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Showing posts with label protests. Show all posts
Showing posts with label protests. Show all posts

Friday, February 3, 2017

The Political Bitchslap Everyone Needs - All Parties Included

You know who's at fault for the state of the country? We are.
What the hell are we allowing to pass for "acceptable" out of our representatives and WHY? Are you THAT sad and pathetic that you're going to be content in sighing, shrugging your shoulders, down-talking others who are suffering in a crippled economy JUST LIKE YOU ARE, and assuming there's nothing to do about it?
Stop believing this horseshit that business-like decorum and understatement to the point of silence is good for us, helpful, or a mark of success. People who are representing us in government BETTER be fucking angry and ready to call out bullshit as it comes up, or they are literally nothing but well-dressed mouthpieces for those who want to profit off OUR suffering and need. Those people will NEVER help the rest of us get what we need, because they make far too much money on keeping it from us and giving us empty statements to lead us along. They will throw you a crumb from the big fat cookie that a corporation paid them, and then tell you that its the people suffering NEXT to you who ate the cookie you didn't get. Too many of us are willing to be complicit little assholes and blame that person suffering beside us, while that suited mouthpiece mumbles some more bullshit through his or her cookie-filled mouth.
Own up to it, for fucks sake, or we're all fucking doomed. Own up to how much time you've spent asleep.
Spare me your liberal or conservative sense of moral superiority to others. Shut the fuck up with your constant excuse making that those who are less well-off than you are living like shit because they're not up to your personal ethical standards. Your "moral superiority" doesn't mean jack shit to poverty-stricken children, and if you truly believe it's fine to shrug that off, YOU are probably the strongest arm of the of the many forces that are pushing those children away from good lives. YOU are a willing accomplice to suffering and further deterioration of the American quality of life. YOU are the voter who doesn't want to fucking bother. YOUR apathy is affording the rape and pillage of our nation's culture and well-being and you should be ashamed of yourself.
If your state representatives are sidestepping the point in endless, useless niceties and word salad, vote the them fuck out. Vote them the fuck out at the local, regional, state, and national level. What we thought were good, balanced, savvy politicians have FUCKED us for personal gain and cushy careers in well-paid jobs they barely show up for, while reaping work-offered healthcare, retirement, and sick pay benefits we are also paying for and will never see anything remotely as good offered to us as citizens. What's worse, is that we all truly understand that political figures are, as a rule, full of shit. It's a standard at this point.
Why do we keep voting for them?
If you were too damn cozy in being an uppity ass Democrat to see that it wasn't going to save you, shame on you.
Democrats have been dicking off, totally high on a sense of their own intellectual superiority, to the point that they don't even investigate who's paying their party members and how that could fuck people over. Your supreme Democratic intellect is used against you just as easily as religion is used as a tool to incite conservatives, and you can't sit here and pretend you give a singular rat's ass about the suffering of others if you can't even listen to them speak because they don't meet your personal standards. Poor, uneducated people that aren't as "worldly" as you deserve a living wage and health care as much as your comfortably numb, blue-voting ass does. To think otherwise is to be a bigot. If you think this way, accept that you are a bigot and if you truly believe that bigotry is bad, sort your fucking life out, mate.
If you let your religious preference be pandered to and thought that was just great, shame on you, too.
Republicans have been far too content to put blame their neighbors and in allowing the vanity of having their "personal relationship" with Jesus stroked as hard as any Democratic ego, to the point that no one's acting in any sort of "Christian" manner. Religion, which should be sacred, personal, and a means of self-improvement as a human being, has been made into a freaking circus side-show via which you're sold shoddy garbage, snake oil, and a ringside seat to your own destruction. Guess what? Your Republican representatives don't give a fuck about you or Jesus. Your preoccupation with Jesus just makes you a great big fucking propaganda target and you're letting it happen because you're a chicken shit who wants to be pandered to. Jesus would want the sick healed and for children to eat, from all I've read about the guy. If your representatives aren't putting that first, how the hell are you going to keep allowing them to align themselves with your savior? How are you not OUTRAGED by such blasphemy? You, as well as uppity Democrats who don't care about starving kids from out of work miners in West Virginia (cause fuck those red state people), should be entirely ashamed of yourselves. For people who want to work in the image of their savior to promote family values, you're awfully goddamn okay with little children and new mothers living in abject poverty and suffering. Just because a guy says "I'm all about Jesus" while he pulls the rug out from under families, doesn't mean he's your friend. Wake the fuck UP.
Oh, and independents? Fuck you, too. You're not helping.
You're leaning either right or left in most cases, fanning the flames of anger, and not doing jack shit to help put out the fire. You're decrying the moral decay of politics as you contribute to it on the citizen level, perfectly content to naysay and complain while everyone (including you) is suffering. What party do you belong to? I FORGOT. YOU'RE AN INDEPENDENT SO FUCK EVERYONE AND THEIR PARTY. You're too GOOD for working within the shit-stained political system, even toward the ends of changing and cleaning it up. What mass are you gathering to effect change? OH THAT'S RIGHT. YOU'RE NOT. You're sharing memes about how fucked up everyone else's party is, while you sit cozily in your little bubble, morally superior to us all because you don't see any reason you should have to pick either, corrupt side. The most ambitious among you are still doing nothing but forming utterly doomed little parties with no might behind them, cause most of you have nothing but disdain for every other party (major or minor) that isn't YOUR specific little horseshit party.
Anyone still got a case of the red-ass from 2016? I know I do. We tried all of the above bullshit for this past election, and we're sitting here with a failed Democratic candidate who didn't give enough fucks about her supporters to so much as pretend to care about the issues that most strongly affect them, nor support them when her opponent won. As a result, we are left with a volatile, moody, uninformed jackass for a Republican president, who's as ready to throw everyone under the bus as he is to throw a temper tantrum. The Democrats are too busy feeling sorry for themselves to even acknowledge the obvious progressive route they need to adopt to succeed, and the Republicans are working around the clock to hasten our demise.
We're all fucked and EVERYONE has allowed the worsening quality of American life to happen, to some degree or another. I don't blame anyone for voting any way they voted in 2016, because we were fucked either way. If you're not pissed off at how the primaries played out on EITHER side of the aisle, you haven't learned jack shit and you should review and reflect so that this shit doesn't happen again. Give yourself two or three smacks to your own, smug, stupid, self-satisfied face while you're at it.
You smug fucking Democrats didn't see anything wrong with superdelegates being allowed to choose the winner of the primary in advance of running one, and you should be slapped soundly for thinking that was anything other than corruption, cronyism, and an OBSCENE waste of money to even run a primary in that case. For fucks' sake, just the waste of MONEY alone should make us all furious that the Democrats tilted their primary in one direction, let alone the utter disrespect for all ethics in pretending that the people who support their party had any say in the outcome.
Republicans - since when the fuck was it a "family value" to encourage and cheer on an egomanical bully and praise him for being one? How is the concept of blaming others for your own problems (immigrants, etc) a "pulling oneself up by ones' own bootstraps" mindset?
Independents? You guys suck, too. If you wanted Bernie or Hillary or who the fuck ever, you should have gotten off your uppity asses and made yourself part of the process.
Kudos to all of you who DID try, and tried your fucking hearts out. I know that's why you're so battle-worn and bitter now. I don't blame you. I am just as hurt and angry as you are. You're going to have to drop it, though. We need to keep swimming or we're all going to drown in the aftermath of the 2016 election. Take all that you learned about election laws and rules in your state, dust yourself the fuck off, and get your pissed off asses to work well in advance of 2020, while we have a chance to do something about it.
TRUTH BOMB: sitting around in echo chambers, indulging in "Anti-Trump" OR "Anti-Clinton" circle jerks with each other all day isn't making you guys a movement. It's making your "movement" into a sad pile of angry little bitches who are only going to be angrier when this shit happens again and again. You ARE entirely complicit in the repetition of the 2016 political disaster if all you can do is conduct constant purity tests among one another and repeat things you already know, over and over again.
BONUS TRUTH BOMB: Everyone's getting fucking sick of your bellyaching, including those among you. We all know its getting us nowhere. It's time to shut the fuck up and move.
The sad fact of the matter is that we shouldn't have been so short-sighted, lazy, and apathetic as to allow the kind of choices we were left with at the end. Maybe we're used to it - all the corruption and game-playing to make a few people some cozy lives at the expense of making ours more miserable. Maybe it crept up on us, incrementally. Whatever the case, if we don't pull our collective heads out of our collective asses and DO something radically different from this point, we're even more fucked in the future than we are now.
.. and we're pretty fucked right now, y'all.
Don't sit on your fat, lazy, closed-minded, uneducated voter ass AGAIN and let the damn parties tell you who you're voting for. Get your shit together. Slap yourself in the face and say "I will not be made a bitch of, AGAIN."
Learn when primary dates are. PICK the goddamn delegates, reps, assemblymen, mayors, governors, state house reps, whatever, this time instead of letting the same fat fucks keep the same damn jobs, unopposed, that they've been sitting comfortably in for years. They don't worry about THEIR kids making it through school, and they're damn sure not sending them to school with YOUR kids. They're not worried about dying from a treatable illness. They don't have to. You're paying with your taxes to place them in positions of power and privilege, and you're also paying for your own family to wither away while these representatives you're supporting live fabulous lives on your dime.
"But I don't like the Democratic party" "Fuck the Dems, they're too corrupt" "Fuck the two party system!" "WE NEED A THIRD PARTY! I'll INVENT ONE AND YOU SHOULD ALL JOIN IT"
Well guess what, kids? The two-party system has all of us by the short and curlies and there isn't a goddamn thing any of your whining, foot-stamping, or going home with your panties in a fucking wad is going to do about it unless you're willing to get your hands (and soul) a little dirty and start getting in the right place to be plucking the con-artists out of these parties. That means you're going to have to be able to belong to them in order to have a vote.
If you think you lean more left - well guess what that means, sweetheart? I think you know the answer to that. Same goes for if you lean right. I don't care what you join. I don't care if you go Green or independent, but if you do, please stop bellyaching to the rest of us about your moral superiority when your effort inevitably fails because of a lack of numbers, electoral access, and the zombie-like mass of party loyalist voters who will always vote for whoever Team Blue or Red picks for them.
We can't fix stupid. We can't fix lazy. We can't make people want to think or grow a spine and enforce change. They'll just suffer on and whine and cry and do the same goddamn thing they always do - vote in larger elections where all the movers and shakers have already been picked for them, and then actually feel like they fucking did something by merely showing the fuck up and voting. We can't fix everyone and snap them out of the political apathy that is prevalent in our depressed society. Making fun of them isn't fixing shit, either.

Sad as it is, there will always likely be more of the party loyalists than independent thinkers. It is the responsibility of the independent thinking, hard-working, cunning progressives to get our candidates lined up in whatever party we can, to ensure that the average mindless voter mass is of some actual use to progressive causes. We can't make them NOT vote blue or red. We CAN make sure that whoever falls under the blue or red banner isn't another fucking jackass in a suit, ready to make money on the average citizen's suffering.
If you genuinely want to effect change, stop being a fucking crybaby and get in there and demand it. Get your equally woke buddies to do the same. GO TO WAR with the two parties who have the power and run for offices held by corporatist salesman who DON'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT THE PEOPLE THEY REPRESENT. If they don't give a fuck about us, we need to actively mount a hostile takeover and throw them the hell out of those seats.
Stop with this pointless repetition of cursing out the parties, or pretending that the two parties are evil incarnate by their very names. That's pathetically superstitious and ignorant. The parties are the structures that have the power. There is every reason for them to strangle out independents and third parties, and no reason whatsoever for them to give up a single inch of the power they possess. Teams Red AND Blue will maintain this stranglehold if we don't get very hostile, very direct, and take that power for ourselves.
WHY THE FUCK DO YOU THINK BERNIE SANDERS DIDN'T WASTE HIS AND HIS FOLLOWERS PRECIOUS TIME BY GOING OUT TO FAIL MARVELOUSLY AS A HOPELESS INDEPENDENT?

He put himself in a position to KEEP swinging. He's not sitting on Facebook, sucking up the adoration of his many followers, bellowing endlessly about how he was cheated. He WAS cheated.

If anyone has a reason to bitch, it's Bernie Sanders.
Is Bernie being a little bitch?
Fuck no, he isn't. He's out there working himself sick trying to represent you.
If you're not supporting that effort, then YOU are being a little bitch. Not Bernie.
Stop being a little bitch. Start being a fucking warrior.
These two parties are not going to be overtaken by a bunch of protesting, angry goddamn hippies and weeping millenials (not that we all don't have a lot of shit to rightfully, angrily weep and protest over). They are two, ready-to-use power structures. NOTHING MORE. The people IN those power structures are abusing them for their own ends.
I think the solution to that is pretty obvious.
Get rid of those people.
Stop being a pussy and stand up to them. Put them out. Put new people in. Take that house over for the people. Don't sit here and wave your typing-fist at me and do nothing but complain. You're as much a part of the problem as the blind party loyalists you rail on endlessly about.
"But what of experience and time served in politics? Won't putting new people in with less experience hurt us?"
I don't know. What are "experienced" politicians doing for any of us right now?
I'll wait.


The Feminine Context

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

I'm BACK, bitches!

Bitchitudinousness reigns again!

Well, hopefully.. I do kinda have some shit to do around here

BUT!

I'm going to try and do better about ranting my ass off on a more regular basis. I find it therapeutic.

What have I been doing with myself, you might ask (or might not.. its been FOR-FUCKING-EVER since I wrote here).. well..

-Moving
-Raising the mini-shebeast
-Being pissed off at Google AdSense which has banned me for life over a stupid misclick which they said was me trying to inflate my own ad revenue.
-Founding, forming, and whipping an MMORPG clan together
-Becoming a more righteously indignant feminist, every fucking day.

Expect more activity here.

Silence is just not on my vagenda anymore.

The Feminine Context

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Occupy Humanity: Can Empathy Be Saved?

Like most Americans these days, I have worked a variety of jobs over the years. Somehow I have managed to maintain a common thread of occupational skills between jobs, because almost all of the positions I've held have been associated with caregiving. Each new employer could look back on my resume and see that I had been charged with the responsibility of caring for living beings that whose very survival depended on me in one way or another. Whether I cared for children, older adults, disabled persons, or animals, the rules are pretty much the same.

No matter who or what you are responsible for, you must treat them with respect and attempt to maintain the dignity and comfort of that individual. I don't care if you're caring for a sick, aggressive pitbull, or a sick, aggressive older man with dementia; you keep BOTH your prejudice AND "values" the hell out of the room and treat either scenario with the same amount of respect and concern. If you think you can treat either the dog or the man with less respect than the other, then you obviously have no business caring for the one who (due to your bias) receives less of your respect. When it comes to caring for that other living person, their rights are up there nearer to the ceiling, whereas yours are somewhere down below the sewer lines.

That's not an exaggeration or veiled complaint. It has to be that way. Placing the utmost emphasis on the needs of the being who is dependent on you is the only way to ensure that you meet those needs appropriately. Working within this structure of "them before us" prevents neglect, and oddly enough, high turnover of caregiver employees. If you can complete the tasks necessary for your job, do them correctly, and adhere to the standards expected from someone in your particular position, it's a lot easier to "leave it at work" and feel good about what you've done. Those who can achieve some level of "job satisfaction" are a lot more likely to remain in their line of work.

Certain things really came into focus for me when I became certified as a nurse aide. I decided that I eventually wanted to become a registered nurse. Having researched the field of nursing, I became aware that in a hospital or nursing home, nurse aides perform basic nursing tasks under the direction of registered nurses. RNs have more education and authority than nurse aides, and are paid better because of it. It makes no sense from a financial standpoint to pay for a floor's worth of RNs when you can pay a few of them to supervise a team of aides who are trained for basic nursing tasks. I got that part. What I didn't understand is how anyone thought they could be a good supervisor when they'd never done the actual job of the person below them. Thus, I decided to learn the "grunt work" and become a certified aide. I figured if I could get through physically challenging part of nursing, I could get through the academic parts a lot easier, PLUS I'd be a much more effective supervisory nurse than one who'd never had to work as an aide.

I realize now that I had identified a need to develop empathy.

At the time, I just figured it would be in my best interest to be prepared, and that the discipline of learning the job that "real nurses" didn't want to do could only help me in my studies later on. In retrospect, I think there was some part of me that wasn't quite "ripe" yet, and even then, young and stupid, I knew it. I was trying to develop a part of me that could extend the necessity of my career beyond simply meeting my own needs. An ever nagging, "pragmatic" part of me kept whispering in the background, "This is a waste of time. You're practically a straight-a student and you're dicking around with this diploma when you could be putting time into a degree". The "pragmatic" voices outside of my head, namely two friends who were (respectively) a dentist and a doctor, were both pretty busy calling me a fool for not pursuing a degree that would lead me to medical school. They treated my decision to become a nurse like a mental illness, or some sort of self-destructive habit. Upon finding out that I had chosen to first become a nurse aide and not even a full nurse, they began avoiding me whenever possible. My dad, who I'm sure wanted nothing but the best for me, wanted me to do something with my mad computer skills, but the idea of sitting on my ass working in an office (and the few times I had done so) made me sick. Sometimes I wonder if he didn't get some sort of 1980's power-suit idea in his head, and likened that and the presumably accompanying business/marketing/information technology degree to "success". In short, the thought of me changing bedpans seemed to make him feel like I was pursuing a diploma program as a scullery-maid, or worse, scullery-maid trainee. He thought it was "beneath" my capabilities, which didn't exactly make me feel great about my chosen career when things were tough. I took a little bittersweet solace in the fact that almost every one of my friends who had gotten degrees in those aforementioned fields had ended up working jobs in coffee houses or in offices that I, without a degree of that kind, could easily talk my way into. Even though I felt bad for my friends, whose own dads had clearly won the day, at least I knew I'd have a job eventually taking CARE of their dads.

I think it's kind of funny, in a dry sort of way, to recall that all the disapproving people in my life were politically conservative. I'll get back to that in a moment, though.

During the course of my later work in elder care, I realized that by putting my opinions and feelings on hold while I was on duty, I was actually able to not only do my job, but thrive in it. I've met a lot of "retired" CNAs who are working in other fields, usually due to their decision that caregiving work was "too depressing" for them. It's not like these women are making any more money than they were as aides, but the idea of being around people who were either actively dying or just irreversibly on their way to death, was more than they could bear. I had been taught a lot in my courses and a few rules still stick out, even after all the time that's passed between then and now. Notably..

1 - Certain things are never to be brought in to your working hours with someone you are taking care of, specifically your germs and bacteria, your negative emotions, your religion (or lack thereof), your political opinions, and details of your personal life.

2 - Certain things are never to be brought out from your working hours with someone you are taking care of, such as their germs and bacteria, their negative emotions, their religion (or lack thereof), their political opinions, and details of their personal life.

3 - Thou shalt never violate, and always remain alert and in timely practice of the laws of the land. It is your place to adhere to them, not bend, alter, or disrespect them. In remaining vigilant in adherence to legal and ethical standards, the client and caregiver shall both be protected.

4 - Lots of things are simply none of your business. No, really, most things are none of your business. That doesn't mean you get to be snippy and make a comment, gesture, or other flippant, passive-aggressive action that indicates your opinion while somewhat satisfying the job requirement that makes this issue none of your business. If you cannot work with someone without making things your business that shouldn't BE your business, you should call your agency, explain YOUR failing, and ask to be assigned elsewhere (if they still want someone like you to work for them).

5 - It IS your business to care enough about the things that are important to your client (religion, politics, family) to listen, learn, and be able to carry on a conversation that addresses THEIR need for camaraderie, NOT YOURS. If it has to be an act, be Oscar-worthy for it.

6 - If you are treated unkindly or with disrespect, you are never to respond in kind. It is your place to avoid those sorts of outbursts. If your client is too hostile and you cannot seem to resolve the issue OR work with it anymore, contact your supervisor for advice or another assignment. Additionally, consider another line of work. Clearly, something about you that you cannot help is too agitating to your client for you to remain caring for them, OR you're not adhering to rule #1, and/or #2.

These rules are probably read as simply "common sense", but when they have to be put into practice, one finds that most people don't have the discipline to follow them. Worse still, most people do not possess the empathy needed to obviate the need for discipline. If you can empathize with others as well as you need to in order to take full care of another living thing, then it shouldn't be so difficult that you NEED strong discipline to adhere to these fairly simple rules. If this empathy is what it takes to look after someone as their caregiver, then it is reasonable to assume that other positions of authority require the same. In fact, these rules could very easily apply to occupations like teacher, policeman, doctor..

.. politician.

It's really starting to concern me as I watch the ability to empathize, a necessary skill for those in a position of authority or as a representative of others, is not only difficult to discover in our "leaders", it is now something that some of us are beginning to treat with derision. The current crop of hopefuls for the GOP nomination are promoting the poorer sides of human nature to such an extent that public displays of it are not only being accepted, they are being celebrated. Public displays like booing our soldiers for asking questions that someone doesn't want to answer, laughing at the idea of someone dying due to lack of medical treatment, and making rape victims legally and permanently responsible for the ramifications of their attackers actions. Since when did our public opinion change from "Oh how awful, we can't let that happen if we can help it" to "serves them right"?

The "53%" rails against those who "don't pay taxes" because they're old and retired or they are literally so poor that they wouldn't survive if they did pay taxes on the mere pittance they make. The "53%" forget sales tax, payroll tax, and property taxes that everyone pays. Tax refunds are NOT "free money". Tax refunds are exactly that, a refund, of money that very poor people had ripped out of their paychecks over the year, causing strain and hardship to the family hanging on tooth and nail for that paycheck. Worse still, the "53%" have been so indoctrinated with hate, fear, and anger directed at their "opposition", they won't even stop and look at the fact that they are essentially fighting for the right to live a way that THEY don't even want to.

Empathy is defined as "the ability to understand and share the feelings of another", which is something that politicians typically make grand attempts to feign, if nothing else. Historically, this has been done because the ability to empathize is typically demonstrated in those people we feel to be the "best" of us. Empathy is the reason your mother knew why you were sad, even when you didn't. It's why she still hugged you and loved you, even when you knowingly broke her rules. Empathy is the reason your friends call, make efforts to comfort, and listen to you cry when they never liked the stupid boyfriend who ended up breaking your heart exactly the way they KNEW he would. Empathy is the reason the best of your friends don't start off with "I told you so".

A massive load of "us against them" is being heaved upon our society, and the core premise is that the dirty, unwashed "them" is stealing undeserved resources from the noble, moral pockets of "us". Through misdirection of fear and anxiety, some (like the" 53%") are blinded to the fact that there's an effort to divide the ACTUAL "us", and apparently it's working. The truth is that there's only about 1% of "them", and they're doing all they can to bleed "us" dry and cast us into a million tiny factions until we don't recognize anyone else as one of "us". Worse still, "they" are claiming to be devout followers of Christianity, which requires empathy and love for others. "They" profess faith in an effort to make themselves appear moral, ethical, and inarguable. Real "faith" dictates that charity, tolerance, love, and concern for others is what makes you a morally upright human in the eyes of your God. Clearly "they" have no faith whatsoever in God, or they would trust that He would do His works and that their micromanagerial efforts here on Earth were not only unnecessary, but possibly an affront to Him.

With a bit of empathy for those that share your humanity, it's not hard to see that most of "us" are all suffering under the same tyranny brought about by just a few of "them".

The Feminine Context

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Occupy Together: Sad Paper Airplanes Don't Cost Postage

On October 28th, members of the Occupy Wall Street movement marched through Manhattan to the headquarters of many major banks, including Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Bank Of America, JP Morgan Chase, and Well Fargo. Assembling outside the entrances to these banks, the OWS protesters threw paper airplanes made of folded up letters from members of the "99 percent". These letters had been written to banking executives and published to the website "OccupyTheBoardroom.com".

Now, personally.. I kinda dig the whole OccupyTheBoardroom thing. Here's a description, in their own words.

"Life gets awfully lonely for those at the top. What can we do to let them know someone's thinking of them? Maybe they need some new friends! We've thought of two ways we can help them with that.

Option 1: Pen Pals
Make your voice heard by the Wall Street elites who wrecked the economy and made the rest of us pay. Click on someone below and tell them a story that you think they should listen to. Just got a college degree and nothing to show for it? Just got evicted while your banker gets bonuses? Share your special story with someone who ought to know.

Option 2: Best Friends Forever
If you're feeling even more generous, why not reach out in a more creative way? Click on a banker below, then read the instructions and examples to get inspired. Maybe your banker needs some kind words, or maybe an intervention. Most importantly, use your imagination! The best, funniest, most revelatory interactions win prizes."

Now that's some old-school-meets-new-tech, good vibes, sarcastic American protesting. That warms me to the cockles of my heart. Maybe the sub-cockular area as well. Either way, I freakin' love it.

When you fold that shit up into a paper airplane, tossing it limp-wristed into the air to watch it nosedive onto the sidewalk... well, shit. How do I put this? This paper airplane gig leaves me cold. It kinda puts the "pussy" in "pusillanimous".

I'm sorry. I'm all for peaceful protesting, but the paper airplane thing looked sad and pitiful. It looked like a bunch of little birds dropping dead at the doorstep. On a purely visual level, to me it made the 99-percent look as weak and fragile as those paper airplanes that no one apparently knew how to fold in such a ways as to make them fly. Don't know what I'm talking about? Watch it for yourself by clicking here. Set it to a string quartet composition in a minor key, and it'll be the most depressing eighteen seconds ever filmed.



In what I can only surmise is a direct response to the sad paper airplane display, YouTube user RansackedRoom gives us THIS.


Our clever friend here has devised a lovely form of protest utilizing the junk mail that people receive every day from banking corporations. His suggestion is to take all of the credit card (and other banking product) offers received in the mail, and simply MAIL THEM BACK, using the postage-paid envelope that the banking corporation has so generously enclosed.

Don't stop there! He also recommends that while you add an insert of your own to indicate your support of the Occupy Movement, that you also enclose ALL your excess junk mail. Why? Well to drive up the postage cost to the bank, of course! For extra points, why not add a small piece of wood or roofing shingle? This will not only make the envelope heavy enough to count for extra postage, it will also make the envelope RIGID, which equals to an ADDITIONAL postage cost.

Sorry, but if I want to make an impact with a peaceful protest involving paper, I'd rather send a roofing shingle, an OWS-themed note, and a firm NO THANK YOU written on the offer sent to me by the bank, than to throw some dumbass paper airplane at a door. Besides, this also makes for a "greener" protest. RansackedRoom's method involves recycling materials that you would have only thrown away, and reusing them for a purpose.

Enjoy! I'm going to go start collecting flat, heavy things. Right after I check my mail.

If anyone's interested, RansackedRoom can be found on Twitter by clicking on this link.


The Feminine Context

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

REM wakes up to support The Occupation

Awesomeness!

This is an older REM song, but the members of REM (which has been broken up) have endorsed the Occupy movement and offer their song, going so far as to release a "sing-along" video so people can learn the lyrics, as well as offering printable handouts of those lyrics on their site. Sounds like a great protest chant to me.




Lyrics are as follows:

Throw your collar up inside
Hang your dollar on me
Listen to the water still
Listen to the causeway

Mad and educated
Primitive and wild
Welcome to the occupation

Here we stand and here we fight
All your fallen heroes
Held and dyed and skinned alive
Listen to the Congress fire

Offering the educated
Primitive and loyal
Welcome to the occupation

Hang your collar up inside
Hang your freedom higher
Listen to the buyer still
Listen to the Congress

Where we propagate confusion
Primitive and wild
The fire on the hemisphere below

Sugarcane and coffee cup
Copper, steel, and cattle
An annotated history
The forest for the fire

Where we open up the floodgates
Freedom reigns supreme
Fire on the hemisphere below
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Monday, October 17, 2011

Veteran Marine PWNS NYPD for Police Brutality

From YouTube.com

"United States Marine Corps. Sgt. Shamar Thomas from Roosevelt, NY went toe to toe with the New York Police Department. An activist in the Occupy Wall Street movement, Thomas voiced his opinions of the NYPD police brutality that had and has been plaguing the #OWS movement.

Thomas is a 24-year-old Marine Veteran (2 tours in Iraq), he currently plays amateur football and is in college.

Thomas comes from a long line of people who sacrifice for their country: Mother, Army Veteran (Iraq), Step father, Army, active duty (Afghanistan), Grand father, Air Force veteran (Vietnam), Great Grand Father Navy veteran (World War II)."



Sgt. Thomas is on the street, and he is pissed.

The point he makes is a valid one. These have been non-violent protests. Perhaps people find the protesters annoying, but they're not actually hurting anyone. The protesters aren't armed, nor are they looting or breaking windows or anything of the sort. Sgt. Thomas shows up and sees police physically pushing the protesters around and can't take it. He asks some pretty valid questions here on the street, such as..

Why are police in riot gear, armed, and pushing unarmed civilians around?

I find it interesting that not one of these policemen could really confront him for the whole five minutes he was speaking. Hell, they wouldn't really look him in the face, for the most part. From the perspective of a man coming home from war, the idea of bearing any sort of arms against unarmed civilians that he's been told he's suffered to fight for, has got to be pretty fucking rage-inducing.

Good on you, Sgt. Thomas.

Just in case you doubt the validity of his claim that he saw police pushing and beating on protesters.. well, check this out. Here's a video of a policeman cold-cocking a young woman who appears to be in her 20's and weigh less than 140lbs. Oh, did I mentioned she's unarmed and standing STILL when he does it?


Here's a video of three Asian-American protesters being moved, one of whom has a bloodied nose from being shoved on the ground by police. If you take note of their surroundings, its fairly clear that these three had instruments set up and were playing music. If you really WANTED to move someone and you had that many hands to help you do it, why not pick the man up and restrain him, rather than break his face open on the ground?


Here's another, where the police not only beat an already restrained protester with a baton, they shove another and pull yet another by her hair over the police line, and then follow up the hair pulling with mace.


You know.. I understand that the police have a shitty job, especially in the face of a situation like this where they are ORDERED to try and contain a very determined mob of people who have no compunction with insulting those policemen and, let's just be really fucking honest here, doing their damndest to INCITE bad behavior out of the police so that they can film it. Like I said, let's be honest.. this video footage of police brutality is a strengthening the resolve and anger of the protesters, and that's good for the Occupy movement. That said, no amount of taunting and irritation by the protesters can excuse bad behavior on the part of the police. Maybe if you're the police, it doesn't feel fair... but the sad fact of the matter, is that its not supposed to be fair. The NYPD are a collection of individuals who have sworn to uphold the law, and the civilians are not bound to that same oath.

Most people, and I do mean MOST, don't have the self-control and strength of composure to take people getting up in their faces and insulting them when they are trying to do a difficult job. I can guarantee you that in the reverse position, the protesters wouldn't be able to contain themselves that much better than the police seen here. However, I believe that when your sworn duty is to "protect and serve", you have to uphold that sworn duty, which MEANS that you have to be BETTER than your peers. Authority figures cannot be afforded the right to lose their tempers as easily as those they are supposed to be guardians of. A parent, who is the authority over their child, doesn't have the right to knock that child around because the child irritated or annoyed them. A parent doesn't have the right to impose punishment without cause, just as a police officer doesn't have the right to arrest a citizen they are supposed to protect and serve without informing that citizen of what they are being arrested for.