments with “Made in the usa.”
Open wide: At California’s prison dental laboratory, inmates produce a complete prosthesis selection, including custom trays, try-ins, bite blocks, and dentures.
Constructive criticism: Prisoners in for burglary, battery, drug and gun charges, and escape helped build a Wal-Mart distribution center in Wisconsin in 2005, until community uproar halted the program. (Company policy says, “Forced or prison labor will not be tolerated by Wal-Mart.”)
On call: Its inmate call centers are the “best kept secret in outsourcing,” Unicor boasts. In 1994, a contractor for gop congressional hopeful Jack Metcalf hired Washington state prisoners to call and remind voters he was pro-death penalty. Metcalf, who prevailed, said he never knew.
Federal Prison Industries, a.k.a. Unicor, says that in addition to soldiers’ uniforms, bedding, shoes, helmets, and flak vests, inmates have “produced missile cables (including those used on the Patriot missiles during the Gulf War)” and “wiring harnesses for jets and tanks.” In 1997, according to Prison Legal News, Boeing subcontractor MicroJet had prisoners cutting airplane components, paying $7 an hour for work that paid union wages of $30 on the outside.
AND THIS
IS WHY
THE WAR ON DRUGS
AND REAGAN
CAN FUCKING BURN FOREVER
FOR FUCKING EVER
(via ikenbot)
2079 
You didn’t think too deeply about this did you? Of course not. If you were prone to thinking deeply about things… you probably wouldn’t be a Feminist, now would you?
I’m screaming “THAT’S THE POINT THAT’S LITERALLY THE POINT YOU JUST MADE THE EXACT POINT” at my computer screen right now.
cappadocia being a dumb fuck as always
(Source: wonderful-manna, via midwestramblings)
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(Source: sikssaapo-p, via queergiftedblack)
673 The internet, especially Tumblr is not a safe place for Hindus. My religion gets worn on t-shirts and now theres a ‘network’ named after Shiva for ‘urban street-work’ reblogging. PoC get attacked all the time for their beliefs in different God. We’re ridiculed and eaten alive because of our differences. I don’t understand when ‘Hinduism’ became a trend.
If you look at history, IF YOU READ HISTORY PROPERLY, Hindus were beheaded, our women were raped and our children and men were murdered if we continued to follow our faith.
And now our God(s) are being worn on t-shirts and our bindis are being completely misused by hipster white girls.
What is this? Reverse history? It’s cool to be Hindu for a couple months because we’re trying to tick off our white-Christian parents?
It’s ignorance.
- (via lifeofnikhil)
(Source: prettyindian, via queerandpresentdanger)
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