Category Archives: Rock on-Peace Out

Standing Rock protesters will not follow official directive to leave camps | US news | The Guardian

At a press conference, Standing Rock Sioux tribal leader Dave Archambault and other protest organizers confidently explained that they would stay at the Oceti Sakowin camp and continue with nonviolent protests, a day after Archambault received a letter from the US army corps of engineers that said all federal lands north of the Cannonball river would be closed to public access 5 December over “safety concerns”.The corps cited the coming winter and increasingly contentious clashes between protesters – who believe the pipeline could harm drinking water and Native A

Source: Standing Rock protesters will not follow official directive to leave camps | US news | The Guardian

In Madagascar Test, Drone Delivers Medicine by Air – The New York Times

Speeding Madagascar Health Care by Air

By Heidi HutnerLast summer, Stony Brook University’s Global Health Institute teamed up with Vayu, Inc., a Michigan start-up developing drones aiding medical care, to test aerial shipments of blood and fecal samples and drugs between remote villages in Madagascar and Centre ValBio, the university’s biological research center adjacent to a national park.Parasitic diseases, tuberculosis and a range of other life-threatening illnesses are common among the Malagasy population. But many people live in remote and inaccessible areas. In Ifanadiana, the district where the drone flights took place, travel to medical facilities can take a day or more by foot, across treacherous terrain.“Often, the sick don’t want to walk long distances, they don’t want to leave their children behind and, in many cases, they associate hospitals with bad outcomes and death,” said Dr. Peter M. Small, who heads the university’s health institute and was formerly deputy director of the Tuberculosis Delivery Program for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Source: In Madagascar Test, Drone Delivers Medicine by Air – The New York Times

Currently In Limbo, ‘Ghost Bike’ Memorials For Fallen Cyclists May Get Formalized: SFist

Today, the Examiner writes that Warner and Mitchell are closer to getting their wish. Supervisor Norman Yee introduced a resolution last week to permit bike memorials as well as to implement “an immediate moratorium on the removal of any ‘Ghost Bike’ for one year so long as they are not obstructing local ordinances, such as blocking pedestrian egress.”According to a statement from Yee, “ghost bikes are powerful reminders to our community that we still have a long way to get to Vision Zero,” or the city’s goal of zero traffic related deaths by 2024. The resolution calls on the Bicycle Advisory Committee to form a partnership with Public Works and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency “for an ordinance for the permitted placement of ‘Ghost Bikes’ or other memorials by citizens who wishes to do so.”

Source: Currently In Limbo, ‘Ghost Bike’ Memorials For Fallen Cyclists May Get Formalized: SFist

Giving Tuesday for CincySmiles Foundation

CincySmiles Foundation was established in 1909, and our mission is to ensure that all members of our community have access to oral health education, disease prevention and treatment services with a special emphasis on those who are at risk due to poverty.Our programs served over 15,000 men, women and children last year and we continue to expand our impact as we move forward into the future. CincySmiles has 4 programs that include the Dental Road Crew, McMicken Dental Center, Discounted Donated Services, and our Workforce Development Program. We are asking for support for our first Giving Tuesday Campaign.  Giving Tuesday is the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday and is a movement to create an international day of giving. To get involved with this movement, we have asked several of our employees, volunteers and supporters to participate as Ambassadors.  Our Ambassadors are helping us raise awareness about our organization and this event all month long.  The event will begin on November 2nd and will run until Giving Tuesday, November 29th. On November 29th, we will celebrate and announce the funds raised from the campaign!Please support our event and help us continue to bring smiles to the Greater Cincinnati area.

Source: Giving Tuesday for CincySmiles Foundation

Swedish politician suspends Twitter account over ‘hate’ – The Local

A former Social Democrat MP and one of the party’s most outspoken feminist and anti-racist campaigners on Tuesday said ‘lies and hate’ had prompted her to take a break from Twitter.Racist and sexist trolls target Sweden’s Twitter account (06 Oct 16)Veronica Palm, a former member of parliament and chairwoman of the centre-left Social Democrat party’s local branch in Stockholm, said the increasingly hostile social climate on Twitter was behind her decision to suspend her account.”As you have noticed I’ve been tweeting less and less. The reason is simple: it actually bloody hurts,” she wrote in a tweet on Tuesday morning.”I simply don’t have the energy. I am human and want to continue to be human. Not switch off my feelings about what other people say. And in that case, lies and hate hurts. It gets under my skin, every day,” Palm, 43, continued.”I have promised that I won’t be silenced by hate and threats. I know that the democratic conversation and free speech is the foundation of democracy, but right now I just can’t do it. I won’t stay quiet, but I’m taking a break from Twitter.”

Source: Swedish politician suspends Twitter account over ‘hate’ – The Local

Trump-Branded Buildings Being Renamed After Complaints | Hollywood Reporter

Tenants learned on Tuesday from the company that owns and manages the New York skyscrapers, which hold 1,325 rental apartments, that the huge gold letters spelling out “Trump Place” would be removed from the sides of the buildings within days.”We’re all very excited and thrilled, and it’s about time,” said Marjorie Jacobs, who has lived in one of the buildings for five years. “We’re disgusted with the results of the presidency.”

Source: Trump-Branded Buildings Being Renamed After Complaints | Hollywood Reporter

Photos: Largest Anti-Trump Protest Yet Swarms In Downtown L.A. For Fifth Day : LAist

An enormous gathering of more than 8,000 people expressing their disapproval of President-Elect Donald Trump have taken to the streets of downtown Los Angeles. The thousands of people began gathering this morning in MacArthur Park at around 10:00 a.m. Soon after, the march began walking east towards downtown Los Angeles on Wilshire Boulevard. By 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, the protest has begun circling through downtown Los Angeles’ streets.Wick reports that the gathering is a largely peaceful assembly of Angelenos from different backgrounds, many of whom have brought their kids along for a taste of their first amendment right to peaceful assembly.The march was organized the group Union del Barrio, a political organizing group that aims to increase political literacy in America’s growing Latinix community.

Source: Photos: Largest Anti-Trump Protest Yet Swarms In Downtown L.A. For Fifth Day : LAist

German Greens call for wealth tax | Germany | DW.COM | 12.11.2016

The gap between the rich and the poor is wide in Germany. For the Greens, it is a matter of fairness that the state tries to narrow it. Billions will be needed for the fight against child poverty and for the construction of affordable housing in major metropolitan areas. Party delegates were split on where that money should come from – a wealth tax or another source. The Greens do not want to be viewed as the party of higher taxes, nor to be seen as paying mere lip service to the idea of social cohesion. This resulted in no fewer than five proposals being put to a vote during the conference.

Source: German Greens call for wealth tax | Germany | DW.COM | 12.11.2016

I’m Muslim, but My Roommate Supports Trump – The New York Times

Now that an us-versus-them system has been voted into office, I want to write for those who feel like the latter, the “them.” National unity in this moment may be nonexistent, but the unity among us is real and crucial. To the first trans kid I ever met; to my Muslim and Hispanic and female friends; to my sister and my mother, both hijabis; to all of the individuals who helped me feel love on Tuesday night, who offered me water as I cried on their bathroom floors, who marched from Union Square to Trump Tower on Wednesday — I believe in us, in our ability to regroup and find a course of action.Mobilization depends on all of us — everyone who has been or could be a target of Mr. Trump, everyone who has been appalled by this election, at the parody of American democracy that has unfolded. We do not need to be silent. We do need to find resilience, inspiration and hope in one another.

Source: I’m Muslim, but My Roommate Supports Trump – The New York Times

Hearts Open, Fists Up | Race Files

In the long term, we will need a different kind of politics fueled not by rage but by a deep-seated belief that the future belongs to us. A younger, more progressive, more inclusive, and more diverse generation is already here. The path forward will require a truly and deeply feminist vision that goes beyond simply electing female bodies to office, and instead reaches past the logic of brutal domination and rivalry toward interdependence, humanity, compassion, and respect for the earth. This feminism has its roots in Black feminist traditions and Indigenous world views, and has no meaning without race at the center.We will need to draw on all of our resources – the deep knowledge of survival in queer and trans communities, in Indigenous communities, in criminalized Black and Brown communities – to build the alternative services and systems we will need in this coming period as access to existing services gets dismantled. We will need the humanity of whites who want to live in a different world, one shaped not by the rivalries of race but by the wholeness of justice. We will need to forge a vision for a new economy and society. This will take work, but I know we have the immense talent and fortitude we need in our movements to achieve it.When we do this, we will have arrived not as Asian Americans, not as immigrants, not as people of color, but as a nation that finally acknowledges that society functions best and security can only exist when we all have what we need: home, health, family, education, culture, community, creativity, and spiritual growth. We will have arrived as a people who understands that you are not me and I am not you, and because of this, we need each other. We will understand that our collective survival hinges upon understanding, confronting, and dismantling race.The future is ours. But for now, we must build the unity and genuine capacity we need to declare clearly: No one comes for any of us without going through all of us. Hearts open, fists up.

Source: Hearts Open, Fists Up | Race Files