I’m Genuinely Concerned That I’ll Have No Real Way To Tell When It’s Safe For Me To Start Doing

“Our community was hit first. Asian restaurants were empty long before other restaurants. Even on the subway I could sense that racism was on the rise. On television one night there was a story about an elderly man who was collecting aluminum cans, just to survive. He was robbed and taunted. His bags were broken. His cans were strewn all over the street. And he didn’t speak English, so he couldn’t even ask for help. It broke me. Because in his face I could see the faces of all our grandparents. In our culture there is a tradition of: ‘Never speak out. Never ask for help.’ If our elders were suffering, would they even let us know? I decided to call a service organization focusing on Asian elderly, and I asked: ‘How many meals do you need?’ They replied: ‘As many as you can cook.’ We started preparing 200 meals per week in our little 300 square foot apartment. Moonlynn cooks beautifully and efficiently, so she lovingly banned me from the kitchen. But I still wanted to help in some way. So I found a black sharpie, and began to write on the plastic containers. Traditionally our elders are very reserved with their affection. I can still make my father blush just by kissing him on the cheek. But since I grew up in America, I have the privilege of being more direct. I found the traditional Chinese characters for ‘We are thinking of you’ and ‘We love you,’ and I wrote them on every container. I thought it was important to use the word ‘we.’ I never signed our own names. Because I wanted it to feel like a whole bunch of people, an entire community who cared. And before long that’s exactly what it was. We found ten restaurant partners within a half mile who helped us prepare culturally relevant foods. And over the past eighteen months Heart of Dinner has delivered 80,000 meals to our Asian elders. We weren’t able to personally write notes on each one. So we put out a call on Instagram, and 100,000 hand-written notes poured in from all over the world. We told people to go wild. Add as much character as you’d like. There were so many styles, and so many colors. But every note had two things, written in big, bold letters: ‘We are thinking of you.’ And ‘We love you.’”

now since tumblr apparently loves to support non-american authors, but is surprisingly mum about this, imma tell you.

you see, everybody's favorite evil corp, Amazon, bought Indian publishing house Westland some six years ago. Now Westland is a very famous and reputed publishing house in India, and has put forth some of the best titles the country has seen. It didn't shy away from controversial and uncomfortable topics, and some of its books quite vocally criticise the current government, which has been responsible for the current state of india as a pseudo-democratic, pseudo-secular, economically ruined country, the most notable one being The Price of the Modi years by Aakar Patel. It also produced Amish Tripathi's pathbreaking Shiva Trilogy.

Now here's the thing that got me nuts.

AMAZON. SHUT. IT. DOWN. A WEEK AGO.

JUST OUT OF THE BLUE, IT IS CLOSING DOWN WESTLAND FOREVER. NOBODY KNOWS WHAT IS TO COME OF THE HUNDREDS OF TITLES PUBLISHED BY IT, OR OF THE AUTHORS ITS CONTRACTED, OR THE PEOPLE EMPLOYED BY IT.

It has triggered a buying surge in India, as people go on shopping spress to get their hands on the titles they want from this house. Short on supply and high on demand, bookstores across India are showing solidarity and moving surplus books around.

here you go with a few links that i think sum up the problem quite nicely, and please guys. just. please support westland.

here they talk about how this is becoming a trend with global corps.

here they talk about the future of indian publishing houses.

this one talks about a bleak future for literature and how it feels like we're living in a dystopian novel

spread this around. jeff bezos continues to be evil, and will be. he is quite literally, irredeemable.

Get ready for a fierce solidarity event! Travel to make it if you can. A diversity of tactics is welcome and encouraged.

i also got conflict avoidant and doesnt take responsibility both of which are true but to a lesser extent also this is the only one i remembered to screenshot hi im a mess

hey yall I didn’t want to have to do work for my online classes so i made a uquiz instead. answer some questions and i’ll tell u what aspect of your personality annoys me the most

here's a random word generator--whatever word it gives you is now the thing you are the deity of

Lakota elders helped a white man preserve their language. Then he tried to sell it back to them.

“No matter how it was collected, where it was collected, when it was collected, our language belongs to us," said Ray Taken Alive, a Lakota teacher.

@mrchicsaraleo @britomartis @el-shab-hussein @paintedwiththecolorsofthewind @stephanemiroux

this is vile

STANDING ROCK INDIAN RESERVATION, S.D. — Ray Taken Alive had been fighting for this moment for two years: At his urging, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Council was about to take the rare and severe step of banishing a nonprofit organization from the tribe’s land.

The Lakota Language Consortium had promised to preserve the tribe’s native language and had spent years gathering recordings of elders, including Taken Alive’s grandmother, to create a new, standardized Lakota dictionary and textbooks.

But when Taken Alive, 35, asked for copies, he was shocked to learn that the consortium, run by a white man, had copyrighted the language materials, which were based on generations of Lakota tradition. The traditional knowledge gathered from the tribe was now being sold back to it in the form of textbooks. 

Keep reading

Help bring Indigenous horses home!

Hi all!

My friend is Ojibwe and a dedicated Indigenous researcher and activist. She recently has discovered a number of Ojibwe ponies (also known as the Lac La Croix pony) for sale by a white-owned farm. 

This is really important because these ponies are very important to the Ojibwe – these ponies are also the only known Indigenous-developed breed of horse in Canada, and there are only 200 left in the world. 

[Image: A girl sitting on an Ojibwe pony and hugging its neck. Image credit to Broadview.]

The fact that there are 200 left at all is incredible at all, because in 1977, Canada took the last known four ponies away to be destroyed, and they were rescued by an Ojibwe man living in Minnesota. 

Read more about the history here.

My friend is arranging to have five of these horses brought back home to the Ojibwe, and her elders are already planning a welcome ceremony for these horses. If anyone has anything to spare, it would be a huge help to bring them home. 

Donate here!

Alternately, you can get the horses a gift from their wishlist! 

it makes sense but i still feel attacked

took a quiz thing and it gave me my d&d stats. the question is now, is this good or bad

Team “I can hear the near silent hum of electrical appliances and the bubbles fizzing in the can of soda on the coffee table, but can’t watch tv without subtitles and processes conversation at ¼ speed”