Diary of a Panromantic Asexual whos pissed

The FBI cut the phone lines during the 1977 disability rights sit-in. Then they turned off the hot water.

They locked the doors from the outside. One hundred and fifty people were trapped on the fourth floor. Half of them used wheelchairs. The government assumed they would leave.

Kitty Cone was thirty-three. She had muscular dystrophy. Her muscles were failing, but her logistics were flawless. She knew how to organize people.

The federal government had promised to sign regulations protecting disabled Americans from discrimination. The policy was known as Section 504. They printed the promise on paper. Then they stalled. Without a signature, it was just typography.

The protesters entered the regional Health, Education, and Welfare building in San Francisco on a Tuesday morning. They took the elevators to the director's office. They brought sleeping bags and catheters. They informed the staff they were not leaving until the law was signed.

By sunset, the police surrounded the exits. Kitty sat near the windows. She organized the floor plan. She assigned committees for security and sanitation. She kept her medication in a small cooler.

According to federal memorandums released decades later, the strategy to end the occupation relied on medical attrition. The building was not equipped for long-term habitation. The FBI calculated that a population requiring ventilators, specialized diets, and daily medical aides would voluntarily evacuate if the environment became sufficiently hostile. They instituted a blockade.

The blockade went into effect immediately. No food deliveries allowed. No medical supplies permitted through the lobby. Guards stood at the main doors checking identification.

Kitty's muscles deteriorated faster under the physical strain. She couldn't walk. When the phone lines went dead, the fourth floor lost contact with the press. The government waited for the quiet.

Kitty dropped to the floor. She realized the barricades were designed for standing adults. The police had blocked the hallways at waist height. They hadn't blocked the linoleum.

The floors were covered in cigarette ash and spilled coffee. She dragged her body through it. She crawled under the barricades to reach the restricted elevator shafts and unguarded offices.

She carried notes in her pockets. She found a single working payphone the FBI missed. She called the local news desks. She called the mayor's office.

She crawled back. When her arms failed, someone pulled her by her ankles. The Black Panthers heard the news reports. They crossed the police lines with hot meals. The FBI could not stop them without a riot.

They shut off the elevators, so she crawled.

The occupation lasted twenty-five days. It remains the longest non-violent occupation of a federal building in American history. On April 28, the Secretary of HEW signed the regulations without a single alteration.

The protesters left the building the next morning. They went back to their apartments. The Rehabilitation Act regulations laid the groundwork for every accessibility law that followed. The HEW building still stands on United Nations Plaza. The elevators run on a schedule. The doors are heavy glass.

Kitty Cone: the woman who crawled under the barricades.

Source: Kitty Cone's oral history, Bancroft Library.

Verified via: National Museum of American History.

get a bit of hope, you get

a cute birb photo

Eating uninspected food is going to crush supermarkets when food poisoning and E. coli start wiping out brands.

Lawsuits for selling tainted food.

This will kill people. This will not save money or end waste or stop fraud.

Originally, I was going to talk about Collective Shout and NCOSE to help bring awareness about their corruption and their plans to destroy video games. But, the more I looked into them, the deeper I went into this rabbit hole to point I saw the devil in the eyes... in more ways than any human being should

So, instead I'm going to address the current state of affairs, and one way we can help protect pop culture and history. Why should we worried about protecting these things?

Well... let me tell you a story. Something more than 6 decades ago:

An asian overlord, and his followers, set out to destroy what he called the "Four Olds"

Old ideas

Old culture

Old customs

Old habits

To accomplish their objectives, the overlord ordered the descruction of millenia worth of culture, the erasure of traditional heroes, the demolition of temples and traditional architecture, the burning of books, and the suppression of dissenting voices.

The goal was to reshape society according to the "ideas" and the "narrative" of this overlord. All in the name of "progress"

You may wonder, what does something that happened half a century ago have to do with the current worldwide censorship?

Some people point out that there is no coincidence that Australia, UK, and other nations rolled out draconian censorship laws around the same time frame. But, even those who can see that are still not seeing the full picture

We cannot see the new supreme ruler of Australian Internet Melinda Tankard Reist as a separate entity from the tech MP from the UK, Peter Kyle. And we cannot separte these two from Senators Mike Lee and Marsha Blackburn, given they're currently trying to do the same in the US.

You have to see this as one single entity, one unique wild beast

Let's go step by step. The first attack was Collective Shout weaponizing payment processors to delete games. To avoid drawing too much unwanted attention, they just targeted adult games with "questionable" tags, to more or less seem consistent with their so-called "anti-porn" brand

Obviously, tens of thousands of gamers, most of which didn't even care about adult content, rang the alarm through the Internet. A female gamer even started to dig everything about them, and needless to say, we found out those australian ladies are diabolical. And that's an understatement! They even went as far as to defend "Cuties" (a movie that exploited hundreds of real underage girls)

A few days later, the UK rolled out the Online Safety Act, and just like critics warned, the so-called anti-porn law was used to censor more than just adult content.

Artists and photographers couldn't see their own work due to UK's restrictions...

...and the only way they could was by giving up their ID and/or personal information. Same applied to Spotify, with the added caveat of them deleting your account if you fail to prove you're not a minor

And it's not just the UK, it's the EU itself. So, I want you pay attention to these details, because they will be importat. Right now, this entity is now restricting both art and music, even if they have nothing to do with pornography.

But, there's more. Under these new laws, even access to Wikipedia is restricted. Let that sink in... an enormous online encyclopedia with lengthy and detailed articles about historical events. Therefor, censorship is also restricting people's access to knowledge and history.

Are you starting to see the big picture? Culture, art, music, history, all under attack in name of "safety".

But, what truly gave this entity away was its activities in the US: you guys probably know about the censorhip duet introduced in the Senate:

The Screen Act, and the Kids Online Protection Act or KOSA (They're not even trying to hide they're copying the UK draconian law). If they pass, they'll be used to crackdown on freedom of expression and pop culture.

Still, this is not the huge reveal. The cherry on the top is another US bill known as "Block BEARD". A new pirate site block bill. At first glance, fighting piracy seems noble, and many people would back it up. But, if we add this factor to what's currently going on around the world, fighting piracy doesn't seem to be the real goal here.

Here's an example. There are movies and series from the 80's and 90's many people would be willing to pay for just to see. But, they're not available in either physical or digital formats. So, what do many of these people do...

In situations like this, pirates become the guardians of media and pop culture, preventing a lot of entertainment from becoming lost media.

If censorship forces all platforms to remove lawful content, pirates become the only way to access this content. But, what happens when even this venue gets blocked?

Now, one may say censorship will only affect adult content devoid of any "artistic value". But, here is when I go back to the beginnig of this war against the current "four". What does Collective Shout and NCOSE truly want aside from getting rid of nudity in the cases of attractive adults? (their defense of "Cuties" show they don't mind as long as they're real little kids)

Well, Melinda Tankard Reist already gave away part of their endgame...

...no more videogames. One of the cores of pop culture, gone. And with the help of Block BEARD, they can supress all ways to recover the content. turning all the media they seek to censor into lost media.

If we factor what the EU is doing with art, music, and knowledge/history, it's obvious they're taking from that asian overlord's playbook. The destruction of the current "four":

Culture

Customs

Habits

Ideas

All in the name of "safety".

As a female gamer recently found out, this entity is making this law as broad a possible to cover nearly everything in media:

As of the writing of this article, NCOSE has been trying to gaslight people into thinking gamers want this censorship. Spoiler alert: they don't, and the people they got to speak in their behalf are not real gamers. That's why NCOSE is getting ratio'd in X as a result

Right now, gamers and weebs as well as developers and content creaters are fighting this wild beast in any way they can. Wikipedia is engaging in some legal battles, and so are lawyers and other advocates for freedom of speech and freedom of expression.

What's the goal of this entity?

Well, the asian overlord mentioned at the beginning of this article holds the answer: the destruction of the four old was an attempt to reshape society by erradicating everything that came before, so the ideas and philosophy of the overlord could override the cutlure and norms of the people.

Or, in a way most pop culture fans could get: "As long as there are those that remember what was, there will always be those that are unable to accept what can be"

The goal is to completely erase current culture and values from the collective consciousness, and replace them with the ones this entity sees fit.

So, where does that leave us?

Even if we win this war, there are things we must do to safekeep the culture this wild beast want to destroy. After all, as we saw when DEI/BRIDGE initiatives finally failed, this entity doesn't stop just because it failed a few times. It just keeps trying. If they fail here, they'll likely focus all of their efforts in eroding freedom of religion. But, that's a matter for another time

Right now, we're seeing the love child of North Korea and the Soviet Union on a near-global scale.

So, we should do is the following:

Download as much media as possible: art, music, movies, series, books, documentaries, etc.

Make backups of everything. The more the better (Flash drives should be hidden in places or spaces nobody would look for)

If you happen to have rare physical media in the forms of books, employ or develop methods to hide them. It doesn't matter if it's a history book, a bible translation, or a manga volume. They all deserve to be preserved

Keep children as far as humanly possible from fan communities and online activity. This entity uses them as a weapon to destroy culture and knowledge, the less children interact with online content, the better

A bill has been introduced in the US that would make all pornography a federal crime. Owning it. Creating it. Distributing it.

Under this law, fanart of nude characters would be a federal crime.

Under this law, depictions of homosexuality or simply being transgender, would be considered pornography and a federal crime.

This bill is not going to pass.

However, the reason for this bill is to continue to push the "overton window". The reason for this bill is to make banning pornography seem more and more normal to everyone until they can actually do that.

And remember, they consider depictions of gay characters and transgenders characters "pornography" in any context, including platonic.

They have been working on this for a decade now and it has been working.

If you are one of the people in fandom who thinks that "nasty" porn on AO3 should be banned because it's "icky" or "immoral", then this mental scam is working on you.

Censorship is never about protecting people.

Censorship is always about control.

Do not let the rising moral panic affect your mind and make you weak to propaganda that lets others control you and control what you watch and read.

Do not fall for the scam.

There are people – some in my own Party – who think that if you just give Donald Trump everything he wants, he’ll make an exception and spare you some of the harm. I’ll ignore the moral abdication of that position for just a second to say — almost none of those people have the experience with this President that I do. I once swallowed my pride to offer him what he values most — public praise on the Sunday news shows — in return for ventilators and N95 masks during the worst of the pandemic. We made a deal. And it turns out his promises were as broken as the BIPAP machines he sent us instead of ventilators. Going along to get along does not work – just ask the Trump-fearing red state Governors who are dealing with the same cuts that we are. I won’t be fooled twice.

I’ve been reflecting, these past four weeks, on two important parts of my life: my work helping to build the Illinois Holocaust Museum and the two times I’ve had the privilege of reciting the oath of office for Illinois Governor.

As some of you know, Skokie, Illinois once had one of the largest populations of Holocaust survivors anywhere in the world. In 1978, Nazis decided they wanted to march there.

The leaders of that march knew that the images of Swastika clad young men goose stepping down a peaceful suburban street would terrorize the local Jewish population – so many of whom had never recovered from their time in German concentration camps.

The prospect of that march sparked a legal fight that went all the way to the Supreme Court. It was a Jewish lawyer from the ACLU who argued the case for the Nazis – contending that even the most hateful of speech was protected under the first amendment.

As an American and a Jew, I find it difficult to resolve my feelings around that Supreme Court case – but I am grateful that the prospect of Nazis marching in their streets spurred the survivors and other Skokie residents to act. They joined together to form the Holocaust Memorial Foundation and built the first Illinois Holocaust Museum in a storefront in 1981 – a small but important forerunner to the one I helped build thirty years later.

I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly. But I know the history intimately — and have spent more time than probably anyone in this room with people who survived the Holocaust. Here’s what I’ve learned – the root that tears apart your house’s foundation begins as a seed – a seed of distrust and hate and blame.

The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe a lifetime ago didn’t arrive overnight. It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame.

I’m watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now. A president who watches a plane go down in the Potomac – and suggests — without facts or findings — that a diversity hire is responsible for the crash. Or the Missouri Attorney General who just sued Starbucks – arguing that consumers pay higher prices for their coffee because the baristas are too “female” and “nonwhite.” The authoritarian playbook is laid bare here: They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems.

I just have one question: What comes next? After we’ve discriminated against, deported or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorities – once we’ve ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends – After that, when the problems we started with are still there staring us in the face – what comes next.

All the atrocities of human history lurk in the answer to that question. And if we don’t want to repeat history – then for God’s sake in this moment we better be strong enough to learn from it.

I swore the following oath on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible: “I do solemnly swear that I will support the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the state of Illinois, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of Governor .... according to the best of my ability.

My oath is to the Constitution of our state and of our country. We don’t have kings in America – and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one. I am not speaking up in service to my ambitions — but in deference to my obligations.

If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this:

It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. All I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.

Those Illinois Nazis did end up holding their march in 1978 – just not in Skokie. After all the blowback from the case, they decided to march in Chicago instead. Only twenty of them showed up. But 2000 people came to counter protest. The Chicago Tribune reported that day that the “rally sputtered to an unspectacular end after ten minutes.” It was Illinoisans who smothered those embers before they could burn into a flame.

Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance. Democracy requires your courage. So gather your justice and humanity, Illinois, and do not let the “tragic spirit of despair” overcome us when our country needs us the most.

Sources:

• NBC Chicago & J.B. Pritzker, Democratic governor of Illinois, State of the State address 2025: Watch speech here | Full text

When I say that Trump has no original play in his playbook this is what I fucking mean. This where America is back sliding into Nazi Germany.

With that said to the people who voted 3rd party fuck you, fuck maga, fuck republicans and fuck you to the people who didn’t vote.