gentle gardening ghost

It's been a hot minute since I put one of these together but since uh

checks notes

Israel seems hellbent on committing a genocide live on social media and propogandaing the hell out of it this felt important. I have cobbled some of these orgs and charity functions from bluesky and the site formerly known as tw*tter, you've probably seen some of them around! But some of the bsky things I wanted to be sure made it over. Anyway.

Cease Fire Today :: if you are an American and you're short on cash for donations, this site has other options (emailing, calling, where protests are happening, etc.). It's all pretty simple to use. Figure out what you have the means to do and get to it.

Jewish Voice for Peace :: Jewish anti-Zionist organization advocating for a free Palestine. They have a good FAQ to hit back on some of the regular questions/concerns that are rooted in propoganda about this war.

Al Jazeera :: I cannot say there's a better source for the truth of what's going on than Al Jazeera. Good way to avoid misinformation, disinformation, etc. As a good example they're covering what's going on in the West Bank to Palestinians there at present along with coverage of Gaza.

Mondoweiss :: I exaggerated, there is a better source -- Mondoweiss is a news site and org to support independent journalism in Palestine. You can donate to them too! They will need it going forward, a lot of journalists have been targeted in this.

United Palestinian Appeal :: UPA does a lot of work in Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon, and in Gaza. Healthcare, infrastructure, education, and outreach. 98% of their funds go to programs.

Anera :: Anera's a relief organization who's been helping people in Palestine, Lebanon, and Jordan get emergency relief since 1968. At present they're trying to get food and hygiene kits into Gaza.

Palestine Children's Relief Fund :: Free medical care to ill and injured children lacking access locally. I do not think I need to say more.

Islamic Relief USA :: Organization that provides aid to help rebuild communities after a disaster, war, and also funds to help lift communities out of poverty. Currently fundraising for medical kits and food and water.

Baitulmaal :: Organization that specializes in emergency aid, poverty relief, and community development.

Medical Aid for Palestine :: Organization to provide medical aid for Palestinians, providing locally-led healthcare.

Prints for Palestine :: Art Auction going on until November 3rd to raise money for Medical Aid for Palestine. Take a look! Make a bid! Or buy something.

Click to send auto-emails that stand against every bill funding genocide.

After all, if you want to buy absolutely nothing - if you want to create a way to live separate from society - you cannot do it like Thoreau; even Thoreau wasn’t doing it like Thoreau; you have to create an separate society, a self-sufficient community, and live in that.

And interestingly Seymour put his finger on “why communes fail.”

In his experience, which was deep and broad, experiments in self-sufficient communities/communes virtually always failed. And not because the idealistic fools weren’t capable of growing crops, or chopping wood, or whatever. It isn’t even the founders were stupid or ignorant or inexperienced, or because self-sufficiency only attracts dramatic personalities. No, the communities he observed consistently failed because they had no ability to resolve conflict. Every group of people will have to come to a tricky decision, resolve a sticky situation, have an awkward conversation or even just get along with unideal situations. They didn’t fall apart because a sheep fell in a ditch; anyone can get a sheep out of a ditch; they fell apart over the arguments about ideology, ditches, sheep and blame. It was always some issue of conflict or communication that broke these well-meaning, well-intentioned, well-educated people apart.

Step back from that and think: people frequently try to live outside capitalism even in this modern world, people frequently try to live in the most environmentally-friendly way, people frequently try to envision an alternative to a hostile state, even in this world where it is difficult or impossible to do so. For every utopia you might picture, people (being people) will have already made a decent attempt at building and living it, in the hope of showing it or even giving it to you. And those utopias aren’t here at the moment for you to have, because it’s terrifically difficult to make communities out of nothing. And that’s largely because it’s very hard to have communication skills about anything at all, let alone something that gets you mad.

All the mommy bloggers, all the brosephs, all the every single customer or client or other person you have dealt with who you wanted to fucking strangle, or at least wanted to be allowed one of those amazing moments of Put Down that viral reddit posts are made of, every single frustrating as fuck human: they will be part of your post-capitalist utopia.

They will not wake up, the morning of the revolution, and suddenly become different people. Your choices will be to line them all up against a wall and shoot them … .or figure out how to live with them in your community. (And multiple revolutions in the past hundred years have tried that whole “line them up and shoot them” thing, tried it REAL HARD, and it didn’t work out great for them either.)

The more de-industrial, de-urbanized, de-impersonal, whatever, your ideal society is? The more it will involve having to work, and work well, and work effectively and without interpersonal violence (physical or social) against people who irritate the fuck out of you.

And no, we never really had any Neat Trick to make that easier in the past. What we most often had was survival pressure so intense that the threat of being ostracized (or having the group turn on you) was enough to force resolutions that nobody was really happy with, or that left an unspoken wound to fester for generations, or to offer up a scapegoat to vent the community’s violence on and then pretend to move on, or … .

Etc.

And I started crying and she was like, is there something in your eye? And I said no I'm crying? And she was like, oh? Why? And I said, because we can't fix my Symptoms because we still don't know what's wrong with me? And she was like. Nothing's wrong with you! :)

In deep red areas you're a republican who is thinking of voting for someone else if they don't vote what you want on this specific bill because it impacts your republican ideals so very much

In swing states you're an undecided voter who's gonna go blue if they don't vote how you like

"I'm a small business owner and [example: anti-drag bill] is making me lose money!" OR "[Anti-drag bill] is going to cost us millions in taxable sales" - If you talk about how it's making you personally lose money and absolutely need to bullshit, you run a bar or do freelance photography. The intern they have on the other line does not have the resources or the know-how to check that.

"I'm concerned that [anti abortion bill] is the government infringing on my personal rights." - Self explanatory.

"[Anti-gay bill] goes against family values in my church." - They aren't going to call your local Pentecostal chapter to fact check this. You don't even need to be Pentecost, you just need to assert that you're part of a community and a major voting bloc.

Take a spoon or two to complete any tasks you need to finish soon. Reblog to give your mutuals a spoon

something needs to change here

this is urgent

I don’t know how to do it

death is the ultimate metaphor for drastic change. it’s a general specific. whatever your problems are, it is very likely that dead people don’t have to deal with them. a real solution to your problems may demand a very narrow range of action that’s likely to be out of reach at this moment, but death is sold on every street corner, so it feels like a more realistic fantasy than happiness.

you don’t really want to die per se but it’s also not completely random chemicals swamping your brain for no reason. you want the pain to stop, you want to be somewhere else, you want to be someone else. it’s urgent. you don’t know how to do it. the end is not the end but a means that feels within your reach right now.