#african-american farm workers

[loudlylovingreview]

Jean Toomer: Harvest Song

I am a reaper whose muscles set at sun-down. All my oats are cradled.But I am too chilled, and too fatigued to bind them. And I hunger.I crack a grain between my teeth. I do not taste it.I have been in the fields all day. My throat is dry. I hunger.My eyes are caked with dust of oat-fields at harvest-time.I am a blind man who stares across the hills, seeking stack’d fields of other harvesters.It…

[schoolhater]

it is election day. i wrote a little essay to share with my IRLs who can't fathom why i might want to abstain from participating in the bloodshed by putting holocaust harris in power, or giving the transpbobic and anti-abortion green party federal campaign money. i've reposted the entire thing under the cut for anyone who wants to read.

but before i begin: donate to mohammed al-habil. he is recovering from surgery, his little sister is chronically ill. the genocide ruined his senior year of high school. it’s his birthday today. he should be celebrating and instead he’s begging on an internet full of people trying to justify the continued destruction of his entire people.

learn more + donate

i keep hearing from people defending their choice to vote for the genocider that even though the democrats are bad, the republicans are worse. or that this election is the most important one. i often see trolley problems that declare that the *only* people who would suffer under the democrats would be palestine, and, because *americans* would suffer under the republicans, we have to put aside our grievances about the potentially-three-hundred-thousand-and-thiry-five people who have been murdered in the past thirteen months and offer our full support to the person who did it.

nearly every time settler colonialism has occurred in history, the first wave of settlers is some vulnerable yet radicalized population who believes they will achieve prosperity in the new world. the uae-backed rsf is establishing settlements using refugees from other african countries in southeast sudan right now. the first wave of israeli settlers were poor. even herzl planned this in the 1890s, in 'the jewish state' he writes that the first wave of settlers should be poor farm workers. and now, the modern settlers in the illegally occupied west bank live in and they are the most radicalized most. despite facing extreme racism within israel, arab israeli settlers are among the most radical zionists. the first settlers in america were poor and tired religious extremists from britain. when they came here they didn't have shit except the military backing of the empire and the carte blanche to commit massacres of indigenous people.

imperialism needs these vulnerable people. it needs to funnel the oppressed populations it creates back into the machine to enact further violence. these people are effective cannon fodder against the indigenous population. they are vulnerable enough that they cannot resist, but their lives are comfortable enough thanks to subsidized housing and special treatment that they begin to identify wholly with the imperialist entity, so they don't even want to. if you're stuck thinking 'well, of course kamala and trump are the same to palestine, but trump will be worse for us!' you've taken the bait. that's exactly the kind of attitude that is allowing this genocide to happen right now. do you know why the usa gives subsidized healthcare to israelis? why we give so many benefits to veterans? why do thousands of people risk their entire lives to come here after we destroy their countries? the usa wants to recruit you into participating in the genocide of gaza so you never oppose it, because it would mean opposing yourself.

even kamala harris knows this. multiple times she's repeated some version of "sure people care about the genocide, but they also care about the price of eggs" as if these things are remotely comparable. because to her supporters, they are. to americans, the rest of the world does not even exist.

i said this on my instagram story and i'll say it again - we understand that the israeli elections are just a performance of democracy to pacify criticism of a violent genocidal apartheid system. none of us would really care if netanyahu stepped down tomorrow because we would see the bombings continue. well, america is the world's "israel"! to the rest of the world, america is that attack dog that only ever brings death and suffering. and regardless of which party is in charge, that doesn't change. and the democrats arent even hiding it anymore.

what the discourse around this election and seeing so many people i once respected voting for the genocide has taught me is that there is no red line for the majority of americans. we are the most self centered, narrow minded, backstabbing group of settlers on this earth. we have seen the terrorist organization that occupies the land we live on fund 70% of the most vile horrific crimes against humanity - the most nightmare inducing rapes, tortures, kidnappings, incarcerations, concentration camps, people being burned alive, people being ripped apart, rendered unrecognizable as human bodies, literally vaporized, killing over three hundred thousand people over thirteen months - and we still want the entities that did all this to exist tomorrow. we want to invest into a future in which all of this still exists.

and when asked to stop, we will threaten to do worse. a greater evil is imagined.

what does this make us?

....

i refuse to participate in this bullshit even to support a third party candidate. i refuse to be bought. i refuse to invest my time and energy into an institution that kills children. i don’t care who runs it.

i wanted to push back against this idea before the polls close as a sort of last ditch effort to be heard. i am not being heard right now. i have gotten into way too many arguments with people i once respected over why voting in favor of a genocide might not be the best idea. and every time i am met with utter disrespect - i am not treated as a person with a political perspective based on my experiences and learning, i am treated like an idiot. and the people voting for genocide are pragmatists, somehow. in lieu of a reason to disagree with me they resort to belittlement. i feel betrayed. i hope this rant changes some minds; if not, let it explain why i treat you differently now.

[dwellordream]

“The Great Depression reached into every corner of the country, but it did not affect all people equally. For many middle-class women of all races, the depression required certain changes in spending patterns: buying cheaper cuts of meat, feeding the homeless men who stopped at the back door, and doing without new clothes. Some of these women continued to do community volunteer work, raising money for the unemployed. They saw the food lines, but they did not have to join them.

Among women workers, race played an important role. The fierce competition for jobs fueled racial resentments. Mexican-American and African-American women were the first to lose their jobs and the last to get relief from welfare agencies. Often, they were already living on the margin of survival. Before 1933, when the Prohibition amendment making the manufacture or sale of alcoholic beverages illegal was repealed, many of these women turned to bootlegging, making their own beer or liquor and selling it.

…Even relatively prosperous farm women--owners, not tenants--in general produced as much as 70 percent of what their families consumed in clothing, toys, and food. They not only gardened but raised poultry. During the depression, women increased the size of their gardens and the number of their hens. They made more butter from their dairy cows and sold it. They cut up the sacks that held large amounts of flour and sewed them into underwear. In the previous decade, they had proudly begun to participate in a culture of store-bought goods. Now they began to can food again. Government agents dragged huge canning kettles across the mountains of northern New Mexico and eastern Tennessee so that women in remote farming villages could preserve their food.

Even with all this work, rural children suffered from malnutrition, and rural women faced childbirth without a doctor or midwife because they could afford neither the medical fees nor the gasoline for transportation. The women resented their declining standards of living, particularly those from better-off farm families who owned their own farms and had, during the 1920s, aspired to participate in the new domestic technology of indoor bath-rooms, modern stoves and heating, and super cleanliness.

…In 1936, a federal appeals court overruled an earlier law that had classified birth control information as obscene and thus illegal to dispense. That decision still left state laws intact, however. The number of birth control clinics nationwide rose from 55 in 1930 to 300 by 1938, but in some states and in many rural areas women still had no access to birth control. In 1937, North Carolina became the first state to provide contraceptives with tax dollar, and six others soon followed. Ironically, North Carolina’s reasoning was not that birth control was a human right but that birth control would reduce the black population.

Despite statistics showing that black women had fewer babies than white women with similar incomes and living situations, many white southern officials in states with large black populations feared a black population explosion. In 1939, the Birth Control Federation of American responded to eager southern state governments by developing “The Negro Project,” a program to disseminate birth control information, which they carefully staffed with local black community leaders. Whatever the logic, one quarter of all women in the United States in their 20s during the depression never bore children. This was the highest rate of childlessness for any decade. Many people simply decided not to get married, and marriage rates fell.

…In the mass media women seemed to be receiving mixed messages. On the one hand, in 1930, the Ladies’ Home Journal featured a former career woman confessing, “I know now without any hesitation… that [my husband’s job] must come first.” In 1931, the popular magazine Outlook and Independent quoted the dean of Barnard College, a women’s college in New York City, telling her students that “perhaps the greatest service that you can render to the community… is to have the courage to refuse to work for gain.” And on its front page in 1935, the New York Times reported that women “suffering from masculine psychological states” and an “aversion to marriage” were being “cured” by the removal of their adrenal gland. In this atmosphere, not only were women workers under fire, but women who centered their lives on women rather than on men came under attack. Lesbianism was no longer chic. Lesbian bars almost disappeared. Homosexuality was now seen by many people as just one more threat to the family.

On the other hand, movie houses showed zany screwball comedies with more complicated lessons. Often deliciously ditsy, incompetent women were rescued by sensible, capable men. Yet, the men in these movies were frequently portrayed as bumbling or slower-witted than the women. Sometimes the men were people who needed joy and whimsy restored to their lives, not an unexpected theme for a nation in the throes of an economic depression. In other movies, however, women were by no means incompetent. The women portrayed by Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, and Joan Crawford in the 1930s were often intelligent but needed men alternately to tame and to soften them.”

- Sarah Jane Deutsch, “Making Do with Disaster.” in From Ballots to Breadlines: American Women, 1920-1940

[rjalker]

Which Side Are You On?

Copying and pasting the entire thing since it's only on the Wayback Machine now, so that it will at least show up in google searches.

___

Leslie Feinberg Feinberg, a transgender activist, received an honorary doctorate from Starr King School in May 2007. Feinberg delivered this speech at the school’s Graduates Dinner.

The diploma I received in high school taught me a lot. I was a butch lesbian high school student who worked second shift doing industrial work, less and less interested in mandatory attendance and classroom rote. One of my English teachers persuaded me to attend my high school graduation ceremony. I sat in the back, in denim and sunglasses, cap pulled low over my eyes. They announced my name, handed me a diploma, an English award and a $10 gift certificate to a local bookstore.

I got an education from that diploma itself. I had seen how many African American classmates who had worked hard to stay in school had been expelled for speaking up, or for minor infractions of arbitrarily punished rules. The majority of the white students was middle class and expected to go on to the university. Although I was blue-collar, headed for the factories, as a white student I was given the gift of a diploma.

I tossed the diploma out, kept the understanding and the gift certificate to the bookstore, and set out to find my education in the roiling world around me.

I came of age and consciousness at the height of the Civil Rights movement, the rising Black Power and American Indian Movement, the Young Lords and the Chicano Farm Workers organizing factories in fields, women’s and gay liberation--and the demand to bring the troops home, now, from yet another Pentagon war, at that time against the Vietnamese people.

The struggle is a great educator. All of the products of my labor have been as a working-class scholar of struggle. And your bestowing of an honorary doctorate, a letter of humanities, for me for my intellectual labor and activist work--has great meaning for me. This is a diploma I will treasure.

I think what brought us together here tonight is that we each sincerely want to change the world for the better. We may or may not agree on how.

But we can meet by bridging conscience and consciousness.

As a secular Jewish revolutionary communist, I know that many of you have heard, out of context, Marx’s phrase that religion is the “opium of the people.”

Marx was actually writing with great compassion for the suffering of the class that was, and still is, exploited, downtrodden and disenfranchised. He wrote, “Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering.”

Religion, he wrote, “is the sigh of the oppressed,” it is, “the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.” It was in that context that Marx said religion is an opiate for pain and suffering.

Many of us in this room share this in common--we feel that suffering, hear the sighs and moans around us, struggle to change the soulless conditions.

How can we unite to change those conditions?

Working in factories in which I was in a union, or trying to be, gave me two important tools. The first was a critical compass: Which side are you on? The other was a honed principle: An injury to one is an injury to all.

My analytical work as a transgender lesbian was sharpened and deepened by the tool of historical materialism, which allowed me to understand how I got to this place in the world by allowing me to see the vista of the hills and valleys of human social development .

The most startling find I discovered was that greed and bigotry are not hard-wired human characteristics. The truth that for the vast majority of human history our earliest ancestors lived cooperatively and communally is downright subversive. It means that human nature is not fixed and immutable, but really quite changeable in changing material conditions. Because of the role of gender variant, transsexual and intersexual people in the belief systems of many cooperative societies, I could see that science and belief had not yet split in early communalism. They were all one effort to understand and to explain the world around us.

It was only at the point where human society first cleaved into have and have-nots--into slave-owners and slaves, feudal landowners and serfs, capitalist patriarchs and workers--that religion and science split, as well.

To our early ancestors, who would have starved without cooperation, the decree, “Thou shalt not steal” would have been inexplicable. But with changing economic organization and exploitation, the Lord’s Prayer changed too. Only under feudal privatizing--the enclosure of common land--could trespass be a crime that required absolution. Only under a money-based capitalism system could debt require mercy.

Virtually every emperor or king or imperial president has flown a religious flag over their class battles to expand their empires. Those who resist, often do so under the banner of the same religion, or an oppressed religion.

Denmark Vesey, the great leader of rebellion of enslaved peoples, was a African Methodist, while Leonidas Polk, an Episcopal bishop, was a Confederate general in the Civil War. The struggle to abolish slavery split the denominations on this continent, based on who suffered from slavery and who profited from slavery.

It was not moral suasion that ended slavery, but a civil war, in which each had to answer, as the union song demands: Which side are you on?

Today, we are being asked to line up behind Halliburton and Big Oil, Wall Street and its banks, to go kill or be killed in a war for empire in the Middle East. This so-called “war on terror” carries the banner of Christian fundamentalism in a war against Muslims who are resisting enslavement, who are defending their land, their labor, their lives.

As a Jewish revolutionary, I say here that I am shoulder-to-shoulder with Muslims who are fighting for their sovereignty and self-determination all over the world.

I live in Jersey City, which I believe at this point has the largest per capita immigrant population in the U.S. Muslim, Arab and South Asian neighbors, co-workers and friends are being discriminated against, disappeared, detained, deported and tortured.

For those who ask, how could Japanese Americans have been rounded up and interned in this and other states in the U.S. during WWII, this is how it begins.

They are not the only political prisoners in the U.S. Tomorrow, people from around the country and around the world will be in Philadelphia to pack the court and the streets outside in support of death-row prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal--Black revolutionary journalist known as “the voice of the voiceless.”

Tomorrow I will wear this sticker that says “New trial now! Free Mumia!” to help bring this demand for justice everywhere tomorrow. I have more stickers for those who would like to demonstrate their solidarity.

The struggle to free Mumia is a defining case of our era, like the struggle to free the Scottsboro Brothers and the Rosenbergs. It is part and parcel of the fight against racism and national oppression, against the prison industrial complex and the death penalty, used as a weapon by today’s rulers just as the emperors lined the road to Rome with crucified slaves to warn others against trying to rise up to break their shackles.

Leonard Peltier, the Cuban Five being held in U.S. jails, immigrant workers in detention after police state raids on factories, the prisons filled with those whose crimes are those of survival. The cities are being starved to pay for endless war.

Overt war against the peoples of Iraq, Palestinian, Afghanistan, Lebanon. Threats of impending war against Iran and saber rattling at North Korea. Covert dirty wars against Cuba, Venezuela and Sudan.

The promoting of fascist ideology and vigilantes against undocumented immigrants trying to survive imperialist globalization. Bigotry and violence, hunger and homelessness.

The pope orders liberation theologists to offer the poor only spiritual sustenance, not struggle with them for an economic system that can provide food for all.

To some, the idea of struggle sounds anathema to peace. But struggle is the road to peace that those who are beleaguered by oppression must take. There is a great centeredness and joy and freedom to be found in doing what is historically necessary, in taking up the tasks that history hands us.

Cuban Revolutionary Che Guevara said so well, “At the risk of seeming ridiculous, a revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.”

It is the love felt by people who are willing to risk their lives for changes that generations yet unborn will cherish. It is the love we feel for all who are resisting tyranny, because we know which side we are on.

In the succinct eloquence of former enslaved laborer, abolitionist, writer and orator Frederick Douglass: “If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet avoid confrontation, are people who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its waters.”

I know that many of us will find each other as we take to the streets for demands for economic and social justice and against the war. But I, and millions more in this country and around the world, will not stop fighting until every battle is won. We are modern-day abolitionists, who are organizing to end this system of capitalist economic enslavement and build a society in which each individual can contribute what they can and in return, receive all that they need and desire.

So I leave you with this question: Which side are you on?

[kemetic-dreams]

Anthony Johnson (c. 1600 – 1670) was a man known for achieving wealth in the early 17th-century Colony of Virginia. Born in Angola, he was one of the first African Americans whose right to own a slave for life was recognized by the Virginia courts. Held as an indentured servant in 1621, he earned his freedom after several years, and was granted land by the colony.

He later became a tobacco farmer in Maryland. He attained great wealth after completing his term as an indentured servant, and has been referred to as "'the African patriarch' of the first community of Negro property owners in America"

In the early 1620s, Portuguese slave traders captured the man who would later be known as Anthony Johnson in Portuguese Angola, named him António, and sold him into the Atlantic slave trade. António was bought by a colonist in Virginia. As an indentured servant, António worked for a merchant at the Virginia Company. He was also received into the Roman Catholic Church

He sailed to Virginia in 1621 aboard the James. The Virginia Muster (census) of 1624 lists his name as "Antonio not given," recorded as "a Negro" in the "notes" column. Historians have some dispute as to whether this was the same António later known as Anthony Johnson, as the census lists several men named "Antonio Johnson was sold as an indentured servant to a white planter named Bennet to work on his Virginia tobacco farm. (Slave laws were not passed until 1661 in Virginia; prior to that date, Africans were not officially considered to be slaves)

Such workers typically worked under a limited indenture contract for four to seven years to pay off their passage, room, board, lodging, and freedom dues. In the early colonial years, most Africans in the Thirteen Colonies were held under such contracts of limited indentured servitude. With the exception of those indentured for life, they were released after a contracted period. Those who managed to survive their period of indenture would receive land and equipment after their contracts expired or were bought out. Most white laborers in this period also came to the colony as indentured servants.

António changed his name to Anthony Johnson. He first entered the legal record as an unindentured man when he purchased a calf in 1647.

Johnson was granted a large plot of farmland by the colonial government after he paid off his indentured contract by his labor. On July 24, 1651, he acquired 250 acres (100 ha) of land under the headright system by buying the contracts of five indentured servants, one of whom was his son, Richard Johnson. The headright system worked in such a way that if a man were to bring indentured servants over to the colonies (in this particular case, Johnson brought the five servants), he was owed 50 acres a "head", or servant. 

The land was located on the Great Naswattock Creek, which flowed into the Pungoteague River in Northampton County, Virginia.

With his own indentured servants, Johnson ran his own tobacco farm. In fact, one of those servants, John Casor, would later become one of the first African men to be declared indentured for life.

Though Casor was the first person who was declared a slave in a civil case, there were both black and white indentured servants sentenced to lifetime servitude before him. Many historians describe indentured servant John Punch as the first documented slave (or slave for life) in America, as punishment for escaping his captors in 1640. It is considered one of the first legal cases to make a racial distinction between black and white indentured servants

                        Significance of Casor lawsuit

The Casor lawsuit demonstrates the culture and mentality of planters in the mid-17th century. Individuals made assumptions about the society of Northampton County and their place in it. According to historians T.H. Brean and Stephen Innes, Casor believed he could form a stronger relationship with his patron Robert Parker than Anthony Johnson had formed over the years with his patrons. Casor considered the dispute to be a matter of patron-client relationship, and this wrongful assumption resulted in his losing his case in court and having the ruling against him. Johnson knew that the local justices shared his basic belief in the sanctity of property. The judge sided with Johnson, although in future legal issues, race played a larger role.

The Casor lawsuit was an example of how difficult it was for Africans who were indentured servants to prevent being reduced to slavery. Most Africans could not read and had almost no knowledge of the English language. Planters found it easy to force them into slavery by refusing to acknowledge the completion of their indentured contracts. This is what happened in Johnson v. Parker. Although two white planters confirmed that Casor had completed his indentured contract with Johnson, the court still ruled in Johnson's favor.

In this early period, free blacks enjoyed "relative equality" with the white community. About 20% of free black Virginians owned their own homes. In 1662 the Virginia Colony passed a law that children in the colony were born with the social status of their mother, according to the Roman principle of partus sequitur ventrem. This meant that the children of slave women were born into slavery, even if their fathers were free, European, Christian, and white. This was a reversal of English common law, which held that the children of English subjects took the status of their father. The Virginian colonial government expressed the opinion that since Africans were not Christians, common law could not and did not apply to them

[fdrlibrary]

BLACK WOMEN IN THE WARTIME STRUGGLE

Black women were on the frontlines of civil rights activism during the war years.

The grassroots organizing work of young leaders like Juanita Jackson, Ella Baker and Rosa Parks helped fuel a dramatic increase in NAACP membership and branch activism. Union organizers like Dollie Lowther Robinson and Maida Springer labored to ensure workers’ rights. Black women also engaged in direct-action protests against segregation like Pauli Murray’s 1940 arrest for sitting in the whites-only section of a bus in Virginia.

Grassroots organizers Juanita Jackson, Ella Baker, and Rosa Parks helped the NAACP grow dramatically during the war. - https://www.mdhistory.org/resources/jackson-and-mitchell-family-portrait/ - https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/94504496/ - https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2015647352/

More than half a million Black women left farm and domestic work for better-paying jobs in wartime shipyards and defense factories. But they had to struggle against employers who refused to hire Black women (or confined them to menial jobs) and white employees who resisted working alongside them.

Black women also overcame determined opposition to enter the armed services. Mary McLeod Bethune served as a special assistant in the War Department and worked with the National Council of Negro Women and Eleanor Roosevelt to open the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) to Black recruits. Eventually, 6,500 served. Bethune also lobbied successfully for officer appointments. Still, Black WACs served in segregated units and were often assigned low-skilled work. The Army also limited the number of Black nurses and restricted them to segregated hospitals. Conditions in the Navy were even worse. Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox opposed the entry of Black women into the service’s women’s auxiliary (WAVES). They were only admitted after his death in 1944.

Major Charity E. Adams inspects a Women’s Army Corps (WAC) battalion in England, February 15, 1945 (https://catalog.archives.gov/id/531249)

African American women also took on the then taboo subject of sexual violence. Sexual assaults on Black women by white men were a parallel offense to the lynchings of Black men. A 1944 Alabama rape case involving Recy Taylor sparked an NAACP investigation by Rosa Parks and widespread publicity. The Committee for Equal Justice, organized by Parks, led a national protest drive to bring the seven, armed white rapists to justice. Its allies included the Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC), described by historian Erik McDuffie as “the shock troops for Black equality across the Jim Crow South during the war.” The SNYC conducted wartime campaigns for desegregation and voting and labor rights. Its leadership included women like Rose Mae Catchings and Sallye Bell Davis, mother of activist Angela Davis.

Please visit our current special exhibition BLACK AMERICANS, CIVIL RIGHTS, AND THE ROOSEVELTS, 1932-1962: https://www.fdrlibrary.org/civil-rights-special-exhibit

[abandoned-mars]

humanstuck names + more ! :]

john - ivan greenfield; korean/english; comic book store employee + shifty mom & pop restaurant waiter/support staff

rose - lavender buchanan; vietnamese/dominican?; sells custom clothes on depop + nsfw tumblr writer/artist

dave - dominic santiago; puerto rican/dominican; audio tech store employee + local club dj + aspiring rapper

jade - dahlia flores; pacific islander; unemployed, works for family farm

aradia - gabriella diamanté; japanese/mexican; texas road house type restaurant kitchen expo/dishwasher

tavros - antonio ‘tony’ noquez; spanish; works at dad’s animal shelter

sollux - niko park; korean; probably unemployed or sells nfts or some shit

karkat - donnie santos; black/colombian; mexican restaurant busboy + movie theatre employee

nepeta - june bernard; french/irish (white); dairy queen employee lol + volunteers @ pet shelter

kanaya - harper norris; african; sells custom clothes

terezi - quinn nephus; greek/italian (white); unemployed

vriska - viktoria ‘vikki’ huffman; russian (white); rue 21 cashier (is about to be fired)

equius - sterling rudd; black/native american?; training to be a mechanic at dad’s auto shop

gamzee - jordan scott; black/mixed; little caesar’s cook

eridan - cory reynolds; russian/scottish (white); unemployed

feferi - josephine galette; black/indian?; diner waitress + volunteers @ pet shelter

jane - janet greenfield; korean/english; pastry shop employee

roxy - macy buchanan; vietnamese/black; shitty dive bar bartender

dirk - diego santiago; puerto rican/dominican; burger king window worker/cook

jake - fletcher flores; pacific islander; texas roadhouse waiter + works on family farm

hal - alex santiago; puerto rican/dominican; thrift store cashier + furry tumblr artist

damara - anastasia ‘ana’ hoshi; japanese/mexican/filipino; hotel maid + fancy-ish restaurant waitress

rufioh - richard ‘richie’ noquez jr.; spanish; works at dad’s pet shelter + grocery store bagger

mituna - tatum ‘tate’ park; korean/welsh?; pizza delivery boy + aspiring twitch streamer

kankri - marcus santos; colombian/egyptian; diner waiter

meulin - lauren ‘laurie’ bernard; french/irish (white); coffee shop barista + tumblr writer/artist

porrim - elle norris; african; high end fashion store employee

latula - presley nephus; greek/italian (white); bowling alley attendant + dive bar bar back

aranea - leah huffman; white; restaurant hostess + interning at mom’s job

horuss - kade rudd; black/native american; dad’s auto shop mechanic + welder

kurloz - jesse scott; mixed; mexican restaurant dishwasher/cook + drug dealer

cronus - trent reynolds; white; works at dad’s company

meenah - natasha galette; black; new wave fashion store + aspiring hair braider

handmaid - hanna hoshi; japanese; house cleaner

summoner - richard ‘rich’ noquez sr.; spanish; owns the local pet shelter + personal trainer

psiioniic - jonathon park; korean; data entry manager + fixes computers for extra money

signless - derrick santos; colombian; preacher/missionary?

disciple - lizette bernard; irish; elementary school teacher

dolorosa - rosa norris; african; interior decorator?

redglare - monroe nephus; greek; lawyer

mindfang - marina huffman; russian; runs her own business (it’s a cover up for some illegal shit)

darkleer - darius rudd; native american, owns an auto shop + army weapons coordinator

ghb - grant scott; black; club bouncer

dualscar - dylan reynolds; russian; chief of surgery at hospital?

hic - cora galette; black; ceo of large cooperation (somewhat in cohorts with marina + dylan)

dad - david greenfield; white; 9-5 sales businessman

mom - lorelei buchanan; vietnamese; retired (used to be a scientist but found the cure to something and retired at like 35)

bro - drew santiago; dominican; club bouncer/dj/bartender + drug dealer + probably has an only fans

grandpa - jake flores; pacific islander; retired air force

calliope - caroline ‘callie’ umbridge; mixed; librarian assistant + stage manager at local theatre

caliborn - caleb umbridge; mixed; unemployed (reddit sub moderator)

i might go back and edit some of these bcus im not in love w all of them but i also don’t give a fuck abt most of them

[petervintonjr]

“I was born and raised in the North, and I knew that there was discrimination… but I had never seen that type of hatred on the face of anyone before. It forced me to work harder, to come back and work harder. It forced me to take a good look at people that I knew and what was going on in my own community.”

Today we study the achievements of social justice giant Constance Mitchell, someone who truly understood the intrinsic connection between poverty and racial inequality, and infused that into her every action.

Born in 1928 New Rochelle, New York, little is known of the childhood or coming-of-age years of Constance (“Connie”) Mae Jenkins, but in 1950 she married Louisianan John Mitchell (part of the Great Migration) and moved to Rochester, New York –-the city for which she would forever be associated, despite her initial impression of a place where “people here didn't know how to smile and they weren't friendly at all.”  Her first foray into Rochester community activism was as a volunteer with the Delta Ressics, a group of Baden Street Black activists who pushed for better housing and living conditions for migrant farm workers living in shacks near Sodus.  She also fought against deplorable living conditions at the Hanover Houses, Rochester’s first low-income apartment complex.  

In 1959 at the urging of a fellow Delta Rassick, Walter Cooper, Mitchell ran for --and lost-- a race for a seat on what is now the Monroe County legislature (Ward 3, then known as the Monroe County Board of Supervisors).  However she made another run in 1961 and was this time successful, and was then re-elected in 1964: the first woman and the first African-American to be elected to that body --though not without enduring resentment, routine insults and slurs, and even threats from her fellow legislators.  From this position she and her husband came into regular contact with such figures as Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, among many other civil rights leaders of the time --even entertaining visits from Malcolm and then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.  In the wake of the violent 1964 racial unrest in Rochester, Connie expressed in an interview for Life magazine, “I'm not telling you, I told you so. I'm saying please listen to us."  These two terms were the full extent of Connie’s political career but her commitment to civil rights was just getting started: in 1965, she walked alongside Dr. King from Selma to Montgomery, but while this heroic act itself disillusioned her, at the same time it reinvigorated her determination to improves lives and conditions in her own community. 

Perhaps one of Mitchell's enduring achievements was the founding of Action for a Better Community, a Rochester-based nonprofit devoted to helping people in low-income areas become more self-sufficient and lift themselves out of poverty.  She also worked closely with the United Way and the Urban League of Rochester, and created the Urban League Black Scholars program.  In later years (1978 to 1989), she became the Program Director for an initiative called PRISM (Program for Rochester to Interest Students in Science and Mathematics).  In 1993 Rochester Mayor Bill Johnson, the first elected Black mayor of that city, credited Connie with inspiring him to get into politics; and in 2013 mayor Lovely Warren, the first Black woman to be elected to that position, similarly credited Connie as a role model. 

In February 2017, Mitchell was awarded the Frederick Douglass Medal for outstanding civic engagement by the University of Rochester.  She died the following year (2018); today the Monroe Country Office Building bears her name at the Constance Mitchell Concourse.

Read a truly absorbing transcript of a lengthy 2008 interview with Constance and John Mitchell at: https://rbscp.lib.rochester.edu/rbfs-CMitchell

[littleguypumpkinsheep]

ALRIGHTY. I have 5 new characters to introduce hehe. Pierre, Christine, Madeline, Annabelle, and Marcy.

Pierre is (was) the towns sheriff. Everyone except the privileged few who gained incentive from his rule hated him. He was very bigoted and let this determine the majority of his decisions. He lost his job after some time when he was murdered in front of his wife in the streets. He/Him, French, Gay (closeted and in denial. Never got the chance to explore).

Christine is (was) Pierre’s wife. She helped to determine and make town laws and decisions. Her marriage was terrible and neither of them liked each other nor did they treat each other well. She internalized a lot of her husband’s misogynistic beliefs about women and often lashed out at others because of that. When her husband was killed, she was taken in by Annabelle and began to learn and heal. She/Her, French, Sapphic.

Annabelle is a sex worker and a single mother to one. She runs and created her business herself, and while it started off small, it became a popular place for locals and for people in other towns. Most of the money she makes is given to her fellow employees or other folk who need it more, and her daughter is the second source of income for the both of them. Annabelle had been empathetic toward Christine, and especially so when Pierre was murdered. She looked after her and helped her to get out of the holes she’d fallen into for years. Her and Christine have some sort of “something” going on. She/Her, African American, Sapphic AroAce.

Marcy is a ranchero. She lives on a separate property in the town to own and look after the farm for her mother, although the two still see each other often and remain close. She frequents the casinos and gun range, and challenges the local men outside to card games for money. She cares deeply for others, and was the first to befriend Madeline. She/Her, African American, Lesbian.

Madeline is room keeper for the town inn. She has a great interest in fashion and sewing, and often frequents the libraries and book stores in other towns nearby to bring back. Because of this, she decided to start a small library of her own, allowing residents to check out anything they want, and she often goes searching for certain books upon request. After being befriended, she and Marcy began dating, and Madeline was finally able to begin her public and social transition. She/Her, Caucasian-Chinese Mix, Lesbian.

[wealmostaneckbeard]

Libertarianism is awful: an incoherent rant

The more I learn about American Libertarianism (also known as AnarchoCapitalism or Individualism or so many other names...) the less I like it. Primarily because it makes people (voters and politicians) so financially anorexic (an actual psychological condition) that they willingly destroy their own infrastructure just to save money in taxes. Infrastructure that would have been high priority targets of an invading military force or terrorist organization. But there is another reason why I hate Libertarianism. Reading about real life cases of libertarians attempting to operate societies made me understand what the true principles of the ideology are:

The masses have no right to control an individual but the individual has the right to oppress the masses.

It is the ideology of a king repackaged and sold to peasants. Kings live a great life because they own a lot of stuff, can indulge in every vice, and they don't have to pay taxes. Therefore, libertarians proclaim, peasants would have a great life too if they got to live like a king. Unfortunately those damned Statists with their burdensome regulations will always prevent the formation of an all-king society and thus they must be destroyed. Never mind that the wealth of kings was only possible through the collective efforts of artisans, merchants, and peasants who staged revolts against kings in order to get lawful governments that better served the collective's interests.

Let's abandon this abstract metaphor which wasn't going anywhere important and move on to gun ownership. By owning a gun, you are giving yourself the power to easily threaten and kill non-gun owners. Unfortunately this is the definition of oppression, even if it was a necessary action to preserve your own freedom. Now If you don't own a gun and you are being threatened with one, the obvious solution is to get yourself a gun. When asked how, the typical libertarian will reply with "The Free Market" and leave it at that. Being privileged gun enthusiasts, they assume that a desperate enslaved farm/sex/factory worker would be able to seek out and purchase the best fire arms that could be used against mercenaries. But a business owners employees would never stage an armed revolt since they love working in inhumane conditions sooooooooo much! And besides, who want would sell guns to poor people? lol, they don't have any money.

When larger questions of logistics/ethics like these arise, such as how poor people can afford fire power that would put them on equal footing with a wealthy warlord and his loyal military, the average libertarian will excitedly info-dump about the American Revolutionary War. They will ignore that the revolutionaries nearly failed a few times due to lack of supplies. And they won't mention (and may not know) about the less successful anti-imperialist efforts that weren't bankrolled by wealthy patrons which ended in genocide of the scrappy guerilla freedom fighters. Which is what happened to the First Nation's of North America, the small tribes across the African continent, and all those other poor people. That because they hate multiculturalism and refuse to learn from the tragedies of others.

In conclusion, the foundation of American Libertarian doctrine was bankrolled by Charles and David Koch, inheritors of Koch Industries, in the 1970's. It is a reflection of the values held by those brothers whose father was a known Nazi sympathizer. It was designed to make the poor be incompetent revolutionaries, make them sympathize with corporate executives, and be compatible with cultural conservative values. Over the last half century this ideology has, unfortunately, been semi-successful which has resulted in greater chaos and poverty in the United States of America and beyond.

[recreationaldivorce]

These two opposite systems of internal colonization reveal one of the most important differences between U.S. and Latin American development models. Why is the north rich and the south poor? The Rio Grande is much more than a geographical frontier. Is today's profound disequilibrium, which seems to confirm Hegel's prophecy of inevitable war between the two Americas, to be traced to U.S. imperialist expansion, or does it have more ancient roots? In fact, back in the colonial beginnings, north and south had already generated very different societies with different aims. The Mayflower pilgrims did not cross the sea to obtain legendary treasures; they came mainly to establish themselves with their families and to reproduce in the New World the system of life and work they had practiced in Europe. They were not soldiers of fortune but pioneers; they came not to conquer but to colonize, and their colonies were settlements. It is true that a slave-plantation economy like Latin America's developed later south of the Delaware, but there was a difference: the centre of gravity in the United States was from the outset the farms and workshops of New England, from which came the victorious armies of the Civil War. New England colonists, the original nucleus of U.S. civilization, never acted as colonial agents for European capitalist accumulation; their own development, and the development of their new land, were always their motivation. The thirteen colonies served as an outlet for the army of European peasants and artisans who were being thrown off the labor market by metropolitan development. Free workers formed the base of that new society across the ocean.

Spain and Portugal, on the other hand, had an abundance of subjugated labor in Latin America. Enslavement of the Indians was followed by the wholesale transplantation of Africans. Through the centuries, a legion of unemployed peasants was always available to be moved to production centers: as precious metal or sugar exports rose and fell, flourishing centers coexisted with centers of decay, and the latter provided labor for the former. This structure persists to our time; today, as yesterday, it means low wage scales because of the pressure of the unemployed on the labor market, and frustrates the growth of an internal consumer market. But also in contrast to the Northern Puritans, internal economic development was never the goal of the ruling classes of Latin American colonial society. Their profits came from outside; they were tied more to the foreign market than to their own domain. Landlords, miners, and merchants had been born to fulfill the mission of supplying Europe with gold, silver, and food. Goods moved along the roads in only one direction: to the port and overseas markets. This also provides the key to the United States' expansion as a national unit and to the fragmentation of Latin America. Our production centers are not interconnected but take the form of a fan with a far-away vertex.

One might say that the thirteen colonies had the fortune of bad fortune. Their history shows the great importance of not being born important. For the north of America had no gold or silver, no Indian civilizations with dense concentrations of people already organized for work, no fabulously fertile tropical soil on the coastal fringe. It was an area where both nature and history had been miserly: both metals and the slave labor to wrest it from the ground were missing. Those colonists were lucky. Furthermore, the northern colonies, from Maryland to New England to Nova Scotia, had a climate and soil similar to British agriculture and produced exactly the same things. That is, as Sergio Bagú notes, they did not offer products complementary to the metropolis. The situation in the Antilles and the mainland Spanish-Portuguese colonies was quite different. Tropical lands produced sugar, tobacco, cotton, indigo, turpentine; a small Carribean island had more economic importance for England than the thirteen colonies that would become the United States.

These circumstances explain the rise and consolidation of the United States as an economically autonomous system, one which did not drain abroad the wealth it produced. The ties between colony and metropolis were slender. In Barbados and Jamaica, on the other hand, only the capital necessary to replace worn-out slaves was reinvested. Thus it was not racial factors that decided the development of the one and the underdevelopment of the other: there was nothing Spanish or Portuguese about Britain's Antillean islands. The truth is that the economic insignificance of the thirteen colonies permitted the early diversification of their exports and set off the early and rapid development of manufacturing. Even before independence, North American industrialization had official encouragement and protection. And England took a tolerant attitude while it strictly forbade its Antillean islands to manufacture much as a pin.

Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America

[a-dark-time]

The Thibodaux Massacre

The Thibodaux Massacre was nothing less than an act of violent racism that ended the lives of up to 60 African Americans.

"On November 23, 1887, a mass shooting of African-American farm workers in Louisiana left some 60 dead. Bodies were dumped in unmarked graves while the white press cheered a victory against a fledgling black union."

This information taken from the Smithsonian Magazine highlights the extremity of the situation as a whole.

Picture taken from the Nicholls library database.

"Murder, foul murder has been committed, and the victims were inoffensive, law-abiding Negroes. Assassins more cruel, more desperate, more desperate than any who had hitherto practiced their nefarious business in Louisiana have been shooting down, like so many cattle, the negroes in and around Thibodaux, Lafourche parish, La."

Quote taken from African American Newspaper.

This was a tragic part of history, and it should be learned about, a way to bring awareness to the horrible situation that African Americans used to live in. The massacre was a result of a labor strike blown out of proportion by the white officials in charge. It should never be forgotten that innocent people were killed that day as a result of wanton racism and power hungry officials.

[lboogie1906]

William Edmondson (c. December 1874 - February 7, 1951) was the first African American artist to have a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1937. He grew up near Nashville, Tennessee. Edmondson’s father, George, died when he was quite young and his mother Jane became a farm worker to support the family. He began carving tombstones and expanded his work to include sports heroes, animals, birdbaths, and figures from the Bible.

He had very little formal education and as a young man he worked for railway shops in Nashville, Chattanooga, and St. Louis. He was employed at various times as a farmhand, horse groom, orderly, fireman, and handyman. He began work as a helper for a stonemason, he discovered his talent for stone carving and built his carving tools by forging railroad spikes. In the early 1930s, he began carving tombstones for Nashville’s African American community using pieces of limestone that had been thrown away. People stopped by and bought tombstones for a few dollars. He never married.

He believed that God guided his creative endeavors and the subject matter reflected his faith. He created Martha and Mary, a sculpture based on these prominent Biblical figures. His sculpture was displayed in 1937 at his first one-person exhibition at MOMA. At the end of the exhibit, it was sold to a prominent collector. From that point, his work was recognized in national art circles.

He connected with Harlem Renaissance artist Aaron Douglas and writer James Weldon Johnson in a discussion about art and ideas. He worked as an artist on Works Progress Administration projects in Nashville (1939-41).

He had solo shows at The Montclair Art Museum The Cheekwood Fine Arts Center, The Nashville Artist Guild, and The Tennessee State Museum. His work was included in group exhibitions in DC, New York, San Francisco, and Paris. His work is in the permanent collections of The Montclair Art Museum. The University of Rochester, the San Francisco Museum of Art, and at The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, The National Museum of American Art, and the Smithsonian Institution. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[dwellordream]

“At the end of the 19th century, when slightly more than half of all working people were still engaged in agriculture and the nation’s population was still concentrated mostly in the Eastern states, the statistically and geographically average American woman would have been a 38-to-40-year-old white farmer’s wife with four or five children, living in southwestern Ohio. Like 98 percent of married white women in 1890, this “average” American woman did not work for pay outside her home. In addition to housekeeping, cooking, and child care, though, she probably performed a great deal of farm labor and may have sold eggs and butter to make a little cash.

She may also have been involved in local church work, or a temperance (anti-alcohol) group, or a ladies’ auxiliary of the county Grange, an organization that encouraged farmer cooperatives and agitated for farmers’ political rights. Our typical mid-continent woman was probably not an immigrant, but she might well have been the offspring of German or Scandinavian immigrants, the groups that had dominated the settlement of the Midwest after the Civil War. Her own daughter, coming of age in the 1890s and educated in a local township school, might have more opportunities than her mother. Unless she married a farmer, or her parents needed her labor at home, she could move to Chicago or some other large city and take up work in a factory, shop, or office.

This picture of the statistically average American woman and her daughter does not tell the whole story. In fact, the typical, if not the average, white American woman in 1890 was just as likely to be a young working-class woman--a Russian-Jewish or Italian garment worker in New York City, a Polish meat packer in Chicago, or an Irish domestic servant in Boston--as she was to be a farmer’s wife in Ohio or Nebraska, because immigration was changing the population so rapidly in 1890. The waves of British, Irish, and German immigration had ended in the 1880s. Now the immigrants, who arrived each year in the hundreds of thousands, came mostly from eastern and southern Europe--Russia, Poland, Serbia, Hungary, Greece, and Italy.

…The picture of women’s lives in the South at the turn of the century differed in several significant ways from that of their Northern counterparts. Southern society had been all but destroyed in the Civil War, along with Southern cities and much of the Southern landscape. Recovery had been slow and incomplete, and the South did not share the industrial prosperity of the North. Society was sharply divided along racial lines, and white racism had become steadily worse after Reconstruction ended in the late 1870s. Confined largely to jobs in agriculture, African Americans worked as laborers on vast cotton or tobacco plantations, or as sharecroppers, paying for the fields that they leased from white landowners with a share of their crops. Few black families owned farms of their own.

Although many black women dreamed of a life in which they could devote full time to family cares and household responsibilities, most had to work full days for white landowners or toil in the fields alongside their husbands in order to maintain even a minimum family income. The few jobs available to black women outside agriculture were in domestic service--working for white families--or in laundries, or in segregated mills and cigarette factories. Black families made enormous sacrifices to keep their daughters in school, with the expectation that they might become teachers or small-business owners. African-American parents could hope that the next generation of black women might escape sharecropping or working in white men’s houses, where they were subject to insult and frequently in danger of sexual assault.

…Western coastal states were especially attractive to Asian immigrants, though the influx of Chinese laborers had slowed to a trickle after the Chinese Exclusion Act became law in 1882. Filipino immigration increased significantly after the Spanish-American War in 1898, and by the end of the 19th century, Japanese immigrants had established substantial communities in California. Although the Chinese and Filipino immigration was at first mostly male, Japanese immigration was more evenly balanced between men and women.

The Asian groups tended to remain isolated from the larger, white society, which regarded their different physical characteristics, as well as their languages and customs, with deep suspicion and contempt. Like women in other immigrant cultures, Asian women remained more isolated and less assimilated than men, remaining homebound or working in restaurants, laundries, or small industries run exclusively by members of their community. Many new brides went straight from the boat to the farms of central California, where they picked fruits and vegetables alongside their husbands by day and cooked meals and cared for their children and living quarters the rest of the time.”

- Karen Manners Smith, “Woman’s World in 1890.” in New Paths to Power: American Women, 1890-1920

[aurianneor]

Immigration

The images are frightening. We see caravans of migrants crossing Central America on their way to the United States. We see boats filled to the brim off the coast of Florida or in the Mediterranean. In border towns, we see hordes of young men on the streets, destitute, jumping the barriers of detention centres, living in squats, sometimes addicted to drugs.

European countries and the United States claim to be so overwhelmed that they delegate their borders to Mexico, Turkey and the countries of North Africa. They pay them to process asylum applications before the migrants have set foot in the destination country. The detention centres are inhumane and the migrants jump the barriers to get to their destination. The barrier is very easy to jump. Migrants enter countries illegally because it is inhumane to ask to enter legally. So they don’t assert their rights.

Faced with these terrifying images, we hear the Right telling us that these illegals must be punished more severely, and we hear the Left telling us that there are no problems with migrants. These migrants work for a tenth of the price and cannot assert their rights before a judge. The people most affected by migration are the rural and poor. The result of this situation of irregularity is to create an extremely cheap labour force that cannot compete with European or American labour. It is legitimate to feel helpless when faced with these migrants. The fields in the United States and Europe are full of illegal workers and the fields are not controlled. The current policy simply creates more scope for employers. The people living in rural areas are concerned, and only the right wing is addressing them.

In the short term, many migrants are arriving at the borders of the West and there is no reason why their treatment should not be organised in humane conditions. Those who wish to assert their right to asylum do not deserve prison.

In the long term, the European and North American powers have largely contributed to making the countries of the South unliveable. We must stop actively destroying these countries. Multinationals must be held criminally responsible when they commit an act in these countries that would be a crime in the West. They must be tried in the West for pollution, subversion, corruption, forced labour, child labour, etc. On the other hand, the West can and must support democratic regimes when they emerge in these countries. African revolutionaries have all been killed. This has to stop.

It is only under these conditions that development aid can be effective. If we give development aid when these conditions are not met, it feeds corruption. Only effective development aid will create decent living opportunities in these countries and reduce the number of migrants.

Taking stronger action on climate change is also important to ensure that these countries do not become hellholes.

If these countries end up receiving a fair income from their resources and labour, they will become long-term customers and trading partners and will be able to deal with the sanitary problems that threaten us all.

------------------------------------------------------------------

Peru, biodiversity in danger: https://www.aurianneor.org/peru-biodiversity-in-danger/

“How can you frighten a man whose hunger”…: https://www.aurianneor.org/how-can-you-frighten-a-man-whose-hunger-is-not/

Fair trade and organic farming: https://www.aurianneor.org/fair-trade-and-organic-farming/

How can we win back trust?: https://www.aurianneor.org/how-can-we-win-back-trust/

Humiliated by the Republic: https://www.aurianneor.org/humiliated-by-the-republic/

“Calais ou pas caler”: https://www.aurianneor.org/calais-ou-pas-caler/

Solidarité Hélvétique: https://www.aurianneor.org/solidarite-helvetique-democratie-semi-directe/

License on the Red Planet – A science fiction story: https://www.aurianneor.org/license-on-the-red-planet-a-science-fiction/

[cryingoflot49]

Book Review

Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town

by Paul Theroux

Two decades ago, the novelist and travel writer Paul Theroux took an overland trip through Africa, starting in Cairo, Egypt and ending in Cape Town, South Africa. This certainly isn’t the safest or the most comfortable means of experiencing the supposed “dark continent”, but it makes for some interesting experiences and insights. Keeping in mind that Theroux’s observations are just one point of view among many, his resulting book Dark Star provides a unique look at a region of the world that holds a permanent place off the beaten path.

While Dark Star is an easy book to read, breaking it down into its individual elements is a good way to approach its merits and examine its flaws. The first element of importance is Theroux’s sense of place. Wherever he goes, the author describes what he sees and the vibe he gets from his surroundings. Starting on the tourist trail in Egypt, he heads south through Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Zambia, and South Africa. You quickly get a sense of what he appreciates and what he doesn’t. He doesn’t like sites that are swarmed with tourists, nor does he like cities with their concentrations of crime and poverty. He also doesn’t like the “death traps” as he calls public transportation which are usually over-croded minivans driven at dangerous speeds on poorly maintained roads, pockmarked with hippopotamus-sized potholes. If you’ve ever traveled in a Third World country, you will know exaclt what he is talking about.

The places that Theroux does like are usually rural, especially farm lands or jungle villages. These are the places where he sees Africans at their best, meaning Africans being Africans in the absence of corrupt and filthy cities built up on the foundations of European colonialism. Some of the book’s best passages involve descriptions of the pyramids in Sudan which are rarely seen by tourists, a boat trip across Lake Victoria, another boat trip from Malawi across the Zambezi over the border into Zimbabwe, and the pristine countrysides of Zimbabwe and South Africa. All places, whether Theroux likes them or not, are described with language that is clear, simple, and direct, making it easy to visualize what he sees.

Another element that is done to near perfection is writings about the people. Theroux talks with tour guides, people on the streets and in the villages, farmers, nuns, educators, government officials, Indian businessmen, prostitutes, authors, intellectuals, and ordinary people. Just like with the places he goes, he describes these people vividly with precision so that you feel like you quickly get to know them. But not everyone is to his liking. He gets into small argument with a fanatical Rastafarian in Ethiopia, a little ornery with physically fit young men who refuse to work, government officials who demand bribes to do their jobs, and he really gives a hard time to a young American missionary woman about the psychological damage that her evangelical ministry is doing to the local people. There is also plenty of anger directed at clueless tourists as well as NGO and charity workers who he sees as being the Westerners who do the most damage to Africa.

The third element of importance is the author, Paul Theroux himself, and his thoughts and commentaries on everything he sees. Before getting into this subject, it should be mentioned that Theroux had a purpose to his journey. In the 1960s he worked as a Peace Corps volunteer, teaching in Malawi. After getting involved with a Leftist political group, he got fired then accepted a teaching position at a college in Uganda. He wanted to return and see what results, if any, his contributions to Africa grew into. What he found was a major disappointment. The charming campuses and villages where he had lived were in ruins and instead of a thriving civilization, he saw emaciated beggars, starving children, an ignorant populace, and chronically corrupt politicians. Shops that were formerly owned by Indian immigrants were abandoned and burnt to the ground, the result of a campaign of ethnic cleansing. African people wanted to buy from shops owned by Africans, but Africans never took control over the businesses after the Indians were killed or chased away. They resorted to begging, theft, petty crime, prostitution, and laziness instead of making an effort to build better villages for themselves. Due to the hopelessness of African society, the most educated citizens fled to America or Europe instead of staying in their home countries where they were most needed.

Throughout his travels in Tanzania, Uganda, and Malawi, Theroux gets increasingly bitter and cynical. He wanted to see Africans thriving and they weren’t. He directs all his wrath towards the Western charities and NGOs who he says are making the local people dependent on aid rather than learning how to run their societies for themselves. Even worse, these organizations work by bribing corrupt politicians to allow them to do work there, keeping greedy and psychotic leaders in positions of power they don’t deserve. Theroux points out that rural people who have given up on the hopeless market economy and returned to subsistence farming are the happiest and healthiest Africans he encounters. Heecomes close to advocating for a type of post-capitalist agrarian anarchism.

Some readers have criticized Theroux for his pessimistic views on contemporary Africa, but he does cite studies that support what he says. He also encounters a lot of Africans in several different countries that agree with him. To make sense of his negativity, you also have to remember that traveling overland through Africa is not exactly stress free. Anybody who has been on an extended backpacking trip anywhere in the world will tell you that traveler’s fatigue is a real thing. Theroux took a longer than average trip through one of the most underdeveloped regions in the world, got shot at by Somali bandits, stuck in the middle of nowhere when his transportation broke down, and got sick with food poisoning, magnifying his traveler’s fatigue to a outsize extent. These circumstances would make you grouchy too. But even in the darkest times, Theroux never loses his appreciation for Africa, the wildlife, the landscapes, and the people who are trying to make the best of their situations. Besides, by the time he crosses the river from Malawi into Zimbabwe, his mood really lightens up.

Dark Star is an engaging travelogue that should be read both critically and with an open mind. All the while, remember that this is Paul Theroux’s singular point of view. That doesn’t make it wrong; that just means that there are other points of view to take into account that may go against what he says even if they don’t necessarily invalidate his opinions. He saw what he saw and he expresses it well. This is raw and honest travel writing and if you haven’t been tough enough to make the same kind of journey, you’re not in a good place to be judgmental of the conclusions he draws.