The-berriest-berry-art - Hey Bradley!

hate incidents against elderly East & Southeast Asians have skyrocketed recently, especially in the Bay Area (article) (thread) . here are some:

an 85 year old Thai man, Vicha Ratanapakdee, was tackled to the ground and murdered in SF

an assailant pushed down a 91 year old Asian man, followed by 2 other elderly men and women, in oakland

a 52 year old Asian-American woman was shot in the head with a flare gun 

there have been over 20 assaults and robberies in Oakland’s Chinatown targeted towards the elderly in the past 2 weeks

a 61 year old Filipino man’s face was slashed on the subway in nyc & no one assisted him

a Vietnamese community center burned down in oakland

this is not new – since the pandemic began, attacks on Asian-Americans have spiked:

an 89 year old Asian woman in brooklyn was set on fire in July

an Asian woman in brooklyn was doused in acid in April while she was taking out her trash

almost 3000 hate incidents against Asian-Americans were reported from march to the end of 2020 (keep in mind, most incidents are unreported)

this is what happens when white supremacists refer to the coronavirus as the “china virus” & “kung flu” and promote rhetoric that harms Asian communities. today is the start of lunar new year celebrations & attacks are expected to increase. as a response, local governments across the us have stationed increased police presence in chinatowns, but a white supremacist police system, which will not protect our elders and will also threaten Black lives and safety, is not the solution. most Asians are unwilling to report hate incidents because we do not believe police will help, and last week, police shot and killed Christian Hall, a 19 year old Chinese-American, during a mental health crisis. we can’t accept tactics that uphold white supremacy. what we need is aid for our communities:

thread of donation links

sign up to accompany elderly Asians while they run errands, etc

gofundme for funds to distribute amongst Bay Area + elsewhere community organizations

gofundme for Vicha Ratanapakdee

gofundme for VACCEB (the community center)

keep up with Stop AAPI Hate

lunar new year is our biggest celebration & is supposed to be a time of joy and family, but due to white supremacy & xenophobia, our communities are hurting. it is incredibly painful to see our elders – who our cultures place a huge amount of respect and reverence on, and who often don’t even tell their families about these hate incidents because they don’t want them to worry – being targeted in this way. please donate if you can & spread whatever resources you come across. i will update this post with more links as i find them.

Scorn: The Art of The Game

SO SOMEHOW MY YAOI SHIRT ENDED UP IN MY DAD’S LAUNDRY BASKET HELP I CAN’T BREATHE

while not an actual action item for the general strike, you could also find some Palestinian recipes to cook. Part of the attempted erasure of Palestinian identity has been Israeli appropriation of recipes/foods. (And some pan-Arab foods too)

An informational comic I illustrated for my comics 2 class about drag!

I often see posts about curating your own online experience that make the point, “content creators aren’t your parents.” And, yes, that is absolutely true! And I try not to be like “as a parent,“ but as a parent…

EVEN PARENTS ARE SUPPOSED TO ENCOURAGE RESPONSIBLE READING/VIEWING BEHAVIOR. NOT filter everything ahead of time for their kid.

When my kiddo was 5, his pediatrician was asking him the usual Well Child Visit questions (“What are your favorite foods? What do you do to get your body moving? Do you know what to do if you get lost in a public place?” Etc.) and she asked, “What do you do if you see something on TV that scares or upsets you?”

I piped up like, “Oh, he doesn’t watch TV without one of us in the room,” which was true at the time and is still largely true now. She said, “Yes, but that won’t always be the case, so make sure you’re talking to him about what to do if he sees something that upsets him.”

So we started talking to him about that, and the answer is simple: “Turn it off or leave the room, and talk to someone you trust about what you saw and what you’re feeling.”

The answer is NOT “Ask your parents to make sure you never see anything upsetting again,” because that’s just not possible — and ultimately that would be doing the kid a disservice, since sooner or later he’s going to be out in the world where we can’t control what he watches or reads. That doesn’t mean we don’t try to make sure he’s watching/reading age-appropriate stuff, it just means that’s not the only safeguard he has — and that’s a good thing.

So yes, content creators aren’t your parents and aren’t responsible for making sure you never see anything you don’t like — but also, your own parents should have taught you what to do when that happens. So if they didn’t, take it from me, your internet mom:

Turn it off.

Walk away.

Talk to someone you trust about how you’re feeling.

And leave the person who created the thing that upset you alone.

support vital community work in Gaza, support Gaza municipality

gaza-city.ensany.com

نداء الحياة لغزة

نداء الحياة لتقديم خدمات المياه وجمع النفايات وازالة الركام وخدمات الصرف الصحي للمواطنين في مدينة غزة - بلدية غزة

As much as I complain about it, I actually really love writing. 

The satisfaction of one really good sentence is worth slogging through NaNoWriMo and producing thousands of terrible ones. The tiny eureka moments are worth the sleep I lose typing them into my phone after midnight. The accomplishment of writing “the end” is worth the hours that passed by in the rest of the world, while mine was standing still.

Writing takes a lot out of me, but it also gives me a lot, too. Worth it.