Fact: No significant percentage of Americans goes without social welfare of any kind:

Reblogged from Choosing Pancakes

Reblogged from Choosing Pancakes

I applaud this:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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All I can say is, "Damn."

No Question from ash H on Vimeo.

Calling this "Obligatory 9/11 Post" is too disrespectful

but I'm not really sure how else to go about it. As everyone in the entire country has said already, a decade ago today our country was changed forever. The generation(s) who had come to take America's freedom and security for granted were rudely awoken. The entire world felt somber and I remember being upset at my little brother and sister for coming home from school with smiles on their faces, blissfully unaware. My little sister told me once she doesn't remember it at all, which is unsurprising given that she was 7. But I was 11, and I will never forget walking into Mrs. Frank's 6th grade Advanced Math class, late as usual, my interest piqued to see the TV was on. Seeing the burning building, I thought we were watching a movie, and I will never forget how multiple people shushed me as I asked what we were watching, or how mere seconds later the second plane hit the second tower and I noticed the red "LIVE" on the top corner of the screen and despite not really knowing what was happening or where those buildings were or why it was important, I staggered backwards, hitting my back painfully on the handle of the cubby behind me. I will never forget what it was like to see grown-ups be afraid, or to watch as my classes dwindled to the single digits by the end of the day, as parents picked their kids up to take them home. There isn't a single day from all of my years of education that will ever be remembered in such detail as that day. 

And now it's ten years later, and I'm 21 and still at school, and we're still entrenched in the war--a war so far removed from my immediate life that it's reprehensibly easy to forget about, but a war nonetheless--that resulted from that day, and I am...at a bit of a loss. I remember that day. I will never forget that day. But does remembering that day mean that today should have been as somber, quiet, and full of negative feelings as that day a decade ago was? Should I feel BAD that I had a really good day today? At what point are we allowed to be aware of what today is the anniversary of without letting that cast a grey shadow of melancholy over the day? Maybe it's incredibly selfish to want to be able to enjoy my day despite the date making me cringe. I would light a candle, but they're not allowed in the dorms. Is there a way just living my life today can be regarded as anything but disrespectful? I'm thankful for all the lives that were given, or changed irrevocably, so that I could live it. But...I don't feel like I'm doing it right, or something.

The memorial is pretty cool.

Disney Doing What It Does Best.

Dealing with problems of race ambiguously at best, not dealing with them at all at worst, right? Wrong. I'm used to Disney ignoring racial issues. Even being marginally racist at times (going back in history there's all kinds of animalization of black peoples--the baboons in The Jungle Book, the crows in Dumbo, etc., and don't even get me started on everything that's wrong with Aladdin). So evidently, in an effort to combat these issues in the company's past, or maybe just riding along on this recent American wave of post-racialism/colorblindness, Disney has now chosen to IGNORE AMERICAN HISTORY COMPLETELY and mark the struggles of African-American soldiers (like my paternal grandfather, a decorated WWII veteran) entirely irrelevant. Great choice.

What am I talking about, you ask? I had the night off from work tonight, so I decided to go see Captain America with K and a couple other friends. [No major spoilers coming up, I pinkie promise.] We trudge along through America's involvement in WWII, from the volunteer army to the Uncle Sam posters and the war bonds...then suddenly we're in Italy facing the 50 or so members of the 107th infantry who didn't get captured by the evil Germans...and there are Black and Asian faces intermingled with the White guys. Huh? Hold up. Wait just one goddamn minute. No they didn't... 

Dear Disney, the United States Armed Forces were not integrated until President Linden Johnson's Executive Order in 1948. During the second World War, African-American soldiers were segregated into their own troops, who were rarely sent to battle, and if so sent into zones considered too dangerous for their white counterparts. They were grunt workers, easily disposable. Their officers were not widely respected, their men treated with more respect by civilians abroad than by their own countrymen. Do I need to bring up the Tuskegee Airmen? (Don't even get me started on Tuskegee in general!) I don't care how many billions of dollars your company is worth; I don't give a shit how much easier it is to cast your movie without regard to race; if you thought it didn't matter, it does. I will not stand by and let the honor of my grandfather and the thousands of African-American men like him who had to fight for the right to fight for their country, and came home to find no honor, no love, no respect, and certainly no veteran's benefits like the GI bill (which could have singlehandedly erased the Black-White wealth gap, had Black veterans been given the opportunity right to go to college or purchase homes as were their White counterparts) be trampled upon. In the same way I cannot tolerate history textbooks that relegate Blacks', womens', or LGBT-persons' histories to colorful boxes and side notes, if they mention them at all, I cannot and will not tolerate you erasing the struggles these men endured. I cannot and will not sit idly by while you piss all over their legacy.

Aren't there people whose job it is to make sure you don't do anything blatantly ignorant like this? Shouldn't someone be checking these things when you're casting? Doesn't anyone care? Minor historical inaccuracies like the details of a uniform or the use of a car that didn't exist yet don't bother me; I realize that it's not actually possible to travel back into time and get everything perfect. But we're not talking about something minor like that. We are talking about the struggle for basic human dignity endured by my father's father, Black peoples of his generation, of previous generations, and to an extent even of today's generation. We are talking about civil rights. We are talking about the way the media likes to subtly cover up the sordid details of our nation's past and pretend everything is all hunky-dory. 

Captain America can't be shown as fighting for an America that actively denied its citizens the very "inalienable truths" it was founded on, huh? That's not gonna sell tickets. Disney, I love you, but this is not okay.   

Two Sides of the Same Coin?

Dallas's housing assistance waitlist opened up for the first time in 5 years last week, and despite the fact that only 100 spots were being offered, over 21,000 people entered the lottery. They started lining up outside the office the night before, and the line was eventually near a mile long. This line was full of infants, children, women, and senior citizens (women, children, and the elderly are the most likely groups of people to be impoverished), and eight people were injured. More info here.
The only thing my brain can scrounge up to compare this to is all the crazies who line up for Black Friday sales within minutes of finish their Thanksgiving dinners. I'm thankful for...this 80-inch flatscreen I'm about to stay up all night waiting to buy. Right. I remember my freshman year, an employee was TRAMPLED TO DEATH opening the doors at Walmart on Black Friday. 
Death by American greed and reckless desire for all things shiny on one hand. Injury by American poverty and reckless desire for decent living conditions on the other. The disappointment shared by those who weren't first in line binding them together. Two sides of the same sad coin.

2nd 30 Day Letter Challenge: Day 17--Letter to a Politician: Freddie D and my thoughts this 4th of July

Dear American Politicians,

This letter contains excerpts from Frederick Douglass's 1852 speech, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" 

1. "This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the 4th of July. It is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. It carries your minds back to the day, and to the act of your great deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that act, and that day. This celebration also marks the beginning of another year of your national life; and reminds you that the Republic of America is now 76 years old. I am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. I repeat, I am glad this is so. There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon. The eye of the reformer is met with angry flashes, portending disastrous times; but his heart may well beat lighter at the thought that America is young, and that she is still in the impressible stage of her existence. May he not hope that high lessons of wisdom, of justice and of truth, will yet give direction to her destiny? Were the nation older, the patriot’s heart might be sadder, and the reformer’s brow heavier. Its future might be shrouded in gloom, and the hope of its prophets go out in sorrow. There is consolation in the thought that America is young. Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. They, however, gradually flow back to the same old channel, and flow on as serenely as ever. But, while the river may not be turned aside, it may dry up, and leave nothing behind but the withered branch, and the unsightly rock, to howl in the abyss-sweeping wind, the sad tale of departed glory. As with rivers so with nations."

 So today I ask, is America still young? 235 years is much longer than 76, but cannot hold a candle to thousands, as Freddie D suggests so eloquently. So do we still have time to work things out and became a nation whose values are not, in any way, hypocritical? Do we still have time to develop the backbone to stand for things we believe in rather than fall to popular opinion? Do we still have time for popular opinion to become informed? Do we still have time to care, to see the bigger picture, to remember the meaning of the word democracy? Or has our window for greatness closed? If all the masses do to observe today is barbecue and drink and watch some fireworks, who will remember the gritty history and the gritty details of the present? Sometimes I feel like we as a nation are hungover after having gotten drunk on our own ideals, and now we're too out of it to do anything but lay in bed with a cold compress and watch it all play out. We need to wake the fuck up and do something. That's the meaning of independence. In that vein:

2. "We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future. To all inspiring motives, to noble deeds which can be gained from the past, we are welcome. But now is the time, the important time. Your fathers have lived, died, and have done their work, and have done much of it well. You live and must die, and you must do your work. You have no right to enjoy a child’s share in the labor of your fathers, unless your children are to be blest by your labors. You have no right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to cover your indolence."

 Next I say that having never really experienced any other part of the world, I am patriotic almost to a fault. Though I hope to do some traveling eventually at some point, the US of A is the end-all be-all for me, and I'm okay with that. There's nothing I'd rather be than American. There is nothing I would rather be than a black American, but that means that, like Freddie D all those years ago, I would like to call attention to the things America overlooks as we celebrate ourselves today. He calls attention to the peculiar institution of American slavery:

3. "I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slave’s point of view. Standing, there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery-the great sin and shame of America! "I will not equivocate; I will not excuse;" I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just. But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more, and denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light?"

I would like to call attention to its lasting effects, as well as to the lasting effects of the fourth value this country was raised on: 'life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness[, and patriarchy].' I want to ask you, America, whether you are celebrating poverty and the disproportionate percentages of women, children, and people of color [and their women and children most of all] who fall below the poverty line in this country. I want to call attention to the wage gap between men and women. I want to call attention to the fact that, according to multiple very-well run audit studies by one of my professors, Devah Pager, it is easier for a white man with a criminal record than a black man with no criminal background to get a JOB in this country, and that was BEFORE the recession hit. I want you to remember the founders' cries of "No taxation without representation!" and ask yourself who exactly our legislators represent. Is the nation's best interest those of its richest or its poorest? America, are you celebrating our failing public schools? Our inability to truly separate church and state and recognize love in all its forms? The tightening and tightening of border control and anti-immigration sentiment in a land that once proclaimed 

"Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" --Emma Lazarus, "The New Colossus", mounted inside the Statue of Liberty

America, have we EVER truly been the land of the free? Certainly not when my man Freddie was talking to you, certainly not now while we have the highest incarceration rates in the entire world. Certainly not now when getting caught with a bag of weed can lose not only your liberty, by sending you to prison, but also silences your voice (as many states ban ex-felons from the ability to vote), and makes it impossible to break the cycle of poverty and self-destruction (as you cannot receive federal financial aid or welfare).

"What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelly to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival."

So I ask you, how much has changed? I don't want to feel like I've abandoned my people--American women, American children, American people of color--by wearing my red, white, and blue today.


Maya

This post is not meant to be a Debbie Downer...

 

I usually have something witty and cute to say about life in general, or my life specifically, like how they say change is the only constant in life, but today I want to take a moment to recognize that that volatility makes life really really fragile. Not only in the oft-talked-about highs-and-lows/rollercoastery ways, but just in the ideas that it can change irrevocably in the blink of an eye, and it can be over just as fast.

"When a tragedy like this strikes, it is part of our nature to demand explanations, to try to impose some order on the chaos and make sense out of that which seems senseless." -- Barack Obama

 National tragedy this week in Arizona: Six regular people living their regular lives decided to go out and participate in democracy--crazy idea--and it cost them their lives, some of which were long and full, but others of which were truly just beginning. 14 more people were injured, with various degrees of severity; their lives have been changed forevermore.

Princeton tragedy: We lost a Tiger this week. A freshman girl from Virginia, who lived in Forbes and played on the softball team. Two of my friends knew her well, and I can't begin to imagine what they're going through because I have never lost a good friend. Her death was ruled "natural causes"; she had evidently been having medically unexplained seizures since May, but had decided to come to Princeton instead of deferring a year to try to figure out what was wrong. I've heard a lot of people commenting that they didn't understand why she would do this, but reading the articles on the homepage about how her friends are mourning her, she wanted to sleep in her uniform, and even her parents called us Tigers her family, it makes sense to me. This place has given me the best years of my entire life thus far, years I sometimes doubt will ever be matched, and from what I can gather, it gave her the best 5 months of hers. And that makes me glad. I just...she was (relatively) fine at dinner the night before, and they found her dead in the morning. Just like that.

Something that has the potential to become a personal tragedy: Okay, I'm being melodramatic. But I'm worried. So I've been pretty quiet about this because I don't know what to think, but things have escalated to the point that it must be shared: my father has been in and out of the hospital for the past week-and-a-half or so. This may be more information than you need to know, but he woke up last Thursday morning with a full bladder and couldn't go. The pressure just kept increasing and increasing so he went to the hospital and had to get a catheter put in. That was in for a week--and he missed work for a week--and when they took it out this Wednesday, he still couldn't go. Now they're saying he has to have surgery next week, and they're going to run tests on samples from his prostate, which means prostate cancer is a feasible explanation for what's going on right now. How do you go to bed one night feeling relatively alright (my dad has high blood pressure and diabetes) and wake up the next morning showing potential signs of having CANCER?! He gets regular checkups and everything! My mom says I'm worried about nothing right now, but I can't help it; I'm freaking the fuck out. 

Too much has happened this week. The world is a crazy place, and our time in it could very well be shorter than any of us imagine. So LIVE your life, okay? Drake has some new song out with Nicki Minaj (said in a disgusted tone, but the reason behind it is another story for another time) in which he says, Every one dies but not everybody lives, and he's entirely right about that. I'm NOT going to say to live each day like it's your last, because let's be real: you'd probably end up in jail or in the hospital or do something to directly cause it to be your last.

I will say this though: I was doing this self-affirmation exercise for a while last year but I stopped: at the end of the night before I went to sleep I would think about one positive thing that happened that day, one thing that made that day worthwhile. It sometimes meant actively taking steps to make something worthy of this title happen each day, and that's something I want to start doing again. It's something EVERYONE should do, because whether we like to think about this or not, your whole world could turn upside down, inside out, or just plain dark overnight.