We request the refunding for critical support services and counselling for criminalised women pre and post release prison in North Queensland by the LNP who cut the funding last week.

Why is this important? Criminalised women have the highest rate of sexual and physical abuse perpetrated against them in our community. Due to this horrendous abuse women turn to self medication with illiiegal drugs and / or alcohol. Nearly 60% of the women have a mental illness.

In Townsville women’s prison over 80% of women are Aboriginal and over 90% of the women cannot read and write. These issues have to be addressed, so that women when released into the community can move on with their lives and not return to drug and alcohol abuse and offending to feed their addiction.

Housing is also a fundamental part of their success on release. The support of our services assists women in healing their traumas and practical needs so when released they can reconnect with their children and families and move towards their goals and being a part of their communities.

(via Save Sisters Inside | CommunityRun)

Sister’s Inside is founded and run by primarily ex-inmate women and some lawyers. It’s been an internationally recognized success model of a service that helps;

- inmate mothers and their children re-establishing or maintain functional relationships during/after imprisonment.

- improved prospects of literacy, safe accommodation and finding work on release.

Allowing how many female inmates in Qld are ATSI women being punished for defending themselves in domestic violence situations, or arrested for petty ‘offences’ related to homelessness, this being top of the list for service shut down tells you exactly where real state priorities are.

Probably not coincidentally: they host the Is Prison Obsolete? Conferences, being one of the few regional public forums about changing the overall high imprisonment of marginalized people, not just services.

Oz folk - pls. signal boost on your other networks, not many politics Oz folk on tumblr.  Non-Oz folk - ATSI = Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander. Native + Black.

leonineantiheroine:

http://m.news.com.au/TopStories/pg/0/fi1171757.htm

A POLICE officer unleashed a series of savage blows to the head of a teenager bleeding from a bullet wound to the neck during a brutal arrest early yesterday.

Moments after he was pulled from a mangled car wreck in Kings Cross, Sydney, shocking footage shows police repeatedly striking Troy Taylor before dragging his limp body across the street.

An officer then places a knee on the teen’s blood-soaked back to handcuff him.

The 18-year-old, one of two teenagers shot by police during a dramatic chase, is then left lying in a pool of blood as dozens of stunned bystanders look on.

The teenagers, one just 14, were in a serious condition in St Vincent’s Hospital last night.

—-

All of the boys and young men are Aboriginal. Yep they did the wrong thing by driving the car onto the pavement but also they seemed to be frightened of the police and there was no need for the cop to bash the kid after the car crashed. 

This is what Mick Mundine had to say:

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/mick-mundine-horrified-by-video-of-arrest-of-shooting-victim-troy-taylor-in-kings-cross/story-e6freuy9-1226335217914

“ABORIGINAL elder Mick Mundine was shocked and stunned by the way police arrested shooting victim Troy Taylor, 18, describing it as “pathetic.”

“It’s very wrong - this has to stop,” Mr Mundine said.

The respected Aboriginal community leader watched the dramatic and disturbing video footage in the offices of The Sunday Telegraph yesterday.

“I mean, how are they training them? What’s the training for? Where’s the commonsense?” said an emotional Mr Mundine, who is working with respected Redfern police commander, Superintendent Luke Freudenstein, to calm tensions in the inner-city suburb.

“They never had guns in the car, so why did they even shoot the kids?”

(via Anita Heiss - Author, Poet, Satirist, Social Commentator)

I’m Aboriginal. I’m just not the Aboriginal person a lot of people want or expect me to be.

What does it mean to be Aboriginal? Why is Australia so obsessed with notions of identity? Anita Heiss, successful author and passionate campaigner for Aboriginal literacy, was born a member of the Wiradjuri nation of central New South Wales, but was raised in the suburbs of Sydney and educated at the local Catholic school. She is Aboriginal - however, this does not mean she likes to go barefoot and, please, don’t ask her to camp in the desert.

After years of stereotyping Aboriginal Australians as either settlement dwellers or rioters in Redfern, the Australian media have discovered a new crime to charge them with: being too ‘fair-skinned’ to be an Australian Aboriginal. Such accusations led to Anita’s involvement in one of the most important and sensational Australian legal decisions of the 21st-century when she joined others in charging a newspaper columnist with breaching the Racial Discrimination Act. He was found guilty, and the repercussions continue.

In this deeply personal memoir, told in her distinctive, wry style, Anita Heiss gives a first-hand account of her experiences as a woman with an Aboriginal mother and Austrian father, and explains the development of her activist consciousness.

Read her story and ask: what does it take for someone to be black enough for you?

dumbthingswhitepplsay:

poemsofthedead:

dumbthingswhitepplsay:

alexandraerin:

freedominwickedness:

dumbthingswhitepplsay:

So here is the list I gave them:

—being outright racist

—stealing terminology from black people

—using that bullshit ass “I don’t date people of your color”

—being covertly racist and using their transness to excuse it

—comparing transness to racism

—forgetting that non-white trans people exist

—complaining every time they have to include non-white trans people in anything

—discounting the opinions of non-white trans people WRT trans issues

—yelling at non-white trans people with narratives based in cultures they don’t understand or know and insisting they’re “sucking up to the kyriarchy”

—insisting that everyone use white trans created rhetoric for all trans people and getting insulted when we choose to use our own rhetoric

—insisting that gate-keeping isn’t right while ignoring that they don’t suffer the same violence as non-white trans people, who need gate-keeping to stay alive

—pretending they suffer the same violence as non-white trans people

—saying problematic shit and then standing behind other white trans people to protect them against the meanie trans PoC

Wait, what? How exactly do nonwhite trans people “need” gatekeeping to stay alive? The rest of your list totally makes sense, but that one doesn’t.

Gatekeeping as in the right to control their own spaces (community gatekeeping), not as in having their access to resources controlled (medical gatekeeping).

Have I told you I love you lately?

Because I do. 

Hells YES. I’d add:

• appropriating terminology/identities from indigenous people and being generally shitty when told that our terms are not for their use
• appropriating not only language but other culture markers from Black (especially, but also other Brown) cultures and taking them outside their cultural context
• consistently centering conversations around their own experiences/narratives at the expense of allowing POC experiences/narratives to be heard
• making coded accusations of “reverse racism”
• setting up hierarchies of oppression to continue to claim they have it worst and be able to deny the benefits of their whiteness
• being generally condescending and/or paternalistic towards POC
• suppressing the stories, histories, and role models of QPOC movements that are explicitly non-white, and on other occasions holding up a token QPOC as “proof” that they acknowledge us
• exoticizing & fetishizing non-white trans* (and cis) people
• telling trans* poc that their experience isn’t “really a trans* experience”
• generally exhibiting and upholding whiteness in interactions with POC

Adding:

—Making racism out to be a cis white people only issue while simultaneously complaining about their own erasure.

Ok this shit is ugly but.

especially this last, going in WAY to much IRL. And anyone who wants to be all “OMG, you are oppressing me because I’m some inner suburban Sydney genderqueer [READ CIS GENDER WHITE] activist - fuck you already. With allies like you, who needs a really high suicide rate.

No, really. Because in 2011, there were 3 Sistergirls following me, 1 in Brisbane, 2 in Sydney. In 2012, they are all dead, as suicides. They were all in their early 20’s [i think].

And only 2 texted me to let me know how bad they were feeling. And only 1 was I able to meet with IRL. And that was not enough.

Yeah sure I questioned my own role in that, and what I could/couldn’t do. Do you really think anyone wouldn’t? But

WHY DID THEY TEXT ME? As some older white lady who is intersex not trans or genderqueer,  and they really hardly knew, in another state? What worth does all this online posturing translate to, in terms of who they thought might PICK UP A PHONE and talk to them as people ?[rather than bullshit on their blog. God, you have no idea how much I’m coming to hate certain hypocritical cisgender genderqueer allies/suicide parasites* - since I realized their constant, intense righteousness, their obsession with finger pointing at others real and perceived opportunism and imperfect organizing - stems from ‘spot it because you got it’ syndrome.  They are the ‘activists’ online most guilty of the conduct they criticize, outside of those they criticize. Which is typical of petty politics in small, self conscious scenes. The hate comes at how wrong it is to just assume any POC transperson or ALL of queer POC history, representation, anything - are there tokens for the taking, to erase or claim for those games. 

For all the righteous talk online, where are you at 3am on any given weekend, and would you be available to recognize what a friend is going through as something based in their specific human experience, and act based on them being a valued peer in reciprocal relationships - rather than self affirming posturing on your blog, or for your angle - and only your angle - in a wedge politic? Consider that all this “trans ally” posturing which has no comittment IRL, and is in massive denial about queer racism, is HARM - not help, if IRL you still can’t/won’t see a Sistergirl as human.

It’s all circulating notions to huge audiences that POC transpeople are victims, or are the eternal Strong Women, or are so oppressed that your 101 self is being PROFOUNDLY radical and brave championing these helpless creatures [by saying nothing they aren’t already saying better year round at multiple POC, LGBTI and queer POC blogs]. It perpetuates prejudice by the method chosen to fight it - being presenting the subject people as caricatures, while presenting selves as complex people who are also champions ‘helping to include’ the caricatured people and their histories - not more priviliged people being included, and also erasing or dividing histories to suit their agendas.

Another trade off is, it implies they have tonnes of friends now, all these people really have their back.  Which can hurt worse, when it’s not romantic to be the subject POC transperson, when they get even more stigma from people expecting them to be victim/superhero caricatures, expectation them to be strong and not ‘impose’ by calling anyone when things are down, because people think they have LOTS of support already [i mean you saw it on 1000 tumblrs right?]

-i see you all brand build on the dead who weren’t white cisgender like your bullshit ass. You know what happened to the boy who cried wolf. don’t think i or other queers will mistake your opportunism for sincerity for a second.

leonineantiheroine:

butcheredmentality: [snip]

i swear to god if some bastard busts out the but Australia is multicultural,~harmony day~ no,racism, the police is here 4u~ shit i will fuck something up. Australia is founded on anti-black sentiments.this shit breaks my heart,a phone call? really?how many more until whitey wakes up and realizes the destruction and pain it continues to inflict on marginalized communities?

wecoming4chu.

also butchered, i felt unsettled by African Australians on FB posting a link to the pigs—as if we should join them. wtf?

“I began researching this story in mid-August. At the time, Atakelt’s family and the Ethiopian community were expecting the autopsy results within weeks. But they did not arrive.”

People making pre-emptive excuses for the police and minimizing it have to quit. A missing autopsy after Black male was in police custody then died in unexplained circumstances does have a history of meaning one thing here.

Even if it does turn out that there’s miraculously some other explanation of the wounds, the next of kin are seeking answers. They haven’t accused anyone, they’re not going on a vendetta, there’s nothing here to be condemning these people or making racial slurs about them.

Saying there’s distrust and they want truth is what would be expected, and respected, from almost anyone else facing this situation. Hell it would be grandstanding from politicians and demands for inquiries by now if the young man had been a white lawyers son.

All this leaping to condemn their request shows a paranoid, willfully ignorant grasp of the power relations at play, with bonus racist snark. Would people really accept non-answers if it was their own relative? So what’s the difference here then?

pocharassed:

As per so-treu’s suggestion - this blog has now been created to archive all the harassment against PoC that tumblr staff do nothing about. A wordpress will be set up soon, in case tumblr takes this down.

ok i was away a bit. then i came back and saw this. you are the best and most beautiful ppl. on tumblr today.

racismschool:

You know how people say “Hate is a strong word” if you imply that you hate someone? This has always annoyed me because I don’t use that word lightly. Sure, I’ll randomly attach this word to things and even to actions but almost never to a person. Both “Hate” and “Monster” are two words that I personally take seriously. Again, I’ll call my little cousin a cute little monster but I feel that you understand the “Monster” I am talking about here.

The reason I wanted to preface this post with the above is because I will be using both of these words to describe someone and I want to make it clear that I am not using these words lightly. I mean them whole heartedly. 

Last night I watched something unfold here on Tumblr that still has me enraged. I am going to provide as many links as possible so that after you read this post, you can read through the fuckery and judge for yourself. After you’ve done that, if you find that you have come to the same conclusion that I have, I am going to request that you reblog this post.

Read More

duskandshiverrrr:

Beautiful, except that can we please shed the myth that only women have uteri?

Awaits the counter race, age, PWD etc. arguments. Reblogs because the slogan “if you can’t trust me with a choice, how can you trust me with a child” encapsulates the infantilizing of women by forced birthers so well.

SNIP! Last night, this image prompted me to post a related late night rant on the on dynamics of Family Values divisiveness in parenting/repro rights debates. On how even conservative cisgender queers and straight white ‘allies’ can dominate trans/intersex politics and take glee in being righteous about “including” us in repro rights, only to then tokenize us and create division with other groups, for example WOC midwives.

About the stress and dillema of wanting to have representation and rapport then when you get a smidgen, feeling it’s being twisted and wiggled away from you, it’s gentrify, it’s too much about allies radical ‘cred’ and to little about the fact that people who’re margianlized in parenting and repro rights might value being able to talk with each other without always being either erased, or championed as props for other people’s conflicts. 

In the time it took me to write it went from 6 to 10 thousand reblogs. And I snipped away that post - it was way to long for tumblr and badly edited and just to ‘late night blathery’. Will re-post if can clarify and cut down to half length.

But it’s still going across my dash. NON-STOP. Over 30 thousand now. Which is great, in the acknowledgement of repro rights.

That people will affirm, like, reblog this so much - compared to how often stuff on repro rights/parenting for queer, POC, poor etc. people gets affirmed - the size of the gap in everyone name checking the ‘ad on’ families but maybe not so much wanting to actually see them…

Kind of confronting. That it prompted to rant about tokenized families, that most other times tumblr/blogging has prompted me to atypical ranting were also in some way touching on the erasure-even-within-radical-advocacy of some families for others: i guess i’m wanting and needing to address that, but insular white queerness or to Family Values feminism isn’t the place to do it, because i/we can’t seem to ever get out of that bait/switch relation.

I realized that years ago, when I got a whole bunch more selective about which feminists and queer forums I engaged with. But I think…like it’s impossible to NOT be reminded all the time, without living in total isolation/under a rock.

My politics haven’t changed nor has the fact that ‘some of my best friends’, are sexual politics nerds or organizers. My relation to feminist media networks and some queerness though, is repel/attract. Simultaneously dreading the negative reminders, and glad of them because now I’m being prompted to change by the bad experiences, rather than nearly kill myself dealing the high turn over of opportunistic ‘friends and allies’.

so-treu:

wickedblackwitch:

And I wasn’t even wearing the uniform. 

neither was i. and i’ve been asked this question since i was 12. -_-

Going on a tangent for call center work: every call center job I’ve had has involved regular white customer calls either;

a] assuming I’m white, will bond over their racism and derailing from their complaints about service to rants about how bad service is related to migrants.

b] assuming I’m white, will bond over their racism, and derailing from their service query to start some ‘friendly’ chat about how they had to deal with some POC today and OMG ISN’T IT TIRESOME HOW THEY SPEAK FUNNY?? chat.

I am white, but obviously not all call center staff are, and I sure don’t want to bond over that shit.

the assumption of whiteness is because i have ‘good’ enunciation, despite or because of having learning disabilities, growing up really underclass/class shamed etc. the assumption of whiteness on call lines is also because white people assume EVERYONE is white until shown otherwise.

So I get to hear this side of other whites. But POC experience that a lot more, those tone and enunciation concerns, especially if  English is their second language, or they’re also from under/working class backgrounds but denied class solidarity because of racism.

It’s repulsive how constantly white callers to help and sales lines figure that anyone with ‘good’ enunciation must be white, so they can derail a service call into a ‘fun’ racist tirade.

Some points about the conditions of those ppl. white customers feel entitled to hate on because they’re on a line.

Call centre workers get evaluated on how fast they handle calls + how much sales, survey recruitment or positive feedback they can generate per shift.

It is generally a job for people facing a lot of unemployment - and unlike other service sectors where there is a range of good or bad employers, in terms of how they treat casuals - the call center industry has boomed by intentionally exploiting the status of casual contract staff in globalized communications.

It’s an industry that relies on and normalizes; high staff turnovers, low wages, playing off insecure workers in majority world countries and western ones to see how low they can get wages vs. how high they can demand total on-call 24 hrs, 7 days a week shift flexibility in exchange for irregular work on casual contacts that get renewed as casuals in the same jobs for up to 5-10 years [after that RSI becomes a sector exit motive for most].

In a few decades of casual jobs in the industries that normalize ‘permanent casual’ contracts for service staff - it’s rare that managers will ever side with staff over racist, sexist customer abuse, or for anyone but managers favorites and the high turnover uni students to be able to reject allocated shifts even for dealing with births or deaths without being fired or warned. The gains of ‘casual’ flexibility go  100% one way, in other words. 

And if you’re POC call centre staff in a majority world country, getting tonnes of white customer calls from western countries you’ll get rants about how the work is being ‘taken by Indians’ or whatever, on top of that. As though that outsourcing wasn’t to deliver ‘competitive’ prices to them and higher profits to their company.

And if you’re white or POC call centre staff in western worlds, you will get tonnes of white customers in the same country as you assuming that because the number is in ‘their’ country, you must be as white and racist as them, so you’re a captive audience for their ‘migrants ruin everything’ tirade.

Those racist tirades cost staff, emotionally and in $ as they add extra humiliation and prejudice to already constant verbal abuse, and consume time which will lower the workers highly monitored and judged ‘performance targets’.  Staff really are captive, to direct in their ear intimate hate sometimes which they can’t afford to dummy spit and call bullshit racism.

POC staff with kids to support can’t always afford to say “fuck you” or “hey, I’m POC lady, and have better English than you as well as Spanish you ignorant hater”  and lose abusive customers like that, in those conditions.

This may seem kinda random to the OP but, white people: when you call 1800 lines and decide ‘this person speaks like me, they probably want my racist derail shit!” Or this person doesn’t speak like me, but hey they called, they ‘asked for it’.

NO! This person is AT WORK, in a really CRAP JOB and very likely to BE POC.

This person is reading to a set script, which some other probably white and higher classed person set for them in attempts to appease white consumer persons like yourself!

Even if they do fuck up, hating on the call center staff accomplishes nothing. They’re expected to cop hate so shareholders can profit from replacing quality customer service with cold calling and impersonal helplines. You may think you’re showing the company, but in reality you and the staff exploiting shareholders vs. harassed staff = BFF.

Hating on call centre staff for things they can’t control, makes you an ass. Hate with some extra racism? Hate with cheap shots about accents, English enunciation and migrants?

You’re a white supremist jerk as well as a complete general social ass. For real.

ETA: I just saw how, some white ppl. are commenting to So-Treu like: white people get that to, so get over it. Yes white people DO get ‘that’ to [gestures at above commentary] but if you’re a white person in the social niches that get it, then you probably work with POC who also get it. So you should be more - not less - aware of the specifically racist extra ways that POC ‘get it’. What’s with the defensiveness??

ETA 2: so some ppl. commenting are not white, but Latino/a. My mistake and apologies for that.

But still, awkward. There are service associations with Latino, Asian, people to, but…this isn’t in conflict with what the OP is saying, about racialized concepts of The Help. It can be said as an AS WELL AS rather than a GET OVER IT INSTEAD OF to specifically anti-Black conceptualizations of maids & service classes.   It’s def. awkward for white ppl. to coment on colourism, but tumblr has taught me …well gross stuff about not giving anyone the benefit of the doubt about anti-Blackness.

e.g. most of my POC family, friends or co-workers are Black Aboriginal, Latinas, SE Asian and/or Desi. Ppl. mistake the Black Aboriginal women for Desi or Latina often and are still racist, sexist, classist patronizing jerks to them. But there are specific changes in behaviour, including from other POC and ‘anti racist’ whites - like decreases in recognition, warmth or status and increased resistance to their social mobility - when they realize the Black Aboriginal women are Black, rather than Desi or Latina.

Not hating, but these things can be expressed without negating specifically Black experience.

nezua:

The capitalist social pyramid is black at the base and white at the top. In South Africa, until apartheid was formally abolished in 1994, this pyramid was legally sanctioned. Elsewhere, while slavery and segregation have been outlawed, the richest people are still the whitest and the poorest are the blackest.

Racism suits capitalism because it’s an important way of justifying economic discrimination. It’s no accident that wherever you find racism, someone seems to be making money from it.

Racist ideas help capitalism get away with super-exploiting racial and ethnic minorities, and all non-white people.

“Those Arabs” or “Those Asians”, we’re told, “are used to doing dirty, hard work, and they’ll be glad to get a job at all.”

Or when unemployment is on the rise, it’s always handy to blame “Asians”, or whichever ethnic group is being demonised at the time, for taking jobs away from “real” Australians.

And when governments in the rich countries impose welfare funding or wage cuts on working people, they always start by targeting the most vulnerable groups — non-Anglo migrants or indigenous people. International students are often the first to cop attacks on higher education.

Racism fosters the idea that the massive under-development and deprivation faced by the people of the Third World is “their fault”. This leads to acceptance of the idea that, while rich countries should give some aid or loans, it should be tied to the recipient government agreeing to terms favourable to the donor countries, including huge interest charges.

Without racist and nationalist ideas prevalent in the populations of imperialist countries, people would be less likely to accept as “natural” or “inevitable” the huge inequalities between the First and Third Worlds or endorse wars on Third World peoples who resist imperialist domination.

In other words, racism is a way for the capitalist class to divide ordinary people from each other, within and between countries: divide and rule.

Important.

(via Gina The Lion Heart | newmatilda.com)

Gina Rinehart, Australia’s richest person — tipped to reach the position of World #1 — has penned a curious and revealing op-ed for the latest edition of Australian Resources and Investment magazine. In it, she expands on a vision that has long represented her Shangri La: a northern Australian free-trade zone, unencumbered by taxation and populated by plentiful temporary labour from overseas. …

There are two main thrusts to her arguments in favour of the free-trade zone.

First, new taxes from the federal Labor government are killing investment in mining, forcing companies offshore and slowing the breakneck pace of the boom — you’ve heard this all before, and the enormous profits posted by companies like Rio Tinto, XStrata and Rinehart’s own company, Hancock Prospecting, should be enough to wipe the tears from your eyes at the plight of our struggling mining executives.

Rinehart’s second point is more bizarre and is a stalking horse for her real desires, if not those of the industry at large. Australians don’t want to live in sweltering Northern Australia where all the goodies are buried, so we need to regulate them less, tax them less and cut payroll and company tax, stamp duty and the like to make it more economically attractive to relocate. Failing that, we should “…consider the terrible plight of very poor people in our neighbouring countries in Asia. We should, on humanitarian grounds, give more of these people the opportunity of guest labour work in Australia.”

In light of Gina buying a 12-15% share in Fairfax media, it seems worth revisiting who we’re dealing with. Also: Qld really is the Texas of Oz, isn’t it?

ETA: Dear anon, the bold isn’t a rejection of migratory labour, but highlighting the fact that she wants to replace refugee visas - which ‘humanitarian grounds’ implies eligibility for - with exploitative temporary visas that would replace giving SE Asian refugees asylum with forcing them in the most dangerous and badly paid jobs.

It’s both a hopeless ‘rebrand’ of herself, and mining profiteering, as humanitarian rather than white supremist on race politics, and a bid to use state immigration mechanisms to obtain a personal, racially profiled extra-exploitable labour force.

Which is what mining land grabs and immigration have always been about, but she’s getting bolder in her power grab, which is damn scary.

p.s. sending anon snark prevents me from gauging whether to really debate this - in case you’re interested enough to do something - or if you’re a troll and posting your vitriol will encourage you. See how this works? 

If anyone’s interested there’s a petition against Gina’s media grab here at Avaaz. 

The election of Dora Martin Berry (Class of 1957, pictured on the left from the Saturday Evening Post) as the UI’s campus queen of 1955 attracted national press coverage as an example of racial tolerance, yet she was barred from carrying out the traditional honors and duties of her title.

via UI Libraries Presents African-American Student History Online- The University of Iowa Libraries