meabsolutely's blog

Thank goodness I don't live there anymore.

ST. CLOUD, Minn. - Bisharo Iman hoped college in St. Cloud would be different than attending high school there — no more taunts of “Go back to your country” aimed at her Somali dress, no more being slammed into lockers.

“I did get away from it — for a while,” said Iman, a junior business major at St. Cloud State University.

That was before a frightening six-week stretch in November and December when vandals carved or scrawled more than a dozen swastikas and other racist images on campus walls, elevators and bathroom stalls.

The spate came as a setback to this central Minnesota university, which has spent more than $1 million, thousands of hours and untold energy in recent years trying to undo its reputation as hostile toward racial and ethnic minorities, an image so entrenched that some refer to the surrounding town as “White Cloud.”

I have been a vegetarian for month since the fourth of January and a lot of people have been curious as to why I made the decision to no longer eat meat, so I have posted my final paper for my global feminism class. It has been difficult to get the formatting anywhere close to what I would for a paper. Anyway, read on if you can:

In the analysis of violence and oppression against women, people are often critical of partriarchy’s role. However, there often seems to be a piece missing from the overall analysis. People have to acknowledge violence against animals because of the many ways it parallels the system of patriarchical oppression toward minority groups.

This year I read 29 books which equals 10,370 pages or 28 pages a day. The bold books are non-fiction. Part of my problem is that I read parts of books and then put them down with every intention of picking them back up, but I sometimes don't. I can think of at least 12 books that I haven't finished, but want to, just from this year. I didn't get to my 50 book goal, and I didn't read quite as much as I did last year, but I was far busier this year. So here is the list:

1) Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling
2) Harry Potter and the Order Of The Phoenix by J.K. Rowling

Jackson Katz discusses Larry Flynt's recent endorsement of Dennis Kucinich

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jackson-katz/dennis-kucinich-endorses-_b_7...

A car repair firm has been taken to court accused of infringing musical copyright because its employees listen to radios at work.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/7029892.s...

My friend Joe was going to work at walmart back in high school until they showed him this video.

http://hrw.org/campaigns/walmart/video.htm

Civil liberties groups cannot sue the federal government to stop President Bush's warrantless domestic spying program, according to a ruling from a divided panel of the federal appeals court in Cincinnati.

The ACLU brought the lawsuit on behalf of reporters, academics, and others who believe their phone calls and e-mails may have been intercepted in the Bush administration's domestic spying program.They argued that those wiretaps inhibit speech and unconstitutionally violate Americans' privacy.

The problem with that argument, according to the new ruling, is that the people who filed the lawsuit can't prove that they have been spied on. And if they haven't been spied on, they haven't been harmed by the program.

I am sure that every single one of you were waiting in bated breath to hear whether or not I took the Moveon.org job (the one I wrote about in my last blog). So here it is:

It was a really difficult decision since working for Move On would mean leaving the shelter I work at really short staffed, but working to stop the War in Iraq is so important. However, in the end it was my health that was the determining factor. Since I have to go to a specialist and it can take more than a month to get in and I don’t know what’s wrong, I decided to stay in good ole fargo/ moorhead this summer.

Oh well.

Hey kiddos,
I ran into a fantastic job though Moveon.org. I will be applying and so should you.
-Kat

Dear MoveOn member,
Our partners at the Americans Against Escalation in Iraq coalition (AAEI) are organizing an exciting campaign—it's called Iraq Summer. It's modeled after campaigns like "Mississippi Summer" which helped pass historic Civil Rights laws and "Vietnam Summer," which helped end the Vietnam war. A group of folks will fan out around the country to key target states and work as full time organizers to help whip up a storm of opposition to the war.

Right now we're looking for organizers and we're hoping you're interested or you might know someone who would be. We're looking for folks who're tough and ready to work long hours to end this war. If you're selected, you'll receive a $400 per week stipend, expenses, housing with a host family and the best organizer training in the country.

When I logged into Punk Planet and was greeted by an ad for Suicide Girls, I thought I had logged into myspace unintentionally.

Hmmm.