@thesummerofrain / thesummerofrain.tumblr.com
albatrosses will wipe the floor with any species of bird you choose to compare them to. they’re the Most, or at least Extremely, by almost every metric
wingspan. lifespan. intricacy of mating dances. devotion to monogamy. investment in offspring. ability to circumnavigate the globe. literary symbolism that is flexible but not to the point of meaninglessness. eyeliner quality. I could go on
This is Sarah Grimké.
She was born to a rich plantation family in the American South during the time of slavery. She owned a slave, Hetty, a girl her parents gave her when she was a child. She was absolutely the sort of person whose racism you could justify as being ‘of her time’ and ‘just the way she was raised’.
And she cited the injustices she saw growing up on the plantation as the motivation for her becoming an abolitionist as an adult.
When she was a kid, she tried to give bible lessons to the slaves on her Dad’s plantation, and taught her own slave to read and write. As an adult, she and her sister campaigned for the end of slavery. When she found out that one of her brothers had raped one of his own slaves and gotten her pregnant three times, she welcomed her nephews into the family and paid for education for the two that wanted it.
This was a woman who was raised in a culture of slavery, looked around her as a child and said “hey, wait a minute, we’re all assholes!” and spent the rest of her life trying to put things right.
It absolutely was a choice.
This is something I’ve been forced to learn in the past two years. The world around me is turning into something I was raised to believe could only happen in history books, or maybe in other parts of the world that sort of belonged in history books.
The more I see this happening–and the more I learn about the past and how hard people did fight to stop Hitler from initially rising to power, or to point out the humanity of slaves–the more apparent it becomes that we have always had these choices, and they’ve always been the same.
And we’re always going to have genuinely appealing opportunities to make the worst possible choices again, no matter how much more modern the world appears.
George Washington owned slaves right? Most of the founding fathers did, and in grade school, to smooth over that abuse of humanity by an American hero, we as children were told “Yes, George Washington did own slaves but he freed them when he died.” And you infer that he didn’t like slavery but it was an economic necessity.
And then you’re in your mid twenties watching a food show on Netflix and you learn that because Pennsylvania was a Quaker colony, they led the nation in emancipation and if an enslaved person was in Philadelphia for more than six months, they automatically became freed. And the young nation’s early capital was in Philadelphia, where Washington brought his household of enslaved people with him. And he took them back to Virginia every five months for a time so as to start that clock over and keep them enslaved.
There’s a trend with historians to want so badly to maintain the prestige of George Washington and an exceptional and morally pristine figure. And true, there are many instances in his writing where he sounds like his opinion on slavery as an institution is turning and that he knew slavery was wrong. But his actions. He literally had to do absolutely nothing to free his household staff, and took great pains to keep them enslaved.
It’s important to remember that too. That there were people in positions of enormous power, who know what they’re doing is wrong, and choose to do it anyway.
Do not let anyone tell you his teeth were made of wood.
This almost killed me the music and pausing is incredible
This is the funniest fucking thing I’ve seen all day
What NBA team are you closest to?
Political map of North America circa 2347
Most Dangerous Predators By Location
Please reblog if you vote, I want this to reach people far and wide <3
Every accusation is a confession. #Projection101
Wild to see this on my dash.
The situation, as you can imagine, is fucked. Two huge areas in south/southeast Atlanta have been bought & there are plans to raze the forest. One to build MORE film studios for Blackhall Studios (think Venom, Jumanji), and the other -- Cop City.
There is a massive plan to essentially make a fake-city for APD and other law enforcement agencies to train in, to practice their increased militarization. The plan is bigger than the NYPD training ground iirc.
The Cop City news caught a lot of citizens surprised, and after a lot of push back, Atlanta City Council was basically like "Okay, fine, here's a day everyone can call in and comment". I think it was something like 13 hours of calls, 65% disapproval of Cop City. And City Council approved anyways. They pulled the same stunt with the juvenile detention center in Decatur like 20 years earlier.
And I'm sure no one will be surprised to hear that this is in a predominantly black neighborhood in ATL. City Council would never dream of allowing forest to be destroyed & Cop City to be built in Buckhead or other whiter, wealthier areas of ATL (not that it should be built at all!!)
There's a ton more information on their Twitter & their other social media in the linktree. Talk to your neighbors, call city council, provide aid to the forest defenders if you can.
The facility will also be used for the GILEE program that helps train pigs all over the world, including those from Israel, Australia, China, and Haiti, among other places. If Cop City is built it will help spread and reinforce police brutality far beyond Atlanta.
Oh wait shit you have actual problems. Sorry for the shitty questions
anon I need you to know this is the funniest ask I've gotten in a while
Nick Offerman Answers the Web’s Most Searched Questions –WIRED, 2020
