Allie

At 8:29 AM today, November 30th, we were hit with a very intense earthquake. Over two hours later, we are still experiencing after shocks.

I’m going to cover a few things that should help.

• When you have power, fill up as many containers with water as possible. If it goes out again, you won’t be able to access water. Fill bathtubs, buckets, etc.

• First Responders are trying their best to help you if you need it. There are roads collapsed and some buildings need more attention first to assure their safety.

• Drive carefully and notice your surroundings. If the stoplights are out, treat every intersection as if it’s a four way stop.

• Be wary of glass. Walk with shoes on until you’re sure you’ve cleaned it all up or at least made it safe to walk in.

• Keep your refrigerator and freezers closed as much as possible until the power comes back on.

• Do checks for your gas lines to make sure hey haven’t been damaged.

It’s a scary experience and it’s reasonable to be scared, but don’t panic!

If anyone has any resources and tips, please feel free to add!

Remember the Muslim travel ban.

Remember Afghan and Iraqi interpreters.

Remember Charlottesville.

Remember Heather Heyer.

Remember Stephen Miller.

Remember Joe Arpaio.

Remember Puerto Rico.

Remember the lifting of the ban on military gear for police.

Remember Bears Ears.

Remember “shithole countries.”

Remember the DREAMers.

Remember child separation.

Remember Steve King.

Remember the Black Voters Matter bus in Louisville, Georgia.

Remember North Dakota voter ID.

Remember Citizens United.

Remember Cambridge Analytica.

Remember dominionism.

Remember Steve Bannon.

Remember Roger Stone.

Remember Merrick Garland.

Remember Obamacare repeal.

Remember Erik Prince.

Remember Betsy DeVos.

Remember the tariffs and the trade war.

Remember net neutrality.

Remember “the enemy of the people”.

Remember the emoluments clause.

Remember Paul Manafort.

Remember Michael Cohen.

Remember gerrymandering.

Remember the federal deficit.

Remember the tax fraud.

Remember Crimea.

Remember Semion Mogilevich.

Remember Flight MH17.

Remember Vladimir Putin.

Remember novichok.

Remember NATO.

Remember Helsinki.

Remember Montenegro.

Remember Maria Butina.

Remember “I like people who weren’t captured.”

Remember “if we have them, why can’t we use them?”

Remember Xinjiang.

Remember Rodrigo Duterte.

Remember Jared Kushner and Mohammed bin Salman.

Remember the Rohingya.

Remember refugees.

Remember HIV and HPV.

Remember Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Remember Trump “fell in love” with Kim Jong Un.

Remember Jamal Khashoggi.

Remember “grab ‘em by the pussy”.

Remember the global gag rule.

Remember Roy Moore.

Remember Roe v. Wade.

Remember Christine Blasey Ford.

Remember the Paris Agreement.

Remember Scott Pruitt.

Remember ANWR.

Remember the trans military ban.

Remember “he wants to hang them all!”

Remember the pipe bombs.

Remember Marjory Stoneman Douglas.

Remember the NRA.

Remember the First Baptist Church  in Jeffersontown, and the Kroger.

Remember the Tree of Life.

Remember oversight power.

Remember voter suppression.

Remember the ineptitude, the deceit, the cruelty, and the glee.

Election Day is Tuesday, November 6th.

An anguished question from a Trump supporter: “Why do liberals think Trump supporters are stupid?”

The serious answer: Here’s what we really think about Trump supporters - the rich, the poor, the malignant and the innocently well-meaning, the ones who think and the ones who don’t…

That when you saw a man who had owned a fraudulent University, intent on scamming poor people, you thought “Fine.”

That when you saw a man who had made it his business practice to stiff his creditors, you said, “Okay.”

That when you heard him proudly brag about his own history of sexual abuse, you said, “No problem.”

That when he made up stories about seeing muslim-Americans in the thousands cheering the destruction of the World Trade Center, you said, “Not an issue.”

That when you saw him brag that he could shoot a man on Fifth Avenue and you wouldn’t care, you chirped, “He sure knows me.”

That when you heard him illustrate his own character by telling that cute story about the elderly guest bleeding on the floor at his country club, the story about how he turned his back and how it was all an imposition on him, you said, “That’s cool!”

That when you saw him mock the disabled, you thought it was the funniest thing you ever saw.

That when you heard him brag that he doesn’t read books, you said, “Well, who has time?”

That when the Central Park Five were compensated as innocent men convicted of a crime they didn’t commit, and he angrily said that they should still be in prison, you said, “That makes sense.”

That when you heard him tell his supporters to beat up protesters and that he would hire attorneys, you thought, “Yes!”

That when you heard him tell one rally to confiscate a man’s coat before throwing him out into the freezing cold, you said, “What a great guy!”

That you have watched the parade of neo-Nazis and white supremacists with whom he curries favor, while refusing to condemn outright Nazis, and you have said, “Thumbs up!”

That you hear him unable to talk to foreign dignitaries without insulting their countries and demanding that they praise his electoral win, you said, “That’s the way I want my President to be.”

That you have watched him remove expertise from all layers of government in favor of people who make money off of eliminating protections in the industries they’re supposed to be regulating and you have said, “What a genius!”

That you have heard him continue to profit from his businesses, in part by leveraging his position as President, to the point of overcharging the Secret Service for space in the properties he owns, and you have said, “That’s smart!”

That you have heard him say that it was difficult to help Puerto Rico because it was the middle of water and you have said, “That makes sense.”

That you have seen him start fights with every country from Canada to New Zealand while praising Russia and quote, “falling in love” with the dictator of North Korea, and you have said, “That’s statesmanship!”

That Trump separated children from their families and put them in cages, managed to lose track of 1500 kids. has opened a tent city incarceration camp in the desert in Texas - he explains that they’re just “animals” - and you say, “well, ok then.”

That you have witnessed all the thousand and one other manifestations of corruption and low moral character and outright animalistic rudeness and contempt for you, the working American voter, and you still show up grinning and wearing your MAGA hats and threatening to beat up anybody who says otherwise.

What you don’t get, Trump supporters in 2018, is that succumbing to frustration and thinking of you as stupid may be wrong and unhelpful, but it’s also…hear me…charitable.

Brighton Park is a predominantly Latino community on the southwest side of Chicago. It’s a neighborhood threatened by poverty, gang violence, ICE raids, and isolation—in a city where income, race, and zip code can determine access to jobs, schools, healthy food, and essential services. It is against this backdrop that the Chicago teacher Xian Franzinger Barrett arrived at the neighborhood’s elementary school in 2014.

Recognizing the vast economic and racial inequalities his students faced, he chose what some might consider a radical approach for his writing and social-studies classes, weaving in concepts such as racism, classism, oppression, and prejudice. Barrett said it was vital to reject the oft-perpetuated narrative that society is fair and equal to address students’ questions and concerns about their current conditions. And Brighton Elementary’s seventh- and eighth-graders quickly put the lessons to work—confronting the school board over inequitable funding, fighting to install a playground, and creating a classroom library focused on black and Latino authors.

“Students who are told that things are fair implode pretty quickly in middle school as self-doubt hits them,” he said, “and they begin to blame themselves for problems they can’t control.”

Barrett’s personal observation is validated by a newly published study in the peer-reviewed journal Child Development that finds traditionally marginalized youth who grew up believing in the American ideal that hard work and perseverance naturally lead to success show a decline in self-esteem and an increase in risky behaviors during their middle-school years. The research is considered the first evidence linking preteens’ emotional and behavioral outcomes to their belief in meritocracy, the widely held assertion that individual merit is always rewarded.

“If you’re in an advantaged position in society, believing the system is fair and that everyone could just get ahead if they just tried hard enough doesn’t create any conflict for you … [you] can feel good about how [you] made it,” said Erin Godfrey, the study’s lead author and an assistant professor of applied psychology at New York University’s Steinhardt School. But for those marginalized by the system—economically, racially, and ethnically—believing the system is fair puts them in conflict with themselves and can have negative consequences.

“If the system is fair, why am I seeing that everybody who has brown skin is in this kind of job? You’re having to think about that … like you’re not as good, or your social group isn’t as good,” Godfrey said. “That’s the piece … that I was trying to really get at [by studying] these kids.”

The findings build upon a body of literature on “system justification”—a social-psychology theory that believes humans tend to defend, bolster, or rationalize the status quo and see overarching social, economic, and political systems as good, fair, and legitimate. System justification is a distinctively American notion, Godfrey said, built on myths used to justify inequities, like “If you just work hard enough you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps … it’s just a matter of motivation and talent and grit.” Yet, as she and her colleagues discovered, these beliefs can be a liability for disadvantaged adolescents once their identity as a member of a marginalized group begins to gel—and once they become keenly aware of how institutional discrimination disadvantages them and their group.

“If you’re [inclined] to believe that … the system is fair, then you’re maybe going to accept stereotypes about you more easily.”

1. Never cross a picket line of striking workers.

2. Never purchase or take free goods from a company who’s workers are striking

3. Honk to support strikers if you drive by a picket line.

4. Join strikers on the picket line even if it’s not your strike, but follow their directions and defer to them while there.

and as years passed, they started touching upon more sensitive topics like death, divorce, natural disasters, deployment and the potential dismemberment/PTSD that comes from it, racism, AIDS, autism, and parental incarceration, while teaching how to cope with these difficult situations in a non-sugarcoated way.