Other cartoons that the publisher refused to print before firing Rogers:
A political cartoonist who had satirized every President during his 25 years at the paper is fired for drawing Trump cartoons.
“This is precisely the time,” Pittsburgh mayor Bill Peduto (often the target of Rogers’ cartoons) said, “when the constitutionally protected free press – including critics like Rob Rogers – should be celebrated and supported, and not fired for doing their jobs. This decision, just one day after Trump labeledthe news media is ‘our country’s biggest enemy.’“
Y’know, like dictators always do under fascist regimes.
A coalition group has begun an occupation at the ICE processing facility located at 4310 SW Macadam Avenue in Portland, Oregon. They demand an immediate end to the “Zero Tolerance” policy and an abolition of ICE.
A vigil Sunday night held over as members of the community decided stay and occupy. Numbers have fluctuated, but are growing steadily. Assemblies will be held every night at 8:30pm so that community decisions can be made about goals and methods.
This is a self-organized occupation, and its members encourage every person to Occupy the nearest ICE facility, GEO Group Office, Senator’s Office or public space and demand an end to ICE, borders and policing.
How interesting that multiple platforms (medium, twitter, github) were almost immediately able to take down the published list of ICE agents taken from LinkedIn. I guess the internet isn’t as “unmanageable” as those companies like to say when it comes to protect certain people huh
I feel like the current moment in history is some sick parody of American ideology the fucking president tweets incoherently all day long and everybody still takes American politics seriously because it’s literally a matter of life and death but at the same time the spectical of it all is just so fucking insane
There’s something fucked up about being forced to take parody seriously at the threat of death.
It is polyvalent in its applications; it serves to reform prisoners, but also to treat patients, to instruct schoolchildren, to confine the insane, to supervise workers, to put beggars and idlers to work. It is a type of location of bodies in space, of distribution of individuals in relation to one another, of hierarchical organization, of disposition of centres and channels of power, of definition of the instruments and modes of intervention of power, which can be implemented in hospitals, workshops, schools, prisons. Whenever one is dealing with a multiplicity of individuals on whom a task or a particular form of behaviour must be imposed, the panoptic schema may be used. It is – necessary modifications apart – applicable ‘to all establishments whatsoever, in which, within a space not too large to be covered or commanded by buildings, a number of persons are meant to be kept under inspection’ (Bentham, 40; although Bentham takes the penitentiary house as his prime example, it is because it has many different functions to fulfil – safe custody, confinement, solitude, forced labour and instruction).
In each of its applications, it makes it possible to perfect the exercise of power.
Prison guards patrolling the perimeter with guns just makes that comparison a WHOLE LOT MORE DIRECT
My favourite part about Foucault and the Panopticon theory in general is that it doesn’t just apply to institutions, it applies to the way we present ourselves as a whole. Kids try so hard to fit in with each other because the systems they live in teach them that someone is always watching, someone always knows everything they do and their lives will be ruined if they step a foot out of line; it’s useful in systems like schools and community centres that function around control, but it’s a severely fucked up way to live and a really fucked up way for kids and young adults to grow up thinking.
Like, slightly off tangent but that’s what I find fascinating about that in gender theory, both as someone who has studied it and as a Trans person; I found myself not only performing the gender I was assigned for everyone else, but I also perform my own gender sometimes to an extreme that would be uncomfortable if I had been born in the body I was supposed to be born in, specifically because “They” who watch are going to judge me and stop me from getting my shit done. I mean it’s not wrong, I’ve had some interesting conversations with people that boil down to “I don’t think you have a right to exist go to hell in a handbasket” but it’s always about being SEEN with me, being seen talking to me, etc etc. It’s all about public perception, and the idea that people are going to be punished for stepping out of the box society has created for them.
Once you’re aware of the theory it really helps you examine your own actions, and look at how communities, no matter how big or small, structure themselves around Panopticons as a basic operating system because we’ve fucked each other up that much.
I don’t think I’d ever recognized how directly surveillance and “protection” parallels the feeling of being in prison. And how literally privacy parallels freedom and liberty.
Major internet sites, big corporations in general, and conservative politicians are working to implement a panopticon dystopia in order to monitor, control, and use us for their own profit.
That’s the definition of life in prison. The prison-industrial complex seeks to expand its reach to all of us.
Not entirely willingly, mind. I was young, religious, and I made
the naïve mistake in thinking that all Christians were like the ones I had
encountered at my home church: warm, tolerant, kind. I fell in love, and we did
what young, hormonal Christian teenagers did: rushed into a marriage.
I realized my mistake almost immediately, but it took far
too long to get out.
Personally, I endured abuse at the hands of my new husband—mental,
physical, sexual, economic, emotional. You name it, he did it. Brutal is an
understatement. He systematically broke me down until I was a shell of a human
being. I’m still dealing with the emotional fallout and physical side effects,
and I probably will be for another decade at least.
That’s personally, but let’s talk his family. Because he was
an extreme case, yes, but he was raised with the idea that women existed to
keep their mouths shut and their legs open. I spit out two children faster than
I could whip my head, because birth control wasn’t part of god’s grand plan for
my life. I was fulfilling my purpose as a mother, and wasn’t that great? My
husband didn’t want the first baby. He wanted me for himself, see? Abortion was
unthinkable, but he fully expected to carry a baby—my baby—to term, then give
it away.
Keeping him was my first rebellion. Keeping the next one was
my second.
In the time I belonged to that family, I watched my
mother-in-law endure the same, though less extreme mistreatment. I watched every
young female family member be groped by the family patriarch. “That’s just how
it is.” I was shamed for making a fuss about it. I watched an older cousin try to sexually assault my teenage
sister-in-law and she was the one who
felt ashamed. We women made family dinners while the men sat on their asses. My
husband and I lived with his parents for a short time. She and I would go to
work each morning—an hour each way—with our husbands sitting in their robes in
the living room, playing video games. When we returned hours later, weary,
exhausted, they hadn’t moved. The standard greeting? “What’s for dinner.”
That’s his family, and yes, some families are sexist, but let’s
talk about church. That’s where all of this is validated, encouraged, taught. Imagine
my shock, when I went to my new husbands’ family church and encountered muted
xenophobia and racism, a heavy dose of homophobia, and some damned overt sexism
(see above.)
Equal roles, but different. Sound familiar? This is still
being taught to little girls today.
In church, I listened with quiet disgust as pastors preached
about how awful my sister—one of the gays—was. I piped up and asked how that
sexual sin was any different than the two young church kids who’d just been
caught “in a bad way”, soon to expect their first baby. Sexual sin is sexual
sin, isn’t it? I sure did get an earful for that one. We did church boycotts:
Disney, Target. Every Sunday School class: Job, cookies, and lets pray God
saves the moos-lims before they all come over and blow us up. We revered
people with white savior complexes who went to be jesus’s hands and feet and
save the poor, helpless Africans.
Hate and ignorance, wrapped up in the holy Scripture.
Hallelujah.
Meanwhile, I endured this abuse. This abuse, and every door
slammed in my face as my husband hit me, tortured me. “Stay true to your vows,”
the pastor would say. “You have communication issues,” our sister-in-law
would tell us. My mother-in-law: “Linds, you just have to accept it. Love is a
choice.”
“But what about the part where it says that husbands are to
love their wives like Christ loves the church?” I asked.
My brother in law, joking: “This is why women aren’t
supposed to speak in church.”
This America is alive and kicking, kids. It’s never gone away; it’s just been lurking,
behind closed doors. “Pass the casual racism and meat loaf, would you? And get
me a glass of water while you’re up. Ketchup, too.” What I’m scared about,
truly, is that I know this. And these ideas are now validated. Now mainstream. Almost
50% of our population believes this is
a good idea.
“It’s our time to take America back.”
What in the hell, if they’ve been saying these things behind
closed doors, and if they believe them In The Name Of God—what in the hell are
they going to say in the open, now? What in the hell are they going to do?
The 50s are revered as the aspirational yester-year, days
gone by. Progress, as we call it, is godlessness to them. We, the godless libs,
took Jesus out of schools. We’ve gone wrong ever since.
This is the America people want back, and that’s my first
fear.
The second is this:
I got out. And I’m terrified that this, my success story,
won’t happen anymore.
I’m the rare statistic. I un-brainwashed and educated myself.
I got counseling (against every Christian advice) to treat severe post-partum
depression. In the process of becoming a healthier person, I realized
what a goddamn mess I was.
It took three tries and a pastor-pseudo-therapist legitimately
telling me, “You know if he hits you again, Linds, I’m going to have to tell
you to leave.”
All regretful, like it was bad news.
“Why should I stick around and wait for it to happen again?”
I asked.
He didn’t have an answer. I left the next week.
It took a few boldfaced lies (it’s temporary, it’s just a separation), and a few miracles, and a
large support system of family and friends who all but plucked me out of that
hell.
For leaving? My price was excommunication. From his family,
our friends, our church. I am the heathen who Divorced my Husband and broke our
home. In that entire city, only three people talk to me now.
(No loss, but it took a long time to recognize that.)
I never, ever would have made it on my own. I had two small children,
a new job that barely paid a living wage, and I was, as I’ve said, a shell of a
human being. I left him and went straight to the human services office. Without
subsidized childcare, healthcare, and food supplements, we would have starved
or been homeless. It never would have been possible.
These are the services that will probably be cut first.
How will anyone in my situation ever be able to leave? They
won’t. Not to mention federal funding for shelters, crisis counseling for
families, healthcare for abused women, and legal services for domestic violence
victims. Throw in a court system that doesn’t value women, and a cultural mentality
that believes what happens behind closed doors should stay behind closed doors… What hope do abused, trapped women have? None in hell.
If this is what makes America great again, I want out. I’ve
been there, done that, and I’m never, ever doing it again.
You’ll take it back over my cold, lifeless body.
This is the dark, dirty secret of Amerika: Women are not free.
Signal boost the hell out of this!
^ The services that Republicans most want to cut aid to are the ones that do the most to help women break free of the brainwashing, control and abuse of disgusting, hateful male fascists
lovingdread 