#political posts

[cetaceanhandiwork]

okay so one of the big arguments you hear against moving away from prisons as a society is that there’s always going to be some % of folks who have no interest in improving their behavior & would always be a danger if ever allowed to walk the streets again. and like, yeah, that % is probably low after you factor in all the other ideas ppl have for solving the root causes of crime (and the number of ppl right now who are imprisoned for incoherent ass reasons to begin with), but it’s never gonna be zero

but today I thought of a very stupid but also very funny solution to that problem: if the # really is as low as has been claimed/estimated, then even if there’s no prisons you can still put those people under house arrest

totalitarian regimes that are facing international pressure for political imprisonments do it all the time. sure, the number of political prisoners they have to treat that way is usually pretty low; it’s not a scalable solution. but you don’t need a scalable solution. we’ve already established that we’re dealing with the exceptional case, here! and in exchange, by using a non-scalable solution, you avoid all the costs of building something scalable. you never build  infrastructure of incarceration. this has several benefits:

nobody’s phoney baloney job relies on there still being a certain number of people imprisoned. you can scale down, even to zero if you get lucky, without that being a political football.

people under house arrest will be able to use normal ass things to live, instead of using special “for prisoners” stuff that’s secretly designed to be off-the-books torture. no special concrete buildings. no special phone companies that turn every phone conversation into a roll of the dice as to whether your recipient can figure out how to get quarters into its collect call wallet. no need for the state to suddenly being responsible for wiping a guy’s butt just because he’s in custody. and for the state, this is cheaper than the alternative! even the savings from cruelly bargain basement economies of scale can’t beat the savings from “that isn’t my problem in the first place”.

scaling it up is costly. yes, I mean it when I say that’s a benefit. consider this: it means that anyone who comes after you & wants to do mass incarceration is going to be bad at it. they’ll have to start from scratch. they’ll have to put in the startup costs and build the infrastructure. the thing you’re building will be harder to use for evil than it is to use for good. that’s the kind of legacy you want in politics.

[superbeans89]

[fandomshatepeopleofcolor]

I feel stuck in my head and I need to ask someone: what's gonna happen to us when biden's reelected? What can we do to stop the genocide? What can we do to get roe v wade back? How to we make things okay?

Answering the last question first — how do we make things okay? We get informed, and we get involved.

If you want to change how things work, first you have to understand why they work the way they do. I’m not saying you have to become an overnight expert, but you gotta know the basics. You have to know who *really* makes the decisions about the stuff you care about. And I’m not being snarky here, but there’s a very very very good chance that that person is not Biden.

(long-ish more in depth USA-specific thoughts under the cut)

Let’s look at the two specifics that you mention. Yes, the president may be commander in chief of the armed forces but that “just” (air quotes bc obviously that is hugely consequential power, but it’s not the only power at play) means he’s the guy who says yes or no, stay or go. A more effective tool to address the United State’s relationship to Israel? Money. You know who controls the federal money? Congress. You know which political body has elections twice as frequently as the president? Congress. Look into who your Senators and Representatives are, look into their voting records, look into their hiring choices, look into their public statements and appearances, look into the company the keep.

If you like what you find, let them know, and if you have the resources, donate money and/or volunteer your time to make sure they win reelection. If you do not like what you find, and you think they might be responsive to public pressure, let them know you didn’t like what you found. If you found it abhorrent or do not trust that they will adjust to their constituents expectations, figure out if they have a competitor, and if they don’t, make sure that someone steps up to the plate. That someone doesn’t have to be you, but while we live in an ostensible democracy, these people can lose their jobs if and when we vote them out.

Regarding Roe v Wade, this might be upsetting to hear but you need to get used to the idea that it’s not coming back, and if anything, things might get worse. If voting and the legal system is your jam, I can recommend researching the circuit and district judges that preside over your region. If organizing and direct action are more your thing, there’s probably a Nurse’s Union in your area that can point you in the right direction. If your school district has an elected body where you can run for a seat to make sure that kids in your area are getting appropriately scientific sexual health education, do that. If you feel brave enough to start actively having conversations about sexual health and reproductive rights among your daily/weekly social groups, and maybe even start a book club style study group to learn about the legal and medical aspects most relevant where you live, do that. Even on the most individual scale, if you can make it clearly known that you are a safe person for people to talk to about this stuff, that’s a great step in the right direction.

To wrap this up, I think I’ll just say that I think big picture, if Biden wins a second term, things will be fine. If anything, maybe his administration will be able to bolster the environmental wins in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) but at a basic level he will probably maintain the status quo and then after the four years are up, he’ll leave office.

Let’s please not pretend the same can be said about Trump.

But in the spirit of ending on a more hopeful note, if you do not want Kamala Harris to be the presumptive nominee for the Democratic Party in 2028 (and/or if you want a third party other than the Democrats and the Republicans to stand a snowball’s chance in hell) the time to start organizing is now. We deserve better than the status quo, we can do this, let’s fuckin go 💪

mod dyr

[wolfspaw]

[marvelsmostwanted]

There are people – some in my own Party – who think that if you just give Donald Trump everything he wants, he’ll make an exception and spare you some of the harm. I’ll ignore the moral abdication of that position for just a second to say — almost none of those people have the experience with this President that I do. I once swallowed my pride to offer him what he values most — public praise on the Sunday news shows — in return for ventilators and N95 masks during the worst of the pandemic. We made a deal. And it turns out his promises were as broken as the BIPAP machines he sent us instead of ventilators. Going along to get along does not work – just ask the Trump-fearing red state Governors who are dealing with the same cuts that we are. I won’t be fooled twice.

I’ve been reflecting, these past four weeks, on two important parts of my life: my work helping to build the Illinois Holocaust Museum and the two times I’ve had the privilege of reciting the oath of office for Illinois Governor.

As some of you know, Skokie, Illinois once had one of the largest populations of Holocaust survivors anywhere in the world. In 1978, Nazis decided they wanted to march there.

The leaders of that march knew that the images of Swastika clad young men goose stepping down a peaceful suburban street would terrorize the local Jewish population – so many of whom had never recovered from their time in German concentration camps.

The prospect of that march sparked a legal fight that went all the way to the Supreme Court. It was a Jewish lawyer from the ACLU who argued the case for the Nazis – contending that even the most hateful of speech was protected under the first amendment.

As an American and a Jew, I find it difficult to resolve my feelings around that Supreme Court case – but I am grateful that the prospect of Nazis marching in their streets spurred the survivors and other Skokie residents to act. They joined together to form the Holocaust Memorial Foundation and built the first Illinois Holocaust Museum in a storefront in 1981 – a small but important forerunner to the one I helped build thirty years later.

I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly. But I know the history intimately — and have spent more time than probably anyone in this room with people who survived the Holocaust. Here’s what I’ve learned – the root that tears apart your house’s foundation begins as a seed – a seed of distrust and hate and blame.

The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe a lifetime ago didn’t arrive overnight. It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame.

I’m watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now. A president who watches a plane go down in the Potomac – and suggests — without facts or findings — that a diversity hire is responsible for the crash. Or the Missouri Attorney General who just sued Starbucks – arguing that consumers pay higher prices for their coffee because the baristas are too “female” and “nonwhite.” The authoritarian playbook is laid bare here: They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems.

I just have one question: What comes next? After we’ve discriminated against, deported or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorities – once we’ve ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends – After that, when the problems we started with are still there staring us in the face – what comes next.

All the atrocities of human history lurk in the answer to that question. And if we don’t want to repeat history – then for God’s sake in this moment we better be strong enough to learn from it.

I swore the following oath on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible: “I do solemnly swear that I will support the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the state of Illinois, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of Governor .... according to the best of my ability.

My oath is to the Constitution of our state and of our country. We don’t have kings in America – and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one. I am not speaking up in service to my ambitions — but in deference to my obligations.

If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this:

It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. All I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.

Those Illinois Nazis did end up holding their march in 1978 – just not in Skokie. After all the blowback from the case, they decided to march in Chicago instead. Only twenty of them showed up. But 2000 people came to counter protest. The Chicago Tribune reported that day that the “rally sputtered to an unspectacular end after ten minutes.” It was Illinoisans who smothered those embers before they could burn into a flame.

Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance. Democracy requires your courage. So gather your justice and humanity, Illinois, and do not let the “tragic spirit of despair” overcome us when our country needs us the most.

Sources:

• NBC Chicago & J.B. Pritzker, Democratic governor of Illinois, State of the State address 2025: Watch speech here | Full text

• Betches News on Instagram (screencaps)

[lun-rk800]

Several documentaries publically treating Luigi Mangione as guilty before his trial even started got released over the past 2 months.

Here's the billion dollar companies behind them.

[honey002]

In regards of the Trump government scraping all trans inclusion in its queer information portion of its websites I have made this thing. Spread the word. Don't let them pretend we never existed.

P.S: Don't like! Reblog! <3

EDIT: Well this got a lot of attention! I got a few users asking to print or repost my art and I am unimaginably grateful to everyone's interest, especially since it's a really simple drawing I made on a whim haha! Anyone who is looking to print these out to hang or hand out or repost on another platform is free to do so, although I ask you to credit me and let people know it's from my Tumblr profile! If anyone wishes to do anything else with my art or post and wants to clarify what I consent to then they can message me privately and I'll explain! <333 all my love to my queer siblings

EDIT: I made an LGBTQIA+ version with a focus on trans and intersex folks, it's on my pinned if you prefer this version of the acronym.

[rats4brainzzz]

imagine how much of a fucking horrible person you have to be that on the first day your elected into office the crisis calls of a Suicide Prevention Project Go Up 33%. The Trevor Project Received over 1,400 Call By Early Monday Afternoon. Most of those calls, if not all, are coming from children. Children scared of you and what you will do. Imagine how much power and how horrible you have to be to do that.

( Edit ) Link To Where I Got My Info:

[princesserica84]

"So this is how liberty dies... With thunderous applause."

[oldtvandcomics]

HEY GUYS!!

GUYS!!!

FRANCE HAS REACHED THE REQUIRED NUMBER OF SIGNATURES ON THE CITIZEN'S INITIATIVE AGAINST CONVERSION THERAPY IN THE EU!!

ONE COUNTRY DOWN, SIX TO GO!!

We also need still quite a few signatures in order to reach the one million required.

As to date, the six other countries with the most signatures are:

Spain - 38.72%

Finland - 30.31%

Ireland - 24.86%

Netherlands - 24.15%

Germany - 23.54%

Belgium - 23.09%

So yeah, still a long way to go, but we ARE slowly getting closer. Don't stop now! Don't let this stay within the community, either, if you have any friends or family who are open to queer rights, get them to sign, too!

[cetaceanhandiwork]

the thing you gotta understand is that every time a sufficiently foreign government does something unpopular enough for average joe on the trolly to have an opinion about it, the result is increased hate crimes against the ethnicity that average joe thinks of as "living there"

remember how, in 2020, when COVID broke containment and spread worldwide, anti-asian violence more than doubled? remember sikh dudes getting jumped over 9/11?

or, for a milder and sillier couple examples: remember how, after the invasion of Ukraine, people were posting on here about giving up Russian cuisine for no good reason? remember freedom fries?

this shit happens every time. people start lashing out against their neighbors b/c something in their brain breaks and makes it so they can't distinguish between "the Russians" (i.e. the government of Russia) and "the Russians" (i.e. some random ethnically Russian guy). and yes this is partly the fault of how governments sort of deliberately name themselves as if the plot of land & the main culture that lives there & the organization that rules it are all one thing - it's harder to keep the three separated in your head when metonymy is built into the terms we use. but I think it's more fundamental than that; after all, it's not like "al qaeda" is any specific country, or as if anyone is "of talibani descent", but 2002's anti-brown and anti-muslim sentiment didn't seem to have been weakened by that.

and so... bringing this around to current events? yeah, actual hate crimes against jews are on the rise, and that's worth talking about & fighting back against. and since we understand that "jewish ppl =/= gov't of israel", we need to be especially responsive to warnings of antisemitism, and not just write them off as being "about" the war, because until you hear the rest of the sentence you don't know whether it's about criticism of the war or not. and accidentally writing off fears about unprecedented levels of antisemitic hate crime (which is happening) as being IDF apologism just makes it sound to the person you're talking with like you think all jews are responsible for the IDF's crimes, which is an awful thing to hear from someone who's supposed to be an ally.

(bonus fact: in case you didn't guess already? wonder of wonders, the other possible version of this situation is happening as well, simultaneously: islamophobic attacks on the rise b/c people see "Hamas" and think "any random palestinian/arab near me". this shit cuts every possible direction. because, again, it doesn't result from a logical thought process. it's people mixing up "ethnic group" with "goverment of country where many of that ethnic group reside", and then taking out their anger at the latter on the former, and the whole political spectrum is vulnerable to that kind of thinking. it happens EVERY time.)

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

[motherofplatypus]

This is how many bullets they shot on a fucking kid.

This post has been compiled in Record of Genocide.

[irate-iguana]

For those who don’t know, Elon Musk has recently been directing his assholery towards Wikipedia — calling them ‘Wokepedia’ due to the amount they spend on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and calling for people to stop giving them money “until they restore balance to their editing authority” —, now is a great time to consider donating to Wikipedia!

[troythecatfish]