?

(Source: thecrystaljungle, via methcastle)

(Source: arcaneimages, via think4yourself)

lenachen:

I’ve been harping on this organization for years, but it hasn’t exactly made me popular among my gay friends. Here’s why this incident (in which a HRC staffer tries to silence a trans activist) doesn’t surprise me in the least:

1. The HRC is first and foremost a political action committee, which means that they want and have always prioritized broad mainstream support, both financially and politically.

2. They have historically excluded, minimized, or simply ignored trans people (as well as other marginalized queer folks) in their agenda and have shown many times over that they have no qualms about abandoning equality for all in favor of equality for some.

3. Its leadership consists almost exclusively of privileged and white gay men. Its corporate partners are led almost exclusively by privileged and white (though not necessarily gay) men. Despite historic criticism of the organization’s lack of diversity, nothing has changed in the last decade. Because the HRC is not interested in anything changing.

4. I know from personal experience that they do not train their staff or volunteers on sensitivity toward trans issues even after all the controversy post-ENDA.

5. The HRC will negotiate with the Devil and sell out just about anyone if it fits their schemes. Would you trust a group like that with your social security benefits? You shouldn’t.

The organization has demonstrated time and time again that it feels no accountability toward major segments of their supposed constituency (trans or young or poor or non-white), so I find it fully plausible that this incident occurred and that the HRC is trying to cover its ass rather than admit that the largest lobbying organization for LGBT rights in the country is really more concerned about staying in power than actually challenging the power structures that currently exist.

In conclusion, you will not find an equal sign on my Facebook or anywhere else. I think it’s hypocritical and ignorant to allow the HRC to represent the entire American queer agenda, so long as the organization continues to devote the great majority of its manpower, influence, and money toward marriage equality alone - a goal which (long overdue may it be) frankly changes very little for the most marginalized and most ignored parts of the queer “community”.

npr:

Water In The Time Of Cholera: Haiti’s Most Urgent Health Problem

In the teeming city of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, millions of people have no reliable water supply. 

Many of the underground pipes that did exist were ruptured by the 2010 earthquake. Many public water kiosks are dry.

So life for most people is a constant struggle for water. And now that cholera has invaded Haiti, safe drinking water has become Haiti’s most urgent public health problem. Contaminated water is the main cause of cholera, which has sickened 530,000 Haitians since late 2010 and killed more than 7,000.

In Port-au-Prince, street vendors sell water in plastic baggies for a few pennies. Much of the city’s water supply is trucked in by commercial vendors or a dwindling number of nongovernmental organizations that took on the task after the quake.

On one busy street corner, just outside one of the city’s biggest slums, people with plastic buckets jostle to get to a length of garden hose that snakes out of a hole in the pavement — a source of free water.

A young woman named Marlene Lucien controls the hose. A self-appointed keeper of the peace, she tries to prevent fights from breaking out.

Is it safe water? “We are used to it,” someone replies. “It’s the water we use every day.” But another person waiting in line says she does worry about cholera. “We are scared of it because it can kill you within hours,” she says. But she has no choice; she has to drink whatever water she can get.

Haiti has never had the kind of water systems that developed nations take for granted. Chalk it up to decades of dysfunctional governments and unreliable international aid. Whatever the reasons, it’s never happened. -Richard Knox

(Video Credit: John Poole, Richard Knox, Jane Greenhalgh)

(Source: pilarpedrosapilar, via fuckyeahhappy)

loveyourchaos:

(by hjartesmil)

(via loveyourchaos)

Conan is too classy

Cityscape made of staples