Sarah Everard was kidnapped and murdered by a police officer, her remains were identified earlier this week.
This resonated across the country, as women feel they cannot even trust police. A vigil was planned to honour her and also to become a Reclaim The Night march, where women nationwide would go out en masse at night in protest of being told to stay indoors to avoid getting murdered.
Initially this vigil was set to go ahead, but the met stepped in and declared that it was unsafe due to COVID (there is currently a ban on all peaceful protest as part of COVID restrictions, yet during lockdown the met has allowed other protests to go ahead if they believe they will get violent if they don’t. This literally discourages peaceful protest and encourages violent protest)
Of course the vigil goes ahead regardless and police move in to disperse it. Police become violent and they begin manhandling/grabbing/dragging the women who were just peacefully marching to honour the memory of a woman killed by a policeman.
[Image captions by gynoidgearhead: First, a video of a swarm of reflective-vest-wearing
British police officers forcing two women in COVID masks to kneel on
the ground as various people shout, before eventually dragging the two
women away from behind. One of the women is initially holding a sign
that says “We aren’t safe in our homes, how can we reclaim […]” The rest
isn’t visible but looks like “our hearts?”.
Then a tweet by
Stan Account (@tristandross): “This would be a horrific video of police
indiscriminately running up to women and dragging them away from behind
regardless, but given the context, this is absolutely obscene.”
Then
a tweet by saranya (@sxranya): “The scenes at Clapham Common right now
prove how Sarah Everard’s murder & everything surrounding it is at
its core not just an issue of male violence but an issue of state
violence. The state & the police have no interests in protecting
women, they are there to protect themselves.”
Another by Marcus
Barnett (@marcusbarnett_): “If you’re in uniform battering people
attending a vigil for a woman murdered by your colleague, you should
probably reassess your fucking life.”
Another by Grace Blakely
(@graceblakely): “I was there a few hours before. It was packed by
around 5, with a big police presence. They weren’t turning anyone
around, or warning people against attending the vigil. They just sat,
quietly, while women streamed onto the common. And as soon as it got
dark, they did this.”
Another by Laura Smith (@LauraSmithCrewe):
“Before anyone suggests differently, anti-mask protesters have been
allowed to go and do their thing week after week. Women showing
solidarity get smashed by the police!”
Another by Sabrina Huck
(@Sabrina_Huck): “The vigil at Clapham Common was peaceful until the
cops moved in - the anger of the crowd was raw. Women don’t feel
protected by the police and the arrests tonight enforce that message.
Solidarity with the sisters taken into custody tonight.”
Another
by “Red ‘til I’m Dead” (@suziegeewizz): “If peaceful protests are
essentially banned, then riots become entirely inevitable.”
Me: *Removes my cat from my lap to do something else.*
My cat: Father is…evil? Father is unyielding? Father is incapable of love? I am running away. I am packing my little rucksack and going out to explore the world as a lone vagabond. I can no longer thrive in this household.
The spiritual successor to Miette
Might I also add
May i add the piece from artist Verbal Vomit
Glad to see we’re all in agreement that cats talk like disparaged victorian children
What I love about this is its acknowledgment that Jason had no intentions at all
this is all 100% true but it always made me really mad that Chidi’s “crime” was having a severe anxiety disorder like he needed understanding and therapy, sending him to the Bad Place for something he had literally no control over was incredibly fucked up
I feel like a less-surface theme of the show is that they’re all in a situation where they have been forced into bad patterns by forces outside their control - Chidi has SEVERE anxiety; Eleanor was forced by abuse and neglect to adopt a self-centered attitude from early childhood and, like many people with traumatic pasts, responds by not dealing with difficult emotions; Jason was very overtly raised in an environment where he got no education and all his models for behaviour were criminal and/or self-destructive; and Tahani has been raised in an environment where everything is performative and she is shot down for any genuine expression of unhappiness or non-material want. Just as Michael and Janet are made one way but changed by their experiences, the moral of the story is that things outside your control shape you but you can move away from them. That could easily be really insulting, in a sort of ‘just get over it’ way, but the idea isn’t that they change solely because they decide to be better - all six of them change because their circumstances change and give them the OPPORTUNITY to be better, because they’re finally given the support system they lack.
I like The Good Place because the whole show has since day 1 been predicated on the idea that black and white moral judgements made in a vacuum are bullshit, and that moral choices are informed by things outside our control, whether that be education, behaviour modelling, unfair treatment or mental health issues. That doesn’t mean we aren’t responsible for our actions but it DOES mean we have to understand morality in the context of people’s varied experiences AND asks for the possibility that if their environment is improved, their ability to function as moral agents also improves.
Reblog if you are a greedy gay hoarding refracted light all for your greedy gay self
I totally am, but also: I have a story. The time: 1995. The place: a small liberal arts college. We decided to participate in “denim day” which was a widespread event wherein on National Coming Out Day, you would wear denim to indicate SUPPORT FOR the LGBT community. Our support group made posters that were very, very clear about this. Wearing denim did not mean that you were coming out, it meant you supported anyone around you who might.
I have never seen so many suits and khakis IN MY LIFE. People who accidentally wore jeans went home and changed.
The community took it as a rebuke. We drew in closer to eachother, and felt unwelcome everywhere we thought we had friends before.
And I had people later tell me “You know I support you, just… I didn’t want anyone to think I was.” First off, I DON’T know you support me. Not if you refuse to, for one day, change nothing about your life to show it. Second off… why is that such a terrifying thought to you?
I remember before rainbows were a “gay thing”. They were everywhere. Church walls next to arks. School walls next to sunshine faces. People have VOLUNTARILY abandoned every other use. I have HEARD PEOPLE SAY they just couldn’t use rainbows anymore because people would think of “gay stuff.”
So I know this is a joke, and a stolen one at that, but you’ve done this to yourselves. If someone is so terrified of being perceived as queer that they will INSTANTLY abandon something they like if it has queer germs on it now or something, then they don’t deserve refracted light.
Maybe help us change the world into a place where being mistaken for queer would be just a thing to chuckle about and you can have refracted light back.
The LGBTQ+ community didn’t steal the rainbow. The straights abandoned it.
