“In 2000, Virginia legislators got involved, asking Governor Jesse Ventura to return their captured icon.
‘Why?’ he asked. ‘We won.’”
LMAAAAO
All the salty racists in the comments are a cherry on top.
Die mad about it energy strong af
Okay but this is a story that @dadhoc loves to talk about because this is a REALLY BIG DEAL in Minnesota.
I have heard the story of The First Minnesota at LEAST ONE HUNDRED TIMES in the course of my marriage and now I GET TO TELL THE REST OF YOU.
So. It’s not just ANY Confederate flag. It is the Confederate flag that the First Minnesota captured on July 3rd, 1863. The First Minnesota prevented the Union line from crumbling by keeping the Federalists from being pushed off of Cemetery Ridge on July 2nd, and on July 2nd, the First Minnesota sustained 82% casualties.
EIGHTY-TWO PERCENT CASUALTIES. They started out as 262 men and ended as 47. But they held the line. They held. The. Line. Then on July 3rd they were placed in one of the few places where the line was breached, and they thus had to charge in again and retake the line breaches, and they did.
It was during one of these charges – remember, they’d already lost eighty-two percent of their friends – that Private Marshall Sherman of Company C captured the flag. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for this.
The survivors of the First Minnesota at Gettysburg served through the rest of the war.
Now, Virginians have asked for it back repeatedly, saying ‘it’s our heritage.’ But the response from the Minnesota Historical Society has basically been, as @dadhoc has summed it up, “to us, this is the legacy of 215 men who were killed or wounded in the preservation of the Union. What, exactly, is its legacy to you?”
No one’s been able to give an answer that isn’t ‘it’s our legacy of trying to destroy the US over slavery,’ because there isn’t one.
Fuck Virginia wanting that flag back, it belongs in Minnesota.
Yesterday a man came into my work, all scruffy and dirty with a big backpack on his shoulders, and as he was leaving I told him to stay dry because it’s been raining almost none stop for a few days.
He stopped and turned around and laughed, and then he showed me his new shoes that he just bought and said “I’ve been walking the perimeter of the United States; these shoes will last me another month, rain or sunshine.”
We talked for a bit and he told me about how he’s walking around the perimeter of the entire U.S. to raise awareness and money for the homeless. He told me about some things he’s seen and the places he’s been so far. Before he left, he gave me a big smile, said “God be with you,” and walked out the door with the happiest strut I’ve ever seen.
He started off in Virginia and made it all the way down here to Florida on foot, and he’s still got a long way to go. He was very kind and very optimistic.
I’ve never met someone like him before, so I want to try and spread him and his effort here on tumblr.
He isn’t very popular yet, but I really want to try to spread his word and raise awareness of the homelessness issue here in the U.S., and try to help him raise money for this cause.
His name is Leroy Bailey and if you want to follow him around the U.S. his facebook is here.
I didn’t get a photo of him so I took this one from his facebook
It’s been almost 3 months since I posted this and Leroy is now in Texas! He still has a really long way to go though so let’s keep this circulating, get his name and his cause out there!
I love this. Its in all the toilets at the local birth centre and basically if your in a domestic violence relationship and cant speak out about it you take one of the stickers and place it on the urine pot and the midwife will speak to you after about it and get you the help needed to flee the violence. So upsetting how many stickers have already gone tho 😦
If it makes you feel better, those might not have been taken by actual folks who needed it – we were taught at the clinic I worked at to never leave a full sheet of anything, because the sorts of folks who need these stickers might also be the kind of folks who, psychologically, have a hard time taking a first step or ‘breaking’ something brand new – like being the first person to take a sticker off a sheet or tear a phone number off a flyer. They called it ‘easing the path’ and all us admin staff were careful to never fill up brochure things all the way, to take the first tag off a flyer we hung up, leave the toys for the kids in uneven piles and leave a couple of books leaning or sideways or lying flat on the shelf.
Reblog for the second set of comments. Folks in abusive relationships have a constant mental commentary about how you aren’t worth it, you’re a bother, you’re inconvenient, you cause trouble, it’s all your fault. That “easing the way” is solid psychology. Feeling like you’re not alone, you’re not the only one who has this problem, can let you shift from feeling helpless and hopeless to being willing to reach out for help.
Variously Backup 