This Isn't Normal

Like there aren't academics that are placed in these learning institutions as a cog in propaganda machines to justify colonialism, give credence to eugenics, deny western backed genocides. Like there aren't abusers and rapists and murderers in academia and you don't see any of them dragged and abused in the public eye.

Infact, one of the leaders of this witch hunt against Jason Ardy is Nathan Cofnas who wrote about how black people aren't smart enough to succeed on their own.

The Wretched of the Earth

Discourse On Colonialism

Making Space for Indigenous Feminism

Settlers: The Mythology Of The White Proletariat from Mayflower to Modern

Red Skin, White Masks : Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition

Borderlands/La Frontera

As We Have Always Done

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

Books I couldn't find on the archive but still recommend you purchase or check out at the library:

Apple devices constantly prompt you to verify your age citing that it’s “the law” when it’s not actually true, I accidentally clicked on verify my age when I was updating my iphone and I found I could not opt out once clicked it was so bizarre.

You ask genuinely and you’ll receive genuinely.

First, in pretty much every damn society the closer the proximity to darker skin, to Blackness, the worse the racism will be via colorism. Second, everyone else really, specifically, globally, hates Black people and see us individually/collectively as a resource to be exploited and Africa as a place to be used to their benefit and pillaged and destroyed.

Antiblackness because it ain’t the same as generalized umbrella racism, because it’s describing the specific ways the rest of the world wants Black folks dead, out of sight, or enslaved, no self determination, no autonomy–bodily, mentally, materially, collectively. TikTok and YouTube algorithms specifically suppress Black creators more than anyone but the darker your skin get, the more you get gone. Shit, don’t think it’s a new thing—over a decade ago Facebook algorithms changed a generation of online Black folks language/speech patterns because if they knew you was Black you could get banned for saying the word “white” in any sense but positively. So we started calling whites yt, and when they caught on to that, we got more creative and used 6f/#ffffff, Mayosapian, yakubian devil, and so so many more.

The ways we are hated ain’t unique to the US, although the US does fuckin love to hate us. It ain’t limited to countries we were or are enslaved in neither. Someone from non-African “third world”, global south, global majority just as likely to hate anyone they see as Black the same because to them, we ain’t people, a people, worthy of acknowledgement, justice, care, humanity.

Literally we, a country where white people are a minority, hate black people and dark skin so much that all our beauty products are full of skin whitening ingredients

One of the most vicious and unacceptable slurs in this language is used at indians and means dark skin

You can survive as a black person in this country if you're an expat with a high paying job. But security guards will regularly follow you around the store while you're doing your groceries

'august in kashmir

is a siege on steroids

india wrapped in saffron

pakistan awash in green

kashmir as always

soaks in blood

red of its old and young

those being born

and those not yet.'

like. im sure for a woman in the 1800s it could feel very affirming to be diagnosed with 'hysteria'. now you finally know what's wrong with you, now you know what's going to make you better, and there's this whole grand old apparatus interested in helping you! (assuming you're not immediately locked away for it.)

“They’re not smarter or faster they’re buying up others’ lifetimes to do their chores”

I see this reaction a lot, and I gotta say, it always makes me a little sad. Whenever the conversation of exploitation of labor comes up, inevitably someone finds themselves struggling with the guilt of “It is so important to me not to contribute to exploitation but I cannot do this thing myself and need someone else to do it for me, so how do I even approach that?”

Exploitation isn’t in the hiring of a service worker. Exploitation is in the respect you show them for their ability to perform the service you need from them.

I have been on a cleaning service staff before, and also been someone who hired a cleaning service, and I can tell you for sure that a lot of cleaning crews (especially worker owned ones) absolutely LOVE their clients and are genuinely happy to be able to make their lives better. The clients they don’t like? Those are the ones who disrespect the workers.

When I was involved with a cleaning service, we had everything from little old ladies living alone to McMasions with five cars as clients, and I can assure you that whenever there was someone who clearly hired us because they were overwhelmed or unable to keep their space clean, those were the households where you put a little more elbow grease in and did a deep clean even when it wasn’t paid for, because you could see how much these people were trying and struggling, and they were always so kind and generous and often embarrassed when talking to you about the job.

I only hired a service a couple if times in my life, but whenever I did, I worked with the same people as often as I could, tipped as well as I could afford, and tried to be the kind of client I would want to have, and that’s how I often ended up with my baseboards cleaned too, or my fridge scrubbed and organized or a restorative clean done in a high use room even when that wasn’t what I had scheduled or paid for.

I’ve heard the same thing from all manner of service workers over the years. Many of us like our jobs! We enjoy the work. It’s the customers that can do a number on you.

The largest dam removal in U.S. history. So successful that the salmon that haven’t run freely in the river for literally over a century came back the next year. Not steady progress over a decade as expected, the very next salmon run they came home. No one alive saw salmon in that river outside the hatcheries kept by native’s tribes and the Department of Fish And Wildlife scientists desperately trying to save them. One of the activists who helped bring the suit spoke of their dying grandmother making them promise to bring the fish home, and they didn’t know how that was possible, but they spent decades doing it.

The legal basis for successfully suing the power company who owned the dams was Indigenous treaty rights to eat the fish. Eating the fish was the one thing in a century that succeeded in being a clear and legally binding right that superseded the desires of white capital and industry. I have been going to the public interest environmental law conference off and on for 20 years where a lot of organizing for Undam The Klamath happened. I’ve heard updates about every legal tact they tried as they happened, and they tried everything.

There are healthy, thriving salmon, trout, and lamprey in a rewilding and recovering Klamath River right now as a direct result of Indigenous people eating them. Of their legally binding right to eat them. They sure as fuck care more about those fish than any white vegan ever could. They are salmon people that the Creator sent Salmon to feed, while charging the People with protecting and stewarding them. It’s not possible to learn about salmon and trout in the Pacific Northwest without learning this, and it’s unambiguously racist to dismiss this symbiotic relationship.

The white vegans are trying to get all hunting and fishing banned in Oregon, and that’s quite possibly the single most catastrophic thing that could be done to the animals here because we killed off all the major predators of creatures like deer and without anything hunting them their numbers will explode, eat all the vegetation, destroy the ecosystem, and then die along with everything else in that failing ecosystem. Controlled hunting of deer is vitally necessary for the deer to survive. This is something Native people know, but patronizing racist savior-complex white people refuse to listen to.

I have a whole collection of Oregon’s Public Broadcasting’s documentaries about Klamath River or the larger story of fish and people in the region. If you watch nothing else, watch Klamath Dams Are Coming Out, First Salmon Ceremony, After The Dams, and First Decent (Native made). It could not be clearer that the salmon are being protected and nourished by the people who eat them, and that stewardship is a massive part of their creation myths. But it contradicts political vegan dogma so they don’t listen.