drowning in moonlight

In one building (hosting multiple agencies), the locks on the bathroom were changed so employees no longer have any access to a bathroom during the workday. People are peeing in trash cans.

Elsewhere, multiple agencies have reported that hand soap is no longer being supplied in the bathrooms.

Toilet paper supplies have not been adjusted to meet the needs of a vastly increased number of in-office employees.

Employee-owned coffee and coffee makers have been stolen or thrown away without notice (it was already illegal for taxpayer dollars to be spent on supplying federal employees with amenities like coffee, so many offices have coffee supplied by pooled employee funds).

Meanwhile, many offices don't even have potable drinking water (recurrent legionella outbreaks), so employees have to bring their own water from home.

Despite an explosion in the number of workers in offices, cleaning budgets have been slashed and many offices are not being cleaned regularly enough to remain sanitary. Pests like roaches and rats are a problem.

The firings continue, legal and illegal. Entire programs are being cut. Managers have no idea when they might lose staff. Employees are getting fired at 6pm on a weekend or finding out when they're unable to log into their computer or when they receive a shipping label in the mail to return their equipment.

Through all of this, the DOGE employees in federal workplaces are enjoying incredible and expensive luxury: AI-powered sleep pods, entire dormitories so they can live in federal buildings, nurseries for their children on site, free food and beverages, laundry services, and who knows what else. They have special security to restrict access to their areas of the buildings, including armed guards.

And I'm not just saying this to lament how bad it is for federal workers. I'm saying this because, as workers are reporting this to one another, the response is, inevitably: "This is illegal." "Yes, but who would I report it to? OPM? They're a DOGE puppet. OSHA? They've cut OSHA. The Inspectors General? Cut. The NLRB? Cut. My union? No longer recognized."

But the top comment was: “I am so happy for the villagers who finally made it out of the mountains and into new homes in prosperous cities. It often takes multiple generations of hard work to get the entire family out. Every family in this village achieved this. What you are looking at is the evidence of their success!”

And the second highest liked comment was: “You can tell this area has poor agricultural resources. The ancestors of the villagers were likely forced to settle here because more powerful villages have occupied the attractive fertile lands. Who knows how long they had been trapped here? I’m glad they finally made it out!”

Another comment with high likes: “My grandparents’ village was like this. Poor air quality from burning coal in poorly ventilated buildings. Bitterly cold in the winter. Dry and hot in the summer. Short growing seasons. And there was always a shortage of water. My parents got factory jobs in the city and after working and saving for years, they finally got all of us out.”

People will do almost anything to get off the fucking farm. Subsistence farming (or its close cousin, farming that would be well over subsistence but the landlord takes all but the bare minimum you need to survive) is so miserable that every nightmarish free labor situation you've ever heard of - the satanic mills, mining a mile down in the dark, carting around piles of shit (often to be sent out to farms), modern sweatshops, sucking syphilitic dick in a filthy alley - are options people chose rather than scratching in the dirt and slowly starving.

We need farmers. Farmers are vital. Landlords aren't farmers. Tradwives with gardens funded by executive/heir husbands aren't farmers. Pickers are farmers, tractor drivers are farmers, and we still oppress them - the children in migrant farmer families are deliberately denied quality schooling so they have no option but to start picking and keep picking.

Boycotting everything all at once, for one day or for as long as you can, because everything is terrible and we’re mad about it…does nothing. It’s vague, disorganized, and frankly impossible. We have to buy things sometimes. You can’t just target the economy as a whole. You have to be specific.

This is for the support of Gaza's Municipality Services - which help ensure clean drinking water, waste collection, debri removal and sanitation services - life saving services to run a state - reader I imagine wherever you are or how lacking the municipality services in your city is, it's not worse than Ghazza.

Currently it's only at 11% - please donate -

Pious Project provides menstrual care kits as well as soap, shampoo, disinfectants, etc

Gaza Esims lets you donate Esims- these are used to connect to the internet and keep communication going in and out of the country

Operation Olive Branch is a spreadsheet of Gofundmes for families seeking funds to flee the country, each having a link to sponsor them

Here's a reading list from Decolonize Palestine

Stop Gaza Genocide is a google doc that is constantly updated, which includes how to contact representatives, how to protest, and various activist resources (US centric)

Samidoun provides a constantly updating calendar of protests, and you can submit ones not listed if there’s a protest happening near you (Global)

UNRWA and Care for Gaza are orgs that directly provide general aid and food

What allows these assumptions to flourish is the fairy tale that peaceful protestors and benevolent ruling class members can join hands and fix things. The reality is the ruling class will happily ignore laws and mow down protestors to maintain their preferred status quo, especially on something as deeply embedded in their interests as the USA/Israel alliance. They know it’s preferable to have a law that is a recorded excuse for them neutralizing somebody, but they’ll do it without any actual legal justification when they really want to. And bank on burying it.