Violent race riots that shook south Tel Aviv sparked shock in Israel last Thursday, but also prompted top-level calls for the immediate arrest and expulsion of tens of thousands of African migrants.
The latest unrest to sweep the impoverished neighbourhoods around Tel Aviv’s central bus station erupted when a demonstration of around 1,000 people who were protesting against the rising number of Africans moving into the area, turned violent.
“Shock, violence and hatred of foreigners in Tel Aviv” was the headline in the Maariv daily, which described scenes of chaos as demonstrators went on the rampage with sticks and stones, attacking African-run shops and smashing up a car driven by two African men.
“Blacks out!” shouted demonstrators in the crowd, while others yelled: “Send the Sudanese back to Sudan,” several news reports said, as other protesters derided the “bleeding-heart leftists” working to help them.
Kids play T-ball, then baseball; they play games and have practice every week and, if they’re serious about it, pre-season and post-season too. We never think, “Let’s have kids play baseball for eight weeks in seventh grade,” and then expect that in five years they can join the majors or even be on a college team. But for some reason we do this with civics. We say, “We’re going to have you do a penny harvest in fifth grade and a service learning project in tenth grade, and then we’ll teach you abstractly about government for a semester in twelfth grade.” Then our students enter the major leagues of citizenship, and we give them the vote and expect them to keep our country going. And that’s just crazy!
Missouri taxpayers soaked twice for Limbaugh statue.
Because nothing says ‘fiscal conservatism’ like blowing $10,000 on a bust of a man so hated that it requires an $1,100 24-hour security camera all its own.
And frankly the damn thing doesn’t look like him at all.
This looks like the cover of Sports Illustrated: Swimsuit Edition - photoshopped.
The ex-wife of Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, alleging that Kirk may have improperly hidden campaign payments to an ex-girlfriend by paying her through a company doing campaign work, The Chicago Tribune reports.
“Mr. Kirk seems to have believed Ms. McCracken provided him with something valuable enough, that he acceded to, directed, or tacitly endorsed … campaign donations being surreptitiously transferred to his girlfriend,” Kimberly Vertolli, the ex-wife, wrote in her complaint, filed in November 2011.
Vertolli, who has been a Navy lieutenant and intelligence officer and a lawyer for the CIA„ herself received $40,000 from the campaign, also through a company, though the Tribune reports that “she said there was nothing improper about that.”
Kirk’s campaign, meanwhile, has called Vertolli’s accusations “groundless.”
Vertolli, 39, and Kirk, 52, divorced in 2009 after nearly eight years of marriage. Eric Elk, Kirk’s campaign manager, told the Tribune that the couple split amicably, but Vertolli now blames Kirk’s relationship with Dodie McCracken, 54, for the divorce.
So here is the deal, my chickadees: you’re not pure, I’m not pure. None of us are outside of kyriarchy, none.
All that fucked up shit that’s been flung at you? That’s inside of you too, just waiting to come out, just waiting for you to reach out to grab it when you feel righteously angry enough. Because our culture teaches us to hate each other, and it gives us fucked-up tools to do so so effectively.
And sometimes, as with those radfems who are transphobic, you don’t even realise that you ARE using the same tools. Because you feel so, so right, so so justified.
And you are not alone; the history of human evil is not really of evil, but horrific and dehumanising things done in the name of good.
And we have this idea of complete innocence, ontological identity innocence, which is why we play this Oppression Olympics game so hard, jostling for the right *to* be righteously angry, to gain the only bit of power we can in a world which often robs of self-determination and the ability to thrive.
Almost every one has the power to hurt someone, in some fashion, whether it be by words, violence or pulling what societal levers you *can* access. There’s always someone to kick across, or down.
And so few of us are really willing to look in the mirror and say, yes I have that potential–let alone yes, I have done that or am doing that. True culpability is a hard thing, because it demands responsibility to one another. Even – especially! – those strange people who you don’t like or understand very much, who feel like they threaten your world, just by existing.
So yes. It’s liberating for marginalised people who’ve had to suppress their anger (cis and trans women alike), being righteous and angry. It is. Sometimes you have to scream out your anger, because if you can’t change a situation at least you can get your voice out.
But if you think that is *all* that I have had to say, here and elsewhere, then you are not really listening, anyway.
I hope that one day you will, though.
My friend, Emily Manuel, wrote an amazing poem about being a trans woman in the world, which she published at Tiger Beatdown. It discusses violence against her, emotional and physical distress/abuse against her, and how painful it is when people one would expect to be inclusive - namely, feminists - turn away or, worse, are actively transphobic.
The comments on the poem range from amazing to disgusting radfem transphobia.
If you want to fight for full reproductive rights, if you are truly interested in REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE and BODILY AUTONOMY, you cannot be transphobic. You cannot actively exclude trans* people from the movement. You cannot deny their lived experiences, question their authenticity, or see them as less than.
What Emmy writes in this quote is SO important. It’s not about perfection or always doing the right thing (there is no way that you will always do the right thing - ever). We are ALL mired in the shit of kyriachy, patriarchy, heteronormativity, cis-normativity, racism, sexism, etc. It’s about trying to fight against our inclinations. It’s about what you do when you realize that you have fucked up, that you have participated in the kyriarchy you are trying to take down.
As the comments on Emmy’s poem show and as Emmy makes clear in this comment:
Very similar to the posts I was making yesterday. We’ve got tons of socialist programs in this country that are very popular, it’s SOCIAL Security for fuck’s sake! But the right has twisted the word socialism to evoke red scare images of soup lines and beet rations.
We’re all about taking care of our elderly with socialist programs but the minute you say “hey, why not give more people those same benefits?” and you’re a goddamn threat to the American Dream.
