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Author: Duncan Spark
I am an artist and writer living in London
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Wednesday Malibu
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Venice Saurday
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Friday Sunset Blvd.
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Native American Jerry Wolf
All this talk about bullying.
How do we teach kids not to bully when we pay Gordon Ramsey and Simon Cowell to bully others? When we invade Iraq and kill the innocent people we were there to protect?
It’s not just the gays who get bullied….
homophobic/racist/classist/fatist/ginger/glasses/smelly/poor/good grades/bad grades… all reasons kids are bullied.
Go on add to the list…
I’ve done my fair share of bullying. On set. Within relationships.
Growing up gay: you have two options… let the homophobes beat you down or fight back. I’ve always fought back. Spent my life fighting.
Probably to my detriment.
They called me BLEACHED NIGGER at Primary School ’cause I had black curly hair.
Yet, the worst bullying in my life occurred after I left school from other gay men. Especially as a youth. Bullied into sexual liaisons.
Vicious bitchery. Cruel and catty.
Yet somehow forgiven because it was meant to be funny.
My body image shot to pieces by gay men. Having to subscribe to their standards of beauty.
Ultimately… as my granny said: what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.
I embraced my curly hair, my gangly legs, fought off the men who tried to shame me into sex or told me to lose weight, shave my head and balls, go to the gym…. and carved my own little niche which ended up being quite a crowded place with other like-minded people.
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Gjelina Tuesday
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Fuck You Jerry Brown
Governor Jerry Brown vetoed the TRUST Act, a bill championed by immigrants rights advocates.
The bill, which was the antithesis of Arizona’s SB 1070, would have helped stop racial profiling and restore trust and transparency between California’s communities and law enforcement officials.
While the outcome of the fight is disappointing, I am thankful for activists who appealed to Governor Brown by signing thousands of petitions then making hundreds of calls to his office urging him to sign the bill.
Adam Luna, is the Political Director of America’s Voice, a leading immigrants rights organization wanted to share this message:
“While it was a bitter disappointment to see the governor veto the TRUST Act, I wanted to let you know how much your activism and solidarity made a real difference.
11,300 petition signatures (more than any other organization!), which were hand-delivered in Sacramento, hundreds of phone calls — it was amazing.”
Those of us in the immigration reform movement know that this is not a fight which is going to be won overnight and the governor said that he’s open to making a deal next year because he knows that you, and we, won’t rest until the fight is won.
While Governor Brown’s failure of leadership on this issue is disheartening, the campaign for fair and sensible immigration policies will go on.
Next week I will be announcing my very own action against the secure communities protocol that incarnated me and thousands of people like me.
A few months ago a young, gay Australian man here legally in the USA on a tourist visa was arrested for peeing in public (a sex crime felony in the state of California) and held in the Men’s Country Jail until he agreed to be deported.
Why?
IMMIGRATION REFORM NOW!
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Deficit Ramble
Quiet days on the ranch. Occasional parties. Trips to Van Nuys. Writing and preparing.
The election approaches. Everyone buying into it like it’s a real event.
Mitt Romney this and Paul Ryan that. Obama in the polls.
The more the right talk about, manifest socialism… the more the people will investigate. A self-fulfilling prophesy. The ill-judged Romney 47% remark seems to have hit a chord.
What sort of chord?
What does this random remark mean to those currently unemployed, underwater, disenfranchised?
In Europe the people are storming the palace. Austerity for what? Debt, deficit, bankers… as explosive as any Molotov cocktail to a modern European .
What is this debt? To whom do we owe the money? How did we get there in the first place? And why should we pay it back?
Unfortunately, if you rely on network nightly news programs for your information about the economy, you are likely to be misinformed about the main causes of the current deficit: in order of importance, the economic downturn, the Bush tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that 34 percent of the 2010 deficit and 28 percent of the 2011 deficit can be attributed to the economic downturn.
The Bush tax cuts dwarf all other policy changes, costing the country an estimated $375 billion this year, or 24 percent of the deficit.
Newsweek: “the tax cuts were by far the largest, adding up to $2.3 trillion over 10 years.” Forty percent of the tax cuts’ benefits went to people earning over $500,000.
With cumulative spending of over $1.2 trillion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the post-9/11 military escalation rounds out the list of top deficit culprits at 14 percent. (The cost could reach up to $4 trillion, including future veterans’ expenses.)
The news media under report or simply ignore the truth about the deficit instead concentrating on entitlements as the main culprit for the obscene debt.
The myth of the deficit is perpetuated by both parties, Republican and Democrat. It is very unlikely that the truth will ever be revealed by either Democratic incumbent or Republican Nominee.
If Obama wins in November he will have to re-calibrate his Presidency. He’ll have nothing to lose.
He may do what the loyal people of the USA have held onto both good and bad about their friendly President… that he is in fact the ultimate dog in the manger… an unchecked liberal, a gay loving entitlement loving…. muslim socialist… ready to launch the USA into the groovy 21st Century?
I’m not holding out much hope… but hey. I hope I’m wrong.
There’s always the deficit to worry about.