Questions Not to Ask People With Chronic Conditions

Womanist Musings: “Not only do the differently abled have to deal with gatekeepers who think they know what it is like to live with our disease because they have studied it, we constantly have to deal with questions from the general public, because a differently abled status is constantly up for a debate.  It is not enough for someone to say my body does not function like yours.  We must explain why and prove that we are worthy of taking on the label of disabled.”

Economy Hurts Government Aid for H.I.V. Drugs

New York Times: “The weak economy is crippling the government program that provides life-sustaining antiretroviral drugs to people with H.I.V. or AIDS who cannot afford them. Nearly 1,800 have been relegated to rapidly expanding waiting lists that less than three years ago had dwindled to zero.”

Kagan Hearings: Gags, God, Guns, and Gays

RH Reality Check: “Kagan went on to talk the special case of ‘partial birth abortion bans,’ which she encouraged Bill Clinton to support while he was president. ‘Partial birth abortion’ isn’t even a medical term. It’s a marketing term coined by anti-choicers in their bid to chip away at Roe v. Wade. For pro-choicers, it’s disappointing to see Kagan uncritically buying into that frame.”

Civil rights organizations question nominee Elena Kagan’s record on race

Washington Post: “The National Bar Association, the main organization of black lawyers, has refrained from endorsing Kagan, giving her a lukewarm rating. The group’s president, Mavis T. Thompson, said it ‘had some qualms’ about Kagan’s statements on crack-cocaine sentencing and what it regards as her inadequate emphasis while dean at Harvard Law School on diversifying the school along racial and ethnic lines. Others have expressed reservations about Kagan’s views on affirmative action, racial profiling and immigration.”

The 20th anniversary of Oka and the continuation of unearthing human rights at the G8/G20

Racialicious: “The actions that have taken place around the G8/G20 from Indigenous people, women, people of colour, the poor, the working class, queer and trans people and disabled people have decades, if not centuries, of baggage that lead up to this point of where we are at with zero accountability from governments for the continuation of oppression.”

For African-Americans, A Virtual Depression­ – Why?

The Nation: “The unemployment figures reflect only part of a broader pattern of socioeconomic disparity between blacks and whites; nearly all indexes—income, wealth, educational attainment, homeownership and foreclosures—show growing gaps and a retreat from gains made in the 1990s, gaps that are being devastatingly widened by the Great Recession.”