#mother of the disability rights movement
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She just wanted to make things better for everyone, her brother said.
She was called a “true force of nature”, a “rolling warrior” who never gave up, continuously fighting for what she believed in and inspiring everyone around her.
When she died this past week on March 4 at the age of 75, she was remembered as a major American civil rights hero.
She “was born in 1947 [in Philadelphia] to two parents who had separately fled Nazi Germany as children in the 1930s,” according to Philissa Cramer, writing for JTA. “All of her grandparents and countless other family members were murdered in the Holocaust.”
At the age of 18 months, she contracted polio, an infection so severe, she spent several months in an iron lung and lost her ability to walk, according to her brother.
She said she believed it was her parents’ experience that led them to reject doctors’ advice to have their daughter institutionalized after she lost the use of her legs, according to Cramer.
“They came from a country where families got separated, some children sent away, others taken from their families by the authorities and never returned — all part of a campaign of systematic dehumanization and murder,” she wrote in her memoir.
“The experience of fleeing Nazi Germany left the parents and their children with a passion.,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
“We truly believe,” her brother would say "that discrimination is wrong in any way, shape or form."
Susan Mizner, Director of the Disability Rights Program and Kendall Ciesemier, Host of At Liberty and Senior Executive Producer of Multimedia, American Civil Liberties Union, wrote:
“When [she] was born, the fight for civil rights didn’t include people with disabilities. Disabled people faced rampant discrimination and segregation in American life. Disabled people experienced high rates of unemployment and were taught in separate schools. Changing these institutions wasn’t just a calling for [her], it was a necessity. At a young age, [she] learned that the world did not see her the way she saw herself, and she spent the rest of her life committed to changing that.”
“The first time that I really remember someone making me feel different was when I was about eight years old,” she told April Coughlin in Story Corps. “My friend and I were going to the candy store. She was pushing my wheelchair, and this young boy came over to me and said, ‘Are you sick?’
“I wished the ground would open and swallow me up. It made me realize that people saw me differently than I saw myself.
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NPR correspondent Joseph Shapiro wrote:
“When she was 5 and it was time to go to kindergarten, her parents . . . went to register her but were turned away at the nearby public school.
“It would create a fire hazard, the principal said, to let a girl in a wheelchair go to the school.
“Her mother . . . fought to end the isolating and erratic hours — just a few hours a week — of home instruction and eventually [she] was allowed into a school building.”
“Kids with disabilities were considered a hardship, economically and socially," she would later write.
She spent the rest of her life fighting, first to get access for herself and then for others, her brother recalled.
“Years later, [she] graduated from college where she studied to become a teacher. Being a speech therapist was one of the few professions, she was told, open to a young woman in a wheelchair,” continued Shapiro.
“But again, she was deemed a fire hazard. This time, in 1970, New York City's Board of Education ruled that a teacher in a wheelchair would be unable to evacuate children during an emergency and denied her a teaching license.
“Having learned from her mother's advocacy, [she] sued. She got support in the local press. "You Can Be President, Not Teacher, with Polio," ran one newspaper story, noting the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt.”
She said she wanted to see “feisty disabled people change the world”.
She did.
She “broke down barriers for disabled children and educators in New York City schools, protested until federal legislation protecting people with disabilities was passed and advised multiple presidential administrations on disability issues,” wrote Cramer.
Her tireless advocacy led to her being widely considered "the mother of the disability rights movement," the American Association of People with Disabilities wrote in a press release.
Her name is Judith Heumann.
This is a new story for the Jon S. Randal Peace Page. The Peace Page focuses on past and present stories seldom told of lives forgotten, ignored, or dismissed. The stories are gathered from writers, journalists, and historians to share awareness and foster understanding, to bring people together. And, as such, the stories this month for Women’s History Month are never relegated to one single month - they are available all year in the Peace Page archives and on this page each week throughout the year. We encourage you to learn more about the individuals and events mentioned here and to support the writers, educators, and historians whose words we present. Thank you for being here and helping us share awareness.
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“Women have been making history for centuries; for some, this was the only choice they had. For women with disabilities in particular, it was either live the way others expected them to or fight for the lives they knew they (and all people with disabilities) deserved,” according to Melissa Young.
Judith Heumann “was perhaps most recognized in recent years from her appearance in the documentary ‘Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution’, which chronicled the forgotten history of a freewheeling summer camp called Camp Jened in upstate New York for teenagers with disabilities in the 1970s,” wrote Edwin Rios of The Guardian.
“Her experience at Camp Jened inspired a groundswell of US political activism and sparked a movement of young activists with disabilities who fought for civil rights protections at a time when they were treated like second-class citizens.”
She also wrote “Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist” and “Rolling Warrior: The Incredible, Sometimes Awkward, True Story of a Rebel Girl on Wheels Who Helped Spark a Revolution.”
Brian P.D. Hannon and Heather Hollingsworth of the Los Angeles Times wrote:
“She lobbied for legislation that eventually led to the federal Americans With Disabilities Act [and the] Individuals With Disabilities Education Act.
“Heumann also was involved in passage of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities, which was ratified in May 2008.
She helped found the Berkeley Center for Independent Living, the Independent Living Movement and the World Institute on Disability and served on the boards of several related organizations, including the American Assn. of People With Disabilities, the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, Humanity and Inclusion and the United States International Council on Disability, according to her website.
“Judy pushed the international human rights community to focus on issues facing people with disabilities when confronting the world’s challenges — whether it be war, climate change, pandemics, poverty or anything else. She ensured that disability was included in the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices and was the first disabled person to serve on the board of Human Rights Watch,” wrote Rebecca Cokley, program officer for the US Disability Rights program at the Ford Foundation and co-founder and director of the Disability Justice initiative at the Center for American Progress.
“Along with 80 activists, and with a little help from the Black Panthers, Heumann staged a sit-in for 25 days, the longest sit-in at a federal building to date,” according to writer Lester Fabian Brathwaite. “As a result, regulations were passed enforcing the Rehabilitation Act.”
“It also served as a demonstrable show of force by a community previously framed by society and the media as weak, incapable and dependent. They were anything but that,” wrote Cokley.
“She would later serve as an advisor on disability rights to the Clinton administration, the World Bank, and the Obama administration,” added Brathwaite.
~~~~~
In NPR’s article:
Shantha Rau Barriga, disability rights director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement Heumman was a “true force of nature”.
“She was a giant in the human rights movement and led with such integrity,” she added. “This loss will be felt far and wide but what a legacy she leaves behind.”
“Beyond all of the policy-making and legal battles that she helped win and fight, she really helped make it possible for disability to not be a bad thing, to make it OK to be disabled in the world and not be regarded as a person who needs to be in a separate, special place,” the president and CEO of the American Association of People with Disabilities, Maria Town, told the Hollywood Reporter.
Heumman said, “Disability only becomes a tragedy when society fails to provide the things we need to lead our lives – job opportunities or barrier-free buildings, for example . . . It is not a tragedy to me that I’m living in a wheelchair.”
She also said, “I wanna see a feisty group of disabled people around the world…if you don’t respect yourself and if you don’t demand what you believe in for yourself, you’re not gonna get it.”
“Judy is often referred to as the mother of the disability rights movement, and for good reason. Not only did she usher forward sweeping changes for disabled people around the world, she mentored, befriended, inspired, and empowered countless disabled people who now carry on her legacy,” wrote Mizner and Ciesemier.
“Hers was one of the first voices to tell us that we matter and that we are worth fighting for. Now, we continue the fight. Judy lives on in every disabled kid who gets to join their classmates in school and every disabled adult who lives in the community, not an institution. She lives on in every disabled person who is feisty enough to pursue their dreams.”
~ jsr
May her memory be a blessing.
The Jon S. Randal Peace Page
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It is over and everything is lost. This is the refrain repeated by Armenian families as they take that final step across the border out of their home of Nagorno-Karabakh.
In just a handful of days more than 100,000 people, almost the entire Armenian population of the breakaway enclave, has fled fearing ethnic persecution at the hands of Azerbaijani forces. The world barely registered it. But this astonishing exodus has vanished a self-declared state that thousands have died fighting for and ended a decades-old bloody chapter of history.
On Saturday, along that dusty mountain road to neighbouring Armenia, a few remaining people limp to safety after enduring days in transit.
Among them is the Tsovinar family who appear bundled in a hatchback littered with bullet holes, with seven relatives crushed in the back. Hasratyan, 48, the mother, crumbles into tears as she tries to make sense of her last 48 hours. The thought she cannot banish is that from this moment forward, she will never again be able to visit the grave of her brother killed in a previous bout of fighting.
“He is buried in our village which is now controlled by Azerbaijan. We can never go back,” the mother-of-three says, as her teenage girls sob quietly beside her.
“We have lost our home, and our homeland. It is an erasing of a people. The world kept silent and handed us over”.
She is interrupted by several ambulances racing in the opposite direction towards Nagorno-Karabakh’s main city of Stepanakert, or Khankendi, as it is known by the Azerbaijani forces that now control the streets. Their job is to fetch the few remaining Karabakh Armenians who want to leave and have yet to make it out.
“Those left are the poorest who have no cars, the disabled and elderly who can’t move easily,” a first responder calls at us through the window. “Then we’re told that’s it.”
As the world focused on the United Nations General Assembly, the war in Ukraine and, in the UK, the felling of an iconic Sycamore tree, a decades old war has reignited here unnoticed.
It ultimately heralded the end of Nagorno-Karabakh, a breakaway Armenian region, that is internationally recognised as being part of Azerbaijan but for several decades has enjoyed de facto independence. It has triggered the largest movement of people in the South Caucasus since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Azerbaijan has vehemently denied instigating ethnic cleansing and has promised to protect Armenians as it works to reintegrate the enclave.
But in the border town of Goris, surrounded by the chaotic arrival of hundreds of refugees, Armenia’s infrastructure minister says Yerevan was now struggling to work out what to do with tens of thousands of displaced and desperate people.
“Simply put this is a modern ethnic cleansing that has been permitted through the guilty silence of the world,” minister Gnel Sanosyan tells The Independent, as four new busses of fleeing families arrive behind him.
“This is a global shame, a shame for the world. We need the international community to step up and step up now.”
The divisions in this part of the world have their roots in centuries-old conflict but the latest iterations of bitter bloodshed erupted during the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Karabakh Armenians, who are in the majority in the enclave, demanded the right to autonomy over the 4,400 square kilometre rolling mountainous region that has its own history and dialect. In the early 1990s they won a bloody war that uprooted Azerbaijanis, building a de facto state that wasn’t internationally unrecognised.
That is until in 2020. Azerbaijan, backed by Turkey, launched a military offensive and took back swathes of territory in a six-week conflict that killed thousands of soldiers and civilians. Russia, which originally supported Armenia but in recent years has grown into a colder ally, brokered a fragile truce and deployed peacekeepers.
But Moscow failed to stop Baku in December, enforcing a 10-month blockade on Nagorno-Karabakh, strangling food, fuel, electricity and water supplies. Then, the international community stood by as Azerbaijan launched a 24-hour military blitz that proved too much for Armenian separatist forces. Outgunned, outnumbered and weakened by the blockade, they agreed to lay down their weapons.
For 30 years the Karabakh authorities had survived pressure from international powerhouses to give up statehood or at least downgrade their aspirations for Nagorno-Karabakh. For 30 years peace plans brokered by countries across the world were tabled and shelved.
And then in a week all hope vanished and the self-declared government agreed to dissolve.
Fearing further shelling and then violent reprisals, as news broke several Karabakh officials including former ministers and separatist commanders, had been arrested by Azerbaijani security forces, people flooded over the border.
At the political level there are discussions about “reintegration” and “peace” but with so few left in Nagorno-Karabakh any process would now be futile.
And so now, sleeping in tents on the floors of hotels, restaurants and sometimes the streets of border towns, shellshocked families, with a handful of belongings, are trying to piece their lives together.
Among them is Vardan Tadevosyan, Nagorno-Karabakh’s minister of health until the government was effectively dissolved on Thursday. He spent the night camping on the floor of a hotel, and carries only the clothes he is wearing. Exhausted he says he had “no idea what the future brings”.
“For 25 years I have built a rehabilitation centre for people with physical disabilities I had to leave it all behind. You don’t know how many people are calling me for support,” he says as his phone ringed incessantly in the background throughout the interview.
“We all left everything behind. I am very depressed,” he repeats, swallowing the sentence with a sigh.
Next to him Artemis, 58, a kindergarten coordinator who has spent 30 years in Steparankert, says the real problems were going to start in the coming weeks when the refugees outstay their temporary accommodation.
“The Azerbaijanis said they want to integrate Nagorno-Karabakh but how do you blockade a people for 10 months and then launch a military operation and then ask them to integrate?” she asks, as she prepares for a new leg of the journey to the Armenian capital where she hopes to find shelter.
“The blockade was part of the ethnic cleansing. This is the only way to get people to flee the land they love. There is no humanity left in the world.”
Back in the central square of Goris, where families pick through piles of donated clothes and blankets and aid organisations hand out food, the loudest question is: what next?
Armenian officials are busy registering families and sending them to shelters in different corners of the country. But there are unanswered queries about long-term accommodation, work and schooling.
“I can’t really think about it, it hurts too much,” says Hasratyan’s eldest daughter Lilet, 16, trembling in the sunlight as the family starts the registration process.
“All I can say to the world is please speak about this and think about us. We are humans, people made of blood, like you and we need your help.”
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Not that long ago, I was pro choice.
I didn’t agree with abortion, but I believed that it was best for them to remain safe, legal, and rare.
What changed my mind was two things. First, the more I learned about abortion, the more I realized that it was neither safe nor rare. The other thing that really helped change my mind was the attitudes of people who openly support abortion.
I see pro choice advocates cry about the dangers of pregnancy all the time, but they never stop to question if abortion poses any risks to the mother.
The truth is that it abortion is risky enough that deaths caused by abortion complications are simply listed in maternal mortality rates alongside everything else.
Now they’ll say they want women to have “informed consent”, and that is a good thing, but let’s be honest here: If something doesn’t make abortion sound like an easy instant fix, it’ll actively be suppressed by the same people who claim to want people to make informed choices.
You don’t even need to dig deep to find examples of pro choice advocates trying to suppress information — after all, which group claims that ultrasounds are propaganda?
Of course, if you really want to get down to it, look at what they’re saying about the poor or the disabled. In their eyes, it’s better for them to die as a fetus than know pain as a human. Note my choice of words.
Not only is that blatant eugenics, but it’s a denial of their inherent humanity, and it’s not even a stretch to say that this same attitude is being reflected in other ways — Canada’s MAiD program treats the elderly and disabled with the same lack of empathy, for example.
Put bluntly, human rights belong to all humans, and when I realized how desperately the pro choice movement wants to believe otherwise, I couldn’t stand being part of it anymore.
And neither should you.
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One Moment of Doubt
Series Masterlist
Warnings: dark elements, some sexiness in this.
Note: this is what yall asked for, remember that.
Please leave me some feedback either in a reblog or an ask! Likes are always appreciated as well. You know I love yall and hell yeah, you love Professor Steve.
Jensen’s fingertips send ripples radiating through you. His warmth surrounds you, swathing you in a soft heat, slowly building as your own hands explore his body. You hook your thumbs in the top of his jeans as you cradle him between your legs, writhing as his tongue delves into your mouth.
His right hand comes up behind your head, steadying you as he trails down your cheek and chin. He kisses your neck as you moan. You flutter up his back, feeling his bare skin as his chest presses flush to you. His nails dig into your side as he nips along your throat.
His embrace is intoxication, so much so that you forget every doubt you had. You know that you’re ready, that he’s the one. You want him so bad.
He parts, panting as you feel along his stomach, the muscles tensing. You puff thinly up at him as he hovers just above you. You feel his excitement against you.
“You sure, honey?” He breathes.
You want to say yes, you’re about to say yes, but you can’t. Honey. Why did he have to call you that? Why do you have to think of… him? The epithet has Professor Rogers’ voice echoing in your head.
You drag your hand up and push against his chest, nearly sobbing, “sorry, Jake, I… I need a moment,” you gasp out.
You feel his reluctance, a moment of hesitation, but he pushes off of you and sits up. He swings his legs down over the edge of your narrow bed. He rubs the hair across his chest, trailing up to scratch his jawline.
“I’m sorry,” you quiver, “I don’t… I… that was good, I’m just… nervous.”
“Yeah, I get it,” he drops his shoulders.
“Please, I just… I need to splash some water on my face, that’s all.”
“Sure,” he mutters.
You don’t blame him. You stand up and fix your bra, popping your tits back into the cups as you poke your arms through the straps. He huffs and a roiling guilt fills your veins.
You go to the sink in the corner, keeping your back to him as you crank on the faucet. You put your hands under the cold water and lean in. You hear a subtle buzz but ignore it as you close your eyes and throw the water across your face.
Another short vibration. Probably Inez or your mother. You turn off the tap and reach for the hand towel nearby. You sense movement as you turn around and Jake frowns as he pulls his gaze away from your phone, forgotten during your romp. It rests just against the bed frame and lights up.
Jake stands, not looking at you as he scoops his shirt off the floor.
“You know, I think I should go back to mine–”
“What? Aren’t you staying the night?”
He shakes his head and pulls on the tee, “I don’t think it’s a good idea. There’s no room.”
“Huh? But–”
“I’m not a fucking idiot,” he sneers. You’ve never heard him like that, “read up on your messages, maybe that guy can give you what you want.”
“What?” You rush over to him, “who— what guy?”
He rolls his eyes and nudges past you, snatching up your phone. He curls his lip as he reads the screen, ‘Thinking of you dresses as Mrs. Claus for Christmas. Have you been naughty or nice?’
You grimace and recoil, “who– I don’t know what that means, Jensen.”
“Sure,” he avoids your gaze as he turns the phone to you. You can tell he’s hurt, “I… I don’t wanna be your second choice. Give him a call, maybe he can get the chastity belt off–”
“Hey, Jen, that’s not–”
“Nice? No, neither is texting other guys.”
“I told you, I’m not–”
He turns the phone to him as the screen brightens. Another message. He swipes up, the lock already disabled by the short glimpse of your face in the lens. His cheek strains and he throws the phone away from him like fire.
“What the fuck!?” He explodes, startling you, “you have to be kidding me? Him?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re fucking professor? That fucking creep?”
“Please, Jensen, no–”
“He sent you a special Christmas gift, enjoy,” he shoves you out of the way and stomps by you, “I can’t fucking believe I thought you were really into me–”
“Jen, I am. I don’t know what he said but–”
“Fuck off,” he grabs his jacket, his bag, and his boots, “I don’t want to hear it. I should’ve known. The way you lost that TA thing so fast, how he was always where you are– what am I to you? A fucking joke? A game?”
“Not at all, I swear, he’s crazy. He won’t leave me alone but I told him too. I don’t– he’s been following me and I’m so scared, Jen–”
“I don’t believe a word,” he pulls open the door, “I’m tired of your lies. Empty promises. I should’ve known…” he stops and looks back at you, eyes glistening as he fixes his glasses, “I could never get a girl like you.”
He stalks off and you run after him, forgetting about your lack of shirt. You grab onto his arm as he gets to the front door and he shrugs you off. You try again and he elbows you away.
“Don’t. Don’t touch me,” he points in your face, “go get that pervert to do it. If he can even get it up.”
You wince and pull back. You clasp your hands together, your heart sinking. You want to tell him everything, make him hear the truth, but you don’t know if it’s worth it. The things he’s saying, the way he’s acting…that he would take Rogers’ word over yours.
“I never lied to you,” you croak, “so go. If you don’t want to listen, fucking go.”
You spin and storm away, clutching your chest with one hand as you flick away tears. You sniffle and stumble back into your room. The front door slams and you nearly keel over.
How could everything have flipped so fast? You go to the bed and retrieve your phone from where it landed. You turn the screen up and nearly scream. There on the screen is a photo of Professor Rogers, naked, with only a corner of a bedsheet covering his pelvis.
You blocked his number. How could he–
If Jensen had looked closer he would see that there was no conversation, that the contact was unknown. Those details fade to the edges of the messages and the photo. You almost can’t blame Jake for buying Professor Rogers’ lies; it seems to be his specialt
#steve rogers#dark steve rogers#dark!steve rogers#steve rogers x reader#jake jensen#jake jensen x reader#the losers#mcu#marvel#captain america#avengers#au#series#drabble#one#professor au#college au#professor!steve
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Iowa's starvation strategy
I don’t really buy that “the cruelty is the point.” I’m a materialist. Money talks, bullshit walks. When billionaires fund unimaginably cruel policies, I think the cruelty is a tactic, a way to get the turkeys to vote for Christmas. After all, policies that grow the fortune of the 1% at the expense of the rest of us have a natural 99% disapproval rating.
If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/19/whats-wrong-with-iowa/#replicable-cruelty
So when some monstrous new law or policy comes down the pike, it’s best understood as a way of getting frightened, angry — and often hateful — people to vote for policies that will actively harm them, by claiming that they will harm others — brown and Black people, women, queers, and the “undeserving” poor.
Pro-oligarch policies don’t win democratic support — but policies that inflict harm a ginned-up group of enemies might. Oligarchs need frightened, hateful people to vote for policies that will secure and expand the power of the rich. Cruelty is the tactic. Power is the strategy. The point isn’t cruelty, it’s power:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/25/roe-v-wade-v-abortion/#no-i-in-uterus
But that doesn’t change the fact that the policies are cruel indeed. Take Iowa, whose billionaire-backed far-right legislature is on a tear, a killing spree that includes active collaboration with rapists, through a law that denies abortion care to survivors of rape and forces them to bear and care for their rapists’ babies:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/16/us/politics/iowa-kamala-harris-abortion.html
The forced birth movement is part of the wider far-right tactic of standing up for imaginary children (e.g. “the unborn,” fictional victims of Hollywood pedo cabals), and utterly abandons real children: poor kids who can’t afford school lunches, kids in cages, kids victimized by youth pastors, kids forced into child labor, etc.
So Iowa isn’t just a forced birth state, it’s a state where children are now to be starved, literally. The state legislature has just authorized an $18m project to kick people off of SNAP (aka food stamps). 270,000 people in Iowa rely on SNAP: elderly people, disabled people, and parents who can’t feed their kids.
Writing in the Washington Post, Kyle Swenson profiles some of these Iowans, like an elderly woman who visited Lisa Spitler’s food pantry for help and said that state officials had told her that she was only eligible for $23/month in assistance:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/04/16/iowa-snap-restrictions-food-stamps/
That’s because Iowa governor KimReynolds signed a bill cutting the additional SNAP aid — federally funded, and free to the state taxpayers of Iowa — that had been made available during the lockdown. Since then, food pantries have been left to paper over the cracks in the system, as Iowans begin to starve.
Before the pandemic, Spitler’s food pantry saw 30 new families a month. Now it’s 100 — and growing. Many of these families have been kicked off of SNAP because they failed to complete useless and confusing paperwork, or did so but missed the short deadlines now imposed by the state. For example, people with permanent disabilities and elderly people who no longer work must continuously file new paperwork confirming that their income hasn’t changed. Their income never changes.
SNAP recipients often work, borrow from relations, and visit food pantries, and still can’t make ends meet, like Amy Cunningham, a 31 year old mother of four in Charlton. She works at a Subway, has tapped her relatives for all they can afford, and relies on her $594/month in SNAP to keep her kids from going hungry. She missed her notice of an annual review and was kicked off the program. Getting kicked off took an instant. Getting reinstated took a starving eternity.
Iowa has a budget surplus of $1.91B. This doesn’t stop ghouls like Iowa House speaker Pat Grassley (a born-rich nepobaby whose grandpa is Senator Chuck Grassley) from claiming that the cuts were a necessity: “[SNAP is] growing within the budget, and are putting pressure on us being able to fund other priorities.”
Grassley’s caucus passed legislation on Jan 30 to kick people off of SNAP if their combined assets, including their work vehicle, total to more than $15,000. SNAP recipients will be subject to invasive means-testing and verification, which will raise the cost of administering SNAP from $2.2m to $18m. Anyone who gets flagged by the system has 10 days to respond or they’ll be kicked off of SNAP.
The state GOP justifies this by claiming that SNAP has an “error rate” of 11.81%. But that “error rate” includes people who were kicked off SNAP erroneously, a circumstance that is much more common than fraud, which is almost nonexistent in SNAP programs. Iowa’s error rate is in line with the national average.
Iowa’s pro-starvation law was authored by a conservative dark-money “think tank” based in Florida: the Opportunity Solutions Project, the lobbying arm of Foundation For Government Accountability, run by Tarren Bragdon, a Maine politician with a knack for getting money from the Koch Network and the DeVos family for projects that punish, humiliate and kill marginalized people. The Iowa bill mirrors provisions passed in Kentucky, Kansas, Wisconsin and elsewhere — and goes beyond them.
The law was wildly unpopular, but it passed anyway. It’s part of the GOP’s push for massive increases in government spending and bureaucracy — but only when those increases go to punishing poor people, policing poor people, jailing poor people, and spying on poor people. It’s truly amazing that the “party of small government” would increase bureaucratic spending to administer SNAP by 800% — and do it with a straight face.
In his essay “The Utopia of Rules,” David Graeber (Rest in Power) described this pathology: just a couple decades ago, the right told us that our biggest threat was Soviet expansion, which would end the “American way of life” and replace it with a dismal world where you spent endless hours filling in pointless forms, endured hunger and substandard housing, and shopped at identical stores that all carried the same goods:
https://memex.craphound.com/2015/02/02/david-graebers-the-utopia-of-rules-on-technology-stupidity-and-the-secret-joys-of-bureaucracy/
A society that can’t feed, house and educate its residents is a failed state. America’s inability to do politics without giving corporations a fat and undeserved share is immiserating an ever-larger share of its people. Federally, SNAP is under huge stress, thanks to the “public-private partnership” at the root of a badly needed “digital overhaul” of the program.
Writing for The American Prospect, Luke Goldstein describes how the USDA changed SNAP rules to let people pay with SNAP for groceries ordered online, as a way to deal with the growing problem of food deserts in poor and rural communities:
https://prospect.org/health/2023-04-19-retail-surveils-food-stamp-users/
It’s a good idea — in theory. But it was sabotaged from the start: first, the proposed rule was altered to ban paying for delivery costs with SNAP, meaning that anyone who ordered food online would have to use scarce cash reserves to pay delivery fees. Then, the USDA declined to negotiate discounts on behalf of the 40 million SNAP users. Finally, the SNAP ecommerce rules don’t include any privacy protections, which will be a bonanza for shadowy data-brokers, who’ll mine SNAP recipients’ data to create marketing lists for scammers, predatory lenders, and other bottom-feeder:
https://www.democraticmedia.org/sites/default/files/field/public-files/2020/cdd_snap_report_ff.pdf
The GOP’s best weapon in this war is statistical illiteracy. While racist, sexist and queerphobic policies mean that marginalized people are more likely than white people to be poor, America’s large population of white people — including elderly white people who are the immovable core of the GOP base — means that policies that target poor people inevitably inflict vast harms on the GOP’s most devoted followers.
Getting these turkeys to vote for Christmas is a sound investment for the ultra-rich, who claim a larger share of the American pie every year. The rich may or may not be racist, or sexist, or queerphobic — some of them surely are — but the reason they pour money into campaigns to stoke divisions among working people isn’t because they get off on hatred. The hatred is a tactic. The cruelty is a tactic. The strategic goal is wealth and power.
Tomorrow (Apr 21), I’m speaking in Chicago at the Stigler Center’s Antitrust and Competition Conference. This weekend (Apr 22/23), I’m at the LA Times Festival of Books.
[Image ID: The Iowa state-house. On the right side of the steps is an engraved drawing of Oliver Twist, holding out his porridge bowl. On the left side is the cook, denying him an extra portion. Peeking out from behind the dome is a business-man in a suit with a dollar-sign-emblazoned money-bag for a head.]
Image:
Iqkotze (modified)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Iowa_State_Capitol_April_2010.jpg
CC BY 3.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en
#pluralistic#ecommerce#Foundation for Government Accountability#fga#iowa#florida#ebt#david graeber#utopia of rules#big government#usda#surveillance#cruelty#gop#devos#starvation#food stamps#snap#koch network#Tarren Bragdon#state policy network
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Loving the people in your family, mind you, is not at odds with a commitment to family abolition. Quite the reverse. I will hazard a definition of love: to love a person is to struggle for their autonomy as well as for their immersion in care, insofar such abundance is possible in a world choked by capital. If this is true, then restricting the number of mothers (of whatever gender) to whom a child has access, on the basis that I am the “real” mother, is not necessarily a form of love worthy of the name. Perchance, when you were very young (assuming you grew up in a nuclear household), you quietly noticed the oppressiveness of the function assigned to whoever was the mother in your home. You sensed her loneliness. You felt a twinge of solidarity. In my experience, children often “get” this better than most: when you love someone, it simply makes no sense to endorse a social technology that isolates them, privatizes their lifeworld, arbitrarily assigns their dwelling-place, class, and very identity in law, and drastically circumscribes their sphere of intimate, interdependent ties. But I am getting ahead of myself.
Most family abolitionists love their families. It is true of course that it is usually the people who have had bad experiences within a social system, and who feel things besides love for that system, who initiate movements to overthrow it. But loving one’s family in spite of a “hard childhood” is pretty typical of the would-be family abolitionist. She may, for instance, sense in her gut that she and the members of her family simply aren’t good for each other, while also loving them, wishing them joy, and knowing full well that there are few or no available alternatives in this world when it comes to providing much-needed care for everybody in question. Frankly, loving one’s family can be a problem for anyone. It might put extra weights around the ankles of a domestic battery survivor seeking to escape (especially given the economic punishments imposed by capitalism on those who flee commodified housing). It might hinder a trans or disabled child from claiming medical care. It might dissuade someone from getting an abortion. Right now, few would deny that reproductive rights—let alone justice—are everywhere systematically denied to populations. Austerity policies purposively render proletarian baby-making crushingly unaffordable, even for two or three or four adults working together, let alone one. Housework is sexed, racialized, and (except in the houses of the rich) unwaged. It is unsurprising, in these global conditions, that large numbers of humans do not or cannot love their families. Reasons range from simple incompatibility to various phobias, ableism, sexual violence, and neglect.
— Sophie Lewis, Abolish the Family. Verso, 2022.
#I wish I had a page number to cite! I don't because my copy of this book is a lousy epub#lol#Sophie Lewis#family abolition
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Tucker Carlson's interview with misogynist, human trafficker and rapist Andrew Tate has been endorsed by Elon Musk, the man who brought Tate among many other reactionary and far-right commentators back to Twitter when he purchased the platform.
There is nothing spontaneous about Musk doing this, and if you're surprised then you're a fool. This has never been about upholding free speech - hence why you've never seen any of these men promote interesting left-wing thinkers.
The ‘SJW’/‘woke’/progressive Left, as unbearably annoying as so many of them are, just keep getting proven right.
They said Nick Fuentes and Kanye were Holocaust-denying anti-semites.
They said Jordan Peterson supported rapists, and didn't believe women should have legal equality.
They said Ben Shapiro and Matt Walsh would use the gender critical movement to blame gay people and women for any and all degeneracies.
They said Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk's recent ‘free speech’ moves were about repositioning themselves so that they could more effectively elevate the voices of overt extremists.
Again and again, their accusations are ageing like fine wine. The reactionary right’s mask is well and fully off.
Andrew Tate, Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Joe Rogan, Konstantin Kissin, Paul Joseph Watson, Ian Miles Cheong, Andy Ngo, Michael Malice, Elijah Schaffer, Zuby, Milo Yionnopoulous, Tommy Robinson, Nick Fuentes, Kanye West, Donald Trump… obviously some of these men could dislike each other, I can't imagine Shapiro and Fuentes at the same house party.
But their ideal societies don't look too different. None of these mens’ do. Because any racial, religious or ethnic prejudices they have against each other will come second to their common-ground.
The organised reaction against this brand of progressivism that has rapidly come to monopolise every sector of public life in the last 10 years, is well and truly underway. Musk, Carlson and Tate have given us the sign. And while I pretty heavily dislike the current ‘woke’ progressive ideology (and have a lot of questions about its top-down cultural spread), I'm scared of these guys way more. And if you're anything but a straight man who doesn’t care about any demographic besides straight men, you should be too.
The reason I say ‘straight men’ and not ‘straight white men’ is because, come on, the reactionary right is more racially diverse than most left-wing groups at this point. 😂😂 White nationalists the world over have bent the knee to a mixed-race man who admitted moving to an Eastern European country because of their more lax laws on sexual assault, and in turn, the ease he would have in exploiting the local women in the country’s already active sex-trafficking trade.
White nationalists (whose role in the reactionary right cannot be discarded any more, after Trump and Kanye had a personal dinner with Nick Fuentes) feel more of an affiliation with a non-white, human trafficking violent rapist, despite evidence of his crimes having been public for a while now, than they do with his WHITE victims.
Jordan Peterson, whose daughter has revolved her entire public image around him, who works with and for him, and whose lingerie photographs were retweeted by him, made a dogwhistle in May about women having their right to vote retracted.
Examples of men devaluing the contributions and rights of the women in their families, communities and wider societies are withstanding the test of time, over and over again, because no matter where in the world they are, and no matter what tensions the different religions, cultures, ethnicities and races of men have with each other, there are traits that unite them all. Misogyny is the most obvious one.
The men of these diverse, far-reaching societies, in many ways feel far more of a kinship to each other, than they do to any woman, girl, gay person, disabled person, mother, child, or any other demographic.
The pendulum always swings back, and now that we know these men have got the owner of the world's biggest social media platform on their side, that is a major sign it could be coming soon. Be on guard and look after each other gyns ❤️
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Within the disability rights community, Heumann was known for fostering and encouraging future generations of leaders, particularly younger disabled women. The 19th interviewed five of Heumann’s friends and mentees about her legacy and impact. Read more: https://19thnews.org/2023/03/remembering-judy-heumann-disability-rights-policy-movement/
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We've lost a major, major disability rights and human rights activist. Rest in power, Judith.
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There are thankfully only a handful of people who swear this is a conservative, Christian show but it's interesting to me considering how negatively the show depicts religion.
S1 - There aren't any direct references to religion but subtle hints. It's implied Hawkins is a typical middle class suburban neighborhood. It's 1983, Reagan was president, and there are hints of the towns Christianity through the bullies. When Will goes missing there are several comments that make it clear that the people in this town aren't surprised. The middle school bully makes a comment that he got "killed by some other queer" and says his father was talking about it. Parents in the town talk about Will being gay. We see Steve's friends - the high school bullies - also making homophobic comments about Jonathan and his brother. The bad guys are homophobic. They also all lose fights this season. The show takes an anti-bullying stance and you are supposed to feel for Will and his friends here. He's a child that's gone missing and the people in the town don't seem to care much or act surprised by it.
There are a few exceptions to this - Joyce mentions to Hopper that Lonnie called Will gay slurs because she is also worried he got killed because he's gay. Hopper takes this seriously during a time when absolutely no one would have criticized him for ignoring this situation. Plenty of people were ignoring gay people dying during this time. No one would have batted an eye at a cop acting like this didn't matter. But Hopper pays attention and puts together a search team. So there are a few people in town who do care - Scott Clarke being one of them. And obviously the rest of our main cast doesn't care what people say about Will because they help to look for him all season. The good guys aren't homophobic. The good guys care about Will. And this includes all of our main characters - the people the audience are supposed to root for go against homophobia and bullying.
(Edit: I forgot to include a conversation between Joyce and Lonnie. When Will's fake body is found Lonnie wants Joyce to see a pastor and Joyce says no. Lonnie is trying to convince her she is crazy. He's the bad guy, and the first thing he wants to do to "fix" the situation is to get Joyce to talk to a pastor. It's another negative association with religion. Joyce is right here. She isn't crazy. And Lonnie isn't being comforting when he says this. He's being controlling and dismissing her feelings. It's clear from what we see of Lonnie that he's an asshole. He abused Will and Jonathan (and likely Joyce as well), he tried to turn Jonathan against his mother when Will went missing, he exploited an opportunity for money. He's not a person we are supposed to be rooting for.)
S2 - This season has a more direct reference to Christianity and it's the Reagan signs on some of the front lawns in Hawkins. This isn't surprising considering again, it's a middle class suburb. Reagan was a popular president at the time and got elected by popular vote twice despite his mishandling of the AIDS crisis and a number of other issues. His name is synonymous with the Christian right. During his time in office, the pro-life movement started to take hold, and he cut back on welfare reform and disability rights to name a few of the problematic things he did. Basically, anyone who wasn't an able-bodied, straight, white, middle class Christian male was struggling and yet he won twice. These days, his name is often compared to Trumps - they openly hated the same groups of people.
This sets the stage in a subtle way for what's going on with the main characters. Because our characters are all outcasts - gay, black, disabled, poor, etc - they are struggling to fit in to mainstream society (which makes it so ironic this show is mainstream). Even Hopper who is your typical straight, white, leading man struggles to fit in - his daughter died and he is coping with depression and substance abuse issues. Things no one discussed openly at the time and were viewed as shameful.
So we have the Reagan sign on the Wheelers front lawn. This tells me that at least Ted is a Reagan supporter which makes sense given this is an upper middle class white family. I am skeptical of Karen (or anyone else in this family) being conservative but I will get to that in S3. Dustins house has a Mondale sign so they are democrats which makes sense - Dustin has a disability and his mother is a single parent. Reagans policies would have hurt them. We don't see the politics of the other boys families but I think it's a safe bet to assume they are democrats. Will's family is poor and his mother is also a single mother. Not to mention that there are hints both Joyce and Jonathan suspect he is gay and they love Will so much, there is no way they would have ever voted for someone like Reagan. And even though the Sinclair's are also an upper middle class family they are black and while no group of people votes in the exact same way, Reagans policies were incredibly racist. Lucas mentions struggles to fit into Hawkins because he's black in the book Lucas on the Line. His family wouldn't have fit into this town even though they are financially well off. It's a mostly white town and that would have absolutely resulted in them being on the receiving end of racism on a regular basis. So even though their family technically conforms, people would not have accepted them.
So we know that our main characters don't fit in and we know Reagan represents all things Christianity and conformity. One of the main themes of the show is "forced conformity is killing the kids" a line directly stated by Eddie in S3 so more on this in a bit.
Something else happens this season that isn't a direct reference to religion but an adjacent theme and it's the conversation Nancy and Jonathan have with Murray. They are trying to figure out how to take down Hawkins lab and get people to believe them. Nancy doesn't understand at first why presenting the evidence they have won't work. And Murray says - people don't want to see whats behind the curtain. It's comforting. They like the curtain. - So they water down the story so the town will understand it in a way that they won't resist. This, I believe, is essentially what the writers are doing with this show. They are watering down that this has been a show that is anti-conformity from the beginning and there are signs of it in S1. But they know if they come right out and say that a main storyline is a queer coming-of-age story, a lot of their mainstream audience isn't going to watch. So up until now anyway, they have been subtle about it. But the audience is starting to notice something is off, especially with Mike in S4 because things aren't adding up.
S3 - It is now the summer of '85 and while there aren't direct references to Christianity, we still get some hints of conservatism. The only reference to religion is a passing comment that Dustin's new girlfriend Suzie is a Mormon. There is also a passing comment made by Max in S2 that there were Mormons at the door when Billy questions her. It was Lucas and she is trying to hide him from her racist brother, so she lies and says she was talking to Mormons. These comments are pretty neutral even though Dustin mentions Suzie's father wouldn't approve of him because he isn't Mormon himself. At the time we are seeing this moment, it's hard to tell if Dustin is telling the truth (everyone thinks he's making up his girlfriend this season.) But we see more of this in S4.
And then there is the comment by Karen Wheeler about Margaret Thatcher. She's on the phone with someone and says "I don't know Cath, maybe if I was Margaret Thatcher that'd be an another story." (this is in episode 5 by the way). A lot of people take this comment to mean Karen is conservative but I feel like it's so vague. We have absolutely no idea what the context of this conversation is or even who she is talking to (presumably one of the mothers from the pool). It's unclear if she was saying something positive or negative. We don't know what she is talking about, all we hear is her say Thatcher's name. So I feel like it's a leap to assume it was a conservative statement she was making.
I have a hard time believing that Karen is conservative (or at least not ultra conservative like a lot of Reagan supporters) for a few reasons. One of which is the contempt she has for Ted. She is frequently rolling her eyes at him or annoyed in some way and we know in canon he is the guy who represents conformity. However, Karen doesn't. This season especially she is shown to not be happy with her life. She is supposed to be a conservative housewife, but she almost has an affair and makes a few interesting comments. One of which was during her conversation with Nancy about her job. Nancy is discussing her misogynistic bosses and Karen gives her helpful and supportive advice about not fitting in. It seems personal, and from what we know about her, this sticks out. Because she seems like she is a typical housewife. I always felt like there was more to her backstory, but she seems to relate personally to Nancy's story of being an outcast at her job.
There is also her relationship with Mike. In S1, we see her trying to connect with him emotionally and get him to talk about his feelings about Will going missing. Karen is clearly someone who her kids can talk to, even if they resist sometimes. And her kids don't exactly fit in or represent conformity. She has been shown to be worried about her their safety repeatedly, Mike in particular, and we never see her trying to force them to conform in any way. And this is a thing that someone in her position would have absolutely been teaching her kids - conservative, Christian values. But we don't see anything like this or any hint of this. So I don't buy the 'she's conservative' theory. I don't think we've seen enough evidence of that. And while the Wheelers are probably a family that goes to church on Sundays, I don't get the impression this is a major influence in their lives. There is no religious paraphernalia around the house and this would have been a very common thing for a family that was pro-Reagan to do. I feel like they are passively conservative. It's the popular, normal choice and Karen and Ted are the epitome of doing things because they think they are supposed to. But this hardly makes them die hard believers.
S4 - This is where religion becomes more direct. Eddie is reading a Newsweek article about the dangers of D&D. During this time Satanic Panic was spreading. People feared for the moral values of the US during a time of extreme conservatism. Eddie clearly thinks this article is a joke. He's mocking anyone who conforms and it's clear Dustin and Mike agree. They are outcasts and they know D&D isn't dangerous. Eddie makes them feel like being different is ok.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have Jason. He's your typical straight, white, christian male and fits in perfectly. He's the star of the basketball team and has the perfect cheerleader girlfriend (at least on the surface). He's the opposite of Eddie. And he is the villain in this story. THE GUY WHO CONFORMS PERFECTLY IS THE VILLAIN. He gets progressively more insane as the season progresses. He's charismatic and he quotes the Bible to rile the town up to hunt Eddie and Hellfire club down. They are all in a panic about the murders that are happening and the cops aren't doing a great job containing things (they also don't have all the information to be fair). But by the end of the season, Jason is completely unhinged and holds Lucas up at gunpoint. He's also part of the reason why Max ended up dying. It's Satanic Panic that drives this attitude forward. People are panicking over the loss of morals and blaming that for the reason why bad things are happening. Which I think will make for an interesting lead-in next season with regard to a more openly gay storyline.
On top of this display of religious fundamentalism, we see Suzie and her family. They are Mormons and we know her father is strict with regard to religion. However the family we see is chaotic. Suzie's sister Eden mocks Suzie for basically being a goody two shoes. Eden also has no hesitation about getting high and clearly is not abiding by Mormon values. Suzie doesn't always either. If there is a cause she believes in - like helping Dustin - she only has a little bit of guilt about going against her father and her religion. Her father is pretty much a joke. He's a fumbling idiot the kids need to outsmart in order to get the information they need. It's not exactly a positive representation of religion. Suzie shows that even though her religion is important to her, she is capable of thinking for herself. She hacks Dustins school computer and a government computer (although she doesn't know all the info about what she is doing here) with little hesitation. Her religious morals aren't exactly stopping her from doing something illegal or unethical. She's a hacker above all else.
At the end of the season we see Ted - the dude who represents all things common - reacting negatively to the news about what's going on in Hawkins. The guy who represents conformity is questioning the "propaganda" the news is coming out with to describe the situation in Hawkins. He is questioning the status quo. This is meant to show how even Ted is noticing something isn't adding up about the "normal" explanation of things. Something, at this point, that the audience should be questioning especially with regard to Mike. Because if even Ted can see something is going on here, then surely the audience can too.
The series has gotten progressively more direct about its anti-conformity theme which is why it makes no sense for them to suddenly forget this in S5. This show has always been about and for outcasts. The Wheeler family is a cautionary tale that Nancy said in season 1 was so depressing. She wants the opposite of this, which is why her and Steve and their 6 kids is never going to work (there are a lot of reasons why this is never going to work). And it's also why Mike and El aren't going to be endgame. Those relationships are there to represent conformity and none of the characters in those relationships are happy. They are the expected, normal relationships. If they wanted the audience to like these relationships they would have been written more positively.
So it's funny to me when people say the show is never going to go against the status quo because they have literally been doing this from the start. It's what the entire show is about. All of the characters are outcasts. All of them. So if people are claiming to like and support them, then they need to get behind the anti-conformity theme. And if they can't do that - this show is simply not for those people and it never was.
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What is your OC passionate about?
I've seen stuff to help develop characters that's asking questions about them, eg. What do they want more than anything? What is their greatest fear? What are their dreams? etc. I've always had trouble with these for some reason. Possibly because they seem so impersonal to me, despite being directed at a person.
But I discovered something the other day. I love crossover fics, and I sometimes imagine my own OCs going into a fandom I like. Because of this, and my recent interest in Ride The Cyclone, I found a way that works better for me.
Ride The Cyclone is a musical about six teens who died in a tragic roller coaster accident. A mystical fortune-telling robot, whose name is Karnak, somehow has the ability to bring one person back to life. He takes the six teens, Ocean, Constance, Ricky, Noel, Mischa, and Jane Doe, to a sort of purgatory. In this purgatory they are to decide which one of them comes back to life.
Each character, excluding Karnak himself, sings a song about themselves so that they can judge amongst themselves who should be brought back to life. But they don't exactly sing about their actual lives, instead they sing about their passions. In the words of Karnak, "Tonight I wish to give them the chance to express not what they were perceived to be, but what they dreamt they were."
Ocean sings about what she's passionate about first: Wanting to be on top, first place, the best. She sings how she's better than everyone else. She sings how the world needs more of her, and less of others.
Noel is next. He sings about the art movement Romanticism, he is the most romantic boy in town after all. He sings about wanting to be a female hooker in post-war France. He sings how he wants to live a life of sin, to burn himself with cigarettes, to die in an alley. He wants to experience a tragic life, not just the good, but the bad.
The next to sing is Mischa. A boy from Ukraine who lost his mother to radiation poisoning. He starts by singing about his facade, a gangsta. He raps about how everything is awesome. How he's awesome. But then he breaks out of that character and sings about his true love. Of which is his fiance, Talia. He devotes himself to her wholly, singing with passion.
Next is Ricky. A boy who was mute and physically disabled his entire life. He was often avoided in life, with his parents and cats being the sole exceptions. He sings about an escapist fantasy. He sings about himself in a sci-fi world, sent to help the race of the cat people of Zolar. How he helps save their world from extinction, and becomes famous in history. He sings about being known and loved.
Then there's Jane Doe. The one unidentified victim of the Cyclone accident, she lost her head and no one knows who she was in life. She sings about how she doesn't understand. Why she couldn't remember her family, her friends, her name? Why can't anyone remember who she is. How she'll be eternally forgotten and how everything will eventually join her in death. She sings about not understanding why.
Finally is Constance. No one really knew her well, she was only known as nice. She sings how she used to think that her life sucked, and howit only got her down. Then she goes into how wonderful she realizes life is now that she's lost it. She sings about loving the life she used ashamed of.
All of them sing about their true passions. Without the fear of being judged, they're all dead anyways, no point in being self-conscious.
Then imagining my own OCs in that situation, with no consequences for expressing themselves, really helps me deep-dive into their characters. Reframing the question "What are they passionate about?" Into what would they be like in this specific situation I'm familiar with?
So I think of my OCs and what they would sing about. For specifics, I have three OCs I've been working on recently.
Left to right they are: Henry Robinson, Victor Shelley, and Mary Robert. Their story is very much about wacky mad science and creating life where there was none. Definitely inspired by the idea/story of Frankenstein.
When I imagine what they would sing about in a situation with no consequences, just a chance to truly express themselves, I understand them far more than I would with just generic questions.
I imagine Henry would sing about his triumph in creating artificial life, he'd sing about how he's going to be known all across medical history as the man to prevent death. He'd sing about how betrayed he felt when Victor abandoned him. He'd sing about how he deserves more.
Victor would sing about his grief. He would sing about how stricken he is at Henry's blatant ignorance of the laws of life and death. He'd sing mourning the lives lost in this pursuit of life. He'd sing about his care for others.
Mary would sing about her lack of understanding. How she was brought into a world, not through love, but through science. How she woke up in a lab with only Henry there to help her, a man who is only using her for his own gain. How she doesn't understand why she couldn't have stayed resting in a grave. She'd sing about her confusion.
With just the question, "What are they passionate about?" I think that Henry's passionate about science, Victor's passionate about his disregard for Henry's actions, and I wouldn't even know about Mary.
But with the question, "What would they do/sing about if there was no fear of consequences?" I come up with so much more.
And so, I ask you, dear reader. What would your character rant about, if only there were no fear of being judged?
(watch Ride The Cyclone, it's great)
#original character#oc#my oc art#creative writing#writing community#writers#writerscommunity#character writing#writblr#writer community#writer things#writer stuff#writers community#writing advice#writing#writing help#writing ideas#writing inspiration#writing inspo#writing problems#writing process#writing tips#writeblr#ocs#oc art#my ocs#drawing#writing prompt#writing stuff#writing prompts
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Quick rundown of what Project 2025 is gonna do to our rights and stuff [so far, with what i know]
Project 2025 is the extreme right's plan to turn America fully conservative, shifting the government to dictatorship and to be authoritarian.
The project will go into effect when the next republican U.S. president gets elected and steps into office.
It's gonna be a gradual change, all of this isn't going to happen overnight.
Dehumanization of People of Color, LGBTQIA+, AFABs {Assigned Female At Birth}, Disabled, and Neurodivergent people
Transgenderism and trans-related things will be criminalized, due to being "pornographic".
AFABs: Women will become less significant in society, single mothers will be forced to marry, life for women will become closer to what it was like before/during the women's rights movement.
LGBTQIA+ People: Queer marriage will most likely be outlawed/criminalized, dehumanization.
Christianity will be pushed onto people
The FBI will be dismantled, the Department of Justice will become compromised, and they're going to do something to the Department of Education to have more conservative education.
Project 2025 official website [from the heritage foundation/DARN CONSERVATIVE PROPAGANDA]: https://www.project2025.org/
#vexi's rants 💬#project 2025#politics#damn these extremist republicans are crazy#project2025#trump#2024 election#stop project 2025#conservative
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i’ve been wondering how quaritch the sullys or norm & the others scientists would react if spider actually got brain damage from the machine, like a speech problem or chronic illness and he becomes shaky, also how would spider himself deal with not being able to swing through trees safely anymore?
I've played with a disabled spider before, though I never posted it, so here's my idea of a potential symptom list; tremors/numbness in his hands, auditory processing issues, sensitivity to light and movement, focal seizures, a mild stutter, and fibromyalgia (cause we have to project a little). another thing is, he just drops sometimes, his legs give out from beneath him and he ends up in a pile on the floor, otherwise completely fine. he also gets phantom pains of the connection from the machine (from what I understand, that machine would feel like pulling your spinal cord out the base of your neck and plugging it into a car battery). Add that to his PTSD from the event, and you get one fucked up kid.
now we just apply this to his family.
for neytiri it's one hell of a wake up call; her neglect for the child allowed him to be kidnapped and he is no physically affected, seemingly for the rest of his life. spider was always weary of asking for help, but now that poses a massive threat to his wellbeing, and the mother in her aches at the realization that she did that to him, she made him feel unable to ask for help. its also really difficult to watch him go through his focal seizures after what had happened to kiri. she know's its wrong of her to want to care for him now after years of neglect, but she wants to right the wrongs. the only problem is, is the boy is terrified of her.
jake is forced to realize how spider is a lot like him, and then looking back and realizing he was always like him, he was just too blind and dumb see it the whole time. now his kid, if he even has the right to call him that (he doesn't), is struggling just to function, and he'd been the one to say 'he's a tough kid' and move on. he feels sick every time he looks at the boy, and he ends up avoiding him just like the rest of his problems.
kiri would be furious with her family for leaving spider behind when she had begged to look for him, and now because they left him with those people, he's in constant pain and fear, frustrated because he lacks control over so much of his body. she would be one of his biggest caretakers, as she knows how to go about it without being patronizing, though even then, her constant help makes him antsy.
lo'ak would feel... upset, angry, sad, frustrated. he doesn't have one word to describe it. I've talked about this with a few friends, but lo'ak, while he may not actually have these disabilities, feels very adhd and dyslexic coded in the way that his trauma and neglect/abuse present themselves within the narrative. especially in the sense that he was never accommodated for his own "shortcomings" and now he has a disabled brother and he's torn between his internalized "ableism" (loosely using that word to run with the example) that stems from pushing his needs below the surface and therefore expecting other's to do the same, and his want to take care of his best friend and brother. it's not that he wants spider to hurt himself by not hiding his disability, its just that he doesn't know what else he can do, because for so long he's tried to do exactly that with no help. it also really hurts watching spider go through his day to day life like that, especially in the early days when he and the people around him didn't fully understand what was wrong so he sorta had to suffer through trial and error.
tuk is a good kid, she probably accommodates spider best because things don't change unless they have to. she still plays with him, nags him, spends time with him all the same. she just adapts to his way of life. she doesn't treat him like he's fragile or in need of pity, and I could see her inadvertently putting him through some sense of physical therapy as she gets him up and about, using his hands, and such. she makes him smile even when he feels hopeless she's the best little sister he could ask for.
norm and max feel helpless, every time the offer to help him he shoves them off (cause they treat him like he's 5 years old and made of glass). they see him fading away, looking more and more dull by the day, they know he needs help or the injury won't heal and it will only get worse, they know they should have done more when spider went missing, but they can't do anything now and spider hates them (he doesn't he just doesn't like his brian being rummaged around in anymore then it has, he doesn't want to be fixed, he just wants to be. he's tired of everyone pitying themselves for not looking for him, tired of everyone worrying, he just wants things to be normal again.)
quaritch would hate himself, he had brought spider to ardmore, even if he hadn't known what the machine would do to him, he allowed it to happen, he let spider to get hurt, and now he tries to do everything he can to make it up to him. he took care of him in the field, pulled strings to get him under the table medical care back on base, was even willing to give him up to the sully's when it started getting really bad, cause even if they were and parents, spider would have a stable life with medical attention. he doesn't have any ill feelings towards his son or his disabilities as many would assume he would; he just wants his boy to feel ok, no matter what that means ability-wise. he's also one of the few people spider lets faun after him because he knows it's not out of guilt for abusing and neglecting him for years but for making a mistake that spider can't find within himself to blame him for.
(including the tonowari family, because I can, I love them too much to exclude them)
tonowari and ronal would throw a fit when they found out spider had been knowingly left behind with the RDA, especially because he knew what they were capable of doing firsthand, but also because he was clearly a worse father than the man he claimed to be running from (quaritch getting a redemption arc and being 'adopted' by ronal and tonowari is my favorite thing, sorry, I just can't leave it out). spider accepts treatment from her because its na'vi medicine, it feels right to seek the Great Mother's help in fixing what the Demons did to him. this quickly turns into him getting adopted, cause ronal has taken to this small human child, and tonowari just wants to see this boy happy.
ao'nung tries to throw hands with jake. that it, he treats spider like he would any other kid, any other brother, he just tries to kill jake for letting that happen to him.
tsireya is just a gentle soul to keep him company. she is a rock in the storm, always calm and caring, always asking permission to care for him, never assuming he wants her help. she holds him steady when the world around him is chaos.
now for spider himself? he feels even more useless and like a freak then before. he feels weak for being so screwed up by what he only lets himself think of as 'a flashy spinning machine' as if it wasn't created to break him. he would hate having attention on him because why should it have taken being tortured to receive this sort of attention? was being a kid not enough, he just has to suffer first? pair that with the fact that he is so self sacrificial and quick to defend the sully's he's shameful of his own anger. he's an emotional disaster, so many different though processes mixing and fighting with each other. but most of all he's frustrated, so frustrated, in the span of a few hours he lost the one thing he had, which was trust in his body, his physical capabilities that allowed him to survive on pandora and be a 'tough' kid that burdened no one. now he needs help with basic tasks and constant supervision so he doesn't just fall down and die somewhere.
#the boy has internalized ableism and xenophobia (against himself as a human)#considering how he fits into pandora as a human. those two things go hand in hand#spider socorro#miles socorro#miles spider socorro#quaritch#avatar the way of water#avatar 2#neytiri#jake sully#ronal#tonowari#miles quaritch#kiri sully#tuk sully#lo'ak sully#I love lo'ak so much#he has so much going through his head#I have so many words#the thought of him trying to wrap his head around spider's disability makes my heart hurt#they're both so used to just adapting to and hiding their “shortcomings” that he almost feels frustrated with spider needing extra help#he knows its wrong#the very thought of it makes him feel sick#it makes him think he's evil or something#love giving my boys internalized issues they have no way of understanding#then having them blame themselves when it was the people around it who caused those mindsets#ao'nung#tsireya#spider te suli tsyeyk'itan#hi'i'tsyil te fkew'weopx tonowari'itan
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Can you please tell me more about disabled  Qtaros, Kanna and gin(this is very much related to that one post.) I’m very interested!
of course!! thank you so much for taking interest :D though i put the gist on that reference above, i'll dive into more detail here!!
Q-TARO:
Although in-game Q-taro's been given the doll joints to replace his major injury, I do have a few personal headcanons from before that incident - namely, that he had a weak right leg from bullying (which he was predisposed to thanks to other developmental issues). This caused a life-long limp, with the occasional pain, but it was never enough that he felt withheld from sports! Asunaro still implemented something in the doll joint that would make it so that he wasn't left overcorrecting his gait.
However, if Asunaro hadn't interfered, he would've eventually recovered naturally. While he can still keep in pace with his team for the most part and retains his endurance, toward the start of him being released from the hospital, there are times where he ends up staying on bench until he's called up for the final stretch as a batter - just to help him readjust & keep the pain from overwhelming him if he was up as a starter. This would be where Q-taro finally gets a cane to help him post-game if he's exerted himself too much (it usually takes a couple hours for the pain to really become more than 'annoying'; adrenaline helps to off-set it until the games end, at least).
After some convincing (and prodding) from his closer friends, I imagine he'd be a bit more willing to continue physical therapy to help with managing pain/building up endurance again (safely). It's by no means perfect, and there are some hurdles to overcome in terms of figuring out his new boundaries, but he can do it! :]
From here, he does also end up occasionally using the wheelchair when casually traveling with friends on much longer distances / on bad pain days. It's more inconvenient and obvious than using the cane, but his friends are good about not making him feel weird about it. At most, they'll just tease him about themselves finally being taller than him; it's all light-hearted attempts at making him feel more comfortable. At the end of the day, they're just happy Q-taro's here.
...also not pictured here, but it does also take some getting used to being essentially blind in his left eye. The depth perception is something he also works on, but he somewhat struggles on his own out on the field; he ends up pairing with someone else. It's usually easier being on shortstop because of the surrounding people, but as long as he's got back-up he can be sent further out into the field.
GIN:
Gin had some issues with how his legs were developing. It took a few years for his mother to notice due to how busy work kept her, but when he was more evidently failing to hit the typical movement milestones, that was when she brought it up.
His left leg is the weaker one and the one he usually didn't use when crawling because the bone alignment was causing him pain; as he grew up, they kept him in physical therapy to work on this, and his mother favored a leg brace rather than any surgery. As he was still young, there was a chance to correct this without needing to go to those lengths, especially as she feared 1) the cost and 2) the idea that this would just hurt Gin more.
Gin feels a bit guilty that his mother was so worried about him in these early years. This is, in part, why he's so insistent on proving how strong he's grown to his mother and will take on more responsibility than he's meant to, if it means she won't have to worry about himself or his step-father.
...Well! At least he gets to pick out the designs for his leg brace :] He usually swaps between different animal-themed ones to represent his current hyperfixation (in this case, he'd have an alligator themed one as of the Death Game), but I usually draw him with the paw print pattern because it's one that's really important to him! Gin specifically got this pattern to match with Mew-chan :D
This is also somewhat related, though it isn't to do with the leg brace: Gin is very sensitive to loud noise/voices, hence the noise-cancelling headphones... at least to subdue the sounds.
In terms of interacting with other participants, I do think Gin would have trouble talking with Alice. Whereas Q-taro is used to lowering his voice for kids who need it (and can usually catch the visual cues for it) and Reko understands the need for a certain 'level' of noise (though hers is usually that she needs something blasting because of her hyposensitivity; depending on each other's levels, they might not be able to talk very long, but they'll talk later!!) ... Alice meanwhile has difficulty managing the volume/forcefulness of his voice. In my headcanons, Alice needs hearing aids - this, and his autism, often makes it difficult to keep that "appropriate volume or tone of voice" but he does make an effort for Gin's sake :]
I've also mentioned it in more detail here, but I do think Gin would really look up to Q-taro for how he perseveres. Even if Q-taro handles pain well enough for the most part, only partially using his mobility aids, it's still very important knowing that this successful adult has that side of him too. It gives Gin more hope, and also provides a healthy masculine role model.
KANNA:
Similarly to her brother, Kanna is chronically ill. More specifically, I imagine she has been recognized with iron-deficient anemia - cause for (some) dizziness and lead up to fainting. This, combined with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, does not make for a fun combination as you can imagine... but her family is working on figuring this out for her :']
The cane helps her mostly with keeping balance, though she also eventually adds little charms to it keep her hands busy so she doesn't tear at the hem of her uniform or pick at her skin too much. Although Kanna, similarly to Q-taro, doesn't need her cane at all times and can even play games without it, she feels more comfortable having it around as a 'just in case'!
This is partly why Kugie walks home with Kanna. While it began for safety's sake (since Kanna was very young), her sister being there when she fainted was actually how the Kizuchi family began to realize the severity of these symptoms and look into it for her! Although Kanna tends to downplay her symptoms because she doesn't want people worrying about her, she really is grateful that they are trying to help her. Even though it took a while for Kugie to warm up to Kanna, it was always nice seeing her sister look out for her in even the smallest ways (offering food (like the ice-cream, where the 'ice' of it helps nausea); setting up the iron supplements before they start preparing the meals (so Kanna can take it the hour in advance); so on!)
On a personal level, Kanna honestly isn't too bothered by having this. It's frustrating sometimes, yes, but generally speaking... she takes it slow anyway, and always has. Walking home, she will stop by the parks or some people's gardens just to take a look; she'll sit down on a bench and just listen to everything before finally setting on homework; she just really enjoys existing in nature. Unlike Kugie, who could scale a mountain in a day, Kanna is content just lying down in the grass - but that doesn't mean she's not up for racing her sister...! :P
(Side note: while the issues with 'balance' and such isn't canon, I do think it is interesting that - through the few times we've seen someone faint - both Shin and Kanna have been the ones who take a while to recover...)
#i hope this makes up for how long it took me to get to this ask :P i'm really happy to see you liked these ideas though!!#these three are really dear to me and i really like interweaving their disabilities (whether implied or headcanoned)#with their actual given storylines!!! it's very fun to figure out and see how it reflects their characters#thank you again!!#ask#yttdposting#yttd#your turn to die#kimi ga shine#kanna kizuchi#gin ibushi#qtaro burgerberg#my art
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Other words and terms deemed problematic include man, woman, mother, father, primitive, advanced, alien, invasive, exotic, non-native and race.
The terms were gathered as part of the EEB (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology) Language Project, founded by a collaboration of scientists in the US and Canada who claim some terminology is not inclusive, and could be harmful.
Even one of the most famous scientific concepts of all time, the “survival of the fittest”, should no longer be used because it discriminates against people with disabilities and is linked to eugenics, they advise.
–
Feminism and gay rights were only the first targets of post modernism. The next targets are environmental stewardship, racial justice, and evolutionary biology.
As soon as Earth scientists start organizing disruptive protests and civil disobedience, post modernism suddenly shows up in their field. As soon as they start leading a global movement to disrupt economic growth, post modernists start telling them they're problematic. Isn't that timing interesting?
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The thing that has been getting to me the most in these mental health conversations these days, is westerns who keep acting like we are being insensitive to their disabilities and mental health issues when we say it's not an excuse to be ignorant or to be silent and to do nothing and to keep a blind eye for comfort and for some to not to trauma dump on palestinians and on pro palestine people of color on social media.
People keep assuming that palestinians and pro palestine people from other parts of the region that have been destroyed by the west are able-bodied and have ok mental health just because they don't talk about it much or don't talk about it. we have suffered and we are suffering because it doesn't end with a ceasefire it doesn't end when you grow up it doesn't end when you leave the country it doesn't end when you get help it doesn't end even if you were born outside of those countries and never stepped a foot on your mother land it doesn't end.
and we are still privileged because palestinians in gaza are keeping us updated and are keeping up with the west bank and with the rest of the world whilst being under one the worst bombardments in history and going through a genocide that in itself should make you feel embarrassed to even bring this up.
I grew up with American airstrikes non stop dropping on my neighborhood and my SCHOOLS because we kept evacuating from schools because they kept getting bombed, watching my family and friends and classmates and my neighbors get kidnapped and killed get blown up to bits watching limbs fly into our house and into our school playgrounds then watch almost everyone i know that lived flee the country in the worst conditions possible then live through daesh...etc I could go on and on for months and I'm only in my early 20s and we didn't get mental or physical help. my uncle just died a couple days ago because of his disability he was poor and he got diagnosed way too late he lived such a hard life that when he died it was relief. most of us don't have access to the most basic human rights which medical help and therapy.
and we are expected to always be well spoken have patience and be comforting for people that we are spoon feeding information or otherwise we are aggressive and barbaric and ungrateful and we are pushing people away from our movements.
I keep seeing people send anons and dms of their suicidal thoughts because of the news to every palestinian i follow on every social media platform and some other pro palestine people of color including myself which is crazy because I don't even have a big following, the news that they have the privilege to turn off because for the gazillion time western countries are committing massacres far from the west especially americans who are in the stomach of the beast.
Have shame.
#this is a#rant post#i hope this came off right and sorry if it didn't#palestine#فلسطين#free palestine#فلسطين حرة#gaza#غزة#mental health#disability#america#united states#iraq#العراق#swana#mena#middle east#southwest asia#north africa#assyrian#current events
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