Tag: america

musingsdeme:

I’m a historian.  Don’t know how many of you know that.  I’m getting a PhD in history, with a specialty in dictatorship, trauma, and childhood.  It’s a field I’ve never wanted to actually be this useful in real life…

I’ve been dreading a Trump presidency from the outset of his candidacy because I’ve studied dictatorial regimes and the fragile lines between democratic and authoritarian rule for the entirety of my adult life.  I know what the collapse of democratic rule looks like. 

This is it people.  We’re at that point.  It’s not a joke, it’s not hyperbole, it’s not conjecture.  We’re about to live in a xenophobic police state.  That’s about to become our reality.

Now, more than ever before, it is essential for us to stick together.  Love one another, support one another, stand with one another.  All forms of oppression are linked.  People like Trump will want to divide us.  They’ll want to break us down from the inside and outside.  They’ll want to fracture our spirit and our sense of worth.  Don’t let them. Know that you matter, know that you are not alone, know that small acts of kindness and solidarity can mean the difference between life and death. 

I can use history to make predictions based on past knowledge, but the present and the future are constantly being rewritten.  We are the agents of change in this world.  We can make a difference. 

lazulisong:

scullyseviltwin:

Go out tomorrow, find a cause. NARAL, ASPCA, Planned Parenthood, A New Way Forward, The Innocence Project, Oxfam, Greenpeace… find out about programs and groups that deal with human trafficking, with racism, with sexism, with women’s health, LGBTQA rights, with what you want to fucking change! Sign up, and fucking fight.

Intern at your local congressional office! Stuff envelops! Listen to citizen complaints! Help dig us out of this shitstorm!

Donate money! Donate time! Be a Big Brother or a Big Sister. Reach out and find what your community needs! Join a litter collecting squad or write cards for people at an elderly community or buy a family in need groceries.

There is. So. Much. You. Can. Still. Do.

Online activism is all well and good, but these groups need feet on the fucking pavement. Don’t confuse shouting at people online as activism! So put up, and let’s shut this racist, classist, misogynistic, rape apologist down.

here is an extremely easy thing to do! the next time you buy pads or razors and you have enough money to buy an extra pack or a travel set of toothpaste / toothbrush, buy an extra one and donate it to a women’s shelter! or buy good socks or good underwear if you can afford it!

thebigblackwolfe:

thebigblackwolfe:

Ok y’all out here talking about harming Trump have fun because the feds legit watch this site and Tumblr has zero problems with submitting your data to them if they ask for it so you can be mad all day but I strongly recommend you don’t sit here and catch a case by threatening the presumptive president elect.

https://www.tumblr.com/transparency y’all think I’m playing but it’s literally right here. Tumblr does get requests for user data from the federal government due to active investigations like don’t be this dumb

v1als:

A quick note based on my post-Brexit experience in the UK – in the time period after the election, your biggest threat will not be Trump and his government. It will be your newly validated bigot neighbours. After Brexit, hate crime shot up by 60% in the UK nearly overnight and it still hasn’t returned to its pre-Brexit level. I imagine the same will happen in America. Be careful. No matter who they are, Trump voters are not your friends. Be safe. Your biggest enemy right now is the neighbour you went to church with and the people you pass on the street every day. Lock down. Go to ground if you have to. Look out for one another. Please, be careful.

v1als:

severus-snape-is-a-butt-trumpet:

what do we do tho? like, honestly? what happens if he’s elected? what do we honest to god do?

Coming from the UK after our own catastrophe: you make his life hell. You make his government’s life hell. Anything and everything shitty that they want to do, you protest, you campaign, you petition, you lobby. You tie the whole thing up in so much red tape that Mr I’ve-Never-Had-Anyone-Say-No-To-Me starts loathing his job.

You create private safe zones, you look out for one another, you let your now validated racist, homophobic, transphobic neighbours know that their bigotry will not be tolerated through any means you feel it’s safe to do so. You join forces. Despite everything, you thrive out of spite, out of survival, out of a need to protect your own.

All of these communities have faced untold amounts of hell before and we’re all still here. It’s in our history to survive – in our genetic makeup. There will be losses and there will be casualties but in four years you’ll still be here and you’ll vote him out and the time to grieve will be then. For now, fight. In any way you can, even if all you can do is get through each day at a time. Fight him every step of the way.

stubborn-string-bones:

ofhouseadama:

you can throw all the blame on thirty party voters, or you can also factor in that this is the first election in FIFTY YEARS without the voting rights act protections making sure people of color and other marginalized groups can get to the polls 

ok i didn’t know anything about this so

Left to their own devices by the Supreme Court, some states and counties
appear to be testing how far they can go with voter suppression. North
Carolina is a case in point. Following the court’s decision in Shelby
County, the Republican-led Legislature passed a law stuffed with voting
restrictions, including voter ID requirements and reductions in early
voting. Last summer, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth
Circuit struck down
most of the law, finding that it targeted Democratic African-American
voters “with almost surgical precision.” Justifying a plan to end Sunday
voting, the state said that counties allowing it in 2014 were
“disproportionately black” and “disproportionately Democratic.” The
appeals court judges correctly called this “as close to a smoking gun
as we are likely to see in modern times.” The Republicans running the
state wanted to change a voting practice out of concern that
“African-Americans, who had overwhelmingly voted for Democrats, had too
much access to the franchise.”

and

Overall, [the Supreme Court] decision [gutting
the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder] means more than 860 fewer polling stations in places with a history of disenfranchisement. State governments in Wisconsin, Texas, Ohio, and North Carolina are ignoring federal court orders to provide proper voting facilities.