Awol Airwaves

folklore by taylor swift (released july 24, 2020)

Felicity’s story was set in the beginnings of the American Revolution, and addressed the conflict that she faced when her loved ones were split between patriots and loyalists. It also covered the effects of animal abuse, and forgiving those who are unforgivable.

Samantha’s stories centered around the growth of industrial America, women’s suffrage, child abuse, and corruption in places of power. Also, it emphasises how dramatically adoption into a caring family can turn a life around.

Kit’s story is one of my favorites. Her family is hit hard by the Great Depression, and they begin taking in boarders and raise chickens to help make ends meet. Her books include themes of poverty, police brutality, homelessness, prejudice, and the importance of unity in difficult times.

Molly’s father, a doctor, is drafted during the Second World War. Throughout her story, friends of hers suffer the loss of their husbands, sons, and brothers overseas. Her mother leaves the traditional housewife position and works full-time to help with the war effort. They also take in an English refugee child, who learns to open up after a life of traumatic experience.

And then there are the later dolls, that kids younger than me would have grown up with (I was just outgrowing American Girl as these came out), like Rebecca, the Jewish girl who dreams of becoming an actress in the budding film industry, or  Julie, who fights against her school’s gender policy surrounding sports in the 70s, or  Nanea, the Hawaiian girl whose father worked at Pearl Harbor.

Nah.

OP (of the tweet thread) was either a actively trying to start shit or is just a huge fucking moron. Probably both.

I’d like to point out that the company that makes American Girl dolls actually doesn’t skimp when doing their research and they don’t make the dolls with the intent to be offensive in any way:

Josefina’s story is about the loss of her mother while she dealt with foreigners and learning to become a healer. She was never in the store I worked at, so I don’t remember much of her story, but I remember a coworker being incredibly happy that it existed!!

Cecile was sold alongside Marie-Grace as a pair, and their story revolves around self confidence, having friends, and learning to pursue your passions in life. They were both retired before I began working there, so I also did not learn their stories as well as I’d have liked to.

The Truly Me line has a variety of dolls with different face moods, eye colours, skin colours, hair colours & textures. You can get them hearing aids, there are bald dolls. There are sets like the diabetes care kit, crutches, arm crutches, wheelchairs, and probably so many more since I left my position in 2017. The Girl of the Year line features many different stories about girls in our present world, featuring girls in STEM, finding passion in arts, dealing with bullying, overcoming adversity and odds stacked against you. There are now boy dolls that has started allowing young boys to grow their interest when they may not have prior to their existence.

This brand means so much to me and to so many others, both young and old. They have given the world its history from a girl’s point of view, and its empowering young minds around the globe, and trust me when I say that. I’ve met collectors from Australia, England, and India, and that’s only a short list off the top of my head.

To all my black followers and friends, stay safe.

Also, I would like to add that black lives have always mattered, will always matter.

It’s awful that we even have to say that because it should be a given. However, we need to say it loud and clear for the racists.

This is why it’s important to SAY HER NAME OUTLOUD!!! Black women are dying and deserve justice too.

second petition

justice for breonna ft. petition

change.org petition

email form to louisville mpd 

email template

Today, Breonna's law was passed. This is a step in the right direction. Next one is to hold people responsible for her death and arrest her murderers and everyone involved in the attempt at cover-up.

I had legitimate tears in my eyes reading what Kenneth, her boyfriend, had to to through after Breonna's murder. That man was being framed for something he didn't do, all after losing his most important person.

It was that easy to jail and charge him on false claims. Why are her murderers still walking free and an innocent man spent time in jail because of a false testimony?

That's time in his life he will never get back, but you know what he'll also never get back and that's also directly on the police? Breonna. And most importantly, Breonna had her life taken from her over a police "mistake". It's time to see the culprits punished.

The first pride was a riot, more specifically a riot against police violence. Trans women of colour like Marsha P. Johnson paved the way for the celebration of pride today. You cannot celebrate your pride this month, or any month if you aren’t also supporting Black Lives Matter and the riots going on against police violence right now. Us white LGBTQ+ need to stand up for our black siblings and their rights, their struggles. We need to amplify their voices and show any support we can.Hey! Better yet, reblog this version:

Extensive BLM Google doc including places to donate to, education resources, etc

List of 75 things white people can do right now

she got a secretary job for the railway service because she had heard that was a good place to help the Resistance, and indeed she was soon contacted to leak train schedules (so Resistants could sabotage freight & ammunition trains going to Germany) and administrative info to help people escape deportation. She writes that she hopes it’s “a little bit of help” and that it will sound “more formidable when I talk about it later—in reality it is almost mundane, not at all like what you read about in books”, and she often feels like she is “playing pretend”

This sentiment comes back a lot at the beginning of her war journal, a kind of surreal feeling, almost impostor’s syndrome, like she can’t take herself seriously as a person living through a war. In 1940 she tries to enter the “forbidden zone” where her former house is, to salvage some items before the house is looted, and a German soldier offers her a lift so she won’t have trouble with the sentries. She refuses, and he sighs and says in bad French “Malheur, la guerre.” (“War—what grief.”) She writes that she had this impression again, that they were all “playing war”, playing a role, and everyone felt weird about it

her fiancé (my grandfather) was among the young men planting bombs on railway tracks to derail freight trains, and he would occasionally steal from a wagon (having no compunction about it as it was stuff the Nazis had stolen) and she & her sister would find an excuse to go out so they could all open the “surprise barrel” together. They thought it was a lot of fun as they never knew what the contents would be—sometimes food, sometimes a barrel full of wine, and once they found items from the looting of a church: crucifixes, rosaries, prayer books and the relic of a saint. She mentions it several times in her diary afterwards, always quite wryly, “We’ve had 52 alerts in 3 days, it’s exhausting having to run to the basement so many times every night, but I know we’re safe, for we have my bone of Saint What’s-His-Name”

1941 is the first time she writes that she feels like she is “living through a chapter of history”, and it’s because she started using old bicycle tyres to make new soles for her shoes, and unravelling wool jumpers to mix the yarn colours and knit “new” jumpers, which “are things you’d read about in books about war.” She gives a jumper to each of her sisters, who are happy about it and say it feels like they are really getting new clothes, and she comments “Nous voilà devenues des héroïnes de Victor Hugo” (“We’ve now become Victor Hugo characters”)

I love the amount of times she compares her life to books—when her fiancé, who was about to be deported for forced labour in Germany, changes his identity and tries to escape to the unoccupied zone (the South of France) and then to Morocco, hoping she can join him later in Casablanca, she is very anxious but also notes how strange it feels to even write these words, which seem right out of a novel.

she was nearly 20 (in 1940) the first time her mother allowed her fiancé to visit her at home (they had to stay in the kitchen, with a chaperone) after he came saying he brought his stamp book to trade stamps with her. They have fun calling each other Monsieur and Mademoiselle again, as was proper (they had long switched to using first names when their parents weren’t around); her fiancé confesses to her that he spent weeks taking stamps off of any envelop he could get his hands on, to improvise a stamp collection so he had a wholesome excuse to visit her at home. She finds the idea brilliant. They do not end up trading stamps, seeing as the “chaperone” is her older sister Geneviève who kindly spends the whole hour “very busy looking for something in the pantry”

at one point she writes bitterly that she queued up nearly the entire day at a grocery shop that was supposed to still have some chocolate and coffee, as she & her sisters were desperate for either. Instead the only things she was given in exchange for her ration tickets were one fourth of a loaf of bread, a small packet of washing soda and a “hat so shapeless you can hardly tell it is a béret”. She writes that her little sister Simone didn’t even fight her for the béret, “voilà à quel point il est laid” (“that’s how ugly it is.”)

she is interrogated by the Nazis again in 1942 and starts to fear that she is about to get caught leaking all this info about transits to Germany, so she goes to the regional director of the train service (who lives in her street) for help. He tells her that trusting him was very dangerous, “What makes you think I’m not an informer?” and she says “Sir you only have one arm. You are a disabled WWI veteran so I assumed you weren’t too fond of Germans.” She then writes: “Je tremblais en entrant dans la pièce. J’aimerais être de ces filles hardies…!” (“I was shaking as I entered the room. I wish I were one of these daring girls…!”)