Archive for November, 2008
Ways to Help Mumbai
30 Nov 2008If you are so moved to help the people of Mumbai, A Book Without a Cover offers an option:
The Help Mumbai website has useful telephone numbers and news and pictures.
Black Friday Causes Death and a Miscarriage at a Long Island Wal-Mart
4:26 pm By Maegan La Mala · New York|Shopping · 2 Comments
28 Nov 2008
Proving that no good can come out of the words “Black Friday” and “Wal-Mart”, a stampede of people this morning killed one worker and is being blamed for causing a shopper to miscarry.
A Wal-Mart worker died after being trampled when hundreds of shoppers smashed through the doors of a Long Island store Friday morning, police and witnesses said.
The 34-year-old worker, employed as an overnight stock clerk, tried to hold back the unruly crowds just after the Valley Stream store opened at 5 a.m.
Witnesses said the surging throngs of shoppers knocked the man down. He fell and was stepped on. As he gasped for air, shoppers ran over and around him.
“He was bum-rushed by 200 people,” said Jimmy Overby, 43, a co-worker. “They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down too…I literally had to fight people off my back.”
Mumbai Attacks
28 Nov 2008I’m still figuring out how to interpret and digest the horror that has been unfolding in Mumbai, India over the last 48 hours.
Federal Legislation Recognizes Native Americans For Just One Day, The Day After Thanksgiving
12:36 pm By Maegan La Mala · history|Politics · Comments Off
28 Nov 2008
Now this just seems like a slap in the face to me.
For the first time, federal legislation has set aside the day after Thanksgiving – for this year only – to honor the contributions American Indians have made to the United States.
This is the same logic that turns Columbus Day into the lat day of Hispanic Heritage Month. The United States has to take an ugly truth of historical fact and the ways it reverberates today and make it into a second tier holiday.
Congress passed legislation this year designating the day as Native American Heritage Day, and President George W. Bush signed it last month.
Meanwhile, the government out of the other side of its mouth will encourage people to shop and spend today, as an act of service for the nation.
Via / News One
While You Were Eating Turkey, The President Elect Speaks
10:27 am By Maegan La Mala · economy|Politics · Comments Off
28 Nov 2008Would it have been so bad for the President Elect to mention Indigenous People?
Black Friday or Buy Nothing Day?
8:26 am By Maegan La Mala · Activism|economy|Marketing|Money|Shopping · 4 Comments
28 Nov 2008
Growing up with a mom who worked in retail, the day after Thanksgiving meant watching my single mom wake up before the sun, before the crazy shoppers, to open up whatever store she worked in at an unholy hour. We never shopped for bargains because it was my mother’s job to make sure others could. Even today, as my mom approaches retirement age, she moved her tired body in the dark, towards the city of Manhattan to unlock doors and fill shopping bags. Black Friday gets no love from me.
My sister and I celebrated Buy Nothing Day before it was even officially a day.
Cuz Today is a Regular Work Day for Me : Jay Smooth on Obama Win
11:33 am By Maegan La Mala · Blogs|Internet|Politics · Comments Off
27 Nov 2008Via / Ill Doctrine
Addams Family Thanksgiving
27 Nov 2008
Feast on this:
The first president, George Washington, in 1783 said he preferred buying Indians’ land rather than driving them off it because that was like driving “wild beasts” from the forest. He compared Indians to wolves, “both being beasts of prey, tho’ they differ in shape.”
Thomas Jefferson — president No. 3 and author of the Declaration of Independence, which refers to Indians as the “merciless Indian Savages” — was known to romanticize Indians and their culture, but that didn’t stop him in 1807 from writing to his secretary of war that in a coming conflict with certain tribes, “[W]e shall destroy all of them.”
As the genocide was winding down in the early 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt (president No. 26) defended the expansion of whites across the continent as an inevitable process “due solely to the power of the mighty civilized races which have not lost the fighting instinct, and which by their expansion are gradually bringing peace into the red wastes where the barbarian peoples of the world hold sway.”
Roosevelt also once said, “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of 10 are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the 10th.”
Via / Alternet
I hate to rain on your Thanksgiving Day parade, blown up and filled with hot air like the balloons blown up to incite people to stuff themselves silly today under the illusion of family unity, and prepping people to stampede their way into stores to get that must have toy made of plastic.
We’ve been through this before. And I’ve had mixed results with my own children and struggling against the mainstream who needs invented traditions to get people in a room together to play nice and be grateful.
Pero people are mourning today.
In 1970, United American Indians of New England declared US Thanksgiving Day a National Day of Mourning. This came about as a result of the suppression of the truth. Wamsutta, an Aquinnah Wampanoag man, had been asked to speak at a fancy Commonwealth of Massachusetts banquet celebrating the 350th anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims. He agreed. The organizers of the dinner, using as a pretext the need to prepare a press release, asked for a copy of the speech he planned to deliver. He agreed. Within days Wamsutta was told by a representative of the Department of Commerce and Development that he would not be allowed to give the speech. The reason given was due to the fact that, “…the theme of the anniversary celebration is brotherhood and anything inflammatory would have been out of place.” What they were really saying was that in this society, the truth is out of place.
And what is the truth?
Hola!
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