#Middle Class Americans

[political-us]

[frontpagewoman]

Thanks, ‘Merica!

[sawbuckplus]

[beauty-funny-trippy]

[donotdestroy]

"The financial media site Investopedia has done the math and calculated that achieving those milestones now costs a staggering $4.4 million—over $1 million more than most Americans will make in their lifetime, according to the researcher."

[cherry-treelane]

There's something so poetic about how El is the centre of all the chaos, wanted by the government and military and Mike is her strong calm that doesn't hesitate to get sucked into her storm and stand by her side in the face of any conflict. Like guys. This little boy did not hesitate to protect her and stand off in the face of the government to defend her, going against all the typical patriotic rule-following norms of an American Suburbanite Middle class nuclear family. He comes from pure safe normalcy but doesn't hesitate to run in the other direction heading towards chaos and danger if it means she's there... because he feels safest with her and is driven by the instinct to protect her. 😭🩷 There's something so beautiful and inspiring about someone as hurt and troubled and chaotic as El being loved in such a simple, unconditional way. Mike doesn't see her for the chaos she represents which surrounds her, he sees her for the innocent goodness that she actually is— her calm, gentle demeanour and the warmth it makes him feel. He understands that all the danger that comes with being with her is through no fault of her own, and actively works to help combat all the forces against her. He knows that despite being the centre of the chaos she's not the cause of it, she's the remedy for the effect of it and that is an undeserved, exhausting punishment yet a burden she bears regardless without complaint— a sign of her innate goodness which Mike recognises and loves her for all the more. Even moreso, he works to share that burden with her and criticise it because he sees how innocent and undeserving she is of the responsibility infringed upon her. His willingness to take all of this on is so wholesome and exactly the kind of sweet effort-full love that a character like El deserves, which is so gratifying for the audience to see.

[nanathebunny]

i do love to think abt armand being so interested in daniel’s Normal As Fuck life stories, like it’s all so mundane to daniel but armand finds it fascinating, he looooooves hearing abt daniel’s first prom, abt the time he failed his drivers test when he was 16, his first job, those normal little things

[nobodywasneverhere]

i hate being disabled and queer at a time like this.

i sit during the day watching my phone, seeing news. i see my every right getting stripped away, i watch through text on my screen as people get dehoused, arrested, forced to starvation by a system i want to go out and fight, but, of course, i can't.

my muscles would give out from the stress, i would endure pain for a week afterward which would bind me to my bed. i am resigned to talking to people who already agree with me and sending out small messages to the void of the internet on platforms which continue to contribute to the destruction of my personhood in the eyes of a fascist government; what good does it do? i'm still stuck in bed, nobody and nothing has changed.

i can't vote, i can't hide myself from it, i'm lucky enough to be in a place with such people that if truly necessary, i could move to another country - but my friends would still be here, most of my family would still be here, here in the place that wants me dead, that wants to force me into the lowest caste of a system meant for extracting capital instead of providing healthcare, protecting rights, making sure i can live.

and what can i do? i can hope that someone else cares enough to do something about it, but the chances that they would? that enough people would? that enough people could even understand what i go through on a daily basis? i truly don't like pessimism but it seems unavoidable with something like this.

i would make art to show people my visceral experience, release it to fly on fragile wings into the world, make sounds and sketch lines, write and dance and be wholly a person but my neck aches even with writing this, my wrists feel that they have been crushed, and my back threatens to give out while laying on a bed.

i am being demoted to something less than human in the eyes of a horrifying amount of people in the country which promised would give me safety. i am a political problem in courtrooms, i am a pity story whispered between my teachers, i am a cautionary tale to nazis online that say i am a conniving predator and a poor confused child that only thinks they want to put their great gendered body through mutilation, i am words from a strict authority about perseverance to kids who they find annoying, i am anything but a person.

i am kid, a fucking angry and scared kid. i am a person and deserve to be treated as one.

i will scream and fight until the memory of being at peace has long since faded and until i find myself living in that memory again. even if it's just online. even if it's just anonymous text on a screen.

but still the question gnaws through the flesh of my thoughts - what good does it do when we can barely do anything?

[political-us]

[brown-little-robin]

my dreams have grown smaller and kinder and far more difficult

[sawbuckplus]

Bottom line: the communist/democrat mayor of LA doesn’t want the federal government to do their legally obligated duty of deporting illegal aliens, especially those with a history of violent crimes.

Take your pick for the reason. Either it’s for the cheap labor or the body count to inflate their representation in Congress. Probably both, plus the desire to undermine federal authority since there isn’t a democrat cabal occupying the White House.

[rosehathawhey]

THE AMERICANS | 1x08 “Mutually Assured Destruction”

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Gloria Oladipo at The Guardian:

In recent weeks, the fate of the United States Postal Service (USPS), a revered and vital public institution, has been uncertain. Since the start of his second presidency, Donald Trump has launched major changes to the federal government. Along with billionaire Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), the president has carried out widespread layoffs at agencies such as the Small Business Administration and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, with the purported goal of cutting costs and boosting efficiency. Now, Trump is turning his focus to the post office, an agency he has long been critical of and one that he may be privatizing. In addition to delivering upwards of 343.5m pieces of mail and packages a day, the post office is responsible for administering official government forms such as passport applications, and providing banking services, such as money orders. As of 2025, it employs 640,000 people. Black people, in particular, make up 29% of its staff, while making up just 12% of the national workforce overall. The Washington Post first reported that Trump is expected to take control of the USPS, likely signing an executive order in the coming weeks to place the independent agency under the Commerce department. With privatization, Trump would probably curtail postal services, said Arrion Brown, the national support services director for the American Postal Workers Union. “The privatization definitely would require less employees,” he said. “That would cut down on the number of postal jobs.” Trump’s potential plans for the USPS could threaten the agency’s rich legacy of Black employment, from which generations of Black families have secured wealth and benefits through service. “The postal service workforce is more diverse racially [and] ethnically than the labor force in this country as a whole,” said Brian Renfroe, the national president of the National Association of Letter Carriers. The gains in the post office with regards to diversity aren’t accidental. One reason for the high rate of Black employment at the postal office is because the USPS recruits veterans, a large percentage of whom are Black, said Monique Morrissey, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “They’re vetted and they’re trustworthy,” said Morrissey of veterans. “You don’t want somebody messing with mail. The consequences are harsh if somebody does that.” Because of federal protections, the post office, like other federal agencies, also has less discrimination in hiring compared to private sector employment. Anti-discrimination language in USPS’s collective bargaining agreements promotes employee diversity, said Renfroe. “Hundreds of thousands of good middle-class jobs have been offered to people all over the country, without regard to race or any other demographic [information]”.

Increased access to postal service employment means that Black families can access solid benefits, especially as generations have been “blocked from other ways of creating wealth”, said Morrissey. “The benefits matter a lot to African American communities because of historical barriers to wealth creation and access to financial security through health benefits,” she said. USPS also pays relatively well compared to other jobs that do not require a college degree, Morrissey added, given training and trust required for the job. USPS also has union-protected pay increases based on how long a person has been employed with the post office, Renfroe noted. “It’s a place to really make a solid middle class career,” he said. “When we talk about collective bargaining rights being attacked, we’re talking about people’s ability to have a middle class career.”

Diversity in the postal service is also a direct result of “geographic diversity”, said Renfroe. Many of the more than 33,000 post offices in the US are “heavily concentrated in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and other urban areas”, regions where Black people are more likely to live and be employed from. The wealth building relationship between Black Americans and the postal service dates back to the 19th century, says Phillip Rubio, a history professor at North Carolina A&T State University. In 1865, Congress passed a law allowing Black people to be employed as postal workers, reversing an 1802 bill that previously declared that mail carriers could only be “free white persons”. Formerly enslaved people then started “taking advantage of what was a patronage job”, said Rubio, who’s an expert on Black postal workers. “The way the postal service opens up to African Americans is [that] they open the door,” he said, adding: “The post office [was] attractive when so many private sector jobs were closed to [Black people].” [...]

In the 1940s, 14% of middle-class Black people were employed by the post office, according to research by the economists Leah Boustan and Robert Margo. Even still, Black employees were largely denied workplace advancement, including for clerk positions and other higher-ranking roles. Black postal workers, particularly in the south, fought to get into local unions and keep local branches from being segregated. The civil rights movement of the 1960s contributed to improved conditions for Black people in the postal service. President John F Kennedy’s Executive Order 10925 prohibited discrimination in the hiring of federal employees, with USPS offices across the country posting Equal Employment Opportunity posters and notices where employees could submit complaints. Black postal employees were also promoted to higher ranking jobs and elected to local and national leadership positions. From 1960 to 1966, USPS was the largest employer of Black people in the US, and by 1970, Black people were 2.5 times more likely to work for the post office than white people (the rate is higher in especially segregated cities). By the year 2000, Black postal employees workers were also in the top 25% of earners of Black workers in the US.

The Guardian wrote a solid piece on how the USPS helped build a solid middle class foundation for Black Americans, and how Racist-in-Chief Trump could upend that legacy.

[lolli-popples]

Local president of the HOA, Rendog:

He's come to reprimand you about the maintenance of your front lawn.

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

NOT EXACTLY A TOWN SQUARE, BUT A PLACE TO HANG OUT NONETHELESS.

PIC INFO: Resolution at 1195x1536 -- Spotlight on a photo by Bill Owens titled "Strip mall," somewhere in the USA, from the portfolio "Leisure," c. 1960s -- 1980s, printed and/or published in 2001.

Source: www.sfmoma.org/artwork/2014.982.46.

[political-us]

Anything to protect big banks