Featured Editorials

A day at the Louisiana OMV

Submitted by Robyn on Thu, 09/10/2015 - 2:06pm

photo glover_zpsbrba5jms.jpgAlexandra Glover of Denham Springs, LA needed to update her drivers license. That's not a fun thing to do for anyone, but it was worse for Alexandra. You see, Alexandra is transgender and she lives in Louisiana.

Transgender advocates say Louisiana is one in a minority of states that are behind when it comes to accommodating transgender and gender non-conforming people in ID laws. Recent efforts by transgender people in South Carolina and West Virginia have helped to change driver’s license practices in those states.

After being denied at a couple of OMV offices, Alexandra's friend thought she should document a visit with video.

You can’t present as a woman if you’re listed as a man.

If you have makeup on or anything like that you’re supposed to take all that off, because you are actually a man.

--OMV worker

The social costs of denying health care for transfolk

Submitted by Robyn on Wed, 09/09/2015 - 2:12pm

For background you might read Joan McCarter's How bad is health insurance for trans people? Really, really bad.

A new nationwide survey measures the social cost of health care providers denying care to transgender people.

As a result of being denied insurance coverage for transition-related medical care, 35% of survey respondents reported needing psychotherapy, 23% became unemployed, 15% attempted suicide, 15% ended up on public assistance programs and 14% became homeless.

The report also discovered that 37% of respondents who were denied care turned to drugs and/or alcohol and 36% developed other physical symptoms.

Nursing schools didn't want "her kind"

Submitted by Robyn on Tue, 09/08/2015 - 1:49pm

photo blossom-brown-1-600_zpsic7dvh7f.jpgBlossom Brown is a graduate of Mississippi University for Women, with a degree in public health, and a native of Jackson, MS. Having earned what she descibes as an "awesome GPA," nd wanting to be able to give back to her community, she applied to some nursing schools.

She received six rejections which she thinks were unfair.

People always say, 'You're going to confuse the patients,' or, 'We don't want your kind here.'

People were looking at that, and you need to be looking at my hard work and dedication that I put into that hard work.

--Blossom Brown

You see, Blossom Brown is a transgender woman.

Unemployed Councils and Eviction Riots

Submitted by gjohnsit on Tue, 09/08/2015 - 10:08am

It was the morning of January 22, 1932, in a quiet, middle-class neighborhood of the Bronx. A crowd was gathering in front of 2302 Olinville Avenue, near the Bronx Park.
City Marshals and Police had moved in to evict 17 tenants who were on a "rent strike". A crowd of 4,000 had gathered nearby.

Morning Greens Open Thread - September 8, 2015

Submitted by MarilynW on Tue, 09/08/2015 - 7:00am

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Aerial pictures reveal rampant illegal logging in Peru's Amazon forest


Only from the air is it possible to make out the scale of three illegal logging roads which have been carved into Peru’s eastern Amazon, while local authorities in the jungle Ucayali region seemingly turn a blind eye.

Huddled in a twin-engine Cessna 402, the Guardian saw as many as 20 lorries carrying tree trunks plying their way up and down three dirt roads, each estimated to measure up to 32 miles. Dotted by stockpiles of logs and workers’ camps, the roads led to barges on a dock on the Ucayali river, a major tributary of the Amazon, a few dozen miles from the regional capital Pucallpa.

Tricks

Submitted by hecate on Tue, 09/08/2015 - 5:13am

The acid test was breaking out into an area in which it had no specific goals. It was just discovering what there was out there if you continued to move away from the norm.

It was a test. And there were people that passed, and there were people that didn't pass.

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