monklemore:

disability advocacy went wrong when it became about inspiration porn and “differently abled” and savants. its incredible that that guy with no legs did a triathlon but your sister with no legs will not and she doesnt need prosthetics or five hour training days to deserve respect and compassion and accommodations. its incredible that that autistic guy can look at a city from a helicopter for an hour and then draw the entire detailed skyline from memory when he lands but your autistic friend cannot and they dont need to have a special Autism Power to deserve respect and compassion and accommodations. 

activism framed around “we are just as CAPABLE” means that when people genuinely are less capable they are left behind. activism framed around “we are just as WORTHY” is fundamental to radical compassion.

(via glitter-stained)

headspace-hotel:

iwilleatyourenglish:

rednines:

fizzywrench:

patrocles:

guerrillatech:

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i don’t normally like to add onto posts but i thought this thread was pretty insightful (link)

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(via Jovishark)

Whatever you think of the music Imagine Dragons are exmormon and the lead singer is a huge donor to LGBT groups in Utah. His like sole political cause is like fighting the astronomically high lgbt youth suicide here in Utah. I fucking hate this webbed site

yeah, this tweet thread fucking sucks.

1. i don’t like Imagine Dragons’ music and i think it is arguable that much of it’s a commercial product, but their members are, as stated above, more or less ex-Mormon.

the lead singer, Dan Reynolds, has discussed his active struggle with his faith and the cult of Mormonism. leaving a cult–especially one that practices shunning–is extremely difficult and can take years. and yet, despite this, he’s made it his mission to help combat issues affecting the LGBT+ community, including conversion therapy, LGBT+ youth suicide, and LGBT+ homelessness.

he has been a consistent and active ally to the point that he has an annual music festival called Loveloud that is dedicated to raising awareness about LGBT+ issues, featuring and promoting LGBT+ artists, and raising money for several charities. he has also donated his own money to LGBT+ organizations and gave his $1 million childhood home to Encircle, an LGBT+ advocacy group in Utah.

the guitarist, Wayne Sermon, has also given talks at conferences dedicated to assisting Mormons in leaving the cult and healing from their trauma.

2. the Lumineers have a history of holding shows solely so they can donate all profits to various charities and causes, including Planned Parenthood in Texas after Republican efforts to defund PP, Dakota Access Pipeline protestors, and LGBT+ charities in North Carolina following the passing of anti-LGBT+ legislation. a lot of their music that doesn’t make it to the radio focuses on issues like poverty, the working class, addiction, and trauma.

3. Marcus Mumford has explicitly stated that he doesn’t actually identify as a Christian, despite using Christian imagery in some of his songs. a person’s parents being Evangelical conservatives should not be an indictment on them. he and the other band members also kicked out their guitarist when he started spewing alt-right talking points and supporting Andy Ngo. i’m still not totally sure i trust his politics–he strikes me as pretty centrist–but good lord, he’s not an Evangelical.

do y’all not realize that you’re allowed to dislike music for purely surface level reasons? like that it doesn’t have to be that it’s made by terrible people–you can just seriously not like how it sounds?

making up bullshit theories where you falsely charge people–especially people actively fighting for progress–with being part of some kind of conservative religious extremist conspiracy theory to justify “i don’t like how they sound” is fucking awful and appalling. go outside.

I was thinking of this thread just the other day!!! because I was thinking about how people hate Imagine Dragons for being overplayed

and I abruptly remembered how there was a tumblr post where a bunch of people decided that Imagine Dragons was regressive cult propaganda music that was only popular because of a malicious political agenda

And like sure, it’s scary how people will make themselves see nonexistent ideological agendas in the music of a band they just…don’t like, but to me it’s even scarier how people will see a general aesthetic trend in art they don’t like and think there has to be an evil ideology behind that aesthetic, because otherwise, how could art that suck be popular?!!1!??

(via quiettiger4ever)

middleearthorcseeksspaceorc:

amvs:

sirensorisons:

amvs:

Luigi Mangione indicted on federal charges for CEO killing
Luigi Mangione is charged with stalking United Healthcare chief Brian Thompson outside the Hilton in Midtown and then shooting him to death
ABC News

just to be clear: a federal grand jury has voted to indict him, which means they’re affirming their intention to charge and prosecute him. there will still be a jury trial– at the end which that jury will find him guilty or not guilty on four separate charges.

to the best of my knowledge, luigi mangione has not been convicted of anything yet. it’s still unfortunate that he has been indicted, but for the moment, all this means is that the case is going to trial.

^^^ very important

#a person arrested in a different state from the crime#wearing a different coat#with a different backpack#searched nine hours before the warrant was given#with a gun left behind in another state#and a manifesto about how heroic and smart the new york police are#even though the real guy left his manifesto in his backpack in new york

(via see-arcane)

madtomedgar:

I cannot take “fraud” talk about benefit programs seriously because I know what can get labeled as fraud. Taking a tupperware of leftovers home from a friend’s birthday can be argued to be food stamp fraud. Exchanging SNAP for cash is fraud, that makes sense, except in many cases, people will let someone else use their leftover SNAP at the end of the month (it doesn’t roll over) in exchange for cash they need for shampoo, toilet paper, Tylenol, or other essentials not covered by SNAP. Paying the nurse or attendant for the full shift even though you asked them to leave early because you wanted to go to bed is fraud, even though the alternative is either they get less pay for no fault of their own, or they have to hang around while you sleep. Meanwhile, paying someone for the full shift when the jobsite has to shut down early is policy in many workplaces. Giving your attendant or nurse cash to go pick up your medicine and letting them keep the change is fraud. In some states packing your kid lunch if you are on free lunch is fraud. Because of how strictly benefits programs are defined and regulated, for the recipients, basic human acts and impulses are defined as fraud.

If people want to talk about benefits fraud, they should be talking about third party administrators, nursing homes, and farms. That’s where big ticket fraud that is malicious, deliberate, and with the aim of ripping off the government happens. It’s the province of large scale service providers and contractors, not people who use benefits or the workers directly assisting them. So unless you’re explicitly talking about that, shut the fuck up about “oh I’m sure there *is* fraud.”

(via anistarrose)

reasonsforhope:

New Mexico made childcare free. It lifted 120,000 people above the poverty line
The state, which has long ranked worst in the US for child wellbeing, became the first and only in the country to offer free childcare to a
the Guardian

“The state, which has long ranked worst in the US for child wellbeing, became the first and only in the country to offer free childcare to a majority of families

There was a moment, just before the pandemic, when Lisset Sanchez thought she might have to drop out of college because the cost of keeping her three children in daycare was just too much.

Even with support from the state, she and her husband were paying $800 a month – about half of what Sanchez and her husband paid for their mortgage in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

But during the pandemic, that cost went down to $0. And Sanchez was not only able to finish college, but enroll in nursing school. With a scholarship that covered her tuition and free childcare, Sanchez could afford to commute to school, buy groceries for her growing family – even after she had two more children – and pay down the family’s mortgage and car loan.

“We are a one-income household,” said Sanchez, whose husband works while she is in school. Having free childcare “did help tremendously”.

…Three years ago, New Mexico became the first state in the nation to offer free childcare to a majority of families. The United States has no federal, universal childcare – and ranks 40th on a Unicef ranking of 41 high-income countries’ childcare policies, while maintaining some of the highest childcare costs in the world. Expanding on pandemic-era assistance, New Mexico made childcare free for families earning up to 400% of the federal poverty level, or about $124,000 for a family of four. That meant about half of New Mexican children now qualified.

In one of the poorest states in the nation, where the median household income is half that and childcare costs for two children could take up 80% of a family’s income, the impact was powerful. The state, which had long ranked worst in the nation for child wellbeing, saw its poverty rate begin to fall.

As the state simultaneously raised wages for childcare workers, and became the first to base its subsidy reimbursement rates on the actual cost of providing such care, early childhood educators were also raised out of poverty. In 2020, 27.4% of childcare providers – often women of color – were living in poverty. By 2024, that number had fallen to 16%.

During the state’s recent legislative session, lawmakers approved a “historic” increase in funding for education, including early childhood education, that might improve those numbers even further...

When now-governor Michelle Lujan Grisham announced her candidacy in late 2016, she emphasized her desire to address the state’s low child wellbeing rating. And when she took office in January 2018, she described her aim to have a “moonshot for education”: major investments in education across the state, from early childhood through college.

That led to her opening the state’s early childhood education and care department in 2019 – and tapping Groginksy, who had overseen efforts to improve early childhood policies in Washington DC, to run it. Then, in 2020, Lujan Grisham threw her support behind a bill in the state legislature that would establish an Early Childhood Trust Fund: by investing $300m – plus budget surpluses each year, largely from oil and gas revenue – the state hoped to distribute a percentage to fund early childhood education each year.

But then, just weeks after the trust fund was established, the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic.

“Covid created a really enormous moment for childcare,” said Heinz. “We had somewhat of a national reckoning about the fact that we don’t have a workforce if we don’t have childcare.”

As federal funding flooded into New Mexico, the state directed millions of dollars toward childcare, including by boosting pay for entry-level childcare providers to $15 an hour, expanding eligibility for free childcare to families making 400% of the poverty level, and becoming the first state in the nation to set childcare subsidy rates at the true cost of delivering care.

As pandemic-era relief funding dried up in 2022, the governor and Democratic lawmakers proposed another way to generate funds for childcare – directing a portion of the state’s Land Grant Permanent Fund to early childhood education and care. Like the Early Childhood Trust Fund, the permanent fund – which was established when New Mexico became a state – was funded by taxes on fossil fuel revenues. That November, 70% of New Mexican voters approved a constitutional amendment directing 1.25% of the fund to early childhood programs.

By then, the Early Childhood Trust Fund had grown exponentially – due to the boom in oil and gas prices. Beginning with $300m in 2020, the fund had swollen to over $9bn by the end of 2024…

New Mexico has long had one of the highest “official poverty rates” in the nation.

But using a metric that accounts for social safety net programs – like universal childcare – that’s slowly shifting. According to “supplemental poverty” data, 17.1% of New Mexicans fell below the federal “supplemental” poverty line from 2013 to 2015 (a metric that takes into account cost of living and social supports) – making it the fifth poorest state in the nation by that measure. But today, that number has fallen to 10.9%, one of the biggest changes in the country, amounting to 120,000 fewer New Mexicans living in poverty.

New Mexico’s child wellbeing ranking – which is based heavily on “official poverty” rankings – probably won’t budge, says Heinz because “the amount of money coming into households, that they have to run their budget, remains very low.

“However, the thing New Mexico has done that’s fairly tremendous, I think, is around families not having to have as much money going out,” she said.

During the recent legislative session, lawmakers deepened their investments in early childhood education even further, approving a 21.6% increase of $170m for education programs – including early childhood education. However, other legislation that advocates had hoped might pass stalled in the legislature, including a bill to require businesses to offer paid family medical leave…

In her budget recommendations, Lujan Grisham asked the state to up its commitment to early childhood policies, by raising the wage floor for childcare workers to $18 an hour and establishing a career lattice for them. Because of that, Gonzalez has been able to start working on her associate’s in childhood education at Central New Mexico Community College where her tuition is waived. The governor also backed a house bill that will increase the amount of money distributed annually from the Early Childhood Trust Fund – since its dramatic growth due to oil and gas revenues.

Although funding childcare through the Land Grant Permanent Fund is unique to New Mexico – and a handful of other states with permanent funds, like Alaska, Texas and North Dakota – Heinz says the Early Childhood Trust fund “holds interesting lessons for other states” about investing a percentage of revenues into early childhood programs.

In New Mexico, those revenues come largely from oil and gas, but New Mexico Voices for Children has put forth recommendations about how the state can continue funding childcare while transitioning away from fossil fuels, largely by raising taxes on the state’s wealthiest earners. Although other states have not yet followed in New Mexico’s footsteps, a growing number are making strides to offer free pre-K to a majority of their residents.

Heinz cautions that change won’t occur overnight. “What New Mexico is trying to do here is play a very long game. And so I am not without worry that people might give it five years, and it’s been almost five years now, and then say, where are the results? Why is everything not better?” she said. “This is generational change” that New Mexico is only just beginning to witness as the first children who were recipients of universal childcare start school.”

-via The Guardian, April 11, 2025

(via the-tao-of-fandom)

epersonae:

greatmountainfloofsquatch:

thoughtportal:

Months after a viral haka was performed in New Zealand parliament, the controversial bill that sparked it has now been defeated. The Treaty Principles bill sought to redefine the which is New Zealand’s founding document. The bill was brought by ACT Party leader David Seymour, who believed the current interpretation of the treaty gave more rights to Māori people than non-Māori New Zealanders. After two years of debate and nationwide protest, the bill was voted down by all but one party.

ABC News Australia

11 to 112? Amazing. And well done.

The news link in the main post wasn’t working for me, so found this instead

New Zealand: Treaty Principles Bill voted down after widespread outrage
The controversial Treaty Principles Bill had sought to reinterpret the country's founding document.
bbc.com

(via the-tao-of-fandom)

furryprovocateur:

i’m not invested in “harry potter was never good” conversations because it doesn’t matter if it’s good or not. quality does not positively correlate with socio-political praxis. it could be a really good piece of art, but if it’s still supporting a vocal proponent of transmisogyny and transphobia, i don’t give a shit. harry potter good or bad, who cares, its success is unambiguiously providing financial and social capital for a morally despicable person.

(via vimesbootstheory)

gremlingirlsmell:

nonryenary:

heavenlivebytalkingheads:

okay I’ve been biting my tongue on this one a bit but the odds of any money you give to a uk trans or especially LGBT charity reaching a single uk transfem is vanishingly unlikely. the primary “resource” these orgs provide is jobs for trans people who can make it in a professional environment, and the vast majority of trans hires are tme (and thus unaffected by the judgement!).

if you know a charity run by transfems take a punt but otherwise please donate to fundraisers instead.

FiveforFive - a transfem and trans women collective fund
FiveforFive is a collective crowdfund for UK trans women, trans fem people and organisations which support them.
fiveforfive.co.uk

Boosting to say donate to Five for Five, run by trans fems and distributed your money directly to trans fems.

Many other LGBTQ+ charities (like AKT, Gendered Intelligence) provide counseling, host support groups, weekend camps, and they do good work - but as OP said this is not money that’s directly in the pockets of those most in need and affected by this recent UK ruling. (Gendered Intelligence is trans-led and does more with their funding as opposed to Mermaids, and AKT directly helps homeless queer youth by helping them find housing. Trans Legal Clinic also provide housing services + are known for their support with transitioning legally + trans healthcare advocacy.)

boosting the boost. the way it works is they randomly spread the donated money between 2 charities/orgs and 3 individual transfem crowdfunds at the end of each month.

if youre a transfem in the UK you can submit your crowdfund/PayPal/etc via a google form, theyll keep your data private

(via mysterioussinkhole)