maystone: (Nofucking Way by iconomicon)
Originally posted by [livejournal.com profile] gabrielleabelle at Mississippi Personhood Amendment
Okay, so I don't usually do this, but this is an issue near and dear to me and this is getting very little no attention in the mainstream media.

Mississippi is voting on November 8th on whether to pass Amendment 26, the "Personhood Amendment". This amendment would grant fertilized eggs and fetuses personhood status.

Putting aside the contentious issue of abortion, this would effectively outlaw birth control and criminalize women who have miscarriages. This is not a good thing.

Jackson Women's Health Organization is the only place women can get abortions in the entire state, and they are trying to launch a grassroots movement against this amendment. This doesn't just apply to Mississippi, though, as Personhood USA, the group that introduced this amendment, is trying to introduce identical amendments in all 50 states.

What's more, in Mississippi, this amendment is expected to pass. It even has Mississippi Democrats, including the Attorney General, Jim Hood, backing it.

The reason I'm posting this here is because I made a meager donation to the Jackson Women's Health Organization this morning, and I received a personal email back hours later - on a Sunday - thanking me and noting that I'm one of the first "outside" people to contribute.

So if you sometimes pass on political action because you figure that enough other people will do something to make a difference, make an exception on this one. My RSS reader is near silent on this amendment. I only found out about it through a feminist blog. The mainstream media is not reporting on it.

If there is ever a time to donate or send a letter in protest, this would be it.

What to do?

- Read up on it. Wake Up, Mississippi is the home of the grassroots effort to fight this amendment. Daily Kos also has a thorough story on it.

- If you can afford it, you can donate at the site's link.

- You can contact the Democratic National Committee to see why more of our representatives aren't speaking out against this.

- Like this Facebook page to help spread awareness.




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mays here. I have heard about this amendment, but I had no idea that it had as much backing as it appears to have now. Even if it passes, I doubt that it would survive the inevitable SCOTUS challenge that it would face; however, in the meantime, there is real harm that could be done to real women in Mississippi. And the insanity would no doubt pass to other southern, right-wing states.

So, yes - please help at least to spread the word.
maystone: (Two women by semyaza)
From what I'd been reading everyone was expecting the decision to fall this way. That doesn't mean that I have to like it. The court adjudicated a very narrow technical point and sidestepped addressing the question of whether it was constitutional to deny the civil rights of so many of its citizens. It's insane to me that a simple majority could take away rights from a minority. Insane.

I've been reading around the net today, and one of the responses that I especially liked said that other revisions should be brought before the CA population, such as: Strip women of the vote; declare that African-Americans cannot be property owners; bring back the poll tax. You want to stir the pot? Then stir that fucker.

Of course the LGBT groups and allies have been organized for months to respond if the decision went against us. They got caught being lazy and assumptive during the Prop 8 vote; they won't be lax again. My fear is that now the conservatives will try to amend their constitution so a simple majority can no longer have such power, and they'll do this in an attempt to do an end run around the move to overturn Prop 8. Call me paranoid, but I put nothing past them.

The momentum is with us. (Or as they say over at Shakesville, the homomentum.)I don't know how long it will take, but same-sex marriage will become the law of the land, as it rightly should. I think this decision today will be the pebble that starts the avalanche.
maystone: (Matchstick by Lee)
When I first heard about the LJ Boycott a few days ago, I decided not to participate. I wanted to post about my reasons for not participating, because I may or may not actually post something during that time, and if I don't get around to posting anything, I don't want my absence - or silence - to be seen as assent. I'd rather be upfront about it.

The situation around the boycott has become murkier, slimier, more political since I first made my decision, and I'm not sure everyone is aware of the underside. I'll clarify that in a bit.

Simply put, I just can't get that outraged over a corporate entity looking to their bottom line. To be honest, I'm surprised that they've handed out unpaid accounts for as long as they have. I believe that I started out with a Basic, but I wanted to support LJ so I paid the $20 and bought in. (It was $20, I think.) I don't mean to sound cavalier about it, because I know that for some people, $20 is no trivial amount. That has certainly been the case for me frequently. I'm a political blog addict; there are any number of places that I wish I could go online that I'm shut out of because the site requires a user fee from its members. There are loads of online research journal articles about lupus and autoimmune diseases that I wish I had access to, but again, they require user fees. I don't begrudge any of those sites their fees. They need the money to support their sites. Fair enough.

Apparently SUP has lousy customer service and no elegant grasp of basic PR. I wish it could be said that they're the only company with those problems, but let's be honest, that's hardly a newsworthy pronouncement. Aggravating? Yes. Outrageous? Not in my books.

I also can't get up a head of steam over the user stats or whatever they're called. Most popular searches? Something like that. I have "bisexuals" listed in my user interest, and it's searchable. I only mention that because I think that was a problem a few days ago that has since been corrected.

So. I only have so much outrage to spare, and it's not going to SUP :) I'm not trying to convince anyone to not participate. We all choose our own battles, eh. I just wanted to be clear about where I stand. If I post on Friday (and I probably will for reasons I'll state right after this), I didn't want it to be seen as a "Nyah-nyah! I broke your boycott!" action. It's just me following my path as you follow yours.

Now here's the news that I'm not sure is making the rounds very quickly. It may give you some pause, it may not. It turns out that there's a lot of antisemitism fueling the boycott in certain sectors of LJ-land. If you're interested in reading about it stated more clearly than I can do, go here and read all about it. And while you're there, please click the link to [livejournal.com profile] chopchica's entry for even more clarification.

Now this shit I can get outraged about. Which is why I just decided that I will post something on Friday. Maybe a lot of somethings. Because for me, silence does equal assent.
maystone: (Huh by ofthemorning)
The weather started off being not unreasonable. Kind of damp but warm enough that there was melting going on. In mid-afternoon the temps rapidly plummeted and the wind whipped up and suddenly it was Siberia. And I mean suddenly.

I finally got the Christmas gifts off to my brother and sil, but not without me annoying the hell out of the poor clerk with my many questions. I wasn't really meaning to be annoying, yet I knew the answer to everything I asked her. I was just in one of those "toy with the clerk" moods. I think I've been hanging around cats too long or something; I'm picking up their love of torment. ::evil heh::

After being pain free for a couple weeks now, I had a resurgence of the old lupus pain in my hips and legs. It started late last night and kept up for most of the day. I was lurching around on very stiff joints, looking ungainly and feeling like crap. It seems to be settling down again, so I'm not sure what's going on with that. Dar thinks it might be related to this cold that I'm still dealing with. Hopefully tonight will be better.

I got a call from the Immigration doctor this morning. Those additional blood tests I had to have because my blood pressure was too high? Yeah, well, he wanted me to know that they came back too low, and Immigration will probably flag them for further follow up. And since the tests concerned my kidney function, he suggested that I let my doctor know and get some further testing done. The levels were only slightly decreased but still below normal, so I'm not going crazy over this, but it is a bit worrisome since I just had them done a few months ago and they were fine. Another thing to add to the list of questions/concerns I'll bring to the appointment with my new rheumatologist.

I found a very neat site that I want all of you to try out. It's called Free Rice, and it's one of those "click to donate" sites, but this one has a neat twist. It's a vocabulary test, and for every word that you identify correctly they'll donate twenty grains of rice. It truly is addictive because the difficulty level increases with every correct answer, and I donated 400 grains of rice in very short order before I forced myself to move on. I figured that this would appeal to my meme/quiz-happy flist :)

I stumbled across this by way of a post at Shakesville (formerly Shakespeare's Sister) that was talking about keeping hope for the future in the face of feeling helpless and staying engaged in changing the world instead of adopting that truly despicable "it's cool to be cynical and disaffected" affect that seems to be epidemic these days. Anyway, among the comments to the thread was a link to a site called So What Can I Do?, which I hope you'll take a look at, too. I browsed it briefly, and there seems to be something for every level and type of engagement.

And now my aching joints and I bid you good evening. Hope you're all warm and safe and happy this night.

August 2015

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