Because Yes

It’s what happened to Jews in Germany in 1938 when their passports were declared invalid. That is what is beginning to happen here, now, to Hispanic citizens along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Oh, is it bad to compare the GOP to Nazis? Well, if members of the GOP do not like being compared to Nazis, they should consider not behaving exactly like Nazis.

Hispanic U.S. citizens, some of whom were in the U.S. military, are not being allowed to renew their passports. This is reportedly happening to “hundreds, even thousands” of Latinos, according to a report in the Washington Post. They’re getting letters from the State Department saying it does not believe they are citizens. The government claims their citizenships are fraudulent. “I’ve had probably 20 people who have been sent to the detention center—U.S. citizens,” Jaime Diez, an attorney in Brownsville, told The Washington Post.

The Washington Post also reports on ICE officials coming to citizens’ homes and taking their passports away. This is an escalation from a few months ago, when Americans were detained by ICE officials just for speaking Spanish to one another.

The administration is currently launching an effort to take citizenship from people who they suspect of fraud in obtaining it. Fraud in these cases is exceedingly rare. The last time the government tried to strip people of their citizenship was, according to Columbia Professor Mae , during The Red Scare of the 1950s. As Ngai remarks, McCarthyism is not typically remembered as a good period in American history.

There is good reason to believe that this could portend still worse things to come for the U.S. Hispanic population, unless people begin to speak out loudly, and fast.

Edited to Add: English/Spanish legal advice for if you are a Latinx American citizen whose citizenship is being challenged.

And FLOOD YOUR SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES WITH YOUR FEELINGS ON THIS SHIT!  Here’s how to do it for free by text.

2nd Edit:  Someone asked “What Can Be Done Abroad?”

Thank you for asking!  

1) Get the word out in your home country’s print and broadcast media and internet.  People in the USA really don’t get how suppressed our press has become and it’s only getting worse by the day.  Part of it is getting any one topic to surface long enough above the churn, which is an intentional tactic being successfully used by the political party in power.

2) The one thing that no one is the USA is not seemingly able to do at all is get attention onto the Republican party as a whole for how complicit they are in all the illegal activity.  If anyone can throw some weight in that direction, it’s an elephant in the room that we REALLY need to get lots of attention on.

3) Support sanctions against the US for our human rights violations.

4) Donate to US groups fighting in the trenches 

https://www.aclu.org/

https://www.hrc.org/

https://www.plannedparenthood.org/

http://refusefascism.com/

https://www.splcenter.org/

https://resist.bot/

5) Check how your own country is doing on ethnic minorities and immigration.  Some bad shit is going around.

Edited AGAIN On Sunday November 4, 2018:

1) Black activists are being murdered and no one is reporting it.

http://www.blacklivesmatter.com

2) More tent cities keep going up.  Where do you really think this is going to end?

https://www.afsc.org/action/stop-ice-and-cbp

3) Anti-Semitism in the USA has gone up 60% over the last year.

https://www.adl.org/

4) Native American disenfranchisement ahead of the midterm elections is at an all-time high.  

https://www.narf.org/cases/voting-rights/

NO MATTER WHAT THE RESULTS ARE OF THE 2018 USA MIDTERM ELECTIONS, NONE OF THESE PROBLEMS ARE GOING TO STOP UNLESS WE GET TO WORK STOPPING THEM.

Edited Nov 17, 2018:

More than 14,000 immigrant children are in U.S. custody, an all-time high

from the SF Chronicle 

EDITED ON JULY 30, 2019

It’s now estimated there are upwards of 50,000 humans being held in American concentration camps.  Here’s a map of how many there are now in the US.

https://concentrationcamps.us/

And they are dying.  If history has taught us anything it’s that this is the point of a concentration camp.  It’s very cheap and easy to allow people to die from neglect.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/24-immigrants-have-died-ice-custody-during-trump-administration-n1015291

Legal American citizens,with multiple forms of ID, who ICE spots and decides just don’t look white enough are starting to be arrested and detained with them.  They aren’t allowed to contact anyone once they are picked up.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/25/us/us-citizen-detained-texas/index.html

WHAT TO DO, HOW TO HELP

https://www.neveragainaction.com/

http://www.notonemoredeportation.com/

https://www.raicestexas.org/

Nigerian Photographer Takes Stunning Portraits Of Diverse African People

Bisola Mofeoluwa Bamuyiwa, owner of her own photography company BMB studio in Lagos, Nigeria. With a talent like hers you would think she had studied photography all her life, but in fact, her only degree is in Project Management Technology from the Lagos State University. Bamuyiwa said she was self-taught with the help of YouTube and photography mentors. In high-school she bought her first camera, documenting school parties, and began her professional career in 2012.

More Info: Instagram  |  boredpanda

the next Pharaoh after her Tuthmosis III  tried to erase Hatshepsut out of history ,chiseled her name off her monuments ,covered the text on her obelisks with stone,knocked down and defaced her statues .

she was even left off the list of pharaohs ..talk about some patriarchy bullshit

her name was lost for a couple of millennia, her body was found in a unmarked grave  in early twentieth century

BUT. but the thing is. you how selkies/seal women was a pretty common variation of this? another really popular one was swans.

i just want you to think about that for a moment. swans. like…I get it, they’re pretty, graceful birds, certainly it’s easy to imagine them magically becoming pretty graceful ladies? but have you ever fought a swan. swans are awful. swans are the devil’s geese. imagine seeing a pretty magic lady and being absolutely enchanted by her, and stealing her magic feather cloak, and then you go up and say ‘hey i’m in love with you, let me make you my queen, it will be great, we’ll be so happy’ and she just looks at you for a moment and…

finally one day, a swan comes up to her and says ‘why don’t you come and swim with us? you always sigh so wistfully to see us on the water, and you would be most welcome to join our company, for you have always been a true friend to our kind’

and the woman says, ‘i can’t swim’

and the swan says, ‘we’ll teach you’

and the woman says, ‘literally i can’t swim, my husband stole my sealskin and should i venture into deep water i would surely drown’ 

and the swan says ‘your husband fucking WHAT’

the next morning the woman’s front yard looks like this. 

Also? Swans don’t have a lot of obvious physical markings that divide the males from females. So some idiot might be like, “damn, that’s a sexy bird, I wanna marry her” and then like. It’s a dude swan. You just transformed thirty pounds of angry aggressive bird into 200+ pounds of angry aggressive adult man, who will totally kick your butt. (Also I’m pretty sure that if you turned a lady swan into a human, you would not get a willowy little 5′0″ girl. You’d probably have a 6-foot amazon with biceps the size of your head. Swans are heavy birds and it takes a LOT of muscle to get them into the air. They are among the baddest bitches in the bird kingdom)

I was scrolling through Twitter when I saw this and almost choked !!

So there was a list going around tumblr for a while that made it to my dash of literary journals that accept open submissions (and will pay!), but upon inspection about half of them were closed indefinitely, and I found quite a few other places that looked interesting through further research, so I wanted to post my own list. 

I tried to focus on things that paid professional grade (at least 6 cents per word), were friendly to speculative fiction, and specifically encouraged diversity and writing about marginalized groups.

(Please note that as of right now I have never submitted or been published with any of these, so if anyone has experience with them, good or bad, please feel free to message or reblog this with your experiences.)

Speculative Fiction

Strange Horizons — Speculative fiction (broadly defined) with an emphasis on diversity, unusual styles, and stories that address politics in nuanced ways. 8c per word. Up to 10,000 words, under 5,000 preferred. Responds within 40 days. LGBT+ positive.

Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine — Sci-fi, fantasy, horror, etc. 7-12c per word. Up to 25,000 words. No response times listed.

Asimov’s Science Fiction — Primarily sci-fi but accepts fantasy and surreal fiction, but no high fantasy/sword and sorcery. Prefers writing that is character driven. 8-10c per word. 1,000-20,000 words. Responds in about five weeks.

Evil Girlfriend Media — Horror and urban fantasy centered on female empowerment and defying gender stereotypes. $100 flat payment. 4,000-7,000 words. No response times given. LGBT+ friendly.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies — Fantasy with a focus on secondary worlds and characters. 6c per word. Up to 10,000 words. Average response time 2-4 weeks.

Fantastic Stories — Speculative fiction with an emphasis on diversity and literary style. 15c per word. Up to 3,000 words. Responds within two weeks. LGBT+ positive.

Fiction Vortex — Serialized fantasy and speculative fiction. $300 for featured stories, $50 otherwise. 3,500 words or less. No response times given.

Shimmer — Speculative fiction with an emphasis on diversity, strong plots, vivid characters, and beautiful writing. 5c per word. 7,500 words or less (will consider longer words with query letter). Usually responds within two weeks. LGBT+ positive.

Clarkesworld Magazine — Sci-fi, fantasy, and other speculative fiction. 10c per word up to 5,000 words, 8c per word after. 1,000-16,000 words. Responds within days usually, gives a tracking number.

Apex Magazine — Speculative fiction of all kinds. 6c per word, +1c per word for podcast stories. Up to 7,500 words, all submissions over will be auto-rejected. Responds within 30 days.

Heliotrope Magazine — Speculative fiction of all kinds. 10c per word. Up to 5,000 words. Responds within 30 days.

Lightspeed Magazine — Speculative fiction of all kinds, with creativity and originality in terms of style and format encouraged. 8c per word. 1,500-10,000 words, under 5,000 preferred. LGBT+ positive. Submissions temporarily closed for their main magazine but is accepting for their People of Color Destroy Science Fiction special.

General Fiction

The Sun Magazine — General fiction, likes personal writing or writing of a cultural/political significance. $300-$1500 flat payment  and a one year subscription to the magazine for fiction (also accepts essays and poetry). No minimum or maximum lengths but over 7,000 words discouraged. Responds in 3-6 months. Physical submissions only.

One Story — Any and all varieties of fiction, “unique and interesting” stories encouraged. $500 payment plus 25 contributor copies. 3,000-8,000 words. Usually responds in 2-3 months.

Camera Obscura — General fiction. $1000 for featured story, $50 for “Bridge the Gap” award, no payment for other contributors. 250-8,000 words. Response time vary, running just over two months as of now.

Flash Fiction 

Daily Science Fiction — Speculative flash fiction (including sci-fi, fantasy, slipstream, etc.). 8c per word. Up to 1,500 words, but shorter stories given priority. Response times not listed.

Vestral Review — General flash fiction. 3-10c per word depending on length to a max of $25. Up to 500 words. Response within four months.

Flash Fiction Online — General flash fiction. $60 flat payment. 500-1,000 words. Response times not listed.

Novels/Novella

Riptide Publishing — Any LGBTQ manuscripts between 15,000 and 150,000 words. Currently especially interested in lesbian romances, trans stories, asexual/aromantic stories, romances with a happy ending, and genre fiction such as urban fantasy. Also has a YA branch.  LGBT+ positive.

Crimson Romance — Romance stories of all kinds, currently seeking LGBT+ stories with a focus on emotional connections and relationships, especially m/m romance. Novel (55,000-90,000 words) or novella (20,000-50,000 words) length.  LGBT+ positive.

Kindle Direct Publishing 

Kindle Direct Publishing — Allows you to set your own prices, create your own cover art, and make royalties off of each sell. Any and all genres are welcome and if you’re prolific and smart about how you’re publishing you can make pretty good money.

General Guide to Kindle Publishing — Gives a good rundown of the publishing process on Kindle.

101 Guide to Kindle Erotica — Great guide with lots of resources about how to make money publishing erotica on Kindle.   

Publishing Comics/Graphic Novels

Here is a list of potential comic companies and what kind of open submissions they accept.  

The Department of Stupendous Stonework is thrilled to welcome its newest member: Yorkshire, England-based artist and stonemason Johnny Clasper, who creates stunning dry stone structures, free-form stone sculptures, and beautiful pebble mosaics.

Visit Johnny Clasper’s website or follow him on Facebook to check out more of his stunning stone art as well as shots of works in progress.