#BIPOC rights

[smallblueblondie]

Please stop ignoring that white supremacy is a huge core element of radfem/terf ideology.

Like yes they hyperenforce gender roles and stereotypes on all cis women, but it is primarily women of color that they target and accuse of being predatory and "not real women" when they're targeting cis women.

The metrics of "real woman vs trans woman" that terfs love to share are almost all just white eurocentric beauty standards. Small nose, thin fine hair, little/no body hair, petite but somehow curvy, hell I've even seen a post saying skin lightness is a determiner.

Terf/radfem circles are racist at their core. You cannot separate radical feminism from it's violently white supremacist roots. You can't have "anti-racist radical feminism", that's a fucking oxymoron. There is a very clean path from terfs to tradfems/tradwifes, to just straight up conservative republican women.

Yes yes always, terfs are super misogynistic. They hurt all women by forcing them back into the little impossible painful boxes that they claim they're fighting. But one of their biggest targets other than trans women is black women. Not to mention ignoring, discrediting, or just straight up trying to erase all the hard work that black trans women did for queer rights.

Radical feminism is very much transphobic, homophobic, and misogynistic. I'm not saying stop addressing it as such. Don't ever do addressing it as such!

But radical feminism is white supremacy in a coat of pink paint. Please never forget that when talking about how it hurts us all.

[cvntyboylove-666]

If you had told me a year ago that we could end up living in a society where uterus-havers bodies belong to the government I would've asked you what kind of omegaverse smut fanfiction you were reading.

[mollyjimbly]

ACTION ALERT THIS IS THE LAST CHANCE!!!

Democratic leadership is quietly working with Speaker Johnson to sneak through reauthorization of Section 702, a racist mass surveillance program. The timing on this is super urgent, they're deciding on what will be attached to the NDAA in the next couple days. FFTF set up a calling tool to put pressure on democratic leadership. Please take a few minutes to call and demand they stop this move. Script and more information are here:

https://www.fightforthefuture.org/actions/tell-democrats-stop-pushing-racist-surveillance/

THE VOTE IS TODAY AT 4.45 EST

PLEASE CALL AND REBLOG I DO NOT CARE IF YOU ARE BUSY DO IT NOW

[reasonsforhope]

"If I wanted to convince you of the reality of human progress, of the fact that we as a species have advanced materially, morally, and politically over our time on this planet, I could quote you chapter and verse from a thick stack of development statistics.

I could tell you that a little more than 200 years ago, nearly half of all children born died before they reached their 15th birthday, and that today it’s less than 5 percent globally. I could tell you that in pre-industrial times, starvation was a constant specter and life expectancy was in the 30s at best. [Note: This is average life expectancy, old people did still exist in olden times] I could tell you that at the dawn of the 19th century, barely more than one person in 10 was literate, while today that ratio has been nearly reversed. I could tell you that today is, on average, the best time to be alive in human history.

But that doesn’t mean you’ll be convinced.

In one 2017 Pew poll, a plurality of Americans — people who, perhaps more than anywhere else, are heirs to the benefits of centuries of material and political progress — reported that life was better 50 years ago than it is today. A 2015 survey of thousands of adults in nine rich countries found that 10 percent or fewer believed that the world was getting better. On the internet, a strange nostalgia persists for the supposedly better times before industrialization, when ordinary people supposedly worked less and life was allegedly simpler and healthier. (They didn’t and it wasn’t.)

Looking backward, we imagine a halcyon past that never was; looking forward, it seems to many as if, in the words of young environmental activist Greta Thunberg, “the world is getting more and more grim every day.”

So it’s boom times for doom times. But the apocalyptic mindset that has gripped so many of us not only understates how far we’ve come, but how much further we can still go. The real story of progress today is its remarkable expansion to the rest of the world in recent decades. In 1950, life expectancy in Africa was just 40; today, it’s past 62. Meanwhile more than 1 billion people have moved out of extreme poverty since 1990 alone.

But there’s more to do — much more. That hundreds of millions of people still go without the benefit of electricity or live in states still racked by violence and injustice isn’t so much an indictment of progress as it is an indication that there is still more low-hanging fruit to harvest.

The world hasn’t become a better place for nearly everyone who lives on it because we wished it so. The astounding economic and technological progress made over the past 200 years has been the result of deliberate policies, a drive to invent and innovate, one advance building upon another. And as our material condition improved, so, for the most part, did our morals and politics — not as a side effect, but as a direct consequence. It’s simply easier to be good when the world isn’t zero-sum.

Which isn’t to say that the record of progress is one of unending wins. For every problem it solved — the lack of usable energy in the pre-fossil fuel days, for instance — it often created a new one, like climate change. But just as a primary way climate change is being addressed is through innovation that has drastically reduced the price of clean energy, so progress tends to be the best route to solving the problems that progress itself can create.

The biggest danger we face today, if we care about actually making the future a more perfect place, isn’t that industrial civilization will choke on its own exhaust or that democracy will crumble or that AI will rise up and overthrow us all. It’s that we will cease believing in the one force that raised humanity out of tens of thousands of years of general misery: the very idea of progress.

Changing Humanity's "Normal" Forever

Progress may be about where we’re going, but it’s impossible to understand without returning to where we’ve been. So let’s take a trip back to the foreign country that was the early years of the 19th century.

In 1820, according to data compiled by the historian Michail Moatsos, about three-quarters of the world’s population earned so little that they could not afford even a tiny living space, some heat and, hopefully, enough food to stave off malnutrition.

It was a state that we would now call “extreme poverty,” except that for most people back then, it wasn’t extreme — it was simply life.

What matters here for the story of progress isn’t the fact that the overwhelming majority of humankind lived in destitution. It’s that this was the norm, and had been the norm since essentially… forever. Poverty, illiteracy, premature death — these weren’t problems, as we would come to define them in our time. They were simply the background reality of being human, as largely unchangeable as birth and death itself...

Between 10,000 BCE and 1700, the average global population growth rate was just 0.04 percent per year. And that wasn’t because human beings weren’t having babies. They were simply dying, in great numbers: at birth, giving birth, in childhood from now-preventable diseases, and in young adulthood from now-preventable wars and violence.

It was only with the progress of industrialization that we broke out of [this long cycle], producing enough food to feed the mounting billions, enough scientific breakthroughs to conquer old killers like smallpox and the measles, and enough political advances to dwindle violent death.

Between 1800 and today, our numbers grew from around 1 billion to 8 billion. And that 8 billion aren’t just healthier, richer, and better educated. On average, they can expect to live more than twice as long. The writer Steven Johnson has called this achievement humanity’s “extra life” — but that extra isn’t just the decades that have been added to our lifespans. It’s the extra people that have been added to our numbers. I’m probably one of them, and you probably are too...

The progress we’ve earned has hardly been uninterrupted or perfectly distributed... [But] once we could prove in practice that the lot of humanity didn’t have to be hand-to-mouth existence, we could see that progress could continue to expand.

Current Progress "Flows Overwhelmingly" to the Developing World

The long twentieth century came late to the Global South, but it did get there. Between 1960 and today, India and China, together home to nearly one in every three people alive today, have seen life expectancy rise from 45 to 70 and 33 to 78, respectively. Per-capita GDP over those years rose some 2,600 percent for India and an astounding 13,400 percent for China, with the latter lifting an estimated 800 million people out of extreme poverty.

In the poorer countries of sub-Saharan Africa, progress has been slower and later, but shouldn’t be underestimated. When we see the drastic decline in child mortality — which has fallen since 1990 from 18.1 percent of all children in that region to 7.4 percent in 2021 — or the more than 20 million measles deaths that have been prevented since 2000 in Africa alone, this is progress continuing to happen now, with the benefits overwhelmingly flowing to the poorest among us.

Vanishing Autocracies

In 1800, according to Our World in Data, zero — none, nada, zip — people lived in what we would now classify as a liberal democracy. Just 22 million people — about 2 percent of the global population — lived in what the site classifies as “electoral autocracies,” meaning that what democracy they had was limited, and limited to a subset of the population.

One hundred years later, things weren’t much better — there were actual liberal democracies, but fewer than 1 percent of the world’s population lived in them...

Today just 2 billion people live in countries that are classified as closed autocracies — relatively few legal rights, no real electoral democracy — and most of them are in China...

Expanding Human Rights

All you have to do is roll the clock back a few decades to see the way that rights, on the whole, have been extended wider and wider: to LGBTQ citizens, to people of color, to women. The fundamental fact is that as much as the technological and economic world of 2023 would be unrecognizable to people in 1800, the same is true of the political world.

Nor can you disentangle that political progress from material progress. Take the gradual but definitive emancipation of women. That has been a hard-fought, ongoing battle, chiefly waged by women who saw the inherent unfairness of a male-dominated society.

But it was aided by the invention of labor-saving technologies in the home like washing machines and refrigerators that primarily gave time back to women and made it easier for them to move into the workforce.

These are all examples of the expansion of the circle of moral concern — the enlargement of who and what is considered worthy of respect and rights, from the foundation of the family or tribe all the way to humans around the world (and increasingly non-human animals as well). And it can’t be separated from the hard fact of material progress.

Leaving a Zero-Sum World Behind

The pre-industrial world was a zero-sum one... In a zero-sum world, you advance only at the expense of others, by taking from a set stock, not by adding, which is why wars of conquest between great powers were so common hundreds of years ago, or why homicide between neighbors was so much more frequent in the pre-industrial era.

We have obviously not eradicated violence, including by the state itself. But a society that can produce more of what it needs and wants is one that will be less inclined to fight over what it has, either with its neighbors or with itself. It’s not that the humans of 2023 are necessarily better, more moral, than their ancestors 200 or more years ago. It’s that war and violence cease to make economic sense...

Doomerism, at its heart, may be that exhaustion made manifest.

But just as we need continued advances in clean tech or biosecurity to protect ourselves from some of the existential threats we’ve inadvertently created, so do we need continued progress to address the problems that have been with us always: of want, of freedom, even of mortality. Nothing can dispel the terminal exhaustion that seems endemic in 2023 better than the idea that there is so much more left to do to lift millions out of poverty and misery while protecting the future — which is possible, thanks to the path of the progress we’ve made.

And we’ll know we’re successful if our descendants can one day look back on the present with the same mix of sympathy and relief with which we should look back on our past. How, they’ll wonder, did they ever live like that?"

-via Vox, 3/20/23

Note: I would seriously recommend reading the whole article--because as long as this post is, this is only about half of it! The article contains a lot more information about the hows and whys of human progress, and it also definitely made me cry the first time I read it.

[heejinsleftnut]

A question for all the leftists I see screaming about refusing to vote for Biden "on principle": what is your plan? I'm genuinely asking, because I have seen no actual ideas for what the course of action is if Trump gets elected again. It will not trigger a revolution like you think it will. 4 years of a pandemic with corporations making record profits while the general populace suffers and still almost no traction gained by labor movements should have made that clear to everyone. It will not cause the US to collapse like you think it will. The country will continue to function, however weakened, with a vengeful and sadistic dictator who is impune to the law and cannot be removed, as well as hundreds of millions of enslaved citizens, and millions more being murdered by the state for the crime of daring to exist. Countless others will likely be lost to suicide. And the ones who survive will remember those who refused "on principle" to do the bare minimum to attempt to keep them safe.

[milkweedtussocktubers]

An Extensive "What Now?" List

So, I made a list. A very extensive "Trump Is President-Elect. What Now?" list. And it's fucking ten pages long and I know it's incomplete, because I am white, and multi-gender, and own my own home, and live in a blue state with enshrined abortion rights and so honestly can't know everything that needs to be on that list. BUT I'm posting what I've got so far. I'll also post the link, because it's a Google Doc that I'm continuously updating and sharing. PLEASE do not take my word as gospel - comment, add, share, spread, correct, message me. This is just a jumping off point, because so many of my friends wanted an action plan. All links except the What If Trump Wins? website are credited to @creature-wizard; they don't know it, but I read their posts and find their work very helpful, so I hope they don't mind that I included some of their links and info. Better than reinventing the wheel.

So THIS is the link:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/10zzAchLDd_NeqpWQXixmNQpH6X5ZsGpHRVsojx38Las/edit?tab=t.0

TRUMP IS PRESIDENT-ELECT. NOW WHAT?

I put together a list of ideas that I hope folks find inspiration in. This can be a personal action plan, a path towards resistance, or just an opportunity to feel a bit better. I welcome all thoughts, suggestions and changes. Please note that I am writing this from the perspective of a white, multi-gender farmer, and that will color and inhibit my ability to see certain issues or solutions. This is not a complete list, but can be a jumping-off point.

I've found this website incredibly helpful: https://whatiftrumpwins.org. All links found within this document are credited to @creature-wizard on Tumblr. 

COMMUNITY AND PUBLIC SERVICE 

Community ties are the most important things we’ve got - that’s where our strength lies. All those small-scale mutual aid projects? That’s what’s going to make life possible on the day to day. So: 

Take a deep breath, and knock on someone’s door. 

Check in with your neighbors - this can be a scheduled date, or just swinging by with an extra loaf of zucchini bread, or chatting over the garden fence. 

Offer to help someone with a simple task - cleaning gutters, building a raised bed, taking their dog to the vet.

Create a carpool system. 

Set up little libraries, freezers and fridges. 

Develop a list of ten local people you trust, with their contact information, and who you know will try to help you. Put the list in your phone, on your fridge, in your wallet. Put yourself on someone else’s list, and commit to it. 

Make friends and meet up with them on a regular basis. Have tea, cook together, go for walks, play video games. Just be there consistently. 

Open your house once a month for community get-togethers. Maybe these are queer/women/BIPOC-only safe spaces, maybe they’re street-wide potlucks. Maybe you make art while crying together. Maybe you binge-watch Lord of the Rings, eat popcorn and share joy.

Think about starting Swaps with your community. Swaps of clothing you don’t need anymore. Swaps of home-made food, seeds, plants or artwork. Swaps of household goods. Get yourself trading and sharing with each other. 

Get a roommate or two. It’ll help each of you save money, reduce loneliness, and might save someone from becoming unhoused. Don't feel obligated to retain that roommate if it's negatively impacting you. This is about a healthy present in a chaotic world, not a desperate act that results in abuse and destruction.

Libraries are funded in large part based on the number of cards they hand out, not books. Get a library card, even if you never use it. Many libraries let you apply online. If your library isn’t physically accessible, or you can’t safely leave your home but you have a cellphone, download the Libby app for books and audiobooks. It’s free, you just need your library card number. If you live or have an address in New York State, you can also get cards to the Brooklyn Public Library and NYC Public Libraries.

Places to volunteer: libraries, hospitals, schools, mental health hotlines, small farms and community gardens, animal shelters, food pantries, mutual aid organizations, medical clinics, harm reduction centers, fire stations, emergency rescue services. 

Advocate for handicapped accessibility in all public spaces. Does your library have a ramp? Your local co-op? Your house? Learn what your disabled community members needs are that are not being met, because it will get worse. 

Do you have skills that can contribute in new ways? For instance, if you're a great bike mechanic, I'll bet you can fix wheelchairs. If you're an electrician, you could help with your neighbor's solar system. If you're handy with a sewing machine, you can make flags and banners.

Keep it local - donate to the after-school music program in your town instead of, say, Planned Parenthood. National organizations will be getting a flood of funding from concerned citizens right now, but local organizations are often more effective and know their community’s needs more intimately.

If you want to participate but in person is too much, or not accessible, go to Zoom meetings. Call or email folks. Perform online tasks, or put up posters.

If you're not sure what you can offer, just ask what people need. Sometimes someone needs their dogs walked, or an emergency baby-sitter. Sometimes a non-profit needs someone to table at an event. Perhaps someone wants a logo designed, or just someone to keep them company. It doesn't have to seem big to you; it could still mean the world to someone else.

Online communities are just as important, and often more accessible. Make the space and time for those meet-ups, whether you’re messaging folks, playing video games together, or finding forums and inspiration. 

Become a safe person for those who need to go back in the closet, or who need to trust someone with their sexuality or gender. 

Run for local office, or sit on the school board. Be the opposing voice in a conservative group.

If you feel safe doing it: advertise. Put up every damn flag at your house except the American flag. Pride, Black Lives Matter, feminism, Earth first, land back - become a visible beacon of safety and hope. If you are still safe, now is NOT the time to go underground. Now is the time to find your people, and be someone for others. So flags, volunteering, barter, lending, carpooling, offering tea, offering your guest room. Make the connections.

The more we connect with and care for our neighbors, the more our neighbors will connect with and care for us. Let’s strengthen and widen our circles. 

*I recognize that for many, much of what I offer can be a genuine safety concern. Sometimes housemates are abusive. Sometimes neighbors threaten you with guns. Use your own discretion and trust your instincts. 

ENVIRONMENT

Small plots of ecological sanctuary make a huge difference. You can plant flowers, collect rainwater, start a compost bin, let your lawn grow, build a hedgerow. Stop spraying pesticides, pick up litter, plant a garden, research native species, celebrate milkweed…

Volunteer or donate to a local conservation organization. 

Visit a park or go for a hike. Visit a local protected zone and learn about the ecosystem with whom you live. Discover your watershed. 

Learn about local pollutants and advocate for protections. Check out your city’s water health publications. 

Question the installation of new businesses, factories and industries. How will they impact the air, water, soil and human health? Protest them with your friends - on a local level, it actually only takes a few hundred people to make waves. I’ve seen huge projects stopped because my friends sat in on every town hall meeting.

Become a citizen scientist - birdwatch, identify local plants and animals, track the weather and then report your findings to naturalist organizations. The Merlin App is a free app that matches birdcalls to the birds in your backyard, iNaturalist takes really accurate photos and identifies them. It can become a whole hobby that also helps maintain consistent scientific data. 

Get your generator in working order. Storms are gonna get worse and you'll need it when the lights go out. Batteries, light bulbs, candles. Get them now. Prepare as if for a blizzard or tornado.

Consider an air filter or a gas mask for after the Clean Air Act is repealed.

Find out whether or not you’re in a flood or hurricane zone, or if you will be in one as climate change continues. What can you do to prepare for or mitigate the damage?

MENTAL AND EMOTIONAL HEALTH 

Remember that you are WORTHY of receiving gifts and help. Allow yourself to receive help with grace. ASK when you need help, even if you’re not quite sure what you need. 

Eat a lot of food and drink plenty of water; your stressed mindset will make you burn calories. 

Treat yourself. Maybe that means binging television, or buying a cute pair of earrings, or taking a bike ride to your favorite place, or resting in the bath with some fancy soaps. 

Don't isolate. Meet friends for coffee, or Ultimate Frisbee, or to learn to make a cake together. 

Create joy. 

         Don’t Hesitate by Mary Oliver

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

Greet the sun. Listen to the stars. Breathe with the trees. Lay in the grass. Cuddle a cat. Talk with the moon. Find a new book. Take up knitting. Make music. Journal. Make art. 

Have set days each week for long-distance friends, and check in with each other at least once a week. Send them care packages. Ask for care packages.

Accept that you will not do everything every day, that some days you will stay in bed until one, eat ice cream in your pajamas and just nap with the dog. That is real and beautiful. That chance to relax? That's something they're trying to take away from us. Rest and relaxation and hammocks and good books are all at risk, so enjoying them is also revolutionary. It's important to keep normalcy alive.

Think about your boundaries. Are you, for instance, comfortable housing someone in need? Comfortable helping someone through grief? It's okay if not. But find those boundaries so that you don't overtax yourself.

PHYSICAL HEALTH AND REPRODUCTION 

Get a medical alert bracelet or have a medical alert card in your wallet. This way, no matter where you are, if you’re unconscious and sent to the ER, EMTs and staff know of your allergies and needs.  For instance, I’m allergic to penicillin, have low vitamin D and take St John’s Wort, a powerful herbal SSRI that could interfere with drugs. 

Find your state’s free Narcan programs, and request Narcan and drug testing strips so that you have them on hand if an emergency arises. 

Get a stockpile of COVID tests, decent masks, and if you plan to get the vaccines, do it now. 

Do not use a period tracking app; do nothing to alert the government to your reproductive medical needs. Unless it’s medically relevant, do not tell your doctor the date of your last menstrual cycle. Pay for all medical needs possible with cash, whether it’s Plan B off the shelf or a co-pay on a prescription. 

If you have any prescriptions, get them refilled as soon as possible. Get extras if you can.  

Get all your birth control needs met now. Implants and IUDs last for years, but if the IUD shifts, you will need medical assistance, so keep that in mind. 

Stock up on condoms and dental dams, get your STD screenings and all similar or related procedures, like colposcopies, mammograms and biopsies done now. 

Consider whether or not you need PrEP for HIV prevention. If you’re at risk but don’t have insurance, there are over-the-counter HIV test kits. They ARE pricey, though.

Stock up on pads and tampons or switch to cloth pads, period underwear or cups. They last at least six years. Cups take less water to clean, though. 

If you're planning to get yourself, your kids or your pets vaccines, do it before January. 

Those who don't want to have kids for the next four years and for whom it’s medically viable should consider a vasectomy. They're reversible, and no one gets stuck with an expected pregnancy. Tube tying is generally irreversible and reversal only has about a 50 percent success rate, depending on how the original procedure was done.

Stock up on basic first aid supplies and educate yourself in basic med training, like CPR, the Heimlich and how to treat pepper spray in the eyes (lots of water). Maybe you’ll find yourself at a protest and your friends get hurt, and you want to be able to help. Perhaps it’s an emergency and there are no safe options to call for help. 

Carry antihistamines with you, even if you don’t have allergies - the woman outside your local coffee shop may not be able to afford an Epi-Pen and you could be the one that keeps her alive long enough for the ambulance to get there. 

Get an umbrella, face mask,bullet-proof vest, and goggles, especially if you are considering joining a protest. Pepper spray, rubber bullets, shrapnel and real bullets are no joke and will be used against you. 

ECONOMICS AND RESOURCES

Invest in wood heating - real wood, not a pellet stove. When fuel prices go up, you will need to have a reliable source of heat. Best to get a wood cook stove. Investigate masonry or rocket stoves because they are very efficient and often can be built by a local company and don't rely on steel, which will also go up as more tariffs are implemented

Put some cash aside outside the bank. Put money in a high interest savings account, but NOT a CD.

Take your car to the mechanic now. Buy snow tires and get your vehicle in working order, because parts will skyrocket in price. 

In your trunk, put together a box of: motor oil, windshield fluid, a small empty gas tank, two gallons of fresh water, brake fluid, tire changing kit, tire pump - anything your car needs. Get two of everything. Have another crate with a blanket, gloves, $200 cash, dishware, a dog leash, some jars or Tupperware. That's for you, if you're in an emergency, want to bring home food, or need to rescue a stray dog. Put a snow shovel in, both for digging yourself out and for moving turtles.

Having a working bike with a tow-behind trailer is an asset, especially as gas and car parts rise in price

Find a list of banned books and obtain them somehow so that there are physical copies for when the online sites are shut down. 

Apply for food stamps, heating assistance, energy discounts, phone discounts, and health insurance now, so you have it for as long as possible before they cut programs.

Anyone close to being able to retire and collect on retirement should consider how that might impact their finances. It might be best to retire early, if you can collect.

Get all your fuel tanks filled now. Propane, oil, kerosene. Even gas stoves, and make sure they're in working order. 

Snail mail will be safer than online communications. Stock up on stamps; sometimes you can get discounts on the USPS website. If you’re sending a lot of packages, try PirateShip.com for discounts. 

FOOD AND WATER

Grow and preserve your own. Learn to cook and share with friends. Start or join a garden club or urban garden. Talk to farmers, read books, watch videos. 

Start looking around your area to see where you can wild harvest. Come Autumn, will you be able to harvest apples from the trees in the city park, or the old farmyard? Rose hips from the bushes along the sidewalk? In the Spring, dandelion leaves from your backyard?

Save seeds. Preserving specific varieties is good, but all seeds are valuable. 

Get a water filter, even if it’s just a water bottle filter. Save it for AFTER the Clean Water Act is slashed, unless your water is already too contaminated to wait. 

Find out how to buy local foods, because tariffs will raise the price of all international goods.

Stock up on food that has to cross a border, like black pepper, chocolate and coffee. Those are my top three, anyway. 

Find a space in your house to use as a root cellar, where it’s cool and damp and dark. Root crops, winter crops and fruits will store longer. You don't have to doomstock, but it's important to have a stored base until your community is strong enough to create its own food. So if during the Winter, you can't grow food, you have a few months supply until it's warm enough to grow again.

Learn how to grow sprouts or shoots on your windowsill. 

Small farms will become havens and targets. Grow with them, preserve, volunteer there, learn. 

Find a local source of meat, because the FDA will not be regulating food-borne illnesses anymore. And eggs, if possible. Buy half a cow or something.

Farmers markets will often accept FoodStamps as payment, and prices may be lower than the stores. 

Start sharing meals with neighbors - maybe you host dinner on Mondays and they host dinner on Thursdays. Lets you practice cooking and gives you a social life. 

PERSONAL AND PUBLIC SAFETY 

Unless they’re actively attacking, don’t trust anything the government says. But the minute they say they’re coming for migrants/trans folx/BIPOC - you go find those people, get them to safety, and pretend you never, ever, ever saw them. 

Do not tell figures of authority of your plans, your ideologies, your efforts to help those under attack. 

Take a self-defense course; the chances you have a weapon if you’re attacked are slim, so you need to learn how to use your body. 

Carry a lighter. It’s small, lightweight and legal with no permit. If you’re grabbed, then putting a flame - even a small one - to someone’s skin can make them let go long enough for you to run. 

Switch your Internet browser to DuckDuckGo. It blocks surveillance and ads. AdNauseam is  a browser extension that scrambles your data so it's less traceable, so the government can't see what you're doing. Get them both. They're free

Install blackout or dark curtains so that visual surveillance into your house is limited. I recognize the military has heat sensors, but your neighbor probably doesn't.

Be aware that Venmo and related apps tell the IRS what you're spending money on. Be careful what you use it for and how you record transactions. 

If making a “suspicious purchase,” like of Plan B, use cash. Wear a baseball cap, sunglasses, mask and contour makeup to hide your face from the security cameras.

Think about security proofing your windows, which makes them less breakable, or backglazing them with bulletproof glass.

The police, now more than ever, are an entity of the state. DO NOT CALL THEM, do not trust them. If you are raped or attacked, go straight to the hospital first. Do NOT shower. Go to the ER, tell them what happened and request a full rape kit. Go next to an independent organization that will help protect you and your rights, and help you decide next steps.

If there's something happening that you might otherwise have called the cops for, but there are people of color or trans individuals involved, DO NOT CALL THE COPS. They WILL kill trans and BIPOC folk. 

If you’re considering a divorce, and you’re serious about it, do it now. No-fault divorces are on the chopping block. 

If you're in the US, you can call 211 to help you find resources.

Crisis Text Line offers services to the US, Ireland, Canada, and the UK.

RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) is a US service offers a lot of information for sexual abuse survivors.

The Trevor Lifeline is a service for queer youth in the US.

If you're a minor, you may wish to read How To Escape Abusive Parents: A Guide For Minors.

If you're an adult, you may wish to read How To Escape Abusive Parents: A Guide For Adults.

You might search on Qwant for like something like "resources for people in abuse" or "abuse resources help" or "domestic violence survivors resources".

PROTESTING AND FIGHTING BACK

Make clear decisions and plans about what protests you'll be a part of and how. Tell only your most trusted friends where you are going, but be sure to tell them.

Obtain safety/riot gear, like masks, goggles and padding. Always carry fresh water for washing out wounds and pepper-sprayed eyes.

Practice that self defense you learned. What are the easiest moves?

Become someone's protest buddy, especially if they, for any reason, might be more vulnerable. Stick to one another and get each other out of dangerous situations. Come up with a safe word, and a safe way to communicate across a protest. A song, a wolf howl, a walkie talkie.

I know nothing about apps, but there are communication apps and social media out there that folx under oppressive regimes use and recommend. Find those.

Keep emergency contacts on standby if you're going to protest. Make sure there's someone who could help bail you out of jail or can help raise money for bail. 

Know your rights, and don’t give them anything when they arrest you. Make a list of lawyers and advocacy groups you feel safe trusting. 

Train in proper video and recording methods to track what happens and what the police do. 

If you're participating in a long term protest, plan properly for your health and the health of your home, partners and pets. 

Get your affairs in order. You may not make it out of a protest alive. 

When planning discussions with folks who might disagree with you, know that you may NOT actually be the best person for said discussion. If you’re really far left and you want to chat with your MAGA uncle about immigration, maybe find someone who’s more center-leaning but unsure to be a go-between. It’s less alienating to your uncle and less traumatizing for you.  

I know I’ve said this already, but carry first-aid supplies, learn basic first-aid, and carry a lighter, so that you can help those in need and protect yourself. 

Fight back with everyday statements. When someone says, “Those illegals are taking all our jobs,” say something like, “Wow, that sounds like some shit a weird Nazi would say.” Add “weird Nazi” to your responses. Laugh at the absurdities of MAGA statements. Make them feel foolish, or give good one-liners that leave them scratching their heads. Can’t think of any? Start binging comedians to learn how to give quick comebacks. 

In order to keep yourself from falling into a bad group, it's important to develop your critical thinking skills:  (credit to @creature-wizard)

Learn to apply the Five W's (who, what, when, where, and why) when encountering any information.

Learn common logical fallacies.

Learn the difference between fact, opinion, belief, and prejudice.

Don't equate emotional reactions with some kind of innate or higher moral guidance.

Ask yourself if you're "thinking for yourself" or being led to believe you're thinking for yourself.

Know what emotional manipulation tactics look like.

Watch out for these behaviors in any new group you join.

Yes, there are ways to confirm the age of an old text without having the original text itself.

Learn how propaganda works.

Watch out for these red flags in spiritual groups.

And watch out for this red flag.

Understand that belief doesn't have to be binary.

LEAVING THE STATES

This post is again from @creature-wizard:

Get a passport. It's also an easy way to officially change your gender market. Canada is becoming really conservative, but Mexico has some of the safest queer cities in the world. You can stay there for no reason for more than three months, leave for three days and come back and keep doing that indefinitely. It's cheap and warm and the food is spectacular. Plus the entire country enshrined abortion rights. 

You will need a go bag. It should include non perishable snacks, water, paperwork, copies of your id, cash, meds, and whatever you love for comfort. Know where it is at all times. Keep it near an exit. My go bag will at least contain my ancestral seeds, my teddy bear, and extra socks.

DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE WHAT THEY WILL DO. Remember the bomb threats, the arson and the insurrection. THEY WILL NOT HESITATE TO BURN YOUR HOUSE DOWN AND TARGET YOUR LOVED ONES AND PETS. Believe them. PLEASE believe them when they say they are Hitler. Trump is just a figurehead. He has the force of an entire party behind him. It will change everything. He can implement martial law overnight. 

Make two or three escape plans. During WWII, people escaped by walking, by hiding under garbage in trucks, by building hot air balloons that they flew, by living in attics for years. 

It can be done, but you have to think ahead. We don't have the time to say, "Oh, it won't get that bad.” People are already dying. It is that bad. 

If you know someone who is MAGA or even close to it, NEVER tell them your escape plan. Never tell anyone anything if you don't trust them enough to hold a loaded gun to your head.

If you’re leaving, consider how to bring your pets. Do they need vaccines to cross a border? Do you even have a cat carrier, and adequate food for travel? What about costs for boarding while you resettled in your new home?

Who will house you if you need a safe space? Make a list of places you have friends, or couches you can sleep on.

LOOK, IT’S TOUGH. IT’S GONNA BE TOUGH. BUT IT CAN BE JOYFUL, AND MYSTERIOUS, AND FUN, TOO. SO LET ME LEAVE YOU WITH THESE THOUGHTS:

Overall, the more you rely on community and less on capitalism, the more security you could have during difficult times. The more secure you are, the more you can and will feel comfortable helping others. 

The Holocaust happened because a lot of good people did nothing, in large part because they decided it couldn't possibly get that bad. But the right-wingers know how to play the long game, and they are actively chipping away at our liberties. 

The way I see it, there are now three primary parts to this rebellion: 

Those physically stopping the issues by destroying dams and animal testing labs, harassing and attacking politicians or corporations, and chaining themselves to bulldozers.

Those ferrying others to safety and providing the necessary resources for those leaving or hiding.

Those feeding, comforting and healing others through food growing, meal prep, offering tea and therapy, and putting down roots to grow community. 

So where do you stand? Do you fight or flee? Do you share cookies or get out the protest signs? Can you do all three? (Probably not, so choose wisely.)

And in the end:

IN 150 CHARACTERS OR LESS

Everything is on fire, but everyone I love is doing beautiful things

and trying to make life worth living.

and I know I don’t have to believe in everything,

but I believe in that. 

~ Nikita Gill 

Take care of each other and take care of yourself. You are not alone. Godspeed. 

[fairyb0ii]

Please share. The situation in Italy is severe. What's happening? In these months our government became oppressive against students and protesters. Today police arrested a lot of people who were going to Rome to protest against the g3nocide in Palest*ne. They also started to attack LGBTQ+ people (especially trans/enby folks). They are attacking the scientific research. They are attacking our right to transition or get an ab*rtion. They are attacking our right to learn consent or discuss about queer topics. They ignore the vi0lence against women, BIPOC and queer folks. They are banning laws against discrimination because "it is an attack to free speech" but they are trying to attack everyone's right to exist. Before they start attacking the social medias, please share this.

[personname1]

I can't help but worry about the future now. This event will do two things for the election. One, it will galvanize Trump supporters and make him more sympathetic to moderates. Two, it will make liberals less likely to vote and moderates harder on liberal candidates.

I hope that we don't see Trump in office again, but I am now afraid in a way I wasn't several hours ago. If Trump gets re-elected the people who will be most hurt are going to be BIPOC, Queer, Immigrant, Religious Minorities, Disabled, and importantly both Ukranians and Palestinians.

If you are part of any of these groups I urge you to find support networks to help you survive, however that might look. If you aren't a US American, please encourage your political bodies to pressure the US government to maintain and improve on human rights and environmental protections, as well as being willing to get targeted groups and people ojt of the US if it becomes necessary.

If you are a US American please vote, and encourage everyone else to vote as well. Push your representatives to become more active in supporting protections for marginalized groups, the environment, and protection for Palestinians and Ukraine.

Importantly, don't lose hope. It is dark, I will not lie or obfuscate on that, but do not let your fear make you inactive. This will be a fight, it will be a fight for years,but it is one we can win and ot is one we must win.

[mama-wrath]

I think I’m fucking hilarious

[sparksinthenight]

Have a Heart Day Letter to Canadian Government to Help Indigenous Kids 2023

This is the letter I wrote to the government of Canada, asking them to stop discriminating against First Nations children and families on reserves, and asking them to stop taking First Nations children from their loving families. All the research is from the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society, whose website is here: https://fncaringsociety.com

You can read the following letter and please, please, even if you don’t live in Canada send a letter of your own, either using this letter as a template or in your own words:

Our names are and we are from various parts of so-called Canada. We are writing to you to ask that you end the discrimination against First Nations children, so that all First nations children can grow up safe, healthy, well educated, and with their families who love them, who they have grown up with and grown attached to. We ask that you fund all services on reserves better, especially child and family services, Jordan's Principle services, and education. We ask that you ensure there is no discrimination in any of the services provided to First Nations people and that all organizations providing access to services on reserves are free of racism and discrimination. We ask that you implement the Spirit Bear Plan. And we also ask that you fairly compensate all children and families who have faced harm as a result of the Canadian government's unfair practices.

Child and Family services on reserves are underfunded. They are also prejudiced. This means that instead of helping families with what they need to in order to best take care of their children, they take children away from families that love them and put them in foster care. Families struggling with poverty or mental health or addictions or disabilities still love their children. These families should not be separated, they should be helped so that they can have their needs met. Indigenous children are 17 times more likely to be separated from their families compared to non-Indigenous children. But they are not more likely to face familial abuse. The reason why the vast majority of these kids are being separated is because their families are poor, struggling with mental illness or addiction or disability, or some combination of these factors. If child and family service providers were better funded and more culturally respectful, they would be able to help families meet their children’s needs instead of taking children away.

Most services on reserves, including services for disabled kids, healthcare services, and mental health services, are funded by the federal government. But these services are often underfunded, often severely. There are also many times when First Nations families living on reserves need to access provincial services. When this happens, there are often long disputes between provincial and federal governments about who should pay. This leads to children not receiving the healthcare and services they need, or having long gaps and delays in receiving healthcare and services.

Jordan’s Principle was implemented to ensure that all children receive timely and adequate healthcare and services first and payment disputes are resolved in a way that doesn’t affect children’s access to services. But this principle has been implemented in a very narrow way by the government and many children who needed services and healthcare under Jordan’s Principle did not receive those services. Many children who did receive services did not receive them in a timely manner.

Education on reserves is also underfunded, and First Nations children on reserves do not have access to safe, comfy schools and high quality education. They do not have environments where they can learn all that they can and reach their full potential. This is horrifically unfair, since every child has an equal right to education and every child has an equal right to good quality education where they can learn, grow, thrive, and reach their full potential.

Education needs funding. You need to have enough teachers, small class sizes, and heating in classrooms. You need books, textbooks, school supplies and a library. You need a whiteboard, markers and erasers. You need good bathrooms. It really helps to have smartboards like settler schools have. You need a gym, sports equipment, art supplies, and a safe playground. You need a lab with equipment. You need therapists, nurses, counselors and educational assistants. You need money for field trips. You often need snacks. You need learning toys like base ten blocks for younger kids. First Nations children cannot afford everything that they need to learn effectively.

The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has ordered the government of Canada to stop discriminating against First Nations children. It has ordered that Canada stop taking children from their loving homes and that they stop denying services and healthcare to children who need them. The government has mostly not listened to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal’s rulings.

An Agreement in Principle is not a binding agreement. It simply is a set of promises that may or may not be turned into a binding agreement. The Canadian government created an Agreement in Principle with First Nations groups including the Assembly of First Nations to fund and support First Nations child and family service providers adequately so that these service providers could help struggling families instead of separating them. They also agreed to fund and support Jordan’s Principle better so that every child who needs services or healthcare can receive it. The government promised to conduct regular reviews of First Nations child and family service providers and Jordan’s Principle providers to check for discrimination, and to have accountability measures for any discrimination that occurs. They promised to reform Indigenous Services Canada to be less discriminatory and more culturally respectful.

While all these ideas are great, these are just ideas at this point. There is no binding agreement yet. The government promised to do these things but no one knows if they’ll keep these promises. A Final Settlement Agreement on reform, which will be legally binding, is being worked towards. But that Agreement has not been made yet and we do not know what the Final Settlement Agreement will include, if it will stay true to the promises made in the Agreement in Principle, or if it will be effective in keeping children holistically healthy and with their families.

The Canadian government has created a Final Settlement Agreement on compensation where it will compensate some of the victims of Canada’s discrimination against First Nations children and families. While this is good, many victims will not be given the $40 000 in compensation that the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has stated that all victims must receive, and many victims will not be compensated at all. Victims that will not be compensated include children who were placed in provincial programs after being separated from their families, the estates of deceased parents or caregiving grandparents, and many people who were denied the help they needed under Jordan’s Principle. There is only $20 billion set aside for compensating families who were discriminated against, which may not be enough to give everyone the $40 000 they are entitled to. And if you want to opt out of the Final Settlement Agreement on compensation and instead claim your $40 000 ordered by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, you only have until February to opt out, and people don’t have the information and guidance they need in order to decide if they want to opt out or not.

It’s not only education, healthcare, child welfare, and disability support services that are underfunded on reserves. All social services on reserves are underfunded. This includes housing services, childcare services, after school programs, utilities services, mental health and addictions support, welfare, and more. This means that families living in poverty have less help and support in order to pull themselves out of poverty and the cycle of poverty continues. It also means that families that need mental health supports don’t receive them. This is bad for children because living in poverty or with bad mental health is not something any child deserves and also because poverty and mental health are often the reasons why children get ripped away from their families and put into foster care. And obviously, being separated from your family is way worse than living in poverty is.

You must ensure that you do the following things:

-Fund First Nations Child and Family Service providers as much as each service provider needs in order to help families to stay together and have their needs met. For example, if a family is suffering from poverty, child and family service providers need to have the money needed to support that family financially instead of taking the child away. If a family is living in bad housing, child and family services needs the funds to improve their housing instead of taking the child away.

-Ensure that all First Nations child and family service providers - and service providers on reserves in general - are non-discriminatory, are routinely and thoroughly checked for any discrimination within the organizations, and that there is accountability and consequences for any discriminatory conduct, policies, or attitudes that are ever found or reported in these organizations.

-Ensure that a broad implementation of Jordan’s Principle is carried out so that every child who ever needs any services, healthcare, or support always receives it.

-Ensure that the system for providing Jordan’s Principle services to people is well-funded, easy to navigate, and non-discriminatory.

-Create a Final Settlement Agreement on child and family service reform and Jordan’s Principle reform that goes above and beyond everything suggested in the Agreement in Principal on reform.

-Ensure that all children, parents, and caregiving grandparents, living or deceased, who have been discriminated against in any way by the Canadian government receive their owed $40 000 compensation. This includes children who were placed in the provincial care system and everyone who did not receive the services they were owed through Jordan’s Principle.

-Fund all services on reserves so that the needs of every person living on reserves can be met.

-Implement the Spirit Bear Plan.

-Fund education on reserves better so that it is of the same quality as education off reserves.

Thank you for reading our letter and please take our concerns to heart.

You can email your own letter to the following ministers:

Prime Minister Trudeau: justin.trudeau@parl.gc.ca

Deputy Prime Minister Freeland: chrystia.freeland@parl.gc.ca

Minister of Indigenous Services Hajdu: patty.hajdu@parl.gc.ca

Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relationships Miller: Marc.Miller@parl.gc.ca

And your own Member of Parliment, who you can find here: https://www.ourcommons.ca/Members/en

[cvntyboylove-666]

I know we'd all like to pretend that trump was never reelected and that nothing bad is going to happen but now is not the time to go into hiding or stay silent. It's time to fight, harder than ever before, harder than the queers and women who came before us, harder than stonewall, harder than the civil rights movement, because the freedom our forebearers fought for is worth preserving, so don't you dare give up. Don't you dare give up on us 🏳‍⚧⚧🏳‍🌈🖤🤎

[shinyasahalo]

[overexciteddragon]

I don't think enough people are aware that fervent support only exists to conteract opposition

"Why are so many people openly supporting trans people lately???" Because trans rights are under attack and it's important to drown the misinformation and bigotry

"Why "black lives matter"??? Why not ALL lives??" Because Black people in North America are being stripped off their rights to life and safety and it's important to scream louder than the racists

"Why are so many people SO damn sexual?? Why do people need to flaunt their sexuality and kinks???" Because fundamentalists are spreading propaganda and committing psy-ops to make the population at large believe sex, sex work, sexuality, and sex education are evil and it's important to flaunt our cock and balls and cock-and-ball tortures as much as we can to show the world that freaks and freakiness will not be prayed away

"Why are people making SO much horrid and freaky and weird media?? Why not write happy stories????" Because our right to explore our traumas, fetishes, fantasies, intrusive thoughts, or just curiosities are being slowly stripped away by a fascist government that hates art and it's important to create as much fucked up, weird, freaky, degenerate art as we possibly can so we can show the neo-nazis we are fucking ungovernable

Do you think we'd be this fucking loud if we weren't trying to fight back???

Don't you see?? Don't you fucking see??? They want you to be white, cisgender, straight, god-fearing and Christian, they want you to have little god-fearing children and live a white-picketted fence life, they want you to wear modest clothing and keep your head down when you are mentally unwell, when you are abused and assaulted. They want you to politely call the Police Officers and report your degenerate neighbour, your Black neighbour, your whore neighbour, your trans neighbour.

You're tired of people being cringe? Being weird? Being sexual? Being loud about their rights? Oh?? You're anmoyed?? You "don't get it"???

Can you imagine how exhausting it is for us to have to always do this? Half the shit i create is 30% self indulgence, and 70% some form of protest, of spite, a big loud "no, you can't assimilate me, I'd rather fucking die than be marketable, I'd rather go out screaming bloody murder than be demure in the face of numerous faceless figures sitting on hand-carved mahogany with fancy robes who never even knew that my DeviantArt OC was a fallen angel with lime green wings and red horns but speak of me like they know who I am. I'll show you who I fucking am, and you will fucking hate it, and you'll have to learn to live in a world where millions of others just like me exist, and I'll give you no other option"

[plebeiangoth]

Seeing as Pride is right around the corner, I feel it necessary to remind everyone that this isn't a white-exclusive thing. I hate that I need to say it, but I'm appalled by how many queer people I've known personally who get genuinely angry when black people "pUsH tHeIr AgEnDa On PrIdE".

Bitch the first Pride was a riot. These were people of all genders and sexual identities fighting for their lives. That's what people of color are doing. If there's a BLM die-in at your Pride parade, let it happen. It's not hurting you. They're hurting and speaking up to do their part to end racial genocide.

I don't know about the rest of the world, but where I come from the LGBT community is thriving and rapidly becoming normal, when BIPOC people are constantly going missing and the cops turn a blind eye. There was a native man murdered at the end of my rural road a couple years ago and as far as I'm aware justice has yet to be served. There are posters of missing BIPOC children which have been displayed for years and everyone just looks away from them.

Sexual and gender discrimination remain a serious issue, don't get me wrong. Trans genocide remains rampant. Racial genocide also remains rampant.

If Pride is about love and community, open the doors to our BIPOC siblings and stop crying because your parade was held up by people who are also fighting for their lives.

[elhoimleafar]

I'm not gonna say names, cause a bunch of you are just friends with the epitome of toxicity out there and you got me freaking tired of your DMs and boring screenshots, and that fake-ass speech about "I'm not into this discussions and drama", except when this affects you.

But, finally yesterday I listened to someone talking about the political aspects of Witchcraft and how much we can do, not like your favorite white ones, who are all the time repeating that #Witchcraft is political and then keep a very convenient silence when something happens to not lose followers and readers, cause of course... Money is more important than actually putting your hands into action, right?

My constant reminder to all, that witchcraft is a path of empowerment historically carried over the shoulders of slaves, women, immigrants (Romanians, Ukranians, German, British, Africans, Caribbeans, etc...) And being pro-diversity is deeper than just highlighting a #blacklivesmatter in your profile to fake your support to the black community.

Also, if "what you do" in pro of diversity, is just to go around as a white hero repeating over and over how cool you are, and at the same time you're being paid for it, you're not doing it for diversity, you're just "supporting" a convenient cause for you.

Have a nice day, the good ones, and the toxic fake-ass ones too ☝🏻

[esckeyes]

PEN America and Penguin Random House are suing Florida over book bans.

Authors involved in the lawsuit are LGBTQIA writers such as George M. Johnson (All Boys Aren't Blue), Kyle Lukoff (Too Bright to See), and David Levithan (Two Boys Kissing) , as well as Ashley Hope Perez (Out of Darkness) whose historical YA is about a segregated town in Texas. Two parents from the district are also participating in the lawsuit.

There has been a concerted effort across America to ban books by queer and BIPOC authors by calling them "pornographic."