#incarcerated workers

[terrorpenned]

oh DS really said the quiet part out Loud this time huh (the violently oppressive upper class)

[chronicbitchsyndrome]

i have been in community with profoundly developmentally disabled peers and peers with brain damage my whole life, bc i had a childhood diagnosis. i have also been leftist my whole life; my mother was a marxist and raised me that way, and while their politics were absolute dogshit, they were lefty dogshit.

my entire life, i have seen leftist educators throw mentally disabled people away as "lost causes" because they couldn't engage with the material the way it was being presented. leftist outreach and education does, genuinely, have a massive lack of accessible material. to be blunt, people are not interested in retrofitting their leftist outreach to be accessible to people who learn best through episodes of sesame street.

as in, i have repeatedly faced outright laughter and cruelty over the idea that this could be a priority. or even something that we consider doing at all.

"people who are that mentally disabled don't need to know about these things," the kindest interpretation goes. ("people who are that mentally disabled don't interact with the world, anyway, they're all in institutions or monitored 24/7 by their parents," the uncharitable underlying assumptions go. "they wouldn't be a worker who needs a union. or a library attendee. or a member of the community garden. or a volunteer at the food bank. or or or")

the people i have seen this hurt the worst, over and over again, are profoundly mentally disabled people of color whose lack of access to accessible antiracist education is causing real danger in their lives. institutionalized disabled people of color who have learned racist ideology and behaviors from white authority, whether they were adopted by white families or incarcerated in care institutions run by white staff. who are treated lower than garbage by leftist educators, who view them as "lost causes," as unworthy of time and effort and attention, as deserving of their abuses because they... what... internalized the abuses that make up every aspect of their lives since birth?

i see people saying things in this conversation like "disability isn't an excuse for racism or transphobia or whatever, people have the obligation to improve themselves." oh, believe me, i have seen again and again how many privileged disabled people utilize their disabilities to punch down on others, try to escape accountability for their punching down by citing disability. but individual weaponization of identity is just that: weaponization of identity.

the power structures at play are what they are. it is a noble and admirable goal to want leftist outreach and education to be more accessible to all. if that is truly your goal, you must eventually reckon with the existence of people who do, actually, really need it presented in a picture book. or an episode of bluey. or a conversation where you only use examples of people they know in real life, using things that happened to them personally. the existence of people who cannot grasp forms of abstract reasoning, who need information presented as rules, or as guidelines, or as categories. the idea that yes, fully grown adults who need daniel tiger to explain racism to them are human beings who not only deserve access to that very thing, but who also deserve to be a part of leftist spaces and benefit from leftist organizing. are people for whom it might be INTEGRAL they get to be a part of leftism. are victims of racism themselves and suffering without access to antiracist spaces and community and support.

and you will need to reckon with the abject cruelty of your peers who laugh and mock the very idea of this. you need to reckon with the fact that a lot of people you respect, a lot of leftists doing genuinely good work, will respond to this by making fun of the people you're serving, even outright telling you their violent fantasies about these people. that is the experience of organizing in leftist spaces for profoundly disabled people. that is why so many of us burn out so fast. there IS a structural problem with mentally disabled people being seen as disposable and not a part of community. and it is EXTREMELY present in leftist organizing and outreach efforts.

[thesaltyace]

Y'all I did NOT know this about Harris, and I think it's really critical that we all listen and understand as we approach this election. Video at the end.

This creator's video describes how progressive Harris was as a prosecutor -- actively going against the grain to the point she was accused of being soft on crime. Accused of being a social worker, not a prosecutor. She calls it being smart on crime. She's pushing for systemic changes to give real pathways to reintegrate incarcerated folks back into society and prevent their past from continuing to haunt them moving forward.

"Kamala's a cop" is a catchy dismissive response usually used to shut down conversation rather than add nuance. But this kind of reform is ESSENTIAL to work towards a present and future that treats incarcerated people with value.

I fell for it in 2020 and have thought "Kamala's a cop" without further inspection since - and I'm sobered by the realization that (you guessed it!) I'm not immune to propaganda.

A better system only follows liberal democracy, because library democracy allows for exploration of better systems. If authoritarianism takes hold, it will not allow for the exploration of better systems. We will have to fight tooth and nail just to try to get back to liberal democracy, and I suspect we could not achieve it in our lifetimes.

Harris isn't perfect. But she's a hell of a lot better than many leftists have led me to believe. Don't let perfection be the enemy of good. Don't let perfection be the enemy of harm reduction.

We can either help elect Trump and usher in authoritarian fascism, or we can help defeat him and pull things back in the direction we want to go. Not liking the choices doesn't absolve you from participating and doing the most good you can with the options available.

I'll link the original video in the replies. The original video has captions if you need them.

[ferretshark]

Project 2025 Cliff Notes:

1. Complete ban on abortions, without exceptions (pg. 449-503)

2. End marriage equality (pg. 545-581)

3. Elimination of unions and worker protections (pg. 581)

4. Defund the FBI and Homeland Security (pg. 133)

5. Eliminate federal agencies like the FDA, EPA, NOAA, and more (pg. 363-417)

6. Mass deportation of immigrants and incarceration in "camps" (pg. 133)

7. End birthright citizenship (pg. 133)

8. Cut Social Security (pg. 691)

9. Cut Medicare (pg. 449)

10. Eliminate the Department of Education (pg. 319)

11. Teach Christian religious beliefs in public schools (pg. 319)

12. Use public, taxpayer money for private religious schools (pg. 319)

13. End the Affordable Care Act (pg. 449)

14. Ban contraceptives (pg. 449)

15. Additional tax breaks for corporations and the 1% (pg. 691)

16. End civil rights & DEI protections in government (pg. 545-581)

17. Ban African American and gender studies in all levels of education (pg. 319)

18. End climate protections: (pg. 417)

19. Increase Arctic drilling (pg. 363)

20. Deregulate big business and the oil industry (pg. 363)

Not to increase anxiety, but I found this buried on Reddit. From six months ago. very good thing to have in your pocket so you are prepared

[pissvortex]

A lot of people are posting about how expensive clothes, for example, are going to get if Trump goes through with tariffs, but other people are perhaps correctly identifying that our economy cannot handle producing clothes at wages American workers will accept. What’s more likely at this point is that we are just going to massively ramp up incarceration to ensure prison slave labor keeps clothing cheap. When Trump talks about “mass deportation,” expect him to create an entire incarcerated labor force with millions more people rather than actually deport anyone from the country.

[porterdavis]

I'm going to post the entire dispatch in hopes more people will read it. It's a stylized version of how US media would cover events in America if they were happening in a foreign country. Chilling.

(Written by Garrett Graff)

-----

Musk Junta Seizes Key Governmental Offices February 1, 2025 By William Boot

WASHINGTON, D.C. — What started Thursday as a political purge of the internal security services accelerated Friday into a full-blown coup, as elite technical units aligned with media oligarch Elon Musk moved to seize key systems at the national treasury, block outside access to federal personnel records, and take offline governmental communication networks.

With rapidity that has stunned even longtime political observers, forces loyal to Musk’s junta have established him as the all-but undisputed unelected head of government in just a matter of days, unwinding the longtime democracy’s constitutional system and its proud nearly 250-year-old tradition of the rule of law. Having secured themselves in key ministries and in a building adjacent to the presidential office complex, Musk’s forces have begun issuing directives to civil service workers and forcing the resignation of officials deemed insufficiently loyal, like the head of the country’s aviation authority.

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The G-7 country’s newly installed president, a mid-level oligarch named Donald Trump, appeared amid Musk’s moves to be increasingly merely a figurehead head of state. Trump is a convicted felon with a long record of family corruption and returned in power in late January after a four-year interlude promising retribution and retaliation against foreign opponents and a domestic “Deep State.” He had been charged with attempting to overthrow the peaceful transition of power that had previously removed him from office in 2021, but loyalist elements in the judiciary successfully blocked his prosecution and incarceration, easing his return to power.

Over the last two weeks, loyalist presidential factions and Musk-backed teams have launched sweeping, illegal Stalin-esque purges of the national police forces and prosecutors, as well as offices known as inspectors-general, who are typically responsible for investigating government corruption. While official numbers of the unprecedented ousters were kept secret, rumors swirled in the capital that the scores of career officials affected by the initial purges could rise into the thousands as political commissars continued to assess the backgrounds of members of the police forces. 

The mentally declining and aging head of state, who has long embraced conspiracist thinking, spent much of the week railing in bizarre public remarks against the country’s oppressed racial and ethnic minorities, whom he blamed without evidence for causing a deadly plane crash across the river from the presidential mansion. Unfounded racist attacks on those minorities have been a key foundation of Trump’s unpredicted rise to political power from a career as a real estate magnate and reality TV host and date back to his first announcement that he would seek the presidency in 2015, when he railed against “rapists” being sent into the country from its southern neighbor.

In one of his first moves upon returning to the presidency, he mobilized far-right paramilitary security forces to begin raids at churches, schools, and workplaces to identify and remove racial minorities, including those who had long lived in harmony with the country’s white Christian majority. He also immediately moved to release from prison some 1,500 supporters who had participated in his unsuccessful 2021 insurrection, including members of violent far-right militias who promptly upon release swore fealty to him in any future civil unrest. Elsewhere, even as he released violent criminals onto the streets, Trump by fiat pulled longstanding government security protection from former military and health officials he felt had betrayed him.

Underscoring his apparent disconnection from reality, reports surfaced that the president had ordered military forces to unleash an environmental catastrophe and flood regions of a separatist province known as California that is led by a high-profile political opponent. The order underscored how the military, which had resisted Trump’s unconstitutional power grabs in his first administration, was now led by a subservient defense minister, a favored TV personality with no experience in management who faced an embarrassing series of allegations about his drunken behavior in the workplace.

Foreign allies who had long aligned themselves with the United States on the international stage were unsettled by increasingly destabilizing nationalistic and imperialist rhetoric coming from the president’s social media accounts—largely posted to a network owned and run by Trump himself—and worried in private conversations in capital embassies that he would mobilize the compliant military to fulfill heretofore unimaginable territorial ambitions that included seizing the country’s northern neighbor, which shares the world’s longest undefended border, and potentially colonizing Panama and Greenland.

Both the country’s defense minister, who has previously said he does not believe women should be allowed to serve in combat roles, and Trump’s new interior minister, who appeared on national TV wearing the paramilitary uniform of the border security force central to Trump’s political rise, spent much of their first days echoing and amplifying the president’s hysteria about racial and ethnic minorities. They and other government officials also immediately canceled all official observances of religious and ethnic minority holidays and launched efforts to scrub official websites and prohibit educating workers or schoolchildren about those minorities’ long, proud history in the country. Overnight Friday, hours after journalists had gone home, the defense minister’s office announced it would bar establishment independent media outlets from working out of the country’s military headquarters and replace them with friendly right-wing media organs.

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The administration’s propaganda minister also announced Friday, apparently with little preparation, that it would initiate an immediate, unexpected, and seemingly ill-considered trade war with the country’s two primary economic partners, a move that if implemented would upend the national economy, disrupt supply chains, and accelerate the return of an inflationary crisis that has roiled domestic politics over the last five years and had just seemed to be returning to normal. Ironically, it was that very inflationary crisis and Trump’s promises on the campaign trail to lower the price of eggs that paved the way for his unforeseen election victory in November.

The country’s other business oligarchs have watched Musk’s unexpected and rapid rise to power with trepidation, and leading media and technology companies who compete with Musk’s extensive business empire—like Meta, Amazon, Disney, Paramount, Apple, and OpenAI—have quickly lined up to negotiate and pay bribes to the president that would allow their companies to operate unimpeded; initial payment terms ranged from million-dollar gifts to the presidential inauguration to $15 million and $25 million payments, made by Disney and Meta, to fund the construction of a presidential shrine. The highest known payment was $40 million from Amazon, which was structured as a gift to the president’s wife in exchange for the media company having the opportunity to film a hagiographic biopic.

It was unclear, exactly, what deal terms any of those bribes and payments unlocked and when subsequent tribute payments would be expected, although on Saturday Trump moved to fire and neuter government watchdogs that had long bedeviled the country’s financial elite.

Throughout the week’s fast-moving seizure of power—one that seems increasingly irreversible by the hour—neither loyalist nor opposition parliamentary leaders raised meaningful objection to the new regime or the unraveling of the country’s constitutional system of checks and balances. A few members of the geriatric legislature body offered scattered social media posts condemning the move, but parliament — where both houses are controlled by so-called “MAGA” members handpicked for their loyalty to the president — went home early for the weekend even as Musk’s forces spread through the capital streets.

It was unclear what role, if any, Musk’s forces would allow parliament to have in the new governmental structure by the time it next returned to the national assembly known as Capitol Hill.

[madsmilfelsen]

[omgthatdress]

Few American writers and entertainers have managed to have careers as wild and scandalous as that of Mae West.

A vaudeville performer since childhood, she developed a distinctive sexy stage persona and signature sauntering walk that was inspired by the likes of Julian Eltinge and Bert Savoy.

In 1927, she opened her first play, Sex, which she both wrote and starred in. It centered around Margy, a high-end sex worker, and Clara, the stuck up society lady who was the mother of the man Margie falls in love with. Ticket sales were strong, but city officials were upset about the play's risqué content. West was eventually arrested, tried, and sentenced to ten days in jail for obscenity.

While incarcerated, she told reporters that she'd worn her silk panties in jail, instead of the "burlap" that was usually given to prisoners. The scandal of it all sent ticket sales through the roof.

Her next play was set to be even more controversial: it was called The Drag, and it had an entire cast of homosexuals. The end scene was a massive and spectacular drag ball. The show went for ten performances before it was shut down by police.

Police threatened to shut down all of Broadway if The Drag continued to be performed, so it was cancelled. However, a censored version with a now heterosexual protagonist called The Pleasure Man was allowed to perform a year later.

Eventually, West would make her way to Hollywood and become one of the most iconic stars of the 1930s.

In 2019, The Drag was performed for the first time in many decades at Gay City in Seattle, and has since then been performed several times across the U.S.

[robertreich]

The Truth About Immigrants and the Economy

Immigrants are good for the economy and our society! Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

For centuries, immigration has been America’s secret sauce for economic growth and prosperity.

But for just as long, immigrants have been an easy scapegoat.

One of the oldest, ugliest lies is to falsely smear immigrants as criminals.

It’s just not true. Crime is way down in America. Anyone who says otherwise is fearmongering.

And whatever crime there is is not being driven by immigration. Immigrants, regardless of citizenship status, are 60% less likely to be incarcerated for committing crimes than U.S.-born citizens.

Maybe that’s why border cities are among America’s safest.

Immigration opponents also claim immigrants are a drag on the economy and a drain on government resources.

Rubbish!

Quite the opposite, the major reason immigrants are coming to America is to build a better life for themselves and their families, contributing to the American economy.

The long-term economic benefits of immigration outweigh any short-term costs. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that adding more immigrants as workers and consumers — including undocumented immigrants — will grow America’s economy by about $7 trillion over the next decade. And those immigrants would increase tax revenue by about $1 trillion, shrinking the deficit and helping pay for programs we all benefit from.

Immigrants of all statuses pay more in taxes than they get in government benefits. Research by the libertarian Cato Institute found first-generation immigrants pay $1.38 in taxes for every $1 they receive in benefits,

This is especially true for undocumented immigrants, who pay billions in taxes each year, but are excluded from almost all federal benefits. After all, you need documentation to receive federal benefits. Guess what undocumented immigrants don’t have. Hello?

And of course, one of the most common anti-immigrant claims also isn’t true.

No. Immigrants are not taking away jobs that Americans want. Undocumented immigrants in particular are doing some of the most dangerous, difficult, low-paying, and essential jobs in the country.

Despite what certain pundits might tell you, immigration has not stopped the U.S. from enjoying record-low unemployment.

And as the Baby Boom generation moves into retirement, young immigrants will help support Social Security by providing a thriving base of younger workers who are paying into the system. The fact that so many immigrants want to come here gives America an advantage over other countries with aging populations, like Germany and Japan.  

What’s more, immigrants are particularly ambitious and hardworking. They are 80% more likely to start a new business than U.S. born citizens. Immigrant-founded businesses also impressively comprise 103 companies in last year’s Fortune 500.

And immigrants continue to add immeasurably to the richness of American culture. We should be celebrating them, not denigrating them.

It’s time to speak the facts and the truth. We need immigrants to keep our economy — and our country — vibrant and growing. They are not “poisoning the blood” of our nation. They’re renewing and restoring it.

[luthienne]

it is beyond disingenuous at this point to center the conversation about israel-palestine on hamas. it is unacceptable. it is actively harmful to the people of palestine who are fighting to survive an ongoing genocide. the state violence and ethnic cleansing inflicted on palestinians by the israeli military & by israeli settlers predates, by far, the existence of hamas. what the state of israel has done from its conception in 1948, the nakba, is beyond the scope of language. the catastrophe. 750000 palestinians displaced, dispossessed of their homes, stripped of their rights, subjected to every unimaginable type of violence, unlawfully detained, separated from their families, prohibited from leaving, prohibited from returning. held walking distance from the place they grew up, never able to go back. harassed by israeli soldiers and settlers. indiscriminately killed. incarcerated. unable to attain the same workers' rights. forced to endure the burning of their villages, of their olive trees, of their gardens, of their homes. and still they survive, they resist, they endure.

this conflict, this genocide, this occupation did not begin on october 7th, 2023. this conflict, this genocide, this occupation did not begin with hamas. the apartheid state of israel exists and has existed since 1948 through means of settler colonialism; it maintains its power through brutal state violence. it is delusional to believe that the inherent violence of a state conceived in settler colonialism will not beget more violence.

[deposedefenddeny]

Thinking of sending something to Luigi Mangione in prison? Read this first.

As a way of showing support for Luigi Mangione, much chatter has been going on about contacting or providing for him materially while he is in prison. However, one should be realistic about whether things you could send Mangione would be able to benefit from it, respond to it, or even receive it.

To be explicit: in the federal facility where Mangione is being held, in sending letters, those incarcerated are nominally limited to purchasing at most 40 domestic stamps a week; in receiving books and publications, they are limited to keeping only what can fit in the storage areas of their cells; and in receiving commissary money, they can spend only $360 of it per month.

Therefore, below is a curated list of charitable alternatives towards incarcerated people for what people are sending to Mangione, along with a Charity Navigator rating when applicable. Unless otherwise stated, all programs are limited to the United States of America.

Letters

Letters for Liberation: A prison penpaling collective that runs a public penpal program.

Prison Correspondence Project: A volunteer collective supporting LGBTQ incarcerated people in the USA and Canada, which runs a penpal program; also accepts funds to aid in sending resources and newsletters inside.

Black and Pink (rating): An organization supporting LGBTQ and HIV/AIDS positive incarcerated people, which runs a penpal program; also accepts funds for its various support programs.

Books

Books to Prisoners (rating): Distributes books nationwide; accepts funds, or used books.

LGBT Books to Prisoners (not rated): Distributes books to LGBTQ people nationwide; accepts funds, used books, or online purchases of books through wishlists.

Prison Book Program (rating): Distributes books nationwide; accepts funds, used books, or online purchases of books through wishlists.

Sex Worker Outreach Program Behind Bars: Directory of Amazon wishlists for incarcerated sex workers, trafficking victims, and survivors to purchase books directly for a person.

Women's Prison Book Program (not rated): Distributes books to cisgender and transgender women nationwide; accepts funds, used books, or online purchases of books through wishlists.

Also: check this directory of prison book programs in CA/GB/USA curated by the Prison Book Program to support a local organization more specific to a region (such as the Appalachian Book Project, serving KY, MD, OH, TN, VA, WV).

Commissary funds

The Commissary Fund (no rating): Sends commissary funds to incarcerated people in New York state.

Last Prisoner Project (rating): Among their other programs, sends commissary funds to people incarcerated for cannabis offenses.

Mission [Green] (no rating): Sends commissary funds to people incarcerated for cannabis offenses, in addition to legal advocacy.

Other forms of support

Innocence Project (rating): Criminal justice reform organization working against wrongful convictions.

The Marshall Project (rating): A nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization about the criminal justice system.

National Bail Fund Network (rating): A directory of community-led bail and bond funds throughout the nation, with the option to give to all as a collective through the directory, or pick out a specific local organization to give to.

Prison Math Project (not rated): Connects incarcerated people with mathematicians to support their interest in mathematics by correspondence.

[highseasslime]

HOW MUCH THE POLICE & PRISON SYSTEM DO IS THE PROBLEM!!

I never get tired of seeing how liberals, since their beliefs are based on vibes more than theory, cannot conceive of people who have an idea of how to build a better society through socialism, but also don’t know how to make a compelling argument against it, so they just lean on nonsense metaphors they’ve constructed to arrive at the conclusions they want. That stupid fucking haunted house analogy utterly fails to account for the constant violence that upholds the status quo of capitalism and the looting of the imperial periphery! But they are fundamentally incapable of conceiving of the status quo as violent because that would cause them discomfort and force them to question their complicity

[luulapants]

why are americans not doing anything about doge. or ice for that matter. from an outsider's point of view, you are all just complying with everything.

ive heard that doge are setting up illegal email servers in some government buildings. why is nobody like. breaking them? the federal data center for ice is in vermont. why is nobody like. setting it on fire? i mean you americans love to talk about your guns so much and how they are for fighting tyranny. and yet... nothing?

you all seem way too complacent and okay with this. in the reblogs of your doge post there are so many people saying things like "there must be SOMEONE who can stop this." you have to do stuff yourself. nobody is going to save you.

Most Americans don't even understand why they're not resisting (hence the "SOMEONE needs to act!"), which is that we're already a fascist police state. Our regular police are militarized and willing to kill or disappear citizens. 0.6% of our population was incarcerated before Trump ever took office. Resistance leaders end up mysteriously dead or disappeared - it's been that way for decades. I think most Americans have a sense, consciously or not, that anything more than symbolic protest is a potentially fatal act.

It's notable that "Somebody should do something!" usually imagines an individual act. A lone gunman. Self-immolation. A suicide bomber. These are our model of "taking action." Most Americans are so detached from any sense of community, especially where politics is concerned. I was taught as a kid that talking about politics is rude. If people had better access to solidarity networks, if they were able and willing to talk openly with their neighbors and colleagues, we wouldn't have that same sense that resistance = certain death.

Meanwhile, another segment treats this like politics as usual. I see one Reddit post talking about the potential for American concentration camps, and the next post down reports that Donald Trump's polling numbers are down. It's surreal. The average citizen can't quite feel the difference in their daily life. Not quite. It still feels like something that's happening on TV, so they can pretend for now. People don't want to die for the cause because they're in denial that we're past the point of no return and they're in denial because they don't want to die.

I have no idea what our country will look like in three months. I couldn't have predicted the current state three months ago. I hope, as things get worse, people seek community and solidarity and work together toward resistance. I suspect, however, that the first resistance will come from individuals whose circumstances became extreme enough to die over. I also suspect those individuals will rarely, if ever, be able to take action anywhere near meaningful power.

Why aren't people shutting down the servers in government buildings? I can't speak to every building, but in GSA, there are alarms on the doors and guards with guns between regular workers and all things DOGE. I can't speak to every agency, but the IRS had armed DHS agents walk a bunch of fired accountants out "for security purposes." We're not the most militarized country in the world for nothing.

One bit of bleak hope: they're breaking their own systems. The US government has crazy security protocols to prevent things like, say, burning down a data enter. They're firing the people that wrote those protocols. I can't imagine they'll replace them with anything near as comprehensive or effective. I think burning down a federal data center would be near impossible for a citizen today. I have no idea what the country will look like in a month.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also Preserved in our archive (Daily updates!)

What if the pandemic safety net cobbled together in 2020 had been a new beginning?

What if when Joe Biden came into office in 2021, the Covid-19 safety net he was handed had become a new floor?

What if that was his baseline—and the newly elected Democratic president, sold by his most ardent supporters as FDR 2.0, had used our Covid-19 response as the bare minimum of a new social contract with Americans?

What if the caring nature of the best aspects of the US Covid response became the map for international relations—leading not just to international cooperation on infectious disease, but on matters of war, climate and genocide?

What if, instead of dismantling the vaccine-delivery infrastructure—which, at its height, delivered some four million shots in a single day—the Biden administration built upon and made some version of it permanent, so that everyone could easily get annual Covid boosters, annual flu vaccines, or get specialty vaccinations during outbreaks of unusual viruses (such as for mpox during the 2022 summer outbreak among queer men) whenever they needed it?

What if the viral surveillance and communication mechanisms utilized for learning about SARS-CoV-2, treating it and telling the public about it were being used to address H5N1—a virus which has been moving from birds to farm mammals to humans with so little notice that dead cows were killed by the “avian flu” and left on the side of a road in California’s Central Valley, as “Thick swarms of black flies hummed and knocked against the windows of an idling car, while crows and vultures waited nearby—eyeballing the taut and bloated carcasses roasting in the October heat”?What if the leaders of the Democratic party had used Covid as a blueprint to make a national platform based on care?

What if all the ways Covid had made clear how farmers, industrial butchers, kitchen staff and other food workers are the most at risk people amongst us to viral infection led to meaningful, permanent protections, such that they were much less likely to contract not just SARS-CoV-2 but H1N1, H5N1, influenza, or any other existing or novel pathogens?

What if all the all the ways Covid exposed how unsafe industrial food production is (for the workers who make it and the people who eat it alike) had triggered safety reforms, instead of having these warnings ignored and leading towards record numbers of safety recalls for e-coli, Salmonella, and Listeria?

What if an airborne pandemic had led to indoor air being as filtered, treated and regulated as drinking water?

What if everyone with a child was still getting a $300 check from the US treasury, so that having a child was not a gambling-style risk, but a responsibility shared with all of society?

What if the paused-for-years student debts were forgiven, so that young people could actually begin their lives?

What if Biden built on Americans’ experience of just showing up somewhere to get the medical care they needed to create a universal healthcare system?

(What if Kamala Harris built upon Americans’ taste of not getting charged at the point of such service—and campaigned on Medicare for All?)

What if once the link between Covid and homelessness was established, the Democrats had pushed infectious disease as just one reason for an end to evictions and a robust, public-health-backed campaign to end homelessness and stop the United States from having more people living on the streets than any other country?

What if after the link between Covid and incarceration was established, the Democrats had pursued decarceration as a public health measure and—instead of throwing weed and cryptocurrency at us—had made reducing incarceration a centerpiece of the Harris campaign to earn the votes of Black men?

(What if after 100,000 Californians died of Covid and the links between Covid, homelessness and incarceration were clear, residents of the Golden State chose to allow rent control and to abolish legal slavery in prisons—instead of voting to ban rent control and to continue prison slavery?)

What if the leaders of the Democratic party had used Covid as a blueprint to make a national platform based on care?

Would we be in the lethal position we are now—with a genocide raging abroad, Covid deaths in the hundreds every week at home, a poisoned food supply, $17 trillion in household debt, oligarch goons ready to dismantle government regulations, and a sociopath heading back into the White House—if Covid had been the floor?

[hungee-boy]

since libs love their guilt tripping so much...

if you support biden you are PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE for:

bombs being dropped on tents that cant even protect against weather let alone a fucking full sized bomb

targeted mass rape

torture, rape, and starvation of people who were incarcerated for no fucking reason

children only knowing a traumatized state of mind, living their whole lives with severe ptsd because they watched their entire family murdered in front of them

children also only knowing disability, living their entire lives with amputated limbs and injuries

hospitals and aid workers being the target of bombing and raiding, with huge mass graves of health workers and patients being the only thing left behind

soldiers disguising themselves as aid workers to infiltrate a fucking refugee camp and killing over 200 fucking people because they werent the precious hostages everyones been crying about

targeting of food systems and the killing of livestock to ensure that if guns and bombs dont kill people, starvation will

targeting of power and communication systems to make sure people cant contact family or ask for help

so many more fucking atrocities that i cant possibly write down lest i have a fucking aneurysm

you are responsible for all of this if you vote for biden. every single one

and if you have a hard time feeling anything then maybe imagine the targets of these crimes are white so you can trick yourself into caring you fucking callous pieces of shit

[trans-axolotl]

today is international whores' day!

"On June 2nd, 1975, over 100 sex workers began an 8-day occupation at the Saint-Nizier Church in Lyon, France. They demanded the end of fines, stigma, police harassment, and the release of ten sex workers who had been imprisoned a few days earlier for soliciting. This occupation was initiated to call attention to the increasing violence against sex workers perpetrated by the French government. It was widely reported both nationally and internationally, receiving support from labor and feminist organizations alike. On June 10th, after 8 days of occupation, the police forcibly removed the women from the church, but their impact marked the start of an international movement." - History, IWD LA

today (and every day) is a good day to learn from sex workers about decriminalization, our activism, and how to support us.

check out the Sex Work Syllabus from the Support Ho(s)e Collective and donate to their ongoing mutual aid campaigns.

read Girls do what they have to do to survive by the Young Women's Empowerment Project.

Donate to SWOP Behind Bars to support incarcerated sex workers.

get involved in harm reduction and decrim activism in your local community.

support the sex workers in your life!!