sleepnoises:

sleepnoises:

80% of my actions are now fueled by sincere hatred for mike pence

if you donate to Planned Parenthood in his name he will apparently get the certificate of donation, but to be sure, i also put his name in the “notification recipient” of the in honor section

and you can put whatever you want in the in honor blank, so it’s a very wholesome way to communicate & start a dialogue! by which i mean, you can be sure he really fucking chokes on it.

he is at:

Office of Governor Mike Pence
State House
Room 206
Indianapolis, IN 46204-2797

Planned Parenthood is over here ($5 minimum donation, although the most common donation right now is apparently $100, which i cannot swing but which i am glad to know). 

benepla:

there’s a post going around listing trans people who killed themselves post-Trump’s election. it is not properly sourced, and searching the names net absolutely no results. it’s fake. i understand why people might reblog this (because it was honestly a horrifying post to read when i thought it was true), but please look into stuff before you reblog them & don’t spread misinformation. don’t create artificial trauma for already terrified communities. 

that being said, here’s the Trans Lifeline numbers that was on the post:
US: (877) 565-8860
Canada: (877) 330-6366

thrillers:

valadilenne:

I’ve been thinking a lot about the meeting between Trump and Obama at the White House, and here’s the thing.

Obama used to be a law professor. This is key.

Law school is so, so different from college. 

In college, everyone expects there to be a “syllabus day,” kind of a grace period where they can show up and get the lay of the land, figure out the bare minimum that they can get away with, the TA gives everyone their office hours, there’s an introductory lecture, and everybody leaves a few minutes early to go take a nap or something. You do the bullshit assignments, you say something in class now and then to get your participation check mark, and figure out how badly you can do on the final and still pass. 

But see, in law school, all the methodologies you’ve spent the last 17 years operating under go out the window. Day one of law school is you being thrown into the deep end of the pool—you’ve had a homework assignment for two weeks now, and it’s to read the first 200 pages of your casebook. And now it’s you and the teacher (who is usually as smug as Alex Trebek) gauging and assessing what you managed to absorb while you skimmed through all those pages of reading so you could hurry up and get to the other 150 pages of reading for your next period class, in front of 50 people who are all smarter than you. And if you fuck up, or you didn’t do the reading, you are at the mercies of not just the professor, but the silent satisfied judgment of your peers. 

Law school is hard, and it will make you feel stupid and tongue-tied and like you don’t know anything and can’t form an argument—because you don’t, and you can’t. Everybody there has had a 4.0 since birth. Everybody there was the smartest kid in their class, and you’re all rabidly competing for a sliver of a chance at something down the road. It’s petty, and savage, fiercely entrenched in a culture of formalities and ceremony, and exactly like Washington DC. 

Yesterday when I was driving home, the NPR reporter talking about the Oval Office meeting mentioned that Trump had thought it was going to be a “getting to know you” type meeting, but that he was surprised when Obama stretched their talk out to 90 minutes before sending him along to the Capitol building where he met with congressional leaders for more lengthy meetings and stuff he didn’t want to do.

And he hasn’t even gotten to the actual job yet. 

So think about that as we go into this. 

Trump walked into the Oval Office like a two-pump-chump freshman thinking it was syllabus day, and what he got was the first day of law school, and he hadn’t done the reading like everyone else had, and Professor Obama decided to put him in the hot seat. 

This was Obama’s chance for the most perfect revenge that would never be picked up on as revenge at all. He was gracious, polite—everything he needed to be for a peaceful transition and a good review from the press. And that would continue when the doors were closed, because that’s the key. Not a Come to Jesus meeting, oh no. If Obama were smart—and he is very smart—he would have treated Trump like an equal, and brought the discussion to a level that assumes far more of Trump than anyone has so far. Assumes that he’s an adult who’s been paying attention. Statistics, esoteric minutiae about the executive branch procedure, economic growth numbers, labor figures, domestic policies, countries Trump has never even heard of, shit that would never in a million years have been in Trump’s campaign soundbites or digestible summaries. 

No way to escape. No aides to remember any of it for him. Just the two of them. 

Because that’s what would strike a precise chill into Trump. The thundering realization that he’s woefully unprepared for the hard, boring, thankless reality of this, and Obama’s version of a smooth transition won’t and shouldn’t include remedial civics. 

That’s what I saw when they shook hands and Trump stared at the floor instead of looking back into Obama’s face. He’s just figured out how little he knows about any of this. 

And that should give you a small glow of satisfaction, because after those meetings, Trump definitely has the 1L Terror Shits. In January, the night sweats and insomnia will show up, but for these first few weeks—nothing but diarrhea and self-doubt.  

cupidsbower:

youngbadmanbrown:

brunetteclaire:

youngbadmanbrown:

youngbadmanbrown:

I wish every white person at one of these protests would commit to doing one-on-one relational work with other whites to deal with their racism

This frustrates me because I’m in a very “liberal” academic space and my white classmates are always having lil breakout groups to discuss allyship, meetings to talk about how they can support black and brown efforts and organizing

But they seem to have zero idea how to actually talk about racism to other white people who don’t already agree with them

I was talking to a classmate today who told me he “felt bad” because his parents and siblings voted trump

And I’m just like: what’s the fucking point of doing all this chatting about allyship if you can’t even sit down and reason with the people closest to you.

Why are you always looking to us for a free education on race when you just compartmentalize that shit or use the insights to get closer to other poc

I think I can add something here as a piece of advice on how to go about this:

I work with a mix of people who carry a wide array of political viewpoints. I work closely with a guy in his 60s who tends to lean Republican on most issues. 

One day, I was in a car with him and another colleague, around my age. The conversation diverted into entitlement spending and race. Us 20 somethings were on one side of the issues and a 60-year-old white guy was on the other. 

After hearing him rant for a bit, I calmly asked, “Hey ____, what’s so wrong with those living in the projects getting unemployment benefits?” I let him answer and then posed another question off of his response. I kept calm and kept letting him speak, then asking follow-up questions. Eventually, he was calm and I could tell he was satisfied that I heard his point and where he was coming from. I also noticed that his views became less and less extreme every time I posed a question. His emotions were subsiding and he was critically thinking about each question. So, I expressed my position of how certain people are exposed to certain opportunity and race plays a major role in exposure. I related to people we both knew. I related to stories of friends that he didn’t know. I asked him, again calmly, if that perspective changes anything. 

He kind of grumbled something and we arrived at our destination, ending the conversation.

However, the next day he came in and stated that he gave my position a lot of thought and felt like I brought up a lot of great points. He said was willing to think about these things. 

I was COMPLETELY taken aback. I realized that my conversation was effective. I honestly don’t know who he voted for or if there a major impact on his thinking, but something changed enough for him to thank me and bring up a willingness to change, albeit how small.

So I guess my advice would be the following:

1) Have people re-examine their own thinking. Don’t tell them how to think or haw you think. Ask them questions that have them explore their thought process.

2) Relate your position to shared experience. Put a face and a name to the marginalized group. Don’t let them go to the ‘well they’re the exception’ answer. Go back to 1) and ask them questions.

3) Stay calm. Like 100% be calm. Disarm their emotions and don’t escalate with your own. This gives them an opportunity to think rationally rather than emotionally. 

4) Don’t do it to feel good about yourself. Do it because it’s the right thing. If you are white/male/straight/cis, you need to do this for those who are not. Keep your thoughts on the marginalized and not making yourself feel good or ‘not like them’. This is not about you.

5) On the flip side, understand white poverty and what is going on in the manufacturing industry. Get the other viewpoint, even if you don’t think it’s worth empathizing with. Just understand that issue. Keep it in the back of your mind when asking questions.

I honestly don’t know if this will work in every circumstance or is enough. I feel like I made a change in someone’s way of thinking.  I thought it was worth sharing. 

Thank you for this.

Yes, I’ve found this works too. You need at least these two steps: giving people space to acknowledge their own fears and other feelings about race, and then offering them a new framework through which they can conceptualise the way power is working. And then you have to leave them to it, and let them think about it at their own pace, but be ready to talk about it more if they open the conversation again.

It’s rarely as fast as the example above, but it does have an effect over time.