Rest Easy, Mr. Simic. 🌹🙏🏽

@joshsternberg It’s so upsetting. It made such a clear dent in child poverty and seems like such an obvious win for society, but then again, we live in a society where people assume Space Karen must be smart because he’s rich and poor people must be poor because they’re lazy, as if his wealth and their poverty aren’t related to societal structures and systems, much like the weirdly warm weather is happening for a reason too.

Dropped the kid off at school on this last school day of the year, and it's 52 degrees outside.

So naturally the conversation between every parent was, "So how about this weather?"

Why are we all are very good at asking the obvious question about weather, but not very good about asking obvious questions across other areas of life?

Like, imagine we asked each other: "So how about the Child Tax Credit getting cut from the omnibus bill...?

Senate passes $1.7 trillion omnibus bill. Goes to the House for easy passage.

What's left out of the bill: An extension of the enhanced Child Tax Credit. This tax credit reduced poverty rates; lifted millions of children over the poverty line.

When politicians wrap themselves around "family values" it should be clear to everyone now that they actually don't care about Americans and our families.

https://www.axios.com/2022/12/22/omnibus-government-spending-bill-2022

@futurebird I think about that poor kid and the injustice of it so often. Especially when I listen to stories about things like the misrepresentive ways crime is reported/cited in terms of what is considered a crime and what doesn’t count in statistics and the idea of rising crime. White collar embezzling or wage theft? Not counted like stealing diapers and formula are. Sigh.

RT @MarkLevineNYC@twitter.com

Exciting news: NYC’s iconic 5th Ave, from 42nd to 59th St, is going to be reimagined as a safer, less congested, pedestrian-centered blvd that also prioritizes cyclists, mass transit, and the public realm.

This will be a game change for Midtown.

Details: https://www.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/917-22/mayor-adams-moves-reimagine-fifth-avenue-bryant-park-central-park

🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/MarkLevineNYC/status/1604597190227369984

*Sheepish request* I'm new to Mastodon, but a lot of my former Twitter followers don't know I'm here yet. Someone suggested I could simply ask you fine people to boost me. Would you be so kind? (I promise to post a photo of my dog to say thanks). #WelcomeToMastodon

Who is Taylor Lorenz and why should we care?

She's a technology columnist for the Washington Post, suspended this evening from Twitter apparently for asking Musk to comment on a story involving Musk. Musk is demonstrating that he can extort censorship from the media with the ban hammer. Taylor was targeted to be an example. Other journalists are put on notice it's not them...this time, and reminded to toe the line. This is about press freedom. That's why we all should care.

#twittermigration

1/12 This 🧵 is called "That Ol' Black Magic".

My Sister and I were having one of our long, deep, philosophical conversations today, and she asked me:

“Given that you are science minded, do you think Black people are magic?”

I thought on this for a long, long moment.

My conclusion is that Black people are magic, and here is my proof.

The expanded Child Tax Credit cut child poverty by nearly half.

Manchin and the GOP let it expire and child poverty spiked by 41%.

In other words, an additional 3.7 million children were thrown into poverty.

Reinstating it is a moral imperative. Do it during the lame duck.

“If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”
― Malcolm X on the media

#Politics
#Mastodon
#News
#BlackHistoryMonth
#BlackMastodon
#BlackTwitter
#BackLivesMatter
#BlackFediverse
#BlackFedi
#BIPOC
#BlackPolitics
#Media
#MalcolmX

Get busy living, or get busy dying.

That's god-damned right.

"We often misdiagnose our current malady as one of “polarization.” That’s wrong. We have one rogue, ethno-authoritarian party and one fairly stable and diverse party. It just looks like polarization when you...consider these parties to be equal in levels of mercenary commitment, which they overwhelmingly are not."

https://newrepublic.com/article/168881/must-fight-better-america-no-choice?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=EB_TNR&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1670361760

In a move that defies parody, the Polish government has givenJacek Kurski, the man who turned state TV into an extremist, homophobic, propaganda channel, to represent Poland at the World Bank.

. Nobody is more unqualified. I wrote about Kurski here: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/poland-polarization/568324/

@anneapplebaum I read this article in 2018, when I had just arrived to live in Prague for a year, and it was so helpful to read then. I was surprised at the changes since the last time I’d lived in Prague, in the early aughts, and I was unprepared for the confederate flags, anti-EU, growing far right signs, open white nationalism I saw that year. So depressing that it has only accelerated, is still accelerating, and that your article is still such a timely read. Thanks for sharing.

They couldn’t face how Nazis were also “us.”

But of course over here we know that Germany couldn’t even begin to confront its atrocities until it acknowledged that Nazis were “us.”

You don't have to agree with en vogue views of gender to insist that trans folks be allowed to live their lives the way they want to and with dignity and safety.

“Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark. Nobody knows what is going to happen to him from one moment to the next, or how one will bear it. This is irreducible. And it's true of everybody. Now, it is true that the nature of society is to create, among its citizens, an illusion of safety; but it is also absolutely true that the safety is always necessarily an illusion. Artists are here to disturb the peace.”
― James Baldwin

If you think it’s horrible one billionaire bought up the public square and killed it, wait until you find out why your city doesn’t have a trolley system