Social Justice Among Other Things...

I want you to remember these ones

They are trying to wear you out.

They are trying to wear you out, and they own most major social media now, along with many major media outlets. The disinformation machine is cranking along. You are going to have to slow the fuck down and read things before you help them wear out other people, too.

So you just saw a post about a real scary bill, hunh? Republicans want to make it a capital offense to pet dogs and repeal The Sky Is Blue Act of 1793, declaring the new official color of the sky to be squant? Damn, that sounds scary.

Let's go look up this fictitious "Make The Sky Squant Again Act" on GovTracker* & on the official legislative tracker on congress.gov!

Well, let's see... GovTracker estimates it has a 1% chance of even getting out of committee and a 0% chance of being enacted, while congress.gov says this bill has 2 cosponsors who have been in the House and combined total of less than a month. The bill doesn't have any actual text, and it was referred to 5 different committees.

That fictitious bill and a hundred others like it are quite literally not worth your time, and more than that, continuing to wring your hands about it and tell other people about the scary scary squant sky bill only does their work for them. It scares people, it makes them spend time and energy on it, and it wears them out. It is a legislative Gish Gallop, meant to throw so many things at people that we can't keep up.

Even calling or messaging your Rep in this case means their staffer has to waste time responding to you and letting you know that Representative Buttzonheads definitely won't support making petting dogs a capital offense, a thing that will never, ever happen regardless.

Staying engaged in this environment is going to require protecting your heart and protecting your energy, yes, but also protecting the energy of others. This is why WWII propaganda posters also included ones taking people to task for spreading panicky rumors and undermining morale.

Do you know why most observant Jews don't eat chicken and dairy together, even though the ban is on red meat and dairy together bc you're not supposed to cook the calf in the milk of its mother?** It's not because we think that chicken might secretly lactate or Just Because. It's because the rabbis decided that if I'm sitting out in public and eating turkey and cheese together, someone might glance at the turkey and mistake it for red meat and think, "oh, well, I know that Spider is a good Jew, there must have been a change, or maybe I can just justify it to myself that if Spider does it, it must be permissible to bend the rules just that much." And I would then be accidentally leading my fellow Jew astray. We are responsible for being even more careful for the sake of others than we are for ourselves.

It's the same principle here. We need to really be careful about the information we are spreading and check things past reading a news site. Is it true? Is it relevant? Is it meaningful? Is the news site one I recognize? Can I find meaningful independent corroboration on another site, which is to say, if I find an article about it on a second site, is it just quoting or rephrasing this site?

Yeah, that is a lot. But that's how we keep them from using us to lead our fellows astray.

*GovTracker is an independent site. They explain their methodology in their About section.

Use the tracker.

Take notes of who's claiming the nothingburgers are already legal. They are doing illegal shit, actually, until Actual Law is passed, and as the trackers show, much won't be for ages if ever.

Take note of the genuinely hazardous shit that's got more than an ice sculptures chance at the equator at becoming actual law.

https://twitter.com/coff33detective/status/1271463582312673281

you may not know this, but i bet your city or town or municipality has a website. i bet that website has some contact forms or email addresses on it. i bet you can use them to put together a message in about 5 minutes! i bet it’s almost as easy as signing a national petition.

which is to say: i’m noticing, like most other people, that the national level discussion on really important and long overdue issues is flagging. but the internet and news cycle is not the only battleground, and you will be pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to—

—fight those battles at home, on your own turf, with much more immediate impact, and they are so, so important.

A few guys voicing their anxiety about speeding on a street where their children play and suggesting a radar speed sign. Despite catching all of two meetings where this was mentioned, I walked back home one day and–yep–there was a radar speed sign up.

A persistent force of 3-5ish loud residents coming to zoning and council meetings because they did not want a drive through style restaurant moving into a particular area where there were already major issues with traffic congestion and safety. This eventually resulted in a Chik-fil-a having its planning proposal shot down by council such that the lot is now likely to house an Aldi. I am getting low cost groceries instead of bigotry chicken in my neighborhood because of a D&D party’s worth of regular speakers.

A turnout of residents shouting down an attempt to reduce the amount of funding for the community Juneteenth celebration until Council backed down. One meeting. Roughly a dozen people + their kids speaking about the significance of the holiday. The celebration ended up having its full funding restored.

Government From Above looks easy. Command your followers to do shit and they do it, right?

Except when they don’t. Because all of a sudden their neighbors get in their faces.

Then the whole thing comes apart.

It’s easy for people to think Their Boy and their way of thinking has won, beating the Evil Other Side. They think they can then go back to arguing with their HOA and worrying about the price of eggs.

Teach them otherwise!

Turn up at local political meetings and have those people understand that you’re not just going to roll over and let them have their way. Yell at them. (In words bigger than they were equipped to understand, if you feel that’s the way to go.) Give them to understand that they are not right, and you will be back again to get up their ill-prepared noses about this. And again. And again. (Because they’ll never really be ready for opposition. No one’s taught them that. They’re just cannon fodder, poor things. They were never meant to go into battle.)

People hate looking stupid repeatedly in front of other people. You can tire them out. You can make them give up. You can make them feel there’s no point in it.

Don’t talk yourself out of this. The Goddess of Justice must descend from great heights to effect herself into the works of human beings. Don’t talk yourself out of “your turn in the barrel.” (As some humans have been known to call it.) It won’t last that long. Almost none of your opponents have any staying power. (Remember Punched-in-The-Face-Nazi guy? He had a huge online presence. It took one punch to make him dig a hole and crawl in.)

Let the folks you’re opposing understand that you’re going to keep on doing this every time they show up. Let them get the sense that you’re willing to be unreasonable about this. They’ve been thinking they’re the “sane” ones in this discourse. Teach them that they may possibly be incorrect.

Be persistent. Some of them will never have seen persistence in their lives. (As opposed to repeating somebody else’s talking points over and over again, which isn’t the same thing at all.) True persistence requires creativity! Every day, make a new way to come at them. They will never be able to keep up with you.

If enough of us do this… we can take whole legislative structures back: from the bottom up.

"I’m very concerned about my client’s right to a fair trial in this case.  He’s being prejudiced by some statements that are being made by government officials. Like every other defendant, he’s entitled to a presumption of innocence. But unfortunately the way this has been handled so far his rights are being violated. And as you know, Your Honor, there’s a wealth of case law guaranteeing his rights to a fair trial, but none of the safeguards have been put in place yet here — in fact it’s just the opposite of what’s been happening. 

He’s a young man, and he is being treated like a human pingpong ball between two warring jurisdictions here.

These federal and state prosecutors are coordinating with one another at the expense of him. They have conflicting theories in their indictment, and they are literally treating him like he is some sort of political fodder, like some sort of spectacle. 

He was on display for everyone to see in the biggest staged perp walk I’ve ever seen in my career. It was absolutely unnecessary. He’s been cooperative with law enforcement. He’d been in custody for over a week. He waived extradition. He was cooperative at all accounts. There was no reason for the NYPD and everybody to have these big assault rifles — that frankly I had no idea it was in their arsenal — and to have all the press there the media there. It was perfectly choreographed. 

And what was the New York City Mayor doing at this press conference, Your Honor? That just made it utterly political. And as your honor knows under Loro v. Charles, the Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit has held it to be clearly established that these staged perp walks to the media unrelated to a legitimate law enforcement objective is unconstitutional. And I submit that there was zero law enforcement objective to do that sort of perp walk. There’s absolutely no need for that whatsoever. 

And frankly, Your Honor, the mayor should know more than anyone about the presumption of innocence that he, too, is afforded dealing with his own issues. And, frankly, I submit that he was just trying to detract from those issues by making a spectacle of Mr. Mangione. 

And there are consequences to this. 

He has a right to a fair trial. And I just want to put on the record statements that the mayor made publicly about my client. Nothing saying “alleged” for example. And he said “I wanted to send a strong message with the police commissioner that we’re leading from the front. I’m not just going to allow him to come into our city. I wanted to look him in the eye and state ‘You carried out this terrorist act in my city, the city of New York that I love.’” And he wanted to show symbolism. 

Your Honor, he’s not a symbol. He’s somebody who is afforded the right to a fair trial. He’s innocent until proven guilty. And the mayor was talking to jurors — future potential jurors that elected him. Those are the people that elected him that he is talking to and calling this man a terrorist.

What an unsurprising & completely expected turn of events that literally everyone saw coming 😮

To all my American friends, the time is now.

Every single on of those registrations was a single person deciding to register. When you think you're just "lil ol me" and your voice doesn't matter that much: Remember this. Your actions have impact, your voice and your vote matter.

Get Registered and VOTE

Exclusive footage obtained by Al-Jazeera showed Israeli special forces using an aid truck and a civilian car to carry out the operation. A US special “hostage cell” played a crucial role in the rescue of four Israeli captives, the American news website Axios reported on Saturday, citing a US administration official. Meanwhile, exclusive footage obtained by Al-Jazeera showed Israeli special forces using an aid truck and a civilian car to carry out the operation. The images depict civilian cars escorted by Israeli military tanks penetrating the western areas of the Nuseirat camp, amid a series of unprecedented air raids targeting the camp and various central Gaza Strip areas, resulting in over 200 Palestinian deaths and dozens of injuries so far. The Popular Resistance Committees in Gaza issued a statement, condemning the “horrific massacre committed by the zionist enemy through its planes, warships, tanks, and special forces in the Nuseirat camp”. “The massacre in the Nusseirat camp clearly and unequivocally reveals and confirms the participation of American enemy forces stationed on the floating dock in killing and slaughtering our people,” the statement continued adding that this happened “despite the criminal American administration’s assertion that this dock’s purpose is solely to pump humanitarian aid”.