U.S. Genderqueer Denied Entry to Visit Canadian Partner; Officers See Therapist Letter, Question Mental Health | Christin Milloy
Very disturbing information has emerged about an incident which recently occurred at the Peace Bridge, one of the road crossings along the Canada / U.S. border, at the hands of Canada’s federal Border Services Agency (CBSA).
Signal boosting.
[[UPDATE: $700 RAISED!]] The Animal Protection Association is a wonderful Southern Indiana no-kill shelter--and they're drowning in debt.
People who do good things shouldn’t be punished—they should be helped. Which is why I’m making it my personal mission to help this absolutely AMAZING local establishment that currently has a $20,000 vet bill.
The Animal Protection Association has helped countless animals in our area. Just last night, Aaron and I were going to the gas station when we came across a few people all looking concerned around a young cat. We stopped and discovered this poor animal had been hit by a car. She was hurt, but her injuries were not fatal, so long as we could get her the care she needed. We took her home in a box given to us by the gas station and kept her through the night. But we were stressing about the cost of the vet—there was no way we could afford to pay for what she needed done, but we were going to anyway if we had no other option. In the morning we decided, on a chance, to call the APA and ask if they could help. We’ve adopted animals from them before and knew they were a trusted shelter.
The woman on the phone sounded heartbroken when she told me that just yesterday they had to put a freeze on taking in any animals or helping with vet bills. I was tearing up and giving up hope when she sighed and said, “I can’t turn away an injured cat.” My face lit up and a few hours later the poor cat we found—which we named Lucky—was taken to their clinic downtown and is now getting the care she needs. Since we can’t home her, they are also taking her into their care.
This is only one example of how amazing this selfless organization is. They are a strictly no-kill shelter, and their cat shelter is AMAZING. No cages for the animals except some nice, large wooden pens on the walls for kittens, sick or mean cats. Otherwise their cats run around free in a small-sized house with cat furniture everywhere, along with a few outdoor pens so they can bird watch.
But the Animal Protection Association—indeed any and all animal shelters that operate on donations alone—need your help. If you live in the Louisville/Jeffersonville area, you can volunteer your time. Otherwise, if you could please, please make a donation of any kind to this loving association I am sure it would be GREATLY appreciate.
The title is a link to the Donation page of their website. You can donate to them via PayPal, but they also have an address for checks or money orders.
Please everyone—winter is coming. Cold, harsh, and unforgiving weather for a lonely cat or dog. With your help—and I believe in Tumblr—we can make the APA stronger and more fit to help even more animals.
Even if you can’t donate, PLEASE signal boost this. Their current vet debt is $20,000, and at this rate I think Lucky might’ve been REALLY Lucky, because I think she’s the last cat they might have been able to help. And they helped us so much, I want to do whatever I can to help this place and the wonderful people who run it for no profit—only the genuine happiness that comes from helping an animal that cannot help itself.
<3
And remember, all donations are tax-deductible!
The APA has gotten $700! Woohoo everyone~!
Abortion fund in Georgia NEEDS FINANCIAL HELP!
From my friend Jennifer:
pro-choice & abortion access friends: your financial help is needed! Georgia Reproductive Justice Access Network, one of the only abortion funds in the southeast, is down to $89. they need an infusion of money FAST so they can keep their fund up and helping those who are pregnant afford abortion care. please give as much as you can!
I say this often about abortion funds but they help people who desperately need to get an abortion but cannot afford it. These are people in the most dire of circumstances.
When you donate to an abortion fund you 1) know your money will go directly toward helping someone and 2) you will make someone’s life better.
If you can, please donate to this abortion fund.
SIGNAL BOOST!
Tuesday, September 25, 2012 is National Voter Registration Day.
TurboVote is a non-partisan web service that makes registering to vote as easy as returning Netflix DVDs.
They don’t care who you vote for as long as you give yourself the opportunity to choose who represents you in (US) government.
The whole thing takes less than 5 minutes.
When you aren’t registered, it seems overwhelming. It seems like it isn’t worth it. I remember that feeling from 1996. But it’s not that hard, and few things feel better. It’s worth it. Get registered.
Seriously the easiest thing you will do today.
pleeease repost this if you can. signal boost, anything. this isn’t just my story, it’s important.
tonight i watched a documentary that made me realize i have spent far too long being far too quiet about something very serious. something i could be speaking out about and helping other people who are going through it right now. for too long i have been ashamed to admit that when i was 13 years old i was sent, against my will, to a rehabilitation center in utah. it was mormon-run, called “turn about ranch.” i had no history of drugs, violence, alcohol abuse, sex addiction, shopping addiction, any kind of addiction at all. i was sent to this program because i had a “bad attitude”. i’ll hit that home: i was sent away to utah and locked up against my will, at the age of 13, because i had “bad attitude” and my parents wanted to “fix me.” i was picked up at the airport and driven to the facility by two people i had never met in my life who tried to calm me down for the 5 hour drive by feeding me cheeseburgers and pretending it would all be okay. when i got there, all of my belongings were taken from me and i was told to go sit in a rock circle in the dirt. i wasn’t allowed to lie down or speak to anyone. no one came to talk to me for 5 hours. when they finally did, i was told i was supposed to be “detoxing” and “thinking about what i’d done.” again, i had never done drugs of any kind. there was nothing to detox from. all i did was cry.
i sat in that circle for 3 days, and then an additional 14 days after that because i wasn’t able to produce 8 fires from the bowdrill technique (i weighed about 87 pounds at the time so this really wasn’t surprising.) i spent 3 months being forced against my will to do hard labor, accept jesus into my heart, repent my sins and be shamed about who i was as a person. i had to fill out a binder of paperwork teaching me how to change and be better. i was cut off from technology and from the outside world. people who ran were chased down on horseback and sent to other programs where they spent 3 months hiking in the wilderness. i didn’t speak to my parents except in letters that the program read ahead of time and threw out if i had revealed too much. when my parents came to get me, the program tried to talk them into keeping me there. during this time i almost died at least 3 times doing things much too dangerous for someone my age. i sat on a cactus and was taken to a vet instead of a doctor. i was kicked by a horse and not taken anywhere. my “schooling” was basically just packing a bunch of us into a room while an older gentlemen slept and the rest of us read books for 4th graders.
When I finally got out of this program, I was sent to a lockdown boarding school in vermont which was even worse. here we weren’t allowed to leave the facility, numerous girls tried to commit suicide, there were at least 2 sexual harassment cases between teachers and students and I had to be kidnapped by my mom and taken to florida because the program didn’t allow you to leave until you were 18.
Both of these programs were run by Aspen Education Group. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspen_Education_Group
This is a mormon-run group that has hundreds of facilities across the country where youths are sent against their will and locked up, cut off from their families. many families have lost contact with their children once this happens because the programs continue to send the children to other facilities without instructing the family first. At this very moment, kids are locked in these facilities with no way out, because their parents couldn’t think of a better alternative to behavioral issues than locking up their child. As far as I know, not many people know about these places. A short-lived reality show “Brat Camp” highlighted them for a while but didn’t garner much attention. Please, if you can, spread this around. This rigorous Mormon company is along the same vein as “straight camps” in terms of their approach. If my mom hadn’t kidnapped me I would’ve been in them until I was 18. I have no other way of getting attention on these programs except this blog, but attention MUST be put on them. They have already had numerous of their facilities shut down due to unethical treatment and sexual harassment cases. You could be helping so many kids who are locked away while the world is completely unaware of this epidemic in this country.
PLEASE PLEASE spread this around. I can no longer stand the thought of someone else having to go through what I went through.
editing for more resources/reading material:
http://tales-from-the-black-school.blogspot.com/2010/11/turn-about-ranch-rough-guide.html
http://wiki.fornits.com/index.php?title=Main_Page
new edit: romney’s company, bain, helped fund this program in 2006. please spread that if you spread nothing else. i want this on his record. he deserves to have this on his record.
(Source: iratevelociraptor)
A Plea for Help.
As some of you know, my partner and I (both transgender women) are building our own home in the Maine woods after losing our prior home in Rhode Island to a subprime lender. We don’t have much money but we do have land rich in timber, clay, and aggregate on and with which to build a new one. We don’t have the money for building timber, so I mill my own from trees here using a portable sawmill powered by a chainsaw. My Tumblr documents the build, with plenty of pictures. Just recently the chainsaw mill engine’s carburetor malfunctioned, causing it to run lean, which burned up the engine. Worse, I was milling a large sawlog of Eastern White Pine, which spoils in mere days and becomes toxic and unusable for building.
The saw engine damage is irreparable, and the engine must be replaced at a cost of $180 usd, which I can’t afford. I’m asking for donations to get our sawmill working again before the wood spoils from fungus and is unusable.
I hate to ask since so many of you are of limited means, but if you can help directly, send what you can to my PayPal at: espacio.translatina (at) gmail (dot) com
[PLEASE REBLOG] Help the Great Sioux Nation Keep Their Land!
White people have stolen from Native people again and again and again. White people stole Native people’s land, put them on reservations, stole their customs and made a mockery of them, tattoo their bodies with mockeries of great Native leaders, and more. And now the Great Sioux Nation is in danger of having their sacred heartland stolen, too.The land is going to be auctioned off on August 25 unless the people can buy it back.
PLEASE donate whatever you can—even just a few dollars helps—and signal boost this. We cannot allow this injustice to happen.
This isn’t necessarily reproductive rights-related, but I donated to this the other day and god, they’re only 10% of the way there and there are four days left. Please don’t let yet another communities’ land and traditions be stolen from them. We owe them this and so much more.
(Source: lesshumansmorecats)
Mission : Help our Robin get *new wings*! Please help us raise funds for Robin, a very special young woman with cerebral palsy, to get her the wheelchair she so desperately needs!
If you could take time out of your day to take a look at this, it’d be mighty nifty of you. Robin (a relative of a friend of mine) has kinda fallen victim to the system time and time again, and they are looking for some help. She has Cerebal Palsy, and the state basically gave her this broken, janky bare-minimum requirement hunk of junk. They’re trying to raise some funds to get her a GOOD wheelchair, and some basic necessities and stuff like that. Their goal is $15K, and they have 100 days left to do it. If you can spare anything, even $5-10 here or there, that’d be hugely helpful. I know I NEVER ask anyone to pass things on, but if you wouldn’t mind this time? I’d be thankful.
“MANILA, Philippines - Torrential rains brought the Philippines capital to a standstill Tuesday, forcing at least 20,000 people to flee their homes as floodwaters covered half the sprawling city, authorities said.”
I can’t go to school because it’s flooded. People have lost their homes and their loved ones. The city’s pretty much halfway submerged in flood water. Please please help in any way you can.
Philippine Red Cross (YOU DON’T NEED TO LIVE HERE TO BE ABLE TO DONATE)
List of Evacuation Centers + Relief Operations
List of Organizations accepting Cash Donations
Other Very Helpful Information + Links
(Source: elijahwood)
Signal Boost!
Most of you know of my UNDYING LOVE AND ADMIRATION for Stone Telling (Rose and Shweta are the kindest editors I’ve ever worked with!). ST has a new chapbook out called Here We Cross and here’s the blurb:
“Here, We Cross” collects twenty-two queer and genderfluid poems from the digital pages of Stone Telling magazine. This chapbook is a celebration of speculative poetry that is diverse and varied; here you will find poems with speakers or protagonists who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, genderqueer, trans*, asexual, and neutrois; speakers who struggle with the body and the society’s imposed readings of that body. It is a painful book, a triumphant book, full of works that soar and breathe and live. Just like us.
If you can, go ahead and buy the book — it’s a fantastic collection. Signal boosts will be warmly appreciated too!
may i say that you have a nice ass benny: THIS MESSAGE NEED TO BE REBLOGGED IF YOU GIVE A SLIVER OF A DAMN ABOUT TRANS RIGHTS
If you know of individuals who have been in a correctional/prison facility in Nevada who were/are transgender and subjected to any sort of problematic treatment (particularly being segregated from the rest of the inmates in a solitary-confinement situation) please contact me as soon as possible. The ACLU is doing some important research and documentation on this issue, and we need to get in touch with folks quickly for potential interviews or written reports. Please spread the word far and wide, and contact me directly with any leads at the information below:
Phil Hooper
ACLU of Nevada
702.366.1536 x204
hooper@aclunv.org
THE NEVADA ACLU IS STARTING A CASE THAT WILL END TRANSGENDER CIVIL RIGHT VIOLATIONS IN PRISONS. IT IS BEGINNING HERE IN NEVADA BUT THIS HAS THE POTENTIAL TO INCITE MAJOR CHANGE
I CARE NOT WHERE YOU LIVE< WHAT CITY< WHAT STATE< WHAT COUNTRY PLEASE REBLOG
this will help trans women be housed where we should be housed, this has the potential to help persons like CeCe McDonald
PLEASE PLEASE REBLOG
THIS WORD NEEDS TO GET OUT THROUGH EVERY MEDIUM WE CAN
PLEASE
SIGNED
Jillian James
Under 48 Hours to Help BlackGirlsCode Teach 300+ Youth of Color to Code [Colorlines.com]
By reaching out to the community through workshops and after school programs, BlackGirlsCode introduces computer coding lessons to young girls from underrepresented communities in programming languages such as Scratch or Ruby on Rails.
The San Francisco based group has less than two days to raise $7,000 and reach their fundraising goal that will allow them to teach computer programming to more than 300 boys and girls from underrepresented communities in at least seven cities across the United States.
If BlackGirlsCode reach their fundraising goal they plan to visit Chicago, Atlanta, St. Louis, Detroit, Los Angeles, Oakland and San Francisco in the next 90 days.
For more information on how you can help visit BlackGirlsCode’s Indiegogo page.
Forever broke because of things like this
(Source: crankyskirt)
FREE AND CHEAP DRUGS YA’LL
Hey Tumblr, if you’re poor, under-or-unemployed, and/or uninsured, you can probably get free drugs directly from the manufacturers.
Yeah, free. Like seriously all you pay for is maybe the doctor/nurse visit you’ll probably need to go to for the prescription.
The basics, because every program is different:
You need:
- to fill out a buttload of paperwork, which is a pain in the buns, but FREE MEDS
- a prescription for the medication(s) you’re trying to obtain, which means you’ll need to find a doctor or nurse practitioner (someone who can legally write scripts), whom you can also probably see for free at a community clinic if you’re willing to chill on a waiting list for three months.
- proof of residence, official ID, utility bill, something like that
- probably your most recent W-2 or paystub, to prove you need assistance. if you make a “decent” amount but maybe have tremendous bills or something, some companies will make exceptions if you take the time to write a letter explaining the situation, and maybe include a pile of copies of your bills. if you’ve been unemployed for a while or have never worked, they’ll probably ask you to explain how you get by, or to provide proof that you’re getting food stamps or something of the sort.
- that’s pretty much it.
- like i said, every company is different, so make sure you read every line of the requirements, because it’s a pain in the arse to send all your shit in and find out that whoops you forgot to draw a unicorn on the lower left-hand corner of your 2011 W-2 form or some ridic shit
Links to patient assistance programs; feel free to add your own:
Lilly (Byetta, Cymbalta, Glucagon, Humalog, Humulin, Livalo, Prozac, Quinidine, ReoPro, Strattera, Xigris, Sybyax, Zyprexa) : http://www.lillytruassist.com/pages/FindProgram.aspx
Sanofi-Aventis (Apidra, Lantus, Clolar, Jevtana, Elitek, Leukine, Eloxatin, Mozobil, Eligard, Lovenox, Rilutek, Multaq, Priftin) : https://patientassistanceprogram.sanofi-aventis.us/index.html
abbott (ANDROGEL, PROMETRIUM, Advicor, Creon, Depakote, Gengraf, Humira, Kaletra, Synthroid, Tarka, and several more) : http://www.abbottpatientassistancefoundation.org/pharmaceutical_products.asp
Pfizer (lots and lots of drugs; I have gotten free Zoloft from them in the past) : http://www.pfizerhelpfulanswers.com/pages/Application/Application.aspx
Basically, pretty much every major pharmaceutical company has some sort of free/discount drug program; you just have to dig around to find it because nobody tells us about them unless they’re those rare sorts of doctors who actually advocate for their patients.
Service-y! Healthcare reform doesn’t happen at lightning speed, sadly, so I’m sure this is relevant to lots of my readers.
(Source: holdontoyourassbutts)
BLITZ - an all inclusive trans* and gender non conforming resource
BLITZ
“YOU ARE AN ARTIST OF YOUR OWN CREATION”
VISION STATEMENT
Creating a safe space for the exchange of ideas and resources for all people under the trans-umbrella and those exploring gender identity.Click the link above to read more…
PSA: on Terra Nullius
We need to have a little talk about the ideology of terra nullius. I see a lot of people using some form of it when discussing Indigenous rights, and even if unintentional, it is wildly problematic.
Basically, terra nullius is the idea that the land, Turtle Island, was essentially empty. But wait, weren’t there millions of peoples here in hundreds or even thousands of diverse nations and empires? But, according to the colonizers, motivated by the desire for our resources, Indigenous peoples didn’t have a concept of property rights so the land is still empty and available for colonizers. This idea is founded on a false dichotomy between “civilized” and “savage”. As we all know, Indigenous peoples are obviously savages, so we can’t understand any forms of ownership, so we can’t own or have rights to land, which is absolutely essential to the existence of some nations.
So if you’re going to use terra nullius, explicitly or implicitly, as an argument you’re a white supremacist colonial piece of shit. Terra nullius is an outdated, racist, incorrect concept that has already been rejected but is, unfortunately, still the foundation of Canadian sovereignty. Indigenous peoples in Canada weren’t conquered, but made treaties and yet most of the land was swallowed up anyways because apparently we’re too uncivilized to know that the land is ours.
it’s ridiculous that this even needs to be said.
(Source: auberginebreeze)
