I don’t even think it’s feasible to get a team together in time, but this is still terrifying and infuriating. And these kids most likely not have insurance if this goes ahead.
I looked it up and it’s not confirmed that these children were kidnapped or if they ran away. The police for the area are citing statistics to try and calm people down, stating that missing persons cases have actually been decreasing over the years. Other websites are also simply referencing numbers to calm people down but I found something from an actual black person on the matter.
“Getting the information out there is great,” Wilson said. “There’s something clearly going on, and we really have to identify what the issues are.”
“If they’re running away, we need to find out what the underlying issue is, for them leaving the home,” Wilson said. “And we need to find them, because the world is cold out there.”
Teenage girls reported missing in March in the District (who have not already returned safely):
In 2013, photographer and marine tour guides Rainer and Silke Schimpf spotted a young killer whale, who they named Sira, with a missing dorsal fin and right-side pectoral fin, leaving him unable to hunt for himself.
But rather than be left to fend for itself or – even worse – die the young calf appeared to be cared for by members of its pod, which shared food with the youngster.
Four years later, by chance and coincidence, Rainer and Silke were out at sea in Algoa Bay, South Africa, documenting a pod of 1000 common dolphin hunting sardine when they had the surprise of a lifetime.
Rainer said: “We had been following this massive pod of dolphins for a couple of months with different film crews as well as tourists and on this particular day we encountered the dolphins we realised they were very nervous.
“Bearing in mind that orcas had been sighted in Cape Town about 800km away, 5-6 days prior, we knew that there was a good chance that orcas would actually be present.”
As the dolphins suddenly sped up, Rainer and his team noticed a pod of five orcas hunting the dolphin in front of the boat.
Rainer said: “We realised that one of the killer whales was our old friend Sira, who is a handicapped whale, which we had encountered first in 2013.”
When Rainer and Silke had first spotted Sira, the young killer whale appeared to follow the rest of the pod at a distance – swimming slower than the others and incapable to hunt.
But four years later, the couple were surprised to see that not only was Sira almost fully grown, but also appeared to be the leader of the pod.
Rainer said: “When we first saw that orca, he was a baby, about 3 and a half metres long and now this particular orca is almost fully grown to about 4 and a half to 5 metres and appeared to be the leader of the pod.”
The pod also included a female with a bent dorsal fin like the killer whale in Free Willy, a ‘huge male’ and four other females.
After spending an hour and a half following the pod of killer whales, Rainer and Silke headed back to shore with the hope that they will continue to encounter the friendly orca for years to come.
Rainer said: “It is obviously very interesting to us and any of the data that we collect gets sent out to diverse researchers.
“Hopefully there will be a happy end for Sira the orca and we will meet again and again.”
The other thing about the word “queer” is that almost everyone I’ve seen opposed to it have been cis, binary gays and lesbians. Not wanting it applied to yourself is fine, but I think people underestimate the appeal of vague, inclusive terminology when they already have language to easily and non-invasively describe themselves.
Saying “I’m gay/lesbian/bi” is pretty simple. Just about everyone knows what you mean, and you quickly establish yourself as a member of a community. Saying “I’m a trans nonbinary bi woman who’s celibate due to dysphoria and possibly on the ace spectrum”… not so much. You’re lucky to find anyone who understands even half of that, and explaining it requires revealing a ton of personal information. The appeal of “queer” is being able to identify yourself without profiling yourself. It’s welcoming and functional terminology to those who do not have the luxury of simplified language and occupy complicated identities. *That’s* why people use it – there are currently not alternatives to express the same sentiment.
It’s not people “oppressing themselves” or naively and irresponsibly using a word with loaded history. It’s easy to dismiss it as bad or unnecessary if you already have the luxury of language to comfortably describe yourself.
There’s another dimension that always, always gets overlooked in contemporary discussions about the word “queer:” class. The last paragraph here reminds me of a old quote: “rich lesbians are ‘sapphic,’ poor lesbians are ‘dykes’.”
The reclaiming of the slur “queer” was an intensely political process, and people who came up during the 90s, or who came up mostly around people who did so, were divided on class and political lines on questions of assimilation into straight capitalist society.
Bourgeois gays and lesbians already had “the luxury of language” to describe themselves – normalized through struggle, thanks to groups like the Gay Liberation Front.
Everyone else, from poor gays and lesbians to bi and trans people and so on, had no such language. These people were the ones for whom social/economic assimilation was not an option.
The only language left, the only word which united this particular underclass, was “queer.” “Queer” came to mean an opposition to assimilation – to straight culture, capitalism, patriarchy, and to upper class gays and lesbians who wanted to throw the rest of us under the bus for a seat at that table – and a solidarity among those marginalized for their sexuality/gender id/presentation.
(Groups which reclaimed “queer,” like Queer Patrol (armed against homophobic violence), (Queers) Bash Back! (action and theory against fascism, homophobia, and transphobia), and Queerbomb (in response to corporate/state co-optation of mainstream Gay Pride), were “ultraleft,” working-class, anti-capitalist, and functioned around solidarity and direct action.)
The contemporary discourse around “queer” as a reclaimed-or-not slur both ignores and reproduces this history. The most marginalized among us, as OP notes, need this language. The ones who have problems with it are, generally, among those who have language – or “community,” or social/economic/political support – of their own.
Steel Phoenix Studios 