Hasta La Gadget!

In this election, Hispanics must support Democrats. It is not often in politics that people are given the choice between real, substantive contrasts. An attitude of “vote for the lesser of two evils” that permeates the American electorate has veiled many voters into believing that both the Democratic and Republican parties are two sides of the same coin. They are not. And Latinos know it.

While there are nuclei of both parties that will vote “D” or “R” because of emotional attachments, the fastest-growing group of voters in America are actually independents, fed up with the self-interested squabbling of mediocre politicians more interested in their own reelections than in leading the country.

Hispanic voters are primarily independents who have voted Democratic in several elections. The reasons for this preference are complex, and not just based in immigration reform. Rather, a preference for policies of social development, education investment, health access and social stability make it clear that a majority of Hispanics prefers the current version of the Democrats over the far-right wing, often extremist Republican Party.

Voters call my show every day to ask, “Who should I vote for?” I am consistent in my response: Vote for the Democrats. To be clear, I, too, am an independent. I have no party affinity, but rather a policy obsession. And the anti-Latino, hostile and aggressive Republican Party of the last decade does not merit Latino support.

Here are three reasons why I think Latinos should support Democrats in the upcoming elections:

1. The economy

President Reagan was very effective in convincing a generation of Americans that Democrats could not be trusted with the economy. “Tax and spend” and “liberal” became powerful markers in the GOP’s successful framing of the Democrats as irresponsible stewards of the economy.

But we now know that since World War II, Democratic administrations have outperformed, both in terms of job creation and overall gross domestic product (GDP) growth, Republicans in every term. With the Democrats’ pro-growth policies, there is a general lifting of all boats when a Democratic administration occupies the White House.

In contrast, the GOP must still cope with the President George W. Bush’s legacy of economic disaster. His was the administration that took the Clinton budget surplus and converted it to a doubling of the national debt. The trickle-down economics fantasy was once again proven completely wrong — leading to a hyper concentration of wealth at the top, slow job growth for middle class Americans and anemic GDP expansion. Add to it the Republican fetish for under-regulating industry, and Bush left America with the worst economy since President Herbert Hoover was chased out of Washington during the Great Depression.

Latinos should be aware that the various Republican blueprints for a GOP-controlled Congress are Bush polices warmed over — and the result would be, predictably, another national economic and social horror show.

2. Immigration reform

Once you break through the clutter of emotions about President Obama’s recent delay in taking executive action to ameliorate the collapsing immigration “system” in America, you are faced with a stark truth: Republicans have been sabotaging immigration reform since at least 2007, when Republicans in the Senate killed Bush’s immigration reform bill.

More recently, in 2009, some 99 percent of all congressional Democrats supported Obama’s immigration push, while 0 percent of Republicans stepped up to provide enough votes for a majority.

And in the last year, after the Democratic-controlled Senate passed a bipartisan immigration bill, Republican House Speaker John Boehner (Ohio) blocked every possible route to a vote. The bill languished, but still Republicans in the House were not content; they voted three times to deport the Dreamers.

Even the supposed Hispanic hope of the GOP, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), faced with Tea Party blowback that threatened his White House ambition, lobbied the House to reject the immigration bill that he had cosponsored and for which he voted.

This moment crystalized his betrayal of American Latinos and the immigration-reform cause that is one of their primary policy objectives.

3. Social stability

Even to American Latinos who were born in the U.S., the specter of the social instability that drove their parents and grandparents to migrate to the United States haunts the collective unconscious of the community. Whether it’s Cubans with Fidel Castro nightmares, Colombians fleeing a savage civil war, or Mexicans who immigrated to escape brutal violence and squalor, the vision of the U.S. as a haven of stability is a shared ideal.

When Republicans engage in destructive maneuvers that hurt the whole country, Latinos are justifiably horrified. The very idea of Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) “government shutdown” is antithetical to Hispanics’ desire for institutional stability. When Republicans on two occasions played chicken with the full faith and credit of the U.S. by threatening to block a vote on raising the debt ceiling, it seemed like the GOP was advocating for national suicide — threatening the American and global economies in the name of one politician’s personal glory.

There are many other reasons why Latinos should vote for Democrats in this cycle. The Big Lie rhetoric coming out of the mouth of Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), for example, accusing immigrants of being both Ebola virus carriers and part of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) sleeper cells, should be enough to motivate Latinos to vote against a party that permits such naked hostility — and racism.

In the end, however, economic growth and shared prosperity; a rational, fair immigration system; and the promise of patriotic social stability are three central motivators for Latinos to vote for Democrats in November.

Latinos should send a message to Republicans: We won’t support your failed policies, we won’t abide by anti-Hispanic rhetoric, and we will always side with political forces that seek to build on the common good, not tear it down.

Let’s face the facts: When it comes to carving pumpkins, squirrels are jerks. Every time one of the hungry critters gets its hands on a pumpkin, it ends up looking something like this:

shoutout to the squirrel who already carved my pumpkin!! pic.twitter.com/B6Y1QDgS0y

— Katherine Harkman (@Katherinenugget) October 27, 2014

Yet somehow, YouTuber richardmangan has figured out how to make the squirrels do the carving for him. Sure, he won’t have the prettiest pumpkins on the block, but assuming the rodents don’t come back for more, his pumpkin will last the longest — and that’s worth something, right?

We have no idea how he convinced the animals to eat in the shape of a face. Given our proximity to Halloween, however, the clearest answer is probably witchcraft.

Watch squirrels carve a pumpkin in the video above.

H/T The Dodo

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My 9-year-old daughter slinks into my office. It is the night before the dreaded spelling test, and as usual we are now just reviewing the words. She struggles with a few as I reluctantly quiz her. I hand back the list and suggest she take a few more minutes studying before we continue. In one graceful movement she nods, tucks her long brown hair behind her ear, leans forward, and takes the paper from my outstretched hand.

I turn back to my desk and begin typing on my laptop. My mind is racing with all the things I need to work on; the spelling list is not one of them. I flash to when I was a child. My mother never quizzed me, but I am not my mother and she is not I.

My light-brown-eyed beauty has stopped reviewing her words and I can sense a question forming. I glance over at her. Her brow furrows and she debates if she should say the words out loud. She snuggles deep into the chair that once graced her nursery, comforted by the familiarity of her rocker.

“Mom, have you ever felt not beautiful?”

A million thoughts cross my mind in the time I take to turn my chair to face her. What’s the appropriate answer to this? Why is she asking me this? Did someone tell her she is not beautiful? Is she valuing her worth based upon other individual’s measures? Or, in the simplicity of a 9-year-old’s mind, does she just want to know if I have never felt beautiful?

As I turn my attention, and chair, towards her I struggle to answer the question. The first words I say will have an impact on her. I answer her honestly.

“Yes, I have felt not beautiful before.”

“People say I am a mirror image of you, then am I not beautiful?”

I worry I said the wrong thing. This is such a delicate conversation. I want her to realize beauty is more than the reflection in the mirror. A woman’s worth lies in her brain, not in her face. But my daughter is not asking about inner beauty; to her this is a separate entity. She speaks of only outer beauty, the visual. It will be years before she realizes inner beauty is more important than outer.

“Honey, all women feel ‘not beautiful’ at some point in their lives.”

“Well, what about when you were my age. Were you as beautiful as you are now?”

I am touched to learn she considers me beautiful, because often I look in the mirror and only find flaws. The mirror reflects the lines around my eyes, the wrinkles that mark the years of life, but I do try to see my beauty.

“Well, when I was your age I was not beautiful. I was gangly and awkward.”

“What’s gangly mean?” she says with a smile inching across her face.

I explain I was very skinny, with long legs and arms. How grace and I lived on opposite sides of the universe. I describe the horrible, feathered boy’s haircut my mother gave me in 1985 and how my crooked teeth did little to elevate my beauty.

Shocked, she blurts out, “Wow Mom! You really weren’t beautiful!”

She gets up, crosses my office and stares at a photo of me in 2nd grade. The picture is a mirror image of her in 2nd grade. She picks up the photo and turns to face me, “Well, you are adorable in this picture and you look just like me!”

Satisfied in her own beauty she crosses back to the green, checked rocker and sits. She is content. She glides back and forth as she studies her spelling list. I admire her so much.

I cherish these times when they happen, and I hope for a million more moments like this one. This is Motherhood, when one question catches you off guard and you never know what to say or why your child is asking you. You brace for the worst, only to realize how amazing the child standing in front of you is and how blessed you are for them to be in your life.

This blog post is part of a series for HuffPost Moments Not Milestones, entitled ‘The Moment I Stopped Being Perfect.’ To see all the other posts in the series, click here.

Although many people believe vampires to be fictional, their presence is ingrained in our pop culture, thanks to shows like “True Blood,” “Twilight,” and the latest vampire movie to hit the big screen: “Dracula Untold.” Although the rules governing the lives of the undead seem to be as fluid as the blood that they drink, in many of the prevailing tales vampires need to avoid direct sunlight, drink blood from humans and sleep in coffins. With Halloween quickly approaching, we at Redfin decided to sink our teeth into the data and found the best U.S. cities to be a vampire.

Since vampires need to avoid sunlight, we found the average number of cloudy days in a year for each city. Then we looked at how long the bars and clubs can serve alcohol, which is a good indicator of how late places stay open at night (giving vampires something to do). Then we added up the number of blood drives happening in the next month, because the undead need a constant food supply. Finally, we pulled data from a report Redfin published last year identifying cities with the most homes for sale near cemeteries, because vampires wouldn’t want to travel too far to get from their home to their coffin when the day breaks.

Read on to find out which cities flew to the top, and which came in dead last. And if you happen to be a vampire, you can start your search for a new home in one of these places.

1. Philadelphia, PA

Cloudy days: 160
Bar Hours: 7 a.m. — 3 a.m.
# of Blood Banks and Drives: 548
Homes for Sale Near Cemeteries Ranking: 2

It turns out that the City of Brotherly Love is a bloody good place to be for vampires, with plenty of cloudy days, a 3 a.m. closing time and many cemeteries in the city. Philadelphia had the most blood drives planned for the next month — 548 — ensuring that vampires would have plenty of places to grab a bite to eat.

Philadelphia vampires would fit right in at the Dracula Ball, a Halloween event taking place at the Trocadero Theatre, or scaring the bejeezus out of people on the street, as one prankster recently captured on camera.

“I’m not surprised Philadelphia tops the list!” said Blakely Minton, a local Redfin real estate agent. “There are a lot of historical homes here, many of which are rumored to be haunted. Examples of places with a spooky past include the Edgar Allan Poe House, Eastern State Penitentiary, the Mütter Museum, the Powel House, the Betsy Ross House… the list goes on. A company called Grim Philly even offers a ‘Vampires, Sex and Ghost Tour’ that you can take at night.”

2. Chicago, IL

Cloudy days: 176
Bar Hours: 7 a.m. — 5 a.m.
# of Blood Banks and Drives: 103
Homes for Sale Near Cemeteries Ranking: 3

It wouldn’t suck to be a vampire in Chicago. Several bars and clubs stay open until 5 a.m., there are more than 100 blood drives in the next month and there are a lot of cemeteries in city limits. Perhaps that’s why there’s a series of novels called “Chicagoland Vampires” that are set in the city, and why there’s a vampire-themed English course at Northwestern University and at the University of Illinois.

Chicago vampires would fit right in at The Vampire Diaries’ Official Convention in 2015, the 3rd Annual Zombies vs. Vampires Pub Crawl, or an event hosted by the Chicago Vampire Meetup Group, which boasts 465 members!

“A lot of supernatural tales stem from Chicago’s rich history, which includes the Great Chicago Fire, prohibition-era gang activity and the Civil War,” said Alex Haried, a local Redfin real estate agent. “The city is home to many places that are rumored to be haunted, including the H.H. Holmes mansion, the Wynekoop Mansion, Jane Addam’s Hull House, and more. I’m not aware of any homes that are supposed to be frequented by vampires, but I’m sure those stories are out there.”

3. Baltimore, MD

Cloudy days: 152
Bar Hours: 6 a.m. — 2 a.m.
# of Blood Banks and Drives: 480
Homes for Sale Near Cemeteries Ranking: 1

Baltimore had a high number of blood drives and cloudy days, but it was the number of homes for sale near cemeteries that put the final nail in the coffin. The city was founded in the 1700s and grew over time, so cemeteries became part of the landscape in most neighborhood developments.

Baltimore vampires would fit right in at a Meetup of the House of Maryland By Night Vampire,Witch & Werewolf Alliance, which has 81 members, or perhaps the Mind’s Eye Society LARP. On a Saturday night they might attend a Batz over Baltimore event at The Depot Nightclub.

“There are a few ghost tours in Baltimore, including one in Ellicott City where you can walk through older neighborhoods and learn about the history of the city and hear all the ghost stories,” said Lynn Ikle, a local Redfin real estate agent. “Some of those historic Georgian-style homes look like they could be the set of a vampire movie.”

4. Portland, OR

Cloudy days: 222
Bar Hours: 7 a.m. — 2:30 a.m.
# of Blood Banks and Drives: 274
Homes for Sale Near Cemeteries Ranking: 8

Portland has the second highest number of cloudy days in a year and hundreds of blood drives in the next month, enabling it to stake its claim at No. 4 on this list. In fact, the gray skies and vegetation were similar enough to Forks, Washington, that the producers of the “Twilight” movies filmed several scenes in Portland, including the Cullens’ house, located at 3333 NW Quimby St.

Portland vampires would fit right in on the set of NBC’s “Grimm,” a fairy-tale inspired hit show filmed in the city, or at an event of the Portland Vampire Meetup group, which has 213 members. Date night might involve a trip to Zompire: The Undead Film Festival or the annual Vampire’s Masquerade Ball.

“We like to keep it weird in Portland. You’ll find groups of people who are into vampires, zombies, ghosts, you name it,” said Wayne Olson, a local Redfin real estate agent. “There’s a Zombie Walk every year that started as a flash mob but is now an organized event where hundreds of people roam the streets dressed up as zombies. There’s also a ghost tour where they hand out real ghost-hunting equipment! And the Vampire’s Masquerade Ball draws a crowd every year.”

5. Boston, MA

Cloudy days: 164
Bar Hours: 8 a.m. — 2 a.m.
# of Blood Banks and Drives: 470
Homes for Sale Near Cemeteries Ranking: 4

Boston has plenty of Bruins, and plenty of ruins. The city had a lot of homes for sale near cemeteries and a lot of blood drives, but fewer cloudy days and late-night options than other cities on the list. However, the city is home to one of the most notorious “vampire killers,” James Riva, who claimed to be a 700-year-old vampire when he killed his grandmother in 1980. Perhaps that’s what inspired the producers of “Being Human,” a supernatural drama about vampires, to set the show in Boston.

Boston vampires would fit right in at the Boston Latin School, which made national headlines in 2009 when police were called in because of vampire-related rumors. Or they could sneak into the Boston area White Wolf LARP Group, which plays role-playing games like Vampire: The Masquerade and Vampire: The Requiem.

“Boston has some of the oldest cemeteries in the U.S., where you can visit the final resting places of people like John Hancock, Paul Revere, and Samuel Adams. A lot of neighborhoods were built around them, so it makes sense that it would rank high in possible Vampire sightings. Boston is filled with spooky old Victorian homes, many of which still have original finishes from hundreds of years ago, so I can see why it made the list,” said Katie Gustafson, a local Redfin real estate agent. “It’s a city filled with mysterious charm and character.”

6. Washington, DC

Cloudy days: 164
Bar Hours: 8 a.m. — 3 a.m.
# of Blood Banks and Drives: 471
Homes for Sale Near Cemeteries Ranking: 11

Vampires may want to pull up stakes and move to our nation’s capital. Although Washington didn’t have as many homes for sale near cemeteries as some of the other cities on the list, there were a high number of blood drives and places that are open until 3 a.m.

Washington vampires would fit right in at the Vamp it Up event at SAX, or at a screening of Orlok, the Vampire in 3D at Artisphere. They might also want to start training for the Vampire 5K, which will take place around this time next year.

“Washington went through a lot of turmoil in its early years, and there are plenty of places that are reportedly haunted as a result,” said Michael Alderfer, a local Redfin real estate agent. “There are also a lot of historical homes with unique histories. It’s no surprise that eventually something like ‘Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter’ would come to exist!”

7. Minneapolis-Saint Paul, MN

Cloudy days: 169
Bar Hours: 8 a.m. — 2 a.m.
# of Blood Banks and Drives: 357
Homes for Sale Near Cemeteries Ranking: 10

Vampire rats might not be the only thing out for blood in Minneapolis. With plenty of blood drives, cemeteries and cloudy days, it’s not a bad place for vampires to settle down. Perhaps that’s why Jonathon “The Impaler” Sharkey — who believed he was a vampire — once ran for governor of Minnesota.

Minneapolis vampires would fit right in at Crypticon Minneapolis, Minnesota’s No. 1 horror convention. For a laugh, they could attend “Dracula: The Musical” at the Howard Conn Fine Arts Center. Or they could blend in on the Transylvania Trolley, a Halloween ride on the Como-Harriet streetcar.

“There are a few places that are rumored to be haunted in the Twin Cities area, including the Wabasha Street Caves, Mounds Theater, The Griggs Mansion, the Lakewood Cemetery, First Avenue Nightclub and the fifth floor of City Hall. A lot of the stories are from the 1800s gold rush days, or from gangster activity in the 1920s,” said Chris Prescott, a local Redfin real estate agent. “I’m not aware of any famous vampire stories, but we just broke the record for the largest gathering of zombies!”

8. Madison, WI

Cloudy days: 180
Bar Hours: 6 a.m. — 2:30 a.m.
# of Blood Banks and Drives: 180
Homes for Sale Near Cemeteries Ranking: n/a

Madison was the dark horse on the list; it had fewer than 10 homes for sale near cemeteries when we ran the analysis last year, but what it lacks in graveyards it makes up for in cloudy days, serving hours and blood drives. It’s also not far from Mineral Point, where there have been reports of a vampire that haunts the Graceland Cemetery.

Madison vampires would fit right in at The Vampire’s Ball at Club Inferno; they might even win the costume contest! They could also learn a little bit more about their history at a University of Wisconsin-Madison class called “The Vampire In Literature And Film.” If that wasn’t enough, they could head to the Madison Public Library for some vampire book recommendations.

“Madison is a very inclusive community, so vampires would likely be accepted for who they are here,” said Brian Callahan, a local Redfin real estate agent. “And people in Madison love Halloween! There’s a big event on State Street called ‘Freakfest’ where tens of thousands of people dress up and listen to live bands. It’s one of the largest Halloween celebrations in the Midwest.”

9. Atlanta, GA

Cloudy days: 149
Bar Hours: 9 a.m. — 2:30 a.m.
# of Blood Banks and Drives: 311
Homes for Sale Near Cemeteries Ranking: 5

It turns out vampires wouldn’t bat an eye at moving to Atlanta. Although it has the least number of cloudy days as any city on the top 10 list, there are plenty of cemeteries in the city where vampires could escape. In fact the Atlanta suburb of Covington, Georgia, is where “The Vampire Diaries” is filmed; those interested in learning more can take the “Vampire Stalkers” Mystic Falls tour.

Atlanta vampires would fit right in at The Atlanta Vampire Alliance, which promotes itself as “a neutral Vampire Community organization.” Or they could attend the Atlanta Vampire Meetup Group, which boasts 591 members. For fun they might go to the Masquerade Nightclub, which is rumored to be frequented by vampires. They might also want to start training for the Vampire 5k on December 6.

“A lot of people in Atlanta have an interest in the paranormal, and there are many historical homes and places that are reportedly haunted,” said Adam Kappel, a local Redfin real estate agent. “Those spooky-looking places might be why so many scary movies and TV shows are filmed here, like ‘The Walking Dead’ and ‘Vampire Diaries.'”

10. Seattle, WA

Cloudy days: 226
Bar Hours: 6 a.m. — 2 a.m.
# of Blood Banks and Drives: 98
Homes for Sale Near Cemeteries Ranking: 37

Seattle’s cloudy weather made the city’s placement on the top 10 list a dead giveaway, but you might be surprised that it came in at the dead end. Seattle had the least number of blood drives and homes for sale near cemeteries, and the bars close at a relatively early time of 2 a.m. However, that didn’t stop Stephenie Meyer from setting her infamous “Twilight” novels in Forks, Washington, which is about a four-hour drive from Seattle.

The popularity of the “Twilight” series might have inspired the First Vampire Tour of Seattle, which is no longer operating, but which took curious visitors to “the site of a Blood Letting Den from years past where it’s said that vampires will be lurking and fifty eyes will be upon you.” It might have also led to the rumors of a vampire attack in Lake Stevens back in 2009. Vampires in Seattle will want to avoid the Seattle Buffy Meetup Group, which has 233 members. But they’d fit right in at the “Choose Your Vampire Adventure” game of flashlight tag at Magnuson Park.

“The Twilight movies definitely put the Northwest on the map as a good destination for vampires,” said Dan Mullins, a local Redfin real estate agent. “Forks, Washington, used to be a small town that most people had never heard of, and now it’s a tourist destination. But I think vampires would prefer Seattle; it’s almost as cloudy and there’s a lot more to do!”

5 Cities Where it Would Suck to Be a Vampire

The following cities came in dead last when it comes to ideal locations for vampires. Not only are they too sunny, they all had less than 100 blood drives in the next month, and very few homes for sale near cemeteries. San Diego and Sacramento are particularly dangerous for vampires, because California is the top garlic-producing state!

1. San Diego, CA
2. Sacramento, CA
3. Tampa, FL
4. Austin, TX
5. Denver, CO

Methodology
We pulled the mean number of cloudy days through 2012 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Information on alcohol serving regulations came from the government pages of each city. We found the number of blood banks and blood drives happening in the next month from directories available at Redcrossblood.org, Americasblood.org and local blood centers. The cemeteries ranking came from data Redfin pulled last year for a report identifying cities with the most homes for sale near cemeteries, which looked at 90 U.S. Census MSAs and cemetery data supplied by OpenStreetMap.org.

I say we bury the b.s. called Domestic Violence Month, and here’s why.

For the past five years I have been taking a look at where American women find themselves in areas ranging from domestic violence and rape to rates of incarceration and the pay gap. The project, now a documentary film presently in post-production called Equal Means Equal, was funded by over 2500 supporters on Kickstarter.*

A few days ago I was asked to speak in Ann Arbor at an event hosted by the University of Michigan to raise awareness about domestic violence and highlight SafeHouse, the local shelter.

The event brought together a broad cross-section of the Ann Arbor community to dialogue about a problem that is very much in their midst.

After the clip from our rough cut, Laurita Thomas (VP at the University of Michigan) asked people to turn around and share their thoughts with those behind them. Sadly, in the packed theater, there seemed to be none untouched. Behind me, a young female college student and an older woman, there with her husband, shared their personal experiences with violence and rape. There were counselors needed, on-hand and in the lobby, to help those for whom the film had triggered personal trauma. During the panel discussion, professors, lawyers, doctors and community leaders made the connections clear between the multiple issues that relate to domestic violence- from economic dependence and poverty to sexual assault, foster care and child sex-trafficking.

Although we’ve recognized domestic violence for the past 33 years as a problem big enough to merit its own full month of awareness, the deep cuts in funding to the 2013 Reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, tell the true story of how committed the United States is to eradicating this gendered epidemic of violence.**

So what say we cut the b.s., take off the rose-colored “empowerment” glasses and look at the facts:

• Domestic violence shelters are closing across the country. VAWA’s reauthorization, spun as a big win, was a financial bloodbath. Desperately needed funding was cut drastically with no plan in place to help the displaced victims.
• Close to 10,000 victims of domestic violence are turned away DAILY in the United States — no money, no options, nowhere to go. [Remember now that these women are making between 42¢ (Latinas in L.A. County) and 88¢ (female employees at the White House) on the male dollar.]
• Over 60 percent of victims go back to their abusers.
• The United States has the highest domestic violence homicide rate in the industrialized world. Three women a day will die at the hands of their intimate partners.
• The police respond to Domestic Violence calls with less urgency than other types of assault, such as stranger assault- this is completely at their discretion.
• The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that the police are not obligated to respond to a domestic violence call where the woman has a restraining order against the abuser, nor do they have to enforce that order.
• An international tribunal determined that the United States is violating the human rights of American women and girls in its failure to protect them from Domestic Violence.
• Bottom line: If it isn’t a war on women, why is our body count almost double that of the combined casualties of our latest two wars? Between 2001 and 2012 6,488 troops died in Iraq and Afghanistan while 11,686 women died at the hands of their abusers.

It’s easy to blame the victims. It’s easier still to blame the perpetrators — the batterers, the abusers, the pimps. Yet we live in a society where it is perfectly respectable for ONE PERSON to have more money than an ENTIRE STATE full of people; a society whose idolatry of greed and ruthlessness in pursuit of the almighty dollar sets the clear example for the pimps and “paper chasers” who brand their 12-year-old “prostitutes” with CREAM (cash rules everything around me) across their foreheads and flay the skin off their bodies if they resist.

But before you rear back in horror at these “animals,” how can we expect empathy, compassion and kindness from a population constantly beaten down and abused by its own country? Undereducated, if at all. Paid too little to survive, worked too hard to raise their children? When you start hearing about moms renting their daughters out to traffickers after school to put food on the table, as I have, you wonder why we don’t start blaming the forces exerting such brutal economic pressure on the American family.

Since 1787, Uncle Sam has sat back and watched as American women have been beaten, raped and murdered regularly, underrepresented in every decision-making area of society, had their bodies co-opted by public politics and been paid less (or nothing) for doing most of the work.

Lately, Uncle Sam’s henchmen on the Supreme Court have colluded with corporations to abuse American women as viciously as if they were throttling them and their children, ripping them off to the tune of TRILLIONS of dollars.

The United States itself is guilty of domestic abuse and until IT stops abusing us it will never really do what is necessary to stop others from doing it to us too. We may get special “months” or ribbons or a trinket here or there but we won’t get equal pay or justice. And if that ain’t domestic violence, I don’t know what is.

*You can watch the trailer for the movie by clicking here:

**[Kind of like Women’s History Month where we teach no women’s history]