Yes, that’s right, it’s obviously the worker’s fault, not the systemic and pervasive problem of crony capitalism. Duh.
Let me tell you some fun stories, OP.
My best friend has a degree in early childhood education AND teaching home economics (there is an actual name for this degree, I just can’t remember it right now, she would kill me). Yes, she has an ~actual degree from a university~. I know it’s hard to believe, because we so adore thinking that everyone making minimum wage are barely high school graduates (as if there’s anything wrong with that).
Here’s the thing though, she can’t get a job with her home-ec degree because all of the things she could be teaching (culinary arts for example) are being cut from school’s budgets. So they’re downsizing those teachers, not hiring more.
So she uses her early childhood education degree, and she works at a preschool. Bear with me. I know it’s more fun to pretend that the only low-wage jobs in our country are in retail and fast food. Because it’s easier to look down on the people busting their asses to make sure you can shop and eat.
She teaches her students their letters and numbers, how to write their names, counting and sharing and art. She gives her students a solid foundation to be able to enter elementary school.
She makes $8 an hour.
In the city she lives in, depending on what preschool she works at she could make anywhere from $8-10 and hour. It’s not a matter of skill, it’s not a matter of ‘rising above’. There is no above in a preschool, unless it’s the director. And someone making $16,000-$20,000 a year and working 40+ hours a week doesn’t really make enough to go back to school for their master’s degree just for the hopes of making $15.
Before I got into my current field I worked at a different non-profit. Oooh, that’s right. A Non-profit organization. With my degree. I actually did ‘rise up’. I rose up as high as I could withing that organization. As high as ANYONE could, actually, without being either the Executive Director or Assistant Director. I went from making 7.25 to making 8.25. That’s right. I rose as HIGH AS I COULD GO and was still only making a dollar more than minimum wage.
That wasn’t because of my skill, or my drive. I rose from the most entry level position to the position directly under the assistant director in THREE YEARS. But it didn’t matter because greed is everywhere, even in non-profits, and the AD and ED were making six figures a year while the rest of us were starving. The AD and ED were also the only people in the org allowed to work full time. This wasn’t because there wasn’t enough work, this was because they didn’t have to give us any insurance if we didn’t work full time hours.
Greed is everywhere. THAT’s why people don’t have living wages. Corporations are making billions of dollars a year, their employees are getting their food from food banks.
i’m not being funny at all when i say i truly do not love men as a whole, nothing close, there are men that i care for in my life but on a general scale i’m indifferent and skeptical when it comes to men.
you can not teach girls to constantly be prepared and wary of rape, abuse and murder from men, blame them for their own abuse when they’re not, and then turn around and expect them to simultaneously love them, what kind of joke.
Joseph Medicine Crow, an acclaimed Native American historian and last surviving war chief of Montana’s Crow Tribe, died at age 102 on Sunday.
A member of the Crow Tribe’s Whistling Water clan, Medicine Crow was born in 1913 and raised by his grandparents in a log house on the Crow Reservation in Montana, the Associated Press reported.
His crow name was “High Bird,” and he grew up hearing stories of the Battle of Little Big Horn from his family members who were there.
His grandfather, Yellowtail, started to train Medicine Crow to be a warrior when he was only 6-years-old. The training involved grueling physical activity, such as running barefoot in the snow.
In 1939, Medicine Crow earned a master’s degree in anthropology from the University of Southern California, becoming the first member of his tribe to ever earn a master’s.
He became a Crow historian, collecting his nomadic tribe’s history through firsthand accounts before 1884, when Native Americans were made to live on reservations.
During World War II, Medicine Crow completed the four tasks needed to become a Crow War Chief, including stealing horses from the enemy and wrestling a weapon away from a Nazi.
“Warfare was our highest art, but Plains Indian warfare was not about killing. It was about intelligence, leadership, and honor,” Medicine Crow wrote in his 2006 book Counting Coup.
In 2009, President Obama bestowed upon Medicine Crow the Presidential Medal of Freedom – the country’s highest civilian honor.
In case you want to forget the USA election circus for a second, here is Center Europa issue:
right now in Poland there is a law waiting to be voted by our goverment about making abortion illegal with only one exception – if mother’s life is in danger. Any kind of abortion – be it intentional or unintentional (wtf does that even mean?!) will make a woman go to the prison
Oooh, and the updates are: 1. Our prime bitch, that is, minister said she’ll okay the law and the chief of the president, that is, chief of the leading party (Law and Justice, hehehe, what a joke) said the same thing, which means this WILL get through 2. Unintentional abortion does, in fact, mean losing the baby. Yeah, you lose the baby and they add sentence to your already depressed self 3. And since the law states that the human being stars at the moment sperm infertiles the egg, some of the protection will be outlawed (like after-sex pills) 4. Some of the prenatal checkings will be outlawed 5. The baby inside of you is dead or will die in agony shortly after the birth? Fuck you losing your mind – in the late case you still have to give a birth and in first case you’re under investigation (you could, after all, kill it somehow) 6. It’ll be labeled as a murder – means, it’ll never outdate
Enjoy.
Basically, we’re going to be the next El Salvador.
I will let myself repeat – FIVE YEARS IN PRISON FOR THE WOMAN UNDERGOING ABORTION. And apparently bishops opinions are more important than women’s. Im not even kidding, they asked episcopate for opinion. You know, all those old rich men who are definitely gonna face the dilemma of abortion one day. That would be funny if it werent terrifying.
Oh, and i forget – due to this bill, if a GIRL, a CHILD, was RAPED and become pregnant, she would be FORCED TO CARRY. It was an actual situation from couple years ago i think, when nine yo girl in Poland had an abortion in that exact case – cause under previous law abortion was allowed in case of pregnancy being a result of rape – and the church went mad. Her parents were harrased, their personal information was leaked, bishops was writing letters pressuring a nine yo to give birth. But then, they were under protection of law. Now – there will be no protection.
WHAT
And how can the rest of the world help fight this?
In case you didn’t know
1. In Ireland, abortion is only allowed if there is a “real and substantial” risk to your life.
Abortion is banned except where there is a risk to your life – but not health. The definition of “risk” is narrow and vague. So it’s almost impossible to actually have an abortion in Ireland.
2. Breaking Ireland’s abortion law could get you 14 years in jail or a €4,000 fine.
If you have an illegal abortion in Ireland, you risk 14 years in prison. If you’re a healthcare provider and refer a woman to seek an abortion abroad, it’s a fine of up to €4,000.Ireland’s abortion law criminalizes women, girls and the health care professionals who try to help them.
3. A woman must carry to full term a foetus that won’t live.
If a woman is carrying a foetus that is unlikely to survive, she must still carry that pregnancy to term under Irish law. The trauma of doing this is summed up by Grainne: “How cruel would it be to make me go through this… To put me through a full pregnancy. I would have the breast milk, I would have everybody asking me how long are you gone?… How could they think that would not affect someone mentally?”
4. Equal right to life. Not equal in practice.
The 8th Amendment to Ireland’s Constitution, made in 1983, protects the right to life of the foetus and places it on an equal footing with the right to life of the woman. Most of the women and health professionals Amnesty spoke to, said that a woman’s rights inevitably come second. Lupe, a woman who was forced to carry a dead foetus for two months, told us: “When a woman gets pregnant in Ireland, she loses her human rights.”
5. Ireland is happy for you to have an abortion – as long as it’s not in Ireland.
Under Irish law, it’s legal to travel abroad to get an abortion, prompting the criticism that Ireland is happy to export its human rights responsibilities. Emma Kitson, who went to the UK for an abortion because her foetus had a fatal medical condition, said: “We deserved to have support within the Irish health care system, to get us through that… They export the problem and they forget all about you.”
6. Each year, about 4,000 women and girls leave Ireland to have an abortion in the UK.
Many feel like criminals for doing this. As Cerys, who travelled to the UK for an abortion, put it: “I am a law-abiding citizen and I felt like I was committing a crime, like I was smuggling drugs across the border. That feeling was horrible.”
@solitaryjo Thanks for these further additions re. the equally pernicious situation in Ireland. (And all this continues is a country that legalised same-sex marriage in 2015.) Sharing again…
I can’t even finish reading these it makes me so sick.
Thoughtfulfangirling 