Andrea Popelka

Potentially abgefahren?!

"In those areas not directly burned but still affected by fire’s air pollution, many (including my family in Santa Cruz) were safely ensconced in their homes breathing clean air thanks to consumer air filters—an index of individualized neoliberal response to toxicity exposure. Others, such as farmworkers, many of them migrants, some undocumented, continued to work the fields, picking fruits and vegetables, while the homeless sheltered in cardboard boxes and tents, all without the luxury of choice. More than a hundred thousand people, representing California’s houseless population, had no protection from air pollution levels rated as unhealthy to hazardous, where air mixed with particulate matter, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide, potentially causing asthma, respiratory illnesses, neurological disorders, and cancers. This is especially the case when fires sweep through constructed environments and burn all manner of products (cell phones, computers, refrigerators, cars). Where the Pyrocene meets the plastisphere, the result is a swirling toxic miasma composed of hydrochloric acid, sulfur dioxide, dioxins, furans, and heavy metals. Washington State’s air, normally pristine, was worse in quality than Beijing and Delhi combined, as California’s airspace became a toxic waste site. Meanwhile, nearly a quarter of the thirteen thousand firefighters battling blazes across California were, are, prisoners, earning $1 per hour, with convict labor saving California up to $100 million annually."

"abolition (a determinate negation not only of a harmful institution, or practice, but of all the ways of accommodating it that have become socially habitual while placing other possibilities into reality)"

The plaquettes, then, performed something like the service of a digital tablet today, providing a surface for animated delight, with flickering movements, the play of entertainment, allowing for fascinated viewing. Human brains, this might suggest, have long enjoyed dreamy shifts of light and shadow, the illusions of pareidolic experience. The leaping of animals, the movement of figures, the twirl of patterns: animation as a cultural form might be much older than we have imagined. It comes from the fires around the caves of our first dwelling."

Mariame Kaba quoting Carl Sagan: "let us temper our criticism with kindness. None of us comes fully equipped"

"The Casino for Social Medicine is run hundred percent by unpaid labor -meaning all four daily bartending shifts, weekly accounting, events coordination, tax filing, bathroom cleaning are all done by people who work together without pay. The rent is made by the sale of drinks. There is a very little buffer left. This economic arrangement came out of necessity, rather than being the product of insufficient wishing otherwise. Equally, it is an outcome of our original priorities. We wanted to offer rent-free space where social organizing and culture making can meet. Such spaces are very few in Berlin's fast gentrifying and fascist landscape. Charging for rent or having entry fees at the door would have felt like pumping our own (current or potential) comrades. We were not interested in running the bar space as an extractivist business. Even though we had money dreams such as starting a foundation to support organizers to rest and paying each other’s health insurance, we also wanted a space where a visitor would need very little to no money to stay – stay warm, stay connected, stay still. The fact that the Casino is still open and in fact has by now stabilized both financially and in labor, is a testimony against the prevalent local attitude of waiting for institutional approval and stability."

"For instance, the bartenders here have a little bio printed out at the bar, which says their name, what languages they speak, what they like to talk about, what they can help you with and also what they need. This really changes the nature of being a bartender: you are here as a human, and you immediately have much more interesting conversations. And many of the bartenders had to make another bio because all their listed needs got met just through having that bio on display. We have a banner at the front that says: “Needs are not scary.” But they require a kind of social gluing, or social prescribing, as it’s called by the NHS in the UK. So one of the functions of the Casino is that it is a connecting spot, a place where people can come and have their needs met between each other. This is why we call it a clinic. Another example is that we host help desks where people offer skills they have, for instance someone who speaks German, Arabic and English comes in for a couple of hours to help out with bureaucracy. People are just so happy to actually talk to someone. We’ve had a help desk about top surgery, another one about digital security."

Helpful Parapraxis editorial about groups.

Jule sent me this 🧡

"Ein grosser Teil des Lebens bleibt immer unausgesprochen, damit muss man sich abfinden. Aber wir müssen uns beeilen, um möglichst viel vom menschlichen Leben dem Chaos zu entreissen."

“FZA: I think this has a lot to do with what Amílcar Cabral said: “Agir para pensar melhor” (“Take action to think better”)”

I'm coming across Madeline Gin's work for the first time, exciting!!