December 18, 1865 Following its ratification by the requisite three-quarters of the states earlier in the month, the 13th Amendment was formally adopted into the U.S. Constitution, ensuring that “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude… shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” “Selling females by the pound”
December 18, 1999 Julia Butterfly Hill descended from her tiny platform 180 feet up in a giant redwood tree (sequoia sempervivens) named “Luna,” after perching there for 738 days to protect it from loggers. Luna survived a chainsaw attack in 2001 but still stands. “The question is not ‘Can you make a difference?’ You already do make a difference.It’s just a matter of what kind of difference you want to make during your life on this planet.” – Julia Butterfly Hill More about Julia Butterfly Hill and Luna Luna Today Earth Medicine
The first entry may be a clue as to why Musk is supporting the Don; he could wish to turn the US into S. Africa. As hard as we worked when we were young until now, progress doesn’t seem to have stuck, here.
December 17, 1982 The U.N. passed a series of 4 resolutions attacking apartheid in South Africa: To organize an international conference of trade unions on sanctions against South Africa (approved 129 to 2); To encourage various international actions against South Africa (126 to 2); Support of sanctions and other measures against South Africa including international sporting events (139 to 1); Cessation of further foreign investments and loans for South Africa (138 to 1). The U.S. was the only country to have voted against all 4 resolutions (joined only by the United Kingdom on two).
December 17, 1990 Jean-Bertrand Aristide Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a radical Roman Catholic priest and opponent of the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier who had been deposed in 1986, was elected president in the first free election in Haiti’s history. He was overthrown in 1991 in a military coup led by Brigadier-General Raoul Cedra. More about Jean-Bertrand Aristide Jean-Bertrand Aristide Fast Facts
December 17, 2010 In Tunesia jobless graduate Mohmad Bouazizi starts selling vegetables. When police seize his cart, he sets fire to himself and later dies. This event believed to be the ignition of Arab Spring. A UK Guardian interactive timeline
In the face of the persistent housing affordability crisis, rising eviction rates in many parts of the country, and ongoing threats against unhoused communities, including the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson, some states and localities — often working with philanthropic partners — are taking innovative approaches to provide unconditional cash to people experiencing housing instability or homelessness through guaranteed income pilot programs.
It’s more important than ever that state and local leaders choose strategies that help people with low incomes meet their housing needs with dignity, rather than punishing people experiencing homelessness through fining and, in some cases, arresting and incarcerating them for sleeping outside when they have nowhere safe to go, which evidence shows are ineffective, costly, and racially discriminatory strategies.
Guaranteed income (GI) is emerging as one strategy for helping people afford housing and other expenses like food, clothing, and transportation. Unlike universal basic income, which proposes giving a standard periodic cash payment to all individuals, guaranteed income provides cash assistance to people based on a determined need — such as experiencing housing instability or having income below a certain level — with assistance typically ranging between $500 and $1000 a month. Over 150 programs across the country have begun providing direct cash assistance, with several localities and states having one or more programs that prioritize people and families who are unhoused or at risk of homelessness. Promising findings from individual pilot programs support broader research demonstrating that GI programs can be a mechanism for helping people meet their needs. Ongoing research is helping us understand the ways that unrestricted cash supports can be designed to be most beneficial to the people who need them, including those experiencing housing insecurity and homelessness.
Today’s wave of the guaranteed income movement isn’t new. In the 1960s and 70s, leaders within the National Welfare Rights Organization, racial justice advocates in the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, and feminist thought leaders within the Wages for Housework Movement began advancing GI in response to historical inequities rooted in enslavement, discrimination, and exclusionary policy choices. While GI initiatives alone don’t address the root causes of these inequities, they provide more possibilities for repairing harms caused by deep-seated prejudice in our institutions.
GI is a compelling step forward as policymakers look for innovative ways to:
ensure that people can make decisions about how to best meet their needs;
improve accessibility and reduce administrative burdens in existing economic security programs;
reduce the discrimination people can face when they participate in assistance programs, which is often rooted in racism and stigma against people with low incomes; and
guarantee that everyone who needs assistance receives it.
The rise of GI programs responds to the reality that many people don’t have enough money, even with work or public benefits, to afford basic needs due to reasons not entirely within their control. For example, systemic and structural racism embedded in the housing market and criminal legal system result in people of color, particularly Black, Indigenous, and Latine communities, being disproportionately harmed by a cycle of homelessness and incarceration. The same is true for the labor market, in which people of color are overrepresented in jobs with the lowest pay because of racism in hiring practices and frequent government underinvestment in communities of color — which leads to low-performing schools, chronic health conditions, and other negative outcomes that hurt employment opportunities. The impacts of low pay are also felt disproportionately by other communities that face discrimination, such as people with disabilities and LGBTQ+ people.
A Sample of Guaranteed Income Programs Prioritizing People Experiencing or At Risk of Homelessness in the United States Copy link
Hover over blue states for a list of programs Copy link
(embedded graphic on the page; click on the “Copy link”s to see. There are quite a few.)
Several GI pilots were implemented in 2024. In California, a five-year pilot called It All Adds Up provides 225 families that recently experienced homelessness and are exiting rapid re-housing programs with $1,000 a month for one year. In Massachusetts, through the Somerville GI Pilot, 200 families that are struggling with high housing costs receive $750 a month for a year. And a New York City program supports 100 families that are living in shelters through monthly cash payments of $1,400 for two years to help them meet their needs.
Federal and state policymakers can take the lessons of GI pilot programs and apply them to other economic security policies. For example, reforming cash assistance programs like TANF and SSI to be more accessible and provide higher benefit levels would go a long way in helping older adults, people with disabilities, and low-income families with children meet their needs. Similarly, expanding access to tenant-based rental assistance, which rigorous research has shown can greatly reduce homelessness and housing insecurity, and testing new ways to deliver it — like through direct rental assistance, which is provided directly to tenants instead of landlords — can make it easier for families to find a place to live.
Expanding cash income supports, increasing access to rental assistance, and making these kinds of assistance simpler to access through processes that respect people’s dignity are the right path forward to improve well-being, promote racial equity, and help people stay stably housed.
And how long is this ‘masculinity crisis’ going to last?Read on Substack
by Rebecca Schoenkopf
Last week, I watched Girls Gone Wild: The Untold Story on Peacock, which, unsurprisingly, was fairly disturbing on a number of levels, starting with the fact that most people at the time thought “getting young women extremely drunk and then convincing them to take their tops off on camera” was a fairly normal, “boys will be boys!” thing to do.
The thing that really struck me, though, was the fact that it remained “normal” until about 2011, when creator Joe Francis was arrested for false imprisonment and assault, after he brought three women home after a night out and refused to let them leave, ultimately attacking one of them and bashing her head into the floor. Francis had long been Public Enemy #1 for feminists (along with, on the other end of the spectrum, the Christian patriarchs who fake-married their daughters at Purity Balls), but at that point, no one was really paying any attention to us.
The reason I bring this up, the reason it struck me, is because I don’t think I really realized until just then what an incredibly short time period it was between the end of that era — this era where bro culture was celebrated, where rape culture was celebrated, where women’s sexuality was a thing within their control whichever way they chose to control it, in which beautiful female celebrities were excoriated for being a size four in public — and the era we are now in.
Because we hear a lot about it from their end, right? The story, as they tell it, is that there were all these ostensibly “liberal” men who “voted for Obama,” but then the Left “just went too far” and drove them into the loving, misogynistic arms of Andrew Tate and Donald Trump. And now they’re lonely and they don’t know how to be men and it is a full-on crisis! A crisis I tell you! And an epidemic!
The way they talk, you would think that they had been forced to live in this horrible matriarchal world for years, during where they weren’t allowed any free speech, were constantly accused of rapes they didn’t commit, were told constantly by everyone that they were garbage and that they had to apologize for being born male.
But let’s piece together this timeline, shall we?
2011: Joe Francis arrested, “Entourage” ends.
2012: During a stand-up set, comedian Daniel Tosh starts talking about how rape jokes are “always” funny — causing a woman in the audience to yell, “Actually, rape jokes are never funny!”, to which he responds, “Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by like, five guys right now? Like right now? What if a bunch of guys just raped her?”
— Also, Tucker Max, who was celebrated for having written a book called I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell, in which he tells multiple stories of having sex with extremely intoxicated women, “retires” from being Tucker Max.
2013: We have the rape joke discourse, led by then-Jezebel writer Lindy West. On the one hand, you have feminists saying “This shit isn’t actually funny,” and on the other, approximately 87 million op-eds about how we must protect the sanctity of rape jokes.
— The campus rape discourse begins. Women who have been raped on campus discuss both the problem of rape on campus and the tendency of school officials to do nothing about it, asking people to take it more seriously and criticizing men who have sex with women when they are too intoxicated to consent. This is followed by years of people complaining that we can’t take these women seriously, because what if they are just having day-after regrets because the man didn’t send them flowers or call them back or something?
2014: In May, incel Elliot Rodger kills six people because he is angry that women won’t have sex with him.
— In August, Gamergate begins — starting out as a rage against progressive videogame developer Zoë Quinn from gamers who believe that she only got good reviews for a game she made that they didn’t like because she had a sexual relationship with a video game reviewer (who never actually reviewed her game). It turns into unfettered rage and harassment against women who dare to criticize games for being misogynistic, and then against all “Social Justice Warriors” in general.
— We have the street harassment discourse, started by Black women on social media, in which women publicly discussed the general unpleasantness of not being able to walk to the grocery store without some guy yelling “Nice tits!” at us. This is quickly followed by approximately 87 million “How are men even supposed to talk to women if they can’t yell at them while they walk down the street?” and “But it’s a compliment!” and “I’m a woman and it makes me feel pretty when men I don’t know compliment my ass!” op-eds.
— The height of the affirmative consent discourse, in which people discuss why it’s important to have affirmative and enthusiastic consent at each stage of sexual activity. Some states implement “Yes Means Yes” laws — so that, instead of asking campus rape victims whether they were clear enough that they did not want to have sex with someone, accused rapists will be asked how they obtained consent, This was, naturally, followed by lots of complaining that it will ruin sex.
2015: Donald Trump begins his presidential campaign, ultimately winning in part due to a backlash to “social justice” activism — feminist activism and rape culture discourse in particular.
So let’s just stop there for now. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list, because I know we had a few more discourses and we certainly had a lot more incel mass murders. But it doesn’t need to be, because the main thing I want to point out is that, at the very most, we had a few years of public discussions of things women had grown real fucking sick of, each of which was swiftly followed by an inevitable “Has feminism gone too far?!?” backlash from those who thought everything was fine the way it was and had been — mostly from those with bigger platforms and more power than we ever had.
This, frankly, has been the case for all social justice movements that have occurred over the last few years — not just feminism and rape culture, but also racism, police brutality and trans rights. You see a groundswell of actual people talking about their experiences and how best to change things so that other people don’t have to go through them, and a swift and terrible backlash from those who say they would like those other people to shut up, please.
Donald Trump was elected again this year, and again we were all told “This is all because you all just went too far! They just couldn’t take it anymore!”
But like, in the end, what did they have to take? People talking publicly on social media? People making art, movies, television shows, music, video games, etc. that they don’t like? Or publicly criticizing things they do like or behavior they enjoy engaging in?
That’s nothing. Especially when compared to everything that everyone else was expected to go through and shut up about. I’d like to point out that, quite notably, taking rape more seriously did not lead to any epidemic of men being sent to prison for not sending flowers or calling the day after.
One of the most jarring points of the “Girls Gone Wild” documentary is one in which a girl recounts how she ended up in a video when she was 17 years old (making it, legally, child pornography), and one of the male teachers at her high school responded by asking her to autograph a copy for him. That’s just one moment, one small snapshot of what was meant to be acceptable back then.
And, you know, at no point did anyone back then publicly wonder or wring their hands about “Is the patriarchy going too far?” Rather, then, as now, most public discussion was about what was wrong with the girls who were doing this, not the men who produced it.
It’s not at all surprising to me that men living in that social environment felt “safe” voting for Barack Obama, or felt like they were totally liberal because they wanted to legalize weed and didn’t care if people were gay or not. Because they could vote for Obama and feel like a good liberal while chanting “Iron my shirt!” at Hillary Clinton. Everything was going really well for them and no one was really challenging the status quo, at least not anyone they were paying any attention to. This is part of what they mean when they say “the Left left me!”
(And, again, that’s just the feminist side of it. They were also “totally fine” with Black people until Black people started bringing up police brutality and racism, and fine with LGBTQ+ people when they thought that civil rights push would end with marriage.)
We’re being punished right now for a feminist utopia we never even had. We went straight from the Girls Gone Wild Era to the Gamergate/Incel mass murder era to the the Trump era. And while a whole lot has changed in terms of what we are willing to put up with or be quiet about, the only thing that has actually changed about the patriarchy has been the flavor it takes on.
December 16, 1942 Heinrich Himmler, head of the German Gestapo, made public an order that Gypsies, or Roma, and those of mixed Roma blood already in labor camps be deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau.”Himmler was determined to prosecute Nazi racial policies, which dictated the elimination from Germany and German-controlled territories of all races deemed “inferior,” as well as “asocial” types, (hardcore criminals, homosexuals, Communists, Slavs, Catholic priests). Gypsies fell into both categories according to Nazi ideology and had been executed widely in Croatia, Poland and the Soviet Union. Gypsy arrivals to the Belzec death camp. The Porajmos (also Porrajmos) — literally Devouring — is a term coined by the Romani to describe attempts by the Nazi regime to exterminate most of their people in Europe. Read more Video
December 16, 1950 President Truman proclaimed a national state of emergency in order to fight “Communist imperialism.” This followed major Chinese intervention in the Korean War, launching a counter-offensive with 300,000 men against Republic of Korea, United States and United Nations troops.The U.N. command, under General Douglas MacArthur, had attacked the North Korean Army at Inchon three months earlier, liberating Seoul, destroying three divisions and forcing a retreat by the North Korean People’s Army. North Korean Leader Kim Il Sung (second from L) with the Korean-Chinese joint military command
December 15, 1791 The Bill of Rights became law when Virginia ratified the first 10 amendments to the United States Constitution. Read The Bill of Rights The Bill of Rights Defense Committee (emphasis mine -A. It’s an important site these days!)
December 15, 1930 Albert Einstein, 1930 Albert Einstein urged militant pacifism and the creation of an international war resistance fund. Einstein stated in New York that if two percent of those called for military service were to refuse to fight, and were to urge peaceful means of settling international conflicts, then governments would become powerless since they could not imprison that many people. He struggled against compulsory military service and urged international protection of conscientious objectors. He concluded that peace, freedom for individuals, and security for societies depended on disarmament; otherwise, “slavery of the individual and the annihilation of civilization threaten us.” Einstein on Peace and World Government
December 15, 1946 Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh sent a note to French Premier Leon Blum congratulating him for his selection as French Premier and asking for peace talks. France had exercised colonial power over the Vietnamese as part of French Indochina, formed in October 1887 from the provinces of Annam, Tonkin, Cochin China, and the Kingdom of Cambodia; Laos was added in 1893. Vietnamese nationalists, however, had demanded independence for the three provinces at the end of World War II.
December 15, 1973 The American Psychiatric Association reversed its long-standing position and declared that homosexuality is not a mental illness and “…deplores all public and private discrimination in such areas as employment, housing, public accommodation…” Read the APA policy on discrimination against [gays]
December 15, 2000 The Chernobyl nuclear power plant was shut down 14 years after becoming the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident ever. Nearly nine tons of radioactive material – dozens of times as much as the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs – were released in the explosion. The radioactive fallout affected 23% of Belarus, with 4.8% of Ukrainian territory and 0.5% of Russia. The Belarussian government spends 30% of its annual budget dealing with the aftermath of Chernobyl.
(I was about to post this one but I wanted to read Ten Bears’s first, and that one’s an essential with lots of news. This is a single positive, and possibly a resource for someone. -A)
Last year, Sammi Mrowka, a graduate student at San Diego State University who is nonbinary and transgender, completed the legal process for changing their name and gender marker on IDs. Mrowka, who uses “he” and “they” pronouns, participated in a name and gender marker change clinic run by law students at the University of San Diego, who helped him fill out the paperwork.
“It was worth it to go through all of the mental stress and gymnastics with these government offices to finally get the relief of, for example, going to a doctor’s office and not having to worry about them using my deadname or misgendering me,” Mrowka said. “I can feel the huge, huge relief, realizing how intense it was every single day having to think about all that, to now, where everything’s done.”
University of San Diego and Loyola Marymount University, both Catholic colleges, host name and gender marker change clinics run by law students. The clinics assist trans and nonbinary people in California who want to change their name and/or gender marker on documents like birth certificates, marriage licenses, driver’s licenses, passports, and social security cards.
Accurate IDs allow trans and nonbinary people to live more safely and gain access to resources and public spaces. Accurate IDs can also reduce the risk of harassment, discrimination, or violence.
At LMU in Los Angeles, Siobhan Kelly Fogarty and Rachana Reddi, both third-year law students, are the leaders of Loyola Maymount’s name and gender marker change clinic. LMU had a name-change clinic in 2022, but it had been on hiatus, and Fogarty and Reddi spent the last year reviving it. They held their first virtual clinic this fall, with five people in attendance. At their first in-person clinic at the Los Angeles LGBT Center, around 75 people came.
Especially now, when anti-trans rhetoric and legislation is on the rise, Fogarty said the Loyola clinic explicitly connects to the school’s religious mission.
“We’re a Jesuit university, and our school has this social justice mission. [The clinic’s] mission is to serve the LGBTQIA+ community seeking name and gender marker changes,” Fogarty said.
USD’s clinic started in 2018 and meets virtually about once a month. Mrowka contacted the clinic in July 2023 after hearing about it on Instagram and through their therapist. Soon after, he had a Zoom meeting with a student volunteer and lawyer who helped him fill out the paperwork.
“I was kind of shocked initially since it is affiliated with a religious institution, but them even having this clinic made me feel comfortable talking to them,” he said. According to clinic volunteers and attorneys, USD’s clinic has helped more than 1,200 people since opening in 2018.
Lilly Wood is a law student at USD and on the clinic’s board. “The school is supportive of the clinic, but it’s unique in the sense that it is entirely student run,” Wood said. Other clinics at USD, Wood said, are either run through the school itself, meaning students can participate for credit, or are run through Legal Aid Society and facilitated by the school.
“The name change and gender marker clinic is run more like a student organization,” Wood said. “There are six or seven of us right now and we run everything.” In addition, attorney volunteers supervise and assist as needed.
As a virtual clinic, Wood said people reach out via email and give basic information, and law student volunteers begin filling out the proper paperwork. There are multiple forms — “it’s very complicated, but they all make up the petition for a name and gender marker change,” Wood said.
On the night of the clinic, participants from all over the state join on a Zoom call, and the volunteers meet with participants individually to make sure the paperwork is correct, then cover next steps for how to proceed.
“A lot of the legal clinics at USD are very meaningful but different from the gender marker clinic,” Wood said. “We have a domestic violence clinic, a worker’s rights clinic, and a lot of times people are coming in with challenging, sad issues that are happening in their personal lives. Usually when people come into the [gender marker change] clinic, they’re so happy to be there. You’re helping them be themselves in a more honest way. It’s celebratory.”
Shortly before Wood came to law school, she said her friend from high school who was a trans woman passed away.
“She really inspired me with her optimism for life even under horrible transphobia,” Wood said. “When I learned about the clinic, it made me want to honor her memory in lending assistance to other trans people in the community.”
Although Mrowka had been out as nonbinary and trans for about a year before coming to the clinic, they said they had little experience finding affirmation in legal and medical spaces.
“It was really nice to feel the difference of talking to professionals and not having to feel the tension in my body,” he said. “There was no, ‘oh god, hopefully they don’t ask about this or that.’”
Mrowka said he also has trouble filling out forms, and having the volunteers fill them out and answer any questions was a huge help. Once the forms were filled out, Mrowka brought them to the courthouse.
LMU’s clinic is one of the only on campus that isn’t officially organized, meaning they don’t receive school funding, which would allow for a director, office on campus, and for students to get school credit.
Reddi and Fogarty are pushing for it to become an official clinic and hope to see it grow in the coming years, continuing their partnerships with the Long Beach and Los Angeles LGBTQ+ centers and faculty members at Loyola. They’ve received a lot of interest from student volunteers.
“Being able to sit with people and fill out the forms, which for me didn’t feel like a huge task — I would have done as many as they needed me to do — it felt good to be a part of someone’s journey in that way,” Reddi said. “It’s more important than ever to continue to do the work that we’re doing.”
Fogarty went to Catholic school growing up and “didn’t have the best experience as an openly queer kid,” she said. “I was concerned about coming to Loyola at first, and finding these communities is what made me feel okay. I saw that Loyola had an LGBTQ org that was the first of its kind in the country. [It’s important] to create space in these faith-based communities where everyone is welcome and seen and heard and safe.”
Part of Wood’s role on the clinic board at USD is keeping up-to-date on changes in the legal landscape of gender record changes.
“It’s hard to be optimistic right now,” Wood said. “We hear a lot from participants about their concerns. It’s unsettling to not know what’s going to happen next, but we’ll be here to support the community as much as possible. We’re lucky enough to be in California, which is very protective of trans rights, but we’re still kind of at the mercy of the federal government in some ways.”
For Mrowka, though they are no longer religious, USD’s clinic “practiced a lot of the virtues that I learned as a kid growing up in church, in terms of radical acceptance and deep compassion and servitude toward the community,” they said. “It’s another example of what neighborly love could look like. They don’t pretend everything is fine in the United States, but it’s so focused on what we can do with what we have.”
Rep. Nancy Mace’s former communications director isn’t buying Mace’s claims that she was attacked by a trans activist. On Tuesday night, Mace wrote that she was “physically accosted tonight on Capitol grounds over my fight to protect women.”
According to reports, James McIntyre, cofounder of the Illinois chapter of Foster Care Alumni of America, was arrested and charged with assaulting a government official after an event at the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill, Tuesday night. Witnesses have said that what they saw does not match Mace’s claims.
Mace posted a picture of herself wearing a sling, writing on X “Just sitting here with your run-of-the-mill gentle ‘normal handshake,’” an apparent reference to the claim that she was assaulted.
Natalie Johnson, who served as former communications director for Mace during her first year in Congress, responded to Mace’s tweet. “This is the same woman who told staff, myself included, during Jan. 6 that she wanted to get ‘punched in the face’ by a rioter so she could get on TV,” Johnson wrote. “She’s full of shit and her prop of a sling is a pathetic ploy for attention.”
According to the Washington Post, Elliot Hinkle, a foster-care advocate from Wyoming, witnessed the interaction between Mace and McIntyre.
“What we witnessed was a handshake, a passionate shake, but it didn’t look like an assault or intended aggression,” Hinkle said, referencing several people they said also saw the encounter. They said McIntyre told Mace, “Trans youth are also foster youth, and they need your support.”
Johnson has been critical of her former boss in the past. Recently, the former staffer slammed Mace after the lawmaker promoted a bill, disingenuously called “Protecting Women’s Private Spaces Act,” that bans trans women from using single-sex federally owned bathrooms. (snip-MORE)
Scottie's Playtime 