WhatSaraSaid
@whatsarasaid.bsky.social
2.5K followers 2.4K following 9.6K posts
Abortion advocate, researcher, utility infielder for bodily autonomy. Roots in Ohio, branches where the sagebrush grows. We're going to get the government out of your doctor’s office, because freedom is for every body.
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whatsarasaid.bsky.social
my 87yo Republican mother in law is taking it to the streets, for the first time in her life, with her friends at the retirement home on Saturday and that's why we will win
kevinmkruse.bsky.social
Someone in my mentions is upset because these people haven’t suffered the worst at ICE’s hands and therefore they shouldn’t be praised for being out on the streets?

Yeah, no. To push back on these people we need everyone — especially those with relative privilege — to get up and get involved.
kevinmkruse.bsky.social
Portland, you magnificent weirdos
whatsarasaid.bsky.social
Welp

I had to block several helpful people who told me that I too should “start getting out there”

in response to a post saying it’s good, actually, that rich white ladies are driving their Subarus to No Kings (leaving unstated “because that lowers the chance of state violence”)

Out of pocket
Reposted by WhatSaraSaid
pedsortho.bsky.social
Please remember that the disgust people have over Christopher Columbus is not based on some modern, 21st century “woke” ideology, but rather on contemporaneous accounts of atrocities that make many modern genocides appear quaint in comparison.

Below, are the accounts of Bartlomé de las Casas.
But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had in-vested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.
The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed. After each six or eight months' work in the mines, which was the time required of each crew to dig enough gold for melting, up to a third of the men died.
While the men were sent many miles away to the mines, the wives remained to work the soil, forced into the excruciating job of digging and making thousands of hills for cassava plants.
Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides... they ceased to pro-create. As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and fam-ished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desper-ation.... In this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk ... and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fer-tile... was depopulated... My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write....
whatsarasaid.bsky.social
My kid is 25 and had to prove citizenship to work a federal job. Chief Justice Roberts has demonstrated the kind of father he is by allowing this to happen. Of course his Irish born adopted children will never be violated, shamed & endangered like our kids. Today’s Republicans are the worst people.
whatsarasaid.bsky.social
www.chicagotribune.com/2025/10/13/i...

Since Chief Justice Roberts’ two children were adopted from Ireland, I guess they will never be arrested for “not looking like a Roberts”

And yet, he and Justice Barrett have a special responsibility here. They are moral and ethical failures. /2
whatsarasaid.bsky.social
Greeley, born at Illinois Masonic hospital & adopted, carries a copy of her passport just in case she runs into federal agents.

“I am Latina and I am a service worker, I fit the description

During the encounter, Greeley said they told her she “doesn’t look like” a Greeley.

Paging CJ Roberts /1
whatsarasaid.bsky.social
thanks, lots of your followers wanted someone to be mad at for the contemptuous attitudes of certain organizers toward the people who show up and whose presence is protective for protest

I get why they're mad, but I'm not the target
whatsarasaid.bsky.social
as a courtesy to your readers it might be kind to quote post summarizing what was said, not...whatever this is

or I can delete this innocuous reply to a conversation about the importance of inclusive organizing vs yelling at people for showing up, which is what it was a reply to
whatsarasaid.bsky.social
you people

"should include" is a commonly used phrase meaning "should be inclusive toward, welcoming to"

hope this helps
whatsarasaid.bsky.social
...how does 'protest should include' do that? it does not

do they came to yell at someone who said something that does indeed deserve to be called out that I didn't say & reading the thread makes it obvious

you're welcome to give everyone the most gracious reading if your schedule permits though
whatsarasaid.bsky.social
As the first polling on Prop 50 (CA redistricting) comes back, you can expect California's remaining Republican members to make every effort to get right with their duty to defend the Constitution, & Congress's role under it, against all enemies. They're weak & spineless, but they like living in DC!
caroleeena.bsky.social
A second House member has broken with Mike Johnson over the Trump shutdown.
whatsarasaid.bsky.social
I was thinking of my first mother in law, who genuinely did not believe that you can't always talk nicely to the cop and drive away with a warning, until we provided her further information about America* when she was 68, and she's been in the street since
*grandchild who isn't white
whatsarasaid.bsky.social
free & fair elections an opposition party can win are a goal, not a strategy; the question is what blend of movement tactics get us there in time for Nov 2026
whatsarasaid.bsky.social
OTD 1987: Gay activists protest state laws letting cops break in your bedroom & cite you for having sex illegally. The Supreme Court had recently validated these laws as compatible with the Constitution in 'Bowers v Hardwick'. 10/11 March on DC of 250K Americans & 1st display of the Names Project
photo of people sitting in circles on plaza in front of SCOTUS, waiting to be arrested, Oct 13 1987
whatsarasaid.bsky.social
way to embody the problem, ma'am
whatsarasaid.bsky.social
Pope Bob of the South Side is going to give certain members of the USCCB agita every day until something changes, one can expect (his mom, like Madeline L'Engle, was a Catholic school librarian, no one could have expected less from him)
implausibleblog.bsky.social
Pope Leo says that American bishops need to be more vocal and support migrant communities from being abducted by ICE in US cities

"Important that we as church give a message of hope in the midst of these horrible struggles, what's going on in some cities in the US"

"The church cannot be silent"
Reposted by WhatSaraSaid
stephenwest.bsky.social
How W. E. B. Du Bois responded to government policing of "anti-American" sentiment during the 1910s:

"I took great satisfaction in being able to sit back in my chair and answer blandly, 'We are seeking to have the Constitution of the United States thoroughly and completely enforced.' ”
Federal agents invaded even the offices of The Crisis and the National Association for the advancement of colored people and asked searching questions: " just what, after all, were our objects and activities?” I took great satisfaction in being able to sit back in my chair and answer blandly, “We are seeking to have the constitution of the United states thoroughly and completely enforced.” It took some ingenuity, even for Southerners, to make treason out of that.
Reposted by WhatSaraSaid
forevernever.bsky.social
Green Card holders don't like carrying the actual card because if it's lost/stolen, it's a pain to get a replacement. One of my friends carried a paper copy of it.
royalpratt.bsky.social
NEWS: ICE gave a Rogers Park man a $130 ticket for not having his papers on him. They rounded him up last week and eventually let him go, but not without a fine that some critics say is un-American. Trump admin enforcing little-used law
www.chicagotribune.com/2025/10/13/i...
ICE tickets Chicago man with legal residency $130 for not having his papers on him: ‘It’s not fair…I’m a resident’
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement fined Rueben Antonio Cruz $130 for not having his papers with him.
www.chicagotribune.com
whatsarasaid.bsky.social
it's really tough to organize the Zoomers who had some stuff happen (Covid) at the stage of development where they should've been exposed to organizers drawing the connections between their material circumstances and politics but instead were either delivering burritos or on Zoom meetings
whatsarasaid.bsky.social
excuse me I am certain it was 'hold my beer'
whatsarasaid.bsky.social
fun fact: naturalized citizens get a $1900 piece of paper called a certificate of citizenship once they 'follow the rules'

y'all are never going to believe what is printed on that document: the citation to the US code making it a CRIME to reproduce it

so, nice catch, Mr Kavanaugh, it's catch 22
whatsarasaid.bsky.social
electoral politics are necessary to harness the movement power built in protest & organizing, if we hope to restore both democratic accountability for policy AND the balance of powers in our constitution

but electoral politics was never going to be sufficient to build that power

simple ain't easy
jakemgrumbach.bsky.social
The siren call of electoral strategy and analysis partially crowded out work on things like law, organizational resistance, and protest. I blame myself, too
whatsarasaid.bsky.social
did not expect this quite innocuous reply post to bring out quite so many weirdos who want someone they feel good about yelling at, but...if you're new to this platform, walking into a conversation and spitting fire on the last person to speak is rude, and no one has to tolerate it here