Do your thing.
{ 5 comments }
So my two weeks are up. Of course I didn’t have the time to post about everything I wanted to. But I did want to say thank you especially to Cara for working this stint out for me.
I’ll leave you with this video from Detroit artists, Invicible and Waajeed.
VIDEO: Detroit artists Invincible + Waajeed doing “Detroit Summer/Emergence.”
I can’t find the lyrics anywhere, but here is a background on the video, and here is another one and here is another one. Basic description of the video: the song starts off in a darker tone, saying summer is here and it’s so hot, it’s a wonder we made it through the cold winter. This is symbolic of several things, the hard times in detroit, in michigan, in the world in general. It’s saying things are bad, but often the thing we’re praying for (like jobs) don’t bring the relief we expect it to. Then the second part kicks off in a brighter mood, and Invincible raps: close your eyes–imagine the future. Another world is happening even if you can’t imagine it…
Another world is happening.
Can you see it?
{ 1 comment }
For other posts in the series:
A short history (1)
A short history (2)
The Ruin Porn Post
The Consequences of Ruin Porn
On the other side: Hope Porn
reImagining Work
Dealing with Poverty while being a Michigander
More Welfare Woes
So another consequence of believing that Detroit (i.e. the Rust Belt) is dying is that it then makes sense to assume that there is no vibrant groundbreaking culture that is alive and well and creating a new way of thinking, a new *theory* if you will, about life in a post-industrial world. If the Rust Belt is given any credit at all for having a culture, it almost entirely centers on Joe the Plumber–a six pack drinking dude that is (ahem) “hard working” so he doesn’t have to think too hard. When you envision him, you envision that bald white guy who has flag tattoos and gets a boner every time “Boot in Your Ass” comes on the radio.
But the thing is, this idea that Joe the Plumber encapsulates the entirety of the Rust Belt experience (because the rest of us are dead, dying, or will be dying shortly) is hard to keep a lid on. Somehow, the dying land and people of the Rust Belt always seeps into mainstream consciousness, without that consciousness ever being fully aware of it. [click to continue…]
{ 2 comments }
My facebook friends pointed me to this latest bit of charming news out of Michigan.
From Think Progress:
If you’re poor and live in Michigan, you just can’t catch a break from the current Republican administration under Gov. Rick Snyder (R-MI). Beginning next month, many Michigan residents on food stamps will lose their benefits under a new law that tightens eligibility requirements.
Seizing on any excuse to kick people out of the program, Republicans have mandated that recipients’ assets be scrutinized, in addition to their income, which has traditionally been the only measure that was considered when deciding eligibility. People with cars worth over $15,000 could be disqualified.
Of course, this change in welfare eligibility was done with the stated intention of returning welfare to “its original purpose”–that is, acting as a safety net for when times get rough.
And yet, I can’t help but think back to my own experience on welfare. Both my partner and I were in school and working–but my partner had at one point been working in the factories. We had a car. In fact we had two of them. Because it’s Michigan and there is no such thing as a viable public transportation. Especially not in Southeast Michigan–where public transportation needs are dictated by corporate needs. Other places get bus lines that run every 20 minutes instead of every hour. We get a freeway that links one factory to another.
So we needed those cars. We were both working, both going to school, both of us got jobs once we graduated, so welfare was absolutely a temporary life line for us. But it was a desperately needed lifeline. One that we wouldn’t have survived without. And yet–we wouldn’t be eligible today because of those two cars and the both of us being students.
How many people in Michigan–how many laid off factory workers specifically, are sitting on welfare with their nice cars in their driveways (those nice cars, by the way, which were often only affordable because of worker discounts that unions fought for)? How many laid off factory workers own their own houses? How many laid off factory workers are trying to figure out a way to survive by going back to school and “retraining” themselves so they are employable in the new job market?
These new rules are not just about drawing on tired ideas of poor people “scamming” the system. These new rules are *using* those negative stereotypes about poor people scamming the system as a way to keep workers desperate and disempowered. You’ll take any job if your kids are hungry. And you’re surely not going to waste time retraining yourself for a high paying job if your kids are going to starve while you’re doing it.
In Michigan, there’s a new type of worker–the kind that works three (or more) shit jobs in order to just barely make it. Because finding one full time job that pays enough to live on is near impossible. Especially without any schooling. But how do laborers who are working 10-20 hours at three different jobs organize? How do they form unions?
It’s being done, even against the odds. But it’s not easy work. And with this legislation–it’s only going to get harder.
{ 9 comments }
WHAS11 tells us that First Unitarian Church in Louisville, Kentucky, has its first-ever female minister. Yay! And stuff. But whatever. The real story is that minister Dawn Cooley is hiding a dark, fishnetted secret (although not the one I was expecting by the time the news story got around to the big reveal).
———
———
I’m pretty sure they did that entire story solely so they could pull out that “gap between church and skate” line at the end.
Transcript after the jump; full text of Cooley’s sermon at her blog.
{ 14 comments }
For other posts in the series:
A short history (1)
A short history (2)
The Ruin Porn Post
The Consequences of Ruin Porn
On the other side: Hope Porn
reImagining Work
Dealing with Poverty while being a Michigander
I often have a really hard time trying to understand the attachment to “Capitalism” that people on the left exhibit. When I say “Capitalism” capitalized and in quotes, I am speaking of both the economic system people in the US live with and promote–and the US government’s relationship with corporations.
Even in Feminist circles, when there is any interrogation at all of “Capitalism,” whether it’s to notice that Detroit is struggling because of unfettered “Capitalism” or to point to how “Capitalism” is making life hell for women laborers worldwide, the response is anything from a mocking, “Oh, look at the cute idealistic hippie!” to a nastier, “How on earth is living without capitalism even possible???” Or people immediately jump to the “Prove that communism works” bandwagon (yes, I’ve gotten into plenty of conversations that mimic this right here on Feministe!), as if communism is the only natural answer to “Capitalism.” [click to continue…]
{ 135 comments }
Oh. My. God. Thanks to LoriAdorable’s Twitter stream, I learn that in the early 1800s, pro-slavery authors reacted to the anti-slavery classic Uncle Tom’s Cabin by writing their own pro-slavery propaganda. I guess that makes sense. What’s really cool is that you can go ahead and read one of those pro-slavery books, in all its glory. Excerpt from the introduction:
When we have seen the dark and horrible pictures drawn of slavery and exhibited to a gazing world, we have wondered if we were one of those favoured individuals to whom the fair side of life is ever turned, or whether we were created with a moral blindness, incapable of distinguishing its lights and shadows. One thing is certain, and if we were on judicial oath we would repeat it, that during our residence in the South, we have never witnessed one scene of cruelty or oppression, never beheld a chain or a manacle, or the infliction of a punishment more severe than parental authority would be justified in applying to filial disobedience or transgression. This is not owing to our being placed in a limited sphere of observation, for we have seen and studied domestic, social, and plantation life, in Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. We have been admitted into close and familiar communion with numerous families in each of these States, not merely as a passing visiter, but as an indwelling guest, and we have never been pained by an inhuman exercise of authority, or a wanton abuse of power.
On the contrary, we have been touched and gratified by the exhibition of affectionate kindness and care on one side, and loyal and devoted attachment on the other. We have been especially struck with the cheerfulness and contentment of the slaves, and their usually elastic and buoyant spirits. From the abundant opportunities we have had of judging, we give it as our honest belief, that the negroes of the South are the happiest labouring class on the face of the globe; even subtracting from their portion of enjoyment all that can truly be said of their trials and sufferings. The fugitives who fly to the Northern States are no proof against the truth of this statement. They have most of them been made disaffected by the influence of others– tempted by promises which are seldom fulfilled[.] Even in the garden of Eden, the seeds of discontent and rebellion were sown; surely we need not wonder that they sometimes take root in the beautiful groves of the South.
In the large cities we have heard of families who were cruel to their slaves, as well as unnaturally severe in the discipline of their children. (Are there no similar instances at the North?) But the indignant feeling which any known instance of inhumanity calls forth at the South, proves that they are not of common occurrence.
We have conversed a great deal with the coloured people, feeling the deepest interest in learning their own views of their peculiar situation, and we have almost invariably been delighted and affected by their humble devotion to their master’s family, their child-like, affectionate reliance on their care and protection, and above all, with their genuine cheerfulness and contentment. (emphasis throughout is from the original author)
Wow. Just … wow. I’m both fascinated and appalled.
Study questions:
* How can this inform us about racism and racial justice in the modern day?
* What parallels can be drawn to other social justice movements like feminism, animal rights, global human rights, etc?
* Or whatever else you want to talk about, as usual ….
{ 66 comments }
As most of you probably know, with the election of Rick Snyder in Michigan came the new Emergency Financial Manager laws. What those laws have entailed has been well documented by Rachel Maddow, among others. What’s been less covered is the fact that it was recently quietly signed into law that welfare recipients in Michigan can only receive 48 months of benefits for an entire lifetime.
As organizers note, this is going to have devastating consequences for Michiganders.
From Michigan Welfare Rights Blog:
- As of October 1, 2011: 11,000 people will be cut off from welfare benefits, and that will continue through until 40,000 people are eliminated from the system. 75% THOSE PEOPLE WILL BE CHILDREN WITH THE AVERAGE AGE OF 7 YEARS OLD.
- Unemployment insurance was cut from a 24 weeks to 20 by the state.
- The Low Income Energy Efficiency Fund which gave DHS, THAW and Salvation Army energy assistance funding every year — adding to $575million in help for the poor since 2002 — has been completely eliminated by ABATE and the Attorney General and the Michigan Court of Appeals; although federal money is still available, it is not enough to cover the gap.
- College students are no longer eligible for food aid, a much needed subsidy.
- There is now a lifelong cap of 48 months for those who receive assistance.
- Most of the assistance cuts will be to renters, disproportionately effecting women.
- These cuts have a secondary effect of increasing domestic violence.
- If utility service is cut from the home, children must be removed by law from the family and home. And, yes, the foster care system is hiring.
- NO ONE IS EXEMPT: Persons with mental disabilities are not exempt from the cuts, recent mothers are exempt for only 2 months after birth, victims of domestic violence exempt for 3 months and caretakers of persons with disabilities for 12 months.
- THE STATE OF MICHIGAN WILL SAVE $68 MILLION IN TAX DOLLARS FROM STARVING CHILDREN.
MEANWHILE, corporations will receive $1.8 billion in tax breaks to ensure major profits keep flowing in — while putting an end to Michigan’s practice of not taxing retirement income and seeking to increase taxes on Michigan’s working poor! (download pdf)
Yes, that’s right. To pay for corporate tax breaks, children, disabled people, and women will be forced to give up a lifeline that for many, is all they have. And those who *do* have at least a little money coming in through pensions, will have a little less of that money as well. All to pay for corporate tax breaks.
Times have been tough in Michigan for a long time. But since Snyder got elected, things have gotten terrifying. Honestly, I could even deal with the far right ideological agenda that Snyder and the Republican Congress have brought with them–if they were sure to bring jobs with that ideological agenda. It’s always easier to fight anti-choice extremism, for example, when you know your family is not going hungry.
But the fact is, Snyder and the Republican Congress are NOT bringing jobs. They aren’t even pretending to look for them. Under the guise of “balancing the budget,” they are building wealth on the bodies of poor people.
Let them eat babies, I guess.
{ 16 comments }
This was originally posted over at Clarisse’s personal blog in 2009.
I am fortunate. I was born in the eighties and I received a great sex-positive upbringing. The public school I attended taught students how to use condoms; middle school health education included a section on sexually transmitted diseases. My parents didn’t throw their sexuality in my face — but they were almost always matter-of-fact, understanding and accepting when they talked about sex. (I’ll never forget how, at age 12 or so, Mom sat me down and gave me a long speech about how it would be totally okay if I were gay.) I was raised Unitarian, and the Unitarian Sunday School teen program included a wonderful sex education curriculum called About Your Sexuality. (I understand that the sex-ed curriculum has been changed and updated, and is now called Our Whole Lives. I haven’t delved deeply into the Our Whole Lives program — maybe it addresses some of the issues I’m about to describe.)
So I think I’m in a good position to describe the problematic signals we face in liberal sexual education. Yes, I’ve experienced the overall sex-negative messages that drench America, and they’re terrible — but so much is already being said about those. I also received lots of sex-positive messages that are incomplete, or problematic, or don’t quite go the distance in helping us navigate sexuality — and I think the sex-positive movement must focus on fixing them.
I’m so grateful for my relatively liberal, relatively sex-positive upbringing. I think it did me a world of good. But here are my five biggest problems with the way I learned about sexuality:
{ 33 comments }
You find the most fascinating things on the internet.
Apparently in Switzerland, it’s illegal to keep a solitary guinea pig, as they’re social animals and don’t do well by themselves. This can cause problems for guinea pig owners when one of a pair of guinea pigs passes on, and they’re forced to buy another, potentially trapping themselves in an endless cycle of buying new companions past the point where they want to continue owning pets. This is where Priska Küng comes in. She runs a guinea pig rental sevice.
She takes 50 Swiss francs (€41) for a castrated male and 60 francs for a female, “as a deposit,” Küng explains. In effect, she sells the animals but pays back half the purchase price when they are returned. The job of the leased rodents is to cheer up companions in their twilight years.
Some return after just a few poignant weeks, others after months, but some stay away for years. “Sometimes people realize that they still get so much enjoyment from the guinea pigs that they want to go on keeping them and come back for another one once their supposed last pet has died,” says Küng.
And don’t worry, the companion animals aren’t rented out continuously:
“It’s important that none of the rental guinea pigs just keep getting passed on,” says Küng. “If an animal has been hired out once, it either stays with me for the rest of its life or it moves somewhere else for good.”
{ 23 comments }
God, I hate romantic comedies with a fiery passion. It’s a cliche, I know–look, the bitter, humorless feminist hates love and laughter–but they make my teeth itch. I don’t fault anyone else for enjoying them, if that’s their thing, but I can’t get over the repeated implication in every single movie that I’m supposed to identify with the inevitably vapid/obtuse/obsessed/otherwise undateable (yet gorgeous, under the ponytail and glasses) woman who will find love at last in the third act.
Christina H., over at Cracked, is with me, and her list of 6 Obnoxious Assumptions Hollywood Makes About Women hits some of my high points: We default to irrational anger on first meeting. We’ll turn on each other at the drop of a hat. We love us some shopping. But with such a wretched expanse of film stock already dead at the hands of such cinematic terrors–just Kate Hudson and Katherine Heigl have nearly 20 between them–there’s no reason to stop at six Obnoxious Assumptions.
Thus:
7. If we’re happy in our careers, it’s only because we don’t know what we’re missing.
If a movie opens up with a woman on the job, whether she’s cleaning hotel rooms or running a company, you can bet she’s a social-lifeless workaholic who will soon be taught to love life through the introduction of a guy and/or kids. (If it’s a man on the job, he’ll generally just be driven, although he might be presented as a workaholic if he will later be saved by the intervention of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl.)
The Cracked piece mentions the Catherine Zeta-Jones movie No Reservations, which I loved because it was basically cooking porn–all bustling around and adding ingredients without measuring them and arranging things on plates. In the beginning, Kate is shown as this Gordon Ramsay-type head chef/badass who rules her kitchen with an iron fist (such that she’s been ordered into therapy by her boss), and she obviously knows and enjoys her stuff. She takes pride in the quality of her work, she talks and thinks about it all the time, she spends early-morning hours in markets tenderly fondling the vegetables–I don’t think I’ve ever been that happy at any job in my life. Then there’s the stuff with the kid and the guy, and montages and a bicycle built for three, and then the charming bistro and the happy ending.
But if you run it backwards, Kate ditches the distracting boyfriend, her apartment gets clean, her sister comes to pick up her kid, and she’s able to focus on the work she loves.
8. We’re suckers for public humiliation.
Women love it when you bring it all out in public. If you’ve screwed up with a woman and she won’t talk to you, the way to her heart is to corner her in a public place and pour your heart out in front of Jesus and all Manhattan. If she’s marrying someone else, crash the wedding. A woman will never feel pressured to accept a public proposal or a public apology simply because the surrounding crowd–who know nothing about you–think you’re swell and romantic. So grab that mic at the wedding reception and start pouring your drunken heart out. We’ll definitely pull you aside, just to keep you from further spoiling the event, thus giving you an opportunity to win us back. We certainly won’t turn red and walk out. Or turn red, yell obscenities at you, and then walk out.
(Exception: Lloyd Dobler, but that might be only because John Cusack is on my List.)
9. We’re just not that bright.
The one we’re meant to be with? That perfect match? Our soulmate? Has been right there all along, and we didn’t even see. (Made of Honor, Someone Like You, The Ugly Truth, etc. ad nauseam.) You’d think we’d be self-aware enough to see what’s right there in front of our faces, but no. Here’s a person we’ve always seen as a friend, waiting patiently–sometimes even giving us romantic advice–while we pursue one failed relationship after another, and we’ve never looked at him/her with anything but the most platonic eye. It can’t be because we’re just not that attracted to them. Or that they’ve had romantic feelings toward us forever and have never spoken up, apparently expecting us to just smell their devotion like an aftershave, be turned on by it, and make the first move. It’s because we’re not attentive, we’re not smart, we’re not observant, and we’re always too busy going after the assholes. Think of all the Nice Guys™ who could have been saved if we’d only recognized their perfection 35 minutes in while we were crying about that jerk from the office. Thanks, Hollywood.
10. Twilight.
{ 39 comments }
I’ve been trying to get my post traumatic stress disorder under control lately, and one of the things I’m trying is an online course you can do from home. I had the first session yesterday. It took me through what PTSD is, including outlining what it called “Unhelpful Thoughts” that can be caused by PTSD.
One of them was “You can never know who will harm you.”
Now, I wouldn’t necessarily call that an “Unhelpful Thought”. I’d call it a “Basic True Fact of Life”. You can’t know who’s going to harm you, and it’s dangerous to think you can. But then, I have PTSD, so my thinking on this may be kinda skewed.
Discuss.
{ 85 comments }
