Megathread written by @JamesConeZone@hexbear.net
Malvina Reynolds (August 23, 1900 – March 17, 1978) was an American folk/blues singer-songwriter and political activist, best known for her songwriting, particularly the songs "Little Boxes" and "What Have They Done to the Rain." Malvina was born in San Francisco, California, United States, to David and Abagail Milder, Jewish socialist immigrants who opposed involvement in World War I. Her mother was born in Russia, and her father was born in Hungary. On the morning of her high-school graduation, Malvina's teacher told her that she and her cousin were to be refused their diplomas in front of everybody because her parents opposed the US interceding in WW1 and for being socialists.
While she was in high school, Malvina first met William “Bud” Reynolds at a socialist dance. She married someone else, and so did Bud (after he proposed and she refused). He ran for governor of Michigan on the Socialist ticket, with the slogan, “You provide the evictions, we’ll provide the riots!” They found each other again after she was divorced, and this time she said yes. She married Bud, a carpenter and labor organizer, in 1934. The FBI had a large file on her after she began writing for the Daily People's World, the CPUSA's official newspaper.
In 1932 during a fundraising party to defend the Scottsboro Bboys, black teenagers falsely accused of crimes, the KKK burned a cross at Malvina's parents home, dragged Malvina's family and friends from their home to assault them. When the police showed up, they arrested everyone, including her family. They imprisoned Malvina's family and left the KKK to roam free in the police station because they were sheriff deputies from Orange County. According to Malvina's daughter, Nancy: "There was a grand jury investigation. And the family was afraid that this would hurt their business that they were all living on [clothing tailor shop], this was in 1932 in the Depression. And they were really living off the trade from the sailors. Well, it turned out the sailors were mostly Irish Catholics. So the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And they kept the store."
She earned her BA and MA in English and her PhD in 1939. Though she was highly educated, she was also a socialist, Jewish, and a woman during the Depression and found no work. She became a social worker and columnist at CPUSA's official newspaper, an assembly line worker for a bomb casing factory during WW2, and then a naval tailor in her parents' shop in Long Beach.
Reynolds began her songwriting career late in life. She was in her late forties when she met Earl Robinson, Pete Seeger, and other folk singers. She returned to school at UC Berkeley, where she studied music theory. Reynolds went on to write several popular songs, including "Little Boxes" (1962), "What Have They Done to the Rain" (1962, about nuclear fallout), "It Isn't Nice" (1964, a civil rights anthem), "Turn Around" (1959, about children growing up), and "There's a Bottom Below" (about depression). Reynolds was also a noted composer of children's songs, including "Love Is Something (Magic Penny)" and "Morningtown Ride" (1957), a top-5 UK single (December 1966) recorded by The Seekers.
She was known in left circles, wrote songs for the Henry Wallace campaign in 1948 and got some acclaim later in life when Belafonte recorded "Turn Around." Reynolds' most famous song, "Little Boxes" made famous by Pete Seeger just at the time he was blacklisted, has enjoyed renewed popularity by being featured in Showtime's TV series Weeds. "Little Boxes" was inspired visually by the houses of Daly City, California.
Reynolds died on March 17, 1978, after pancreatitis caused her kidneys to fail. She wanted little fanfare to mark her passing—in "Wake for a Singer," Reynolds wrote, "Celebrate my death, of whom it could be said/She was a working-class woman and a red."
Her protests songs support unions and the working class explicitly, especially the Carolina Cotton Mill Song.
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The great Satan will fall in a fire created by its own hubris and strengthened by its hate and desire for constant consumption
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Normalize putting work-involved dreams as hours on your time sheet
I believe that would fall under the scope of emotional labor
These parasitic institutions have interrupted my life so much that they make an appearance even when I am in one of my most human states, so I deserve a treat
I am going to annihilate you. I am going to annihilate you. I am going to annihilate you.
The antibiotics are working
and I can munch a lot better now. Today is so far going good.
also cw: alcoholism
spoiler
My dad said he would stop drinking again, he didn't drink yesterday since he had to drive me to the dentist and stuff, and today he hasn't. I hope this time he doesn't relapse and he stays sober for long as possible. Because like, I really can't handle these things anymore. This year just been one of the worst and I really really need some stability. It was there before he relapsed but now I guess that stability is back? I dunno, I also just feel like this year I'm attracting a lot of bad luck.
Also if he stays sober, I can do some things again because it puts things back on the table. So at least some good things. But seriously I hope he stays sober and I know it's hard, but when I can't handle it anymore, I really can't. It probably helps that I'm not mentally present 80% of the time usually. Along with that, Last year my mental state was absolutely bad and I was probably in a few mental health crises. However I don't think that was from just my dad drinking since I was also taking care of my mom to before she passed. I dunno, I just want like, things to be calm for a while. Just please because I'm really tired of losing my mind like every week and then bouncing back between everything awful and hopeless, to everything will be okay and there will be hope and just make it through the night, tomorrow will be better. It is really fucking exhausting vacillating between those two points constantly.
i feel bad that i haven't chosen a name my therapist can use for me
i'm still a ways out from beginning any serious transition apart from changing my pronouns here, and it doesn't feel right to use a girl's name while i'm still so obviously guy'd up. big ol fake over here
you absolutely aren't fake, don't let yourself fall into that trap. what you feel is real and justified. you should definitely try out names though, it helps a lot and i'm sure your therapist will be accommodating if you find one you like better
Yea that imposter feeling is rough, I feel like most trans people go through that. I'm sure you know deep down you know that you're valid in your gender identity but just in case, know that no cis people even come close to the worries that you have with "feeling fake" about their gender identity haha
I think testing out names with your therapist is a good start though! If you decide to change, you don't have to tell everybody you know about your new name again and hopefully your therapy sessions will be a safe space for it
Sometimes I look around and think like, do these people want good things? Do they even want a better world? Would it be cruel of me to become a dictator that fixes the climate and feeds and houses everyone? Clearly people don't want that, who am I to drag them by their hair kicking and screaming towards a better world?
After Covid I am 100% on board with ruling with an iron fist. USians at least are not able to make responsible decisions or act responsibly and will need to be cared for and educated like children. I don't care what they think about it. I'm sick of seeing my friends suffer for the self destructive greed of the capitalists, and I no longer have any respect for Americans. We're gonna have a better world if I have to drag them by the ears.
I'm open to being wrong about this but All HR Workers Are basically Bastards right? aside from the (pretty fucking admittedly big) difference of doing direct violence to people vs not they seem to serve all the same interests as cops (protecting capital at the expense of the worker, Office Life Edition). And I mean there's a reason they generally aren't allowed into unions.
My sister's taking an college HR course in Canada. Looking through it, it seems to be almost entirely about mediation between unions and existing labour laws. So it's anti-union as far as the government will currently allow. I'd guess the people who want to do HR are already massive shitlibs rather than HR training itself being more bourgeois than anything else in the economy. Maybe the job itself has their work being easier when workers are crushed or something. I'm generally pretty skeptical of ideology informing people's actions over whatever material benefits the systems they're a part of gives them.
I think the arguement that HR occupy a similar role to cops and should not be considered workers is valid. Their job is to protect the interests of the boss. They don't produce anything and their explicit purpose is to discipline and control workers in a way that is detrimental to the workers and beneficial to the boss.
My last job was providing trainings to HR types on how to follow labor laws, but it was essentially, "here's all the different ways and reasons you can say 'No' to employees and the few times you're legally required to say 'Yes'." Lots of details on how to turn down sick time requests, minimum legal amount of PTO, things like that.
There was a path to promotion for me at that job, but I left it for some reason
Small not-really-self-promotion: I got a good quality scan of Anna Louise Strong's This Soviet World uploaded to libgen. https://hexbear.net/post/279362
I think it's an incredible eye-opener into how the Soviets made their new society (it was written in 1936 so placed solidly during the breakneck industrialization), and how that society in turn changed the people living in it. Here's a wild quote from the chapter The Factory Collective; I cannot even imagine feeling this way about my workplace:The intimate sense of possession which a Soviet worker feels in his factory was strikingly shown to me by my step-daughter Ducia, who worked in a large electric plant near Moscow. I accompanied her on her return to the factory after she had been ill at home with grippe. As we approached the plant she grew excited; a vividness came into her gestures which had been lacking during her two weeks at home. She insisted that I notice and admire the factory laboratory where she worked, the power plant, the restaurant, the big workers' club building; she pointed out the pathway between the shops that led to the park and stadium. I suddenly realized that Ducia had been positively homesick for her factory.
I read an account from right at the end of the ussr. The workers at this factory made food products based on what materials they could get. If fruit was available they made fruit juice. If carrots and peas were avialable they'd take their whole assembly line apart and re-configure it to make baby food. Whatever produce was available to them, they could reconfigure the factory to put it to use.
I think this account was from her book The Stalin Era, but at another point Strong recounts how in this one relatively isolated place in the USSR, so many people had come from all the surrounding region to find work at this one new factory that there wasn't enough work to be done. On top of that, most other factories in the broader region already had their yearly quotas filled in. So all of the people who had nothing to do got together and started calling up other factories around the USSR to ask "Hey, we need work and want to build a new factory. Can you volunteer a bunch of steel to send our way?" or "Can you send us concrete?" And volunteer brigades at these other factories worked overtime to send these people what they needed to build a second factory in this town, just so that they could work and contribute to the collective project.
I just. Haven't felt that motivated to do anything, let alone WORK in... a frankly depressing long time. And for these rural peasants to be so fired up and excited to contribute to their collective life really moved me.
Edit: Found it. It's on the bottom of page 28 of the book (29 of the PDF), which you can find here.
Capitalist hell world probs
Stay in a town where rent is ungodly to retain somewhat of a social life but lose any possibility of saving money
Move back in with your parents for free housing but have no social life
Checking out a thing organised monthly for queer autistic people, it's like a two minute walk away from a train museum. Feel like we're going to lose some people on their way there, how are they supposed to compete with that?
Godamn. If this UPS strike happens and other workers refuse to cross the picket line, shit could get real
I think he just wanted to get as far away from me as possible, didn't even have time to snap a photo before he disappeared into the trees. Never seen a deer in Helsinki before (granted, it was an area with lots of fields and trees)
Saw a friggin moose calf last year while walking home which frankly freaked me out
Yup, getting trampled by a momma moose was my immediate concern. It may have been big enough that it had recently been left on its own though. It suddenly came out of the bushes and crossed the road in front of me and thankfully there was no second moose following it