An east London coffee shop has become the first in the capital to join an initiative that lets customers buy a drink for poor or homeless local people.
"We have far more than 87,000 rapes in this country every year, but each of them is invariably portrayed as an isolated incident. We have dots so close they’re splatters melting into a stain, but hardly anyone connects them, or names that stain. In India they did. They said that this is a civil rights issue, it’s a human rights issue, it’s everyone’s problem, it’s not isolated, and it’s never going to be acceptable again. It has to change. It’s your job to change it, and mine, and ours."
Rebecca Solnit: A Rape a Minute, A Thousand Corpses a Year (via baileymthomas)
A woman is beaten every nine seconds in this country. Just to be clear: not nine minutes, but nine seconds. It’s the number-one cause of injury to American women; of the two million injured annually, more than half a million of those injuries require medical attention while about 145,000 require overnight hospitalizations, according to the Center for Disease Control, and you don’t want to know about the dentistry needed afterwards. Spouses are also the leading cause of death for pregnant women in the US.
“Women worldwide ages 15 through 44 are more likely to die or be maimed because of male violence than because of cancer, malaria, war and traffic accidents combined,” writes Nicholas D. Kristof, one of the few prominent figures to address the issue regularly.
Can’t figure out what to do for my dissertation.
Waaaahhh…
Yesssss, I love this blogpost!
Thank you, stavvers.
What if we started to think once again about organizing society around what makes life better for all of us?
Pretty please.
strongly certain nothing will have any effect and everything will be terrible forever, but sign this anyway
when there’s nothing left to lose, right? UK people activate!
Uk citizen here.
The nhs is institutionally transphobic and maintains policies which discriminate against and deny care to trans patients.
They can burn to death and drown for all I care.
Throwing out the baby with the bathwater?
How about, instead of abolishing the NHS, which ensures free healthcare from cradle to grave for everyone in the UK, let’s keep it and work on changing the handful of flawed policies? Why punish Britain’s poor (which is almost everyone, if we understand “poor” in this context as “everyone who can’t afford to pay for private treatment for every illness”)?oh.
it’s so easy for cis people sometimes.
The backbone of transphobia is universal healthcare. I think if we want to solve transphobia, we are going to have to privatise healthcare. I mean when you look at the US, there is a country that sees trans people as like gods. And I am going to say that that is 98% down to having a healthcare system that hates poor people.
I’m sorry to be so snarky, but the comment about letting the NHS burn is beyond absurd. What is that sentiment possibly hoping to achieve? Are trans people in poverty going to suddenly have greater access to private healthcare? I genuinally don’t understand what that will achieve in abolishing the poison of transphobia.
I cannot bear the kind of pomo-ised attitudes on the left sometimes. It appears to often be more about sounding off and not about trying to change things. It promotes a what-abouttery. So here the NHS is an equal enemy to a transphobic religious group. The question should be centred around how we change that, not descending into a smug apathy where elitist debate and analysis becomes the centre of focus itself. There is absolutely a place for debate and analysis, such as on an issue like the NHS’ policies towards trans people. But it needs to be introduced as a tool into the struggle to advance the collective experiences of poor people and trans people, not becoming the centre of the struggle itself. Otherwise we end up all sounding like a pretentious political theory student (almost the same as a pretentious stoner: “If people can get past, can they also get…future???”). But also, otherwise there is no struggle at all.
Reblog for commentary ^!
TRIGGER WARNING: Domestic violence/Suicide attempt (cutting): Worst domestic violence/sexual assault case I’ve ever seen this weekend.
And I’ve been doing this for five years.
Not the worst as far as injuries, but the worst as far as situation.
Husband’s a cop. This is not his first marriage. He’s had two other wives arrested for aggravated assault, one of them actually did time.
And this timid, tiny woman with a gash in her wrist where she tried to kill herself to get away from him left the sexual assault response center in cuffs. They arrested HER because he claimed she had come at him with the knife.
This shitbag.
And this is why I have no faith in the police. None. It’s got NOTHING to do with him being an abusive waste of carbon per se, as those turn up frequently it seems-
It’s the fact that he’s a cop. He goes to work every day in a building full of the supposed keenest minds on crime, people who are supposed to have an instinct for knowing when they see these kinds of people. And no one has noticed.
How is it that no one has noticed?
I hate this goddamned city.
"Crime is naught but misdirected energy. So long as every institution of today, economic, political, social, and moral, conspires to misdirect human energy into wrong channels; so long as most people are out of place doing the things they hate to do, living a life they loathe to live, crime will be inevitable, and all the laws on the statutes can only increase, but never do away with, crime."
No one ever believed the tremendous social dismay of the Thatcher years would re-appear in modern Great Britain. The seed was however sewn in an incredibly divisive country: feigning inclusiveness, economic stability, and understanding domestic politics, the gap grew wider in the face of the economic crash. Whoever you believe is to blame, there is no denying that London had rarely seen scenes of such a widespread, contagious, and seemingly uncontainable violence. In the very recent aftermath of very traumatic events for a country that always thought the Irish were its biggest problem, here is a breakdown the social barriers of race divisions, class war, and utter lack of social cohesion. A fantastic piece by Josh Kitto.
Excellent piece. Click through to read the whole thing.
Making Sense of the London Riots
It’s going to be a while before serious journalists and analysts manage to work a narrative linking these events together; at this point it’s a case of actually clarifying what did/didn’t happen last night, and how this all began.
The Guardian seems to have this best covered, having had a journalist on the ground throughout the evening — here’s his take on how it started: http://t.co/fI9qUmM; and how it subsequently spread:
What began as a gathering of around 200 protesters demanding answers over the death of Mark Duggan, who was shot dead by police on Thursday, culminated 12 hours later in a full-scale riot that saw brazen looting spread across north-London suburbs…
There were stories of Duggan having been shot after being handcuffed; others said he had sent a message to friends 15 minutes before he was killed, saying he had been cornered but was safe. There were chants of “we want answers” but those present said the protest was good-natured. The demonstration, which organisers expected to last no more than an hour, was initially fronted by women, who surrounded Wilson, who had three children with 29-year-old Duggan. What happened over the next four hours is subject to debate, but what is clear is that tensions gradually escalated, as police made only limited attempts to talk to the demonstrators. Some who were present described seeing a younger, more aggressive crowd arrive around dusk, some carrying weapons. “These people were prepared,” said Bill Dow, a bystander. “They had fireworks and petrol cans.”And how it subsequently spread the second night: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/08/london-riots-spread-second-night?CMP=twt_gu
The best place to carry on getting on-going information throughout the day:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/08/london-riots-tottenham-duggan-blog?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
What else is emerging from subsequent reports is that the spark was not only the death of Duggan, but a disproportionate response by police to a 16 year old girl who demanded answers and broke from the crowd; apparently this is when the original Tottenham riots turned violent.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8687547/Attack-on-teenage-girl-blamed-for-start-of-Tottenham-riot.html
Doubts over the initial Duggan shooting and an IPCC official denying it was an ‘assassination with gunshots to the face’: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/07/police-attack-london-burns?CMP=twt_gu
Timelines and videos:
The BBC has finally began covering the issues: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14436499
Brixton stores looted: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14439898
Police clashes in Enfield: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14438669
Analysis:
The right refutes there is a link between the riots and Tory cuts: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyyoung/100099866/blaming-these-riots-on-the-cuts-risks-inflaming-an-already-volatile-situation/
A more nuanced response to the issue:
The Tories may not be to blame for the Tottenham riots, but they will be if they fail to deal with the aftermath.http://www.spectator.co.uk/martinbright/7150233/the-coalition-cant-ignore-the-tottenham-riots.thtml
Piece in the Telegraph linking UK Uncut to the riots:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100099918/the-looting-is-a-pr-disaster-for-uk-uncut/
If you’re interested in the party political side of this (aka: is Cameron not flying straight back a presentational blunder? etc):
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/7151533/the-politics-of-our-discontent.thtml
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/benedictbrogan/100099857/a-big-step-osborne-promises-to-back-eurozone-integration/
Nick Clegg on the riots and if it’s a dereliction of duty for him and others to be away during this time: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-14443082?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
Why Boris (London mayor) won’t be returning: http://snipelondon.com/scoop/why-boris-johnson-should-stay-on-his-sun-lounger
The effect of Boris’s reassuring phone call was somewhat muted by his inability to get Mark Duggan’s name right, but his message was clear. The police were doing a “very, very good job” and he was staying put.
I’ll update further once better analysis has appeared; I’ve seen a few tumblr posts saying ‘good on the UK for standing up to the police’ but I think there’s a few things that need to be remembered — the events of last night seem to just be criminal behaviour, unrelated to the original peaceful Tottenham protests that escalated, and there’s nothing particularly noble about depressing the local economy further, or ruining innocent people’s livelihoods. By all means, there appears to be a real policing issue here which will (hopefully) be revealed by the IPCC investigation, but there shouldn’t be some glorification of last night’s looting into a ‘social movement’.
The most useful outline that I’ve seen of the weekend’s disturbances.
