La Lubu
What would a pop song be without the riffs, refrains, and harmonies of its backup vocalists? Although these singers are usually relegated to the margins, and few, if any, become household names, their work has defined countless songs that remain in our hearts and collective consciousness. Twenty Feet from Stardom juxtaposes interviews with industry legends (Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, and others) and the relative unknowns who support them like Darlene Love, Merry Clayton, Lisa Fischer, and Judith Hill as they illuminate the art of melding their own distinct voices with lead vocals and reveal their desires for careers as solo artists. Twenty Feet from Stardom traces the backup singers’ history—from those Phil Spector–produced pop tunes and soul-inspired British Explosion acts of the 1960s, to their reversal of fortune when the recording industry changed in the 1990s, and into today.
i’m really, really, really, REALLY excited about this.
because Black women singing/doing rock and roll!!
Every day, workers are forced to minimize safety in order to keep their jobs. The vast majority of American workers have no unions to defend their right to workplace safety. The U.S. Department of Labor and other federal agencies do not protect workers from being killed on the job.
The explosion in West, Texas was as big as the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVeigh, yet there will be no war on this kind of terrorism. This is because the prevailing philosophy is profit before people.
American workers are more likely to be killed by their boss than a terrorist. Last year, approximately 5,000 workers were killed at work by unsafe conditions.
Kevin Harrington, New York City
(via socialismartnature)
Truth.
Congress has been doing its best to gut OSHA for a long, long time now: fines have not risen in ages (big companies can absorb the “you willfully killed an employee” fine without blinking), and OSHA has had a shit of a time promulgating new regulations. Most OSHA regs date back to ANSI standards of the late 60s, and iirc, the last big update of chemical standards was in the mid-80s. (One of the last reg updates — hexavalent chrome, the same chemical that the Julia Roberts film was about — only happened because a union had sued for AN ETERNITY to get it. They won several times running — once to say, yes, you shall have your regulation; again to say, what, you mean you wanted it in a timely manner??; and again to say, what, when you said “timely manner” you meant timely-timely and not just whenever?? — before the courts finally told Congress to BACK THE FUCK OFF and let OSHA make their reg already.)
…do I need to tell you how much manufacturing has changed since 1969? How about the chemical industry? SO MANY NEW CHEMICALS SINCE THE 1980s.
Hell, it’s gotten so bad, that the chemists (industrial hygienists, they’re called) employed by OSHA and NIOSH formed their own professional organization (the NCGIH), which publishes a book every year of what the regulations WOULD be if they got to have their say. And employers-of-conscience use THAT book in addition to the OSHA regs. But then a bunch of industry lobbyists up and sued NCGIH, trying to force them to stop publishing that book, because the book was making them look bad and sometimes helping employees win employer-negligence lawsuits.
(this is my bitter laugh)
And mind you, this all is far, far worse when viewed from an intersectionality perspective. F’rinstance, immigrants are FAR more likely to be killed on the job than other workers: some of that roots in language or culture (not knowing they have rights to a safer workplace than they’ve got, or not believing in those rights, once told; or alternatively, not being able to communicate with coworkers/employers well enough to understand what is or is not a dangerous way to do something), some of it is being in such an economically precarious position that they can’t afford to take the risk of trusting in whistleblower protections (which are far, far from perfect), and some of it is living in dead fear of *other* branches of the federal government (ICE!) and thus being justifiably unwilling to cooperate with *any* government inspectors. (In Oregon, there is a law expressly forbidding OR-OSHA inspectors from sharing info with immigration or police, to help back the “no really, you can trust me, I won’t turn you in, even if I *wanted* to the law forbids me from doing so, just tell me, IS YOUR EMPLOYER TRING TO KILL YOU?” Some white people are as mad as hell about that law and want it gutted, as you might imagine. God forbid that undocumented workers should have any kind of protection from their employers!)
The situation is a long, long way from how it was supposed to work, back when it was all set up in 1971. And yes, union-busting is part of the reason for that.
…and y’know, I’m just going to stop talking now, because I could go on about this for a long, long time.
But in summation: you should be able to go to work and come home with as many body parts as you left with, and you should be able to come home with them all in good working order, too. You really, really fucking should.
(via sanguinarysanguinity)
(Source: socialistworker.org, via so-treu)
Ya know, incase your day wasn’t ruined already.
he looks like a foot idc what he has to say
Wow. Y’know, most of the time when I hear the phrase “looks like foot”, the person in question turns out to be a little bit on the homely side. But…I just googled “Mike Jeffries” and this guy really does look like a foot. With fungus-filled toenails. Hard-ass calluses on top of bunions. Toe jam. This guy fell through the ugly tree and hit every goddamn branch on the way down.
(Source: coagulates, via wretchedoftheearth)
Lauryn Hill Jail: Singer Sentenced To Three Months In Prison For Tax Evasion
i want to know why we’ll throw a rich black woman in prison for having a “parade of excuses” and “feeling put upon” but we can’t manage to figure out how to put multi-billionaire white men who have actively worked to destroy cities like detroit in prison.
(via iinventedeverything)(via iinventedeverything)
Is Junk Food really cheaper? New York Times article shows a profound example.
THIS. THIS. THISTHISTHIS.
No more excuses, people!!!
Or I could eat whatever the fuck I want and still run in formation without dying.
kthx.
One day we’ll stop comparing completely unrelated things & using false numbers to food shame right? Right?
Funny, but I’m having a really hard time picturing groceries being that cheap in NYC. They sure the hell are not in the Rust Belt. Take the chicken-and-potatoes dinner. Setting aside the fact of where-the-hell-are-the-spices and what-goes-on-the-“salad” (translation: lettuce) besides salt, pepper, and oil…..the cost of that chicken IRL is going to be around nine bucks, the cost of the loaf of wheat bread is going to be around $1.80, the lemon is going to be a dollar, and the milk is going to be close to three bucks. Now let’s add in the cost of the gasoline to get to the grocery store, since grocery stores are all located in the pricier neighborhoods people of average income can’t afford to live in (well, actually out by the highway interchanges and de-facto “business sections” while the older neighborhoods of the inner city languish). Finally, let’s put a price on the dish soap, sponges, and most importantly *the time* it takes to cook and clean. especially after a physically demanding non-creative-class job. And when we’re done with the true pricing, the fast food is either cheaper than or comparable to the made-from-scratch……except no dishes to do, no worries about stuff going bad in the fridge (another disadvantage to the midwest; our food spends so much time on trucks that fresh stuff has a fridge shelf life of three days…..unless you spend your money on the boutique prices of the farmer’s market and can somehow make it there on the one day it’s open during nontypical business hours).
Don’t get me wrong—-I cook from scratch a lot. “Food snob” is pretty much synonymous with being Sicilian. But I refuse to labor under the delusion that it’s easier or cheaper to do so. It isn’t. It tastes better. For me, it’s an act of creativity in a life that doesn’t often afford that possibility. But this food shaming stuff? Fuck that. Let’s see a “Fast Food Nation” that focuses on the lives of low-income service workers instead of the fucking fat and nutritional composition of the meals.
About how the issue with a lot of progressive movements is they’re high handed cowards??
That they got involved to ” help” people and not build with innovate and change ?
But not have the hard convos with mom and dad and their friends
So they felt good about being magnanimous
So you don’t…
Whomp! BA “leans in” in a way Sheryl Sandberg (who?) prolly didn’t intend….
mr. toast and i don’t have wedding bands. we were too poor (we bought a set of those $20 rings from meijer), and then we lost the cheap rings and then we just never got around to replacing them—so it’s been well over a decade since either one of us had a ring.
i’ve been thinking a lot about the…
You said: are poor people ever “responsible” over anything. I say: how can you be “responsible” over anything when you are in control of damn near nothing? Whether or not you have a job. What the weather is going to be like in the winter (meaning: your heat bill). Where you live. When your car or other necessary mechanical appliances are going to break down. Even what the hours are going to be on your job, sometimes. Whether your babysitter is sick (meaning: can’t go to work today). How ill you’re going to get and how those fucking bills are going to be paid (or even if you can get seen). Money is the balm that smooths over those rough spots; it steps in builds a bridge over all those troubled waters. It fixes.
I hear what you’re saying about taking that leap of faith and getting married anyway. I did, and didn’t think about it as a leap of anything at the time. I was 19. I think of it as a leap of stupidity now, when I think about it at all, LOL! (it got bad, really bad. As in the flame was turned up on the stove of abuse until I finally realized it was hot in there. I didn’t at first, which oughta tellya somethin’. Anyway….) There’s a whole conservative movement out there now to convince young people to get married without thinking about all the contingencies, while at the same time the push is on to make divorce more difficult to get—-two year waiting periods, year-long weekly counseling sessions, that sort of thing. The rationale is (a) people are having kids anyway, without being married and (b) if two people with minimum wage jobs just get married and locked into it, they’ll have to focus their energies and place the blame on the quality or quantity of their survival on each other instead of the system(s) that are gamed against them. Anyway….this particular push is gearing up, has financial and academic backing, and is something conservatives and liberals, religious and nonreligious are getting behind—-let’s go after those poor folks and their cohabitation.
