You might have heard that around 40 House Democrats are staging a sit-in today to force a vote on gun control. This action comes after four gun control amendments — designed to strengthen background checks and restrict gun sales to people on terrorist watch lists — were defeated in the Senate Monday. And of course, this follows one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history. Normally, such proceedings would be captured by C-SPAN cameras, but unusually, this sit-in is being broadcast over Twitter’s live-streaming video app, Periscope, after C-SPAN cameras were shut off by Republicans who called for a recess.
Technology news sites have some snarky takes on this today. Wired ran an article instructing members of Congress how to use the app properly, assuming they probably don’t know how. Vice’s Motherboard got a bit more existential: “Is this what the future of public transparency is? The iPhones in Congresspersons’ pockets, every politician their own citizen journalist, holding their phones up (vertically) like they’re in a Justin Bieber concert?”
"Hey, Congress, here’s how you use Periscope" Wired
"We Replaced C-SPAN with Periscope and I Can’t Even" Vice Motherboard
The history of feminism is usually divided into three waves. The second wave, popular in the '70s, used to be criticized for being too radical, extreme and far-removed from women’s everyday lives. It’s also recently come under fire for not being radical enough in its consciousness of race and class, with some contending it focused too much on the concerns of upper and middle class white women. In Slate, Laura Miller mounts a defense of second-wave feminism. She argues that not only was the movement more diverse than many remember, it laid the foundation for many victories we now take for granted, including domestic violence shelters, legal abortion, individualized contraception, and more. As Miller puts it, “Much of what the second wave accomplished or helped to accomplish now seems as if it has always existed. It hasn’t.”
"A second look at the second wave" Slate
A member of an LGBTQ gun group called Pink Pistols wrote an op-ed in the New York Times today arguing that LGBTQ people who are against guns should think twice about their stance, and consider arming themselves. Dan Savage had some strong words of criticism for the piece in The Stranger.
"The L.G.B.T. Case for Guns" The New York Times
"NYTimes Prints Clueless Op-Ed By Stupid LGBT Gun-Fondler" The Stranger
