Informed – Page 38 – Confluence Daily

Reading Time: 2 minutes That Dr. Ford carried this trauma with her – carries it today – does not surprise me. It would surprise me if I had a female friend who didn’t carry similar trauma, really.

What deeply saddens me is that the trauma which has outlined her life for over 30 years is completely unmemorable to Judge Kavanaugh. And if he wasn’t the perpetrator, then it’s unmemorable to whoever that man was.

Because it was meaningless to him. And it was everything to her.

Informed

September 13, 2018 Confluence

Female Chief Terminates 850 Child Marriages in Malawi and Sends Girls Back to School

Reading Time: 2 minutes A Malawian female chief has established a new law to prevent child marriage in Malawi and has terminated approximately 850 child marriages across the country to date.

Theresa Kachindamoto, a senior chief in the Dedza district of Malawi, claimed that her decision to take a stand came from her frustration over seeing 12-year-old girls walking around with babies on their hips.

Informed

September 13, 2018 Confluence

Evacuating While Black, Brown, or Poor Highlights the Unexpected Benefits of Privilege

Reading Time: 4 minutes While millions of Americans on the Carolina and Georgia coasts are filling up their gas tanks and evacuating their homes to safety, millions of others aren’t. As we watch the coverage showing people who aren’t evacuating the same question always comes up. Why doesn’t everyone just leave?

Yes, some people stay because they enjoy the thrill.
Some people stay because they want to protect their property.
Some people stay for the hurricane party.

However, a lot of people who should evacuate stay for reasons many people can’t understand that have nothing to do with the party. For a variety of reasons people who live in poverty often find it impossible to evacuate. Additionally for many reasons people of color are disproportionately affected by hurricanes.

Informed

September 12, 2018 Confluence

THANK YOU, JUDY CHICAGO!

Reading Time: 7 minutes I remember the moment I walked into the Egyptian Ballroom in Atlanta’s Fox Theater to see an art exhibition called The Dinner Party: Judy Chicago’s feminist-awakening homage to women—and my first real history lesson! It was early October 1982 and I didn’t know what I was in for; yet I could feel the womb of womanly beauty and power and mystery all around me. It was as though I was reclaiming something, but it’d be years before I had the words to express it.

Informed

September 10, 2018 Confluence

America’s Biggest Conspiracy Theory Is Real: The Racist Truth Behind the Myth of Voter Fraud

Reading Time: 7 minutes Like most conspiracy theories, until you read the facts, it all seems too crazy to be true.

It sounds as preposterous as the government poisoning black people in St. Louis with big fans. The U.S. vote suppression scheme seems as crazy as a four-decade medical experiment on black Alabama farmers. Saying that North Carolina Republicans prevent black people from voting is almost as ludicrous as announcing that the state had a Department of Eugenics to prevent black babies from being born, which is to say …

It is 100 percent real.

Informed

September 6, 2018 Confluence

25th Amendment: The Political Apocalypse

Reading Time: 4 minutes Both the 25th amendment and impeachment have deeply painful ramifications for our nation. Our republican led congress seems to lack the will to take on the duty of protecting our nation from a madman. This is why the midterms are so critical. However, the NYT op-ed gives me both hope and a shudder of terror at the prospect that impeachment is not our only way out. “Adults in the room” are doing what they have to do. If it turns out the executing the 25th is what must be done, Trump may be gone but chances are high no one will like it when the dust settles.

Informed

September 5, 2018 Confluence

Kakenya Ntaiya: A Girl Who Demanded School

Reading Time: < 1 minute Kakenya Ntaiya made a deal with her father: She would undergo a traditional Maasai rite of passage, female circumcision if he would let her go to high school. Ntaiya tells the fearless story of continuing on to college, and of working with her village elders to build a school for girls in her community, changing the destiny of 125 young women.

Informed

September 5, 2018 Confluence

QAnon: The Conspiracy Craziness You’ll Be Hearing More About

Reading Time: 7 minutes At a recent Trump rally in Tampa, the mass public was exposed to a movement that’s been lurking in the darker corners of the internet quite some time. Q is a fringe movement that discusses, digests, and dissects several loosely connected and vaguely defined — and baseless — conspiracy theories and the numbers of people following Q are growing rapidly.

In one shot on Fox News of this rally, the camera angle of the president was partially blocked by a sign in the crowd reading “We Are Q.” It wasn’t the only sign supporting Q in the audience. Some attendees wore T-shirts with a blocky Q. Others held up signs with the letter. It raised some questions and some eyebrows.

Informed

August 30, 2018 Confluence

The Week: Please Be Sensitive to our Snowflake President’s Need for Safe Space

Reading Time: 3 minutes Trump doesn’t want a free press. He wants free praise. After Democrats failed to clap for him at his State of the Union address in January, he accused them of treason. He admitted he hired Omarosa Manigault Newman because she “said GREAT things about me.” He clearly revoked former CIA Director John Brennan’s security clearance because he said mean things about him — mean but true. On Twitter, Trump quotes Fox News hosts who flatter him the way I quote my old flames who told me — and I quote — “you’re sooooo sexy.”

Informed

August 28, 2018 Confluence

We hereby reclaim our Mollie

Reading Time: 5 minutes “It is not your right to exacerbate this grievous act by hijacking Mollie and all she believed with your racist fear-mongering,” Tibbetts Murphy wrote. “You do not get to use her murder to inaccurately promote your ‘permanently separated’ hyperbole. You do not have permission to callously use this tragedy to demonize an entire population for the acts of one man.”