This Week's Opening Thought: July 27, 2026

This week's opening thought: We live in a country currently embroiled in an unnecessay war that has cost us lives and resources. Domestically, people can barely afford to live and feed themselves and their families. Lettuce is giving people explosive diarrhea because the little food standards we do have in this country have been obliterated. People are dying at the hands of domestic terrorists posing as a government-funded law enforcement agency. Unemployment is high. Gas prices are high. Our rights are being taken away from us on the daily. Black, Brown, and trans communities are being terrorized and are in a constant state of danger. But you know what's most important to a whole lot of y'all?

That The Odyssey movie has Black and Brown folx in it.

You know, Homer's Odyssey. The one with the cyclops and giants and sea creatures and sh--.

Well, a whole bunch of y'all [*cough* people of pallor *cough*] are vocally mad that an obviously made-up story about Greeks and Romans made into a major motion picture with CGI special effects isn't "historically accurate."

Because that's definitely much more important than the *motions all around me at the raging dumpster fires surrounding us all*.

And this is why white supremacy is a joke. Albeit a dangerous, fragile joke but a joke nonetheless.

How can anyone take people of pallor seriously when these are the stupid personal odysseys through mediocrity and fragility that y'all constantly embark on in lieu of being legitimately up in arms and standing with your fellow citizens against all of the oppressive states we should be in solidarity to fight against?

Nope. Y'all gotta roll with that bigotry, hate, fragility, and racism until the wheels fall off on the most ridiculous sh--.

I can't imagine how goofy it must feel to be constantly at war with ghosts and believe you're "in danger" because you can't stop drinking the faux superiority Kool-Aid and see that the real enemies are within. And how extra-goofy it must be to tell yourself that this isn’t goofy and to paint it as some kind of “white pride” or thinly-constructed justification for why you think these kinds of things are important to upholding your identities.

What a dumb Trojan Horse to be constantly duped by.

This Week's Opening Thought: July 13, 2026

This week's opening thought: A whole lot of y'all seem to be, for some reason, distraught that people aren't handin' out thoughtful eulogies to a man who spent around 30 years of his life doing more harm than good to countless melanated and queer communities.

Note: When I say a whole lot of y'all, I'm talking about large numbers of people of pallor and the melanated and/or queer pallor apologists who long for pallor to embrace them and use them to fight their own people like Pokemon (i.e. the Cory Bookers of the world).

So, because some of y'all are really on one about how many of us have chosen to dogwalk a man who weaponized his internal self-hatred and chose to devote his life to legislative violence and harm, I thought I'd take a moment to offer you two thoughts so you can hopefully digest the tea better and basically shut up. And by "basically shut up," I mean that we will not be taking questions or engaging in "debates."

Alright? OK.

One: you can be a crappy human being AND someone who did one or two nice things here and there for a couple of people in your orbit. You can be both. But when you've spent a chunk of your adult life being more crappy than helpful on a large scale? Yeah, people are definitely gonna talk about the crappy things you did way more than anything nice you did. You've earned that kind of eulogy.

And if you aren't the crappy person in question but you decide to exercise a VERY selective memory to only focus on a couple of nice things the crappy person did while chastising others for focusing on the crappy things the deceased person spent their life engaging in?

You should be willing to take the L for defending a crappy person and be ten toes down with your eagerness to defend crappy people.

Two: I've lived a life that has allowed me to impact people's daily lives in a myriad of ways. I intimately know how the simplest of decisions/indecisions can dismantle a person's life. With this in mind, I have always done the work that I do from a place of humanity, acknowledging my privilege, power, and positionality while making sure I don't weaponize those things to harm others and/or benefit myself. Because of this, I know that when my time comes, the likelihood of thousands of people hopping on the internet or finding any platform they can to dogwalk me for being a hateful bag of crap that did harm to their lives is practically non-existent.

Every day, I get out of my bed and choose to live my life this way because I know the damage I can do...and I don't have anywhere near the power to alter lives that politicians have in this country.

Can you say the same about yourself and how you navigate the world? And if not, why would you expect people to "only remember the good times" when they look back on the crappy life you've led?

You can take all of that and swallow it as you see fit.

Proof of Life

It’s been a minute since I’ve hopped on here and we talked about *gestures wildly at the raging dumpster fires surrounding us all*. So let’s talk about where I’ve been, why I’ve been quiet, and what y’all have (still) been up to/NOT been up to.

On Delores, Cesar, and Doing It For "The Culture"

TW: Mentions of sexual abuse, predatory actions.

The Venn diagram of sexual abuse, power, and societal and cultural constructs of masculinity and “taking one for the culture/movement” dynamics always leaves me angry and sick to my stomach.

Dolores Huerta is 96 years old. Throughout her entire career of civil and human rights activism, she has had to hold sexual abuse in her body at the hands of Cesar Chavez. For over 50 years. She birthed two children from this sexual abuse and assault, both of whom she had to hide her relationship and connection to “for the culture.” Countless other women have carried similar experiences of abuse at the hands of Cesar Chavez in their bodies for decades. It all comes back to these women feeling they had to put the movement before themselves, because society and culture had ingrained in them that speaking out against a man who positioned himself as the movement’s figurehead in real time would’ve jeopardized the work.

One of the saddest parts of that notion is that there is likely some truth to it.

These women would’ve likely been discredited and possibly attacked and ostracized by folx in their community. Their plight would’ve been perverted and twisted by hate-filled white supremacists. They likely would’ve been treated as if they were trying to destroy the movement they tirelessly dedicated themselves to. White U.S. America at the time would’ve conjured up all sorts of stereotypes and bigoted narratives to discredit the work these women were doing and to fight against any civil rights advancements by characterizing Cesar as a monster, but not for the reasons he should be viewed as such.

And the fact that we can’t sit here and say this wouldn’t happen or isn’t happening today speaks volumes about how women are viewed and disrespected in movements, even when they are the ones showing up and doing the heavy lifting.

Women shouldn’t have to constantly sacrifice themselves, physically, mentally, and emotionally, for toxic, abusive men and “the culture.” They shouldn’t have to fear for their safety or face ostracization for speaking truth to power and seeking accountability. And most importantly, women shouldn’t always have to fight an uphill battle to be believed when a man has abused and harmed them and others in their community.

Believe Delores.

Believe women.

Believe that the culture and the movement will survive and thrive if we remove cancerous individuals from the equation, even if they’ve positioned themselves as figureheads.

And take some time to evaluate why it’s so hard for so many of y’all to believe that way too many “decent” men are using that facade to do the opposite of decent things to those they deem vulnerable and lacking credibility.

Doing all of that believing and taking action?

THAT is “for the culture.”

Anything else is cosigning harm and abuse.

Read Delores Huerta’s statement here.

Read the NYT article “Cesar Chavez, a Civil Rights Icon, Is Accused of Abusing Girls for Years” here.

On Kansas, Transphobia, and Domestic Terrorism

TW: Transphobia.

A letter from the Kansas Division of Vehicles dated February 23, 2026, is being sent to the homes of transgender Kansans informing them that they must surrender their driver's licenses and that their current credentials will be considered invalid upon the House Substitute for Senate Bill 244’s publication in the Kansas Register on February 26.

House Substitute for Senate Bill 244 was passed on February 17, 2026, after the Kansas House overrode Governor Laura Kelly’s veto. Because of this, Kansas-issued driver's licenses and identification cards must now reflect the credential holder's “sex at birth.”

There is no grace period for updating credentials, and anyone operating a vehicle without a valid credential "may be subject to additional penalties." Those whose gender marker does not match their sex assigned at birth are directed to surrender their current credential to the Division of Vehicles for reissuance.

The consequences for noncompliance could escalate quickly. Under Kansas law, driving without a valid license is a class B misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. A conviction triggers an automatic 90-day license suspension. If a person drives during that suspension, they face a charge of driving on a suspended license, which carries a mandatory minimum of five days in jail. Kansas requires county jails to house inmates by sex assigned at birth.

This "bill" is also essentially a "Bathroom Bill", meaning that it mandates that multi-occupancy, private spaces in public buildings (such as restrooms, locker rooms, and changing rooms) are restricted to use based on biological sex. This "law" also allows individuals "aggrieved" by a violation of these privacy rules to bring a civil action, with potential for damages up to $1,000.00.

And again, there was no grace period given. This "law" is effective immediately. Schools, public buildings, businesses, even Government facilities are now all expected to scramble to help the State of Kansas employ transphobic discriminatory practices to the citizenry.

Let's keep it 100. This "law" is not about "protecting children and families" like these raggedy conservatives in Kansas want to keep stating. This law is meant to target, antagonize, profile, and terrorize anyone who is trans, non-binary, or expressing themselves in ways that do not fit the nonsensical gender binary that white supremacist culture insists we all bend the knee to.

This "bill" will protect no one. People are going to be followed into restrooms, harassed, profiled by law enforcement, and harassed by "good citizens." Kansas courts will be inundated with frivolous lawsuits from weak-willed, fragile, transphobic people insisting trans folx have done them harm by just existing in a space with them and expecting some kind of financial restitution.

This is domestic terrorism, pure and simple. And if you see it as anything other than that?

I'll let you connect the dots and label yourself.