World Water Day Is Celebrated Internationally On March 22. Declared By The UN 25 Years Ago, This Day

What I want in 2019 - a prevention plan for climate change. preferably involving lots of solar panels and immigrant employees. - an end to world hunger. preferably involving sustainable agriculture and lots of international aid. - for everyone to have access to clean water. See my ‘World Water Day’ post for details. 

And hey, @ my classmates - stop using ‘gay’ as an insult. It ain’t cute. 

ooh, y’know what would be even better!? Let’s have everyone stop saying “he or she” or “his or hers” to refer to someone who’s gender we don’t know. Doesn’t matter the context - its unnecessary and cis-normative and hard on the tongue. If you wanna be fancy and impress your friends, try saying “guys, gals, and non-binary pals,” (as coined by Thomas Sanders). Or just use “they”. “They” is fine, guys. 

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Happy International Women’s Day! Every March 8, the world celebrates the social, economic, and political achievements of women everywhere. For centuries, women around the world have become heroines of all shapes and sizes, reshaping their communities and achieving their goals. For over a hundred years, international communities have recognized this day as a time to honor their accomplishments and fight for gender equality. Today is the day to fight for women’s rights, to global equity, education, and dignity. So what history will you make, on March 8, 2018?

[src]

I am the challenger. Standing in the ring,  your foolishness thundering at me, two beady eyes of human hate, two sharpened horns that prick where I’ve wounds. That turn on others when it hurts them most. I challenge you, counter you, shouting in rage at what you’ve done to hurt us; what you’ll do to hurt anything you fear. And you fear me, my swift foot, bent knee, flick of red from muscled knowledge. (I might be young, but I’ve the strength of a thousand fighters) Reading has done me so well, but experience, out in the real ring, is where I present my skill. Crowds are stomping, howling. You charge at me. I am the challenger - I will cut you down. Because I know I deserve better than this. As does all. You run, I swoop; You stomp, I switch; You bellow, I roar, and we are at it again, a bullfight of wit and change and progress. Your bright eyes are misinformed. Mine know enough to prove you wrong, to slow you, cut you down, and then we will be human again. I am the challenger, of all I see to be wrong, of all I know I can change. I am proud. You can be changed. Changed by I, the challenger. 

OK. It’s time to get this done.

Hi everyone. It’s been a while. 

I started this blog in September of 2017. I stopped posting in March 2018. Now i’m back, after 9-odd months of figuring stuff out. 

I guess I needed to get myself together, to eliminate some pressure from my life. I’ll say it, last spring was a really rough time for me, and I just couldn’t keep this blog up anymore. I took the summer to recollect myself, and the autumn to enjoy my new life. And it is pretty new - new school, new friends, new schedule. I’m glad to say I’m doing much, much better. 

And during this time, I didn’t think much about this blog and its purpose at all. I was still writing all the time. I was still thinking about the same things I’ve written about here. But last year, the pressure was getting to me - to be clear, pressure I was putting on myself. I wanted to put my all into this blog - and I genuinely enjoyed doing so - but I guess it just became too much.   

This is a long post. It’s written by someone you don’t know and have never met, so you probably won’t spend 10 minutes of your time reading it. I don’t really mind. But I’m writing this for three reasons: to explain myself, to advise you, and to make a super rough draft of a mission statement for this blog. That sounds a little dramatic. But I think it fits the goal here, actually: To explain, to advise, and make some super rough drafts of crap.

If you are reading this, you’re probably one of my much beloved followers. Thank you so much for all your support and (dare I say it) interest. I didn’t forget about you these past nine months, but I also learned not to forget about myself. It takes guts to put yourself out there on the Scary InternetTM, and I’ve learned that if I wanna do it right, I’ve gotta be thinking about my own well-being. I only have to do this if I want to, not for the sake of strangers. No shade - it’s just me being honest. 

And I guess that’s where the advice come in: if you want to put yourself and your work out there, whether that’s here or anywhere else, it shouldn’t be just for others. It has to be for you, too.   

And now for the mission statement part, or a very rough draft of it: the purpose of this blog is to share with you my opinions, ideas, values, and writing. That’s why I do it for me. What I do for you (hopefully) is inform and teach, about issues I care about and that I hope you care about too. Social justice, environmentalism, history, sociocultural issues; sometimes just poems or stories. 

Someone, upon hearing about my blog, told me I was a social critic. I prefer the term ’social observer’. I think that, in a way, that is my responsibility as a writer. It’s also my responsibility as an activist. Your craft, gift, passion, whatever you want to call it should be shared. It deserves to be shared. So have at it. 

There will be more posts coming up in the next few weeks. But for now, thank you, everybody. Happy (almost) New Year!

Who should worry most about climate change? 

a) Poor people. They’re the most vulnerable to the harmful effects of climate change, including natural disasters and disease. Some people benefit from practices that exacerbate climate change - if those people were at risk, they’d be actively fighting those practices. My teacher drew a diagram on the board; poor people live in one area and rich people live in the other. If the rich people want to build a big yucky factory, they’ll build it where the poor people live, because they don’t have any money for lawyers. This is the way it’s been all over the world. 

b) People who live by the sea. Rising sea levels, flooding, and storms won’t treat those places will. A lot of property will be damaged, people displaced, and coastal cities could be underwater before the century is out. Boston is my home. I don’t want my people or my family to be uprooted by water. I don’t want the history, art, and architecture of my city to go underwater - it’s too beautiful for that.

We are at a point where Israelis can slaughter civilians in Gaza and the West Bank with total impunity. This is worse than what we saw in apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia. The closest analogue is the European colonization of the Americas, where killing was done for sport and resistance was annihilated.

think most people do not grasp the magnitude of this horror. Imagine living under the thumb of an occupying regime that is bent on eradicating your community, either through forced removal or genocide, and if you resist this in any way - anything from armed struggle to poetry or journalism - you will be assassinated, or imprisoned and tortured indefinitely, and your family and loved ones will be bombed.

The first tweet should read, “and the response to resistance was campaigns of annihilation.” Because, despite generations of genocidal violence, the resistance lives. In the Americas and in Gaza too it lives, and in all who refuse to accept dehumanisation.

Should 16 year olds be allowed to vote?

Pros:

young ppl will have a voice earlier on

they’ll be empowered + encouraged to change their communities

the voices with the most knowledge about what people need will be elevated.

foster responsibility

Cons:

teens are too young to understand impact of their actions.

aren’t knowledgable or aware of political issues

too much pressure put on young shoulders.

those who are too immature could misrepresent people’s needs.

I say yes! More 16-year-olds than you would think, myself included, are ready and willing to make a difference. Some kids might be too immature for the vote, but frankly, so are some adults. We’re smart; we can handle it.  After all, we’ve only got a couple more years before adulthood comes along, so why not start preparing in the meantime? If we’re properly informed and coached by adults, we will make the right choices. Age doesn’t determine a person’s intelligence, maturity, or sense of responsibility. 

I really, really want to do something, something more than join a few clubs or run a blog. I want to help my community. I want to have an impact on the legislation that determines my future, to make the adults sitting indoors deciding my fate hear me. Adults don’t realize how much power they have - if I could vote.… man, you have no idea the things I’d make happen.

“My body, my choice” only makes sense when someone else’s life isn’t at stake.