#every one of them knows this is unconstitutional
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"This can't be legal," Danny said in a weak voice. "I mean, how are they allowed to do this?"
Lancer tensed. "It falls under a gray area. If you ask me, the Anti-Ecto Prevention Act gives them far too much jurisdiction."
The GIW, full in pure white HAZMAT suits from the overlarge hoods to the fitted boots, ushered in the next student from his class. Poor Lester walked into the tent, looking green in the face. Sweat rolled down his temples and his hands shook as the suited agent clasped his shoulder and pulled him through the curtains.
Paulina sniffed. "I don't want to be microchipped."
"Were you even listening at all?" Wes scoffed. "It's biodegradable. It'll be out of your system within a year and prevents you from being overshadowed. Unless, of course, you are a ghost." His eyes flitted to Danny. "Then who the hell knows what it'll do to you?"
"I'm not doing it." Sam crossed her arms. She was sitting on the gym floor, cross-legged. "It's unconstitutional, the total principle of it."
"I can't believe I'm agreeing with Manson," Paulina said. "But they'll have to drag me in there before they insert something underneath my flawless skin."
Valerie rolled her eyes. "Not that I object to being overshadowed, but I'd rather not have the U.S. government tracking my every move."
"There's not trackers in them," Lancer said. "They were adamant about that when we were told about this."
"Great," Sam drew out, "the untested ghost repelling microchips with unknown side effects being nonconsensually administered to minors allegedly doesn't broadcast our current locations to the government. That eases my nerves."
The tension in the room was palpable.
"I have uh, I have epilepsy," Nathan spoke up. His voice was short and clipped. "Do they even know how this'll affect that?"
Lancer put his head in his hands. "Dear Lord. I didn't sign up for this. I hate this."
The curtains were drawn back again. An agent, possibly the same one from a minute before but it was hard to tell since they all looked the same in the HAZMAT suits. He looked down at a clipboard.
"Fenton?" he called. "Daniel Fenton?"
Danny stared at the floor from where he was standing, not daring to look up and inevitably see everyone's eyes on him. The tiles on the gym floor looked like maple-colored planks of wood, but there was a thin film of clear plastic—or maybe rubber—when he slid his shoes against it.
"Fenton," repeated the agent, "come with me."
He didn't look up.
No. Because if he looked up, that meant he would have to do something. He wanted to avoid this for as long as he could.
There was a sound of rustling and in his peripheral vision he saw his classmates move out of the way as the agent stalked toward him.
He stumbled backward, not quite tripping, but struggling to keep even footing. Oh. He hoped he hadn't phased his feet through each other. He used to be bad with that. This would be the worst time and place to fall into old habits.
The agent gave him an unreadable look, face obscured by the HAZMAT mask, but Danny could feel the man's impatience as he waved the clipboard.
"Fenton. You're up."
"No."
His classmates glanced at him nervously and the agent shifted his weight, giving an agitated huff.
"Kid, you don't get a choice in this. This is for your protection."
"I can protect myself, thanks," he snapped. "I think I'll do fine without your little ghost zapping chip embedded in my arm."
"I don't know who you think you are, but just because your parents are ghost hunters doesn't make you exempt from this. All students, no exceptions."
He locked eyes with the man behind the mask. Well, it was a calculated guess at where the man's eyes were but Danny hoped his stare came across as menacing.
"It's nothing more than a pinch. I promise this won't be half as bad as you're imagining."
"Oh, I'm sure it will be."
Wes cleared his throat.
"Fenton's a—"
Without warning, Sam pulled herself to her feet and slugged Wes in the face. Hard. He stumbled backward and almost fell on one of the bleachers. Blood dripped from her knuckles and from his nose. Oh. That was going to bruise badly.
Lancer cried in alarm.
"Miss Manson!"
"Sorry, Mr. Lancer. Muscle spasm."
"We don't have time for this." The agent reached forward and grabbed Danny's shoulder as he'd done to Lester minutes before. "Come on. Let's get this done."
Danny stood his ground, and the agent pulled against him. He was stronger than the agent, and despite that, he'd phased the bottom of his shoes into the uppermost layer of the gym's floor. He wasn't going anywhere.
"How in the world—?"
Paulina started sobbing at the top of her lungs.
"I don't want to be here! I don't want to be chipped! I want to go home!"
The agent turned toward her, startled. "Now, calm down now—"
Wes staggered forward, blood dripping onto the floor as he moved. Some fell onto the agent's pristine, white boots. He jumped away from Wes like he'd been burned.
More students joined Paulina, clamoring that they didn't want to be chipped either. Sam raised her bloodied fist and shouted—an unhinged, almost feral scream while Danny gradually phased his shoes deeper into the floor. Mr. Lancer pulled a book out from somewhere and was waving it around, a loose bookmark falling out as he did so, in a futile attempt to capture everyone's attention.
Three identical agents ran out of the curtained tent at the sound of the chaos.
"What is going on!" one of them barked.
"Sir, the students are being uncooperative," the first agent said.
"I need medical attention," Wes said, unhelpfully.
The new agent, who Danny decided was the boss, accessed Wes and the drops of blood on the first agent's boots with horror.
"Agent Kilo, you didn't…"
"No, no. It was the girl."
He nodded his head to Sam, who hid her bloodied fist behind her back.
"He's a liar!" she said. "He hit Wes! We all saw it!"
The other students gave tentative nods. Ever the performer, Paulina flinched away from Agent Kilo, as if afraid he might strike her. In the midst of it all Lancer did nothing.
"Kilo," the boss's voice was stern. "That's not how we do things."
"But I didn't—"
"You're dismissed for now. We'll discuss this later." He turned to Wes. "I do apologize."
Wes looked at him like he'd grown an extra head. "Alright?"
Agent Kilo stormed away, muttering something about lying, conniving brats and threw his clipboard on the ground.
Lancer stepped in. "If I may, I do say that my students have been through an emotionally stressful experience here and I don't know if they should continue with this today. Besides, Mr. Weston does still need medical attention and I believe that should be our top priority."
The boss grunted. "Right. Return to class. We'll continue this at another date."
He waved a hand and the other agents headed back to the tent. Meanwhile, the students trailed after Lancer toward the opposite end of the gym—all sighing in relief.
As they left the gym, Sam caught Danny's shoulder and hissed in his ear. "Danny, the clipboard."
The discarded clipboard was forgotten on the floor.
"Mark our names off," she hissed. "I'll keep them distracted."
He nodded. He tapped into invisibility and retrieved the clipboard. A ballpoint pen was clipped to the top of it and he marked off the box beside his and Sam's names, doing his best to emulate Agent Kilo's loopy initials for the official confirmation. With any luck, the man wouldn't remember it later among all the chaos. With better luck, the man would be dismissed from the GIW completely.
He flipped the clipboard face-up and left it closer to the tent so that the agents would find it. He flew back into the corridor and met up with Sam, who was lingering near the end of the group.
"Got it." He dropped back onto the visible spectrum. "We're officially chipped."
"Oh, thank God. You're a literal lifesaver."
Wes turned, holding a wad of paper towels against his bloodied nose. "Please tell me I'm not the only one who just saw Fenton appear out of thin air, right?"
"You're concussed, Weston," Valerie said, not bothering to turn around and check. "He's not a ghost."
"Manson did not give me a concussion!"
"Yeah, Agent Kilo did," Nathan brushed off. "Keep up. The GIW can suck it."
That was something they could all, unquestionably, agree on.
#Danny Phantom#Danny Fenton#Sam Manson#Wes Weston#Fanfiction#Danny Phantom Fanfiction#Phicc#Fic#Phic#wrwritings
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Elie Mystal covered the ridiculous, “Presidential Immunity” (aka, “Why Can’t Trump Be Treated Like A Dictator?”) case before SCOTUS
Dreeben: "BECAUSE THERE WEREN'T CRIMES!" (he didn't yell, I did, but he said "because there weren't crimes." )
Oh God, now Roberts wondering if they should send it back to the DC circuit because he's worried about presidents getting prosecuted in bad faith.
Roberts: "The court of appeals did not get into a focused consideration of what facts we're talking about or what documents we're talking about... they did not look at what courts usually look at when... taking away immunity."
Is this motherfucker serious? His argument is "Every president coups, why is mine getting charged?"
Thomas: Are you saying there's no immunity even for official acts?
And... that could be the ballgame
Roberts, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh are more worried about a prosecutor going after a president for *political* reasons than A PRESIDENT TRYING TO OVERTHROW THE GOVERNMENT.
This is just about over.
And by "this" I mean the rule of law and by "over" I mean delayed indefinitely to help Trump.
Gorsuch suggesting that under the government's standard a president could be prosecuted for leading a "civil rights protest" in front of Congress and sought to "influence an official proceeding."
Yes, because Jan 6 and a fucking sit in are the same thing, Neil.
This is goddamn disgusting.
I'm going to keep listening because it is my literal job, but this is pretty much in the bag for Trump at this point. Remand to DC Circuit for decision on "official acts" and whether organizing a coup is one.
After November, if Trump loses, SCOTUS will return to the issue.
Alito: Are you really saying the president is subject to criminal laws like everybody else?
YES YOU DICK. THE PRESIDENT SHOULD BE SUBJECT TO THE LAWS LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE!
Alito: "I'm not talking about the particular facts of this case."
WHY? WHY THE HELL ARE NOT TALKING ABOUT THIS FUCKING CASE RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU?
The question I'd have for the SCOTUS now is: If you do this, why would a Republican president every peacefully transfer power again?
Democratic presidents will because Democrats follow rules that don't apply to the other side. But why would Republicans just leave *ever again*?
Alito: Couldn't FDR's decision to inter Japanese Americans during WWII be charged [as a crime]?
He says that LIKE THAT'S A BAD THING?
And Dreeben is trying to say that he couldn't.
This country, and specifically this court, is a fucking joke.
Now onto self-pardons. Alito is just playing all the Fox News hits now.
I'm going to smoke. Biden should send Seal Team 6 to Mar-a-Lago because according to Alito there's no downside.
Alito just suggested that the last election was "questionably decided"
I have left my body and am texting things I can't say aloud to my friends.
Kagan is like the first person to be asking about the actual criminal acts Trump is charged with.
I assume Alito is not listening because Kagan is a woman while Gorsuch is probably sitting there emailing the New York Times because they got something wrong on the Spelling Bee.
I see the internet is unimpressed with Dreeben but that's being a little unfair. The Republican justices want to do this, there's nothing that Dreeben could say to stop them.
What he *could* be doing was making their hypocrisy more clear for the non-legal media following along.
But... SCOTUS advocates have to preserve their ability to argue another day, and blowing up the justices in one case
A: Doesn't help them actually win the case.
B: Actively hurts them in the next one.
Kavanaugh: "Like Justice Gorsuch, I'm not concerned with the here and now of this case, I'm concerned about the future."
I don't know why this is acceptable. I do know that the justices are sure they are right about ignoring the facts of THIS ACTUAL CASE.
Kavanaugh... who WORKED FOR KEN STARR... is basically saying that Jack Smith is politically motivated and his appoint in unconstitutional.
It's... maddening. And most of the media reports will not even point out this hypocrisy.
The "independent counsel" law was rewritten into our current "special counsel" law BECAUSE of the shit Kavanaugh helped Starr do! Everybody was like "that crap can't happen again."
Somebody get @neal_katyal and @MonicaLewinsky on the phone to blow up this asshole.
@neal_katyal @MonicaLewinsky Every time I try to no have a stroke listening to this bullshit, they say something even more risible and stupid.
@neal_katyal @MonicaLewinsky Kavanaugh: "President Ford's pardon. Hugely unpopular when he did it... now probably looked on as one of his better decisions."
What? WHAT? WHO THE FUCK THINKS FORD'S PARDON OF NIXON WAS A GOOD IDEA? WHEN DID I DIE AND GO TO HELL????
@neal_katyal @MonicaLewinsky This could be a men v. women 5-4 ruling.
Men: Let's kick this back to DC to further delay Trump's trial.
Soto, Kagan, Jackson: Why? That's fucking dumb.
Barrett: Ladies, I agree with you, but we shouldn't call the men fucking dumb. We should politely disagree.
@neal_katyal @MonicaLewinsky We're past the two and half hour mark for an argument where the Republican justices made their decision when they were appointed, some of them decades ago.
@neal_katyal @MonicaLewinsky KBJ is closing by trying to answer all of Gorsuch's questions, which would be effective if Gorsuch operated in good faith. But... he doesn't. So...
@neal_katyal @MonicaLewinsky I had hoped that *one* of the liberal justices would have made the point from the Common Cause brief, highlighting that the whole point of what Republican justices are doing is to give Trump delay.
Not a persuasive argument for the justices, but good for the media to hear.
@neal_katyal @MonicaLewinsky The case is submitted. Court doesn't come back till May 9th which will be a decision day.
But I think they won't decide *this* case until July 3rd for max delay. And that decision will be 5-4 to remand the case back to DC, for additional delay.
@neal_katyal @MonicaLewinsky I wish I had better news for you. Thanks anyway for following along with our national descent into madness.
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An Analysis of Haruka’s MVs: Distance and Disability
Hello! I’ve recently fallen down the rabbit hole that is Milgram and I have been itching to make some completely normal and sane analysis posts. My silly alternate title for this was gonna be “Things About Haruka’s MVs That Just Make Sense: A Hyperfixation-fuelled Analysis”, because honestly my autistic brain has been having a field day over here.
I am in awe with just about every single music video in this project; the animation is incredible and each one packs so much carefully laid out information. But I have been rotating Haruka’s in my head constantly since I first watched them, and I have a lot of Thoughts. Not about whether he’s guilty or innocent/forgiven or unforgiven. Not about whether or not I can justify his murders. Just some straight up imagery and symbolism analysis, through the lens of disability.
Haruka’s disability has not been specified, but I am confident we can at least say he is neurodivergent. I feel like the cultural differences in names for several things e.g. ‘learning disability’ vs ‘learning difficulty’ will just invite unnecessary drama, and is a little pedantic. What does matter here is that Haruka's experience as a disabled person is heavily intertwined within his story and his motives.
So, without further ado... let’s get into this!
Trigger warnings/TW: I will be discussing ableism, eugenics and harm towards disabled people. Everything else will be related to the music videos ‘Weakness’ and ‘All Knowing and All Agony’, so any triggering content within them may also be mentioned. Read at your own discretion and stay safe!
Disability: some brief (important) historical context
It is only within the last few decades that those who are disabled have been ‘seen’ for the first time. A modern society is (ideally) expected to be built to include and accommodate for disability, and to acknowledge disabled people’s existence. But for many countries (even the ones making steps outlined above) this is still not the case. For a very, very long time, globally, that has not been the case.
For most disabled people, society makes it very clear that they are a burden to it and are better off not existing.
I’m going to make this section as succinct as possible because...it’s heavy stuff. But it’s important, and I want you all to get the gist of what I’m saying. The weight of it.
Let’s highlight a piece of history regarding IQ and eugenics, surrounding the publication and subsequent worldwide reception of ‘The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-mindedness’ by Henry Herbert Goddard in 1913:
“In 1927, it was used as evidence in the case of Buck v. Bell, which culminated in a Supreme Court ruling that the involuntary sterilization of ‘mentally defective’ persons was not unconstitutional in the United States. By 1938, thirty-three US states had passed laws allowing for the forced sterilization of women with learning disabilities and twenty-nine had made sterilization compulsory for people who were thought to have genetic conditions. Many European countries followed suit: Denmark in 1929, then Norway in 1934, and after that Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Iceland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Latvia, Hungary and Turkey.”
— Limburg, J. (2021) Letters To My Weird Sisters: On Autism and Feminism, p. 126
This history of a ‘sterilization law’ includes Japan, who between 1948 and 1996 enacted the Eugenics Protection Law which “authorised the sterilization of people with intellectual disabilities, mental illnesses or hereditary disorders.” According to the government, about 25,000 were sterilized.
SO. It’s important to bring this up. To establish how much disabled people are not wanted, just from their governments. Let alone society. To this day, disabled people are hidden away from the public by families that are ashamed of their existence.
Japanese culture values collectivism, and maintaining the harmony of a group...to the extent of excluding those that don’t fit into the mould. That are different.
The question is: where do they go? The ones that are publicly rejected?
Haruka and The Curious Case of Distant Waters
Okay that’s enough of the heavy real-world stuff! Time to delve into some...*checks notes*...heavy fictional stuff. Fun!
Haruka’s MVs prominently display themes of distance and separation through the motif of water, specifically being submerged underwater.
The name Haruka reinforces this concept as the specific kanji used (遥) translates to ‘distant’, ‘remote’ or ‘far away’. As there are many, many kanji choices for the name (including but not limited to: ocean/sea, eternity/permeance, clear/distinct/obvious, and spring/growth/cherry blossom) it feels like a particularly cruel and intentional choice to go with that one.
Through the exploration of this motif, we can see the extent in which Otherness/the state of being ‘Other’ drives Haruka to great lengths to close the distance and escape it.
What I noticed throughout both MVs (particularly AK&AA but note the beginning scene of Weakness), is that whenever Haruka looks at himself in a reflective surface (e.g. the vanity mirror, the fish tank), water either begins to rise and overwhelms him, or is already there and he appears submerged:
I think this is the “All-Knowing” part of AK&AA. He knows he’s different, and he knows there’s a huge ocean between him and his peers, his family, everyone. A disconnect when trying to listen and understand, but also when trying to be understood by others and listened to himself.
You know when you submerge your head in water, and your hearing gets all muffled and incomprehensible? And have you ever tried speaking underwater? You can’t, because if you open your mouth you’ll drown. It’ll just come out as bubbles rising to the surface.
I also think the bubbles symbolise rising tension, between what he wants and what he currently has. Bubbles are everywhere in these MVs, even in places where they shouldn’t logically be? Such as this scene, following the line “don’t wipe me out, don’t wipe me out”:
Immediately pans up to Haruka gasping for breath, droplets of water rising from...somewhere. For about a split second, and they’re gone.
This boy is really going through it. I’m getting an ‘emerging from the ocean before I drown’ vibe from this one folks. When the line that follows this scene is “I can’t stop, I can’t stop”, what I’m REALLY hearing is “I can’t stop (killing) or I’ll drown”. This is his lifeboat, pulling him out from the depths of being neglected and hidden away, into the spotlight.
Some interesting images from Weakness in relation to that (of spotlights):
Anyways, onto the next point:
Blue to Orange: Water to...Nectar?
So, the orange liquid. It’s clearly representing blood, but I don’t think this is just a “danganronpa pink blood” situation of censoring/getting this video onto youtube without restrictions.
I think it’s most likely honey, specifically nectar.
The etymology of the word nectar shows its compounds translate to “death” and “overcoming”. Nectar is also called the drink of the gods, so it would make sense for it to be a ‘death-defeating’, immortalizing liquid.
For Haruka’s victims to contain nectar is very interesting. It reinforces that necessity to kill, to take the life of another, to sustain himself. To overcome the ‘living death’ he is experiencing by being hidden away from society.
This is his means of escape from drowning.
However, as we all know, things don’t turn out great for him. By the end of AK&AA Haruka is rejected once again by his mother, after which the door is shut (the light with it is gone too) and we’re met with this imagery:
The nectar floods the room, engulfing him much like the water from earlier.
There are many things we could take from this. One being that the nectar-gathering/killing-spree has clouded his vision; it’s so sweet, so sickly sweet and he’s addicted to the taste of attention, even if it’s very bad attention.
Who else has honey imagery in their MV again?
Oh, right.
Anyway, the nectar/honey situation could also be representing submerging into an even further level of distance. All that murder is gonna push people away, despite his motive being to close the gap between him and normal people. The 'ocean’ has lost clarity and become a maddening, delusional substance. After all, there is a type of honey literally called ‘mad honey’ known for its medicinal and hallucinogenic properties.
That’s enough about honey, though. Let’s move onto less unfortunate... oh, sorry, what was that? *checks notes*...Ah, yes. I meant to say, let’s move onto even more unfortunate symbolism:
The Necklace
So, this necklace. Haruka steals it from his mother’s belongings, and is his only material, physical connection to her. It is taken on the declaration of “making (her) love me again” and getting her attention once more, now he is no longer a child but a teenager closer to adulthood (at least, that’s what I consider the ‘shirt with a vest sweater and tie’ to represent. child him = the blue polo, teenager him = this one, adult him = an amalgamation of his teenager clothes).
I wasn’t sure if this was an opal or pearl/mother of pearl, but I’m leaning towards opal from the other depiction of it in Weakness:
Opals are fun because they can symbolise both good luck and bad luck, usually to do with whether it’s your birthstone. There’s something to be said of Haruka’s belief in his ‘misfortune’ and the superstition surrounding these gemstones.
But they are even more interesting for the powers they supposedly have; in medieval times the opal was considered the ‘patron of thieves’ for their ability to grant the wearer invisibility.
There is a deliciously sad irony to Haruka’s theft with that titbit of information.
Now, if this isn’t an opal, and it’s a pearl/mother of pearl there’s still some fun interpretation to be had! A little less sad, even. Pearls invoke strong imagery of the sea, of purity, and of a connection to the maternal. If this is the last thing he has relating to his mother, I can see this necklace representing a lifeline when he’s deep in the ocean. A reminder of why he’s doing all of this killing, and who it’s for.
His mother’s attention (or the idea of having a mother at all, any mother) is his driving force in life.
Speaking of that...
So We Really Need To Talk About That Fish Tank: AKA, Why Haruka’s Mom Wins ‘The Worst Parent of The Year’ Award
This fucking fish tank.
Okay, I’m gonna start by saying: I don’t think this is reading too far into things. When it takes an animation team months, sometimes years to create a 3-5 minute music video, and one as detailed as this...you don’t just wing it. There are storyboards, there are key frames and there are choices made down to the smallest of details.
From the sheer volume of animal/insect/fish décor that resides in the Sakurai household, you bet I’m gonna pay attention to what type of fish are in that fish tank.
For one thing, they live in saltwater. This is a marine tank, aka the harder choice of aquarium to have. I mean, way, WAY harder. For the experienced only.
These fish right here? One is a clownfish, and the other is a yellow boxfish.
Boxfish are a nightmare to keep alive. This article goes into more detail than I will, but all you need to know is: if there was ever a fish out of all the fish you could possibly want in your tank, this is the one to avoid like the plague.
They release deadly toxins when stressed, as a survival instinct. Boom. All your fish are dead. They need to eat a shit ton of food, but are notoriously clumsy swimmers and slow eaters. Boom. Starving, stressed out boxfish. Boxfish either dies from starvation or dies from stress and toxins.
For Haruka’s mom to have not just one of these fuckers, but a tank consisting ONLY OF MULTIPLE BOXFISH AND CLOWNFISH...
This is a high-maintenance tank. And it shows how much time and effort, how much care she puts into the things she loves.
How neglectful she is as a parent of a disabled child in contrast.
There’s something about the last scene between Haruka and his mother that reinforces this for me:
Haruka’s relationship with animals and himself: AKA, “why don’t I just become the damn fish tank?”
Let me backpedal a little bit. This subheading will make sense in a minute.
So, like I said earlier we have a lot of décor in this house relating to insects and fish. We also have a lot of pets. Both living and dead, taxidermized creatures in one household, proudly on display.
I think this may have created some confusion for Haruka regarding the value of animals being alive or dead, as in his perspective his mother values both equally. The fish in a tank may be full of alive creatures, but they’re still on display as if it’s artwork. Isn’t breaking the glass of a framed picture of a fish equal to breaking the glass of a tank with a ‘picture of living fish’?
(This isn’t to say Haruka is clueless to the impact of his actions, nor to justify any harm to animals. I just find the train of thought to be intriguing.)
So when considering these ‘objects’ are proud trophies of his work:
This is a carefully arranged display, which by the way, doesn’t contain a single fish. In fact the only piece of that moment visible here is the...large piece of driftwood? Okay. Keep that in mind.
We proceed into Haruka’s mother opening the door and seeing her son, for the first time in any of the MVs. Note the way they composed this shot:
I’m obsessed with this scene. The blue eye framing Haruka, with a literal fishbowl effect on him...
He is the goddamn fish in the aquarium now. His mother’s full attention is on him and him alone, with only the dead animals, the books, the lamp and the driftwood as window dressing to this wonderful display.
Doesn’t it just scream “Look at me! Look at what I did, mom!” to you?
That blue spotlight is on him once more. He is not just drifting deeper into an endless ocean, but contained in a vessel to be stared at.
One Last Observation
I didn’t know where to fit this in but I think the end feels appropriate.
His clothing here:
Is a frankenstein-esque mash up of clothes from his younger years. He wears this throughout AK&AA, and as I mentioned before it signifies him as an adult. However, I should clarify what I mean here as Haruka says “he thinks he’s 17″ and “doesn’t care about his age”. So... not an adult, but on the cusp of adulthood.
But I think he actually does care about his age, and quite a lot too.
This outfit feels symbolic of refusing to let go of the past, and of himself as a child. He’s literally grown out of his clothing, but he still clings onto it. He’s attached to the past because it not only contains his happiest moments, but the change from being loved to becoming neglected.
As a disabled person, you’re often treated with a lot more forgiveness when you’re younger. That is to say, some people don’t realise that children with disabilities grow up into adults with disabilities. There is a point where even support from medical and social services drops off like a cliff edge once you turn 18.
The ill-fitting clothing in this context becomes more than a reflection on Haruka’s feelings, and extends to reflecting society’s feelings on disabled adults ‘refusing to grow up’.
I don’t blame Haruka for holding onto his childhood like this. He’ll be even less publicly visible and seen once he is no longer a pitiful child, but a ‘weird’ adult in ill-fitting, children’s clothes.
#milgram#haruka sakurai#analysis#weakness#all-knowing and all-agony#symbolism#disability#*drops this onto the fandom like a ton of bricks* hi i'm new here pleasure to meet u#oh man I finally finished it... this is a very (and I mean a VERY) long post asdfghjkl#I'm pretty happy with how it turned out though! I got most of the things I wanted to say and point out down#believe it or not there was actually MORE I could've said but I think tumblr may have crashed on me if I did that lmao#particularly to do with Weakness as I focused more on AK&AA here. but anyways#I love how morally grey everyone is in this series! It makes for some really fun analysis!#it's so so nice seeing a disabled character in such a position too and not just 'is a cinnamon roll' or 'the devil reincarnate' yknow#I debated leaving in the real-world history stuff but I think it sets the tone of my analysis pretty well and shows the importance of--#--haruka's disability not as a justification of his actions but as a vital backdrop to his environment and struggles
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A Nebraska Republican state senator who voted for a combined anti-trans and anti-abortion bill that passed by one vote in the legislature has admitted that she didn’t pay attention to the issue.
State Senator Christy Armendariz represents the 18th District in the state.
Writing for New York magazine, journalist Lila Shapiro said that the Senator “led me to a bench in an empty hallway” to say that she “found it puzzling that a reporter from New York would come all the way to Nebraska to cover this affair.”
“I don’t watch the news or get the newspaper,” she told the magazine. “Is there anything going on I should be aware of?”
The writer told Ms. Armendariz that other states have passed other similar bills restricting trans and women’s reproductive rights and that an appeals court on the federal level in the Nebraska circuit had ruled that one of them was unconstitutional.
“So is it a big widespread thing?” she asked the writer, adding that regular Nebraska residents were unaware of the issue.
“I knocked doors for a year, and nobody brought this up,” the Senator said, adding that she wished that the legislation had never been brought to the floor.
For three months, a group of lawmakers in the state ground nearly all legislative business in the state to a halt, grabbing the nation’s attention with a remarkable filibuster to stifle a bill that would end gender-affirming care for young transgender people.
Late Tuesday 16 May, Republican lawmakers broke through, advancing a bill that not only bans gender-affirming care for trans people under 19 years old but also tacks on an amendment to outlaw abortion after roughly 10 weeks of pregnancy and hands the state’s GOP-appointed medical officer the authority to set the rules for affirming care for trans youth.
Hundreds of protesters filled the capital in Lincoln, standing outside the doors and in the gallery above lawmakers while chanting “one more vote to save our lives”; only one Senator would have had to defect from supporters of the bill to kill the legislation.
The vote – on the 78th day of a 90-day session – followed a series of manoeuvres that opponents argued were bending and breaking the rules of the state legislature to hammer through the legislation and avert the filibuster, which would allow opponents to occupy their allotted time to speak the bill to death.
“What you are attempting to do today is the lowest of the absolute lows,” state Senator Machaela Cavanaugh, who spearheaded the filibuster, told Republican lawmakers.
“You literally have to cheat at every moment of this debate in every possible way … You are allowing it to happen,” she added. “You do literally have blood on your hands, and if you vote for it, you will have buckets.”
State Senator Megan Hunt, the first openly LGBT+ member of the state legislature and the mother of a trans child, lambasted lawmakers for their “escape routes” from the capitol to avoid facing protesters.
“If you can’t go out and face them, you are not worthy,” she said. “Your legacy is filth.”
Protesters surrounded the state capitol chambers in Lincoln again on 19 May, chanting “keep your bans off our bodies” and “save our lives” as lawmakers made their final round of votes on the bill, which passed 33-15. The bill reached the exact number of votes needed to pass.
Republican Governor Jim Pillen signed it into law on Monday.
“We are working to inspire Nebraskans to get in the game so that abortion is simply unthinkable in the state of Nebraska,” Mr. Pillen said, according to WOWT.
He called the legislation “the most significant win for [the] social conservative agenda that over a generation has seen in Nebraska. I think that’s something we need to clap and shout about.”
At a show in Nebraska hours after the vote on Friday night, the artist Lizzo lambasted the legislation from the stage. “It really breaks my heart that there are young people growing up in a world that doesn’t protect them,” she said.
“Don’t let anyone tell you who you are. ... These laws are not real. You are what’s real, and you deserve to be protected,” she said.
“Hat tip to Senator Armendariz, who says she doesn’t know anything about the issue, doesn’t pay attention to current events, and wishes the bill she voted for hadn’t been introduced. It passed by 1 vote,” wrote Ari Kohen, a political science professor at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
“These are the people who devoted an entire legislative session to taking away people’s rights in the face of massive opposition from experts and ordinary citizens. They openly admit that none of their constituents mentioned this issue to them and they don’t know much about it,” he added. “We have a handful of legislators who care enough to listen and learn. And then we have the majority, who seem not to know or care what they’re doing as long as it feels right to them and they have the votes to do it. Awful.”
The Independent has requested comment from Ms. Armendariz.
#us politics#news#the independent#Nebraska#republicans#conservatives#Christy Armendariz#new york magazine#Lila Shapiro#gender-affirming care#gender-affirming care bans#trans healthcare#trans healthcare ban#abortions#abortion bans#reproductive rights#reproductive health#Machaela Cavanaugh#Megan Hunt#gov. Jim Pillen#WOWT#Lizzo#celebs#celebrities#music#Ari Kohen#tweet#twitter#2023#lgbtqia+ rights
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With the insanity coming out of the Alabama Supreme Court...do you have any thoughts on the concept of separation of church and state?
As a young athiest living in the US, it really feels like that line has never actually existed and history is just trying to gaslight about it.
Am I crazy? Am I just overreacting? Do you think there can be a separation between church and state in a country that is so deeply religious?
Also, hope you are feeling better!!!
(For anyone who is unaware, the Alabama Supreme Court recently ruled 8-1 that frozen embryos from IVF treatments can be considered children under state law after a fertility clinic was sued for the wrongful death of embryos that were destroyed. Chief Justice Tom Parker stated in his concurring opinion that “Even before birth, all human beings bear the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.")
You're not crazy and you're not overreacting at all. If you follow any kind of atheist news, you know that there is a constant stream of lawmakers and judges overstepping the separation of church and state. Take a scroll through the Friendly Atheist blog at any time and you'll see dozens of stories about city councils, schools, state lawmakers, etc. blatantly trying to enact religious discrimination against atheists and members of minority religions.
I think separation of church and state is an unfathomably important ideal, but in practice it can be difficult to enforce. For every institute that gets sued for violating the establishment clause, another dozen are going unreported. People who DO report and/or sue about it face horrific levels of harassment. And it's getting worse with the rise of evangelicals as one of the most important and reliable voting blocs in the country - Republicans are swinging way towards Christofascism to court them. Far-right Republicans are pretty open about not believing that separation of church and state is morally or legally necessary. And effective separation of church and state relies heavily on lawmakers and judges acting in good faith, which Republicans have repeatedly proven they have no interest in doing.
Personally I think we are about to see a wave of attacks against the separation of church and state, especially with the current makeup of the Supreme Court. Almost half of Americans think America should be a "Christian nation". SCOTUS has been getting more and more biased towards religion in general and Christianity in particular even before Trump's appointees. And recently they've sided with religiously-motivated discrimination against gay people and ruled that teacher-sponsored prayer is acceptable at public school events. A Democrat in Mississippi filed a bill that would put in place a trigger law to return public prayers to schools should the case that banned school-sponsored prayer ever be overturned, and I suspect "put God back in schools" might be the next rallying cry for the right now that Roe v Wade has been overturned.
To end on a slightly higher note, it's not all doom and gloom. I think this is a pretty predictable backlash from Christians who, having their privilege questioned in even the slightest fashion, think they're now being oppressed. Most blatantly unconstitutional bills ARE being quashed, most people, religious or otherwise, don't want separation of church and state to be repealed, and secularism is on the rise. It's just that we still have a VERY long way to go towards completely removing religious privilege in this country.
#thanks for asking! wish i had a more optimistic answer to give#and i am feeling much better thank you!#atheism#skepticism umbrella
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Michael de Adder :: @deAdder:: All the King's men
* * * *
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
April 28, 2024
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
APR 29, 2024
On Friday, in an interview with CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins, Trump’s former attorney general William Barr brushed off the recent news that Trump, furious that the story he had taken refuge in a bunker during the Black Lives Matter protests in summer 2020 had leaked, called for the White House leaker to be executed.
“I remember him being very mad about that. I actually don’t remember him saying ‘executing,’ but I wouldn‘t dispute it, you know,” Barr said to Collins when she asked him about it. “The president would lose his temper and say things like that. I doubt he would’ve actually carried it out.”
Collins followed up, asking if Trump would call for executions on other occasions. “He would say things similar to that on occasions to blow off steam. But I wouldn’t take them literally every time he did it,” Barr answered.
Why not? Collins asked.
“Because at the end of the day, it wouldn’t be carried out and you could talk sense into him,” Barr said. “I don’t think he would actually go and kill political rivals and things like that.” Barr said he intends to vote for Trump.
“Just to be clear,” Collins said, “you’re voting for someone who you believe tried to subvert the peaceful transfer of power, that can’t even achieve his own policies, that lied about the election even after his attorney general told him that the election wasn’t stolen.… You’re going to vote for someone who is facing 88 criminal counts?”
“The answer to the question is yes,” Barr said. “I think the real threat to democracy is the progressive movement and the Biden administration.”
The contention of the former attorney general—who had been responsible for enforcing the rule of law in the United States of America—that a man who has demanded the execution of people he dislikes is a better candidate for the presidency than a man who is using the power of the federal government to create jobs for ordinary people, combat climate change, protect the environment, and promote health and education, illustrates that Republican leaders have abandoned democracy.
In November 2019, in a speech to the right-wing Federalist Society, Barr ignored the Declaration of Independence, which is a list of complaints against King George III, to argue that Americans had rebelled in 1776 not against the king, but rather against Parliament. In the modern world, Barr argued, Congress has grown far too strong. The president should be able to act on his own initiative and not be checked by either congressional or judicial oversight.
That theory is known as the theory of the “unitary executive,” and it says that because the president is the head of one of the three unique branches of government, any oversight of that office by Congress or the courts is unconstitutional, although in fact presidents since George Washington have accepted congressional oversight.
The theory took root in 1986, when Samuel Alito, then a 35-year-old lawyer for the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice, proposed the use of “signing statements” to take from Congress the sole power to make laws by giving the president the power to “interpret” them. In 1987, president Ronald Reagan issued a signing statement to a debt bill, declaring his right to interpret it as he wished and saying the president could not be forced “to follow the orders of a subordinate.”
In 2004, when Congress outlawed the newly-revealed U.S. torture program at remote sites around the world, President George W. Bush issued a signing statement rejecting any limitation on “the unitary executive branch.” In April 2020, to justify his demands for states to reopen in the face of the deadly pandemic, Trump told reporters, “When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total….” Now, in 2024, Trump’s lawyers are in court arguing that the president has criminal immunity for his behavior in the White House, possibly including his right to order the executions of those he sees as enemies.
As Republicans have embraced unlimited power for the president, they have also turned against the right of American citizens to have a say in their government. Beginning with so-called ballot integrity measures in 1986, they embraced methods to knock voters off the voting rolls. That policy intensified after Democrats passed the so-called Motor-Voter Law in 1993, making it easier to register to vote.
After voters nonetheless elected Democrat Barack Obama in 2008, the Supreme Court handed down the 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, permitting unlimited donations to political campaigns, and corporate money flowed into them. In that same year, Republican operatives launched Operation REDMAP to elect Republicans to state legislatures ahead of the redistricting required after the 2010 census. Operation REDMAP resulted in extreme partisan gerrymandering that would make it virtually impossible for Democrats to win elections even if they won a majority of the vote.
Then, in 2013, the Supreme Court decided Shelby County v. Holder, which gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965. That law had required states with a history of racial discrimination to get clearance from the Department of Justice before they changed their voting laws. The court said that preclearance was no longer necessary. Within hours of the decision, Republican-dominated states proposed new laws that discriminate against voters of color.
In 2019, Barr explained to an audience at the University of Notre Dame the ideology behind the strong executive and weakened representation. Rejecting the clear words of the Constitution’s framers, Barr said that the U.S. was never meant to be a secular democracy. When the nation’s founders had spoken so extensively about self-government, he said, they had not meant the right to elect representatives of their own choosing. Instead, he said, the founders meant the ability of individuals to “restrain and govern themselves.” And, because people are willful, the only way to achieve self-government is through religion.
Those who believe the United States is a secular country, he said, are destroying the nation. It was imperative, he said, to reject those values and embrace religion as the basis for American government.
The idea that the United States must become a Christian nation has apparently led Barr to accept the idea that a man who has called for the execution of those he sees as enemies should be president, apparently because he is expected to usher in an authoritarian Christian state, in preference to a man who is using the power of the government to help ordinary Americans.
Saturday night, journalists, politicians, and celebrities gathered for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, an annual fundraiser for the White House Correspondents’ Association, which protects press passes for journalists who regularly cover the White House, assigns seats in the briefing room, funds scholarships for aspiring journalists, and gives awards for outstanding journalism. It is traditionally an evening of comedy, but last night, after a humorous speech, President Joe Biden implored the press to take the threat of dictatorship seriously.
“I’m sincerely not asking of you to take sides but asking you to rise up to the seriousness of the moment; move past the horse race numbers and the gotcha moments and the distractions, the sideshows that have come to dominate and sensationalize our politics; and focus on what’s actually at stake,” he said. “Every single one of us has…a serious role to play in making sure democracy endures…. I have my role, but, with all due respect, so do you.”
George Stephanopoulos of ABC’s This Week apparently took this reminder to heart. “Until now,” he said in the show’s opener on Sunday, “[n]o American president had ever faced a criminal trial. No American president had ever faced a federal indictment for retaining and concealing classified documents. No American president had ever faced a federal indictment or a state indictment for trying to overturn an election, or been named an unindicted co-conspirator in two other states for the same crime. No American president ever faced hundreds of millions of dollars in judgments for business fraud, defamation, and sexual abuse….
“The scale of the abnormality is so staggering, that it can actually become numbing. It’s all too easy to fall into reflexive habits, to treat this as a normal campaign, where both sides embrace the rule of law, where both sides are dedicated to a debate based on facts and the peaceful transfer of power. But, that is not what’s happening this election year. Those bedrock tenets of our democracy are being tested in a way we haven’t seen since the Civil War. It’s a test for the candidates, for those of us in the media, and for all of us as citizens.”
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
#Letters From An American#Michael de Adder#kings#Corrupt SCOTUS#Opus Dei SCOTUS#Shelby County v. Holder#voting rights#democracy#anti-democratic#religion#William Barr#Unitary Executive#divine rights of Kings
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Also, while I'm on my disk horse... I'm starting to think that we need a penalty for Nuisance Legislation in the same way that we have a penalty for Nuisance Lawsuits.
There are plenty of conservative legislators (at both the state and federal level) who have made a career out of grandstanding. They sponsor bills that have no chance of becoming law and/or are blatantly unconstitutional on their face. Bills like "let's put the Ten Commandments in every classroom in the state", or "let's legally affirm that Marriage Is Between A Man And A Woman, despite the current state of the law and our constituents' public opinion".
They know that these bills are unlikely to get passed, and they know that these bills are legally suspect on their face. Some of them probably believe that they can get them challenged in the Supreme Court and win.
But I think most of them, especially at the federal level, are fully aware that this legislation will never, ever, ever go through. They're not trying to make legislation that is good for their constituents, or even good for their campaign donors and lobbyists. They're running a grift.
They're going back home and telling their base, "hey, we tried to give you what you wanted, but those mean libruls in the House/Senate/executive branch/courts struck it down! Because they're bad and evil and want to turn the frogs gay! Never mind that the bill we tried to pass through was unconstitutional, unethical, and designed to fail so you'd get angry about it. Give us more money and we'll keep Fighting For You! UwU"
And then their base gives them more money, and they get re-elected, and they go back and do it again. And again. And occasionally, one of these garbage bills gets signed into law, and everyone suffers for six months to a year before a court finally shuts it down for being blatantly wrong.
.... In court, a plaintiff who keeps suing people for dumb, bad reasons eventually gets kicked out of the judicial system for wasting court resources. If you keep putting together lawsuits that have no chance of winning, that are based on shitty legal theory, or that are clearly designed to punish a person despite them being found innocent over and over? The court will smack you down for it.
Depending on who you are and what you're doing, you might get ruled against and have to pay damages, you might get banned from suing in that court again, or you might get disbarred.
It's not a perfect system-- a homeless plaintiff acting as their own lawyer is going to get knocked down for frivolous lawsuits a lot earlier than a billionaire with a legal team-- but there is a system in place to keep this shit from happening. It's cold comfort if you're on the other side of a frivolous lawsuit, sure, but it's more than nothing.
Normally, I'm not a fan of saying "there oughta be a law..." because any law is written in blood. If you make a law, you have to enforce it, and any time you enforce it, you run the risk of killing someone.
But I'm starting to think we need a similar system for legislation.
In particular, I'm thinking if you sponsor more than one blatantly unconstitutional, poorly-written, legally dubious bill per year, you should have to justify yourself to a bipartisan committee of some kind and should suffer consequences if you keep doing it.
Because otherwise, you're going to keep getting people who are not trying to legislate; they're trying to grift.
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A long time ago (2008) I lived in California while getting my MFA, and of course Prop 8 happened. It was ugly.
For those who don't know. Prop 8 was put on the California ballot after same-sex marriage was legalized, to illegalize it again. It was worded weirdly and up to the election and after was a really ugly time, and when it passed it was like a pall was cast over the queer population. Everyone was cheering Obama's win, but Prop 8 had passed, too, and that made it hard to celebrate.
Ultimately the CA Supreme Court struck it down because it created two classes of queer people: those who were able to marry in the time it was legal, and those who could not marry, which was unconstitutional.
At the time I was regularly attending a church service for the queer population, which I'd become aware of at Pride that year, and post-election it was just us grieving and coming together to support each other. We spent the entire election season huddling together for fear it would pass, and engaging in activism and protest.
A married lesbian couple I knew woke up (pre-election) to find that their lawn was covered in Yes on 8 signs, and they tore them down and set the pile on fire in the center of their driveway (the signs were plastic but they were too upset to care; their kids woke up to see the sea of hate on their own lawn). One of their neighbors had done it, and another neighbor let them know who it was.
There were regularly picketing Yes on 8 protestors (including kids) at nearly every corner, encouraged by the LDS to do so, all weekend long, like a constant caravan of hate.
I visited a friend/classmate who was Mormon (but not a bigot) and her roommate came home and started ranting about a car that had a sign that Yes on 8 was bigotry. It was my car and I said so, and she turned beet red and retreated to her room. She didn't have the courage to keep talking shit TO me.
The Catholic church removed a popular priest from the church just off campus because he said Prop 8 did not jive with the universal love of Christ. He became a symbol of the movement against Prop 8.
I hand-made a sign for a protest against Prop 8 he headed after it passed that read "Marriage is about love, not genitalia" and I made it into the local paper (with my back turned).
On my way to said protest, I was wearing a pride flag shirt that asked "When can I vote on YOUR marriage?" and I stopped at a Starbucks for caffeine. A large man decided to stand super close and growl "Never" in an attempt to intimidate me, then left in fury when I laughed at him. He was not the first person to try to intimidate me, nor was he the last.
Sometimes I wonder if young queer folks know just how bad it was a mere 15 years ago, and if they understand how terrifying it is to hear the rhetoric by bigots who intend to strip our rights or worse.
I don't know why I'm remembering this just now. Maybe because Trump won Iowa and we all know his plans.
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They got married.
Well, not in Korea, not yet, but they registered and got married in the USA and now they are a proud married couple.
I’m so happy for them, and just like them I do hope that one day they can not only celebrate their marriage in Korea but also make it official there too, meaning they will be acknowledged legally as a married couple with everything that comes of that.
I don’t know just how aware all my readers are, but if they are not acknowledged by law as a married couple or even de facto, they don’t have the basic right to even make a medical decision for their loved one in case of emergency, not legally recognized as their spouse can mean not being allowed to be by their side during a medical emergency, sit by their side in intensive care. Not being legally acknowledged as their spouse means no financial legal rights that a heterosexual couple, either married or de facto, have. It’s inheritance, it’s rights to their spouse’s pension etc. If the law does not recognize them they are non existent as far as these rights are considered.
There are many countries that have either recognized and allowed same sex marriages or have recognized same sex couples legally (some of these countries religiously based do not have the option for civil marriage but accept a same sex couples marriage out side of their borders as marriage, thus accepting them as a married couple even if they did not get married in that country to start with, hence giving them full rights under the law, they also recognized long term couples, including same sex couples as de facto married meaning full rights as a married couple under the law - a kind of compromise).
Korea isn’t there yet, and it doesn’t look, under the current administration, that they will be getting there anytime soon.
But, there are some little rays of hope.
One of them being the progress made of late with the SK military ‘sodomy law’. A couple of court rulings and the latest report by The NHRC to the constitutional court calling the law unconstitutional. Hopefully the Constitutional court will finally deem this act as unconstitutional and bring an end to it.
On the other hand there is a whole battle going on with trying to pass a basic anti discrimination law, and it’s scary to see just how much opposition there is to this law.
The ugliness coming out in this battle for a law that will protect not only those of the LGBTQ+ community, but every single resident of the country, including women, including other minorities in SK, including the law makers themselves, is beyond imagination.
It’s been branded as a law that will turn Korean children gay, god forbid, a law that will cause the spread of HIV (which btw has become more of a heterosexual problem now days and that is whole discussion for another day, but ignorance is ignorance, what can I say?).
And this last one is the kicker (as if the other two aren’t bad enough), it’s claimed that passing this law will bring to the collapse of Korean society, Not discriminating against parts of your society will do that, no. Granting all parts of your society the basic rights as a human being, that will bring down your society. UGH.
So no, not too optimistic as to the chances of this law passing anytime soon.
I really don’t know how I got here. This started out as me being happy and optimistic.
I guess what I’m saying is I’m so happy for them. I’m happy they could do that, go to the USA and get that legal recognition they so wanted (again, not yet recognized legally in SK sadly). I just wish that someday, sooner rather than later, they will be able to get that same recognition in SK.
I wish them all the happiness in the world. They are the cutest couple ever (well, apart from JM and JK that is, lol), and deserve all the happiness in the world.
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Try
Revolution doesn't just happen overnight. It can happen spontaneously, yes, but it builds and builds and builds until it can no longer be contained. The need for freedom, liberty and justice will become a force so massive that the government in Washington DC will not be able to ignore or write off as "tiktok kid activism". It is up to every single one of us to contribute to the revolution.
Oppression is not natural. Freedom is the nature of all life forms, not just us humans. While some animals such as the dog or cat can definitely survive better in a house under control of a human, I've never seen a dog more happy then when you let them outside. To control people, whether it be because of some dumb book written 2,000 years ago (by man not God) or because of some obsession with maintaining "order" is an act of narcissism. To think that one has a right to control what living breathing beings can do with their lives is a blatant act of claiming that they are gods over humanity.
Remember this: It is not natural to be controlled. If you are spiritual or super religious, God (or gods) gave us free will for a reason. If you are an atheist, then free will comes from nature. Governments try to control people because they are afraid. President Thomas Jefferson himself coined the phrase: When the government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. The government tries to control people because like most men, they fear losing their power and wealth. They seek to control to preserve their power. That's why the government will commit atrocities like opening fire on striking workers like the Kent State shootings against students protesting the Vietnam War or the 1927 Columbine Mine massacre against coal miners simply striking for better wages and benefits. It is inhumane to control people. Sure, government has to exist. I'm not an anarchist, but the amount of control the US government has exhibited since 1981 is unconstitutional and must be opposed.
Reform is not the answer. Reform is just a bandage on a wound that needs stitches. Change is needed but change through reform is like a drug addict thinking he's kicking drugs by simply only doing drugs once a week. True Revolution happens when the opium is completely thrown out and destroyed. In order for true change to happen, it must come through sudden revolution. We must uphaul the system and like a phoenix, rebirth this country from its ashes.
It does sometime seem like it's impossible. "What can I do? I'm just one person and the US government has the military." Remember this, we outnumber them. The US military has 1,328,000+ active servicemen, with 800,000+ reserve while the US population is 334,914,895 (2023 concenus). Ordinary peasants took down the Czar's Armies and ruled Russia for 74 years. In many revolutions, those were in the military sided with the people, such as the French and Russian Revolutions. Hell, a vast number of those who swore an allegiance to King George III took off their redcoats and pledged their lives to the cause of the American Revolution. When enough soldiers see what is happening, they will dissent and swell our ranks. The British Empire was the most powerful military in the world at that time and we won, though we would've lost without France's assistance so don't get arrogant.
I know revolution seems impossible especially with all the propaganda that Fox News, CNN, MSNBC etc pop out everyday. Remember the Soviets and the Nazis shoved propaganda throughout their empires and both fell, people in both nations rose up against the far-left communism and far-right fascism. The British government often used propaganda, including religious propaganda, to ensure that their American subjects should be loyal to the King and yet we've been an indepenet country since 1783. The Russian government under Putin commands obedience and tells its people tremendous lies about its illegal war in Ukraine and yet millions of Russian people protest him. The Israelis claim that anyone who opposes Israel or its actions (genocide) against Palestinians in Gaza is Anti-Semitic and yet people all around the world, including here in the US, protest Israel.
It's also quite possible that multiple revolutions must happen in order for the big one to come about. The Soviet Union didn't come about because of one revolution in 1917 but of two. The people rose up against the Czar in February of 1917 only for sadly the extremist Bolsheviks to conquer Russia in the October Revolution of 1917. Our own American Revolution took over 10 years to ignite, starting with the British Parliament passing the Stamp Act in 1765 to the firing of shots at Lexington and Concord in 1775. The American Revolution occurred across thirteen colonies. So really, the American Revolution was about multiple revolutions exploding throughout the Colonies that united to form the United States of America.
This is not a shot at conservatism or leftism. Both the Democrat and Republican Parties have taken rights from Americans, from the Republicans passing the Patriot Act (essentially gutting the Bill of Rights) after 9/11 and Democrats not allowing that proto-fascist act to expire (it's set to expire every five years but the government under both parties keep delaying the expiration). This is an outline on how revolution must happen. Both parties have allowed the wealthy elite to plunder this nation and steal from the working class to ensure they have all the money and power (one is definitely more guilty than the other but I digress) .
Remember this: Revolutions happen because the people demand it. When enough people have tried method after method of chaning the system peacefully, what other alternative do they have left other than Revolution? Every protest, whether it's on the left or right, puts out in front of the people the failures of the government. Millions of women are to this day protesting that the supreme court has stripped them of their constitutional right to bodily autonomy. Millions of people around the world are in the streets protesting the genocidal act of Putin's Russia and Netenyahu's Israel.
Maybe it is hopeless. Maybe I'm just wasting time on this post. Most likely no one will see it. But I have to try. I would rather die on my feet then live on my knees. If I could do this fight against tyranny all over again, the only thing I'd change is the year it happened. Never give up. Even if you don't live to see the results. Even if you fail. Even if the government comes to your house to take you away. Your example will inspire others to rise up. We have to try. Change doesn't happen because we bowed our heads and went along to get along. And sometimes you have to out yourself. Sometimes you have to call out your alcoholic racist uncle at Thanksgiving. Even if your family turns against you.
Remember this: revolutions don't happen because of one person. George Washington didn't defeat the British at Yorktown all himself. It took the courage, bravery and sacrifice of thousands of brave American men and women. Even children, as proven by then 13 year old Andrew Jackson. Napoleon didn't start the French revolution. Vladimir Lenin didn't start the Russian Revolution. It's up to all of us. To lead by example.
We will sacrifice, we will struggle but ultimately we will triumph.
Let me end this with the manifesto of Karis Nemik, a character from the Andor series (a really good Star Wars series despite my preference for Star Wars Legends). Consider these words and take them to heart:
There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy.
Remember this. Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they've already enlisted in the cause.
Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward. And then remember this. The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear.
Remember that. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empire's authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege.
Remember this: Try.
#Try#Freedom#Revolution#Socialism#Capitalism#Communism#Fascism#Oppresion#Conservatism#Leftism#Leftist#Uprising#palestinian uprising#Andor#Syndicalism#liberty#american revolution#second american revolution#conservatives#american civil war#civil war#feminism#pizza
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This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
A state judge in Montana gave climate activists a decisive win on Monday when she ruled that the state’s support of fossil fuels violates their constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment.
District Court judge Kathy Seeley struck down as unconstitutional a state policy barring consideration of the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions in fossil fuel permitting. Her ruling establishes legal protection against broad harms caused by climate change and enshrines a state right to a world free from those harms, creating a potential foundation for future lawsuits across the country.
“We are heard!” Kian Tanner, one of the 16 youth plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said in a statement. He grew up near the Flathead River and testified to watching wildfires come ever closer to his home each year. “Frankly, the elation and joy in my heart is overwhelming in the best way. We set the precedent not only for the United States, but for the world.”
The case was the first of its kind to reach trial. Seeley’s decision adds to a growing number of rulings that say governments have a responsibility to protect citizens from climate change. The timing of her verdict—coinciding with major wildfires and heat waves that have taken lives worldwide—couldn’t be more poignant, said Julia Olson. She is the chief legal counsel and executive director of Our Children’s Trust, which has brought similar suits in all 50 states.
“As fires rage in the West, fueled by fossil fuel pollution, today’s ruling in Montana is a game changer that marks a turning point in this generation’s efforts to save the planet from the devastating effects of human-caused climate chaos,” she said.
Climate change has profoundly shaped the lives of the 16 plaintiffs, through both psychological distress and the damage it has wrought to their homes and cultural heritage. Each has spoken eloquently about smelling wildfire smoke on the wind and feeling trapped by the increasingly oppressive heat of summer on the high plains. All of them have railed against state politicians for not only failing to mitigate the problem, but actively making it worse.
In their lawsuit, they argued that the state’s enthusiastic support of fossil fuels violates their inalienable right, enshrined in Article II of Montana’s constitution, to a “clean and healthful environment.” They also accused the governor and other officials of neglecting their constitutional duty to preserve and protect the environment for future generations. “Although defendants know that the youth plaintiffs are living under dangerous climatic conditions that create an unreasonable risk of harm, they continue to act affirmatively to exacerbate the climate crisis,” the suit states.
For two weeks in June, 12 of the plaintiffs poured their hearts out in a courtroom in Missoula. Their testimony was corroborated by a panel of climate scientists, childhood psychologists, and other experts who spoke to the impacts of a warming world and how it affects young people.
“I know that climate change is a global issue, but Montana needs to take responsibility for our part,” 22-year-old Rikki Held, the lead plaintiff, testified. “You can’t just blow it off and do nothing about it.”
Seeley agreed. “Every additional ton of greenhouse gas emissions exacerbates Plaintiffs’ injuries and risks locking in irreversible climate injuries,” she wrote in her 108-page ruling. “Plaintiffs’ injuries will grow increasingly severe and irreversible without science-based actions to address climate change.”
The road to the trial was rocky, with the state attempting to throw the case out multiple times. During the trial the state attempted what some termed a “nothing-to-see-here” approach, bringing free-market economists and climate deniers to the fore to convince the judge that permitting and fossil fuel regulation wasn’t really the state’s responsibility. The state also argued that even if it were to stop emitting CO2 entirely, it would have little impact.
Seeley didn’t buy that.
“Montana’s [greenhouse gas] emissions and climate change have been proven to be a substantial factor in causing climate impacts to Montana’s environment and harm and injury to the youth plaintiffs,” she wrote in her ruling. The judge also noted that the state did not offer a compelling argument for why it didn’t consider the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions when making permitting decisions. She also noted that renewable power is “technically feasible and economically beneficial.”
Emily Flower, spokesperson for state attorney general Austin Knudsen, decried the ruling as “absurd” and called the trial a “taxpayer-funded publicity stunt.” She said the office plans to appeal.
“Montanans can’t be blamed for changing the climate,” Flower said, according to the Associated Press. “Their same legal theory has been thrown out of federal court and courts in more than a dozen states. It should have been here as well, but they found an ideological judge who bent over backward to allow the case to move forward and earn herself a spot in their next documentary.”
Attorneys who participated in the trial say that the verdict is notable because it puts the blame for inaction squarely on the shoulders of state officials, indicating they have the power to change their approach.
Seeley “recognized that the only obstacles to a transition to a clean energy economy in Montana are political,” said Melissa Hornbein, an attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center. “They’re not technological.”
Hornbein hopes the verdict shapes similar suits focusing on governmental responsibility for addressing climate change. Our Children’s Trust also represents 14 young plaintiffs in Hawaii in a similar case, Nawahine v. the Hawaii Department of Transportation, which is now slated to move forward next year.
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Boy, gig companies sure hire disastrously sloppy lawyers
In the run-up to the 2020 election, “gig work” companies, led by Uber and Lyft, firehosed $225m to back the passage of Proposition 22, a law that would permanently allow them to misclassify employees as contractors, not entitled to benefits or workplace protections.
More than a decade after Citizens United — the Supreme Court ruling that paved the way for unlimited dark money in US election spending — it’s sometimes hard to get a sense of scale. Is $225m a lot of money to spend on a California ballot initiative?
Uh, yeah. Uber and Lyft’s spending on that single question exceeded nearly all the spending on all the 2020 state electoral campaigns, combined. It was a big flex, and it paid off. After the passage of Prop 22, companies like Pavilions mass-fired their union staff and replaced them with gig workers:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/05/manorialism-feudalism-cycle/#prop22
Given both the high stakes and the high pricetag for Prop 22, you’d think that the lawyers who drafted it would have been very careful to ensure that the law itself was valid. I mean, it’d be hilarious if the companies spent $225m bigfooting their way to a custom-wrought California law only to have it invalidated because it violated the state constitution, you know?
Here’s something hilarious: Prop 22 was unconstitutional. It took so much power away from the legislature that a state court found that it required a constitutional amendment to be valid. The California Superior court voided Prop 22 in its entirety and $225m in dark money went up in smoke. You love to see it.
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-08-20/prop-22-unconstitutional
It wasn’t supposed to be that way. Prop 22 was supposed to be model legislation, like the laws banning municipal broadband that ALEC pushed through statehouses across the country. In fact, Lyft, Uber and their allies had already committed $100m to dark-money campaign spending for a similar provision in Massachusetts for the 2022 elections.
You’ll never guess what happened next. With just months to go until the election, the Massachusetts surpreme court unanimously ruled that the worker misclassification initiative is so badly drafted that it can’t appear on the ballot.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-14/massachusetts-justices-strike-down-gig-backed-ballot-initiative
The ballot initiative included a provision that let the gig companies off the hook for car wrecks, no matter how culpable they were, but the summary provided to voters failed to mention this. The court found the summary so misleading that they tore the whole thing up.
This is a baffling error. Look, I’m as gaffe-prone as anyone, but I’m not a lawyer. In 20 years of advocacy work, I’ve always worked in teams with lawyers who serve as the red team for my weird ideas, gaming out all the ways that they can go wrong.
Like, one time when I beat a giant corporation that tried sued me on idiotic grounds and lost big, I wanted to use the phrase “not even wrong” to describe their outlandish legal theory. The lawyer involved made me take that out: “You don’t want anything that anyone can interpret as your admission that they’re right, even if you mean the opposite.” She was right. I was wrong. I took it out.
When the stakes are higher — for example, in legislative work, or high stake litigation, or treaty drafting — whole teams of lawyers go over every word, getting into fierce arguments about whether or how it could be adversely interpreted. The idea is to make something drum-tight, because it would suck to get through all of this and then lose due to an unforced error in the drafting.
I can’t even imagine how you go ahead with a $100m ballot initiative campaign without gaming out the way it’ll play in court. I mean, sure, your boss is going to freak out if you fairly describe the ballot initiative’s lopsided language in the voter guide summary, but the lawyer’s job is to explain that failing to do so could wreck the whole thing.
It’s possible — likely, even — that the leadership in gig work companies are so high on their own supply that they can’t conceive of losing, and ignore their legal advice. It’s also possible that these lawyers have caught the profession’s most debilitating disease: compulsive bullying, which manifests in competitive sadism:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/10/duke-sucks/#devils
Seen in this light, lawyers’ addiction to sadistic overreach when representing massive, bullying clients is a feature, not a bug. Time and again, it produces operatic comeuppances that save us all from giant companies’ nefarious plans.
Remember “Free Basics?” This was Facebook’s bid to make “Facebook” synonymous with “internet” for people living in poor countries in the Global South. The idea was that Facebook would bribe the local ISPs and wireless companies to impose data-caps, but exempt Facebook and the internet services it favored.
The company claimed that this was just an act of charity, a bid to make the internet universally accessible to poor people. Critics claimed that it was “poor internet for poor people.” The evidence backed the critics — zero-rating programs like Internet Basics didn’t (and don’t) improve internet access:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/02/countries-zero-rating-have-more-expensive-wireless-broadband-countries-without-it
Facebook fought an especially vicious campaign in India, where local activists with deep technological backgrounds led a nationwide uprising against Free Basics, prompting the national telecoms regulator to put out a consultation paper seeking public comment on whether to allow the program.
Facebook cooked up a seemingly unbeatable plan: whenever people in India opened Facebook on their devices, they were prompted to send a form-letter to the telecoms regulator supporting Facebook’s position. It worked: Facebook got millions of comments in its favor.
But it failed. Due to sloppy drafting, Facebook’s boilerplate didn’t actually address any of the points raised in the consultation paper. The regulator threw them all out, saying “Consultation papers are not opinion polls. We expect the stakeholders who participate to provide meaningful input.”
https://web.archive.org/web/20160102182135/https://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/consultation-paper-is-not-an-opinion-poll-trai-chairman/article8050019.ece
Facebook could have drafted comments that were responsive to the consultation paper, but it didn’t. Instead, it astroturfed millions of people into sending puffed-up, nonresponsive nonsense to the regulator. Somehow, amidst all the comma-fucking that characterizes a normal legal drafting process, Facebook managed to blow it.
It’s been six years since the Facebook Free Basics debacle, and I still don’t know how it is that they managed to squander such a giant advantage. I mean, I’m glad they did, but just as with Prop 22 and the Massachusetts ballot question, I can’t figure out how the world’s most powerful companies keep slipping on their own banana-peels.
[Image ID: A rusted wreck with Massachusetts custom plates reading 'DERP' and an Uber bumper-decal.]
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What I really don't understand about housing is that it's treated like a business and not something humans need to live. It's inhumane.
The US constitution says we have the right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. You know what's required for those things? A place to live. Homelessness in itself is unconstitutional. And don't we all agree that everyone deserves a place to sleep? Don't we all agree that we don't want people on the streets?
Banks and landlords should not decide whether or not someone has a place to live.
Let's think about it this way.
This is the reality for a lot of people.
You owe money to your past landlord? Even if they lied about the circumstances? Sorry, no one can rent to you now because that money is more important than your & your kids' safety and going homeless. They "can't help it", they need their "business" to prosper, not you. They're not gonna get their money paid back any faster – in fact, now you have MORE expenses & it'll be a slower process.
Maybe the company that owns the place is worth millions and they won't be hurting at all without the money. Doesn't matter. You're going to be punished since you couldn't help make them richer. Their lives matter more than yours, sorry.
Now you're either couch hopping, living out of your car, or out on the streets. You have to find a way to pay back your landlord instead of saving up for another place. Now let's say you're on disability like I am, or in between jobs. You're having trouble getting someone to hire you or getting on any assistance because you no longer have a mailing address. You only have a few hundred bucks per MONTH to survive off of.
Maybe your landlord agrees to do a payment plan, but now you have to choose between having food & your other bills paid for or paying them a minimum $150-$200 a month, that they want delivered to them in person every time. Now you assume someone will rent to you because you have proof that you're paying it off, but you're losing money on application fees because they still won't work with you. You have to somehow come up with the money for the applications, a down payment, and first month's rent while also paying back your previous landlord in the off chance that someone MIGHT rent to you after you've already blown $300 on application fees.
Your landlord made the decision to make you homeless.
"Well they have to add that stuff to their rental record!" that record is only kept to work with other landlords to make sure that no one can have a place to live unless they're profitable. They're contributing to that system.
"But landlords need a way to make money too!" Here's a tip: find a real job. Owning something and receiving passive income from it is not a job. Your tenants are busting their asses at their real jobs just for you to take 1/3 of their income so you can live comfortably knowing that other people's labor is paying your bills.
EVERY HUMAN DESERVES THE RIGHT TO A PLACE TO LIVE.
Landlords are a class of people that should NOT EXIST. There is no reason we need a person that stands between us and owning a house – just to tell us what we can and can't do in the place we're paying for.
"But I can't afford a mortgage and need to rent!"
You're already paying off your landlord's mortgage and MORE. The housing market is the way it is because landlords drove the prices up. And this is where it's the bank's fault as well. You can't save up for a down payment because you're paying off someone else's mortgage; you can't get approved for a home loan because with the price of housing you have to be able to qualify for a larger amount than before, or maybe you happened to have one or two unexpected life events that lowered your credit score. The banks decide that their profit is more important than human lives, too.
The vast majority of us are only a couple of missed paychecks away from homelessness.
We can't keep complaining about homelessness while ignoring the root cause of the issue.
#.bdo#homelessness#im real salty about having to live w my mom#bc the property managers claimed they had to replace the entire carpet for my cat peeing in one spot#i owe 1100#i lost my housing assistance because of it#ALAB
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I was always pretty good at social studies/ government/ civics, etc., but the one thing that ALWAYS tripped me up was when we would talk about the three branches of government and it would ask, "Which branch of the government carries out the law?"
If you asked me to describe the functions of the three branches of government, I could do it in detail (legislative makes laws, judicial interprets and evaluates laws, executive enforces/ can veto laws), but I had no idea (and still kind of don't) what the phrase "carry out" means in terms of government. Every time I got that question on a quiz, I would just try to blindly guess at whether the meaning of "carry out" is closer to making, evaluating, or enforcing law, and I still had to google it right now to find out what it means.
In my mind, if you ask me to define the phrase "carry out," other than physically putting laws in a bag and taking them somewhere, I would say, "do the thing as planned." Like, if someone said, "Carry out the protocols we discussed" in a spy movie, I know they'd mean, "Do the thing we talked about." IDEALLY all three branches of government would be doing SOMETHING. Or if you interpret it to mean 'finishing," there's very little "finishing" anything involved in government-- our government/ civics/ social studies classes would say that our government system is a living and breathing process based on a living document.
And who really 'finishes' a law? Thanks to the process of checks and balances, it can be any of the three branches. If I didn't overthink so much, I could be like, "Carries out means finishes, President signs bill into law at the end of the process, that means the Executive Branch carries out law." That's probably what they expected us to think. But me being me, I'm always like, "Well, the Supreme Court can rule that a law is unconstitutional, and the Legislative Branch can override a veto, so the President doesn't really get the last word unless the other two branches agree, so none of these make sense to me.
"I wish there was some way for me to explain as a kid, "I really understand the subject matter, I just can't wrap my head around this vague verb!" Anyone else have a relatively easy question or topic that you just ALWAYS overthink and screw up?
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Tribal sovereignty in America is under attack.
This isn't one of my regular posts, but it is something that still matters an extreme amount to me. Here is a link to a petition you can sign which I will also be including at the end of this post.
The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), a crucial piece of legislation designed to safeguard the well-being and cultural identity of Native American children, is facing a significant threat in the ongoing Supreme Court case of Brackeen v. Haaland. This case is not just an attack on the ICWA, but tribal sovereignty itself.
The ICWA, enacted in 1978, recognizes the inherent rights of Native American tribes to maintain their families and communities. It provides a framework for ensuring that Native American children involved in child custody proceedings receive the utmost protection while preserving their cultural heritage and connections to their tribes. Child welfare organizations consistently describe ICWA's protections against child removal as "the gold standard" for all children, and medical, scientific, and social science research all shows that ICWA's placement preferences promote and protect the best interests of Native children.
The case began when a white Evangelical Christian family felt a "spiritual calling" to adopt native children. The ICWA would favor family and tribe members over them in being able to adopt multiple native children, which is why they are trying to have the act ruled unconstitutional.
If the ICWA is ruled unconstitutional, Indian law (laws protecting Native Americans, their tribes, and their rights) will be threatened. "Indian law is based on the principle that tribes are sovereign nations that have a government-to-government relationship with the United States," according to Beth Wright, member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe and staff attorney at the Native American Rights Fund. "If this is reduced to a racial classification, all rights that tribes and tribal people enjoy are also subject to attack. They're attacking tribal sovereignty at its core."
Not only is this just horrible, but “one of those firms [representing the white family] doesn’t just represent companies like Chevron,” Rebecca Nagle, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, said. “They work for every corner of the industry: pipelines, trade organizations, lobbying groups ― you name it. And that firm is now representing the Brackeens in their big federal lawsuit.”
Sign the petition.
Resources below ↓
The Native American Rights Fund: Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) (Haaland v. Brackeen)
NPR on the implications of the case against ICWA
Dear Justice Alito: What You Don’t Know About Us
Partnership with Native Americans: ICWA Fact Sheet
America's Original Sin Continues: The Fight Over Native Children
The National Indian Child Welfare Association
The Child Welfare Information Gateway: Indian Child Welfare Act
"Brackeen v. Haaland" and the Indian Child Welfare Act: Understanding the 1978 Legislation and the 2022 SCOTUS Case
Challenging the Indian Child Welfare Act and Tribal Sovereignty
#indigenous#native#native american#human rights#petition#sign the petition#first nations#mutual aid#direct action#protest#decolonize#decolonisation#colonization#colonial history#colonizers#anti colonialism#racism#social issues#native culture#indigenous rights#landback#tribal rights#protect icwa#save icwa#icwa#indian child welfare act#cultural genocide
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Seoul Tries To Cancel Pride ... Again
I know, I know. There is BTS media floating around that I have not yet covered, but Y'ALL THIS IS IMPORTANT OKAY
So basically what happened is, the Seoul Queer Culture Festival, every year, has to declare its use of public property to have the Pride parade. X tells me that "everyone knew" it was gonna be a problem this year, as it has been in the past, because of the new government.
And sure enough that's what happened. The City of Seoul took the declaration (not permission, because groups don't need permission) to committee and, surprise surprise, the committee said "Nope, don't think so, LGBTQ+ people, not in our backyard, utensils".
Last year the Culture Festival's org tried apply for nonprofit status and that was denied, and that under the Moon administration, so it's no shock that a country who voted for Yoon would also have mega-asshole level conservatives in City government. They do. Something about how they might sell explicit baked goods.
The cookies in question, possibly.
This week, US President Joe Biden is visiting Seoul. Which is led by Mayor Oh Se-hoon of the People Power Party (President Yoon's party). Mayor Oh is actively trying to block Seoul Pride and also says - out lout - that LGBTQ+ equality is unconstitutional. Maybe Biden will take notice, or not.
And what does this have to do with BTS? Only everything, if you believe (as I do) that at least three members are absolutely not heterosexual and possibly as many as ALL of them are part of the community. Certainly they're all allies, who want equality for their own queer loved ones, if not for themselves.
Love is love. Just let people live, omg, as I am wont to say, but also what kind of bullshit is getting perpetrated behind the scenes on our guys, who are under immense pressure right now? Not that they could even GO to Pride but wouldn't it be great if they knew it was happening, that change was coming?
Some brave members of the community are protesting one at a time in front of City Hall pending Pride on June 1. Kev doesn't usually get to go (his job, closets, etc) but X does, and he's planning to be there this year whether it's "canceled" or not.
Swing some chickens for my favorite homosexuals, willya? They're being oppressed. The hate is real, in Korea. And the next time anyone comes at you about the Jeon-Parks being in the closet, you can show them exactly WHY.
#i'm so ticked off that i'm molting#lgbts#lgbtq+#lgbtq+ equality#seoul#seoul pride#queer culture festival#repression#oppression#korean culture#president yoon#queer rights#trans rights#jikook#this is what an enforced closet looks like#kev's boyfie x#my bffs cant have nice things because president yoon hates the queers#the straights are not okay in korea
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