reminder that it doesn’t matter how trivial or silly your reason to hold on and keep going is. It’s still valid and important , and I’m happy you’re still here.
And even when it is, people still have a problem with it.
I went back and did some digging, because it occured to me that I didn’t know the date reference of this story and, sadly, there are way too many stories about school lunch debt that they’re easy to mix up.
This particular story was from July 2019 (I reblogged it Sept 2022).
There was a relevant update within a week of the scandal: public outrage was swift, the embarrassed school board redacted the outrageous allusions to indebted students ending up in foster care, and it accepted the CEO’s $20k donation.
It doesnt change the fact that the very concept of “school lunch debt” is disturbing and inhumane (and there are still stories about children…with lunch debt…). And clearly, the district changed it’s tone because it didn’t like the bad PR. But figured it was helpful to have more info and context.
Here are some of the relevant sources; each offer bits of info unique to each specific source:
Remember: Public outrage can and does solve problems.
this link is local for the VA/DC area, but Settle the Debt does continuous fundraising to pay off school lunch debt for entire schools. The woman who started it, Adelle Settle, also works with lawmakers to advocate for both funding and pressure to get schools to provide free lunches for all students.
I miss when library books used to have little paper pockets inside with a list of all the people who borrowed it and when… I hate that this is now exclusive knowledge of librarians. I do care that a miss Mariana borrowed this book in 1985 and then Dario in 1997. They’re my brothers and sisters
Disgust has absolutely no ethical weight. If you are basing your ethical positions on the emotion of disgust you should stop, it is entirely unjustified and leads to a huge amount of harm.
On a basic conceptual level our society doesn’t want women to know that lesbianism is even a possibility. It’s seen as a threat when women assert their lesbianism, but love between women is fundamentally trivialized and the intention is to make it appear that way so that aforementioned threat never arises. I remember when I told my mama I was a homo the first thing she said was “It’s normal to think women are pretty” and “I love my female friends” in an attempt to trivialize my love for women. It was only until I asserted myself as being very much romantically involved with women in a way that was incompatible with heterosexuality that she broke out into hysterics lol. It makes me wonder how many women are living unhappy lives because lesbianism is abstracted and isolated so far away from women as a mere conceptual reality.
fun fact: this is literally one reason why lesbianism was never criminalized in the UK
the notion of adding it to the anti-sodomy laws was brought up a few times, but shot down in the 1920s because then women might- gasp! -be aware that such things were possible
“The more you advertise vice by prohibiting it the more you will increase it,” was the thought of James Harris, Fifth Earl of Malmesbury, on the subject
Hamilton John Agmondesham, Earl of Desart, added “I am strongly of opinion that the mere discussion of subjects of this sort tends, in the minds of unbalanced people, of whom there are many, to create the idea of an offence of which the enormous majority of them have never even heard.”
