#This is a global eugenics campaign

[txttletale]

h… how is any of that racist

assuming that you mean my posts about the 5e monster manual entry for orcs and how insanely racist it is--by happy coincidence i have a bunch of sources about this strewn haphazardly across my browser so i'm happy to answer this.

so we will start with this. the words 'tribe' and 'chief' are deeply, deeply racialised. they have been used throughout colonial (and well into modern and present-day!) history to describe groups of indigenous peoples across the world—with implications of 'primitive' people and societies within the Western myth of linear societal progress. europeans have nations and kings--africans and native americans have tribes and chiefs. the 'tribe' is not a neutral concept--it is a concept that was constructed by europeans in positions of global military domination over a century to justify a narrative about the linear progress of civilization to justify domination [1][2]. of course, it's not just the use of the words 'tribe' or 'chief' but their deployment here in the context of what is obviously supposed to be a 'primitive' method of of government--the 'orcish tribe' is inherently violence, a 'savage' society entirely built on "bloodlust" and "fear"

regis stella puts it much better than i could in this account of an early 20th-century travel memoir in Imagining the Other: The Representation of the Papua New Guinean Subject

while we're on this point i figure i'll add all the other language around 'savagery', 'inherent bloodlust' and so on in the monster manual here to further illustrate my point: it's all quite rote and repeats itself a lot.

now, wait, waiiiit, wait a second. wait a moment. hold up what was that last thing

oh thats not good. having to explain why this is racist feels a little like having to explain why its bad to hit people with hammers but i'll do it anyway: the comparison of real-life 'tribes' of people to insects, vermin, and pestilences is a very real element of genocidal rhetoric--from the holocaust [3] to the rwandan genocide [4]. what is the implied correct societal responose to a tribe that is 'like a plague?'

finally, this is the part that made me say "holy fucking shit this is in the 5th edition monster manual?" because it is pure undiluted gygaxian eugenics shit. first of all, the narrative of the ever-swelling horde, the indigenous or Asian people as an undiffernetiated mass of amorphous Other, is an old one and one that's been used to devalue the lives of people of colour and justify violence against 'the horde'. but the part that's absolutely jaw-dropping is the use of the tropes of reproductive racism--the narrative of Black and indigenous hyperfecundity is also an established racist trope, one which was instrumental in the forced sterilisation of Black and Native women in the USA [5] and now manifests itself in the "great replacement" demographic anxieties of modern racism [6] -- think of White Genocide conspiracy theories and the 14 Words. and of course that is to say nothing of the fact that is made very clear and reiterated (and mechanicised in the form of the Half-Orc player race!) that WotC wants to be very clear about how much orcs "readily crossbreed with other races". this is miscegenation anxiety, plain and simple--somethign else stella talks about.

so yeah! hopefully nobody will ever ask me this fucking question again! (this is just across two fucking pages of the monster manual by the way don’t get me started on the shit that’s in the other books! god forbid i even think about campaign modules!!)

[manorpunk]

2️⃣

‘Comprador’ refers to an agent of a large multinational corporation whose typical job responsibility is taking a small underdeveloped nation and turning it into a vending machine for a natural resource - oil, coffee, coal, minerals - then getting that nation so dependent on selling those raw materials to that company that they effectively control it.

Unrelatedly, the Global Logistics Network was the single largest anything of 2069.

They weren’t a monopoly, no, no, no. They were… you see, the crowded and fragile system of intercontinental shipping was simply too important to be left in the hands of any single nation. You all saw what happened when the Brits monopolized it, and when the US monopolized it after them. You’ve seen how nations owning major canals turns them into a hive of corruption. Shipping belongs to the world, which means it belongs to the GLN.

They were headquartered in Qingdao, a major city in the Shandong province of China. Don’t be fooled, China fumbled the past few decades as much as everyone else, but every institution needs a head, and every head needs a headquarters, and the headquarters of the Global Logistics Network were located in Qingdao. The complex of skyscrapers that comprised GLNHQ was large and populous enough to form its own city-state, a closed loop of offices, gyms, fabricators, dormitories, labs, shops, copackers, cafeterias, and warehouses. You could spend your whole life there without ever setting foot on the earth itself. Many did.

Such was the Global Logistics Network. Like capitalism rising centuries ago from the sclerotic and shambling remnants of feudalism, the GLN rose from the old ways of hyper-financialized over-leveraged capitalism to create something new, something so new it didn’t even have a name yet. Much like the transition from feudalism to capitalism, things were better overall, but good lord, what a low bar to clear.

Towering above it all at the top floor of the central skyscraper sat Meng “Harold” Jianli, sole co-founder of the GLN. One might wonder how someone could be a ‘sole co-founder,’ and the answer was that the GLN was so powerful and omnipresent that its leader could have called himself a living god for all the power that sat upon his person. He certainly had more power than those who had historically claimed the title of living god.

But Meng “Harold” Jianli was no god, living or otherwise. Despite the vast power seated upon his person, or perhaps because of it,he looked rather disheveled, with a jowly face like splotchy old parchment, a sagging belly, and a crudely functional flat-top of black hair. His suit was slack and rumpled - his weight had a tendency to fluctuate wildly thanks to the stress.

It was stressful, being in charge. Past a certain point, you don’t really get more powerful, you just have more people to babysit and more fires to put out. He had to keep an eye on Novo Karo Bioresearch, or they’d be so excited to show off their new research that they’d start doing eugenics. He had to keep an eye on Vae Victis Engineering, or they’d get so excited testing out their new tech that they’d start a world war. And now, with his hands steepled and his brow furrowed, he had to keep an eye on the vtuber that the American League had elected president.

 He stared at Sunny Roosevelt. Sunny smiled back and gave him a little wave.

“I am willing to work with you, miss Roosevelt. The GLN is willing to work with just about anyone, it’s one of our biggest strengths.” He shifted effortlessly between ‘I’ and ‘we,’ treating the two as synonyms. “The issue is, we are still trying to figure out what your administration actually intends to do.” 

“Hmm.” Sunny put a finger to her chin, pursed her lips, and looked upward. An ellipsis appeared over her head.  “You got a copy of my campaign objectives, right?”

“Are you referring to this?” He held up a single sheet of paper, on which was written ‘make anime real’ in 48-point font and nothing else.

“Yep!”

“And you think this qualifies as a roadmap for your presidency.”

“Personally, I think it’s quite ambitious.”

Harold puttered his lips. “Miss Roosevelt-”

“Please, call me ‘mommy.’”

“Miss Roosevelt, I understand that you are standing on rather shaky ground. The National Board of Directors is being dragged away from the provisional US government days,” he said, which neglected to mention how half of the National Board of Directors were former GLN big names, “and the new state congress acts more like a rehab clinic for celebrity podcasters than a governing body,” he said, which stood just fine without caveats.

“I understand,” Sunny said, nodding and still smiling, “I’m a bimbo who’s in way over her head, so you’re going to unveil the GLN’s big five year plan and tell me to follow it like a good little girl.”

Harold was already in the process of lifting a hefty unlabeled binder, intending to thump it dramatically atop his desk, but the accuracy of Sunny’s comment left him slightly deflated. “I prefer to think of it as an advisory-”

“And then I’ll kiss up to you during our conversations,” Sunny continued, “but stall and drag my feet when it comes to actually implementing anything, and you’ll say,” she loosened her face and dropped her voice, “dammit Sunny, are you trying to play me for a fool?”

“I don’t sound like that. I don’t sound like Richard Nixon,” Harold protested, sounding kind of like Richard Nixon.

“And then I’ll say, it’s not me, it’s the state governors, they just refuse to cooperate. The new congress is one big old boy’s club. Even the Board of Directors is demanding overly-detailed descriptions of everything before they’ll sign off on it, it’s malicious compliance!” Sunny hung her head and threw her hands, wailing, “you set me up to fail, Harold. You set me up to fail, you rat bastard!”

“Are you done?”

Sunny straightened back up. There was that smile again. “Yep. That was fun.”

“In any case, while I understand you are currently something of a figurehead, even figureheads cannot afford to do nothing. Not when a third of the country is still lacking even the barest measures of centralized government.”

“What, you mean the Midwest Autonomous Zone?” A little question mark appeared over Sunny's head. “I mean, yeah, but it’s not like that started with the fall of the old US. Missouri was a dump long before the thirties.”

“Be that as it may-”

“That’s the 2030s, because we’re in the future.”

“Miss Roosevelt.”

“Please, call m-”

“No. Miss Roosevelt, why did you become president if you are so averse to actually presiding?”

Sunny shrugged and let out a huffy little sigh. “Look, most people weren’t exactly begging to have America back. Not even Americans. They don’t want someone with a bold, inspirational vision. Bold, inspirational visions are what start world wars, for George’s sake. I, for one, believe that bench-warming is not just a good idea but a moral imperative.”

“George’s sake?” Harold repeated.

“Saint George Washington. Oh, right, America’s got a brand new religion now, it’s called Founderism. We took the whole Founding Father worship thing and made it an official heresy. Also, Jesus was a small business owner.”

Harold grimaced and considered leaving the former USA to the wolves for a few more decades.

[hathorik]

Rundown on the vocabulary of oppression - Ideology and Diplomacy

In the face of current events™, some of my students felt lost and confused and one of them asked me to help them understand what words such as fascism, nazism, antisemitism and zionism mean. My guess is they're not the only people feeling that way. So let's take a look at all those words being thrown around and what their actual meaning is.

This is gonna be a long post so all the material is going under the cut. I will, once again, be very serious about my sources and use Wikipedia because come the fuck on it's right THERE.

Fascism: far-right authoritarian nationalist political ideology, often suppressing any democratic aspect from political life (be it through forbidding all but one party or reducing the number and political range of parties available to make sure the result of any election will only further the political ideology and its goals). It entails a strong militarism, forceful suppression of political opponents, violent repression of protests and social struggles, and often has roots in racism (or simply white supremacy) to reinforce the nationalist aspect. Historical examples of fascism justified themselves through their ultimate goal to create a perfect society for perfect people; nowadays the blunt racist übermensch-creating ideas are a little too old-fashioned and we can reconsider the workings, ideological tennets and goals of fascism in a globalized neo-liberal world (tldr: protecting the people in power and reinforcing oppression of everyone else).

Nazism: German-flavored fascism created by an obscure Austrian painter. Despite it originating from "National Socialism", there is nothing social about Nazism; that was a PR stunt to bring in the communist voters after a strong communism diabolisation campaign. The idea was that a natural hierarchy or races existed and at the top of them was the mythical Aryan race the German people were supposedly the descendants of and that the farther a population strayed from the Aryan race ideal, the lower it was in the race hierarchy with, at the very bottom, Jews. Because why not, antisemitism was trendy in the 30's. They were however not the only targets of the Nazi movement and Nazis up to today's neo-nazi groups will indiscriminately attack all kinds of people they judge undesirable in their perfect society; foreigners, people from so-called "inferior races", queers, neurodivergent people, disabled people and so on.

Racism: discrimination and prejudice against people based on their race or ethnicity, be it social or enforced by a state and its laws (Apartheid). It relies on two ideological basis: good old xenophobia (discrimination and prejudice against foreigners) and the nazi race hierarchy theory (which itself rests on eugenics, which were very popular in the US in the 20's). It leads to direct actions or discriminative measures against people perceived as inferior or undesirable, the inaction of legal authorities when those happen and serves as basis to ideas such as Supremacy.

White supremacy: the eugenics-based idea that North-Western Europeans and their descendants ("White" people) are superior to all other races/ethnicities/cultures/civilisations on Earth because they happened to develop technologies earlier and to have a clearly understood (to them) progression from idealized Ancient Civilisations to perfect "modern societies" (industrialized oppression-based capitalism). The whole thing being backed by religious ideas to make it even smoother. Reality is that Europe just had a very nice climate, plenty of easily available resources which boosted its development and a whole bunch of Intellectuals™ to affirm that yes they were superior and therefore meant to Reign Supreme on the Earth. Today, White supremacy can be seen in violent groups and institutions such as the Aryan Brotherhood, the United States Government and the Israeli military.

Minority: theoretically, a minority is a group of people within a population which finds itself in so small numbers they end up never getting their voices heard through democratic processes. The truth is that gerrymandering and state-enforced measures (such as Apartheid or race-targeted police brutality) make the demographic aspect irrelevant and really the people in power make the populations they don't like minorities in order to dismiss them or diabolise them even more easily. Think about "immigrants", "arabs", "pedophiles" (when referring to queer people) and so on. You must have stumbled upon it at some point.

Jewishness: to be Jewish, aka to belong to a matriarcal bloodline which can be retraced to the original 13 tribes of Israel. Jewishness is an easy target (see: antisemitism) because it affirms itself and its existence through both cultural/religious aspects and an admitted racial aspect. Following an important diaspora, Jewish people can be found in almost every country and within almost every culture; there are Jewish people of color and Arab Jews. Which is a problem to some (see: Zionism).

Antisemitism: Jew-targeted racism. Mostly found in non-Jews, there is however such a thing as "auto-antisemitism" which is antisemitism perpetrated by Jews upon Jews (See: Association of German National Jews, aka "Jews for Hitler"), be it as self-loathing of one's own Jewishness (Karl Marx and Henry Kissinger were examples of this) or as a way to distinguish between "good" and "bad" jews. Historically, antisemitism was first motivated by the old "They killed Jesus" argument and their often immigrant status, but in more recent times ideas such as Jews being parasites feeding on the societies of "good people" (the Aryan race, for Nazi Germany) or the fact that some Jews ended up in pretty important positions of power (see: Rothschild Family) gave traction to plenty of conspiracy theories, which only got backed by the rise of Zionism and the creation of the State of Israel, which is why antisemitism is often brought up whenever criticism of its policies and actions are made.

Originally, the term "Semitic" on which the word is based designated "Arabs, Jews, Akkadians, and Phoenicians"; it has now been reduced to Jewish populations only.

Zionism: ideology born around the 1820's according to which the territory of the "Promised Land" (then: Palestine) had to be returned to the exiled Jewish population and a Jewish ethno-state be created there. Early on, acquisition of Palestinian land by wealthy Jewish families was the first ways of expression of Zionism, but after the Second World War the horrors of concentration camps were used as an argument by Zionists to ask for the creation of the state of Israel. Today, Zionism refers to the defense of the State of Israel, its policies and its legitimacy, as well as the existence of an "ideal Jewish population"; thus Zionists reject non-white Jewish populations and do no shy away from affirming their racism or comparing themselves to Nazis in a positive way. Zionism can be considered as the a flavor of Jewish Fascism.

Colonialism: derived from White Supremacy, colonialism is the ideology affirming that White people have the moral imperative to conquer the Earth, subjugate local "barbarian" or "savage" populations and bring them "civilization"; this resulted in countless genocides, forced conversion to Christianity and theft of land and natural resources from native populations, as well as settling of White people on said stolen land. Canada, the United States, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Australia and Israel are examples of modern, still existing Colonial Nations, and all still enforce oppression of native populations in varying degrees, the worst being genocidal campaigns and apartheid laws.

Imperialism: practice of maintaining or extending power over foreign nations, particularly through expansionism, employing both hard power (military and economic power) and soft power (diplomatic power and cultural imperialism). Imperialism focuses on establishing or maintaining hegemony and a more or less formal empire. While related to the concepts of colonialism, imperialism is a distinct concept that can apply to other forms of expansion and many forms of government. For example, the US interventionism in the Middle East (Gulf wars of 90-91 and 2003 onward) and its backing of Israel's expansion are imperialist measures, as well as the veto power of China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States over the UN.

[18thvariation]

2022 annual review

What can I say... except that I’m feeling defeated amidst the storm of eugenic gaslighting and COVID minimization constantly swirling around us. It is a dark time to be in public health, but it’s even more devastating when your own field turns against its own alleged values. To those still holding the line and speaking our truths, I echo your defiance.

I’ll continue to show up day after day and do my best.

Notable Happenings

Long-awaited reunion with Quag - skating in North Van

Monkeypox vaccine campaign

J+K wedding in Tofino (Wickaninnish Beach)

Expanding my teaching practice :) 

Camping with Lady @ Sproat Lake

Norcal trip: Monterey, Big Sur, Napa/Sonoma, San Francisco

Highlights: McWay sunset, Monterey Bay Aquarium, Asian Art Museum, Legion of Honor

Influenza vaccination campaign

Adopting Goose! (@thecutestgoose)

Books that influenced me:

What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma (Foo, Stephanie)

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent (Wilkerson, Isabel)

Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism (Walia, Harsha)

All the Living and the Dead: From Embalmers to Executioners, an Exploration of the People Who Have Made Death Their Life's Work (Campbell, Hayley)

All That Moves Us: A Pediatric Neurosurgeon, His Young Patients, and Their Stories of Grace and Resilience (Wellons, Jay)

The Inevitable: Dispatches on the Right to Die (Engelhart, Katie)

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory (Doughty, Caitlin)

Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City (Elliot, Andrea)

On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal (Klein, Naomi)

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowkedge, and the Teachings of Plants (Kimmerer, Robin Wall)

No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need (Klein, Naomi)

The Emergency: A Year of Healing and Heartbreak in a Chicago ER (Fisher, Thomas)

Dear Life: A Doctor’s Story of Love and Loss (Clarke, Rachel)

The Vaccine Race: Science, Politics, and the Human Costs of Defeating Disease (Wadman, Meredith)

The Facemaker: One Surgeon's Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I (Fitzharris, Lindsey)

A Good Time to be Born: How Science and Public Health Gave Children a Future (Klass, Perri)

The Magical Language of Others (Koh, E.J.)

Chinatown Pretty: Fashion and Wisdom from Chinatown’s Most Stylish Seniors (Lo, Andria)

Favourite Movies/TV series

SPY x FAMILY

Crash Landing on You

Twenty-Five Twenty-One

Hospital Playlist

The Farewell

Favourite foodie experiences

Brasserie Coquette (Kitsilano)

Sushi Time (Kerrisdale)

MELLO (Kerrisdale)

Esteban (Monterey, CA)

Palette Tea House (San Francisco, CA)

California Fish Market (San Francisco, CA)

[theintexp]

Kutuzov Prospect by The Internal Expression

Music by The Internal Expression & Poems by Denis Davydov & Paintings by Peter Von Hess & some episodes from the film War and Peace by Sergey Bondarchuk were used in this video.

The track Kutuzov Prospect is dedicated to the victory of the Russian Army led by Mikhail Kutuzov in the Russian campaign of 1812

I don't want highest awards And dreams of conquest Don't disturb my peace! But if a fierce foe dares to oppose us, My first duty, my sacred duty - Rise up for our homeland again. Denis V. Davydov, Elegy IV

The French invasion of Russia, also known as the Russian campaign (French: Campagne de Russie) and in Russia as the Patriotic War of 1812 (Russian: Оте́чественная война́ 1812 го́да), was initiated by Napoleon with the aim of compelling the Russian Empire to comply with the continental blockade of the United Kingdom. Widely studied, Napoleon’s incursion into Russia stands as a focal point in military history, recognized among the most devastating military endeavors globally. In a span of fewer than six months, the campaign exacted a staggering toll, claiming the lives of nearly a million soldiers and civilians.

On 24 June 1812 and subsequent days, the initial wave of the multinational Grande Armée crossed the Niemen River, marking the entry from the Duchy of Warsaw into Russia. Employing extensive forced marches, Napoleon rapidly advanced his army of nearly half a million individuals through Western Russia, encompassing present-day Belarus, in a bid to dismantle the disparate Russian forces led by Barclay de Tolly and Pyotr Bagration totaling approximately 180,000–220,000 soldiers at that juncture. Despite losing half of his men within six weeks due to extreme weather conditions, diseases and scarcity of provisions, Napoleon emerged victorious in the Battle of Smolensk. However, the Russian Army, now commanded by Mikhail Kutuzov, opted for a strategic retreat, employing attrition warfare against Napoleon compelling the invaders to rely on an inadequate supply system, incapable of sustaining their vast army in the field.

The fierce Battle of Borodino, located 110 kilometres (70 mi) west of Moscow, concluded as a narrow victory for the French although Napoleon was not able to beat the Russian army and Kutuzov could not stop the French. At the Council at Fili Kutuzov made the critical decision not to defend the city but to orchestrate a general withdrawal, prioritizing the preservation of the Russian army. On 14 September, Napoleon and his roughly 100,000-strong army took control of Moscow, only to discover it deserted, and set ablaze by its military governor Fyodor Rostopchin. Remaining in Moscow for five weeks, Napoleon awaited a peace proposal that never materialized. Due to favorable weather conditions, Napoleon delayed his departure, hoping to secure supplies through an alternate route. However, after losing the Battle of Maloyaroslavets he was compelled to retrace his initial path.

As early November arrived, snowfall and frost complicated the retreat. Shortages of food and winter attire for the soldiers and provision for the horses, combined with relentless guerilla warfare from Russian peasants and Cossacks resulted in significant losses. Once again more than half of the soldiers perished on the roadside succumbing to exhaustion, typhus and the unforgiving continental climate. The once-formidable Grande Armée disintegrated into a disordered multitude, leaving the Russians with no alternative but to witness the crumbling state of the invaders.

During the Battle of Krasnoi, Napoleon faced a critical scarcity of cavalry and artillery due to severe snowfall and icy conditions. Employing a strategic maneuver, he deployed the Old Guard against Miloradovich, who obstructed the primary road to Krasny, effectively isolating him from the main army. Davout successfully broke through, Eugene de Beauharnais and Michel Ney were forced to take a detour. Despite the consolidation of several retreating French corps with the main army, by the time they reached the Berezina, Napoleon commanded only around 49,000 troops alongside 40,000 stragglers of little military significance. On 5 December, Napoleon departed from the army at Smorgonie in a sled and returned to Paris. Within a few days, an additional 20,000 people succombed to the bitter cold and diseases carried by lice. Murat and Ney assumed command, pressing forward but leaving over 20,000 men in the hospitals of Vilnius. The remnants of the principal armies, disheartened, crossed the frozen Niemen and the Bug.

Napoleon’s initial force upon entering Russia exceeded 450,000 men, accompanied by over 150,000 horses, approximately 25,000 wagons and nearly 1,400 artillery pieces. However, the surviving count dwindled to a mere 120,000 men (excluding early deserters); signifying a staggering loss of approximately 380,000 lives throughout the campaign, half of which resulted from diseases. This catastrophic outcome shattered Napoleon’s once-untarnished reputation of invincibility. Sources. French invasion of Russia, from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

В создании видео Кутузовский проспект использовались: Музыка The Internal Expression Стихи Дениса Давыдова Картины Петера Фон Гесса Эпизоды фильма Война и Мир Сергея Бондарчука

Трек Кутузовский проспект посвящён победе Русской армии во главе с Михаилом Кутузовым в Отечественной войне 1812 года

Не хочу высоких званий, И мечты завоеваний Не тревожат мой покой! Но коль враг ожесточенный Нам дерзнёт противустать, Первый долг мой, долг священный - Вновь за родину восстать. Денис Давыдов, Элегия IV

Оте́чественная война́ 1812 го́да, во французской историографии - Ру́сская кампа́ния 1812 го́да (фр. Campagne de Russie 1812) - военный конфликт между Российской и Первой Французской империей, протекавший на территории России в период с 12 (24) июня до 14 (26) декабря 1812 года. В дореволюционной российской историографии традиционно именовался «нашествием двенадцати языков» (уст. Нашествіе двунадесяти языковъ) в связи с многонациональным составом армии Наполеона.

Причинами войны стали отказ Российской империи активно поддерживать континентальную блокаду, в которой Наполеон видел главное оружие против Великобритании, а также политика Наполеона в отношении европейских государств, проводившаяся без учёта интересов России.

«Масштаб операций в 1812 г. почти невероятен,­ а потери - военные и гражданские, французских захватчиков и русских защитников - вызывают содрогание даже сегодня, несмотря на несоизмеримо большие потери в двух последовавших одна за другой мировых войнах в XX в.».

На первом этапе войны (с июня по сентябрь 1812 года) русская армия с боями отступала от границ России до Москвы, дав под Москвой Бородинское сражение.

В начале второго этапа войны (с октября по декабрь 1812 года) наполеоновская армия маневрировала, стремясь уйти на зимние квартиры в неразорённые войной местности, а затем отступала до границ России, преследуемая русской армией, голодом и морозами.

Война закончилась почти полным уничтожением наполеоновской армии, освобождением территории России и переносом военных действий на земли Варшавского герцогства и Германии в 1813 году (см. Война Шестой коалиции). Среди причин поражения армии Наполеона российский историк Н. А. Троицкий называет всенародное участие в войне и героизм русской армии, неготовность французской армии к боевым действиям на больших пространствах и в природно-климатических условиях России, полководческие дарования русского главнокомандующего М. И. Кутузова и других генералов русской армии.

В 1789-1799 годах во Франции произошла Великая французская революция, закончившаяся приходом к власти Наполеона Бонапарта. Реакцией нескольких крупных монархических европейских стран (включая Россию и Великобританию) было создание серии антифранцузских коалиций, изначально ставивших целью восстановление монархии Бурбонов, но позже принявших оборонительный характер в попытке остановить дальнейшее распространение французской экспансии в Европе. Война четвёртой коалиции закончилась для России поражением русских войск в битве под Фридландом 14 июня 1807 года. Император Александр I заключил с Наполеоном Тильзитский мир, по которому обязался присоединиться к континентальной блокаде Великобритании, что противоречило экономическим и политическим интересам России. По мнению русского дворянства и армии, условия мирного договора были унизительны и позорны для страны. Русское правительство использовало Тильзитский договор и последовавшие за ним годы для накопления сил к предстоящей борьбе с Наполеоном.

По итогам Тильзитского мира и Эрфуртского конгресса Россия в 1808 году отобрала у Швеции Финляндию и сделала ряд других территориальных приобретений; Наполеону же развязала руки для покорения всей Европы. Французские войска после ряда аннексий, произведённых главным образом за счёт австрийских владений (см. Война пятой коалиции), придвинулись вплотную к границам Российской империи.

После 1807 года главным и, по сути, единственным врагом Наполеона оставалась Великобритания. Великобритания захватила колонии Франции в Америке и Индии и препятствовала французской торговле. Учитывая, что Англия господствовала на море, единственным реальным оружием Наполеона в борьбе с ней была континентальная блокада, эффективность которой зависела от желания других европейских государств соблюдать санкции. Наполеон настойчиво требовал от Александра I более последовательно осуществлять континентальную блокаду, но наталкивался на нежелание России разрывать отношения со своим главным торговым партнёром.

В 1810 году русское правительство ввело свободную торговлю с нейтральными странами, что позволяло России торговать с Великобританией через посредников, и приняло заградительный тариф, который повышал таможенные ставки, главным образом на ввозившиеся французские товары. Это вызвало негодование французского правительства.

Наполеон не был наследственным монархом и поэтому желал подтвердить легитимность своего коронования через брак с представительницей одного из великих монархических домов Европы. В 1808 году российскому царствующему дому было сделано предложение о браке между Наполеоном и сестрой Александра I великой княжной Екатериной. Предложение было отклонено под предлогом помолвки Екатерины с принцем Саксен-Кобургским. В 1810 году Наполеону было отказано вторично, на этот раз относительно брака с другой великой княжной — 14-летней Анной (впоследствии королевой Нидерландов). В том же году Наполеон женился на принцессе Марии-Луизе Австрийской, дочери императора Австрии Франца II. По мнению историка Е. В. Тарле, «австрийский брак» для Наполеона «был крупнейшим обеспечением тыла, в случае, если придётся снова воевать с Россией». Двойной отказ Наполеону со стороны Александра I и брак Наполеона с австрийской принцессой вызвали кризис доверия в русско-французских отношениях и резко их ухудшили.

В начале 1811 года Россия, опасавшаяся восстановления Польши, стянула несколько дивизий к границам Варшавского герцогства, что было воспринято Наполеоном как военная угроза герцогству.

В 1811 году Наполеон заявил своему послу в Варшаве аббату де Прадту: «Через пять лет я буду владыкой всего мира. Остаётся одна Россия, - я раздавлю её…».

Согласно традиционным представлениям в российской науке, от последствий континентальной блокады, к которой Россия присоединилась по условиям Тильзитского мира 1807 года, страдали русские землевладельцы и купцы и, как следствие, государственные финансы России. Однако ряд исследователей утверждает, что благосостояние основных податных сословий, в числе которых были купечество и крестьянство, не претерпело существенных изменений в период блокады. Об этом, в частности, можно судить по динамике недоимок по платежам в бюджет, которая показывает, что эти сословия даже нашли возможность выплачивать в рассматриваемый период повышенные налоги. Эти же авторы утверждают, что ограничение ввоза иностранных товаров стимулировало развитие российской промышленности. Снижение таможенных сборов, наблюдавшееся в период блокады, не имело большого влияния на российский бюджет, поскольку пошлины не являлись его существенной статьёй, и даже в момент достижения своей максимальной величины в 1803 году, когда они составили 13,1 млн руб., на их долю приходилось всего 12,9 % доходов бюджета. Поэтому, согласно этой точке зрения, континентальная блокада Англии была для Александра I только поводом к разрыву отношений с Францией.

В 1807 году из польских земель, входивших, согласно второму и третьему разделам Польши, в состав Пруссии и Австрии, Наполеон создал Великое герцогство Варшавское. Наполеон поддерживал мечты Варшавского герцогства воссоздать независимую Польшу до границ бывшей Речи Посполитой, что было возможно сделать только после отторжения от России части её территории. В 1810 году Наполеон отобрал владения у герцога Ольденбургского, родственника Александра I, что вызвало негодование в Петербурге. Александр I требовал передать Варшавское герцогство как компенсацию за отнятые владения герцогу Ольденбургскому или ликвидировать его как самостоятельное образование.

Вопреки условиям Тильзитского соглашения, Наполеон продолжал оккупировать своими войсками территорию Пруссии, Александр I требовал вывести их оттуда.

С конца 1810 года в европейских дипломатических кругах стали обсуждать грядущую войну между Французской и Российской империями. На дипломатическом приёме 15 августа 1811 года ��аполеон гневно высказал в адрес России ряд угроз русскому послу в Париже князю Куракину, после чего в Европе уже никто не сомневался в близкой войне Франции и России. К осени 1811 года российский посол в Париже князь Куракин докладывал в Санкт-Петербург о признаках неизбежной войны. Источник. Отечественная война 1812 года из Википедии - свободной энциклопедии.

[eddiegirls]

obsessed w the fact that people act like it's surprising that the united states government threw us under the bus during the pandemic by*:

not curbing the spread of the virus in the beginning of 2020 (to protect capital)

not enforcing strict lockdowns after the virus reached the US (to protect capital)

not providing free funds, food, housing, or healthcare to vulnerable people (namely unhoused, low income, and disabled people) (to protect capital)

not providing adequate PPE to hospitals or the general population, causing massive shortages, causing more people to get sick, causing even more shortages (to protect capital)

not providing free, readily available tests (to protect capital)

running a half-assed vaccine public health campaign and allowing antivax lunatics to spread misinformation to the masses (to protect capital)

contributing to vaccine apartheid by systematically preventing people in the global south from receiving the COVID vaccine, which also created new variants and resulted in millions of deaths worldwide (to protect capital)

keeping schools open and exposing children to a potentially-deadly virus (to protect capital)

telling us that new surges are not a major concern because most deaths "occurred in people who had at least four comorbidities," which is "really encouraging news" [this is eugenics] (to protect capital)

*an incomplete list

because honestly none of this should surprise you if you're paying attention

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Monopoly so fragile

A big boat stuck in the Suez Canal, catastrophically disrupting global logistics - it wasn't just predictable, it was inevitable. For decades, the shipping industry has consolidated into just a few companies, and ships got bigger - too big to sail.

As Matthew Stoller points out, in 2000 the ten biggest shippers controlled 12% of the market, today, it's more that 82%, and even that number is misleadingly rosy because of alliances among the megashippers that effectively turn them into one company.

https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/what-we-can-learn-from-a-big-boat

The Suez crisis illustrates one of the less-appreciated harms of monopoly: all of us are dunderheads at least some of the time. When a single person wields a lot of unchecked power, their follies, errors and blind-spots take on global consequence.

The "efficiencies" of the new class of megaships - the Ever Given weighs 220 kilotons and is as long as the Empire State Building - were always offset by risks, such as the risk of getting stuck in a canal or harbor.

Despite this, a handful of executives were able to green-light their deployment. Either these execs didn't believe the experts, or they didn't care (maybe they thought they'd retire before the crisis) or they thought they could externalize the costs onto the rest of us.

Running a complex system is a game of risk mitigation: not just making a system that works as well as possible, but also making one that fails as well as possible. Build the Titanic if you must, but for the love of God, make sure it has enough life-boats.

Monopolies are brittle. The ideology that underpins them is fundamentally eugenic: that there exists among us superbeings, genetic sports who were born with the extraordinary insights and genius that entitle them to rule over the rest of us.

If we let nature run its course, these benevolent dictators will usher in an era of global prosperity.

This is catastrophically, idiotically, manifestly wrong. First, even people who are very smart about some things are very stupid about other things.

Charles Koch took over his father's hydrocarbon empire and correctly concluded that the industry was being held back by a focus on short-term profits. He made a series of long-term bets on new production technologies and grew the business a thousandfold.

Being patient and farsighted made Koch one of the richest people in world history - and one of the most influential. He pioneered a kind of slow, patient policy entrepreneurship, investing in a network of think-tanks that mainstreamed his extremist ideology over decades.

And yet, this man who became a billionaire and changed the character of global politics with his foresight has managed to convince himself that there is no climate emergency. That patience, foresight, and cool weighing of probabilities have gone out the window completely.

Smart people are often fools (so are regular people). History is full of them. Take William Shockley, the Nobel-winning inventor of silicon transistors who failed in industry because he became obsessed with eugenics and devoted his life to a racist sterilization campaign.

Moreover, fools sometimes succeed. Take Mark Zuckerberg, who justified his self-serving "real names" policy (which makes it easier to target ads by banning pseudonyms) by claiming that any attempt to present yourself in different ways to different people is "two-faced."

That is a genuinely idiotic thing to believe: presenting yourself differently to your lover, your parents, your toddler, your boss and your friends isn't "two-faced," it's human. To do otherwise would be monstrous.

But even when monopolists aren't idiots, they are still dangerous. The problem with Zuck isn't merely that he's uniquely unsuited to being the unaccountable czar of 2.6 billion peoples' social lives - it's that no one should have that job.

Monopolists all have their own cherished idiocies (as do the rest of us), but they share a common pathology: the ideology, popularized by Thomas Friedman and others, that "efficiency" is the highest virtue.

The whole basis for 40 years of tolerating (even encouraging) monopolies is the efficiencies of scale that come from consolidating power into a few hands, and the shared interests that arise from a brittle interdependence.

Who would go to war with the trading partner that controls the world's supply of some essential item?

This was always, predictably, a system that would work well but fail badly. Clustering the world's semiconductor production in Taiwan made chips cheap and plentiful, sure.

But then the 1999 Taiwan quake shut down all the world's computer sales. There are plenty of examples like this that Stoller lists: a single vaccine factory in England shuts down in 2004 and the US loses half of its flu vaccines.

Despite the increasing tempo of supply-chain crises that ripple out across the world, we have allowed monopolists to "take the fat out of the system at every joint," setting up a thousand crises among us and yet to come.

Bedding makers can't make mattress for want of foam. RV manufacturers can't get enough "air conditioners, fridges, furniture" to meet orders. Often, the pivotal items are obscure and utterly critical, like the $1 "flat steel form ties," without which home construction halts.

"For the want of a nail, the shoe was lost." We've understood that tightly coupled systems have cascading failures since the 13th century. "Resiliency" is inefficient - but only if you ignore what happens when brittle systems fail.

Every monopolist *necessarily* shares an ideology that elevates brittleness to a virtue. They must, because monopolies are brittle. One foolish mistake, one ship wedged in a canal, one delusive denial of climate change, and we all suffer.

Every monopolist believes in their own infallibility. They must, because to have someone as fallible as me or you in charge of the world's social media or shipping or flat steel ties is otherwise a recipe for disaster.

Of all the dangerous things monopolists are wrong about, this belief in their own inability to be wrong is the most dangerous.

Image: Copernicus Sentinel (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Container_Ship_%27Ever_Given%27_stuck_in_the_Suez_Canal,_Egypt_-_March_24th,_2021_cropped.jpg

CC BY: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[96thdayofrage]

On this day, May 02, 1963

On May 2, 1963, more than 700 Black children peacefully protested racial segregation in Birmingham, Alabama, as part of the Children's Crusade, beginning a movement that sparked widely-publicized police brutality that shocked the nation and spurred major civil rights advances.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) had launched the Children's Crusade to revive the Birmingham anti-segregation campaign. As part of that effort, more than 1,000 African American children trained in nonviolent protest tactics walked out of their classes on May 2 and assembled at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church to march to downtown Birmingham. Though hundreds were assaulted, arrested, and transported to jail in school buses and paddy wagons, the children refused to relent their peaceful demonstration.

The next day, when hundreds more children began to march, Commissioner of Public Safety Eugene "Bull" Connor directed local police and firemen to attack the children with high-pressure fire hoses, batons, and police dogs. Images of children being brutally assaulted by police and snarling canines appeared on television and in newspapers throughout the nation and world, provoking global outrage. The U.S. Department of Justice soon intervened.

The campaign to desegregate Birmingham ended on May 10 when city officials agreed to desegregate the city's downtown stores and release jailed demonstrators in exchange for an end to SCLC's protests. The following evening, disgruntled proponents of segregation responded to the agreement with a series of local bombings.

In the wake of the Children's Crusade, the Birmingham Board of Education announced that all children who participated in the march would be suspended or expelled from school. A federal district court upheld the ruling, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ultimately reversed the decision and ordered the students re-admitted to school.

[grandhotelabyss]

The crassest by-your-bootstraps libertarianism, the most tedious religious exhortation to self-transcendence and moral perfection, are infinitely preferable to this recrudescent left-fascism, this emergent neo-Fabianism, this eugenics with a smile and a pronoun go-round. They’ll say their program will be universal because we’re all equally subject to chance, and I even believe that some people, like Freddie de Boer, have their hearts in the right place, but the actual logic here is inexorable. I would rather die in a ditch than exist at the patronizing sufferance of a scientistic clerisy that had used its vaunted, intrusive metrics to pre-establish my worth and potential.

Most accounts of the origin of Britain’s welfare state begin with the Minority Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws, drafted by Sidney and Beatrice Webb during the first decade of the 20th century. Beneath their seemingly compassionate rhetoric, the founders of the Fabian Society were snobbish, elitist and harboured a savage contempt for the poorest of the poor. Both husband and wife were enthusiastic supporters of the eugenics movement, which held that most of the behavioural traits that led to poverty were inherited. In short, that the poor were genetically inferior to the educated middle class.

Eugenics had been the brainchild of Charles Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton, and was developed in response to Darwin’s theory of natural selection. It was taken up as a programme of political action by Darwin’s son Leonard. The eugenicists aimed to replace natural selection with a planned and deliberate selection. They were alarmed by the fact that the poorest in society bred faster than the middle class, forecasting that this trend would lead to a spiral of degeneration in the gene pool. Their aim was to encourage the rich to have more children and the poor to have fewer. They quickly got the science establishment on their side, creating a national panic about genetic deterioration that became as widespread and salient as fears of global warming are today. In this scenario, the poorest with their ‘defective’ genes were the bogeymen, a class that threatened to contaminate future generations.

[...]

In the years leading up to the first world war Leonard Darwin set about lobbying the government to act. He wanted to set up flying squads of scientists, armed with powers of arrest over the poor, to tour the country weeding out the ‘unfit’. Those who were found wanting by these tribunals were to be segregated in special colonies or sterilised. One politician who supported such draconian measures in parliament was the Labour MP Will Crooks, who described the targets of the eugenics campaign as ‘like human vermin’ who ‘crawl about doing absolutely nothing, except polluting and corrupting everything they touch’. Crooks was perhaps only outdone in his vehement contempt for what we now call the ‘underclass’ by Shaw, who believed that they had ‘no business to be alive’ and speculated at a meeting of the Eugenics Society about the need to use a ‘lethal chamber’ to solve the problem.

—Dennis Sewell, “How Eugenics Poisoned the Welfare State”

[1989taylorsversion]

hi! you're definitely entitled to your own opinion about children & pollution & etc, and i'm not trying to be aggressive, but you should reflect on where you're getting this idea and the historical roots of the idea that overpopulation is a problem or even a thing. Those ideas emerged out of eugenics in the early 20th century and were usually weaponized against minority communities. For example, ideas about overpopulation and over fertility were used to justify US-organized forced sterilization campaigns of women in Puerto Rico. If you want to read more on this, check out Laura Briggs' work (here's a link to her faculty page), especially her book, Reproducing Empire. Although used in a different context today, calls to combat "overpopulation" usually cite the same racist fears that drove support for the eugenicist movement. I know you are not coming from that same place. This is just something to consider and read about more in the future.

You are absolutely correct on all accounts, however I am not criticizing people in underdeveloped countries without access to resources who are having many children, because that's an entirely different issue. It is also true that global population is not expected to continue growing exponentially, but it is also undisputably true that as our population stands right now we are using way too many resources and destroying the planet. So I will continue to think that a person/couple in a developed country with access to resources is selfish for choosing to have a bunch of children when every day we see new impacts from climate change and our overuse of resources. To me, creating more humans for the purpose of "spreading your religion" is even more egregious but is also another entirely different/complex piece of the puzzle.

[jewish-privilege]

For the past several days, I went to sleep thinking of Darnella Frazier — the courageous 17-year-old Black girl who filmed the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Because of her bravery and commitment to documenting Officer Derek Chauvin pressing his knee into Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes — yet another example of anti-Black policing — the world bore witness to the too-often fatal edge of racist police violence. The video of Floyd’s death, which revealed the outright lies the involved officers told, caused collective outrage. People poured into the streets of cities across the world, despite a global pandemic disproportionately affecting Black communities, to decry this heinous act of grave brutality. The video was a breaking point.

...I also noted how few of the anti-Black policing “victims’ list” posted and widely circulated included women and girls. I was disheartened more of these call-outs didn’t include the recent police killing of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky. Although killed in March 2020, the emergency medical technician’s story only became more widespread in the past few weeks. During the violent execution of a no-knock warrant, police killed Taylor in a barrage of bullets that struck her at least eight times. Her killing fit within a troubling history of police killing Black women and girls in their homes.

Hearing Taylor’s story immediately conjured memories of police killing other Black women and girls, such as Atatiana Jefferson, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, and Pearlie Golden, in their own homes, where no brave bystanders could bear witness and record their senseless deaths at the hands of police. Not even their homes could offer safety from fatal violence initiated by those paid by our tax dollars “to protect and serve.” Golden was a 93-year old woman in mental distress. Stanley-Jones was a 7-year-old asleep in her bed. Jefferson was a 28-year-old playing video games with her nephew. Their lives mattered.

In 2015, when the African American Policy Forum released the #SayHerName report, the organization powerfully called out the recent history of police brutality against Black women and girls. Five years later, the push to acknowledge and rally around Black women and girls victimized by police violence remains an uphill battle. It can feel like screaming into a void when proclaiming that police kill Black women, girls, gender-variant and nonconforming people, and trans men at a disproportionate rate, too.

Black folks of all genders take to the streets to protest the stark reality that Black men and boys are disproportionately victims of police killings. The comparative lack of mobilized outrage for the killing of Black women and girls is an injurious erasure. It also begs the soul-crushing question: Why does killing Black women and girls warrant only a footnote in how we understand and reckon with police violence?

Police and state violence against Black women and girls in this nation began with the trans-Atlantic slave trade and continues through the deaths of Black women in police custody such as Diamond Ross, Layleen Polanco, Sandra Bland, Kindra Chapman, Ralkina Jones, and Joyce Curnell. This history encompasses lynchings, rampant sexual violence, physical assaults, and the criminalization of Black womanhood and girlhood. The convergence of anti-Black racism and sexism in U.S. history is a violent and too-often fatal force. Black women were “strange fruits hanging from poplar trees,” gang raped by white supremacists, assaulted on chain gangs while incarcerated, and forcibly sterilized as part of racist eugenics agendas. The countless examples, both documented and unknown, make it impossible to excise Black women and girls from any discussion of and movement against anti-Black violence in the United States.

...It’s time to broaden the scope of how we understand police brutality and whose deaths we mobilize around. To allow sexism to affect how we talk about and protest anti-Black racism and police brutality reveals a half-*ssed commitment to racial justice. The police killings of Black women, girls, and trans men need to be addressed in the ongoing struggle to end police violence against Black people. To #SayHerName can’t just be an empty gesture prompted by the demands of a few to see state-sanctioned killings of Black women and girls as worthy of viral campaigns and local, national, and global protests. That hashtag, as well as #BlackTransLivesMatter, are calls to action, to remembering, and to revealing a fuller truth about anti-Black police violence.

The intensification of protests over the past few days means awakening to the smell of state-sanctioned blood lust — a disturbing combination of remnants of tear gas, pepper spray, and fire. Although protests in cities like Louisville call out Breonna Taylor’s name and tell her story, it’s imperative for all engaged in the struggle against anti-Black police violence to invoke the names and tell the stories of Black victims of all genders. We should be in streets for them, too.

[ladyhistorypod]

Episode 11: [Insert Political Joke Here]

Sources:

Patsy Mink

National Women’s History Museum

University of Hawaii

United States House of Representatives

Patsy Takemoto Mink

KHON2 News (YouTube)

Further Viewing: Internet Archive, Patsy Mink: Ahead of the Majority (Trailer)

Alice Roosevelt Longworth

The White House Historical Association

Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson State University

Find A Grave

The New York Times

Smithsonian Institute

Wilma Mankiller

National Women’s History Museum

Oklahoma History

Time Magazine

National Women’s Hall of Fame

Smithsonian Magazine

Attributions: Cherokee Nation's Chief Wilma Mankiller, Marching Drum, Power Of People: Sea-Tac Airport Travel Ban/Immigration Protest

Click below for a transcript of this episode!

Archival Audio: I'm really very excited by, and my process says our difficulty has been that not enough have run. We can’t expect that every woman, because she's a woman, the minute she runs she's going to be successful. That's not possible. So we do need to have the numbers in there competing, and given the numbers I think we're going to be more and more successful over the years.

Alana: So this is the first episode that's going to come out after the election is over. Like, by the time this comes out we're gonna know.

Haley: I was thinking of that when I was looking at the schedule and I don't know… I'm real nervous. I have class that night. It's going to my first class being like on the east coast, so I'm gonna be real tired. I’m gonna be with my cat though it's gonna be fine.

Alana: No this podcast is gonna be so nice.

Lexi: To be fair, we might not know who actually won by that Thursday.

Haley and Alana, somehow at exactly the same time: That’s true.

Lexi: Because there's going to be a lot of contention about mail-in ballots. So, dear Lexi listening to this on Thursday or even on Tuesday while editing it of election week; how's it going? What’s up?

Alana: Are you okay?

Lexi: Are you doing okay? Do we know yet? When will we know?

Alana: When will we know? We probably won't know on Tuesday when you're editing it, but… 

Lexi: And we probably won't know on Thursday.

Alana: On Thursday when it comes out.

Lexi: We might get a result and then we might get told it's not the result. There might be a lawsuit.

Alana: This podcast is gonna be really nice for the two of you to have to remember my voice by when I die in the coup.

Lexi: Yes the coup that will occur in DC. That might be more like January.

Alana: That's true, the coup will be in January.

Lexi: When someone refuses to leave… the area… to evacuate the premises.

Alana: Maybe he’ll be dead by then.

[INTRO MUSIC]

Alana: Hello and welcome to Lady History; the good, the bad, and the ugly ladies you missed in history class. Here I am, still on Zoom, with Lexi. Lexi, have you ever run a political campaign?

Lexi: Oh my god. I have.

Alana: Did I set you up for this?

Lexi: Yes. My dog is running for daycare class president. Please vote for him. His name is Captain, he's a Portuguese water dog, he's two and a half years old, and he's really cute. His platform is that he'll give you a snuggle.

Alana: I love him.

Lexi: Me too.

Alana: And someday will be reunited in person, Haley. Haley, what's your political platform?

Haley: I know. My skeleton is allowed to be in my passenger seat so I can ride in the carpool lane.

Lexi: Skeletons is people.

Haley: My plastic Napoleon Bone-aparte should be my second in command. Thus, me going in the carpool lane.

Lexi: Vote for Haley, skeletons is people.

Alana: And I'm Alana and my single issue vote is not ushering in the apocalypse.

Lexi: I have experience as a campaign manager, feel free to hire me.

Haley: A lot of people are gonna hate that.

Alana: No I love that.

Haley: I’ve never met–

Lexi: Listen, the people who support NAGPRA, they will love that.

Haley: He’s fake. My mom really had to grill me and I–

Lexi: He’s not real. Her skeleton is not real.

Haley: My mom was terrified that I got a real skeleton. And like honestly, of all people, I could go on the deep dark black webs, sure, but she even like texted my roommate like when we were all like in a group chat and we were calling or something and she was like “Caroline it's plastic, right.” And then also, y'all were involved in this– when Robert and I started dating, for like months he thought that was real and wouldn’t go near it and was like, heavily creeped out that like he was sleeping in the same room as a real skeleton. And it wasn’t until like I pitied him and–

Alana: First of all, he’s sleeping in the same room as two real skeletons.

Haley: That's true.

Lexi: He's sharing a body with one.

Archival Audio: Because the women have not until recently reached retirement age after having worked a full lifetime, only now are beginning to realize that there is inequity in the law.

Lexi: Congresswoman Patsy Takemoto Mink was born on December 6, 1927, near a sugar plantation. She was born on the Hawaiian island of Maui, and I just have to say, Maui is one of my favorite places on Earth. It was the first place I took scuba diving lessons and it is seriously an amazing and beautiful place. I have trouble thinking of any place I've ever been that's as beautiful. Patsy was a third generation American and her grandparents were immigrants from Japan. The term among Japanese Americans for a third generation child is sansei, not to be confused with sensei which means teacher. And sansei are the first to be raised by parents who are themselves raised in America, so they are very American and that is why they get a special name. Patsy was close with her brother Eugene and the two spent most of their childhood exploring the island together, foraging for edible mushrooms and bamboo shoots which is really cute. The family mainly spoke English at home, but Patsy learned Japanese in order to communicate with her mother's parents. Her father, Suematsu Takemoto, had been orphaned at a young age and served in the military before attending the University of Hawaii and becoming a civil engineer. He served during World War I. Suematsu was the first Japanese American to earn a degree in civil engineering from the University of Hawaii and he set a precedent for his children who would go on to break barriers themselves. Patsy witnessed racial discrimination faced by her family at a young age and this may have served as inspiration for her work in later life. Patsy also grew up in a community where many families did not have the privileges and comforts that her family had, and she realized this when she started to attend school; this also likely shaped her future work. Patsy's parents treated Eugene and Patsy equally, breaking Japanese tradition in which strict gender roles were imposed. This likely contributed to the strong bond that she and Eugene shared, valuing each other as equals. Patsy, who always kept up with her brother, decided to attend school a year early to be with him in class. She started primary school at the age of just four. In the fourth grade, her and her brother were transferred to a new school. This new school, which focused on English language learning, only admitted students with fluent English skills, effectively segregating white students from non white students and indigenous people on the Hawaiian islands. Every teacher they had in class was white. Patsy and Eugene were admitted because they had great English skills, but of course, English was their first language and it was also language their parents spoke to them at home. And Patsy and Eugene were part of only five percent of the student body that was non white, so ninety five percent of the school was white. Though Patsy flourished academically, she had trouble fitting in at the new school and made very few friends. Patsy's hobbies included listening to the radio and reading books which connected her to the world beyond Maui. Eventually, Patsy entered a new school to begin high school. There she was elected class president. She claims the support of the football team helped her secure the position. This was the start of her career in politics. While Patsy was in high school, the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred.

Archival Audio (FDR): Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy.

Lexi: Local non-Japanese citizens became wary of the Japanese locals, despite no Japanese Hawaiians being involved in the attacks. Japanese families destroyed culturally significant family heirlooms such as katanas and kimonos. They shut down Japanese language schools and they disbanded their cultural clubs. At the same time, Japanese Americans in mainland America were being rounded up and sent to internment camps. Many of them had been born and raised in America and had never even visited Japan. Some of them were sansei, just like Patsy. But racism and fear led non-Japanese individuals to oust even their closest Japanese friends. In Hawaii, far less Japanese were sent to internment camps and Patsy narrowly escaped participating in a tragic part of her generation and culture’s upbringing. Despite this, Patsy later in life claimed that President FDR was her political inspiration. Patsy graduated from her high school as valedictorian in the middle of a global war. In the fall, Patsy was admitted to the University of Hawaii, her father's alma mater, and she began her studies. She participated on the debate team and became president of the pre-med club because at the time she was considering pursuing a career in medicine. As the war continued, many of Patsy's college friends decided to transfer to schools on the mainland for security reasons. One of her professors suggested she apply to a women's college on the mainland. She was admitted to Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania which happens to be my home state. She met with the president of the college upon her arrival at the school; he told her she would probably struggle with her course work because the classes are all taught in English and she would be granted a private room. Patsy later recalled that he was so shocked when she replied in perfect English for multiple sentences, and she was then put in a shared room because if you can speak English, you can share a room. This was Patsy’s first taste of the ignorance many mainland Americans had about the Hawaiian territory, which was not yet a state. Patsy found the course work at Wilson to be below her, stifling her for real learning. She also faced discrimination from classmates and faculty. Because of this, she transferred to the University of Nebraska. It was at her third college that Patsy became engaged with policy making. The university's policy segregated white students and students of color in student housing. The international house, where she assumed she had been placed purely because Hawaii was not a state at the time, actually was home to both international students of color and American students were Black, Latinx, or Asian. The school’s other dormitories and the on-campus Greek housing only admitted white students. Patsy decided to take action and began a campaign to end the discriminatory policy. She led letter writing efforts, worked with the school newspaper, and spoke with local newspapers about the issue. Students she did not even know began supporting her in her campaign. She became president of the Unaffiliated Students, a group of individuals were not associated with Greek life at the University of Nebraska. Patsy was within just one semester a campus leader. The same year she starred at the University of Nebraska, the housing discrimination policy was lifted by the board. Unfortunately, Patsy suffered a medical emergency and had to return to Hawaii to be with her family, where she finished her last semester of college just where she started, at the University of Hawaii. She earned a dual major degree in chemistry and zoology. After graduation, she applied to medical school. Every school she applied to reject her. At the time, women were not admitted to medical school at a fair rate and women made up only about three percent of the student body of most American medical schools. And, because it was 1948, many colleges were focusing on admitting returned veterans. The odds had been stacked against Patsy, and unfortunately she would not be able to fulfill her goal and dream of becoming a doctor. Then Patsy started her first job in a museum at the Honolulu Academy of Arts. Museums always seem to be a factor in our shows… huh… Well anyway–

Alana: I wonder why… 

Lexi: I wonder why… I mean I didn't even know this about her when I picked her so this is super fascinating.

Alana: You were just– you are drawn to her.

Lexi: Yes.

Alana: The museum called out to you.

Lexi: The little museum bit. And this is actually where she met her mentor who encouraged her to pursue law, so it was through the museum that she found her true calling. And she was accepted to the University of Chicago under their international student quota, and though she desperately, desperately wanted to correct their error and remind her that being born in the Hawaii territory made her an American, she did not want to mess up the chance to get into law school, so she just rolled with it. So, she went to Chicago and she started law school. Patsy found law school intellectually a good match for her and it kept her engaged in her learning which was something she really cared about. She made many friends, some of whom were also Japanese American students studying law. It was at law school where she met her future husband, John Francis Mink. John was from a Pennsylvania mining town and his grandparents were Czechoslovakian immigrants. He had received his undergraduate degree from Penn State and was pursuing a Masters in geophysics at the University of Chicago. Patsy and John married while still in grad school. Patsy's parents disapproved, saying they wished that she would wait until the two graduated, though it is speculated they may have had qualms about her marrying a white man. Patsy graduated in 1951 as the first Hawaiian woman to graduate from the University of Chicago with a law degree. John and Patsy remained in Chicago and had a daughter named Gwendolyn who goes by Wendy for short. And after she was born, they decided it was time to move back to Hawaii. A really shitty, dumb law at the time made women citizens of their husbands’ home states. Who decided that, what for, I do not know. This meant Patsy, despite spending less than a semester for life in Pennsylvania, was a Pennsylvania resident. She fought this law, arguing that the couple had never resided there together and she was granted Hawaiian residency and she was able to take the bar exam in Hawaii. Though she passed, she could not find work as a lawyer. The dual reality of her gender and race was working against her. Potential employers found that it would not be appropriate for a married woman to work long hours as a lawyer and they also feared she would decide to have another child. Go figure, they just assume these things about women, blahblah blahblah blah, people suck. So with the assistance of her father, she opened her own firm, advertising herself as the first Japanese woman lawyer in Hawaii. She had few clients, so she worked as a part time professor and took court appointed cases to supplement her income. When Hawaii was granted statehood, Patsy knew she wanted to run for government positions. She helped start a club in Oahu for young Democrats and expanded her interest in politics. In 1959, she ran for a position in Congress, but was not elected. In 1962, she won a seat in Hawaii’s State Senate. She had run an intense door to door community campaign, and it had worked. Patsy became the chair of the Education Committee and served in the State Senate until 1964. Patsy was determined to make change on a national scale and continue to campaign for selection as a candidate for the Democratic Party of Hawaii. In 1964, Hawaii was granted a second seat in the US House and Patsy ran to be the representative; she became the first Asian American woman to serve in Congress and the first woman to represent Hawaii. During the eighty ninth Congress, from 1965 to 1967, only thirteen of the five hundred thirty five combined senators and representatives were women. Patsy was the only woman of color. There's actually an awesome picture of the thirteen women and Patsy’s just right there in the middle with a big smile, but I think it's so crazy when you think about percentages and scale and how that doesn't accurately represent America, and, hm, anyway. Patsy fought for gender and racial equality. She promoted bilingual education, co-wrote Title IX, and promoted affordable child care. As a working mother, she knew she needed to support other working parents. Even though she moved to DC to take her new role she often traveled home to Hawaii to visit her constituents and hear their concerns. In 1970, she was the first Democratic woman to deliver a State of the Union response. She also passed an act in 1974 protecting women's access to equal education. She also spoke openly against America's participation in the Vietnam War, fearing the effects on civilians of the weapons that were being used. In 1976, she attempted to run for the U. S. Senate but lost. Then the Democratic Party of Oregon asked Patsy to run for president. Because they had an anti-war focus, Patsy felt they shared values and agreed to run for them. Patsy only got two percent of the Democratic primary vote, but she broke barriers as an Asian American and woman running for president; she was the first. East Asian American woman to seek the democratic nomination for president. Patsy also served as the Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs in the Carter administration. In 1990, Patsy returned to Congress as a representative for Hawaii. She founded the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus and served six more terms in the House. In the summer of 2002, Patsy fell ill with pneumonia. She was hospitalized in her home state. She died in September 2002. Because ballots had already been printed for the 2002 election, her name still appeared as the candidate. Despite passing before the election, she won by a vast majority. Her replacement, Ed Case, still serves as a representative for their district of Hawaii today. After Patsy passed away, the Title IX Act was officially renamed the Patsy Mink Act. Patsy was actually one of the women I covered in my personal Instagram campaign to combat the lack of Asian American women in U. S. history core education standards, and as of 2020, no state public school history standard mentions an Asian American woman by name. I've said it on the pod before, I'll probably say it again; let's make sure students learn about people like Patsy, especially young girls in the Asian American community who can see themselves in politics because someone like Patsy broke barriers for them. Patsy continues to be the subject of documentaries and podcasts. In fact, of all the women that I've covered so far, she was featured on the most podcasts according to my quick Google. Obama awarded Patsy a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom, commemorating her work for the people of Hawaii and the nation, and remembered her as the embodiment of the Aloha spirit. Of Patsy, Obama said “Every girl playing little league, every woman playing college sports, and every parent, including Michelle and myself, who watches their daughter on a field or in a classroom, is forever grateful to the late Patsy Mink.” Patsy left her mark on US politics, paving the way for iconic Asian American politicians today like Mazie Hirono, Tammy Duckworth, Andrew Yang, and even Kamala Harris. Mahalo and arigato, Patsy. Lastly, I would like to thank the National Women's History Museum for the awesome page if they put together on her which I used as one of my main sources and I interned there this summer and the content is really well researched and totally worth checking out if you need resources on other women like Patsy.

Alana: I think I remember Obama– like I remember him giving the Presidential Medal of Freedom to her. And I think I remember him also being like she was a political icon of his, outside of what she did for like Asian Americans and women and Asian American women. Like he was just like this is someone else from Hawaii who was doing cool political things. Like role models don't need to be gendered.

Lexi: Yeah I was just gonna say like Hawaii is his home. It might be that being born there and her being born there really built a connection for him between them.

Archival Audio: My mother and I were put behind a screen door in the drawing room. We were allowed to listen, but we couldn’t be seen.

Haley: This is gonna be a wild ride because I have a lot of anecdotes about my life and to this woman, and this woman is Alice Roosevelt Longworth known as the president's daughter or the American celebrity of her time, and she was even referred to as Princess Alice. Like I said, I have a lot of anecdotes about my life and the Roosevelts. Can I interest anyone with a fun fact?

Lexi: Yes I love fun facts.

Haley: Thank you for your enthusiasm Lexi. Her father–

Lexi: Yes! I love fun facts!

Alana: Always! I always want the fun facts!

Haley: I love these two people. President Theodore Roosevelt is technically my fraternity brother. It's like a technical, like they– we say it, we claim as like the boast Roosevelt is like our fraternity brother but there's no– I think, I don't think there's like actual documentation that they were Alpha Delta Phi fraternity members, so– and also if you're listening to me like “that's a fraternity, no women allowed” I am part of the Alpha Delta Phi Society, we still claim post-split to be like gender neutral and be like “hey, women should be involved not just as our secretaries.” That's a whole other tangent I could go on. Google it, if you will. I think there's even a Wikipedia about it. But yeah he's my fraternity brother. I say that a lot when I like, see pictures or like statues of any of the Roosevelts, it’s a great time. I'm gonna start us off with like an inkling of a Teddy quote since we've been talking about him, and a lot of you may know that this quote whisper it while you listen to it if you're in the car, taking a shower, just chilling on your bed hugging a dog, anyway Teddy once said “I can do one of two things, I can be President of the United States or I can control Alice. I cannot possibly do both.” That's just giving you a taste of what a ride we’re going to go on. So what did Alice do to be worthy of such a quote, and the honor of being one of our political ladies for this episode? Honestly I could go on hours– I know I say this all the time, I can go on an hour long tangent on Alice, and I'm going to keep it just to like her pol– main political topics. Again, cracking this history book wide open to the birth of Alice on February 12 1884. Unfortunately, two days later, both her mother and her paternal grandmother died, and she was raised by her aunt Anna Roosevelt, and grew up with her five other half siblings between New York and Washington. This leads into another fun fact, if you will. You can visit their house at Sagamore Hill, and my friend was a ranger there once last year, and I got to go visit her during our Friendsgiving and slept in one of the barns on their site and there's like, I think Teddy's buried there, Alice is not but we'll get to that. But they have a whole like Roosevelt cemetery, it's a whole historic site in Long Island. The barn is haunted by something because I could not sleep at all, I just felt like something kept waking me up and I kept looking at this like one creaky door. Because we were in like her guest rooms, which was like two, two other twin beds in case they were like more Rangers on duty. And mine looked straight at this old door that kind of like lead into a mudroom and the outdoors. I swear there was no light outside. Like I went around, like the next time, I twisted my ankle trying to get around to that area, and I couldn't find like where this porch light would be giving such a green mist of color around this door at night because like all the lights were like those museum fluorescent like white bright lights or like– nothing green light and it freaked me out. Anyhoo that's end of like my tangent with that fun fact. Go visit Sagamore Hill for more Teddy content. And as a child– back to Alice– it was clear that she was a brilliant woman. Many sources noted that she was quote self taught in many of her areas of studies and was an avid reader. Along with her brilliance, she was considered to be a stubborn, strong-willed, risk taker, headline-maker, rabble-rouser, and trendsetter. Just all the things and you want in a lady. Alice's political side didn't shine through her skin cells until her father was sworn into office after President McKinley was assassinated in 1901. She was also, if not like the first, the first of any of the president's daughters to take like on a political role, kind of like with Lexi you were saying like there are a lot of firsts going on, and I believe this was like a first, for whatever reason, but she was the first of like president's daughter having some sort of political action that she like was like “hey let's fix this. I'm gonna do this, I'm a lady, I'm brilliant, I can do this, I have a voice.” And for example, in 1905 she accompanied Congressmen to Asia as like a quote goodwill ambassador for the administration, for like one of those let's go see the sights that we see a lot of political figures around the world do. There she was involved in a lot of peace discussions that were like post Russo-Japanese War. So there's a lot there. There's a lot on like the White House website that's in the sources, but it was more about the politics rather than Alice herself and I saw that a lot when I was reading things about Alice. Like when it started to get political it was heavily on the politics not much so what Alice did for those political actions or her political voice. I don't know if that's like author writing stuff…  I didn't write it, all I know is that she was married. I believe it was like around 1906 and it was to Nick Longworth– that's why we have the Roosevelt Longworth name– who was actually part of the Republican Party. So at this time it was the Progressive Party which was her father Teddy Roosevelt and herself and then the Republican Party. And Alice agreed with her father on political stances, thus the Progressive Party, thus making these different political ideals kind of like a wrench in their relationship. But there’s a lot of other stuff that made this marriage kind of like a very topsy turvy one. But also there was alcoholism and affairs and they didn't necessarily come from Nick. This is where I read many sources where like Alice had many different lovers. I didn't really dig into Nick’s because like… men… we're here for Alice. But it was noted that she had different affairs, lovers, and these were all other men in the government. More on her political leaning, I didn't see anywhere that they got divorced, but they did have a daughter, Paulina, and Nick died bef– like way before Alice's death and she would– like should write books and go on like traveling trips, even post Daddy being in office to support Paulina. So I said her father died– that was a great segue, good job Haley. Even after her father died, she continued to use her voice in politics. She was one of the people who led the charge to keep the US from joining the League of Nations, and this is we're gonna get into like right around World War II. She was also a tough critic on how FDR was handling the Great Depression, and she at this time had a syndicated newspaper column where she would just bash politics, essentially. She would use this column to speak her voice and say “Hey, I have this, I’m gonna use it, I'm going to speak my mind, not care if I'm gonna piss any other political figure heads off” which… snaps for her. She also used her voice when she was on different committees to help the US, especially throughout World War II. She was heavily on the side of being neutral. I believe she was like even the head of some of these committees, these US implemented committees, to stay neutral. And just like overall politics itself. I couldn't find any where she was on a specific women's rights, education, it was more glossed over. I could have missed something. Other than being on committees, writing in newspapers, going on different platforms to speak her mind, she also would campaign for others such as Taft’s campaign and it was noted that she was friends with the Kennedys, Nixons, and the Johnsons; all other political figurehead families and future presidents. I didn't know where to put this little story, but like I need to say it, it's great. She was known for like, being like, that wild child. But in her wild child youths, she was known for smoking on the White House rooftop, and I'm like trying to picture the White House in my head, and obviously it probably changed a little bit since like Teddy was president, but like… I want to know if like you could see her from like walking on the Mall just like chilling on the roof because her father said she couldn't smoke inside the house for like a whole laundry list of reasons, it's not ladylike, blah blah blah, and she would just go to the roof and be like “I want to smoke. I'm going to do it on the roof. You can't touch me when I'm on the roof.” And she would also carry around a snake in her purse, and the snake’s name is Emily Spinach, yes, Emily Spinach was her… her snake’s name. Like honestly I would just love to carry around like a snake in my purse or any animal in my purse.

Alana: That’s my aesthetic.

Haley: It's an iconic name, Emily Spinach. This also confused me because I saw many pictures of her with a small dog. Like, kind of like a chihuahua, kind of like a pomsky, like one of those small fluffy dog mixes, so I want to know if like the snake and the dog got along. I don't– I don't know. I couldn't see my small dog like, liking a snake much.

Alana: I think small dogs were bred to hunt snakes. I'm not good at like the history of dog breeds but a lot of those small breeds were bred to hunt like pests, so–

Lexi: Rats, snakes.

Haley: Yeah, very confused.

Lexi: I guess if you raised it from a puppy around your snake, it might– it might have a different view, but like I don't let my parrot and my dog hang out. Maybe she didn’t let them hang out. That’s chill. I don’t know.

Haley: Yeah, I couldn't find a picture of like the two of them together, and if anyone does, please send it our way. That is– that would be an incredible portrait. Because she also– a lot of her faces are kind of like a “I don't want to be here” face, the classic “please leave me alone” which is iconic. And like one of her wedding photos is between like her, her dad and like her husband, and her face is just like “I so don't want to be like here right now…” Chef's kiss, I can feel it. I felt the energy. My last tidbit, of course, is while she was born in New York City, she was buried in Rock Creek Park Cemetery when she died at the age of 96. And I actually went to Rock Creek Park Cemetery a few years ago, when living in DC. At least like on the outside of it, if it's the same cemetery. I went to many cemeteries in DC, doing like the spooky tours but also getting from like point e– point A to point B, because like Rock Creek Cemetery is like way to get into like Maryland area. Also, anyhoo, on their website she's noted as one of their famous residents, and on their tour I believe that her like tomb, grave area is like part of their cemetery tour. Keep it respectful, people. And that's my story on Alice. 

Alana: I like that she carried a snake around in her purse. That is my aesthetic. That is goals.

Lexi: Snakes are fun little noodles.

Alana: They’re so fun.

Haley: Snakes are fun. I would love a snake. Emily Spinach. I now want like a stuffed snake to name it Emily Spinach. Lexi, I remember that one of your friends or your sister requested this.

Lexi: Yes, my sister Elena Hoffman who is in law school in DC at the George Washington University. She’s not my biological sister, she's my sorority sister she sent me this like– 

Alana: That always confuses me.

Lexi: Sorry.

Alana: Lexi will say that she has a sister and I'm like no you don't and I've– because I forget that she’s in a sorority.

Lexi: Anyway, she sent me this picture that's like one of those tumblr history… we take it with more salt than the Dead Sea.

Alana: Take your internet history lessons with more salt than the Dead Sea.

Lexi: Exactly. And it was like one of those like distorted screenshots where some screenshots it a million times and shares it like a meme. It was– it was about her being crazy, was like smoking cigarettes on the Mall, carrying around a snake, blah blah, a lot of which turns out to be true, so… Elena, thank you for suggesting her. I hope this confirms your weird internet history for you.

Haley: I really thought because I've seen like some of those pictures too, but it kept coming up in sources that I was like “oh they're not gonna give me like misinformation.” If they were, like I wouldn't be surprised, like misinformation comes up even in like what we call good sources. Like correct us if you're more widespread in the Alice history. Because I keep forgetting that like when we do this research, we do like probably like three hours of research, maybe less, maybe more depending on the person, but there are like, people devoted to this for their life's work. So like please, again we say this every episode.

Alana: If we're wrong let us know.

Archival Audio: “My guest, director, producer Valerie Red-Horse Mohl, let's start with the subject. What is the subject of your– your documentary?” “Well the name of the film is Mankiller and that actually is Wilma Mankiller’s last name. Wilma was the first woman elected Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation and her story is just so relevant today.”

Alana: So my political icon for today is Wilma Mankiller, who has the best last name ever in the entire world, it's amazing. It's actually a military rank that was achieved by one of her ancestors, but kids made fun of her for it. If your name is Mankiller, why would you– why would you make fun of that? Because one time–

Lexi: First off, I would be scared.

Alana: Exactly! Exactly, why wouldn't you be scared? One time as like a grown up she was fed up with it and she said to somebody that it was a nickname and that she'd earned it. And I’m just like, what a woman. Very cool. So, she was born on November 18, Scorpio, 1945 in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Her father's name was Charley Mankiller and he was Cherokee, and her mother was an Irish Dutch woman named Irene Sutton. And Wilma describes her family as an “activist family” so that is how she grew up to be an activist. She was the sixth of eleven children so right there in the middle. And when she was eleven years old, when she was eleven years old, the federal relocation programs that meant to encourage– I'm doing the massivest air quotes in the whole world– encourage assimilation. (Frustration noises) The racism!

Lexi: I just puked in my mouth a little bit.

Alana: The racism! But they moved her family to San Francisco, where they were poor in Oklahoma and they were destitute in San Francisco. It was bad news bears. She married for the first time in 1963 to an accountant from California named Hector Hugo Olaya de Bardi. They had two daughters, and I'm gonna bring up their names– Gina and Felicia. Felicia is my middle name. I think it was Haley, Haley was it you who I told you my middle name and you thought I was kidding?

Haley: Yeah.

Alana: Felicia is legit my middle name. That's true. I will show you my birth certificates, or my passport probably is more likely because I have that on me. In 1969, there was a nineteen month Native American occupation of the island of Alcatraz. Like nobody was using it, it had yet to become a tourist trap and it wasn’t a prison, and so it was sort of like out of use. But for nineteen months, Native American activists occupied Alcatraz and they like had schools and were just doing really amazing things.

Lexi: That's so cool. I didn't know that about Alcatraz and that is so cool.

Alana: It was amazing. But this happened while Wilma was living in San Francisco, which is you know right near Alcatraz, of course. It awoke something in her. She considered it a benchmark in her activism that inspired her to shift her career more towards political activism as opposed to being a mom and doing other things. Her husband wanted her to stay home and be more of like a traditional– massive air quotes again– housewife, so they got a divorce, which is what I would do as well if my husband was like “no I want you to stay home.” I’d be like first of all, why didn’t you tell me this before we got married we could have saved both of us a whole heap of trouble and just not gotten married in the first place but okay. But they got divorced, and so Wilma moved with her daughters back to her family land in Oklahoma, where she became involved in community government and improvement projects. In 1979, she survived a very bad car accident where her best friend died and she was also diagnosed with– I'm probably gonna pronounce this super wrong– myasthenia gravis, which is a neuromuscular disorder that made it hard to talk, hard to write, hard to use her hands in general. So she started the Bell, Oklahoma water project; and Bell, Oklahoma is a tiny, itty bitty, little town in Oklahoma, so small, most people only spoke Cherokee, and they were in like dangerous living conditions. There was no clean water, it was just a bad time all around. But using federal grant money and local volunteers, she managed to construct eighteen miles of a water system and repair a lot of the dangerous living conditions. While she was recruiting volunteers she met her second husband who was full Cherokee named Charlie Soap. I'm not gonna say nothin about her dad and her second husband having the same name, but okay. That's a deal breaker for me, but you know what Wilma, go for it.

Haley: If I found another person with the name Fuzzy. I think I would have to marry them. I don't know like I feel like that's just too insane not to.

Alana: So Ross Swimmer, in 1983, chose her as a running mate for the Cherokee Nation election as he was running for Principal Chief and he wanted her to be his deputy. And they won, despite sexism and death threats. And in 1985 Swimmer took a position in the federal government and Wilma became full time Chief, full time Principal Chief, not deputy anymore. She served two more terms, for a total of ten years as Principal Chief. She decided not to run for reelection in 1995 because of her health. Under her leadership, tribal enrollment was up, infant mortality was down, literacy was up, unemployment was down. She created a self-sufficient health care system, although that's not really going so great anymore because of Covid and racism. Two really bad things, just in general. Of my least favorite things right now, I would say Covid and racism, really high up there on my list of dislikes. She won the Presidential Medal of Freedom, actually, in 1998 from President Bill Clinton who I'm probably gonna talk about in not a flattering light in a couple weeks. And she died in 2010 of pancreatic cancer. She left a legacy of cultural pride and self sufficiency and self government for the Cherokee people. It was her whole thing was like we can do this ourselves, we aren't helpless, we can create our own governments and our own systems, we can be just as good at government for ourselves as these white people who are like imposing these restrictions on us. We can govern ourselves. And so that was her whole thing was like we don't need outside help. That's the story of Wilma Mankiller. I have a couple of closing statements about– for the episode in general. I have been very frustrated lately with people who say that they stay out of politics.

Lexi: It comes to replace a privilege.

Alana: It comes from a place of privilege!

Lexi: But people in different communities can have different levels of privilege, unfortunately.

Haley: Yes.

Lexi: And they can try to exclude themselves from the political process because they think it doesn't affect them, which is blowing my mind. I just–

Lexi: The place I see it the most, and I'm– I don't know if you guys have noticed this too; so many people outside of museums, old heads in museums, trying to say museums should be apolitical. And this frustrates me to no end. For one, everything is political. The existence of a museum is political.

Haley: Yes.

Lexi: Our existence is political. People working in a museum, people who live and then also work in a museum. It's all political. Everything you do– your kid going to school? Political. Your kid go to school? that's political. You eat food? Politics. You wear glasses? You go to the doctor? All politics. This is all political. So, when people say museums are apolitical, I just want to– or or even when they say museums are bipartisan, museums lean one way or the other. And museums tell stories, and stories always have a bias in them, and museum shouldn't try to be apolitical. Museums should aim to tell stories and to make change in their communities. 

Haley: I’ve had a similar conversation– I will not give like personal details, but the bottom line was that… the argument that this person was trying to say why they shouldn't be political, were all like human rights… it was just like oh well museums are already like not racist, or like not gender biased and it’s like–

Lexi: Well that's wrong.

Alana: That’s just false.

Haley: But they– like they were trying to skirt around the way of saying like, “oh but these aren't, these are human rights stances, like we can talk about those in museums.” Even though like kind of saying that they're like not happening, trying to be on the more of like there is no gender bias there is no like blah blah blah– which is false, but saying like because those are human rights that they're not political, thus like a museum can talk about it, but we can't say like major political statements which–

Lexi: Human rights is political. It shouldn’t be, all humans should have rights, but…

Haley: Yes! Yes!

Alana: That's why they're called human rights.

Haley: The US has made this a political argument, of course like– regardless of what your stance is, like say “oh these are purely human rights,” not everyone sees it that way.

Lexi: And museums are racist.

Haley: Yes, museums are racist.

Lexi: You know, everyday– everyday, I like sit in the shower because I'm just so overwhelmed. And I think “Museums bad. Museums racist. Museums sexist. Me museums? Me learn museums? Me bad. Me racist. Me sexist. What this all for.” And then I say “That’s museums. Long live the museum.” Because I believe museums can be better places, but–

Haley: And we see that a lot.

Lexi: Yes. There are so many museums doing good work, like District Six Museum in South Africa, the Anacostia Community Museum in DC, one closer to home. Like there are so many museums doing good work, actively anti-racist work. But the historical institution, until we admit this organization is founded on racist and sexist principles–

Haley: We’re getting into a whole chunk of my thesis about the origin of museums. I could–

Alana: I was more talking about, in the broader sense. Like the non-museum people who I know who are like “oh I stay out of politics” and who have friends who are opposite sides of the aisle.

Lexi: Oh, “I don’t vote because I don't care”? Like–

Alana: “I don't know because I don't care.” I think there comes a time, you come to realize that just you existing is political.

Lexi: Yes.

Haley: I also think–

Alana: Like, my existence is political just by virtue of who I am.

Haley: Yes. I also want to like reference like Enola Holmes, remember that part where–

Alana: I was thinking about that a lot.

Haley: It was in the cafe and it was Sherlock–

Alana: Sorry, Lexi. 

Haley: And this other cafe human…

Alana: Edith, I think is her name.

Haley: Edith, yes. She was running the cafe and running the upstairs like women learning Jiu Jitsu…

Lexi: The suffragist karate school.

Haley: Yeah, yes. Don’t quote me if it’s Jiu Jitsu.

Lexi: They did not mention the kind, I think it was just martial arts.

Haley: Okay, martial arts. Martial arts. But Sherlock was like “oh I don't get into politics” and…

Lexi: That pissed me off.

Alana: Because like, then she was like “because the system in place benefits you and you don’t want to see it change.”

Archival Audio: “Show me what democracy looks like!” “This is what democracy looks like!” “Show me what democracy looks like!” “This is what democracy looks like!” “Show me what democracy looks like!” “This is what democracy looks like!”

Lexi: You can find this podcast on Twitter and Instagram at LadyHistoryPod. Our show notes and a transcript of this episode will be on ladyhistorypod dot tumblr dot com. If you like the show, leave us a review or tell your friends, and if you don't like the show, keep it to yourself.

Alana: Our logo is by Alexia Ibarra, you can find her on Twitter and Instagram at LexiBDraws. Our theme music is by me, GarageBand, and Ameliea Earhart. Lexi is doing the editing. You will not see us, and we will not see you, but you will hear us, next time, on Lady History.

[OUTRO MUSIC]

Haley: Next week on Lady History, we’re cracking open the history books and talking about some historic and iconic lady authors. Remember, a book a day keeps the stupidity away.