Small and angry about it

btw, here’s yours:

Before the trip to St. Louis, in the summer and fall of 2015, BLMC attempted to work with the Rice family (from a distance) to build momentum for the fight to jail the cops that killed Tamir Rice. Samaria Rice’s sheer will to get justice inspired tens of thousands across the country. Grass roots formations across the Midwest and South began to respond to these efforts, led by Samaria Rice. BLMC raised hundreds of dollars to rent busses, local unions were contributing and making plans to attend what was shaping up as a regional protest, steadily building into a national one. Several churches in the South were beginning to get busses and organize their congregations to attend. Chicago and Boston activists were mobilizing support as well. The family — rightfully so — reached out to BLM national for additional help. What happened next was treacherous. First, the open phone conferences organized to plan the #YearWithoutTamir action were shut down. BLM national, through a local leader they assigned, set up a new conference call where no one could speak but the moderator. They alienated churches who planned on sending support from the South. They refused to declare a firm day for a mass action, despite repeated requests from BLMC and numerous other groups. This made it impossible for unions and other organizations to zero in on a key day to bus people in. That single action destroyed union, regional and national support. At the last minute, a protest action day was called, but by then it was too late. The result was that only a couple hundred people — mostly from the nearby region — attended the action, when the stage (through the work of the Rice family) was set for many thousands more on a scale we saw later during the Philando Castile actions. The BLM leaders of that debacle then blamed local Black residents for low attendance at an event that was not built in any serious way and not geared towards mass participation.

inat has options for this! for each observation you upload, you can choose to keep the location public, not to disclose location at all, or to obscure it.

“Grace says he would like half of dome to be water.”

“Oh, is necessary for humans to have large amounts of water question?”

Small Eridian equivalent of a sigh. “No. Not needed for life. In fact Grace will die if he falls in water and does not get out.”

“Tell him we give him water in containers that won't kill him. Lots lots lots of water on Erid for Grace to drink.”

“No. Grace say he want water on ground. Also want it with excess sodium chloride compound so it will be unhealthy for drink.”

“Grace want this liquid for celebration.”

“Of course.” They scan it. “You have wrong liquid. This contain compounds which are poisonous for humans.”

“Yes yes yes. Grace say humans like feeling of being slightly poisoned.”

The most recent time, I arrived half an hour before the event as usual, but the building was locked. We don't have a key and the door is normally left open for us. Jim shows up a few minutes later, we can't get in, and we're just standing on the street in a sketchy part of town.

I suggest we message everyone and move the event to somewhere else, a local bar that's very safe, it means we won't be able to do what we had planned but we can at least sit inside and socialise for an hour or two. Jim doesn't like this idea. So we wait on the street as several people walk past giving us weird looks.

After about 10 minutes, Jim thinks he sees someone through a window inside the house. We know there are theoretically people who live above the arts centre, but we've never seen them before. Jim starts hammering on the door, and the people on the street are staring at us even more.

Then Jim decides to stary yelling, not just "Hello", but "Hello we're from the transgender group!" at the door, really loudly. People are really looking now. He keeps doing this for about five minutes until eventually a man actually opens the door and asks "What do you want?"

I can tell instantly that this guy has *views* on trans people, gay people, the usual. But Jim just says, loudly enough for everyone nearby to hear too, "Hi, we're here from the transgender group, we're holding a transgender event in here!" This guy thinks for a second then his eyes narrow and he looks directly at *me* with a kind of vicious disgust that I recognise all too well.

I have to explain that Jim started medical transition very young. He looks and sounds totally indistinguishable from a cis man, to the extent that many people within the community privately doubt that he is trans at all (he is though). I don't mean to imply that he doesn't face transphobia, even the most perfectly "passing" trans man faces a ton of discrimination for that transness. I just mean to point out that this man looked down at us on the doorstep and saw what he would describe as a man in men's clothing, and a potential T-slur in women's clothing, and then heard Jim essentially say "we're transgender", and he knew that he had clocked me correctly, and that disgust I saw in his face was that confirmation that one of *them* was here in his house.

In the end, nothing bad happened, the guy stood there blocking our entry for a minute, but eventually grunted something and wandered off. But it took me a while to realise that I was actually a bit shaken up by the whole thing.

The kid was picked up by an ambulance 30 minutes later.

Now as an adult working in security I get SO MANY folks- upper-middle aged mostly- coming to me to 'rat out' people they think are faking it.

I was once sent into a bathroom because a client demanded that the "fucker won't get out, so go drag them out"- I was NEVER going to do that, so I did a wellness check instead. You know who it was? A person recently released from the hospital after a car accident. They had a hole in their skull and major hearing loss. They couldn't answer the owner because they couldn't HEAR the owner.

Another time about a homeless man who got around town by kicking the ground from his wheelchair. "You know he doesn't actually need that thing, his legs work fine, it's just for pity points"- Oh, so he's not paralyzed, his wheelchair is performative? Funny story Dale, I actually know that guy, he was backed over by a truck and has chronic pain from his shattered pelvis. But sure, let's make him stand up and walk everywhere so nobody feels too bad for him and tries to help him or something.

"She doesn't need that scooter, I've seen her get out of it."

"Look how fat he is, because he just rides around and refuses to get up."

"She doesn't really need that cane- she comes here without it all the time"

and in the one hand, did i enjoy spending hours researching housing regulations in my state? not especially. drafting this email was stressful. but on the other hand, did i learn a lot by doing that research? yeah, i did. i’m more prepared for my current and future leases. i used some of that info to make decisions about a new renter’s insurance policy. i already told three different people about things i learned that are relevant to their leases that they didn’t know yet. (pro tip: see if you’re supposed to be getting annual interest payments on your security deposit! also look up what specific appliances your landlords must legally provide as of 2026.) i also got to reconnect with my cousin for a bit because her job gave her specific insight on part of the situation, and i’d much rather do that than have a chatbot make shit up for me.

also, i drafted that email with the power of friendship (friends angry on our behalf) and spite (from landlords telling me not to do my research). chatgpt could never.