//thread/

This was the very first experience I had in an LGBTQ social circle when I first openly came out as a lesbian at 18. I had just gone through a difficult breakup and was depressed and lonely for lesbian community, so I thought I would go to my university’s Pride Club.(1)

Pretty much all the members were female, with the exception of one gay man and one trans woman (who was 31). Not one single girl in the group identified as bi or lesbian, but rather several combinations of ‘queer’, ‘pansexual’, ‘genderfluid demisexual’, and ‘non binary’.(2)

We began by introducing ourselves and stating our preferred pronouns. I already felt super out of place but I went along with it anyway. When introducing myself as a lesbian, the head of the club kindly asked me to refer to myself as ‘queer’ or ‘gay’ so as to be inclusive of (3)

everyone’s identities. I apologized and agreed to the terms but it stirred up something inside me, pretty much the exact same feeling I had when I came out to my family and they refused to acknowledge or accept that I was a lesbian.(4)

The topics of discussion ranged from dating, gender expression, and the difficulties Victoria faced as a ‘trans lesbian’ and how so few people in her life would validate her identity. Victoria was showered with praise and support, and not one single person had any (5)

1/ The Evidence-Based Social Work Alliance has written an open letter to the Chief Executives of all four UK social work regulators, CAFCASS and BASW.

A request for policy review and practice guidance

https://t.co/xfISp9y9Vd

2/ "EBSWA gathers and considers evidence on the questions of sex and gender identity in order to inform professional discussion. We are concerned by the uncritical use of gender identity theory in social work and other professions".

3/ "Of immediate concern is the increasing numbers of children and young people with gender dysphoria who are presenting to the profession. The welfare of gender-dysphoric children is increasingly being discussed within the child-protection context...

4/ "...and yet our attempts to explore alternatives to the affirmation model are being met with accusations of hateful conduct and referrals to our regulator for investigation. We are being silenced in our attempts to understand and discuss the evidence-base approaches to this".

5/ "The recent high-profile Judicial review of the Tavistock and Portman Trust’s treatment of Keira Bell...will change the way in which professionals approach this issue. Social work policy and practice must engage and respond in line with these developments".

OUR HUSBANDS TAKE OUR CARS, SALARIES AND SPEND IT WITH GIRLFRIENDS: HON NHARI

HON. VAIRET NHARI: Thank you Mr Speaker, I want to add a few words on the issue of violence even members of Parliament we suffer from domestic violence. @GMCZimbabwe @wlsazim @womensvoicezw @MAZ_Zim

HON. NHARI: If I am given a motor vehicle, and take it to the constituency, the husband will deny me the use of that vehicle saying he is the one who permitted me to go to Parliament.

HON. NHARI: So, you must not use the car and female Members of Parliament will end up using public transport to conduct Parliament business. The husbands take our salaries and spend it on beer and girlfriends.

HON. NHARI: That is abuse and children that grow up in such families go into early marriages because of stress. The fight between the mother and father makes children sad and some will turn to drug abuse as well as prostitution.

HON. NHARI: Members of Parliament let us teach our people that they are some lawyers that offer services for free such as @ZimWomenLawyers and MUSASA. They can assist you if you are involved in domestic violence.

all the boy cousins split off to talk about romances and personal growth since the last family reunion. the girl cousins go down to the creek to smoke cigarettes and throw knives

our conversation inevitably turns to the dark and mysterious world of the girl cousins. “why do they smoke those things? they smell so nasty!” teddy cried. “i saw a pack of birth control pills sitting out on lisa’s desk,” ronald said somberly.

quickly a consensus is reached that we need to find out exactly what the girls are talking about. gerald and i volunteer for recon. spying seems dishonorable but we agree bigger things might be at stake. edwin caught tara rolling her eyes at the Sunday school teacher.

we slip down to the creek by a trail cut by a jack rabbit. as we sneak, sly and quiet as foxes, the sense of boyish mischief departs and an oppressive feeling sets upon us instead. the thicket grows darker and the shadows twist the wrong way. we look at one another very coldly.

coming to a bank looking over the sand bar we see the girls sitting cross legged in a circle darkly painted on the sand. one girl sits in the middle but her face is covered by a kind of mask. a deer’s head. fat black flies buzz around her and her chest is painted sticky red.

THREAD
1/15
I'm struck by how there's been no response to the #motherandbabyhomesreport from 3 of the largest national groups involved in survivors lives to date - the @clann_project, @adoptionrights & @maglaundries have not officially tweeted since the report was released.

2/15
This tells me one thing & one thing only - they have nothing to say yet. I find it so interesting that so many others have leapt to speak on behalf of survivors when some of the key survivor interest groups have not yet commented.
#motherandbabyhomes

3/15
The report is MASSIVE, approximately 3000 pages, the information contained in it very detailed in parts, I've been immersed in this story my whole adult life & even I can't yet grasp the detail in the one chapter that is about the #MotherandBabyHome I was born in.

4/15
I appreciate that much of the report is shocking to those for whom this has not been their life story, for those of us who are survivors we have, for the most part, been only too intimately familiar with the details of the #motherandbabyhomesreport, & much more besides.

5/15
My experience, & the experience of every other survivor I know, is that we have been talked about & talked over our entire lives. Gaslit by agencies, adoptive parents, birth parents, the state, churches, society & much more, with others deciding for us what is best for us.

While @staceyabrams credits me & my wife w/ investing in GA "before it was logical," the signs were there if you knew what to look for. The question now is who's next?

In my latest for @thenation, I point to 4 factors for turning a red state blue. THREAD

1.) Favorable demographic trends

Texas has the second-largest pool of nonvoting people of color (after already blue CA), and the numbers of potential voters of color far exceeds the margin of difference in statewide elections.

Joe Biden lost Texas by ~600k votes, and despite the record turnout on both sides, 4.5 million eligible people of color still did not vote according to exit polls and census data.

2.) "Level 5 Leaders" also known as:

Leaders who combine personal humility with indomitable will and are "infected with an incurable need to produce results" for the cause.

and Brianna Brown are Abrams-like Level 5 leaders who have built a relentless and effective civic engagement machine that has helped tip electoral outcomes in cities and counties across the state.

BOYS ALSO SUFFER FROM DOMESTIC VIOLENCE LIKE GIRLS

HON ROBSON MAVENYENGWA: Thank you Mr. Speaker for allowing me the opportunity to add my voice to the motion brought by Hon. Bhuda concerning gender based violence which is mainly targeted against women and children. @wlsazim

HON MAVENYENGWA: I am a parent, I have a girl child and it pains me to witness the girl child being abused especially when they live with people who are not their natural parents. If people live with a step mother in most cases, they are ill treated.@YetTrust @NAYOZimbabwe

HON MAVENYENGWA: They grow up in an environment that is not conducive for children. There was a case where we ended up having to call the police because the stepmother was ill treating the child. @Y4pdZ @Youth4SDGsZim @NYDT1 @Youthdecidezw @moysarzim

HON. MAVENYENGWA: The child would draw water, look for wood and do everything to the extent that the child was failing to go to school. The father was there and was seeing these events unfold with his own eyes. That also touched me as the local Member of Parliament.

HON. MAVENYENGWA: I ended up looking for the police& those from Social Welfare department to ensure they assist the child. We are saying that Govt should come up with laws& penalties that are deterrent especially in GBV especially where the mother has passed away.

"Is juju real?" now you have a bunch of Christians in a room telling you juju is real because of course Christianity is real. I find these questions to be a waste of time.

"juju is real because how do you know juju isn't real. You need to open your mind". Very sound argument.

This one said even plant has spirit. What Albert Einstein did is also written in the Bible. E = MC square. Now he's talking about holiness and removing slippers, I don't know wetin concern this one with "is JuJu real?"

Apparently Africans have the strongest resistance to JuJu because our dark skin colour reacts to dark magic.

Someone has finally asked if JuJu is real why is the black race still at the bottom of the barrel?

Getting ready to hear the juju is only good for bad things like.

I just saw a thread with people debating teacher’s salaries again.

Are we still doing this? Are we still throwing around this 180 days?

I don’t know one teacher that works 180 days and I know THOUSANDS of teachers. I don’t know one that works 8-3 pm.

Maybe that’s just my network? You can be connected to plenty of orgs and schools and someone will still try to tell me about what educators deserve...

With an anecdote about their Uncle’s cousin’s entrepreneur friend that used to teach.

STOP THIS.

And the educators that tell you...”I take all my days. I take all my summers.”

They dream lessons. They wake up with kids on their minds. They plan without realizing they’re planning.

They get called to professional development WEEKS before school begins.

Professional developments look different at every school. Leaders implement their visions based on need, board directives, survival, and sometimes ego.

I know educators that are painting walls and scrubbing floors during “PD.” I know educators that are internalizing...

Curriculum a mile a minute and are being asked to memorize them. I know educators that are being asked to write instruction from scratch. I know leaders that were told 1 week before school starts that the fire/health/contractor dept. cleared them to be in the building.

1/ It's hard to find words that don't cheapen, belittle, glorify or dismiss what happened during the Holocaust (Shoah). It's also hard to find words that make sense of the numbers involved. 6 million Jewish people, murdered. Entire families, gone.
#HolocaustMemorialDay #Holocaust

2/ Their property, land, art, culture & achievements stolen and erased. Many are still fighting, 75 years later, to regain what was taken from them - physically and mentally. It is almost incomprehensible, yet it happened. But it didn't start or end

3/ Another 11 million people were murdered throughout the Holocaust era. Others targeted included the disabled, the LGBTQ+ community, Black people, Roma, Poles & other Slavic peoples, Jehovah’s Witnesses, prisoners of war & members of political opposition groups.
#genocide

4/ If we held a minute of silence for every known victim of the Nazis we would be silent for over 32 years.

5/ Sadly humanity didn't learn & there have been further genocides by a variety of groups claiming purity, religion or territory as their reasoning. So how do we respond to this? How do we try to be better?
#Darfur #Cambodia #Serbia #Rwanda #Rohingya

I wrote this a similar thread a while back but it’s worth repeating given the way in which QANON and similar theories are spreading and how it resonates with people who are mentally unstable. This is a thread about giant ants. Sort of.

A while back, I was covering a terrorism trial and a guy I knew from decades ago who had since become schizophrenic became fixated on me. He became strangely convinced he could save the world and that I had to be part of it.

He was convinced at times I was Hillary Clinton (in disguise), and at other times he thought he needed to impregnate me (against my will) to save the human race. He once emailed a whole bunch of people at the newspaper where I worked. It wasn’t great.

I ended up getting a restraining order against him. But since I had once known him, and had known him at a time when he wasn’t like this — when he hadn’t posed a threat — I tried to understand what was going on.

Here is a synopsis of a situation outside of our place in DC Saturday night and some things to think about going forward about the limits of policing. (1/?)

So, about two hours ago, there was a man across the street from where we live screaming and threatening no one in particular on our side of the street.

It's unclear from my vantage whether the man is mentally ill or was simply intoxicated, but suffice it to say he's not in his right mind during this outburst.

In a major US city, this is not particularly unusual, though anyone in the immediate vicinity could be excused for feeling uncomfortable.

I'd imagine description would read something like: B/M, 6'0", 30s, grey hoodie, black pants, pacing & yelling in threatening manner.

For 15-20 minutes, he was totally left alone. At some point, MPD was called, and they came-- but no lights or sirens, established a very loose perimeter--and let him continue to rant at nobody in particular.

Here is a reminder of some of the failings in the past 12 months that have led to so many infections & deaths-

1.The PM missed 5 cobra meetings at start
2. The Government ignored warnings about pandemic preparations
3. They allowed ppe stockpiles to run down (1/10)

4. Delayed lockdown number one
5. Delayed lockdown number two
6.Delayed lockdown number three
7. Ignored Sage advice on a circuit break lockdown for 6 weeks
8.Allowed people to enter the UK without checks
9.Stopped contract tracing in March (2/10)

10. Discharged people into care homes without testing
11.Allowed ppe to be exported
12. Ignored WHO advice to “test test test”
13. Couldn’t track how many people were being tested each day
14.Didn’t require private testing companies to report results to local councils (3/10)

15. Created an app that notification to self isolate from didn’t count for claiming a self isolation payment
16. Recommended face coverings in May but didn’t make it compulsory until July
17.Didn’t join cross Eu ppe procurement (4/10)

18. Handed contact tracing to private companies with no record
19. Handed ppe contracts to companies with no record
20.Failed to support people to self isolate
21.Brought in scheme of support for self isolation that only 1 in 8 people qualify for (5/10)

LASG HAS ANNOUNCED ADDITIONAL ADJUSTMENT TO THE CURRENT TRAFFIC FLOW ARRANGEMENTS ON THIRD MAINLAND BRIDGE.

#ForAGreaterLagos
#3MB
#ThirdMainlandBridge
#tmbrehab

@jidesanwoolu @tundefashola

In order to accomplish the planned reopening of the 3rd Mainland Bridge on February 22nd, 2021 due to the on-going rehabilitation/maintenance works, ..

... the Lagos State Government hereby announce the shifting of the current diversion point on the bridge to a closer position for traffic coming from Iyana Oworosoki going to Adekunle or Lagos Island.

This adjustment is to allow the removal, replacement and casting of joint No. 23 in addition to the two other joints (16 and 17) that are presently being worked on by the Federal Ministry of Works contractor.

The planned two (2) weeks temporary traffic flow changes shall be from 12 midnight 15th January, 2021 to 12 midnight 29th January, 2021. The current traffic status shall then resume at 00.01 hrs 30th January, 2021.