Social Justice Warriors at Work

Leaders You Have Never Heard Of
A new generation of black activists are working on issues from housing to transportation to food security.
02/28/2019 11:20 am ET

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/black-climate-leaders-social-justice_b_5c...

People who get "whole systems."

Where have you noticed the disadvantage? Pockets? The quality of work clothes? The price of hair cuts? Tax on women's sanitary supplies?

Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez – a world designed for men

From the ‘one-size-fits-men’ approach to smartphone design to the medical trials that are putting women’s lives at risk … this book uses data like a laser

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/feb/28/invisible-women-by-carolin...

"Criado Perez has assembled a cornucopia of statistics – from how blind auditions have increased the proportion of female players hired by orchestras to nearly 50%, to the good reasons why women take up to 2.3 times as long as men to use the toilet. This is a man’s world, we learn, because those who built it didn’t take gender differences into account. Most offices, we learn, are five degrees too cold for women, because the formula to determine their temperature was developed in the 1960s based on the metabolic resting rate of a 40-year-old, 70kg man; women’s metabolisms are slower. Women in Britain are 50% more likely to be misdiagnosed following a heart attack: heart failure trials generally use male participants. Cars are designed around the body of 'Reference Man', so although men are more likely to crash, women involved in collisions are nearly 50% more likely to be seriously hurt.

"Criado Perez calls the 'one-size-fits-men' approach. The average smartphone – 5.5 inches long – is too big for most women’s hands, and it doesn’t often fit in our pockets. Speech-recognition software is trained on recordings of male voices: Google’s version is 70% more likely to understand men. One woman reported that her car’s voice-command system only listened to her husband, even when he was sitting in the passenger seat. Women are more likely to feel sick while wearing a VR headset. Another study found that fitness monitors underestimate steps during housework by up to 74%, and users complain that they don’t count steps taken while pushing a pram.

Even snow-ploughing, it turns out, is a feminist issue: in Sweden, roads were once cleared before pavements, a policy derived from data that prioritised commuters in cars over pedestrians ferrying children or doing the shopping. But then officials realised that it’s easier to drive through three inches of snow than push a buggy through it. Clearing pavements first also saved the state money: a study in one Swedish town found that pedestrians were three times more likely to be injured in icy conditions than car drivers; and 70% of those injured were women."

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David Trammel's picture

I'll admit I have not run into the experience of identity politics take to extreme. As a 61 year old middle class white man, I suspect that I would have the whole problems of the world blamed on me. Not sure if they would enjoy me laughing in their face and saying "Seriously Grow Up!".

Wasn't the point of the "Dark Web Intellectuals"? Learning how to see other viewpoints and connect with other people? Somebody on the old site wondered why Black people weren't lining up to be Green Wizards. Like because they were busy doing their own things?

IMHO, the memeplexes were a lot of mental masturbation. YMMV of course. I can--and will--share stories of what SWJ are actually doing. I'll put them under one convenient heading. Feel free to expand your vision of community.

Movement Led By Teenage Girls Is Sweeping Europe. And It’s Coming To The US Next.
Students are going on strike around the world to demand action on climate
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/lesterfeder/europe-climate-change-p...

"LONDON — A huge student protest movement led almost exclusively by teenage girls and young women is sweeping Europe, and it's on the brink of breaking through in the US.

"So far this year, tens of thousands of high school–age students in Belgium, Germany, and Sweden have boycotted class and protested against climate change. The loose movement’s inspiration, a 16-year-old girl who began a solitary picket last year outside the Swedish Parliament in Stockholm, has compared the protests to the March for Our Lives movement organized by the Parkland teens in the wake of a shooting at their school that left 17 dead."

Adults failed to take climate action. Meet the young activists stepping up

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/04/can-they-save-us-mee...

"Despite being barely two years old, the Sunrise Movement has outpaced established environmental groups in the push to radically reshape the political landscape around climate change. Closely allied with new congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the youth-led Sunrise Movement has helped set out a sweepingly ambitious plan to address climate change in the form of the Green New Deal.

"The movement comprises a small core team of young organizers, supported by a larger group of several hundred volunteers. The group’s elevation of the Green New Deal has clearly riled Trump, who has falsely but repeatedly claimed that the plan would result in the banning of cars, air travel and even cows."

There is a powerful documentary currently on PBS: American Experience, Holly Near: Singing for Our Lives." (Thru 03/29/19)
https://www.pbs.org/video/holly-near-singing-for-our-lives-mdfleq/

"Experience the power of song in the struggle for equality through the story of feminist singer and activist Holly Near, who for the last 40 years has worked on global social justice coalition-building in the women’s and lesbian movements. Directed by Jim Brown Directed by Jim Brown (American Masters — The Highwaymen: Friends Til The End; American Masters – Pete Seeger: The Power of Song). "

Kiashu's picture

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/09/american-food-giants...

Only a vast energy surplus from a large EROEI makes the destruction of American family farms and their replacement by large corporation's CAFO systems possible.

This will change. And that's a good thing, for the environment, for animal welfare, for small business, and for families. This is why, as JMG has said, the environmentalist movement has been such a failure, they've failed to see the common ground they have with people like family farmers and social conservatives.