Scotland and the UK

Government exists but to maintain special privilege and property rights; it coerces man into submission and therefore robs him of dignity, self-respect, and life.

Emma Goldman, "A New Declaration of Independence"

Emma stone by Yorgos Lanthimos for W magazine, 2019

Ansev Demirhan at Ms. Magazine:

The anti-feminist Independent Women’s Voice/Forum (IWF/V) has officially launched its 2024 election agenda. An internal fundraising document provided to True North Research shows one way it is putting that agenda into action is by continuing to try and blunt the horrific repercussions of the Supreme Court overturning Roe, while deploying their veneer of independence to sway centrist and independent voters.  The document details a two-phase plan and a budget that is almost twice the amount it proposed in its 2022 midterm fundraising documents, as reported by The Washington Post. Despite claiming to take no position on abortion, IWF/V launched a PR campaign ahead of the 2022 midterms—the first election cycle following the Dobbs decision—which included advertising trying to convince younger women that reproductive rights were less important than other issues the group listed. 

One way IWF/V’s agenda for this election cycle stands out from its previous midterm action plan is its emphasis on reassuring women that access to contraception is not in jeopardy—despite key voices in the anti-abortion movement making it clear otherwise. The group is a member of Project 2025, a MAGA blueprint that includes detailed plans to attack contraception access, promote the rhythm method, deploy the CDC to increase “abortion surveillance” and data collection and much more.  IWF/V also has a long history of undermining contraception access, though the group has a talking point about supporting over-the-counter availability of the contraception pill.

IWF/V’s “Hope Agenda”

Independent Women’s Forum (IWF), a 501(c)(3), and its 501(c)(4) the Independent Women’s Voice (IWV), are pay-to-play groups that use their “independent” branding to laud right-wing politicians along with the legislative wish lists of some for-profit corporations, such as Juul. Based on its most recent tax filings, the groups reported a combined $8.1 million in revenue. IWF/V has received money from the Koch network, Leonard Leo’s network and funds from secretive donor-advised funds, like the Bradley Impact Fund, the National Christian Charitable Foundation and DonorsTrust. 

[...]

But Americans are intimately familiar with the political reality of abortion access in this country. 

The majority of states have abortion restrictions or bans in place that make it difficult for pregnant Americans to receive essential healthcare. 

The U.S. Supreme Court continues to be deployed as a tool to potentially limit abortion access nationally (in the mifepristone and EMTALA cases). 

Over 64,000 unwanted pregnancies have been caused by rape in states with total abortion bans that were implemented post-Roe. 

Abortions increased in 2023, the first full calendar year following the Dobbs decision, because people continue to need and seek abortions despite the fractured abortion healthcare landscape unleashed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Americans are also faced with the political reality that the anti-abortion movement is coming for contraception. That is one reason why IWF/V honing in on messaging around birth control access as something that is safeguarded and supported by the GOP is so troubling. The group itself has a history of opposing contraception access. 

[...]

Anti-trans messaging is also central to IWF/V’s plan to ‘get out the vote’ in 2024, according to its “Hope Agenda.” IWF also attacked the Right to Contraception Act, using anti-trans scaremongering to falsely suggest that this legislation would “require doctors to sterilize minors.” This is not the only anti-trans tactic the group has used to detract from the devastating impact of the overturn of Roe.  IWF/V is also behind the anti-trans “model” bill the “Women’s Bill of Rights,” which enumerates no rights other than the right to discriminate against transgender people, especially transgender women. This model bill has ostensibly been used by so-called conservative or independent policymakers and groups that allegedly care more about American women, but IWF/V itself has repeatedly attacked pro-woman policies. IWF/V has opposed the Equal Rights Amendment,  federal paid leave, federally subsidized child care, the Violence Against Women Act and Title IX—though it recently backed a watered-down version of VAWA and for decades it sided with men’s sports teams against Title IX spending on women’s sports until it deployed anti-trans messaging about women’s sports.

Ms. Magazine exposes the right-wing Koch/Leonard Leo-funded antifeminist group Independent Women's Forum and their sister groups Independent Women's Voice and Independent Women’s Law Center. These groups claim to be pro-women, but in reality, the policies they support-- such as anti-trans "Women's Bill of Rights" and attacks on abortion access, contraception, and in vitro fertilization-- are harmful to women.

Emma Roberts | Valentino gown | Film Independent Spirit Awards | 2024

Actresses at the Film Independent Spirit Awards.

Photos by Getty Images

A New Declaration of Independence, by Emma Goldman

When, in the course of human development, existing institutions prove inadequate to the needs of man, when they serve merely to enslave, rob, and oppress mankind, the people have the eternal right to rebel against, and overthrow, these institutions.

The mere fact that these forces — inimical to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — are legalized by statute laws, sanctified by divine rights, and enforced by political power, in no way justifies their continued existence.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all human beings, irrespective of race, color, or sex, are born with the equal right to share at the table of life; that to secure this right, there must be established among men economic, social, and political freedom; we hold further that government exists but to maintain special privilege and property rights; that it coerces man into submission and therefore robs him of dignity, self-respect, and life.

The history of the American kings of capital and authority is the history of repeated crimes, injustice, oppression, outrage, and abuse, all aiming at the suppression of individual liberties and the exploitation of the people. A vast country, rich enough to supply all her children with all possible comforts, and insure well-being to all, is in the hands of a few, while the nameless millions are at the mercy of ruthless wealth gatherers, unscrupulous lawmakers, and corrupt politicians. Sturdy sons of America are forced to tramp the country in a fruitless search for bread, and many of her daughters are driven into the street, while thousands of tender children are daily sacrificed on the altar of Mammon. The reign of these kings is holding mankind in slavery, perpetuating poverty and disease, maintaining crime and corruption; it is fettering the spirit of liberty, throttling the voice of justice, and degrading and oppressing humanity. It is engaged in continual war and slaughter, devastating the country and destroying the best and finest qualities of man; it nurtures superstition and ignorance, sows prejudice and strife, and turns the human family into a camp of Ishmaelites.

We, therefore, the liberty-loving men and women, realizing the great injustice and brutality of this state of affairs, earnestly and boldly do hereby declare, That each and every individual is and ought to be free to own himself and to enjoy the full fruit of his labor; that man is absolved from all allegiance to the kings of authority and capital; that he has, by the very fact of his being, free access to the land and all means of production, and entire liberty of disposing of the fruits of his efforts; that each and every individual has the unquestionable and unabridgable right of free and voluntary association with other equally sovereign individuals for economic, political, social, and all other purposes, and that to achieve this end man must emancipate himself from the sacredness of property, the respect for man-made law, the fear of the Church, the cowardice of public opinion, the stupid arrogance of national, racial, religious, and sex superiority, and from the narrow puritanical conception of human life. And for the support of this Declaration, and with a firm reliance on the harmonious blending of man’s social and individual tendencies, the lovers of liberty joyfully consecrate their uncompromising devotion, their energy and intelligence, their solidarity and their lives.

This ‘Declaration’ was written at the request of a certain newspaper, which subsequently refused to publish it, though the article was already in composition.

Title: A New Declaration of Independence Author: Emma Goldman Topics: freedom, introductory Date: 1909 Source: Retrieved on March 15th, 2009 from sunsite.berkeley.edu. [RevoltLib.com]], retrieved on July 4, 2020. Notes: Published in Mother Earth, Vol. IV, no. 5, July 1909.

Wiztober Day 2: Skydancer - KOOKABURRAS!

Emma's three Kookaburras, Baxter, Scout, and Fern, playing together. They're creatures together :3 I love them. Brothers.

man, birds r hard to draw XD

Statue of Liberty, New York USA by Batistini Gaston on Flickr.

* * * *

“The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus:

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. “Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

David Bromwich parses Lazarus’ message:

Like other late Romantics, she believed in republican freedom and the religion of the heart; they went together naturally and might be known to each other under the name of “sympathy.” … Americans, the poem says, must never forget what it is to be weak and comfortless. For me to know, through the workings of sympathy, that “heroic forms” have passed through a crisis like mine, can be a liberation in itself.

Emma roberts independent spirit awards 2024

god ash was such a creep. a whole adult dating a teenager? even worse he was her BOSS

Emma Roberts attends the 2024 Film independent Spirit Awards

I have many nelson family thoughts like why did we never dwell on them more. I mean without them we wouldn't have the show at all

Emma, puertas oscuras AKA Emma, Dark Doors (1974), Directed by José Ramón Larraz.