I started writing this ten minutes before the official announcement was made, because of course Darren Wilson’s not getting indicted. It’s bullshit, it has EVERYTHING to do with the value of black lives in America and the weird hero worship we afford police officers and our acceptance of state-sponsored violence. And white supremacy. It wasn’t a trial, he wasn’t found not guilty of anything, they aren’t even bothering to ask the next set of questions.
Also, CNN needs to fire Don Lemon, he’s an idiot. No wonder people have given up on television news.
Blaming social media for getting everyone riled up, though, that’s a classy move one might not have anticipated. Bob McCulloch could not possibly have radiated more contempt and disinterest.
It’s a tragedy, and a crime. Please use the comments to share responses that you found meaningful. We’ll be gathering some more sources later today.
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Cracking down on corruption in the international adoption marketplace:
But no matter what the Embassy believed it had found, for the most part, it almost always had to approve the adoption visas anyway; the standard for proving fraud was almost impossibly high. As one official wrote: “That’s not to say that fraudulent or unethical acts on the part of an ASP [adoption service provider] should be ignored. It’s just that where the adjudication is concerned, there are very narrow grounds under which it can affect the outcome.” As Trish Maskew, now Chief of the State Department’s Adoption Division, explained in her 2005 article “Child Trafficking and International Adoption, “Short of a confession, it is hard to fathom what kind of direct evidence the USCIS Officer in Charge could possibly unearth to support the charge of child buying.” (I have explained more about this here.)
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Through October, 45 people had been killed by law enforcement officers in Utah since 2010, accounting for 15 percent of all homicides during that period.
A Salt Lake Tribune review of nearly 300 homicides, using media reports, state crime statistics, medical-examiner records and court records, shows that use of force by police is the second-most common circumstance under which Utahns kill each other, surpassed only by intimate partner violence.
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On “Sybil” and its legacy.
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Jia did a remarkable interview with one of the women hung out to dry by UVA, which is hard to read, obviously, but is also really powerful and important:
Let me ask you another question, which I want to preface by saying I understand, personally and well, that there’s a massive difference between drunk or even blackout sex and rape. But, some people really fear the potential gray area—they fear that some girls will think “regrettable” and cry assault.
I find that idea very out of step with reality, but it’s worth asking: how did you know the difference? How did you know when you woke up that you hadn’t consented? That it wasn’t just, you got drunk and had sex?
Because I couldn’t take a breath without hearing those guys joke about fucking my dead body. I knew very deep down that something horrific had happened. I knew I had not had the chance to make the choice. I did not want to fuck that guy. I did not in any way want to give him access to my body.
I know, when I’ve had drunk sex—vague memories, unclear situations—that I was an active participant. People would tell me the morning after, “You said this, you did this,” and I’d be like, “Sure, that sounds like me.”
There is a difference between having drunk sex and having someone penetrate you when you are lying there, basically unconscious. The thing is, I had a previous experience. I’d been raped in high school. I had gotten really drunk, and my friends dropped me off at my house and put me in bed. This person broke into my house and had sex with my unconscious body.
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Thanksgiving: not always the best day to show up to volunteer at a shelter for the first time. Call first, see if they’ll be stuck making busy work for you.
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David Carr on being one of Bill Cosby’s media enablers:
I was one of those who looked away. Having read the Philadelphia magazine story when it came out, I knew when the editors of the airline magazine called that they would have no interest in pursuing those allegations in a short interview in a magazine meant to occupy fliers.
My job as a journalist was to turn that assignment down. If I was not going to do the work to tell the truth about the guy, I should not have let him prattle on about his new book at the time.
But I did not turn it down. I did the interview and took the money.
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a really long new interview with joni mitchell (in which she does the i’m-not-a-feminist thing while citing things which are in no way about not being a feminist and also says other gross stuff bc your heroes ALWAYS WILL, thanks guys, thanks for that) but she also is very perceptive in other ways here:
Q: Two other songs on this box set—Not To Blame and No Apologies—also sound like they could have been written yesterday. They touch on the current discussion of sexual abuse and violence against women.
A: You know I did an interview with a CBC commentator. I exorcised the house after this guy left. I smudged it and opened all the windows. Now it comes out that he has been fired from CBC. People kept saying, “What a great interviewer.” I didn’t think so. After about the 20th one, I said, “What did you think was great about it?” That he couldn’t knock me over? They would look stunned when I said that. To me, his behaviour was overtly hostile.
FIST PUMP.
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This is a very beautiful little story about geese and also dads.
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This is how unbelievably segregated #Ferguson really is http://t.co/MbNC6qXx2Z pic.twitter.com/G1TxAudAeg
— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) November 24, 2014
Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
I heard the Ferguson decision last night, and I’m still angry and disgusted. How do people deal with being this mad at the world every day? (more accurate question: why do such infuriating things just keep happening while half the country looks away or makes excuses?)
I’m not dealing well with being this mad at the world every day and I’m white for godssake. I don’t have a clue how people farther down the Privilege Ladder cope. I mean, I’m considering therapy to get over my anger issues at this point. JFC. I’m just so angry all the damn time.
Because this is going to be a long-haul stress, I recommend visiting Making Light’s “In this hour” page; it was posted in the wake of the Katrina fuck-ups and offers some advice about how to balance righteous anger against the fear of drowning in it. Therapy’s on the list.
I actually burst into tears during a conversation/minor argument with my boyfriend about obesity and fat-shaming the other day. All of this shit I’ve been reading about hit me at once – the sadness of people not being able to buy a damn vegetable, those poor women at UVA, Michael Ferguson’s family, the women who need to travel 500 miles for an abortion while they get yelled at by lunatics, everyone murdered by ISIS. Everything is terrifying and rage-inducing – I don’t know how the people who are in the middle of it all get up in the morning.
The NAACP has a petition up on their website that urges the Department of Justice to continue the criminal civil rights investigation into Michael Brown’s death.
I was and am devastated. I spent the evening crying, retweeting, and making a donation to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. If others have suggestions for places to donate, I welcome them–I want to put my money where my mouth is.
The Ferguson library! They’re providing a safe space for families and children, and they have a Paypal for donations. Linked from their website, here.
Thank you! I was going to ask for the places that most need donations — this seems like a good option.
“Atticus–” said Jem bleakly.
He turned in the doorway. “What, son?”
“How could they do it, how could they?”
“I don’t know, but they did it. They’ve done it before and they did it tonight and they’ll do it again and when they do it — seems that only children weep.”
—
Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird
Stealing this to post on FB. God, it’s heart-rending how far we haven’t come in the last 50+ years . . .
I’m just sick this morning.
Re: Ferguson, I have no words.
Soooooooooooooooo:
I had a long talk with my roommate last night about her health, her weight, and her fears about how being skinny and conventionally attractive will make her a target for street harassment and abuse. She wants to lose weight, but will have to work on her mental issues simultaneously.
Other than stocking the fridge with veggies and suggesting we go for walks, any advice on how to be supportive? I’m not the “LET’S JOIN A GYM BRAH” type, but I’m sure I could be enabling little things around the home, in clever and subtle ways. (Although I did totally make the stock “Learn self-defense!” suggestion.)
Once upon a time after college, I decided to lose a lot of weight. I did it very rationally/heathily but I wasn’t prepared for the way people saw me in my new body. It wasn’t so much street harrassment (all it did was change it from “hey fatty” to “hey hotty”, and really it didn’t make me feel any better/worse about it), but suddenly I was VISIBLE to both men and women in a way I had never been before. Suddenly men were holding doors open for me and women were starting conversations with me and everybody of all genders had more smiles and eye contact for me. It was really hard for me to deal with because it made me feel how much my acceptance as a human being depended on how I looked. This was only compounded by the fact that losing weight didn’t actually change how much I loved myself or my body all that much. All my self-hatred and the skeeviness of social recognition contingent on how my body conformed to standards combined to make me completely wig out.
Now I’m back to my old weight (thanks grad school/knee injury/depo shots!), but I’m much happier in my body, even despite being generally invisible. The difference is that I worked on loving myself and my body. Plus I got older and just stopped giving a shit about strangers’ opinions as much.
The advice I have for you/your room mate is to work on how she feels about herself and her body. Being healthy, exercising, and eating well are all excellent goals, but 1) it may not work out exactly how she wants it to–losing weight for keeps is a battle and 2) no matter how it turns out, the body issues will still be there. The creeps and harassers will still be there. The well-meaning asshats who can’t see you if you don’t measure up to stupid beauty standards will still be there. You can’t do this for her. You can only suggest seeing some professional and/or doing some reading and doing the work–and give her the love and support she needs.
Also, I should add that you really can’t do any of this for her. You can snack on veggies with her and go for walks with her if that’s what she wants to do, but other than the love/support thing, it’s her work to do. Pushing diets and exercise on somebody, even when they are consciously trying to lose weight, just goes poorly. It seems like help, but it can add to the pressure and change the dynamics of a relationship in unpleasant ways…
ALSO: Shapely Prose and this article in particular was so helpful to me in coming to love my jiggly body: http://kateharding.net/2007/11/27/the-fantasy-of-….
Kate Harding isn’t posting there anymore, but it’s an amazing resource full of wisdom and good writing.
“I had a long talk with my roommate last night about her health, her weight, and her fears about how being skinny and conventionally attractive will make her a target for street harassment and abuse.”
But… fat people also get harassed? o.O
(I know that framing this as a no-win situation isn’t exactly HELPFUL, this just seems like an harmful assumption to be making. Having a certain body type doesn’t make you immune from street harassment, and just because people don’t yell “hey baby!” and instead yell “Moo!” it doesn’t mean you’re not being harrassed.)
I’m sorry if I gave the impression that I thought it was a rational fear. It’s obviously not; I thought the “mental issues” reference covered that.
How about help her call a therapist to work on her problem with feeling fearful all the time, and the rest of the time, just be a really good friend?
I don’t think having a personal in-house weight coach is very conducive to mental health. Unconditional caring is a lot more helpful. Of course having someone cook you nice healthy dinners doesn’t hurt provided you don’t get mad if she feels like eating buffalo wings instead sometimes.
I was kinda hoping for concrete (lived) examples of what “a really good friend” does — obviously I don’t want to nag her, but I don’t want to help her lapse, either. What’s “caring” look like, in practical terms?
For example, I suggested last night that therapy might be worth looking into, but I’m not going to remind her repeatedly that it’s a thing she should do. She’ll have to decide on that on her own (and when she decides, maybe I’ll be able to help get it sorted out).
“Lapse”?
I mean, ok. I think you are going to be getting a lot of pushback on this that you maybe weren’t prepared for. This is a really, really loaded subject for a lot of people, myself included, so I’m going to suggest, as nicely as I possibly can, that maybe you and your roommate need to do some reading on fat acceptance and how bodies work instead of asking for advice on how to make your fat roommate thin.
I think you are asking the wrong kinds of questions.
I think a “really good friend” doesn’t police their friends’ food choices, activity levels, or body shape.
Also, keeping raw veggies around to snack on may be YOUR idea of healthy, but for example, someone like me would find that NOT healthy since eating raw vegetables causes me extreme digestive distress.
Concrete examples:
1) if you do grocery shopping together, make lists and plan for the week, and then stick to the list when you are in the store. Make sure you aren’t hungry when you go.
2) If you are doing things together, suggest events that either don’t revolve around food or pick venues that offer options that are more in line with her eating goals (e.g. maybe don’t order pizza for movie night, try not to make drinking a central part of what you do together)
3) If she asks you to remind her to do something, or wake her up for the gym, or whatever, do it, but if you wake her up for the gym and she says “fuck it” and goes back to sleep, don’t continue to nag or prod. Make it clear when you agree to do this that you will not be nagging or prodding.
4) When she eats something she’s not “supposed” to, or skips the gym, don’t let her beat herself up. If the weight loss isn’t happening as fast as she wants, don’t let her beat herself up. When she engages in negative self-talk around you, shut it down. Remind her that these things are slow, and that it is a process, and that even if she doesn’t lose a single pound, she is improving her body by getting exercise and by paying attention to what she eats.
5) Make it clear that you are willing to listen. Actually be willing to listen.
6) Offer concrete ways that you think you can help, but then don’t push. E.g. tell her that you would be willing to help her research therapists and make phone calls. As you’ve stated, she has to decide on her own if she wants to take you up on it, but “would you like me to do X?” can be a lot more helpful than “let me know if I can help”. People often say the latter as a stock phrase, and people don’t believe it, or they don’t know what help it is they need until someone suggests something.
I am currently unhappy with my physical condition. Not solely my weight, but partly–I’m out of shape and I have a ton of migraine triggers and a touchy digestion that is rebelling against a lot of food. My spouse is trying to support me, and this advice is based on what he and I have discussed: ask your friend what makes her feel vibrant when she eats it, what makes her feel like she’s treating her body lovingly and taking care of it. And then keep that around.
Fist bumps of solidarity on migraines and iffy digestive systems. I hate it that all I want is a salad and I know that I will be sick for days (raw lettuce = BAD NEWS) and so I get what I know I can digest instead (usually some sort of lean protein and carb combo) but I feel so judged — look at that fat chick why doesn’t she just eat a salad……
See, I’d be all over that salad, but vegetables tend to treat me well. It’s such an individual thing, isn’t it? I have a friend who has a lot of trouble with lettuce, and she loves salad. It’s rough.
Right now, I’m realizing that a lot of my food persona, if you will, was the Cool Fat Chick Who Doesn’t Give A Crap. Yay, bacon! I’m going to make cookies! Let’s order pizza! Diet, whatever, I eat what I want when I want it! The way to a girl’s heart is CHEESE!
…and then I’ve been gradually realizing that two of my biggest migraine triggers are greasy food and cow’s milk dairy, and I feel better when I eat a ton of fiber. I have to give up that persona a little bit, and it’s weird. I’m finding myself saying, “Hold the cheese, please” and trying to convince myself that the short-term awesomeness of the bacon, or the buttery cookies, will come with unpleasant consequences.
This shit is hard, people.
That’s really interesting. Especially since when you’re fat, eating a salad or whatever (at least in public) subjects you to a whole NOTHER kind of scrutiny and judgement. It’s almost like everyone should shut the fuck up about what other people do with their bodies.
Sounds like between the two of us we could maybe eat one whole Caesar salad — I’ll take the cheese and bacon and you can take the lettuce 😀
Gods I want a Caesar salad though. ARGH.
A little while back a colleague with a gluten intolerance and I demolished some leftover pizza. He pulled the cheese off and handed me a tomato-sauce-soaked crust. We were both very happy.
I’m sorry this guy quit, because we could have had a pizza tag team THING. Also now it’s my job to fix the internets.
Oh my god, this. I run a blog, and am writing a book, about eating what you like, and being relaxed about food, and my whole persona is this food-loving extra-cheese why-not person…and I’m discovering that cheese gives me rashes and migraines and digestive trouble. And it’s sort of a head fuck. On every level.
I would totally read your blog and your book!
You could ask her to let you know if she find any fun/interesting looking classes to take. I know I feel more comfortable signing up for stuff like that if I know at least one other person in the class and that way you’re not pressuring her to do anything in particular.
Ferguson’s Trial from Sarah Kendzior.
“On August 9, an Instagram photo circulated through St. Louis social media. It was of a man holding a cardboard sign saying “Ferguson police just executed my unarmed son”. The man was later identified as Louis Head, the stepfather of Michael Brown. More photos began to circulate, including of Brown’s body lying dead in the road. Grieving residents who filled the streets were declared, by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, to be a “mob”. The Post-Dispatch later changed the headline to “crowd”, but the narrative was set.
“Darren Wilson will never be on trial. Black St. Louis always was.”
I really want to re-read and re-share the Ezekiel Kweku piece from late August on Michael Brown but when I tried to pull it up I got a 404 error. Is there any way to fix this? I feel like it explains exactly why/ how this non-indictment happened.
We are re-running it on the main page later this morning, so it is not in the archives currently.
Ah! Thanks!
Not exactly Ferguson, but Bijan Stephen’s piece on Medium about The Talk black parents have to give their kids is a gut-wrenching must read: https://medium.com/matter/the-talk-92371a1c0ae5
Can’t do it with Ferguson. Can’t. Have to focus on something else.
So here’s another Joni interview: http://jonimitchell.com/library/view.cfm?id=2871
I could accuse the guy behind it of being overly dramatic about her seclusion, but given what I’ve read elsewhere (including that new interview book), I’m pretty sure he’s not. I don’t mean this in an oh-why-did-she-not-end-up-with-anybody way at all, but there’s something deeply sad about how she’s more or less cut herself off from the outside world, even if there’s probably a very reasonable explaination for it (illness, entirely earned bitterness, etc.).
Sorry, but does this sound concern-trollish? A little? I’d just love for Joni to come roaring back in some way, and the increasing possibillity that she won’t makes me feel awful.
But it’s not about what I feel, obviously.
Just so angry and weary, last night and today. I feel so much older.
I’ve also learned that some people I know, who I thought were pretty cool, are actually incredibly racist. So…now I know that.
Finally, something I saw on my Facebook feed this morning that’s been resonating strongly with me: “Have your opinions, but be very careful what they make of you.”
Yes to weary and angry and tired. And demoralized. I don’t know, I guess I can donate money or go to a protest, but it all feels so pointless.
Thank you for articulating this; I’ve been feeling similarly. I want to believe that donating to, say, the Ferguson Library will help, but does it really? Or am I just That Person, throwing money at an issue because it makes me feel better?
I feel like everything I want to do is so useless, and diminished, it makes me scared to do anything. Which is terrible.
I’m going to respectfully push back and say no, you’re not just throwing money at an issue. If you give money to the NAACP or the legal defense fund, or the organization that’s been supporting the protestors, you are helping and supporting people who are in a position to do more than those of us at a physical distance can do.
I’m going to give some money to the Ferguson Public Library. I’m a librarian and I have so much respect and love for how vocal they are being about their choice to stay open; hold classes for students; and be a safe, welcoming space for the people who need one right now. Libraries and librarians make me so proud when things are hard.
That pushback was warranted, and helpful. I’ve been so afraid about getting it wrong, I didn’t stop to think about the fact that doing anything could help make it right.
Thank you for helping me see my way through this–I think I’ll be joining you in donating what I can to the library.
Those are definitely good points, and thanks for the perspective. I guess sometimes it feels like such a small thing and we’re up against things that are so big, it starts to feel hopeless.
This piece helped me understand how badly the prosecutor fucked this up by abdicating his responsibility to advocate for Michael Brown.
Your link sends me right back here–fix please?
http://www.vox.com/2014/11/24/7175967/darren-wilson-char...
Sorry about that!
Grand juries are essentially adjuncts to prosecutor’s offices. Prosecutors select all the evidence that the grand jury will see–they’re under no obligation to disclose evidence favorable to the accused in seeking an indictment. And the thing is, the grand jury knows what to expect–unlike a trial jury, they sit for months, dealing with multiple cases, seeing the same prosecutors up before them every day. After seeing a dozen cases in which the prosecutor gets up, tells you a bunch of damning facts about the accused and nothing on the other side and then asks you to return an indictment, of course they’re going to immediately notice the change when a prosecutor comes in and starts burying them in conflicting evidence and holding what is in effect a mini-trial. The prosecutor doesn’t need to say that he doesn’t want them to return an indictment; it’s obvious.
I am infuriated at this decision, and also Tamir Rice and I think Jamelle Bouie is correct here,
“Justifying Homicide: Why Darren Wilson was never going to be indicted for killing Michael Brown.”
Aww. Geese. Dumb stupid geese. That reminds me – I would like to share my own DADS story:
This morning I took my car in to swap out my regular tires for snows. We’ve got a big storm coming tomorrow, so the tire place was packed with DADS all getting their snow tires on. I was the only non-dad in the place. Except I think they must’ve been half-bloods, because a true DAD around here would’ve gotten the snow tires on the second Buffalo got walloped with snow last week, even though that’s like 8 hours away.
That the first instinct in much of this country, when someone – particularly a police officer – kills an UNARMED person with a firearm, is to be skeptical of the victim’s actions, rather than the shooter’s, is so sickening.
I’m a criminal defense attorney and I hate that my job has made me so cynical that I didn’t expect any different result. I’m struggling to think of any time recently that a police officer has been indicted and stood trial for killing a civilian. I know it hasn’t happened where I practice. I keep thinking of the phrase I first heard in law school, that a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich. But only if the prosecutor wants it indicted. They will never push hard to indict police officers. They depend on them too much to make their cases.
I didn’t expect any different result, but I’m still sad and tired and disgusted. And writing this quickly because I have to head to court and continue to represent people in this system. It doesn’t feel like enough.
Lisa Bloom dug into the grand jury proceedings, and well, it becomes pretty clear the prosecutor did not want to indict at all. Softball questions, no follow-up about inconsistencies, apologizing for calling it a “crime”, etc. https://twitter.com/lisabloom
It’s nauseating, really.
the only instance I can think of is in the killing of Oscar Grant. And that guy, who shot Grant in the back of the head as he lay on the ground, got less time than Plaxico Burress did for accidentally shooting himself in the leg.
what a fucking disgrace.
I’m really interested in this–I don’t know a thing about grand juries. Do you have any recommendations about where to go to read about what the standards for sending to trial should (should, of course, being the operative word here) be?
I’m not in Missouri, but I found this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-the-fe…
I’ll just say on top of that – probable cause is a very low standard. Way less than the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard for a conviction. It’s also pretty unusual for a DA’s office to just throw a bunch of evidence at a grand jury and say “have at it.” Generally, the prosecutor presenting the case to a grand jury makes a recommendation (like, “we believe you should charge Defendant X with Charge Y”). The fact that that didn’t happen here seems to show that the DA’s office was not behind this case from the beginning, which, of course.
I read a piece on this topic this morning- grand juries will indict anyone except a police officer: http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/ferguson-micha…
The prosecutor:
https://twitter.com/7im/status/537120032493277184…
The prosecutor.
Well, shit. Exactly. Clown court. Might as well not bother.
Washington City Paper has a round up of protests happening in DC today. I will be attending the rally at Mt. Vernon Square. http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk…
Thank you for this link! I’ll be at Mt. Vernon Square, too.
As will I!
I think I’m just going to hang out here in this comments section all day, because Toast commenters are the best commenters, and even reading the most on-face depressing sentiments is making me feel a teeny bit better about the whole thing. Is that weird? That’s probably weird. But it’s true.
Please use the comments to share responses that you found meaningful
Soooooo many people on Twitter are like “look at the looting you’re only hurting yourselves” or whatever, and it’s INFURIATING.
oh my god, fuck those people, white people riot ALL THE TIME because their favourite sportsball team lost.
White people riot when their favorite sportsball team WINS!
Or the ones who are all, “Follow MLK’s example and protest peacefully!” Yeah, well, MLK still ended up being shot and killed…
Because people who ignore protest leaders and MICHAEL BROWN’S PARENTS are totally going to listen to some random white person on Facebook or Twitter.
I don’t know what to say. I feel devastated. But to paraphrase what someone said on Twitter earlier today, I might be devastated but I have the privilege of not being afraid. I don’t have to have a talk with my sons about how best to act around a police officer. Because I am white.
The fact that this is true is so grotesque I don’t have the words. I’m glad to hear about donating to the public library in Ferguson because I literally don’t know what else to do.
I heard about Tamir Rice yesterday, but this just… Read it. https://twitter.com/yankrachel/status/53689886798…
Also, an unarmed man, Akai Gurley, was killed by a cop in NYC on Sunday night.
I am so sad for all of humanity, really.
Mmhmm a coworker literally let similar words come out of her mouth this morning and I basically yelled at her.
Today, I’m grateful (as I suppose I should be every day) that politics aren’t discussed in my workplace. It feels like an unspoken rule, to some extent. The only remotely political conversation I’ve ever heard regarded how Anthony Weiner should probably learn to keep it in his pants.
I’m sorry you had to hear her.
It should be a rule (spoken aloud, when necessary) in every workplace. Because it gets awfully difficult to work with someone after learning they’re a bigot of one type or another, or just oppose something that means everything to you.
Some of my cousins on FB are going off about this and other horrible things (sample view: “if follow police orders and this wouldn’t happen”) and I don’t even know what to do. They’re in college, so I have good faith that at some point they’ll be gradually guided to a belated epiphany by meeting more diverse peers and/or the concept of structural racism. But they’re also unusually bullheaded and angry and defensive, so maybe they won’t. I want to say something so badly, either on FB or when they inevitably bring it up at Thanksgiving, but I don’t know if that’s helpful or what. ugh ugh ugh
Are there other, more impressionable family members who see this? My feeling is that you probably won’t change their minds, but if there’s anyone seeing their bullshit who’s like “this makes me kind of uncomfortable but I don’t know why,” they might benefit from seeing some pushback.
Just so disheartened, so angry, so despairing. I keep tearing up. How, how, how [not how did this one officer escape accountability, that is clear enough]? People in my FB feed have been posting and re-posting RFK’s speech in Indianapolis. I read it, and it rings hollow. That was 50 years ago. How are we still here, appealing for calm in the face of mind-boggling injustice and tragedy?
The thing that people are saying about white privilege meaning you’re angry and upset but not afraid is true and real but there are those of us who are white parents of black sons and are very, very afraid. But I’m not really going to post that anywhere as a response because that would be awful derailing and centring my white voice, etc. But I need a safe space to speak my fear, and Toasties, you’re it. I want my wonderful toddler to grow and I also want to preserve him in amber so he never becomes a police target. I have not had a lifetime of preparation for this terror, as my partner has, as I never expected to have children at all, much less a black son. Last night I washed his hair and combed through his curls and kissed him goodnight, then did the dishes, then turned on the Missouri livestream, then sobbed for hours. His sweet face is going to be seen as a threat to men with guns in around 10 years and then thereafter. I can barely breathe.
Here’s a glimmer of hope, at least. National Bar Association press release: http://us7.campaign-archive1.com/?u=b493e6c4d31be…
hugs and love to you, mama. your sweet baby. this whole thing hurts the mother part of me most.
I copied part of your link down below, thank you for posting it (and your post is beautifully written, too. I wish the best for you & your family).
Thank you both.
I am glad you are sharing your voice here, it is a huge, huge fear. I am thinking of you warmly.
Well I can’t seem to embed it from my phone, but I suggest you click through with the sound on: <a href=”https://vine.co/v/O1XUabDBQd1” target=”_blank”>https://vine.co/v/O1XUabDBQd1
““Multiple personality carries with it the implication that they really have more than one personality,” Dr. Spiegel said. Not so. “The problem is fragmentation of identity, not that you really are 12 people,” he said, “that you have not more than one but less than one personality.””
Ohhhhh this is so infuriating. I ought to wait and breathe and write a considered response but when would I have time for that?
I am not a PERSONALITY I am a PERSON. It is not my fault I happen to share my body with many other people, it does not make me some sort of sick person who needs psychiatric help, it is just how it is. *I* am not 12 people, I am *one* person, there are just other people here too!
I wish the people who were ‘debunking’ my life would actually bother to LISTEN to what my life is before they started explaining how their tems for it are wrong.
The one positive I’m seeing is that my facebook friends (and the people they’re sharing and retweeting) are all being really solid right now. A lot of them live in STL and are posting updates from marches and demonstrations. I know that we each live in a bubble of people who agree with us, and that many people are logging in to see hateful gloating right now. But I’m glad that the internet exists for times like these, and that a thousand miles away I can be reminded that there are good, concerned people who won’t shut up in the face of all that is terrible. If there’s one way that we’ve progressed, it’s that we have the internet to help us share and discuss and organize our rage.
So it’s far from the only thing that could be said or done, but Jia’s interview highlights how having a largely ignored formal drinking age of 21 assists rape and rapists in the college/university setting.
Yeah, the part about how freshmen have nowhere else to go besides frat parties really stuck out for me. I remember feeling that way at the first college I attended- for freshmen, there were literally no other socialization options on a Friday night besides frat parties. I went to the frats not because I really wanted to party with frat brothers, but because the other choice was staying in my dorm room alone. I ended up being sexually assaulted at one of those parties (I was not raped, so I consider myself very fortunate), and that never would have happened had I had some other Friday night activity to do instead.
Wow. Thanks for sharing that.
Oh my god to Joni talking about Jian!
I am so glad to hear her say she hated that interview because I also hated it. It was centered around her coming to Toronto to perform a couple of years ago, and everyone was losing their shit about ‘what a great interview’ and ‘only Jian would be able to get Joni to come out of her shell’…just NO. her loathing of him radiates through the whole interview.
A righteous piece by Syreeta McFadden in the Guardian today. A phrase that stood out for me was ‘the hydra of white supremacy’.
Do you have a blog, or can you point me to articles that you commented on, so I can read your story?
I’m writing about my early life … I may have DID; but I have so many other problems (I’m a barrel of acronyms) that I mostly deal with the DID by myself. Thanks … .
Edit: Replying to Bryn (Plus Others) above. Will try again to get the post to link …
Hi Ella!
If you click through my little icon it should take you to our Dreamwidth account, which I & other people in the system write in sometimes, although not very regularly for a while. You (and anyone else!) are welcome to read it and comment there and ask questions.
We do not identify as DID because we do not identify as mentally ill or dissociated in that way (although some individuals in our system are dissociated themselves, it is not a black & white kind of thing), but there are lots of good resources out there for people with DID if you are looking for help/support. And we are happy to talk and listen.
The real indictment is that Darren Wilson’s actions are considered lawful and that he was determined to be acting in accordance with his training.
I’m convinced now that changing the system starts at the local level. Local and state elections for jobs like prosecutors and judges and city council members and governors have a real and direct impact on communities. This is doable, this kind of change. When are the next municipal elections in Ferguson, and in my own town? Who is running? What is their platform? What public position have they taken on this tragedy, and who are their backers? How can I help those I support to succeed? These are the questions I’m asking today.
These are great questions. And be warned – it’s hard to get an answer. I sent an email to the DC police asking what proactive steps they’re taking to prevent the shooting of unarmed civilians. Two weeks later I got an email saying that DC police force is diverse.
Um, ok.
Michelle Alexander:
“No matter what the grand jury does, let us remember that true justice will come only when our criminal injustice system is radically transformed: when we no longer have militarized police forces, wars on our communities, a school-to-prison pipeline, and police departments that shoot first and ask questions later. True justice will be rendered not when a single “guilty” verdict is rendered in one man’s case, but when the system as a whole has been found guilty and we, as a nation, have committed ourselves to repairing, as best we can, the immeasurable harm that has been done.”
re gloating: My dad is gloating SO MUCH. I’m stuck at my parents’ house with no car and they live in a suburbia of St. Louis so nothing is within walking distance. It feels like I’m trapped here having to listen to all his racist opinions and its making me so mad. Yesterday I disagreed with him on something and he completely went off yelling. So now I just don’t say anything and retreat upstairs to follow whats happening on twitter. (He, of course, gets all his news from Fox.)
“WASHINGTON, DC –…National Bar Association President Pamela J. Meanes expresses her sincere disappointment with the outcome of the Grand Jury’s decision but has made it abundantly clear that the National Bar Association stands firm and will be calling on the U.S. Department of Justice to pursue federal charges against officer Darren Wilson. “We will not rest until Michael Brown and his family has justice” states Pamela Meanes, President of the National Bar Association.”
My partner and I were watching our local news (BC, Canada) and when it cut to the Grand Jury’s decision, my first thought was “Oh, no, no, no, no, no.” Second thought: “Is there a way around this? A civil suit?” After reading NBA President Pamela Meanes’s press release, I could slowly let out my breath and hope for some justice.
But I almost feel like Hope is a towel soaked in tears and every time it’s wrung out, it gets a little drier each time and what happens when you keep twisting and squeezing and nothing comes out. What then, besides despair, violence and darkness? No, I need hope, I need to believe SOMETHING positive will happen, it just has to.
Judging by their comments, cousins’ friends are all extremely impressionable and have gathered many terrible ideas from suspect sources in their eighteen years! I did wade in and my cousins were actually fairly reasonable, all things considered, so I don’t know if their initial post was just posturing or what. I do remember the desperate need to have an original or provocative thing to say when I was eighteen, but I really really hope I never let that lead me into making common cause with racists.
Did anyone read the comments on the geese story? Most of the commenters seem to think the story is cruel to a. geese or b. her dad.
Yes! I…was confused. I thought it sounded like her dad was a very good man, and the geese…were geese. I loved the piece, anyway.
The frat house where those rapes occurred is visible from my church. We’re working with UVA student leaders to participate in various peer intervention programs, to help provide what safe space we can. The student response to these tragedies has been fantastic, and a lot of students are standing up and working to create a better environment for their classmates. But all of these bystander and peer response programs make me angry, because it’s fallen to a bunch of 20-year olds to create the safe space that their administration can’t or won’t enforce. The culture of violence and fear that starts with that horrifying Rugby Rd song, and ends with the murder of Hannah Graham (not to mention the other women who have disappeared, but who don’t get national media attention for…reasons), has been active at UVA for ages, and the administration does nothing. Women get attacked, and the deans coo and hug and offer sympathy, but don’t actually work to change anything. The university holds high its Honor Code, claiming to expel students for theft and cheating, but do sweet fuck-all about rich white men committing violent assault. Because, as Dean Eramo puts it, “nobody wants to send their daughter to the rape school.”
I read Jia’s article on UVA and the Rolling Stone one, and it makes me want to throw up violently from all of my orifices. I recently graduated from college and yes, I was sexually assaulted there and yes, I know WAY too many people who have been raped, and I don’t think a single person has ever been expelled from my college for rape. For plagiarism? Why yes! But not for rape.
It makes me incandescent with rage. It’s mostly just the people who have been sexually assaulted who know just how prevalent the violence is. We have our network. We know. Once one person shares their story, a dozen more reach out. But the discussion is confined to gatherings of survivors in “safe spaces.” And so rapists aren’t caught, if they are ever caught, until they become serial rapists.
What happened to me wasn’t SO so bad but the humiliation of it, plus the humiliation of the reporting process and my parents’ uncomprehending and unsupportive reactions, was enough–so much more than enough–that I want to do my damndest to make sure that I am the last person that guy will treat that way. I talk about it to everyone now. When appropriate. Sometimes when people ask why I’m not going home for Christmas, why I’m not dating anyone, or why I have such mixed feelings about my elite school.
I wrote a longer comment than this but I had to delete most of it because it wasn’t productive. I hate confining my rage to a size and shape that keeps it productive. But it has to be done, at least in the public realm. No one will listen to a young woman locked into a wordless endless scream of rage about an issue that most people refuse to see.
The only thing I could think to do was to write to my state and federal lawmakers and urge them to support legislation requiring that all law enforcement officers be equipped with body-worn cameras while on duty. I would also like to donate to the Ferguson Library and the ACLU.
I hope you've found some comfort from racist gloating. It really sucks to confront that with close relatives.
A friend posted this link ("How to Teach Kids About What's Happening in Ferguson: A crowdsourced syllabus about race, African American history, civil rights, and policing") this morning: http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014…. It looks like it's mostly geared to older kids, but there might be something helpful in there.
Stealing this to post on FB. God, it's heart-rending how far we haven't come in the last 50+ years . . .
I want to say something nice here too, but words are failing me all over the place. Just… I think you are terrific, and I love the way you relate your experiences, and I feel like you are a model of what is possible and awesome.
Never have I linked more freely to this article than on the FB posts of idiots today.
This is no time to be flippant or cavalier, but there is the teeniest, tiniest, most self-serving kind of silver lining: the racist dickheads in all my news feeds have made themselves known, and now I can unfriend them with horrorful glee.
This is from Psychological Network about talking to your kids and tailoring for age http://www.psynetinc.com/ferguson.htm
This is for schools on how to teach about Ferguson, but seems like it could easily be used for parents https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5gvUqGxdmZhTDhE…