I know a habit isn't a superpower it's the opposite of that

Not sure there's enough sanitizer in the world to ever scrub their hands clean.

Yesterday for paid-subscribers I sent out a dispatch from the Mexican state of Guerrero on their recent successful efforts to decriminalize abortion in a place where that prospect might have seemed unlikely.

We argued that human rights are not up for consultation

Welcome to Hell WorldLuke O’Neil

"In Guerrero there are reasons as good as anywhere to fight for the right to abortion," Ann Deslandes wrote.

Here, as Calixto explained, those reasons include injury and death related to pregnancy and abortion, the prevalence of rape and sexual assault, including within families, and punishment for miscarriage and forced pregnancy of girls who are raped. Of the many stories, told and untold, behind these facts and figures, one is that of Adriana Manzanares, an indigenous woman from the La Montaña region of Guerrero who spent five of a twenty two-year sentence in jail when she had a stillborn baby. Another is nine-year-old ‘María’, also indigenous from La Montaña, who was raped and became pregnant and was refused an abortion at the hospital in Chilpancingo.

Deputy Beatriz Mojica’s office is two doors down from Calixto’s. She is a representative for the Acapulco region, as is Calixto.

“The most affected by this issue are the poorest women,” Mojica, a proud descendent of the Guerrero coast’s African communities, said.

That largely means “poor, indigenous and Afro-Mexican women, often women who are raped; who do not have the resources to go to Mexico City [where abortion has been legal since 2007] or to see a private doctor.”

“Many of the maternal deaths in our state are due to clandestine abortions” she added soberly.

Subscribe to read the rest here.

If you missed it you may appreciate this report from Mexico on the massive protests over violence against women from back in March.

It speaks to the prevalence of the violence they face

It is simultaneous mourning and jubilee

Welcome to Hell WorldLuke O’Neil

Also in yesterday's post I dug into a recent very well done Boston Globe story that follows a woman on her commute that basically wins a Hell World bingo with all of the various overlapping problems illustrated in this single woman's life: the stresses and cost and time suck of commuting, crumbling and unreliable public transport infrastructure, lack of affordable housing and outrageous rents in city centers pushing the workers whose labor is required to make them function further and further away, the indignities foisted upon immigrants and the working class, and powerful corporations subcontracting out "unskilled" labor to name just a few.

Then I looked once again at the somehow still ongoing spate of fake stories about fentanyl overdoses being shared by cops and dutifully written down by the media.

Don't make me tap the sign again.

The cops and local news won’t stop lying about fentanyl

Cops lie

Welcome to Hell WorldLuke O’Neil

On a decidedly less important but still personally upsetting to me matter here's this:

I read this extremely well written 30th anniversary review of the Alice in Chains album Dirt over on Pitchfork the other day so I've been down in a bit of a hole lately – if you'll forgive me –  listening to it over and over. It's a miserable album but its misery is triumphant in a way. Spitting in the face of god and death and all of them type of way. I know a habit isn't a superpower it's the opposite of that but the way they make it sound I almost believe them. The dumb shit you believe when you are young and come to know better later in life but also it's still there inside of you somewhere lingering.

Eric Harvey writes:

The title itself says it all: Dirt is, on one hand, the most elemental album of the grunge era, tackling the big questions with bluesy and Biblical seriousness: a busted dam, a rainstorm, a flood, a big old pile of them bones. For dirt thou art, And unto dirt shalt thou return. It’s also an album about feeling like dirt, and knowing that others see you that way. Dirt is by and for a dispossessed generation who came of age in the shadow of Vietnam, amid skyrocketing divorce rates, hard drugs, and an ever-widening gap between the haves and have-nots.

...

The album rightfully made Alice in Chains one of the most famous bands in the world, and revealed them as one of the most gifted, capable of shifting from the B movie jump-scare screams of “Them Bones” to the poignant hesher existentialism of “I’d like to fly/But my wings have been so denied,” from “Down in a Hole.” It’s not for the faint of heart, either: Dirt is one of the most unremittingly bleak albums ever released by a major label. As they toured it through arenas and amphitheaters, tens of millions of fans were listening—and screaming along—to Staley plumbing the depths and torment of his heroin addiction.

Anyway it's within that context that I came across this post last night that is one of the more baffling branding tie-ins I've seen in a while.

Wait. No.

I'm not too precious about very many things and I am aware of how the world works especially when it comes to the business deals of decades old rock bands but something about this combination of album and product is really fucking getting my ass!! Two of those dolls are dead of overdoses.

Ah fuck it not my problem I suppose. The churning wheel stops for no man.

Ok well that's all for now. I'd appreciate it if you would jump on over to the paid-subscription tier if you can but if not see you for the next free newsletter whenever that is.

In the meantime here's a nice poem by Ada Limón who was announced as the new poet laureate of the United States yesterday.