And the National Parks Services said, “lol, no” and went rogue and we were all like, “I was not expecting the park rangers to lead the resistance, none of the dystopian novels I read prepared me for this but cool.”
i’m loving all this violent response to nazis stuff that’s going around but i also want to say like be careful out there because not all nazis are fucking clowns like richard spencer. most of em carry weapons and will not hesitate to cut your ass up and leave you dying in a dumpster. if you don’t know how to fight, don’t take one on without backup. and even if you do know how to fight, watch yourself. i don’t want to see any of you getting killed
WE NEED 3 SENATORS TO CHANGE THEIR VOTES TO PREVENT DeVos FROM BEING CONFIRMED!!!
The vote to confirm Betsy DeVos as Sec of Education was delayed. The hearing of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions will now be held at 10 a.m. Jan. 31, according to an advisory from the committee.
And now to act (esp my ME, GA, NC and SC friends)! Betsy DeVos is up for confirmation as U.S. Education Secretary, and many, many educators have expressed strongly that she is not qualified to ensure quality education in this country.
Please consider calling one of the following Republican Senators (key in the confirmation vote) to express your opinion on the appointment. At least 3 of these need to be convinced in order to block DeVos’ nomination. Don’t email. Don’t tweet. Don’t complain on Facebook. Call them!
Then, PLEASE SHARE WIDELY:
If you live in one of the states represented below, PLEASE call YOUR Senator, If you don’t, pick one and call him/her:
Susan Collins (ME) 207.622.8414..&..202.224.2523
Lamar Alexander (TN) 615.736.5129..&..202.224.4944
Lisa Murkowski (AK) 907.586.7277..&..202.224.6665
Johnny Isakson (GA) 770.661.0999..&..202.224.3643
Orrin Hatch (UT) 801.524.4380..&..202.224.5251
Richard Burr (NC) 336.631.5125..&..202.224.3154..&.. 910.251.1058..&..828.350.2437
Michael Enzi (WY) 202.224.3424
Dr. Bill Cassidy (LA) 202.224.5824
Pat Roberts (KS) 202.224.4774
Tim Scott (SC) 202.224.6121
Rand Paul (KY) 202.224.4343
Battlestations, my Yankee Activist peeps
gonna call lamar alexander tomorrow
Booooooost
CALL YOUR DANG REPRESENTATIVES
Susan Collins (ME) 207.622.8414..&..202.224.2523 Lamar Alexander (TN) 615.736.5129..&..202.224.4944 Lisa Murkowski (AK) 907.586.7277..&..202.224.6665 Johnny Isakson (GA) 770.661.0999..&..202.224.3643 Orrin Hatch (UT) 801.524.4380..&..202.224.5251 Richard Burr (NC) 336.631.5125..&..202.224.3154..&.. 910.251.1058..&..828.350.2437 Michael Enzi (WY) 202.224.3424 Dr. Bill Cassidy (LA) 202.224.5824 Pat Roberts (KS) 202.224.4774 Tim Scott (SC) 202.224.6121 Rand Paul (KY) 202.224.4343
CALL THEM AND MAKE YOUR VOICES HEARD
Devos LITERALLY SUPPORTS CHILD LABOUR
This woman is not a politician she’s a fucking disney villain
Call your representatives and tell them to vote AGAINST this repulsive creature
In light of threats to the National Park Service on Twitter, follow @AltUSNatParkSer on twitter for more of the National Park Service’s unexpected rebellion.
People talk about politics as if it’s this isolated, abstract concept that only matters at election time. Somebody’s politics is their world view. It’s whether they think certain human beings deserve rights. It’s how they think the world should be. And if somebody thinks that the world should be colder, meaner, less accepting and downright hostile to people that are different to them, then sure as fuck is the friendship over.
I got pregnant three years ago. I was 22, it was a brand-new relationship, but I was adamant that I was having a baby. I’ve always taken motherhood very seriously. I was abused — the product of people who shouldn’t have had kids — then adopted. I felt so strongly that this was the most important job of my life.
I wasn’t at risk of genetic defects, so during the anatomy scan it didn’t even occur to me that they were looking for abnormalities. Me, my boyfriend, and my parents all went to the appointment, and when they said I was having a girl, my mom jumped up and down hollering as if she were at a football game. My boyfriend cried.
I was home alone when I got a call from the genetic specialist who told me that the tests were positive for trisomy 13. I thought that was Down syndrome and thought, Okay, I can do that. But then she started apologizing: “I’m so sorry, these babies usually miscarry. It’s a miracle she’s made it this far.” I said I didn’t understand, and she explained that my baby could pass any day, be still-born, or die soon after. I Googled “trisomy 13” and saw horrific pictures of babies without noses or mouths. I sat there and sobbed while I held my belly apologizing to her over and over and over again. I called my mom and said, “My baby’s going to die. My baby’s going to die.”
The doctor cleared her schedule and saw me later that day. She said: “You need to make a decision. You’re already 23 weeks and the state of Ohio has restrictions that impact your options.” She explained I could terminate or carry the pregnancy to its extent. At the time, 24 weeks was the cutoff for abortion in Ohio or else you had to travel to another state. [In December 2016, Republican governor John Kasich signed a law that reduced this cutoff to 20 weeks.] We only had days to decide, and even then there were waiting lists and the expense was horrendous. I had never felt so alone.
The counselor said my baby wasn’t in pain and there was no risk to either of our lives if we continued the pregnancy. I thought, Let’s try to make some memories while we can. I really enjoyed being pregnant. I loved having this purpose, and I thought as long as she’s not suffering, I think that her being here with us right now is the best we can do. And so … we tried.
At 29 weeks, my ankles and legs got extremely swollen. I was disassociating and became lightheaded, so I left work. I started cramping and ended up in the hospital. There were so many tests, which ultimately concluded that this was an emergency situation. [Jessica was at risk of having a seizure, and potentially dying, if labor wasn’t induced.] I wasn’t thinking, I’m terminating this pregnancy in order to save my life, but that’s what my paperwork said.
The doctor was very clear. He said, “You need to decide whether you want to induce now or come back in a week and get your blood pressure checked again — and I will induce you then.” I lived 45 minutes away from any hospital, on a farm without neighbors. It was a bitterly cold January. He was afraid I’d have a seizure and not get to them in time. That worried me, too.
But I knew that if I was induced, there was no chance my daughter would survive. Even if I carried her to term, her survival rate was very low, less than 5 percent. Another decision I had to make was telling the doctors that I did not want them to resuscitate the baby.
I was in labor for 32 hours.
I declined to have her monitored during labor because I didn’t want to sit there listening to her pass away. So they’d periodically come in and quietly listen for a heartbeat. The last time, at 1 a.m., they couldn’t hear it. I made them bring my family back into the room, and about a half an hour later it was time. She was born after three pushes, and at just two and a half pounds. Her heart was still beating, but she didn’t cry or breathe or make any sort of sound. There was mention of oxygen, but I said, “Please, just let her go.” They put her on my chest, and my boyfriend came and cut the cord.
She stayed alive for two and a half hours. They called it when her heart stopped.
When I made the decision to “voluntarily” induce, I felt like I was picking myself over my child. I wouldn’t wish that on the most evil person on Earth. A funeral director arrived with a huge white cloth. He said, “I have to cover her face so people don’t know when I’m walking down the hall [with such a small body].” I handed her over, and that was the last time that I saw her. I didn’t want a casket on display at the funeral; that tiny box would have been way too much. I collected her ashes a week later.
Many people don’t understand why this experience reinforced my pro-choice beliefs. Now more than ever, I firmly believe: No conditions. No restrictions. I can’t imagine being in that situation and being denied the dignity of making a choice. That little bit of control was so empowering. Nobody just wakes up after being pregnant for over 20 weeks and says, “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
When Trump said those things about late-term abortion during the debate, I was so angry. What must the rest of the world think of us? I have friends in the U.K. and Canada saying, “What the hell? You can have 30 guns but you can’t have a dignified, comfortable abortion?”
And while we’re getting abortions and making painful decisions about our bodies, Trump is fucking tweeting.
Google could launch an effort to keep trolls and bad information at bay, with a program that would rank websites according to veracity, and sort results according to those rankings. Currently, the search engine ranks pages according to popularity, which means that pages containing unsubstantiated celebrity gossip or conspiracy theories, for example, show up very high.
This feels like the moment when Han Solo comes roaring back in the Millennium Falcon and knock’s Darth Vader out of commission to give Luke a clear run at the Death Star exhaust port. “Yeahoo!”
DO IT, FULFILL YOUR CORPORATE MISSION AND ‘DON’T BE EVIL’
When you struggle with your mental health on a daily basis, it can be hard to take action on the things that matter most to you. The mental barriers anxiety creates often appear insurmountable. But sometimes, when you really need to, you can break those barriers down. This week, with encouragement from some great people on the internet, I pushed against my anxiety and made some calls to members of our government. Here’s a comic about how you can do that, too. (Resources and transcript below.)
Motivational resources: There are a lot! Here are a few I really like:
Sharon Wong posted a great series of tweets that helped me manage my phone anxiety and make some calls.
Kelsey is tweeting pretty much daily with advice and reminders about calling representatives. I found this tweet an especially great reminder that calls aren’t nearly as big a deal as anxiety makes them out to be.
Informational resources: There are a lot of these, as well! These three are good places to start:
my knowledge of authoritarian regimes and state oppressive tactics tells me that this new administration is trying to suppress resistance and cause fear through issuing a surge of oppressive policies and other actions in its first week. attempting to overwhelm us. to fatigue us, to make us lose hope in the possibility of resisting. his friendship with putin is one of many things that makes this make sense 4 me - these are the kinds of overt oppressive tactics the russian state uses on its citizens. remember resistance is always possible, and the use of methods to suppress resistance always indicates fear of resistance.
This is the advice of every expert on nations that gave way to the rise of authoritarian regimes. They all say the same thing. RESIST. The citizens must resist, and continue to resist. It is possible and it is the only way.
the use of methods to suppress resistance always indicates fear of resistance.
