Wild Thorns and Brambles

here are all of the scum who control oil, coal, and natural gas

here are the ones who run the factories

If they gave every employee a $5/hr wage increase and increased their workforce by 10% to reduce time pressures on individual workers, it would cost them between $6B and $9B per year (assuming 40 to 60 hr average work week), still leaving about $40B in gross profits. That’s still a ridiculously huge amount of money being made.

It’s the kind of situation where even asking is coercive, because these women have no power and no other options–and turning down such a work assignment just isn’t a choice many can make, even before you consider that saying no to a pushed job assignment is likely to get them punished.

And you really don’t get any kind of reward for job experience in prison tbh. Because the fact that it’s in prison causes it to be seen as unskilled labor no matter how highly skilled it is, and is overshadowed by the fact that most places won’t hire felons, and the chance of getting any kind of certification to prove you have a highly specialized skill is nill to none.

Asked why she chose to adopt Erica, out of the scores of other children she has cared for, EM said: “Maybe it was the whole dependence thing I thrive on, because she was always going to need me.The satisfaction of being able to make her happy. It wasn’t hard to love her like our own because we loved many babies like our own. We weren’t thinking down the road.”

Bold is mine, because I don’t think it’s a coincidence that someone who “thrives on dependence” (yikes) would volunteer someone in their care for a completely untested* treatment to keep them permanently a child?

I read this article and I must say… for people trying to paint a picture, they are trying their hardest to not talk about the obvious things.

It was pre-meditated attack by a White man who had the ability to buy these guns legally. 

And the guns themselves were not designed for personal protection, but to kill a massive amount of people, or at the very least, waste a lot of bullets. 

What patterns are you hoping to find other than another privileged White man who wanted to cause destruction? Who was able to stroll into a hotel and managed to carry a LOAD of weapons with NO questions asked?

There are a lot of questions that need to be answered. The problem is, we’re asking the wrong questions. We’re looking for that “magic bullet” (no pun intended) to stop the “next shooter”, but in reality, we’re doing everything we can to dance around the real problem… making sure that regular citizens do not get their hands on a weapon that was meant for a war zone in the first place!

And let’s not say “but if we tighten up the gun laws, criminals will be able to get the guns anyway”… THIS MAN WAS NOT A CAREER CRIMINAL!

Last week in Tallahassee, Florida, Chloe Bressack was transferred from their role as a fifth-grade science teacher after asking students and parents to use gender-neutral pronouns for them. 

Bressack wrote a letter to the class and parents expressing that they use they/them/their pronouns and the honorific Mx. instead of Mr. or Ms. A handful of parents reportedly transferred their students out of the class, and then a parent shared the letter on Facebook asking for reactions from other parents. 

Bressack has now been transferred to teach in an adult education program.

In a statement announcing the transfer, school officials said the district has a “responsibility to provide a productive educational environment free of distractions for our students, teachers, and staff.”

Superintendent Rocky Hanna said in the statement that he wouldn’t “allow teachers in our school system to influence our children negatively,” adding that in this situation, “I do not believe this is the case.” He also said that Mx. Bressack agreed to the transfer. “Given the complexity of this issue, we both agreed a different environment would be best for Teacher Bressack’s educational career and for the young students at Canopy Oaks,” he said.

Following the controversy, Mx. Bressack said in a statement that they work together with their students to “create a positive environment of respect and understanding.” “I understand that students will not always address me in the way I prefer, and that is okay,” they said. “We keep moving with a big smile and continue on with our learning. In our classroom, our learning and our well-being is the priority.”

This excuse is lazy. Gender is not a distraction. Pronouns are not that difficult. And teaching kids about all the different ways to be yourself is a good thing.

BREAKING:  Trump bans transgender individuals from serving in the military

Trump announced Wednesday he is banning transgender individuals from serving in the military “in any capacity” — a surprise announcement that is sure to draw condemnation from LGBTQ groups.

Sorry for the long post, but Republicans are seriously trying to say that it’s not “civil” to point out the fact that their healthcare bill will cause millions of people to lose their insurance, which will cause thousands of preventable deaths.

Talk about it. Make noise about it. Tell the truth about what it’s going to do.

Help stop this bill:

trumpcareten.org

5calls.org

PLEASE

PEOPLE WILL DIE IF WE DONT FIGHT THIS

This week, an appeals court decided to uphold a law that specifically protects homophobia and transphobia in Mississippi. Really. 

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit lifted an injunction on HB1523, a law that provides extra protection to those who discriminate against LGBTQ people based on three specific religious beliefs: opposing marriage equality, opposing sex outside of monogamous man-woman marriages, and opposing the legitimacy of transgender identities. 

Mississippi is already one of the states that lacks protections for LGBTQ people. Now, it goes the extra mile by not just broadly protecting religious discrimination, but specifically protecting religious homophobia and transphobia.

In a unanimous opinion issued Thursday, a three-judge panel determined that the plaintiffs challenging the law did not have proper standing to bring their complaint against the law. “Standing is not available to just any resident of a jurisdiction to challenge a government message without a corresponding action about a particular belief outside the context of a religious display or exercise,” the Court explained. The plaintiffs — several Mississippi residents, a church, and an advocacy organization — do not hold the beliefs outlined for special protection, but according to the Court, that doesn’t mean they are injured by the law.

The ruling overturns a lower court’s ruling from last summer that put the law on hold with an injunction. U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves had concluded that by endorsing and elevating one set of religious beliefs, the law conveyed the state’s “disapproval and diminution” of all other religious beliefs. “If three specific beliefs are ‘protected by this act,’ it follows that every other religious belief a citizen holds is not protected by the act,” he wrote. “Christian Mississippians with religious beliefs contrary to [HB 1523] become second-class Christians.”

The appeals court didn’t weigh in on the merits and left the door open for future challenges. “We do not foreclose the possibility that a future plaintiff may be able to show clear injury-in-fact,” the decision explained, “but the federal courts must withhold judgment unless and until that plaintiff comes forward.” Because the law privileges one set of beliefs but doesn’t explicitly punish the others — and because there are no state or local laws protecting against anti-LGBTQ discrimination — figuring out how a plaintiff could actually demonstrate injury by the law could be quite a challenge.

In a joint letter, six members of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA) have publicly resigned because of Trump’s utter disregard for science and apathy about the field of HIV/AIDS.

Scott A. Schoettes, Lucy Bradley-Springer, Gina Brown, Ulysses W. Burley III, Michelle Ogle, and Grissel Granados said that they’re resigning because the president “simply does not care” about their work or about the global fight against HIV/AIDS. Their letter is devastating to read. Excerpts:

The Trump Administration has no strategy to address the on-going HIV/AIDS epidemic, seeks zero input from experts to formulate HIV policy, and—most concerning—pushes legislation that will harm people living with HIV and halt or reverse important gains made in the fight against this disease. […]

Signs of President Trump’s lack of understanding and concern regarding this important public health issue were apparent when he was a candidate. While Secretary Clinton and Senator Sanders both met with HIV advocates during the primaries, candidate Trump refused. Whatever the politics of that decision, Mr. Trump missed an opportunity to learn—from the experts—about the contours of today’s epidemic and the most pressing issues currently affecting people living with HIV. 

In keeping with candidate Trump’s lack of regard for this community, President Trump took down the Office of National AIDS Policy website the day he took office and there has been no replacement for this website 132 days into his administration. […]

And we know who the biggest losers will be if states are given the option of eliminating essential health benefits or allowing insurers to charge people with HIV substantially more than others.

It will be people—many of them people of color—across the South and in rural and underserved areas across the country, the regions and communities now at the epicenter of the U.S. HIV/AIDS epidemic.

It will be young gay and bisexual men; it will be women of color; it will be transgender women; it will be low-income people.  

It will be people who become newly infected in an uncontrolled epidemic, new cases that could be prevented by appropriate care for those already living with the disease. […]

We hope the members of Congress who have the power to affect healthcare reform will engage with us and other advocates in a way that the Trump Administration apparently will not.