thinkingaloudquietly

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State Of The Union: Gawker Becomes First Online-Only Media Outlet To Organize

Wednesday night, Gawker Media voted to unionize. The stats: 107 of 118 eligible voters cast secret ballots, 80 of whom voted yes. Just like that, Gawker will become the first digital-only news site to have a union.

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Please help a disabled trans girl

My name is ambrie and ive run out of resources and now have to turn to donations for help. I’ve been kicked out of my parents’ home almost a year ago (june) and have been homeless until last december when i was offered a room in transitional housing with the young women’s shelter i was staying in at the time. My housing situation is stable now but only because i managed to get on welfare, which forced me to drop out of school (they don’t accept students).

I can’t find employment not only because i would need to be closeted, but also because i have BPD, SAD, ADHD, and probably ASD. I also have a sleeping disorder and basically do not wake up for several hours (if not days) once every week or two. Ive lost multiple jobs in the past few years because of the sleeping disorder, combined with having too much anxiety to ask for accessibility measures.

I currently have $-284.19 in my savings account (it goes down to $-300.00 but there are interest charges) and $908.61 on my credit card (it goes up to $1000.00 but also has interest charges). Welfare pays for my housing but only pays around $50.00 per month for basic needs. I have a volunteer position at a lgbt+ youth group that pays small honorariums (i can’t disclose the amount) but is nowhere near enough for me to afford enough food not to starve.

I’ve been depressed and have missed 4 of the last 6 shifts at that position (meaning i dont get paid), and i am afraid my mental health will only go worse from here. Summers are usually easier for me because of my SAD, but my partner/bff and i have been having lots of problems lately and i am not taking it well. At the same time though, summer means less layers and either more dysphoria or more transmisogyny being hurled in my general direction, so saying summers are easier isn’t that accurate.

I want to be able to go back to school, but that would involve getting off welfare, which would mean getting a job, which is practically impossible. I’m stuck in this loop and need money to survive until i can find a way out of this situation.

If you can’t afford to send any money, please help me by reblogging this

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[Screenshot of money in bank account. $1.32 is listed in chequing, $0.63 is listed in savings.] I am posting this from a bench outside the coffee shop nearest to me with wifi, at 3am. My data has been used up and cancelled so I do not have much opportunity to do this. I tried to take money out of my account today so I could make change to do laundry. I couldn’t take it out because it’s less than $20. I couldn’t do laundry and I cried on the sidewalk outside the place with the ATM, trying to figure out if I could go on living. (#suicide implication tw.) Facts about me and my life in point form: - I am unable to work due to severe mental and physical sicknesses (mainly major depression, C-PTSD, possible BPD, and severe low iron, the latter of which is caused by malnutrition and causes me to have fainting spells from time to time and have a very hard time with physical exertion). - I can no longer afford iron supplements or my medications. My medications help me with basic functioning, doing things like making sentences and doing laundry. I have a week or two left of one of the medications, but I ran out of the rest and am greatly feeling the effects. I cannot afford insurance and am not on any kind of drug plan. - I am working with social workers to get on ODSP (government funding for those who are disabled) and OW (immediate emergency funding which would get me by for the few months before ODSP would even consider accepting me). Scheduling appointments with these social workers is almost always completely dependent on their availability. Because the services these workers provide is free, they are almost always booked up and have a hard time scheduling me in. - I am completely homeless, and have been for all of April and will probably be until at least July. The few shelters that will accept me are usually full. - I am trans, and have been on the wait list for hormones for about a year. Supposedly, I’ll get my first consultation for hormones in July or August. I do not know if I will be able to pay for this either. As well, changing your name in Ontario costs a lot of money as well, on top of which that would require new IDs. - I have no family. I have not spoken to my mother in about a year due to abuse. My father generally does not to speak to me as a whole (except via text on holidays) and I have not seen him in years. My extended family has generally gone out of their way to send me transphobic, and thoroughly abusive, ableist, and dismissive messages in the most public and humiliating ways on social networking sites and it has put my life in danger. - Even if I were capable of working, I could not get a job due to the activist work that I have done in the area, and how I have unintentionally garnered a reputation due to founding Anti-Capitalist Pride. I do this work and I do it for free because it is the only kind of thing that I feel validates my existence. - I am trying to get hooked up with the local food bank, but I have ARFID and lactose intolerance which leads me to have very few food items I can eat. Local food banks are not really the best for those with ARFID. - My paypal is jazweeks@gmail.com - If you are in a place with similar grocery stores to Ottawa, Ontario (nofrills, independent, loblaws, metro) and you’d rather buy me a grocery gift card, feel free to message me for an address. - I am staying at a friend’s place until July 1st. I should be okay with housing until then but I desperately need to eat and do laundry and buy medication and print applications for funding. Please signal boost and help me survive. I need help as soon as possible and more than anything I just need hope.

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You need to watch this full video.

(Video originally by Benjamin Hancock)

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Barkha Dutt, of NDTV, shuts down white feminism at the Women in the World summit in New York City. [X]

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18 year old Tania Harris was shot twice by police in Robbinsdale, MN yesterday. Police were called to the scene to protect her from a potential fight and are claiming she had a knife but her mother and witnesses are saying that her mother had taken the knife from her before police shot her.

Tania was cuffed and put in the back of the squad car after being shot.

She survived the shooting and is in stable condition.

The local activists are already planning actions around supporting her.

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Did you hear about the black man in Baltimore that was killed, while in police custody?

1. Freddie Gray, who had 80% of his spine severed at his neck? No. the other one.

2. You mean Trayvon Scott, who in February died in a police holding cell without any explanation? No. the other one.

3. You mean Tyrone West, who despite never committing a crime, was beaten to death in an abandoned lot last year, and Baltimore refused to release the autopsy? No. the other one.

4. You mean George King, who was tased 5 times in 10 minutes while laying in a hospital bed, suffering from meningitis? No. the other one.

5. You mean Anthony Anderson, whose death was determined a homicide by the state’s medical examiner after being brutally beaten by police?

NO. the Other one.

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we’re having a real problem here because some children can’t afford lunch outside of plans through their schools, and with the schools being closed they have no means to eat.

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Watch the Baltimore Police LIE and get called out by a reporter for The Guardian. 

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This is Baltimore, days, weeks, months, years BEFORE the riots. If this was your neighborhood you would be fed up as well.

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“Activist #JosephKent was being peaceful as you can be & Baltimore police snatched him on live TV #BaltimoreUprising“

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It’s the video that came to be the rallying cry for the movement protesting the deaths of people of color in police cases — the takedown and arrest of Eric Garner, in Staten Island last summer. The man who shot that video, on his smartphone, 30-year-old Ramsey Orta, was in need of a rally of support himself. The day after Garner’s death was declared a homicide, Orta was arrested and jailed on an unrelated gun charge, and was later charged with a drug crime. He’s been in Rikers Island since, and has been on a hunger strike there for days now.

So his family launched this GoFundMe site to raise the $16,000 needed for his bail bond — they’ve now raised far more, just under $40,000, and growing, from more than 1,500 people giving a few bucks each.

But the whole effort came to a halt this afternoon, after Orta posted his bail bond. A source in District Attorney Daniel Donovan’s office said an assistant DA there sought a hearing to assess the source of the bail. A bail source hearing is a common procedure used to ensure that any funds have not been obtained through illicit or illegal sources. Most of the donors from around the country have given their names. Donovan is running for Congress in the special election for the district made up of Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn four weeks from now.

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Let me talk to you

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I was in Fort Frances and coming out of a motel room one day, about ten o’clock in the morning, and this white guy came right up to me and grabbed my breast and assumed that he was just going to waltz me right back into the room—you know, a total stranger. I got mad! I slapped him right across the face. When I told people about it, nobody reacted. It was nothing new to the Native women around me. They just shrugged, like, “Oh, yeah.”

Aboriginal woman in “Real” Indians and Others on her business trip experience in northern Ontario as an Aboriginal professional leaving the safe confines of Toronto (via urbannativegirl)

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I mean, fuck the corporate branding of this, but shit yes this conversation needs to be normalized! 

How An Underwear Brand Is Trying To Change The Conversation About Periods

Period stories have traditionally been relegated to the “most embarrassing moment” section of teen magazines. Now, a women’s performance underwear brand is trying to change that. Dear Kate’s “First Time” video, directed by Process Media’s Mary Harron, includes short interviews with over 20 women about the first time they got their periods.  Watch the full video for stories that don’t shroud periods in shame or the “ick” factor, but has anecdotes that are funny, honest and varied.

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Civil Rights Attorneys Sue Ferguson Over ‘Debtors Prisons’ Joseph Shapiro In a new challenge to police practices in Ferguson, Mo., a group of civil rights lawyers is suing the city over the way people are jailed when they fail to pay fines for traffic tickets and other minor offenses. The lawsuit, filed Sunday night on the eve of the six-month anniversary of the police shooting of Michael Brown, alleges that the city violates the Constitution by jailing people without adequately considering whether they were indigent and, as a result, unable to pay. The suit is filed on behalf of 11 plaintiffs who say they were too poor to pay but were then jailed — sometimes for two weeks or more. NPR got an advance look at the lawsuit, filed by lawyers from Equal Justice Under Law, ArchCity Defenders and the Saint Louis University School of Law. It charges that Ferguson officials “have built a municipal scheme designed to brutalize, to punish, and to profit.” In 2013, Ferguson collected $2.6 million in court fines and fees, mainly on traffic violations and other low-level municipal offenses. That was the city’s second-largest source of income, or about 21 percent of its total budget. The lawsuit challenges the practice of jailing people when they can’t afford to pay those fines. When tickets go unpaid, people are summoned to court and usually offered a new payment plan. If they fail to show up or make the new payments, the city issues an arrest warrant. In 2013, Ferguson, a city with a population of 21,000, issued nearly 33,000 arrest warrants for unpaid traffic violations and other minor offenses. Many of those were for people who lived outside the city. READ MORE (and prepare to be filled with rage…)

If you think Ferguson is the only city this kind of injustice is occurring in, think again. It’s probably happening in your own city, if you live State-side. The criminal justice system has been increasingly criminalizing poverty over the last 3 decades, and with the boom of the private prison system, it’s only going to get worse. The time for action is now. More than just protesting, we have to start attacking the laws and policy that allows these miscarriages of justice to occur. #staywoke #farfromover