Hey Friends.

One way to be an ally to disabled queer people:

If you want to attend a pride event, ask about their accessibility plans and policies.

Ask about their covid policies. Ask if they are accessible to mobility aid users. Ask if they will have strobe lights, if there will be bathrooms, if there is water. Make the event planners consider who they may have left out, even if the person being left out isn't you. Have your friends ask as well. Help create a demand. Help get conversations started. Help people see where things could be more accessible.

Because when we, the disabled, ask these questions? We're much more likely to get ignored, and much less likely to be heard when we raise hell.

So help us raise hell when we need it. Demand to know why your local Pride event isn't requiring masks, or is charging for water, or doesn't have wheelchair ramps, or whatever other accessibility issue you catch.

Stop leaving us behind. We need your fucking help.

Religious fucknut doesn't read their own fucking "holy" text in rush to alienate the "other".

"This is not “The Ten Commandments” that can be found in any Bible. It’s “The Ten Commandments” that Hollywood used to promote DeMille’s 1956 blockbuster The Ten Commandments."

slacktivist

Louisiana will post the Twelve Commandments in schools

The 12 commandments mandated for Louisiana schools are not from the Bible. They're from a 1950s promotional campaign by the Fraternal Order

the Guardian

‘Terrifying and dystopian’: the dark realities of the supreme court’s homelessness decision

Sara Rankin, a law professor cited in Sotomayor’s dissent in the Oregon case, warns more cities will seek to banish the unhoused

Let’s start with Oregon – what does this mean for unhoused people in Grants Pass?

It means that Grants Pass can enforce its 24/7 citywide ban on public homelessness. The question was whether cities should be able to jail or fine someone who has no other alternative but to live in public space – the unhoused folks who are considered “involuntarily homeless”. The city was already allowed to arrest people who had declined offers of shelter. Now, Grants Pass will likely be fining people who have no shelter options.

When you fine someone who can’t pay, the fine can eventually turn into a misdemeanor. Studies have shown that it doesn’t help an already poor person to be driven into debt. Fining someone makes them less likely to emerge from homelessness, including by ruining their credit score and making them unable to afford basic needs like food.

Beyond fines, the city of Grants Pass is going to eventually jail more people. This is punishing people who have done nothing more than exist in public space. This case was about whether you can punish people for the unavoidable consequences of being human. The supreme court said yes.

How do you expect the decision will impact other jurisdictions across the west?

This is quite possibly the most consequential decision in history up until this point relating to homeless rights. It’s hard to overstate how important it is.

I think more cities will attempt 24/7 citywide bans on homelessness. I think it will encourage cities to shift away from investments in evidence-based approaches like adequately investing in affordable housing, permanent supportive housing and diversion and shift toward more law-and-order, enforcement-led efforts to essentially jail and banish already marginalized people from public view.

Grants Pass argued it wasn’t criminalizing the status of homelessness, but criminalizing the act of camping in public. The supreme court majority in its ruling on Friday concurred, and said that criminalizing an act does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment.

Presumably cities could in the future go even further than Grants Pass has, as long as they frame their laws as prohibiting public camping, instead of prohibiting homelessness, although I don’t think that issue has been fully resolved by today’s decision.

Donald Trump and others have used increasingly dark rhetoric, threatening to force people into “tent cities”. Will the ruling embolden those kinds of efforts?

I think we could see the forced displacement of unhoused folks into what I would call internment camps out in the middle of nowhere – a mass migration of unhoused people from one place where their existence is banned to other places where the laws don’t ban their existence. Many cities already have authorized camps in far-out locations that are completely invisible to the general public. I learned about one that was bordered by a dump, a recycling center and railroad tracks – the quintessentially least desirable place.

The idea of rounding up unhoused folks and forcing them into camps or out of the jurisdiction entirely is obviously very concerning. And it should be of grave concern, because once something is invisible, you don’t know what’s happening to the already really vulnerable people living there. Trump has publicly contemplated using his federal authority to move people into the middle of the desert where they won’t bother anyone by existing. It’s a very dystopian vision of internment camps and the likely abuses and neglect that would come from that. It’s terrifying.

Prior to this ruling, cities already had quite a lot of latitude to restrict camping, correct?

Yes, cities could already sweep encampments as much as they like. In many cities, they’ve been sweeping tents at record rates. They could also already enforce anti-camping laws if there was something that could be shown to be an urgent public health or safety issue with respect to a particular encampment – for example, if an encampment was blocking a whole sidewalk. Cities could sweep without even giving notice in those circumstances. Under the previous standard, cities weren’t even required to provide adequate shelter. It just said if the city lacks shelter, it can’t jail or fine someone, which to me should be so straightforward, and yet somehow here we are.

How do you expect legal advocates for unhoused people will respond to this ruling?

The dehumanizing message of today’s decision is going to galvanize civil rights attorneys. It has to. Anytime somebody’s basic right to exist is threatened, civil rights activists have to regroup. And cities should not approach this too cavalierly. There will be legal consequences for cities that pursue 24/7 citywide bans on homelessness. All this decision does is remove the protections for unhoused folks under the eighth amendment of the US constitution. States across the country have analogs to the eighth amendment in their state constitutions. States can and often do interpret their state constitutional provisions to be more protective than the federal constitution. The eighth amendment at its core is really about how much we value the humanity of vulnerable people. So it’s crippling from a human standpoint to have that protection removed. But there are other avenues that homeless rights advocates and human rights lawyers can still pursue. They can make arguments under other federal constitutional provisions. There are still due process arguments under the 14th amendment. You can still argue there is selective prosecution. There are arguments that could be made under the fourth amendment [which protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures]. There’s the Americans with Disabilities Act [ADA], and most chronically homeless people would likely qualify as someone with a disability who has protections from state-sanctioned abuse.

Last Minute Reminder to Ohioans: Vote NO on Issue 1 Today

Why? You mean, aside from the fact that it was rushed onto the ballot in order to make sure that the uterus-bearing in Ohio have less control over their bodies than their local politicians, and that it was shoved into an August voting date that this same legislature actually voted out of existence specifically to ensure that the issue would have so little attention that only the rabid faithful…

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What to boycott NOW to help stop Israel’s unfolding genocide of Palestinians in Gaza

BDS Movement

What to boycott NOW to help stop Israel’s unfolding genocide of Palestinians in Gaza

We call on our supporters to strengthen our targeted boycott and divestment campaigns to maximize our impact!

Reminder that boycotting DOES work, there is historic proof! Don't let anyone discourage you otherwise!

The BDS movement uses the historically successful method of targeted boycotts inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement, the US Civil Rights movement, the Indian anti-colonial struggle, among others worldwide.

We must strategically focus on a relatively smaller number of carefully selected companies and products for maximum impact. Companies that play a clear and direct role in Israel’s crimes and where there is real potential for winning, as was the case with, among others, G4S, Veolia, Orange, Ben & Jerry’s and Pillsbury. Compelling such huge, complicit companies, through strategic and context-sensitive boycott and divestment campaigns, to end their complicity in Israeli apartheid and war crimes against Palestinians sends a very powerful message to hundreds of other complicit companies that “your time will come, so get out before it’s too late!”

A reminder that Jazwares CEO - the company behind toy brands like Kellytoy, Squishmallows, Bum Bumz, Hello Kitty, Pokemon (in North America), Nerf, and many others - is a staunch supporter of Israel, with half of their recent intern cohort from Reichman University being called back to fight in the IOF. Not only this, but he and his wife Laura are working with the organization known as Brothers For Life that gives aid to Israeli soldiers, as well as supporting the infamous Canary Mission, which is responsible for doxxing pro-Palestinian students.

Buying new Jazwares products is going towards a CEO who supports genocide, please continue to boycott Jazwares brands and seek out alternative brands or strictly buy from secondhand sources when looking for new gifts for yourself or your loved ones. Do not continue to put money in Jazwares's pockets.

Source