Amazing how crass this culture is. I know, the whole slavery DNA and before, expropriation of not just the land and culture, but the body whole of Original Peoples, and all the massacres, the lynchings, the endless firing squads against strikers, workers, the murders by the law, and worse, structural homicide of this land, granted, all pretty disgusting.
Once you’re labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination — employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service — are suddenly legal. As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and largely less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.
– Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow
Dump trucks spread sand on a Fort Lauderdale, Florida, beach as part of a beach nourishment program. Photo by Jim West/Alamy Stock Photo
Hakai Magazine — In the beginning, there was the beach, and the people saw that it was good. Then the people said, “Let there be houses, too.” And the people saw that the houses were good.
Then the beach started to erode, and the people said, “Wait, this isn’t good.”
Lost in the overall dreariness of Donald Trump’s victory on election night was the decent amount of better news on more local levels. The decriminalization of marijuana continued its forward progress passing on eight of the nine public referendums on which that some version of issue appeared. Though perhaps the most intriguing news came out of Los Angeles where voters overwhelmingly passed a referendum that will fund a public transportation system that the city has been haltingly working towards for decades.
Any act that tries to contribute towards ending the prevalent suffering caused by absolute poverty is, in itself, the purest expression of a sharing economy via the heart, via our maturity and via common sense, especially if that act is focused on trying to persuade our political representatives to commit to sharing the resources of the world.
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I reside in Orlando, a city laden with socio-economic facades which echo the theme park set pieces for which the city is best known – Shiny on the outside and hollow on the inside. If you tilt your head up in the downtown area, you’ll see glossy clean structures that speak to affluence, but it’s difficult to ignore the contradictions on street level where homeless swallow their pride and beg for money, which is not unlike most American cities.
In January 2016, a medical doctor noted his surgery, the Brighton Homeless Healthcare centre, had seen 21 deaths last year alone. His figures also include 15 deaths in 2013 and 15 in 2014. Winter is fast approaching and preventive actions need to be explored. In July 2016, doctors have claimed the state of emergency accommodation in the city could contribute to a rise in homeless deaths. The doctor noted all the deaths were preventable.
In his article, “How Genuine Are NGOs?” Joseph Mudingu stated that NGOs “are the vehicles through which the exploiters seek to influence the opinions of ‘civil society’.” Thus it would not be surprising, given America’s pivot to Asia in response to its waning economic influence, that some NGOs would be prodded to excoriate a designated enemy — even though that enemy country does not surround other countries with its military bases, neither does it threaten violence nor militarily attack other countries; conv
And it was interesting, because afterwards, there was a party, and there were couples who were arguing. Basically, the men, in general, didn’t like the movie. They were like, ‘I had hard times, he should have gotten a job, he should have pulled himself together, he had a kid.’ They were very tough with him. And the women were, ‘No, you don’t understand, he had mental illness, he was broken, he lost his wife.’ They were much more understanding toward him. I just stood back and thought, look at this.”
In search of a haircut, I found Analog, Eugene’s favorite barber shop according to Yelp. Also a tattoo parlor. Upstairs, the walls are lined with LP album covers of the 60s, 70s and 80s, with good tunes on the sound system. But it was too busy that morning, with a long wait.
