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personal-blog243 · 2 years

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#immigrants we get the job done #close the camps #now this #good news for immigrants #good news

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reasonsforhope · 1 year

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"While tourists visiting Mexican beaches complain about piles of smelly seaweed, one Mexican gardener reckoned it was something like a gift.

The governments in places like Cancun have been required to clear away as much as 40,000 tons of sargassum seaweed, which smells like rotten eggs, but Omar de Jesús Vazquez Sánchez is steering it away from the landfills and into a kiln, where he makes adobe-like blocks that pass regulation as a building material.

He started SargaBlock to market the bricks, which are being highlighted by the UN Development Program as a stroke of brilliance, and a sustainable solution to a current environmental problem.

His story begins back in 2015 when, like any experienced laborer, he found rich people were stuck with a job they didn’t want to do. In this case, it was cleaning up the sargassum on the beaches of the Riviera Maya.

Omar grew up in poverty, immigrated to the US as a child to become a day laborer, and eventually dropped out of school and became a substance abuser. The American dream never appealed to him as much as a “Mexican dream”—a mix of memories from his childhood and dreams of being a gardener back home, so he moved back.

His time feeling unwanted as an addict and immigrant gave him a unique perspective on the smelly seaweed.

“When you have problems with drugs or alcohol, you’re viewed as a problem for society. No one wants anything to do with you. They look away,” Omar told Christian Science Monitor in a translated interview.

“When sargassum started arriving, it created a similar reaction. Everyone was complaining, I wanted to mold something good out of something everyone saw as bad.”

The ecology and environment offices of Quintana Roo, the legislative area that includes the city of Cancun, approved the SargaBlocks for use, and similar organic-based blocks have been reckoned as being capable of enduring 120 years.

The UN Development Program selected Omar’s work to be featured in their Accelerator Lab global broadcast to alert the world of its value and ingenuity.

There are all kinds of naturally-occurring pollutants or burdens that could be used in construction, and the UNDP hoped that by sharing Omar’s vision of the future of the Caribbean’s sargassum problem, it would inspire others to act in similar ways.

Bricks and cement can be great sources to use up naturally-occurring material that’s dangerous or burdensome—like this Filippino community using the ash from volcanic eruptions to make bricks.

Omar has been fortunate enough to be able to donate 14 “Casas Angelitas,” or homes made of SargaBlock, to families in need, and seems to be exceedingly close to achieving his “Mexican dream.”"

-via Good News Network, 4/24/23

#mexico #caribbean #seaweed #sargassum #construction #architecture #cancun #quintanaroo #riviera maya #immigrants #united states #sustainability #solarpunk #good news #hope

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melyzard · 5 days

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The World is Amazing, Actually (Part 11 or 12, I lost count)

It's been awhile since I made a post about how fucking rad the world actually is, and amidst all the pandemics and climate change and economic troubles, I felt the need.

So:

Today’s Wild Place (The Earth is An Alien Planet):

The Danakil Depression, Ethiopia:

The Danakil Depression is probably the closest you'll ever be able to come to standing on the surface of Venus (without the crushing atmosphere, of course). Choking sulphuric acid and chlorine gases fill the air, while acid ponds and geysers pepper the landscape.

- Daisy Dobrijevic, published July 4, 2022

(BTW scientists recently discovered microbes capable of surviving in this toxic, extremely hot environment, which means...well, even if we kick the bucket, life will continue. There's something comforting in knowing that no matter how bad we screw up...life will go on.)

Today’s Incredible Feat of Engineering (look! at what! we made!):

Ouarzazate Solar Power Station in Morocco, which has gone solar in a big way.

(Which means they are making a huge contribution to helping fight toxic pollution, noise pollution, water use, land destruction, and carbon emissions. No really, there are charts. Reducing carbon emissions charts. Reducing irresponsible land use charts. Charts! Graphs! Data samples!)

Today’s Cool Life Form (the rare, the weird, the beautiful):

The Hispaniolan Solenodon.

A very rare, nocturnal, shrew-like creature that is one of the few mammals able to produce venom. Look at him! Look at his snout! He's just a little guy! He will bite you and run away on his back legs! He's rare, and endangered, but not gone! Not gone yet, bitches!

(Bonus: 10 Fun Facts About the Solenodon)

Today’s Bizarre Mystery (no, seriously, wtf?):

The Great Unconformity.

Hey, remember the Grand Canyon? Remember how we can see the passage of time through each layer, going back hundreds of thousands of years?

Did you know that apparently, on this massive record of earth's geological history, there's a chunk of time missing? Science has some hypotheses about how and why this happens (and yes, it's been found in more than one place), but they are really only hypotheses, and no one's really sure what happened to, oh, 1.6 billion years, give or take.

Today’s Act of Humanity (yes, we are worth the effort):

After fleeing a war, Ukrainians rush to help Mississippi tornado victims.

"They made the 16-hour drive south to donate bottled water and volunteer with aid workers, buoyed by the idea that they could help a community facing a similar struggle to theirs.

“We had to leave our home,” Pavliuk told The Washington Post in Ukrainian, in an interview interpreted by Hrebenyk. “And they don’t have a place to go back, either.”"

NEW CATEGORY:

Today's Good News About The Future (No, It's Not Too Late and Anyone Who Says Otherwise is Selling Something):

The Saiga Antelope, a species critical to the continued survival of huge swathes of grassland, that in 2003 was down to 6% of it's population and already extinct in it's natural habitat of China and Ukraine, has rebounded back to almost 2 million strong thanks to conservation efforts.

Previous | Next

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wyllsravengard · 26 days

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alhamdulillah my palestinian friends whole family made it out it today with nothing but minor injuries

#z.gen #officially found refuge in egypt i think 🥲 hopefully they can immigrate to here and canada #been supporting them since the start theyre good people and ill continue too #but really. really good news. alhamdulillah

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girderednerve · 3 months

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The AP found that U.S. prison labor is in the supply chains of goods being shipped all over the world via multinational companies, including to countries that have been slapped with import bans by Washington in recent years. For instance, the U.S. has blocked shipments of cotton coming from China, a top manufacturer of popular clothing brands, because it was produced by forced or prison labor. But crops harvested by U.S. prisoners have entered the supply chains of companies that export to China.

While prison labor seeps into the supply chains of some companies through third-party suppliers without them knowing, others buy direct. Mammoth commodity traders that are essential to feeding the globe like Cargill, Bunge, Louis Dreyfus, Archer Daniels Midland and Consolidated Grain and Barge – which together post annual revenues of more than $400 billion – have in recent years scooped up millions of dollars’ worth of soy, corn and wheat straight from prisons, which compete with local farmers.

...Incarceration was used not just for punishment or rehabilitation but for profit. A law passed a few years [after the formal end of the convict-leasing system in 1928] made it illegal to knowingly transport or sell goods made by incarcerated workers across state lines, though an exception was made for agricultural products. Today, after years of efforts by lawmakers and businesses, corporations are setting up joint ventures with corrections agencies, enabling them to sell almost anything nationwide.

Civilian workers are guaranteed basic rights and protections by OSHA and laws like the Fair Labor Standards Act, but prisoners, who are often not legally considered employees, are denied many of those entitlements and cannot protest or form unions.

“They may be doing the exact same work as people who are not incarcerated, but they don’t have the training, they don’t have the experience, they don’t have the protective equipment,” said Jennifer Turner, lead author of a 2022 American Civil Liberties Union report on prison labor.

#this whole article is good read the whole thing #it's extremely important that reporters & activists continue to bring to light the horrific abuses of prison labor #& that we all understand that none of this is new - angola / louisiana state prison is immense & has a vast bloody history #the largest agricultural producer in the state of texas in the 60s was the department of corrections #& as this article points out a rising reliance on incarcerated labor is one response #to the labor shortages caused by unchecked covid deaths + restrictive immigration policy #the whole of american incarceration & labor policy is evil. blood on the leaves & blood at the root

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mx-potato · 7 months

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I am so tired of white queer people being the only representation that we get.

I’ll see movies and books and TV shows being praised for their “amazing queer representation” and then it’s a bunch of skinny cis white gay people.

Skinny cis white gay people are not the only queer people who exist

#give me fat nonbinary protagonists #give me gender nonconforming immigrant superheroes #give me trans euphoria #give me Black aromantic stories #give me trans stories told by trans people #for the love of all things good and holy give me representation that isn't just skinny cis white able bodied upper middle class gay people #i'm so sick of queer stories that were clearly written for people who aren't queer #crazy how in an attempt to “destroy stereotypes” we just built new ones #people will claim to want to “think outside of the box” and then pick the second closest thing to the box #queer poc #transgender #queer #nonbinary #aromantic #arospec #aspec #asexual #intersectionality

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genniviva · 5 months

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The mood was pretty weird while counting votes tonight. We were all... baffled? Baffled, yeah, especially at first when we were unfolding the votes and were met with party four, four, nineteen, four again. Wilders' PVV ended up with more than a quarter of the votes cast at our location.

We tried, but none of us could imagine what that guy would do if he were to somehow form a coalition. He has been opposition for so long that we had to wonder--does he even know? He doesn't have a party program beyond "fuck migrants." He relies on charisma and the neat thing called "not being in charge of the government people hate." Dick.

Anyways. Not happy about this at all.

#dutch #the netherlands #anyways other moments from tonight's vote counting:#that person who voted for the final person on the list. that was the only vote cast for the last six parties.#all votes for NSC were for Omzigt. to be expected given the whole situation but it was pretty funny getting to tonelessly read “one. one.#one. one.“ 124 times in a row.#*clenches fist* if i hadn't send away those few people who had invalid voting passes we could have reached 1000 votes. damn my integrity!#today was. good. long--eleven hours from start to finish of unbroken work--but fullfilling. the other volunteers were really nice #listening to their life stories you could see this position attracted a certain kind of person #all volunteer librarians and working with getting immigrants all set up with a new life and guided living for disabled people and--#i liked working with them :)#oh! and i got gravely wounded in the battle for democracy #read: i got a papercut :(

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blabla3419 · 2 months

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#good news from Florida #virgilio aguilar mendez #police brutality #immigration #guatemala #mine

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nokingsonlyfooles · 4 months

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One-Third.

Of all the news that's bothered me today, this one bothers me the most. So I'll mention it.

I'm not in the habit of telling people what to think, or do. I'm an anarchist, that's not my brand. And sometimes I don't even know what to think or do.

So! Despite the wall and the crimes against humanity, Trump yeeted fewer human beings back across the border in four years than Obama did in his first four. And being deported in a sweeping, ultranationalist fervour is not the end of one's story. The family pictured above were ejected in Eisenhower's Operation Racial Slur, because brain rot is nothing new in my country of origin. They came back legally, reunited, prospered, and now they make tamales for the holidays like I do. It's hard to crush the people your economy depends on, isn't it? They just won't stay down!

Cartoonish evil posturing is not very effective. Silence, subtlety and charisma are much better at achieving their goals. I am left wondering if fewer people would be willing to let the genocide slide if Trump were funding it, and quoting Hitler about it to the media.

But I shouldn't wonder that. Of course more people would yell about it if Trump were doing it. They know what Trump is! He never lets you forget it! He'd be screaming about eradicating the Arab Menace on Fox News 24/7. When he passes out from lack of oxygen, they'll rerun his greatest hits. Biden, on the other hand - Hey! At Least He's Not Trump. And, judging from other articles, that seems to be the platform he's running on. Again.

I carried water for Obama when he was in office. I was a hell of a lot younger and less cynical, but I bought that a person would not put children in cages if there were any other option. I do not buy that anymore. And I barely remember hearing anything about the deportations until his term was almost up. He was only sending back the criminals, you remember that? Did you accept it as politically expedient like I did, or were you smarter than me?

That water I carried was full of lead, you should not drink it no matter what the nice man in the tan suit says.

This is why I'm not up for choosing the lesser evil. Stories like this suggest that, if we tote up the numbers like soulless accountants, the calculations for most/least harm are fucking fucked. Kant is bullshit and I am not a goddamn utilitarian. I'm not about to vote Idiot and keep my fingers crossed that he's too loud and stupid to do much damage. I don't know what opportunities for damage will occur in the next four years, or who will be in the best position to take advantage of them.

Polling suggests that most Americans don't want to make this choice any more than I do. But we're goin' ahead anyway, and we've already decided two evils will be the only viable candidates, months ahead of the primaries. You'll just hafta guess the lesser one! Have fun weighing all those human lives against each other!

I can only reiterate: Don't ask me this. I don't have the answer. And I'm not going to do the math, the math is evil too. I shouldn't even be TEMPTED to do math like this. Please call me when you have a candidate who doesn't want to harm anyone. I am no longer responding to folks asking me who I'm willing to throw under the bus.

#us politics #news #ap news #immigration #lesser of two evils #and just plain evil #evil math #if we say 1/2 of our 2 party democracy wants to end democracy then they're both auditioning to be the last party standing before the end #so they can end it instead #because “sorry only one party now - but it's the GOOD one” is not democracy anymore #i don't wanna know how many folks would be fine with that if their party was the GOOD one

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daisies-on-a-cup · 7 months

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stop why did no one tell me about elemental <///3

#i cried more than i thought i would omgggg #when she bowed to her father at the end GODDDDDD #i didnt know it was going to be an allegory on asian immigration into the u.s like omfg im so emotional over this #new fav movie i think #and the romance was so sweet omfg and wade was everything i really liked him #omg and i really appreciate the focus was kept on ember even though they kept dropping hints about wade's past #goddd sincerely such a good movie #elemental

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personal-blog243 · 5 months

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Holy shit this is huge! We need to follow this to hopefully see this is carried out successfully but this sounds awesome!

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reasonsforhope · 1 year

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“America likes to tell a certain story about itself: It’s a safe haven, a place of refuge for the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. It’s a story that history shows hasn’t always been true. But thankfully, it just got easier for Americans to take matters into their own hands and turn that aspiration into a reality.

The Biden administration on January 19 launched the Welcome Corps, a new program that will allow groups of Americans to directly sponsor refugees to resettle in their communities.

Whereas recent programs have focused on bringing over people from specific places — Afghanistan, Ukraine, Venezuela — this program makes it possible for private citizens to resettle people from any place in the world, so long as they are refugees as defined by the US Refugee Act.

Under the Welcome Corps program, you and a few of your friends can pool together funds to provide an immigration pathway that allows vulnerable people who may not otherwise be able to immigrate the ability to rebuild their lives in the US. Forming a private sponsor group involves bringing together at least five adults in your area and collectively raising $2,275 for each person you want to resettle in your community. With that money, sponsors commit to helping them through the first three months there, which can include securing and furnishing housing, stocking the pantry with food, supporting job hunts, and registering kids for school.

It’s a powerful way to improve life for the newcomers, granting them protection from persecution or violence in their country of origin, plus the chance to access health care, education, and socioeconomic opportunities. It can also improve life for everyone who’ll be in the newcomers’ orbit, including you and your neighbors. Research suggests welcoming refugees will likely benefit your community as a whole, for example by opening new businesses that revitalize neighborhoods. In Canada, a similar private sponsorship program has proven immensely popular and successful over the past decade.

But you might be thinking: Why should it fall to private citizens to fork over the cash, time, and energy to resettle refugees? Shouldn’t that be the government’s job?

...It’s a fair point: This is the government’s job. That’s why the advocacy groups that pushed for the Welcome Corps program insisted that any refugees who come to the US via private sponsorship should be in addition to the number of traditional, government-assisted resettlement cases.

The State Department has signaled that it agrees. This means that by sponsoring a refugee, you can play a role in allowing the US to take in more refugees overall. It really is additive.

And unlike prior programs for Afghans or Ukrainians, which were temporary, ad hoc responses to crises, the Welcome Corps is intended to be a permanent fixture. The hope is that it’ll complement the traditional resettlement process, which has been struggling for years.”

-via Vox, 1/27/23

#refugees #asylum #us politics #immigration #migration is a human right #refugee #afghanistan #ukraine #welcome corps #refugee sponsorship #united states #human rights #immigration reform #immigrant rights #good news #hope #this has SO MUCH potential to make a difference #to let us help people rather than just watch the government be awful and racist #it's huge

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ffcrazy15 · 25 days

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My thoughts upon walking out of the theater after seeing Cabrini:

"Wow, so it actually IS possible to make a good movie about a saint."

#It is truly sooooo good all of you go see it right now.#Honestly? See it even if you're not religious.#The pointed commentary on how America treats new immigrants (and especially people it considers brown/POC) is just *chef's kiss*#And Cabrini is so cool ughhhhh I want to be her. I need to be more like her.#No more tiptoeing around men's expectations. Just gonna walk into board rooms and start demanding help for my orphans.#cabrini #Mother Cabrini #movies #catholic #catholicism

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eretzyisrael · 4 months

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Good News From Israel

In the 31 Dec 23 edition of Israel’s good news, the highlights include:

A 95-year-old reservist re-enlisted to fight for Israel.

Volunteer overseas medics are rushing to help Israel.

See who is being successfully treated with Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy.

Papua New Guinea has opened the first consulate in Judea & Samaria.

Israeli scientists are fighting bad bacteria and utilizing good bacteria.

Intel’s billion-dollar investment shows confidence in Israel’s economy.

The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra is “playing” its part in Israel’s war effort.

Welcome to 1,200 new French Israelis.