Monthly Archives: November 2016

Body Impolitic Faces the New United States

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Laurie and Debbie say:

standing-rock

Two and a half weeks ago, Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, backed up by a Republican Senate and a Republican House of Representatives.

We stand among the people who know that Donald Trump is a despicable human being, who is not intellectually, morally, ethically, or in any way qualified to run this country, and who know that the people he surrounds himself with are — to say the least — no better.

We are stand among the people who are in the process of committing more time, money, energy, and heart to the causes we believe in, to the people who are most threatened by this cataclysm, and the possibility that not all of the damage that is about to be wrought on this country will be permanent.

We stand among the people who categorically refuse to normalize the Trump presidency in any way, to cut the racists and haters and thieves in the government any slack, or to ever agree to a compromise with our “leaders” that throws anyone under the bus.

We named our blog, many years ago, because we wanted to write about bodies, and because the phrase “body politic” conveyed a kind of consensus about how bodies are seen and treated, a consensus we refused to share. Now we are more specifically engaged with the phrase. The dictionary defines “body politic” as “a group of persons united under a single governmental authority.” As the Body Impolitic, we are members of a group of persons united in resistance to our governmental authority.

We are working on what that will look like. You’ll still see photography posts, and probably even some old Body-Impolitic-style commentary on body image. But the focus will be on what we, and others, are doing to fight back. We’d love to hear what you are doing.

Survival Guide: Usable, Editable, Sharable

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Debbie says:

landscape-1478728611-america-problem[photo from our100, a separate awesome resource]

I never heard of Ariel Speedwagon Federow until I came across their (her? his?)  amazing start to a survival guide for the new realities of the United States. The Oh Crap! What Now? Survival Guide is editable and expandable, and it’s already pretty damn thorough. (I sent one addition to Ariel on Sunday and it is already in the guide.)

Categories as of now are:

  • Health
  • The Legal System and You
  • Responding to Hate
  • Self Defense
  • Housing
  • Food Access
  • Money
  • Digital Security
  • Orgs to Support
  • Other Guides, and
  • Recursos en Espanol.

You can be sure that more will come.

Ariel is very clear:

MEDIA PEOPLE: I know you look at this and see a story. It’s pretty fucking cool. Please protect this as a community resource. Email ariel@theworldisaterribleplace.com if you want to talk about it.

I checked; personal blogs are encouraged to share the link. I feel sure you will find it useful, be able to improve it, or both.

REUSE: This content is here for you. This is under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution License, attributed to the Oh Shit! (or Oh Crap!) guide. Please adapt as you need for your own community. It would be awesome if you shared those adaptations and documents back for others’ use as many of us are facing similar questions.

And I did a little research on Ariel, hoping I could find preferred pronouns, which I couldn’t. But what I did find out is that Ariel seems like an amazingly cool genderqueer performer, whom I will now watch for in that role as well.