McSorley’s, oldest Irish pub in NYC, is forced to admit women customers after 116 years of being male only, after a lawsuit by the National Organization for Women. NOW’s Lucy Komisar grimly steps up to the bar. (1970)
I have a story to share. My name is Milena, and Iβm a single mother of a beautiful two year old little boy. When I was a teenager, I was sexually abused by my step father. When I was nineteen, I finally told my mother and she didnβt believe me. Also when I was nineteen, my high school boyfriend joined the military and asked me to marry him. Figuring it was likely for him to be stationed far away from my home state, and wanting to escape my toxic family, I got married, and moved half way across the country. I quickly became pregnant with his child, and I realized that he was not a good person, as our life fell apart thanks to his lies about making car payments and keeping up on rent, when he became physically abusive. I left him, and set out to build my life by myself with my son. I spent the next year and a half struggling and spiraling and aimless. I then found a great job, and was finally on my way to being stable. I was approved for an apartment, moved in, and was very suddenly laid off by the small company I worked for. Their business was suffering and as a result, lay offs due to budget cuts cost me my job. I now am unemployed and am unable to get a new job, as I owe my sonβs daycare $400. He is currently not in daycare and I canβt re-enroll him to get a new job until I pay off the $400 debt. On top of it, my rent is due and I have -$20 in my account. My last hope is the kindness of strangers. my hope is to be able to stay in my apartment, get my son back in school, and find a job that pays well enough so I can be self sufficient. No assistance programs will help me with my $400 daycare debt, and rent assistance programs donβt stack, so they arenβt willing to help me pay my entire rent. Iβm asking if everyone who sees this could at least reblog. Being unable to donate is totally understandable, but the more eyes see it, the better chance my son and I have of not ending up back on the street with nowhere to go. If you can donate, you are a saint and a God send, and I plan to do everything in my power to pay back those who help me during this tumultuous time.
“Each footstep taken in this society bristles with privileges, and is marked with a bloodstain; each turn of the government machinery grinds the tumbling, gasping flesh of the poor; and tears are running from everywhere in the impenetrable night of suffering. Facing these endless murders and continuous tortures, what’s the meaning of society, this crumbling wall, this collapsing staircase?
We live in ugly times. The misery has never been worse, because it’s never been more obvious, and it’s never stood closer to the spectacle of wasted riches and the promised land of well-being from which it is relentlessly turned away. Never has the law, which protects only the banks, pressed so hard upon the tortured shoulders of the poor. Capitalism is insatiable, and the wage system compounds the evils of ancient slavery. The shops are packed full of clothing, and there are those who go about completely naked; the indifferent rich are puking up food, while others perish from hunger in their doorways. No cry is heeded: whenever a single, louder complaint penetrates the din of sad murmurs, the Lebels is loaded and the troops are mobilized.”
A couple of weeks ago, someone submitted French revolutionary Maximilien Robespierre as their history crush.
While I was pleased to see Robespierre spotlighted, I was not pleased to see how he was depicted. Contrary to popular (and frankly erroneous opinion), Robespierre was not a lunatic, a tyrant, or a mass murderer. He did not “go insane” or kill thousands of people. In fact, he saved thousands and lost his life because of it.
Pretty crush worthy right?
Well, it gets better.
Throughout some of the bloodiest points of the revolution, Robespierre made it his mission to stand up against the very excesses he is now accused of promoting. He protected the lives of thousands of his political enemies, personally intervened in the condemnation of King Louis XVI’s sister (Madame Elisabeth), and promptly scolded/recalled those deputies responsible for military atrocities on the war front.
Robespierre did believe in terror - but his terror was a necessary one, a terror which relied on clemency and reason to achieve its means. It was not “the Terror” we are taught or the the Terror that we know. That terror was the one carried out by Robespierre’s political enemies, enemies who then utilized propaganda to attribute their excesses to Robespierre posthumously.
As the esteemed historian William Doyle writes:
Robespierre himself, he was never a dictator, and there is no reliable evidence to suggest that it was his aim…men called him a dictator because they feared moral inflexibility in one who had power. After they had destroyed him, they used the charge to justify what they had done. It also enabled them to blame him for acts they themselves had helped to commit, but which became increasingly a subject for shame, recrimination, and revenge during the months of retreat from terror and ruthless government which now began.
Need more proof? Put down that AP Euro textbook and look into some accredited works on the subject from JM Thompson, Albert Mathiez, George Rude, or RR Palmer.
Vive Robespierre!
Vive Robespierre!
I don’t know what an AP textbook is, I assume some sort of schoolbook. I’d suggest reading McPhee and Linton in English, Leuwers, Bosc & Bélissa, Obligi and Martin in French.
It’s important to remember he was part of a government that was trying to hold things together in the face of external war and civil war at the same time. Emergency measures, yes; some that may have gone too far, perhaps, but how do you manage a crisis like that?
These were people who had not been in major political positions before. Maximilien, for example, was an up-and-coming young advocate in a Northern city, with a reputation for fighting for good causes. In terms of experience, revolutionary government was a pressure-cooker environment for all of them. He seems to have done remarkably well in terms of retaining his moral compass, compared to some of them.
My tummy doesn’t have to be cute. It holds my internal organs. My thighs don’t have to “crush men’s skulls”. I use them to carry myself. My stretch marks don’t have to be tiger stripes I earned. They came when I grew.
Stop.
feeling this
This!
I feel like even body positivity is too focused on, like, the appearance of the body. I know I became a whole lot happier with my body when I started thinking of it less in terms of how it looked (to me or anyone else) and realized, that, like…
When I feel cool breeze on my skin on a really hot day, my body did that for me.
When I step into a bath after a hike, and my muscles ache, but in a good way, and the steam all around me makes me feel like a flower blooming, my body did that for me.
And the hike before it, and standing on a large rock breathing the raw winter air seeing the power of the half-frozen river. That too.
When I’ve had a plate of pasta puttanesca, and I chopped and sauteed the ingredients and now I’m full-but-not-uncomfortable, and warm all over, and perfectly content, my body did that for me.
My body doesn’t have to look awesome to be awesome. It’s awesome because it’s where I live.
