destroy all corporations. but especially dupont 💚

[ID: A screenshot from the UFCW Local 7 Union's donation page. The header reads "Hardship Fund for Striking King Soopers Workers" in bold, and the body of the text reads as follows.

The workers at King Soopers are on an Unfair Labor Practices strike. Some of the striking workers will need additional financial assistance to get through this time.

This Hardship Fund assists with essential needs that have occurred since the strike date. Those in need will need to fill out an application, the Hardship Committee will review such application and, upon approval, the check will be sent directly to the creditor.

We appreciate all of the support we are receiving from our community and hope to be back in our stores, serving you soon.

End ID.]

For those looking to support the strike, this is (arguably) the best way. Picketing workers are paid $160 a day, and up to $800 a week, so long as they have the funds to do so. Those who don't cross the picket line but don't picket get paid a $100 weekly honor wage.

This strike cannot live on without funding. If you want to help the strike, this is the best way to do it.

(source below.)

Some of what’s going on there is just, well, talk is cheap, and it’s easier to get people to say the right slogans than to actually unlearn transphobia. But I think some of it is this:

A common form of transmisogyny is the idea that a trans woman, as a man pretending to be a woman, is something threatening pretending to be nonthreatening. (Julia Serano’s “deceptive transsexual” is basically this.) Now the people in these spaces don’t think trans women are men, oh no. They’ll say “trans women are women” and fully believe it. But it’s one thing to think that trans women are women in the abstract, when the word “women” is right there in the subject of the sentence to guide you. When you’re dealing with an actual trans woman in front of you… maybe she’s got masculine features and you kind of think of her as a man even if you wouldn’t say it. Maybe she’s half a foot taller than her partner and if there’s abuse going on there, there’s no question in your mind who’s abusing whom. Maybe she said something you disagree with and well, would she really have said that if she hadn’t spent most of her life being treated as a man? Maybe she’s taking up more space than you’d like her to and that feels pretty masculine to you. And you’re not saying that she’s faking her identity or anything, but it sure is convenient for her that she can accuse people of transphobia if they point out how she’s exhibiting toxic masculinity.

I’m always a bit annoyed when some ecoactivists are are all “Hope! Degrowth! The planet can heal!” without giving an honest time frame for that.

Like, even if we manage to end capitalism and degrow an all of that, the CO2 that’s already in the air will continue to heat up the planet for decades and the results of that will be with us for this century at the very least.

Yes, ecosystems can heal, yes, that’s worth fighting for. But it’ll get worse before it gets better and most of us won’t be there for the good parts. You can leave that out to spread “Hope”, but all that will do is make people optimistic for a short time only for them to feel hurt and betrayed when they figure out the truth.

An worse then feeling cheated our of a bright future, people acting on this false optimistic worldview won’t build the kind of support networks that we are going to need to survive our real future. Preparing for a more ecologically unstable earth must be part of our work, even as we continue to strive for the end of capitalism an a shift to a far more sustainable way of living.

Get into the habit of sharing stuff for free with others. We’re probably going to experience some forms of scarcity and when that happens, all we have is each other. Self-sufficiency is a myth, community self-sufficiency isn’t. Create neighborhood resources. A tool-sharing shed or a water filter for ground or rain water could make a difference here and now, but will also matter in the future. Advance mode: Start Mutual Aid collectives.

Learn first aid and other emergency medical skills. Whether your region is vulnerable to heat waves, wild fires, flooding, drought, extreme cold or electrical failures, there will be people in need of help an medical systems are unlikely to be able to cope with it all. Learning to take care of others is always useful, even if you’re lucky enough to not experience any disasters at all. Advanced mode: Start a DIY medicine collective or learn an advance skill like growing medicinal herbs or physical therapy.

Learn to break the law. As the crisis deepens, governments will let more and more people fall through the cracks. Refugees and undocumented people are likely to be the first targets but other minorities can be targetted too. Those people won’t be able to survive unless people are willing to break the law to get them housing, food, etc. Advanced mode: get experience breaking the law together and put it to work actually helping undocumented people.

Learn to support each other. Our mental health is as important as our physical health and to truly support each other we need more than good intentions. Learn psychological first aid, learn how to structurally support trauma survivors, people who are mourning, people struggling with depression and more. Advanced mode: start a Support & Recovery collective.

Work on building a community without discrimination and systematic injustice. All of the things to come will hit the most marginalized harder. We can only get through it together if our communities truly value everyone in it and we understand that an injury to one is an injury to all. Learn about systematic oppression, learn about privilege, learn about conflict resolution an mediation and put that to work in your community. Advanced mode: start a transformative justice collective.

… and more.

during the presidential election (black) ppl were given so much shit for not being head over heels for biden with one of their biggest reasons being "getting the cheeto out of office!! uwu". yes trump is evil but biden has literally taken the reigns of america and is doing the same dance with them.

i don't think (white) liberals understand what it's like being petrified of having little to no power when it comes to relatives in colonized countries that have been crumbled to ruin and left to slowly die. they don't think beyond the baseless twitter or tumblr post that has so many likes and shares that it has to be true due to its popularity.

while u are sitting in the comfort of ur home screaming at strangers online over issues that only personally affect u and ur fragile image, there are ppl that work to support their families both in the US, Canada, UK, etc and the ones back home. making bi-weekly trips to western union. buying minutes to make sure they're alive and not just okay. deciding whether or not to cut food costs for themselves or folks back home because they can't afford it.

and when absolute hell breaks out to the point where ppl would rather risk their lives swimming with their children on their backs or huddling on crowded dingy make shift boats not haven eaten in days so they can reach sanctuary in a country that has promised asylum, even going as far as making it law, but are instead met with whips similar to the ones black ancestors met their ends to and put on the first flight back into what they were trying to escape.

Excellent question. It would take an entire two day session in an OT101 to answer you completely but I’ll do my best to address your concerns in this limited format.

To start with your last question—yes, anti-union propaganda of the sort you and your coworkers were to exposed to is extremely common, especially in the United States, if that is where you are.

It is illegal to terminate an employee for unionising efforts. All workers have the federally protected right to form a union but that does not and will not stop businesses from practicing illegal firings, intimidation and harassment if they so much as suspect organising efforts on the part of their employees.

Organising is dangerous. Getting fired can be catastrophic but it is not even the worst punishment this system will mete out in defense of the employing class. Workers on strike continue to get injured and killed by strike breakers and scabs. Organisers I personally know have been brutally attacked by police while on the picket line and have the permanent scars to show for it. If a strike is found to be “illegal” for any reason, the state will levy gratuitous fines and potential incarceration for workers it finds “guilty”.

And then, to your first point, even if a union campaign is or appears as though it might potentially be successful, the owners can always just cut their losses, pull up stakes, fire the entire staff and start fresh somewhere else.

That all sounds pretty scary, doesn’t it? Organising is a fight, plain and simple. The bosses have a playbook that has worked for them for a long time but what they don’t want you to know is we have a playbook of our own and it works when we follow it carefully and creatively.

You may have heard the phrase “Agitate, Organise, WIN!” Not to be glib but that’s what it can boil down to. When we organise safely, with attention and care, we win. Wins can be small. Wins can be big. When we organise correctly, we win and we win a lot more than you or any worker in this world will ever know.

Wins of the sort I have seen are not publicised. They are considered wounds to the bosses and bosses abhor the appearance of weakness, so most wins are played off as company policy or good management but the organisers know. The workers who won know what went into it behind the scenes.

The potential for loss is no reason not to fight. The stakes we face are all the more reason to organise right and organise right now.

Organising to win is a slow process. There aren’t any short cuts. It takes perception, communication, listening, learning, brainstorming, a lot more listening, getting angry, being frustrated, sharing joy and so much courage in the face of bad odds.

Organising can also be the most rewarding thing you’ll ever do.

I’m a trans man in the UK, I’ve been on the waiting list to be diagnosed for just over 2 years now, and am expected to wait around another 2 years before I get my first appointment (if the wait time doesn’t increase). I will then wait around 2 more years (at the very least) for my second appointment, and if I’m very lucky and am diagnosed in that appointment (which is not guaranteed in the slightest), I’ll enter another waiting list to access healthcare. The service I’m in is considered around average. There are people waiting 6 years for their first appointment in other services, so I am incredibly lucky with my supportive family (in that I haven’t been kicked out or abused, parents still don’t respect pronouns or name) and I have good friends who respect me, as well as only waiting 4 years for a first appointment.

Maybe you could go private if you had the money, right? Go a similar route to trans people in the US? A diagnosis from a private practice can be rejected by your General Practitioner, and any referral you get for hormones or surgery can be completely dismissed, because you weren’t diagnosed by an NHS practice. You would likely have to go entirely private, which is not possible for thousands of trans people who rely on the NHS. This is an issue within the NHS and a completely lack of funding and training for trans healthcare, resulting in horrifically long wait time and difficult to access help, especially given doctors and surgeons have and are having their practices shut down because they aren’t considered proper by the NHS, despite being one of very very few who commit to this kind of work.

I feel like this advice is less helpful in the lulls between mass uprisings, like the one we're in now. It's just not as accessible at the moment to get in contact with protest organizers, and if you're waiting for a big protest to help prepare for you'll be doing a lot less than you could

What we need right now is base-building and direct action. I suggest getting in touch with a local mutual aid group. My mutual aid group always needs people to sort food and pack boxes, FNB needs people to cook and serve, the free store I volunteer at needs folks to just basically sit around 90% of the time and answer questions

It is not enough to say that the NLRB has made vague gestures at showing that a non-union strike is theoretically possible. If you get fired illegally and you’re not part of a union, who’s going to pay for your employment tribunal? You? Unless you’re aware of how expensive tribunals can be and have that money set to the side, you’re opening yourself up to a world of hurt.

This is genuinely the most dangerous, nonsensical thing I’ve seen on this website in a long, long time. Do not do this. Do not mistake masturbatory individualistic action for a collective movement.

But somehow, they’ve managed to make it even more patronizing.

Stunning.

This is in the UK.

I teach Equality and Diversity, so understanding how people see themselves and would prefer to be called is important, and this has helped.

Here is another link about the importance of giving children the right word to advocate for themselves and to understand their experiences.

There are already a minimum of 2 dozen people killed by the police and its very likely that the military is hiding the actual number.

this is my friends uncle, one of the teachers at ketab—an organization some of you might remember me posting about a few months ago.

ketab not only provides financial aid, personal supplies (clothes, food, whatever to accommodate the needs of the people in kabul), aid to displaced families, and medical supplies, but also nourishes the lives of the future generations in afghanistan. omid, the teacher mentioned, was my friend’s uncle. my friend, who started this beautiful organization. this fundraiser is for his funeral expenses, as he was the breadwinner for the family and his family didn’t have anybody else to earn income for them.