i’d encourage people to donate to HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, if able. they support refugees and immigrants all over the world.
the pittsburgh shooter allegedly posted on social media, claiming that HIAS are bringing in ‘hostile invaders’ that ‘kill our people’, before carrying out the shooting.
he will not silence us. now, more than ever, we stand with immigrants and refugees, and live our jewish values publicly and bravely.
Eight Jews Dead in an Antisemitic Hate Crime, and Trump is Already Victim Blaming
This morning, a white man named Robert Bowers entered Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, shouted “all jews must die,” and shot 14 people. At least 8 so far are dead.
When asked if this reflected on gun control, the president of the united states said, “If they had protection inside, the results would have been far better…if they had some kind of a protection inside the temple, maybe it could have been a very much different situation. They didn’t — he was able to do things that unfortunately he shouldn’t have been able to do.”
This is victim blaming. He is saying that because these congregants had chosen not to defile a house of g-d with instruments of death, they were shot.
When building the Temple in Jerusalem, it’s said, g-d required the stones not be cut with metal tools, as such things could be used to kill people. We believe that instruments of death have no place in the praising of g-d. We should not be required to sacrifice this value in order to stay alive.
May their memories be a blessing.
I appreciate that people are liking this, but please reblog as well
You want to know how we got Conservative Protestantism in a Gay Hat?
We got it through “shut up, check your privilege, listen, and amplify.”
Through “you don’t get an opinion on this” and “educate yourself on why I’m right before you dare claim the right to participate in this conversation.”
Through “any expression of marginalized anger is ipso-facto justified, hdu tone-police it.”
We got it by refusing to allow anyone to question the conclusions that people–fallible humans raised in conservative societies–drew from the events of their individual lives, as long as they threw the words “lived experience” around and claimed the relevant group memberships.
We got it through every single social norm put in place to silence criticism of minority voices. To automatically boost the credibility of anyone claiming to speak on behalf of the oppressed. To dismantle every vector through which that credibility could be thrown into doubt. To pressure people into taking credible speakers on faith and becoming enforcers for views they hadn’t even been fully persuaded of.
We got it because we stopped tolerating doubt of anything dressed in a legit-looking gay hat.
What got us is that humans are fucking fallible. [….]
We instilled a culture of relying on group membership, ideological allegiance, and familiarity with social-justice jargon as a proxy for credibility.… and then placed a big fat fucking taboo on every mechanism that might force someone “credible” to come up with anything more than an appeal to authority to justify the unexamined opinions they pull out their ass.
Bolding mine. I want to draw this out and underline and underscore it, especially the bit I’ve bolded.
This is a natural human thing: we want to know what the cues are, what the signs are to Indicate Who’s In Charge. And that’s what this is about, at heart: indicating Who’s In Charge, Who Makes The Rules, and What The Rules Are. We’re wired to look for that in social situations.
The problem is that all simplistic rigid attempts to do that are fucking doomed to end up in hideously abusive socially toxic systems for two reasons: one is that humans suck, and are fallible, and are wrong a lot of the time, and another is predators love to game rules and yes every single fucking “demographic” has social predators, aka people who are out to serve their own power, influence and domination of a social milieu above and beyond all other factors.
Sometimes they do this consciously, deliberately and with self awareness; sometimes it’s a manifestation of their own Issues. This is just like every other situation where this is at play, including romantic relationships, work environments, theatre organizations and strata councils. 😛 But either way, people who are doing this are absolutely going to use the rules to their own best advantage and in order to shore up their own power.
There will be potentially abusive dynamics that arise in anything that is humans interacting with other humans. This is not avoidable. And in fact if you approach a situation with the idea that it can’t or won’t happen, it’s that much more of a guarantee that it will.
But when it does, you will have no mechanism to deal with it. At all.
And this is what the loose conglomerate of “queer people who write fanfiction on the internets/do fannish shit out there and also are concerned with social issues” have in fact done.
Of course, we’ve done it because the shitty oppressive threads of society like to use as a weapon “all people arguing about this are doing it in Bad Faith and if we approach it that way we can silence them”. But the reality is that running to the other end with “no people doing this are ever doing anything but acting in Pure and Fair and Correct Good Faith and are inherently right all the time” is not a solution that ends up with “people not being shitty and abusive”: it just changes WHICH people get to be shitty and abusive. And which people are acceptable targets for abuse.
The problem is that there is no hard-fast universally applicable rules that will guarantee you are Good and On The Right Side and Doing It Right every single time. This is not how being human works.
The best you will ever get is that in a lot of cases you can make “all other things being equal” statements, with the awareness that sometimes all other things are not equal.
All other things being equal, lived experience is more relevant/weighty than outsider theory. All other things being equal, if you’re an outsider and an insider is speaking, you should probably hush and listen and not argue. All other things being equal, it’s probably a better idea to amplify insider voices than risk speaking over them.
This is sort of like how when all other things are equal, you shouldn’t hit other people. All other things being equal, you shouldn’t yell at other people. All other things being equal, it’s a better idea to be kind and patient and forgiving than the alternative. All other things being equal, seatbelts are a REALLY GOOD IDEA. All other things being equal, setting your house on fire is a REALLY BAD IDEA.
And then sometimes all things are NOT equal, and you have to adjust accordingly.
There’s no way around having to have that flexibility, that situation where things may be different than the norm.
My partner’s teeth have been in constant and steadily worsening pain for over a year. We’re both disabled and living in poverty, so there’s no way we can save up for this on our own. Any donations, however little, and any reblogs will be deeply appreciated!
“Trump has incited political violence for years. As Sarah Kendzior points out, he has forthrightly stated for a very long time that his desired outcome is a sense of civil violence and instability. Yet reporters wonder aloud if Democrats will “go low” to counter Trump’s “insults,” as if saying mean stuff is all Trump is doing. Democrats such as Joe Biden are lamenting our “division,” as if that merely floated down from the heavens and settled across our land. Trump wants us to be at war with one another. How many different ways does he have to say this before we believe him?”
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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