#decolonize trauma work
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Okay but it was our communist government that pushed ethno-religious supremacy to legitimize the newly-emancipated nation the British Empire left behind, a legacy that was eagerly taken over by the neoliberal government. The Global South's communist governments all tore themselves apart just as well as the neoliberal ones because it turned out centralized power corrupts no matter the economics of it. It's extremely Eurocentric and reductive to blame all the world's ills on an economic system that the Europeans only got off the ground two hundred years ago. Ethno-religious supremacy, colonization and imperialism have been around for millennia.
I know some dickheads have now decided that Judaism is the "bad, violent, terrorist religion" and Islam is the "good, peaceful" one, which is only to be expected of white people, but how much of an issue is it currently? Like I've seen some USAmericans sharing how the Islamic faith shapes Gazans values and perseverance (good) except with that distinct white hippie "I'm about to imprint on this like the world's most racist duck" vibe (bad), but I didn't think they're already turning on Judaism in numbers.
Do they realize that Christianity is also the same kind of comfort to Christian minorities in Asia and Africa? That it was Buddhists that genocided the Rohingyas in Myanmar and Tamils in Sri Lanka? That Hindu fundamentalists are even now trying to ethnically cleanse Muslims in India? How Hindus and Christians are terrorized and persecuted in Pakistan? That Muslims have had a long history of persecuting and ethnically cleansing Jews too?
Really tired of asking y'all to be normal about people's religions man. There's no religion that's inherently violent or exceptionally peaceful. It's just like any other ideology that becomes a weapon in the hands of ethnic power. Interrogate power, not religion, and respect people's belief systems insofar as they aren't in your business.
#I have ''communists dni'' on my bio#because when you tell a western communist that communism is just as violent and have left a legacy of intergenerational trauma#in previously colonized countries#they get really mad and assume you're a capitalist#and try to westsplain your own region's political history to you using Wikipedia#the way y'all ascribe everything to capitalism and white supremacy is part of your imperialist egocentricism#we have realities and histories independent of you#and most of our trauma is rooted in the way the Europeans invaded‚#shuffled people around for their convenience#carved up our lands like a cake‚ called it a ''nation'' and fucked off#leaving us with an elite class‚ economic ruin and ethnomajorities#the nation itself is a violent colonial construct#like you cannot do any decolonization work with the idea that there's just one system of inequality extant today#capitalism needs to go. but the greed and love of power that created it is inherent to humanity#and will just corrupt whatever system replaces it#unless we figure out a way to prevent concentrations of power and resources#anyway yeah. The weaponizing of religion is an issue that has existed since the dawn of civilization
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Places to donate to help Palestine
PCRF.net - They did over a 100 medical missions in 2022 (Palestine Children’s Relief Fund)
Middle East Children's Alliance - A Non-profit organization fighting for the well-being and rights of Middle Eastern Children. They also have a link to a 'tool kit' to help spread information about the Gaza Genocide. I'm linking to it directly HERE
Anera: Where Hope Finds a Way - They provide everything from food, medicine and hygiene kits. $30 equals 16 blood bags - an essential thing for helping doctors help people survive horrible physical trauma.
UNICEF.org - Link to where you can donate to help UNICEF get aid to those suffering in Palestine.
And because I know damn well that lots of people don't have the extra funds to donate money - you can help by simply clicking here once a day. It donates ad revenue. Click to help Palestine
[I wanted so much to find other places people could donate that weren't in the US or Canada, but I was having problems figuring out how to ensure that they were reputable. If anyone knows of any, please reblog and add the links!]
And some basic informational sources for those who want to understand what's really going on other than the misleading information from the media.
BDS - The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement works to end international support for Israel's oppression of Palestinians. Offers actual news about what's happening.
Decolonize Palestine - In depth information about the history and origins of Palestine. Also has a great 'debunked myths' section that lists almost all of all the lies the Media has been peddling.
Mondoweiss - An independent website devoted to informing readers about developments in Israel/Palestine and related US foreign policy. (Be aware: Some articles show disturbing images of the horrors happening in Gaza.)
Petitions I found with reputable track records (there are a LOT of fakes out there)
Canada:
Independant Jewish Voices Canada - Gaza on the Brink Ceasefire Now! - Prewritten letter to Justin Trudeau and Mélanie Joly calling for an immediate ceasefire, and for an end to the collective punishment of Palestinians. Just sign your name and it sends a letter!
There are several other ways (Including email addresses to various people/companies, as well as physical addresses you can mail letters to) listed here.
DON'T send threats/hate mail. That does nothing but make them double down on their current stances. Be polite. You don't have to take a happy tone, but be polite.
United States:
USA - Tell Congress: Stop Fueling the Gaza Genocide - Demanding an immediate ceasefire and for Humanitarian Aid to be allowed into Gaza.
Jewish Voice for Peace - You can use their form for send a letter to Congress to demand that they should focus on de-escalation instead of sending money and weapons to Israel so they can continue their genocidal war against Palestinians.
Jewish Voice for Peace (part 2) - Fill out this form and inform President Biden that he should call for a ceasefire and stop supplying money and weapons to Israel.
#free palestine#palestine aid#how to help palestine#stop the genocide#free gaza#help palestine#charities#non profit
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Marks of growth as a person and practitioner in witchcraft spaces:
-not feeling the need to constantly correct others
-knowing when and how to offer a dissenting viewpoint
-being content to disagree without engaging in debate
-fact-checking information before passing it along or incorporating it into your practice
-questioning your assumptions and decolonizing your thinking
-understanding that no two practices are the same and that the experiences and opinions of others do not need to govern your path
-understanding that practices not your own or contrary to your own can still be valid
-being able to describe your current beliefs without putting down others or defaulting to discussions about religious trauma
-focusing on comprehension, learning, and exploration rather than consumption
-understanding that "witch" is a gender neutral term and that anyone can be a witch if they choose to
-understanding that safety is more important than visibility
-understanding that magical practice does not have to be constant
-Developing personal beliefs and practices that may align with existing traditions but may not match them precisely
-Developing a reliable bullshit detector and employing it regularly
-Diminished desire for constant validation from outside sources as to whether you're "doing it right"
-diminished desire to overshare or aestheticize your practices, instead focusing on what works for you rather than what looks pretty enough for social media
-diminished desire to Do All The Things At Once and instead focusing on the areas where you are comfortable / interested and taking things at a reasonable pace
-being aware of the problems in the community and doing your best to not contribute to them
-being aware of the New Age pipeline and staying out of it as much as possible
-embracing science and history and common sense alongside magical learning and spiritual beliefs (if you have them)
There are lots of others, but these are some of the ones I've noted in my own journey. Just some things to consider.
Happy Witching and Keep Growing!
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Indigenous People's Day
DR. HENRIETTA MANN Cheyenne
On this Indigenous Peoples' Day, we are featuring Matika Wilbur’s recent publication Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America, published by Ten Speed Press in 2023. Wilbur (b. 1984) is a visual storyteller and member of the Swinomish and Tulalip peoples of coastal Washington. She holds a degree from the Brooks Institute of Photography alongside a teaching certificate that has shaped her style of educating through narrative portraits.
Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America, a book born from a documentary project of the same name, resolves to share contemporary Native issues and culture. In 2012 Wilbur set out from Seattle to visit and photograph all 562 plus Native American sovereign territories in the United States.
Wilbur’s engagement with the communities she visited resulted in the creation of hundreds of dynamic portraits and documentation of conversations about “tribal sovereignty, self-determination, wellness, recovery from historical trauma, decolonization of the mind, and revitalization of culture.” She refers to her portraiture approach as “an indigenous photography method” that includes several hours and sometimes days of interaction with the participants, an exchange of energy and gifts, and asking sitters to choose their portrait location. The outcome is a stunning collection of Native narratives and portraits.
GREG BISKAKONE JOHNSON Lac Du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians
HOLLY MITITQUQ NORDLUM Iñupiaq
J. MIKO THOMAS Chickasaw Nation
MOIRA REDCORN Osage, Caddo
HELENA and PRESTON ARROW-WEED Taos Pueblo/Kwaatsaan, Kamia
STEPHEN YELLOWTAIL Apsáalooke (Crow Nation)
LEI'OHU and LA'AKEA CHUN Kānaka Maoli
ORLANDO BEGAY Din��
KALE NISSEN Colville Tribes
GRACE ROMERO PACHECO Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians
ISABELLA and ALYSSA KLAIN Diné
NANCY WILBUR Swinomish
DR. JEREMIAH "JERRY" WOLFE Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians
RUTH DEMMERT Tlingit
MARVA SII~XUUTESNA JONES Tolowa Dee-Ni' Nation, Yurok, Karuk, Wintu
Matika Wilbur will be speaking on UW-Milwaukee's campus Thursday, November 16 from 6-7p.m. in conjunction with her exhibition Seeds of Culture: The Portraits and Voices of Native American Women on view at the Union Art Gallery November 16 through December 15, 2023.
-Jenna, Special Collections Graduate Intern
We acknowledge that in Milwaukee we live and work on traditional Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk, and Menominee homelands along the southwest shores of Michigami, part of North America’s largest system of freshwater lakes, where the Milwaukee, Menominee, and Kinnickinnic rivers meet and the people of Wisconsin’s sovereign Anishinaabe, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Oneida, and Mohican nations remain present.
#indigenous peoples' day#matika wilbur#project 562#Ten Speed Press#Native Americans#holidays#UWM Native American Literature Collecton
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I'm pretty sure Atla being Aang's story and never about Zutara is just.......kinda what Atla about instead of making it a bad story lol!Like it's called 'Avatar:The Last Airbender' and the 2nd part refers to Aang being the sole survivor of a genocide which like the characters is based on the real genocide that happens to Tibet,Aang's people,by China.The Water Tribe gang are also genocide survivors because they're native-coded and the Fire Nation is an imperialist empire because it's based on Japan when it was
So Aang's the protagonist because it's about poc trauma and potraying etchnic cleansing survivors as the victims they are but also humanizing them and showing them as heroes and capable of saving the world that tried to wipe them all out!Aang is the good guy because he goes out of way to help everybody,with activism AND direct action and in the comics,he kickstarted decolonization and arguably counts as the inventor of in his world.Atla was created to radicalize the kids watching it and while it's not perfect(see the demonization of Jet and Hama and asskissing of Iroh),Aang is undoubtedly a great role model and relatable to kids of color as well as asian people who come from lesser known asian cultures that're happy to finally get some rep that's not just easian characters
On the topic of Katara,not sorry at all but she's never been meant to be 'the universal female experience' or some other radf.em-adjacent caricature.Yes,she's a girl and it's really important to her she's a girl but she wants to be a girl HER way,not what's expected of her by society.Katara is a brown native american-Inuk girl who was parentified despite having an older brother due to sexism and fell for Aang because he helped her feel like a real kid instead of a mini mom and he fell for her at first sight because he found her indigenous features to be angelic and princess-y and all around perfect and Katara is a punk girl,she refuses to follow the rules or conform to standards or hold herself back for ANYONE and never shuts up about it or refuses to stop acting on it so she's canonically an anarchist,she was Aang's righthand in The Gaang and did her own solo anti-imperalist activity on her own too and provided resources and aid and even emotional comfort for oppressed groups all throught the show so she's canonically an activist and she hates the Fire Nation and ALL bigots and abusers,no expections,so she's canonically anti-authority and anti-establishment too.Katara is a feminist character in the sense she's nothing like women are expected to be and does the heroism and has the personality traits which are said to be reserved for men by the patriachy,ESPECIALLY at the time.And yes,Zutaras,you too to this fuckin' day
Zuko's redemption arc was Zuko's redemption arc.Not an arc about finding a way to make it okay for him to date Katara!ZUKO'S REDEMPTION ARC IS ABOUT ZUKO!Not even Mai had a huge hand in that despite being Zuko's canon girlfriend but that's not because 'she wasn't important to him',it's because he didn't do anything he had to redeem himself for to her except breaking up with her in a petty way so he could work on healing and free himself from Ozai and she understood that by connecting the dots so she forgave him as she gets what it's like to have your parents abuse you because it's 'normal' in their culture-easian culture.Zuko is fundamentally a japanese man,his name,his design,his backstory,his personality,his powers/fighting style,his tastes,his generational trauma.Ozai abused Zuko using techniques created by abusive easian parents specifically since sadly the normalization of child abuse is so wide,different cultures each have their own unique tactics for it and Zuko thought nothing of it until he left the Fire Nation and learned it's not normal at all and that he deserves better.That's how it works for a lot of kids of color,if not most of us
In addition to the giving reperations aspect,Zuko becoming Aang's big brother figure and pseudo-dad is him healing his inner child and breaking the cycle of abuse.Dadko symbolizes peace with their dynamic too,peace for Zuko's lineage because now he gets to be the good dad to Aang Ozai never was to him and grew up to be a good biodad to Izumi largely realistically thanks to Aang giving him experience with raising kids.Zuko's dad friend behavior is a positive trait,'Mom'tara is silencing Katara for your male fave so she can be realize she's not a real kid actually,Aang was wrong and she's not actually beautiful,kind,cool,funny,charming,badass,a hero and deserving of a soft love with someone who's patient with her because he's just happy to her in silence until he thought he'd have to die to save the world and couldn't bear the thought of parting with her because she's his whole world just as he gave her hope she could grow up to save it.And y'all call him a r*pist because they were mutually unspokenly flirting for months and she got angry at him for implying they shouldn't kiss followed up by an implied almost kiss and multiple cheek kisses from her to him so he thought to make up for it out of misreading the room and immediately regretted it and berated himself for making her uncomfortable at the same time an EXPLICITLY non-consensual on her side episode where Zuko kidnaps her,talks badly to/of her,threatens her condesendingly and even steals Kya's necklace is what gave Zutara popularity
Atla is one of the best pg show's of all time because it's not about Zutara but about Aang.Not about cishet romance where the oppressed girl falls for her boy oppressor as it has the 'undesirable' race boy the villain.Then it would've been propaganda and glamorization of Japan's darker history as during Japan's imperialist era,women were treated pretty similarly to black people in the slavery/segregations and i'm making that comparison because as a black woman 1.It's pretty accurate and 2.Zutradras have a misogynoir problem and an antiblackness problem towards black men too by treating black girls as the same white girls like how they do Katara as a brown indigenous girl and moc Atla fans are targeted by the white Z/K suckers on the basis of being 'males' when white women inherently have privilege over moc,black and brown men most of all.They got a transmisogyny problem too since as i stated,their 'feminism' in regards to Katara is ciscentric only and carry r.adfem-like rethoric to how she should be written,plus their hatred of Aang for 'not being a real man' since they see him as amab and he's canonically very feminine and then there's all the anti-trans Zuko headcanons sentiments that only come from them with literally every other Atla ship group being supportive of trans readings of him,as well as for the Avatarverse cast in general.Atla is a love letter to misfits,not a love story for the normies.Aang was right to keep the Air Nomads alive by not killing Ozai because poc shouldn't have to give up our culture to be 'real punks' when punk is black made and whites and westerners are very much the biggest reasons we and other poc we even need revolutions
Kataang is a ship between two punk kids of color and Zutara robs countless abused japanese/asian-american kids of the narrative they needed and still need.The Atla fandom is extremely anti Zutara because it's a papable replacement for a very powerful story that only caters to the very people the series was saying are bad for correct and proven reasons.You can say 'interracial relathionships are so important and that's why should've Zutara happened!!!' but as a black/white biracial woman you're no different than people who only like interracial ships if they have a white person and get mad at poc4poc interracial rep seeing as you whitewash Zuko's writing and you can also say 'No girl would choose Aang over Zuko' but i had a huge crush on Aang and i was told i wasn't a real girl despite being afab because i was an autistic black tomboy and a huge part of his appeal was that he's not the fantasy,he was like me and plenty of girls weren't attracted to Zuko and it's enforcing cisheteronormative to act like we all did just because we're women.Hell,i'm convinced Katara is trans because of her relathionship with girlhood and canon punkhood and bi with a preference for gnc partners because of Kataang and the Katoph subtext and curiously enough NO Zutara shipper who's anti Kataang headcanons her as transfem while most Kataangers nowadays follow the t4t take on it and almost every lesbian i've met in the fandom stans it too and mocks Zutara
Avatar:The Last Airbender is about a tibetan boy who saves himself and everyone else from the system that tried to wipe his people out entierly with the help of a parentified brown native femme punk girl he's in love with and her in love with him back for his own unconventionality and the reason the mc even survived properly was she didn't stand for her older brother's misogyny and the tritagonist is a japanese disabled abuse survivor who's redemptic arc and joining of the good guys is a healing arc that involves holding himself accountable and unlearning propaganda and ACTING on it instead of infantalizing him because he may have been 16 at the the time but literally everyone he'd hurt is younger than him and coddling and refusing to progress isn't actual healing.'Aang is an ugly loser because he shaves his head for cultural reasons and is kind and positive and boys aren't supposed to be if they wanna get girls and Katara should've ended up with Zuko to fix the nation that colonized hers by becoming it's leader and living there and Zuko's arc was ruined because he didn't become a good person for romance but for himself and to make friends' is NOT the hot take you think it is
#atla geekery#aang#anti zutara#pro kataang#pro aang#aang defense squad#aanglove#genderfluid aang#audhd aang#pastel punk aang#katara#pro katara#katara deserved better#punk katara#bi katara#autistic katara#trans katara#katara supremacy#zuko#pro zuko#zuko deserved better#dadko#aang and zuko#trans zuko#autistic zuko#partially blind zuko#pro mai#pro maiko#bigotry#summerposting
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Wrt White woman brain (WWB): I'm non white largely raised surrounded by white ppl. Have embarrassingly had my own WWB moments/periods in life. I think that there is also an overlap of guilt and learned helplessness in this conversation that might not be picked up on for some folks. Not a excuse at all, but an insight into how a sense of helplessness and undressed trauma gets misdirected against people of color in many social situations. I think it's important for people to be aware of their traumas as to not perpetuate them, but WWB keeps people in a victim mindset even when they are doing ACTIVE harm. I also perceive this to be a motivator behind "white tears" as a defense mechanism.
Also as a non-white person there is an pretty big intersection of racial trauma that feeds into (and sadly sometimes invokes) the WWB phenom. As in, the need for people of color to escape into "whiteness" (respectability politics) can give us the impulse to shut down ideas, attitudes and situations that challenge a polite status-quo that is actually systemically violent.
Anyway, thank you for continuing this conversation. It gave me some stuff to think on and work through. I think it's important for those of us who want to the world to be a better place to criticize systems and structures like whiteness that we are often forced to participate in despite the harm it does us.
(For ppl interested in decolonization and mental health, I highly suggest starting with the invention of whiteness as a construct.) /end preaching to the choir
Thank you so much for your message! You've put it perfectly, I think -- WWB locks people into a victim mindset even while they're actively doing harm. And yeah, sadly, it's not just WW who do it! I think especially as the pressure toward assimilation and as class privilege ramp up for a person, their risk of falling into WWB increases.
Heartily seconding that people examine the social construction of whiteness. I've been hyping up this book a lot lately, but Nell Irvin Painter's "The History of White People" is such a fabulous introduction to how whiteness was invented and why. The first hundred pages or so is a great primer to start with. Hillbilly: A Cultural History of an American Icon by Anthony Harkins is also a great foray into the topic.
I also have found a lot of value in reading criticisms of white British culture. so much of it reflects all the toxicity of white America, just heightened and made even more obviously neurotic to my outsider's eyes that it helps me to better appreciate my own issues. Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class by Owen Jones is a great one, and even some fiction like Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro really helped me recognize some of the most avoidant and defensive behavior patterns in my own culture and family, even though it's ostensibly about British children in a boarding school.
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If anyone is curious about what is happening in Australia at the moment, today Australian citizens voted on whether or not there should be added to the constitution the need for the government to set up an advisory board made up of Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders (Australia's indigenous people) so that they can bring forward issues affecting their communities as well as provide feedback on how new laws might affect the. The results of the vote was announced a few hours ago and it was a No, with over half the population deciding not to include this in the constitution.
The reason this inclusion in the constitution was so important is because of one simple fact: Australia is a very racist country. It pretends not to be, pushing a narrative of assimilation (for example, I remember ads about how we're "one country, one people" playing on tv when I was a kid, and many of the ads against voting yes focused on how "this voice would divide us").
The Stolen Generation only ended in 1969. If you don't know what this is, The Stolen Generation refers to a period in which the government forcibly took Indigenous children from their communities, families and cultures. These children were then taken to institutions, or adopted - being punished for speaking their own languages, and often being subject to abuse and neglect. Most of these children never saw their families again. Many indigenous traditions and cultural practices are passed down from generation to generation orally, meaning that The Stolen Generation led to a lot of traditions being lost.
The reason i'm explaining what The Stolen Generation is, is that it still massively affects indigenous people today. The Stolen Generation only ended 54 years ago, meaning that the CHILDREN taken from their families are still very much alive today, and the trauma they experienced still affects their communities. There's a massive gap in education, employment, etc between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples.
The Stolen Generation isn't the only contributor to Australia's culture of racism, or the systematic racism here; but I wanted to inform people about it because it makes a point and spreads awareness about Australia's history.
This no result is a sobering reality check. The advisory committee would have meant issues such as Black deaths in custody, and the gap could have been prioritized by the government.
Australia is still very much racist. People are still uneducated on the difference between equality and equity. People don't want to put in the work to make the world better and decolonize their minds. The government still doesn't give a shit about it's people. Misinformation is rampant. Fearmongering is rampant.
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Something that has come with doing decolonizing and organizing work is the fact that two things can exist at the same time.
A good example is how I think we should more excitedly support smaller indie devs like myself, but I also realize that people put so much time, effort, and passion into releases that are A or AA. There's so much effort that goes into these games, and I found that using my time to compare myself to others when they work so hard is useless. I'm me. I'm the only me there is. I'm the creator of GRIM, MOURN, Neon Nights, Wrath of the Undersea, and so many other games and products.
It's better to celebrate each other's works and create your own cool stuff when you can rather than compare yourself all the time. This is something I'm realizing more, but I'm still struggling with it. Lots of trauma causing that.
Just some interesting thoughts! In summation, let's put energy into appreciating each other's works rather than being shamed by our own selves by not creating "as cool stuff" as others!
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Here’s some positivity for Palestinian systems!
Systems live and thrive all over the world, and Palestine is no different! Whether you live in Palestine or are a diaspora Palestinian, we want to remind you that you are loved, and are so worthy of compassion and support. This post is for Palestinian systems everywhere!
❤️ Shoutout to Palestinian systems whose plurality is inherently connected to their spirituality or religious beliefs!
🖤 Shoutout to traumagenic Palestinians whose systems formed due to displacement, war, violence, or generational trauma!
🤍 Shoutout to Palestinian systems who are proud of their culture and heritage!
💚 Shoutout to diaspora Palestinian systems who long to one day return to their homeland!
❤️ Shoutout to Palestinian systems who work together to take care of themselves, their family, and their friends!
🖤 Shoutout to Palestinian systems who are activists or part of the resistance against occupation!
🤍 Shoutout to Palestinians who purposefully created their systems for any reason!
💚 Shoutout to diaspora Palestinians who are trying to reconnect with their culture in big or small ways!
❤️ Shoutout to Palestinian systems who work to preserve Palestinian traditions, folk art, literature, and ways of life!
🖤 Shoutout to Palestinian systems who educate others about their nation and how to be a good ally to Palestinians everywhere!
🤍 Shoutout to Palestinian systems who are often tired, exhausted, scared, nervous, or dismayed!
💚 Shoutout to Palestinians who find ways to celebrate life and experience joy every day!
It is our goal to center and uplift marginalized voices with this blog. We have always and will always support Palestinians and their Right to Return! Please know that your life and the lives of every member of your system have value. You are important, loved, and a vital part of this community just the way you are! We are so very grateful for your presence in our spaces, and we want to do whatever we can to uplift your voices!
Please try to treat yourself with patience and gentle kindness. We hope there are many good things in store for you and your system in your future! Until then, know that we’re rooting for you and we are wishing you the very best in all that you do. Take care of yourself and your system to the best of your ability, and have a wonderful day!
For non-Palestinians, we will link some resources below the cut where you can learn more about Palestine and current efforts to fight back against colonization of their homes and land. Please educate yourself in order to stand up for Palestinians however you can!
#multiplicity#plurality#pluralgang#actuallyplural#system positivity#plural positivity#plural pride#system pride#palestine#palestinain system
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Departure letter
As mentioned in this post, that outlines why I needed to let this be my last message in the Kindergarten Mafia Discord server... here is the Scathing Letter™. ------------------------
It is time for me to go.
I absolutely loathe having to do a departure announcement because this is not an airport and I’m sure not a lot of people care.
But as someone who has spent 10+ years of their life actively decolonizing and liberating my viewpoints, it would be absolutely remiss for me to not leave final remarks here expressing my utter disappointment and feelings of not being safe in this space. Not just as POC but someone chronically ill and autistic. Y’all have not made it kind for someone who has any sort of marginalized identity, as evidenced by the public dogpiling in this thread as well as the now deleted messages in clarifications.
I’m not going to address the majority of the drama except for what started it all : someone refusing a Native person’s (well-deserved) call out for a culturally appropriative phrase.
It is devastatingly clear to me that a large portion of folks in this server have a poorly curated personal life extremely lacking in diversity.
The defensiveness and elitism (really? Dictionary definitions?). Refusal to actively listen and instead attack others about lacking critical thinking. Self-claimed expertise. I could go on.
So I revise what I had posted previously. Everyone is a little racist and this server is full of white supremacy tenets.
https://rrapp.hks.harvard.edu/the-culture-of-white-supremacy-in-organizations/
This is my last attempt at educating some of you, which will go poorly, I’m sure.
I spent an inordinate amount of time/energy/spoons to provide coherent context the last time but to find the entire thread deleted with no respect for the effort I spent there, has been one of the final straws.
Frequently mentioning your volunteer status is frankly laughable. I have volunteered for quite a few places, including mutual aid organizations, and across multiple timezones and never have I seen so many excuses to say that y’all do not care about POC. (1/2)
I don’t care how old anyone is, what their job IRL is, what works you’ve posted with how many kudos, etc. I *do* care about the fact that multiple people, when speaking up, are treated with callousness and hurtfulness. That is a larger indication of your mental age and capacity than any other words you can type.
That I felt safe enough to be so vulnerable in this space for a while was an illusion. There are continued indicators that POC words are ignored, especially calling out that I know both Jynx and William have requested their labor be deleted in the server but have not been.
Last, but not least, I’m sure people will read this and think oh it’s Phoenix banding together with their friends. I say this with as much passion I can muster : I would have the same amount of disdain for the actions seen in this server without any personal friendship ties and emotions. That is how the social justice aspect of my autism works.
You all have so much work to do when it comes to respecting other human beings that have different experiences than you. If I weren’t so consumed with the feelings of my actual divorce, recent termination, and the continued trauma of world events like that in Falasteen, I’d feel bad for you.
As it stands, I believe my energy is precious and I simply cannot spare any more in spaces where I (and others) am not welcome or given respect to. Let it be noted that I’ve actually gone viral on social media before and I still have not left THOSE spaces and yet am choosing to leave this one. The troll comments I received on Tiktok can be ignored because they are from complete strangers that I do not give a single fuck about. The ones here, purportedly from those who claim it’s “safe”, are even more insidious in nature.
Whatever race or ethnicity you are, to take people who have shown you their vulnerabilities and turn around to show your entire behinds in the least sexiest way ever, is not a good look. Ever.
Leave the ass scenes to KinnPorsche.
#announcing my departure#it's not an airport#but i'm taking flight#bye racists#good riddance#kindergarten mafia#decolonize fandom spaces
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saw some rancid infographic propaganda the other day that said "you're probably a Zionist & you just don't know it!" then proceeded to define Zionism as "the belief that Jews, like every other ethnic group, deserve their own nation"
i don't know what i expected. maybe some mealy-mouthed bullshit like "the Jewish right to self-determination" (what does that even mean? does it protect my Jewish right to determine that i'm not a fucking Zionist?) or one of the other "all we want is safety :'(" misdirections. but no. it's straight up ethnonationalism
ETHNOSTATES ARE NOT A HUMAN RIGHT. good fucking grief they're really out here like "ethnicities should control their own nation-states :) :) :) that's what Indigenous rights means, right? :) it's decolonization baby, everybody gets a fascist utopia!"
it's so unbelievably gross to me the way Zionists adapt the language to say the same fucking thing in whatever way they think will win people over - in the late 19th / early 20th century the Zionist project was excitedly & explicitly colonial, in the 21st century they've appropriated the frameworks of Indigeneity (a coherent, specific political concept that is way more complex than having ancestral ties to somewhere!!!) to repaint it as a "land back movement" because it isn't cool anymore to openly say you want to wipe out people who've been living somewhere for generations & seize the land. but the content of the statement is the same. it's the same!!! the whole question of whether or not Jews (which Jews? literally all of us? the entire massive multi-ethnic diaspora??) are "Indigenous" to Eretz Israel is not only absurd but completely irrelevant. we could all be fucking Indigenous & it STILL WOULDN'T GIVE US THE RIGHT TO OUR OWN VIOLENT ETHNOCRACY how is this even up for debate!!!
"but Jews will never be safe unless we control our own country" listen. listen. thousands of years of trauma - exiles, pogroms, genocides - are in my blood too, and somehow, given the choice to risk being killed by antisemites vs. become an actual fucking Nazi for "guaranteed safety" (how well is that working out???), i would still choose death. i would rather die! a thousand times! you fucking shandas!
#palestine#zionist bullshit#it makes me physically ill#sorry this is a vent i'm just so fucking angry all of the time#i mean under the absolutely crushing grief
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Introductory post!
Hello-Hello-Hello!
The name's Eunoia/Evi! Nice to meet you!
I am a digital artist and writer and I sometimes dabble into music (nothing professional here, these are all hobbies (at least as of now))
I'm currently working on "Night Terrors", an low-fantasy story that I hope to turn into a webcomic (and even an animated series) in the future! I also have a pirate story called "Out to Sea", which I'd like to turn into a webcomic too!
I am also in a alot of fandoms!
The Owl House
The Malevolent Podcast
Steven Universe
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, and more!
If you want to check out my socials, check out this lovely linktree link
Do not interact with this blog if you're
Also, here's a very lovely post which includes a list of fundraisers for Palestine, Congo etc.
DNI list!
Homophobic, racist, transphobic etc. This blog is meant to be a safe space and it should remain as such. Any form of hate speech or discrimination is strictly prohibited.
Supporting Israel, or generally excusing genocide. What the fuck is wrong with you? Get the fuck out of here!
A proshipper. No, shipping and old man with a little girl will not help you cope with your trauma. Get out of my blog and seek therapy.
Just generally an asshole and/or a weirdo.
Anyways, I hope you like what I have to offer and enjoy your stay on my blog! Bye-bye!
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Regency Romantasy
So...it has been brought to my attention that I perhaps have a type, and this book ticked a lot of really good boxes for me. It's regency-inspired. It's fantasy. It's a romance. It has a chronically ill main character. It has sewing and fashion. Literally 90% of the characters are LGBTQIA. It has a BALCONY SCENE for crying out loud. It even has a gossip columnist who might be better than Lady Whistledown (do NOT come for me, Bridgerton Fandom, I said what I said). I could go on, but at that point I think we would have completely dissolved from actual review to screamed list of things I enjoyed, so let's rein it in for a minute and talk A Fragile Enchantment.
I'm going to start with setting, because while this book is regency-inspired, it also plays a little fast and loose with other historical inspirations. The reality of the blight and famine in historical Ireland (and frankly also the troubles and every time that Ireland revolted against England) was that it came after the regency, but here Niamh is the first generation after a similar event and subsequent revolt in her home country of fantasy Irel--I mean Machland. She has grown up surrounded by survivors of the blight and revolt, and like everyone who reads Maus learns, generational trauma is a BITCH. So when our dressmaker protagonist is invited to make the wedding clothes for the son of the king who murdered her people, it's politically and emotionally charged. Add to that the fact that Niamh's magic is hereditary and weirdly murdery, and yeah, things are emotional as heck.
Possibly I shouldn't relate quite so hard to a protagonist who is literally hurting herself for people who ultimately couldn't give a damn about her, but that IS my villain origin story, so all I had for Niamh was compassion at how hard a position that is to be in.
Niamh herself is beautifully written, and Saft balances all the threads tied around and pulling at Niamh's heart just beautifully. Every choice is complex and fraught, and so-deeply-ingrained-she-doesnt-even-notice-it impulse to shape herself around other people's pain and grief and comfort them instead of sitting with her own feelings is just stunningly well executed without feeling dramatic or indulgent.
Niamh is so desperate for friends, and the little ring she constructs around herself couldn't be stranger or more wonderful. From the enraged, grumpy Kit to Sinclair to Rosa and Miriam, this found family is wildly unlikely and prickly, but they fit between each other's thorns just perfectly.
And speaking of people having thorns...we need to address Kit Carmine. Younger son of a mad (and abusive before he went mad) king with an alcohol problem and green magic, our boy is GRUMPY. And BLUNT. And honestly I love him for that, because those thorns are hiding a very stressed out, distinctly squishy center. And also one that is deathly afraid of hurting people, because that's also a thing.
Kit is so tangled up between rage and duty and the few people he cares about that he and Niamh really have to work to develop a compassionate understanding based on wildly different personalities. And then you add all the imperialist and decolonizing stress between them plus the fact that KIT IS LITERALLY ABOUT TO MARRY SOMEONE ELSE and it's a whole deal.
There are so many wonderful moments in this book, it was a delight from start to finish. I objectively have more to say about this book, but I want to avoid spoilers here to inspire y'all to go read this book. I promise, it's worth it. Now, go get it and read. *shoos you toward the bookstore/library/tablet/place you get your books from*
#a fragile enchantment#allison saft#niamh o conchobhair#kit carmine#regency romance#fantasy romance#regency fantasy#green magic#thread magic#gossip columnist#chronically ill main character#chronic illness#lgbtq representation#bi representation#books and reading#books and novels#books#books & libraries#book recommendations
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"It has become clear during the past two months in the Gaza Strip that the Zionist entity is plenty capable of equaling the belligerence of the American frontier, an era of wholesale ethnic cleansing thought to be a feature of history. (“It could never happen today,” people sometimes would foolishly declare.) Colonial atrocities of the past—Wounded Knee, Sand Creek, the Trail of Tears—are now everywhere in evidence. The Zionist entity is carrying out a kind of primitive violence with modern technology. This violence fills our computer and television screens. People around the world get minute-by-minute accounts of massive destruction and widespread murder. Certain images have become horrifyingly familiar: throngs of refugees queuing for bread; ambulances dodging tank and machine gun fire; hospitals in disarray; once-dense neighborhoods transformed by aerial bombardment into kilometers of rubble. We scroll through photos of men blindfolded and stripped to their underwear, lined up on the ground like antiquities in a museum courtyard. The scrolling continues into pictures of white body bags in shallow trenches and then into videos of little girls and boys screaming trauma into the ruins of their childhood. We are perhaps the first generation to witness genocide in real time. History books about the horrors of the past are written every time somebody opens social media.
The theory that bearing witness will curtail Israel’s ability to act on exterminationist fantasies no longer holds. Information and knowledge, it turns out, aren’t reliable bulwarks against genocide. Impunity isn’t beholden to disapproval.
What does it tell us that the Zionist entity can conduct this genocide in high definition, with no credible deniability and amid condemnation from all corners of the world? It tells us that people serious about Palestinian liberation were right to despise the so-called radicals who laundered Zionism through celebrity activism, academic credentialism, NGO astroturf, and the Democratic Party. An entire class of influencers arose from Bernie Sanders’ failed presidential campaigns. They populate hundreds of podcasts and livestreams. They wasted incalculable energy and resources promoting a man who would go on to repeatedly justify the bloody campaign in Gaza. Now they deplore Sanders after having extracted all the clout appended to his name and having ostracized the outliers who accurately tagged him as a fraud from the get-go. It was the most noteworthy example of a timeworn practice: pursuing access to microphones and New Yorker profiles by subsuming Palestinian liberation to institutions constitutionally hostile to revolutionary politics. It tells us that international governing bodies and legal institutions are at best useless. Despite some halfhearted hemming and hawing, the UN has been an accomplice to the Zionist entity’s genocide. The ICC will never see an American, Israeli, or EU war criminal on its docket. The Arab League pretends to care, but its performance is entirely unconvincing. Such institutions have been captured by imperialism since their inception. It tells us that “dialogue” was always a pathway to submission. The idea that Israelis and Palestinians should dialogue as a means to peace was always dubious if only because dialogue can’t work in situations of disparate power. But now, with Israelis overwhelmingly in favor of the genocide, it should be clear that Palestinians never had anyone to dialogue with in the first place. It tells us that Western academe was completely unprepared for the material demands of decolonization despite its popularity as a professional brand. Many among the intellectual class, including scholars of Fanon like Adam Shatz and Lewis Gordon, either disavow or diminish anticolonial resistance or ignore it altogether. Academe is where resistance goes for processing and beautification after it has been completed. It’s rarely a place for the organizing stage. It tells us that deterrence isn’t a game of strategy played by eggheads on the internet, but an onerous project conditional on guns and rockets. Academics generally are too scared to say it, or, in an object lesson on arrogance, don’t actually believe it, but a cache of weapons will always be more important than a conference panel. It tells us that electoralism is a sham. There is no meaningful ideological variance among U.S. politicians at the national level. In practice, they range from center-right to fascist. In the upcoming presidential election, for example, voters will get to decide between two scarcely-functional old farts with histories of sexual misconduct and a complete devotion to Zionist genocide. It tells us that racism isn’t simply an attitude, for its origin is social violence and eventually it will become physically violent in order to perform its civic mandate. In the framework of settler colonization, racism manifests as a yearning for cultural purification through displacement of the native. It tells us that capitalism makes death a valuable commodity. The Zionist entity isn’t merely an imperialist beachhead; it is a major player in the international weapons trade. It tests new munitions, chemicals, and surveillance technology on Palestinians. It arms reactionary forces throughout the Global South. It serves as a conduit and accomplice to U.S. policing. Because of Zionist occupation, corporations enjoy the use of human subjects as raw material for development and innovation.
It tells us that we wasted a whole lot of time trying to convince the oppressor that we are worthy of life when the oppressor cannot live without our extinction.
More than anything, it tells us that in the benighted West there is no democracy, no free speech, no legislative remedy, no human rights, no right even to be human. These are illusions people repeat in an effort to survive pervasive depravity, or myths they cynically invoke to gather the crumbs of deprivation. There is a ruling class and various iterations of the dispossessed and the dispossessed exist only to serve ruling class gluttony.
That’s why countless people can deplore a genocide zoomed into our personal devices without being able to stop it. We are not simply ineffectual in the world of policymaking; policymakers are taunting us with their depravity.
What can we do, then? It’s important to start by recognizing that the entire political class, from presidents to online pundits, has no regard for us—detests us, in fact—and is therefore never a reliable source of empathy or relief. Denizens of this class do not want our feedback; they want us to scroll through the debris of their malevolence. Upon this recognition, the possibilities become clearer, albeit less convenient. But in the spirit of urgency, we can keep it simple: whether it happens in darkness or light, on screen or off, the Zionist entity needs to become an archive we browse as a cautionary tale, or else our future on this planet will be history."
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does marxists dni include anarcho communists who use dialectical materialism/marxism or just marxist leninists
Idk man my country's had a communist government and two Marxist uprisings and they were all a bunch of twats that fucked over everyone as much as the neoliberal government did.
This is going to sound like a rant but it's just me going through a spiel I've had to explain over and over (and I'm still half asleep). If you're for some glorious armed rebellion or believe the only reason communism didn't work in all the other countries was because of the US, or think that all the totalitarianism, ethnofascism and genocides were overinflated, or all the drastic failures was because it wasn't "real communism" then that's what the DNI is for. This shit isn't theoretical to me. I'm tired of the ideology of some white dude two hundred years ago that keeps getting people killed being the be-all end-all of western leftists. There's a reason indigenous activism and most actual decolonial academics don't fuck with communism. And in my experience, communists and anarchists and neoliberals in the West are identical in the experience of BIPOC and the Global South because y'all are racist and ableist as hell. None of you bother to unlearn your imperialist conditioning and US exceptionalism, you're more attached to your minority trauma than liberation and solidarity, and you just want to stuff the world into the shape you have in your head rather embracing decolonization as an evolving and contextual process. Theory and ideology can't teach you humility, compassion, decentering and just listening to the conversation of actual colonized people without inserting yourself.
*shrug* You don't have to agree with me, but if you can listen to Global South people who've lived under communism without going "um, actually" you're welcome to follow. I actually do have communist friends in my own country I can talk with because we've experienced the same shit. But my politics are based on human nature subjected to the power dynamics played out again and again in the patterns of history and looking at what this stuff looks like in practice. And I ain't nobody's comrade.
#really i'm not going off on you i'm just exhausted#asks#anon#western leftists#decolonization#knee of huss
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The thing I hate about the leftist mainstream, forgive me for repeating myself, is that they mindlessly repeat slogans and get emotionally and frantically invested in these slogans, while in fact not really understanding what is there behind these slogans. Not even knowing it. Not even bothering to know.
And whenever you obviously try to ask them what exactly do they mean by these slogans and how do they plan to achieve it, they get mad that you question these slogans.
So recently I finally had the bravey to ask someone. Let me explain my point before that: to me it's obvious that immediate "Abolish Israel", meaning, if we just erase the borders on the nearest future and unite both countries into a future Palestine, it will most likely end up in violent clashes between ex Israeli and Palestinian citizens. Hear me, both populations if not hate each other definitely aren't chill to each other. Currently they are enemies. I think it's totally valid for Palestinians to feel hatred to their oppressors, but even if we say that they wouldn't express any hatred, do you assume that nationalist Isralites will be in peace and agreement with that situation and won't try attacking Palestinians, even if they arent the government anymore? Personally, I think that both nations have mutual hatred, and both are capable of violence and nationalism towards each other. Both have instances. If you add Israeli Arabs to Palestinians, Jewish and Palestinian populations will be around the same. Other than that, we all know that Israel has enough weapons on its territory and we don't know who's gonna get hold of it.
So there goes my question: how do you ensure that this crisis won't happen in the decolonized Palestine you all demand for? And another obvious question: how exactly are we gonna achieve the abolishment of Israel?
And not a single time I asked, I got a valid answer. People either don't know, or don't care. For example, I got replies like this:
Just imagine demanding something and not knowing what are you actually demanding. Imagine demanding something because you claim you care so much for people, but once you achieved it, the said people's well being isn't relevant to you. How the fuck does that work?
After that I tried to explain my thoughts, its much more possible to apply pressure to get a ceasefire and then change the Israeli government. Most likely and most farely Israel will have to pay reparations and must withdraw its control over current Palestinian territories. After that it will definitely require some time for both nations to be ready to unite, to heal Palestinian trauma and to undo the Israeli propaganda. That'll require cooperation from both Israeli and Palestinian government. And only then it will be possible and actually safe to unite both nations into one country.
After I wrote this, Op closed the replies.
And I want to say that I'm nor Palestinian, neither Israeli, so I am not the one to decide the fate of both nations and land they live on. I merely say what I think makes sense and is fair. I do not demand anything other than to save and value people's lives. Neither are these people. But they're emotional and passionate in their demands. This reminds me very much of russian opposition. Everyone passionately wants putin and his regime to get dismantled but has literally no idea about what to do next.
And despite what pro-putinists say using this as an excuse to justify putin's rule, it doesn't work like that. The only conclusion we can drive is that too often people who speak on politics the most loudly are the ones least educated and conscious on the subject.
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