INFRANMATION

often my answer was a soft i don’t know. an i-got-tired when actually it was more like - i couldn’t. i just couldn’t. it feels like everything is covered in snow. don’t you know that i’m mad at myself too? i want this stuff just as much as you do. i want to live in a clean house with good food and have an okay job and know i’m not disappointing the people i’m coming home to. i don’t like missing opportunities and having to scramble in a panic about last-minute things.

i’m a fully grown adult. she is posing for a pic on insta. if you want a life like this, go out and get it. it’s 2pm and i haven’t eaten breakfast. i am staring at the space where i should be working. 

PSA FOR THOSE IN DC AREA - PLEASE STOP FEEDING BIRDS (JUNE 2021)

Folklore student answer: “Also, almost all cultures have something like djinn, faeries, hulder, fox spirits, and other similar creatures who can appear at least human and are very, very dangerous to humans!” 

Genetics aside, various hominid species didn’t start visually looking all that different until 50,000 years ago, while under the skin changes began as early as 89,000 years ago (ie the development of the Y chromosome but I might be oversimplifying at this point) Point being, even our non-human cousins didn’t. look. that. different. from. us. Especially comparing the diversifying of humans themselves crossing trans continental as it was. And even then neandertals still had advantagious traits for living in the Eurasian hemisphere.

Also I digress, regardless of it being intentional, and with few perserved records from that chapter in our species’ history, I don’t like the implication that the uncanny valley effect stems from humans being inherently racist (for lack of a word for hatred of non-human intelligences). I know that sounds off the wall but prejudice and sense of superiority by birthright is vastly different than othering by means of the sucess of social groups and the need to compete for territory or resources. Racism is entirely a Eurpean fabrication and it’s been proven time and time again to be a cultural outlier and purposfully designed to further the agenda of corroded theocratical religious divinity (here, here, here) and the financial benifits of the exploitation of colonism that otherwise has not been replicated by other cultures to the same degree. (this is the only example off the top of my head but I’m know there’s more.)

You know what’s older than racism?

You know what’s more flesh crawling than neandertals?

fucking rabies

You know what LOOKS like a human but doesn’t ACT human ENOUGH? Do you know what might bite you and get you sick or turn you into something that also moves about in a non human way? Brain parasites that give you painful headaches and intensifies agression and confusion.

Say you’re a monkey and one member of your troop gets bitten by something. Later he starts twitching and swaying about. He keeps stumbling out of trees but barely feels anything when he hits the ground. He won’t eat sleep or drink. He makes guttural noises that keep alerting predators and he’s in obvious writhing agony. Suddenly he’s not your friend anymore. He doesn’t recognize you and he attempts to bite and claw at anything that moves.

Up until preventitive oral medications and vaccines were developed in the 1970s there was NOTHING stopping rabies and it still prevails today and kills hundreds of thousands of people in third world countries with limited medical resources a year. There’s no cure for rabies once youve got it and the only reliable diagnostic is a brain autopsy.

Rabies. TB. Leoprosy. Syphilis. Meningitis. Toxoplasmosis. Anthrax. Mercury Poisoning. Prion disease. These are all bad and in different varying degrees can cause limps, sores, agression, confusion or dazed trances, ambled pacing, convulsions or uncharacteristic behavior in humans.

Basically everything that people are terrified of when it comes to zombies. Vampires bite. Werewolves rip people apart. Demonic possesion? Easy. Changlings take the place of your loved ones.

Also I don’t think that it’s a conicidence that the things we find uncomfortable with the uncanny valley also just happen to line up with predatory behavior, smiling too wide or staring you down, blinking too slowly or moving towards you with a slow steady speed. It’s just a danger signal to keep other monkeys in a troop from getting bitten by an infected monkey. Simple as that.

After all what’s scarier? A dead body, or moving body that will MAKE you dead?

I’m not going to be a hypocrite by pointing out racism being excused as a stemmed human behavior without claiming that the deep seated primal fear of disease doesn’t make a good excuse for ableism as well. I mean we use othering to discern friend from foe, and then at some point decided that was a good enough excuse for racism. Theres legitimate proof that ancient homonids could and would be hospitible to the disabled out of compassion. The point of having these initial fears is to guage saftey measures first, but once someone or something is proven to be harmless that normally should be the end of it. I mean if an adult wild silverback gorrilla can look at a spycam and decide it’s chill after a moment of inspection then there’s really no excuse for any of us.

Healthy othering =/= newly invented racism.

healthy fear of infectious diseases =/= excuse to hate disabled people.

like even sitting in an office for eight hours a day isn’t particularly pleasant (or healthy, as we are beginning to see) but when we’re talking about doing *actual work* for that same amount time it gets pretty fucking brutal

doing literally *anything* (even leisure activities) for eight hours straight tends to be less than enjoyable but when we’re talking about things like construction, landscaping, factory work, and hell, even foodservice and retail, eight hours is a fucking ETERNITY

It’s not just celebrities and politicians, but you can see it in how the public reacts to male celebrities and politicians vs female celebrities and politicians for their parenting and how involved they are with their kids. A male public figure will be praised just for spending some time, any time at all with his kids, but a female public figure, well, it’s just expected from her, she’s a woman and it’s her job as a woman no matter how busy or famous she is.

But it’s not just celebrities and public figures obviously, this is something I see all the fucking time in every day life. People praise men just for not leaving and being present in their kids life, because the bar is so low, but again, the bar for women is set exponentially higher. The other day I saw a dude whining on Facebook about how his ex-girlfriend is always mad at him for not spending enough time with their son, but there were literally dozens of comments of “But your facebook profile picture is a selfie with your son so obviously you actually spend some time with him!! You’re obviously a good man and a good parent for actually being present and not just totally abandoning him altogether like so many men out there do.” Meanwhile, the next day I saw a woman post a little anecdote about how her toddler splashed in a puddle and got wet so she had to run into Target to get a spare change of clothes for her kid, aaaand all the comments were people abrasively reprimanding her for not always having a spare change of clothes for her kid “like a good mum always should, my wife always carries spare clothes for our kid, why aren’t you? Just thoughtless and careless parenting, smh.” 

The bar in parenting for men is so low. We honestly are praising men just for the very bare minimum “he didn’t leave, he spends some time at all with his kids, that’s being a good parent.” But if he does just abandon his baby mum and skip out of town? People will say “it’s a shame, but what you expect? He’s a man, and so many men just aren’t up to parenting, it’s to be expected.” People will even joke about men just skipping out on being a parent and leaving all the work to the woman, because it’s so common and expected. There’s still so many double standards in parenting and dismissing parenting as women’s work and expecting very little from men. I’m glad I’m starting to see people on Tumblr talk about people calling a man spending time with his children “babysitting” but like, there’s still so many more issues in double standards in parenting that need to be tackled. For example, it’s nearly a daily thing for me to see things like baby baths or children’s food advertised only toward women “make baby’s bath time easier for mom! Great way for mom to sneak some healthy food into her children’s diet!” like, don’t men bathe and feed their children too? And how are these advertisements enforcing sexist double standards in parenting? 

They sure should. Let’s fight to have this changed in our lifetime. Not just for mlm and single fathers, but because even straight men raising a child with a woman should be doing their fair fucking share of work. And a lot of men want to be doing their fair share of work, changing their children’s diapers and all, but shit like not having changing stations in restrooms blocks that and makes more responsibility for the mother.

The same can be said about deadbeat fathers keeping the bar low for men and parenting. People calling a man a “good father” because he spends some time every once in a while with his kids and takes selfies with them, but can’t be bothered to do any of the intensive and difficult work of actually parenting his children, but he’s a “good father” because he’s actually present in his children’s lives and didn’t completely abandon them like a lot of fathers do. The bar is so low it’s in hell.

And who does that leave most or all of the work to? The mother. And this is going to have consequences because this extra work makes it harder or outright impossible for women to succeed in their ambitions and careers outside the home, which will contribute to the gender wage gap and women having less positions of power and influence in society like lawmakers and media creators.

Leading the violent crackdown [on the NYC uprisings following George Floyd’s murder] was the New York Police Department’s Strategic Response Group, or SRG, a heavily militarized, rapid-response unit of several hundred officers. Since its founding in 2015 to deal with public disorder events and terrorist acts, civil rights advocates have objected to the deployment of the unit to protests, and then-NYPD chief of department and later Commissioner James O’Neill pledged at the time that the SRG would “not be involved in handling protests and demonstrations.”

The pledge turned out to be hollow. That same year, the SRG was deployed against Black Lives Matter protesters. Since then, the unit’s armor-clad officers and bike squads have become a regular presence at protests, where they stand out for their confrontational and aggressive tactics. After each confrontation, complaints about the unit streamed into the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the independent body tasked with reviewing allegations of police abuse. Investigators found a disproportionate number of SRG officers accused of wrongdoing to have exceeded their legal authority, when compared with the wider department. The group earned a reputation among activists as the NYPD’s “goon squad.”

Inside the SRG: Despite its visibility, little is publicly known about the SRG and how its specialized officers are trained to respond to protests. Even the frequently cited number of 700 SRG officers is an estimate; the NYPD will not confirm the unit’s headcount.

Now a series of internal documents obtained by The Intercept shed new light on the police unit behind some of the most brutal repression of protests in the wake of George Floyd’s killing. The Intercept is publishing three of the public records with this story, including the SRG’s guidelines and manuals for its field force operations and bike squads.

The documents offer a comprehensive overview of how the SRG operates. They outline the unit’s responsibilities during routine assignments to precincts across the city, to which its officers are dispatched in response to spikes in crime and during special mobilizations, including to protests. The documents provide instructions regarding “mass arrest” procedures, guidelines for officers equipped with Colt M4 rifles, and directions for plainclothes, “counter-surveillance” officers tasked with shadowing tactical teams in the field.

Marked as “law enforcement sensitive” and bearing destruction notices, the documents also detail a variety of formations and maneuvers for bike squads and teams of officers on foot and in vehicles. Some of the maneuvers described in detail are variations of what the NYPD refers to as “encirclement,” the police’s name for what demonstrators call “kettling,” a technique civil rights advocates have long denounced as leading to police abuses.

NYPD’s Strategic Response Group (SRG) Guide

NYPD’s SRG Field Force Modules

NYPD’s SRG Bike Squad Modules

these guides show diagrams of police formations and arrest tactics, would be extremely useful for protestors in the future looking to evade cops or otherwise

and a personal favorite:

Like we have Fernando who's presumably afro-brazilian. He's an orphan and has to commit crimes (stealing birds) to keep himself afloat and he lives in the favelas (basically "slums" in Rio)

Then this white couple comes along (may i say with literally 0.1% chemistry, also Tùlio sucks) and they basically fix all his problems and even adopt him JUST to leave him in RIO in the 2nd movie while they are adventuring around in the Amazonas. We literally see Fernando 2 seconds in Rio 2. Fernando literally becomes another bird for Tùlio and Linda to take care of, when he is in fact a human being. Not to mention that it is confirmed that he works at the blue bird reservoir for Tùlio (while he is gone), basically providing free child labour.

And the only scene where we see him in the 2nd movie is while he's standing on a birdhouse looking treehouse, which kind of reinforces the entire "just another bird to collect" statement.

In terms of OP’s posts- yes it is gross to detract from BLM by trying to say “hey, these groups experience racism too!!”

But the thing is, at least for Asian Americans, the whole COVID thing made racism against Asians so much worse- and while I’m not saying those who are advocating for BLM are racist against Asian people, there’s a huge difference between how people reacted to racism against Asians and racism against black people

Not to mention a decent amount of ppl who were saying “BLM!” turned a blind eye towards the racism against Asian people because they didn’t perceive it as racism

And I feel that Asians have a right to feel offended by everything going on- our experiences have basically been put on a back burner. Is that a bad thing to say? Yes. But that is literally what’s happening.

I just cannot fathom how “hey I get BLM is happening, and I support it, but racism against Asians is also a very much prevalent issue rn” is offensive. How exactly is that detracting from the situation? Is it because we’re saying “hey focus on this too!” How is that throwing black people under the bus?

And in regards to the reblog- what the fuck? It’s racist to expect people to stand up for you? No offense but couldn’t the exact same thing be said about black people? I wholeheartedly disagree.

I really am sorry if this is offensive, but this post lowkey made me feel invalidated about my experiences with racism. And if that’s a bad thing, okay. Educate me. Because I truly do not understand this mindset but a lot of people agree with it and I just don’t know why

And I am telling you that you are in the wrong.

The reason that people give BLM a lot of attention is because the nature of anti-Black racism in the U.S. is deeply systemic and extremely violent in nature. Now, I'm not saying that it's right of people to ignore anti-Asian racism. Anti-oppression work should not leave any minority behind, and that includes us. But just as you are stating a reality that anti-Asian racism gets less attention, I'm stating a reality that the kind of racism we get is different from anti-Black racism and requires different solutions. In my opinion, anti-Asian racism, especially related to COVID, requires grassroot awareness campaigns and open dialogue. Conversely, anti-Black racism requires the majority of American citizens to be onboard with fundamentally changing law enforcement, justice, medical, and academic systems that are embedded into the very foundations of the country. This is a complete overhaul of American society. These are huge changes and American lives are at stake - this is why the response is unequal. And I will repeat: it is wrong that some people completely brush off anti-Asian racism. But many people are cognizant of it while focusing more intensely on anti-Black racism, and it is because anti-Black racism is different in scale and nature. I think this is a fair reason.

Importantly also, the systemic nature of anti-Black racism means that as non-Black people, Asians benefit from this system too. (This of course, does not apply to Black Asians.) Thus, we need to be part of that group of people who are actively onboard with dismantling these racist systems and centering the conversation around Black folk as much as possible.

In my opinion, this is why it is offensive and tone deaf to say, "BLM is getting a ton of attention right now but what about Asians?" When you ask this question, it is centering the conversation away from the plight of Black Americans at our benefit - which is disturbing when you consider that American society is hellbent on silencing Black Americans and pushing them to the periphery as much as possible. When we play along with this system that centers attention away from Black people, we are participating in anti-Blackness.

This is also completely unnecessary when you consider that there are ways to address anti-Asian racism that do not center conversations away from Black folk - as stated by that reblog you are criticizing. Why are you framing this as, "Why them and not us? Look at us too!" Why can't your callouts and awareness efforts just focus solely on anti-Asian racism without bringing BLM into it? Why do your upset feelings about racism have to do with the fact that BLM is getting more attention? Regardless of your intentions, it suggests that you simply don't care about Black Americans as much as you care about yourself.

It is also very interesting that you would place responsibility upon the Black community to advocate for us. This dialogue is not about Black people looking the other way and being complicit in anti-Asian racism. Not "doing the work" is different from complicity. Activist campaigns are gruelling, emotionally taxing, and drains financial resources. We should not expect Black communities to do it for us, and just because they don't doesn't mean that they are complicit. They can, and largely do, support anti-racism for Asians without spearheading this labor-intensive activist work. Because it is absolutely our responsibility to do this hard work for ourselves. (And by the way, historically, our communities absolutely have benefitted from the anti-oppression work done by Black activists.)

And if you read this all and think that Black folk should be doing this labor intensive work for us - I'm going to ask you this. Have you been doing it for them? Have you been organizing and fighting on their behalf? How much work have you done for them?

And now, a tangentially related but still important convo that should be had:

It is interesting that you bring up COVID, because there is this rhetoric among Asian-Ams I've noticed that we should not stand up for Black people just because no one stood up for Asians during COVID. This makes no sense. Why should anti-Asian racism from others lead to anti-Blackness from us? This is not how solidarity between Black people and Asians works.

Now what would happen if a homeless quilt was made by someone who actually cared about homeless people?

Meet former ad designer Willie Baronet. 

Baronet is an artist who talks to homeless people and buys their signs from them for $20 a pop, if they’re willing to sell. He uses the signs in art exhibits to educate the privileged and point them to ways they can help, and to humanize homeless people and tell them they matter. 

native american rights fund

heyday berkely roundhouse

news from native california magazine

national indian child welfare association

california indian legal services

native american food sovereignty alliance

meskwaki food sovereignty initiative

friends of pine ridge reservation

first nations development institute

Video Transcription from user @/lelegenevieve on TikTok: “If you’ve been supporting the Black Lives Matter movement or are looking for ways to support, please stop scrolling and signal boost this video. I’ve been coding—pretty tirelessly—everyday for my website pb-resources.com. It’s an education tool and resource I’ve been using to compile information to fight police brutality and white supremacy. There are calls to action, educational tools, and different places to donate. Today I added this section that allows you to input your information and send automated emails; and everything is filled out for you. It was also really important that for me to adds way to support the Black trans community. And in a few days, the website will be generating ad revenue and 100% of the proceeds will be donated; so all you have to do is visit the site to support BLM. Lastly, I’ve been asking you guys to follow me on Instagram (@/alexisdenisew) so I can hit 10k and get the swipe up update and I’m almost there. So if you haven’t already, go follow.”

If anyone with experience with audio transcription formatting would like to repost this with a better transcript, please do, my experience is limited.