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Clumps of white fluff drift across the highway on the west side of the Mississippi Delta town of Belzoni. Cotton now grows from the beds of former catfish ponds.

When catfish ponds in the self-proclaimed Catfish Capital of the World dried up, jobs went with them. Humphreys county, where Belzoni is located, has an unemployment rate double the national level.

But it is not entirely a forgotten southern backwater – at least, not to one government agency. Last year ProPublica reported that the Internal Revenue Service audits Humphreys county taxpayers at a higher rate than anywhere else in America.

About 12 out of 1,000 tax returns are audited each year in the county, according to the ProPublica analysis. That’s 53% higher than the national average and raises the question of why such a place is the subject of such IRS attention, rather than the haunts of millionaires and billionaires, like Manhattan and its one-time resident Donald Trump. But in the most heavily audited county in the US, the recent shock news that Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017 was no surprise, said Joe Jackson, who was elected mayor of Belzoni last month.

“Most people around here are kind of adjusted to the idea that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer,” he said. “That’s not surprising to people in our area.”

The local economy was already in a shambles when the coronavirus hit. The catfish industry was nearly wiped out around 2008 when restaurants across the US started buying cheaper fish imported from Asia. Ethanol demand drove up the price of corn, which is fed to catfish, at the same time. But the pandemic has made things worse. There are only a handful of restaurants in town, but they are now closed to discourage social gatherings, Jackson said.

Many of the storefronts on Hayden Street, the main drag in Belzoni, are closed and, the paint is chipping from the catfish sculptures outside the police station, city hall and pharmacy. Yet the county’s residents have been targeted by the IRS for claiming a tax credit that aims to lift working parents out of poverty.

The IRS audits about 300,000 taxpayers who claim the earned income tax credit, or EITC, each year. These taxpayers are targeted more often than high-income and high-wealth taxpayers because the audits of EITC claimants are easier to do, according to a 2019 letter written by the IRS Commissioner.

An analysis by Kim Bloomquist, who retired from the IRS Office of Research in 2018, found that the IRS’s policy has resulted in higher rates of tax audits in poor communities of color than the rest of the country. Eight of the most heavily audited counties in the country are in Mississippi. In Humphreys county, 76% of the 8,000 residents are Black.

The IRS audits most EITC claimants by mail, but wealthy taxpayers are typically audited in person and the audits require more training. In the 2019 fiscal year, about 80% of individual taxpayer audits were done by mail. But 52% of the $6.9bn recovered from these tax audits came from audits done in person, which are typically performed on wealthier taxpayers.

The IRS commissioner, Charles Rettig, wrote that the IRS needs more money to hire and train auditors in order to balance the number of audits across all income levels. Between 2010 and 2017, the IRS budget was cut by about $2bn. The budget cuts shifted the focus of IRS audits from high-income taxpayers to low- and middle-income EITC claimants, according to Bloomquist’s research.

Bloomquist acknowledged Rettig’s reasoning for why the IRS audits more EITC claimants, who tend to be more rural, lower-income taxpayers. Auditing millionaires and billionaires can take years, as in the case of Trump.

Like... y’all can (and do) drive yourselves mad fussing over situations in which someone might seek an abortion for reasons that are bigoted or offensive. You will accomplish nothing from this, because at the end of the day, “is bodily autonomy a right?” is a yes or no question. It either is or it is not. People either deserve access to abortion or they do not. We can’t pick and choose.

If a five year old child is dying and needs a pint of your blood to survive (and you are the only viable donor), no one can force you to give your blood. Even if the child will die without it. No one can force you. Donating would be a good deed on your part, but no one can force you to do it. Your bodily autonomy is absolute, even if someone else will die because you refused to "share" a part of yourself. Our society lives this truth through the fact that bi-monthly blood donations are not mandatory despite the fact that those donations would save lives.

And that's only a pint of blood. That amount of blood is something that your body will replace quickly, and the act of donating has very little risk to your health. Pregnancy is a continuous nine months of "sharing" your body. It is much more exhausting, physically damaging, and dangerous than donating blood.

I’ll give you a metaphor now. A smoker engages in an act that they know has potential detriments - they take on the risk of unwanted cancer when they engage in smoking. And should in the unfortunate event that they get cancer, they will be responsible for contracting it themselves, the cancer wasn’t forced upon them. - I know this metaphor isn’t perfect either, but I’m writing this on no sleep and this leads to my point. You can not negate the rights of the woman by only considering the fetus, and by that logic- you cannot negate the rights of the fetus (at the point where personhood is established) by only considering the carrier. I don’t have the answer to what point a fetus becomes a person, but I hope you can consider this more holistically!

You are blending two different, logically incompatible arguments: 1.) that pregnancy is punishment that people earn for being irresponsible sluts and 2.) that a foetus is equal in personhood to its parent and has an inherent right to be born.

The first point is obviously a load of crap—you acknowledge that pregnancy can happen by means of rape and other circumstances that are beyond someone’s control. People also have sex without realizing that pregnancy is a possible consequence all the time—through naivety, through misconceptions, through accident and deception. If a woman has sex with a man who lies and swears he’s had a vasectomy, she is not knowingly taking on the risk of pregnancy.

Cancer is a terrible metaphor for pregnancy for so many reasons. Do you mean to imply that smokers do not deserve access to cancer treatment because they have “earned” the disease? I’m sure you know that non-smokers can be harmed by second-hand smoke, and that many people began smoking before the health hazards were widely known—my parents, for example.

Now, let’s say that some people earn the consequences of their irresponsible sctions: they had sex, knowing the risks, and are now burdened by unwanted pregnancy. We’ll call them the Deserving Sluts. We know that not everyone who gets pregnant is a Deserving Slut; some are Blameless Victims.

Let’s say that a Deserving Slut should not be allowed to abort. She should be required to carry to term and give birth whether she wants to or not; after all, she’s made her bed, now she must sleep in it. She consented to pregnancy and childbirth when she consented to PIV sex. No abortion for her!

So... what about the Blameless Victim? Maybe she was raped. Maybe she’s a child. Maybe the father is her own parent. Surely she is traumatized. Surely she has been through enough. Should she be spared from the trauma of childbirth and permitted to abort?

Many people would say yes, and understandably so; it is hard to look at a Blameless Victim and ask her to go through still more pain and indignity.

But murder is murder. If, by being conceived, a foetus has a right to life and autonomy that is equal to a living, breathing human, then it doesn’t matter if the parent is a Deserving Slut or a Blameless Victim. The “guilt” of the pregnant party is irrelevant. Allowing an 11 year old survivor of incest and rape to abort her foetus is the same amount of murder as it would be if she were a 25 year-old Deserving Slut. IF, and I repeat IF, you are opposed to abortion based on foetal rights, then the question of responsibility is irrelevant.

Finally, here is a point I have never seen anyone else make. People do not abort fully-developed, viable foetuses that could potentially be kept alive outside the body. If something terrible happens late in a pregnancy, any surgical intervention that happens will be a last-ditch medical emergency. The overwhelming majority of voluntary abortions occur during the first trimester, when the foetus is less recognizably human than the frozen hairless mice I just bought at Petsmart for Damocles the cornsnake (second trimester abortions are rare—almost always the result of earlier abortion access being unavailable). Does that lump already count as a living human and deserve equal autonomy and rights? Perhaps you, like many others, would say yes.

But a lot of fucked up shit happens in utero. The womb is a bizarre and perilous place. Many people conceive and miscarry without ever realizing it. Sometimes people have quintuplets.... and, occasionally, people absorb their twins.

Be mindful of the content you’re putting on your social media accounts. Stop retweeting/reposting violent images and videos of black people dying. Know that content like this, even with trigger warnings included, can be very emotionally disturbing/distressing and yes, even traumatic, for black people navigating the internet right now.

Report any images and videos you see where protestors’ faces are visible/unblurred, particularly in content surrounding the lootings. Don’t retweet or repost these images and videos. This can be a death sentence. 

DONATE, PARTICULARLY TO MINNESOTA-BASED BLACK YOUTH MOVEMENTS / MUTUAL AID FUNDS WHO ARE DOING WORK ON THE GROUND. FOLLOW/BOOST IF YOU CAN’T.

• The Minnesota Freedom Fund, a mutual aid group fighting back against the unjust MN bail system, is taking donations. (Twitter)

• The Black Visions Collective, a Minnesota-based freedom fighter organization creating campaigns for justice, is taking donations. (Twitter)

• Reclaim the Block, a coalition to demand that Minneapolis divest from policing, is taking donations. (Twitter)

• Crowdfunding for black trans people in need thread. 

Whale Day

A bunch of flowery whales and stuff… for no reason

the american government reacted accordingly. a full investigation was launched to hold the culprits responsible – what nation could have sanctioned such a brutal attack on so many innocents? what kind of soulless country could, regardless of vendetta, allow such a heinous crime? 

by 2002, the united states had their answer. the investigation was complete. A 600 page document known as the Congressional Report on 9/11 was released. approx 20 pages detailing the workings of the nation responsible were produced. The report was published. 

Except the name of the country responsible for 9/11 was redacted in the report. blackened out with a sharpie. It would remain redacted for 14 years. The country in question? Saudi Arabia. 

Instead of declaring to the world who was involved in orchestrating 9/11, the u.s. would hide this information for over a decade. 

Instead, they would point fingers at Iraq, whilst knowing that iraq had nothing to do with the attack in the first place. They would orchestrate journalistic propaganda in the new york times about “weapons of mass destruction” – a narrative that had been proven false by their very own intelligence officers, a narrative that had been shot down by every journalist that had ever stepped foot in Niger (where the purported ingredients of mass destruction were coming from). Regardless, the New York Times would dutifully publish the perverted stories anyway. NYT editors would say “to not invade iraq is the bigger mistake”. 

In 2003, the months of building up false stories in the media, propaganda in every mainstream newspaper, journal and t.v. show would pay off. The u.s. would invade iraq. 

from 2003 -  2011 the country of iraq would be brutalized in ways never seen before by mankind. modern, 21st century warfare would decimate the very spirit of iraq. at least 460 000 innocent, iraqi civilians murdered in 8 years. entire generations were wiped out in less than a decade. we will never know their names. 

waves of sexual violence committed upon “captured” cities ensued at the hands of american soldiers. many of the survivors, if not dead at the hands of their occupiers, would take their own lives. we will never know their names. 

in 2011, the blood in iraq is finally dry. we’ve leeched all of it. we’ve procured the natural resources we came for – it’s time to head out. the so called WMD we came for were never found, they did not exist, they were never real to begin with. A far cry from how things got started, we start seeing articles about the falsehood of the iraq war. the same publishers who willingly handed out propaganda to the masses about WMD in Saddam’s hands are now saying “wait…we’ve made an error.” the narrative shifts. the occupation ends 3 years after a new commander in chief is granted the power to end it. in its wake we leave behind military bases and mercenaries that are ready to activate whenever called upon. 

That same year, the u.s. supports various popular movements across the arab world. tens of regimes are flipped. 

and in that same year, using the same weapons left behind by valiant american rapists and invaders, an army of another kind of mercenaries is born. they call themselves ISIL, then ISIS. 

ISIS vows to cleanse the muslim world of shia muslims, minority sect muslims, christians, yezidis, Jewish people. ISIS also vows they are enemies of the u.s. America vows vice versa. Their feud is a celebrated one. ISIS, the evil nemesis of the Brave & Courageous America. 

But then, 2012 happens. America, losing their influence and control over the levant, start funding ISIS factions. America starts funding Al-Qaeda factions. 

The same NYT that once convinced us that Iraq had WMD is now INSISTING that these al-qaeda factions, that themselves claim to be brothers of al-qaeda, are moderate rebels simply looking for democracy and liberation. people believe it. 

America’s proxies in the levant go on to destroy the region in unimaginable ways–and then, 2018 happens. 

Iraqis & Iranians destroy ISIS. Indisputably, action from both nations led to the destruction of ISIS, now a paid member of the U.S. military. America, once using ISIS and AQ factions to regain control over the levant struggles to position themselves as the heroes – attempting pathetically to play both sides of the same coin. Again, the same way outlets like NYT backtracked their Iraq war propaganda, they start apologizing for identical mistakes in naming actual american funded terrorists as “freedom fighters.” another cycle ends. 

ISIS is gone, but the real loss is America’s. They’ve lost the barbaric feudalistic control they once held in the region via ISIS and Al-Qaeda. Their terrorist assets have been reduced to ashes by a people they once themselves invaded from 2003 - 2011.

This brings us to today. The united states has assassinated Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s second in command. this is akin to another nation murdering the likes of mike pence, joe biden or dick cheney. it is an act of war. 4000 troops have been deployed to the Iraq-Iran region. It is an invasion. 

And just as in 2003 the NYT & MSM justified the faulty invasion of iraq, and just as in 2012 the NYT & MSM justified the funding of ISIS & AQ factions, in 2020, a new propaganda will circulate to justify the illegal assassination of sovereign leaders. 

New propaganda will circulate to justify a new era of bloodshed in Iraq & Iran and the rape and murder of innocents.  New propaganda will vilify young, brown children as terrorists.  New propaganda will circulate to return us to the year 2003. 

There is nothing I can do within my capacity to help anyone. I am completely useless in saving any of the lives that will be taken in the next several years. 

All I can do is ask that when you see a piece of information that attempts to justify the actions of the u.s. on foreign soil, in any foreign nation, that you reduce it to ashes. They lied to you in 2003, they did it again in 2011, they are doing it again in 2020.