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I don’t really want to wade into discourse too much today because I know everyone is extremely miserable online rn but I think if you want to give people genuine advice on what to do politically, “join a union/get involved in your current union/organise your workplace” or “join ACORN/a tenant union/etc” is much more actionable advice than like “build community.”

the problem with “community” is that it doesn’t have the same formal infrastructure / resources / political connections / organising capacity that allows your hard work to have reach far beyond your immediate circle (which is what a union has), and also because like, “community” is an extremely vague and abstract concept that can mean anything from a local restaurant run by your neighbour to a church to your dnd friend group. Reaching out and helping your neighbours is a good thing, lots of people are having a really tough time and helping people around you pay rent or take care of their family or etc is a good thing and you should feel good doing that, but in response to the complete institutional and political failure of electoral liberalism I think the next best option is to turn towards already existing national infrastructure that can mobilise people without requiring you to individually maintain dedicated personal relationships with everyone around you. In my experience + the experience of many long-time activists that I know, relying on interpersonal connections to organise and get things done leads to highly sectarian, disorganised, toxic, and unpleasant organising conditions. The cold impersonal bureaucracy of union membership is legitimately a good solution to this problem.

there are many little positions of power available in these organisation that become open to you for as low a cost as showing up to zoom meetings. I have personally been elected to positions in various unions/orgs literally because I was someone who showed up to meetings! Nobody goes to committee meetings! You get annual budgets! You get to pass votes, organise events, spend money on organising materials! You get to buy food for people! Organising is so much easier in these spaces.

And of course, you are going to face the same ideological resistance, apathy, ignorance, incompetence, and bigotry that you would at your local queer meet-up or community neighbourhood council, and I have no illusions about the institutional limits of unions (which can also be reactionary, bigoted, highly disorganised, incompetent, toxic, and so on), but if you want to avoid completely exhausting yourself and resenting everyone around you, you don’t need to build “community” from the ground up, there are already structures out there where you can do good work. For all the resistance there is to unions and union activity, you will face that same level of resistance with local organising but have none of the power, resources, or institutional legitimacy already secured by unions

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gen z has to reckon with its radicalization problem. you are not a morally pure and superior generation of youth come to save the world, your men and boys are radicalized at an unprecedented level and you ignore it because it’s too hard to address but you have to. these boys are in your classes, they date your friends, you know them and you cannot continue to pretend this is an “old white guy” problem

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the most depressing part is that it's not even kamala's stance on genocide that is costing her the elections. i wish it were. it's people genuinely shifting for trump. but it's the pro-palestine movement that's going to get the blame for it.

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anyway my hot take is that the modern night-of live reporting model is bad and probably should be illegal. democracy is not a spectator sport and the fact that news outlets are allowed to exploit partial vote counts for ratings is ghoulish. there is nothing you can learn the night of a major election that has greater value than waiting the several days to a week that it will take, and always has taken, for the final vote totals to be established

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its almost as if trumps loss in 2020 was in-fact a bellwether for the continued rise of neo-fascism... its almost like, just maybe, when a liberal party responds to reactionary ideologies with centrism and militant nationalism it doesn't exactly offer a counter to fascism but instead offers nutritive soil for its roots to grow... you could almost argue that a state that extracts its power from violent exploitation will inevitably fall to fascism... perhaps, just maybe, this is the inherent trajectory of a nation built on genocide... weird...

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i hate to be that guy, but the idea that gender, sex, and sexuality are ontologically pure concepts that can be rigidly defined if we simply police our language enough (our english language, because of course) is—i cannot stress this enough—a total waste of time. you may as well spend your afternoons teaching a brick how to swim

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I love seeing my mutuals in my notes because it confirms they’re not mad at me. yet

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the only thing that bothers me about the booping is that I can see the paw pads which makes me feel like I'm backhanding peoples' blogs

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Look don't test me I'll block and turn off reblogs with a hair trigger if you all can't be normal about this but I do feel like it needs to be said that "do you think abortion should be allowed if the mother's reason for wanting it is—" the only acceptable answer to that question is Yes no matter what the end of that sentence is going to be. I do not care if someone wants an abortion for selfish reasons or bigoted reasons or cruel reasons or any other hypothetical strawman you can think of, there is no circumstance where someone should be denied the right to opt out of a forced pregnancy and birth. First of all, who's in charge of interrogating everyone seeking an abortion to make sure they're doing it for reasons Pure Of Heart? Second, why do you think Forced Birth is an appropriate punishment to inflict on anyone? If your answer to "should abortion be allowed when the motivation is—" is anything but an unequivocal "yes, and I don't care about the motivation" then you are not pro-choice

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if you are anti-zionist the most effective work you can do is to ensure your community--politically and geographically-- is safe for jews to exist in. im serious. is your community safe for jews to be in? do you know any jews? if you do, are they scared of you? if you don't, if they are, why?

zionism is the premise that jews need to take exclusive control of our own homeland by force because there is nowhere else in the world for us to belong. that's it, that's the heart of it. if you disagree with the premise, you need to be part of the counter argument: that the jews of the diaspora are valued by their fellow citizens in countries around the world. that the jews of europe and asia and africa and the americas belong where they were born, that the jewish people deserve to belong wherever we live, that we are not invaders or parasites or unwanted guests living on the sufferance of christians and muslims who have a natural right to expell us when we've outstayed our welcome.

i'm not israeli. that land is the home of those who were born there, and i was born in california. i know a lot of my fellow americans right now that say they're anti-zionist but what they mean is they want israel gone and me along with it. and that is, ironically, why there's zionism in the first place.

are you anti-zionist or anti-jew? are we your neighbors or not? if you really want decolonization, get your own community in order. if you want all the jews to just fucking shut up already, you can join a six thousand year tradition of not actually ever managing that no matter how many genocides get done.

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"it's concerning if university students are genuinely struggling to read full adult-level books for class" and "don't overstate the reporting of a single news article" and "if this shift is genuinely real, it's reflective of broad curriculum changes in lower education levels, probably at least in part due to remote schooling during COVID, and doesn't mean the new generation is being willfully Stupid and Vapid" and "when reading for personal pleasure people should read whatever they like without shame" and "reading from a broad variety of genres, styles, and authorial backgrounds will improve your understanding of both literature and the real world" and "actively mocking people for their tastes in books does not encourage them to become more adventurous you're just being mean" and also "but seriously adult books are not just boringly pretentious nothingburgers padded with pointless sex scenes, and claiming they are just shows how little you've read" all can and should co-exist.

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it does still make me insane specifically how many queer people lovingly embrace astrology. I went to a poetry workshop yesterday that was genuinely quite good but also included an option to disclose astrology designations during introductions and so many people broke out some variation of "I'm a [x] sum but I have a [y] placement and it SHOWS" girl no it doesn't. that's meaningless correlation you completely invented the causation

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It’s el muchacho monday

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Masculine cape made of green silk velvet with golden embroidery. Years 1651-1675.

Source: Museu Virtual de la Moda de Catalunya [Fashion Virtual Museum of Catalonia]. Kept in Museu del Disseny [Design Museum] in Barcelona, Catalonia.

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