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The Daily Beast

Girl Scouts Threatened Legal Action Against Troop Over Gaza Fundraiser

The troop in question says they now plan to leave the Girl Scouts.

A Girl Scout troop leader in Missouri was threatened with legal action by the organization after her troop tried to sell bracelets to raise money for Gaza, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Nawal Abuhamdeh said that it had been the children’s idea to sell bracelets to raise money for the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. She said that the members of her troop, including her own 10 year-old daughter, had been deeply emotionally impacted by Israel’s brutal military campaign in Gaza, which has killed more than 29,000 people, and at least 10,000 children. “I’m grieving. We are all grieving. We literally couldn’t muster the energy to sell cookies,” Abuhamdeh said. Soon after making a post about the fundraiser, Abuhamdeh said she received an email from the Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri organization, alerting her that her troop could not support “partisan politics,” and needed to “stay neutral.” The email said that the fundraiser had violated the organization’s governing documents, and that if the troop went forward with their plan, the organization would engage legal counsel to “protect the intellectual property and other rights of the organization.”

Today when I pick up my 7 year old from school I know I am going to cry uncontrollably. Because my child is safe. My child does not have to worry about where the next meal will come from. My child does not have to flee our home to desperately seek safety.

Lama Jamous is 9 years old and her future as a journalist is not secure. Over 11,000 children who could have gone on to bright and beautiful futures will never have that future. No child in Gaza is safe.

Please don't look away and please don't stop talking about Palestine.

it is, i think, symptomatic of the way larian has built this brand: bg3 was always marketed as being mature (read: sexual), and that was one of the big draws for players - myself included! especially as media pulls more towards extremes, with mainstream video games starting to get increasingly graphically sexual, graphically violent, and the vogue for 'grey morality' becomes the norm, those boundaries get pushed, and it becomes more and more of a selling point.

larian obviously focused on this, along with the How Do You Do, Fellow Kids brand, the increased accessibility of game devs on twitter, and adopted it heavily into their marketing strategy, and are now pretty reliant on the horny gamer crowd for a lot of their audience, and more importantly, they're doing this on purpose.

which is how you end up in situations like this.

characters (white men) the players want to fuck get centred: they get updates, they get more content, they get favoured. halsin's gone from a side character in EA to a half-fledged romance option, to a full romance option: he shows up in the promotional material, is larian's poster boy for the sex scenes, he gets more content with every update.

now gortash gets more heavily implied situationship lines with the dark urge, because players are horny for him. nevermind that some people aren't playing that way, or that he was originally set up to be a lower-level antagonist; nevermind that if the durge's storyline needed expansion, it should've been with orin and sarevok and bhaal, or that it muddies the writing for the rest of gortash's arc + characterisation: people want to fuck him, so it gets put in the game. it's not even to do with karlach, whose quest so desperately needs expansion! it's specifically catering to the people who want their character to have a Relationship with the slaver, because they're either not interested in or not able to focus on strengthening the weak spots in the narrative: they're just doing things that will net the 'my favourite dating sim' people lmfao.

meanwhile, literal main character wyll gets his quest demoted to a subquest, doesn't get bugfixes, doesn't get a single unique romance greeting after 6 patches and months of requests. he's not a Horny character, so he doesn't get the focus: he's not a player favourite, so he gets nothing. it's just... so unbelievably, indisputably racist, and it's incredibly grim and disappointing to watch it happen in real-time.

If are living in America and are wondering what you can do now please consider contacting The White House and demanding a recount / revote!

Check out the ALCU -> The ACLU is an organization that specifically fights back against harmful laws and bills - they fought trump off RAPIDLY during his first presidency and theyre overall good for keeping track of resources and stuff!

Ensure your vote is counted through Vote Curing!

Sign this Petition : Jane Byson (the maker of petition) ;

"We need a recount and revote for the 2024 election. An investigation needs to be looked into after Trumps sudden rise after all favor was pointed towards Kamala Harris. This isn't superstition when there was proof that she was in the lead. Something is wrong and the people of the US shouldn't suffer for it."

For those who are contemplating suicide or self harm consider contacting these Hotlines! Keep Fighting Please, and to those who have more resources PLEASE add on.

would love to turn people on to nz on screen, a free archive of new zealand and māori content with over 4500 titles!

the site is accessible in both english and te reo, and it includes over 500 films, 3000 tv series & specials, 2000 documentaries, as well as history series & specials, chat shows, musicals, lgbtq+ content, standup, children's shows, historic news & sports, and more :)

new zealand and māori filmmaking & content, particularly from before the late 2000s, can be exceptionally hard to track down and haven't been given the archival attention they deserve, so this is an amazing resource!

Double post today because HE- ♡♡♡♡♡♡♡