???

here's a petition to halt it:

here's a link to the people in charge of voting tomorrow to contact! email, call, tell them how you won't visit or vacation here if the bill goes through. please, this is important since they're discussing it tomorrow, wednesday (5/14) and could vote on it tomorrow too! you don't have to live here to send something either! please spread the word

The N.C. House on Thursday temporarily shelved a bill that reinstates the statewide ban on public wearing of masks, even for people who are immunocompromised. The bill — House Bill 237, titled “Unmasking Mobs and Criminals” — also would bar the wearing of masks during a pandemic. The bill was placed into the gatekeeper House Rules and Operations committee, which typically meets on Tuesday afternoons and Wednesday and Thursday mornings. However, House speaker Tim Moore, R-Cleveland, has the discretion during session to take a bill out of committee and place it on the floor calendar. The expectation is that the House will reject Senate changes to the bill and send it to a concurrence committee to reach a potential compromise on the language.

(link to 12ft.io since the article is paywalled)

Great news from yesterday! Keep putting pressure on our elected officials and here is another I post I made to reblog with some newer info! Also, you don't have to be a North Carolina resident to sign the petition!

anyway today i was able to take the train to physical therapy by myself, and stopped for coffee on the way back, and nothing bad happened and it was a beautiful day.

she said "that's really good to hear. i've been putting it off for a while and this makes me feel better about doing it. i'd LOVE to go places again." and i said "do it! it changes your life, it can be difficult sometimes but that's so small in the face of what it can do for you!"

most of the interactions i have with other people that are specifically about my mobility are positive moments of solidarity. not all, but the vast majority.

The best is when I'm out in public, and babies in strollers see me. They're fascinated by the thing that rolls by itself.

Also, I can do "spinnies" in it, whenever I want. And going down long, winding, ramps is a lot of fun.

Back in November I was traveling for a meeting to my childhood city, and I got some pretty upsetting news. Worse, I had worn shoes I didn't wear every day at the time, and they had ripped some fairly nasty chafing sores in my feet, even with colloidal bandages everywhere. I wasn't really feeling okay enough to go to the meeting without crying in public in front of strangers I was trying to befriend, but I also didn't want to sit in the AirBNB with my coworkers and sob either, you know? I hate being vulnerable in public and this particular thing just made me feel insane and heartbroken and completely incompetent.

So I thought okay. I'm gonna go to a beloved museum. But I can't stand and walk right now. Everything hurts, taking a step hurts, because these chafing sores make wearing shoes really painful. There's no way I can go through a whole museum without making everything worse and winding up sobbing in a corner exactly like I don't want to do.

But museums rent wheelchairs. This one, I happened to know, would check one out to you for the day for free, as long as you showed the front desk your driver's license. And... well, I have been involved in disability advocacy for long enough that I would have told my friends to borrow a chair, right, because temporary disability from injury is still real disability. So I swallowed my anxiety and I limped up to the front desk when I came in, and I asked to borrow a wheelchair. (I don't know how visibly I was limping, but I would have been trying to minimize that, too.)

They just smiled, asked for my license, and then gave me one just like that. I tucked my purse in next to me, sat down, and wheeled myself off to go see the exhibits. No comment, no inquiry, not even a funny look.

I got to see the whole museum and take my mind off everything I was hurting emotionally from, without having to hurt anything more physically. It wasn't an empty museum, either—this one is a big museum, it's never empty—but no one gave me a second glance. It was good to use some muscles and skin that weren't sore, too, and I used up a lot less of my very limited ability to cope while also distracting myself a bit from how bad I felt. And I got to use a resource that exists to help people who need help, which means I got to be a number that will help justify the museum's wheelchair rental policy and its decisions to put copies of its display materials low enough to be used by other short patrons: other people using mobility devices, children, little people, all kinds of folks. It wound up being a sorely needed day away from my problems.

Portrait of a Young Woman, Jean-Etienne Liotard 

"Is it nepotism?"

"What?"

*explains the nuances of cronyism in society and its basis in cisheteropatriarchical concepts like primogeniture that (while we pretend that this concept passed with the divine right of kings) still control nearly every aspect of our lives in some way.*

"Ma'am, it's just networking and meritocracy :)"

*gets home*

*opens the networking and meritocracy*

The Eurovision song contest is facing intense scrunity and accusations of discrimination after it rebuked Swedish-Palestinian pop star Eric Saade for wearing a Palestinian scarf in the opening act of the semi-finals. Saade, whose father is of Palestinian origin, kicked off the first semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest in Malmo, Sweden on Tuesday evening with a keffiyeh, a traditional Palestinian and Arab male headdress, wrapped around his wrist. [...] In response, the organisers of the contest, European Broadcasting Union (EBU) released a statement saying it "regretted" that Saade wore the scarf. "The Eurovision Song Contest is a live TV show. All performers are made aware of the rules of the contest, and we regret that Eric Saade chose to compromise the non-political nature of the event," it said. [...] Eurovision later posted clips of the performances of the other two opening acts on its social media pages, but did not share Saade’s, prompting social media users to share the performance on their personal pages to show support for the artist.

Waving Palestinian flags, wearing traditional Palestinian garments, or if we're being honest, just being Palestinian, is now officially "too political" for Eurovision.

Literally, all Saade did was wear a keffiyeh around his wrist—while being Palestinian—and that was enough to get a statement from the EBU, and have his opening performance scrubbed from Youtube.

If you're not already boycotting Eurovision this year, then what the fuck is wrong with you?

Below are two statements from Saade. The first one, giving his reason for participating, was posted a few days ago, and the other was in response to the EBU accusing him of 'compromising the non-political nature' of the Genocide Song Contest: