No Excuses

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Essence Block Party

DUMBO, Brooklyn

They hand out a minor meaningless victories to give people catharsis.

Then people stop caring and look away.

We won everyone thinks, we celebrate the work we did by simply spreading the word.

Then most people stop paying attention and the construction resumes.

This delay doesn’t even protect all the cultural sites or even halt construction along most of the pipeline’s route. Just in a specific area.

This isn’t a victory really.

The pipeline needs to be stopped in its entirety.

The USSR was a blood-soaked mess. A racist, anti-semitic, sexist blood-soaked mess at that. Do not repeat the sins of the Left of the 60s/etc by ignoring that. (Same goes for Maoist China, etc.) To ignore that is to literally piss on a truly appalling number of graves As an allegory, Animal Farm’s inaccuracies were that it’s not grim and horrific enough. The most conservative and hesitant and “well we don’t want to be hysterical about this” count of Stalin’s death toll, not including famine-victims, is 4 million; the one which, after various amounts of research, I find most convincing is about 20 million. Mao’s Great Leap Forward killed anywhere from 18 to 50 million, and we have literal footage of Tienamen, guys. 

This is not the good example you are looking for. Do not romanticise them. 

100% go back, as OP says, to the things that actually had good results (like a 40 hour work-week and basic human worker’s rights and shite) and did not do them over mountains of corpses. We have lots! They even included (gosh!) women! and queers! and people of colour/different ethnicities! They do all the things you want. 

like what the fuck, nothing happened to you on that day – which, you know, thank goodness – so why the fuck do you insist on dominating the conversation? my daily life is still being effected by this even now, over ten years later.

but you’re not interested in hearing about how my fifth grade health teacher never again called on me or the arab girl in my class. you’re not interested in how whenever my family travels, all fourteen of us (a number that used to include young children) get “randomly” searched. you’re not interested in the fact that when i was asked to buy a propane tank for a barbecue, i spent the rest of the day stressed out and worried that the attendants at all the stores visited to inquire were all going to think i was making explosives (all stores in the neighborhood mysteriously were out of propane tanks in the middle of summer). you’re not interested in the fact that whenever my cousin prepares to fly on his own, his mother calls him to make sure he’s clean shaven so he doesn’t look “like a terrorist.” you’re not interested in the fact that when i was you’re not interested in the fact that i once witnessed a whole family of white people bypass the x-ray scanner for the old fashioned metal detector, but when i asked for the same treatment, i was denied; when i pointed out the (many) signs claiming that i had the right to refuse going through that machine, the tsa agent who mere seconds earlier berated me for my request went conveniently deaf. you’re not interested in hearing about how my sister was told “sorry about your leader” when osama bin laden was killed.

i could reference personal anecdotes until i went blue in the face.

there are countless people who have stories like this, stories that are grotesque and demeaning and terrifying. these are everyday occurrences.

but you’re not interested in any of that. frankly, you’re not even that interested when middle eastern and muslim (and sometimes non-muslim desi) people are subjected to extreme violence or killed. you guys got over chapel hill pretty damn fast. if you noticed it at all.

you don’t give a fuck about us, or our ongoing 9/11 stories. you just want to tell me about how horrible it was, sitting in class and listening to other kids get their names called on the pa system.

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1) India and Nepal

2) Kenya and Tanzania

3) Argentina and Brazil

4) Norway and Sweden

5) Lesotho and South Africa

6) France and Italy

7) Poland and Belarus

8) Senegal and The Gambia

9) Spain and Portugal

10) US and Mexico

[A Palestinian posted her poem on YouTube and ended up under house arrest.]

-Dareen Tatour is among dozens of Palestinians who have arrested for incitement allegations in relation to social media posts in recent months. Anas Khateeb, 19, was charged with incitement to violence and “terrorism” relating to three Facebook posts he allegedly uploaded in October 2015. The posts garnered no more than a few dozen “likes”, said Khateeb’s lawyer, Aram Mohammed, who is with Adalah - The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel.  Israel has established a rich tradition of persecuting Palestinian writers and poets. In the 1960s, the government repeatedly targeted and arrested Mahmoud Darwish for his poetry and activism until he finally left his homeland for permanent exile in 1970. Samih al-Qasim was imprisoned several times and wrote some of his most enduring poems about his experiences of incarceration at the hands of a repressive regime. Dareen Tatour smiles and laughs easily. Her blue-green eyes—a trait that runs in the family—radiate with an amiable warmth and affection. But occasionally the smile slips away and the contours of her face reveal signs of fatigue and apprehension. A tension beneath the skin. Dark circles under her eyes. The stress and uncertainty have affected her and her close-knit family. “We weren’t able to eat properly for three months…” her father tells us. He stops mid-sentence. His face dims.