directactionforhope

[directactionforhope]

terfs would lose their minds if they were exposed to 2000s-2010s "a girl can do anything a boy can do, including beating them at sports" messaging like why are you all acting like nobody has ever said this and that it's radical to think that women aren't inherently worse at things. open your mind. read some feminist theory. touch some grass. the most basic banal middle-class white woman feminism of the 2010s looks fucking radical and visionary compared to the misogynistic victimization complex y'all are peddling

[directactionforhope]

i'm sorry to be that person but buying less shit and spending less money in general is actually such a salve to so many of our personal/political/environmental problems. saving your own money and not mindlessly giving it to corporations who are ruining our world, walking instead of driving, buying second hand or swapping with friends or joining a buy nothing group or picking your furniture up off the street, reusing things until they're totally dead and then giving them a new life as something else, eating cheap, whole foods - dried beans and rice and seasonal produce, or dumpster diving if you're so inclined - or growing your own, sharing what you have with others, learning how to make and fix things, singing and playing and dancing with people, these things don't need to cost money and for so much of human history they didn't. we all need to get out of the mindset that we can buy our way into happiness because we can't, but we can create communion with the places and people around us and connect in a way that is not facilitated by big profit making machines. stop spending your hard earned money and time on things that don't give a shit about you, and focus on creating a world that you want to live in, stop letting them tell you that it's not worth your effort because it is.

[directactionforhope]

Part of the reason I'm so adamant about encouraging people to get comfortable with bugs, my own interests aside, is because we cannot have a bright, solarpunk future without them.

A green future is not a bugless future. It is, in fact, a fairly bugful future. If you care about ecological stability, then you need to start with bugs, because they're the most at risk with our current use of pesticides.

[directactionforhope]

we have all noticed that "self-care" basically ended up as a replacement word for "pampering" in a marketing lexicon and not as an active set of behaviours intended to allow the body and brain to adequately rest and revive in the face of the ceaseless crushing grind of capitalism yes

[directactionforhope]

refusing to apply first aid to the wound because "it shouldn't have happened in the first place, so what we really should be doing is making sure no one gets stabbed ever again"

[directactionforhope]

Documenting the Damage: 100 Harmful Policies from the First 100 Days of Trump's Second Term

The second Trump administration has had the busiest first 100 days of any US presidency in nearly a century. Since January, I've been keeping a spreadsheet documenting 900+ policy changes and political developments. I then bundled many of the most important changes into 100 topics areas and wrote a summary of each of them, providing a semi-comprehensive account of the tremendous changes to US politics which have occurred.

PDF version of the full report

Website version of the full report

Medium versions:

Introduction + Part I: Democracy and Government

Part II: Civil Rights and Liberties

Part III: Economy and Public Services 

Part IV: Environment and Energy

Part V + Conclusion: Foreign Policy

[directactionforhope]

A friend of mine from around here who is Very Christian and has never had a Jewish friend before was asking me some stuff about antisemitism today, and it made me realize that the ways people talk about various types of bigotry and racism are so designed to stump people about the nature and purpose of systems of oppression. "Why do people hate the jews so much?" is such a common refrain and while there have been many books and articles written pulling apart all the important contextual and historical things that can help people understand antisemitism SPECIFICALLY, what I ended up saying to my friend was this:

"Something to understand about antisemitism is it isnt just ideological. The expulsion of jews from various countries was very often a method of "legally" seizing their wealth when the church needed money. It has been historically an incredibly convenient source of both a group of people to blame and also an easy way to just... Be able to steal from people, lmao. It has served very concrete material purposes for churches and governments throughout history. Sometimes you have to approach asking those questions from a different angle because it often isnt about the hatred so much as it is about ... Redirecting energy and attention, right, like upholding structures that benefit those in power. The hatred is convenient because it allows those in power to take actions that would not be tolerated if the group in question were not considered to be Exceptional in their inhumanity. Like the undocumented immigrants now, asking "why do they hate the immigrants so much" isnt always a productive avenue of thought because the hatred is usually just... Useful. Rather it is more helpful to ask "Who does it benefit for these people to be treated this way" -> "what do they need to make the general public believe about that group of people in order to justify this treatment". I think sometimes we are made to think hatred of jews is special and rooted in something different than other hatred... It's not. I mean all types of racism etc are unique. But it very much is about justifying actions that benefit a ruling class in all instances, imo."

And she like totally got it!!! She was like "OH I NEVER THOUGHT ABOUT IT LIKE THAT BUT THAT MAKES SO MUCH SENSE THANK YOU" I am very proud of myself lol :')

[directactionforhope]

Ngl most days I want to reach through the screen, grab nonblack and TME people by the shoulders, and shake y’all while screaming “BLACK TRANS WOMEN ARE BEING MURDERED I DONT CARE BOUT YOUR LIL DISCOURSES”

[directactionforhope]

I think it's easy for many of us who desire change to oppose nuance because the complexity can paralyze us and preserve the status quo.

And at the same time, the simplicity is dividing us, making us too small to fight or build something better.

Here at some things I'm trying to hold:

I'm generally in favor of a revolutionary view that says we should scrutinize our whole systems, rather than a reform view that holds we should work within them. To paraphrase Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, the problem is not the Emperor; it's the Empire.

It is remarkably hard to perceive what horrors and hardships are being prevented by our current structures. To take one small example, the FDA in the US has too much influence from drug companies and sometimes fails to acknowledge risk until many people are harmed--and at the same time, it's why there's no sawdust in our bread flour and why companies have to list their ingredients. To simply throw out the structures without knowing what deluge they're holding back risks major harm.

Any major overhaul risks abandoning the most vulnerable. Even with a perfect plan for a future that is better than our present, we can't overlook the risks associated with revolution itself and we can't ignore the voices of the people most likely to be hurt in the process.

I believe in the possibility of a better future. I believe we can build a world that's less cruel and more joyful. And I believe the people who disagree with me on how to get there have valid points worthy of consideration. A revolution that's just for me and people who agree with me is just more fascism; it places my views at the top of a power hierarchy instead of toppling it.

[directactionforhope]

Tbt to me seeing people selling human remains at a convention and being like “we have permits its legal!” But not being able to tell me WHERE they got the remains

Yeahhhhhh. That’s the thing. I don’t think human remains should be in private collections unless they’re your own body parts or they belong to someone you love (with their previous permission) and even if you know where these remains came from it doesn’t necessarily it ethical. If they’re recent and clean, there is every likelihood the seller is sourcing them through the overseas bone trade and getting them cheap from developing countries with remains disposal problems, the family of that individual may never know the bones of their loved one were stolen. Dead, unclaimed or unable to pay plot rent, flesh rended from bone and immediately on the expo table.

I’m an antique collector and I spend a lot of time in oddity spaces and the amount of times historical remains are found in antique stores TERRIFIES ME. Not just grave robbed bones from medieval crypts, those still disturb me but far less than things like Torres Strait Islander ornamented skulls, mokomokai, Aztec decorated skulls, shrunken heads, etc. So many times the ethnic group that created these have been BEGGING FOR THEM BACK FOR CENTURIES AND DECADES. And they’re being bought and sold alongside lamps and furniture. Physical remains of colonialism and white supremacy, PEOPLE thousands of miles away from where they were born and died. And the collectors who collect this get so angry if you mention it, if you tell them how to repatriate it, if you tell them how the Māori are still looking for the heads of their ancestors. It is so sickening.

[directactionforhope]

the Freedom Flotilla is back for another voyage to end the illegal blockade of Gaza!!!!

just like last time, you can track their voyage. on the ff website are also listed other ways you can help.

please follow the freedom flotilla and share the message, they need everyone's participation

[directactionforhope]

Roughly 6 months in and the US is already at the ‘full blown concentration camps’ stage.

[directactionforhope]

I sometimes see folks talk about the lack of historical transmasculine narratives and culture in comparison to transfeminine ones, and regardless of validity I just want to say that it’s incredibly cruel to draw the conclusion that it just must’ve been easier for us/less necessary rather than acknowledging that for a lot of human history people AFAB were treated as literal property with very little autonomy. Hell, in the states, people AFAB weren’t even allowed to open bank accounts without permission from their “husband” until 1974. Regardless of how things are now, I think it’s incredibly important to keep in mind how transmasculine bodies and narratives were controlled (and still continue to be) by governmental and societal powers by way of our assigned sex, along with our transness.

[directactionforhope]

There is no polite or respectful way for a stranger to ask someone to disclose potentially traumatic information

[directactionforhope]

may every conservative find themselves in a society in which they are constantly scared out of their boring minds by the everyday activity of the people around them, which they are completely powerless to stop or affect, forever and ever, amen

[directactionforhope]

The local population in countries that export bananas typically eat different varieties grown primarily by small farmers. The ones for the Americans and the Europeans, Cavendish variety bananas, are grown in huge, monoculture plantations that are susceptible to disease. The banana industry consumes more agrichemicals than any other in the world, asides from cotton. Most plantations will spend more on pesticides than on wages. Pesticides are sprayed by plane, 85% of which does not land on the bananas and instead lands on the homes of workers in the surrounding area and seeps into the groundwater. The results are cancers, stillbirths, and dead rivers.

The supermarkets dominate the banana trade and force the price of bananas down. Plantations resolve this issue by intensifying and degrading working conditions. Banana workers will work for up to 14 hours a day in tropical heat, without overtime pay, for 6 days a week. Their wages will not cover their cost of housing, food, and education for their children. On most plantations independent trade unions are, of course, suppressed. Contracts are insecure, or workers are hired through intermediaries, and troublemakers are not invited back.

Who benefits most from this arrangement? The export value of bananas is worth $8bn - the retail value of these bananas is worth $25bn. Here’s a breakdown of who gets what from the sale of banana in the EU.

On average, the banana workers get between 5 and 9% of the total value, while the retailers capture between 36 to 43% of the value. So if you got a bunch of bananas at Tesco (the majority of UK bananas come from Costa Rica) for 95p, 6.65p would go to the banana workers, and 38p would go to Tesco.

Furthermore, when it comes to calculating a country’s GDP (the total sum of the value of economic activity going on in a country, which is used to measure how rich or poor a country is, how fast its economy is ‘growing’ and therefore how valuable their currency is on the world market, how valuable its government bonds, its claim on resources internationally…etc), the worker wages, production, export numbers count towards the country producing the banana, while retail, ripening, tariffs, and shipping & import will count towards the importing country. A country like Costa Rica will participate has to participate in this arrangement as it needs ‘hard’ (i.e. Western) currencies in order to import essential commodities on the world market.

So for the example above of a bunch of Costa Rican bananas sold in a UK supermarket, 20.7p will be added to Costa Rica’s GDP while 74.3p will be added to the UK’s GDP. Therefore, the consumption of a banana in the UK will add more to the UK’s wealth than growing it will to Costa Rica’s. The same holds for Bangladeshi t-shirts, iPhones assembled in China, chocolate made with cocoa from Ghana…it’s the heart of how the capitalism of the ‘developed’ economy functions. Never ending consumption to fuel the appearance of wealth, fuelled by the exploitation of both land and people in the global south.

[directactionforhope]

With RFK JR defunding narcan access, I’d like to remind Americans this:

Don’t throw out your expired narcan.

If that’s all you have, use it. It’s better than nothing.

The expiration date was recently extended to have a shelf life from 2 to 3 years.

Studies have shown that the efficacy of narcan can last years if not decades after the expiration date.

Don’t throw out your expired narcan.

Obviously if you have new stuff, use that first but if it’s all you got, use it.