Month: August 2018

trcunning:

tweet from Wikipedia brown (verified, @eveewing): 

I just thought about this today and dug through my pictures to find it: a letter from a black soldier in the Civil War to the person who owns his daughter. “The longer you keep my child from me the longer you will have to burn in Hell and the quicker you will get there.“ 

photo text (with corrected spelling and broken into sentences, paragraphs): 

Letter from a Black Soldier to the Owner of His Daughter

Spotswood Ric, a former slave, writes to Kittey Diggs, 1864: 

I received a letter from Cariline telling me that you say I tried to steal, to plunder, my child away from you. Not I want you to understand that Mary is my Child and she is a God given rite of my own. 

And you may hold on to her as long as you can. But I want you to remember this one thing, that the longer you keep my Child from me the longer you will have to burn in hell and the quicker you’ll get there. 

For we are now making up about one thousand black troops to come up thorough, and want to come through, Glasgow. And when we come woe be to Copperhood rebels and to the Slaveholding rebels. For we don’t expect to leave them there. Root nor branch. But we think however that we (that have children in the hands of you devils), we will try your the day that we enter Glasgow. 

I want you to understand Kittey Diggs that where ever you and I meet we are enemies to each other. I offered once to pay you forty dollars for my own Child but I am glad now that you did not accept it. Just hold on now as long as you can and the worse it will be for you. 

You never in you life before I came down hear did you give children anything, not anything whatever, not even a dollars worth of expenses. Now you call my children your property. Not so with me. 

My children is my own and I expect to get them. And when I get ready to come after Mary I will have both a power and authority to bring her away and to exact vengeances on them that holds my Child. 

You will then know how to talk to me. I will assure that. And you will know how to talk right too. I want you now to just hold on; to hear if you want to. If your conscience tells that’s the road, go that road and what it will bring you to Kittey Diggs. 

I have no fears about getting Mary out of your hands. This whole Government gives cheer to me and you cannot help yourself.

Source: Ira Berlin, ed. Freedom, A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1982, 690.

Source: blacktwittercomedy.com

constant-instigator:

landlordkiller420:

anarchapella:

comcastkills:

profeminist:

Source

even if the fraud was like 5% it wouldn’t compare to rich people cheating the system by trillions lmao

Also, SNAP “fraud” is like exchanging some of your stamps for cash to buy necessities you can’t buy with stamps, like soap or deodorant or tampons

TBH even if one hundred percent of people on food stamps were committing food stamp fraud I’d still be in favor of keeping the program around

Hey I wanna talk about this.

I work at a drug addiction counseling center. A ton of my clients have, at one time or another, sold their food stamps. This is basically exactly what the GOP is afraid of, right? Drug addicts selling their food stamps.

I have learned, now, to ask them WHY they sold their food stamps. Here is an incomplete list of the answers:

– I need tampons, and you can’t buy them with foodstamps

– See above RE: toilet paper

– I was living in a hotel with no kitchen then. I had to buy pre-prepared food

– The homeless shelter won’t let me keep food in my locker or room, so I have to buy pre-prepared food (Yes, really)

– I had to make rent

– My sister had to make rent

– My son had to make rent

– I needed co-pays to get my medication or I’ll die

– I needed co-pays to get my medication or I’ll loose control of my mental health

But the absolute most common form of food stamp fraud I see? Giving away food stamps to other family members who get no food stamps or insufficient food stamps to feed their families. I see that every month. People glassy eyed and hungry because they gave away their food to their adult kids, their grand kids, cousins, siblings etc.

So, is food stamp fraud rampant? In some places, yes. And I’m not about to chastise people for it.

Source: profeminist

With one reblog from earlier getting more notes, I couldn’t help but think about how I still keep getting surprised at some pretty big differences in perspective.

Also reminded again of this one guy I knew when I was in high school and college, and really hoping things have gotten easier there.

Buck was personally a pretty committed vegetarian–and also hunting buddies with a friend’s partner. While he was living mostly off potatoes, peanut butter, and whatever he could grow? He was also hunting and fishing (besides doing most of the gardening) for his family, with both his parents the “broken down by shitty jobs” kind of disabled by that point.

Not always hunting in season, either, BTW. Partly because they were some of the only people I knew without electricity a lot of the time. So, they couldn’t easily just freeze his limit of deer for the rest of the year like most other people relying heavily on hunting.

They were struggling about the hardest of anybody I’ve known, and that’s saying something. Hopefully at least one of his parents eventually got approved for disability benefits, but they were pretty much stuck in limbo at that point. I don’t remember if Buck was the only or just the oldest kid, but he was pretty much keeping the family going in his late teens/early 20s. Not at all a good situation, but he stepped up to a point that nobody should have ever needed to.

Anyway, I had to think about that again. And also some of the likely reactions from people who just have no frame of reference to get basically any of it.

Back around to the multiple kinds of segregation in the US encouraging that. Plus, of course, widgets.

cryptofjordest:

“Doctor-inflicted pain and infirmity have always been a part of medical practice. Professional callousness, negligence, and sheer incompetence are age-old forms of malpractice. With the transformation of the doctor from an artisan exercising a skill on personally-known individuals into a technician applying scientific rules to classes of patients, malpractice acquired an anonymous, almost respectable status. What had formerly been considered an abuse of confidence and a moral fault can now be rationalized into the occasional breakdown of equipment and operators. In a complex technological hospital, negligence becomes “random human error” or “system breakdown,” callousness becomes “scientific detachment,” and incompetence becomes “a lack of specialized equipment.” The depersonalization of diagnosis and therapy has changed malpractice from an ethical into a technical problem.”

— Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health, by Ivan Illich

bittersnurr:

myceliorum:

“Highlights is in a mansion. Like, it’s pretty cool. It’s a very unconventional office space.”

“We’re lucky to work in such a neat old building. Makes you want to be creative, makes you want to do the best job possible for these kids.”

“The work life here, it’s unlike anywhere else I’ve worked.”

“They do psychological testing on you before you’re hired here.”

“I distrusted it when I first came here. I thought, this has gotta be disingenuous. How is it possible that people are in this good a mood all of the time?”

“I think we try to bring out the best in each other, I think we try to really just encourage each other and boost each other up.”

“In terms of wholesomeness, I mean I hate that word because it sounds like goody-goody, and that’s not what we are here. We’re just honest genuine ethical people.”

“It’s a good brainwash but yeah it takes you over.”

“We’re in a bubble of sorts. Our minds are so entrenched and focused on the children, and being kind and being thoughtful, and the rest of the world isn’t like that, you know? And if they are, it’s false. I don’t know, I’m very disappointed, though.”

“It is a little different here. It’s quiet. The socioeconomic level is maybe not reflective of many of our readers. So we do work hard to make sure that we are not too secluded and too isolated from the rest of the world.”

44 Pages (documentary about the children’s magazine Highlights). Series of quotes from employees about the company culture.

Does this creep anyone else out???

Honestly I got like halfway down this before being like “ oh the childrens magazine thing” because if you omitted that I would have legit assumed this was some kind of weird institution thing.

Like the first few about the building reminds me of how institutions will make themselves look nice to trick people into thinking the service is also nice.

The everyone in a good mood/testing shit sounds like the sort of mandatory enforcement of positivity you would get for putting on an act for the clients, like people who take those jobs “getting used to it” and desensitized. Full on mention of brainwashing.

YEAH SUPER CREEPY.