#Dixieland of the Proletariat

[queersatanic]

What's Left of the South pod Ep: 107 “The Satanic Temple is NOT your friend” w/ Queer Satanic

Our friends at What's Left of the South pod had us back on to talk about how The Satanic Temple is not actually able to help people get around state laws in red states like the South to access abortions, and why TST's owners are garbage.

Moreover, we’re no longer being sued by The Satanic Temple in federal court. But the state course case looks like it's proceeding. So we also talked a lil’ about that.

We'll have to see if, like our last appearance on the pod back in 2022, the Temple has one of their paid contractors listen to the show, partially transcribe it, and submit it to the court record with nonspecific claims of defamation.

Anyway, check out our interview.

Libsyn | Spotify | Overcast | Bullhorn | Player FM | Google | Apple

[whats-left-of-the-south]

Watch "Dixieland Of The Proletariat" on YouTube

[strommccallum]

Charleston's hospitality industry workers can take the lead.

Charleston and much of its outlying metropolitan area has been transformed into something of a playground and gated community of the wealthy of the world.

This growing and increasingly gilded playground and gated community, this Garden & Gun Disneyland, stands on the back of an extreme and deepening proletarian misery. A most foul opulence is facilitated by an imperialist plague upon the local working class, by the local working class’s impoverishment and dispossession.

Behind the three figure suppers downed by vacationers, compradors, and the Carpetbagger bourgeoisie is the agony and sweat of kitchen workers toiling away in galleys of the twenty first century and paid wages insufficient to cover the cost of living in the city. Delivering meals are in house restaurant employees and gig economy contractors who receive compensation as paltry and face conditions as deplorable as do delivery workers in places where millionaires are far less frequently encountered. Handling front of house operations are servers and bartenders that, outside of the most exclusive establishments and breakneck paced bars and nightclubs, seldom bring home anything which could be described as a “reasonable living”.

Ferrying around tourists and local residents too hammered to pilot their own automobiles or stumble home are gig contractors, taxi company employees, and rickshaw chauffeurs remumerated hardly any more generously than are their food delivery compeers.

Making possible the stays at the area’s ritzy and gaudy hotels are valet drivers, bell hops, concierges, and maids who live economic nightmares.

Maintaining the grounds and facilities of the resorts and golf courses surrounding the city are landscapers toiling (often in suffocating heat and humidity) for pittances and being left in penury.

Keeping spotless and pristine the mobile palaces enjoyed by the marine jetsetter clique and their sycophants, the ostentatious private yachts that clog the local marinas and waterways, are crews who can’t afford private residences, let alone private cruises.

And every year, hundreds of residences housing the area’s hospitality and other blue collar workers are transformed into AirBnB units and luxury housing. Few new “affordable” residences are built in areas within a reasonable commute’s distance from the “action” (not that residential construction of any sort would be anything close to ecologically responsible in most of these areas), and those that do go up are often components of cronyist, tax credit-laden “public/private developer partnership” developments that price out those at the very bottom. The construction of housing developments for high tuition out of state College of Charleston students is sanctioned by the college in gentrifying neighborhoods as their native proletarian inhabitants are pushed out onto the street! General rent control and meaningfully punitive taxation of “investment property” and secondary residences is a treated as a topic that is not to be broached in “respectable” places. Anything more than softly spoken and heavily qualified nominal opposition to the prevailing imperialism is written off by the elite as outright pathology.

But to the present, this ever advancing and worsening immiseration has faced no meaningful opposition. The hospitality and other service industry workers of the city and its outlying metropolitan area remain unorganized and without mutual aid institutions for housing and other pressing concerns.

That isn’t to say that the last year has not turned on light bulbs in the minds of the area’s downtrodden. The slowdown in the operations of the hospitality industry resulting from, and the federal unemployment programs in response to, the SARS-CoV2 pandemic have given idle workers time to begin to realize how atrocious their predicament is and begin to recognize how little of the wealth they produce goes to them, to recognize the severity of their undercompensation, to begin to develop some conception of the whole surplus value thing.

Comrades of the South! Let us begin here! This is the place to launch a first concentrated effort to get the ball rolling! Such inchoate yet passionate sentiments must be developed into a deeper class consciousness, united, and brought into a fighting body, into a new party and attached labor union for the Southern greater working class!

We must show Charleston’s hospitality industry workers that they should take the lead! Charleston, with its name recognition, with its epitomization of the ills of neoliberal capitalism, the service industry economy, and the Garden & Gun chicification and gentrification of the South, with its fame as a historical bastion of reaction, with its opulence juxtaposed against poverty and proletarian misery, is the place to begin a struggle for a worker’s Dixieland. South Carolina, with its regularly hyped right to work law, its political elite’s explicit advertisement of it as an anti-labor race to the bottom destination, and the lowest unionization rate of any state of the South or, for that matter, any state of Uncle Sam’s empire at large, is the place to begin a struggle for a worker’s Dixieland.

Yes- It is certain that, even in the early days of a movement, even in an early highly local struggle by an openly revolutionary party for radical reforms such as wage increases and property tax regime restructure, there will be huge obstacles in our way, including the simple fact that Taft-Hartley and other Second Red Scare era anti-socialist and anti-labor protest legislation is still on the books. There will be display of and testimony to hospitality group owner “paternalism” and showcasing of the most well off managerial and front of house workers. There will be harassment from and surveillance by state and non-state actors. There will be valorization of scabbing. There will be blacklisting and ostracism. There will be attempts to pit workers against workers on racial, ethnic, gender, professional, and sector lines. Early work on the microscale will be strenuous and frustrating all the same.

But none of this changes the fact that Charleston and its outlying metropolitan area is the most fertile ground to plant the first seed for a socialist Dixieland in, and none of this changes the fact that the hospitality sector of the economy, the sector staffed by what is now the most oppressed and class conscious sector of the proletariat, is the place to begin the struggle for radical class consciousness-raising reforms towards a maximalist agenda.

Comrades of the Lowcountry, South Carolina, and the South, let us wait no longer. Let us build a party and attached labor union capable of winning class consciousness-raising radical reforms towards maximalist goals within the near future. This is our first fight to win. Let us get to organizing.

-Strom McCallum

(Republished from my blog)

[shirlleycoyle]

Vegan Meat Company’s Anti-Union Speeches Are Being Scrubbed from the Internet

Earlier this year, the vegan-meat company No Evil Foods, which sells socialist-themed products at 5,500 grocery stores across the United States, including Whole Foods, fought a union drive at its Weaverville, North Carolina-plant.

The anti-union campaign led by No Evil Foods management featured a series of compulsory meetings, some of which were recorded by workers on their personal phones, portions of which were published in May by Motherboard and several other outlets, including In These Times, Industrial Worker, and the podcast Dixieland of the Proletariat.

Someone claiming to represent the company now appears to be trying to scrub the internet of these recordings by filing takedown requests on copyright and privacy grounds with the sites on which they're hosted. Audio of the meeting has been deleted from YouTube, SoundCloud, and the podcast hosting platform LibSyn in recent days. A freelance journalist, Andrew Miller, who published the audio, had his personal website shut down by his web host HostGator on August 27. The takedown requests, several of which were viewed by Motherboard, claim that the speeches the company wrote are copyrighted. One video and four audio recordings—including two full-length podcast episodes that incorporate recordings of the meeting—have been flagged and removed from the internet.

No Evil Foods did not respond to Motherboard's request for comment, and the company blocked me on their official Twitter account. Emailed requests for comment sent to "rachel@noevilfoods.com," the address that filed the complaints, were not returned. On Friday, LibSyn determined that one of the takedown requests was "fraudulent," meaning that the person who filed it did not have a legitimate copyright claim, according to an email obtained by Motherboard. The episode of Dixieland of the Proletariat  was restored because No Evil Foods did not respond to an inquiry about fraud from the podcast platform.

Motherboard spoke to copyright experts who said that under fair use doctrine of U.S. copyright law, news outlets likely did not violate No Evil Foods' copyright by publishing the audio recordings. In the United States, fair use allows the limited use of copyrighted material without permission from the copyright holder specifically for the uses of news reporting and criticism.

"Copyright is not a restriction on speech or expression or news gathering," Katharine Trendacosta, the lead policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation told Motherboard. "It’s meant as a way to protect the rights of artists. To use it to [prevent journalists from reporting the news] is not the way it was intended."

It is also not clear who specifically owns the copyright of these recordings. U.S. copyright law is notoriously complicated, and while No Evil Foods owns the copyright on the text of the speech itself, an audio recording of it could be considered a separate work, according to copyright experts. The U.S. copyright office itself explains that this is a particularly complicated area of copyright. Motherboard is also unsure what agreements employees signed with No Evil Foods as terms of their employment and if they contain any copyright clauses.

No Evil Foods brands itself as a radical leftist company, selling $8 packages of vegan products with names like "Comrade Cluck" (a mock chicken seasoned with garlic and onion), and "El Zapatista" (a substitute chorizo), a reference to Mexico’s anti-capitalist guerilla movement. On its website, the company says, “we do good no evil. We care about doing good through the products we make.” The anti-union speeches given by No Evil Foods founders fit within a larger trend of outwardly progressive companies like the ACLU and Whole Foods taking anti-union stances when their workers seek to improve their working conditions.

In meetings recorded by workers and published by Motherboard and other outlets, which have since been taken off the internet, the company's founders Mike Woliansky and Sadrah Schadel utilize standard anti-union talking points, warning their employees that a union would scare away investors, take away their rights, and drain their wages like a "shitty gym membership that you just want to get out of."

In 2019, workers at the plant began a union campaign with the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) in order to lock their wages, benefits, and hours into a contract. In a speech, Schadel said that while she supports the idea of unions, she firmly did not believe a union, specifically UFCW, would be a "progressive" choice for the company.

Woliansky compared joining the UFCW, which represents tens of thousands of meatpacking workers in the US, to “hitching your wagon to a huge organization with high paid executives and a history of scandal and supporting slaughterhouses." Meanwhile, Schadel said the union "is the exact opposite of what we stand for and who we are."

Following the series of anti-union speeches, workers voted against joining the UFCW in a landslide 43-15 vote in February. After the election, No Evil Foods fired two employees who were active in the union drive. Both of the workers filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Review Board (NLRB), claiming the company had fired them for engaging in protected activities.

In early August, Motherboard received a notification from YouTube that a video of one of the speeches had received a privacy complaint. The video was subsequently removed; YouTube denied an appeal to leave it up. In recent weeks, SoundCloud has also removed audio of the speeches published by Motherboard and Industrial Worker, citing supposed copyright violations.

Each of the recordings was taken on workers' personal devices in North Carolina, which requires the consent of only one present person in order to record audio.

In an email complaint to the podcast platform Libsyn about a version of the audio that appeared on In These Times's Working People podcast on August 24, someone using the email address "rachel@noevilfoods.com" claimed that the recording was "Unauthorized" because it included contents "authored" by the two No Evil Foods founders and a hired consultant. The name on the email account is "Rachel Woliansky," and Soundcloud told Industrial Worker that the inquiry came from "Rachel Woliansky." (No Evil Foods' CEO Mike Woliansky has a relative with the same name, according to a public database.) The email address Rachel@noevilfoods.com did not respond to Motherboard's request for comment.

"Each clip was authored by Mark McPeak, Sadrah Schadel, & Michael Woliansky of No Evil Foods, respectively," the person in control of rachel@noevilfoods.com wrote. "I hereby state that I have a good faith belief that the disputed use of the copyrighted material is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law."

Andrew Miller, the freelance reporter who had his personal website suspended on August 27 for supposed copyright violations, has filed a counter notice with the platform Hostgator, contesting the claim.

A provision in 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) makes it possible for parties to request the takedown of online content simply by filing a claim, as someone did on Soundcloud and Libsyn. Online platforms generally remove the content immediately unless accused parties issue a counter notice saying they believe the claim is false; as Motherboard has reported before, DMCA is regularly abused because platforms generally default to removing content, which is legally safer than leaving contested content online.

"Abuse of the DMCA is much more common than you'd think," said Trendacosta, the EFF policy analyst. "It’s the quickest way to get stuff off the internet. People will say you need DMCA laws for artists. But when things like this happen, it points out the dangers of making a system that takes down things."

Cory Doctorow, a prominent internet rights expert, activist, and science fiction author, said that companies and other actors have a strong interest in presenting unfavorable coverage as a copyright infringement.

"What if Harvey Weinstein had taken copious notes on his crimes, and then said he had a copyright right on them, and that you couldn't publish them? This is news reportage and it's in the public interest to know about it," Doctorow said. "But there's a strong interest in presenting this as copyright infringement."

Adding to the absurdity of the situation, it appears that rachel@noevilfoods.com filed at least some of these complaints using a pseudonym. Some of the takedown requests (sent by rachel@noevilfoods.com) were signed "Birdie Gregson," a pseudonym also used by a former No Evil Foods employee who was active in the union drive on a Twitter account that posts about union-busting at No Evil Foods and other companies.

LibSyn told Motherboard that a complaint identical to the one about the Working People podcast episode using the name Birdie Gregson was filed about an episode of the leftist podcast Dixieland of the Proletariat, which also featured audio from the No Evil Foods founders' speeches. LibSyn said it had no choice but to take down the entire podcast episodes, but reuploaded one of them on August 28 after No Evil Foods did not respond to an inquiry from LibSyn.

In an email to the podcast producer, a representative from LibSyn wrote, "We reached out to No Evil Foods to confirm if Birdie Gregson was a real person and they did not reply to our inquiry….Sorry for the issue they put you through we have never seen a fraudulent DMCA takedown notice before and are shocked any company would do this."

In an email sent by Soundcloud to Industrial Worker, Soundcloud indicated that its takedown request came from Rachel Woliansky, associated with a Soundcloud account with the name "Birdie Gregson." The only action that account has taken was "liking" an episode of a vegan podcast in which No Evil Foods executives Mike Woliansky and Sadrah Schadel were interviewed. The podcast was uploaded six months ago, prior to any of this happening.

In recent months, an Instagram account formed with the handle @birdiegregson, which praises working conditions at No Evil Foods. Its bio reads:  "#noevilfoodsarethebestfoods I’ve had a change of heart and I’m calling off my smear campaign."

Workers say they believe the account was created by someone at No Evil Foods in order to confuse people; No Evil Foods did not respond to a request for comment about the account or the use of the name Birdie Gregson.

Vegan Meat Company’s Anti-Union Speeches Are Being Scrubbed from the Internet syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[melbynews-blog]

Von der Hallig zum Arbeiterstrand : Burks' Blog

Neuer Beitrag veröffentlicht bei https://melby.de/von-der-hallig-zum-arbeiterstrand-burks-blog/

Von der Hallig zum Arbeiterstrand : Burks' Blog

Heute muss ich das Publikum leider wieder mit langweiligen Paddelbildern behelligen, da ich mehr als sechs Stunden auf dem Wasser war und mich die Weltläufte, ob Trump nicht doch alles richtig macht oder ob die Ukraine während der Fussballweltmeisterschaft in den Donbass einmarschiert, nicht interessierten. Das wird so lange gehen, wie ich sage: Ich habe Dinge vom Kajak aus gesehen, die meine Augen nie zuvor gesehen hatten.

Zum Beispiel Maienwerder (oberstes Bild), das ich südlich passierte und wohlgemut zur Hallig (die Kolonie heißt wirklich so!) steuerte, aber jäh erschrak, da mich ein großes Schiff (2. Foto) anhupte, wohl andeutend, ich solle aus der Fahrrinne verschwinden. Rechterhand wollte ich in die Kleine Malche einbiegen, sozusagen Hallig backstage, es wurde mir aber durch ein Schild „Laichschonbezirk“ verwehrt.

Ich paddelte also am unbewohnten Baumwerder und Reiswerder (Kein Strom! Kein Wasser!) vorbei und erreichte alsbald Lindwerder im Tegeler See (wird vermutlich bald von Polen beansprucht, da archäologische Funde auf eine slawische Besiedlung hindeuten). Da sind ein paar verwunschene Häuschen, wer wohnt denn da?) Dort hat man schon einen Blick auf Tegel 4. Foto) und kann Raddampfern begegnen (5. Foto – was für ein Quatsch! Hoffentlich spielen die da wenigstens ausschließlich Dixieland.)

Wenig später musste ich warten, bis die Fähre Scharfenberg vorbei war. Das ist dort alles allerliebst langsam und fast romantisch, von Großstadt-Feeling keine Spur. Nicht weit davon gibt es einen Arbeiterstrand, das Proletariat habe ich aber nicht gesehen.

Von der Südspitze Tegelorts musste ich ein Beweisfoto schießen. Ich kann mich daran erinnern, wie ewig weit es mit dem Auto dorthin war – vor dem Fall der Mauer. Auch von Valentinswerder hatte ich noch nie wirklich etwas gehört. „Nur 26 Insulaner leben dauerhaft auf dem Eiland. Künstler und Kreative haben sich dort Traumhäuschen gebaut.“ Warum eigentlich nicht ich? Und warum ist ein großer Teil der Insel in Familienbesitz?

Übrigens: Der Trolley auf Schienen an der Schleuse Spandau ist verschwunden, und der zweite Trolley hat nur noch drei Räder – eine nette Überraschung, wenn man sein Boot über den Betonbuckel ziehen will…

Juni 12, 2018 | abgelegt unter Leibesübungen, Panorama 

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[queersatanic]

The Satanic Temple cannot help you get an abortion, and it does not deserve your support.

Sometimes you just need to hear it from an Italian American with a mustache 🤌🤌🤌

Note: that last reference is inadvertent. Nelson of Dixieland of the Proletariat Podcast still means TST there.

We got LOTS of issues with Anton LaVey and the Church of Satan but “pushing into the middle of abortion rights for attention” ain’t one of them

[TikTok with captions]

[queersatanic]

Queer Satanic: No Hierarchies – Only Vibes

'… we’d love to hear more about y’all … as a meme page and a quasi-group? collective? whatever y’all wanna say. In your ideology what are some more positive aspects of y’all? Because from what Tyler said, from what y’all had to say, … y’all sound great?' 'Don’t take this the wrong way, but y’all seem like the chillest anarchists I’ve ever met.'

Dixieland of the Proletariat, Episode 66 “Hail Satan” w/Queer Satanic Heretics (Timestamp 1:12:55)

'Just gotta find myself a good community similar ...' 'I just want a fun Satanic group that isn’t garbage filled with manipulative leaders.' 'How do I join you?' 'Why don’t you start an organization?'

Evergreen Memes for Queer Satanic Fiends Facebook page comments

From the very moment we committed our story to written word—what The Satanic Temple calls our “manifestos” and very graciously included copies of in their federal court filings against us (please see Exhibit 5 – Document #1, Attachment #5, and Exhibit 5 – Document #26, Attachment #5)—we have received commentary like this.

Even in the latter (Exhibit 5, Document #26, Attachment #5), there is a similar comment from a third-party that TST uses as the basis for one of their newer throw-spaghetti-on-the-wall-and-see-if-it-sticks claims against us.

Queer Satanic has never been and was never intended to be an organization or official “group.” We have no organization, no members, and no hierarchy. Even the name “Queer Satanic” stemmed from the original meme page, "Evergreen Memes for Queer Satanic Fiends" and handle @QueerSatanicMemes, which we then shortened and used across social media platforms in order to spread the word of TST’s SLAPP suit against us. That's a lawsuit that – regardless of any personal feelings – bound us together (so far indefinitely) into a group called “defendants.”

"Queer Satanic" was a moniker that fit us, that reflected the values that led to our ousting as heretics, and the principles that we wished to embrace in our lives. To put it shortly:

Queer Satanic is not an organization. Queer Satanic is vibes.

While we have remained in touch with folks who were also kicked out or who left of their own accord, those relationships are loose, purely social, and do not form any sort of official group or organization.

We’d strongly encourage you to listen to our response to Dixieland of the Proletariat’s question in the podcast quoted above, or read some of our answers to similar questions on Tumblr over the years (1) (2), but since we still get these questions, we are more than happy to send out a few words of encouragement.

Don’t wait for someone else to make the perfect group for you. Make your own collective.

You don’t have to be a leader, and we’d personally advise against hierarchies altogether. Our experiences and the experiences of others who support us across the nation (or world, perhaps?) show that if you are asking for such a group, there are assuredly folks near you who would also appreciate such a group. The ideal collectives are not worldwide, not nationwide, not even statewide. They are localized communities without hierarchies who share values, serve a need, and agree on a course of action. Preferably, direct action.

Don’t look to us or anyone else to serve your needs; surely we will disappoint you. Instead, create the group that you need. Know that once the group has completely fulfilled that need, it may very well dissipate. But that’s OK – that’s the lifecycle of groups. The camaraderie you form with your fellow members may extend into another group that forms another purpose later; it may last a lifetime. Or it may only be appropriate for and last for that moment. Who can say.

There’s plenty of reading that can be done on the subject by people much more qualified than we are and with more experience than we have, if you need some inspiration or a deeper basis to draw on. We’ll link a few below to get you started, but please understand people are fallible, and so are these resources.

The driving force behind creating your own group and becoming an adversary to your most pressing tyrannies has to come from you.

We can’t wait to see what amazing things you do.

Remember: No hierarchies. Only vibes.

How to Form an Affinity Group – CrimethInc

Relative to their small size, affinity groups can achieve a disproportionately powerful impact. In contrast to traditional top-down structures, they are free to adapt to any situation, they need not pass their decisions through a complicated process of ratification, and all the participants can act and react instantly without waiting for orders—yet with a clear idea of what to expect from one another. ... Most important of all, affinity groups are motivated by shared desire and loyalty, rather than profit, duty, or any other compensation or abstraction.

Organizing Communities – Tom Knoche

People get involved with groups because they present an opportunity for them to gain something they want. It may be tangible or intangible, but the motivation to get involved comes with an expectation of relatively short-term gratification. The job of community organizations is to facilitate a process where groups of people with similar needs or problems learn to work together for the benefit of all. Through this process, people learn to work cooperatively and learn that their informal association can usually solve problems more effectively and quickly than established organizations.

The Intersections of Anarchism And Community Organizing – Dave

Organizing is not about telling people what to do, nor should organizers go into a community with solutions to problems one identifies as an outsider. Community organizing is a bottom-up process which focuses on solutions to issues established by people who live in the community. One does not have to live in the same place as one organizes, nor does one have to fill the exact same social categories as those you are organizing with (though it definitley would help). The strength of any organizing drive is the potency of the political relationships its participants have with each other and how those relationships move the participants toward challenging relations of power.

[queersatanic]

We got interviewed by the Dixieland of The Proletariat podcast and got to talk about how modern Satanism has been rife with fascism and reaction, but it didn't and doesn't have to be that way.

[whats-left-of-the-south]

Abortion in the South