vibha

i don’t mind the idea of being a high school level literature teacher, but parents would hate me

re re re re re: “the great gatsby gay”

| would you prefer for me to lie to them? fuck you janice i have tenure

nothing more relatable than this

in this essay i won’t

when u gotta accept the null so why bother

this is the last year that we can make this stupid joke so im going to make the most of it and post it every day until 2020

Okay, friends, let’s talk about going to protests and weaponizing our whiteness, if in fact we are white.

You know what the protesters who marched with Dr. King wore? Their best. Their clergy stoles, their suits. If you’re a doctor or a nurse? Wear your scrubs. If you’re a parent? Wear your PTA shirt if it’s too hot for a suit. If you’re a student? Dress like you’re going to go volunteer somewhere nice, or wear a t-shirt that proclaims you a member of your high school band, your drama group, your church youth group. Whatever it is, make sure it’s right there with your white face.

This is literally the tactic of the people who marched with King in the 60s, and we need to bring it back, and bring it back HARD.

I do this all the time when I go to marches. I wear my cutest, least-offensive geeky t-shirt, crocs and black pants, or I wear my t-shirt that mentions my kid’s school district, or now I’ll wear the pink t-shirt that says I’m part of the Sisterhood at my shul. If it’s cold enough, I wear a cardigan and jeans and sit my ass in my wheelchair. (I need to anyway.) I put signs on my wheelchair that say things like ‘I love my trans daughter’ and ‘love for all trans children’ or something else that applies to the event. Dress like you are going to an interview if you can, or make yourself look like a parent going to pick up a gallon of milk at the corner store. Make yourself “respectable.” Use respectability politics and whiteness AS A WEAPON.

Fuck yes I will weaponize the fact that I look like a white soccer mom. And you should do this too if you can. Weaponize the fuck out of your whiteness. If you are disabled and comfortable with doing so, turn ableism on its head and weaponize it. Make it so that the cameras that WILL be pointed at you see your whiteness, see your status as a parent, see your status as a community member. See you in your wheelchair or with your cane. If you have privilege or a status that allows you to use it as a weapon or a shield, use it as a shield to defend others or a weapon to break through the bullshit.

This has a fair number of notes, so maybe it’s already been mentioned but …

The “Sunday Best” thing from the Civil Rights Movement of the 50s & 60s, or wearing markers of an assigned profession (e.g. scrubs) is an established tactic of social movements.  They’re part of what Charles Tilly (one of the academic god father’s of social movement theory) called “WUNC” displays.  WUNC can be broken down to:

While I’m very much in support of anti-fascist protesting in whatever form it takes, especially when engaged in a counter-protest, one of the great tragedies of the American political climate right now is that we’ve really forgotten some of the biggest lessons of the Civil Rights Era.  King didn’t trot out fresh-faced students, church women in big fancy hats, or the elderly and disabled without knowing what he was doing.  He (and the other members of his affiliated organizations) knew that if the police were photographed using violent repression against a mother holding her child, or a student in slacks, a cardigan, and Buddy Holly glasses, it would go over very differently than if they were photographed beating up “unruly thugs”.  Their presence alone would be notable to people locally, especially in the heat of the south.  But so would photographs of repressive violence against “nice people” that would then get picked up by the national media, and maybe in markets that were more sensitive to racial oppression.  

[And like, there are other factors as well.  People also sometimes think the Civil Rights Era erupted spontaneously from Jim Crowe and segregation in the South, and those are giant factors (”depravation” and “grievance”, in jargon), but there were also legislative things and court rulings brewing since the 1920s (the NAACP had been trying Civil Rights cases, and looking for test cases over the years), and the Cold War meant that America needed to appear to be the perfect image of opportunity and equality (together these things manifest as an “opportunity structure”.  again, jargon).  Not to get to down on protest as its own thing, but the structuralists do have a bit of a point.]

…  There are other types of anti-fascist counter-protesting that have developed in various ways through the years. And like, a big thing in social movement theory overall is that while there are common tactics (”protest repertoires” in jargon), historical contexts matter a lot and some groups will have to do more dramatic performances of the WUNC to get attention.  There’s also the move revolutionary antifa-type riot mentality.  I’m not gonna call that one wrong either, mind, but since the Civil Rights Movement was brought up, it should be noted that those two forms of protest differed intentionally.

Anyway, as someone turning in a dissertation on this in a couple of days, here’s some drive-by political-sociology.  If you want to learn more about the research behind processes of social movements, where they succeeded, and where they failed, I totally recommend checking out:

(McAdam has a quite well-regarded book on the Civil Rights Era specifically. I haven’t read it personally as it relates less to my regional context. However like, that’s worth noting and looking into.  Also all of these are stodgey academic texts, but they’re not uncommon in university libraries, or even in some bookstores. They’re also all a bit old now and shouldn’t cost you a ton online.)

As a note – My point here isn’t to descend from the Ivory Tower of Academia and say “you people on the streets are doing this wrong!!1!”.  Theory doesn’t always match up with Practice, and as noted by pretty much every notable theorist anyway… Context matters a TON.  Not all movements will be able to use the same practices or performances.  Sometimes their inaccessible, sometimes they just don’t have the cross-context appeal.  It’s about experimentation and finding opportunity.  To be clear, this isn’t about me telling folks how it should be done.  Still, I think it’s worth sharing information when it’s available, especially if people who might not know are trying to draw specific links to historical cases.  Social movement theorists have pretty much all agreed that WUNC displays (along with other factors like media diffusion) are super duper important and can be recognized in movements across historical contexts.  I think it’s worth it for younger activists who might be looking for protest repertoires that work for their movement as it’s developing to take heed of the successes and failures of the past.  Especially since a lot of it is either a) so much a part of history and culture that it doesn’t really get examined for its constituent bits, or b) has been mythologized to the point that it’s hard to look for really good popular historical information on its technical processes.

(If people have questions, feel free to DM me.  I might be a little slow the next couple of days as I finish up proof-reading and checking all my citations but yeah.  Let’s share knowledge and smash the fash.)

The Nazis of 2017 gained the ground they have with articles about how they were “dapper.” That was a political choice, and it worked. It snowed a lot of gullible goyim. People refused for almost a year to call “the alt-right” Nazis because they looked “like average white people.”

Nazis see their whiteness as a weapon already. Get yours out there and show them – they will never sway everyone. “If you have privilege or a status that allows you to use it as a weapon or a shield, use it as a shield to defend others or a weapon to break through the bullshit.”

Not someone who typically adds to an already long post, but I have done the whole dressing dapper af thing and it WORKS. A few years ago there was this big city council vote about an anti-discrimination ordinance that was going to be passed in my relatively progressive, but still very southern hometown. There were huge protests on both sides, both for and against the ordinance, with each side wearing a specific color (red was for, purple against) to show which side they supported. Most of the people against the ordinance were bussed in by hyper conservative churches and many didn’t even live in the town. It was a lot of old people and many of them wore nice clothing. I knew this would probably be the case, so I, being a southern girl at heart and knowing how these people work, broke out my crinoline and nicest red dress and perfect white gloves. I curled my hair and put on makeup and I showed my ass up to the protest. Made a point to be the picture of a perfect southern belle. And it threw the bigoted assholes for a serious loop. It was like they were short circuiting or something. They kept telling me how I reminded them of someone from their church or how pretty I looked and “how would a nice girl like you like a big cross dressing man in the ladies room???” which of course allowed me to explain, ever so nicely, that they were being bigoted assholes. And they Did Not Like that, because I was forcing them to look in the mirror, at someone who looks like them/someone they claim to be “protecting” and question their motives and beliefs. Seriously guys, it fucking works. Weaponize the fact that you look like the oppressor and throw it in their faces.

Bless this last comment.

say it again:

Weaponize the fact that you look like the oppressor and throw it in their faces.

This happens with feminist conversations too. Ever noticed that anti-feminists love to pretend that feminists are “unattractive” (by which they mean fat, dyed hair, pierced, tattooed, not “conventionally attractive”)? Not saying that people should dress in a way that isn’t for them, but those feminists who are “conventionally attractive” and who anti-feminists would not think are feminists need to stand up even more visibly if they can. Ruin their image of what they’re against look like. Make them aware that we look just like them so they can’t easily dismiss us based on what we look like. -V

She’s doing a great job

I mean getting the government running is a priority RN. I’m sure Dems will get to it in time

Like they got around to closing Gitmo right?

the bill wasnt to fund ICE by itself the bill was to FUND THE GOVERNMENT PERIOD. Like seriously voting no to stop funding the government specifically to stop ICE from being funded is 1. not actually going to deal with the problem of abolishing ICE and 2. Only will continue to harm those who are affected by the shutdown. Like those whos families need the welfare programs that the bill voted to fund??  If we want to abolish ICE you dont do that by just saying ‘hi i vote to stop funding it’ once?? it takes LEGISLATION and WORK. Not just voting on one bill that isnt even focused on the issue at hand. 

this is such a bullshit outrage piece and yall keep falling for it. incredible. 

also, where’s that post where ppl were misrepresenting her views on deportation? because she is in favor of deporting actual dangerous people.

It wasn’t even ‘dangerous people’ in general that people were attacking her over- it was one single actual nazi war criminal.

Yall need to be real careful about what outrage you uncritically swallow about Dems right now, because if you think that it won’t be used to divide and screw over the left like in 2016, you’re naive as hell.

You want 4 more years of Trump? This is how you get 4 more years of Trump.

honestly… tbh,. to be honest, to be totally honest… to tbh be honest..

when you can’t find scholarship on a certain topic so you’re forced to research and write it yourself

the academic equivalent of writing the fic you want to read

like you can be an asshole to me if you do it in french

me: please help me i’m dying

brooklyn 99 fan: you really should watch brooklyn 99

at a job interview

“So tell us a bit about yourself”

2 hours later:

one time i got a sample from the tea store at the mall and as i walked away the guy said “tea you later” and then his coworker smacked him

John Wojtowicz & Elizabeth Eden

John Wojtowicz famously robbed a bank to pay for Liz’s sex reassignment surgery, which inspired the film Dog Day Afternoon (1975). Wojtowicz was sentenced to twenty years in prison, but served six. Using the money from the film, Liz was able to pay for her sex change. 

I’ve seen his mugshot a thousand times but never this

Artist  ふむな draws and imagines her life with her starter in an adorable comics.