gaslight gatekeep girlboss

The sexuality of a police officer is cop.

The gender of a police officer is cop.

When you become the enforcer and protector of capital, you are making the deal to be slightly favored by the system over others like you, in exchange for being its servant. Your solidarity is with the system that you serve, even if it hates you.

I do not think it should need to be said, but unfortunately it absolutely is, that nobody should ever be forced to become pregnant, be a parent or carry a pregnancy to term. Ever. This requires both complete and total abortion rights & access but also the dismantling of the gendered expectation of women to want and need children. Remaining child free should not only be possible for women, it should also be normal and completely accepted. Anything else is oppressive.

However, I am deeply bothered by how many people who share these views talk about children. I have come across many posts describing children in cruel and dehumanizing ways, emphasizing how gross and terrible children are and how much of a burden they are to their parents. This, I think is also wrong.

Children are a particularly vulnerable population. They often have very little rights and autonomy and are at the whims of adults around them, which makes then particularly vulnerable to abuse. Children are real, fully realized people who have very specific needs and considerations. Constantly discussing how disgusting and terrible children are, means attacking people who have no power and cannot defend themselves, legally or otherwise. These views cannot be separated from calls to remove children from public life, like parks and transportation, the practice of which is both dehumanizing and oppressive. This goes hand in hand with the gendered oppression of women who are unfortunately still often the primary caregivers of children. Forcing children out of the public sphere means forcing mothers out of it too. And the right to not have children needs to go hand in hand with the right to have children. Women need abortion rights and access but they also need the right and access to give birth for free. They need robust childcare and child & family friendly infrastructure. Otherwise the only people who can afford to have children are wealthy elites.

NO NEVER DEATH TO WHIMSY

you should also never ever unplug the air conditioner and stick a flashlight in the vent that blows air to see if we're in there. it's very bad, that place should not be checked

and whatever you do, if you've already made the mistake of unplugging it, don't remove it from the window for cleaning if possible. and whether it's possible to remove the unit or not, don't carefully disassemble the front panel, document where the screws go and plastic bits go, and open up the vent more to be able to get into it easily

as black mold, i'm an expert on this. you should heed my warnings: now, if you've somehow made the mistake of doing all of the above, you should not use warm water and dish soap to CLEAN the inside of the vent thoroughly. DON'T ever use a bottle brush to get into the hard to reach places. and certainly don't rinse and dry the cleaned area before carefully putting it back together

there's nothing wrong with us, black mold. we don't cause or exacerbate breathing conditions like asthma or other illnesses. it's cool, we're cool

furthermore, if you're capable of removing the window unit, DONT take a hose with the same soapy water and wash the portion of the window unit that sits outside the window and is therefore weatherproofed.

whatever you do, don't allow the air conditioner to dry before plugging it back in and turning it on again

and if you have a central air conditioner, you will definitely never ever consult a manual or sources online to perform a similar cleaning procedure on the cooling unit outside.

It is a lot of elbow grease and definitely not just spraying a can and waiting. Especially do not use the ones that are self rinsing via the natural condensation of water around the coils where all you have to do is let the foam settle a couple hours before turning the unit back on. These foaming cleaners are also terrible to use on the removable air intake vent covers. You definitely do not just have to spray the opposite side of all the trapped shit on the plastic mesh and let the foam push it off. Also that stuff on the cover is great for you and your air conditioner.

But how they actually worked was manipulating racist policies to cause as much of a delay as possible. They'd sit down at the bar to order (that's how those restaurants worked, you had to sit down to order and there weren't many tables) and when the waiter said they couldn't serve them, they'd respond that they would wait until they could be served. And then all their friends who they organized this with would do the same, and they would sit there at every seat until they're holding up the whole line. Then nobody could order and the restaurant was forced to either close, serve them, or try and fail to work around them. It wasn't just to make a point, it was to cost them money and time.

Does this look quiet, peaceful, nondisruptive?

And the struggle didn't stop after formal integration, once the Civil Rights act had passed. Because even when they are legally required to serve you, they can make you really fucking uncomfortable and threaten you and the cops probably will take their side.

For one example, there was a cafe that would serve Black people, but would then publicly break the dishes so that no white customer would ever have to eat off a dish a Black person had eaten off of. This was done publicly, right as the Black diner was done eating. The waitress takes the plate and smashes it. This is a signal both to the white diners "see, we hate them just as much as you do, you're safe here" and also a threat of violence to the Black diners. "If you're not careful we'll smash you just like we did this plate."

But at the same time, if Black people go there and eat every day ... how long before the cafe can't afford to do that? How long before they have broken so many dishes that it's eating into their profits? How long before the white diners start getting used to eating alongside Black people and simply don't care as much any longer, or start getting annoyed at the noise and fuss and mess?

1. Folks in these movements trained. They were disruptive and they were strategic about it and they trained so that they could stay calm in terrifying situations and create the targeted disruptions they wanted to create and not get goaded into deviating from that. Absolutely badass.

2. Not at all a criticism of OP because I think their description of people thinking it was "quiet self-sacrificial non-disruptive christ-like activism" is dead on, but I think that description itself speaks to the same kind of revisionism re: the Christ of the Gospels and how disruptive he was and why, and it's important to remember that, especially in this era of renewed christofascism. Rev. Dr. King was a prophet and you will never convince me otherwise.

Nonviolence is not a goal, it is a strategy. A deliberate strategy at a calculated time in response to violence of the oppressor, which can be effective if it shames the perpetrators. See: why Selma or Montgomery was chosen by the SCLC (they had the most racist unhinged sheriffs who would deploy maximum force, which got shown on nationwide broadcasts and finally moved the public).

Nonviolence doesn’t mean you don’t carry weapons if necessary, as many organizers in Selma did. Nonviolence doesn’t mean that you accept that people will throw bombs into your family’s home, as they did to MLK.

And yes, the absurd simplification and bastardization of this strategy is deliberate. It went from being a tool for fighting for liberation to being a justification for more violence and oppression used against future generations of protestors who didn’t meet the standard of perfectly obedient nonviolent non disruptive protestors. Which of course there is no such thing.