#land reform

[girderednerve]

In the aftermath of the original Appalachian Land Ownership Study [in the 1980s], community groups began organizing for state-level reforms. Their efforts were most successful in places like Kentucky and West Virginia, where the coal industry was a clear and hostile enemy. It is harder to offer prescriptions for the situation in places like western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, where the tourism economy defies easy analysis. What does a just economy in a climate crisis look like? What is a just recovery? Perhaps one place to start is looking back to the reforms the Land Ownership researchers recommended. Some local organizations, like BeLoved Asheville, are already thinking along these lines—they recently put out a call for owners to donate or sell land to build homes for people who have been displaced. “It is now long past time for public discussions of land reform options in the region,” the authors of the Land Ownership survey wrote. “The future of Appalachia and its people is too important to do otherwise.”

[pannaginip]

AlterMidya on Twitter @altermidya:

PANOORIN: Nagsama-sama ang iba't ibang organisasyon para sa #IWWD2024. Tampok na usapin ang paglaban sa niraratsadang Charter change ng Marcos Jr administration.

2024 Mar. 8

Philippine Collegian, official student publication of UP Diliman, on Twitter @phkule:

NOW: Multisectoral groups march from Vicente Cruz Street to Mendiola to register their calls for wage increase, genuine agrarian reform, and national sovereignty this International Women’s Day.

#IWWD2024 #AbanteBabae

2024 Mar. 8

Katribu on Twitter @katribuphils:

INDIGENOUS AND MORO WOMEN EMBODIED BAI BIBYAON, STOOD AGAINST CHACHA ON INTERNATIONAL WORKING WOMEN’S DAY

Together, they unite under the banner "Kabuhayan, Karapatan, at Kasarinlan, Hindi Charter Change ng Dayuhan at Iilan."

Read the full release here: (FB link)

2024 Mar. 8

[feckcops]

Swimmers poised for biggest mass trespass so far at Kinder reservoir

“Up to 1,000 swimmers are expected to head to Kinder reservoir in Derbyshire on Sunday in the biggest trespass of the water to date. The turnout will mark the anniversary of a mass trespass that helped establish the principle of the right to roam in the UK.

“The swim trespass of Kinder reservoir, situated below Kinder Scout where the 1932 protest took place, has become an annual event and is growing rapidly with the boom in wild swimming. The event is now in its third year, and swimmers of all backgrounds are invited to the reservoir, owned by the water company United Utilities, to exercise ‘the uncontested right to swim in open water’.

“The mass trespass of Kinder Scout on 24 April 1932 involved an estimated 400 people and led to six arrests. It is widely considered to have laid the foundations for the UK’s first national park, the Peak District, and helped pave the way for the establishment of the Pennine Way and other long-distance footpaths.

“Last year about 400 people took to Kinder reservoir to mark the anniversary, and greater awareness, along with the continued growth in wild swimming, means numbers are expected to be substantially higher this year.”

[jamaicahomescom]

The History of Politics and Property in Jamaica: A Comprehensive Exploration

Jamaica’s political landscape has always been intertwined with the question of land ownership and property rights. From the colonial era to the present day, the evolution of politics in this island nation has often centered on who holds the land, how it is distributed, and the socioeconomic implications of such ownership. Understanding the trajectory of this relationship is crucial to…

[jovialbasementbouquetblr]

2015: The Puzzle of Rural Land Rights in PRC

Land and land rights in China have always been a mind-bending topic for me. I can’t claim to be Red or Expert (又红又专), but here below are some of my mind-droppings as I try to understand this a bit better. Chinese peasants got ownership of the land they worked after 1949 partly thanks to the Communist Party’s rural work teams that killed and encouraged peasants to participate in the killing of…

[canadianabroadvery]

"...

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Communist Party of China carried out land reform throughout the countryside. This was a series of violent campaigns that shook village societies to their core and resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Chinese citizens.

These years only make sense in the context of decades of conflict between the Communists and their Nationalist rivals, but land reform also has deeper roots in an age-old question: Who owns the land? ...

"... Writing the history of the Communists and their revolution is greatly complicated by the party’s attempt to control the historical record. That has been especially true since the Tiananmen Massacre of 1989, when the party began accusing its critics of “historical nihilism” — a charge leveled at those who dared to question official party history.

As far as party historians are concerned, land reform was the transformative moment of Maoist revolution, when the party heroically led long-oppressed peasants to stand up and overthrow feudal power. The party has actively pushed back against any questioning of this interpretation. When the Cyberspace Administration of China released a list of the top ten “rumors” of historical nihilism, number eight on the list was the rumor that land reform had been a mistake. ... "

[gwynever]

strongly recommend The Poor Had No Lawyers: Who Owns Scotland and How They Got it by Andy Wightman for a really readable background in to how this went down in Scotland. It will also make you really angry over and over again about how our land has been stolen by the rich and they continue to exploit it.

Scotland badly needs land reform and this book will turn you into a passionate advocate for it.

[uclpact]

For the Rights of the Soil not to be Exhausted: Ecocentric Practices for Land Restoration

Co-Directors of the Postsocialist Art Centre (PACT) Maja and Reuben Fowkes will be presenting ‘For the Rights of the Soil not to be Exhausted: Ecocentric Practices for Land Restoration’ on April 12th as part of the ‘Matter Matters: The Aesthetics and Politics of Soil’ panel at the 49th Annual Association for Art History Conference, taking place at University College London.

About the Presentation:

As climate breakdown tests the ecological limits of heavy agriculture, how have artists exposed the entwined colonial and environmental histories of land and proposed ecocentric practices based on more-than-human comradeship and care? These questions are addressed through Anetta Mona Chişa’s One Are (2021), which translated the Roman unit of territory into a 100m2 inverted cast of a ploughed field to reveal the materiality of the soil in its earthy imprint of tilling, cracking and erosion. Also considered is Cooking Sections’ For the Rights of the Soil not to be Exhausted (2019), which engaged with the histories of chernozem from the Ukrainian steppe, from the terror of Soviet grain requisitioning to the impact of shifting climatic zones. The artist duo also collaborated with lawyers to legally enshrine the defence of the soil against capitalist extractivism, encapsulating the planetary tipping point in attitudes towards what anthropologist Kristina Lyons calls the “complex self-organising system” underground.

Image: Anetta Mona Chişa, One Are (2021)

[pannaginip]

Umani Productions and Bulatlat have released a 10-min. documentary titled "Buhay lukad" [lukad = process of extracting coconut meat from the shell, sometimes used interchangeably with copra/kopra]. Has Tagalog subs.

Copra farmers in Bicol have endured decades of misery due to feudal conditions.

2024 Jan. 7

Like most agriculture in the Philippines, the production of copra remains small-scale and limited to individual farmers, most of them paying rent to landlords. A dearth of infrastructure and development forces coconut farmers to sell their products to exporters at drop-dead wholesale prices, who in turn profit off an industry making upwards of £750 million (US$ 1 billion) annually.

The grave disparity between the farmer and the exporter can be traced directly to the Philippines’ status as an agricultural nation plagued by old feudalism. Agricultural land is concentrated in the hands of a small crop of dynasties, corporations, and foreign plantations - making it impossible for farmers to rise above their status as “the poorest of the poor.”

2021 Oct. 16

[justshipsandstuff]

When life gives you lemons

(Inspired by a tweet I couldn’t find again bc twitter is being its quirky self today)

[feyd-rautha-apologist]

As someone whose family got persecuted by communists:

Yeah, fuck em, they deserved that shit. I don't support my great grandfather having been put in a gulag because that was way later and for a shit reason, but him and his family getting their farm & estate taken away was fully justified

I think about this tweet all the time

[ratwithhands]

Read Right to Left (Manga Format)

I have returned to watching demon slayer after a year and it came up while I was having a serious late night talk with my big sister. I was talking about the relationship between Michikatsu/Kokushibo and Yoriichi and it turns out we both see each other in Yoriichi's shoes and ourselves in Michikatsu's place. Definitely surprising, but really relieving to know that we both worry too much and we are not so far apart in skill as we believe.

This is technically the first piece of fanart I've ever made for the characters in Demon Slayer, I have made OCs before but I never drew an actual character from the story. For context this is mostly just a fun "what if" scenario with them meeting in the afterlife. I like to think Yoriichi's love would reawaken Michikatsu's humanity.

[canisalbus]

Vachete Suomi AU. Vesuri ja Vaski asuvat suuressa kylässä jossain sisämaassa kaukana suurista kaupungeista kuten Turusta. Kirkonkylän pappi, Vesuri, yrittää parhaansa mukaan vakuuttaa kyläläisiä kasvattamaan perunaa, koska se on satoisa ja ravitseva kasvi mutta kyläläiset eivät tahdo luopua nauriista. Vaski on kartanonvoudin poika ja yrittää pitää suhteita yllä kyläläisiin, että he olisivat suostuvaisia maksamaan veroja kuninkaalle eivätkä hyökkäisi hänen isänsä kimppuun.

Loose translation:

Finnish Vaschete AU.

Vesuri (a type of pruning knife/billhook) and Vaski (brass/copper/bronze) live in a big village somewhere inland, far away from the country's populous cities like Turku (Finland's oldest city and former capital located in the southwestern coast). The village priest, Vesuri, is trying his best to persuade the villagers to start farming potato, a high-yielding and nourishing crop, but people are reluctant to give up their turnips (one of Finland's most important staple foods up until 1800's when potato finally took over). Vaski is the son of a local lord of the manor (or maybe you'd call it bailiff? Or even jarl?) and is doing his best to get along with the villagers so that they would continue paying their taxes to the king and wouldn't turn against his dad.

[thepeopleinpower]

Capitalism and colonialism took community away from us and I want it back. I’ve heard about it from my grandparents and in books and articles online. All throughout history and still today in some parts of the world. People looking out for each other. Regularly. Relentlessly. Neighbors watching each others children, having enough food to share and actually sharing it, being invested in each others lives because everyone has different strengths.

Today community has been strategically painted as a weakness and something to be skeptical of because it is a threat to the very foundations of capitalism. And that’s a real fucking shame because in reality, growing up with community and still having that through adulthood would probably make most people generally happier and less perpetually tired and stressed. It is renewable resilient versatile adaptable self-sustaining and kind of the Ultimate Resource.

[clembarbarossa]

On to the subject of the French Revolution: most of the people who fell to the guillotine were commoners. Nobles were still disproportionately impacted (8% of the executions whilst they were like 1% of the population - the clergy was far more impacted). The loss of their privileges and the seizure of the émigrés' land did more to end their dominance than a few chopped-off heads.

Seeing the notes on posts about the Burning Man Debacle™ and for fucks sake I am taking the phrase 'eat the rich' away from y'all until you can CORRECTLY IDENTIFY the rich

Rich is 'arrived by way of their private jet', is 'dropped $500k on a submarine ticket', is '$500 is a rounding error'.

'$500 dollars for a nine day event they must all be rich white people' no you reactionary rotten potato that is actually an entirely reasonable price for an entirely normal person to pay for an annual event! $500 over the course of a year is approximately equivalent to one big takeout a month! Being able to afford that doesn't make you rich it makes you probably not poor! The 'rich or poor' narrative is a false dichotomy that completely excludes the fact that 'richness' or 'poorness' is a SCALE! It's not fucking categorical! You don't one day magically flip a switch and go from 'poor' to 'rich' or vice versa you see incremental changes over time! Wealth distribution is a (these days, admittedly, rather wonky) motherfucking BELL CURVE! . The fact that capitalism is driving more and more people to either extreme of said curve is just evidence of a broken system, but it doesn't change the fact that most people should have a decent amount of disposable income!

The fact that many people don't have said disposable income doesn't magically make the ones that do 'rich' it makes everyone else poor. And the people at fault for the massive and growing percentage of people living below the poverty line are not the ones managing to stay above it, it's the fault of the actually rich, the ones stealing our time and our health and our wages and our future in pursuit of a number on a screen. And the rich are the only people you're helping by hating the people struggling slightly less than you.

When it comes time to 'eat the rich' you're going to be murdering dentists and librarians and scientists while the actually rich point and laugh from a safe distance as you solve their problems for them.

[eightyonekilograms]

Me: "Let's go out; I promise I won't get political."

Me, three drinks later, pounding on the table: "The Philippines need real comprehensive land reform, ASAP!"