Just...read it.
Out loud, if you can manage it.
Choose to fight with me.
Fight for life.
Fight for fairness.
Crush them with words until they cry and run away.
Slay them with weapons that are mightier than any sword, gun, or SWAT attempt.
https://jakimfett.deviantart.com/art/A-Violence-of-Words-749445765
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First they came for the Immigrants, and you did not speak out—
Because you were not a Immigrant.
\\\
Then they came for the Activists, and you did not speak out—
Because you were not an Activist.
\\\
Then they came for the Jews, and you did not speak out—
Because you were not a Jew.
\\\
Now, they are coming for you, and there will be no one left to speak for you.
\\\
> You still don't get it.
\\\
ICE is Geheime Staatspolizei.
Trump is Putin's Puppet.
This is a modern Holocaust.
Your neighbors,
your friends,
your mentors,
your peers,
are being taken for the crime of being chronically ill:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7287631/CBP-chief-says-HIV-positive-parents-separated-children-border.html
They will come for you.
Be ready.
When a system of governance attacks a subset of the persons it governs, that system must be evaluated to ascertain if that attack threatens all persons.
When the weakest, the most marginalized, the most vulnerable, are targeted,
it is a warning sign that the system of governance has become toxic,
and correction must be enforced.
Left unchecked,
an attack on one
**will**
become an attack on all.
And should the system
become more corrupt than can be changed,
burn it to the ground and start anew.
Doth the phoenix know the pain of fiery rebirth?
Or do fledglings spring from ashes,
whole and unmarred by memory of the flame?
The only ethical action under a system as thoroughly corrupt as 2019's flavour of late stage capitalism,
is to collaborate against & past that toxic, outdated system for exchange.
---
I am an angry person.
I wake up angry.
I fall asleep exhausted, after a day of grinding through survival tasks, full of anger.
I dream angry.
I wake up, angry.
Anger at the abuses pouring across our news feeds.
Anger at the ones responsible for the children in cages.
Anger at the ones with influence, power, and money who haven't used their resources to leave the world better than they found it.
Anger at the artificial scarcity and poverty all around me.
My anger gets shit done, tho.
---
I'm a low spoons person.
You may be too.
Together, we can take our fractional spoons, and with our anger, forge a better way for us all to survive.
===
Come with me.
The first step towards a resistance is a community.
If you want community, you have to be self-aware and intentionally.
The first step towards community is breaking down the walls between us.
We can, without malice, systemically exclude good people from the benefits of online communities.
The invisible things, our individual traumas, our access needs, triggers, each of them unique to us, but also shared, in a way, by all of the social media refugees on here.
We're all just trying to survive, and I want that to bring us together, rather than divide us into factions.
===
Read this in full, then read it again and take notes:
https://www.dailyxtra.com/why-are-queer-people-so-mean-to-each-other-160978
---
Use your anger to extend kindness and understanding to the other members of your community.
Measure your words as you post, and consider using intentionally uplifting wording rather than criticism or argument.
Use your anger to punch up, not out or down.
If you cannot,
or will not,
be intentionally restrained with your word-weapons when an ally is in your sights,
you are not ready to go to war with me.
---
Level up your self-awareness,
your willingness to examine your biases and unspoken expectations,
and your understanding of the ripple effects your word choice has on the psyche of your trenchmates,
and you'll be a heck of a lot closer than most.
---
Take time to uplift eachother.
Punching down is great,
but revolutions are about more than breaking oppression.
They are about rebuilding alongside neighbors, friends, and allies who have had your back along the way.
===
If you do one thing, this All Hallow's Eve, just be kind to eachother.
Here are two things that people seem to treat differently, often in significant ways.
---
On one hand, we have consent.
This paradigm is, generally speaking among People That Aren't Shit, to involve some measure of enthusiasm to be really and truly A Thing.
The corollary being that, if the individual providing consent feels afraid, unable, or worried about saying "No!", what's happening is NOT ACTUALLY CONSENT.
---
On the other hand, we have work.
Humans on this planet are expected to work for money (to survive).
If you cannot work, unless you somehow prove your disability/health deterioration/injury to the generally-accepted-as-being-abusive & uncaring systems for an exclusion, you will die of exposure, hunger, or self-harm.
Saying "No!" to capitalism means death.
===
When viewed through the lens of consent, much of what "modern" society requires start to look a lot like an entire system of normalized abuse.
Slavery is a lack of freedom.
There is a massive *functional* difference between historical systemic enslavement and modern "wage slavery".
And,in the context of functionally moving forward as an intentionally equitable society, degree of enslavement matters exactly ZERO.
---
Freedom is a spectrum, and we're nowhere near "good" for 95+% of people in 2019.
And, if you're aiming *anywhere* except for a future where all captives (held physically or otherwise) are freed, you gotta stop selling #deathsticks and go rethink your life.
---
Policing someone's degree of lack-of-freedom puts onus on the victim to prove the degree of their distress.
That's definitely not solidarity.
That's probably gaslighting.
===
Being an ally of marginalized individuals, and working towards a society where people are free, means letting go of expectations, letting go of pride, anger, and trauma, and *actually showing up* for allies.
Quoth the @sesshirecat :
Those of us who have been harmed by the systems around us have a responsibility to ensure that the cycle of toxicity is not perpetrated by our actions, words, or subtext.
---
We are not responsible for what was done to us.
We absolutely are responsible for what we do with that.
Two years ago, I was waiting in my tent in the mountains for a cougar to move away from my campsite, not knowing that in a few hours I'd be personally experiencing police brutality.
I said it before, and I will say it again.
I am now resisting.
And I hope you are resisting, too.
Every small, difficult choice matters. Every stolen moment of corporate time spent boosting poc on radical social media. Every $5 spent directly to an artist instead of Amazon Music. Every moment you consider, and rephrase, because kindness is our power, and rage is our shield, and we refuse to turn that raw energy on a trenchmate.
I survived.
Please, survive.
Help eachother survive.
That is how we win.
We survive, and we keep being kind.
We're able to breathe this week.
Despite the terrible things happening in the world.
Our bank has processed the check which our lawyer provided us, and after two full years of waiting...
...law enforcement has (finally) paid up for beating me up (back in 2018).
We've spent a few days...crashed hard...and then started pushing forward to obtain land, purchase infrastructure, and make a place of safety available to rent refugees and others in need.
Our short term goal is a place to rebuild and research, the medium term goals are sustainable means of production focused on housing to begin with...and long term, the sky is the limit when enough engineers have enough room and resources...
The storm is coming for us all.
Some have retreated to their castles in the sky, and pulled up the ladders.
We that remain will resist.
We that remain will outlive.
We that remain will grow green things, build relationships that last, and pass on the best of us to tomorrow's children.
We can do this.
We are enough.
We belong in the future we create together.
We all bleed the same color.
All life sings the same tune.
Life will persist long after we've gone.
Deep breath, friend.
We will get through this.
@eryn thank you for that link, I hadn't seen that before!
A lot of it is pretty woo, like "Somatics ... centres the body, its animal wisdom and primal knowledge, as the root of human potential." I don't blame anyone who has a hard time taking it seriously.
But! Van der Kolk has done great work identifying the physiological changes from trauma, and somatic experiencing therapy helps you cultivate awareness of those changes in your own body.
@eryn that the article inherits some of the woo is unavoidable, but I am so happy to see someone applying the insights to the queer experience.
Anybody with evidence-based reservations: please please give it a good faith read and I promise you'll come away with real insights.
Hello there, friend.
If you'd participate in writing secure, decentralized org software for a cooperative mutual aid network, please raise your...appendage or other indicator...
...or do an 'awoo', or whatever it is the critters 'n kin are doing these days...
...or send me a DM should you prefer to remain discreet...
...
We could use your help.
First layer of needs is for writing bug reports and maintaining points of feedback for an existing development team.
---
This is adjacent to, and supporting, the #GeneralStrike movement.
Please boost for praxis and revolution, and all that jazz.
war is the most fucked-up drug
the cult teaches you to trust your body,
but only for violence
===
Just...think about that,
if you've not seen active combat.
Now, think about
what growing up in that mindset
does to a kid.
Growing up #ActuallyAutistic in that environment gave me a layer of subconscious expectation that any touch could become violence at any moment. The heightened awareness of #ConstantVigilance is just...life as normal.
Being back here is...not good for me.
This is the place where that training happened.
Finding a way to keep my personal stability has required compromises to preserve my literal sanity.
Resisting that is the first part of even having equal footing with other, more 'socialized' individuals in social, interpersonal, and personal contexts.
The work of #deprogramming this will take me a lifetime, and my primary concern is making sure that this trauma ends with me.
I'we wages war on war, that tomorrow's children might live free.
And this commitment towards finding and ending the root cause of armed conflict cannot be changed, shaken, or deferred.
===
Peace in our time, or gee tee eff oh.
Thank y'all for being on this journey with i'we.
TessaLation
TempleWulf
Soni L.