Informed – Page 36 – Confluence Daily

Reading Time: 8 minutes I woke up this morning with the powerful need to write down what I want to happen in our country, politically.

I’m going to share these ideas with you not because I want you to agree with me, but because I want you to consider your own perspective on these issues and come to your own conclusions.

Then, take a hard look at the candidates on your slate next month. Where do they stand on the issue vs. where you stand? If it’s unclear, find a way to ask them.

Then, vote for the people who are closest to your point of view. They may not be 100% in alignment with you – but vote for the one who’s 80% there over the one who’s 10% with you.

Informed

October 10, 2018 Confluence

Shea Depmore: Kavanaugh Cure Trump Detox

Reading Time: < 1 minute Need to detox from Donald Trump and the Kavanaugh hearings? Need help staying informed without going insane? Allow yourself to detox from Trump with this week’s mantra: November is Coming.

This is a parody video… hopefully, that’s obvious. But if it’s not, enjoy the healing Reiki-like weirdness.

Informed

October 9, 2018 Confluence

Movie Review: A Star is Born, (Spoiler Alert)

Reading Time: 3 minutes A Star is Born made me feel like I’d just spent two hours and seventeen minutes watching people I cared about fall in love and then lose themselves and in the end lose each other. I don’t want to see this movie again and it’s not because it’s not well done. I don’t want to see it again because it’s done too well.

Bottom line: Do not go see this movie if you’re looking to feel good when you walk out of the theater. You won’t. However, if you’ve got some good mood to spare, it’s worth the price of admission to feel something deeply that will distract you from all the politics in the world – at least for two hours and a few minutes

Informed

October 9, 2018 Confluence

Vox: The rape culture of the 1980s, explained by Sixteen Candles

Reading Time: 9 minutes The dominant cultural narrative at the time of Brett Kavanaugh’s high school experience was the one offered by Sixteen Candles. And it taught any girl who went to a party and got assaulted by an acquaintance that whatever happened to her was surely her fault, that it proved she was the wrong kind of girl, that it was funny, that she had nothing whatsoever to complain about, and that it absolutely wasn’t rape.

Under those circumstances, the mystery is not why “any person would continue to go to … ten parties over a two-year period where women were routinely gang raped and not report it,” as Sen. Graham argued. The mystery is why anyone ever came forward with their story at all.

Informed

October 5, 2018 Confluence

Saturday, October 6, 2018 will be the day the patriarchy died

Reading Time: 3 minutes We’re overdue for a revolution and there cannot be a revolution without women — and you know what? Women did not want this. We didn’t want to have to take our rage to a bloody battlefield. We hoped for the evolution of men who would break the patriarchy themselves. They have not. The problem with that is systems of oppression are not sustainable, no matter how badly oppressors want them to be.

So, here we are, at the party they created, the party we weren’t invited to – but we’re here anyway, and we’re going to burn it down.

We’re going to burn it down, not because we’re angry, but because it’s time.
It’s ours to do and they’ve left us no choice but to do it.

Informed

October 4, 2018 Confluence

CNN: Brooke Baldwin-This face behind Trump startled me

Reading Time: < 1 minute CNN’s Brooke Baldwin says the scene atPresident Trump’s rally during which he mocked Brett Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford was “absent of soul.”

Informed

October 3, 2018 Confluence

Possibilities: From Tokenism to Community

Reading Time: 8 minutes Veterans of racial justice work have discovered that tokenism is often coupled with assimilation. When a person gets chosen to “break the glass ceiling,” implicit in that selection is the message that “We invited you into our exclusive group. You represent (x) (x=marginalized group). You must act like us, speak like us, behave like us and be loyal to us, what we stand for, our values, our ways, and our foundations.”

This action of tokenism is done as “the method of limited access that gives false hope to those left behind and blames them for ‘not making it.’ Tokenism is a form of co-optation. It takes the brightest and best of the most assimilated, reward them with position and money (though rarely genuine leadership and power) and then uses them as a model of what is necessary to succeed, even though there are often no more openings for others who may follow the model.”

Informed

October 2, 2018 Confluence

Kavanaugh, Rape Culture, and the Time for an Important Course Correction

Reading Time: 6 minutes What if there were a groundswell of not just women but men, all calling out the entitled mentality that normalizes the displays of dominance included in every assault? There are those who lament that every small physical gesture is scrutinized and labeled, these days. I think this is a small price to pay as we try to change a worldwide culture where rape is a weapon and a silent epidemic rages, in the form of the indelible, excruciating memories of the victims, without any real consequences for the vast majority of their tormentors.

Informed

October 2, 2018 Confluence

Why “I’m not racist” is only half the story | Robin DiAngelo

Reading Time: 3 minutes While we who are white tend to be fragile in that it doesn’t take much to upset us around race, the impact of our response is not fragile at all. It’s a kind of weaponized defensiveness, weaponized hurt feelings. And it functions really, really effectively to repel the challenge. As a white person I move through the world racially comfortable virtually 24/7. It is exceptional for me to be outside of my racial comfort zone, and most of my life I’ve been warned not to go outside my racial comfort zone.

Informed

October 1, 2018 Confluence

CNN: These images of women around Kavanaugh evoke a familiar alibi

Reading Time: 5 minutes It is also the case that this is a way of rhetorically displacing the victim — if the wife and family are the injured parties, the woman who has brought forth the charge is understood as victimizing a woman and children too.

A great deal of empirical evidence has shown that people who commit acts of intimate and sexual violence often do it more than once. But it is also true that people can commit horrific acts of violence against others and still be good to those they love. The psychological and cultural inability to come to terms with that reality results in many victims being disbelieved and treated quite badly.