October 2011
16 posts
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It is true that any child can be trafficked, but like everything else, poverty, racism, and other societal violence are huge risk factors: A pimp who goes to a suburban school to pick up a girl is much more likely to be noticed or caught, and the girl that went missing will be reported to the authority immediately. On the other hand, youth who is neglected or abandoned by their family and has no safe place to return to is a much easier and safer target for anyone looking for a minor to exploit.
But the misguided panic among middle-class suburban parents lead to policies that are ineffectual or even counter-productive, such as curfews and more policing at schools and malls. Curfews or youth shutouts in public spaces that are intended to protect youth from harm at night would only work if the youth had a safe place to go home to at night; if they don’t, curfews would force them to find some random adult to stay with for the night, which may not necessarily increase their safety.
” —Interesting article on youth sex trade from Emi Koyama. Read more: Youth in the sex industry: how recognizing “push” and “pull” factors can better inform public policy (via harmreduction)Hey were you all at the occupation this weekend/were you the fnb folk? If so hey!! :) If not who are you? :)
Radical Intersectionality based collective in Niagara. A bunch of members were at Occupy Toronto over the weekend but not specifically involved as part of the Live Free Collective.
“I must remind you that starving a child is violence. Suppressing a culture is violence. Neglecting school children is violence. Punishing a mother and her family is violence. Discrimination against a working man is violence. Ghetto housing is violence. Ignoring medical need is violence. Contempt for poverty is violence.”
—Coretta Scott King (via zeitgeistmovement)
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The problem with cultural appropriation is that it replaces the original with a copy created by the dominant culture. It dilutes the original, removes all symbolic value from it and replaces it with a ready to consume product devoid of context and meaning.
Cultural appropriation, at its most extreme, is a violent form of colonization because it removes the original group behind the culture and reinforces stereotypes about that group (i.e. ALL First Nation folks are reduced to “war bonnets”, whether their culture uses them or not; all Latin@s are reduced to a stylized version of Catholicism regardless of their spirituality; etc.). The mechanism of commodifying a culture ends up being a tool to re-inforce [sic] racism as it reduces the people behind those cultures to a mere cartoon like representation of their realities. It’s a great way to ultimately Other and objectify entire groups of people by taking something that is dynamic and ever evolving and freezing it for a marketing photo opportunity.
” —i want to print this out on cards and hand it to anyone obviously appropriating anything
(via seppin)
Hey, where is that person that was trying to defend wearing Native items on Halloween? They should read this.
(via the-madame-hatter)
DECOLONIZE WALL STREET →
tequilasovereign.blogspot.com
What “Wall Street” and the U.S. has become — an imperial-colonial power over the world’s economics and the laws that protect it — is a direct legacy of the fraud and violence committed against Native nations.
Perhaps those who now claim to OCCUPY WALL STREET in the name of reforming America could remember their history and call it something else (seeRacialicious’ post on the importance of language in opposition). Wall Street is, after all, already an occupied territory. As are all of U.S. land holdings in northern America, the Pacific, and the Caribbean.
Decolonize the opposition!
