footstepsoftheelephant:

elecmon:

dovahfem:

snugglebunchesofeyes:

rhiannonfrater:

sapphicshimmers:

weabooweedwitch:

cjameswrite:

sapphicshimmers:

marycp2011:

habeascorphish:

dovahfem:

dovahfem:

Donald Trump sending thousands of troops to the border isn’t just ridiculous, it’s horrifying. What exactly does he plan to do with all those troops? He just recently said he is prepared to gun down people who throw rocks… it gives you a clue doesn’t it?

I’m genuinely worried that these people are going to get hurt, I don’t trust  Donald Trump and I’m worried as to why we are comfortable with sending thousands of troops to greet families and children with guns… horrifying.

it’s also a massive breach in military deployment protocol, specifically the Posse Comitatus act and Article 10 of the United States Code. Donald Trump is breaking the fucking law 

HE’S GONNA HAVE TROOPS GUN DOWN & MURDER WOMEN & CHILDREN.

I’m hoping that none of them get an itchy trigger finger as another commenter pointed out, but there is no other reason for them to be there and he’s talking about shooting people who throw rocks and it just sounds like an excuse to open fire. Let’s pray that nothing violent takes place against those people.

And they will all say “I was just following orders”

He wants to send more troops to the Mexican border than are currently deployed in Afghanistan just an fyi

We can afford all these troops at the border but not 15 dollars minimum wage, free college, or Medicare for all.

I live on the Border. It’s peaceful, beautiful, and very nice overall.

He’s just afraid of brown people. Even women and children.

and we still have sent no aid to Puerto Rico, alright

I saw someone in the tags say this is fearmongering but there’s fearmongering, and then there’s actual fear. All of the comments on this post are reactions of genuine, sincere concern for the people at the border. Nobody is trying to fearmonger.

WE ARE ACTUALLY AFRAID.

Just to provide some context here since I haven’t seen a single soul talk about the Caravan online, I only know about it due to the controversy caused by several local Spanish news stations that decided to air coverage despite many stations in Mexico forbidding it;

There are currently thousands of people migrating in a Caravan up to the Mexican border. They are escaping poverty, and violence amongst other things from their home countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. They’re hoping to find a better life or apply for Asylum. 

They’ve been walking for nearly a full month now having started October 12th of this year (2018 time stamp for anyone seeing this in the future.)

[Pictured above is the Caravan as it reached the Suchiate river at the border between Guatemala and Mexico]

[Pictured above is the first wave of the Caravan reaching the Tijuana border -not apart of the massive wave that was seen at the river.]

[Pictured above are several caravan men who decided to jump into the river when the crowds on the bridge got too dense when it was decided that only Women and Children could pass, most were fathers, brothers, and sons who didn’t wish to be separated. Many mothers with small children were also lowered down into the rafts to avoid the crowd that was stuck on the bridge for 24+ hours.]

The Donald Trump political campaign put out an ad that was as dehumanizing as you could imagine towards the immigrants, who again, at this point are largely unarmed women and children who are trying to escape the violence in their home countries.

The ad was so bad that even Fox News decided to pull it and denounce it entirely.

Donald Trump has deployed 1,000 troops to the border in anticipation for the Caravans arrival. Promising to more than double the number to about 5,000 troops lasting until about December 15th, 2018. 

[Pictured above are children waiting in line for their turn on playground equipment.]

[Pictured above is what sleep and rest has typically looked like for them, many only having a backpack or so left of their personal belongings to take with them.]

[Pictured above is man holding up a sign that reads, “Thank-you Mexico for opening up your hearts.” After the bridge and border were opened.]

These are the faces of the people Donald Trump is sending thousands of troops over to shoot down because he sees them as a threat.

Pray for the Caravans safe travels.

Does anyone know of any direct action being planned, to protect the arriving caravan of people from military violence? I feel like prayers are not enough, and would like to be involved in getting people safely into the country.

do the damn math, hotshot

iaiamothrafhtagn:

gonna hear a lot of fingerwagging about how yet again all the losses are the fault of an apathetic voter base or whatever and to every single one of you that gets out of bed ready to die on that hill of condescending arrogance:

run these numbers through whatever fuckbrain filter you use to interpret statistical data and explain to me in plain english how “people didn’t vote” explains the results of an election with numbers like this.

because you gotta be some galactically endowed genius to somehow think that’s how numbers like that could happen.

Thoughts on the overall election results? Some Dems are depressed about the Senate and think we’re doomed but they took the House so I don’t think we’re doomed? What do you think

racefortheironthrone:

I think the doomed language is stupid. 

We took the House, held our losses in the Senate in the worst damn map imaginable, won seven governor’s mansions, picked up quite a few trifectas and flipped some legislative chambers even where we don’t have the trifecta, expanded Medicaid in three states (and with the governors’ wins we’ll get Kansas and Maine on top of that), won a ton of criminal justice and voting rights reforms.

It wasn’t a perfect night. There were some real disappointments. There was some truly ugly fear-mongering and disenfranchisement, and the rules of the game are tilted such that a 9% popular vote margin, one of the biggest in the history of midterm elections, didn’t feel quite like the wave that it was. 

But even in our disappointments, we made critical gains that will change things in the future: Beto didn’t win, but running a competitive race in Texas helped several Democrats over the line in the House and in the state legislature which wouldn’t have happened otherwise; Florida was a disappointment for the Senate and Governor’s races, but the passage of Amendment 4 means that the next election in Florida won’t have 10% of the population disenfranchised. 

So take the win, even though it’s not perfect. 

To quote Max Weber (and apologies for his 19th century language here):

Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards. It requires passion as well as perspective. Certainly all historical experience confirms–that man would not have achieved the possible unless time and again he had reached out for the impossible. But to do that, a man must be a leader, and more than a leader, he must be a hero as well, in a very sober sense of the word. And even those who are neither leaders nor heroes must arm themselves with that resolve of heart which can brave even the failing of all hopes. This is necessary right now, otherwise we shall fail to attain that which it is possible to achieve today. Only he who is certain not to destroy himself in the process should hear the call of politics; he must endure even though he finds the world too stupid or too petty for that which he would offer. In the face of that he must have the resolve to say ‘and yet,’—for only then does he hear the ‘call’ of politics.

the-real-seebs:

imgetting2old4diss:

magical-duck-from-hell:

simon-nuncio:

gokuma:

transboysunited:

transadvicegroup:

spyhops:

stephrc79:

howler32557038:

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.

Signal boost to this unbelievably important message.

I’d reblog this a thousand times if I could.

Stop attacking allies. Educate. Not hate. 

This is incredibly important. Please read!

Educate calmly. Be respectful. Be understanding. Be forgiving.


Gonna Reblog this every time

Reblogging because this is really fucking important

This is so important there is enough hate out in the world already .try to be alittle kinder to each other .love not hate.

Good advice.

1dietcokeinacan:

mercurydaze:

the real “problem with political correctness” is not that it’s considered offensive to use slurs, but that there are now many “progressive” environments where saying the right things is more important than doing the right thing. it’s why it’s so easy for abusers to gain traction in leftist circles (they learn the right words quickly and employ them to frame their own behavior as progressive); it’s why so much potential activist energy gets poured into fighting about language; it’s why moderate liberals didn’t believe fer/guson had a problem until the police emails with actual racist language were leaked. (you can do racist things, you just can’t SAY racist things.) i don’t have a neat conclusion here but a related point is that i’m so much happier since i started focusing on like, being a good kind caring person instead of trying to remove the word “crazy” from the vocabulary of everyone in my family

Just saying this is truly one of the best “discourse” posts on this site like……this hits the nail directly on the head re: what is going on with language right now and everyone pushing back in the notes only serves to further prove the point it’s making

parentheticalaside:

The point is not to win. The point is to do the right thing. The point is to try and maybe we win. The point is that not trying is guaranteed failure.

The point is doing our best to make the world better for ourselves. It’s not about victory, it’s about effort.

So you take a breath, you grieve your losses, and you don’t give up. Because we’re all in this together and the very least we can do for the least among us is to say we tried.

Real failure is when they convince you to give up.

deerhoofandrabbitsfoot:

brainstatic:

I don’t care what the Founding Fathers would have wanted, I don’t care if Jesus was a hippie or not, I don’t care what Marx prescribed. I can’t take living in a world where we’re all servants of long-dead men. You know what happens if you make a law the Founding Fathers wouldn’t like? Nothing, they’re dead and they’re never coming back. I’m genuinely envious of countries that can just make whatever laws they want without worrying about how 18th century agrarian noblemen would have seen it. Stop arguing that Jesus loved the poor too, what he loved or didn’t love is irrelevant, he doesn’t get a say in any of this. We could have a country that isn’t shackled to these ghosts if we collectively wanted to.

This is gorgeous.

fierceawakening:

epistemotypus:

adobsonartworks:

This is what I hate the most about nearly all online debates. Sometimes opposing sides are NOT equal, and we shouldn’t treat them as if they were.

That is… Debates aren’t about finding a common middle ground, they’re about presenting two arguments and letting the audience make up their own mind. Which is WHY you want Camp Genocide to make their argument, b/c nothing will dig their grave faster than their own attempt at trying to sell the murder of innocent people as a good thing. You WANT to actively engage with them so that you can openly refute what they say, rather than let them slink away to a corner where they can lure people into easily overlooked echo chambers.

Debates are quite literally how we won our civil rights. If they were ever about finding the middle ground we’d have never achieved anything. You sell our most effective tool for progress short when you act like the goal is to meet in the middle, rather than openly destroying harmful ideologies on the public forum.

And I dare you to find literally any online argument, debate or otherwise, that ever once ended with both parties meeting in the middle, as opposed to both parties blocking the other person and then shit talking the other behind their back. People won’t meet in the middle ground over goddamn waifus for Christ’s sake they sure as shit ain’t meeting in the middle over political ideology.

Refusing to argue against bad ideas lets them fester into something worse. You don’t fight sickness by ignoring it, you fight it by recognizing it exists.

People who make posts like this seem to be relabeling “compromises” as “debates.”

Sometimes compromises are not appropriate, yes.

But debates are a completely different beast.