Seriously, I never will understand the mentality of people who say that. Yes, I know that it makes me weird that the logistics of the racist statements bug me.
The Detroit Federation of Teachers joined with some parents Thursday to sue the school district over conditions in the schools and call for the dismissal of state-appointed Emergency Manager Darnell Earley.
"Asking a child to learn or a teacher to instruct with steam coming from their mouth due to the cold in the classroom, in vermin infested rooms, with ceiling tiles falling from above, with buckets to catch the rain water falling from above, or in buildings that are literally making them sick is more than what is legally or constitutionally tolerable," the lawsuit says.
The complaint also alleges that Earley, who was appointed by Gov. Rick Snyder and has sweeping powers, has neglected his duties and made the district's financial problems worse. Officials have said DPS is in danger of running out of cash in April or May.
The plaintiffs are asking a judge to remove Earley and restore local control to the school district. They also want the district to be ordered to fix the building problems, promptly investigate complaints and create a long-term capital plan.
Trying to silence teachers by threatening to take away their jobs is childish and unfair to my education. When you have lost these teachers, how will you replace them? Who wants to work in a school district where ceilings fall on student’s heads, and mushrooms grow in the hallways? I did not have an English teacher for the first
four months of school, and last year I did not have a French teacher the whole first semester. With a history of all these vacancies, how will firing 23 teachers help your case at all. [...]
Legislators, the Emergency Manager and others have said that teachers are hindering our education by doing these sickouts, but the reality is that none of you live in Detroit, and none of you have children who go to a DPS school. None of you have to come to school every day and share books (if we even have books), or be in the middle of doing work and the lights cut off. None of you have to worry about your safety everyday of your life, or walk past mushrooms growing in the hallway. None of you have to skip lunch every day because the food is moldy, and the milk is old. None of you experience what we experience, and until you have, you have no right to speak on anything happening in our district. Our teachers are doing what is best for us, and my education is not being hindered any more than it was when I went a whole Semester without a French/English teacher.
When you’re talking about kids facing unsanitary conditions and hunger and being deprived of a chance at an education, you find the money to fix it. Just like you don’t poison a city’s water supply. Except if you’re Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and his cadre of emergency managers, apparently.
sure, a mature and intelligent 14 year old girl isn’t allowed to know she’s queer because “she’s a child” but my 4 month old nephew reaches out his hand towards a woman and he’s “a real ladykiller already”
AMAZING 3-yr old Pe’Tehn Raighn-Kem can read, write and pay tribute to one of the most renowned writers of all time. She memorized author Maya Angelou’s poem “Hey Black Child” in just a week and recited the poem to an audience during the Chicago daytime talk show Windy City LIVE.
I’m The Professor wielding my sonic laptop and my catchphrase is “okay”
I’m the Geophysicist and I have a sonic cell phone and my catch phrase is “just don’t forget to put it back when you’re done.” Which I like.
I’m the Sales Rep (my parents have boring careers) with a sonic iPhone and my catchphrase is “thank you”.
Uh. I’m the Substitute Teacher with a sonic gel-wrist-rest-thing-for-keyboards and my catchphrase is “Yes’m!”.
Look, we can’t ALL be badass.
I’m The Teacher, I have a Sonic Smartphone, and my catchphrase is “Check is in the mail.”
I’m the Safety programmer, I have a sonic steering wheel, and my catchphrase is “We eat anything!”
I am The Technician, armed with a sonic tea cup. My catchphrase is: “I have also laughed at dinosaur parkour.”
I am the Administrator and I use a sonic wacom pen. My catchphrase is “That we can do
I’m a Record Keeper and I use a sonic sock (?? it was in my left hand when I read this ) and my catchphrase is “Lol yeah.”
I’m The Warper Operator (my mom worked in a textile plant) and I use my Sonic Wireless Headphones. My catchphrase is “And I love you with all my dark little heart! Chuuu~”
I’m the Correction Officer and I use my Sonic empty Mike’s Hard Lemonade bottle. My catchphrase is “do you think cats realize when they sleep upside down?”
I’m The Engineer and this? This is my Sonic Keyboard, ofc. “Hahahahaha.”
I’m the Mason and here’s my super effective sonic rock painted like a cat. My catchphrase is “TOO MUCH EFFORT.”
I’m the Engineer with my sonic Android phone with the phrase “other than that yes I see silly typos thanks for catching”.
the Architect, with a Sonic Small Piece Of Paper I Fiddle With Nervously, and my catchphrase is “I’m five minutes away”, which is timelord for “i’ll get there when i get there”. it is also mouse for “i’ll get there when i get there”. see, excelent timetraveler material
I am the Chef, who travels through time accompanied by her sonic pillow and her catch phrase is “the dog was sick again.” Nice.
The Psychologist with her sonic teatowel and the catchphrase “Well, convince me!”
I’m the Secretary and I have sonic scissors. My catchphrase was in Finnish, translated version would be something like “we’ll see about it tomorrow.”
The Postgrad Student, armed with a sonic sofa. My last text was the picture of that Matt Damon Turgle thing, so it’s either that or ‘it was his finest film’. I can live with this
I’m The Pharmacist, with my Sonic dufflecoat and the iconic catchphrase of ‘Thankyou x’.
I’m the Teacher (retired and then brought out of retirement because I’m too fucking competent), recognisable by my sonic X-men cardigan, and my catchphrases “beige levels of interesting” and “I’ll get thru it.”
I’m The Historian, with my Sonic… uh.. you’re never going to believe this, but… with my Sonic Screwdriver in hand. My iconic catchphrase though?
“Buh?”
I’m the Accountant, I also have a sonic laptop, and my catchphrase is “Here”
How versatile!
The Electrician, with my sonic… pants, maybe? Or possibly keys. My catch phrase is “you know the one”
A Reuters/Ipsos poll taken just after the Supreme Court announced it would hear a GOP-led challenge to President Obama's immigration orders showed strong support for the measures ... until Obama entered conversation.
The poll shows 61 percent of Americans support the plan to relax immigration policy for some undocumented people when it is described in general terms without using Obama's name, including 42 percent of Republicans. Half of Republicans opposed the idea.
But when the same plan was described as being an executive action taken by Obama, support fell to 54 percent overall, with only 31 percent of Republicans supporting it and 62 percent opposing the measures.
Democrats only had a two-point discrepancy—with 78 percent supporting the general idea and 80 percent backing it after Obama entered the picture.
The GOP thinking must go something like this: Surely if it's Obama's idea, it must be bad even though I thought it sounded pretty reasonable.
Or worse: I should check in with what other Republicans think—oh wait, no need, because Obama.
Or worser: I thought it sounded like a plot to help terrorists infiltrate the country and now I know it is for sure!
Yeah, “worser” is frowned upon. Just didn’t want to say “worst” ‘cuz we all know there’s worse ideations out there.
Michigan is having a rough year, to put it mildly. Flint is reeling from the news that its water supply was contaminated with lead for 17 months. In Detroit, teacher "sick-outs" have been shutting down schools; 88 of the city's 104 schools were closed on January 21. These two seemingly unrelated episodes are joined by a common policy: Both Detroit's school system and Flint's water system have beenunder the control of emergency managers, unelected officials who are empowered to make sweeping decisions and override local policies in the name of balancing budgets.
What's an emergency manager? Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder was elected in 2010 on a platform of fiscal austerity. Snyder, the former head of Gateway computers and a darling of the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity, promised to run the state like a company, complete with "outcomes" and "deliverables." In 2011, he introduced a signature piece of legislation, Public Act 4, which expanded the state's authority to take over financially troubled cities and school districts. Similar laws exist in about 20 states, but Michigan's is the most expansive: Emergency managers picked by the governor have the power to renegotiate or cancel city contracts, unilaterally draft policy, privatize public services, sell off city property, and even fire elected officials.
Since 2011, 17 municipalities or school districts in Michigan have been assigned emergency managers. The majority of them are in poor, predominantly African-American communities that have been hit hard by depressed economies and shrinking populations. Some EMs have worked with communities to generate local buy-in, but their outsider status, lack of accountability, and propensity forcutting public services to save money have generated harsh criticism. As Michael Steinberg, the legal director for the Michigan chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said a recent statement, "Flint is Exhibit A for what happens when a state suspends democracy and installs unaccountable bean counters to run a city."
So what does this have to do with Flint? Flint was one of the the first cities to be assigned an emergency manager, in 2011; it would have four EMs in as many years. In 2013, its city council voted to build a pipeline to Lake Huron that would free the city of its dependence on Detroit's water system by 2017. Ed Kurtz, the then-emergency manager, signed off on the plan, and the question became where Flint would source its water in the intervening years. According to a recent Daily Beast investigation, Kurtz rejected the idea of using Flint River water based on conversations with Michigan's Department of Environmental Quality. Longtime Flint residents were also skeptical of the idea: General Motors, which calls Flint home, had used the river as a dumping ground for years.
Yet in 2014, under emergency manager Darnell Earley, the city switched water sources to the Flint River. It remains unclear what led authorities to believe that Flint River water was safe to drink; Earley maintains the decision was supported in a vote by the city council, though there is no record of such a vote. Howard Croft, the former director of public works for Flint, told the ACLU that the decision was financial, had been reviewed by state authorities, and went "all the way to the governor's office."
In March of 2015, after months of residents reporting unusual health symptoms and foul-smelling, tainted water coming from their taps, the Flint City Council voted to "do all things necessary" to switch back to Detroit's water system. Then-acting emergency manager Jerry Ambrose nixed the vote, calling it "incomprehensible."
And what about Detroit? For the past few weeks, Detroit teachers have been protesting with coordinated sick days that have caused dozens of temporary school closures. The sick-outs, the teachers say, are in response to disgraceful school conditions, from black mold and dead rodents in classrooms to class sizes of more than 40 students.
The Detroit Public School system has been under the authority of an emergency manager since 2009, when the beleaguered system of roughly 100,000 students was mired in debt. Today, after six years under four emergency managers, the number of students has shrunk by about 50 percent while the system's debt has ballooned to $515 million. It risks going bankrupt by April. Over the past five years, every public school employee has taken a 10 percent wage cut.
"Emergency management is not working," Ivy Bailey, the president of Detroit Federation of Teachers, told CNN. "If the goal was to destroy DPS, emergency management has done an excellent job."
Governor Snyder's latest pick for DPS emergency manager was Darnell Earley, the same official who oversaw Flint's transition to corrosive river water. On January 21, the day 88 schools were shut down, the school system filed a restraining order against the protesting teachers meant to stop them from calling in sick. The motion was denied. On January 23, Earley posted new rules requiring teachers to submit a written report to him if they learn about their fellow employees organizing a strike. "Failure to immediately comply with this order may be grounds for discipline up to and including termination," the rules read. Earley's office did not respond to requests for comment.
What's next for Michigan's emergency managers?
There are currently no Michigan cities with emergency managers, though three school districts still them. But they remain unpopular with many Michiganders. Democratic legislators say they will introduce a bill to repeal the EM law. Voters already overturned the EM law in a November 2012 referendum, but a month later, the Republican-led state legislature passed a nearly identical law attached to an appropriations bill that is immune to voter referendum.
"Appointing an emergency manager is the last thing I ever want to do," wrote Snyder in a 2012 blog post entitled "Why Michigan Needs Its Emergency Manager Law," written just before the voter referendum. "But if worse comes to worse, the state has a responsibility to protect the health, welfare and safety of its citizens. We can't stand by and watch schools fail, water shut off, or police protection disappear."
These dudes are fucking legit. They don’t just show up one day in court, either, they actually make friends with the kids and let them know they have a support system and that there are people in the world who care about them and will always have their back. And less important, but also cool, is that the few times a couple of them have come into my cafe, they’ve been super friendly and polite and when I told one of the guys that I noticed his Bikers Against Child Abuse patch and wanted him to know how awesome I thought he was because of it, he got kind of shy and blushed and said, “The kids are the awesome ones, we just let them know they’re allowed to be brave.”
The source is long, but so, so good. These men and women are available in 36 states, 24 hours a day to stand guard at home, in court, at school, even if the child has a nightmare. Many of them are survivors of childhood abuse as well, and know what it’s like to feel scared and alone.
In court that day, the judge asked the boy, “Are you afraid?” No, the boy said.
Pipes says the judge seemed surprised, and asked, “Why not?”
The boy glanced at Pipes and the other bikers sitting in the front row, two more standing on each side of the courtroom door, and told the judge, “Because my friends are scarier than he is.”
Actual tears.. hnngh
Show me more of people like this, world. I give up on humans too easily.
where do i sign up for this,i want to be in this gang
My friend told me about this a few years ago when I really needed this. They really are the nicest people in the world and I love them!!
This is fucking amazing. It may be out of character for me to say this but rock on
Bikers Against Child Abuse was founded in 1995 by a Native American child psychologist whose ride name is Chief, when he came across a young boy who had been subjected to extreme abuse and was too afraid to leave his house. He called the boy to reach out to him, but the only thing that seemed to interest the child was Chief’s bike. Soon, some 20 bikers went to the boy’s neighborhood and were able to draw him out of his house for the first time in weeks.
Chief’s thesis was that a child who has been abused by an adult can benefit psychologically from the presence of even more intimidating adults that they know are on their side. “When we tell a child they don’t have to be afraid, they believe us,” Arizona biker Pipes told azcentral.com. “When we tell them we will be there for them, they believe us.”
The fact that a native man started this brings tears to my eyes…
My parents are a part of this organization and they are metal af
They go on runs to protect the child if they feel even the slightest threatened no matter where. If the child needs them to go on vacation with them, they do. Bikers come from across the nation to watch over and take shifts for these kids. And the best part is once you’re adopted into this family as a BACA kid, you’re always one. Even when you’re 40 and the perp gets released from jail, they’ll come meet with you and find your best options for avoiding the person and maintaining the life you’ve built for yourself. Once a BACA child, always a BACA child. In Florida, there’s 100% rate for identifying the perp based on the child’s testimony. Why? Because BACA stands with the child and supports the child so they feel comfortable enough to point out their attacker.
What’s better than a badass biker gang being on your side???
When people say “squad goals”, this is what comes to my mind: a badass squad for good.
me: does something really, really stupid with my sleeping and/or eating schedule
me: this will be fine
arrested development narrator voice: it was not fine
“Check yourself.
Sometimes you are the toxic person.
Sometimes you are the mean, negative person you’re looking to push away.
Sometimes the problem is you.
And that doesn’t make you less worthy.
Keep on growing.
Keep on checking yourself.
Keep on motivating yourself.
Mistakes are opportunities.
Look at them, own them, grow from them and move on.
Do better, be better.”
Who’s Pam? Doesn’t matter. Pam will make three billion dollars.
i would pay to see this
are you fucking kidding me I WANT this movie
I want to see this cheerful lady walking through fire and being badass and sweet
and most of all I want her to save the day with the normal shit she’s toting in that bag.
I NEED this.
‘Let me get this straight. You’re saying our Xanderian captor is in pain from a swollen… thing, and is going to eject us from the airlock? Well why didn’t you say so? Here, hun, I think I got some Aleve in here. You just take that.’
*Alien collapses frothing*
Everyone stares at her in awe. ‘How did you know that naproxen is fatal to Xanderians?’
‘Honestly, you people never have children? I hear EVERYTHING.’
or
‘Oh dear, you need something to bridge to gap between circuits and stop the shortage? I know I got a safety pin, just wait.’
*Ship jumps to warp ahead of pursuit*
Like, seriously, I want her to fucking MacGyver whatever is needed to resolve the plot issues, using Clorets gum, her Kindle, a Starbucks receipt (tall caramel macchiato) and a handful of change and lint.
Because we got so many ‘ordinary’ guy heroes that go on to be extraordinary, and let’s be real - in an actual Holllywood movie Pam would scarcely rate a speaking part. I want a female hero who is a hero without needing a goddamned makeover and just needed the right circumstances to shine. I am up to my goddamn neck with ordinary dude heroes. I’m sick of them. I know everything about them already.
I would really really like an explicitly noromo fic challenge where the focus was on writing platonic relationships between characters with the same intimacy and intensity that fandom writes romance.
Not like, that kind of t for teen gen which is really just romance that fades tastefully to black nonsense, but like. no holds barred, these people mean E V E R Y T H I N G to each other and are the most important people in the world and they would do anything for the other person but without the assumed support of romantic and sexual expectation and intention underpinning it. Actual ensemble gen, or us vs the world, or whatever. just. idk. there are more types of important relationships than just romantic ones and i’d like to see more of that.
“Yesterday I responded to a comment by @insanitybytes22, in which she suggested things wives and mothers can do to help men as an olive branch instead of blaming men for every marital breakdown. I appreciated her saying so.
But I remember my wife often saying how exhausting it was for her to have to tell me what to do all the time. It’s why the sexiest thing a man can say to his partner is “I got this,” and then take care of whatever needs taken care of.
I always reasoned: “If you just tell me what you want me to do, I’ll gladly do it.”
But she didn’t want to be my mother. She wanted to be my partner, and she wanted me to apply all of my intelligence and learning capabilities to the logistics of managing our lives and household.
She wanted me to figure out all of the things that need done, and devise my own method of task management.
I wish I could remember what seemed so unreasonable to me about that at the time.”
With unsafe tap water continuing to flow out of the faucets in Flint, Michigan, reports on the internet say undocumented immigrants and those without ID are being turned away from getting bottled water. But some on social media are fighting back to help get water to those who need it.
This is just ugly tbh. If this is you, your heart is ugly
