Do you believe in systemic injustice?
Progressives are often accused of wanting to spend other people’s money on things they value. “Spend money on social programs,” the critics say, “but spend your own money. Charity is great, but it should be voluntary.” If social programs were charity, I would agree. But they are not.
Social programs are a societal response to the problems caused by our society. Our decisions affect others. With my decision to buy conventionally grown bananas, I’ve contributed to somebody’s use of the pesticides that caused birth defects in the children of the people who picked the bananas. The money I spent to fill my gas tank helps prop up some of my least favorite governments. The land I call my yard is land somebody else can’t grow food on. My fear of paying more for electricity means everything from more coal-miners with lung diseases from lax safety standards to the spectrum of tragedy global warming will wreak.
Private charity is a good thing—but it does not confront injustice. If my neighbor drunkenly crashes her car into a tree, I might, out of charity, give her a ride to the grocery store. If another neighbor’s house burns down, I’ll let him stay in my extra bedroom while he’s sorting things out. Neither of these problems is caused by injustice.
Charity is also a necessary response to injustice—but it isn’t sufficient. Systemic injustice requires systemic response.
reblogged from robot-heart-politics
For once, why can't feminists --
— just be honest, and say “Yes, what she said was problematic and no, you can’t twist away from the racial implications,” admit that mainstream feminism and especially “reproductive rights”-focused feminism has acted as an oppressive force against POC and especially WOC?
Rather than doing this “nothing wrong was done! PRO-LIFE is your true enemy!” dance?
Why can’t the feminist response to this ad be — not “Sanger/PP/whomever could NEVER be racist! oh, and you ladies just don’t understand the value of a good abortion!” — but “Yeah, we have given POC serious cause for concern, and they are right to be wary of us. This ad is a result of our actions and the only way we can fight it is to change what we’ve been doing and actually fight with POC, with a more holistic vision of their needs and a lens sharpened for a critique of whiteness and its impositions”?
reblogged from amandaw
reblogged from robot-heart-politics
Revisiting that "Republicans are Crazy" Daily Kos Research 2000 Poll
great analysis of the flaws in the recent Daily Kos poll on self-identified republicans, making the findings seem much less terrifying.
This is really excellent. In fact, this is exactly the kind of analysis I wanted to do when I first saw the Daily Kos poll, but don’t have the statistical ability to pull off. I think it also points to the larger problem in our current political narrative: the constant need to paint the other side as crazy and teh willingness to twist number or commission polls to prove this point.
reblogged from abbyjean
Man, I am so happy that Al Franken was elected. So far, he has been doing some truly amazing things. Between his leadership in this meeting and his work on the anti-rape amendment, on top of consistently representing actual progressive interests, he is almost single-handedly reviving the left in the Senate. I hope that his being out front on these issues convinces other Senators that running to the middle is not always the best election strategy.
Speaking of Small Wonder...
This might be literally the grossest thing I’ve seen on the internet. It’s worse than the dolphin sex thing.
There are about a hundred things to love in Rich FourFour’s review of Small Wonder, but the montage of V.I.C.I. squinting was my favorite.
reblogged from crumbler
Let’s put this in heterosexual terms first: say a married, straight couple want a child, but they can’t conceive because the husband is sterile. So the couple go through the sperm-selling websites for some operational sperm. The lab-made embryos are implanted in the wife, and, lo and behold, she has a child. At that point, would anyone rationally argue that the husband is not the child’s father? Would the husband have to adopt the child? No, obviously not. Now, what if, a year later, the wife decides she doesn’t want to be married to the husband and moves away? We would, of course, expect visitation rights for the father to not only be maintained, but enforced. And if the ex-wife decides that the ex-husband is a bad influence on the child because he’s, say, Norwegian? We would say that unless he’s abusive or neglectful to the child, she’s got to abide by any joint custody arrangements. If she refuses to do so, well, who among us would not say that she is legally in the wrong and something needs to be done?
In a nutshell, that’s the case between Janet Jenkins and Lisa Miller, except make the husband into a civil-unioned female partner and “Norwegian” into “lesbian.” Miller is the biological mother of Isabella, and about a year after Isabella’s birth, in 2003, Miller broke up withe Jenkins and left Vermont with Isabella to live with family in Virginia. She and Jenkins agreed to and maintained a rough visitation schedule. In church one day, Miller got born again and decided not to be gay. She pushed for sole custody of Isabella in 2004, wanting to completely cut Jenkins out of Isabella’s life.
In 2008, Miller said of Jenkins, “I do not feel safe leaving my daughter with her, and I believe I have a God-given and constitutional right to raise my child as I see fit. There is a homosexual agenda at work here, and Isabella is a pawn in their game. It has nothing to do with the law. Isabella was saved at age 4, loves God, and knows what’s right and what’s wrong. We don’t hate Janet, we pray for her soul and salvation.”
There is a religious right agenda at work here, and Isabella is clearly a pawn in their game…
Click through and read the whole thing. It’s all pretty appalling.
(via robot-heart-politics) Amazing.
reblogged from robot-heart-politics
Rich Four Four Spent 9 Hours Watching the New Small Wonder Season 1 DVD
And it’s amazing.
reblogged from lindsayrobertson
