Politics Corner December 1st

 

photo mine (beware of Harlan)

“We want to make sure that as part of World Aids Day, that people understand that this isn’t just a moment for us to come and reflect. It’s actually a moment for us to come and fight again, because unfortunately we are facing existential threats due to just the ongoing dysfunction and most extreme viewpoints of conservatives in the House,” said Jeremiah Johnson, the executive director of Prep4All, an Aids prevention and treatment organization. [Guardian]

Today is the 35th annual World AIDS Day. The fact that it is still necessary to mark it is as sad as the fact that I had to dig up news about it. This is a crisis that has been going on since at least 1981 and was allowed to become a pandemic because people, particularly US Republican politicians would rather let people suffer and die than to offer care to gay men, Haitians, blacks, the homeless, needle users or anyone else more likely to contract the disease. You'd think we would have learned something in the meantime but we haven't. Not only have we shoved AIDS under the rug as something that's over - it's not and now we have long-term problems to deal with as well - but we have learned nothing. We let politics determine our response to COVID and we're shoving it under the rug as if it's over too.

I'm lucky that COVID hasn't hit me as hard but I know what it's like to watch a loved one die in front of me from behind my mask. I know what it's like to finally take the mask off when it's too late for them to see me and too late for me to cause them any more harm.

my late friend Danny Sotomayor

courtesy https://latino.si.edu/
via X

And because it's December we like to pretend that we are bringing all of the homeless inside just like we give once a year to food banks on Thanksgiving. No matter our good intentions there will always be people who fall through the cracks or don't want our help for one reason or another. This particular crusade seems more wrongheaded than most. These are people who have some sort of shelter. We should be more concerned about making their lives easier than kicking them out. [WISN]

via WTMJ

We can't have nice things. [BBC]

via BBC

Political discussion welcome