wandering child of the earth

2. The Delectable Negro: Human Consumption and Homoeroticism Within US Slave Culture by Vincent Woodard

3. "Abolitionists turned the tables on Europeans by accusing them of being cannibals when they ate sugar tainted with the flesh and blood of slaves."

here's the intro

Also it is absolutely ridiculous to think that we can deem a work from a country where queerness is illegal less legitimate because the author has not chosen to publicly disclosed their identity. Authors who were forced to hide their names because of government crack downs on queer art have been questioned for not being openly #Ownvoices.

I'm passionate because I have experience with this issue. I was questioned as to whether I could write about trans people, while I had been out as genderfluid in my personal relationships for years. I just didn't think it was a strangers business. If not for pressure from outsiders, I may have had a better experience coming out on my own terms, but some of y'all ruined that for me.

And was like, uh, are you missing something there, buddy? Like all that red in northern Africa? Because that's a lot of red.

And I was going to give them the benefit of doubt, since I don't know much about the climate in Northern Africa, aside from Morroco and Egypt, which seem like really hot places, so you know, maybe it's normal there?

But nope, that's not the case:

Some selections from the article:

"The region has been experiencing some of the most intense heat waves in recent years, but in many cases they’ve been under-reported due to misconceptions about Africans’ ability to withstand them.

“Africa is seen as a sunny and hot continent,” said Amadou Thierno Gaye, a research scientist and professor at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, the capital of Senegal. “People think we are used to heat, but we are having high temperatures for a longer duration. Nobody is used to this.”

update as of 11:04 EDT, via Reuters

The verb here "خرس" "kharasa" means "to shut oneself up" in the sense that it's intransitive: it's not about someone making someone else silent. It's about that person or thing becoming silent.

Additionally the conjugation of the verb here is in the third person. It's not referring to himself, it's referring to the plane.

The verb for "to silence" or "to mute" is "كتم" "katama".

"I must silence the plane" would be "يجب ان اكتم الطائرة"

I believe this is to reflect that poet wants for his circumstances to change, rather than conveying that he must use his poetry to change them. He's saying that his poetry is a result of the circumstances and that he cannot be apolitical without a change to that.

And electricity in Britain is expensive. So even the folks who have AC can't necessarily afford to run it.

More than 50% of Indigenous communities in reserve areas in Canada are at high risk of pipeline spills. When there is a spill, reserves are disproportionately impacted.

The National Energy Board and Supreme Court of Canada has a history of declaring the "public interest and economic interests outweigh Indigenous and treaty rights." Basically, Indigenous peoples don't count enough as "public" to matter.

Pipelines are built without proper consent from the Indigenous Nations they choose to occupy. Keep in mind I say choose, because this is the case even when alternative pipeline routes are suggested that could avoid reserve land. This is a direct, constant, and often violent threat to Indigenous sovereignty.

The MMIW crisis is funded by the oil industry through the creation of worker's "man camps" near reserve land. These "man camps" are nothing but pits of sexual violence and human trafficking of Indigenous women and girls. I am not exaggerating; this is well studied and well documented.

Resources & Sources:

To become an ‘energy superpower’, Canada wants to bulldoze Indigenous rights (START HERE!)

Indigenous Resistance to Alberta Oil and Gas Development Report

When the environment is destroyed, you're destroyed: Achieving Indigenous led pipeline justice

First Nations Consent Ignored as Canadians Asked to Subsidize LNG Expansion

Oil pipelines and food sovereignty: threat to health equity for Indigenous communities

Is Violence against Indigenous Women in “Canada’s interest”? Liquified Natural Gas in B.C., Sexual Violence & Narratives of Terra Nullius

The colonial playbook never ended, Canada’s pipeline deal proves it

"not to be rude but some of you are trying to derive an understanding of Palestine entirely from tweets reacting to other tweets reacting to other tweets. every day i open this app and discover another argument that was already answered in Palestinian literature 30+ years ago

Palestinians are not merely subjects of history but producers of theory. there is a whole archive of palestinian memory, strategy, critique, self critique, philosophy, and historical analysis. twitter is not a substitute for it.

u should all be engaging with palestinians as thinkers rather than as sources of tragedy."

It wasn't that long ago that banks and companies would refuse to serve gay people. People are going all the way up to the Supreme Court to enshrine the right not to serve LGBTQ people in their business. Rainbow capitalism showed which companies were safe to do business with and it pressured other companies to do the same.

Likewise, companies did and do try to discrominate against LGBTQ employees. Rainbow capitalism let employees be open about their identities and feel safe. The 50 year old gay man marching with Bank of America may have hidden his sexuality for decades because it wasn't safe to come out at work.

It helped set top down societal values and norms that LGBTQ people are a welcome part of society.

It pressured companies to adopt nondiscrimination policies and DEI policies.

It made companies donate to pride celebrations and LGBTQ causes.

with mixed success, it provided powerful and visible allies for political change, like the Respect for Marriage Act. Businesses pulled out of North Carolina and forced it to go back on a bathroom bill.

The drawdown of rainbow capitalism has real consequences. Pride celebrations losing corporate sponsorships means they are not able to hold those celebrations. DEI programs are being rolled back. Companies are buying less from queer owned businesses. Support for gay marriage is actually decreasing in polls.

Are these all cause and effect? No. Is it sometimes just a lagging indicator? Yeah. Are fair weather allies like big corps really not great? Yeah.

In May of 1944, Roma and Sinti prisoners staged an armed resistance against the planned "liquidation" of the gypsy camps, which would have led to the mass murder of approximately 6,000 Romani. Thanks to the efforts of the Roma and Sinti interned at Auschwitz, these execution plans were staggered and delayed for several months. We hold this day to honor their bravery, mourn their deaths, and memorialize that which the Romani community endured under the Nazi regime.

You can learn some more about Romani Resistance Day, and the ongoing effort to preserve the Berlin memorial to murdered Roma and Sinti against Deutsche Bahn's railroad development, by listening to this episode of Smith's Kushti Podcast.