I am going to tell everyone a secret, especially people in rural areas.
You…can do a slow social progressive takeover of your local Democratic party, probably. You just need to carve out some time for it.
“Renay”, you say, exasperated, “that sounds fake, but okay.” But I’m here to tell you that if you’re in a rural/red state (or even blue states), you have an excellent chance of infecting the Democratic Party in your area with some straight up radical empathy. And you can do it in sneaky ways. It’s a long game. Here is a list:
1. Find your county Democrats. You may have to start at state level, but eventually you should be able to track down the chair of the county party and find out where and when they meet. Start attending meetings. If they’re not having meetings, hoooooboy. That’s a totally different thing. I spent two years fighting that battle, but if you want help, ping me.
2. At the very first meeting, if the group isn’t using a microphone, bring it up. Ask if the committee can invest in a portable PA system to bring to meetings to help people who have trouble hearing. If they balk (ables often will), don’t worry. Make the request once, and then make the request at every subsequent meeting, kindly, until they get so sick of you they cave and/or start empathizing with you. My position here: who cares why it gets done. Just get it done.
3. Keep going to meetings. Generally county parties meet every month.
4. If there are nametags at meetings, always use them and put your pronouns on them. Yes, even you, cis people. ESPECIALLY YOU.
5. At your third meeting, if the group is using sign in sheets, ask the secretary, or meeting chair if the former is unclear, if the sign in sheets could have a field for pronouns. It’s not about getting people to use it yet—that’s later—we just want it on the template so YOU can use it and set an example. Yes, you can make this request even as a cis person. In fact, it’s probably better that you do because it will cost you less. You can do the emotional labor instead of making trans and enby friends do the labor. This goes back to nametags: if you do it, you create a safe bubble for others to do it, or a social pressure situation for people to do it. Social pressure is sometimes toxic, but we can use it for positive things!
These are Very Simple things you can do to Increase Inclusion in local Democratic spaces and shove them left. This is just the start, too. There’s language scrubbing (kind of advanced because you need to have relationships with the people), requesting the committee invite guest speakers from marginalized communities, and becoming a delegate to the state party annual convention. This is Very Advanced because it generally means travel, but I plan to do it myself because in two years I’m going to make the Arkansas DPA adopt gender neutral language in their platform instead of this “he or she” business.
I mean, maybe you think of going to county meetings and go, “ugh I would rather eat glass” but you can always take an ebook on your phone or something (I do this…soon I will have time to knit again and I’ll be doing that). Take 3-4 hours out of your month and invest it.
What shoves the Democratic Party left? We do. A bunch of people taking small steps in their local communities. And then the candidates coming out of those committees get more progressive and thoughtful, too.
The world doesn’t change just because we want it to. We make it change.
Go do the work.
Additionally: show up to enough meetings and there’s a non-zero chance you could be running things, which is also helpful for the whole slow radicalisation process.
(in NZ if you show up to enough local meetings of a major political party you basically get elected to Parliament if that’s a thing you’re into, you think I’m joking but I’m not really, so I figure for the US ‘running things on a local level’ is totes achievable)
Can I watch a great film knowing the actresses in it were terrorized and mistreated the entire time? Can I watch a football game knowing that the players are getting brain injuries right before my eyes? Can I listen to my favorite albums anymore knowing that the singers were all beating their wives in between studio sessions? Can I eat at the new fancy taco place knowing when the building that used to be there got bulldozed eight families got kicked out of their homes so they could be replaced with condos and a chain restaurant? Can I wear the affordable clothes I bought downtown that were probably assembled in a sweatshop with child labor? Can I eat quinoa?
Can I eat this burger? Can I drink this bottled water? Can I buy a car and drive to work because I’m sick of taking an hour each way on the subway? Whose bones do I stand on? Whose bones am I standing on right now?
On one hand, it’s a privilege to be able to choose to acknowledge these horrors or not–we’re going to acknowledge that privilege. On the other hand, I once attended a lecture by the explorerer-conservationist Jacques-Yves Cousteau’s daughter and son and they had a lot of opinions about what we could do to help the environment and the ocean and I talked about how in my country, we have to drink bottled water, because it’s a desert and there’s only salt water all around, but we’re contributing to pollution and all of these things…
And she looked at me and told me not to fall into the trap of “activist guilt.” I couldn’t remember the exact words, but, it was the first time I’d heard the term and it took a weight off my shoulders.
We do what we can. It’s so much better than giving up entirely or not doing anything at all because we can’t do it perfectly. It doesn’t benefit anyone in the end if we just sit around feeling guilty about every little thing in life. I’d just joined tumblr back then (haha, so like, eight or nine years ago at this point?), I was being exposed to way more than I’d ever been before (I was previously just into feminism and animal rights/wildlife conservation/environmentalism since I was a kid), and it was weighing on me.
As long as humans are humans and living flawed lives, many consumed by greed, there will not be anything in this world untouched by evil.
I usually avoid stuff that says it was made in China or other cheap looking knockoffs, out of fear of them being made in sweatshops (now, I know even a lot of big brands use those…), it’s exhausting. Then, I read something about how people who actually lived and worked in those would still buy this cheap stuff and how this shocked the foreigner reporting on it, but they just looked confused like, it’s what they can afford and them avoiding consuming it isn’t going to change the whole system from the ground-up.
… it went on about how “money talks” and choosing where to put your money still feeds the whole capitalist system and is nearly a way of comforting yourself, but you not buying doesn’t mean everyone else isn’t. What needs to be tackled is at a much higher level than any of us can reach.
Of course, I’d still, given the choice, give my money to companies I agree with and I’ll boycott what I know to support awful stuff, but I also feel no superiority over this and know now it’s not as black and white or easy as I thought it was.
This is the same reason that moral purity “you can’t enjoy [x] because it’s Problematic ™” is such nonsense, because nothing is pure. There’s something bad about everything if you dig deep enough. As long as we lived in flawed human societies we’ve got to make the best of what they offer us. If you have the choice and means, please, do support those who do good, but also, don’t beat yourself up over not living up to an unattainable ideal.
No one can. You’ll just make yourself so miserable, you either burn up and stop fighting entirely or you’ll make yourself a non-productive, depressed heap just out of a bleeding heart left unchecked. You can’t make a change to this world if you refuse to engage in it.
hey @staff kindly stop marking this stuff under sensitive content
This is awesome.
It’s also worth spreading around that you do not have to take an oath on a Bible. If they’ll let her use this, then you can use pretty much any book, which might matter for atheists and people who’s religion lacks sacred texts.
methinks….people underestimate how makeup is an actual real psychological trauma and im not being hyperbolic. being incapable of seeing your bare face in the mirror w/o being shook to your core and spiralling into a chain of negative emotions that ruins the rest of ur day? viscerally fearing being observed w/o makeup so much it informs how and when and IF you dare to move in public spaces? how many women fear intimate relationships bc they cant stomach the thought of someone seeing them w/o makeup? being so alienated from your own body that either exposing it or being exposed to it renders u depressed disturbed and disgusted sounds like textbook trauma responses to me
Republicans in 2016: It doesn’t matter how awful Trump is, Hillary used her personal e-mail account for government matters!
Ivanka: (Uses her personal e-mail for government matters)
Republicans in 2018: oh, that kind of thing doesn’t matter
Me: (Stares at the camera like I was on The Office)
It’s starting to feel like all those Republicans who claimed they were only voting for Rump because Hillary was so awful were actually just fine with racism, facism, adultery, idiocy, lying, homophobia, and rampant misogyny because they felt it wouldn’t affect them personally or something.
call me the fucking ~internet police~ BUT I DIDN’T KNOW UNTIL TODAY THAT THERE’S LITERALLY A COMMUNITY OF “PEDOPHILE POSITIVITY” ON THIS HELLSITE
THERE ARE PEOPLE OPENLY ADMITTING THAT THEY ARE ATTRACTED TO CHILDREN/CONSUMING CHILD PORN ON THIS WEBSITE!?!??! THERE’S 13 YEAR OLDS ON HERE!!!
so my dudes, how to flag “maps” (minor attracted people aka pedophiles)
1. click “flag this blog”
2. click “this violates tumblr’s community guildlines”
3. click “someone is at risk of harm”
4. click “harm to minors”
5. type “pedophile” in the box
THIS IS GOOD AND ALL BUT PLEASE IF THEY HAVE ACTUAL CP PLEASE REPORT IT TO FBI TIPS,
If it’s clear they have broken laws (they post/talk about using child porn, admit to things they’ve done with minors, etc), go fill out a form here ( https://tips.fbi.gov ) to make the FBI aware and bring this filth to justice. Every single one. And if there’s no proof of criminal offense, then go on and flag them, at least then they aren’t here to prey on children on the internet.
Hi guys I recently had a run in with a pedophile who was posting child pornography, please don’t call the police there’s not a whole lot they can do in situations of tracking unlessit’s in your home state! And they don’t have a department that deals with blogs.
Instead call 1-800-843-5678 or fill out a form for cybertipline.com , they reach out within the same day and deal with these assholes all the time. They will contact you if they need more assistance or if they’ve resolved it! The police department redirected me to the hotline and will do so in every situation unless it’s local. Stay safe!
WHAT THE FUCK EW????????
REBLOG TO WRECK A PEDOPHILE
yes, please report to the fbi or the other place mentioned. tumblr will only delete the blog and all of the evidence.
Also use IWF (Internet Watch Foundation/ iwf.org.uk) for mentioned imagery, especially if in the UK. You can even report anonymously.
Norse mythology fails to convey the sense of terror that must have hung over Asgard every time Loki was gone for longer than eight months and three weeks
Iron in the Sand 