Tag: How We Live Now

Texas Woman Dies After Abortion Denied

Josseli Barnica grieved the news as she lay in a Houston hospital bed on Sept. 3, 2021: The sibling she’d dreamt of giving her daughter would not survive this pregnancy.

The fetus was on the verge of coming out, its head pressed against her dilated cervix; she was 17 weeks pregnant and a miscarriage was “in progress,” doctors noted in hospital records. At that point, they should have offered to speed up the delivery or empty her uterus to stave off a deadly infection, more than a dozen medical experts told ProPublica.

But when Barnica’s husband rushed to her side from his job on a construction site, she relayed what she said the medical team had told her: “They had to wait until there was no heartbeat,” he told ProPublica in Spanish. “It would be a crime to give her an abortion.”

For 40 hours, the anguished 28-year-old mother prayed for doctors to help her get home to her daughter; all the while, her uterus remained exposed to bacteria.

Three days after she delivered, Barnica died of an infection.

A Texas Woman Died After the Hospital Said It Would be a “Crime” to Intervene in Her Miscarriage
Josseli Barnica is one of at least two pregnant Texas women who died after doctors delayed emergency care. She’d told her husband that the medical team said it couldn’t act until the fetal heartbeat stopped.

Losing Your Job and Your Insurance

Fired after telling HR I needed surgery. They cancelled my family’s insurance immediately.
ETA to answer some questions: I submitted an inquiry with EEOC. I have to wait for my interview in February to sue them. I can’t afford a lawyer, and none I contacted will do a contingency plan. I can’t afford COBRA, I don’t have a job. I am filing unemployment today. They fired me 4 days before the end of the month.

It’s absolutely fucking insane that a job can just ruin your life on a weekday for something that had never been brought up prior. So now not only am I getting MORE sick from my surgery having to be cancelled, my oldest child has a cavity that she was supposed to be getting fixed next week and I will have to pay $400 out of pocket to do so when I have no income. Medicaid is backed up with applications, so all I can do is hope I’ll somehow get reimbursed.

I HATE IT HERE.

https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/1fw07rf/fired_after_telling_hr_i_needed_surgery_they/

Valiant-Jellyfish
I was fired the day I had to get a biopsy for cancer. 3 weeks before Christmas. They canceled my insurance that day. No biopsy. Do I have cancer? Who knows.

Ok-Accountant5973
My brother was Fired the same day he told his manager that he had been diagnosed with lung cancer 2 weeks before Christmas. He had 2 small children and one on the way when they did that to him. They also gave him a week to move because the apartment he living at was at the same apartment complex that he worked at.

kearneycation
As a Canadian, having your health insurance tied to employment just seems so wild to me. This sucks, I just feel bad for y’all.

I was hospitalized a couple years ago for two weeks: had a chest tube inserted, had to have regular MRIs, xrays, blood work, etc. Had pain meds when I needed them. A follow-up a month later then again two months later.

I didn’t have to think about money once the entire time. When I was discharged I was just discharged, no talk of insurance or a bill or anything. It was stressful enough, the last thing I needed was financial stress on top of it.

Georgia Woman Dies Due to Abortion Ban

When Georgia’s ban went into effect, Thurman’s pregnancy had just passed six weeks. According to ProPublica, Thurman scheduled a dilation and curettage in North Carolina, which still permitted abortion. But when traffic delayed her travel, the clinic — “inundated with women from other states where bans had taken effect” — could not keep her appointment slot. A clinic employee gave her legally obtained abortion pills to use instead. (“Her pregnancy was well within the standard of care for that treatment,” ProPublica reports.)

Unfortunately, upon her return home, Thurman suffered a highly unusual complication, with increasing pain and heavy bleeding. The North Carolina clinic would have performed a D&C as a free follow-up, but it was too far away. Instead, Thurman went to a nearby hospital. Citing medical records, ProPublica says that “doctors noted a foul odor during a pelvic exam, and an ultrasound showed possible tissue in her uterus.”

Usually, these signs of sepsis would be addressed with a D&C to remove the fetal tissue. But the LIFE Act prohibits “administering any instrument … with the purpose of terminating a pregnancy.” That made performing this normally commonplace and safe procedure a possible felony for the doctors. Hospital staff delayed the procedure for nearly a day, as Thurman’s condition worsened. Finally, hours after her organs began failing, she was taken in for surgery — during which she died. Her mother recalled her last words: “Promise me you’ll take care of my son.”

Georgia’s ‘pro-life’ abortion ban literally killed a woman — and she won’t be the last

The Slacker – Background and Philosophy of

The term achieved renewed popularity following its use in the 1985 film Back to the Future in which James Tolkan‘s character Mr. Strickland chronically refers to Marty McFly, his father George McFly, Biff Tannen, and a group of teenage delinquents as “slackers”.[11] It gained subsequent exposure from the 1989 Superchunk single “Slack Motherfucker”, and the 1990 film Slacker.[12] The television series Rox has been noted for its “depiction of the slacker lifestyle … of the early ’90s”.[13][14][15]

Slacker became widely used in the 1990s to refer to a type of apathetic youth who were cynical and uninterested in political or social causes and as a stereotype for members of Generation X.[16] Richard Linklater, director of the aforementioned 1990 film, commented on the term’s meaning in a 1995 interview, stating that “I think the cheapest definition [of a slacker] would be someone who’s just lazy, hangin’ out, doing nothing. I’d like to change that to somebody who’s not doing what’s expected of them. Somebody who’s trying to live an interesting life, doing what they want to do, and if that takes time to find, so be it.”[17]

The term has connotations of “apathy and aimlessness”.[18] It is also used to refer to an educated person who avoids work, possibly as an anti-materialist stance, who may be viewed as an underachiever.[12]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slacker

V: What are your parent’s occupations?
DP: My mom’s a teacher and my dad was a white collar clerk working in the customs field. We were pretty poor, and throughout childhood we watched our dad lament about coming to America filled with visions of wealth, and how everybody was becoming rich except him. He struggled and worked well beyond the age of retirement and still never really got ahead. I don’t know how young  I was – maybe around ten – when I realized that you can work all your life and still end up poor. I’d rather not go chasing those rainbows and just be happy with what I have.

Zines, Volume 2 – RE/Search
More self-expression obsession coming at you: in-depth interviews with 12 more unusual publishers. From a 15-year-old suburbanite former punk, to a filmmaker and “tracker” (8-track collector/expert); a French self-publisher of art books (in the original meaning of the word), to the dishwasher whose goal it is to wash dishes in every state of the U.S.A. Also, a history of proletarian novels, zine reviews and much, much more. Read all about it in Zines! Vol. 2!

Excerpt from the interview with Dishwasher Pete

Labor Day 2024 – Year in Review

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More Perfect Union
@MorePerfectUS

Today is Labor Day, and the working class has a lot to be excited about.
Unions are more popular than they’ve been in decades, and they’re winning victories too.
Let’s take a look at some of the most important developments over the last year.🧵

Last November, the United Auto Workers stood up in a historic strike against Stellantis, General Motors, and Ford and won contracts that will raise wages by at least 25% over the next four years.

The UAW made history again just 5 months later, unionizing the first automobile plant in the South since the 1940s and expanding the UAW’s reach beyond the Midwest. More than 70% of the workers at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga voted to unionize.

In May, 1,700 Disneyland character and parade workers won a new union — which they’re calling Magic United.

Then, 14,000 other Disneyland workers won a 31% raise after threatening to strike in July. It’s their biggest ever wage increase. Most workers will see a $6.10/hour bump, and minimum pay is rising to $24/hour this year.

Southwest Airlines flight attendants secured a contract that raises wages by 33% over the next 4 years.

Workers at Blue Bird—the country’s largest electric school bus maker—ratified their first union contract. They secured raises of up to 40%.

Starbucks Workers United announced in February that they secured a commitment from Starbucks to begin negotiations on a collective bargaining agreement for more than 9,000 workers at 380+ different locations.

The Writers Guild of America also secured their own victory in September last year, ratifying a contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers after the second-longest strike in Hollywood history.

Not too long after that, the Screen Actors Guild secured their own contract as well, bringing an end to what was a rare multi-union struggle over workers’ rights in Hollywood in 2023.

Unions more broadly are very popular. A new poll from Gallup shows that 67% of Americans support labor unions and more than 75% say that unions get the goods for their members. A record high of 61% of Americans say that unions help the economy, as well.

Nationwide, more than 75% of all private sector organizing attempts from mid-2023 to mid-2024 resulted in union victories, according to the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies.

Goodbye to Landmark Chez Artiste

For Denver’s independent film lovers, when it rains, it pours.

At the end of last week, the Landmark Chez Artiste in University Hills announced that it will close its doors for good after Thursday, Aug. 8.

The news comes shortly after the shuttering of the Landmark Esquire Theatre, one of the city’s bastions for independent and late-night cinema, on July 18.

In a statement from Landmark President Kevin Holloway when he broke the news about the Esquire’s imminent redevelopment, he said: “Landmark’s renowned Mayan Theatre, Chez Artiste, and The Landmark at Greenwood Village will remain open and continue to serve the area.”

Landmark Chez Artiste to close this week in the latest blow to Denver’s film buffs
The closure comes less than a month after the Esquire Theatre shuttered.

World’s Hottest Day on Record

The record for the world’s hottest day has tumbled twice in one week, according to the European climate change service.

On Monday the global average surface air temperature reached 17.15C, breaking the record of 17.09C set on Sunday.

It beats the record set in July 2023, and it could break again this week.

Parts of the world are experiencing powerful heatwaves including the Mediterranean, Russia and Canada.

World breaks hottest day record twice in a week
July 24, 2024

Goodbye Esquire Theater

Say goodbye to another beloved Denver institution.

The Landmark Esquire Theatre will close after its final screenings on Thursday, July 18.

The theater is known for arthouse and independent films, as well as regular programming of the cult classics “Rocky Horror Picture Show” and “The Room.”
…
Jimenez said he wants to thank the Esquire for “all of the cool stuff that I’ve been able to see here and all of the stuff that I wasn’t able to see anywhere else.”

‘A great place for weirdos’: Who we met on closing weekend at the Esquire Theatre
Another icon of old Denver is fading into the past.