Crafting Cool Worlds

BUT it’s a cute and meme-able image of a little froggy! If you don’t have the time, patience, or attention span to read my longer post about the topic, I’ve created a handy guide for protesting that can be distributed as an image. Feel free to save the image and distribute it to friends, family, and companions.

[Image ID: “If You’re About to Attend a Protest: Lenny the Frog’s Tips for a Safe & Effective Protest”

A photo of an unamused tomato frog is at the bottom left corner of the image. There are two columns of text. On the right is a red column with “Don’t” as a header. On the right is a green column with “Do” as a header.

In the red “Don’t” column is:

Have a GPS on your phone

Let someone go solo

Provoke dogs or horses

RSVP to a protest

Sign your name anywhere

Take photos of faces

Tell others how to act

Wear contacts (tear gas)

NEVER speak to law enforcement without legal counsel present.

In the green “Do” column is:

Bring extra clothes

Bring medicine

Cover scars or tattoos

Have a first air kid

Know the area

Know your rights

Record police brutality

Stand up for others

Stay together

Tell a friend you’re going

ALWAYS check on your fellow protesters to make sure they’re safe!

You care about kids? Great! GO ON BRUH. Take jr home with you. No, no… not that fresh baked Jr; it’ll be easy to find them a placement. I’m talking about the neurodivergent 12 year old who has frustration induced screaming fits; that knows every curse word in the English language and loves to use them liberally.

O-Oh. You don’t want him? Why not… I thought you cared about kids?

Oh… I get it. You only care about “normal” kids.

I don't think abortion is anyone's first choice for birth control, and saying "just use birth control" does not account for the fact that birth control does not always work (I used to volunteer in a clinic that did a lot of maternal health care, and one of the doctors mentioned how his sister was having her sixth child, even though she and her husband had been using birth control AND condoms.), and it does not account for pregnancies from rape. (It took a long time for me to respond to this because I was looking for an old article written by a pediatrician who years ago treated a 10 year old girl who was throwing up all the time and turned out to be pregnant. But the news has made that article redundant. Please read the entire article I linked. Regardless of intention, that is the result of “pro-life” policy.) I think abortion is what people choose when they are pregnant, and know that they CANNOT be (for health reasons, for safety reasons, or for other personal reasons). Abortion isn't legal past fetal viability and wasn't under Roe, either, but forcing a person to carry a fetus for months and suffer the risk and side effects of that on their body against their will is cruel and inhumane.

Even if they did deliver the fetus as soon as it was viable, that would still be months of vomiting (in some cases severe enough to require hospitalization, commonly bad enough to cause dental health problems), irreversible bodily changes, requiring extra medical care, and it would end in an invasive surgery that would also put the pregnant person's life at risk and would permanently change their body. The resulting premature baby would also require months and months of expensive medical care for weeks if not months. Where would the money for that come from? From charity? From the state? We can't even get enough funding to offer adequate food assistance to poor kids and families as it is.

And to circle back to forced pregnancy: If you disagree about forced pregnancy being inhumane, you should really think about how you’d feel about forced organ donation. Would you be okay with having the government dragging you or a loved one to a hospital so they could cut you open and take one of your kidneys, a lobe of your liver, your blood, bone marrow, or skin? After all, any of those operations would potentially save the life of whoever received the organ or tissue or blood, and it would be safer than pregnancy and giving birth, and would have fewer lingering effects.

We all have the potential to sacrifice and risk and use our bodies to give life to other people RIGHT NOW. Right now, if you have two kidneys, if you haven’t recently given blood or bone marrow or a lobe of your liver, if you are not signing up to be experimented on for drug trials, you are failing to give life to at least one person, if not many people, and are just as guilty of doing so as someone who has an abortion. But I do not judge or fault anyone for that, because I believe that giving life to another person should always be a freely given gift.

Conservatives (especially Christians) are really passionate about hating it, just so happens I’m passionate about defending it. I am a Christian, I’ve grown up as one and continued on with it. I wholeheartedly believe in God, and I am especially fond of the teachings of kindness and against hatred. So, as a American Christian that isn’t stuck with the republicans, here’s a take:

You don’t get to make the fucking call on what is or isn’t murder. You don’t have that authority. And yes, that might make it a “grey area” in some ways, but we can only go off of the facts we have now to make a call. We have a scientific explanation for when a fetus has brain functioning, which is the closest thing we have to confirming when a child is “alive” in the womb. It isn’t at conception. We have statistics showing how abortions don’t go down much when abortion is illegal, but deaths from botched abortions go up. That isn’t supporting life in my eyes. We have proof that countries with legal abortion don’t have higher rates of abortion, just safer ones. In fact, when paired with better sex education, better support for new parents, and other policies, they actually go down.  And you know what other facts we have? Conservatives, especially religious conservatives, have tried to limit sex education, especially for women/afab people for ages. Conservatives have been against gun control, despite the rising of mass shooting in the U.S in recent years, which is also killing children that we have more proof are alive. Conservatives support laws that suppress LGBT+ people and their identities, despite how being in the closer literally kills you faster. Conservatives have supported the police, who have a long history of violence against marginalized groups since their inception. Conservatives are also capitalists, despite how capitalism has killed and facilitated the deaths of innumerable people.

Conservatism is the real “cancel culture”. They’ve been doing it from the beginning; misrepresenting, minimizing, or even down right ignoring contributions of women, people of color and any other group (LGBTQ et al) that didn’t embrace their view of a white, Christian, male dominated society. Progressives want all people of all cultures, races and beliefs to be recognized for the part they play in our society. Making room in our classrooms, public observances for this diversity isn’t cancelling anything except their domination of the public forum.

They point to the removal of statues of Confederate generals, and other honors as “proof” of the “cancel culture”. But what country glorifies traitors with statues, and names public buildings after them? Make no mistake about it, the Constitution was very clear that taking up arms against the United States is an act of treason. Those statues are even more repugnant when you realize that most of them were erected at a time great racial tension in the 1920s and 1930s.

Removing the statues doesn’t mean we won’t learn about those men. A balanced look at their history will still be possible, flaws and all. But that is no reason to glorify them.

What about “Merry Christmas”? No one that I know of on the left is trying to outlaw it. But most of us prefer “season’s greetings” or some other nonspecific with people whose beliefs we don’t know; because that’s what respectful people do. But hey, say whatever you like, if you feel you have to advertise your faith to anyone and everyone go ahead and be that person. No one is proposing that “Merry Christmas” is illegal to say.

I can hear them saying “but what about the Nativity Scenes and other Christmas displays you want to outlaw?” Well that idea is that the government doesn’t get to use taxpayer money to put on those displays. That’s just keeping the government fair and neutral – separation of church and state. That isn’t cancelling anything but one faith’s monopoly on the public purse to promote their religion. OK let’s turn it around. Would conservatives like to have their tax dollars spent promoting Hanukkah, or Ramadan, or any number of other religions special days?

because theyd rather someone stay terrible or just straight up die than become a better person 

from a compassionate point of view it’s deeply distressing and from a pragmatic point of view it’s outright frustrating

What matters isn’t if people are good or bad.

What matters is if they’re trying to be better today than they were yesterday.

Shortly after the success of The Buddy Program, Parton learned in dealing with teachers from the school district that problems in education often begin during first grade when kids are at different developmental levels. That year The Dollywood Foundation paid the salaries for additional teachers assistants in every first grade class for the next 2 years, under the agreement that if the program worked, the school system would effectively adopt and fund the program after the trial period.

During the same period, Parton founded the Imagination Library in 1995: The idea being that children from her rural hometown and low-income families often start school at a disadvantage and as a result, will be unfairly compared to their peers for the rest of their lives, effectively encouraging them not to pursue higher education. The objective of the Imagination library was that every child in Sevier County would receive one book, every month, mailed and addressed to the child, from the day they were born until the day they started kindergarten, 100% free of charge. What began as a hometown initiative now serves children in all 50 states, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, mailing thousands of free books to children around the world monthly.

On March 1, 2018 Parton donated her 100 millionth book at the Library of Congress: a copy of “Coat of Many Colors” dedicated to her father, who never learned to read or write.

Remember how Trump called for the checks to be raised to $2k with the explicit assurance from McConnell that any such increase would be blocked? Remember how the checks originally were supposed to be signed “Trump”? That was intended to make Trump look like he gave a shit. So is this. He didn’t. The current administration has fucked up a ton, but any comparison with Trump’s response, whether in relief checks or on any other level, is utter bullshit.