Anarchistisches Kollektiv Köln

"Work less, to live more"

“But what will you do with the lazy man, the man who does not want to work?” inquires your friend.

That is an interesting question, and you will probably be very much surprised when I say that there is really no such thing as laziness. What we call a lazy man is generally a square man in a round hole. That is, the right man in the wrong place, And you will always find that when a fellow is in the wrong place, he will be inefficient or shiftless. For so-called laziness and a good deal of inefficiency are merely unfitness, misplacement. If you are compelled to do the thing you are unfitted for by your inclinations or temperament, you will be inefficient at it; if you are forced to do work you are not interested in, you will be lazy at it.

Dismissing people because of their age

Pretending that the people who disagree with you are ‘unintelligent’ and the people who agree with you are ‘smart’

Accusing the people you disagree with of having some mental illness.

Accents and speech patterns

Mocking personal hygiene

Mocking someone not getting laid or mocking genital size or shape

Mocking lack of productivity and independence (’you probably live in your moms basement’ stuff)

And YES. You are all right. These are all bad reasons to claim superiority over someone and every time someone brings up this stuff their ageism/ableism/classism/sexism/etc is showing.

Appearance-based barbs like it’s dirt,

(And see the list growing)

Your -isms are showing -

Shoplifters who spoke to Novara Media said the cost of living crisis had pushed them to steal more of life’s essentials. “A couple of times I’ve been on the verge of crying when I go to buy Sainsbury’s Basics apple and blackcurrant squash and realise the price has doubled in the past three months,” said John.

Lara, a culture worker from London, has started shoplifting groceries more frequently; she said it has become more socially acceptable in her circles. “I know that other people do it, and I’ve seen how other people do it, and that really helped,” she said. Previously, she avoided stealing because her upbringing and wider moralism had convinced her it was “a shameful thing” to do.

“Before, I would have described stealing as this really anti-Islamic thing to do,” she said. Shoplifting is also especially frowned-upon by “parents who come from a working-class or lower middle-class background,” she said, because of how classist ‘scrounger’ stereotypes “trickle down to how we surveil and shame each other.”

Nowadays however, Lara sees shoplifting as “one of the few guerrilla tactics we have available to us.”

Alan, a construction worker from London, who, like John and Anna, has been shoplifting around half his groceries in recent months, has “no moral qualms” about stealing from supermarkets. “I just think that the stuff in the world is ours, all of ours,” he said, “and that we’ve invented a really stupid system for the distribution of resources which doesn’t treat them as ours, and treats them as things that can be used for capitalists to make profit.”

He wouldn’t steal things if it meant that “someone’s labour went unrewarded”, he said, but all shoplifting affects is “the profits of shareholders” he said. “[I have] no concerns about that at all.”

[…]

While, for many, shoplifting feels like a form of resistance to untenable living conditions, no one who spoke to Novara Media was sure how to build solidarity between shoplifters. Alan shoplifts food for rough sleepers, but wishes there were more organised approaches to shoplifting – like the mass stealing and redistribution of food that occurred in Greece following the 2008 financial crisis.

Lara believes shoplifting could be “revolutionary” if it could be “more of an organised operation” that involved “getting workers on side”.

What they measure matters. A recent analysis by ACLU researchers found that when Allegheny’s algorithm flagged people who accessed county services for mental health and other behavioral health programs, that could add up to three points to a child’s risk score, a significant increase on a scale of 20.

Through tracking their work across the country, however, the AP found their tools can set families up for separation by rating their risk based on personal characteristics they cannot change or control, such as race or disability, rather than just their actions as parents.

Over time, Allegheny’s tool has tracked if members of the family have diagnoses for schizophrenia or mood disorders. It’s also measured if parents or other children in the household have disabilities, by noting whether any family members received Supplemental Security Income, a federal benefit for people with disabilities. The county said that it factors in SSI payments in part because children with disabilities are more likely to be abused or neglected.

The county also said disabilities-aligned data can be “predictive of the outcomes” and it “should come as no surprise that parents with disabilities … may also have a need for additional supports and services.” In an emailed statement, the county added that elsewhere in the country, social workers also draw on data about mental health and other conditions that may affect a parent’s ability to safely care for a child.

People with disabilities are overrepresented in the child welfare system, yet there’s no evidence that they harm their children at higher rates, said Traci LaLiberte, a University of Minnesota expert on child welfare and disabilities.

Trans people need to start stockpiling HRT

Seriously. Stockpile it. You can buy estrogen and spironolactone and progesterone online. Testosterone is a scheduled drug in the US, but you can buy it online, too. I don't care if it's illegal. I don't care if it's sketchy. I don't care if it makes cis people uncomfortable that we're hoarding hormones and transitioning behind closed doors. Checkout the r/diyhrt subreddit for links, details, risks, support, etc.

We are under attack.

Missouri AG just passed down an emergency rule Requiring conversion therapy for trans people, instituting a mandatory 18 months of therapy before hormones or puberty blockers can be prescribed, Requiring the distribution of misinformation and lies to trans people about the "dangers" of the "experimental treatment," Requiring screen for social media addiction and "social contagion" regarding gender and transness (a theory that has been thoroughly debunked), Requiring that "preexisting mental health conditions" be "fully identified and treated" before transition (including neurodiversity like ADHD, Autism, BPD, etc.) States the support trans people are greatly outnumbered by states that want to see us dead. We are in stage 7 of the ten stages of genocide, and the heavy hand of the State is going to crush us, and liberal "allies" aren't enough.

So, stockpile.

Order online. Order illegally. Stash. Distribute in your community.

Organize.

Gather your friends, neighbors, accomplices. Gather supplies, intel, weapons, tools. Arm yourselves. Seriously, arm yourselves. And if you can't get a firearm, or don't want one for whatever reason, find your niche. Counterintel, propaganda, distro. Cause when they come for you, your HRT, your clothes and care, you don't want to be alone.

Electoralism will not save us. Voting will not save us. Courts will not save us.

Voting isn't going to work. It's not designed to work.

Electoral liberalism is what got us here, how do you not see that? The people pushing these laws and rules and restrictions WERE ELECTED.

I'm done with liberals. I'm done with "allies." I only have room for accomplices, accessories, comrades. I only have time for the people who will take up arms and bricks and bottles and blades to defend my community.

And if you're not? If that isn't you?

Just heard about the mess that YA author Maggie Tokuda-Hall has been dealing with. tl;dr, Her publisher offered her the chance to be part of an initiative that would’ve put her work in a lot more stores and libraries. It’s an initiative specifically aimed at amplifying Asian voices… but only if she removed the word “racism” from her author’s note. On a book about the Japanese internment.

I am very glad she rejected this offer, and I 100% agree with her that this is pure cowardice. I’m appalled at Scholastic – or any other publisher who’s doing this but whose authors can’t take the risk of speaking out. This is the kind of crap that marginalized writers have to deal with all the time – and it is also how fascism takes root:  “just business” decisions that perpetuate injustice, systematic erasure of targeted groups from their own damn stories, institutions choosing to do what’s easy over what’s right.

(I have been very fortunate to never have a publisher do this to me. Plenty of disrespectful bs from institutions and individuals within the industry, but never from the people who signed my checks. I’m also somewhat insulated from the book ban bullshit because my work is genre and isn’t aimed at kids – though that’s coming, of course. Fascists don’t stop until they are stopped.)

During the, “Week of Action,” a bulldozer-like machine with a subsequent drilling apparatus was completely decommissioned before it could continue to destroy more of the Welaunee forest on the South Black Hall plot.

The proposed huge-ass soundstage adjacent to proposed Cop City will also never be built!

We are advocates of actions that actually STOP WORK, & work gets STOPPED by directly confronting WORK, our enemies, & earth destroying machines.

Let it be remembered that though other gatherings & gardens are also good, these types of activities are only made possible by actions that DISABLE OUR ENEMIES from being able to work & gain territory.

The only good machine is a machine on fire, & we will not let our comrade Tortuguita’s death be in vain, nor will we allow counterrevolutionary discourse & behavior to permeate the movement or exploit Tort’s murder.

Blessed be the barricades & Blessed is the Flame!

No, see, this is exactly what I'm talking about. If advertising made people less likely to buy a product then marketing firms would 100% know about it long before you. Ads work on a subconscious level, and you're not so much smarter than the average rube that they actually backfire on you and only you

While you're walking around confident in your knowledge that ads don't affect you, you're missing all the ways that they are affecting you constantly underneath your conscious notice

Less clutter on your screen

Faster internet

More privacy

You never have to wait for a youtube video again

Two officers pulled up very quietly in a squad car while I had my back turned. They did not announce their arrival. When I noticed them approaching me by the sound of their footsteps, I was frightened and reached for my phone to record them. They thought I was going for a weapon and one reached for his pistol. I put my hands up.

They illegally detained me and took my ID to run a background check. The one who had started to draw his gun on me asked me if I’d had any thoughts of hurting myself or others.

My background check came up clean. They released me and told me I wasn’t doing anything illegal. I went to my car and bawled my eyes out, thinking about how I’d almost died for the crime of “weird behavior.”

Post-Fire Sale!

https://store.crimethinc.com/collections/damages-sale

A year and a half ago, a catastrophic fire destroyed our mailorder space. Some goods survived this fire, however, including several boxes of books and journals that had been returned by stores and distributors or that were too damaged to be sold as brand new. Ironically, the damage that they had sustained protected them, as we didn’t bother to keep them on hand for mailorder.

Another new zine on our site!

How to Survive a Felony Trial

https://crimethinc.com/zines/how-to-survive-a-felony-trial

This zine is for anyone facing the threat of prison time as a result of participating in the struggle for a socially and ecologically sustainable future, and for anyone who might face that threat at some point in the future.