blinded by the light

sarahseeandersen: The internal monologue that goes on whenever...

Sat, 18 May 2013 14:08:56 -0700

The internal monologue that goes on whenever I cave to junk food. T_T

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Fri, 17 May 2013 23:19:16 -0700

"No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them."

Fri, 17 May 2013 23:18:12 -0700

“No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them.”

- Assata Shakur (via ethiopienne)

great quote.

(via deafmuslimpunx)

Our government considers this woman a terrorist.

(via knowledgeequalsblackpower)

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Fri, 17 May 2013 23:15:05 -0700

Immorality Quotient Quiz

Sun, 12 May 2013 21:19:33 -0700

Immorality Quotient Quiz:

poetryofblood:

superherojuice:

laadoracion:

putabindionit:

the-city-mouse:

439- I’m Herodotus, appropriately enough.

500- RF Czar

433 who wants to have public sex?

…809?

I LOVE THAT THIS IS ONLINE. I used to hate keeping track of the numbers.

(Also, 1361, motherfuckers! HAH. Immoral as fuck.)

356.

this is why one year out from reed i go to bed at 10:00, drink a lot of juice, and watch downton abbey like a middle-aged white lady.

hell middle-aged white ladies probably go harder than i do.

~morality~

thepeoplesrecord: The American Dream of upward mobility is...

Sun, 12 May 2013 21:07:08 -0700

thepeoplesrecord:

The American Dream of upward mobility is dead, thanks to the neoliberal ministrations of capital and government. But a new dream could rise from the mess left by globalization, off-shoring and austerity.
May 10, 2013

The continuation of the economic crisis of 2008 up to the present has driven home a social trend that has been evident since the late 1970s, the decline of what is usually called “the middle class” and the accompanying American Dream.

As Richard Wolff has pointed out in Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to do About it, this upward mobility was a reality for most citizens of the United States for several generations, from 1820 to 1970. For 150 years, real wages rose. In the quarter century from 1947 to 1973, average real wages rose an astounding 75 percent. But that shared prosperity came to a halt in the mid ’70s. In the next 25 years, from 1979 to 2005, wages and benefits rose less than 4 percent. The sustained rise in standards of living had been made possible by a conjunction of historical circumstances, circumstances that began to reach exhaustion by the mid 1970s.

In recent decades, the economy has grown, and there was a gain in total wealth. But where did it go? From 1983 to 2008, total GDP grew from $6.1 trillion to $13.2 trillion in constant 2005 dollars. The unequal distribution of the total wealth gain during this period is revealing. The wealthiest 5 percent of American households captured 81.7 percent of the gain. The bottom 60 percent of households not only failed to share in the overall increase, they suffered a 7.5 percent loss. Some of what the top 1 percent gained came directly from that bottom 60 percent.

Downward mobility
Between 2001 and 2008, entry level wages declined 7 percent for college graduates and 4 percent for high school graduates. Entry into middle-level incomes is becoming more difficult.

With the offshoring of manufacturing, the industrial regions of the northeast and the Great Lakes were transformed into a Rust Belt. United States manufacturing employment peaked in 1979 at almost 20 million and fell under neoliberalism to about 11.5 million in 2010. Today, 80 percent of the world’s industrial workforce is now in the global South. Most of it used to be in the United States. This is in no small measure the result of corporate policies over the last 30 years - policies encouraged by our political leaders - to offshore those low-skilled industrial jobs that used to be the entry point to the middle “class” for many. As less-skilled industrial jobs were offshored, at first, in the ’90s, we were told by Robert Reich, labor secretary in the first Clinton administration, that to remain competitive in the global economy, US workers needed to upgrade their skills. We were told the new economy would be the new road to the American Dream. We are still being told that. But offshoring of jobs has not been limited to low-skilled assembly line work. Corporate capital has discovered that any job that can be done by computers can be done anywhere in the world and consequently will be done wherever the cheapest workers with the requisite knowledge can be found. So the knowledge-economy jobs are now also being offshored to countries like India. The knowledge workers there will work for far less than in the United States. And many of our college graduates today are saddled with heavy debt and unable to find work.

As a result of corporate policies and public policies purchased by corporations, there has been wage stagnation for the past 30 years, even as worker productivity rose sharply. This is shown clearly in the above graph. Capital took the bulk of productivity gains (shown by the upper pink line) over the 1993-2006 period by holding wages down (shown by the lower blue line). But then with the 2008 financial crisis, median family income declined further, by nearly 10 percent. Overall, as incomes have declined, corporate profits have soared.

For a while, wealth appeared to increase for average citizens because of inflating real estate values. But the financial crisis of 2008 wiped out that fictitious wealth. Median family wealth in 2010 was the same as it had been 20 years earlier.

It is corporate capital’s unquenchable thirst for profit and political leaders’ easy purchasability under capitalism that is destroying what was once called ‘the American dream’ (of upward mobility). Political leaders, Democrats and Republicans alike, embrace Charles Wilson’s adage that “what’s good for General Motors is good for America.”

Corporate-led neoliberal globalization has transformed nation-states into what I call globalized states, that is, states that serve the interests of transnational capital above the interests of national populations. This has resulted in a limitation of sovereignty and of the possibility for democratically-shaped national policies. Increasingly, the countries’ fates depend more on powerful transnational corporations rather than on their own people.

Support for neoliberalism bipartisan
In the United States, there has long been bipartisan consensus behind globalization and the neoliberal policies that promote it. Both parties have long embraced basic public policies that undermine the economic security of millions of working people. Both parties favor no-strings Wall Street bailouts, expanded unregulated trade, weakened unions and fiscal austerity as an economic priority, with its concomitant shredding of social programs. There may be some difference in degree on these issues, but both parties are in basic agreement.

One-third of all working families are now poor; their annual income, for a family of four, is below the $45,622 poverty threshold - an income insufficient to meet basic needs.

This bipartisan consensus is illustrated by Senate approval this last year of free-trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea. While all politicians were calling for more jobs, they approved a free-trade agreement that they knew would destroy jobs. This was evident in the fact that approval of the free-trade agreement was accompanied by extended unemployment benefits for displaced workers. They just can’t help themselves when an opportunity arises to favor transnational corporations. And now the Obama administration is set to expand this folly even further with the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Legitimacy of systems questioned
With the growing downward mobility now being experienced, the social contract is unraveling. The legitimacy of the dominant institutions is being questioned. Public confidence in Congress as well as government is at an all-time low; large banks are viewed (correctly) as criminal; blind faith in market magic has been dispelled - and corporations are even seen as having betrayed the nation. The legitimacy of the system of capitalism is in crisis as sizable percentages now have a positive view of socialism as an alternative, particularly among the young (who have not known the rabid anticommunism of the Cold War era). As the national elections in 2008 and 2012 have shown, the people of the United States are asking for far-reaching changes, more change than the political elite is willing or even able to deliver.

Without new major innovations to offer opportunities for profitable investment, where is all the accumulated capital to go? Here again we have a classic over-accumulation crisis. One fix that has been deployed by the corporate wealthy is to reduce their tax burden, shifting it to the popular classes below. This has been the agenda of their sector of the political elite for decades. That has been combined with the neoliberal offensive against social programs, again at the expense of the popular classes. In effect, the plutocracy has come to understand that growth of their wealth will no longer come mainly from productive investment, but must come out of the hides of those below them. That requires imposing austerity on others so they can continue to prosper.

Thomas B. Edsall, author of The Age of Austerity: How Scarcity Will Remake American Politics, sums up the situation as follows:

Affluent Republicans - the donor and policy base of the conservative movement - are on red alert. They want to protect and enhance their position in a future of diminished resources. What really provokes the ferocity with which the right currently fights for regressive tax and spending policies is a deeply pessimistic vision premised on a future of hard times. This vision has prompted the Republican Party to adopt a preemptive strategy that anticipates the end of growth and the onset of sustained austerity - a strategy to make sure that the size of their slice of the pie doesn’t get smaller as the pie shrinks.

It is in this light that we can understand the death march the Republican Party has set out on. Its survival and that of its patrons is at stake. It leads them to adopt scorched-earth policies that ought to spell certain electoral defeat were it not for their gerrymandering, voter suppression, election rigging and other antidemocratic measures needed to maintain political power within the existing political duopoly. What they are so desperate to protect is not only their own political careers, but the insatiable hunger of capital.

For its part, the Democratic Party is also beholden to the interests of transnational capital, as I pointed out earlier. As Jeff Faux has documented, as early as the Carter administration, the Democratic Party embraced the neoliberal ideology. New Democrat Bill Clinton extended the Reagan-Bush I program of globalization with free trade and deregulation of finance capital. The Obama administration has continued on the same course. The political elite is united on its basic priorities. As Faux remarks, the United States is no longer rich enough to continue to finance America’s three principal national dreams:

1. The dream of the business elite for subsidized, unregulated capitalism.

2. The dream of the political elite for global hegemony.

3. The dream of the people for a steadily rising standard of living.

We can certainly continue to have one out of three, and perhaps even two out of three. But three out of three? No.

It is the dream of the US people that will have to go. That is the reality that no US politician dares to utter. If he did, it might spark popular demands that dreams 1. and 2. be sacrificed instead. The hard truth is that none of the three can be sustained indefinitely. Capitalism is in crisis. The military costs of global hegemony have become more than a debt-burdened state can sustain, as well as more than much of the world will continue to tolerate.

As for rising living standards, even if the dreams of Wall Street and Washington did not trump those of the people, are they really sustainable? With only a small portion of the world’s population, the United States consumes an immensely disproportionate share of the world’s resources. The current rate of use of world resources globally would be sustainable if we had one and one-half planet Earths. But guess what? We have only one. And the rest of the world’s peoples also have dreams of rising standards of living. If all the people in the entire world enjoyed US standards with the same per capita ecological footprint, five Earths would be needed.

My favorite slogan from the Occupy movement was “Wake up from the American Dream. Create a livable American reality.” That is the challenge We the People face in the 21st century. And we have to face it with little help from our political elite and none from capital. We have to do it ourselves. It will take social movements and prolonged struggle. It will take courage and bold experimentation. And for starters, it will take speaking the truth: The American Dream is over. For good or ill, history will move on without it.

Postscript: Besides this dominant American Dream, there is an alternative one in the background. It has its roots in the 18th century Enlightenment and was expressed in the French Revolution with the slogan “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.” That was the dream of a society in which all could live in community, a society of mutual support among equals, where each individual was free to develop his/her human capacities supported by the community. The basic values of that vision are deeply rooted in the American culture. It can be the basis of an alternative - sustainable - American Dream.

Source (I heavily reduced weaker/less-engaging paragraphs so read the full thing if you’re interested)

Upper photo for sharing

"I asked all of the gay male students in the room to raise their hand if in the past week they..."

Fri, 10 May 2013 22:31:08 -0700

“I asked all of the gay male students in the room to raise their hand if in the past week they touched a woman’s body without her consent. After a moment of hesitation, all of the hands of the gay men in the room went up. I then asked the same gay men to raise their hand if in the past week they offered a woman unsolicited advice about how to “improve” her body or her fashion. Once again, after a moment of hesitation, all of the hands in the room went up.

These questions came after a brief exploration of gay men’s relationship to American fashion and women’s bodies. That dialogue included recognizing that gay men in the United States are often hailed as the experts of women’s fashion and by proxy women’s bodies. In addition to this there is a dominant logic that suggests that because gay men have no conscious desire to be sexually intimate with women, our uninvited touching and groping (physical assault) is benign.””

- Gay Men’s Sexism and Women’s Bodies by Yolo Akili (via plightofthepretty)

jewelstaites: how to give a good handjob bop it pull it twist it

Fri, 10 May 2013 22:29:15 -0700

jewelstaites:

how to give a good handjob

bop it

pull it

twist it

deadstacylives: one of the most important lines in music, for...

Fri, 10 May 2013 22:27:57 -0700

deadstacylives:

one of the most important lines in music, for real.

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like..."

Thu, 09 May 2013 22:28:36 -0700

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, and live along some distant day into the answer.”

- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet (via establishedin81)

"You’re in love with my mind. But sometimes, sweetheart, a woman needs a man who loves her ass."

Wed, 08 May 2013 22:41:15 -0700

“

You’re in love with my mind.

But sometimes, sweetheart,
a woman needs a man
who loves her ass.

”

- Sandra Cisneros (via thechocolatebrigade)

mylifeasafeminista: (via For Harriet)

Wed, 08 May 2013 22:40:27 -0700

mylifeasafeminista:

(via For Harriet)

flatabsandthighgaps: girlgrowingsmall: Guys that Z is in...

Wed, 08 May 2013 17:48:48 -0700

flatabsandthighgaps:

girlgrowingsmall:

Guys that Z is in freaking Times New Roman

This person isn’t messing around okay

"When I love, I love: wholly, thoroughly, completely, drowning in everything. Every glance can be a..."

Mon, 06 May 2013 22:14:28 -0700

“When I love, I love: wholly, thoroughly, completely, drowning in everything. Every glance can be a conversation, eyes just playing and saying what needs to be said. Silence is loud, and the air becomes heavy.

I want you. I want all of you.”

- Warsan Shire (via yasodhara)

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Mon, 06 May 2013 20:12:26 -0700

eatsleepdraw: testing my new markers better return them it...

Sun, 05 May 2013 23:14:18 -0700

eatsleepdraw:

testing my new markers

better return them it looks like they came with a heavy dose of racism.

sonofafieldnegro: youngblackandvegan: neeneeism: WHY CAN’T...

Sun, 05 May 2013 23:11:53 -0700

sonofafieldnegro:

youngblackandvegan:

neeneeism:

WHY CAN’T STUFF LIKE THIS GO VIRAL? Morehouse Whiz Kid is Causing a Stir: 13-Year-Old Dominates College. LOVE THIS STORY PLEASE READ MORE…

PLEASE SHARE! SHARE! SHARE!!!!!!

At thirteen years of age, Stephen Stafford is causing quite a stir at Morehouse College. Stafford has a triple major in pre-med, math and computer science. Though he loves playing video games and playing his drum set, he is no typical teenager. He is exactly the kind of student I had in mind when I wrote the book, “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about College,” because he shows the power of the black male mind when we put our energy into things that matter most. Over the 17-years I’ve spent teaching at the college level, I have never seen anything more impressive, nor more reflective of what black men represent.

“I’ve never taught a student as young as Stephen, and it’s been amazing,” said computer science professor Sonya Dennis. “He’s motivating other students to do better and makes them want to step up their game.”

Stafford began his college career at the age of 11, after being home-schooled by his mother. Stafford’s mother said that when Stafford began to teach her instead of being taught by her, she knew he needed to be in a college environment. Since that time, he has excelled in his classes and continues to grow intellectually.
via ramomart.com

come on

you know why this stuff isn’t viral

regardless, this is an amazing story

Officially jealous of a 13-year-old boy. Kudos, kid.

holaafrica: Even if it makes others uncomfortable, i will love...

Fri, 03 May 2013 07:36:10 -0700

holaafrica:

Even if it makes others uncomfortable, i will love who i am.

Dear white people at Renn Fayre

Fri, 03 May 2013 07:29:11 -0700

ik4rus:

you may have seen me on my soapbox on Reed Emissions talking about cultural appropriation and racism.

Yes, the theme is “New World”, which brought to mind colonialism for a lot of students of color. I don’t expect anyone to seriously read this, so here are some bulletpoints.

If you’re worried about your costume being “misconstrued as racist”, don’t go as something that can be misconstrued. A lot of people are going for a space theme. Dress up like a robot or an astronaut or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Not racist. Not a fucking difficult concept.

Stop bitching about how this issue is divisive. Stop disregarding students of color who feel legitimately affected by this. Stop dismissing them because you’re tired of the dialogue. We’re still talking because you aren’t fucking listening.

If you are dressed as a Native American or a pilgrim, I will be super fucking upset.

response to RE 2370: You feel intimidated by fliers by students of color who’ve expressed discomfort with the theme? Fuck you. You can feel intimidated when you’ve

A) had experiences as a student of color, been threatened because you’re not white, been followed in a store, been looked at funny by old people, and/or
B) had your culture shit on by sociopathic white liberal arts students.

Now, cue five or so five or so asks/reblogs from Reedies telling me “all white people aren’t like that!” and “ur making the issue more divisive!!! what about the white people!!!!”

Instead of making it more divisive by fighting with me, how about giving a shit about what your students of color have to say?

blackfashion: howtobeafuckinglady: this is a work of art yes

Thu, 02 May 2013 21:46:11 -0700

blackfashion:

howtobeafuckinglady:

this is a work of art

yes