#but anarchistic

[enfinizatics]

dear americans,

as a polish queer woman and human rights activist, i know exactly how you're feeling right now and what to expect from these elections. i lived through the 2015-2023 regime of pis, a right-wing populist party that divided families in the same way trump did. i’ve experienced the rise of fascism in poland, the influence of far-right parties like konfederacja, and their “santa’s little helpers”—ordo iuris, an ultra-conservative catholic organization (banned in many countries, mind you) that helped enforce a near-total abortion ban and runs anti-queer campaigns in public spaces. i supported the black protests in 2016 as a middle schooler when they first tried to ban abortion. as an adult, i actively participated in the 2020 women’s strike, running from police tear gas daily after they finally passed the ban. i supported friends who faced charges.

i’ve lived through intense homophobia in poland as a queer teen and adult. i survived the first pride march in my hometown, where far-right extremists threw stones and glass at us. i endured the anti-queer propaganda spread by the ruling party in state-owned media. i survived the “rainbow night,” poland’s own stonewall moment in summer 2020, when police arrested around 50 queer activists following the arrest of margo, a nonbinary activist. i survived the "lgbt-free zones," the targeted violence, the slurs from strangers on the street, and the protests i held against queerphobia. it was hard as fuck, but i survived.

but just because i survived, it doesn’t mean others did. many women died because of the abortion ban—marta, justyna, izabela, dorota, joanna, maria, and many others who didn’t survive pis’s draconian anti-abortion laws. milo, kacper, michał, zuzia (she was 12), wiktor, and other queer and trans kids and young adults took their own lives because of the relentless queerphobia.

despite all of this, our experience in poland can serve as a guide now. here are some tips for staying safe and how we, polish queers and women, organized under the regime:

safety first, always. if you know someone who’s had an abortion, no you don’t. if you know someone is trans, no you don’t. if you know people who help with safe abortions, no you don’t—at least not until you know it’s 100% safe to share. if you are queer or have had an abortion, only share this with people you trust fully. most importantly, not everyone has to be an activist just because they’re part of a minority. if it feels unsafe to share that you're queer, trans, etc., then don’t. it doesn’t make you any less queer.

use secure, encrypted messaging like signal for conversations on potentially risky topics, such as queerness, abortion, organizing counter-actions, protests—anything that might be used against you.

stay anonymous online. if you want to research or report something without surveillance, do not use regular internet. get a vpn (mullvad is affordable and reliable), download the tor browser (for both onion and standard links), and if you plan to whistleblow, consider using a riseup email account.

organize and build networks. community is everything now. support each other, foster independence, because your government won’t have your back. set up collectives, grassroots movements. create lists of trusted professionals—lawyers, doctors, etc.—who can offer support.

to lawyers and doctors: please consider pro-bono work. this is what got us through poland’s hardest times. your work will be needed now more than ever.

for protests or risky actions: always write a pro-bono lawyer’s number on your arm with a permanent marker.

get to know the anarchist black cross federation and other resources on safety culture: "Starting an anarchist black cross group: A guide"; Still We Rise - A resource pack for transgender and non-gender conforming people in prison; Safe OUTside the system by the Audre Lorde Project;

for safe abortion info or involvement: get familiar with womenhelpwomen.

stay radical, stay strong, stay informed: The Anarchist Library

if i forgot to (or didn't) include something, don't hesitate to reblog this post with other resources.

[theatheistgirl]

[smokegrassshakeass]

Bottoms, Tops, we all hate cops!!

[Image Description: a photograph of two white people wearing punk clothing, seemingly at a Pride parade. They are holding up a black sign with the words "Bottoms, tops, we all hate cops" in white, capitalized text. End Description.]

(provided by Aspirationatwork)

[genderqueerdykes]

the solution for taking care of "unsightly" homeless people is to house us. that is the only solution. if you can't stand the look of someone living on the sidewalk, you shouldn't stand for them being put into that situation to begin with. housing us is the only answer.

[shroobles]

[chronicbitchsyndrome]

so: masking: good, unequivocally. please mask and please educate others on why they should mask to make the world safer for immune compromised people to participate in.

however: masking is not my policy focus and it shouldn't be yours, either. masking is a very good mitigation against droplet-born illnesses and a slightly less effective (but still very good) mitigation against airborne illnesses, but its place in the pyramid of mitigation demands is pretty low, for several reasons:

it's an individual mitigation, not a systemic one. the best mitigations to make public life more accessible affect everyone without distributing the majority of the effort among individuals (who may not be able to comply, may not have access to education on how to comply, or may be actively malicious).

it's a post-hoc mitigation, or to put it another way, it's a band-aid over the underlying problem. even if it was possible to enforce, universal masking still wouldn't address the underlying problem that it is dangerous for sick people and immune compromised people to be in the same public locations to begin with. this is a solvable problem! we have created the societal conditions for this problem!

here are my policy focuses:

upgraded air filtration and ventilation systems for all public buildings. appropriate ventilation should be just as bog-standard as appropriately clean running water. an indoor venue without a ventilation system capable of performing 5 complete air changes per hour should be like encountering a public restroom without any sinks or hand sanitizer stations whatsoever.

enforced paid sick leave for all employees until 3-5 days without symptoms. the vast majority of respiratory and food-borne illnesses circulate through industry sectors where employees come into work while experiencing symptoms. a taco bell worker should never be making food while experiencing strep throat symptoms, even without a strep diagnosis.

enforced virtual schooling options for sick students. the other vast majority of respiratory and food-borne illnesses circulate through schools. the proximity of so many kids and teenagers together indoors (with little to no proper ventilation and high levels of physical activity) means that if even one person comes to school sick, hundreds will be infected in the following few days. those students will most likely infect their parents as well. allowing students to complete all readings and coursework through sites like blackboard or compass while sick will cut down massively on disease transmission.

accessible testing for everyone. not just for COVID; if there's a test for any contagious illness capable of being performed outside of lab conditions, there should be a regulated option for performing that test at home (similar to COVID rapid tests). if a test can only be performed under lab conditions, there should be a government-subsidized program to provide free of charge testing to anyone who needs it, through urgent cares and pharmacies.

the last thing to note is that these things stack; upgraded ventilation systems in all public buildings mean that students and employees get sick less often to begin with, making it less burdensome for students and employees to be absent due to sickness, and making it more likely that sick individuals will choose to stay home themselves (since it's not so costly for them).

masking is great! keep masking! please use masking as a rhetorical "this is what we can do as individuals to make public life safer while we're pushing for drastic policy changes," and don't get complacent in either direction--don't assume that masking is all you need to do or an acceptable forever-solution, and equally, don't fall prey to thinking that pushing for policy change "makes up" for not masking in public. it's not a game with scores and sides; masking is a material thing you can do to help the individual people you interact with one by one, and policy changes are what's going to make the entirety of public life safer for all immune compromised people.

[deceased-bunny]

Heat

Another old gift for @thegutterbunny / @gutter-bunny-art , I have a type mew :3

[anarcho-catboyism]

Horrible fact of the day: Chevron just released a new boat fuel that WILL give you cancer.

Not "might", not "could", WILL. It has a cancer ratio of 1.3:1, as in, in a group of 10 people, 10 would contract CANCER.

(Edit: apparently some articles are now saying 1.4:1, and some are saying a little under that. Either way, the consensus seems to be anywhere between a 95-100+% of contracting cancer, with some expectations of this fuel not even needing a full lifetime of exposure for you to get Cancer.)

The EPA's safety limit is 1:1,000,000 as in 1 in a million people get cancer.

The EPA approved it anyways. I am not joking. The EPA approved a boat fuel that has a near 100% chance of giving someone cancer. It has such a good chance of giving someone cancer that if you DIDN'T get cancer YOU WOULD BE AN OUTLIER.

Fuck the oil industries.

Edit: If you find this (rightfully) horrifying, have you considered industrial sabotage? /hj

This isn't something we can vote away. This isn't something the rich are gonna apologize and make a 10 minute apology video for this. They don't care if you starve or wither in hospitals or get blown up in their wars.

If you don't know where to get started:

If you already know what to do, then it's time to do it. Participate in mutual aid, raise awareness in real life as well as online, participate in or train in self defense and emergency medical training classes.

[anarchywoofwoof]

[rainbowpopeworld]

[batfamilycannons]

A daily occurrence

Jason, English nerd, Todd: USE OXFORD COMMAS, CUNT!

Tim, I dropped out of high school I’ll do whatever the fuck I want, Drake: No.

Dick, I speak like 17 languages fluently and still refuse to follow or learn the grammar rules in this one, Grayson: a what?

[motziedapul]

Perhaps the funniest thing that could have happened lately was that this anticapitalist cafe and community space near my place was shutting down near the end of May - but because so many Texas and Florida conservatives celebrated it online, the place got a huge donation to keep operating

It's a great place. It functions mostly like a regular cafe but it has this free/pay what you want drip coffee for anyone who wants it, free bathroom use, and it stocks indie merch and books on antifascist, queer, leftist, socialist, indigenous topics. I've met a lot of awesome people there.

Its very existence enrages conservatives, and anarchocapitalists who tried to claim it only to be shown the middle finger by its anticapitalist owner, who is an all around nice dude (and a fellow Elden Ring fan)

If you can toss a coin to its continued operation, please do! Upon request from their followers on insta they opened a Gofundme. Even just a few dollars will be a huge help.

[anarchistfrogposting]

In my experience, a big reason that people tend to struggle with the concept of “no good cops” is that they only see police as being violent when they are actively beating or killing us. I think if more folks understood the scope and the breadth of the violence that policing engenders in and inflicts upon our communities, more people would agree that a better world is one without it.

[anarchist-art]

[fools-and-perverts2]

I'm joining in on the trend of making polls to capture your attention with the hope that you'll keep reading to hear about Mounir Raed Alanqar from Gaza (number 8 on the vetted gfms spreadsheet) who messaged me earlier today.

this is what they sent

they are only 19 and fundraising for themselves and their younger sister Sham, who is 4 years old and developing a skin condition.

Please donate to their GFM or at least share their account and their story like I am doing. at time of posting they gave raised €1786 / €35000 and the last donation was 7 hours ago!!!

thank you so much for donating/sharing this post and the posts on their blog, every little counts. we will see a free palestine and we will see it in all of our lifetimes, Sham and Mounir Raed included if you help them out🫶

@raed-moner <- here's the Tumblr

tagging big blogs/celebrities for reach

@genderqueerdykes @ayeforscotland @strange-aeons @writingwithcolor @what-is-my-aesthetic @biggest-gaudiest-patronuses @lesbiansandgayssupporttheminers @pukicho

thank you all