Survival

You guys I've been procrastinating talking about Trayvon Martin for months now and I just can't.

George Zimmerman is a bad guy. And he hurt more people after his acquittal. And now he's profiting off of the murder of a kid just like me.

And frankly I just don't understand how the justice system is able to incarcerate one in three Black men, the vast majority of whom are nonviolent offenders, but not one guy—a murderer, abuser and rapist (he's got to be at least one of those things)—we've decided is white for some reason.

All I really have to say is that every Black man in this country is Trayvon Martin, and every Black non-cishet-male is Renisha McBride. I heard Melissa Harris-Perry say that her friend's young son slept in her bed on the night of the verdict out of fear—that's what it feels like.

In the words of Emmett Till's cousin, Ollie Gordon, “Number one, Trayvon was killed by a white boy that got out of his truck armed to the teeth, chased him down then killed him, and then the jury did the same thing they did in 1955 with Emmett Till, they came back with a not guilty vote[.] ... That broke my heart, that tells me that things [have] not changed as much as people would like to say they have changed.”

I hope this reminds you all that survival will always be a motivator for my interest in social justice. 

J Long BGD Quotes

I'm just going to credit Mia McKenzie of Black Girl Dangerous and leave huge chunks of quoted text here, because this article is one of the greatest social justice things that have ever happened to me.

I'm also going to hold myself accountable for my privilege, because I don't do that enough. I am frequently the person who wants a cookie for being an ally. Especially on issues of queer- and trans*phobia, physical ableism, and classism, I could definitely stop talking about all of the "ally" work I've done in the past and instead hold myself accountable for current actions and, quite literally, copy-paste the voices of people ACTUALLY OPPRESSED by the structures I'm talking about rather than providing my privileged two cents. The reason why I'm supposed to tell people I support them in their identity is not to make me feel like a good person—it's to make them feel safe.

And that's probably harsh of me to say about myself. But, like, oppression is harsh, sooo...here's the short version:

I’m kinda over the term “ally["] ... and the constant cookie-seeking of people who just can’t do the right thing unless they are sure they’re gonna get some kind of credit for it[.] 

Allyship is ... not supposed to be about you. ... It’s not supposed to be a way of glorifying yourself at the expense of the folks you claim to be an ally to. It’s not supposed to be a performance. ... It’s supposed to be about you doing the following things:

1. shutting up and listening
2. educating yourself (you could start with the thousands of books and websites that already exist and are chock full of damn near everything anyone needs to know about most systems and practices of oppression)
3. when it’s time to talk, not talking over the people you claim to be in solidarity with
4. accepting feedback/criticism about how your “allyship” is causing more harm than good without whitesplaining/mansplaining/whateversplaining
5. shutting up and listening some more
6. supporting groups, projects, orgs, etc. run by and for marginalized people so our voices get to be the loudest on the issues that effect us
7. not expecting marginalized people to provide emotional labor for you

...

“Ally” cannot be a label that someone stamps onto you–or, god forbid, that you stamp on to yourself—so you can then go around claiming it as some kind of identity. It’s not an identity. It’s a practice. It’s an active thing that must be done over and over again, in the largest and smallest ways, every day.

Sounds like a lot of work, huh? Sounds exhausting. Well, yeah, it ought to. Because the people who experience racism, misogyny, ableism, queerphobia, transphobia, classism, etc. are exhausted. So, why shouldn’t their “allies” be?

Maybe how exhausted you are is a good measure of how well you’re doing the work.

—The Brilliant Mia McKenzie 

Micro-finance!

John Green explains micro-finance.

The vlogbrothers are quite possibly the best popular channel on youtube. The channel is 6 years old, was one of the first massively popular youtube channels, and does quite a bit of what John and Hank Green call "decreasing world-suck." They are the founders of Project for Awesome (P4A) and have the biggest group on kiva.org—Nerdfighters! Kiva (and an organization like it called Opportunity International) is what I'm here to talk about.

THREE MILLION DOLLARS. THAT IS THE POWER OF INTERNET (SL)ACTIVISM

Image: A graph with time in months on the x-axis and dollars loaned in hundreds of thousands on the y-axis. It is titled "Kiva Lending Team: Nerdfighters" with the subtext "A Common Interest team since Sep 2, 2008", and indicates that the graph feature is in Beta. The graph is split by continent, with North America at the top, then Central America, then South America, then Africa, then Middle East, then Eastern Europe, then Asia, then Western Europe, then Australia/New Zealand, then Oceania. I'm not sure whether this indicates the continent receiving or giving the donation, because North America is at the top, but Western Europe is at the bottom, so unless there are just scads of donations going to Mexico, that doesn't make a lot of sense.

Kiva and Opportunity are organizations for micro-finance, which is when people with relative class privilege, act as tiny, interest-free, one-person banks for people, mostly in the developing world, who don't have access to banking. You can contribute by making out loans to small businesses in other countries and/or by donating to kiva itself. The coolest part is that there's about a 98% payback rate, so you'll get your money back and be able to re-donate it! The idea is that it surpasses corruption both in banks (which rob businesses with interest rates) and in governments (e.g. in countries where the government will steal donated money, like Haiti), and instead goes directly to the individual.

It's a never-ending circle of wealth sharing.
And you know how I love wealth sharing.
Eh? Eh?
(The joke is that I am a socialist. That is the joke.)

Image: The "enter" button of an older-looking desktop keyboard, but instead of "enter," it says "Money back" with a hand holding U.S. currency.

There's some argument about why Opportunity is a better organization than Kiva, and it is ethically, but it doesn't have nearly as much social networking power, so I've chosen to use both. The things that are better about Opportunity according to http://awomansinvestment.blogspot.com/ and word of mouth are:

- It better targets people living below the poverty line
- It does business training in addition to loans, which increases sustainability
- They offer micro-insurance and micro-savings to people living below the poverty line
- They're more experienced

- It makes no profits

opportunity.org

Image: Opportunity International's logo, reading "Opportunity International: Giving the Poor a Working Chance". There is an image of an ellipsoid above the text, which is blank except for latitudinal and longitudinal lines. The ellipsoid sits inside of what appears to be a maroon "O" drawn in marker.

The perks of Kiva are:

- It's more popular
- It's stronger at social networking and has a broader community
- It's more user-friendly
- It's more sustainable—Opportunity exists because it's CEO had preexisting wealth, while Kiva runs on a "suggested donation" (that is, admittedly, a little high—it's CEO makes an embarrassing amount of money per year).

kiva.org

Image: Kiva's logo, which reads, "KIVA: loans that change lives". The K in Kiva is made to look like a tree. The words are dark green, enclosed in a light green curvilinear square.

So yeah. Additionally, John Green's protagonist Hazel Grace in TFioS talks about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, where she articulates that people need food and shelter, but that doesn't mean they don't also need love and arts and education and things of that nature. So don't just donate to grocery stores—donate to jewelry shops, too!

Maslow's hierarchy of needs dehumanizes the oppressed.
The hungry may need food...but that doesn't mean they need love any less.

Image: Maslow's hierarchy and "Maslow 'rewired'" side-by-side. The original hierarchy has "biological and physiological" at the base, then "safety", then "belonging and love", then "esteem", then self-actualization", and changes from green to orange, bottom to top. The revised hierarchy has a red circle in the middle reading "connection", then four surrounding circles around that circle, which are connected by lines(but the surrounding circles are not connected to the middle circle). The surrounding circle at the top is yellow and reads "esteem, reputation and competence"; the circle on the right is orange and reads "safety, order and certainty"; the circle on the bottom is light green and reads "community, belonging & love"; the circle on the left is dark green and reads "food, shelter & sex". Each version of the hierarchy is enclosed in a curvilinear square.

The only thing that's missing, for me, is the ability to micro-finance within the U.S.—particularly because I just learned about the Pine Ridge American Indian reservation, where people experience poverty similar to that in countries we consider "developing." I'd like to enact my leftist leanings within the U.S., as well!

Seriously though. Go forth and redistribute your wealth!

Peace Prize Problems vs. Malala

***UPDATE***

The West has embraced Malala for the same reasons it embraced pacifist civil rights activists: IT IS EXPLOITING HER AND PERVERTING HER MESSAGE.

So while I was writing about Malala, I took a quote from her interview with John Stewart—an interview which troubled me because Stewart asked, jokingly, if he could adopt her. It felt colonialist, but I allowed myself to be gaslighted by colonialist, patriarchal society.

Shortly after I posted about Malala, a friend hit the nail on the head in posting a Huffington Post article about Malala and the white messiah complex. A few poignant exerpts:

This is a story of a native girl being saved by the white man. Flown to the UK, the Western world can feel good about itself as they save the native woman from the savage men of her home nation. It is a historic racist narrative that has been institutionalised.
...
The Western savior complex has hijacked Malala's message. The West has killed more girls than the Taliban have. The West has denied more girls an education via their missiles than the Taliban has by their bullets. The West has done more against education around the world than extremists could ever dream of. 

I should've known. Any time a woman of color is enthusiastically embraced for her social justice work by the predominantly white public, I should get suspicious. But I just couldn't put my finger on it.

Baig of HuffPost, and my friend, are both right. There are a thousand Malalas killed by drone strikes, not the Taliban, who didn't survive to tell her story, who didn't get flown out to a Western country to get intensive medical care. They are not pacifist Dr. Kings—they know that sometimes it's the ballot or the bullet (or in this case, women's education or the bullet). I see pacifism and civil disobedience as debatable means of social change simply because the way oppressors seem to love it makes me uneasy. But even if we agree that pacifism good, that does not equal approval of Western protogenocidal military choices.

Truth is, I'm fundamentally uncomfortable with the notion of a Peace Prize administered by westerners. Isn't it just a means to dictate which types of revolutions are okay?

Malala is wonderful, and so are the non-pacifists in her situation, and so are the thousands of kids killed at the hands of the U.S. government.
***

This is just me nominating Malala Yousafzai for the Nobel Peace Prize. They're announcing it tomorrow and she is the definition of an awesome pacifist.

I can't know the other potential nominees for sure because the Nobel people don't disclose, and while other shoe-in candidates (Denis Mukwege is an incredible human being, about whom I read in Eve Ensler's memoir, In the Body of the World) appeal to me, I can't help but empathize with her as a young person passionate about change. Malala was targeted by the Taliban and ultimately shot in the head at the age of 14, just for being an advocate for womens' education and trying to go to school. She made a miraculous recovery and is now a prominent young feminist pacifist advocate for education. Malala represents, to me, an innate goodness and resistance to oppression in the human soul. In her words...

Influential AND fabulous

"If he comes, what will you do, Malala? Then I replied to myself, 'Malala, just take a shoe and hit him.' But then I said, if you hit a Talib with a shoe, then there will be no difference between you and the Talib—you must not treat others with cruelty and harshness, you must fight others but through peace and through dialogue and through education."

So yeah, if Obama and Al Gore can win it, Malala certainly deserves to. 

Purse Classism vs. Fair Trade

None a dis pls

Image: A really ugly purse with that appropriative fringe design that's supposed to be generically American Indian, a huge peace sign on the front with a rainbow design, and some braided rainbow handles. There's a huge tag on the top that makes it look like it's from a gift shop, and it probably is.

So I guess the whole point of pseudo-VEDA is that I blog even when I'm not feelin' it. And today all I really have to say is that I need a new purse.

I've had Coach purses since the 8th grade which sounds like a lot of fun except that there's no reason for me to have such an expensive purse. Like, yes, I do use my purse a lot, but I also do things like spill nail polish and vitamin C tablets inside, and it also creates this weird cognitive dissonance for me where I'm a social justice activist who carries around this brand-name overpriced probably-not-fair-trade-or-cruelty-free thing.

So in addition to getting these weird stares from kids who are like a) why is she carrying a purse with her backpack and b) why is her purse Coach is she a rich kid (and while I have class privilege, I am not a rich kid), maintenance of said purses also requires a trip out to the Albertville, Minnesota Coach outlet store, which is really far, with my grandma, who is the driver of my serial-purchasing of Coach purses, and also the driver of the car, because I cannot drive.

And I am sick of it and would rather have an activist-purse.

So does anybody know where I could find a purse that is neither exorbitantly expensive nor laden with conflict minerals?

Seriously though, I need a fair-trade, cruelty-free, environmentally responsible dream-tote that zips shut and has both handles and a shoulder strap.

And then I can carry my hippie power everywhere I go!

UR DOIN IT 4 ATTENTIOOONNN!!!!11!!!!1!!

Bigotry's never a cute look.

Image: A 'yahoo answers' response.
"Best Answer - Chosen by Voters
They're weirdos, let them slice themselves lol
9 months ago
100% 1 Vote

So I googled "self harm for attention" to kick off this post because the internet is always an infinite fountain of wonderful things and offensive things.

I googled it because the rebuttal is always, "NO, it's NEVER for attention!" And I feel like there are lots of variations on this for all kinds of oppression. "Being gay is NEVER a choice!" "I'm not a feminist JUST because I'm a woman!"

I just don't get it?? I do things for attention all the time. When I talk about mental illness, it is FOR ATTENTION, to eliminate stigma and communicate to other mental illness kids that they are not alone. When I tell satirical stories about misogynoir*, I do it for attention, because it's funny, and I am coping.

We've created this weird formula as a society: if someone is acting in their own self-interest, it is okay to treat them ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLY. You're just ___ because you're ___. So what?!

Maybe sometimes people do choose to be gay (like Cynthia Nixon), and that's fine, and maybe sometimes people are feminists because they aren't cis-hetero-men, which is cool, and maybe, JUST MAYBE, the kid who is self harming for attention DESERVES ATTENTION, just like he deserves a therapist to help him find better ways to get attention.

You know what's worse than being "self-centered"? BEING UNKIND.

JUST LOVE EACH OTHER GOSHHHH

*misogynoir: a term the internet made up for oppression of Black women

BEDO + Michael Jackson Chamber

Summary of current life feelings:

The Struggle Boat
Image: A group of white people with a dark-skinned tour guide (lol—didn't even notice this until I did the image description) in one of those blow-up-looking water rafts with a bunch of plastic oars, braving some vicious-looking rapids that they shouldn't have even attempted to cross in the first place and looking generally like n00bs.

The plan is to use my blog to ameliorate the afloat-ness. It is COLLEGE APP TIME. Is this blog an asset or a detriment to me for college apps? What if I delete the videos where I talk about White people?

So I'm going to BEDO, which is my version of VEDA. I was going to VEDA and then I lost my "motivaish," in the words of a great Blake math teacher. So BEDO is Blog Every Day in October. Because, you know, October also starts with a vowel.

Naturally, I am already two days behind.

***

THAT BEING SAID, I was wallowing a yester-fortnight and just watching infinite TED talks. And I found one on depression.

Embedding this was hard work and you should praise me for it - the youtube search engine through blogger SUCKS.

A summary of my takeaway from this video would approximately amount to:

1. Something is wrong with the way we treat depression currently.
2. Anti-depressants are great, sometimes, but other times they just uselessly (or harmfully) flood the brain with serotonin or norepinephrine or dopamine and it's a bad, expensive thing. Especially when a placebo works almost as well.

Full disclosure: I've experienced my fair share of negative psychiatric medication side effects.

3. There's this clinical trial in Arizona (where I can't go because I might be mistaken for Latina and racially profiled #4thamendmentfail) where they're putting patients, off their meds, with major depressive disorder, in 145ºF hyperthermia chambers for a series of 2 hour sessions. AND IT'S WORKING. It's working better than the antidepressant and the placebo.

I am having a (hypomanic) hunch about this. I think this is a breakthrough, guys. Especially as Minnesotan, we have heightened rates of depression and suicide, and just from my life experience, this makes so much sense. I know that pathos isn't logos, but the fact that the temperature linkage to depression is even stronger than PROZAC's linkage to depression is huge.

I am convinced that three years from now, there will be a new class of temperature-regulating drugs, and all the naysayers will look back on this TED talk as a piece of history.

So spread the word. 

Dory > Current Events

I've tried so hard to keep up with current events and stick to them so that I can get blog views. Because if on the night of the Trayvon Martin decision, I post about Trayvon, I get blog traffic, and then that's good because I've made an impact! But that depresses me because current events are depressing, and the stuff that makes the news is dictated by the White supremacist power structure and stuff anyways.

*Laughs a little* *Cries a little*

I'm still gonna talk about Trayvon, obviously. But I can't do it now. I'm still processing. I know it's been awhile... But I'd rather write a good post than a relevant one.

So let's talk about Dory.

Image: Dory from "Finding Nemo". She's bugging out her eyes, pursing her lips, and raising a fin to her mouth, as if in awe, or asking a question. She's in the ocean.

Dory is a fish voiced by the glorious and social-justice-y Ellen DeGeneres. I was very confused and irrationally irritated with her when I watched Finding Nemo as a child because I did not understand what about her made her deserved to be loved (read: any more than I do). I had this weird jealousy that indicated, "I'M a better fish than HER! Why is SHE a protagonist?" She was annoying and forgetful. I thought there had to be something "wonderful and special" about people who get to be in movies—but nothing about Dory made me want to BE her. What I did not realize is that Dory is a champion.

Today, the most important part of Finding Nemo to me is Dory's bildungsroman. She experiences a mental disability—which I identify with because I have a mental illness—but remains positive despite trials, and has little victories (P. Sherman 42 Wallaby Way Sydney) that can be attributed to her friendship with Marlin. And regardless of whether you buy into the conspiracy theory that she and Marlin later get married, she deserved to be loved because everyone does.

Dory taught me that what matters about us is how we grow, and what matters about relationships is how our growths are compatible.

Dory is now a mascot for me who helps me analyze and eliminate the internalized ableism I had towards myself as a child. As someone who has had an invisible disability for most of my sentient life, I have always thought that what makes me "strong" is leaving my disability—a part of me—behind, instead of living with it. So I harbored a terrible prejudice towards Dory for having small victories instead of undergoing total disability erasure. I did not see her strength.

The moral of the story is that you are not strong just because you overcame an obstacle, any more than Dory would be strong for suddenly having a miraculous recovery from short-term memory loss. You are strong for experiencing growth, and putting in the effort.

I'm looking forward to Finding Dory, needless to say :)

***

A transcript of the article I based this off of is below with a link to the site. (It's reformatted without huge pictures.)

Have you ever seen Finding Nemo? You know – that Pixar animated film that made you sob into the collar of your coat for 45 straight minutes in a darkened theater after the credits finished rolling?

If you haven’t seen it, Finding Nemo tells the tale of a father and son clownfish duo who become separated from each other and learn all sorts of life lessons on the journey to (SPOILER ALERT--but come on, it’s Pixar) their eventual reunion. As he ventures far out of his comfort zone to locate his son, Marlin, the neurotic fish father, struggles with one the most painful parts of parenting: learning to let go.

Early on in his journey, Marlin pairs up with Dory, a cheerful and well-meaning surgeon fish (voiced by Ellen Degeneres) who is happy to keep Marlin company, even though she struggles with serious short-term memory loss that often leaves her overwhelmingly anxious and disoriented if she’s left to fend for herself. Dory is persistent, devoted, and skilled, though (she can read English and speak a little whale), and Marlin finds her company useful…if not a little challenging. But Dory was an audience favorite when Nemo was released in 2003, and the film’s fans were thrilled this week when Pixar announced that Finding Dory will be released in 2015.

Amidst the flurry of social media shares and visions of Dory merch that surrounded the announcement, there was also speculation about how Pixar—a name synonymous with beautiful (and beautifully heartbreaking) storytelling—will approach having a main character whose sunny disposition is offset by some pretty serious cognitive and mental disabilities. As Michael Arbeiter of Hollywood.com asks in his article, will Finding Dory be Pixar’s first attempt to embrace and explore the topic of mental illness?

HOLD UP, you might be saying: Dory isn’t mentally ill, she’s just quirky! Well, sure, you can certainly see it that way. And Pixar can choose to see it that way too…or they can decide to take it a little further. As Arbeiter points out, Marlin and Dory’s relationship mirrors that of other famous film couples, namely Charlie and Ray in Rain Man (refer directly to Arbeiter for a full explanation), and it’s not unreasonable to expect the film to at least touch on Dory’s differences.  Finding Dory could easily incorporate Dory’s struggles in living with her mental disability as an allegory for the millions of people who fight a similar battle, many of whom will undoubtedly be sitting in the audience on opening day with their children (or their parents). Dory is already a beloved character; wouldn’t it be an interesting and valuable experience to see someone we know and love handle the challenges of less-than-ideal mental health?

I believe Arbeiter puts it best: “Sounds like a silly venture for a Pixar movie, maybe, but just think of the Toy Story franchise: a trilogy that expanded from ‘What if toys came alive when we left the room?’ to a heartrending allegory about self-preservation, loss, and identity.”

—"WILL PIXAR ADDRESS MENTAL ILLNESS IN THE UPCOMING SEQUEL ‘FINDING DORY’?" by Gayle of artwithimpact.org, artwithimpact.org//node/1201.

Am Terrible Blogger

Hi :)

I'm still freaking out and formulating my thoughts on Trayvon...

Sorry I abandoned you all for a month - I was out of town!

New bloggity soon! Possibly even a vloggity. Or both.

—AKB

Image: A cartoony narwhal making a kind of silly-angry face and holding a green light saber with it's fins. It's horn is inexplicably red against the black, starry night background. In the same font as the Star Wars movie title, it reads above the narwhal's face:
Nar
Whals
It then reads, "Cyanide and Happiness © Explosm.net" at the bottom. 

Party Like A Rock Star – A New Positivity – Scalia You Crazy – Haters Get Off Me

Let us all celebrate the strides I've made in improving my video quality.