The Audacity of Dope

Seattle’s music scene is brimming with creative, hard-working artists who care about helping those in need—and who know how to party. In that tradition, on Monday, January 18, a handful of the city’s favorite DJ’s will descend upon Nectar Lounge’s well-equipped sound system to provide the jams for a benefit party with proceeds going towards relief efforts in Haiti.

The impoverished Caribbean island, shaken to its core by a magnitude 7 earthquake earlier this week, needs every cent it can get to fund the efforts of those already elbows-deep in the challenging tasks of picking through the rubble and rebuilding their nation. Here at home, Nectar and its partners offer you the opportunity to gather in celebration & reflection to contribute what you can financially to the cause. We’ll see you on Monday!

Be there and support a good cause.

Saw this in the NY Times today and I thought it was equal parts heartbreaking and infuriating. I generally prefer to keep sports and politics separate, but I really hope that the world uses the upcoming Olympics to put pressure on China’s government. Between their human rights issues and the intense censorship of the press and their own people, something has to change. Sheer economic numbers won’t make China the super power it wants to be. At some point, its ethics need to catch up with the times.

When the final numbers are in, this earthquake will have killed over 100K people. We always think less of these tragedies when they happen abroad, but just imagine if we lost that many people here. To put it in perspective, Hurricane Katrina killed less than 2K. It’s insane.

Also, the audacity of the Chinese government to “have begged parents to quiet down and accept financial compensation for the loss of their children” is unbelievable. They don’t want money. They want their children back. And since you can’t provide that, you damn sure better give them some answers.

Chinese Stifle Grieving Parents’ Protest of Shoddy School Construction

DUJIANGYAN, China — Police officers here on Tuesday surrounded more than 100 parents protesting shoddy school construction and mourning the deaths of thousands of children during the recent earthquake.

The police dragged away several crying mothers and removed some journalists trying to report on the event, according to witnesses and photographs of the protest.

The attempt to snuff out the protest was the strongest sign so far of the government’s growing impatience with public airing of grievances over unsafe school construction.

A standoff between the parents, many carrying framed photos of their dead children, and the police officers, dressed in black uniforms, lasted for several hours. In the end, the parents walked away.

Read the full article describing the protest in detail and all the censorship these people are facing here.