#state sanctioned slavery

[haggishlyhagging]

This legalization of prostitution in the nineteenth century by the state is its open approval of that doctrine of the church that woman was created for man. It is an acknowledgment by men that vice is an inherent quality of their natures. It is in accord with man's repeated assertion that only through means of a class of women pursuing immorality as a business, is any woman safe from violence.

In a letter to the National Woman Suffrage Convention at St. Louis (May 1879), Mrs. Josephine E. Butler, Honorable Secretary of the Federation and of the Ladies National Association for the Protection of Women, wrote:

England holds a peculiar position in regard to the question. She was the last to adopt this system of slavery, and she adopted it in that thorough manner which characterizes the actions of the Anglo-Saxon race. In no other country has prostitution been registered by law. It has been understood by the Latin race, even when morally enervated, that the law could not—without risk of losing its majesty and force—sanction illegality and violate justice. In England alone the regulations are law.

This legalization of vice—which is the endorsement of the "necessity" of impurity of man and the institution of the slavery of woman—is the most open denial which modern times have seen of the principle of the sacredness of the individual human being.

An English high-class journal dared to demand that women who are unchaste shall henceforth be dealt with "not as human beings, but as foul sewers" or some such "material nuisance" without souls, without rights and without responsibility. When the leaders of public opinion in a country have arrived at such a point of combined skepticism and despotism as to recommend such a manner of dealing with human beings, there is no crime which that country may not presently legalize. There is no organization of murder, no conspiracy of abominable things that it may not, and in due time will not, have been found to embrace in its guilty methods.

-Matilda Joslyn Gage, Woman, Church and State

[godloveyell]

Jesus Fucking Chris! Are homeless people supposed to just hover a few inches off the ground when they need to sleep?!

Nothing like homeless people to turn even the most compassionate people into devout eugenicists. I’m waiting for some politician to pass a law forcing homeless people to compete in Hunger Games or Squid Games-style shows for the entertainment of the public. Lord knows there will be pundits and others willing to defend this sort of thing, because see previous remarks about eugenics.

Ideally, we’d just give homeless people a goddamn house. It’s literally been proven to be cheaper and more effective than any of our labyrinthine bureaucracies or letting them die in the streets.

But if we’re not going to do anything to address the problem of homelessness, is it so much to ask that we not at least make matters worse for them? They’re just trying to live.

Apparently it is too much to ask.

And who enforces this? Is it just a few bad apples, or is it all cops?

How hard is it for them to find cops willing to enforce this? Do they have to sift through hundreds of heroic cops who refuse until they find the one cop who's monstrous enough to enforce this, or do they easily find cops willing to enforce this because monstrous cops are everywhere and being a monster is part of the job?

"All cops are bad" is not a stereotype. It's literally a requirement for the job that every single one knew about.

[notchainedtotrauma]

In any case, white people, who had robbed black people of their liberty and who profited by this theft every hour they lived, had no moral ground on which to stand. They had the judges, the juries, the shotgun, the law-in a word, power. But it was a criminal power, to be feared but not to be respected, and to be outwitted in any way whatsoever.

from Down at the Cross by James Baldwin

[communistkenobi]

does anyone have reading recommendations that clarify the difference between liberalism and fascism? I’m having trouble distinguishing what is just like normal levels of imperial/colonial violence conducted by a liberal state and what pushes it over the edge into a fascist state. Is fascism simply mature liberalism? Is it liberalism in crisis? Can we only make historical, reactive judgements about what is fascist, which is to say, can we only know if fascism occurred after it has come and gone? I take the general point that calling all liberal states fascist can let them off the hook for types of violence considered normal or “just doing business,” invisibilising the daily violences they conduct as part of the regular maintenance of a liberal capitalist state. People are calling the US fascist for its direct participation in and funding of the genocide in Palestine - a diagnosis I don't disagree with, but if that’s the case, where do you draw the distinction between the US being merely a liberal state with aggressive global imperial ambitions and the US being a fully fascist state? Perhaps more bluntly, what’s the difference between a liberal drone strike and a fascist one? I’m struggling to understand the value of the fascist label, because everything it describes (ultranationalism, a theory of racial and cultural degeneracy/decline, paranoia about an imminent external threat expressed as violence against internal populations deemed to have insufficient loyalty to the country, a turn towards a mythologised tradition of the past, imperial expansion, genocidal projects against minority populations, etc etc) just seems to me like a description of United States in general lol

[oneshortdamnfuse]

PLEASE support The Innocence Project. Let the state sanctioned murder of Marcellus Williams radicalize you into caring about incarcerated people. Don’t let those in office that allow for this to defeat you. Incarcerated people are among the most violated and exploited class of people in the United States. We have built a justice system that benefits off of the mass incarceration of marginalized people. Incarceration is used to disenfranchise people. It is used for modern day slavery. Anyone can become incarcerated. It is the quickest and easiest way for your government to strip you of your rights.

[serious2020]

She smoked weed legally, then gave birth. New York took her baby.

www.nytimes.com/2023/05/17/nyregion/marijuana-mother-child-removed-lawsuit.html

[wileycap]

PALPATINE: My dear boy. The only thing that we are discussing right now is what you want.

ANAKIN: Hm. Okay, world peace for Padmé, a Best Jedi mug for Obi-Wan - no, that's not me being bitchy, he literally will not accept a bigger gift...

PALPATINE: Yes, you shall have it all. Just -

ANAKIN: Oh, I'm not done. A billion... no, you know what, a trillion credits for Ahsoka, rights for the clones plus backpay and overtime for the war, full rights to their own genetic code, a special vode-only tribune that will investigate Kaminoans and natborn officers for sentient rights violations...

PALPATINE:

ANAKIN: ... slavery is to be abolished across the galaxy, I and any vode who want to join me will be sanctioned by the Republic to hunt down slavers, starting with Tatooine, hair cream for Windu - okay, that one is me being bitchy - and, well, I guess I'd want a fleet of the absolute best ships for me. As a treat.

PALPATINE: I see. Are you done?

ANAKIN: I guess. How soon can you deliver?

PALPATINE: Well. As it stands... it might... take some time.

ANAKIN: That's cool. You can get all the legal stuff done tomorrow, just call in a special session of the Senate, but I get that commissioning a fleet will take some time. I didn't even give you a list of models or anything.

PALPATINE: ... yes. I can't help but to think that you're disregarding your wife's safety here.

ANAKIN: Oh, no. I'm being smart.

PALPATINE: You are?

ANAKIN: Yup. Padmé is a completely healthy woman. Her pregnancy is very low risk. So, if she's going to die in childbirth, it's got to have something to do with the war, right? If we end the war, there's no danger to Padmé.

PALPATINE: Have you forgotten what I told you about Darth Plagueis the Wise?

ANAKIN: No, but if I use Sith Magic to save her, she's probably going to turn into a zombie or something. Trust me, Chancellor, I've seen it before.

PALPATINE: I'm afraid to ask, but where have you seen zombies?

ANAKIN: Eh, you can check my mission reports. Anyways, if you just hand me your credit chit, I can get to buying Obi-Wan that mug, giving Ahsoka the trillion and all that.

PALPATINE: Well, I...

ANAKIN: And if you don't want to go through with this, I'm definitely going to murder you right now. You being a Sith Lord and all that.

PALPATINE: Oh.

ANAKIN: Yeah.

PALPATINE: Well, here's my credit chit.

ANAKIN: Thanks, Sheev! Just one more question. What are you getting out of this?

PALPATINE: ... I'm going to declare myself Emperor and bring about the age of the Sith.

ANAKIN: Okay, that's cool.

PALPATINE: It... is?

ANAKIN: Sure. I mean, you basically are an emperor already, and we have freedom of religion. Just make sure that your Empire is strictly democratic, or else Padmé's going to be mad at me.

PALPATINE: I... what? The purpose of an Empire is to do away with democracy! Cut away the rot of bureaucracy!

ANAKIN: Chancellor, do you remember the conversation we had just now about me murdering you?

PALPATINE: Yes, but you hate the Republic too!

ANAKIN: I know, but work stuff can't come between me and Padmé. One of the rules of a successful marriage. Anyways, get it done. I gotta go buy a mug and some hair cream.

-------------------------------

BREAKING NEWS!

PEACE! Supreme Chancellor / Emperor-Elect Sheev Palpatine has announced the immediate cessation of hostilities between the Republic and the CIS along with a slew of other groundbreaking proposals. The Supreme Chancellor stated that with the death of General Grievous...

The Coruscant Herald spoke with Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, also known as the Negotiator.

"I've got this mug." said Master Kenobi, before launching into a protracted rant about the state of our democracy.

"I got back from Utapau, and Anakin tells me that he 'kind of' turned to the Dark Side. How do you 'kind of' turn? But now we have galactic peace. But we also have an Emperor. Well, in three days we will have an Emperor. But the Emperor is going to have less power than the Supreme Chancellor has right now, and they're the same person. Not to mention that he's the Sith. My entire life has turned into a philosophical nightmare on whether the ends justify the means, and it's all being personified by this blasted mug." ...

Senator Padmé Amidala of Naboo had a brief conversation with the Herald.

"Well, I think of it like a retirement present. A lifetime achievement award. He is an older man, and no doubt he'll abdicate in due time. This will be an interesting footnote in the history of the Republic." ...

Spokesbeing for the Shmi Skywalker Foundation, Anakin Skywalker spoke at length with our reporter.

"Well, we at the Shmi Skywalker Foundation offer only two things: freedom to slaves and death to slavers. And sometimes imprisonment to slavers, because Obi-Wan and Padmé were pretty adamant about that. And also financial aid, legal aid, housing, therapy, et cetera. For the freed people. So I guess we offer more than two things, but they're all good things."

"Sheev? Sheev is great. A nice old man. I think he's going to abdicate in, oh, three years or so? [Editor's Note: Transcript is garbled due to the Emperor-Elect coughing suddenly.] [...Yo]u need a glass of water, Sheev? Get him - yeah, one of you red guys, get him a glass of water. You're not a young man anymore, Sheev. Yeah, I think he'll abdicate within three years."

Emperor-Elect Sheev Palpatine declined to comment at this time.

[eroguron0nsense]

Garp, Fascism, and Parental Failure

Garp is truly one of the most interesting One Piece characters for me because of the extent to which his dogged, relentless devotion to a fascist system–and the supposed "order" it promises to uphold in the face of anarchy or rebellion–perseveres no matter how many times it fails him and his son and his grandsons. He's fully aware of the deep-seated corruption and atrocity, and feels some kind of moral obligation to bend its rules to protect the innocent (as we can see with his attempts to protect Rouge and Ace), but when faced with widespread femicide and infanticide, genocide, slavery and endless examples of egregious cruelty, he is unable to comprehend the notion that the system is indefensible, or that the only moral choice he can possibly make when faced with that level of atrocity is to leave and resist it. His son recognizing the inherent, inexcusable failures of the World Government and its armed enforcers–literally quitting the force to start a revolution– changes nothing. The order to slaughter pregnant people and infants at Baterilla can't convince him otherwise. The countless instances of bribery, the tolerance of atrocity from state-sanctioned privateers, everything about the history of the Valley of the Gods are all things he's aware of, and takes issue with, but never comes to the conclusion that he cannot affect positive change within a system designed for oppression. The public execution of his grandson–a prime example of the marine's fundamentally irrational, arrogant, vindictive cruelty clearly bound to blow up in all of their faces even before their Pyrrhic victory at the summit war–makes him waver, but even when confronted with this obvious, indefensible injustice against a child he raised and rescued by people seeking to murder him on live TV and desecrate his corpse as a show of power, he cannot bring himself to act against it in any meaningful way no matter how much it hurts him to leave his grandson to die. If he can't veto it, he'll stay Vice Admiral and suffer through Ace being sacrificed on the altar of fascist state control, and functionally leave Luffy for dead in the process while he's at it. He fails every single person he wanted to love–Ace, Luffy, and almost certainly Dragon–and allows himself to be reluctantly complicit in countless crimes against humanity again and again and again because he's so deeply steeped in this notion of preservation of order through state control that he convinces himself that even this disgusting, atrocious, fundamentally flawed and untenable excuse for a government is better than abolition, better than revolution, or just the act of expecting accountability or literally anything better from the systems that issue false promises to protect you. Dadan beating the living shit out of him and calling him a failure as a grandfather, as a self proclaimed defender of the people, is one of the most important scenes in the Postwar Arc because a lesser series might frame Garp as a tragic, helpless figure suffering more than anyone else due to conflict of love and duty, but One Piece refuses to whitewash his actions/inaction or allow the grief and suffering caused by systems he's complicit in to take precedence over its real victims: the D brothers.

There's so much I could say about statism and anarchism and the ways people have internalized the supposed necessity of state violence to the extent they can't oppose that violence even when it ruins them or their loved ones, but that horrible indoctrination and its devastating consequences for both him and his family are what makes Garp so fascinating to watch and so thematically/politically important to One Piece as a whole.

[queerism1969]

Atrocity created by CAPITALISM

Irish Famine (1845-1852)

Indian Famines during British colonial rule (Various, 18th-20th centuries)

Indigenous Genocide (Ongoing since colonization)

Slavery (16th-19th centuries)

Indonesian Genocide (1965-1966)

Pinochet Dictatorship (1973-1990)

Argentina Dictatorship (1976-1983)

Brazilian Dictatorship (1964-1985)

Pakistan Incident (Bangladesh Genocide, 1971)

The Gilded Age (Late 19th century)

The Great Depression (1929-1939)

Operation Condor (1960s-1980s)

Banana Wars (Early 20th century)

Batista Dictatorship (1952-1959)

Guantanamo Bay (Ongoing since 2002)

Vietnam War (1955-1975)

My Lai Massacre (1968)

Sinchon Massacre (Korean War, 1950-1953)

Kent State Massacre (1970)

Patriot Act (2001)

Red Summer (1919)

Jim Crow (Late 19th-20th centuries)

MK Ultra (1950s-1970s)

1985 MOVE bombing (1985)

1921 Battle of Blair Mountain (1921)

Malayan Emergency (1948-1960)

Mau Mau Rebellion (1952-1960)

Covert war in Yemen (Ongoing)

Stanley Meyer incident (1998)

Genocide in Turkey (Armenian Genocide and others, WWI era)

Congolese Genocide (Late 19th-20th centuries)

Greek Civil War (1946-1949)

Invasion of Cyprus by Turkey (1974)

Washita River Massacre (1868)

Minamata Disaster (1950s-1960s)

Bhopal Disaster (1984)

Kentler Project (1960s-2003)

Thomas Midgley Jr. and leaded gasoline (Early 20th century)

Forced labor in private US prisons (Ongoing)

Collateral murder in Iraq (2010)

Julian Assange and leaks (Ongoing)

US drone strikes (Ongoing)

US sanctions (Ongoing)

US support for dictatorships (Ongoing)

Korean War and civilian casualties (Korean War, 1950-1953)

Nazi funding and collaboration (WWII era)

Hitler and "Judeo-Bolshevism" (WWII era)

[bsof-maarav]

Editor’s Note: Sanne DeWitt is a microbiologist, geneticist, researcher, and author of a memoir: “I Was Born In An Old Age Home”. She has lived in Berkeley, California since 1957, where she moved for advanced studies in microbiology and genetics, and worked there until her retirement. The views expressed here are those of the author. View more opinion on CNN.CNN — 

In 1957, I moved to Berkeley, California: a bastion of American liberalism that squarely aligns with my progressive values, and a hub of American scholarship that nurtured my academic quest and professional growth. I came here for advanced studies in microbiology and genetics. Since then, I have lived, worked as a scientist and retired in this community.

Over the 65 years that I have called this beautiful area home, I have occasionally encountered antisemitism, but these one-off incidents never succeeded in destroying my spirit. When I was four years old, Nazis burst into my bedroom and sent me and my family to Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp. We were soon released and I was smuggled out of Germany by a Christian woman. After this harrowing experience, not much in the Bay Area could scare me.

But since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, the hatred towards Jews that I have seen in Berkeley terrifies me more than anything I have experienced while living here. I am still reeling from being called a liar at a Berkeley City Council meeting, where I asked for a proclamation to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day and spoke about October 7. The Jews at that meeting were circled and called “Zionist pigs” by menacing protesters.

We are approaching the holiday of Passover, which commemorates the freedom of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery and our formation as a free Jewish people in our own land. But this Passover is like no other in recent history, with scores of hostages still held in Gaza and Jews worldwide fearful for our future — including Jews in the US. We are facing the worst global antisemitism since the Holocaust and while it is not state-sanctioned as Nazism was, it is a threat going unchecked in California’s East Bay.

It is incredibly painful to see my neighbors vilify Jews, tear down posters of Jewish hostages in Gaza and not believe Jewish rape victims. In this hotbed, hatred and hostility have become normalized. Families have moved their children out of public schools. Jewish businesses have been vandalized and boycotted. And lies about Jews and Israel have gone unchecked and unchallenged in our public forums. Our local Jewish community is both horrified and petrified.

This onslaught of Jewish hatred cannot become the new normal. This epidemic must be treated as seriously as all other hatreds that our society is confronting, such as racism and homophobia. We need more education about Judaism and how the long, sordid history of antisemitism ties into other forms of hatred in our public schools.

We need colleges and universities to unequivocally denounce hate speech and actions directed at Jews. We need public officials to urge mutual respect, understanding and civil discourse during city council and town hall meetings.

I have seen where unchecked antisemitism can lead, when people will do nothing — or worse, join the mainstream, such as our German neighbors during Nazism. This Passover, I resolve with whatever time I have left in this world to fight for the safety of the Jewish people, in Berkeley and around the globe.

During Passover, we are commanded to tell the story of the exodus out of Egypt to our children. We believe in the lasting power of sharing this history with younger generations and reflecting on this hopeful new beginning. There is also lasting power in sharing my history as a Jewish refugee — and I invite my Berkeley neighbors to hear my story. Without understanding and acceptance, we are enslaved by our biases.

The hatred, violence and bigotry against the Jewish community cannot continue — for our shared future, we must confront it and root it out.

[contemplatingoutlander]

"One of the most important realities of American life is this: No nation can fully undo the effects of 345 years of state-sanctioned bigotry — from slavery to Jim Crow — in 59 years. The time period between the arrival of the first slaves on colonial shores in 1619 and the abolition of legalized discrimination with the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 is simply too long, the discrimination too ingrained and the distortion of society too great to wave the wand of legal and cultural reform and quickly realize the dream of American equality."

--David French, Opinion Columnist for the The New York Times

[saintsenara]

For sure and fair play, HP was a long project! But yeah, JKR fiercely defending her inconsistencies almost forces us to fiercely point them. Out of spite. I do get that many issues were out of Harry’s radar and understanding, but JKR trying to convince the audience through interviews that the wizarding world doesn’t have the same prejudices as the muggle world just makes me conclude that she must be herself incredibly unaware of the privileges herself and people in her circle possess. Plus the whole HIV parallel that just sounds so misguided and sours the text to me. Yet here I am! Love your blog xx

the lycanthropy-as-aids metaphor is extraordinary in how tone-deaf it is and it pisses me off...

especially because it doesn't make sense at any point in the story. the complete transformation of how house elves think of their enslavement between chamber of secrets [in which dobby mentions whisper-networks of politically-engaged elves decrying their treatment at the hands of wizards] and goblet of fire is really fucking irritating, but it has some slight defence in the narrative shift that the series undergoes after prisoner of azkaban from children's boarding-school literature to something approaching folkloric epic.

[that is, chamber of secrets needs to wrap up with dobby being freed, the malfoys getting their - comparatively benign - comeuppance, and everything being well, because children's stories always end with that everything back to normal vibe, and so the fact that harry has just learned that the wizarding world has institutionalised chattel slavery and been remarkably unbothered by that fact can be shelved by the genre conventions. after prisoner of azkaban, the books end more ambiguously and are more interlinked, as they start moving towards their big conclusion in deathly hallows, and are also darker in tone. and yet she decided to use this shift in tone... to make elves love being enslaved...]

which is to say, perhaps the lycanthropy-as-aids metaphor could be justified as a standalone plot device within prisoner of azkaban - since the reader does hear lupin explain not only the shame and stigma wizarding society's poor understanding of his condition causes, but also how the state's callous discrimination against werewolves impacts his ability to access healthcare, education, and employment - which then doesn't work after the series' narrative shift, when jkr wanted to introduce characters like fenrir greyback...

except it doesn't work even then! because at the end of prisoner of azkaban lupin turns into a rampaging monster who has a desperate, primal urge to eat children - and reveals his condition to be legitimately dangerous to an extent which entirely justifies why parents would feel uneasy about him being employed in a school.

[and - especially - being employed without dumbledore appearing to put any safeguards in place to keep both lupin and his students safe.]

one part of the tragedy of the aids crisis is baseless social stigma at an individual level, absolutely, and lupin - who is a nice [ish] man who doesn't meet the stereotypes wizards appear to have of untransformed werewolves - suffers from this.

but another is the way this stigma drove a state-sanctioned looking-the-other-way and refusing to act while the bodies piled up - something there is no parallel for in the series' worldbuilding around werewolves, not least because it tends to have a positive view of states and their institutions [state corruption is always located in individuals - fudge, umbridge - rather than in the structures which enable them, which are seen as fundamentally sound, for example] which i would imagine most people who know even a cursory amount about the official response to the aids crisis are unlikely to share...

and another is that - since hiv has a very, very long asymptomatic period - it was spreading without anyone knowing it existed for years, if not decades, before it burst into the public consciousness with death on wholesale scale. and then it continued to spread in terror and confusion - for years, you couldn't know if you had it until you started getting sick, and then, when you could access tests [if you could access tests], you were told it was a death sentence, and you would be unable to pinpoint when and by whom you'd been infected, and you would be unable to know how many people you might have infected in turn.

nothing about the series' presentation of lycanthropy corresponds to this.

but, with this said, i think there are two parallels between the conditions which could be interesting in the hands of someone who approached them with care.

the first is to see lupin's role as the series' one "good werewolf" as a mirror to the fact that public opinion became considerably more sympathetic to those living with and dying of hiv/aids when it began to emerge that people [white! "respectable"! heterosexual!] had been infected via blood transfusions and treatments for haemophilia. queer men and intravenous drug users could be dismissed as having brought their infections upon themselves... but not someone [white! "respectable"! heterosexual!] who went into hospital for a routine operation and came out slowly dying.

lupin - the son of a prominent civil servant [with all the class status that entails], bitten as a child through no fault of his own, hogwarts educated, connected to establishment figures like dumbledore - makes a great poster child for a milquetoast "werewolves aren't all bad" campaign which manages not to offend the state's sensibilities by asking it to stop demonising pretty much every other werewolf in history...

the second is to think about the generational divide.

in countries where access to appropriate medication is widespread [and that there are many countries where this isn't the case shouldn't be forgotten], hiv is easily treatable, easily manageable, easily rendered untransmissable, and easily preventable. the quality of life - and the life expectancy - of hiv positive people is now broadly equal to that of their hiv negative peers. the number of aids-related deaths worldwide annually has more than halved since 2010 and, in 2024, it is possible to say that virtually nobody who is newly diagnosed with hiv will go on to develop aids.

this is - sincerely - one of the single greatest achievements in the history of medicine. and it's completely changed how we think and talk about hiv, what it means to be diagnosed with it, what it means to live with it, and what it means to know [and to love, and to fuck] someone who has it.

if we imagine that there are similar advances in the treatment of lycanthropy - with the wolfsbane potion, which seems pretty bare-bones, replaced with something which made the impact of the werewolf's transformation even less severe [or which prevented it altogether] - then being a werewolf in the 2020s would mean something very different than it did in the 1980s.

and if - say - lupin is right, and teddy inherits his condition, thinking about how enormously different his experience being a werewolf might be from his father's [even at a very basic level - not having to turn down invitations based on the moon cycle, for example], and how he would come to understand himself and understand lupin through this different experience, would be a genuinely fascinating premise for a fic.

but not if jkr was writing it.

[notchainedtotrauma]

Bernice King's quoting her father Martin Luther King: “We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.” #MLKDay #MLK95 #MLK

Bernice King quoting her father Martin Luther King: “Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.” #MLKDay #MLK95 #MLK

Bernice King quoting her father Martin Luther King: “Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter — but beautiful — struggle for a new world.”

Bernice King quoting her father Martin Luther King: “True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.” #MLKDay #MLK95 #MLK

Bernice King quoting her father Martin Luther King: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” #MLKDay #MLK95 #MLK

Bernice King quoting her father Martin Luther King: “A Church that has lost its voice for justice is a Church that has lost its relevance in the world.” #MLKDay #MLK95 #MLK

[hoodreader]

the lynching/murder of Khaliifah Williams (Rest in Power & Peace ✊🏾🕊️)

transit, mundane, & political astrology ramble from a pro-Black + afro pessimist leaning astrology student. i’m still learning so take that into consideration when reading.

trigger warning: state sanctioned violence

it is with insurmountable sadness that i write this post regarding the recent lynching of Khaliifah Williams, a wrongly convinced Black man who was sentenced to death by the state of missouri/mike parson. after countless of calls, protests, marches, blockades, pleas from the victim’s family and the williams family, Khaliifah was murdered by this system.

i see his face and i see all of us. all of us black people!!! i see oldhead uncles, barber shops, corner stores. i see something so familiar. do not let this mourning be for nothing. arm urself with knowledge, community, and bravery.

i know i can’t physically hold a moment of silence with text, but please allow thirty seconds of quiet before clicking ‘Keep Reading,’ to simply honor the memory of another soul lost to this system.

read his poetry here: “Perspectives and Emotions” by Khaliifah Williams, aka, Marcellus Williams.

On September 24, 2024 at 6:10 pm in Bonne Terre, Missouri, Khaliifah Williams was lynched by this system / Mike Parson.

1H in Pisces containing Saturn in Pisces Rx

a water sign shows emotional sensitivity. in a mutable modality, it shows that there is change coming. i feel Khaliifah is represented by Saturn in this chart, as saturn in the mundane chart represents the oppressed, isolated, imprisoned, dead, and poor or enslaved. i also personally ascribe race (and racial oppression) to saturn as well.

if u have any understanding of the USA prison system, it is derived from the abolishment of chattel slavery in the united states. when it was illegalized to own slaves on plantations, it was then only allowed within prisons, and so, black people became disproportionately imprisoned. thus… slavery persists. source.

communally, saturn in the mundane chart rules sadness, sorrow, depression, and disappointment in the public. as u can see, saturn is in a tight conjunction to the ascendant. the moment of his lynching was a moment of disappointment and misery to the people, as it became (once again) grimly bleak what the state of this nation is. i wonder if it functions as “the last straw.”

jupiter is the chart ruler here. and it’s actually quite interesting… while saturn is the signifier for the proliteriate, the poor, the enslaved, the imprisoned, and the marginalized… jupiter is the signifier of the bourgeoisie, the wealthy, judicial leaders, justice, and judgment. but not only that, it represents hopes and aspirations.

the ascendant being in a jovial sign shows hope & aspiration. but saturn Rx in pisces shows hope is misplaced. it shattered the delusion that the united states - of all governments - and the crooked people running this nation would suddenly gain a conscience. but the united states is devoid of that. mike parson is devoid of that.

saturn in pisces Rx and the recent partial lunar eclipse in pisces tells u to let go of ur delusions, especially with saturn telling u to let go of delusions regarding structure and hierarchy. yes, this is a sad moment, but the sign pisces is the last mutable (transitionary) sign in the zodiac cycle. there is an impending change.

we need to invest hope in ourselves instead of those who oppress us. when has an oppressor EVER given their victims the keys to free themselves?

“Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.”

— Assata Shakur

5H Cancer Moon conjunct Cancer Mars

the moon represents the common people, and with the moon conjunction mars (strong moon, weak mars), it can definitely be read as some form of defensiveness happening among the people. which i don’t blame. we need to defend ourselves. i interpret this as the response being heavily emotional, and the people feeling like they need to protect themselves and their sense of “homeliness.” in this case, the fifth house represents what is valued by the people, and here, it’s valued to protect itself.

8H Libra Sun

the sun represents rulers and leaders. i feel like the president is represented here, as we are nearing a presidential election. but also general leaders (of law). it’s weakened times three — in fall, in the eighth house (bad house), and it’s conjunct the south node (a malefic). it’s also harsh aspecting the moon (benefic, ruling over the people). the sun is not in a confident configuration, and i feel like that’s reflected in the people’s (moon) lack of confidence in the country’s ridership. there’s a lot of uncertainty. and this didn’t help.

the eighth house represents death, lack of control, fear, anxiety, psychological illness. with a weakened sun here, i wonder if someone judicial or presidential is going to die in response to this, or have declining health… delays in getting in office. or if there’s going to be a dramatic deconstruction of how the president/law is viewed due to radical change in belief of the general public. the south node (the headless body of the dragon) represents destruction in the mundane chart, and being in conjunction to the sun shows a destruction to the ruler/head. in libra, i wonder if the deconstruction relates to the USA’s part in imperialism/genocide/colonialism in sudan, the DR congo, haiti, palestine, and more. libra is the foreign affairs, venus rules giving/receiving, and the eighth house rules economic foreign affairs to the states. but i’m truthfully struggling to interpret this.

10H in Sagittarius, 10H lord Jupiter in Gemini

the tenth house is those in power or authority; the ‘rulers.’ in sagittarius, it shows that the authoritative figure is a judicial person (and thus, i think this what mike parson represented by). fire signs represent action - some possibly violent - and mutable modality again represents change.

i notice sagittarius is significant in the mundane charts of cultural events. for example, the death of george floyd had a sagittarius ascendant. and the january 6, 2021 chart also had a sagittarius ascendant. i wonder if there’s going to be another incited cultural action in response to this - or maybe that could be represented by all of the protests that had already happened in response to his sentence. it’s something that mobilizes the people.

i feel like because jupiter is in gemini — which is detriment for jupiter — it can be read as this lacking direction. the sagittarius sign is the archer, so it’s right on target. but gemini is scattered, & while the people may mobilize (sag energy, sag rules masses/gatherings & worldly affairs such as protests), they can lose sight of the objective thru being distracted. which is quite literally what happened with the 2020 Floyd/Taylor/etc. protests. and it’s interesting because there’s quite a few thematic overlaps between the chart of George Floyd’s death and the chart of Khallifah Williams’ death. i may or may not make a post on it. depends on my mood.

moving on though. since jupiter is read for optimism, a weakened jupiter in the invisible house supports the idea that this will be a time of confusion, distraction, anxiety, and pessimism. it’s expected that people feel hopeless in response to this.

11H in Capricorn, 12H in Aquarius, Lord in the 1H

there is awareness of how we bypass, deny, repress, or ignore reality. the twelfth house is how we are responsible for how we undo ourselves. i’m thinkinggg it may be readable as us thinking we were at the end/close to a resolution, but we are actually just beginning. same for the eleventh house lord in the first.

eleventh house is our alliances, our community, our communal goals & aspirations in the mundane chart. and i think it shows our (meaning anti-colonial radicals, i guess lmao) goal is to dissolve this system due to its violence. pluto is present in this house, retrograded and at the anaretic degree. pluto brings destruction and so does the anaretic degree. in capricorn, the destruction is to institutions, customs, hierarchies. it’s the tower card. the lord placed in the first house may signify that the power to manifest hope in placed in the hands of the people, not the government.

regarding the twelfth house, maybe it’s saying that naïveté and misplaced hope is how we undo ourselves. deluding urself into thinking voting, peaceful protests, or petitions will challenge hundreds of years of colonialism in this country. especially because of the 2020 protests. mfkas really thought that was revolutionary and it’s like no… it was cute and all i guess but that wasn’t revolution.

revolution can’t be planned or organized, and the eleventh/twelfth lord = saturn in pisces Rx shows that. i’m not saying that tomorrow mfkas gon go outside and start burning shit to the ground (although i wish they would). but hopefully… this death won’t be another forgotten name. i know he won’t be the last to get murdered to this system, but i hope we see this for what it is: it’s genocide, it is modern day lynching, it’s anti-black, & there is no justice in this justice system.

like i said, i don’t really post mundane or political astrology. but i’m trying to speak from my heart about something very sensitive to me. if there are any more seasoned mundane astrologers who can provide feedback, that would be helpful & even more helpful if they are also black.

the shit that happens in this world is so fucked up. we supposed to be using these tools (spirituality, divination, etc) to aid us because the colonialism we experienced was also spiritual warfare. like i said, as a black person this shit hit mad close to home so when i see another one of my people getting murdered to this system, i know it can be any of us. & that’s because the black body & black soul is disposable to this anti black world. so yea… #HellNaw #FuckMikeParson #FuckAmerica #FuckIsntreal #FuckEmAll

black power, HoodReader

[hold-him-down]

Belleview Chapter One: Welcome to Belleview

Notes: ~11 years after the beginning of The Fighter, this is not a Luke/Leo story but is in-universe.

TW: Institutionalized slavery, nonsexual nudity, starvation mention, human euthanasia mention, degrading language, all the things.

✥ ✥ ✥

From the outside, it is a beautiful campus. Elegant in its simplicity, with three brick buildings forming a crescent at the mouth of a long, rose-bush lined drive that intersects wrought iron gates.

Today, police swarm it, more for the optics than anything else. They’re not here to enact change, or to start building moral credit, but they are here, and so he smiles, shakes hands, introduces himself.

He opens the double-paned glass door, which sits just in front of a set of reinforced steel bars, and he’s immediately met with the silence of a reception area from which all of its workforce has been escorted out. 

Almost all.

“Lincoln Prescott?” says a singular man, in his mid-twenties on his best day, peeking around the corner. He’s nervous, skittish even. Fidgeting palms run down his sweater and he smiles, but it’s not the smile of someone who’s happy, welcoming, comfortable, warm. 

Lincoln returns the gesture and nods. He doesn’t extend his hand. Instead, he turns over the key he’s just been handed, and he reads the man’s name-tag.

Jared Fisher, Handler. Level Two. 

Jared smiles sheepishly and takes off the name-badge. “I wasn’t sure if I should wear it. I guess… I guess it’s not really needed anymore.” He holds it out to Lincoln, who stares at it for several seconds, before he sets it on the counter behind him.

“Uh,” Jared says, cutting through the silence of the massive waiting area. “I’m sorry. I know, I’m sure, that you’re not– I get it, I mean. I know I’m the enemy here.” 

Lincoln narrows his eyes, shaking his head once. 

“They said if I– Uhh, they said they’ll take it into c– consideration, I guess. When the trials start. When… whatever is going to happen, happens.” He swallows, and Lincoln feels something that is related to sympathy, but not quite it. He lets that feeling fizzle quickly. “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone," Jared says quietly. 

There’s silence again. Lincoln lets it settle over him, watching the ex-handler’s fidgeting intensify, before he says, “Oh. You’re waiting for me to speak.” 

Jared shrinks.

When the final nail in the coffin of support for the trade and consumption of government-sanctioned slavery had been hammered in, there wasn’t the type of frenzy that anyone expected. That morning, people, by and large, woke up, had their coffee, showered. They caught their trains to work, they read their news and they watched, closely, but there wasn’t an uproar. They stole glances at their phones and monitors for updates, for news, for what happens next. 

Truth be told, it had been heading this way for a while. Within the last ten years, individual states had begun passing legislation that, in hindsight, paved the path for widespread challenges to the system, led by a few congresspeople who finally woke the fuck up. Things turned violent early, with protests, rallies, boycotts, demonstrations… everything imaginable. 

Videos of workers being tortured, followed by videos of workers recounting their own stories, began making national headlines. Consumers of workers’ labor fought hard to sway public opinion back to the positive outcomes the system had brought the country, but with each passing week, with each new video of a worker strapped to a table being violated in unimaginable ways, it was a losing battle.

As local legislation was passed, certain states became a kind of safe-haven for runaways. And eventually, things started going federal. 

The most significant bill, the one that fully outlawed the use of worker labor and reinstated the ‘freedom’ of current workers, was going to be codified that morning. It wasn’t unexpected, at that point, but still, the infrastructure, the plan, was… well, it had holes, to say the least.

The workers who were deemed functional, by some arbitrary metric, would be relocated to massive government-owned housing units. They would share rooms by the half dozen, be fed, given medical attention, and slowly be reintegrated into society. No one knew exactly how that would work, but it had been successful in the states that had already outlawed worker labor (with some notable exceptions), so the plan, half-assed as it was, was set into motion.

Former safehouses were repurposed as halfway houses for those who were less “independent.”

Individual volunteers were gathered who would open their homes to those who were unable to care for themselves but didn't pose any significant safety or medical risk.

In the days leading up to the vote for reinstatement of worker rights, when it was clear how things were going to go, people did go into a frenzy. Hospitals scrambled to hire, doctor’s offices scrambled to modify policy, the call for volunteers to offer shelter, food, medical assistance, jobs… it was madness.

But that morning, the morning the final nail landed, it was quiet.

Jared leads Lincoln down a narrow hallway, spouting off information as he does. The linoleum tiled floor is clean, but peels around the edges. The walls are white, chipped along the corners and where the doorframes meet the drywall. The ceiling is white, but there’s a yellow cast. The fluorescent lights that line the halls give it a sort of eerie post-apocalyptic vibe, and it’s fitting.

The building, Belleview, is eerily quiet. There’s no obvious screaming coming from within, so it’s already better than he expected. 

Jared slaps his keycard against a box outside a set of double doors, and Lincoln takes a breath. The volunteers are gathering outside by now. His group of nurses, doctors, caretakers. They could be with him, but he wanted this run-through alone. To give him time to make sure the plan that he spent the last week finessing would work.

Jared stops at the first door, and pushes a button outside of it, bringing to life a screen. There’s a name on the top, and Lincoln glances through the information he’s shown. Jared presses another button, and the door unlocks audibly, the light above it turning from red to green.

Inside is a man, with nothing else. Brown hair, blue eyes. He doesn’t look at them. 

“This one can get aggressive.” Jared’s voice is matter of fact, as he points out the information on the tablet. “They come here to… you know, to be of whatever use they can be until they…” he whispers, and Lincoln offers him the briefest of glances. He regrets it immediately. “Expire.”

Lincoln turns his attention back to the screen, and so Jared continues. “We have 21, uh… residents, right now. I think that’s what we’re supposed to call them now. They were… well, you know. They were workers, but the rejects, I guess. They’re in… they’re in various states of um…”

Lincoln clears his throat tersely, throwing a warning glance to the ex-handler. 

“Well, okay. I’m sure you’ve been briefed, and if not, I’m sure you will be.” He begins walking again, letting the last door close without another glance, as he approaches the next. “We tried to take as good of care of them as we could. They’re fed and watered and we tried to... whenever we could, some of us tried to offer them some comfort.”

He stops at the door. “Obviously, they’re here for a reason, so they don’t tend to be super… uh, super cooperative or trainable or anything. They’re usually just… they’re here for a short time, and then–” He stops himself this time, without the warning glance.

“We call this guy Tank, but I think his real name is Tyler, if that means anything to you.” 

Lincoln nods. “Does it say here? Anywhere on here? What his name is?”

Jared fiddles with the screen for several seconds before it comes to a demographic page. It lists 20 inhabitants, and presumably, their room numbers. 

“Look at that,” Jared says then, interrupting Lincoln’s review. “Looks like I was right, it is Tyler. That was a guess.”

Lincoln takes a breath, because there’s no benefit to causing a scene here. If Jared was offered leniency, then he was a handler who, at least on the surface, wasn’t as bad as he could have been. 

“Anyway, this one used to be aggressive, too." The door opens and Jared gestures to the man who lays on his stomach, bandages across his back. "But now? Nothing going on in there.” He points to his own temples, and lets the door swing shut. He switches to the video feed, where Tyler stares into the camera.

Jared continues along to the next room, and Lincoln follows behind him, his thoughts racing.

Lincoln Prescott was already in his car on his way to the site he’d been assigned to oversee before they even finalized things in the White House. It’s a temporary solution to a very serious problem, they said. It would take ten to fifteen days to get those who were in no shape to get to a halfway house the medical attention they needed and find suitable placements for them. 

In the meantime, they were safest where they were. He was needed to help organize the volunteers and medical personnel, and to act as a sort of director of the temporary housing facility.

So he drove. He knew it would be bad, maybe the worst of the worst. He had been briefed. He was given a stack of files of the inhabitants that he would be overseeing. He looked it over that night, and every night since then. He spent the last six days memorizing every face, every backstory.

It was a site to house those that the government had deemed unable to be placed, for one reason or another. Too violent, too unpredictable, too difficult to be trained. From what Lincoln could gather, these workers served any and all purposes. Their primary reason for existence was, it seemed, to trial training techniques, to trial drugs, to motivate the workers who were difficult, to show that there were worse fates.

They ranged in ages from 19-26. None survived longer. 

“Doctor Prescott?” Jared asks, from somewhere far away. Lincoln looks up from the tablet, and Jared is already down the hall at the next door. Lincoln takes a breath, biding his time. They’ve gone through eighteen of the men, with Jared's special commentary on each of them. Twice, Jared had promised that he wasn't a bad person, and that the culture had been one thing, but now it was another, and he was ready to pivot.

Only once had Lincoln felt himself snap, and had to excuse himself before serious harm was done.

Some of the men were given the accommodation of a bed, some of them were given clothing, some had rotten food in their cells, some had broken bones, open wounds. Some slept fitfully, and some slept so completely still that Lincoln thought that they might not be alive at all. Jared had assured him, in those moments, that they probably were.

Jared opens the door to the twentieth room, with a small, “We call this one ‘Felix.’ I think you’ll like him,” as he does. The man, short blonde hair and dark brown eyes and at least forty pounds less than his frame should support, blinks himself awake. He sits in the corner of the tiny room and stares at Lincoln. He tries to smile, but the tremors that rock his body make it hard to buy. He doesn't wear any clothes, and has one of the DLS-issued shock collars affixed to his neck. His ribs shake when he breathes too deep, but again, he tries to smile, even as he backs further into the corner.

Jared is speaking to him, but Lincoln doesn’t clock exactly what’s being said. The man looks so afraid, but still, he lifts his fingers in a sort of wave, shaking as he does. Lincoln waves back, offering him a small smile in return.

“We’re not allowed to euthanize them,” Jared is saying. 

“What?” 

“When they hit the end, I mean. We have to give them enough food, give them enough water. If they choose to stop eating or drinking or… whatever, that’s on them. We can’t assist them. Once they’re too far gone, sometimes we’ll just stop trying to get them to eat, and let them go.”

He thought, by now, that he’d heard it all. His eyes widen. “Is that where we’re at with him?”

Jared shrugs. “He’s sick. The director said he’s gonna go any day now, but it’s better if we don’t directly cause that.”

Lincoln doesn’t attempt to keep the hatred out of his eyes.

“He knows,” Jared says. “They all do. Once we stop pulling them for testing, it’s only a matter of time. He wants you to pull him, though,” he continues. “He wants to know it’s not his time yet. He wants to show you he can still be of use. He doesn’t really speak anymore, but he tries to be sweet, so we will keep him in rotation.”

“Stop talking,” Lincoln says then, his fist in a tight ball but, remarkably, not around the man’s throat. Jared’s mouth snaps shut. 

“Show me the last one, and then you’re finished here.” 

As they retreat away from the man’s cell, the door closes behind them, and Lincoln watches the hope leave his eyes.

They make quick work of the last door, and the weasley man leads Lincoln back through the main wing, mumbling about how there were several wings they didn’t tour, but he at least got to see all the residents, and how if he has questions, he is more than happy to take a call, day or night, and how… 

✥ ✥ ✥

The volunteers stand in a haphazard group, each with a color coded name-badge to at least give Lincoln a starting point as to their role. He begins by directing the doctors and nurses to rooms, providing instructions on how to access the rooms, providing instructions on how to access the medical files, providing whatever information he can.

They’re working on finding placements for each of these boys, he tells them. But they all require intensive, specific treatment. As they find placements, they’ll be housed, and once they’ve placed the last boy, the volunteers will be reassigned.

As the last of the volunteers heads inside to get their own bearings, Lincoln takes a step back, regarding the innocuous building. 

“I guess that’s that,” Jared says from behind him, taking a step forward and extending his hand out once more. Lincoln looks down at it, shoving his hands into his pockets, as Jared mumbles,  “Welcome to Belleview.”

UNTITLED SYSTEM COLLAPSE STORY TAGLIST: @pigeonwhumps @peachy-panic @whump-cravings

[leportraitducadavre]

Do you think people in the fandom would be more forgiving towards Sasuke character as a whole if we got the show from his perspective or if not that then if his thoughts are more shown?

I find myself drawn to his character because, in many ways, I see reflections of my own inclinations, albeit magnified. The tumultuous events that unfolded within his clan and the devastating actions of his brother, wiping out everyone, add a layer of complexity to his character. It's kind of intrigued me to consider that, under similar circumstances, I might make similar choices, perhaps even worse. The Narutoverse, with its deeply rooted issues like child soldiers, clan annihilation, and internal slavery within the Hyuga branch, presents a grim reality. While some characters, and even elements of the fandom, criticize and reject his actions, arguing that trauma should not be an excuse, it's hard to ignore the systemic problems within the Narutoverse itself. The pervasive cycle of suffering, with clans being wiped out and individuals enslaved, points to a broken system that breeds villains and antagonists seeking change.

In contrast to the complacency and cooperation displayed by many characters, those who rebel against the established order and strive for something different, flawed as their execution may be, at least attempt to address the root issues. The fact that they are trying to break free from the oppressive system suggests a level of agency and resistance, even if I may not fully agree with their methods. That's why I'm more forgiving towards the antagantis like Pain, Madara and especially in Sasuke case.

Reflecting on Naruto's journey and his current achievements the fundamental issues persist unchanged.

Also, sorry if this got long I ramble a lot when discussing lol. I hope you have a good day.

Hello, this took long to reply, and for that, I apologize.

I don’t think the issue is “not having Sasuke’s thoughts on display” for him to get sympathy, as we get to see firsthand the reasoning behind his actions, his background, and connections; we also get to see the atrocities committed by the system on multiple characters including those that the fandom takes as “less controversial” and which are considered victims of a bigger scale than Sasuke. I put more blame on the naturalization of state-sanctioned violence and the oppression of minority groups who are then blamed for their village’s actions as they are “savage-coded,” which turns the government’s oppression into a response to their behavior rather than an action born from their own bias. Their ultimate argument always boils down to “fighting violence with violence is not the way,” yet they fail to understand that a government built with brutality as its primary basis and as its primary tool leaves no room for negotiations, as it also implies that those oppressed continue to be oppressed until a “solution” is reached through time. They blame those discriminated against and later on massacred for their demise and not those in power who decided that committing genocide was a plausible solution to their dispute. 

The main issue with the idea that “their hearts are in the right place, but I don’t agree with the antagonist methods” also derives from this same perspective, where the discriminated must take all the consequences of the persecution they suffered and choose the “moral high ground” still to keep being “victims” and not become “victimizers.” Their categorization as innocents/savages is always based upon their response to the mass killing of their kin, minimizing the actions of those in power and diminishing the value of their critics to the system in place. 

Yet, while the naturalization of state-sanctioned violence plays a part in Sasuke’s status as a “villain” by many of his detractors, it’s not the only one, as many feel Naruto has a similar (perhaps harder) experience with the system in place as he was ostracized, yet he chose to follow Konoha’s WoF –many fans are closer to experience something similar to Naruto (an unpopular kid that was often shunned by comrades), so they feel more inclined to stand behind a character that reflects a personal experience of them, and not behind the boy who suffered genocide, a thing not many can see themselves in nor can build sympathy for as they (again) naturalized such occurrence. 

The popularization of the action genre featuring first-world soldiers invading the global south, whose focus is more on the trauma that lingers in the invader for trying to bring peace than on the indiscriminate killing of minorities, also contributes to seeing those in power as more humane or deserving of redemption than those responding violently against the intruders, because those invaded should put their trust in the “good intentions” of those abiding by the system that destroyed them in the first place.