“We have manufacturing companies who say to us, ‘I don’t want to look at those people. They’re not used to showing up and coming to work anymore,’ ” says Stefani Pashman, head of the Three Rivers Workforce Investment Board in Pittsburgh. Unemployment counselors talk about the difficulties of teaching “soft skills”—such as simply showing up on time for an interview and wearing something nicer than a stained T-shirt. “The perception of these people as workers,” says David Coplan, director of the Mon Valley Providers Council, “is that they’re damaged goods.”
It’s easy to write off the Mon Valley left-behinds as an old story limited to the specific woes of the steel industry. But in many ways, the people here are part of a much broader trend toward long-term unemployment in America. As in Braddock, and now a slew of communities laid low by the housing bubble and bust, the phenomenon can feed on itself and create a vicious cycle of disappearing jobs, declining incomes, higher foreclosures, and more layoffs.
nprmusic:
Sarah Dougher, a musician and professor at Portland State University who also teaches at Portland’s Rock’n’Roll Camp for Girls, is concerned that the interest in Riot Grrrl she sees today more often takes the form of nostalgic longing for “authentic community” than a practical engagement in radical politics.
“Among people who grew up with the Internet — people who are presented with a gajillion cultural options — when they find one that feels really cool and authentic to them, like Riot Grrrl is to some people, they glom on to it,” Dougher says. “Now there are all these people coming out of the Rock’n’Roll Camp for Girls who are like, ‘Look at my ‘zine!’ And I’m like, ‘Why are you making a ‘zine? You have the Internet.’”
Riot Grrl, 20 Years Later
To many male gamers, feminist just means “someone who will not tolerate the only jokes I know how to make.
—
To My Someday Daughter, by Geordie Tait - a Magic: the Gathering Miscellaneous Article (via 3liza)
perfect
(via fionafix-it)
To many MEN, that’s what they think feminist means.
(via ultraprism)
Such a good read.
I just read Frances Moore Lappé’s essay on the state of the food movement in the Nation. Very thought-provoking and insightful. Now to read the responses of Michael Pollan, Raj Patel, Eric Schlosser, and Vandana Shiva. As an American studying abroad in Europe, I’m loving the produce here. Eating non-GMOs this often reveals a remarkable taste difference.
Some quotes:
Corporatism, after all, depends on our belief in the fairy tale that market “magic” (Ronald Reagan’s unforgettable term) works on its own without us.
Food can break that spell. For the food movement’s power is that it can shift our sense of self: from passive, disconnected consumers in a magical market to active, richly connected co-producers in societies we are creating—as share owners in a CSA farm or purchasers of fair-trade products or actors in public life shaping the next farm bill.
This has always been the attraction to me of the food movement. It’s one of the few things my father and I agree about, politically. It brings people together from so many different backgrounds and ideologies. We all need to eat.
h/t: The Nation (just realized they have a tumblr, LOVE IT)
Photo: Neighborhood Food Truck?
mehreenkasana:
In case you’ve been baffled by men/women behaving as sexists or even racists, here’s something you might not have heard of: Homosociality. Hugo Schwyzer explains the term and how it continues to downplay the significance of gender equality in various societies due to one simple reason: The need…
Click through to read the whole thing. It’s great.
