#Action and Advocacy

[edenfenixblogs]

Let’s put some numbers to Jewish fear right now.

In news that I’m sure will thrill all antisemites, it would take startlingly little effort to foment widespread violence against us and cause another genocide of the Jewish people.

I have had many fellow Jews express to me how overwhelming it is to see the rising antisemitism. I have seen many Jews express fear at being drowned out of public, online, and IRL spaces due to dangerously violent vitriol.

I have also seen people who claim to advocate for Palestine—especially western leftists—openly mock Jews who express this fear.

Finally, I and my fellow Jews have often expressed that, while we wholeheartedly support Palestinian freedom and self determination, it is exhausting to have to say so repeatedly, especially when we are trying to advocate for ourselves. This is not due to any latent or widespread hatred of Muslims, Arabs, or Palestinians. It is because we are an extremely maligned and marginalized minority that is fighting to be heard against strong, hostile forces that at best wish we’d shut up and at worst want us eradicated from the planet.

There is a disconnect about how much harm people can do to Jews by spreading antisemitism and refusing to dismantle their own internalized antisemitism—and everyone has internalized antisemitism. It is one of the oldest forms of prejudice in the world and is found in almost every single culture. It is as, if not more, pervasive than white privilege. Yes. You read that right. And if asked to elaborate, I will provide numbers on that to the best of my ability. For the purposes of this post, however, I want to focus on the global distribution of religious groups only.

Specifically, this disconnect is between Jews who are fully aware and feel the affects of this damage and goyim who simply do not comprehend our marginalization.

To help, let’s put some numbers to this. In this post, I’ll be using the Pew Research Center’s survey and findings on the Global Religious Landscape. This is the most recent data from a reputable source that I could find which surveyed every world religion at the same time. While the Jewish population has grown slightly in the intervening years, so have most (if not all) other religious populations around the globe. I wanted to use figures measured at the same time to avoid bias for or against any religious group.

For the purposes of this post, I will not be discussing folk religions or other religions. This is not because they are not important. This is because they are not a monolith and individual folk religions and other religions may have even fewer adherents per religion than Judaism. I am currently only focusing on religions and religious groups who have more adherents than Judaism.

In descending order of adherents, there number of people in the world belonging to these groups:

2,200,000,000 (2.2 Billion) Christians

1,600,000,000 (1.6 Billion) Muslims

1,100,000,000 (1.1 Billion) Religiously unaffiliated people

1,000,000,000 (1 Billion) Hindus

500,000,000 (500 Million) Buddhists

14,000,000 (14 Million) Jews

Reduced to the simplest fractions there are:

1100 Christians for every 7 Jews

800 Muslims for every 7 Jews

550 Religiously unaffiliated people for every 7 Jews

500 Hindus for every 7 Jews

250 Buddhists for every 7 Jews

Combined, there are 6,400,000,000 non-Jewish people in religions or religious groups (including religiously unaffiliated people).

This means that for every 7 Jews there are 3200 people in religious groups who outnumber us.

Jews are 0.2 % of the global population.

When we tell you that hate is dangerous, it is because…

It would only take 0.21% of 6.4 Billion people to hate us in order to completely overwhelm and outnumber every single Jewish person on the planet. In other words, only 67.2 out of every 3200 people.

And given how violent and aggressive people have become toward us in recent weeks, that doesn’t seem far off.

No, most Christians, Muslims, Atheists/Agnostics, Hindus, and Buddhists do NOT hate Jews.

But if even 0.21% of them do hate us, Jews are at a legitimate and terrifying risk of ethnic cleansing and genocide.

It is not possible for Jews alone to fight this rising tide of hate. There simply aren’t enough of us. And many of us are too scared to tell you the truth: if you don’t vocally and repeatedly stand up for Jews (and not just the ones you agree with) you will be complicit in the genocide that follows. Police your own communities.

Nobody acting in good faith is asking you to abandon Palestinians or their fight for self determination and equality in their homeland. All we are asking is for you to learn about antisemitism, deconstruct it in yourself, and loudly condemn it when it occurs in front of you. We are asking you to comfort us and not run away when we are scared or even angry at you. Because a lot of us are angry with you, because we are extremely scared right now and many of you are not helping us. Many of you are actively and carelessly spreading dogwhistles that further the global rise in hatred against us.

You can support Palestine AND avoid Islamophobia WITHOUT making antisemitism worse. But you can’t stop antisemitism by staying silent in the face of it. And if you don’t speak up, you will get us killed. Silence, in this case, is quite literally violence.

Many of us have armed guards posted at our synagogues and schools and community centers because of this. I certainly had times where my synagogue and school had to have armed security for our safety.

The only reason more of us haven’t died already is because we have millennia of experience in confronting this kind of hatred and guarding against it.

But in pure numbers, if you don’t speak up for us now, we don’t have a chance at survival without support.

So, what can you do, specifically?:

* Make a stand or public statement about condemning antisemitism without mentioning another group. Acknowledge Jewish fear, pain, and current danger without contextualizing it in someone else’s. It could literally be something as simple as “Antisemitism is bad. There’s never a reason for it. I won’t tolerate it in presence in real life or online.” If you cannot bring yourself to publicly make this statement, you should have a serious look at yourself to understand why you can’t.

* Learn about the six universal features of antisemitism and the many, various dog whistles affecting the global Jewish community

* Do not welcome people who espouse rhetoric that includes any features from the above bullet point in your community unless you are able to educate them and eliminate that behavior.

* Check in on your Jewish friends, regularly and repeatedly. Do not wait for them to reach out to you. They are scared of you. Even if you don’t have the emotional space to have conversations about antisemitism. Just send a message once in a while, unprompted, “Jfyi, antisemitism still sucks. I support you.”

* Redirect conversations about which “side” is “right” to how to attain peace. Do this by saying that this line of argument is not conducive to peace, and link to a well-respected organization not widely accused of either antisemitism or Islamophobia that is devoted to achieving a peaceful resolution, increasing education, or providing humanitarian aid to relevant affected groups—including Jews, Israelis, Palestinians, Muslims, and Arabs. You can find over 160 such organizations at the Alliance for Middle East Peace https://www.allmep.org/

* Look to support experienced groups without widespread and verifiable claims of prejudice against either Jews or Muslims or Arabs or Palestinians. Many of these organizations can also be found at the AllMEP link above. Avoid groups on the shit list as well as unproductive and harmful movements.

* Do not default to western methods of political demonstration. Specifically, protests are not useful in attaining peace in western nations at this time. Israelis and Palestinians can and should protest to the best of their abilities in Israel and Palestine so as to pressure their own governments. However, protests in western nations have proven to be poorly regulated and to further the spread of bigoted rhetoric and violence against Jews, Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinians. Furthermore, there are nearly as many Palestinians in the world as there are Jews. It is extremely easy and common for the voices of bad actors and bigots on all sides to completely drown out Jewish and Palestinian voices and concerns at these events.

* Spend more time listening and learning than speaking and acting. Anyone who tells you this conflict is simple is someone who is lying to you. Take the time to learn the ways in which your actions and words can get people hurt before joining the fray.

* Stop demonizing Zionism as a concept, even if you disagree with it. Understand that it is a philosophy with many different movements that often conflict with each other. The Zionism practiced by Netanyahu and the Likud party is NOT representative of most Zionists or interpretations of Zionism. It is an extremist form of Zionism known as Revisionist Zionism.

* Don’t deny Jewish indigeneity to the levant. It doesn’t help Palestine and hurts Jews by erasing our physical and cultural history as well as erasing the Jews who remained in Israel even through widespread diaspora.

* KEEP THE HOLOCAUST OUT OF YOUR MOUTH

Things That Are Always OK

* Denouncing Antisemitism loudly and publicly

* Denouncing Islamophobia loudly and publicly

* Telling your Jewish and Muslim and Arab friends you support them and won't abandon them

* Elevating the work of respected, widely accepted people and organizations devoted to attaining peace for all, rather than just one group of people.

* Develop media literacy

* Understand what aspects of the current western leftist movements Jews are criticizing, rather than assuming our criticisms are motivated by hatred for Palestine or Palestinians.

* Expressing sorrow for civilian deaths regardless of religion or nationality.

* When you are not Jewish and you share a post about antisemitism from a Jewish person, please say you’re a goy. This isn’t because you’re not welcome to share. This is because it is indescribably comforting to know we aren’t just talking amongst ourselves and screaming into the void. Let us know you are supportive of us. It doesn’t mean that you or we hate Palestine or Palestinians or that we oppose their full and equal rights in our shared homeland.

[blanket-burrito-protocol]

The 50th anniversary of AIMs (American Indian Movement's) occupation at Wounded Knee is coming up, so the Lakota People's Law Project is leading another push to free an AIM activist who was wrongly convicted of killing two federal agents in 1975- Leonard Peltier. He was convicted on false evidence and false testimony and sentenced to two life sentences. He is now 78.

LPL has a formatted email up on their website now which you can personalize and send to Biden to ask for clemency. (Please personalize emails like this so it doesn't get filtered as spam. Just move some words around, add some, take some, you don't have to write a whole email.) Please pass this around.

[uncanny-tranny]

Something I absolutely hate that's done for some reason:

Person: Isn't that typical narcissistic behaviour? *Lists out behaviours and tactics done specifically by abusers of literally all neurotypes*

There is no such thing as an "abuser disorder" because abuse is a pattern of behaviour. Stigmatizing disorders like NPD only contributes in horrifically negative things and discourages people from seeking help when they may need it. You can call out abuse without essentializing it with an Abuser Disorder.

[long-anti-covid]

Action item for people in the US with long covid:

the Long-Hauler Advocacy Project is asking people with long covid (and caregivers for people with long covid) to fill out their survey about the Social Security Disability process

they're trying to gather information that they can use in advocating to reform the disability application process

they are asking for responses from anyone with long covid, whether you've applied to SSDI or not (one of the things they are gathering data on is the reasons why people haven't applied.)

[petrichoremojis]

IDs in alt

Symbols for: "learn", "I am ending this conversation", and two variants for "I can't breathe through my nose"

Learn and the breathing ones were requests, the second one we did for ourself

[this-user-is-sus]

Scientists this week warn that the collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current (aka AMOC, contains the Gulf Stream) is closer than they previously predicted, as early as 2025.

This is bad and will lead to ripples in climate, weather patterns, local "normal" temperatures, storm severity, ocean oxygenation and fishery productivity (hello phrase "fish die-offs" 😭), and sea level that will disrupt life as we know it and cannot be reversed in this century or maybe (likely) for centuries to come.

(You can check the Wikipedia page for more information.).

Scream at someone about this.

Go here -- https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/ -- or here -- https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials. Start typing. Feel free to use the template I'm putting under the "read more." Press send. Repeat if you have the energy. Ily if you do it even once. Thank you, and keep fighting the good fight!

Dear <NAME OF OFFICIAL>,

<OPTIONAL SENTENCE OR TWO TO INTRODUCE YOURSELF. Say why climate change matters to you. Say if you're frightened. Say if you're depressed. Say if you're anxious. Make it personal.>

This week a study was released (https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/25/world/gulf-stream-atlantic-current-collapse-climate-scn-intl/index.html, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-39810-w) showing that the collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation is far closer than scientists had previously thought. When this current stops, it will have far-reaching impacts on sea level, weather, storm patterns, and fishery production that will be irreversible for a century or far longer.

I am deeply worried about the future. We need climate change ACTION now, not just voluntary incentive programs. Please take action to improve our electrical grid, transition our power plants to clean fuels, transition to clean modes of transportation, and tax carbon emissions.

Sincerely,

<YOUR NAME HERE>

[enbycrip]

UK folks, and, tbh, disabled folks from abroad, every disabled person who depends on PIP to live desperately needs your urgent input on the Tory Green Paper proposing to change PIP from a regular payment into vouchers, catalogues and other things that give disabled people less and less freedom and control over our lives

Liz Kendall, the new Labour Work and Pensions Secretary, has a long track record of incredibly disableist behaviour. She *needs* a clear signal that the public support the right of disabled people to live our own lives and make our own choices about how we live without continually having to fight an expensive bureaucracy with no clue what disability is actually like, nor how expensive it is to live as a disabled person.

Link gives more info and takes you to the consultation:

https://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/news/time-running-out-to-challenge-pip-vouchers?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR1qdDOjD0Zz0zeyYOOYFPTnlSX5_lwmBranq6Xs60x5l4dCli5q-Ywd9ww_aem_DSWkyRN-oVizRVvSpj0UZA

[daisylovesrumble]

petition: Stop the Massacre of Sweden's Brown Bears. Demand an End to This Brutal Cull!

[secret-disc-horses]

I replied to that one ‘gaylor hate post’ in the gaylor tag with the citations the OP so rudely requested. So strange… OP had time to mock all the other gaylors who replied or act smug with other people hating on gaylors, but somehow had no time to reply to my citations… Wonder why. 👀

[ivygorgon]

An open letter to the U.S. Congress

Stop Elon Musk from stealing our personal information!

6,399 so far! Help us get to 10,000 signers!

I am writing to urge you to stop Elon Musk from stealing our personal information.

It appears Musk has hacked into millions of Americans’ personal information and now has access to their taxes, Social Security, student debt and financial aid filings. Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency was not created by Congress—it is operating with zero transparency and in clear violation of federal law.

This violation of our privacy is causing American families across the country to fear for our privacy, safety and dignity. If this goes unchecked, Musk could steal our private data to help in making cuts to vital government programs that our families depend on—and to make it easier to cut taxes for himself and other billionaires.

We must have guardrails to stop this unlawful invasion of privacy.

Congress and the Trump administration must stop Elon Musk from stealing Americans' tax and other private data.

▶ Created on February 10 by Jess Craven · 6,398 signers in the past 7 days

📱 Text SIGN PUTWGR to 50409

🤯 Text FOLLOW JESSCRAVEN101 to 50409

[edenfenixblogs]

New Pinned Post: How This Blog Approaches The Conflict

I am not normally a politically-focused blog. I am normally a personal blog that enjoys fandom and occasionally processes my own past trauma. As this war goes on, I am finding that it is against my personal ethics and morals to stay silent when I have the ability to educate and remain more patient than most. (My patience is not endless. I’m still human). So, while disinformation/misinformation, and propaganda abound on all sides. I feel like the best way I can help lower the temperature is to put my skills to use.

Primary Political Goals:

1. Emphasize humanity above all and use verifiable information and good faith education and discourse to reduce tension.

2. Do my absolute best to move the conversation away from polarizing, accusatory discourse that forces Jews, Muslims, Arabs, Israelis, and Palestinians to play a desperate game of defense and toward a shared mutually beneficial peace that honors each grouped indigeneity culture, and connection to their ancestral homeland.

3. Demonstrate and emphasize both Jewish-Muslim solidarity and Israeli-Palestinian solidarity.

Primary Blogging Goals:

As a diaspora Jew, my primary goal is threefold

1. Educate about antisemitism and Islamophobia—including calling it out and explaining it to the best of my ability.

2. Elevate responsible, verifiable voices—regardless of religion or nationality—and information to the best of my ability.

3. Demonstrate effective activism and provide insight and encouragement for other to find their most effective way to contribute to fostering peace.

Elaboration:

1. I have the most experience with an understanding of antisemitism. I am more of an expert in antisemitism and have more ability to identify and educate about it. That said: I will not tolerate any Islamophobia or racism and if I don’t have the ability to educate about it, you will be blocked. If I have the ability to educate about it, I will do so and give you the chance to read about it and adjust your behavior. If you do not do so, I will block you.

2. This does not mean equal representation of all nationalities and religions. It means the best informed and most reliable voices AND the voices I personally have the best ability to vet, verify, and substantiate. This will often mean Jewish voices and Israeli voices. This is me staying in my lane, not choosing to suppress any voice. I will not elevate purposefully divisive, tokenized, or uninformed voices. This does not mean that I won’t elevate Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab voices as well. I will. But my primary goal here is responsibility. To do that, I have to stay in my lane.

3. I am most effective as an educator on this matter, a guide to finding reliable peace-oriented voices, and an example of patience. There’s a great desire among many to protest or create videos detailing their opinions and stances. Not only is this primarily performative—especially among non-Muslim/non-Palestinian goyim—it has the potential to be extraordinarily damaging to Jews both in Israel and in Diaspora as well as to Arabs, Muslims, Palestinians, and South East Asians worldwide. If you truly desire to help and not just feel like you’re helping, the best thing you can do is follow the lead of much more experienced activists with a demonstrated track record of effectiveness and good faith in their areas of expertise. As I stated: mine is primarily education and greater than average (though not limitless) amounts of patience. If you want to donate money or engage in more direct action and aid, I suggest finding pro-Palestinian Israeli voices and peace oriented Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian voices as well as organizations with experience in this conflict that do not rely on eliminating any population or erasing anyone’s connection to the Levant. Follow their lead on that matter. If you are only just engaging in this conflict for the first time due to current events, you likely do not know nearly as much as you think you do about any of this. Being uninformed and spouting disinformation has actual dire consequences that can get Jews, Muslims, Palestinians, Israelis, and Arabs killed. It is vital that you’re responsible in your engagement on this matter. Learning dogwhistles and how to spot bad faith arguments is a must. And to be effective, you should spend more of your time learning than you’re doing protesting or arguing. This is a 2000+ year old conflict. There is a lot to know and understand. And there are a lot of people willing to prey on your newcomer status and manipulate your existing beliefs to use you as a pawn to further their bad faith aims. The only consistent, trustworthy principal is to trust those who repeatedly affirm their goal as peace and shared prosperity and who reject any form of demonization based on ethnicity or religion. This is not a game. This is not the west’s fight. This is a conflict between two horribly oppressed, traumatized, and nearly exterminated ethnoreligous groups.

I am begging you to think, listen, and learn before joining the fray.

Note: I also don’t claim to be perfect. If I mess up or reblog something that causes unintended harm (which is very easy to do when engaging in discussions and activism about this conflict), I will say so and issue a correction. There’s no need to be hostile in informing me about this. Just message with your concern and I’ll evaluate from there.

Additionally, I will not interact with Hamas apologists. Hamas is a terrorist organization.

Anyone trying to make me feel like this is an Us vs. Them situation will be blocked.

[actualadvocacybruh]

Rad fems - “Men are inherently violent unlike women who are compassionate and logical”

Also rad fems …. Every time

They also said I deserve to be raped as well but that deserved it own little post as the hypocrisy and blatant disregard for SA and CSA (me btw) victims is on display

[miizuchii]

[uncanny-tranny]

"The world isn't a safe place, so get used to it!"

Man, as somebody who's survived multiple, long-lasting instances of abuse from a very young age, I was under the impression that the world was, indeed, so safe and conforming to my desires. I'm practically stunned to learn that this is not the case, and I have been severely humbled

(Sarcasm fully intended)

[gmos]

per my last reblog, i was gonna make a long post about it, but passing and especially being stealth is a privilege, not a standard. the idea that cis white patriarchy gets the final say on a) what genders should look like and b) everyone must participate in one of them is a BAD THING. the concept of passing and stealth exists because trans people are persecuted. not because we should be aspiring towards it

[dawnmarionette]

im gonna be sooo for real if trump wins im absolutely not going to feel sorry for anyone whos spent the last 2 months on socmed doing nothing but posting every day about how voting harris is identical to condoning genocide & they dont want to dirty their hands like that. trump is going to basically nuke gaza so i hope you all are happy with your moral integrity in abstaining & discouraging others from voting, a decision that kept your own souls pure & untouched from guilt while leaving the most vulnerable people in the world to reap the consequences. good job online left, you successfully avoided touching the Evil Lever that would divert the trolley from the minorities on the tracks. hooray

the dems themselves have a lot of responsibility for this too dgmw, but if trump wins & we lose like 80% of all civil rights or start the third world war in the middle east or something, a lot of terminally online leftists are going to learn the hard way that harm reduction is called that for a reason