Jester Knyght

If you want to learn more about him, there’s a great documentary on him called Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin

When he began growing some older kinds of corn, the genetics of different ancestral types started to reappear.

He took it upon himself to seek out the elders to whose tribes those ancestral strains had been loved and cultivated by previously. It allowed these tribes to welcome back and cultivate the corn their ancestors knew.

The glass gem varieties were part of the selective breeding he worked on.

Unfortunately, Carl passed in 2016. Something that tugs at my heart is that he gained the name White Eagle, which is also the name of the dent corn our tribe is known for and is grown by us to this day.

The corn he cultivated (and re-cultivated) are still available to purchase and grow yourselves here

I fired off a tweet thread this morning, but I feel like a lot of folks here might benefit from this info, too. Which is: if you want anything to change, from police abolition to getting statues removed to passing local ordinances requiring masks to removing local legislation putting limits on abortion (just for some random examples), you need to get real familiar with your local reps. As in, you need to know who they are, what they do, how they’re elected/appointed, how long they’ve been doing that job, what their history is and how you can pressure them into doing what you want. Using hashtags and sharing links and signal boosting can only do so much. Talking to the people who are actually able to implement the change you want is a huge part that I don’t think gets discussed enough; and although it requires some preliminary work, once you get into the groove it’s surprisingly easy.

First, find out where you live! Which you may think is a stupid step, but —do you live in a city? Are you sure? I live in a city, for example, but I actually live in a township/suburb of that city, not the city proper. (Fortunately due to what I suspect is some white flight-related weirdness, I can still hassle the city proper.) There are entire towns inside of some cities, like West Hollywood and Los Angeles. Double-check; you might be surprised.

Then, find out who’s in charge of said place. There are quite a few people, actually. You probably have a mayor — but they might be called a supervisor. Or you may have a city manager, or executive, or clerk, or all three, or someone else entirely, who’s actually doing the day-to-day running of the place — for instance, while Austin has a mayor, it also has a city manager, and the city manager does WAY more than the mayor does. You also have people at the county/parish level — a county executive is I think the most common term, although sometimes it’s the county clerk, who can have entirely different duties depending on the county. Whatever way it works where you live, find out. While you’re at it, find out who’s in charge of your local elections. Sometimes that’s the county clerk (actually I think it’s almost always the country clerk, but sometimes it’s the county auditor or something weird like that); sometimes they’re elected and sometimes they’re appointed. Find out. Get names, put their contact info in your phone. (More on that later.)

Then, find out who represents you on the city/town council and the county legislature, or whatever they’re called where you are. Finding out what district you’re in can sometimes be hellaciously frustrating; when in doubt, an email to the county or city council can often get you an answer if you provide your address. Also bear in mind that different places have different ways of apportioning council members; sometimes they’re all “at large,” sometimes they’re elected according to districts, sometimes it’s a combination of both. Sometimes (not often I don’t think) they’re not elected at all but appointed by someone. Find out who! And don’t leave out things like school boards and zoning boards and community college boards and anything else you happen upon that has a representative you didn’t know existed. They exist, and I guarantee they’ve got power.

Note: find out who represents you state-wide, too. Often calling the governor isn’t that effective (at least for me, calling Cuomo ain’t gonna do much; if you live in Delaware or Montana or Iowa or somewhere relatively less populous, definitely get your governor’s information), but your state reps are usually pretty eager to talk to constituents, even — and this is really important these days — ones who aren’t of the same party. I’m represented by a GOP state senator, for example, but he ended up voting for this bill that just got signed into law. Most states are bicameral (except Nebraska, heyooo), so you likely have a state senator and a state rep/assemblyman/whatever. Make sure to get info for both. (Unless you live in Nebraska, in which case tell Ernie I said hi.)

Next, find out what the court system looks like where you are. Are your state/county/district/etc judges appointed? Elected? What are their terms? Who’s your District Attorney? Who’s in charge of your Public Defender’s office? (I actually haven’t bothered to look up that myself until today!) What courts handle which offenses in your area? Collect that information.

And what do you do with this info? You put it into your phone contacts, or whatever you use to keep your contacts organized, I dunno, maybe you still use your Wizard from 1992. No judgement. However you do it, put all of these contacts somewhere they’re all together — for example, if you have a letter in your directory that isn’t used much. I have a kind of weird method of organizing my contacts, which is that I put their first and last names (and their handles, if I know them online) in the Firstname field, then the Lastname field I use to say how I know them. So all of my New York-based friends are listed as “NYC, Holly Golightly/moonrivergoddess” or whatever. So for me personally, I just put all my political contacts under “Y” as in “Y do I have to keep pestering you to make you do the right thing.” So a county clerk would be listed like so:

Y, County Clerk Horace Vandergelder

In the “Company” field, I usually put their party and when/if they’re up for election next as well as term length, so Horace would be “Dem, 2020/2024.″ And then I might add any links I thought were helpful as well as notes about, say, what staffer I may’ve talked to or if there’s an important bill coming up etc.

And now you’ve got that information, it’s time to fuckin’ use it. Was there a protest that happened in your area that ended in arrests or violence? Call your mayor, register your displeasure. Call your DA, ask if anyone’s being charged. Call your city council member, ask them what legislation they’d support to end police violence. What do you know that you want them to know? Alternatively, was there a protest in your area that was really great and positive? Call these people; ask if they attended. If they did, offer support for them and say that you want them to follow up with actionable steps. If they didn’t, ask why. (BTW, it’s election season — look at the candidates, too! That state senator I mentioned earlier is retiring this year, and a pretty awesome Democrat is in a good position to get his seat; I’ve started volunteering for him in part because he’s got a history of agitating for police reform and has been regularly attending the protests here.) You can email, too; you’re welcome to c&p form emails, but once you have all these people’s contact info at your fingertips you’d be amazed how easy it’ll be to write something from you, that will be far more effective.

It’s also important to keep a record for yourself of who you’ve talked to, when you talked to them, what they said, if you want to follow up etc. I’ve got a little section of my planner for this; it has dates, names, topics, the works. It’s been really helpful to me over the past few weeks making sure I’m exerting pressure to a variety of people in a variety of positions, not just repeatedly calling one office and leaving the same message over and over again.

But if you really want to, as I put it on twitter, tighten the sphincter of local government, nothing beats face-to-face (or, these days, facetime-to-facetime). And here you’ve got a shitton of options. You can see if a particular politician/government office is taking virtual one-on-one meetings, where you can lobby either your politician or (more likely) one of their staffers to support legislation or policies or whatnot. This is, and I cannot stress it enough, HUGELY EFFECTIVE, especially if you are a demo they don’t often see (aka if you’re not a white Boomer). Local politicians are both desperate for and terrified of an engaged constituency; they want you to care but they’re very much aware that anyone showing up to an office (or a zoom meeting) could make their lives very, very difficult.

If one-on-one isn’t your style, there are also committee meetings, which… holy shit, you would not believe the number of committees there are. Committees for art festivals, committees for transportation, committees for public safety, committees for pretty much everything you can think of and a few I’ll bet you can’t. Noodle around on your councils’ and county’s websites, including their facebook page (nine times out of ten there will be more — and more up-to-date — info on the facebook page) to find out what committees meet when. And here is where your specific priorities will be important, because usually you can attend and in some cases even become part of these committees. Do you want to advocate for better public transportation? Find out when the transportation committee meets. Go to that meeting. If they have a Q&A, get some fuckin’ Qs ready and demand some fuckin’ As.

And then there’s the big kahunas of council meetings and state legislature sessions. Most city/town councils have a segment of their weekly/monthly meetings to hear from the public (this is different from a public hearing, FYI, although they too are really important and you should find out if there are any going on where you live and when). Do you have something you want to get in front of the whole council? Get your ass on the list! In Austin I think you had to call or email the council’s office by the day before; in my town you just roll up and get in line when it comes time. Then for state legislatures, often there will be specific bills on which they ask for “citizen input” or however else they describe it. This is less practical because we don’t all live in easy distance of our state capital, but if you do, consider getting involved there. (And right now with the pandemic, your state legislatures may have new rules about citizen participation that actually make it easier for you to get involved, for once.)

And they shot him in the crotch with it.

If I were feeling charitable I’d say that the cop who fired the shell was aiming for center of mass and miscalculated the distance and hit the guy low.

MASK UP, COME IN BLOC, BE PREPARED, YOU. COULD SAVE SOMEONES LIFE

Allow demonstrators to take action without fear of immediate identification. If you choose to wear a mask, wear it right.

Cover Up It is not enough to half cover your face. Even if you get away, the police may use photos or videos to charge you later. Cover your hair, face, arms and hands. Cloth gloves are the best. Take out piercings. Make sure there are no identifying features on your clothes, shoes or backpack. If you bring any materials with you, wipe them down first with rubbing alcohol first to get the prints off. Don’t bring anything you don’t need. Stay Tight If possible, come to a demonstration with a small group of people you trust. Choose your crew based on shared intentions, not just friendship. You’re here to have each other’s back in the streets and follow up if one of you gets arrested or hurt. Strangers needs to protect each other too. Stay physically close, do not spread out, so that if police try to enter the crowd, you can “accidentally” get in their way. The front of the march might need to slow down while the back catches up. Stay moving, though: a tight, mobile crowd is difficult to surround or disperse.

Meanwhile the moment people are allowed to do what they want, the first things they do are…

Make art and plant a garden.

FOR THOSE OF YOU PROTESTING

TAKE NOTES FROM HONG KONG AND USE THE BRICKS THAT THE POLICE ARE PLANTING TO INCITE VIOLENCE TO YOUR ADVANTAGE!!

We need to be smarter and stack them up, glue them to the ground, or place them in large patterns to block Police vans from causing more damage.

PLEASE SPREAD TO GET THIS IDEA ROLLING

follow here for more news

#WakeUp

i’m going to try to make my case here, and i have no doubt there will be gnashing of teeth from people arguing the letter of the law over the spirit of it but i will address that as well. the “damage” done to publishers was near nonexistent but in exchange the publishers who have filed the lawsuit are willing to destroy the archive under the crushing weight of monetary punishment.

the Internet Archive is literally an online library and is recognized as a library by the state of california. it is not a pirate site.

you cannot download the books on the internet archive website. the only book available for download are those in the public domain. all other books can be checked out the same as you would check out any other e-book at any other brick and mortar library. you can borrow the book for 14 days. the books are protected with DRM and copyright protection to prevent theft.

the books online are purchased or donated, and then scanned. you can only borrow as many books as there are physical copies available at the library. so if there is one copy of war and peace  available as an e-book and i check it out, you will have to wait until i’m done with it to check it out yourself. this is slightly different than how regular libraries do it, but regular libraries are currently at war with publishers over e-books and how they fit into libraries.

the national emergency library was temporary. it was slated to last from march 24th to june 30th. it was made specifically in response to the pandemic.

the only change to the current process of book lending was the suspension of wait-lists. this means that for 3 months, multiple people could check out the same book for 14 days. they were able to accomplish this by using the collections from the phillips academy andover, marygrove college, and trent university. the statement from the Internet Archive includes this information:

During the waitlist suspension, users will be able to borrow books from the National Emergency Library without joining a waitlist, ensuring that students will have access to assigned readings and library materials that the Internet Archive has digitized for the remainder of the US academic calendar, and that people who cannot physically access their local libraries because of closure or self-quarantine can continue to read and thrive during this time of crisis, keeping themselves and others safe.  

… Public support for this emergency measure has come from over 100 individuals, libraries and universities across the world, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).  “Ubiquitous access to open digital content has long been an important goal for MIT and MIT Libraries. Learning and research depend on it,” said Chris Bourg, Director of MIT Libraries. “In a global pandemic, robust digital lending options are key to a library’s ability to care for staff and the community, by allowing all of us to work remotely and maintain the recommended social distancing.”

… A final note on calling this a “National Emergency” Library.  We lend to the world, including these books. We chose that language deliberately because we are pegging the suspension of the waitlists to the duration of the US national emergency.  Users all over the world have equal access to the books now available, regardless of their location.

ok, there are 2 things i want to address now:

the argument that by supporting this writers don’t make money: the fault for this does not and will never lay at the feet of librarians. after reading all of the above, i would find it very difficult to sincerely believe that an author’s royalty money was severely impacted by three months of 14 days library checkouts. we really cannot allow ourselves to start declaring libraries as our financial enemies because they allow the poor to access things they otherwise would not be able to access. institutions that make information freely available to the public need to be preserved at all costs (source: was librarian).

this is a fault in the publisher. the publisher is the one who profits the most from a book sale and the publisher is the one who is filing the lawsuit. the publishing industry is a group of leeches that cling to you as you slowly attempt to make a living.

a library does not hurt profits. a library is a public service.

even if you want to adhere to the letter of the law, i find it extremely difficult to condemn the actions of the internet archive. there was no financial reason for what they did, no malice and no ulterior motive. their national emergency library was a response to brick and mortar libraries being closed in the wake of a pandemic and shutting off a stream of information to people who needed it (especially students!). in response to catastrophe they stepped up and offered a solution. to condemn them under false pretenses (as many did, by calling it a pirate site and weirdly claiming you could download books an unlimited amount of times [?]) has been calamitous.

this was a huge post lol. if you really read this thank you. i hope it made sense. my motive for writing this is not bc i think writers should be poor and should work for free so don’t get it twisted (i draw a dumbass webcomic so i Get It). i just really like libraries and am really upset at the smear job this one got.

It means that during that one scene in Empire Strikes Back, these two assholes know EXACTLY who the other one is.

Also, I have a couple of things I want to clarify on this post. 

Because of the Luke and R2 exchange right before they land on Dagobah, when Luke is explaining that they’re going to find Yoda, an old Jedi Master, and R2 appears to be like, “whomst??” I now hold the headcanon that while R2 knew who Yoda was, he didn’t actually know Yoda’s name. So when they got down to Dagobah, R2 was absolutely like, “OH SHIT, IT’S YOU. HOW THE FUCK ARE YOU STILL ALIVE, GIVE ME BACK THE FLASHLIGHT, WHY DOES NO LISTEN TO ME, BACK OFF YOU GREEN SOCK, I’LL FINISH THE JOB MYSELF, I HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING AROUND HERE.”