September 2011
“The reason racism is a feminist issue is easily explained by the inherent definition of feminism. Feminism is the political theory and practice to free all women: women of color, working-class women, poor women, physically challenged women, lesbians, old women –as well as white economically privileged heterosexual women. Anything less than this is not feminism, but merely female self-aggrandizement.”
—Barbara Smith, 1979
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The city’s most experienced agitators—the labor and community groups that typically organize local marches, rallies and sit-ins—have been largely missing from the Occupy Wall Street protest that is in its 13th day at Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan.
But that’s about to change.
A loose coalition of labor and community groups said Thursday that they would join the protest next week. They are organizing a solidarity march scheduled for Wednesday that is expected to start at City Hall and finish a few blocks south at Zuccotti Park.
“It’s a responsibility for the progressive organizations in town to show their support and connect Occupy Wall Street to some of the struggles that are real in the city today,” said Jon Kest, executive director of New York Communities for Change, which is helping to organize the march. “They’re speaking about issues we’re trying to speak about.”
Despite the common cause, the city’s established left did not initially embrace the protest, which began Sept. 17 and has been made up mostly of young people angry about the widening income chasm in the country, the growing influence of money on politics and police brutality, among other issues.
But as the action nears the start of its third week, unions and community groups are eager to jump on board. They are motivated perhaps by a sense of solidarity and a desire to tap into its growing success, but undoubtedly by something else too—embarrassment that a group of young people using Twitter and Facebook have been able to draw attention to progressive causes in a way they haven’t been able to in years.
” —Crain’s New York Business, “Veteran Agitators Flock to Occupy Wall Street” (via inothernews)
“It has come to our attention that recent twitter feeds are reporting false information concerning current conditions at the U.S. Capitol. Conditions at the U.S. Capitol are currently normal.”
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U.S. Capitol Police spokeswoman Sgt. Kimberly Schneider, unamused by the Twitter postings from The Onion, a satirical news site, which claimed that members of Congress had armed themselves with semi-automatic weapons, taken a group of schoolchildren hostage inside the Capitol building, and demanded $12 trillion in ransom. (via officialssay)
i know this is being said The Onion put this on in poor taste, but i think it is hilarious! who the hell would believe that?
Excerpt from the unedited Jon Stewart interview of Bill O'Reilly on last night's "The Daily Show"
- JON STEWART: I think you and I are agreeing on principle, but maybe not degrees of which: do you think this past decade, this past 20 years, has been a good 20 years for the wealthy?
- BILL O'REILLY: Yeah, I would say it's been a good 20 years for the wealthy, with the technological advances and things like that. Look -- I don't have any sympathy for the pinheads who were stealing money, and doing all the derivatives selling, and doing all the day trading. I don't like these people, all right? And I think there should be government watchdogs and set up rules where they can do this and you can't do that.
- STEWART (interjecting): So you're a Democrat.
- O'REILLY: On that, I am!
Salary vs sleep: Which would you pick? →
pnas.org
There may even be a magic number in all this, researchers reported last year. In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and other researchers found that beyond a household income of $75,000 a year, money apparently “does nothing for happiness, enjoyment, sadness or stress.” When The New York Times spoke with Kahneman about the study, he said “it’s not so much that money buys you happiness, but that lack of money buys you misery.”
“
When Julian Bond, the former Georgia lawmaker and civil rights activist, turned to teaching two decades ago, he often quizzed his college students to gauge their awareness of the civil rights movement. He did not want to underestimate their grasp of the topic or talk down to them, he said.
“My fears were misplaced,” Mr. Bond said. No student had heard of George Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama, he said. One student guessed that Mr. Wallace might have been a CBS newsman.
That ignorance by American students of the basic history of the civil rights movement has not changed — in fact, it has worsened, according to a new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center, on whose board Mr. Bond sits. The report says that states’ academic standards for public schools are one major cause of the problem.
“Across the country, state educational standards virtually ignore our civil rights history,” concludes the report, which is to be released on Wednesday.
” —The New York Times, “Students’ Knowledge of Civil Rights History Has Deteriorated, Study Finds.”
Shame.
(via inothernews)
“I had nothing else to do. Writing gave me something to do every day.”
—William S. Burroughs (via theparisreview)
“My bill is very simple, I just null and void any regulations passed in the last 20 years.”
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Rep. Don Young, an Alaska Republican, explaining his plans to introduce a bill that would repeal every federal regulation that’s been put into effect in the past two decades. (via officialssay)
dumber than a box of rocks