you should follow me if you reject essentialism / embrace intersectional feminist thought but are also way critical / bored of most contemporary queer theory.
i wanna go to baltimore!!! where are you moving to? NYC?
yeah, i’m moving to new york city to earn an msw in community organizing, planning, and development. i will be leaving my partner of six years // cat & living with the rents until shit inevitably hits the fan. i’m extremely upset about this move & still haven’t made my “final” decision (nobody at my job knows that i’m leaving, i’m making professional plans for “next year” etc.) but i know that this opportunity is too perfect to pass up for so many reasons. the more i think about it, the more i see how trauma influences the perpetration of oppression; “individual” traumas are often community issues. i’m really stoked to get to study social work from what is supposed to be the most progressive perspective out there. i was accepted to specifically focus on community organizing strategies, which is also pretty rad!
i think that baltimore is the most underrated city on the east coast. i mean, it has plenty of problems and there are so many systemic issues of racism and bigotry which play a role in the city’s urban poverty, but there are also a lot of long-time residents who doing amazing work here, and the community is very strong. living here has definitely helped me grow up and into myself in ways that new york city never could.
Here’s my Babes In Toyland cover band, playing “He’s My Thing” at last night’s Riot Grrrl Covers Show. So we fudged it a bit, but damn did we have a good time!
this is fucking sick suzy. i wish i had been able to make it up there!
i took the 9:15 bolt bus with a good friend who’s saying her last goodbye to her parents in yonkers before she takes off on a journey out west. i arrived at my mom’s at around 1:30. my mom made me a vegan eggcream is slow cooking tofu in cranberry sauce. delicious! i’m meeting with jamie in williamsburg [the only in-between spot] in few hours to work on our collaborative zine [shit ‘progressive’ kids don’t want to hear: a journal of unpopular opinions] & then maybe i’ll go to beacon’s closet or out for some drinks with my childhood friend. tomorrow i’ll be at a free documentary screening at the new school about living with hiv /aids, and then attending an occupy wall street safer spaces training [i’m no longer really involved, but it will still be great to hear other people’s input about methods of responding to conflict, survivor support, mental health needs, non-violent communication tactics, promoting anti-oppression, accountability for harm, and other concepts]. life is good.
The video that my camera accidentally took after we were maced. The visuals aren’t too good because I dropped my camera to the ground and wasn’t aware that it was on; however, the audio gives a pretty clear idea of what is happening.
this is from the red headed person who previously posted their arrest/mace story.
you can hear in the audio that the person who was directly maced is DEAF and couldn’t hear the police saying to get back.
My name is Kelly Schomburg, I’m the girl with the red hair in these pictures. I was protesting at the Occupy Wall Street march yesterday when I and several other women were sprayed with mace and subsequently arrested. Many have already seen the video, which has been spreading like wildfire over twitter, Facebook, tumblr, and other video feeds, along with hundreds of other photos and videos. This is my recount of what happened.
A young man of color arrested in Union Square earlier today doing literally nothing but crossing the street.
I am fucking shaking with anger. This video shows Union Square earlier today. Clearly there is a protest but the area immediately surrounding the guy with the camera is just observers and people milling around. Watch the guy in the red shirt. From the vimeo link:
As you can see at around 0:30, a young man in a red shirt, Glenn Daniels Jr, is walking near the sidewalk with hundreds of other protestors. The crowd was attempting to cross the street to continue the march south down Broadway from Union Square. Daniels is peacefully walking with a water bottle, not committing any crime. At 0:35 he is approached by an NYPD officer and pushed towards the sidewalk. At 0:38 a senior police officer in a white shirt quickly approaches and grabs Daniels and another young man with a beard and backpack. The lighter skinned man is let go, but Daniels is arrested. The remainder of the video shows NYPD officers cuffing and detaining Daniels.
Unbefuckinglievable. He’s doing fucking nothing.
Can’t watch the video from my phone but it’s not like I don’t believe you. It’s amazing what cops will do when they know people are watching. They don’t even have enough send to be ashamed.
Holy shit. That’s so wrong and they don’t even give a fuck.
this was my team, the sea wolves, for quorum field day on august 20th, 2011. behold our handmade sea wolf-y costumes. we totally kicked butt in condom tossing contests. i’m the one waving the flag, my partner is the redhead with the headband crouching in the back row.
“We are not evacuating Rikers Island,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a news conference this afternoon. Bloomberg annouced a host of extreme measures being taken by New York City in preparation for the arrival of Hurricane Irene, including a shutdown of the public transit system and the unprecedented mandatory evacuation of some 250,000 people from low-lying areas. But in response to a reporter’s question, the mayor stated in no uncertain terms (and with more than a hint of annoyance) that one group of New Yorkers on vulnerable ground will be staying put.
New York City is surrounded by small islands and barrier beaches, and a glance at the city’s evacuation map reveals all of them to be in Zone A (already under a mandatory evacuation order) or Zone B–all, that is, save one. Rikers Island, which lies in the waters between Queens and the Bronx, is not highlighted at all, meaning it is not to be evacuated under any circumstances.
According to the New York City Department of Corrections’ own website, more than three-quarters of Rikers Island’s 400 acres are built on landfill–which is generally thought to be more vulnerable to natural disasters. Its ten jails have a capacity of close to 17,000 inmates, and normally house at least 12,000, including juveniles and large numbers of prisoners with mental illness–not to mention pre-trial detainees who have yet to be convicted of any crime.
Incidentally one of the areas of activism I pursued while living in New York was evacuation plans for regional prisons, not only for weather events but also in the event of a catastrophic nuclear meltdown. If you’re familiar with the region, you may be familiar with the Indian Point nuclear power plant, an outdated cracking 50-year-old facility which has leaked radiation on several occasions in recent years. It sits on the Hudson River a short ride from Sing Sing, and in the event of a nuclear meltdown, evacuation plans call for Sing Sing to be locked and abandoned with all inmates still inside. The only sure solution is actually to shut down Indian Point — and we managed to get as far as county hearings on the question, but didn’t manage to cross the finish line and shut it down. In the meantime, the inhumanity of evacuation plans is a point for agitation and reform, and Irene provides an opportunity to engage that debate.
Now’s a good time (no actually, a couple weeks ago was a good time, really) to read up on disaster preparedness & relief outside of the government. Here’s a zine, Insurrectionary Mutual Aid, that we distro and that I really like, about organizing for disasters (natural/manmade/political, etc.) as communities and from an anarchist framework. What got me really paying attention to disaster relief was the immigration raids here a few years ago, and everyone sorting out what families needed in the aftermath of it, and seeing that as a disaster as well, just an intentional one.
picture #1: starting off the games with our hands to our hearts singing “we are the champions”
picture #2: two of my teammates on the dusty walker sea wolves.
picture #3: field day crowd scene
picture #4: condom toss
picture #5: queers in a line.
quorum queer house field day in prospect park was absolutely amazing. an estimated 400 of us split up into themed teams with our chosen families and “competed” in games such as condom tosses, human knots, throw the rings on the dildos, suck and blow & dirty telephone. haley and i were on the dusty walker sea wolves with the hoax distributor through bluestockings (standing on the left in the second pic). lots of glitter & a bit of nudity. i stole these pictures off somebody’s flicker, sorry!!!! i’m not in any of these so far. anti-copyright photos to come.
