Fascinating watching this website contort around the idea of reaching out to and converting far right leaning individuals as if the same 3-4 stances aren’t having a do-si-do while all being able to coexist
It’s like
Outreach to radicalized individuals needs to happen, because without it their numbers just grow
But also
Outreach is time consuming and difficult, not guaranteed to work, and put you or people around you in danger by putting you on a radicalized persons radar
But also
We know that compassionate, prolonged outreach is remarkably effective. We also know emotional appeals are astronomically more likely to change someone’s mind than factual ones when it comes to core beliefs
But also
most deradicalization works when someone who is close to the individual puts in the work to shift their perspective.
But also
You do not need to do this yourself/no one is obligated to do this thing that is difficult and dangerous and there is a ton of organizing work and also outreach work in our own political circle that needs doing and you should utilize your resources how you see fit
But also
You do not need to be nice to or coddle people who have done material harm
But also
Outright hostility only serves to reinforce the us vs. them mentality and makes it harder to deprogram people
But also
focusing on trying to win over radicalized individuals can’t come at the expense of work to help victims/our community/those marginalized/etc.
But also
People who are deradicalized need a community to reintegrate to or what’s the point.
But also
You don’t have to welcome someone who’s done harm into your community.
But also
Sometimes your desire to not allow someone who has reformed reintegrate into a community has less to do with harm reduction and more to do with punishing them for previous wrongdoing
But also
You never owe forgiveness to anyone who has harmed you.
But also
Outreach to radicalized individuals needs to happen, because without it their numbers just grow.
Just ad infinitum. Just a never ending ouroboros of “You’re an idiot for how you engage with this famously thorny issue”.
Just pick one of the bullet points above and work at it, and if someone else wants to work at one of the other ones, we’re all trying to make things better. Maybe be less snarky and self righteous.
the degree that parents of young children seem to think Baby Shark came out of nowhere astounds me. this is a DECADES-OLD camp song, that has spanned generations.
i am not a parent of a young child but i worked at summer camps for years and let me tell you before it was ruined by parents of young children baby shark was the most fun camp song ever. kids went buckwild over baby shark. but then it had to be commercialized. you ruined it. yall motherfuckers stay away from the bear song or we’ll have words
i teleport you into the ocean! spin the wheel to find out what environment/ecosystem you end up in (you can look it up if you don’t know what it is). assuming you can survive there,
i am so serious when i say dark and quiet are both human rights.
i don’t mean like absolute silence. obviously in an ideal community, there would still be sound and noise from people and music and work etc. but it haunts me that when i camp in the forest i can hear the howl of semi trucks on the interstate miles away. and the people who live beside it never know quiet. it haunts me that many people will live their whole lives never seeing the stars in the sky that were fully visible with NO electric light pollution as recently as my great-grandparents’ childhoods.
so much of our lives is bright bright unnecessary noise. neon mcdonalds signs 200 feet in the air so we can see it from the road. led lights over billboards. parking lots lit up like sports stadiums at closed office buildings. advertisements playing at gasoline pumps. streets lined with led porch lights and decorative garden lights that genuinely threaten entire species of wildlife. music blaring outside pharmacies to deter homeless people. everything always shining and wailing for no purpose but profit and cruelty.
obviously not everything can be turned off or made quiet and i wouldn’t want it to be anyway and there is a lot of nuance and room for “but what about” here, but MANY things HAVE to change because none of us are supposed to live like this and we shouldn’t have to!!!
as a POC I can’t overstate how much I appreciate this, the third one especially who has this look that has lost so much hope, you can see her eyes swell in real time post transformation and it just goes to show that looking good makes us feel good
it warms my heart to see so many reblog this from me, yet unless you’re Black? (with little exceptions) I don’t think you all really get it, so let me really paint the story here.
the thing about Black hair is that it is varied, like incredibly so. some of us luck out and get what we dub “Good Hair”, hair that is normally not as tightly curled and manageable with a little to midrange amount of effort. But many MANY of us have natural hair that is tough and thick, the curls are small, sometimes very tightly wound, it makes brushing and combing damn near impossible on top of other hair care methods. short as well as braided hair isn’t always desired but for many of us we have no choice, it’s just easier to maintain it that way, it is a sentence, not a style.
keep in mind that hairstyle is a statement, especially when you’re Black, your hair says so much about you in this community in particular. we also have the fact that our standard is held against White standards of beauty, and that is a whole different conversation involving privilege, systemic racism, and internalized hatred—like bitch, this has LAYERS!
take the age into account here for all these women, but in this case I’m specifically talking about the third. now, these are all educated assumptions, but you know where those tears are from? she’s had to live with this hair her whole life! and you just KNOW she’s tried everything!—heat, curling, straightening, perms, softeners/relaxers, HUNDREDS of products that make hundreds of promises, and many of these risk taking out the natural oil and proteins in hair which is a death sentence for Black hair. she had given up hope that anything good could ever be done I’ll bet. that transformation did more than style her hair, it gave her years upon years of hope; Listen to Black folk when they tell you, it’s more than just hair.
this man is doing more than hair, he’s changing lives…I just hope he knows that.
and you can see how much good styling helps! These ladies have obviously had some makeup work done as well, but the new styles make a world of difference.
