#only you can prevent fascism
Explore tagged Tumblr posts
tomorrowusa · 1 year ago
Text
Tumblr media
This is not a time to become complacent and assume that everything will turn out fine without our individual involvement. We all have something to offer based on our abilities.
More than anything, grassroots political work is needed. For a dozen or so years we believed the internet was a substitute for doing person to person precinct work; the results of that mindset were Donald Trump, a GOP Congress, and a far right Supreme Court.
Find out what the neighbors are thinking about things – listen rather than preach. We can then tailor our message to strike the right chord. People don't have to agree with you 100% on everything to vote your way.
3 notes · View notes
asongoftearsandfandoms · 11 days ago
Text
Not to be a pessimist or anything, but to everyone hopefully reminding everyone "We only need to last four years! We can do this!":
Maybe only four years. Hopefully only four years.
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
Telling yourself and others "Hey, it's just four years" needs to be backed up with the constant fight and action of ensuring it doesn't turn into more than four years.
1 note · View note
spacebeyonce · 1 year ago
Text
getting the urge to remind folks that there are absolutely other options - BETTER options - this presidential election and that like. change is possible. if enough of us band together change is absolutely possible.
19 notes · View notes
toytulini · 8 months ago
Note
Thank you for your tags on the baeddalism post. As someone who is aroace (formerly biace) and a nb transmasc I've literally watched every identity I have be dragged into discourse time and time again and it's always the exact same rhetoric to a nauseating degree. People are so terminally online that they constantly invent new nonexistent stereotypes of other queer identities to get mad at or just pick a queer identity to be the monster of the week, and it's excruciating to see it repeat the same way everytime.
I wanted to try to respond to this more eloquently after i had some caffeine, but if we wait for eloquence itll go unanswered for years. but lmao yea of course. Im also aroace and enby. I was here since like 2014, I suffered through reading all these same stupid arguments about a-specs and my tolerance for it is so fried. The queer infighting and gatekeeping bullshit is so rotting. I hope we learn one of these days. My disillusion that this keeps fucking happening is at least tempered by the fact that all the blogs who I followed for good takes on inclusionism and queer solidarity during the acecourse are also not tolerating this shit, and they are recognizing it as the same old bullshit its been the whole time.
#asks#tiredtief#i am so bad at actually Arguing w ppl so i try to avoid engaging directly as usual but i continue my tradition of#steaming in the fucking tags lmao#anyway hi. welcome. ill follow back. u seem nice#also i wish it was just terminally online brainrot but unfortunately i think this shit predates the internet#and this shit = ppl being stupid bitchy assholes to each other. i have an unfortunate feeling that it is merely an extension of the old.#call yourself a community organizer but youre not on speaking terms with your ex roommates thing. and its annoying ppl#applying like toxic friend group drama dynamics to a marginalized community cos they cant help but pick fucking fights i guess#my point is ppl have probably been being stupid toxic assholes about community since we started being people and having community#and it sucks and its always sucked but we made it this far. so hopefully we can keep going to go be stupid assholes to each other in the#future. i worry this is coming across as misanthropic. its only a little misanthropic. humans is humans. not good or bad but also i think#as social animals we are fundamentally fucking Annoying. i want to believe that we can like. get to a point where we stop arguing about#peoples identities like this. and maybe we will. but we will almost certainly be arguing about some other dumb shit. hopefully like some#low stakes fandom discourse or sports teams. discourse is brainrot but getting into meaningless arguments with fans of a different sports#team does fundamentally feel like a healthier expression of toxicity than starting queer separatist movements in the name#of protecting vulnerable ppl while not realizing that seperatism is just Isolating vulnerable ppl making them more susceptible to all the#harms you claim to want to prevent. dont ever fall for the reactionary exclusionist kool aid folks. even if they frame it as#reactionary seperatism. thats bad for you and your whole community youre cutting yourself off from and we cant be doing that shit#with fucking fascism impending everywhere and shit that targets and harms all of us up on the chopping block. goddddd#anyway. i need to go to the store.
6 notes · View notes
bearfoottruck · 8 months ago
Text
In random election news, as if we didn't already have enough reasons to hate Trump, he recently admitted at one of his rallies that he doesn't care about his supporters and just wants their votes:
0 notes
thesaltyace · 7 months ago
Text
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.
11K notes · View notes
dumbsharkboy · 22 days ago
Text
Some things to remember on this monday afternoon for us Americans:
if you see ICE, say ICE. it’s not illegal unless you try to physically stop them
trans folks, if you can, stock pile your HRT and if you haven’t already update all documents with name and gender changes
make sure you have your passport and important paperwork ready to go in case of emergencies
don’t isolate, just because the world shit doesn’t mean you don’t have people who care around you.
read more, whether it be the news, fiction, nonfiction… whatever. reading helps distract but it also reflects current society and can show us signs that we should no avoid in order to prevent fascism.
help the homeless and disadvantaged
do what you can, but if your mental or physical health is going to be impacted, prioritize yourself.
it’s so important to stick together as a community and help each other as much as possible. i’d say it’s only 4 years but the future is uncertain and we don’t know if it’s going to get better or worse. As long as we have each other we will be okay. Stay safe
2K notes · View notes
southpauz · 22 days ago
Text
I am genuinely frightened for the future of America, its people, and every other country that America imposes itself upon.
Trump's administration falls under literally EVERY defining characteristic of Fascism.
Far-right conservatives have completely overtaken our mainstream media, forcibly silenced them, or bought them out so they can praise and sane-wash Trump over fear of retribution.
His administration is owned by the ultra wealthy who control all of our social media apps/sites. Every large corporation owner was in attendance at Trump's inauguration, sitting in FRONT of his cabinet. Tiktok is spreading pro-Trump propaganda, Zuckerberg intends to "remove factchecking" from Meta platforms (like Facebook and Instagram itself), and Bill Gates just said he had a fascinating talk with Trump recently and was impressed by him.
Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, bought Twitter and completely turned it into an alt-right misinformation machine that spews hatred over diversity and acceptance and directly impacted people's impression of the election which lead to Trump's victory. He changed the algorithm on Twitter to boost nazi, transphobic, racist rhetoric alongside retreating similar posts to his audience and changed the algorithm to suppress democratic posts.
After Trump's inauguration Elon was on stage and he gave an enthusiastic NAZI SALUTE. TWICE. ON TELEVISION.
They're targeting our education to keep us dumb and complacent little worker bees so we don't learn how to critically think and see through the propaganda and lies they spew.
They are targeting minorities, especially the trans community and undocumented immigrants, to make people fight a different "enemy" than the people ACTUALLY harming them: the 1%.
They are targeting women's right to their own bodily autonomy in order to keep making sure they keep having worker bees to keep making them more money and to foster a disdain for human rights in our population by linking our government to evangelical Christian morals.
We are in danger.
Please do your proper research and make sure you take your information from multiple sources, including primary sources like court and governmental documents, to prevent bias.
Please look into local programs, volunteer opportunities, and social gathering events so you can get to know your community better and help build more solidarity and safety.
Please keep your eyes open to help your neighbor who may be targeted by this administration. Make sure to should "LA MIGRA" if you spot any ICE vehicles to alert your undocumented friends and neighbors, and remember that police can't come into your home without a warrant and you have the right to remain silent.
Most importantly: DO NOT GIVE UP. It feels so hopeless, but the only thing that can make it worse is if we give up. Becoming compliant in advance only speeds up fascist takeovers.
Resist. Be careful. Care for one another. I love you guys.
Unless you voted for or currently support Trump. Go fuck yourselves you pieces of shit.
625 notes · View notes
qqueenofhades · 9 months ago
Note
There is no law that prevents a convicted felon from running for and becoming president, nor a law that bans someone from being president in prison. Also, if Trump gets incapacitated in someway, many ultra right republicans who equally despise trans people and immigrants and Muslims would happily take his place
And I ask, with all due respect, what is your point?
Do you think I don't know that?
Do you think I am somehow convinced that everything is hunky dory now and we don't have any work left to do?
Are you just determined to be the first of the gloom-and-doomers who show up like clockwork in my inbox, every time some consequence happens to Trump, to morosely insist that no consequences will happen to him? First it was "he'll win re-election." Then it was "the coup will succeed." Then it was "he will never be indicted." Then it was "2022 will be a red wave!" Then it was "he will never be tried." Then it was "he will never be convicted." Now we've moved on, within less than 2 hours of the first US President ever to be convicted of ONE felony, let alone THIRTY-FOUR, "he'll never be sentenced or face a real consequence or lose the election." The goalposts keep moving RIGHT along without even a single pause to acknowledge the difficulty and the value of the progress we have made thus far, and it makes me CRAZY.
Do you people realize how fucking rare it is, both in the world today and historically, for a former (and would-be future) head of state to be held to criminal account by a jury of 12 anonymous ordinary citizens? When that one person, Trump, is the center of the malignant fascist cancer that has spread through this country ever since 2016, and plenty of his cultists are still insisting that it's Trump or nobody for them? When we've actually reached the stage of holding him legally accountable for (some of) his crimes for the first time in his miserable misbegotten life? I suspect that most of you are so deep in the "America is totally broken and the system is useless and we can only Revolute!!!1" rabbit hole that you're bound and determined to argue away every step we take, however slow, as Meaning Nothing TM. Voting? Fake. Fighting to make real progress? Also fake. Everything is fake except our belief that everything is broken and we need the Keyboard Warrior Glorious Revolution!!! As long as you can keep inventing ever more contorted twists of logic to ignore everything else that's happened so far, this makes sense... or something. I guess?
Now we're onto "removing Trump won't matter :(" when a whole lot of people have been fighting day and fucking night to get all the privileged-princess Online Leftists to get off their Che Guevara cosplaying asses and cast a single fucking vote to keep us from full-on-sliding into fascism. A slide into fascism that, again, has been spearheaded and centered around Trump's toxic cult of personality and which is still tied to him in almost every way. Apparently holding him to account (again, which has never happened to him in his life) already doesn't matter because wah wah he won't suffer any consequences. If he loses this election he's probably going to jail for the rest of his life! We would have electorally defeated the greatest threat to the American democratic experiment in 250 years, and frankly a huge part of the fascist far-right hydra that is currently attempting a comeback around the world! This is, yet again:
THE FIRST TIME ANY AMERICAN PRESIDENT, EVER, HAS BEEN CONVICTED OF MULTIPLE FELONY CHARGES IN A COURT OF LAW BY A JURY OF HIS PEERS
and yet we're still hearing that nothing matters and no work has been done and removing him will have no effect???
Come on. Come on. I know it's tiring and it's slow and it doesn't go as fast as we want. But every single damn time the process goes another step, here you people are in my inbox insisting that we're still at zero progress and it means nothing, and lemme tell you, I am Tired of it. Come on. You don't have to jump up and down (my own feeling is glee and vindication but still not relaxation, I will not relax until he loses the fucking election and goes to jail), but you also don't need to keep myopically pretending that all the effort thus far by so many people means nothing. Come on.
968 notes · View notes
copperbadge · 2 years ago
Note
Hey Sam! Since it's currently AO3 donation time, I'm wondering what your thoughts are on it? I'm asking because you've written RPF and it's one of many "anti-AO3/anti-AO3 donations" people's favourite things to bring up when they're complaining about AO3 getting so many donations that it continuously obtains an excess of its donation goal whenever donation time rolls around? (Wow, how many times can I say "donation" in an ask?) Sorry if this question bothers you! I don't mean to offend or annoy.
Hey anon! Sorry it took a while to get to this, I don't even know if the drive is still going on, but the question came in while I was traveling and I didn't really have the time for stuff that wasn't travel-related. In any case, let's dig in! (I am not offended, no worries.)
So really there are two issues here and as much as some people who are critical of AO3 want to conflate them, they are different. While some criticism of AO3 may be valid, rhetoric against AO3 tends to misinterpret both in separate ways.
First there's the issue of what AO3 hosts -- RPF, yes, but more broadly, varied content that some people find distasteful or think should be illegal, which is a misunderstanding of the purpose of the archive and more broadly a dangerous attitude towards the concept of freedom of expression.
Second, there's the issue of AO3 generally outpacing its fundraising goals while not allowing monetization, which is a misunderstanding of the legal status of AO3 and to an extent a misunderstanding of philanthropy as a whole.
The longer I watch debates about content go on, the more I come to the conclusion that I was fortunate to have a teacher who really wanted to instill in us an understanding of free speech not as a policy but as an ongoing dialogue. It's not only that freedom of expression "protects you from the government, not the Justin" as the meme goes, but also that freedom of expression is not a static thing. It's an ongoing process of identifying what we find harmful in society and what we want to do about it.
Should the freedom to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater be restricted? Should the freedom to yell slurs at drag performers? Should the freedom to teach prepubescent kids about gender, sexuality, and/or safe sex? Should the freedom to wear a leather puppy hood at Pride? Who gets to say, and why?
I was nine when my teacher did a unit on freedom of speech and the intersection of "harm prevention" and "censorship", which is (and should be) a discussion, not a set of ironclad rules. This ambiguity has thus been with me for over thirty years, and I'm comfortable with the ambiguity, with the process; I'm not sure a lot of people critical of AO3's content truly are. Perhaps some can't be, especially those affected by hate speech, but RPF is not hate speech. It's just fiction. Or is fiction "just fiction"? This is a question society as a whole is grappling with, although fandom seems to be a little out ahead of society in terms of how explicitly we discuss it.
The idea that prose can incite violence or cause harm is both valid to examine (witness the rise of fascism on the radio in the 20s, on Facebook and Twitter in the past ten years; they're very similar processes) and a very slippery slope. Because again: who decides what harm is, and what causes it, and what we do about it? Our values align us with certain beliefs, but those are only our values, not universal truths. So AO3 is part of the ongoing question of harm and benefit both to society and individuals.
AO3 itself, however, has a fairly defined policy that it is not meant to police content; it is an archive, not a bookstore or a school board. AO3 refines its TOS and policies as necessary, but the goal is always open access and as much freedom of expression as possible, and if that's uncomfortable for some people then that's a discussion we have to have; ignoring it won't make it go away. But it has to be a discussion, it can't be a unilateral change to the archive's TOS or a series of snaps and clapbacks, and I don't see a lot of people ready to move beyond flinging insults. Perhaps because they were taught a much more binary view of freedom of expression than I was.
So, self-evidently, I support AO3 and I don't have a problem with RPF. Whether other people do is something we're going to have to get to grips with, and that's likely to be a process that is still going on when most of us are dust. I'd rather have a century of ambiguity than a wrong answer tomorrow, anyway.
But whether AO3 hosts RPF is truly a separate issue from its donation drives, because it's a criticism some people level at the site which exists whether it's fundraising or not. So people can criticize AO3's open policy and they can give it as a reason not to support the site, but it's just one aspect of the archive and the fundraising as a whole should be examined separately.
I think AO3's fundraisers are deeply misunderstood (sometimes on purpose) because even people who are anticapitalist get a little crazy when money gets involved, and this is, to fandom, a lot of money -- a few hundred thousand, reliably, every fundraiser. To me, a fundraiser that pulls in three hundred grand is almost quaint; my current nonprofit pulls in better than ten million a year and my previous employer had an endowment of several billion dollars. At my old job I didn't even bother researching people who couldn't give us a hundred grand.
On the other hand, AO3 is an extreme and astounding outlier in the nonprofit world, because basically it's the only one of its kind to work the way it does. It is entirely volunteer-run on the operational side (ie: tag wranglers, coders, lawyers, etc) and has no fundraising staff (gift officers, researchers, outreach officers) as far as I'm aware. To pull in three hundred grand from individual one-time donations, without any paid staff and without even a volunteer fundraising officer? That's insane. That doesn't happen. Except at AO3.
What people misunderstand, however, is the basic status of a nonprofit, which is a legal status, not simply a social one. (I'm adding in some corrections here since it gets complicated and the terminology can be important!) The Organization for Transformative Works, the parent of AO3, is a nonprofit, which indicates how it was incorporated as an organization; additionally it is registered federally as tax-exempt, which carries certain perks, like not paying sales tax, and certain duties, like making their financials transparent to a certain extent. (Religious nonprofits are exempt from the transparency requirement.) If you're interested in more about nonprofits and tax-exempt status a reader dropped a great article here.
Nonprofits, unlike for-profit companies, cannot pay a share of their income to stakeholders. Nonprofits don't have financial stakeholders, only donors. They can have employees and pay them a salary -- that's me, for example -- but if a nonprofit pulls in $10M in donations, my salary is paid from that, I don't get a percentage and nobody else does either. That's what it means to be a nonprofit -- the money above operational costs goes back into the organization. The donations we (and AO3) receive must be plowed under and used for outreach, server maintenance, further fundraising, services expansion, et cetera. You can see this in the 990 forms on Guidestar or ProPublica, or in their more accessible breakdowns on Charity Navigator. Nonprofits that do not put the majority of their income towards service provision tend to get audited and lose their nonprofit status. So nobody's getting paid from all that money, and the overage that isn't spent goes into what is basically a savings account in the name of the nonprofit. (I'm vastly simplifying but that's the gist.) Using that money for personal purposes is illegal. It's called "private inurement" and there's a good article here about it. The money belongs to the OTW as a concept, not to anyone in or of the OTW.
So the biggest misunderstanding that I see in people who are mad at AO3 fundraisers is that "they" are getting all this money (who "they" are is never clearly stated but I'm pretty sure people think @astolat has a special wifi router that runs on burning hundred dollar bills) while "we" can't monetize our fanfic. But "they" get nothing -- nobody even earns a salary from AO3 -- and you can easily prove that by looking at the 990 forms they file with the government, which are required to be made public. You can see the most recently available 990, from 2020, here at Guidestar. Page seven will show you the "highest compensated" employees, all of whom are earning zero dollars or nonmonetary perks (that's the three columns on the right).
Either AO3 is entirely volunteer-run or someone's Doing A Real Fraud. The money the OTW spends is documented (that's page 10 and 11 primarily) and while they may pay for, say, the travel and lodging expenses of a lawyer going to DC to defend a freedom-of-expression case, they don't pay the lawyer for their time, or give them a cut of the income.
Despite what you've read, the reason "we" can't monetize our fanfics on AO3 has nothing to do with the site being the product of volunteer handiwork or AO3 having it in their terms of service or it being considered gauche by some to do so; it's because
IT'S ILLEGAL.
I cannot say this loudly enough: It is against the law for a nonprofit to be used by its staff, volunteers, or beneficiaries to earn direct profit from the services provided by the nonprofit.
You can be paid to work at one, but you cannot side-hustle by selling your handmade friendship bracelets for personal gain on the nonprofit's website. If the nonprofit knowingly allows monetization of its services, it can lose nonprofit status, be fined, be hit with back taxes, and a lot of other unpleasant bullshit can go down, including prosecution of those involved for fraud. If you put a ko-fi link on your fanfic, you are breaking the law, and if AO3 allows it, they are too.
Okay, that was a sidebar, but in some ways not, because it gets to the heart of the real complaints about AO3 fundraising, which is that people in fandom are sick or unhoused or in some form of need and other people in fandom are giving to AO3, a fan site that is financially stable, instead of giving to peoples' gofundmes or dropping money in their Ko-Fi or Paypal. And while it is a legitimate grievance that there are people who are in such desperate need while we live in an era of unprecedented abundance, that's not AO3's fault. AO3 doesn't solicit actively, there's no unasked-for mailings or calls from a gift officer. They just put a banner up on their website, and people give. (Again, this is incredibly outlier behavior in the nonprofit world, I'd do a case study on it but the conclusion would just be "shit's real, yo.") You might as well be mad that people give to their local food bank instead of someone's ko-fi.
You cannot lay at AO3's feet the fact that people want to give to AO3 instead of to your fundraiser. That's a choice individuals have made, and while you can engage with them in terms of why they made the philanthropic choices they did, to blame an organization they supported rather than the person who made the choice to give is not only incorrect but futile, and unlikely to win anyone over to supporting you. We know from research that guilt is not a tremendous motivator of philanthropy.
It is also not necessarily a binary choice; just because AO3 gets a hundred grand in $5 donations doesn't mean most of the people giving don't also give $5 elsewhere. I support the OTW on occasion, and I also fundraise for UNICEF and the Chicago Parks Foundation and BAGLY and others, in addition to giving monthly to several nonprofits that I have longterm relationships with -- my alma mater, the animal rescue where I got the Cryptids, my shul. And I give, occasionally and anonymously, to fundraisers that pass through Radio Free Monday, which are mainly individuals in need, because I was once in need and now I pay it forward. These are the choices I have made. Nobody twisted my arm. I respond poorly to someone making the attempt to do so by attacking places I've given.
I think the upshot is, after all of this that I've written, that we cannot begin to come to grips with questions of institutional inequality in philanthropy, or freedom of expression and censorship, until people actually understand what's going on, and too few do. So all I can do is try and explain, and hopefully create a forum for people to learn and grow when it comes to charitable giving.
Archive Of Our Own and the Organization for Transformative Works are products of our community and as that community changes, we will necessarily continue to re-evaluate what aspects of it mean and how AO3/OTW express the community sentiment. I hope that the ongoing discussion of support for AO3 also leads to people learning more about their philanthropic options. But criticizing AO3 for fundraising by attacking it for fulfilling one of its stated purposes is silly, and attempting to guilt people into giving in the ways one thinks they should give rather than how they do give is just going to make one extremely unlikable.
As members of this community, we have to be a part of the push and pull, but it's difficult to do that competently in ignorance. So, I do my best to be knowledgeable and to educate my readers, and I hope others will do the same.
3K notes · View notes
milf--adjacent · 9 days ago
Text
Me in 2021: "All Biden is doing in office is assuring the facist observation and policing arms of the government are being funded at all time highs. At the same time, he's dismantling public health for short term political gains of claiming he "beat the pandemic" while thousands still die (e.g. chaning the covid quarantine time from 10 days [not always enough time to clear an infevtion] to 5 days [almost never enough time to clear an infection] based on a letter from Delta Airline's CEO whining about having to be concerned with his employee's health, completely defunding test/trace/treat infrastructure, and manipulating the science to tell us to unmask and that current covid vaccines prevent spread [multiple studies show that because of covid's evolutionary propensity for immune escape, vaccination alone is not enough to stop spread. Even one nonpharmaceutical intervention alongside vaccination reduces spread incredibly. Factor this in with a population that has only ~20% vaccine uptake, and you've got a public health strategy that costs billions yet does nothing to protect the public].) All his presidency has done is prime the next republican who takes office to do even more overt fascism than ever before. The very least he could do is actually work to legislate protections for abortion, trans rights, and immigrant rights to make what the next republican president is obviously going to attack hard going at the very least."
Liberals around that same time: "Shut up, MAGA loser. Biden is my favoritest blorbo and he's gonna be so much better in his second term!"
Liberals on Feb 2, 2025: "No one possibly could have predicted this."
P.S. At the time of writing, over 2,100 covid deaths occurred in the US in the past 30 days. If you aren't masking, testing, and taking other precautions (such as following wastewater trends and pushing for air filtration in public spaces), you are a bigger part of the problem than you think. Asymptomatic spread of covid accounts for more than 60% of all cases: that's why vax and relax + stay home if you feel sick can never work to keep people safe. Fascism starts with the infirm: protect us by masking. Refuse to let us be cast aside and killed by an uncaring society you are a part of.
235 notes · View notes
tomorrowusa · 2 years ago
Photo
Tumblr media
It’s easier to outvote cult members than it is to get them to embrace rationality.
Register to vote. Never miss an election; there’s no such thing as an unimportant election. 
I Will Vote
Voter registration is by location. Whenever you move you need to register at your new address. If you’ve moved since the last election, even if it’s just across the street, it’s necessary to register at your new place.
Don’t let some vote suppressing MAGA politician deny you the right to vote because of a technicality. Remain informed about voting procedures and eligibility requirements.
0 notes
mostlysignssomeportents · 1 month ago
Text
Occupy the Democratic National Committee
Tumblr media
Picks and Shovels is a new, standalone technothriller starring Marty Hench, my two-fisted, hard-fighting, tech-scam-busting forensic accountant. You can pre-order it on my latest Kickstarter, which features a brilliant audiobook read by Wil Wheaton.
Tumblr media
Back in 2017, the Democratic National Committee's lawyers submitted a legal brief that didn't just say the quiet part out loud; they bellowed it: "[The DNC can] go into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the [presidential] candidate that way":
https://observer.com/2017/05/dnc-lawsuit-presidential-primaries-bernie-sanders-supporters/
The brief was submitted in the lawsuit between Bernie Sanders and the DNC. Sanders sued over the DNC changing the rules midway through 2016 process in order to sideline him and give the nomination to Hillary Clinton. The DNC's response boiled down to, "Sure, we cheated. So what? We, the committee, are ultimately answerable only to ourselves, and we can choose anyone to lead the party into any election."
The DNC is a weak institution, in other words. There's a universe in which that would be OK. After all, there's a lot of overhead that comes with making strong institutions, all those checks and balances and oversight and transparency soak up resources that you could be using to do other stuff. In an ideal world, a badly run Democratic Party would be spurred to improve after it lost elections, which would result in the defenestration of bad party bosses and the ouster of bad candidates:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/30/weak-institutions/
But the US political system is not an ideal world. In the real world, it's possible for party bosses who pursue disastrous strategies that result in key electoral losses to remain in power. The Democratic Party still rakes in massive donations from people who hate Trump more than they hate the Democratic Party's incompetence. Candidates in gerrymandered safe seats can be wildly incompetent and still hold onto power for improbably long timescales, despite the manifest evidence of their total unfitness for office:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Lipinski
In the absence of real consequences for corruption, incompetence and utter moral turpitude, the Democratic National Committee needs some other form of discipline to get it into fighting form. We need to occupy the DNC, strengthen its institutional safeguards, and turn it into an election-winning, fascism-fighting, extinction-rebelling, worker-defending powerhouse.
Three weeks from now, the DNC will meet in National Harbor MD to elect its new president and officers. Who gets to vote on that? The 448 members of the party's national committee. Who are they? As Micah Sifry writes for The American Prospect, it's a secret, even to the committee members:
https://prospect.org/politics/2025-01-10-opening-dncs-black-box/
No, really. While nominally, members can request a list of their fellow members, the DNC stalls and stonewalls and does everything it can to prevent the committee from communicating in any way they can't control. This is incredible, but it's true. Which is why Sifry has published a leaked list of all 448 members:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bQKIP3W1NWChRjSbsE0O5k5s7OdgXrJi5-CMfFECIBU/edit?gid=0#gid=0
Looking at the spreadsheet of members, we get a rare glimpse inside the Democratic sausage factory. There's te 73 "at large" members who were voted on as a single block after being handpicked by outgoing president Jaime Harrison. These members are a mix of great people and terrible people, and that's by design: it meant that Sanders and Warren voters could only get their people onto the committee if they voted for some of the most disgusting corporate shills you can imagine.
The fact that the national committee's membership is secret and their communications must pass through a DNC chokepoint means that they get up to all kinds of shenanigans, like at the 2023 summer meeting where they voted themselves the power to throw out any bylaw amendments passed at a national party convention. The vote was whipped by paid DNC staff, creating an atmosphere so poisonous that Jessica Chambers (a rep from Wyoming) called the DNC "the least democratic organization that I’m involved with."
Sifry's breakdown is really useful: he identifies the minority of members who are elected by the party rank-and-file, calling them "the people most responsive to what the base of the party cares about." He also calls out the corporate shills who "buckrake as lobbists," like Donna Brazile, "a partner at “corporate reputation strategy firm.”
But even where state party organizations have elections for their committee members, some states keep the results of those elections a secret. Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania have 69 members, but the identities of all but 14 of them are a secret.
This is a rotten institution, and that's by design. If you want to know why we can't have nice things – or, you know, a world that's not on fire and haunted by creeping fascism – this is why. The takeover of the DNC won't be easy, but it can't start until we know who the DNC is.
Tumblr media
Check out my Kickstarter to pre-order copies of my next novel, Picks and Shovels!
Tumblr media
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/10/smoke-filled-room-where-it-happens/#dinosaurs
160 notes · View notes
nonbinarypirat · 1 year ago
Text
education vs. fascism in iruma-kun
Tumblr media
someone mentioned this in another post but iruma-kun does a wonderful job of showing that education is key to fighting fascist and harmful radical ideas. As soon as it became clear that things were going to change in the netherworld what was Sullivan's response? It wasn't "oh we need to send spies" or "we need to find the people" (though im sure people are working hard to find those answers) it was "we need to focus on educating our students." Because only knowledge and diversity in thoughts can combat fascist ideas. The issue only becomes worse with a lack of understanding and an echo chamber. And by doubling down with education, we can make sure our students are prepared for what lies ahead. Thats how we truly fight the power.
The teachers themselves can tell that things are changing. They stay informed and guess what? its obvious things are about to throw down soon. And so they work tirelessly not just because it's their jobs, but because they need to. this is their protest. this is how we can prevent the spread of gross rhetoric. And after Heartbreaker what they do? they double down on their education too. Because there is always something new to learn, always a way to grow/sharpen your strength. They too know that they can't stay stagnant, they must continue pushing to provide their students with the best chance of survival.
When you have villians that believe in these ideas in media, there's a big issue of them leaving out education as a weapon. But it's crucial if we want anything to truly change. Iruma himself wants to no longer be naive about the netherworld which was growing to be an issue the longer he stays. because yeah, you can't stay uninformed anymore iruma. its time to learn about the history of you new home and the leaders. taking being the king out of it, ignorance about these topics is a breeding ground for becoming complacent. iruma wants to be a hero? or at least, do the right thing when he can? that requires knowledge to make sure you aren't inadvertently hurting someone along the way.
Iruma loves the netherworld, the place he proudly calls home. but it's frought with danger and cruel people. And yet, Iruma is still proud of his new home and friends and wants to do anything he can to stay here. This reflects real life, where there is goodness and pride in the place you live and yet a faction of people who taint it with othering ideas. However, it's always worth fighting for the good overall and bettering yourself so you can see another tomorrow through. Iruma knows he can only protect himself and his loved ones is through learning. And I love Nishi for truly understanding this too. You can't fight fascism through pure will, it has to be beaten by education and the williness to better one's knowledge. That is how we will take back the Netherworld.
but yeah, this is just my little spiel as someone who loves educational activism and is going to school to become a teacher :). If i can find the original post I'll make sure to credit the op!
931 notes · View notes
rochenn · 1 year ago
Text
The year is 2034. Disney announces the production of the show "Resistance: Dooku of Serenno", set during the early days of the Empire, starring CG Christopher Lee.
We begin with a flashback to Revenge of the Sith. After Dooku is beheaded, we learn that he used the Force to supply his brain with blood and oxygen. The movie is visibly retconned - as Obi-Wan, Anakin and Palpatine flee the Invisible Hand, four human parts can be spotted stealthily floating after them.
Dooku, being Dooku, survives the crash and manages to steal away. His head is surgically reattached. Don't ask why nobody else ever stitched their lightsaber-chopped limbs back on. He ends up getting prosthetic hands, anyway. David Filoni said in a behind-the-scenes interview that he thought they were cool.
Previously established canon prevents Dooku from doing anything in-character until Order 66. He lets loose in Coruscant's undercity and becomes the local kooky old man who couldn't possibly be public enemy number one until Mace Windu, freshly fried and unhanded, crashes down in front of him. What a coincidence.
Mace is still played by Sam L. Jackson. He is So Old. He is only there for the paycheck. Disney didn't know how to recast him. He is acting alongside the shell of a man who has been dead for two decades.
After a joke about missing hands that is very funny, the two get along swimmingly. They don't really talk about Dooku's various war crimes. "My droid army would never traumatize a young child," Dooku says with a wink into the camera. Remember to buy your Mandalorian merch.
Mace and Dooku organize an underground resistance on Coruscant in the spirit of the Confederacy. Mace is okay with this. Choice aspects of this arc are compelling, like the fight against fascism under the yoke of cruel state suppression, but tone-deaf allusions to the work of Sophie Scholl cause controversy abroad. Andor did it better. Critics on YouTube who thus far lauded the return of fan favorites and 'faithful casting' tear into the show for pushing the woke agenda.
Nothing Mace and Dooku accomplish has any impact on the Original Trilogy. What were you expecting? The end of the show teases a second season with the arrival of a mysterious woman. Dooku's secret wife. You never knew of her because she was never relevant before. As the final credit music slowly creeps in, she says: "Don't you want to see your son?"
The music swells and we cut to Serenno. The planet has never been mentioned throughout all 15 episodes of the show. Standing in the ruins of Dooku's castle is Dooku's son: back turned to the viewer, gazing into the sunset. Dooku II of Serenno, proud heir, turns his head. He is played by Harry Styles.
Roll credits.
698 notes · View notes
wiisagi-maiingan · 3 months ago
Text
I'm not trying to be a doomer here, but it actually really aggravates me when people say there's no way that America can be turned into a fascist regime, that it's impossible for the Republicans to install a dictator, etc etc.
I think it's really easy and reassuring to look at fascism as something easy to prevent through voting or checks and balances or even just logistics. You can reassure yourself that nothing like that will ever happen to your country because things are different here. . . but that is what literally everyone thinks.
Nobody ever believes that their country can become a fascist dictatorship. Politicians openly talk about plans to put people into work camps and get rid of term limits and we say that that's not possible. A presidential candidate endorses an attempt to violently overthrow the government and we say it wasn't that bad actually because it didn't succeed and then we put him back into office. The presidential elect talks about his intentions to use the military for mass deportations, something only possible if immigrants are declared as hostile foreign invaders in a war, and we laugh at the absurdity because who would ever vote in favor of that?
And I'm not saying that we're going to turn into a dictatorship but I AM saying that it's ridiculous and ignorant to pretend like it's impossible, to ignore all the warning signs in favor of making ourselves feel better. And I say we because I fall into this mindset too but this is what everyone has done when faced with rising fascism and many people will never have the chance to regret acting like the signs weren't there.
169 notes · View notes