Most of us didn’t expect this to be anything but stopping the slide into the abyss.
Don’t kid yourself.
I don’t think any of us are naive, or so idealistic that they can’t see what’s happening around them. Today was simply about giving us time to have a Plan B.
And we’ve achieved that. Control of the House by the Dems is a big deal, or COULD be a big deal. Some of the people who have been elected today – Halland, Davids, Omar and Ocasio-Cortez, for example, though there are many examples – are canaries in the coal mine for some of the fossils in Congress, or they should be, if Pelosi wants to fucking listen to what people are telling her and the other Dems.
So now we have time. What next?
You don’t have to know right this second, but tomorrow, when you wake up and shit still stinks, what’s our Plan B? What do we do tomorrow?
Congratulations. We’ve hit a mile marker on the marathon.
Tomorrow, we wake up, and we keep going.
We said the exact same thing in 2016. What did we get in return?
– Muslim Immigration and Travel Ban
– War on Immigrants
– War on Sexual Abuse Survivors, Women’s Health, and Reproductive Health Rights
– War on LGBTQ+
– War on Healthcare
– A massive infidelity scandal
– The degradation of American values (just look at how conveniently lawmakers threw basic human decency out of the window in the Kavanaugh confirmation!)
– Mass shooting on a synagogue
– Mass shooting in Parkland
– Mass shooting in a yoga studio
– Vehicular murder in Charlottesville
– Fire bombing of mosques and synagogues
– Vandalism in many religious and societal institutions
– Bombs being sent in the mail
– A strengthened NRA
– Fox News still going strong
– A WORSENING racist cops crisis
– Permit Patty, Cornerstone Candice, BBQ Becky, and an increasing number of open racists
When will it stop? When we become desensitized? When all of this becomes normal? Because we’ve basically made that choice this time the same way we did last year…
Cool, so, what’s your plan? Is your plan to just say ‘look at everything we’ve lost’? Because a) that’s not a plan and b) you think any of us have forgotten any of the above and c) that’s not a plan?
If you want to make a post saying ‘all is lost,’ or whatever the point of this was, you’re always free to make your own post. Sometimes it’s really okay to let someone say ‘this is a marathon, get up tomorrow and get to work’.
Because here’s the thing: we did get to work, and it mattered. Voter turnout was historic. We saw the House shift control, which gives subpoena power to Democrats, and takes vital House leadership positions away from Trump’s yes-men. That matters. What else did we see? The first two NA women, the first two Muslim women, the first Palestinian-American, the first Somali-American, the first, the first, the first: we, as leftists, got to work, and it made a fucking difference. A rank-and-file Democrat was unseated during the primaries, and then the challenger was elected in the general election, and if the calcified creatures of perpetual compromise in charge of the vaguely left-leaning part of this two-party mess are paying any attention, they’re on notice. (I do not expect them to be paying attention.)
I mean if you just want to wring you hands and despair, there’s room for that, but for fuck’s sake, don’t come in here and suck the air out of a me saying ‘it’s okay, we made a difference, we can keep going, don’t give up, we got what we really expected out of this, and that’s okay.’
Anyway, for everyone else: the work you put in made a difference. Thanks for helping stave off the apocalypse for people like my family.
(Also, idk about y’all, but this was NOT my message after 2016. That was the most emotionally crushing election I ever lived through, and I voted in 2000.)
ALSO:
Imagine you are halfway up a cliff.
Below you is a spiky pit full of poisonous snakes.
You’re slipping.
Someone throws you a rope. (They do not swear on the grave of your father to not kill you until you’ve reached the top.)
This is great, except that the rope is strong enough to support your weight–not to climb.
Would you rather fall, or hang on the rope in one spot until you’ve gotten enough strength back to keep climbing???
I don’t know about you, but this should be a pretty obvious fucking metaphor, and I would rather take the fucking rope, thank you.
Staying where we are is still better than where we could have gone.
Fucking thank you.
… Also we HAVEN’T stayed where we were, Dems won control of the fucking House and ousted a bunch of rep governors. What kind of cracked walnut doesn’t understand how big of a victory that is?? How fucking DARE anyone compare this to 2016??? That rhetoric smells as bad as Russian troll shit.
And things like Governor’s races MATTER. Remember that time the Governor of Michigan overthrew the elected government of Flint specifically so he could POISON everyone at great expense, then blocked all attempts to help them for over a year and they still don’t have safe water because the Republicans refuse to pay to fix things they break?
That guy just got voted the hell out.
Are you seriously arguing that having a Governor who won’t literally poison children for fun is better than having a Governor who WON’T do that and might actually fix things? Because those two things look wildly different to me!
Is the battle over? NO. We are going to have to keep fighting tooth and nail over the next couple of years, but IT IS PROGRESS.
Mitch McConnel promised out right to steal everybody’s health care if they won the election. Winning the House STOPS that. I literally become HOMELESS and die if the promised cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid (Medicaid cpvers part of my Medicare premium) go through. A whole lot of people die if they repeal the ACA and the protections for pre-existing conditions go through. That won’t happen because we took the House.
If y’all came out in 2016, we wouldn’t be where we are now. Those of us who had the most to lose if basic civil rights were repealed begged you all to vote Democrat to stop this from happening.
Now we have to all pull together to fight our way back up to where we were two years ago.
Mourn if you have to, but Do Not Give the Fuck Up! That’s what they want you to do. They want you to lie down so they can rollover you! Fuck that!
We fight! We have each other’s backs! We leave no one behind this time! we keep the fuck going because they alternative is neo-feudal facist dystopia and people likee me rounded up into camps to die and I’m not going without a damned fight!
This made me nearly bite a pencil in half in enraged memory.
@ THE REST OF MY ANCIENT HISTORY CLASS; Y’ALL ARE WELCOME FOR THAT FUCKIN A THE REST OF YOU DID NO GODDAMN WORK FOR
Oh man, so I know everyone hates group projects with ample good reason, but lemme just tell you something that happened to me in my final year of uni. My dad got real sick and was in and out of hospital numerous times, one time with a suspected heart attack. Which meant my mum ended up caring for my dad, and I wound up caring for my disabled brother, on top of working a part time job and going to university full time.
My grades slid dramatically. I was having to appeal nearly all my results with my professors, and was mercifully granted extensions by all but one of them. (Which, if you’re out there Ronald: stub your toe and step on lego for the rest of eternity.) And then our Revolutionary Cultures prof. assigned a group project, and paired us at random with our classmates. And I knew, I knew I was just going to be a dead weight so I went to my new buddy and told them we should go to the profs office and ask for her to be switched to someone else who wasn’t just going to drag them down. And my new best buddy for the rest of the semester looked at me, looked at our assigned project, and very gently started to cry as she told me “I was just about to say the same thing to you,” and then tearfully told me her mum was dying, and the only reason she hadn’t dropped out to take care of her was because her mum wanted to see her graduate. She’d been given six months and we graduated in five. Provided we finished this class. And we were both out of appeals and leniency time.
It’s probably one of my most vivid memories from the whole college experience, just sitting on the floor of the Renaissance Lit corridor hugging someone who until a moment ago had been a relative stranger known only in passing, and trying to tell them it would be okay, we’d get the paper done. And we did. We scraped a C- together between the two of us and we managed to coast over the passing mark for the class and were allowed to graduate with abysmal but passing marks.
And I still think about her all the time. Especially when I wind up in group projects for work, and it feels like no one else is shouldering any of the burden, I make a note to reach out and say “hey, you don’t seem to be engaging with this much, are you okay?”
And a lot of the time it shocks people. They’re not expecting earnest concern for their lack of interest, and you find out things like their kid is sick, their dog just died, they’ve got health issues going on, or sometimes they just don’t know where to begin with the project and didn’t want to tell you that because they were frightened of being judged or perceived as lazy when they’re just overwhelmed.
And I honestly wish things like this were taught in team building exercises, cause that’s what group projects in school are. They’re supposed to be teaching you how to work well with others and achieve a common goal, while at the same time totally skipping over the fundamentals of human interaction and how to engage socially with others, and it’s fucking bullshit.
For the record, she actually abandoned the movement BEFORE they all got whooping cough, but abandoned it too late. There’d been a breakout of measles in her area that caused her to reassess, and she and her doctor had already drafted and started a catch-up vaccination schedule, but her kids caught whooping cough just before it could be started. Then she wrote a blog post for The Scientific Parent explaining how she and her husband had come to wrong decisions in the first place, how they changed their mind, the consequences they suffered as a result, and asking other parents to please vaccinate their kids. And now she’s an activist for destroying the misinformation of anti-vaxxers, and reaching out to anti-vaxxers because she’s understands their fears but knows their kids deserve better.
She was trying to the best for her kids and just didn’t know how to interpret the validity of information or its sources, an actual skill that can be actually difficult and that is under-taught and a necessary first step to being able to trust vaccination research, so chose no action over taking an action she wasn’t sure of. She kept looking into it with family and friends and even eventually came to the right conclusion before her kids became sick, but it was still too late.
Honestly it was pretty brave of her to publicly admit she was wrong. She could have just quietly vaccinated her kids and not become a national news story, but instead she spoke out, even saying “I’m writing this from quarantine, the irony of which isn’t lost on me.” and also “I am not looking forward to any gloating or shame as this ‘defection’ from the antivaxx camp goes public, but, this isn’t a popularity contest. Right now my family is living the consequences of misinformation and fear. I understand that families in our community may be mad at us for putting their kids at risk.”
She understood the consequences and still put herself and her story out there.
You know what, it does take a big person to admit they were wrong so publicly and work to undo the harm. I believe I made fun of her in the past, but timemachineyeah changed my mind.
How could you be against free college. Like if I think about student loans for more than a few minutes I think about jumping off a cliff have some pity damn
Because hundreds of thousands of people have already paid for their tuition. Should they be reimbursed? It’s not fair to the people who have already paid/ are paying for college. That’s why.
Yeah I love thinking how my kids are gonna cry and have panic attacks because of the heavy student loans they’re gonna have just because they want to go to a good school. Yeah I really want them to suffer just like I did bc yknow I paid why should they have it any easier than me?? I don’t want America to be better than I found it. Fuck future generations.
i dont think we should use cars because it’s not fair to the people who had to travel via horseback. should they be resurrected with necromancy and allowed to apply for a drivers license? think logically here
This is actually what you should say to an ICE agent who has come to your house looking for an undocumented immigrant.
Specifically, do not open the door; tell them to slide their warrant under the door. Read it carefully and check to see if it’s a JUDICIAL warrant, which will have specific information like the time and location where they’re allowed to search, and a specific description of who or what they’re allowed to search for. ICE practically *never* have this; they’ll have an ADMINISTRATIVE warrant, which is just their orders from their boss telling them to arrest a particular person. It does not give them the right to enter your house.
ICE *can* enter your house if they have probable cause, such as if they see the person they’re looking for through a window or door (which is why you don’t open the door). Other forms of probable cause include kids telling agents that they were born outside of the US. Agents will trick people into chatting with them, especially kids who serve as translators for their parents, asking things like “What part of Mexico are you from?” Staying silent keeps the onus on them to prove in court later that they had evidence someone isn’t here legally.
It’s important to remember that for now, at least, every person ICE wants to deport has to go before a judge, and ICE has to provide evidence that they know this person is undocumented and that they were arrested without violating the 4th amendment (against unreasonable search and seizure). We know that cops lie and that judges usually side with them, but agents would rather go for a sure bet from a targeted raid than risk wasting their time and energy on arrests that could be thrown out. Knowing your rights and being prepared makes you a more difficult target.
“I do not consent to entry without a warrant.”
(This information comes from notes I took at a workshop on being an immigration ally. Learn more at welcomingamerica.org)
ACTUALLY, ICE will wave around anything and call it a warrant and unless you’re a lawyer chances are you won’t be able to tell, so call a lawyer. ICE often comes in civilian vehicles and clothes, will often conceal their badges from you and will even lie about who they are, and they’ve been known to work with police. You shouldn’t open the door. Call your lawyer, a volunteer lawyer group that assists immigrants or a response network* first. Never say anything that might reveal you’re an immigrant at all to any cop, not even if you are arrested for something else. Call your lawyer and let them deal with it.
ICE presentara cualquier cosa y la llamara un warrant, y aunque usted sea un abogado, probablemente no sabra la diferencia, asi que llame a su abogado. ICE muy seguido se presenta en ropa y autos civiles sin marcas, obscuren sus placas y pueden hasta mentir aceca de quienes son, aveces hasta trabajan con policia local para hacer arrestos de immigracion. No habra la puerta. Llame a su abogado, un grupo de abogados voluntarios que asistan a immigrantes o un grupo de respuesta* primero. Nunca diga nada que revele que es usted un immigrante a ningun policia, ni siquiera si usted esta ciendo arrestado por ortra razon. Llame a su abogado y dejen que ellos lideen con ICE.
Here is what a Judicial warrant looks like:
Asi es como se ve un warrant judicial:
This what an immigration warrant looks like:
Asi se ve un warrant de immigracion:
If the warrant looks like this, you don’t have to let them in. Either way, call your lawyer and if you see ICE or suspect you see them, call someone who responds to ICE raids.
Si el warrant se ve como este, usted no tiene que dejarlos entrar. En qualquier caso, llame a su abogado y si ve a ICE o sospecha que los ve llame a alguen que responda a raids de ICE.
*Response networks. Research online if there’s a network of people in your area who respond to ICE raids, you can also ask at local temples or churches if they know of one. These are people whom you call on the phone, they give you brief instructions and send respondents to your location to assist you, serve as witnesses and document what happens so you can use that information to your defense.
*Grupos de respuesta. Busque en linea si hai un grupo de gente en su area que responda a raids de ICE, tambien puede preguntar en tempos o iglecias locales si conocen de uno. Estas son personas que usted llama en el telephono, le dan instuciones breves y llaman socorristas a su locacion a asistirle, servir como testigos y documentar lo que suseda para que usted pueda usar esa informacion en su defensa.
If you ain’t got eleven dollars, talk to your local and they should be able to work something out.
You can join the IWW even if you’re unemployed, and even if your labor is exploited in prison.
When they say one big union for everyone, they really mean it
Subminimum dues for the Wobs are six bucks
Seriously, join the fucking IWW. Message your local on Facebook if you don’t know who to turn to. They’d love to have you and they’ll meet with you in person to talk about it and sign you up if you want. It can and will only lead to good things for you.
For real guys, I can’t recommend this enough. Join your local union.
I worked at a union job years ago. Best job I ever had. Fair pay–they’d negotiated us danger pay from minimum wage; full benefits (Canadian so we had health care anyways but they covered most of our prescriptions, and glasses, and dental work); got paid holidays starting at two weeks when you started (I think the first year was just the two weeks off, but after that it was paid, and increased regularly with seniority); regular pay bumps to keep up with inflation; sick days; PLUS when management were dicks they’d sort them out.
Like this one time, I had a machine that was cleaning some extremely dirty grain (our wheat was full of peas, which we didn’t handle, so our machines just dumped it as oversized garbage along with pieces of stalks etc), and had this really heavy sack (because it was a regular burlap sack but now it was full of fucking peas) that the peas were going into that usually would be emptied maybe twice a shift or so, and we had so many peas coming out that it was needing to be emptied like every ten minutes. And by the time you lugged this like eighty-pound bag of peas to the other side of the floor to dump, and then cleaned up the mess the machine dumped on the floor while you were doing that, it was damned near time to dump the peas again.
So it’s getting time for my lunch break (mandatory half hour, plus two coffee breaks, also mandatory), and there is no way in hell I can leave it; the peas will pile up high enough that there will be a fire risk from them rubbing against the machine.
So I call my supervisor and tell him my lunch is almost due, and he should either get someone to spell me off or else shut the machine down so I can have my break (which I desperately needed at that point, as you can imagine).
Well, they had a shitload of wheat to clean all the peas out of, and didn’t want to shut the machine down. So first he told me to let the machine just overflow and clean it up after; and when I told him that would likely start a fire with how many peas were coming out, he told me to “just take my break between emptying the sack.” Which, like, does not actually count as taking a fucking break from it.
So I called down to my union rep and told him what was up, he talked to the supervisor, and then him and the supervisor came and had a look at how many peas were coming out (so many that we were joking that the peas were contaminated with wheat), and then grabbed a couple of guys off sweeping to empty the bag while I ate.
And then put a second body on the floor to help handle all those peas because omfg.
Unions are the best. Remember that in the mid-Eighties, almost half of all jobs were unionized. It was Reagan catering to corporations that got all the workers’ rights that people quite literally had fought and died for almost a hundred years previously rolled right back.
Bring back the unions!!
What if your job is under the table? Can you still join a union?
Yes! The IWW is an explicitly anticapitalist union and recognizes *all* labor as worthy of respect and representation. They collect minimal data on individual members and prefer to collect dues in cash and in person for exactly those reasons. All you really need is a local officer to jaw at, a name (doesn’t have to be real), and eleven dollars.
I forget the number, but there’s even a sex workers’ industrial.
nobody ever talks about how saying non-binary genders don’t exist is racist as fuck
How?
many many many indigenous cultures have historically included more than two genders and to say that those genders do not exist is to say that those cultural traditions are invalid, and that only the imperialist gender binary is correct. which is racism.
wupacing 