University Internationalization

So, we've been talking about internationalization of my university.  Like, do we want to make it a big part of where the university is heading, etc.

And today as some people talked about it in all the "right" words (the kind you get hired to spearhead such an initiative with), it occurred to me that those "right" words seem kind of wrong.

Like...cross-cultural interaction is supposed to aim for teaching privileged people that they're not the center of the world, but that it isn't necessarily about teaching them that it's wrong if they find themselves there.

I felt like...like it was about setting upper-middle-class white people up to be benevolent dictators in an apartheid country.  "You're going to be the minority in this country, so learn about someone different than you."  But there was no mention of anything like, "You're going to lose your power in this country, so learn how to not be in charge."  Just, "Learn about someone different than you."  Which is why I feel like we were talking about learning to be really noble, nice, friendly white South Africans or something.

The person talking today mentioned how internationalization started after WWII, when we thought having people go to each other's countries could make them such sensitive people that we wouldn't have big wars again, but that we needed to move beyond that.  But ultimately, I felt like that "next step" in "internationalization" was "making a classroom discussion out of your brown neighbors."  (See this post - found via blackamazon)

I'm torn - this kind of education is the STORY OF MY LIFE.  Satisfying curiosity about people who're different than me.  I have lived this model of learning and still live it.  I wouldn't be blogging without that part of my life.

But I feel like there has to be a better way than this to better our local society.

I remember a dinnertime argument w/ a close family member who felt that an immigrant community in my town/state, no matter how big it got, shouldn't ever get majority rule in charge of my town/state, because white people had better ideas about policy-setting than they did.  (Not that she knows anything about that immigrant community's social structure.)

This.  This is the kind of opinion that I think is so important to change.

I feel like the real work is not in putting our immigrant neighbors into an academic mental zoo, but getting privileged people open-minded to the idea of living by policies set by them.  It's not just about surveying Hmong people about their family structure and finding a common pattern and memorizing that pattern as trivia you now know about Hmong people.  It's about cultivating an attitude of being okay sending your kids to a public school district whose board's policies are shaped by Hmong ideas of what's good for children and families.  "Internationalization" of education seems to me that it should be about teaching humility - fostering attitudes that one is not the first person in history to live under a different culture's rules, like them or not.  And so on and so forth - real democratic power, not apartheid.  Something like that.

That's all I've got.

University Avenue

Today I visited the farmer's market on University Avenue.

Still much the same, but 1 new big difference is a retail products stand that I'm guessing is run by Sun Foods (imported produce & treats/drinks).

I stared down the street a couple of times and thought, "This is it. This is its last summer of peace before everything I see goes away. I should come again. A lot more."

Looking the other way, I thought, "Big Daddy's Saturday Barbecue! I still haven't eaten there. And where else did I mean to go each time I said I should come & shop here before it's gone?"

On my way out of the neighborhood, I thought about how I hadn't bought any Big Daddy's because it's out of my food budget. I wondered if I would end up doing all those money-spending activities that it's my "last chance" for. I wondered if there was any point--is a 1x taste of new-to-me, good food worth breaking my budget for?

I missed Art Song's original BBQ shack, apparently--and although there's a sign that reminds me of that all the time--my life is going on despite it. Wouldn't it go on if I never tried Big Daddy's or bought any clothes at one of the tailor shops?


Then I moved on to: What did I do all that protest work for? Was I misguided? 95% of the neighborhood is things I don't & won't spend money on.

Maybe I felt like it was worth working for the 100% to save the 5% I do patronize.

Or maybe I felt like it was worth working for the 100% to save the 10-15% I'd patronize if I lived there (which I have in the past).

Besides the "because what's happening to 'them' isn't fair" part. That was there. I'm trying to reach in and find the "me" that made that particular crusade important.



Photos can't capture it, and my memory's not a steel trap. But maybe I'll meditate on the heat and the wind and the sound and the 3-D and the smell after I finish this post so I can commit it to memory better than I usually do.




Other thoughts as I arrived closer to home:
What the f*** is up with my -isms? I don't "deserve" a lawn and a garden and a lack of retail right outside my bedroom and a convenient bus line (but not right outside my bedroom) all put together any more than anyone else on this earth. But I expect it.

Ditto my job. I doubt we people like me "deserve" a cushy job that makes a neighborhood like that, and a reliable car, possible. But damned if I don't expect it and keep it off the brain most every day. I guess it'd kinda suck not to fit the mold. Maybe the way I didn't fit the mold & felt "under watch" as a corporate secretary; maybe differently. Hm. I don't know where next to go w/ the thought, but it came to me. I guess it's going, now.




Naptime. And ****load of fresh veggies to prep & cook time. Yikes.



P.S. Today is AWESOME!!!! I love heat!!!!!!!!

Tornado Prayers + North Minneapolis Curfew

Please pray for people in North Minneapolis, Minnesota. It's the poorest section of Minneapolis, and it was hit by a tornado.

I hope I can help.

Please pray for people in Joplin, Missouri. It was REALLY badly hit by a tornado. 75% of the city gone & 89 deaths from one article I read.

Political opinion: I don't like the North Minneapolis curfew. No curfews in Minneapolis for at least 30 years, and we put one in place on the victims of a tornado? It feels morally wrong to me, for a lot of reasons.

We Have To Fight For Michigan & Others, Too!

P.S. And I'll look out for my brothers & sisters in Michigan, too!

We May Have To Fight To Save Cheap, Quality Produce In North Minneapolis

From "In Defense of the Minneapolis Farmers Market" by Susan Berkson:

We are in an under-served neighborhood. A neighborhood without food security. Without us, there would be no fruits or vegetables in this area. So by default, we are the green grocer for this neighborhood. And people want their bananas and pineapples and cherries. And they should be able to get them. Regardless of their income.

I don't know about you, but I like bananas. I like them year-round. Coffee, too. And none of it is grown here.

There is a moratorium on resellers, so no new ones can join. But those who are members now are not being kicked out. They fill a need. And when strawberries and raspberries are in season here, the resellers are not allowed to sell them.

The resellers meet a need. And that need should be met.

We feed families here, Minneapolis families. We are their green grocer.

Feeding families doesn't provide much money to the rich and powerful. Selling families football tickets does. So I'm horrified and frightened by the talk of ceasing to use the land on which the Minneapolis Farmer's Market sits as a farmer's market, and instead using it as a football stadium.

I know, one of the elected (*sigh*--seriously, folks??) Hennepin County commissioners who'd been planning to push for this has said he's not going to go through with pushing for it after all.

But what this has revealed to me is that a beloved Minneapolis site that feeds Minneapolis families cheaply is in the sights of people who want more yachts.

---------------------
I'm feeling particularly depressed about this after reading this post about Benton Harbor at the Radically Hott Off tumblr and following up on Benton Harbor + Jean Klock Park (click here to learn more--I was particularly outraged that among the arguments that might be working on the powers that be is that "public"-with-$200-a-day land = "public"-with-$0-a-day land!) and following up with this quote by "attempter," via Art Jacobson's article "Privatizing Public Properties Is Theft:"

Privatization is easy to understand once you see it as the final enclosure onslaught. Once again the people are to be driven en masse off their own property, for no reason whatsoever other than pure robbery.

Even if it were true that “balancing the books” were either possible or desirable (it’s neither; the books are nothing but fraudulent accounting, real “growth” ended years ago; and besides, if these books represented something real, nominal balance could easily be achieved by taxing the rich and corporations a fraction of their fair share), government officials would have no right to alienate public property. That’s a crime against sovereignty. It’s among the most profound forms of treason.

The fact is that capitalism is never sustainable. Even its own textbooks admit that it quickly runs down and reaches stasis. Or, from the point of view of the profiteers, it stagnates. So the only way to prop up profit rates is to continually repeat the process of primitive accumulation, direct robbery in order to accumulate enough of a capital base to recommence capitalist investment.

The classic example was Europe’s land enclosures. Subsequent examples were those of colonialism, imperialism, the IP regime, and financialization. Today capitalism is dead once and for all, since there’s no plunder frontier left. So the only thing left to do is carry out the terminal plunder, the direct robbery of whatever non-enclosed things are still left. Land, services, infrastructure, public heritage information, the water, the air.

And by the time that’s all commodified, it’ll certainly be impossible for anyone to pay for any of it. But by then debt indenture will no longer be meant to extract money, but to enforce the “new” serf system.

---------------------
But I guess what I really have to do is not get so depressed. A bumper sticker told me last week, "To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing." (-Raymond Williams, sez Google.)

I admire radicals! I want to be one. So I guess I have to fight FOR feeding families, and not cry ABOUT land-stealing yacht-buyers. Radically Hott Off also recently mentioned activism:

I wonder how much more helpful it would be to...start doing things like reimagining how organizing happens? So that the organizing itself becomes a healing space? (just as an example).

Looking at my tags, trying to see how to classify this post, I see that I've done this before. I have a whole tag called "University Avenue." I crashed and burned because I wore myself out working as a lone wolf. I wouldn't have to volunteer time on work I didn't 100% believe in (like not fighting the light rail's route, and only fighting for mitigation projects). I wouldn't have to suffer the heartbreak of finding out after asking that maybe no one but me wanted to do the project I 100% believed in (fighting the light rail's route). And my project didn't work, despite having 100% support from its volunteer corps of 1, because it had a volunteer corps of 1! :-)

But goddamn, I did it. I have worked to make hope possible. And I'll take all my lessons I learned from University Avenue (including volunteering my time to the projects of the people who are most in harm's way, even if they seem like lousy compromises to me, because 1) they're theirs and 2) they already have a team of affected people on board with the plan), and all the lessons I learn from radicals in the blogosphere, and I will look out for feeding Minneapolis families.

Immigrants Evicted And Then Abused in Bobigny, Seine-Saint-Denis, France

Immigrants Evicted And Then Abused in Bobigny, Seine-Saint-Denis, France

If I don't follow up w/ contact information, harrass me.

In Reponse To Motherhood Discussions From BFP's Blog

Damn.

This comment by Alara Rogers gave me new words to describe my fear about becoming a mother.

Alara wrote:

I saw the perception that ... if mothers aren’t completely selfless and also perfect then they will ruin their child ...

This is really tied up in with both of my parents', as well as my paternal grandparents' + aunts/uncles', frequent classist statements about childbearing. "There oughtta be a way to require a license to have kids." And the "stupid" people who wouldn't get a license are almost ALWAYS middle-or-lower in class.

Now that I'm doing more leftist readings, I'm learning that most of these behaviors my family members attributed to 100% stupidity, and yet almost always pointed out in poorer people, were more likely 80% influenced by effects of poverty.

BUT, that doesn't provide me a lifetime of positive alternative models to emulate. I just read about poorer people raising kids.

Now I'm looking at having significantly less wealth & income than the rest of my family. I can't see another way about life that I can stand the thought of.

Back to Alara's quote about "ruining" my child...there's this part of me that, thanks to my parent, is aware of the upper-middle-to-upper-class escape from being completely selfless. You pay to have other people help you raise your child "right."

But...society and my parents at large definitely gave me this message that I have to be completely selfless if I'm going to raise children without enough money, to avoid "ruining" them.

Alara also wrote:

I saw the perception that ... if mothers are completely selfless then they are doormats...

So I'm avoiding having any. Damned if I know how to be selfless. (That's the other thing I learned by observation. Not being selfless. The money ensured they didn't have to do that to "not ruin me.")

US military enforces attacks on Haitian unions

Repost of an April article by La Macha from VivirLatino:

What this is: video explaining how Haitian Unions are organizing for increased pay–and the US military is a part of the attacks against them.

A comment I like on that story from The Partisan:

Due to the weakness of the Haitian state, the US Marines are now enforcing the rules of the Haitian anti-union bosses. They are ensuring that the status-quo remains in Haiti, that unions posses little to no power. The US military is doing the dirty work of the Haitian capitalist class and its international allies that have set up shop on the island.

Earlier in April, La Macha had posted this on Vivirlatino:

This is a really important look at Haitian sweatshops post-earthquake (although it’s not explicitly stated in the video). Haitian workers are making on average, $2 a day at these shops.

Another thing to consider–the current president was a replacement for ousted president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Who helped to oust him? The US, of course. Isn’t it weird how all the presidents that we “support” think it’s best to keep worker wages just a tad above the ‘why even bother working’ line?

Please contact congresspeople, the White House, State/Defense department people, media, etc. and demand that we stop doing this.




And some other sad union stories I should've linked to a while ago but surely aren't irrelevant to the workers' lives yet:

Royal Mail:

• "Myths of the Royal Mail strike" by Lenin at Lenin's Tomb, from October.


• See also "Gone Postal" at the same site, from February.


• And this at the Socialist Worker is interesting:

  "Royal Mail and the government have been saying that the number of letters sent is down by 10 percent ... Figures were being manipulated to make it look like there was less mail than there actually was."



• So is this article (found via this, found via this.)

British Airways:

• "BA strike can and should win, and they deserve your support" by Lenin at Lenin's Tomb, from March

Rio Tinto:
See the links at "Rio Tinto Borax Trying To Hurt Working Conditions Of Workers Right Now".

Black Pople In Old Cartoons - I Never Realized That's What They Were Supposed To Be

I just figured out why I never interpreted a lot of old 40's/50's/etc. cartoons with black people depicted as having black people in them when I was a kid.

(Such as this one.) (Via this, via this.)

There's so often this weird pale area around the mouth that takes up half the face.

I associate that w/ animals. (i.e. fur stopping and skin showing)

I'm pretty sure that as a kid, I never realized those were supposed to be illustrations of people, rather than illustrations of animals w/ dark fur & light skin walking around on two feet. Badly-explained animals or something (i.e. not clear, and never indicated, just what kind they were supposed to be distortions of).

(At that age, I didn't recognize any of the geographically- or racially-"identifying" words they were speaking as such.)

Now, what I'm not sure of is whether I ever noticed that "unidentified nondescript animals" were generally in cotton-picking-and-dancing cartoons, and that activities like the ones I & my relatives did were generally performed by type-identifiable (and often light-furred/feathered) animals.

Huh.

I've Been A White Woman Playing The Role Of Expert

I realized while reading "Jezebel Circles the Wagons" by Renee over at Womanist Musings that I have been itching to do this lately:

My shoulders are tired of carrying the burden of their outright conceit. How many times has the work of WOC been stolen so that a White woman could play the role of expert?

I've been lecturing my coworker/friend a lot lately. I'm trying not to do it, but I'm really struggling with it this past 3 weeks. A lot. Like...on and on and on w/ ridiculous "expert"-ing in fun conversation at lunch. Gardening, (socioeconopolicital lefty stuff even--watch it!!!), crap I am so not an expert on--just a big collector of knowledge on.

And y'know, I tamp it down because I had enough of a little voice telling me it'd be wrong to bring up stuff I read in blogs written by women of color just because she's a woman of color...

...but now I realize it's a damned good thing I didn't, because it'd have at least 3 reasons for being the wrong thing to do to her. The "this is about you--look!" wrong thing, the "playing the role of expert" thing, and the "stealing the work of WOC" thing. Yeesh.

I plan to take this as a kick in the pants to stop "playing the role of expert" with things I stole. I think that should help me do a lot of the shutting up I've been struggling w/ these 3 weeks, anyway.

Wealth Gap And Jay Z by Blackamazon

Read Wealth Gap And Jay Z by Blackamazon.

Rio Tinto Borax Trying To Hurt Working Conditions Of Workers Right Now

Via Jon @ Poetry Is For Assholes:

Remember when I posted about my fondness for the town of Boron, out in the High Desert above Los Angeles? Boron is in the news because the folks at the Borax mine have been locked out. Management refuses to bargain with the union unless they will concede seniority and almost every workplace practice. No surprise, the union couldn't negotiate on those terms so management locked them out.

America is being turned into a nation of rats and punks. People are so thoroughly narcotized by television that their highest ambition is to someday be allowed to kiss a billionaire's ass. I'm glad somebody is willing to stand for some kind of principle rather than blaming the immigrants or the poor people or unwed mothers or whoever they think needs kicking. If things go on this way soon we'll be a nation of Walmart employees who can't afford to shop at Walmart.

The normally unreadable Mike Davis wrote a pretty good piece on the lockout- Here

Update- The miners are represented by The International Longshore and Warehouse Union. I'd love to know the history of how the longshoremen ended up organizing so far from the water, but I can say that the ILWU is everything a union should be. Over the years I've had quite a few friends and a couple of family members who were ILWU and it is a real stand up, rank and file, solidarity based union. You can read about the lockout at the union's website HERE.

Jon also posted some YouTube videos--I'll direct you to his site for those.

I'm partway through the Nation article so far, and it's making me sad. :-( I don't know exactly what to do besides post the story on my blog. Please support the borax mine workers, at least by spreading the story, I guess.

I Wish Paul Simon Had Helped Finish Out "Dance, Dance, Dance"

I really wish Paul Simon hadn't sung over this girl. I really wish he hadn't insisted on performing his song "the" right way.


I wish he had used his talent to skillfully back her up for as much performance time as he was allocated.

If he had the talent to do it, an extra level of wonderfulness would've been to keep the rhythm going but simultaneously encourage other kids to help make the song if they wanted to.

He was on a show for children. How awesome would it have been if he had spent his entire time block using his talent to help those children turn the chords & rhythm of "Me & Julio" into another really cool song?

Allied Commanders Trafficked Berber Women To Be Raped In Italians' Place

:-(

According to Rick Atkinson's The Day Of Battle, to "fix" the problem of Moroccan soldiers raping Italian women, American army offiicals (Wikipedia gives credit to French ones) decided to "transport" Berber women to Italy and stick them with those rapists.

They trafficked women away from home, into the vicinity of rapists, with the intention of having those rapists rape them.

What a horrific attitude: dividing populations of women into "women we don't so much hate seeing men rape" and "women we hate seeing men rape."

What a horrific attitude.

What a horrific action.
(With effects that probably weren't documented as thorougly as the effects of those soldiers raping Italians was. I think the Berbers then weren't highly literate or centralized. I guess by now, 2010, the effects just have to be...presumed via empathy.)

Where's Aniysah?

Okay, I did think of something I want to write about Aniysah's case.

Short story, as I understand it:

• Aniysah's father abused Aniysah's mother.
  
  
• Aniysah's mother got out, and even got a protective order to get Aniysah's father to have to stay away from both of them.
  
  
• Aniysah's father persistently filed for chances to get that protective order overruled and see Aniysah anyway. This was granted.
  
  
• Aniysah started talking about getting abused and showing physical signs of being abused. Professionals reported this to the court system.
  
  
• Another professional 1) said it was Aniysah's mother who'd been reporting those signs and 2) said they were lies. Aniysah's mother wrote a clarifying letter to a judge, saying that 1) it was professionals, not her, who'd been reporting signs of abuse, and 2) this other professional was, well, behaving unprofessionally.
  
  
• That judge decided that this professional wasn't doing anything uncouth.
  
  
• Aniysah's mom moved out of the state to get Aniysah away from the abuse, since the courts weren't helping her get Aniysah away from it.
  
  
• A judge decided this wasn't cool and granted full custody of Aniysah to the very same father she'd initially told to stay away from Aniysah. I don't know why. I guess...I guess he was really convincing over all the time between when this story as I'm summarizing it started and the point I'm up to now.
  
  
• Aniysah's mother and Aniysah came back to New York City to visit other family, and the police came and took Aniysah away and gave her to ... well, it sounds like it's not 100% clear, but that Aniysah's father certainly has a heck of a lot of access to her right now. (Which seems crazy to me. I mean, he abused her mom so much they initially said stay away from Aniysah; later on there were professionals starting to say that when Aniysah was around him & his family, she was getting abused by someone...yikes.)
  
  
• Aniysah's mother is hanging around New York City, trying to get custody of Aniysah back, or at least trying to make sure that New York won't leave Aniysah in any situation that'll lead to her being abused. But apparently, even the latter isn't proving very fruitful--and she could use help from people to make at least the latter happen, if not the former.

Okay, so maybe it's not much shorter than fuller story explained on Document The Silence and other blogs. Whoops.

Anyway, I hope people will blog her story, write letters to the editor about it maybe? (not sure if that'd be considered welcome by Aniysah's mother or not), show up at the court date (definitely welcome), etc.

Where's Aniysah?

For 27 hours now, I've been wanting to write something about Aniysah & her mother's quest to make sure she stays free of harm and grows up w/ truly good care and love. But I just can't figure it out yet. So there it is--a link to her story.

And I'll throw in that if you're in New York City and you'd like to support Aniysah's mother's struggle, please go to her court hearing on December 22. Directions, etc. at this link.

Thanks.

Quotes About The University Avenue Light Rail

"Nate" on a blog by Mitch Berg called Shot In The Dark wrote about LRT on University Ave:

I lived in Midway for 5 years and still own a house there. I rode the 16 to work downtown weekdays. My daughter rode it to the U. I went to the LRT planning meetings at the Hmong Community Center and saw the fraud that is “citizen participation” when the outcome was locked in.

I have seen the grocery carts clustered around the bus stop at Simpson. Why are they there? Because that’s where Rainbow is. Single mothers with toddlers in tow shop at the big box BECAUSE ITS CHEAPER and ride the local bus home. Honestly, sincerely, believe me – that woman will not spend one thin dime at the new Caribou. She can’t afford it. Nobody living between Rice and Fairview can afford it, which is why it’s not there now.

As Mitch pointed out, there’s a tremendous difference between Hiawatha and University, both in the character of the neighborhoods and in the purpose of the public transportation. Hiawatha is intended to get commuters from Out There to Down Town. The 16 bus gets locals to the grocery store and home. They’re completely different needs. LRT works to ship people from end point to end point but that’s not how people ride public transit on University. If you want to get from downtown St. Paul to downtown Minneapolis you take the 94 Express bus on the freeway.

Used to be, Progressives asked people what they wanted then tried to deliver it. Seems that now, they tell people what they’re getting whether they want it or not.

(link mine)

Mitch Berg wrote on the same blog:

the “mission” of the Central Corridor is very, very unclear. Nate summed up Hiawatha’s pretty ably – move people, more or less quickly, from a burb to downtown. It does that mission more or less well, albeit at a 66% loss.

So what’s the “mission” of the Central Corridor? There are really two options: Provide commuter access to whisk people between the downtowns (replacing the 94 and maybe the 50 buses and cutting down on traffic on 94) or providing local transit along Uni (replacing the 16 and cutting down on local traffic along University)?

...

The Met decided to go for the worst of both worlds; to take the expense and disruption of building down a busy working street, but to build the ‘Sexier’, faster, heavier option that serves the purpose of a busy, working street vastly less well.

And they made that decision without meaningful public input, in a way that ensures the maxiumum deleterious impact on the neighborhoods and the budget, for reasons that make no sense as urban planning, as civil engineering, as economic planning, as traffic management, as anything.

One more good quote from Mitch Berg:

("Charlieq" wrote:) [Kim Huoy Chor]...has free wifi and it delivers in little red cars that look like street racers. This is an example of someone building a business to weather the construction...

(Mitch Berg wrote:) And I couldn’t be happier for them. But lots of those businesses with the signs on their windows worked plenty hard, too, and built businesses to weather life on University Avenue – no mean feat.

Dealing with life on Uni and Big, Upper-Middle-Class MPR-listening latte-drinking White Brother?

There’s such a thing as piling on.

I am an upper-middle-class, MPR-listening, fancy-food-consuming white person. But for crying out loud, we're not supposed to decide what every last corner of the earth is supposed to be like!!

We Really Need To Up Our Efforts Changing Our Culture

This would be a good reason to work on KEEPING BOYS FROM THINKING THEY'RE ENTITLED TO SEXUAL RELATIONS WHENEVER THEY WANT THEM.

Because here are obviously huge-ass problems with jumping in violently, like that you might kill the boy.

THAT is why "just beat up sexual assaulters" is NOT a good default response from society to the existence of sexual assault.

IT RESULTS IN DEATH.



"Stop people from wanting to do things that are sexual assault" is a BETTER default reponse from society to the existence of sexual assault.

Here are good examples of things that're wrong right now that we could non-violently reduce sexual assault incidents by fixing:

Harriet Jacobs wrote at Figitivus:

What I mean to say is:

The way men and women interact on a daily basis is the way they interact when rape occurs. The social dynamics we see at play between men and women are the same social dynamics that cause men to feel rape is okay, and women to feel they have no right to object. And if you accept those social interactions as normal and appropriate in your day to day life, there is absolutely no reason you should be shocked that rape occurs without screaming, without fighting, without bruising, without provocation, and without prosecution. Behavior exists on a continuum. Rape doesn’t inhabit its own little corner of the world, where everything is suddenly all different now. The behavior you accept today is the behavior that becomes rape tomorrow. And you very well might accept it then, too.

Aaminah Hernandez wrote on FlipFloppingJoy comments:

consent is a good starting point, in so far as “man, did you ASK her and did she give you a clear yes” but we know there’s still lots of room in that. much better to get to the radical “man, why do you even feel compelled to get off by doing that to a woman?”. let’s address why men WANT to do certain things that are hurtful to women, regardless of whether or not women will “let” you do it. that’s not the point. the point is where does the inclination to dominate a woman come from and why is that what makes you “feel like a man”?
...
and yes, i know that opens up a can of worms on the BDSM issue and policing what people get off on, and questionning women’s right to consent to things just because we find them abhorrant. but i think that’s NOT what we are talking about here. ... i think we’re talking about a whole different matter which is men being able to be men, confident in their masculinity, sexually expressive, without it resting on degradation and pain to women (or other men for that matter).

Especially us people w/ time on our hands--let's CHANGE that "daily basis" and that "day to day life" and that basis for boy's and men's masculinity and sexual expressiveness for the boys whose lives we influence. NOW. WIDESPREAD. INTENSE.



Because this boy didn't deserve to die for what he did to the female friend he was traveling with.

"Deserve" isn't even the right word for how I would feel about one punch in response to what he was doing to his friend.

I think he DID deserve a culture / cultures that would, throughout it / them, SUPPORT non-violent lifestyles.



I'll get more active in anti-violence work.

The rest of our boys and girls who are still alive deserve it, and to make what people "deserve" happen, someone's gotta do it.
(Lots of someones. But I'll start w/ me.)

Temptations To Profit

Sometimes I just want to take the economic analysis I've been blessed enough to see blogging and try to use it to get a bigger piece of the pie than the median piece.

I've been telling my mom not to bother w/ stocks/mutual funds as soon as she can cash out again like she could've before the late 2008 crash.

When I've told her that I'm thinking I might not rely on them as a 50-year plan for having emergency/retirement funds, to the extent that I've felt comfortable doing so, I've even told her that I feel that way because I see signs that the "top 0.1%" aren't relying on it anymore, so it's probably not that good an idea.

I'm not comfortable sharing this all the time, because of course it leads to, "So what are the 'top 0.1%' buying to make money off over the next 50 years?"

I have suspicions about that from the reading I do. But I don't want to share it w/ her. Because I think that most of the things they're buying for that purpose are morally wrong to buy (especially for that purpose). And I don't to contribute towards one more human being doing such morally wrong things.



But sometimes I wish I could just say, "Here's what they're doing--and here's the liberal upper-middle-class greenwashed / nostalgiawashed equivalent we could pool our money on and that might keep us at our current lifelong levels of consumption / get us further ahead of the median over the next 50 years--especially if the 'top 0.1%' succeed at buying and profiting on all this."



I guess it's good that I suppress those feelings, meditate on desiring to make the Knower Of True Good proud of me rather than those who love me closest here on earth proud of me (for being the "brainiac" who helps us via the above idea), and work towards sharing my better and more godly findings w/ Mom. (And...working towards sharing includes calling her up just to see how she is and building a relationship, so I'd better wrap this up.) And learning self-discipline so I can thrive in close relationships & home relationships in a world where the "top 0.1%" succeed in buying and profiting on these oh-so-wrong things and hurting my consumption ability. (I should go finish those dishes I talked so big about.)

Over and out!

If Homelessness In Front Of Your Business Is Disturbing, Then...

Cool idea:

If the evidence of homelessness in front of your business or in your neighborhood is disturbing, then tell your senators and congressional representatives to readjust federal priorities for housing assistance.

-From "Stop punishing people with the sit-lie ordinance" at the Western Regional Advocacy Project