Sasha

Names on this fundraiser list show the best side of that long memory.

the tree had grown a root up through the center of it & out through the sides

I'm still learning, but from what I've gleaned so far, it's very clear that our ancestors had a very different relationship to gender/gender expression than what we have in the present moment. I think of the orisha known to take both male and female form and how that wasn't considered strange. I think of how before colonialism and slavery, that intimacy between men wasn't considered horrific. And this is just my personal opinion, but the homophobia and transphobia in our communities is a kind of self-hatred. I'm not saying that we're all gay/trans (though I'm very happily my bi self) but I do think that it's way more common than people would care to admit.

Listen in the past the poor have had to improvise cheap food the rich never wanted as a means to survive. And over the many years of innovation made the food taste good until eventually the rich where like: “Oh hay you actually like that garbage? Why on earth would you like it?” Then they try it, love it, start buying it, and then drive the price up so much it becomes a luxury good.

They do this and its devastating, the food typically never becomes affordable again. It don’t matter how cheap the foo dis to produce, it doesn’t matter if there is almost no meat on the bone or its super difficult to eat and messy. Once the poor discover how to make some bit of cheap food taste good, the rich take it away via driving the price of it up.

THEY DID THIS TO RIBS.

Ribs were garage meat. Just look at them, there is hardly any meat on the bone, you have to eat them by hand usually, and they are messy. They where an undesirable cheap source of junk meat. But the poor being the poor made them taste good. (Because they don’t have much to choose from.) The rich discovered the meals the poor made with them and decided they liked ribs too. People discovered they could sell a few ribs to rich people and make way more money then selling lots of ribs to poor people and the price was driven up.

It was a cheap meat because no rich person looks at the dangly part of the neck of a cow and goes ‘ooh, that looks tasty!’.

But then Food Network started showcasing things like barbecued brisket.  Rich people started showing up at places that weren’t just Rib Crib to get their barbeque.  And the price of brisket went up.  A lot.

I regularly see it for over five dollars a pound in stores now.  And while yeah, that might not seem like a lot when you’re talking only a pound or two of meat, brisket is normally sold in ten to twenty pound sizes.  It’s become completely unaffordable to the people that made it delicious.

Sushi used to be really cheap, too, until it became ‘trendy’.  Guess why you’re now paying twelve dollars for your order of California rolls?  Because rich people discovered something that poor people had been eating for ages.

Person #1: *Meme about breaking news* Person #2: I can’t keep learning the news like this. Person #3: If you’re going to a circus, expect to see clowns.

But the thing is, sure, everyone on tumblr expects to see clowns.

What we don’t expect is for the clowns to do this:

Redditors design worst volume sliders possible

we have made it to the abyssopelagic zone!!!

hm. it’s really dark. let’s light this place up! just gimme a minute…

This may be true for some of them.

But the rest are our peers. They're teachers, and hiring staff, and HR, and managers. They are healthcare workers, and therapists, and handymen, and bartenders. They're policeman, and politicians, and judges, and policy makers.

Their lives are not without direct impact on our own. They exist among us, and their decisions inform our opportunities, environment, and quality of life.