Big-Ass Wings

“SCROLL UP IT’S GLASS”

I was on the phone with police the other day describing someone and he was over here talking *over* dispatch to give me details I already knew... because I had paused.... to give dispatch time to type.... and I guess he thought I didn't know???

Like man I appreciate the spirit but I literally taught YOU how to do that, do you think I forgot??

Like I bequeathed unto you my Stone of Power and in doing so lost all arcane wisdom???

and while I USED to think it was because I was a girl and they thought girls were stupid, I have come to understand that really, it comes from more of a benign and congnitively youthful void where "other people know things that I don't" and "sometimes things don't make sense to me because there are things I am not yet aware of"

and this can be directed towards anyone they haven't subconciously identified as a Wiser Authority

Because if "people who might know more than me" is an unspoken category that applies only to Professors, Guardians, Role Models, and Peers- and NONE of those hypothetical persons LOOKS like "girl", in their head, they aren't treating girls like they're dumb- they're treating girls THE EXACT SAME WAY they treat EVEYONE ELSE...... who isn't more intelligent.

No wonder they're always so blind to it! They're looking for a big solid block that says "BELIEF THAT WOMEN ARE STUPID", and they're COMPLETELY MISSING the big, empty hole where "BELEIEF THAT ANY WOMEN MIGHT KNOW MORE THAN ME" should go

I would never pay money for a redbox. if you ask politely and are very very persistent (i.e. annoying) they will let you take it away

here's my dad and i taking it away

luckily there are no shortage of freaks like us who will just take them away on our own volition. we did it all "by the book", too: we set up cones and caution tape, disconnected electricity properly, used an angle grinder to grind down the bolts in the concrete so nobody would trip on them, then cleaned everything up afterward and sealed off the electrical panel so the store would know everything is safe and tidy. though they were hesitant when we were first contacting them, they were honestly very relieved and grateful when we finally took it away, especially once they saw that we "knew what we were doing" (we don't) and look like we've "done this before" (we haven't).

the fun part: the reason why this redbox, in particular, was completely full and unraided is because the computer hardware inside had failed some months before the bankruptcy, and a failing company sure as hell wasn't gonna send a tech out to our podunk dipshit city to fix it, so it was impossible to rent movies or take any discs out. plus, for who knows how long, people were returning old redbox discs to this machine and not taking any out, leading to a much higher variety of movies than your average redbox.

there is a thriving community of redbox hackers and modders out there, as well, creating open-source software for repurposing the machines and not letting their very interesting and robust disc-management hardware go to waste. this one belongs to my brother (who was very annoying persistent and did all the legwork of contacting managers and securing permission) who is a programmer by trade and will be hacking it into a family-access movie library, with whatever discs we want. i mean the machine is completely weatherproof and has a built-in AC unit, it would be such a waste to not try to turn it into something cool.

if we get another one, i'm gonna try to mod it into some sort of art or zine vending machine. the disc boxes are just the right size for small print art or stickers. would make a great "little free library" too.

Yes, Asians Are Oppressed

It's shocking how eagerly people will make statements such as "Asians are basically white." Yet I can see why even another person of color might come to the conclusion. Relations between Asian Americans (or Asians of any society in the West) and other communities of color have always been strained. Black and Latino Americans are aware, and correctly, that many Asian American communities have a trait unique to communities of color: racial superiority. Native Americans are hardly acknowledged, if at all, by Asians. Most non-Asian communities of color experience systemic racial oppression far more severe and longer lasting than Asians in the West have endured.

But to see Asian communities solely from that perspective is antithetical to cross-racial solidarity for all people of color. In addition to the erasure of darker-skinned non-East Asians in this train of thought, and in addition to the fact that playing 'Oppression Olympics' has never benefited any categories of minorities, the fact remains that orientalism, or anti-Asian racism, cannot be a footnote in the history of American racism and white supremacy.

The predominant theme running through the history of Asian Americans from the very first arrivals-this is, obviously, 1830s to this day-is the Perpetual Foreigner Syndrome. This sense that we cannot possibly belong is exemplified by the internment of Japanese Americans, 120,000 individuals, two-thirds of them born in this nation and therefore citizens, that we could not be trusted, that blood will tell, that we truly would be actually loyal to the emperor of Japan or to some other sovereignty or that we could never assimilate, that we would not be Christian, could not speak English, could not truly join, did not understand democracy, were inscrutable, would not somehow wish for the same freedoms that others whose forbearers had come on the Mayflower wish for.

-- Frank H. Wu, UC Hastings College of the Law, 2016

Asian Americans, I would argue, are among the predominant cultures regarded as foreign, unknown outsiders. In a 2022 study, Asian Americans were the least likely to feel that they completely belong and are accepted in the United States (29%) compared to Black Americans (33%), Latino Americans (42%), and white Americans (61%). From the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 to the 1922 Supreme Court decision that Asian Americans were not naturalized citizens because they were not Caucasian to the surge in anti-Asian racism during the COVID-19 pandemic, the truth is that Yes. Asians are oppressed.

During World War II, 120,000 Japanese American citizens (citizens, not those on visa- citizens of this country) were uprooted and told to pack bags to internment camps for the simple crime of their ancestral origin, which alone certified their guilt in potentially being a spy. A portion of those interned (known as "Nisei" - second generation immigrant children) could not speak Japanese, and had never been to Japan. This was not done against German Americans, nor Italian Americans. They had to work unlike fellow white Americans to prove their nationality. The 442nd Regimental Combat Team composed of Japanese American Nisei remains the most decorated unit in American military history for their work in WWII Europe. But not Asia. Japanese American troops were not permitted to be sent to Asia.

Lead to the Model Minority

In 1966, a New York Times article by a white author thus lauded the hard work that prevented Japanese Americans from becoming a "problem minority". At the same time, the war on crime and criminalization of Black Americans was beginning. It was in this context that the "model minority" myth emerged, casting Asian Americans as hardworking and quiet, villainizing Black Americans. (It should be said that this does not justify the antiblackness in Asian American communities, only provides contextualization in a systemic lose-lose struggle between two communities fostered by whiteness, who continues to benefit in the end.)

Part of the reason API people avoid it is that they can see the way Blacks and Latinos are positioned… and they don’t want that, so they’ll do something different and hope for a different outcome… Those are the two big ones: a lot of pressure not to talk about it, and then a lot of pressure to disassociate from Blacks and Latinos.

-- Participant in a ChangeLab study about Asian Americans and race

Disclaimers.

Now that we're talking about #StopAsianHate, I see being both Black and Asian — the bridge between both of these communities and how similar they are. And sometimes I just get frustrated, because we're both not seeing each other's humanity and unifying as much as we should.

-- Johnathan Gibbs, Blasian activist

It is, however, crucial to remember that the 'model minority' stereotype in America very heavily focuses on East Asians, namely Chinese, Korean, and Japanese Americans. South and Southeast Asians, especially darker-skinned Asians, rarely feel a connect to the "model minority" stereotype. The demonization of dark skin and skin lightness hierarchy in Asia continues to reflect the effects of antiblackness even as an internalized system for Asians. Another notable element is mixed race Asian and Black American people (mixed race Asians of which many more lessons could be written on alone). As those who face both antiblackness and orientalism, their perspectives are especially important when considering cross-racial solidarity.

They're like, "Black Lives Matter and yes, this is happening to us too, but the root is white supremacy. But then you have this sector of the population... that are like, "Well, they don't understand that Black people have been going through this," and then they'll say, "Well, Asian people have gone through the Chinese Exclusion Act." But girl, slavery happened. Then you get into what everybody labels as the "oppression Olympics," and I don't do the oppression Olympics because there's no comparison. I say this as an Asian person, there is no comparison to what Black people have gone through in the United States of America since 1619.

-- Johnathan Gibbs

And the last disclaimer is that though I said we should not play 'Oppression Olympics', in a discussion like this it is vital to acknowledge that Black Americans have been facing significant amounts of systemic racism, and it is not reducing American orientalism to a footnote to say that.

So What's the Solution? Yuri Kochiyama, Malcolm X, and Cross-Racial Solidarity

Yet despite this shared struggle, divergent goals and interests “sets our two communities apart and pits us against each other. […] Racialized disinformation […] sustains white supremacy. It can also be weaponized to disrupt cross-racial solidarity among different communities and ultimately uphold the tenets of white supremacy power structures.

-- Phan, a research analyst with the Asian American Disinformation Table.

But I have spent all this time talking about how these communities are different, oppressed differently, put differently against each other, all while focusing on differences is still not the solution. 

Black-Asian solidarity is not new: Frederick Douglass argued against the Chinese Exclusion Act, political activist Yuri Kochiyama was an ally and friend of Malcolm X, and Jesse Jackson stepped away from his presidential campaign in 1992 to protest the murder of Vincent Chin. Japanese Americans’ push for reparations for internment during World War II was modeled on the civil rights movement of the 60s and 70s.

-- Joseph Williams, The Long History of Black-Asian Solidarity, 2023

Japanese American human rights activist Yuri Kochiyama was the one by Malcom X's side cradling his head in her lap after he’d been fatally shot at Audubon Ballroom. She had directly contributed to the passing of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which guaranteed reparations for former internees of the Japanese American camps (including herself). But the majority of Kochiyama’s influence today stems from her work in cross-racial solidarity through grassroots activism.

She helped connect Asian American activism to the larger Civil Rights movement, and formed unity between diverse communities. Based in Harlem at the height of the movement, she worked directly alongside Black and Latino communities, and through her work, Kochiyama demonstrated to all that the fight for justice does not define those by their differences, but by their willingness to stand together.

The same exact playbook is being used against both Black and Asian communities. So if we don’t stick together, the playbook that wins against one of our communities will absolutely win against the other.

There was a big push to eliminate "degrading jobs" but the strategy was to eliminate the position, then create a new position outside of the bargaining unit to do the work. So like, we wouldn't have dishwashers, but we'd have people who washed dishes that weren't eligible to be in the union.

I was like A) what the actual fuck? Dish washing isn't "degrading", it's fucking vital. B) What the actual fuck? You want to create a union just to exploit different people?

The first time someone told me that busing tables was "degrading", I was like "Oh, uhh, yeah, like it's very necessary work but under compensated for how vital it is?" and they responded "No, touching plates that other people have eaten off of is disgusting."

In bargaining, someone on the Union side suggested that we eliminate all the cashiers and exclusively use self-checkouts (they were a cashier and didn't like it). The organizer told them that the union wasn't in the habit of eliminating bargaining unit positions. (This is the same person I've talked about how said that "as a prison abolitionist" we just needed to execute most criminals.)

It got me thinking, along with Ann Russell talking about how to treat cleaners (being a cleaner herself), about how we conceptualise domestic service as particularly degrading in all its forms, when, really, why is that? Why is paying someone to do something intrinsically bad?

Like, even in a moneyless, gift economy society, there would still be people whose primary contribution to their communities would be cleaning. Some people like to clean, and are really rather good at it.

I've talked ad nauseam in the past about how British attitudes towards cleaners and other service based positions today are the descendants of Victorian attitudes. That is, both the attitudes of conservatives and many progressives of that time. The trade union movement was particularly exclusionary towards service workers.

We did a day trip to a soup kitchen to help out; and got paired up -- one person bussing tables, the other doing dishes/cooking/prepping the plates.

Now, back then my ADHD wasn't recognized, much less treated in any shape or form. And I knew that I would not only royally fuck up bussing, but also be miserable the entire time. It just ain't my job, and it still isn't mine.

Now, my partner? Wasn't raring to go washing the dishes. It was a job no one wanted to do; hence possibly also the trade-off, so one person didn't get saddled with a job no one wanted to do.

I didn't mind it, I had long nice gloves and no one bothered me.

So we just decided to not switch our positions.

Everyone has their hang-ups, and their jobs they're not cut out for. A workable system means that people having to do jobs they're not cut out for is reduced as much as possible.

(ʘ‿ʘ✿) “what you say ‘bout me”