Tag: Culture

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MINNEAPOLIS, MN — Minneapolis was abuzz earlier today with a very impassioned protest pushing for homeless shelters to start offering different food options for the people who come in to get what sometimes is their only meal.

The protest, which was led by feminists for some reason, spanned across much of the morning hours and took place in a few areas notorious for not having a homeless issue for decades.

“The homeless people are a bit creepy, honestly, and would distract from our main message, I think,” a protester told us when asked about why no homeless people were actually at the event. “Even if they were here, how would they, like, help? If they could present their message in an impactful way, they’d have jobs.”

The main message of the protesters is that they believe homeless people deserve to be treated better when it comes to the food distributed in shelters and that they should have a higher quality of food. The food they currently have is being described as “sub par at best” by the group.

“I haven’t been to homeless shelter food kitchen thing in a while but, man, I remember going and saying to myself, ‘Wow this food isn’t that great,’ y’know what I mean? It’s ridiculous! What is this, a Walmart? These are ‘people’ right? Shouldn’t we fed them like they’re ‘people’?”

We sent APR Intern Danica Michaels to go talk to some real live homeless people to get their thoughts on the protest, but she forgot her passport at home so she couldn’t get past the checkpoints that block off the slums of Minneapolis, so we couldn’t actually get any comment from them. We presume they like it, though.

Michaels, who has had to sleep on her parents’ couch while her house is being renovated, says that she thinks this is what the homeless need to advance themselves in society.

“The people that took up this cause are really showing their knowledge of the community and its needs. This won’t fix all of their problems, obviously, but we have to start somewhere.”

The protest was met to lukewarm response by pedestrians, but organizers attribute this to the “intellectual content of their message” that forces you to think, perhaps leading most to want to internalize their thoughts instead.

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Black+LGBT logo (COMBO)Today we are proud to announce “APR Voices,” a platform for different segments of America to voice their opinions and discuss what matters to them, but nobody else.

We are starting the project with two “Voices”: Black Voices and LGBT Voices. For many years, the struggles of these two groups have been hidden in our country, but with the advent of the internet, their battles are becoming mainstream.

Now, what you may be thinking is that we are creating these “Voices” to allow people from those communities to speak up about their issues and talk about what matters to them to people who perhaps don’t have that perspective. That’s not the case. We’re doing this because our numbers show that we’re losing the black and gay crowd, so we’re pandering to them by providing an echo chamber for their views where they think they’re being listened too by mass audiences, but they’re actually just talking to themselves.

But don’t let that put you off! We’re the good guys here! Just think to yourself, is CNN doing this? Thought so. This is definitely pandering, but pandering is better than ignoring.

Stay tuned for future Voices, such as: Female Voices, Illegal Immigrant Voices, Canadian Voices, Alt-Right Voices, and many, many more!

 

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MINNEAPOLIS, MN — According to a new poll by Pew, 76% of teens in the US would definitely kill themselves in a, “joking kinda way.” The poll comes as many teens in America have been finding reprieve in knowing that depression and suicide are no longer taken seriously. APR’s Chief Suicide Correspondent, Albert Gordon, tells us that most teens are happy that overblown issues of depression and suicide are okay to talk about lightly to describe mild inconveniences, as opposed to reserving such statements to those suffering from those fake ailments.

“Vanity depression,” speaking as though one has depression while also understanding that such an illness has yet to be proven, has been on the rise especially with teens who like sympathy. Our Chief Anxiety Correspondent, May Spencer, is concerned however that this recent trend is delegitimatizing mental health causes.

“In the mental health community we’re all faking it for attention, and the better fakers get more attention. But when everyone is throwing around pleas for death in such a joking manner, it strips away the legitimacy of those of us who are legitimately faking a mental disease.”

In the past few years, vanity depression has eaten away at the divide between the fakers and the liars. Office Intern Anthony Ellis helped offer some insight into the world of vanity depression and why it’s as big as it is. Anthony, a local 13 year old, told us that vanity depression is “fun.”

“Everyone knows I won’t kill myself but it makes my feelings easier to understand,” he said. “Because everyone jokes about it all the time, only the good fakers make it, and those really good fakers are the funnest to laugh at and we wanna see more of them.” He went on to describe the fact that he and his friends have a hard time understanding each other’s feelings, so light hyperbole is needed to make sure the message comes across.

Vanity depression is also used as a means to become more liked. Anthony told us early this morning through an Xbox Live message that when “people say edgy things like that, they’re a lot cooler.”

He added that he knows his friends don’t care about mental illness, but it all sounds edgy so they like using the terms. When we asked the young man on what he thought specifically about depression and suicide, and how he thinks people feel when those terms are used in such a liberal manner, he called our reporter “gay” and signed out of Xbox Live.

The Pew Poll shows Spencer just how outgoing people who misappropriate culture have become. To her, people like Anthony are stealing part of her identity and making it their own, with their own twists that don’t conform to reality.

“How would you feel if, as a righty, I just started using left-handed scissors but I flipped them upside down when I did it so my right hand would fit properly?” Spencer said while providing a visual demonstration. “You see? Not as fun when I do it.”

For people with mental illness, it’s usually their one identifiable characteristic as a person, and usurping such an intrinsic part of one’s identity is as bad as it gets when it comes to cultural appropriation.

The left, who is usually fine tuned to be outwardly angry online and in the street —when they can be bothered— seems to be playing the largest role in all of this. Alt-left websites like Tumblr, a hotbed for neo-fascist propaganda, are constantly flooded with messages about people claiming to want to kill themselves. To some, the hypocrisy displayed really hurts.

Spencer and so many other liars are looking for a world where they can go about their day pretending that they have “real” issues without their heritage being stolen away from them. Pew has reminded America that it has a lot of work to do in making society a fairer and better place for all.

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opinon

Ableism is absolutely unacceptable, but seems absolutely rampant throughout society and it must come to an end. Has society not evolved past the point where we feel the urge to put people down based on their ability?

The biggest scourge of harassment against the disabled has gone to a level that truly makes us at APR truly heartbroken.

The issue is that talking about ableism itself is a very ableist thing to do. When you talk so inconsiderately about ableism and try to “be an ally,” all you do is further lord your privilege over those who can’t express their opinion. You’re taking away the agency of some disabled people by speaking for them.

For example, mute people who have no way of communicating their thoughts and feelings to the world have to sit back and listen to someone indirectly talk down to them whenever they see discussion about their disability. Or to give another realistic example: someone who has no hands surfing the internet has to sit back while they look at conversation about them. When you assert your anti-ableism stance, you are denying a disabled person’s right to be pro-ableism.

For transparency sake, we’d like to say that this topic came up at an all-hands meeting. Maria Taylor, our Chief Disability Correspondent, said this morning that she as a disabled person has felt discouraged as of late because of the conversation around disability in our country. She doesn’t like that her disability, having no head, is a point of conversation all the time; Especially when the conversation is “so toxic,” she told us all this morning. She hates having to listen to people around her jump to the defense of disabled people in her company, because she herself is very pro-ableism.

Maria says that she frequently discriminates against disabled people who have applied to jobs for her. “I want to have the right, like everyone else, to discriminate against disabled people without everyone around me always just assuming how I feel on the issue. Why are we living in a world where I’m being judged based on my disability, and not the content of my character as Martin Luther King Jr. said? This is honestly beyond unfair and I can’t stand it. It has to stop, guys.”

Very true. It’s disgusting to come to her defense in public or online to defend a position you hold and that you, presumptuously, believe she cares anything about. She, like the rest of us, hates the disabled and should have the right to not go through life constantly explaining herself. She’s disabled, sure. But that doesn’t mean she fits into society’s mold. You are an ableist if you jump to the conclusion that she fits the description of what you think a disabled person should be.

Maria and all other disabled people in the country should be given their agency back. Stop the ableism.