Fighting injustice can trigger trauma — we need to learn how to process it and take healing action - Waging Nonviolence »
When I was at Standing Rock, the elders told us, as we were preparing to go to town to engage in a direct action, “Remember, you are going to a ceremony.” What kind of creative actions could we think up if we viewed direct action as ceremony, or a modality of healing collective trauma? What possibilities could be opened up then?
In order for us to have that level of creativity, we cannot be in our trauma state. Trauma is not conducive to creative thinking. Which brings us to another paradox of these times ― how do we slow down enough so that we can fully utilize our neocortex and listen to our hearts while addressing the real urgency and opportunity of this moment?
(Source: wagingnonviolence.org)
College-Educated Professionals Are Capitalism’s Useful Idiots »
In early spring, when COVID-19 had killed only dozens of Americans, Stuart Stevens, a strategist for the four previous Republican presidential nominees, wrote that “those of us in the Republican Party built this moment,” because “the failures of the government’s response to the coronavirus crisis can be traced directly to some of the toxic fantasies now dear to the Republican Party … Government is bad. Establishment experts are overrated or just plain wrong. Science is suspect.”
(Source: The Atlantic)
Bubble Tea: A Layered and Sugar-Laced History with Recipe (ASIAN 258) »
(Source: chinesefoodhistory.org)
Analysis | Protesters want justice — including on social, economic and climate demands »
Compared with a policy package with only climate reforms, including economic policies such as a jobs guarantee, unionized clean energy jobs and retraining for fossil fuel workers increased support for the package by an average of 12 percentage points. While Democrats in our survey viewed these policies more favorably, including economic measures in a climate package does not drive Republicans away.
We found similar results when we added some social policy planks, such as affordable housing and a $15 minimum wage. The social policies we tested increased support for a climate policy package by an average of 11 percentage points.
(Source: Washington Post)
Asians 4 Black Lives: Uplift Black Resistance, Help Build Black Power
a4bl:
On May 25, 2020, George Floyd was murdered in broad daylight by four Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) officers. This gut-wrenching tragedy, in addition to the police murders of Tony McDade, Yassin Mohamed, Sean Reed, Breonna Taylor, Steven Taylor, the vigilante murder of Ahmaud Arbery, and the hate crime murder of Nina Pop, and countless others, has re-sparked collective outrage that is being met with the brute force of state repression — all during a pandemic that is disproportionately claiming Black and Indigenous lives in this country.
We, as Asians4BlackLives (A4BL), join our comrades in denouncing these gross displays of state-sanctioned police violence, and renew our call to all non-Black people of Asian descent to move in solidarity with Black communities for Black liberation and resistance.
We cannot look past the fact that Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng, two of the MPD police officers involved in the murder of George Floyd, are Asian American. While we acknowledge the complex and contradictory histories of who make up “Asian Americans,” another instance of the direct involvement of officers of Asian descent in the death of a Black man is not just a damning symbol for Asian American complicity in the death of Black people, but also a direct manifestation of anti-Blackness in our communities.
This history of anti-Blackness runs deep, from the murder of Latasha Harlins by Soon Ja Du to daily practices of racial profiling and cultural appropriation. Non-Black Asians must act swiftly to end all forms of violence against Black people. We call on Asian Americans to reject the model minority myth, which was historically created to delegitimize Black resistance while absolving non-Black Americans from addressing systemic racism. It is our duty to continue the legacy of past and present Black and Asian solidarity — from activists like Yuri Kochiyama, Grace Lee Boggs, and Kartar Dhillon to the Black Buffalo soldiers who defected from the U.S. army in support of Philippine independence. This means organizing our communities in solidarity and protesting using a diversity of tactics, including shutting down business as usual to ensure that each life wrongfully taken by the police does not go in vain.
Abolish the Police
We echo what Black activists have said countless times: the institution of modern-day policing — with its origins in slave-catching — has always served to protect private property and the ruling elite at the expense of Black, Indigenous, and poor and working class communities. Police violence against Black people is not the result of some officers being “a few bad apples.” The trees producing these apples are rotten to the roots. The problem cannot be fixed with simple reform measures — abolition of the police as an institution is necessary to prevent further Black lives from being lost.
Uplift Black Resistance, Help Build Black Power
We uplift the demands from the Movement for Black Lives and amplify the call to divest from police and invest in community. We also join Reclaim the Block, Black Visions Collective, and others who have called on the Minneapolis City Council to defund the Minneapolis Police Department (and all police departments) and invest in resources that actually keep Black communities (and thereby also all communities) safe and healthy by sharing and signing this petition.
We urge our communities to continue to join spaces and groups of people that are on the frontlines of building a society rooted in Black Power and Black Liberation, a world where Black Lives truly matter:
- Build strong communities and community safety plans; #DontCalltheCops.
- Fight to abolish the prison industrial complex that continuously profits from locking up Black people and perpetuates a never-ending cycle of criminalization and violence. #AbolishPrisons.
- Fight to #CancelRent and raise the minimum wage so that Black communities can afford to live in the neighborhoods they are often displaced from.
- Fight for a just transition, a #BlackNewDeal, #RedNewDeal and a #GreenNewDeal to counter the greed of corporations that for too long have profited off of the destruction of our Mother Earth and the environmental racism that disproportionately affects Black and Indigenous people.
- Fight for #MedicareForAll, so that Black people can have access to quality healthcare that does not lead to catastrophic spending and bankruptcy.
- Fight for a society in which wealth is not concentrated in the hands of a few billionaires who utilize the police to violently protect their interests.
- Fight against imperialism, which threatens Black communities globally, and support people-led movements worldwide.
- Build life together that promotes not just surviving, but thriving: SOLUTIONS not PUNISHMENT.
- Research the Black-led groups in your area. Talk to your non-Black friends and family about anti-Blackness. Listen, plug in to action, and donate to Black individuals and organizations.
- Donate to vetted, Black-led organizations, bail funds, and allied groups in your area. In Minnesota, we recommend the following, which are currently accepting donations as of June 1, 2020: George Floyd’s family GoFundMe, CTUL, a low-income worker of color-led organization (mostly Latinx) down the block from where George Floyd was killed, who have been offering mutual aid to protesters, and Northstar Health Collective, street medics treating people and training folks how to take care of each other in protests.
In all these struggles, follow the leadership and center the perspectives of those most affected.
All lives do not matter until Black Lives Matter. Asian Americans need to strengthen our solidarity with our Black siblings. We must struggle and fight together for an end to the unjust siege against Black communities everywhere, and put an end to the police state and all forms of state-sanctioned violence.
Together, with our comrades, we demand:
Justice for George Floyd
Justice for Tony McDade
Justice for Yassin Mohamed
Justice for Sean Reed
Justice for Breonna Taylor
Justice for Steven Taylor
Justice for Ahmaud Arbery
Justice for Nina Pop
Justice for all Black LivesBlack Lives Matter
In Love, Power, and Solidarity,
Asians4BlackLives
Emotion Processing in Joint Hypermobility: A Potential Link to the Neural Bases of Anxiety and Related Somatic Symptoms in Collagen Anomalies - PubMed »
(Source: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
How to tell a raven from a crow. Made with corvid researcher Dr. Kaeli Swift for her blog post on the subject!
oh my god my boyfriend commissioned this portrait of Data and Spot from my friend Robin and I’m dying
As Congress Pushes a $2 Trillion Stimulus Package, the “How Will You Pay For It?” Question Is Tossed in the Trash »
When Congress passes a spending bill that is fully “paid for,” it sends two sets of instructions to the Federal Reserve. The Fed is the government’s fiscal agent — i.e. its bank — and virtually all payments made by (and to) the federal government are handled by the Fed.
The first set of instructions tells the Fed to make certain authorized payments on behalf of the U.S. Treasury. The Fed makes these payments by using a computer to add dollars to bank accounts. If we’re doing a big infrastructure bill, then the government might be paying Caterpillar Inc. for lots of new building equipment and hiring thousands of construction workers, architects, engineers, and so on. Government spending adds dollars to bank accounts.
The second set of instructions tells the Fed to use the computer to subtract dollars from bank accounts. In our example, closing tax loopholes would force people and companies to pay higher taxes.
On balance, “paying for” its spending means that the government instructs the Fed to subtract away (via tax) exactly as many dollars as it adds (via spending) to bank accounts.
(Source: theintercept.com)
