Tag: social justice

Casey’s 2020 Playlist

Wow, 2020. Is it over yet?

Music helped get me through this tumultuous year. Here’s this year’s playlist (or as they were tagged in prior years, mix cd).

Some bright spots were the releases by Norah Jones, The Chicks (formerly the Dixie Chicks), Meghan Trainor, and Pink! I enjoyed discovering some not-so-new but new-to-me songs from Ava Max and Alicia Keys — Underdog got some serious airtime for me in the pandemic (check out the music video). And being introduced to new queer artists Shea Diamond and Be Steadwell was fantastic — Be Steadwell’s song Sometimes is, to me, the perfect queer love song (bonus: the music video is both heartwarming and signed).

The Black Lives Matter movement influenced the list this year as I set out to find new artists of color and discovered Tobe Nwigwe and re-discovered Emeli Sandé. And it’s no coincidence that March March by The Chicks is on the list (I highly recommend watching the music video). I’ll say it again for those in the back: Black Lives Matter.

  1. Kings & Queens – Ava Max
  2. Evil Twin – Meghan Trainor
  3. So Am I – Ava Max
  4. I Am America – Shea Diamond
  5. Walk Me Home – Pink
  6. Texas Man – The Chicks
  7. Next To Me – Emeli Sandé
  8. Settlin’ – Sugarland
  9. Cowboy Take Me Away – Dixie Chicks
  10. Workin’ on It – Meghan Trainor
  11. Hurts to Be Alone – Norah Jones
  12. Underdog – Alicia Keys
  13. Sometimes – Be Steadwell
  14. Make It Home – Tobe Nwigwe
  15. March March – The Chicks
  16. I Am Woman – Helen Reddy
  17. The Scar – Carly Simon

Notice anything interesting about the list this year? I’ll give you a hint: take a read through the artist names and see if anything jumps out at you.

Not a straight white man in sight. I intentionally tried to seek out people of color, women, and LGBTQ+ artists this year. The list is still very (very) white and I continue to broaden my exposure to more artists of color.

You can listen to the songs on Spotify (except for the last track because it isn’t on Spotify). As always, the order of the songs have been carefully curated. You may not be able to listen to them in order with the Spotify free account.

We did good & fought bad

As promised in December 2017, last year Daniel and I upped our game to not just do good by donating to charities, but also to fight bad by giving money to local and national political campaigns.

Doing Good

This year we donated over $10k to the same organizations we supported in 2016 and 2017. We think these organizations, both local and national, are doing great work for youth, LGBTQ folks, women, POC, and the environment. Particularly in the case of the ACLU and Lambda Legal, we are proud to be a part of efforts to fight the GOP abomination, I mean administration.

Fighting Bad

In addition to donating to charitable organizations, we got political this year. We promised ourselves that we would do so only if we could continue supporting the charities we cared about first and I’m happy to say we were able to do that.

In total we gave over $9k to Democratic candidates running in the midterms. Not all of the candidates won, but it was worth every penny. I view it like an investment – some pay off in the short term (winning in the midterms) and some pay of in the long term (like Beto riling up Democratic voters for other races in Texas despite him not winning his race). And you can bet that we are in this for the long term.

Fighting Together

I’m more proud of how we were able to raise an additional $6k by engaging other people to donate. Together, we helped take back the House from the Republicans.

In 2020 we will be taking the gloves off again. We’ll continue to encourage voter registration & voter turn-out and put our money where our mouth is to fight for our country.

Casey’s 2018 Mix CD

2018 has been a hard year for many of us. Between the shit-show that is the GOP administration to #metoo, my community has really struggled. And this year’s mix CD playlist reflects it. (See the mix cd tag to see prior years.)

Pink’s Barbies and Better Life reminds us of simpler, arguably better, times as does Ben Rector’s Old Friends. I discovered Fire Drills by Dessa and Rescue by Yuna which are great reminders of the underlying struggle women face in this country as well as their strength and perseverance through it. This year I became estranged from some formerly-close people, bringing Somebody That I Use To Know to the forefront of my mind; because really: Take Me or Leave Me.

But this year wasn’t without (musical) redemption as I found Girl Blue’s song Fire Under Water (from a touching Las Vegas tourism advertisement of all places). Sam Hunt’s song House Party and Your Song by Rita Ora always makes me want to scoot-a-boot. Daniel and I heard orchestral performances of Billy Joel’s And So It Goes and Simon & Garfunkel’s The Sound of Silence by the Seattle Symphony this year too. The former was an instrumental arrangement for strings that was simply astounding and I’ve been unable to find a recording of it anywhere.

Also, did you know that Dolly Parton is a huge advocate of childhood literacy and her Imagination Library celebrated delivering their 100 millionth book to kids this year? That’s worth a little 9 to 5 for sure.

So without further ado, this is my 2018 Mix CD:

  1. And So It Goes – Billy Joel
  2. The Sound of Silence – Simon & Garfunkel
  3. Barbies – Pink
  4. Somebody That I Use To Know – Walk Off the Earth
  5. 9 to 5 – Dolly Parton
  6. Your Song – Rita Ora
  7. Rescue – Yuna
  8. Take Me or Leave Me – Jonathan Larson (from RENT)
  9. Fire Drills – Dessa
  10. Fire Under Water – Girl Blue
  11. House Party – Sam Hunt
  12. All Night Long – Lionel Richie
  13. You Can Call Me Al – Paul Simon
  14. Better Life – Pink
  15. Old Friends – Ben Rector
  16. 2 Places at 1 Time – Zac Brown Band
  17. Ladies in Lavender – Joshua Bell

You can listen to the songs on Spotify too. Note the order of the songs have been carefully curated as well, although I don’t think Spotify will let you listen to them in order on the free account.

Geeking out at GeekGirlCon

This weekend was GeekGirlCon (GGC), a convention dedicated to empowering geeky women, girls, and other underrepresented minorities. In many ways it resembles the larger Emerald City Comic Con that takes place in Seattle every March — there are great panels on interesting topics, tons of cosplay, and an entire huge floor of vendors selling awesome, geeky stuff. But the reason Daniel and I have attended GGC every year for the past 4 years instead of Emerald City Comic Con is because of the amazing diversity of people and specific focus on empowering women.

The vast majority of GGC attendees are women or enbys of all ages. And while there are a lot of white people present, there are a good number of people of color and the number keeps increasing every year. Of the sessions I attended, all but one of the panels had a person of color (most more than one POC). And only two had a guy on them and the guys were out numbered by women 3:1. GGC is one of the very few places that I as a gay white cis male feel like a minority and yet I still feel very welcome as a gay geek.

0070-dream-like-a-girl1 The vendor floor is awesome and full of great purveyors of Fun Geeky Stuff. We bought two new books from Blind Eye Books, a publisher of books with LGBTQ+ protagonists, and two more copies of the Dream Like a Girl poster for our nieces who don’t yet have one. While the vendor floor is wonderful, the real reason we attend GCC is because of the sessions.

Yesterday Daniel and I attended a session hosted by a panel of librarians and an archivist talking about library science careers and how one gets into it. Today we attended a session about museums and how fictional portrayal of museums differ from real life and how museums are changing to meet a modern world.

And probably my favorite session of the weekend was titled Careers at NASA: From Mission Operations to Public Engagement where 6 women scientists from Goddard Space Flight Center talked to a room full of girls and young women about how they found their way into NASA. The women talked about things they struggled with along the way, what a typical day looks like, and what they’re most proud of. Most importantly, these women made being a scientist and engineer relevant and accessible. This, to me, is the core of why GCC is awesome: it inspires young women and lets them know that they, too, can do amazing things!

It was a great weekend and more awesome sessions than we could attend. We’re already looking forward to next year!

Doing Good; Fighting Bad

Last year Daniel and I gave a lot of thought into how we can do some good in the world with our charitable donations. We found some great local and national organizations that we really believed were making an impact in the world by supporting women, people of color, immigrants, LGBTQ+, youth, and other minorities. This year we are excited to support those same organizations again.

Sometimes, however, it’s not enough to just Do Good, you have to also Fight Bad.

Accordingly, next year in addition to supporting local and national organizations at the same financial level we have been, we are giving an equal amount of money to local and national political campaigns.

This isn’t something we’re venturing into lightly. Both of us strongly believe that local communities should be the ones electing their representatives without outside influence. And in a perfect world people would have equal representation within that community to elect those officials. But we don’t live in a perfect world. We live in a world where Republicans have used gerrymandering to stack the deck in their favor, denying minorities equal representation in states across the nation. Not to mention re-enacting Jim Crow laws in 9 states and disenfranchising minority voters with voter ID laws.

We’ll be keeping a close eye on how the midterm races unfold over the next year and where we can put our money to good use. And I’m not above funding Republican campaigns to get the lesser of two Republican evils if it comes down to that. I’m not about to let perfect be the enemy of good enough.

It’s time for liberals to stop pretending we live in an ideal world and playing by idealist rules. It’s time to take the gloves off and buy our own congresspeople, even if that means setting aside some of our principles, because the Republicans have abandoned their principles years ago.

A Preponderance of Privilege

Despite being gay, I have a preponderance of privilege1.

I am privileged to be a white cis male born in America. I am privileged to come from a loving, caring household. My parents worked very hard while I was growing up and we always had enough quality food on the table. My parents paid for me to go to college and I graduated with no student loans. I am privileged to have a knack with computers, and privileged to have had access to one at a very early age. I am privileged to work in the tech industry and am paid insanely well. And while I work hard at my job, so do many others in many other industries who live paycheck to paycheck. I am privileged to be fully-abeled, have good health, and good health insurance through my company.

I have so much privilege that frankly, it’s embarrassing. I contributed nothing to being white, being male, being from a loving household, having a knack for tech, or being born fully-abled. Throughout the course of my life I’ve used and build upon these things to get where I am today. Doors were opened and opportunities presented to me because of my privilege.

The only aspect of my life where I don’t have privilege is being gay. And still I am privileged in that the thing that makes me part of a minority group is something I can easily hide if I felt my safety was at risk.

Being gay is what helped me see my privilege.

I think until you can identify some area where you don’t have privilege, it’s hard to really grasp what privilege means. It’s much easier to see doors that were closed in front of you for something you can’t change rather than ones opened just because of who you are. It wasn’t until I had to fight for the right to marry the man I loved that I understood that not everyone is playing on the same field.

It’s worth noting that privilege does not denigrate effort. You can work hard for what you’ve achieved with or without privilege, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t start with a leg up on the ladder because of that privilege.

Being privileged is what makes it easier for me to live as an openly gay man.

LGBTQ+ people can be fired simply for being gay in 28 states, yet because of my privilege I was never worried about this when I lived in Texas nor am I concerned about someone not hiring me because I’m gay. My privilege lets me get away with things like this worry-free that others can’t. And I feel that it’s my obligation to use that privilege to be very visibly out as a gay man, both personally and professionally. To advocate for those less privileged in my workplace, be they LGBTQ+, women, people of color, etc.

I consider it my moral obligation to use my privilege to help others with less privilege in any way that I can3, Because I did nothing to earn this privilege myself.

 

1 I know many people get wound around the axle on the word “privilege”. If you are a religiously-inclined person, just substitute “blessed” or “blessings” for privilege. It’s not an exact match but if that helps you with the concept, go for it.2

2 That ruins the alliteration in the title though, so just retitle this post in your head to A Bevy of Blessings.

3 To those of religious backgrounds, this should bring to mind the parable of the faithful servant.

Can we agree that Nazis are bad?

Trump supporters:

I have a hard time finding common ground with you, and common ground is essential in establishing a fruitful conversation about anything.

Can we at least agree that Nazis are bad?

The Nazis that came bearing swastikas.

The Nazis with their goal of an Aryan-only (ie: white-only) world.

The Nazis that hated and killed Jews, gays, the disabled, and anyone else who wasn’t like them.

The Nazis that killed over 11 million people in World War II.

The Nazis that my grandfather fought on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.

Can we at least agree that Nazis are bad?

Because President Trump can’t:

“I’m not putting anybody on a moral plane. What I’m saying is this — you had a group on one side, and you had a group on the other, and they came at each other with clubs and it was vicious and it was horrible and it was a horrible thing to watch,” Trump said. “But there is another side. There was a group on this side, you can call them the left, you’ve just called them the left, that came, violently attacking the other group. So you can say what you want, but that’s the way it is.”

Trump is claiming a moral equivalency between people who showed up with guns and swastikas chanting “Jews will not replace us” and the protesters who showed up to oppose them.

So I ask you again: can we at least agree that Nazis are bad?

#WhyIMarch: For visibility

Saturday, the day after Trump’s inauguration, I am joining the Women’s March in Seattle, a sister march to the one happening in Washington, DC. I am marching for visibility. Visibility for myself, my partner, my female friends, my friends of color, my LGBT friends, my Muslim friends, and others.

I have zero confidence that the incoming administration seeks to represent or benefit anyone who isn’t an affluent old white straight cis male. Look at how Trump’s top 4 cabinet positions are all white males, the first time in 28 years. Or how all of his cabinet is anti-LGBT. Or his intent to deport illegal immigrants and build a wall between the US and Mexico. Or create a Muslim registry here in the US. Or how he personally treats women, as exhibited by his treatment of Fox news anchor Megyn Kelly and his comment to “grab them by the pussy”.

I hate to break it to Trump, but straight cis white males are in the minority in this country. Hell, males alone are in the minority in this country.1

So I’m marching to make sure Trump and the rest of his administration know that we are here and we are not going away. We will stand up for each other and actively resist any efforts to erode our civil liberties. We are angry and we are motivated.

March with me.

Not in Seattle or Washington DC: find a march near you.

1 In 2010, 50.8% of the people in the US were women according to the census.

Doing Good

Daniel and I have serious concerns about the incoming administration’s attitude and commitment to the environment and the rights of anyone who isn’t an old straight white guy. While we may not be doing well, we can at least do good.

We sat down and made a list of organizations that were tackling issues and supporting groups near and dear to our hearts. We focused on organizations that support women, LGBT, people of color, and immigrants, both locally and nationally. We ended up with a rather large list of organizations we wanted to support at the end of 2016 but not enough money to support them all like we wanted. Instead of giving everyone a medium amount of money, we gave big to a few organizations and gave small to the rest.

Primary organizations

We gave big to these organizations, wanting to focus locally and in areas that directly affect our LGBT community and women.

Local

National

Secondary organizations

These aren’t any less important than the others, but we feel it’s more effective to give larger donations and there was only so much money to go around. We believe in the work these groups are doing and wanted to let them know they have our support.

Local

National

Where are you doing good?

What organizations are near and dear to your heart? What groups are you supporting?