This is a personal blog chock full of my favorite fandoms and posts on social justice issues, and sometimes the ways these intersect. Feel free to message me about my posts and our shared fandoms: I love Saga, Avatar: the Last Airbender, Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy X, Harry Potter, the Office, Parks and Rec, Portlandia, Game of Thrones, Hunger Games, Adventure Time and some anime here and there: Sailor Moon (July 2014!), Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Ouran High School Host Club, Sword Art Online and Kamisama Hajimemashita. If you want to subscribe but want to avoid seeing triggering posts on your dash, please let me know and I'll tag it with something you suggest! My posts range from the lighthearted and ridiculously cute to downright heavy shit, not gonna lie.
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<b><p></b> <b>Bernie Sanders:</b> These are the issues, this is how we fix them.<p/><b>Hillary Clinton:</b> I'd be the first woman president. I regret *insert thing* Also, I think it's 100% okay to spy on the American people<p/><b>Jim Webb:</b> uhhh *talks about not getting time to speak* *gets cut off* *cries*<p/><b>Martin O'Malley:</b> *sounding high* clean energy by 2050 *smiles*<p/><b>Lincoln Chafee:</b> I don't really know. I haven't had any scandals.<p/></p><p/></p>
Black Teen With White Parents Mistaken For Burglar, Assaulted By Cops In His Own Home
‘Put your hands on the door, I was like, ‘For what? This is my house.’ Police pointed at photos of white people hanging on the wall and told him that he was lying.
A North Carolina teen was recently assaulted and pepper sprayed by police in his own home, after he was mistaken for a burglar. 18-year-old DeShawn Currie has been living with foster parents Ricky and Stacy Tyler in Wake County, North Carolina for about a year.
The Tylers love DeShawn as their own son and they have taken him into their home, in hopes to provide him the safe and loving environment that he needs to thrive in the most important years of his life.
Unfortunately, some of the Tyler’s neighbors were not familiar with the family dynamics of the home, and decided to call the police to report a burglary when they saw the young man entering his home after school one day. DeShawn did not climb through a window or struggle to get inside, but simply walked through the unlocked door of the home. The only thing that actually made his neighbors suspicious, was the color of his skin.
When police arrived on the scene they treated DeShawn like a criminal without asking any questions.
“They was like, ‘Put your hands on the door, I was like, ‘For what? This is my house.’ I was like, ‘Why are y’all in here?” DeShawn said in an interview.
When DeShawn asked the officers why they were in his home, they pointed at photos of white people hanging on the wall and told him that he was lying.
“I’m feeling comfortable, I had moved into my room, and I’m feeling like I’m loved. And then when they come in and they just profile me and say that I’m not who I am. And that I do not stay here because there was white kids on the wall, that really made me mad,” DeShawn later told reporters.
During the entire altercation, police were shouting profanity at the young man, and pointing multiple guns at his face. When DeShawn stood firm and insisted that he was in fact in his own home, police attacked him with pepper spray.
When Stacy Tyler came home from work she saw her son DeShawn in the driveway being treated by paramedics for the injuries that police had inflicted.
“My 5-year-old last night, she looked at me and said, ‘Mama I don’t understand why they hated our brother, and they had to come in and hurt him,”Stay Tyler told reporters.
“Everything that we’ve worked so hard for in the past years was stripped away yesterday in just a matter of moments,” father Ricky Tyler added.
The police department has defended their actions, saying that that DeShawn did not obey the officer’s orders to the letter, despite the fact that they were intruders in his home and had no right to be there barking orders at him.
Who says Mexico was the land of tacos and burritos?
Let me teach a little something about Mexican culture. Contrary to popular belief that we are all burrito/taco/chili with beans eaters, that is HIGHLY incorrect! (In fact, we didn’t even invent Chili!) Our vast variety of gastronomy is known as the most renowned in the world, and our food has been famously stamped with the logo by many people as, “There is no other food like Mexico’s food.” We have a huge variety of dishes, as many as 200 different dishes from EACH state of Mexico. We have more than 30 ways of preparing eggs, and over 450 ways to use chile in recipes! These top 10 above are my personal favorite Mexican dishes, where I will also link you the recipes to each one in English, in order! With a new movie coming out in October following Hispanic culture, and Dia De Los Muertos slowly creeping upon us, I felt it a fun idea to share these amazing delicacies with all of you!
I just so fucking hate this “people are SO STUPID for BUYING stuff!!!” mentality where everyone is stereotyped as these brainless consumers falling for some kind of trick.
Look, us average lower class consumers are not babies. We know our money goes to huge companies that are sometimes evil, we know they advertise to us all day so we will do that. When we go to McDonalds or the movies or Wal-Mart we’re trying to eat and enjoy life on a budget with very few other options. Sometimes we save up and treat loved ones to something like Disneyworld or Universal Studios because it exists and might be fun.
Not everybody has the disposable income, time and energy available to them to only ever give their money to indie art and organic local farmers and shit, it’s not an issue of ignorance and gullibility.
There are lots of things to criticize about capitalism but human beings trying to get by without a whole lot of choices are not the bad guys.
Is your latte too hot? Mine was this morning. I was at the bustling Oasis shopping center in Kampala, Uganda, and I took one sip and then spilt it all over me. You know who else has these problems? The local Ugandans that frequent this shop, and make up the majority of it’s clientele.
As Africa stabilizes across the continent, Westerners forget that average daily problems in Europe or North America are not that far off from that of the African middle class. Our smart phones sometimes freeze up. That’s annoying. The DJ is playing shit, so we leave the club.
Which is not to say that there aren’t problems. It’s not to pretend that all of Kampala or Nairobi or Kigali is a paradise of African wealth where the biggest problem is a warm beer. There is real, stark, damaging poverty here. But there is similar poverty in Clichy Sous Bois in Paris. There is similar poverty in Brooklyn. In Chicago. The outskirts of Amsterdam.
The idea that an African can’t have similar issues to those living in London is a mistake. It is a mistake rooted in the idea that Europe is somehow superior or has vast amounts of wealth. In reality, the East African GDP has been steadily on the rise for years, whereas the economic outlook in both North America and Europe have been steadily declining. Angola just gave a loan to their former colonialists, Portugal. Our cities now have thumping clubs, eclectic cuisine and most of these places are owned and invested in by locals.
Stop feeling bad for Africa. It doesn’t need your pity.
If you want to do something to help those who survive on very little, try investing in it. Instead of buying Tom’s shoes which give away free shoes (and therefore remove jobs from hardworking Africans making shoes) invest in Sole Rebels. A woman-owned Ethiopian based shoe company that pays their workers a livable wage.
Tonight I am going with Ugandan friends and some expats to watch the Poland vs. England match, live on DSTV at my local pub. I will eat grilled tilapia and drink some beer. This is not an extraordinary life here. This is the new Kampala average. This continent is far from perfect. Uganda is far from perfect. But it is getting there, and if you think for one minute Africans do not experience massages, cupcake shops, foam on our coffee, car trouble, banking woes and hangovers after too much fun, you are dead wrong.
It’s not all flies on babies. Welcome to the real Africa.
