Call In Campaign for #SherodKindell – who was unarmed, shot by police& being held in #Denver w/o pain meds.

I was so tired when I got off work that I slept too long. I can’t sleep tonight.

I am working on the Coloradans for Justice FB page and Twitter and the Colorado Activist Calendar because that is what I can do at this very moment to not feel helpless. Pretty sure there are a lot of people up late tonight.

Last night I went to a meeting and struggled to find hope through it. I work with amazing people. We are stronger in numbers. I am glad to have the opportunity to use the skills I’ve developed in a manner that does not serve the system. Last night, there was also a vigil for Jessie Martinez, and the Denver Police watched the attendants from the shadows.

I am not going to argue the vague details of the case released to the media by the police department. The witnesses were all arrested and cannot speak. If people can ask for all the facts when 25 women accuse Bill Cosby of rape, I can doubt 2 Denver police officers.

Three miles from my house, there’s an empty bed where a teenager should be sleeping. If you watched the news, you will see her portrayed as a grown woman. She was a girl. She was a woman of color, she was queer.

I am struck again by her name and face. Tonight, we all shared her face on our pages, calling for action, calling “enough!”

We have been saying “enough” for a very long time.

I should not ever have known these faces. I should not ever have known these names. These people should have been allowed to live their lives and have a future.

I will say it again. Stop killing people. Their lives matter. Black lives matter. Brown lives matter. Women’s lives matter. Queer lives matter. Trans lives matter.

If the police and sheriff’s departments around the country want to stop the protests, then you must stop the unjust killing of thousands of brown, black, queer, trans people each year, and stop the schools to prison for profit pipeline, I’ll calm down. I’ll go back to writing poems about pointless things. I will spend more time on my couch and go back to live tweeting movies and TV shows.

Honestly, I would love to have my old life back, but I know that’s never going to happen.

It is already too late for justice for Jessie Hernandez. Justice only comes if you survive. What I can do, what you can do, is work to create justice. The creation of justice is the cessation of hostilities against marginalized people.

Nurses, Ebola and Whistleblowing, A Recent History Regarding Texas

In which I discuss laws against anonymous whistleblowing in Texas, which has led to a culture of fear among medical staff and patients, which could lead to a worsening outbreak of Ebola in Texas.

Facebook information here: on.fb.me/YU8WKx

Since 1996, protests around the country have been held on October 22nd to remember victims of police brutality and speak out against this ongoing practice of violence against the citizens of this countr.

Coloradans for Justice, in coordination with other groups,  has added Denver to the group of locations around the country.

We will gather at 5:00 PM MST with the event to start at 5:15. There will be speakers from the community: family members who have lost loved ones to police brutality and those who have experienced it first hand. In addition, you will here updates on progress in the community made since our September 3rd forum.

Please come out! If you would like to be added to the CoForJustice mailing list, email us at COforJustice@gmail.com.

We need volunteers!!! If you cannot come to the event, if you could pass out flyers close to the event, even just to your local coffee house, it would be extremely helpful. Flyers for the event are in the works. If you are a graphic designer, we could really use some assistance creating a logo for COforJustice, as well as a basic flyer for this event. Please contact us at CoforJustice@gmail.com or tweet us @COforJustice.

Moving Beyond ‘I Feel So Helpless’.

A response I wrote in my Women’s Studies class that I wanted to save.

1) How does the ideology of “the ideal nuclear family” affect people’s ideas and public policies concerning personal relationships and family life? Use material in Chapter 7 (readings by Crittenden and Chambers) and Chapter 8 (reading by Parrenas). Think in terms of micro-,meso-, and macro-level factors.

2. What are the opportunities, limitations, and losses for women in the global South arising from the globalization of the economy?  What responsibilities of people living in a relatively rich country like the United States to address social and economic problems faces by women from countries of the global South? What can be done? Think in terms of race, class, culture, and nation. Also think micro to global levels of analysis and action.

In the United States, we have bought into our own myth. We have been raised to believe that a nuclear family consisting of a husband, wife, and assorted offspring – heterosexual and of matching race – is the cornerstone to our society, when really, if we looked at our history, the ideal of the nuclear family is the result of a romanticization of a brief period in United States history when  the White middle class was briefly able to sustain itself on the income of one individual.

It is important to acknowledge the romanticization of this time period. Post World War II, pre-Vietnam War, the Baby Boom. These times are held up as idyllic when even a rudimentary examination of what life was actually like for the majority of individuals around the world at this time. In Europe and England, massive reconstruction and redrawing of borders, and wars would continue to take place for decades. In Japan, reconstruction from the devastating fall out of two nuclear bombings, and in China, the oppression of it’s dicatorial system and one child policies continued to ensure that infanticide of female babies was often seen as the only hope. And in the United States, the Civil Rights movement was underway. In Ann Filemyr’s essay “Loving Across the Boundary,” she discusses the embrace of White people of their own naivete about what was so eloquently described by W.E.B. Dubois as “the color line.” Indeed. The color line is not invisible. It’s not indescribable. And that brief, romanticized era of United States history is not what we should set as our life goals.

Programs to encourage marriage in the United States and demonize single mothers or working mothers draw heavily on the myth of the 1950’s working family. Wealthy White families who are able to thrive on one income are held up as examples to the working poor. You should be able to have this, the US says to its people. You can have this! As long as you remain married, have children, go to church, and work hard, you should be able to have an ideal life, own a home, retire well, and relax as your life nears its end. I mention going to church because the Conservative movement in the US has a deep investment in marriage as a religious institution. In order to maintain this highly unlikely promise of the benefits of marriage, modern Conservatives have done what White religious movements have been doing for centuries: demonizing single women, especially single mothers, and in the US, especially Black single mothers.

Essays throughout our chapters document this pressure felt by women, but most especially felt by Black women. The pressure to give back to a poor family and community is felt by all children who do better than their parents or better than their siblings, but it is most acutely felt in the Black community. Veronica Chambers writes about how a couple who set aside $500 of their monthly budget to give to family. She also writes about Angela Kyle, who said “I felt that I didn’t have the right not to marry a black man. I felt I had a responsibility to have a Black child.” (Kirk & Okazawa-Rey, 2013, p.351.”

When you combine Chamber’s essay with Ann Crittenen’s essay about “The Mommy Tax,” we quickly see this is a trap women cannot escape. If you work to have a successful career, you may face the inability to have children later in your life. If you have children when you are young, even if well educated, you can expect to be hired for less and to receive smaller increases in income throughout your life. If you have a child in the middle of your career, the need to take maternity leave or the desire to take a few months to spend with children is likely to affect you for the rest of your career. All of these factors will affect you when you reach retirement. In these years, when you would want to help your children attend college, your retirement may hold hundreds of thousands of dollars less than it would otherwise, and you may find yourself inable of assisting your children, even after a long life of dedicated motherhood and work. If you are single, all of those numbers go down. And if you are single and Black, you are now termed “pathological.” What is seen as the descent of the United States way of life and economy has been placed on the shoulders of single Black mothers as solidly as a yoke, and the burden is destructive to the body, soul, and mind of Black women, and Black children. By placing false blame for a perceived deterioration in society on Black single mothers, Conservatives and the Liberals who take part in this game maneuver Black women into a corner they cannot escape.

Women living in the global South, and traveling as labor from the global South to Northern areas face similar persecution for perceived abandonment of their families. While men also travel, a large portion of the blame for increased stress upon children and family bonds is placed not on the shoulders of the father, but again on the shoulders of the mother. While carrying this burden in their hearts, women from the global South work as housekeepers, nannies, nurses aides and caregivers. Because they cannot find work at home that would provide their children with food and shelter, they move to other countries to do so. They are rewarded by being shouldered with the blame for the perceived decrease in the quality of their society and culture.

When the United States exports its idealized tv shows and movies that continue to extoll the virtues and rightness of the White, 1950’s US family, it places pressure upon families in other countries. It creates dissatisfaction with one’s primary culture and way of life. Additionally, it creates unrealistic explanations for those who migrate to the United States, Australia, Europe, and Canada. Very few migrant workers who come to the United States will more than scrape by. There are horror stories everywhere about the treatment of the women who care for the families of those in so called “developed nations.” Denial of health care, denial of food, sometimes denial even of personal space or a place to sleep is a common theme about what happens to women who come North looking for work to support their families.

I see a rather radical need for change in the global economy that would improve the lives of women around the world. And yes, White women, I mean our lives would be improved as well. What needs to occur is a split from the ideal of the 1950’s US nuclear family. A push toward fair wages for domestic workers, as well as fair working conditions. Implementation of funds for parents to assist them as they raise their children in order to prevent them from needing to leave the country to work. And for the upper echelon of businesswomen, a move away from viewing having children as a bad thing in an employee. Paying mothers less is ridiculous and companies do it because they can get away with it easily. Mothers, especially single mothers, know they have to take jobs that come their way. They know they have to buy the most economical products, which often means using items made in terrible working conditions in factories in the Global South.

In short, the woman occupying Earth in the year 2014 is trapped in a cycle that only few escape. And when those few escape, they are held up as models of society, without acknowledging the backs of the other women they had to walk across, or the fact that they may have had additional skills, additional resources, additional advantages that other women did not. They managed to find that high paying job, have their children at exactly the right moment, and then they are able to afford the advantage of paying another woman to leave her family in order to care for their own. Even at the height of the pinnacle, women like Sheryl Sandberg are caught in “The Mommy Trap,” and perpetuate its cycle. Instructions to “lean in” or “ban bossiness” in little girls are only instructions to continue the system of least resistance that we all are a part of: the patriarchy.

Tonight, I’m having a Meniere’s attack – vertigo and nausea. I know part of the reason is that my sinuses are really inflamed. My husband has a terrible cold. I have a bad sinus headache. I decided to make a soup to try to make us feel better. Initially, I was just going to drink broth with spices, but then I decided to make it a meal, so I added edamame, spinach and veggies.

Serves 2. Prep time 20 minutes. Cook time 40 minutes.

Ingredients

1 bag shelled edamame

1 bag frozen spinach

6 baby bella mushrooms, chopped.

5-6 cloves of garlic

Olive Oil

4 tablespoons roughly chopped ginger (or more)

2 inches lemongrass, chopped and pressed

1 teaspoon (or to taste) cayenne pepper

2 teaspoons fresh basil

Salt and black pepper to taste.

1 quart chicken broth. (you can use vegetable broth and then it will be vegan)

————-

Directions

Heat olive oil in a soup pot. Add garlic, ginger, and lemongrass. Saute until fragrant.

Add chicken broth

Add Cayenne pepper. Add as much as you want. I know I put in at least a teaspoon, probably more.

Add basil.

Add black pepper.

Bring to a boil.

Once boiling, add edamame, spinach, and mushrooms. Bring to a boil.

Simmer for 20-30 minutes (I simmered until my husband got home from work).

This soup is HOT. It works really well to help you clear your sinuses, chest, and you feel a lot better after eating it.

Feel better!

I support a lot of causes and I support a lot of people. I am uncomfortable with calling myself an “ally.” One reason is that I’m not particularly fond of labels and the other reason is what the world “ally” represents to me. When I think of allies, I think of the allies that grouped together to fight the Nazis in World War II. They were together for one particular cause, even if they had different forms of government and different opinions on different sociopolitical and economic issues.

The thing about the Allies, though, they were in the front lines. They were in the trenches. They were dying. Once they were in, they could not leave. They did not leave until the war was over and the last prisoner free.

Even the white people who aligned themselves with the Civil Rights movements were allies. They took beatings. They marched for miles, and some of them were murdered along with their Black comrades.  They were true allies.

I have marched in protests. I have signed petition after petition. I have voted my conscious even when I knew my candidate would lose because they were, in my heart, the right candidate for the job. I have spoken up at the Supermarket, at the bank. I call my coworkers on racist behaviors and let my Black and Hispanic, and Indian coworkers know that I will back them up if they need it.

But when I write, when I speak out, people do not threaten me. People do not threaten my children. No one is trying to find out where I live and publish that information. When I talk about my struggle with depression, no one tries to contact my primary care doctor and send them my Twitter logs. I am generally unafraid of the police. All of these things come to me because I have white privilege. I am not straight, and I am not cis, but in not being vocal about my gender status, people assume I am. I am weak because I do not speak out about my status, but I am not ready for that battle.

I do speak out.  I do speak up. When someone is being attacked on Twitter and asks for help, I join in. When someone is being discriminated against in public, I say something. If I see a mother struggling with groceries, I try to help pay. I donate what I can. But when I speak up, the tone of the conversation immediately changes. The person being racist changes their bearing. Now they are talking to a white person, and they are suddenly more respectful. If they are being a troll online, I can use the same derailing tactics they are using to get them away from the person they are trolling.

I’ve been called a race traitor, I’ve been called a N—– lover. None of that is anything near what people of color go through. No one has threatened my children. No one has threatened my life. No one has threatened my safety. Indeed, even on my most controversial, viral blog post, the most that happened was that people said I should quit my job. Even though my boss read the post, she never thought I should quit, and her opinion is all that matters in that situation.

So I am not your ally. I wish I could say I was. But the things I do are not sufficient for me to call myself your ally. I am your supporter. I will support you, with words, with money when I have it, with friendship if you need it, but I cannot be an ally. I cannot be on the front lines of the fight you are in. You cannot leave the fight you are in, but I can. White privilege affords me that opportunity.  My efforts are not enough to call myself your ally. If there is another war, I will join you. I will put myself in 100% and I will not leave. And then I will be your ally.

I feel like this is me and @LynxSainteMarie. We were always going to be friends, the internet just gave us a way to do so.

Why ‘feminist infighting’ is coded language for ‘pipe down I don’t want to hear about your intersectionality’.

My dear friend @LynxSainteMarie’s labor of love is coming to fruition. Today, their website “Queer Of Gender” launched, with it’s first article, by Mercy Medusa Mahogany Immanuel Thokozane Minah.

Take a moment, read the links, and if you are Queer of Gender, contribute!

This semester, I have my community health class. I have to spend 56 hours volunteering and gathering data about a population in my community and a disease that affects that community.

I’ve thought all week about where I should focus my project on, and I’ve come to a decision.

Individuals who are trans face incredible odds, particularly if they are people of color. They also dying younger and by more violent causes than the general population.These are my friends and neighbors I am losing.

I identify as genderfluid but generally do not bring it up because to do so would invite scrutiny, accusations, and mockery. But I am saying this here because even though I have the privilege of passing, passing limits my free expression of who I am and one day I truly hope to be free in that expression. I would love to have a closet divided into thirds. One for woman. One for man. One for the days when I don’t feel like any gender expresses who I am.

Reasons for this project:

We have the horrible last days of Dr. V, now etched into a webpages walls for clickbait for all the world to see and judge and mock. (Note: link posts to @ParkerMolloy‘s eloquent synopsis and take down of how the article could have been written without outing Dr. V. and causing her and her loved ones so much distress.

We experience hate crimes all over the world. Countries where being trans is a death sentence.

We experience higher rates of STDs, especially HIV among trans individuals.

Most members of the medical community receive ZERO training on the emotional, physical, and spiritual needs of the trans population. Because of this, trans individuals are often afraid to go to a hospital or doctor’s office, even in an emergency. This must stop.

I am going to make my Community Health project about death in the trans community and what could be done to prevent the early deaths of my trans friends and family. I am going to be able to present to at least 60 nurses and my professors what can be done to improve the mental and physical health of the trans community. While I am doing this, I am also going to create a presentation that can be easily emailed and blogged and shared about the healthcare needs of the trans community.

I am going to tweet about my project and the work I am doing under the hashtag #transdyingyoung.

Because I am new to this, I am going to enlist the help of anyone who would like to review my project and my posts. If you would, please email me at grimalkinrn at gmail dot com. I will not out anyone. I will not post personal, identifying information about anyone who does not want to be identified. I WILL listen to members of the trans community and solicit their instruction and advice.

I have a pretty good idea why I think trans individuals are dying so young, and of so many things that cis individuals do not, but I also know there are cultures that embrace multiple genders. We have people that embrace multiple genders.

My hope is that with this project I will bring education to more than 60 people. I am going to share my research and blog about these 56 hours of data collection and service. And by sharing this blog post, I am going to out myself to my classmates, and fellow nurses. I am genderfluid, and I am not going to be silent about it anymore.

This is not going to be a journey down a rabbit hole where things get stranger and stranger. I am going to work to put the healthcare needs of the trans community into the light of day, and move the practice of medicine FORWARD.

‘Care left undone’ during nursing shifts: associations with workload and perceived quality of care

This study, performed in the UK, shows the correlation between tasks left undone during a nurse’s shift and staffing on a hospital unit. Tasks that are most often left undone include talking with and educating patients.  This affects patients far after they leave the hospital, especially if they do not receive vital instructions for maintaining their health, such as how to care for wounds, when to take (or not to take) medication, and when to call a doctor. This is yet another study that shows nurse staffing affects patients not just while they are in the hospital, but also when they have left.

On my unit we try to keep the mentality that it’s a 24 hour job and the next shift can get to things if we cannot get to them ourselves. But this primarily addresses tasks that a nurse is not able to get to, not patient education and counseling. It would be so nice to have adequate time to talk to my patients and educate them thoroughly. Currently this feels like the exception rather than the rule.  I know busy nurses everywhere are suffering from the same chronic disappointment in our jobs. We got into nursing for the patients, it is upsetting when you are forced, due to staffing, to give only the care written down on paper and not the vital care that nurses are trained to give every patient: emotional support and comfort. The ability to spend time with your patients and care for their emotions is part of what makes nursing a rewarding occupation, and the inability to do so is what causes many nurses to develop compassion fatigue, burnout, and to leave the profession.