{look upon my works, ye mighty}

Link: Delta Makes Woman With Muscular Dystrophy Crawl Off Plane

"On July 20th, Julianna's (delayed) Delta flight landed in Atlanta at 7:30pm, with a connecting flight scheduled for 8:05pm. Julianna, who has muscular dystrophy, missed the connecting flight because nobody came with a wheelchair until 8:05—the same time the connecting flight took off. To make matters worse, the plane crew told Julianna she might make the flight anyway if she stopped waiting for help and got off the plane right now, so she crawled down the stairs on her own. When the wheelchair came she was "wheeled into a back room and advised" that her plane had taken off. But that was just the first half of her ordeal, and the next eight hours only got worse."

Delta can't be allowed to just brush her off with a meal voucher that she wasn't even able to use.

If you have a Yahoo account, Buzz it up. If enough people Buzz it, it might make front page news and put more pressure on Delta to compensate her adequately and change their policies so nothing like that happens again. If you have a Digg account, Digg it. The more negative publicity, the better the chances of Delta being shamed into acting.

And finally, spare a couple of seconds to go complain directly to Delta here. I know it looks intimidating because they're asking for all that RL info, but all they really need is a name and an e-mail address, if you checked the asterisk'd fields. In the comment box, link to the news article in question so that they'll know what you're talking about, then tell them exactly what you think of their behavior.

If anyone's got any further ideas on how to make the story more visible, drop me a comment. A public apology is the least of what they owe her, but it's something that can be achieved through the pressure of public opinion if enough of us actually put our outrage to good use and do something about this.

Remember my post about the Pretty Bird Woman Shelter and how it needed donations to rebuild after having been burned down? ceresi just posted about it again but this time, there's a twist. The following two paragraphs are taken directly from her post.

- stonedtodeath is offering to donate one cent per word to the Pretty Bird Woman House. I think she's into bandslash and SPN, so if those are your fandoms and you've been looking for a way to donate, check out her post here.

- mickeym is offering to write in exchange for donations. I can tell she's into SPN by the header of her journal, haha (mmmm, boys), so if that's your thing, go! Check out her post here.

I've now been inspired to do the same. This is my offer to donate on the behalf of other people who are low on cash but high on talent/creativity/enthusiasm.

Write me something and I'll donate a cent per word to the Pretty Bird Women House and post a screencap of a receipt that'll look like this so that'll you have some form of tangible proof of having done a good deed.

Fandoms that I heart are:

Animorphs, Archie Comics, Batman/DC*, Batman Beyond, Big Wolf on Campus, Bruno and Boots, Chrestomanci, Discworld, Fables, Good Omens, Gravitation, Greek Mythology, Gundam Wing, Harry Potter, Hercules (Disney), Mighty Ducks, Mulan (Disney), Othello (the manga), Petshop of Horrors, Pokemon, Sailor Moon season R, Smallville, Spiderman, Stick It, Sweet Valley, The Authority, Yu-Gi-Oh.

See? Plenty of options. And if you still want to make a donation through me but can't write for any of those fandoms, drop me a comment with what you can write for and I'll choose something. I really want to get as many people as possible involved in this somehow.

The fundraiser ends on the 31st of Jan, so you can drop in any time before then unless I run out of money before then. To keep track of how donations from this post are going, I'll be editing this every time someone contributes. Please feel free to link to this post in your own journal or spread it wherever you want.

Total:

2415 / 7000 words. 63% done, 44.15 dollars contributed!

Link of the Day: Beauty Kit.

It's a fantastic, disturbing video about plastic surgery. The link takes you to a livejournal page where the vid is embedded -- the vid is only about 2 minutes long, not really graphic because it deals mostly with drawings instead of live surgery, but is incredibly provocative and got a knee-jerk reaction of omgICK from me. I highly recommend watching it.

Secondly, tomorrow, the 11th of October is both National Coming Out Day and National Depression Screening Day. The first means that I'm going to be distributing brochures and stickers that the Human Rights Committee sent me as part of their Action Kit for Members as well as finding something appropriately rainbow-colored to wear, the second means that I'm linking all of you over here, where you can find a center near you to get screened for free to make sure you're not depressed as opposed to just fatigued, unmotivated, having sleeping problems or any of those other myriad symptoms that can be ignored pretty easily.

Link of the Day: Trick or Treat for UNICEF.

I know it's a little early to be thinking about Halloween, but the link above lets you order the orange boxes used for collecting donations on Halloween. If I can get people to go with me on Halloween and get a good enough costume (I figure if I'm going to be collecting money instead of candy, I ought to have a killer costume), then I'm pretty sure that I'll do that.

Anyone else in? If I thought there'd be enough interest, I'd start up a comm where everyone can post a picture of themselves on Halloween, holding the collection box and in their costume.

Also, what's your opinion of trick-or-treating for UNICEF? It's not like it's asking for huge donations, but on the other hand, it is basically pan-handling even though it is for a charity geared towards children and Halloween is a children's holiday (though I'm sadly not a child any longer).

Anyway, good idea, bad idea? Likely to offend you if a college student in costume shows up asking for a donation to UNICEF instead of candy?

Taken from __marcelo
>>

Air Force Charges Victim in Her Own Rape

This news item made my stomach turn: Cassandra Hernandez, a female Air Force airman was raped, reported her attack and then subsequently became a court-martial defendant, herself.

The story goes down like this: Hernandez was at a party, where she was drinking. She says that three male airman raped her. She went to the hospital and filed a report accusing her attackers. Due to stress and harsh interrogation tactics by the Air Force, she eventually refused to testify against the airmen.

The Air Force then charged her with underage drinking (of which she admits to being guilty, but that's hardly the point, now is it?) and, along with her three attackers,"indecent acts." I had a hell of a lot of trouble finding an official definition for "indecent acts," and the best one I came up with is a "form of immorality relating to sexual impurity which is not only grossly vulgar, obscene, and repugnant to common propriety, but tends to excite lust and deprave the morals with respect to sexual relations." Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the basic translation seems to be "a sexual act, particularly one that is not generally accepted in society, such as sex with multiple partners."

So. The woman was raped. By three men. She reported her rape. She was harassed by her superiors, to the point where she became too afraid to testify. The Air Force took this as meaning that the sex was therefore consensual (which isn't what it means at all), and charged her in the case of her own rape. If she loses her case, she could be publicly registered as a sex offender.

Sounds like it couldn't get any worse, right? But it does. How? The three alleged attackers were offered sexual assault immunity to testify against Hernandez on the indecent acts charge. Having at least half a brain cell among them, they accepted.

Hernandez is writing to her congresspeople and her Governor, Rick Perry, in a desperate plea to end this madness. Once you finish throwing up, crying, breaking things, etc., I strongly suggest that you write, too.

IMPORTANT CORRECTION: Apparently, the correct action to take is to write directly to YOUR congresspersons. You can find the information to write to your Representative here, and the information to write to your Senators here. It is a good idea to include one of the links to articles about thecase, so that they know specifically what you are referring to.

Posted by Cara at 04:15 PM | in Law, News, Sexual Assault, Violence Against Women

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if any of you have a good way of passing this around--to each other or to the news through the spotlight thing--PLEASE DO IT. follow the links to write to your congressperson. (if anyone wants a pre-written letter to sign, i can draw up a template.) maybe if we get the word out, something can be done about it. <<

The level of rage on my part is not to be believed. Want to pass this on to let more people know about, links and everything? The entire rich-text file of the page can be found <a href="http://svendra.com/lj/post.txt">here</a>.

I wonder if getting an e-mail from a UN addy makes the congresspeople more or less likely to listen to me?

While discussing Obama vs. Clinton the other day with a guy, the man in question came forth with this pearl of wisdom:

"Women make laws when they can't make quiche."

Unsurprisingly, that infuriated me.

Politics is not something that women do because they're not good at cooking, or domestic arts. Running the country is in no way a consolation prize for being a bad cook or housewife!

If you want to get into politics, it means that you want to have a say in the direction that the country heads in. It means you want to influence the social system of the country, the international opinion of the country and the financial situation of the country.

If you're running a country like America, it means that you're affecting the whole damn world. The reprecussions of your decisions will be felt by countries so far across the globe that they're going to sleep when you're having lunch, or waking up when you're eating quiche for dinner.

Going into politics means that you have power.

Baking a quiche isn't especially empowering (unless you poison it, I suppose).

Being involved in American politics -- running for President, running for Senate, canvassing house-to-house, putting up posters, and hell, even just showing up voting -- means that you can change the world.

I think that's better than baking one lousy quiche.

Link of the Day: Rename Norris Hall Petition.

Norris Hall is where the V-Tech shootings took place; where 25 students and five professors died, along with their killer. The link leads to an online petition that already has over 20K signatures in favor of renaming Norris Hall for Liviu Librescu who was an engineering professor that displayed incredible heroism by blocking the classroom door with his body during the shootings so that his students could jump to safety. Aged 76, he was also a Holocaust survivor and had taught there for 20 years.

I think that sort of courage is incredible and deserves to be remembered. Don't you?

1. Today is National Day of Silence. I went to class, though nearly didn't due to fatigue and bad sleep, and spoke up plenty -- then realized during the mid-class break that it was the Day of Silence and I should have kept quiet. Damn. I hope you guys are doing a better job of observing it than I am.

2. VTech shooting tragedy happened on Monday. I found out about it through lenaf007's journal, who isn't on my flist but did take part in the YGO Anti-Hate Fest, and whose journal I clicked to randomly because I liked her Captain Jack Sparrow = Ryuuji icon.

I remember that I found out that Princess Diana died because I'd woken up early to watch something on Cartoon Network and they were showing a little bar at the top asking people to please check their local news channels. These days, it seems weird to me that a children's cartoon channel would do something like that, but back then, I waited until my mother woke up and came down, then showed it to her.

9/11, I was at piano practice with my teacher, and he mentioned it when I was leaving. We thought it was a joke, some sort of prank being played on the media. Then I came home and found out that it was all over the TV.

In poetry class today, we were talking about how often, people can remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they find out about a tragedy. I guess that means no matter what else she may achieve in her life, Lena's always going to be linked to VTech in my head. Probably not how she wants to be remembered, but it's too late now.

It feels weirdly unreal to me, still. School shootings, I can kind of understand. I'm not justifying them in any way, but at least in a school, I can imagine bullies and emotional hell and having to deal with it day in and day out until you just snap. A college seems bigger to me. It's easier to just isolate yourself from those sort of elements though I know people that have had bad experiences in college, so it isn't that easy, I suppose. It still feels like in a school, you'd have a better chance of at least hitting people you dislike -- in a college, there's too big a pool of potential targets. You'd end up killing people you don't even know if you just fire at random.

It just doesn't make sense to me.

On a different note, nyrehtak brought up the 'Ismail-Ax' on the guy's arm. If there really is a connection to the Animorphs series, I have no idea how I'd react to that. He supposedly sent a 1,800 word missive to the NBC, so maybe he explained that in there somewhere. Because yes, my first thought was of Ax when I read that, but Ax was kind of way too cool to go on a killing spree in a university. I'd like the psychopaths to please leave my favorite characters alone.

3. Dani is arriving tomorrow! I am in a tizzy of trying to clean up my room for her. And then we'll get a mattress for her tomorrow, and another mattress for Neko -- Cid, if you're still willing to let me borrow a mattress, I think that I figured out a way that I can actually fit three of them into my room so that we can all crash together. My laundry's in to wash, I'm moving furniture right now, and later, I'll vacuum the room and rebuzz my hair.

From Thursday, 18th April to Monday, 22nd April, I will be offline completely. AnimeBoston + Dani + Neko = WHEEE! But, WHEEE that excludes the possibility of me being on the Net, though I might pop online late Monday after Neko's gone. Try not to do anything drastic without me.

4. Placebo concert = new t-shirt with a cornflower blue Placebo logo. Anyone who finds me that logo on the Net will make me way happy.

5.It was Sri Lankan New Year last Saturday. Happy New Year, everyone!

Link of the Day: Light To Unite.

For every virtual candle lit, Bristol-Myers Squibb is donating $1 to the National AIDS fund. It only takes a few seconds and it'll clear your conscience. Go click.

How many of you pay attention to the news about countries outside of the one that you live in?

Most of my flist is from America; people say Americans are self-absorbed and rarely listen to anything except American news.

True or not? Historically, America had an isolationist attitude during WWI but that was nearly a century ago. We should have moved on by then.

I know I pay attention to news about Europe, because I grew up there, Asia because that's where my genetic stock is from and where most of my family is, Australia because I lived there too once upon a time, and America because that's where I go to uni/live/was born. Dual nationality for Sri Lanka and America, permanent residency for Austria and Australia -- I've got personal reasons to cover most of the globe, though nothing for Africa or the Middle East.

Not that it matters.

I don't see how anyone can be ignorant of the genocide in Dafur or each successive crisis in the Middle East. It's news. Our world, our events. It might be happening on the other side of the world for now, but if chaos theory says one butterfly's wings flapping can create a storm, then one death (Archduke Franz-Ferdinand) is all it takes to kick off a World War.

Boys kissing. Just as a reward for reading through that.

So do me a favor and answer the following poll honestly? Answers are screened so that nobody will know what you've voted.

[Poll #785691]