not who loves you

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. 

By no means do I intend to defend price gouging, bots, scalping, what have you, but this discussion needs to expand past ‘How could my four heroes live with themselves after charging this kind of money/allowing this kind of business practices’. We need to pursue more nuanced avenues regarding capitalism, borderline extortion negotiated into contracts by major event corporations and multimillionaire venue owners. 

As a near-30 xXemoXx, I remember the process of navigating tickets sales between 2005-2012, obviously circumstances have changed since that time. The past six years, My Chem fandom engagement has existed largely within an Internet-contained and self-motivated bubble; individual, physical expenses have been on the lower end e.g. merch, music, cheaper solo tickets. It genuinely is distressing to me watching the younger generation being plunged into the reality of paying bunches of money to see people so special to their existence. 

In discussions with fans in my age range, even we’re having difficulty reconciling the parasocial-based concept of four dudes with commendable ethics and the concept of a Major Label Rock Band who have many many employees, facilitators, and business leeches that operate mostly invisible to fans. Along with creatives working for a well-deserved paycheck, there is MONEY in high level music industry positions. In a way, it’s comparable to public-facing film actors and the multitudes of unseen crew members in the end credits.

Not to get Sincere but.... blease... let this disaster of a situation be the beginning of an exploration and deeper understanding of the mechanics that make a huge tour possible.

I’m from Canada. Our cops are pretty touchy jerks, but I was unprepared for American cops. It never even crossed my mind to not go for my purse to have my papers ready when they asked, and I got in *serious* trouble that would’ve been a lot worse had I been tanner at the time.

The .ORG top-level domain and all of the nonprofit organizations that depend on it are at risk if a private equity firm is allowed to buy control of it. EFF has joined with over 250 respected nonprofits to oppose the sale of Public Interest Registry, the (currently) nonprofit entity that operates the .ORG domain, to Ethos Capital. Internet pioneers including Esther Dyson and Tim Berners-Lee have spoken out against this secretive deal. And 12,000 Internet users and counting have added their voices to the opposition.

What’s the harm in this $1.135 billion deal? In short, it would give Ethos Capital the power to censor the speech of nonprofit organizations (NGOs) to advance commercial interests, and to extract ever-growing monopoly rents from those same nonprofits. Ethos Capital has a financial incentive to engage in censorship—and, of course, in price increases. And the contracts that .ORG operates under don’t create enough accountability or limits on Ethos’s conduct.

Take Action

 SIGN THE PETITION TO DEFEND DOT ORGS

Domain Registries Have Censorship Power

Registries like PIR manage the Internet’s top-level domains under policies set out by ICANN, the governing body for the Internet’s domain name system. Registries have the power to suspend domain names, or even transfer them to other Internet users, subject to their contracts with ICANN. When a domain name is suspended, all of the Internet resources that use that name are disrupted, including websites, email addresses, and apps. That power lets registries exert influence over speech on the Internet in much the same way that social networks, search engines, and other well-placed intermediaries can do. And that power can be sold or bartered to other powerful groups, including repressive governments and corporate interests, giving them new powers of censorship.

Using the Internet’s chokepoints for censorship already happens far too often. For example:

The registry operators Donuts and Radix, who manage several hundred top-level domains, have private agreements with the Motion Picture Association of America to suspend domains based on accusations of copyright infringement from major movie studios, with no court order or right of appeal.

The search engine Bing, along with firewall maintainers and other intermediaries, has suppressed access to websites offering truthful information about obtaining prescription medicines from online pharmacies. They acted at the request of groups with close ties to U.S. pharmaceutical manufacturers who seek to keep drug prices high. The same groups have sought cooperation from domain registries and their governing body, ICANN.

The governments of Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, among others, regularly submit a flood of takedown requests to intermediaries, presumably in the hope that those intermediaries won’t examine those requests closely enough to reject the unjustified and illegal requests buried within them.

Saudi Arabia has relied on intermediaries like Medium, Snapchat, and Netflix to censor journalism it deems critical of the country’s totalitarian government.

DNA, a trade association for the domain name industry, has proposed a broad program of Internet speech regulation, to be enforced with domain suspensions, also with no accountability or due process guarantees for Internet users.

As the new operator of .ORG, Ethos Capital would have the ability to engage in these and other forms of censorship. It could enforce any limitations on nonprofits’ speech, including selective enforcement of particular national laws. For intermediaries with power over speech, such conduct can be lucrative, if it wins the favor of a powerful industry like the U.S. movie studios or of the government of an authoritarian country where the intermediary wishes to do business. Since many NGOs are engaged in speech that seeks to hold governments and industry to account, those powerful interests have every incentive to buy the cooperation of a well-placed intermediary, including an Ethos-owned PIR.

Not Enough Safeguards

The sale of PIR to Ethos Capital erodes the safeguards against this form of censorship.

First, the .ORG TLD has a unique meaning. A new NGO website or project may be able to use a different top-level domain, but none carries the same message. A domain name ending in .ORG is the key signifier of non-commercial, public-minded organizations on the Internet. Even the new top-level domains .NGO and .ONG (also run by PIR), which would appear to be substitutes for .ORG, have seen little use.

Established NGOs are in even more of a bind. The .ORG top-level domain is 34 years old, and many of the world’s most important NGOs have used .ORG names for decades. For established NGOs, changing domain names is scarcely an option. Changing from .ORG to a .INFO or .US domain, for example, means disrupting email communications, losing search engine placement, and incurring massive expenses to change an organization’s basic online identity. Established NGOs are effectively a captive audience for the policies and prices set by PIR.

Second, the top-level domain for nonprofits should itself be run by a nonprofit. Today, PIR is a subsidiary of the Internet Society (ISOC), which also promotes Internet access worldwide and oversees the Internet’s basic technical standards. ISOC is a longstanding part of the community of Internet governance organizations. When ISOC created PIR in 2002, it touted its nonprofit status and position in the community as the reasons it should run .ORG. And those community ties help explain why, when PIR proposed building its own copyright enforcement system in 2016, outcry from the community caused it to back down. If PIR is operated for private profit, it will inevitably be less attentive to the Internet governance community.

Third, ICANN, the organization that sets policy for the domain name system, has been busy removing the legal guardrails that could protect nonprofit users of .ORG. Earlier this year, ICANN removed caps on registration fees for .ORG names, allowing PIR to raise prices at will on its captive customer base of nonprofits. And ICANN also gave PIR explicit permission to create new “protections for the rights of third parties”—often used as a justification and legal cover for censorship—without community input or accountability.

Without these safeguards, the sale of PIR to Ethos raises unacceptable risks of censorship and financial exploitation for nonprofits the world over. Yet Ethos and ISOC insist on completing the sale as quickly as possible, without addressing the community’s concerns. Their only response to the massive public outcry against the deal has been vague, unenforceable promises of good behavior.

The sale needs to be halted, and a process begun to guarantee the rights of nonprofit Internet users. You can help by signing the petition:

TAKE ACTION

 SIGN THE PETITION TO DEFEND DOT ORGS

so it’s open enrollment time, which means you need to pick a health insurance plan from the exchanges!  it can be daunting as shit, for sure, especially if you don’t live in the filthy weeds that are the business side of our garbage health care industry like yours truly does.  

so!  here’s a quick rundown of some of the vocabulary:

premiums: this is what you pay per month for the glorious honor of having insurance coverage.  it does not count towards your deductible or out of pocket maximum.  depending on your income, you may be eligible for a subsidy or other financial assistance to make your premiums more affordable.  

deductible: this is how much in health care costs you have to pay before your insurance starts really kicking in.  for example, my insurance through work had a $1,500 deductible, so the copays and coinsurances and lab costs that i had to pay early in the year, before i had another surgery, were fully my responsibility until i’d paid out $1,500; after that, my insurance started covering a flat 80% of everything, including copays.  basically, the deductible is how many actual dollars you have to pay out for medical costs before your insurance takes over.  

if you’re someone who goes to the doctor a lot, like me, you’re probably going to want a plan with a lower deductible, which will have a higher premium; however, in the long run, you’ll come out more ahead with a high premium/lower deductible.

on the flip side, if you’re generally healthy and just need an annual checkup, flu shot, ob-gyn annual, etc., then you probably want a lower premium/higher deductible plan.

out of pocket maximum: this is the cap on how much– aside from premiums– you should have to pay in health care costs in a year.  most plans on the exchanges right now have a high deductible and higher OOP max.  

network: this is the collection of providers (doctors, surgeons, urgent care facilities, imaging facilities, etc.– any clinical medical care or medical service provider) that are contracted with the insurance plan.  this means that they have an agreement with the plan to accept payment from that plan for services.  you can still see out of network providers, but your plan may have a separate out of network deductible that is higher and that you pay separately from your main deductible (for example, if your plan deductible if $5,000, you might have a separate out of network deductible of $5,500; even if you’ve already paid of $4,950 of your regular deductible, if you see an out of network doctor, you’re going to have to hit the $5,500 deductible in copays and whatnot before the insurance covers them fully).  

most insurers have their own website that identifies what doctors are in network.  sometimes you can access this without being on the plan already, sometimes you can’t.  a decent, though inconsistent, workaround is to use zocdoc, where you can put in the plan type you’re thinking about switching to and see what doctors are in network.  the drawback to zocdoc is that contract status is doctor-reported, so if the doctor’s office in question is slow to update, the records may be out of date.  

another option to determine network availability for a specific doctor or care group is, if you’re okay hopping on the phone, to just give them a call and ask outright if they’re going to be in network for plan ___ in 2018.  

if you’re like me and hate talking on the phone, the other option is that large provider groups, and a good number of smaller groups and individual providers, will often also have accepted insurances on their websites.  in my experience almost all providers who have privileges at a hospital will have that listed on their pages on the hospital’s website.

copay: this is a flat fee you pay to a provider when you see them.  it’s like the cover charge at a bar: you pay $20 to get in the door, and then you get the dubious honor of also paying for the drinks and food you buy inside on top of that.  

coinsurance: this is a percentage charge for seeing a provider.  instead of a $20 copay for the cost of the visit to see doctor bob, you’re charged, say, 10% of the total cost of all charges associated with you visit to see doctor bob.  if you don’t get much done, this may only like $10; if you get a full metabolic panel run and a bunch of xrays, it might be $100.  

and the plan types:

hmo: health management organization.  the concept of this plan is that you have a pcp (primary care provider - your regular doctor) who functions as your primary point of contact for all medical care.  if you want to see a non-pcp doctor, you have to first see your pcp, who will write you a referral to see said specialist.  specialists include orthopedists, physical therapists, neurologists, ob-gyns,  etc. - any provider who isn’t your pcp, basically.  

hmos tend to be cheaper for you, the beneficiary

this is because of how they’re paid out: pcp doctors receive a capitation (aka, a set flat amount) payment from the insurer for each beneficiary (you) who has them as a pcp.  

so, if i’m a primary care doc and i have 200 blue cross hmo patients and i get $100 per patient, i get $20,000 from blue cross, ostensibly for the cost of care provided, but the provider keeps all $20,000 even if they only end up incurring $15,000 in costs.  the downside of this for you as a patient is that this encourages pcps to get a lot of people to sign up as their patients, and then to see them as little as possible/push them out to specialists for actual care, as this lowers their costs and increases their revenues.  

you may end up feeling like you’re going in circles trying to get actual care because you’re getting pushed from one doctor to another.

note: hmo plans sometimes do not cover out of network providers at all.

ppo: preferred provider organization.  this plan is a free for all: if they’re in network, you can go to whomever you want.  they tend to be a bit pricier (almost always on premiums, 50/50 on deductibles) than hmo plans, but you’re basically paying for ease of access.  you can make an appointment directly with any specialist you so choose.  these plans are ideal for people like me, since i have to see orthopedists and hematologists and physical therapists pretty regularly, and going through a pcp for each of those would be a pain.  

you’ll tend to have relatively low copays within the network and higher ones outside of it

unlike some hmo plans, most ppo plans will provide coverage for out of network providers, just at a less favorable rate

epo: exclusive provider organization. this is the bastard child of the hmo and ppo and is also an increasingly common option on most of the exchanges.  like a ppo, no pcp or referrals are provided; however, the network tends to be narrower and you have less choice of in-network providers and, crucially, they don’t tend to cover any out of network providers except for emergencies 

important note: the classification of “emergency” isn’t just “emergency situation”, but generally is limited to a proven medical emergency in which you go to an actual emergency room or emergency department.  

insurers will frequently challenge ER/ED bills to confirm medical necessity because– 

in their defense, since they’re meant to cover almost the entirety of emergency bills and also because one of the quantifiable measures of success in moving to value-based care that the ACA established is lowering avoidable ER/ED admissions

–they don’t want to encourage people to go the ER/ED for just anything

high deductible/catastrophic: these are exactly what they sound like– plans for healthy young people who are pretty much only going to wind up with medical costs if something terrible and, well, catastrophic, like a car accident, happens.  they have low premiums and very high deductibles (often approaching ~$10,000).  these are only available to people under the age of thirty, because clearly as soon as you turn thirty you must turn into a total drain on all healthcare resources :|

so what does all of this boil down to for you and your enrollment?

start by figuring out what financial help you’re eligible for!  the exchanges generally have an option at the front end of the process for you to identify your annual income and number of dependents on your plan.  this will let you know if you’re eligible for a subsidy or other financial help, and, if so, how much; you should also have an option when searching through plans on the exchanges to input estimated financial help, which will adjust the premiums in the search engine.  

after that, start digging into the individual plan options.  every exchange plan should provide a summary of benefits and coverage.  it’ll be a pdf and will look like this:

that red circle in the top right there? that’s where you can identify what type of plan you’re looking at.  the first page in the summary of benefits will always look the same– it’s the basic overview of the costs and definitions.

this document will also list excluded services.  it’ll generally be somewhere in the middle/back half of the document and will have a clear header like this:

for me, this is the first thing i look for after verifying premium and deductible amounts.  as the above picture indicates, you can find more information in the plan documents.  these aren’t always directly linked to on the exchange website, but you can generally find them on the insurance providers website.  these will be a lot more detailed and can be anywhere between twenty and 200 pages.  ctrl + f your heart out: as frustrating and complicated as insurers can be, they can’t actually fail to disclose if they, for example, don’t cover all forms of contraceptives.  they’ll disclose it in the plan documents, even if they don’t, unfortunately, have to be clear and up front about it.

NOTE: MINIMUM VALUE STANDARDS

towards the end of the summary of benefits document will be a page that looks like this:

minimum value standards roughs out to basically meaning that at least 60% of all medical charges are covered.  if the plan you’re on does not meet minimum value standards, you might be able to get a tax credit to help you buy another marketplace plan.  always check for this verification when you’re researching plans.

what does all of this shit mean? 

it means start here and then find your state’s exchange from there.  the garbage carrot in chief established “maintenance times” on this website throughout the open enrollment period (sunday afternoons, i believe), so schedule around that.  sit down on a monday or wednesday or saturday with some snacks and a cup of your favorite beer/wine/tea/whathaveyou and crank up some good music to jam to and do some research:

start with figuring out what you can afford monthly and if something terrible happens and you have to cover ER and/or surgery bills

if you have a specific doctor you want to stay with, figure out which insurances they’ll be accepting

check for coverage info in the summary of benefits documents and, if you want more detail, in the plan documents

narrow it down to a few and compare the prices

take a break and have a cookie, you deserve it at this point

pick a plan!  if you’re not feeling super certain about it, go for a walk, do some laundry, pet your cat– just take a break, walk away, come back to it with fresh eyes.  this is a big deal, so you don’t want to wear your brain out and give yourself a headache and then just pick one at random because you have eye strain and want to be done.  open enrollment goes until december 15, so don’t rush yourself.

sign up for your plan

have another cookie and pat yourself on the back, because you just signed up for health insurance for 2018!

now take a nap because that was fucking exhausting and you deserve it

as always, i’m here for any questions you might have!  

there will be basically zero advertising for it this year, bc of the current administration and also bc alex azar is a shithead, so.  put it in your calendar so you don’t forget, expect them to roll out another maintenance schedule on the website that will fuck with weekends and usual enrollment times, and get started early this year.  

i’ll also make a more detailed addition later, but be really careful looking at what the plans offer. there are shitty junk plans allowed on the marketplaces now so don’t assume that just because they’re on an aca state exchange that they’re good, or even decent coverage. i know health insurance is expensive and overwhelming to look at, but there are affordable, decent plans in most marketplaces, even if you have to dig for them.

This is going to be a long post, but it’s important because this is the kind of thing that really needs public support. It’s not “oh, let’s compromise! we’ll share! ;).” It’s the first step in a multi-step process that is going to likely end in total repatriation for most (if not all- Britain, as per usual when it comes to artifacts, is being a shit) of the looted bronzes.

So. Why short-term loans and not just giving stuff back? Well, the first thing you need to realize is that this going to set a multinational legal precedent. This can’t be a quick process because that leaves more room for error in favor of the European institutions- which we know can happen because that is what happened with some of the repatriation laws in the US. When NAGPRA, the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act, was passed in 1990, museums were given five years to inventory their collections and identify which of the federally recognized tribes objects originated from. As a result of this short timeline, massive quantities of Native American artifacts were labeled as being culturally unidentifiable and as such technically immune to repatriation. That means a lot of Native American artifacts and even remains, despite being federally required to go back, have been loopholed into staying in museums. It essentially created a legal way for museums to ignore the law, and some museums have really abused the hell out of this loophole. This needs to not happen with the European repatriation practices. If repatriation is going to happen in the best way, you have to take careful steps. 

The loan agreements are best summed up by this quote from the Benin Dialogue Group: “This event occurs within a wider context and does not imply that Nigerian partners have waived claims for the eventual return of works of art removed from the Royal Court of Benin, nor have the European museums excluded the possibility of such returns.”

People are missing this, I think, because they don’t understand what repatriation actually is and how it works. There’s a lot of moving parts! Museum repatriation isn’t just “hey we took these, now here you go.” Repatriation takes into account fragility of the artifacts- if we ship them back now, will we be handing their actual owners a pile of dust?- as well as who actually has the best claim to them. That doesn’t mean “which European museum claims them,” it means “hey, Europe and America REALLY FCKED UP AFRICAN SOCIOPOLITICAL GROUPS due to chattel slavery and the way the Scramble for Africa divided the continent.” But more on that in a sec. First, there’s something really important to understand about European museums.

In many European countries, there’s not actually a protocol in place for giving stuff back. There should be, but there isn’t- and as such, this is something that’s very new for a lot of museums. In fact, in some cases, it’s illegal for museums to divest their collections, which is not a fair set of laws- but it means that loans are a way around this. Isn’t the most important thing getting the objects back in their place of origin so that the artists’ descent communities have access to them? (I personally think that’s the most important thing. Possession is nine tenths of the law, so once the bronzes are home, then we can argue the law.) 

This also isn’t a case of giving something back to an individual- it’s giving something back to a country and the culture from whence it came. You can’t just go to the Nigerian embassy and hand the first staffer you see a bunch of art and artifacts- museum people have to be very careful about the transfer. This is true on both sides of the equation. Repatriation also has to take into account who the stuff should belong to. 

For instance: Why are the Benin bronzes going back to Nigeria, when Benin the country is still extant? Because they were looted from Benin City, which is in modern-day Nigeria, which happened because African national borders are also relics of colonialism. Country lines were, by and large, not decided by African peoples; they were settled by Europeans during their pillaging of the continent for resources. Loans mean that these items can be displayed in Africa, for African people, while the details of permanent homing are figured out.

That leads us to the next thing people aren’t getting: These loans aren’t like borrowing a book from the library. Items aren’t being loaned to an individual, and there’s not a due date. In many cases, loans are actually more convenient than artifact transfers. There’s a lot of big-picture stuff to look at here, and for a brand new institution that’s not even built yet, loans make so much more sense than an actual transference of ownership for the first couple of years. Why? Logistics. 

The Nigerian museum will be brand new, and as such, will be in the process of establishing its collection protocols, including rules about preservation (how will they store and care for the artifacts that aren’t on display? if you’re a new museum, you gotta decide that for yourself!), cataloging, and information coherence. Part of the point of museums is to keep information together. Every museum has its own system for this, and if they just straight-up adopted a European database system, they’d be using systems of categorization are based on colonial ideas of classification and hierarchy, using ethnic/social affiliations decided by European colonizers and largely bare of the language that African peoples describe themselves with. (I’ve seen these databases. It’s not pretty.) So they’ll adapt their own system, and then that’s where we get to the data entry part- which can take literal years for even a small collection. See, once something enters a museum collection, data’s attached to it- who put it there, where they got it- and as it continues to exist in a museum collection, data accumulates. “Loaning” stuff back for a short period actually takes some of the burden off the Nigerian museum because the stuff will remain in the European museums’ system while the Nigerian museum builds up its database. Give the Nigerian museum some time- as they grow physically and develop their systems, they’ll be better equipped to permanently house these artifacts. Which they will.

And this really is literal, I can’t stress that enough. This isn’t a “Oh, the African museum won’t have the resources, we’d better hold on to the stuff for them” patronizing thing, this is a “literally this museum is not finished yet, decisions about cataloging and storage have not yet been made” thing. 

Physical storage is another Big Deal for why the European museums are agreeing to loans rather than outright repatriation. There is a TON OF LOOTED STUFF. The three-year rotating loan system means that for the first time, the looted artifacts will be able to be seen at home. But the looted artifacts aren’t going to be the only thing in this museum! Nigerian art didn’t stop happening after the 1800s- this museum is going to be a celebration of modern African art as well, and pre-1800s art. Loans mean that while the museum is building that storage space, they can display different objects without worrying about where to put them when they want to cycle in new bronzes. Museum buildings don’t spring out of the ground overnight. Safe, climate-controlled storage doesn’t blossom with the dew. Like, give them some time. These loans are a two-way street. If the Nigerian art museum didn’t like the terms and conditions, they wouldn’t have agreed to them. France was willing to give more- hell, the French side of the consortium has put new legislation in place to sidestep French laws about museums not being allowed to divest their collections so that they could just give things to Nigeria instead of doing loans. But the new Nigerian museum had agency and made decisions, too. They want these loans. 

This is heartbreaking.

We want justice for the murder victim too, and we're definitely not trying to protect the murderer. The thing is, the murder happened in Taiwan, outside of Hong Kong, and HK currently doesn't have any extradition agreement with Taiwan, so we can't give the man to Taiwan for legal proceedings right now.

Now, HK can certainly work out some sort of special agreements with Taiwan to make it happen for this murder case, and that's what a reasonable top HK leader should do. But no, the current Chief Executive (i.e. the top political leader), who's actually elected by mainland China but not democratically elected by the people of HK and thus doesn't really care about our opinion, decided not to work out a special arrangement for the murder case. You know what she did?

She decided to make a blanket change to the current HK extradition law, so that it allows everyone who lives or even just passing through HK to be handed over to places we currently don't have extradition deals with. Sounds good, right?

Wrong! Taiwan doesn't want to go down this route and it has explicitly stated that if that's the route HK takes, Taiwan will not request for the murderer to be handed over to Taiwan. For one, it's not the most time efficient way for HK to hand over the man to Taiwan and get justice for the murdered girlfriend.

The most important and underlying reason is: the proposed changes cover handing over people to mainland China, which we all don't trust bc of its "legal" system that frequently forces people to "confess" their "crime" without real proof of crime and the main victims are human rights activists. The proposed new extradition bill can't guarantee people turned over will be assumed innocent until proven guilty in the legal systems they're sent to, which is the foundation to protect people wrongfully charged of crime. And the HK court doesn't have enough power to overrule sending anyone to mainland China for any "crime".

Tl;dr:

HongKongers want justice for the murder victim, but not through the proposed changes to the law currently put forward by the HK government. If the proposed changes are passed, mainland China can bully the top HK political leader into handing over anyone who disagrees with mainland China to be sentenced in mainland China under any "crime" it can make up.

"You're protecting the murderer if you don't support the proposed new extradition bill" is exactly the kind of rhetoric the mainland China-appointed top HK political leader uses to try to make protestors fighting for freedom look bad.

Is that what you want for Hong Kong? To be turned into the express line for punishment in mainland China for fabricated crimes?

there are several posts going around about how to best help if you witness an ICE raid/arrest as a (white) citizen. many of them are filled with extremely bad, LARP-y advice such as screaming at agents and getting physically close to them. in most cases, this is just going to make things worse for everyone at risk (including yourself). you need to stay calm, and avoid getting someone accused of resisting arrest.

to be clear: most of these fascists dont care about the law. “illegal” is not a magic word you can say to make them stop. and, being a white citizen is not an impenetrable shield. you can still be arrested, so be prepared for that. you are, however, less likely to be arrested, and MUCH less likely to be killed or held extralegally.

here is what you should actually do to help:

record, and make sure your phone auto-backups to a cloud. streaming can be problematic because its best to have lawyers look over the footage first. be aware they might also grab your phone, even without a warrant. if they’re grabbing it out of your hands, try to lock it. make sure you have a pin lock, not pattern or fingerprint. here’s some other ways to protect your phone from cops.

if you are able to film, and have determined it won’t escalate the situation, make it obvious you are doing so, because secretly recording is illegal in several states. narrate any violation of rights you see. here is a Q&A about filming ICE.

stay several feet back from agents, because they can claim you’re impeding them. if you’re recording and they claim this, take several steps back, and announce it as you’re doing so, if you’re filming.

ask if they are free to go, if someone is being approached. if ICE insists on the person asking for themself, and they speak spanish*, tell them “por favor repita: ‘am i free to go?’” (this just means “please repeat”) if the agent says yes, tell them “usted se puede ir”. if not..

calmly inform people of their rights if they are being arrested. they do not have to speak at all to agents, answer any questions without a lawyer, or sign anything. they do have to show their paperwork if they have it, but do NOT have to hand over the paperwork/passport, or consent to a search of themselves/belongings, without a judicial warrant (not administrative! here’s the difference). it is crucial that they give as little information as possible to ICE.

if you speak spanish, list their rights in spanish as well, and translate what the agents are saying. if not, keep the google translate app on your phone – it’s not perfect, but it’s quick/accessible and can download languages for offline use. you can also memorize this sentence: “no tiene que responder ni dar su consentimiento” - “you dont have to respond or consent”

get their lawyer’s contact info, if they have one and are being taken away by ICE. many people carry a card with emergency contact info on it, including childcare info and loved ones, so you can offer to call those numbers for them.

call for legal help. do not call the ACLU or other big organizations for immediate help, call your local immigration help center (for New York State, contact IDP at 212-725-6422. for California, call the TRUST hotline at 844-878-7801). United We Dream is an immigrant-lead organization that provides aid nationwide, and can be reached at 844-363-1423. please save these numbers in your phone!

know the ICE rapid response network in your town, and keep their number on hand. if there isn’t one close to you, here’s how to make one.

finally, here are some useful toolkits:

comprehensive ICE response guide

know your rights posters for in-home raid readiness, community flyers, and informative videos

ACLU videos explaining what to do in various situations with ICE

Well, let’s put it like this: People who understand that climate change is real, are like people desperately trying to put out a fire in their own house. And sometimes assholes will intentionally mute the fire alarm, or even try to turn off the water hose. Black people and other people of color are trying to put out that same house fire, but with fewer resources, and also while a deranged sniper is outside, constantly taking shots at us, at random intervals.

So I guess maybe it depends a little bit on your perspective.

We’ve been fighting one of these threats literally for hundreds and hundreds of years. And now, we need to be be fighting both. Both are very real threats. One just happens to be much more immediate, for some of us. I can’t help save the world from climate change if some random cop shoots me dead because they “feared for their life” when all I did was walk past them.

If we valued lives of color more generally the fact that people are already dying from a changing climate would force us to act. It is a human rights issue. Human means all of us.

Humanity has spread itself over nearly this whole planet (and only a very little of it ever lost its protective melanin) and if “all lives” had ever mattered we wouldn’t be willing to allow the threats of rising seas and superstorms and the loss of croplands to threaten our species as the price of ad absurdum wealth for a very very few.

If we cared about the environment for its own sake we’d be willing to listen to scientists and farmers and indigenous peoples of color on how to live sustainably on this earth over a handful of mostly white, mostly western idiots - oil companies bribing the climate and sustainability science communities, agribusiness lobbyists pushing to displace traditional farming for patented monocultures, pastors preaching that the world is doomed and disposable and to be used up before the worthy get a new one.