i was in switzerland a few years ago. we were driving back to dresden
after spending some time in the south of france. we stoppped in a
quaint little mountain town and i stretched my legs and smoked a
cigarrete while my partner went to look for a room. maybe it was my
black hair and olive skin, but as soon as he left me alone i felt the
climate change around me. the people on the street glared at me, a
woman with a baby carriage made a big show of zipping up the plastic
carriage cover and the unzipping it once she got past me. i’ve
travelled. i lived in a dodgy neighborhood for a decade. i’ve never
felt so unnerved by a place as i did in that little town. my partner
returned and i begged him to get me out of there, and then i made him
walk me to a bathroom in a pub. i never pull that shit. i’ve had a
deep lizzard brain kind of hate for switzerland ever since.
so it comes as no surprise to me that you all released a famous child
rapist. you are the country that i have been calling ‘what facism
aspires to be’.

—
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.
Willem de Kooning

The phone bill is paid and there is enough $ left over that this month
should end with enough food in our bellies. thank you.

—
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.
Willem de Kooning

It’s a familiar line, one that we are taught from childhood. It
sparked the revolution and brought about a democratic sea change that
would eventually span the globe.
But it’s more than that. Real democracy can’t exist without
representation, and it can’t exist without a robust progressive tax
system. otherwise we end up with a walmart democracy. sure the price
is cheap but the product is crap and the workers are starving. we get
what we pay for, and low tax rates mean shitty policies.
Robust, progressive taxes. those 2 words are important. taxes are the
last safegaurd, the bit of leverage that means companies can pay their
workers shit if they like, but the workers will get back services from
the government like healthcare and eduction funded by the taxes the
company and their bosses pay. it incentivises higher wages so that fat
cats can offset some of their own tax burden. it makes politicians
more responsive to the people, because the people have paid for
quality.

—
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.
Willem de Kooning

my phone (and only source of internet since my compy died) is about to
be shut off and i foolishly spent this month’s donations/subscriptions
on groceries.
70 bucks keeps it on for now. 140 keeps it on till august. i wish i
had some pithy wit to make you giggle and hit the donate button but
all i got is a giant worryball o stress.

—
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.
Willem de Kooning

Me: so i had an idea but it was on a not eating day so i don’t know if it’s any good
Wonder: okay
Me: we need to start a shadow government online so that people could see something with more than laws that make rich people richer. Is it a good idea or the ramblings of a starving person?
Wonder: yes
Me: haha

I get maybe 10 solicitations for political donations a day. You all know who they come from, you get the same ones I’m sure. But every new request for money leaves me just a bit more bitter. ‘Send us money because we are the only party/ candidate/ organization looking after your interests’ seems so hollow when you look at the facts. Dems are in control of everything, but they can’t pass a measly unemployment extension. Financial stocks jump at the passing of banking ‘reform’. My family is still uninsured and pays most of what little money they have for doctors visits and medicine.
i can’t help but think all those political contributions would be better spent if they were just given to the people the pols claim they want to protect. How much more effective might that be than paying people to find new laws to make the rich richer?

Since i am limited to how many characters i can put in one post via my phone, you’ll all just have to deal with 2 posts.
Where did i leave off…
I don’t have to imagine too hard how relieved a non het person might be sitting in that office and hearing someone who is not them calling out a douchebag on their douchebaggery. I think if some random dude ever told a street harraser that it’s not my job to smile on command for them, or said ‘hey chill with the fucking not funny sexist posts on facebook’ or maybe even just ‘ugh not another crappy apatow flickwhere all the men are loveable assholes and all the women are shrews’ i’d bake him a fucking cake. Seriously. It’s never happened. Not once. Actually, that’s not true. Deeks done it once or twice. But never a random guy.
Be the random guy (or white person or hetero person,etc.) Show a little courage, suffer a little bit of anger, and be a real ally.

I read somewhere yesterday (and you’ll have to forgive the lack of sitage as i am back to only having internet on my phone) that political theory is all about left and right while political reality is all about top and bottom. It was prolly Echidne who said it. And then this morning the newsbunnies reported that congress refused to extend unemployment benefits of one million people who have been out of work for six months because it would either raise taxes or the deficit or both.
top and bottom indeed. As they’ve been saying at Corrente ‘let them eat catfood’.
(not unrelated, but despite trying to eat like a healthy person i have lost yet another 5 pounds. The cure for the obesity epidemic is apparently a good dose of Dickensian poverty. Woot fucking woot).

So Violet thinks us younger feminists are too elitist in who we allow to call themselves feminists. And Renee gets whinged at constantly for proudly proclaiming she’s not a feminist (for damn good reasons, I might add).

And the whole thing pisses me off.

See I haven’t been a feminist as long as Violet, since I wasn’t born until 1975. But I have been a feminist since I first noticed how different girls are treated from boys, so since my brother was born in 1977. I’ve never cringed from the label, not even as a teenager. But the truth of the matter is, feminism leaves a whole fuckload of us out in the cold. Not feminism the philosophy, but feminism in practice. Breaking a glass ceiling doesn’t mean a damn thing to a pink collar secretary trapped in a dead end career because the hours make daycare possible. Abortion access is great but for poor women and brown women we need to stop being treated like thieves and lepers because we had the audacity to breed. And w00t w00t, it’s way easier to get a divorce, but now we get custody of the kids and no real child support collection. Progress people, at least now we don’t have to be lawfully wedded to the deadbeats forever.

Perhaps us younger feminist are peeved about people like Sarah Palin calling themselves feminists because Oh shiny let’s go contort our principles even further to bring these ladies into the feminism fold while continuing to leave out those of us who’ve agreed with the philosophy all along.

But again, I don’t give a flying fuck what label you use. Do you believe in bodily autonomy (in all forms), social justice, economic justice and all those fundamental feminismy things. YAY! Call yourself Late to Dinner, we still agree on what’s important. If, however, you think that abortion is wrongity wrong or that Welfare should be abolished then you can call yourself Gloria Steinem Jr. and I’m still going to think you’re a giant tool(of the patriarchy).

It ain’t what you call yourself. It’s what you do that counts.*

*This exact same argument can be applied to progressives/fauxgressives, btw. You can’t be progressive while giving big corporations/banksters/insurance companies hand jobs for campaign dough.

(I actually adore Violet, but this whole “who is a feminist” shit has been going on way too long. Violet’s post just gave me a ranting off point.)

Look, I get the need to feel like you’re doing something, anything to help in the face of an overwhelming tragedy. That is good and fine and should be supported and encouraged.

But it should not be what we rely on to fix massive problems, especially those caused by humans to begin with. While it may make us feel individually better, it makes society as a whole weaker and less responsible.

We have a 10% (counted) unemployment rate. We have thousands of people on the gulf coast whose jobs in fishing and tourism are going to or already have disappeared. We can fix both those things, at least a little bit, but not by volunteering or donating money to cleaning up the gulf.

We have thousands or more unemployed construction workers. Pay their airfare. Pay for hazmat training. Pay for hotel rooms and meals at local restaurants while we pay them to clean up the gulf. And while we’re doing that we pay the unemployed admins to process the time cards and A/P and make the travel arrangements. And bill it all to BP. No need to find it in the budget. No need to wait for BP to do something. Train people to give Pelicans baths. Pay people to make protective gear and masks. Put them all on federal health insurance plans. Pay people who haven’t gotten oiled yet to boom the coastline from Panama City to Maine. And charge it to BP.

This is not a natural disaster. This could have been avoided. This is not a hurricane or an earthquake. It’s a toxic waste dump. There is a clear villain with deep pockets. Every donation you make, every hour you volunteer, is less responsibility that company has to take for creating this horrible mess.

If you still need to do something, then someone should establish a legal fund for all the victims of this disaster. Give your money to them, so they can hire just as many lawyers as BP.