Fuck this simple like SIMPLE Senate majority.

If you're a US citizen, I really hope you're voting.

2016, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas): “It has been 80 years since a Supreme Court vacancy was nominated and confirmed in an election year. There is a long tradition that you don’t do this in an election year.”

2018, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.): “If an opening comes in the last year of President Trump’s term, and the primary process has started, we’ll wait to the next election.”

2016, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.): “I don’t think we should be moving on a nominee in the last year of this president’s term - I would say that if it was a Republican president.”

2016, Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.): “The very balance of our nation’s highest court is in serious jeopardy. As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I will do everything in my power to encourage the president and Senate leadership not to start this process until we hear from the American people.”

2016, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa): “A lifetime appointment that could dramatically impact individual freedoms and change the direction of the court for at least a generation is too important to get bogged down in politics. The American people shouldn’t be denied a voice.”

2016, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.): “The campaign is already under way. It is essential to the institution of the Senate and to the very health of our republic to not launch our nation into a partisan, divisive confirmation battle during the very same time the American people are casting their ballots to elect our next president.”

2016, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.): “In this election year, the American people will have an opportunity to have their say in the future direction of our country. For this reason, I believe the vacancy left open by Justice Antonin Scalia should not be filled until there is a new president.”

2016, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.): “The Senate should not confirm a new Supreme Court justice until we have a new president.” 2016, Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Col.): “I think we’re too close to the election. The president who is elected in November should be the one who makes this decision.”

2016, Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio): “I believe the best thing for the country is to trust the American people to weigh in on who should make a lifetime appointment that could reshape the Supreme Court for generations. This wouldn’t be unusual. It is common practice for the Senate to stop acting on lifetime appointments during the last year of a presidential term, and it’s been nearly 80 years since any president was permitted to immediately fill a vacancy that arose in a presidential election year.”

2016, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.): “I strongly agree that the American people should decide the future direction of the Supreme Court by their votes for president and the majority party in the U.S. Senate.” “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.” Mitch McConnell, March 2016

We Live on Native Land, by the Sacrifice of Native Land, to the Ongoing Detriment of Native People. Our Ancestors' Actions Created Irreparable Harm.

My gratitude to the Kizh Nation aka Gabrieleño Indians, whose website and links taught me a bit about their lives pre-invasion and their struggles to survive from the 1800s to now. The more I read about their tree, Koonasgna, named El Aliso by the colonizers who enjoyed its shade and, like we colonizers do, built and drained and crowded it out till it could no longer survive.

Today I mourn Koonasgna and I revere the Kizh, who have survived every Spanish-American act of violence. I learn from their stories and truths. I reach past my Ancestors' violence to make up for lost life, to wreak less harm by giving back.

Read learn & donate: https://gabrielenoindians.org

harvest moon message: it's gonna get crazier before it gets better. it's gonna get scarier before it gets better. we've gotta get clear before it gets better.

clear on our intentions of evening things out in the next post-pandemic world. clear on how we treat each other. how we amplify muffled voices. how we muffle artificially amplified voices. and how we put the old methods of oppression feet first into the fire.

clear on our big plans. we've lost too much for the little ones.

[words by me, pls only repost w credit]

i hate quoting cops. and i hate police theatrics. i hate trying to play detective and put together what happened the night of Breonna Taylor's brutal murder. i hate that body cams were avoided, chaos was encouraged, and (imo) the cops were going after Breonna, trying to punish her for their perception of her as a drug pusher.

louisville police insisted that the us postal service had notified them of strange packages delivered to Breonna, but the usps hadn't done that. the reasons for their breakin and brutal execution were inadequate at best. personally, i think they were perpetuating the War on Race as usual.

i'm typing out this letter of pre-termination because i could only find the pdf of it, and because even the most sympathetic entity - the department that sent him and his accomplices to Ms. Taylor's home - sees that brett hankinson was causing problems as a cop since at least 2019 [fact check: actually since 2006 when he failed to appear in court while a cop, and has participated in at least one prior "police-involved shooting" that hurt an innocent civillian].

he is violent. he his prone to violating rules. come to find out, he's a sexual abuser too. and he was an employee of the city of louisville, paid by her citizens, promoted to detective, promoted to narcotics. he broke into someone's house with two cops - john mattingly and myles cosgrove - who will walk away completely unscathed, maybe mentioned in passing the next time one of them is caught.

this is why police departments need to be abolished, and brand new folks need to be put in charge of public safety and held accountable with the tone that chief schroeder uses to fire brett.

letter to detective brett hankinson #6150 by interim chief of police robert j schroeder

"I have determined you violated Standard Operating Procedure 5.1.2 Obedience to Rules and Regulations when your actions displayed an extreme indifference to the value of human life when you wantonly and blindly fired ten (10) rounds into the apartment of Breonna Taylor on March 13, 2020. These rounds created a substantial danger of death and serious injury to Breonna Taylor and the three occupants of the apartment next to Ms. Taylor's. I make my determination purusant to the preponderance of the evidence.

You also violated Standard Operating Procedure 9.1.12 Use of Deadly Force when you used deadly force by blindly firing ten (10) rounds into Breonna Taylor's apartment without supporting facts that your deadly force was directed at a person against whom posed an immediate threat of danger or serious injury to yourself or others. In fact the ten (10) rounds you fired were into a patio door and window which were covered with material that completely prevented you from verifying any person as an immediate threat or more importantly any innocent persons present.

You further failed to be cognizant of the direction in which your firearm was discharged. Some of the rounds you fired actually travelled into the apartment next to Ms. Taylor's endangering the three lives in that apartment. You have previously been disciplined for reckless conduct that injured an innocent person in Professional Standards Case #17-062 for which you were disciplined on January 9, 2019.

Based upon my review, these are extreme violations of our policies. I find your conduct a shock to the conscience. I am alarmed and stunned you used deadly force in this fashion. You have never been trained by the Louisville Metro Police Department to use deadly force in this fashion. Your actions have brought discredit upon yourself and the Department. Your conduct has severely damaged the image of our Department we have established with our community. The result of your actions seriously impedes the Department's goal of providing the citizens of our city with the most professional law enforcement agency possible. I cannot tolerate this type of conduct by any member of the Lousiville Metro Police Department. Your conduct demands your termination. I have the utmost confidence in my decision to terminate your employment for the best interest for the Lousiville Metro Police Department and our community.

full memorandum here

[cw: sexual assault]

we gotta stop giving white men the benefit of the doubt.

we gotta start doubting white men.

it's not merely white men, per se, imo. it's not testosterone or that pesky y chromosome. gender power, imo, isn't physical. if someone, anyone, was given all the privileges and benefits that white men are given, some if not most of us would probably abuse them. so, specifially, we gotta start doubting anyone weilding the power of a white man.

one of the reasons i dropped my gender is the simple truth that perceived gender empowers or disempowers, depending on which side of the binary the recipient of the boost or boot is on.

yes, gender is certainly an accessory of white supremacy. it offers space. it brings the drinks and the roofies. it covers up the aftermath with excuses, scorn, "you're just jealous of their success". it insists on good vibes only.

it's easier for me to break down the game when i'm no longer assigned to a team. but my whiteness, also generated and maintained by generations of abuse, and shared with many of the most devastatingly abusive folks in the world, is more difficult to distance myself from in order to dismantle it. so i must do the work from the inside out, hack away at my whiteness like a limb to an ulcer.

fuck anthony lister, fuck bassnectar, fuck each and every popular white male artist using their "genius" as a cloaking device, whose crimes are kept on private display in their "vip" room. more to the point, fuck each and every white person who supports the systemic imbalance of power that lifts them up and keeps them on top.

they're ruining art. we're better off without them.

what a day to switch over to tumblr.

fires rage! rbg dies! and an earthquake cuz why not.

we have no control over any of the natural disasters, but donating to amy mcgrath definitely helped on the collective human disaster ruling us.

[photo by steven brown] hello!  it’s me.  long long long ago, when my age ended in teen and the decade began with 9 and teh internet still smelled fresh, i had an online journal.  it was hand-coded in html3, full of angst and courier new lowercase.  i let it go around the time that i started college and my computer died and all that.  but i keep missing it.  every few years i take a look at the code and think, i could post this back up.  but it was personal as hell, and a lot of it came from an ignorant mind that hadn’t quite caught up to its prejudices.  and, like a true angsty journal, it didn’t identify my queerness, my gender dysphoria, my inherited racism and internalized misogyny. so maybe it’s best to keep it resting, and start over as myself. i’m turning 40 in a couple months, and have spent the last couple years or so in deep self-definition.  i finally dropped my assigned gender, explored my sexuality while remaining in a monogamous relationship (something i’d previously thought was impossible), and started to find a balance between bouts of public success with ongoing private discovery.  and through all of it, i’ve found myself deeply dissatisfied with what social media has become.  algorithms are gross.  links to issues and calls for change have been ignored by the double-headed hydra of facebook/instagram.  remember when we had usernames and rss feeds and linkchains?  could we get back there again?  it won’t be exactly the same as my little chunk of hand-coded internet (plus i’m using my legal name), but maybe it’ll be worth attempting anyway. tl;dr: i’m backing away from fb, and posting links and such here. keep in touch. xx

cancel jk rowling all the way. i've had a bone to pick with her since she donated and publicly supported england's anti-indyref campaign against scotland.  and the tropes woven in her books!  i don't think making billions off a generation of young readers makes up for any of her problematic behavior.

was so excited for this...till i read the fine print: "the new law will create an incentive for former inmate firefighters to pursue jobs professionally after their release, by asking a judge to withdraw their plea of guilty, the associated press reported. the judge could then opt to dismiss the accusations." dude.  no.  the bill should be allowing people with nonviolent convictions to be able to work public office jobs like firefighting, period.  the power of employment doesn't need to be put in the hands of judges.

some easy activism: steve lysenko is a teacher at a school close to rochester.  he's been participating in the protests to hold the rochester police department responsible for suffocating a rochester citizen earlier this year.  at one of these protests, he posted a video on his personal account saying what we've been saying: fuck the police.  now white supremacist sympathizers are trying to get him fired. for the record, the cops who actually killed daniel prude are not fired - they're still getting paid.  how messed up is that?

heyyy now's our chance to help! and we gotta stop calling the police for mental health crises. their training does not cover mental health.

gendered acting awards did what they were meant to do. with gender-neutral awards, everyone can be up for a win no matter what their stated or perceived gender is.

one of the first things to do when i relocate - up there with switching utilities and mail - is to do a little research about whose land my new home is on - who was screwed over by the colonization that benefits me - and what i can begin to do that could raise awareness and provide for the land's survivors. today i learned about the Kizh, who lived here 15,000 years before being enslaved by the spanish to build their missions.  i read about their villages and burial sites.  i look forward to learning more.  in the meantime, here's a no-brainer: change the name of "indian hill" (ew gross) to Kizh-Toibingna, the name of the former village. if you live on American Indian land (if you live in america, guess what: you pretty much definitely do!) and are interested in learning more about the folks who originally lived there, text 907-312-5085 with the colonized name of your area (e.g. hollywood, ca). it's a solid place to start.

to witness oppression is to stare into a deep abyss, devoid of hope or faith. this moral sinkhole formed the underbelly of the united states from day one, and even in the middle of this resurgence of freedom fighting, it's hard to believe we can ever truly get to it's source.  but we can't turn away until it is disarmed and filled. these days, instead of going straight to the news to see what white violence has been perpetuated since the morning before, i seek out messages of power to remind myself that Black americans are powerful people, that all my hope and advocacy is merely to support them while they rise up. this morning i found this slave rebellion reenactment from last year.  i was inspired by the pure badass nature of Black History and the reclaiming of Black Power from the white hands that constantly attempt to rewrite history.

as americans, it's our job to pay attention to what's being done in our name.  by normalizing ties with an illegally occupying country as it occupies another, past our respective police/army training each other to be aggro af, we allow more blood to seep onto our hands.