Originally posted by chez_jaeat Mississippi Personhood Amendment
Originally posted by gabrielleabelleat Mississippi Personhood Amendment
FYI-I copied this from melodious329-I wasn't the one who made the donation.
I don't know how to mirror posts from LJ here, so I'm sure these links are going to be messed up. If you want more info, you can either look at my LJ, or at the lj for chez_jaeat, gabrielleabelleat, or melodious329. I just wanted another venue to get the word out, because this is the first I've seen about this business, and it alarms me.
Mississippi is voting on November 8th on whether to pass Amendment 26, the "Personhood Amendment". This amendment would grant fertilized eggs and fetuses personhood status.
Putting aside the contentious issue of abortion, this would effectively outlaw birth control and criminalize women who have miscarriages. This is not a good thing.
Jackson Women's Health Organization is the only place women can get abortions in the entire state, and they are trying to launch a grassroots movement against this amendment. This doesn't just apply to Mississippi, though, as Personhood USA, the group that introduced this amendment, is trying to introduce identical amendments in all 50 states.
What's more, in Mississippi, this amendment is expected to pass. It even has Mississippi Democrats, including the Attorney General, Jim Hood, backing it.
The reason I'm posting this here is because I made a meager donation to the Jackson Women's Health Organization this morning, and I received a personal email back hours later - on a Sunday - thanking me and noting that I'm one of the first "outside" people to contribute.
So if you sometimes pass on political action because you figure that enough other people will do something to make a difference, make an exception on this one. My RSS reader is near silent on this amendment. I only found out about it through a feminist blog. The mainstream media is not reporting on it.
If there is ever a time to donate or send a letter in protest, this would be it.
What to do?
- Read up on it. Wake Up, Mississippi is the home of the grassroots effort to fight this amendment. Daily Kos also has a thorough story on it.
- If you can afford it, you can donate at the site's link.
- You can contact the Democratic National Committee to see why more of our representatives aren't speaking out against this.
- Like this Facebook page to help spread awareness.
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
realpestilence's InsaneJournal:
| Tuesday, October 11th, 2011 | |
| 11:35 pm | Mississippi Personhood Amendment Current Mood:  scared |
| Wednesday, July 27th, 2011 | |
| 9:58 pm | I'm overdrawn at the bank, thanks to my hours being cut so much... these last 3 months. Kids are out for summer vacation, and our store gets very, very slow. It'll get better, once they go back to school-we hope. The company's starting this computer automated scheduling, and I doubt that'll work out in our favor. I'd be ok-unhappy and worried, but basically ok, if it weren't for the fact that my dad and brother are supposed to bring me the car next week. Finally!...except I have no money. I do have the $500 down that we agreed on, but I can't afford tags or insurance...and I'd really rather use that money for rent. I did tell my dad, but I don't know if he really gets how bad it is. I wish they'd just give me the car. But I can't ask for that, and I highly doubt they would, anyways. I NEED that car so I can look for work more effectively, and be able to get to/get home from any job I might find (much more reliably than the bus), but I can't afford it. If I had the other job, I could afford it, but I can't get it without the car! Catch-22. If they'd brought me the car 3 months ago, I'd have had the money, no problem. But they couldn't do it then, because they were straightening things out after mom's death. I don't blame them at all, but it is...bad timing. This is the roughest it's been since I was first laid off from the office in September. I only made it through then because of a friend's extreme (and unexpected) kindness. I just hope my dad can and will do something, even though it's not really fair of me to ask, or I don't know what I'll do about that car.
You know, I joked with him about "if I have the car, at least I'll have a place to live". But I wasn't really joking. |
| Thursday, May 19th, 2011 | |
| 10:33 am | Lytol-centril Pern fic rec every new beginning (comes from some other beginning's end), by Penknife http://archiveofourown.org/works/31627 It's beautifully-written, and if you like Lytol, this is THE "must read" fic for him.
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| Monday, January 31st, 2011 | |
| 7:05 am | If you enjoy writing dark fic... dark_fest over at LJ has a multi-fandom prompt claim going on until Feb 8th. There's also a few "any fandom" prompts, in case your fandom isn't represented. http://community.livejournal.com/dark_fe There's some DCU prompts I'm hoping get claimed! |
| Saturday, September 12th, 2009 | |
| 10:18 am | by A.E.Houseman (with the lyrical title "XXXVII") I did not lose my heart in summer's even, When roses to the moonrise burst apart: When plumes were under heel and lead was flying, In blood and smoke and flame I lost my heart. I lost it to a soldier and a foeman, A chap that did not kill me, but he tried; That took the sabre straight and took it striking, And laughed and kissed his hand to me and died. Current Mood:  contemplative |
| 9:37 am | Guitar Repair Woman by Buddy Wakefield My mother told me, "If you ever become a rock star do not smash the guitar. There are too many poor kids out there who have nothin' and they see that shit when all they wanna do is play that thing. Boy you better let'm play." Okay, if she ever starts in on one of these lectures, your best bet is to pull up a chair, chief, 'cause Momma don't deal in the abridged version. She worries about me so much some days it feels like I'm watching windshield wipers on high speed during a light sprinkle and I gotta tell'er, "Ma, yer makin' me nervous." She was born to be laid back, y'all, I swear, but some of us were brought up in households where Care Free is a stick of gum, and the only option for getting out is to walk faster. The woman can run in high heels backwards while bursting my bubble, double checking my homework, rolling enough pennies to make sure I have lunch money, and preparing for a meeting at school on her only day off so she can tell Miss Goss the music teacher, "If you ever touch my boy again, big lady, I'll bounce a hammer off yer skull." I remember her doing these things swiftly and with a smile in her discounted thrift store business suits off layaway. She wore them bright and distinguished enough to cover up the 30 years of highway scars truckin' through her spine. Some accidents you don't need to see, rubbernecker. Keep movin' 'cause she made it. She's alive and she's famous. We can stretch Van Gogh paintings from Kilgore, TX to Binghamton, NY and you still won't find the brilliant brush strokes it takes to be a single mother sacrificing the best part of her dreams to raise a baby boy who-on most days- she probably wants to strangle. We disagree-a lot. For instance, she still thinks it's okay to carry on a conversation full throttle at 7 a.m. whereas I think... Oh, wait, I'm sorry... I don't think at seven in the morning. But we both agree that Love makes no mistakes. So at night time, when she's winding down and I'm still writing books about how to get comfortable in this skin she gave me, I see rock stars on stages smashing guitars. It's then when I wanna find'm a comfortable chair get'm a snack, and introduce them to Daylight: This is my mother, Tresa B. Olsen. Runner of the tight shift. Taker of the temperature. Leaver of the light on. Lover of the underdog. Mover of the mountain. Winner of the good life. Keeper of the hope chest. Guitar Repair Woman. And I am her son, Buddy Wakefield. I play a tricked-out electric pen, thanks to the makers of music and metaphor, but I do my best to keep the words in check, and I use a padded microphone so I don't hurt you, because sometimes I smash things, and I don't ever wanna let'er down. Current Mood: contemplative |
| Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008 | |
| 4:07 pm | Joy, by Gennady Alexeyev (translated from the original Russian) Be careful when you partake of joy. Just as a pike, joy contains countless small bones. Having swallowed it up wash it down with a glass of light, transparent sadness. It shall be of some benefit to your health. After a short period of melancholy get back to joy. Don’t be lazy about enjoying yourself, do it as often as you can. Don’t be ashamed of it, enjoy yourself openly. Don’t be afraid of it, enjoy yourself without fear. Don’t listen to anybody, enjoy yourself on your own. Who knows, maybe those who watch you will also acquire a taste for joy? Current Mood:  curious |
| 10:47 am | Belly Dancer, by Diane Wakoski be the substance of my attraction? Where does this thin green silk come from that covers my body? Surely any woman wearing such fabrics would move her body just to feel them touching every part of her. Yet most of the women frown, or look away, or laugh stiffly. They are afraid of these materials and these movements in some way. The psychologists would say they are afraid of themselves, somehow. Perhaps awakening too much desire— that their men could never satisfy? So they keep themselves laced and buttoned and made up in hopes that the framework will keep them stiff enough not to feel the whole register. In hopes that they will not have to experience that unquenchable desire for rhythm and contact. If a snake glided across this floor most of them would faint or shrink away. Yet that movement could be their own. That smooth movement frightens them— awakening ancestors and relatives to the tips of the arms and toes. So my bare feet and my thin green silks my bells and finger cymbals offend them—frighten their old-young bodies. While the men simper and leer— glad for the vicarious experience and exercise. They do not realize how I scorn them; or how I dance for their frightened, unawakened, sweet women. Current Mood:  pleased |
| Monday, September 1st, 2008 | |
| 11:33 pm | looking, by Gwendolyn Brooks looking You have no word for soldiers to enjoy The feel of, as an apple, and to chew With masculine satisfaction. Not "good-by!" "Come back!" or "careful!" Look, and let him go. "Good-by!" is brutal, and "come back!" the raw Insistence of an idle desperation Since could he favor he would favor now. He will be "careful!" if he has permission. Looking is better. At the dissolution Grab greatly with the eye, crush in a steel Of study-Even that is vain. Expression, The touch or look or word, will little avail. The brawniest will not beat back the storm Nor the heaviest haul your little boy from harm. Current Mood:  sad |
| 11:00 pm | The Rabbit Catcher, by Sylvia Plath It was a place of force- The wind gagging my mouth with my own blown hair, Tearing off my voice, and the sea Blinding me with its lights, the lives of the dead Unreeling in it, spreading like oil. I tasted the malignity of the gorse, Its black spikes, The extreme unction of its yellow candle-flowers. They had an efficiency, a great beauty, And were extravagant, like torture. There was only one place to get to. Simmering, perfumed, The paths narrowed into the hollow And the snares almost effaced themselves- Zeroes, shutting on nothing, Set close, like birth pangs. The absence of shrieks Made a hole in the hot day, a vacancy. The glassy light was a clear wall, The thickets quiet. I felt a still busyness, an intent. I felt hands round a tea mug, dull, blunt, Ringing the white china. How they awaited him, those little deaths! They waited like sweethearts. They excited him. And we, too, had a relationship- Tight wires between us, Pegs too deep to uproot, and a mind like a ring Sliding shut on some quick thing, The constriction killing me also. Current Mood: restless |
| 10:50 pm | |
| 10:41 pm | The Evening Sunsets Witness and Pass On, by Carl Sandberg Passion may call for a partner to share the music of its bones, to weave shadows, rain, moonshine, dreams- Passion may hammer on hard door panels, empty a hot vocabulary of wanting, wanting- it is all there in the fragments of Sappho. Passion may consider poppies cheap with their strong stalks in the wind, with their crying crimson sheaths- Passion may remember tiger lilies, keepers of a creeping evening mist, tawny watchers of the morning stars- Passion may cry to the moon for miracles of flesh, for red answers to a white riddle- it is told in the tears on many love letters. Passion may spend its money, its youth, its laughter, all else, till again passion is alone spending its cries to the moon- and some weep, some sing, some go to war. Passion may be alone at a window seeking kisses fasten lips in wild troths, a storm of red silk scarfs in a high wind, armfuls of redbirds let loose into bush and sky- and some weep, some sing, some go to war. Passion may come with baskets throwing paths of red rain flowers, each folded petal a sacrament- the evening sunsets witness and pass on. Passion may build itself houses of air and look from a thousand tall windows till the wind rides and gathers. Passion may be a wind child transient and made of air- Passion may be a wild grass where a great wind came and went. The evening sunsets witness and pass on. Current Mood: pleased |
| 10:18 pm | Is there any way to delete past entries? There's a few I wouldn't mind getting rid of, just for tidiness. *shrugs* Current Mood:  apathetic |
| Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 | |
| 7:03 am | fic recs, please? If anyone has any fic recs for some top!Draco/bottom!Harry or top!Severus/bottom!Harry that they'd be willing to share links for, I'd appreciate it. We're trying to get the Mounted Empire groups more active and I don't have access to the lists that Mystic kept, yet...possibly won't, at all. Still waiting for her to respond. Current Mood: tired |
| Sunday, May 11th, 2008 | |
| 9:14 pm | Being reminded by ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} magic_helmetthat I have this place, I guess I ought to dust it off and post a bit. Because y'all can't live without my random bitchin', right?*blinks* It would be easier if I actually had something to *say*. *crickets* Um. I'm thinking about re-reading the Harry Potter books, both to remind myself why I originally enjoyed the fandom and to brush up on canon details in the latter few books. I've not read DH itself. I'm feeling weary at the prospect, which is sad, because I *did* like the first two very much. I thought the third was interesting (even though I don't get why the girls squeal over Sirius, who was an ass); thought the fourth had a lot of great ideas but was toooo looooong and wordy, ye gods please EDIT and keep on track, plot-wise; and the fifth was disappointing. If it's called HBP, it should be about the HBP, don't you think? At least a bit? And, as I said, I've not read the last one. *shrugs* I've come to realize that I dislike Dumbledore intensely; I dislike most of the adults in the HP world, actually. I will also rant at great length if provoked on the general poor editing done to keep these behomeths under control. I do admire the books for the concept Rowling started out with and the impact they've had on children's publishing and getting many people more interested in reading; but on the whole, they're sloppily done. But I still think I ought to re-read them at least once, all in a row, so I can throw some writing challenges out there. HP is a dying fandom and in another couple of years, I wouldn't be surprised to see most of the groups or comms defunct. I'll be a little sad, because that's where I started out and what gave me a foothold on ye olde internet world, but not surprised. Current Mood: blah |
| Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 | |
| 4:05 am | I'd appreciate the assistance very much... Can someone tell me how to leave an asylum? I don't want to be in that asylum_promo IJ any more, but I can't find any buttons that say "leave community" or similar, like LJ has. *scowls* Current Mood:  annoyed |
| Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 | |
| 8:23 pm | #52-'Red As Blood'-Tanith Lee (last 2007 50book entry!) #52-'Red As Blood'-by Tanith Lee. This is a short story collection of re-told fairy tales. Lee's a good short story writer and these stories become unsettling in her hands, often vaguely erotic and rather unnerving. I was reading it anyways so I could copy the ones I like best to my lj (see "Wolfland"), so I figured I might as well go along and read the whole thing. I think 'Wolfland' and 'Paid Piper" are my favorites, with "Red as Blood" and 'When the Clock Strikes' close seconds. Current Mood: excited |
| 8:21 pm | #51-'Around the World in 80 Days'-Jules Verne #51-'Around the World in 80 Days', by Jules Verne, is a favorite classic of mine. It's amusing, adventurous, with a dash of action here and a spot of romance there-and the prose is easy to read, rather timeless, unlike some classics that date badly. Phileas Fogg makes a bet that he can travel around the world in 80 days and stakes half his fortune on it-he'll need the other half to make the trip, what with bribes and elephants and burning up steamships and dashing rescues and all. He takes along his interesting servant, Passpartout, and acquires companions along the way...and cares not a whit for the scenery as he travels. He's on business, not touring! *laughs* If you can find the made-for-tv filmed version of this book, starring Pierce Brosnan as Phileas, it's a lot of fun to watch. Verne had a great imagination and is one of my favorite authors from that time period (the other being Edgar Rice Burroughs). Current Mood: amused |
| 8:19 pm | #50-'The Best of Robert Service"-poetry collection by same #50 (whoohoo, I did it!)-'The Best of Robert Service'-poetry collection by Robert Service. Robert Service wrote many poems, greatly varied is subject; he's particularly known for the ones about the Gold Rush and the Yukon frontier. There's some off-hand, humorous ditties in there, too, war poems, and the odd nature piece. I like a lot of his work, though it's difficult to read en masse like this; he tends to go for the 'story' over the rhyme or meter, so the poem can be difficult to read. I think if I hadn't been reading for the challenge, I'd have only picked up the book to do a few pages at a time, for easier absorption. However, don't let that stop you-imo, he is worth reading. Ant Hill Black ants have made a musty mound My purple pine tree under, And I am often to be found, Regarding it with wonder. Yet as I watch, somehow it's odd, Above their busy striving I feel like an ironic god Surveying human striving. Then one day came my serving maid, And just in time I caught her, For on each lusty arm she weighed A pail of boiling water. Said she with glee:"When this I spill, Of life they'll soon be lacking." Said I:"If even one you kill, You bitch! I'll send you packing." Just think-ten thousand eager lives In that toil-won upcasting, Their homes, their babies and their wives Destroyed in one fell blasting! Imagine that swift-scalding hell!... And though, mayhap, it seem a Fantastic, far-fetched parallel Remember...Hiroshima. Muguet 'Twas on the sacred First of May I made a sentimental sally To buy myself a slender spray Of pearly lily of the valley; And setting it beside my bed, Dream back the smile of one now dead. But when I asked how much a spray? The figure seemed so astronomic I rather fear that my dismay Must have appeared a little comic. The price, the shopgirl gravely said, Alas! was fifteen francs a head. However, I said:"Give me three, And wrap them in a silver paper, And I will take them home with me, And light an 'in memoriam' taper, To one whose smile, so heaven bright, Was wont to make my darkness light." Then lo! I saw beside me stand A woman shabby, old and grey, Who pointed with a trembling hand And shyly asked: "How much are they?" But when I told her, sadly said: "I'll save my francs for milk and bread. Yet I've a daughter just sixteen, Long sick abed and oh so sad. I thought-well, how they would have been A gift, maybe, to make her glad..." And then I saw her eyes caress My blossoms with such wisftulness. I gave them:sought my garret bare, Knowing that she whom I had loved, Although no blooms I brought here there, Would have so tenderly approved... And in the dark I lay awhile, Seeing again her radiant smile. |
| 8:17 pm | #49-'The Man Who Never Was'-Ewen Montagu #49-'The Man Who Never Was'-by Ewen Montagu, is a brief recounting of the "Operation Mincemeat" that played such a vital part in setting up the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943. Briefly stated, the "Man Who Never Was' was a corpse, dressed in an officer's uniform and carrying important, forged papers, who was set to drift in the ocean where he would be picked up by the Spaniards, who were sure to pass the info along to the Germans. There was an extreme amount of fine planning, from photos of his new "fiancee" to ticket stubs for the theater, included, to flesh out Major Martin's personality; and then there were the confidential "old boy" letters from one Admiral to another...toss in a few rumors here, a few troop movements there, and we have a very risky cover deception that somehow, amazingly enough, worked. The author, who was the originator of the plan, is a bit...hm, self-congratulatory about it-this was clearly his finest hour and wow, aren't we smugly pleased with ourselves for being British? Why, yes-yes, we are! However, it *is* a fascinating story and the book gives many previously unreleased behind-the-scenes details that are interesting for anyone with a taste for espionage or war history books. (You can blame my daddy for this one.) Current Mood: thoughtful |