Jessie Nicole

ianthe:

Hundreds of Chicago Students Walk Out of Standardized Test

Hundreds of Chicago students are taking up the mantle in the fight against the role of standardized tests in public school closures as they walked out of a state exam Wednesday. Their message: “We are over-tested, under-resourced and fed up!”

Over 300 students from over 25 different Chicago public schools boycotted the second day of a state-wide standardized test.

Ahead of a school board meeting, at which the demonstrators were banned from speaking, the students rallied outside the district headquarters carrying placards and forming a human chain.

“We’re just trying to make a statement that tests should not determine our future or the future of our schools,” said student organizer Alexssa Moore, a senior at Lindblom High School.

Brian Sturgis, senior at Paul Robesan High School and boycott organizer with the group Chicago Students Organizing to Save Our Schools (CSOSOS), declared in an op-ed “We are Chicago students and we are here to save our schools!”

He writes:

Mayor Emanuel and his Board of Education want to close 54 grammar schools around the city, all of which are in black and Latino communities: this is racist. These schools are also being judged based on assessments and tests given throughout the year: this is foolish. These school closings will leave neighborhoods dismantled, parents lost, students unaccounted for, and more importantly, will put children in harmful situations: this is dangerous.

Sturgis explains that Mayor Emanuel and the Board of Education

are putting too much pressure on standardized testing and threatening to close schools that don’t have high test scores. When schools are under so much pressure to raise test scores it leads to low-scoring students being neglected, not supported. This is what happened when 68 low-scoring juniors were demoted to sophomore status at a southwest side high school in Chicago last month, right before the state test.

The student boycott follows a protest earlier this month, Occupy the Department of Education, during which teachers and education activists descended on the Capitol to draw attention to the rampant privatization of public schools and the rash of recent school closures.

In February, a nationwide day of action led by the Seattle school teachers’ boycott of a standardized test brought this issue to national attention.

(via fuckyeahmyvagina)

emigrl:

During an interview about sex workers’ rights, I told the interviewer that arguments for and against legalization, decriminalization, criminalization, and “Swedish model” all miss the point. “What is the legal structure that you want to see?” He asked. I said, “redistribution of wealth.”

sexworkerproblems:

A Submission from a friend of the site

(please note that not all sex workers agree that “whore” is a slur, or that reclamation of the word “whore” should be restricted to full service sex workers)

SW6

Reclaiming whore was actually pretty important for me. Gives me feelings. 

ave-atque-vale:

foradayofsky:

marpotish:

phaelsafe:

Anita Sarkeesian faces backlash for disabling Youtube comments.

In celebration of International Women’s Day, people are taking to the Internet to complain about Anita Sarkeesian. The first installment of her long-awaited video series about sexism in video games was released yesterday, inspiring an inevitable torrent of backlash. Aside from suggestions that she “stole” the Kickstarter funding for the Women vs. Tropes in Video Games series, much of the criticism is because she disabled comments on the YouTube video.

[…]

Leading the charge against Sarkeesian’s decision is Tumblr user amazingatheist, who posted a ten-minute video entitled “Who’s The Damsel Now?“ Arguing that Sarkeesian’s “censorship” of YouTube comments counteracts her message about strong women, and that her TED talk about online harassment amounts to “whining,” amazingatheist says:

“What are you afraid of, Anita? Why can’t people have a discourse about your material? Why can’t people make their opinions towards your content known? I understand that some comments will be abusive in nature — probably most will — but so what?”

Ironically, the existence of this response means by definition that amazingatheist is making his opinion known, as well as participating in a discourse about Sarkeesian’s material. [READ MORE]

The amazingatheist destroyed his own chance at participating in these discussions by being a misogynistic MRA. Just in case, that link needs a trigger/content warning so TW: rape, misogyny, abusive language.

The woman got bombarded with rape and death threats when she talked about the idea of doing this series. And people are up in arms about her not wanting to deal with that during her actual work??

So aside from the misogyny aspect here (and that isn’t to downplay it at all, because holy fucking shit you ASSHOLES,) I would like to point out something that appears to be lost on 95% of the denizens of The Intertubes:

No one is required to let you air your opinion in their space.

This includes the comments section of anything they upload to YouTube.

Seriously, the number of people who think that they are somehow owed the right to comment on things boggles me. You want to bitch about someone’s videos, comment on news articles, disagree with someone’s Facebook post? Go do it in your space. No one owes you shit.

And in particular, no one you are abusive and violent toward owes you shit.

I’m still boggling at this bit: “I understand that some comments will be abusive in nature — probably most will — but so what?”

Abusive in nature…but so what?

That comment says everything, doesn’t it?

After all, who fucking cares about what it’s like to receive death threats, rape threats? About what it’s like to have people barge into your space to pour violent, abusive vitriol all over your work? They are owed that opportunity, apparently. They are owed the opportunity to abuse you, and if you deny them that, you’re “censoring” them.

I would like everyone to think about that for a moment. @amazingatheist thinks it’s OK to threaten & abuse women he disagrees with - he’s done it himself, and he’s certainly never had any problem with anyone else doing it.

Abuse is OK. But protecting yourself from abuse? OH NO, CAN’T HAVE THAT.

What a shitstain.

(via crunkfeministcollective)

My boss just recited this to me, first in Russian then in English:

Goodbye, my friend, goodbye
My love, you are in my heart.
It was preordained we should part
And be reunited by and by.
Goodbye: no handshake to endure.
Let’s have no sadness — furrowed brow.
There’s nothing new in dying now
Though living is no newer.

It’s the last poem written by Russian poet Sergei Yesinin. That he wrote in his own blood. Right before he committed suicide. 

It was much creepier and weirder once he got to that part of the story. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Yesenin

dentonsocialists:

No, seriously, stop comparing them. I’m pretty sure Malcolm X would’ve been outraged to be compared to JFK. And MLK spoke against wars, Obama continues them. Oh, & seriously? If you call MLK “Dr. King” but Angela Davis, “Mrs. Davis” you should get that checked on. She’s got a Ph. D too.

I’m embarrassed that this is the first time I’ve noticed the discrepancy between how I often I hear “Dr. Martin Luther King” as opposed to “Dr. Angela Davis” which I think I’ve literally ONLY heard when she was being introduced to speak. Fucking hell.

(via crunkfeministcollective)

Audrey Hepburn foreeevvveeerrr

(via fuckyeahmyvagina)

trashprincesss:

I want nothing to do with a feminism that excludes trans* women. Go be a cisterhood without me.

(via marginalutilite)