#but a) not always b) they experience oppression based off of their ethnicity

[rebellum]

The whole transandrophobia discussion thing is weird bc it feels like it's a bunch of poc and jewish trans people being like "here are my experiences of how specifically being MASCULINE had affected me, and the discrimination and violence I experienced based on that. And here is how that relates to me being a racial/ethnic minority"

And then a few loud white trans people going "ohhh you wanna be oppressed so bad you *slur*. This is why there aren't any poc in your movement it's because REAL poc understand intersectionality"

[anarchy101]

What would an anarchist program look like?

by CrimethInc

An Anarchist Program

0. The Ends Are the Means

Those who support an anarchist program live and organize in a way that makes the program imminently possible, not in some distant future after a dictatorial party has acquired power. This represents a completely different way of creating power starting right now.

Nothing in this program, not even the abolition of the state, can justify means of struggle that would not be at home in the world we wish to inhabit, nor the postponing of questions of freedom and well-being until after some state of exception that we dress up as a revolution.

1. Mutual Survival

Under capitalism, no one has a right to survival. We are all forced to pay for the means of survival—and some of us can’t. Millions of people die every year from easily preventable causes; billions live in misery because they are denied the means for a healthy, dignified life. That ends now.

A. Every person and every community has a right to their means of survival.

B. It follows that persons and communities that choose to constitute themselves in a way that destroys others’ means of survival, or that withhold those means in exchange for some service (exploitation), are destroying the possibility for mutual survival. Therefore, their “way of life” does not constitute survival—it endangers survival.

C. Persons and communities are right to defend themselves against exploitation or threats to their means of survival, preferably by convincing those who threaten or exploit them to change their way of life to a more harmonious, mutually feasible pattern—but also, if necessary, by force.

D. Conflict and death have always been a part of life, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. With current technologies, attempts to stave off death are predicated on multiplying deaths among those who lack access to such technologies. It follows that survival is not the absence of death, but the possibility for a healthy and fulfilling life, as well as the possibility to pass something of that life on to future generations.

E. In this sense, the opposite of life is not death, but extermination, the total annihilation of a group, including even the destruction of the memory of that group. Extermination belongs to the state. It precludes the possibility of mutual survival.

2. Decolonization

Colonization is crucial to the global spread of capitalism and the devastation it has entailed. This devastation has ongoing repercussions at every level. Colonization is the basis of the United States; it has also been foundational to the major European states that functioned as the architects of the current global system of statism and capitalism. T3. Reparations and Ending Anti-Blacknesshe partial revolutions of the 20th century did not alter the basic colonial frameworks they inherited. All of this must change.

A. Colonized peoples have a right to reconstitute their communities, their languages and knowledge systems, their territories, and their organizational systems. All of these are fluid realities that members of such communities adapt to their present needs.

B. Settler societies must be destroyed. Because they are so historically ingrained, their abolition will not be a single moment of compensation (as though a price tag could be attached to all the suffering that has been caused), but a complex and evolving process. Indigenous communities should be able to define what decolonization looks like from a position of strength and healing, such as the abolition of the United States (and Canada and other nations) will allow. This is also necessary to break with the gunboat diplomacy that has characterized much of settler colonialism.

C. By definition, we cannot and will not define the limits of decolonization from the present moment, from within the reality of a settler society. Anarchists, Indigenous and otherwise, favor models of decolonization that break with colonial logics and repudiate nation-states, ethnic essentialism, punitive and genocidal practices, and mere reforms regarding who holds state power.

D. Settler communities that have historically and to the present day played the role of an aggressive and hostile neighbor helping to police and exploit Native communities in the reservation system will be encouraged to disband, and will be treated as paramilitaries if they continue any form of hostility. All “Man Camps” will be disbanded immediately, and resources will be dedicated to helping find missing Indigenous women and two-spirit people.

E. Universities, museums, and other institutions will return all bodies, body parts, art, and artifacts stolen from Indigenous communities.

F. It is right for Indigenous communities to recover all the territory they need for their full cultural, spiritual, and material survival.

G. Priority might be given to recovering land of spiritual importance, land that had belonged to the government, and large commercial holdings—but again, preconceived limitations should not be placed on how decolonization will unfold.

H. Communities in countries that maintained external colonial projects (e.g., the United Kingdom, Spain, France) will facilitate a large-scale transfer of useful resources expropriated from their abolished governments, the wealthy, and institutions that existed to serve the wealthy (e.g., private hospitals). These resources will go to communities in the ex-colonies.

A composition by Afro-Futurist artist Olalekan Jeyifous, part of a series exploring alternative futures for Brooklyn.

3. Reparations and Ending Anti-Blackness

Anti-Blackness and other forms of racism are fundamental to the current power structure. They grew out of colonialism and capitalism from the very beginning, to such an extent that capitalism is inseparable from racism, though the latter can take many forms. It is impossible to fully abolish these power structures without striking at the historically grounded legacies of racism.

A. Communities of people largely descended from the survivors of slavery are right to take over large landholdings that had previously been plantations, as well as the excess wealth of families and institutions that profited off of slave labor. This redistribution should be carried out on a communal rather than an individual basis, to avoid encouraging identitarian processes that declare individuals legitimate or illegitimate based on abstract criteria. Those who organize a collective or communal expropriation have the right to define their own experiences and how oppression has affected them historically, as well as to choose how to constitute themselves and whom to invite into their community.

B. Historically racialized neighborhoods that have been gentrified may be reclaimed. Because many neighborhoods, before gentrification, are in fact quite diverse and working class people of all races can lose their homes, those who are involved in housing and anti-racist struggles at the time of the revolution may form assemblies to organize the process of inviting people back into reclaimed neighborhoods, for example prioritizing prior residents or their children, and finding ways to strike a balance between revitalizing Black and other cultures of resistance and creating practices of cross-racial solidarity that break down the segregations and separations of racism.

C. People in neighborhoods that are infrastructurally unsound or unsanitary, that suffer from environmental racism or other harmful effects that will continue causing health problems into the foreseeable future, may expropriate and move into wealthy neighborhoods (preferentially targeting the wealthiest). The prior residents of those neighborhoods may move into the vacated, substandard neighborhood with an eye towards improving it through their own effort, or they may move into other unused housing, of which there is plenty, thanks to capitalist real estate markets.

D. Weapons taken from the disbanded police and military will be distributed among Black, Indigenous, and other racialized communities, and to volunteer militias that fought unambiguously on the anti-racist side during the entirety of the revolutionary conflict. The communities will decide what is to be done with the weapons—whether to distribute, store, or dismantle them.

E. Resources related to education and healthcare may be taken from wealthy neighborhoods for the benefit of racialized neighborhoods.

F. The onus is on white anti-capitalists, or more correctly, anti-capitalists in the process of definitively breaking with their whiteness, to work with other white people to achieve a process of reparations that is as peaceful as possible, to help them move to other neighborhoods or territories in the case that they are evicted, to soften their landing and help them find the means for dignified survival, without creating entrenched identities or resentment that might encourage intergenerational conflicts or keep whiteness alive.

G. Assemblies of people committed to the relevant causes at the time of the revolution will set up truth and reconciliation committees to deal with whatever racist atrocities are brought to their attention, such as the forced sterilizations carried out in ICE facilities. The processes for uncovering the truth of these atrocities and achieving some kind of reconciliation will not be purely symbolic, and they need not delegitimize personal acts of revenge, but they will strive for some form of collective healing and transformative justice rather than punitive and carceral measures.4. Land

All the following points of the program are contingent on points 1-3 being put in motion in a way that is satisfactory to those who have suffered white supremacy, colonization, and racial capitalism. The rights and principles in point 4, for example, about access to land, must not be used to thwart efforts by Indigenous communities to get their Land Back.

The Esselen Tribe inhabited this land across the Big Sur coast of California for more than 6000 years, until Spanish colonizers seized it. Their claim to it was only recently acknowledged by the courts.

4. Land

The way capitalism and Western civilization have taught us to think about the land and the way to treat it has brought us to the brink of disaster. The paradigm of land as property, as a resource to be exploited, is simultaneously a failure and a travesty. The commodification of land has been instrumental to colonialism and exploitation, while the measuring, demarcation, and assertion of dominion over land has been central to the state throughout its history.

A. Land is a living thing. Land cannot be bought and sold.

B. Land belongs to those who belong to it, which is to say, those who take care of it and those whose survival is based on it.

C. Land should be respected. Communities should consider the personhood of the land and all other beings that exist in relation with it. The idea that only humans of a predetermined type have personhood is responsible for a large part of the disaster we face.

D. Land is the basis for survival, and all land is interconnected.

E. It follows that defense of the land is self-defense, and is therefore right.

F. A community that exists in an intimate, localized relationship with the land, or a community that historically has had such a relationship and proved to be good stewards of the land, will probably know best how to interrelate with a specific territory. Others should defer to them in questions regarding defending and caring for the land.

G. It is the responsibility of all communities to aid and accompany the land as it heals from centuries of capitalism and the state.

5. Water

Water is life.

A. All communities must return the water they use to the river, lake, or aquifer as clean as they found it.

B. All communities have a responsibility to help their watershed heal and purify itself after centuries of capitalist aggression.

C. In view of climate change, desertification, and all the other forms of damage to the planet, all communities have a responsibility to adapt their lifeways in the event of water scarcity, and to help each other to migrate if increasing water scarcity and desertification render a dignified survival impossible.

D. In the event of water scarcity, priority for water use is given to localized forms of sustainable agriculture and to preserving the habitats of other forms of life.

E. Polluting the water or taking so much that others downstream or in the same aquifer do not have enough for a dignified survival is an act of aggression.

F. Communities should respond to assaults on their water with attempts at dialogue and negotiation, but if these attempts are fruitless, they are right to defend themselves.

Garden River First Nation’s railroad bridge.

6. Borders

The global system we are abolishing is based on states asserting sovereignty over clearly demarcated borders, alternately cooperating and competing in capitalist accumulation and warfare. Nation-states have always led to cultural and linguistic homogenization and genocide, and borders have revealed themselves to be increasingly murderous mechanisms. All that, henceforth, is abolished.

A. People and communities, in concert, decide what communities they want to be a part of, and how they wish to be constituted, respectively. This is the principle of voluntary association.

B. All together, as best we can, we will develop principles of Freedom of Movement, balanced with a respect for the communities that are the custodians of the territories others wish to move through. These two principles necessitate the abolition of borders, on the one hand, and the abolition of individualistic, entitled tourism on the other. It is reasonable for communities, which exist in relation to a specific territory, to expect privacy as well as basic respect from visitors; at the same time, it is good for people to be able to move freely in search of a better life or even simply because movement brings them joy and well-being. These two rights, such as they are, may come into conflict. Communities and individuals commit to resolving those conflicts as constructively as possible.

C. Communities commit to offering basic hospitality and safe conduct to migrants. This could include migrants who wish to return home, having been forced to emigrate by the effects of capitalism. It could include the migration of entire communities fleeing the long-term effects of environmental racism.

D. Communities will coordinate across territories as they see fit. This could include federations organized along linguistic lines (for the sake of convenience), coordinating bodies in a shared watershed, and more. Anarchists recommend redundant, overlapping forms of organization, as well as membership in multiple communities, to resist the potentially militaristic reproduction of bordered units or essentialist identities.

A way to reorganize living environments as imagined by anarchist artist Clifford Harper.

7. Housing

Even governments that enshrine the right to housing in their constitutions have failed to guarantee this basic need. As Malatesta pointed out, capitalism is the system in which builders go homeless because there are too many houses.

A. Houses belong to those who live in them.

B. No one has a right to more houses than they need. This should not be reduced to a principle of “one family, one house,” because of the danger in normalizing one model of the family, and because some dynamic families include movement between multiple nodes, and to respect pastoral and other societies organized around seasonal migrations. However, this does mean that the vacation houses of the rich are fair game for expropriation for those who need access to land or decent housing.

C. Housing is not a commodity to be bought and sold.

D. Communities will make sure all their own members have dignified housing, and then they will help neighboring communities find the resources they need to meet their housing needs.

E. Anarchists will encourage the transformation of housing, which capitalist real estate development and urban planning utilized specifically to promote patriarchal nuclear families. People are encouraged to change their vital spaces in a way that enables more communal practices of kinship, child-rearing practices not based in the heterosexual couple, and autonomous spaces for women and gender nonconforming people.

F. Anarchists will make it a priority to provide safe housing for people fleeing abusive relationships and circumstances.

G. Communities will begin immediately, within their means, to modify housing to be ecologically sustainable, and to modify settlement patterns so that housing nuclei correspond to ecological and cultural needs, moving away from the present reality in which existing housing corresponds to the imperatives of capitalism. As this process will take decades, communities should develop plans and share ideas for organizing the transition, taking into account that there will be a rapid shift away from fossil fuels and changes in the availability of different construction materials.

H. Evicting people from their houses is an emotionally traumatizing act that we do not want to form a part of the world we are building. However, many historically oppressed communities find themselves living in situations that directly shorten their lives, whereas the ostentatious housing of rich people represents generations of accumulated plunder; in those cases, it is better for them to take the housing of those who profited off their misery than to continue in misery. Under capitalism, there is no inalienable right to remain in a particular house, and we are not carrying out a revolution in order to give rights to rich people they did not even claim under their own chosen system.

Christiania, an autonomous neighborhood in Copenhagen, Denmark.

8. Food

A key aspect of capitalist accumulation has been the industrialization and hyper-exploitation of food producers, both human farmers and other forms of life, trying to squeeze out an ever-growing surplus. This has led to the acts of genocide associated with the commodification of the land, the total destruction of peasant societies, deforestation and monocrop deserts, mass starvation, mass extinction, pollution, climate change, dead zones in the ocean, the destruction and commodification of communities of different living beings, the murder of living soil, and the systematized imprisonment and torture of non-human animals. How we feed ourselves is a nexus that brings together how we organize our society and the relationships we create with the broader ecosystem.

A. Everyone has a right to all the food they need for a healthy, dignified life.

B. Making sure that everyone has enough food is a collective responsibility.

C. Arbitrarily placing limits on or destroying the food supply that others depend on is an assault on their survival. They may respond to this with legitimate self-defense.

D. Workers in food production industries at the time of the revolution will socialize the means of production under their control with the aim of ensuring everyone’s access to food.

E. Communities will begin the process of redistributing large tracts of farmland and reclaiming land in urban environments to enable food sovereignty and to share access to the means to feed ourselves.

F. Agriculture will transition away from the current petroleum-dependent, highly industrialized model to a localized, ecocentric model designed to fulfill two purposes: ensuring food security and restoring the health of the planet. The human diet will be resituated in an ecosystemic logic.

G. Particularly damaging technologies like factory trawlers and animal warehouses for industrial-scale meat and dairy production will be dismantled as quickly as possible.

A collective meal at Ungdomshuset, an autonomous social center in Copenhagen.

9. Healthcare

Under capitalism and the state, healthcare has been used as a form of extortion to keep poor people in misery and in debt, to surveil, discipline, and control our bodies, and particularly to torture and control women, trans and non-binary people, racialized people, and people with different abilities and mental health difference. It is one of the most damning indictments of the present system that the practices that should focus on healing function as a venue for cruelty and profiteering.

A. Everyone has a right to preventive therapies and living conditions that guarantee them the best possible health.

B. Everyone has a right to define for themselves what constitutes health, in dialogue with their community. People who share a collective experience or identity related to gender, sexuality, physical ability, mental health, ethnicity, or anything else, may develop their own definition or ideal of health; members of those groups are free to subscribe to those definitions or not to subscribe to them.

C. Everyone has a right to alter their body, in line with their gender expression or for whatever reason, as they see fit. People have an unrestricted right to contraceptives and abortion.

D. No healthcare worker can be forced to perform a procedure that they do not agree with, but denying someone access to a medical procedure is an assault on their bodily autonomy. Training in skills related to healthcare will be spread as widely as possible so no one is ever in the position of gatekeeping access to healthcare.

E. Everyone has a right to the full extent of treatment available to them in their community, or to travel in search of better conditions or better treatment options.

F. Healthcare workers at the time of the revolution will socialize the hospitals and other institutions and infrastructures at their disposal, and do their best to ensure continuing access to healthcare, to universalize and improve access and quality of treatment, to equalize treatment for historically marginalized populations, to facilitate reconciliation processes to address the abuse of such populations by the medical profession, and to reorganize their profession to remove all capitalist influences and classist organization, while still weighting internal hierarchies to favor training and experience.

G. Trafficking in healthcare, including the threat to withhold healthcare, is an act of aggression.

H. As part of the process of self-definition of health, anarchists will encourage the formation of assemblies that center people’s own needs and experiences, breaking the tradition that establishes healthcare professionals as the protagonists and people as mere receptacles for illness or treatment. People will share and increase knowledge of their own bodies, availing themselves of the tools they need to be proactive in securing the greatest health and happiness possible.

A Berkeley Free Clinic truck offering free HIV tests on a sidewalk in Berkeley, California in 2012.

10. Education

Public education has been used to create patriotic, obedient, and white supremacist civil servants, soldiers, and citizens. For even longer, Catholic education in Europe and in the colonies was used to justify colonialism and state authority. Both public and private education are linked to systematic child abuse. Contrary to classist stereotypes, people with more formal education are often more able to dismiss facts that contradict their prejudices or worldview. Education as it stands is a cornerstone of oppression.

On the contrary, education should be an unending process of growth and self-actualization. Anarchists have always been at the forefront of experimenting with models of liberating education that break with the standard formulas of patriotic, patriarchal, colonial, capitalist education.

A. Knowledge must be free; it belongs to the community.

B. Everyone must be able to access whatever educational opportunities they desire. Anarchists will encourage specific projects that end the oppressions that limit people’s access to education because of their gender, sexuality, race, class, or other divisions. Examples might include intensive trainings in fields like math, sciences, and mechanics for people from groups that have historically been discouraged from entering those fields, or history and literature courses that center the voices and experiences of subjects other than upper-class heterosexual white men. Such projects will also deploy a diversity of learning environments that do not assume a single, normative standard of physical and mental abilities.

C. Anarchists will help ensure that historically marginalized groups can obtain the resources they need to identify and develop the body of knowledge that is important to their specific community and to spread it as they see fit.

D. Children are free to engage in educational settings as they see fit, in dialogue with their communities. Free children who have all their basic needs met are constantly engaged in their own education, independently of whether they do so in a formal setting.

E. Teachers and professors who want to continue working as such may organize basic education, but anarchists will encourage the emergence of new projects based on liberating models of education rather than rote memorization or the completion of preconceived modules, especially collective self-organized self-education projects.

David Graeber speaking at Maagdenhuis in Amsterdam in 2015.

F. Professions that prove to be useful and desirable after the demise of capitalism will organize educational programs to train new members of the profession, expropriating resources from schools and universities or taking over teaching spaces within them, in dialogue with other professions.

G. Scientific organizations may constitute themselves to provide for professional training in universities, and to maintain laboratories and peer-reviewed papers. They will discuss ways to raise the resources necessary to maintain laboratories and needed technologies without capitalizing on the processes of knowledge production. One possible solution is that scientific experimentation will have to respond largely to the needs voiced by communities as a whole.

H. The advanced education needed to become a scientist is a gift from the community to the individual; the knowledge the scientists help produce should be a gift back to the community. Scientists should also honor their responsibility to share tools for education as widely as possible. Scientific knowledge and training should not be concentrated in a few hands. Good science thrives on widespread participation in the process of research and review. For science to live, scientists must cease to treat other human beings as objects in a petri dish and focus on equipping them to participate in that process.

I. Scientists, teachers, and other educators will facilitate reconciliation processes to deal with forms of abuse they may have been complicit in before the revolution, from facilitating police violence against students to working with corporations that caused people harm. Accredited scientists who used their knowledge to aid fossil fuel, armaments, and similar industries should be stripped of their perceived legitimacy in the same way that doctors can be delicensed for malpractice.

J. Associations of scientists will decide if they actually need to use some form of licensing in order to assure the quality of their work. The answer may not be the same for heart surgeons as for botanists. This implies a balance between the needs of scientists to ensure standards of quality, the interests of people to prevent monopolies or gatekeepers that limit access to knowledge and training, as well as people’s need for transparency—ensuring, for example, that those they entrust with their medical care or technological projects that might pollute their environment have not been dangerously negligent in the past. Associations of laypeople will also organize to weigh in on these decisions.

11. Production

Under capitalism, production is one of the chief means of accumulating capital for the wealthy—through alienated work, exploitation, and the destruction of the environment. In anarchy, the only question is how to meet socially defined needs, which include everything from collective survival to the need people feel to grow and enjoy life.

A. Ex-workers will seize their workplaces at the earliest convenience, studying whether the workplace (factory, workshop, office, store, restaurant, etc.) can be modified to produce something socially useful in a healthy way. If not, the workplace will be dismantled and its resources shared out among ex-workers, neighboring communities, and useful workplaces.

B. Ex-workers, excluding managers while welcoming unemployed people with pertinent skills who had been denied access to employment under capitalism, will create some form of collective, cooperative, or communal structure to organize their workplaces, federating with other workplaces across their industry in order to oversee the production of socially useful goods.

C. Delegates within these productive federations must be beholden to a specific collective mandate (promoting positions that arise from their base assembly), they must be immediately recallable if they fail that mandate, and they must continue to exercise their craft. Workplace assemblies will decide if delegates must carry out their normal work on a daily basis or if they may be excused for a limited number of months before returning to normal work, as demanded by the conditions of their work and the needs of the federative labor (for example, delegates may have to travel long distances and might not be able to work during certain periods).

D. Those who wish to be professional representatives, doing no other work but that of bureaucrats and politicians, may form their own federations of representatives in which to go about representing themselves and others to the best of their abilities. For this purpose, it is recommended that they paint their faces white, don berets and striped shirts, travel from community to community, and hold their committee meetings open to the public. People don’t need bureaucrats—but we will always need entertainment!

E. No one may be forced to work. Communities and productive federations will do their utmost to operate according to a logic of abundance rather than a logic of scarcity or monopoly. People who wish to carry out productive or creative labors in a more individual setting or manner will be encouraged to do so, and insofar as it is possible, they will be afforded the space and resources they need, though in moments of absolute scarcity, such as the difficult years of the transition, communities may prefer to favor more effective collective workplaces that are immediately responding to a community need.

F. The gendering of different productive activities is abolished. Anarchists encourage their communities to reflect on how different useful, necessary, and beneficial activities are unequally recognized and rewarded with status, and propose initiatives or new traditions by which to eliminate these vestiges of patriarchy.

G. Ex-workers are encouraged to fully transform their workplaces, deconstructing machinery into its component tools if need be in order to work at a safer pace and create an environment that is healthy in terms of noise, air quality, chemicals, and non-repetitive labors.

H. Workplaces will strike a balance between the creative or productive desires of the members, the needs of surrounding communities, and the needs of society as a whole. This means encouraging artisans in their creative development, making sure not to pollute nearby communities with harmful chemicals or excessive noise, and seeking to create things that others in society need, though embracing the logic of abundance means giving this latter directive the broadest possible interpretation except in cases of acute scarcity that threaten a community’s survival.

I. Destructive energy infrastructure will be phased out at the safest pace possible. Experts in the relevant fields will be encouraged to oversee the shutting down of nuclear power plants according to a schedule that leaves the smallest amount of highly radioactive waste and the plugging of oil wells so they do not contaminate ground water.

J. On a less urgent timeline, communities will explore the decommissioning of highly destructive “green energy” projects that endanger river populations, migratory birds, and other living things. This work will depend on the development of localized, ecological energy production and the drastic reduction of overall energy use, a part of which is the redesigning of buildings to allow for passive solar heating and cooling, a demanding endeavor that cannot be accomplished in a single decade.

K. Communities will decide what technologies and what kinds of scientific experimentation and development they will support. However, in all cases, the communities and scientific organizations involved must be able to absorb or remediate all the negative consequences of that technology. There is no justification for mining someone else’s territory or creating toxic substances that future generations will have to deal with.

12. Distribution, Communication, and Transportation

Localizing power in people and communities has an adjunct in organizing the material means of survival on as local a level as possible, for example through principles like food sovereignty. However, the danger of dependence on an exploitative socioeconomic system decreases dramatically when people can meet most of their survival needs through the resources and activity of a small local network of communities. For the remainder of those needs, as well as all the things that make life more enjoyable, it may be necessary to organize distribution across multiple regions of a continent and beyond. Additionally, travel is extremely important in an anarchist society to inculcate a global consciousness, encourage reciprocity and solidarity, prevent the emergence of borders, and collectivize knowledge as much as possible.

A. All state-backed currencies are abolished. All monetary debts are canceled.

B. Exchange of goods between communities shall be done in as equitable a manner as possible. Communities in close contact may prefer a free exchange or gift economy. Communities without the basis of trust that makes a gift economy easier to practice may decide to use quid pro quo trade, but trading up for profit (serial trading to capture a growth of value) or charging interest on the lending of goods can be considered attempts at coercion and exploitation.

C. Communities should pursue food sovereignty, meeting the majority of their survival needs from their local land base, but beyond that, infrastructures should be maintained to encourage exchange and travel.

D. Transport workers, together with affected communities, will collaborate to transform existing transportation infrastructure to be as ecologically sustainable as possible, while other infrastructures (e.g., airports and highways) are to be dismantled.

E. Already extracted fossil fuel reserves and existing infrastructures will be rationed, giving priority to the transition in agricultural production, global reparations of resources, and maintaining connectivity in rural areas with no transportation alternatives.

F. Communities, transportation workers, and those involved in fighting against patriarchal violence at the time of the revolution will work together to make sure that people can travel freely and safely regardless of their gender. Communities that enable or permit violence against women or gender non-conforming people traveling through their territory are considered to be in aggression against the rest of the world.

G. Communities will do their best to maintain existing communications infrastructure so that they can remain in touch to communicate globally and share the experiences of their respective revolutionary processes. In the long term, they will explore ways to maintain those infrastructures they find useful with recycled or non-harmful materials. They will also study whether addictive and depressive behaviors related to social networking technologies are intrinsic to those technologies or a maladaptive response to the alienations of capitalism.

13. Conflict Resolution and Transformative Justice

Prisons and police have existed for far too long, destroying people and communities. There are ways to deal with the inevitable conflicts of social existence that see people as capable of growth, redemption, and healing, and that are organized to meet the needs of the community rather than to protect a system of oppression and inequality. The revolution is a process of destroying state power; it is also a process of the rebirth of real communities. Capitalism forced us to be dependent on its mechanisms for our survival, but once it is abolished, our survival once again becomes something we create collectively.

A. Communities are reconstituted through the assemblies and other spaces through which they organize their territory and the survival of their members. A part of this means being accountable to the community on which our survival depends, and taking part in the healthy resolution of conflicts, the healing of harm, and the restoring of reciprocal relations.

B. Communities will do their best to enable fluid ways of being and relating that break with the closed, patriarchal, and micro-oppressive structures that have been traditional in many places. However, no leeway need be given to the dominant concept of fluidity of late capitalism in which people move through space without ever acknowledging their relations, their impact on others, or the simple fact that their survival is not their personal property.

C. People involved in mediation, conflict resolution, and transformative justice will share resources and encourage communities to deal with conflict and harm in a restorative way that promotes healing and reconciliation. We will also make sure that the burden of this work does not fall disproportionately along gender lines.

D. Communities will define norms and boundaries around harmful behaviors, but anarchists will encourage them to develop practices that center dialogue and processes of healing and reconciliation, rather than the codification of prohibited behaviors and punishment.

E. Communities that already have traditions of mediation and reconciliatory processes are encouraged to share their experience as they see fit.

F. All prisons will be dismantled, with communities taking in ex-prisoners who had been convicted of harming other people and committing to working with them on exploring the circumstances around the harm.

G. Committees of people experienced in transformative justice will work with ex-prisoners who are not taken in and vouched for by any community, together with the communities harmed by them, to try to find a solution.

H. Given that total opposition to prisons is not a widespread position, anarchists will organize debates on other possible responses to the worst scenarios of harm—the small minority of cases in which people repeatedly kill, abuse, or victimize others. One possible proposal is to always favor reconciliation with all resources available, but to never delegitimize autonomous acts of self-defense or revenge, especially in cases in which reconciliation is not a realistic outcome.

I. Special attention will be given to all acts of gender and sexual violence, especially those that had been normalized under the patriarchal, punitive regime that is to be abolished. People active in opposing such violence will suggest appropriate structures and practices for communities to adopt.

14. Safety

The state thrives on the lie that security and freedom constitute a dichotomy, two things that exist in inverse proportion and that we must sacrifice each in equal measure to strike a balance between them. Because security is connected with survival, the state can convince us that we would not be able to enjoy what little freedom we have if we did not prioritize security and accept its protection.

In truth, our survival, our safety, and our freedom all depend on how well we can take care of one another, not how high we build walls around ourselves. As long as states exist, even only as a projection in the minds of the power-hungry, we will need to defend ourselves from those who would subjugate and exploit us; sometimes, we will also need to defend ourselves from those who cause harm by not recognizing others’ boundaries, not empathizing with others, or not realizing the consequences of their own actions. How we organize our defense can be dangerous to our freedom. It is also a challenge to conceive of dangers and conflicts in a way that transforms us and others, rather than fixing our antagonists as permanent enemies we need to destroy.

A. All police forces are abolished, and their members should participate in reconciliation processes to address the harm they have caused. Those who refuse may be viewed as statist paramilitaries.

B. Communities may create some kind of volunteer service to protect against various forms of aggression or interpersonal harm. However, to prevent anything like a police force from emerging, whatever form this service takes, it must focus on de-escalation and reconciliation rather than punishment; it should focus on calling out the rest of the community to deal with the conflict or instance of harm rather than monopolizing the response; and the participants must not have special privileges in terms of the right to use force or access to weapons that the rest of the community does not have.

C. Communities are encouraged to create some kind of protective group, tradition, or structure specifically designed to respond to and deal with gender violence in all its forms. They may wish this force to be composed of people other than cis men.

D. Because the state will not be abolished everywhere at once, and because many communities with hierarchical values may continue to exist and may try to subordinate neighboring communities to their will, there may be a need to create anarchist militias or other fighting units—both to defend a free territory and to engage in revolutionary warfare against a statist, imperialist territory. To deserve the terms “free militia” and “revolutionary warfare,” these must be dedicated to several key principles that distinguish them from statist armies. Simply tacking on a red flag is not enough. The fighters must be volunteers; they must be able to choose their own leaders and leadership structures. There must be no officers with aristocratic privileges. The entirety of the force must decide together on acceptable measures of discipline. Assemblies that transcend the free militias—for example, federations of the communities from which the fighters come—will decide the broad strategic objectives and guidelines for humanitarian conduct. In other words the militias must not be fully autonomous: they exist to defend the needs of broader communities, rather than dominating those communities or promoting their own interests on anything but a tactical level.

E. Free militias will avoid the logic of territorial, aggressive warfare in which the objective is to conquer a space defined as enemy territory. The purpose should either be defensive warfare, defending the communities and dissuading others from attacking, or revolutionary warfare, supporting people in an oppressive society who are fighting for their own freedom. In the latter case, the initiative must come from those oppressed people and must not be organized primarily by the militias of a neighboring territory.

F. Free communities do not try to eliminate or annihilate enemies. They defend their freedom and dignity, and support others who are doing so, and then they try to make friends or at the very least make peace.

G. Safety, in an anarchist framework, is not the protection of the weak by the strong, it is the empowerment and cultivated capacity for self-defense of all, with priority given to those whose gender socialization, racialization, or physical and psychological difference has specifically disempowered them under current oppressive conditions.

H. Peace, in an anarchist framework, is not simply the absence of armed conflict, especially when such absence indicates acquiescence to oppression. Peace is an outgrowth of happiness, freedom, and self-actualization, which we hope this program will foster more than capitalism ever has, and a proactive effort. Anarchists will encourage communities to engage and exchange not just with their immediate neighbors, but transcontinentally, sharing and creating cultural bonds, affinities, and friendships on a global scale so as to make the wars of conquest and annihilation that states have been practicing for millennia inconceivable.

15. Community Organization and Coordination

In opposition to involuntary citizenship and dictatorial or representative decision-making that imposes homogenizing laws on all of society, anarchism posits the principles of voluntary association and self-organization, meaning people are free to form themselves into groups of their choosing, to organize those groups as they see fit, and to order their lives on a daily basis, with everyone’s participation.

A. Every community is autonomous and free to organize its own affairs. Every community should develop its own methods and structures of organization and subsistence.

B. Anarchists encourage models that prioritize well-being and prevent the reemergence of statist organization, including the gift economy within communities, and overlapping, redundant forms of organization that prevent the centralization of power, such as combinations of federated territorial assemblies, workplace assemblies, infrastructural organizations, and professional and educational organizations. The goal is to tie people together in a multiplicity of organizational spaces. This way, many different organizational models and cultures can be practiced, since none are neutral or equally accessible to everyone; conflict is mediated by multiplying relationships through numerous organizational and territorial bonds; and the emergence of a political class that is skilled in manipulating assemblies and that thrives in the alienated space of politics is discouraged. If there is no central space where all decisions and authority are legitimated, no matter how participatory that space pretends to be, there can be no political class. This is the difference between democracy and anarchy—not to mention the fact that anarchism has historically opposed slavery, capitalism, patriarchy, imperialism, and the like, whereas democracy has often relied upon them.

C. In order to prevent the return of authoritarian dynamics in the guise of democracy, anarchists would do well to facilitate community processes exploring how formal and informal mechanisms of decision-making distribute gendered power and how vital informal, non-legitimized spaces are to the organization of daily life—but also identifying which informal spaces enable the centralization of power and studying how different ways of organizing, opening, and diffusing formal spaces can serve to prevent rather than facilitate the centralization of power.

D. As a general rule, the only time it is acceptable to intervene in the affairs of a neighboring community is in matters of self-defense, when they do not respect their neighbors’ need for freedom and a dignified survival.

E. When a community does not respect its members’ need for food, water, shelter, healthcare, and bodily integrity, it is good for neighboring communities to offer those members support and refuge. The neighboring communities may support efforts by oppressed or exploited members of the first community to end their oppression, but liberation must always be the task of those who are most directly affected by oppression. Communities should try to avoid intervening directly or forcefully in the affairs of their neighbors.

F. Communities should strive to accept the inevitable differences they have with their neighbors, aiming to foster relations of dialogue and peace. In the case of communities that do not respect the dignity and survival of others, it may be preferable to seek mediation or cut off connections rather than escalating to physical conflict.

G. Many communities will find the need or the desire to join in larger associations for matters of culture, production, and distribution and in order to share common resources. It is preferable to form free federations or associations that maintain power at the local level, while also creating multiple, cross-cutting organizational ties so that every person in every community is a member of multiple groups—for example, the coordinating body to protect a shared watershed, a cultural-linguistic grouping, a scientific association and university system, a producers’ and consumers’ union for sharing resources, and a territorial confederation. In this way, each community has a richer web of relationships, and in the case of conflicts, disputes do not fracture into two belligerent sides, but everyone is tied together by other relationships so there is an abundance of mediators and a general interest in preserving the peace.

16. The Planet

Capitalism has brought the planet to the brink of collapse. It is not enough to destroy capitalism. We must also uproot the capitalist, Western way of relating with the land in favor of healthy, reciprocal, ecocentric relations, and we must do everything possible to heal the planet and all the living communities that share it.

A. It is our responsibility to help the planet heal and help ensure the survival and continuity of all living communities.

B. Communities will tend to their territories as best they can to remediate the destruction and pollution caused by capitalism, to identify and protect species and ecosystems that are in danger, to promote the rewilding of spaces, and to conceive of themselves as part of the ecosystem.

C. Communities and scientific associations will pool resources and share information in order to track problems of global concern, such as greenhouse gases, vulnerable species, dead zones and plastic pollution in the oceans, radiation, and other forms of long-term pollution. They will set targets and make recommendations to specific communities and territorial confederations with the goal of ameliorating these problems as thoroughly and fairly as possible.

[warofnationsapology]

Our Apology

Hello everyone,

With everything that has happened as of late in regards to the warofnationsrp, the admin team wanted to address the situation.

First of all, we want to start this off by apologizing for how much anger, hurt, and offense we have caused. We created this group to be a fun community in a historical setting, and we fully take responsibility for any mistakes we have made in the building of that setting and its plots. From the beginning, we have only wanted this to be a fun, welcoming, and inclusive group. We’ve always asked all of our players to come to us immediately if they had questions or concerns. Whenever issues arose, our admin team tried to find solutions with the priority being to respect our players and the RPC as a whole. We realize now that our attempts to do that thus far have done more harm than good. We take full responsibility for our mistakes and deeply apologize for their effects. We understand now that the best thing for us to do is disband completely, admit our mistakes, and apologize from the bottom of our hearts.

We also wanted to explain our side of what occurred and why we’ve made the decisions we have as an admin team. This is not to justify or excuse our actions or to shame anyone who was hurt by them. We know now that we have made some horrible miscalculations in our management of these issues. This is purely for us to provide context for those miscalculations and context for all sides of this story.

When this group began, there were 4 admins. Out of the 4 of us, the poster of the original callout was the most experienced admin, and the most involved in the RPC as a whole outside of our group. Due to this, we tended to rely on her guidance more often as we learned and grew ourselves as admins. When it came to going through applications and checking faceclaims for diversity, This admin (Admin A hereforth for the sake of clarity) provided us with some wonderful tools to help us check for ethnic miscasting and determining ethnicities correctly. Those tools, and others she introduced us to continued to be used by our admin team even after she left. Near the inception of the group, War of Nations also received two questions concerning colonialism and racism issues of the time period depicted in the group. The first was addressed publicly by Admin A on the original War of Nations main blog, which has since been deleted by Admin A. However, what was roughly addressed in the answer was that we were an AU historical group and because we were an AU would not include themes of slavery, racism, or ethnic oppression in order to create a more inclusive environment. When the second message was received, it was presented to the Admin team by Admin A with the following comment:

Since she was the most knowledgeable about these sorts of issues, we followed her lead when it came to it.

The other concern that was presented by the poster of the callout was that Admins A and B made the decision to step down from the group, there was a disagreement about how their characters leaving would affect the major plots of other players with whom they were involved. For the admins who remained, our primary concern was the enjoyment of our players and assisting them be able to maintain the rich plots and characters they had already invested so much into. However, we wanted to respect them by asking their permission before writing any such things into a plot drop. We agree that our persistence in pursuing these plot changes was disrespectful, and we apologize for not agreeing to the terms sooner. In the end, we did realize that we needed to respect their characters, so we agreed to not use the plot suggestions concerning their characters. We worked with each of our players individually to adjust their stories so that we could restructure their plots to remove those characters fully.

The conversation following ended with one of the current admins (henceforth known as Admin C) apologizing if she came off as rude or defensive. Within the same hour of Admin A and Admin B saying they were leaving, Admin C had received some terrible news from her family, so she admitted that her responses might have been more emotional and rude because she was processing the news while trying to work on switching everything over. This is how it ended:

With Admins A and B complimenting Admin C as an admin and sending well wishes, we were under the assumption that they were stepping away on amicable terms and were okay with the RP continuing.

When the initial callout post was made, the remaining admin team discussed that our plot did need some clarification as we absolutely did not want to promote colonialism or ethnic and racial oppression. Because of this, we decided to write a disclaimer explaining further the intent of this roleplay and its policies to clarify and reassure the RPC of our mission for this to be a fun and inclusive historical AU roleplay. We once again encouraged any questions and concerns to be brought to our attention, and we did respectfully conduct conversations with several historical RPers outside of our group who approached us about our disclaimer and agreed that we handled it in the best way we could. With these policies in place, we continued on, making it a purpose to be aware daily of concerns not only within our group but in the RPC and media as a whole.

As more callouts have surfaced, War of Nations received multiple anons requesting that we delete the roleplay completely. At this time, we also assessed the plots and storylines that our players were currently pursuing or carrying out, and found that none of them contained any parts of the overarching plot, any of the topics presented as a concern in the callouts, or other areas that had been brought to our attention at the time. Instead our players were focused primarily on major political disputes between major countries in our Old World sphere of roleplay as well as personal relationships and character development. Our players seemed to be enjoying their interactions. We knew the best course of action was likely to delete the RP,  we wanted to let our players still be able to continue their interactions and enjoy the work they had put into their characters in a safe environment, and under a new structure which would be not include any topics of colonialism or racism. There would be no overarching plot to this roleplay. Only a generalized time period in the 1700s in which the characters they’d created could continue their personal plots such as family feuds or new romances. We were also concerned that if we tried to continue on Tumblr, our players might be attacked because of their association with the original group’s plot. We also realized that many of our players were eager to roleplay more often but were limited when it came to computer access. The Admin Team thought that by shifting to Discord we could start this roleplay on a clean slate with the old plot completely removed from it all as well as give our players with limited computer access more opportunities to interact on mobile.

As we started to set things in motion, we realized that moving to Discord would be equally as detrimental, and so we realized that the best decision was to disband completely. Due to the admin team having personal obligations (i.e. family, work, and caretaking responsibilities), we were not able to address this properly before others called us out on the mistake we had already realized and planned to address. That is when we recognized fully that we were continuing to make mistakes that were hurting our players and the RPC as a whole and needed to completely disband.

In regards to players that have expressed having experiences discrimination or oppression in the group, we were shocked and heartbroken to learn that they felt this way. These concerns were voiced by some of our original RPers who have stayed with us, and we never had any conversations surrounding these concerns between players involved and our remaining admin team. Additionally, the remaining admins had no knowledge that former admins had been asking for her insight as a POC or that she was doing so in a way that made one of the player uncomfortable. We respect this player deeply both as a mun and as a person, and have a great appreciation for their in-depth knowledge of history as a whole, and the rich breadth of resources and fun facts she shared with the group. She often helped us give clarification on things like proper titling and historical accuracy. These are all things she presented to us. However, the remaining admins never reached out to her for specific insight due to her being a POC.

From Admin C in regards to Esmeralda: Initially, the character of Esmeralda was an interpretation of the book/movie/musical character from The Hunchback of Notre Dame as if she had appeared on the television show Once Upon a Time. I have roleplayed Esmeralda for years, and early on in her creation, a friend of mine who is a POC reminded me to research the Romani people before beginning to roleplay her. I did so, and in my research, I found that the g-word was a derogatory term and that Romani people had early origins in India (as listed here on the Wikipedia page sourcing this book and two other sources). Therefore, both actresses I have used for her were Indian actresses (here and here). I also made sure that any judgement that is based on her performing troupe was based solely on them being travelling performers and illusionists instead of their ethnicity. In that one reply I did that was mentioned, I remember when I re-read it before posting, I realized that I had used that word and it needed to be removed. I remember that I thought to myself "why did I write that?", and I took a mental note to take it out before I posted it as I read over the rest of the reply. Until seeing that player’s post about it, I thought I had removed it, and it has now been removed. However, I must have gotten distracted when reading over it and forgot that I didn't take it out when I returned from the distraction to posting it. This is a mistake I have made in the past that has led to posting replies with grammatical or spelling errors, but never something this horrible. That was my mistake and my own fault for not being more diligent for which I take full responsibility and apologize whole-heartedly.

As an admin team, we have tried to read every thread so we knew that we were aware of what was going on as well as consciously look for possible issues. We will admit that while we did catch some issues and addressed them immediately, we did not pay close enough attention and some things were missed.  We did not always read as carefully as we should have. These issues should have been seen and addressed right away. The admin team fully admits to making this mistake as well, and we do apologize for letting such horrible things get missed.

For any other examples of discrimination felt in this group, we deeply apologize for those as well. We also apologize that we did not present ourselves in a manner to make us more approachable when it came to telling us about these mistakes directly when they occurred. We both want to be better community members and allies, and will continue to educate ourselves, learn, and grow to improve in these areas.

In conclusion, we would like to thank you for taking the time to read this fully. War of Nations has been disbanded completely as a group. Our admins offer our apologies to our players, both current and former, the former admins, and all RPC community members who were hurt by the mistakes we’ve made. We have made some terrible mistakes, and we completely apologize for those with every fiber of our beings. We take full responsibility for those mistakes, and by recognizing them, will strive to be better in the future.

With our deepest apologies,

Former Admins C and D

@warofnationsrp​

@warofnationshq​

[cartoonessays]

The Problem With The Simpsons

As of this writing, the most recent episode of The Simpsons is “No Good Read Goes Unpunished”, in which they briefly offered a response to comedian Hari Kondabolu’s documentary The Problem With Apu.  The documentary used the Apu character as a jump-off point to discuss the marginalization and the extremely reductive view of South Asians in popular media, particularly drawing on his experience as an Indian-American forced to reckon with a greater population who didn’t view his cultural heritage beyond Apu behind the checkout counter at the Kwik-E-Mart saying “thank you, come again”.

In “No Good Read Goes Unpunished”, the B-plot involves Marge rediscovering a beloved book from her childhood called The Princess in the Garden, only to realize how racist and imperialistic it was in an attempt to read it to Lisa.  Marge later attempts to make edits to the book in order for it to fit current-day sensibilities, or in Marge’s words, “It takes a lot of work to take the spirit and character out of a book, but now it’s as inoffensive as a Sunday in Cincinnati”.  Lisa quickly recognizes that Marge’s changes to the story sanitize the whole plot and calls it out, leaving a frustrated Marge to ask what she’s supposed to do.  Lisa breaks the fourth wall and replies:

Something that started decades ago, and was applauded and inoffensive is now politically incorrect. What can you do?

As she says this, the camera pans down to a portrait of Apu with the caption “don’t have a cow!”.  Marge responds by saying “Some things will be dealt with at a later date,” with Lisa quipping “If at all” as they both stare directly in the camera.

A lot of the response The Simpsons has gotten to this has been negative.

And for good fucking reason too.

This response to The Problem With Apu is bullshit; I’m not gonna mince words.  These writers are better than this and these writers know they’re better than this.  Pulling out the banal “PC gone mad” canard is the refuge of a comedic hack.

First of all, The Problem With Apu highlights how Apu Nahasapeemapetilon’s conception as a character is based off of various South Asian stereotypes that include but aren’t limited to his voice being performed by a white man (Hank Azaria) doing an impression of another white man (Peter Sellers) doing an Indian accent, his job being at a 7-Eleven type of convenience store, and the fact that his name “Nahasapeemapetilon” is just foreign sounding gibberish and not actually a name.  Kondabolu and various other South Asian actors and comedians discuss how growing up they were bullied and picked on by being called “Apu” and his catchphrase “thank you, come again” was used against them as a slur.  They also talked about how the roles they get offered for shows and movies hardly go beyond stereotypes and cliches that draw a lot of parallels to Apu.  And the Simpsons writers responded to all of this with a dismissive and tired ass whine about political correctness.

It’s particularly disingenuous of them to use Lisa as their mouthpiece to voice this response, considering her statement is a dismissive retort of her whole existence as a character.

The season 5 episode “Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy” is all about Lisa taking the makers of Malibu Stacy dolls to task over its reinforcement of sexist stereotypes, noting how popular and influential the dolls are to girls around the world.  A lot of striking parallels to Kondabolu’s documentary about Apu, aren’t there?  The show didn’t treat Lisa’s concerns about Malibu Stacy’s sexism as trivial or a non-issue; she was framed as the hero in this episode.  Lisa’s statement in “No Good Read Goes Unpunished” is a complete 180-turn from “Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy”.

Most of the negative critiques that have been written about “No Good Read Goes Unpunished” have focused specifically on moments where Lisa and Marge break the fourth wall.  But I want to discuss the framing around that moment in the episode more because it is also terrible and makes that particular moment even worse in context.  In Marge’s changes to the book she grew up with, she changed the protagonist from a little girl who happily revels in Britain’s colonization of South America to a “cisgender girl who fights for wild horse rescue and net neutrality”.  Let’s see how many liberal strawmen are in this sentence.  There’s a strawman related to the language used by transgender rights activists and allies, another strawman related to animal rights, and are they seriously framing net neutrality as something you can write off as some shallow identifier of politically correct liberals?  Are there a lot of people who brush off the net neutrality issue as political correctness?

And once Marge began telling her re-edited story, Lisa was quick to point out that all the re-edits stripped the story of the emotional journey the protagonist goes through.  First of all, how the hell would Lisa know about the protagonist’s emotional journey or how the racial stereotypes play into it?  She hasn’t read the damn book!  Second of all, this is a false dichotomy the episode sets up to give weight to its dismissal of The Problem With Apu.  Indulgence in racist stereotypes aren’t an inherent function of character arcs in stories.  Why does Marge specifically say “It takes a lot of work to take the spirit and character out of a book, but now it’s as inoffensive as a Sunday in Cincinnati”?  Her objection in the first place was the book’s racism, not that it had spirit and character.  Why are they now framing racism and pro-colonialism as “spirit and character”?  Perhaps The Princess in the Garden is some kind of allusion to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and controversy surrounding its banning/censoring in various schools and libraries?  If that is the case, the rest of the episode does not make that clear.

In fact, when I watched the full episode, I was surprised to see the rest of B-plot actually admonished the book’s racist stereotyping.  The first part of this plot sets up its racial and ethnic stereotyping as really over-the-top and mean-spirited (and giving no allusions of how it related to an emotional arc later in the story).  The last part of this plot mocks historians of The Princess in the Garden’s author who act as apologists for her racism through ridiculous reasoning that they don’t even really believe (they call her racism “self-consciously ironic protest against [the author’s] own oppression” due to her being a lesbian).  So on top of this episode’s response to The Problem With Apu being built from various strawmen, dishonestly framing a dichotomy between creating a character with an emotional arc and not promoting racial stereotypes, and just being really heavy-handed (they both stare directly at the viewers for crying out loud), it was completely in contrast with the rest of the plot.

I can’t read this as anything else but a petty “fuck you” to Hari Kondabolu.  And that is really sad.  These writers are better than this.

Or maybe they’re not better than this.

The Simpsons has always been an overwhelmingly white show with very little representation of people of color.  In fact, the only characters of color I can think of that has been explored beyond their on-the-surface personality quirks in the show’s almost thirty year tenure are Apu and Carl in only one episode.  This show hasn’t really grappled with racism in any of their episodes outside a character making a small quip about it once in a blue moon or “Much Apu About Nothing” (although that was more about xenophobia than racism).  It seems to be an issue the writers of the show have never been comfortable in tackling.  They nonetheless open themselves up to scrutiny by ignoring it, especially when they conceive a foreign character based on stereotypes they find funny (Simpsons writer Dana Gould admitted to that in Kondabolu’s documentary).

I’m not even necessarily saying that they should kill off Apu or something like that.  I like Apu and I personally wouldn’t want to see him go (but hey, I’m not Indian).  But I would have liked to see the writers honestly reckon with the stereotypical character they created and how the decades-long ubiquity of the show has helped shape the broader collective view of South Asians in media.

Instead they chose to respond like this:

And it’s not only beneath them, it’s pathetic.

P.S. This episode offers much better insight on the debate between artistic freedom vs. calling out objectionable content in media anyway.

[funnythingshere0-blog]

'BlacKkKlansman' Review: Spike Lee Detonates a Funny and Righteously Furious 'Fuck You' to Trump — Cannes 2018

New Post has been published on http://funnythingshere.xyz/blackkklansman-review-spike-lee-detonates-a-funny-and-righteously-furious-fuck-you-to-trump-cannes-2018/

'BlacKkKlansman' Review: Spike Lee Detonates a Funny and Righteously Furious 'Fuck You' to Trump — Cannes 2018

It’s surprisingly easy to forget that “BlacKkKlansman” is a Spike Lee joint. Not only does it open with an extended sequence from “Gone with the Wind” (not a Spike Lee joint), but it also spends a good amount of time parsing the fundamental dilemma of Jewish-American identity, and takes place in the snow-white hills of Colorado Springs … which in this country, is pretty much as far from Crooklyn as you can get.

Sure, the usual Lee flourishes pop up here and there — from the introductory text promising this buddy-cop biopic is “some fo’ real shit,” to the gorgeous conveyor-belt shot at the climax, and the sobering mic drop of news footage that brings things to a close — and the whole thing is kissed with his cock-eyed anger. But so much of this movie seems like it could’ve been made by anybody. It couldn’t have been — it wouldn’t have been — but it often seems that way. We’re talking a clean three-act structure, a couple of scenes that vaguely resemble car chases, and motherfucking Topher Grace.

The truth is, you just don’t expect that something called “BlacKkKlansman,” an unvarnished look back at the African-American police officer who conned his way into David Duke’s inner circle, is going to be Spike Lee’s most commercial project since “Inside Man” in 2006. Hell, this thing is so mainstream it feels like the start of a franchise. And yet, that mass appeal is a huge part of what makes this funny and righteously furious American film so powerful. Lee might paint with a broad brush, but he makes damn sure that every one of his targets is tagged with at least a little splotch of red. And he makes damn sure that every one of us can see it so clearly that it will never wash off.



“BlacKkKlansman” rewinds the clock back to the early ’70s, a time when the Vietnam War was raging, caller ID had yet to be invented, and way too many other things were the same as they are now. When Ron Stallworth (John David Washington, of the Denzel Washingtons) rolls up to the Colorado Springs Police Department, he’s the first black cop they’ve ever had on the force. And his blackness is a bit dissonant for many of his very white (and very sheltered) new co-workers. On the one hand, he’s got a big afro. On the other, he talks like a bible salesman.

Read More:Cannes Film Festival Directors Sign Pledge Vowing to Increase Gender Equality at Festival

Sick of working in the records office and eager to earn the respect of his peers, Ron volunteers for undercover work. He says he’s got a “niche.” Lucky for him, a perfect opportunity for some light intel work falls into his lap: Kwame Ture (a commanding Corey Hawkins) is giving a speech for the black student union, and Ron is just the guy to slip in and read the room unnoticed. Not only does he get the job done, but he also gets to meet-cute with a beautiful and impassioned activist named Patrice Dumas (Spider-Man’s recent love interest, Laura Harrier).

But there are too many diehard racists on the force — too many angry white men who like to kill black kids for sport. So Ron tries to move things along. On the spur of the moment, he opens the phone book, picks up the receiver, and dials the local chapter of the KKK. He tells them that he’s interested in becoming a member; he uses his real name (rookie mistake). The next thing Ron knows, he’s got a blind date with a real-life White Nationalist. And, um, that’s probably not going to be much of a love connection. Fortunately, our quick-thinking hero has a plan: He’s going to pull a “Cyrando de Bergerac” and send a detective named Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) to wear a wire and “play” Ron Stallworth in person. Never mind that Flip is Jewish — even he needs to be reminded of that. Besides, he can pass.

Just like that, they’re off to the races. Flip gets in tight with the brotherhood, while Ron listens in from a nearby car. The Colorado Springs chapter of “The Organization” is represented by a cartoonish trio of incompetents (Ryan Eggold as the leader, Jasper Pääkkönen as the suspicious sociopath, and “I, Tonya” breakout Paul Walter Hauser as the mouth-breathing source of extra comic relief). The film makes fun of them from its modest start to its explosive finish, and yet — strange as it may seem — there’s always something irreducibly terrifying about a well-armed militia that’s hellbent on ethnic cleansing.

Read More:‘Three Faces’ Review: Jafar Panahi’s Turns His Life Into a Movie With Another Statement on Censorship — Cannes 2018

Always something, but sometimes not enough. Lee, whose films are not exactly known for their tonal consistency, often struggles to reconcile the dark comedy of these scenes with the sheer darkness that surrounds them. At times, the absurdity of the KKK members — and one of their wives — is so extreme that it undercuts the urgency of the threat they pose. And that’s before Stallworth connects with the hate group’s then-leader, an eminently punchable and regrettably familiar weasel named David Duke (unfortunately for Topher Grace, the role that he was born to play).

But the mocking phone calls between Ron and the Grand Wizard aren’t only there so that we can laugh at Duke as he swears that he can tell the difference between black and white people based on the sound of their voice. They also serve a second, and more critical function, as Lee’s script — based on Stallworth’s memoir, and co-written by three other writers — uses their duality as a vehicle to explore the quest for pluralism at the heart of this story. Is it truly possible for a black American to be both of those things at once? Is it possible for a Jew? Wasn’t the fundamental promise of this country that we could all be together ourselves?

It’s hard to imagine a more lucid expression of that seemingly irreconcilable conflict than the sequence in which Ron — the real Ron — is assigned to protect Duke when he comes to town. In a film where Washington is too often stuck behind a desk, putting on his phone voice and biting his tongue, this strange encounter allows the actor to have an out-of-body experience; he’s othered and included at the same time, twisting Duke’s own ignorance against him. It’s all conveyed through the suspense of a ’70s cop thriller (and sometimes even the swagger of blaxploitation), and Washington has a blast with every moment of it.

Read More:Cannes 2018 Palme d’Or Contenders: Here’s a Look at the Likely Winners (UPDATED)

Driver eventually does as well, though his character spends most of the movie in harm’s way. Unleashing the pent-up testosterone that percolated beneath his roles in “Girls” and “Star Wars,” Driver leans into every one of the self-loathing epithets that Flip uses as a disguise. He does a brilliant job of registering the toll that it takes, every anti-semitic jab pushing him closer to a real confrontation with the Jewish identity that he’s always kept like a half-forgotten secret.

It’s very unexpected (and exceedingly rare) to see a film that reckons with the dormant feelings — the pride, shame, tradition, history, and otherness — of being a “passing” Jew in White America, let alone a film that clarifies that reflects the Jewish-American and African-American experiences against each other in order to clarify them both.

While “BlacKkKlansman” only has so much time to dwell on such things as it barrels along the predictable trajectory of a superhero origin saga, each of Lee’s hyper-political asides speaks to the institutional anxieties at the heart of this story. In fact, Ron and Patrice spend most of their scenes together addressing the issue head-on: Is it possible to change the system from the inside if the people in power don’t want the system to change?

David Duke found a way to crack it, and he drops enough groan-worthy dramatic irony to make sure we recognize that (he foams at the mouth about “America first,” and even gives a little speech about inserting a White Nationalist into the Oval Office one day). Patrice isn’t convinced that it’s a workable solution for an oppressed people, but if the Colorado Springs Police Department can turn things around on their own streets — if Ron can somehow reconcile being a black cop, and Flip a white Jew — then we can be the system. Quoth Hillel the Elder: “If not now, when? If not you, who?”

Far more frightening than it is funny (especially after Lee connects the dots from Colorado Springs to Charlottesville), “BlacKkKlansman” packages such weighty and ultra-relevant subjects into the form of a wildly uneven but consistently entertaining night at the movies. It’s as broad as America is wide, but that’s as broad as it needs to be. After all, “The Birth of a Nation” was a blockbuster. It was history written with lightning. “BlaKkKlansman” is a deafening roll of the thunder we’ve been waiting for ever since.

Grade: B+

“BlacKkKlansman” premiered in Competition at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. It will be released in theaters on August 10th.

[romancatholicreflections]

9th July >> Sunday Homilies and Reflections for Roman Catholics on the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A.

Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Gospel text: Matthew 11:25-30 Jesus preachingvs.25 At that time, Jesus exclaimed, “I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and of earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to mere children. vs.26 Yes, Father, for that is what it pleased you to do. vs.27 Everything has been entrusted to me by the Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, just as no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. vs.28 Come to me, all you who labour and are overburdened, and I will give you rest. vs.29 Shoulder my yoke and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. vs.30 Yes, my yoke is easy and my burden light.” ******************************************************************* We have four sets of homily notes to choose from. Please click on the one required or scroll down the page. We have four sets of homily notes to choose from. Please scroll down the page for the desired one. Michel DeVerteuil : A Trinidadian Holy Ghost Priest, Specialist in Lectio Divina Thomas O’Loughlin: Professor of Historical Theology, University of Wales. Lampeter. John Littleton: Director of the Priory Institute Distant Learning, Tallaght Donal Neary SJ: Editor of The Sacred Heart Messenger ******************************************************* Michel de Verteuil Lectio Divina with the Sunday Gospels – Year A www.columba.ie General comments Today’s passage is best understood as a wonderful summary of the “Little Way” of St Thérèse of Lisieux. For those who are acquainted with the spiritual teaching of the Saint, it is an opportunity to celebrate her and all she has meant to the Church and to the world of our time. Like all bible passages, this one teaches by way of story. It records a moment of intense emotion in the life of Jesus, when he “exclaims” i.e. utters a heartfelt prayer of thanksgiving. The experience was particular to Jesus but as always with lectio divina we are invited to enter into it, recognizing with gratitude that we and great people who have touched our lives have lived similar moments. They have been “wisdom moments”, i.e. taught us some important lessons about human living. Jesus reflects on three aspects of his life: a) verses 25 and 26: the learned and the clever did not understand him but “mere children” did; b) verse 27: his relationship with his heavenly father; c) verses 28 to 30: his ministry to those who are overburdened by the religion of his time. We read the passage as one continuous flow, interpreting each section in the light of the other two. Verses 25 and 26. The Jewish community which Jesus ministered to was divided into two categories: (a) those who knew and practiced the law and (b) those who did neither. Jesus experiences that those barriers are of no consequence – the experts in the law didn’t understand him whereas the others did – and this moves him very deeply. Note the adjective “mere” – they were considered of no consequence. Jesus’ overall response is positive; he is not concerned with those who don’t understand, his entire focus is on the wisdom of the little ones. He is like Mary in the Magnificat celebrating the “lowly lifted up” rather than rejoicing at “the mighty cast down”. We too have had moments when we became aware of the greatness of those we had previously looked down upon: – men and women who never darken the doors of a church turned out to be “holy” people; – those with little formal education shared insights which we had never thought of; – the children of dysfunctional families became wonderful parents. We remember our feelings then – how wrong we had been! what good news that we had been wrong! The “mere children” need not be people. We can interpret them of aspects of ourselves that we tend to disown – our weak points, failures, jealousies, feelings of insecurity. One day we realize that in order to see reality more clearly we must see the world with the eyes of a child and renounce our need/desire to find security in power or status – being “learned and clever”. We celebrate moments when perhaps for the first time we appreciated: – the beauty of nature – the greatness of others – the potential in a community. The passage is a lived experience of Jesus’ teaching that unless we are converted and become like little children we will never enter the kingdom of heaven. In verse 27 Jesus remembers that he himself was a “mere child” in the presence of his heavenly Father. The passage is recognized to be difficult. Many scholars read it as a testimony to Jesus’ unique relationship with God the Father – in parallel with similar testimonies in St John’s Gospel. It therefore becomes a “proof text” that he was truly God. But the “law” of lectio divina that I mentioned above must apply to this verse in particular – the only way to understand a bible passage is from personal experience. Lectio reminds us that by the incarnation Jesus does not merely reveal God, he reveals us to ourselves. He invites us to share his unique experience, even though on a lower level. Furthermore we approach the passage “from below” remembering our deep human relationships, e.g. with a spouse, a colleague, a “soul friend”; the relationship then becomes a “parable” of our relationship with God. The passage looks at two aspects of Jesus’ relationship with the Father, – trust, in verse 27a, – “knowing” in verse 27b. Verse 27a tells us that for Jesus (and for us) “everything” in the relationship is a gift, temporarily “entrusted to us” by a loving Father. This is how “mere children” relate with adults. “Know” in 27b has the biblical meaning of “have a very intimate relationship” (in the bible “know” often means “have sexual intercourse with”). “No one knows except … ” is also a biblical way of speaking. It indicates the intensity of the relationship, “I know you in way that no one in the world does”. It is like the passages which speak of Israel as Good’s “only” or “first- begotten” son which mean, “my love for you is very special”. Parents will understand this; they know about loving each of their children as an “only child”. Verse 27c adds that Jesus has shared with others his intimacy with the Father. The verse is saying two things: – his ministry (like ours) consists in initiating people into intimacy with God; – he “chooses”, in the sense that he puts the stamp of his freedom on the relationship he establishes: “life (the Lord) sent you on my path, and I have turned what was a chance meeting into a personal choice.” Verses 28 to 30 draw the conclusion from the first two sections: because Jesus has experienced life as a gift, his followers are truly free. In the time of Jesus (as in our time) religion had become a matter of keeping commandments; people experienced it as “labour”; they felt “overburdened” by it. Jesus changed that; he made religion an experience of freedom. He challenged his followers to reach beyond their narrow concerns, but they experienced this “yoke” as “easy” and this “burden” as “light”. We celebrate people who did that for us. We interpret “gentle and humble of heart” in the light of the two previous sections. It means being able to accept weakness (being mere children) in the presence of God. Our interpretation will be based on personal experience – we think of people who made life’s challenges easy to bear and recognize how they were gentle and humble of heart. We can interpret the passage as a celebration of the teaching method of the great Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire, as taught in his famous work Pedagogy of the Oppressed. We can identify the three stages of the passage, starting with the third: – teaching must not be a “burdensome” transferring of facts (the “banking method” of education) but an initiation to freedom; – for true teachers knowledge is a sacred trust they grow into, side by side with their students; – the sign of a good teaching method is that the lowly understand things hidden from the learned and the clever (including the teacher). Prayer Reflection Heavenly Father, Lord of heaven and earth, we thank you that you have hidden things from the learned and the clever and revealed them to mere children; yes, Father, that is what it has pleased you to do. Lord, we always tend to form groups where we feel superior to others and listen only to one another, – as a Church and as groups within the Church; – within ethnic groups and social classes; – within our families and communities. We thank you for those precious moments when you break down the barriers we have set up, surprising us by hiding things from us and revealing them to those we considered mere children: washing_feet1 – someone we thought a sinner taught us true loyalty or love; – a child we looked on as inferior said a word that brought peace to our family; – young people accomplished something we adults had not been able to do; – a group we had written off as unemployable organized themselves into a co-op. At that moment you were calling us to poverty of spirit whereby we recognize you as Lord of heaven and earth. Lord, we pray that our Church may be a presence of Jesus in our country: – always on the lookout for those who are looked down upon as mere children; – grateful when you reveal things to them that have been hidden from the learned and the clever; – and proclaiming your love to the world. Lord, we thank you for moments of intimacy and sharing, when friends opened themselves to us in trust, letting us know them as no one knew them, and we felt known as we had never been known, and there was no worry about our trust being betrayed. These were truly sacred moments when we experienced your love and your trust. We pray today for families, that they may be living experiences of your Holy Trinity, with trust between parents and children, parents letting themselves be known by their children and children letting themselves be known by their parents, and children free to invite whoever they like into that place of trust. Lord, there are people in our society who are overburdened: – society makes them feel responsible for the country; – their sins appear more shameful than the sins of more respectable people; – they are caught in a trap of poverty and lack the energy to get out. We pray that as a Church we may not add to their burdens. Help us on the contrary to come to them like Jesus, – with respect and trust and in a spirit of dialogue; – with humility and gentleness of heart, so that they may feel themselves understood and so find rest for their souls. Lord, we pray today for those who feel called to undertake some burden: – to accept death or illness; – to forgive an enemy; – to let a loved one go; – to involve themselves in a struggle for justice. Help them to trust you, that you know how they labour and are overburdened, that you are gentle and humble of heart, and they will find the yoke easy and the burden light. Heavenly Father, we thank you for moments of deep prayer when we experience that everything is your gift entrusted to us. Others misunderstand us, but we feel you understand, and we say no one knows us except you; we feel so close to you, we can say no one knows you except us; so close to those we minister to, we can say those whom we have chosen to reveal you to also know you. Lord, religion often becomes a matter of keeping commandments, a heavy burden to bear. We thank you for sending us teachers like Jesus, so gentle and humble in heart that we find rest for our souls; they lay a yoke on us but it is easy, they ask us to bear a burden but it is light. Lord, we thank you for the gift of St Thérèse of Lisieux. Truly you revealed things to this mere child which you hid from the learned and the clever among her contemporaries, yes Father that is what it pleased you to do; – she knew that whatever she had was entrusted to her by you, – she felt herself known by you in a way that no one else knew her, – she knew you as no one else knew you, and those to whom she taught her Little Way, – she called to her all who felt religion as a labour and a burden and she gave them rest; – we have learnt humility and gentleness of heart from her and we found rest for our souls; – we found her yoke easy and her burden light. ********************************************************* Thomas O’Loughlin Liturgical Resources for the Year of Matthew www.columba.ie Introduction to the Celebration Every Sunday we gather here because we have heard the Lord’s invitation: ‘Come to me, all you who labour and are overburdened, and I will give you rest.’ We rejoice that God in his generosity has given us this day of rest, this day of rejoicing, this day when we can just be happy and reflect on the wonder of the creation. Homily Notes 1. The challenge with a text such as today’s gospel is to find something particular that can give expression to the aspect of the kergyma which it represents. I am picking up the notion of the rest that God gives us, and particularising it in terms of the notion of Sunday as the divine gift of a day of rest. 2. This is, of course, an ancient theme. And, deviant notions of Sabbatarianism apart, there has been a standard way to pre­sent both the Sabbath (in Jewish sources) and Sunday (among Christians) down the ages. These presentations have a common theme: ‘This is the day.’ Whether it is the day of creating or resting from creating, or the day of resurrection or some other day. Then this actual day, Sunday now, is a means of participating in that original’ day’. This notion that time forms mystical unity with the fundamental moments in the history of salvation is deeply embedded in both Jewish sundayfundayand Christian notions of ritual and celebration. However, possibly Christmas and Easter apart, they seem not to excite people today in the way they did until quite recently. Whatever has caused this change is one matter, the fact is that in a ‘leisure society’ the notion of a Day of Rest, or a Day belonging to the Lord, just does not move people – even if they are Christians. This can be seen in that many people are willing to opt for alternative ‘worship services’ that would take place on weekday evenings because they do not want to have ‘to go on Sunday’ as it ‘messes up their weekend’. The time of leisure, the weekend, is so sacrosanct that it cannot even be interrupted for prayer. Older books spoke of the di­chotomy of people who gave ‘Sunday to God; the rest to mammon’; now it is more complex. Monday to Friday is for work and duties; weekends are pure leisure time; God does not belong to my leisure time, so he can be squeezed in dur­ing the week. 3. So how do you speak about Sunday and’ a day of rest’ to people when many of those listening will be viewing their presence there as an interruption in their leisure time? Indeed, there will be individuals in every assembly who will be suf­fering from stress because of the tension that her /his decision to go the Eucharist has caused their families who see it as an unwarranted interruption the family’s leisure. Today, in every society where there is a five-day week and work is limited by a maximum number of hours, Sunday is a problem for Christians! 4. The first step is to acknowledge the problem. Ask rhetorically how many know this dialogue: the family want to go somewhere on Sunday and to leave to get there for lunchtime. Only one parent is a church-goer. That person’s desire to attend the Eucharist is throwing the plans out. So someone asks: ‘Why can’t you just skip church this week – you can worship God anywhere – you don’t need to go into a special building!’ Reply: ‘It’s not as simple as that!’ Another voice: ‘Well, OK, but can you not make an exception for today, it’s such a nice day!’ Reply: ‘But I made an exception last week and this week I’m down on the list to do the reading!’ Another: ‘Oh Yes! Someone else’s list. Strange religion this: someone else is more important than your family’s happiness. Strange religion this! Loving God means you don’t love your family.’ Another voice: ‘You better go on to your Mass. We’re too late to get there now anyway. You might as well go off and look after your religion!’ 5. This acknowledgement of the stress that many are under can be a way of ventilating a problem that people have never named and itself lessens the stress and the consequent feelings of guilt. Jesus light of world6. So the first step in preaching Sunday is to say to people that resting is having burdens removed: so, just for now, relax. God loves us and knows the strains and stresses we live with. 7. Then, step two, just point out the irony: in a ‘leisure society’ the pressures to use ‘leisure time’ often become so great, that the time is as stressed as for work-time. We have industri­alised leisure time! How much leisure is left? Yet God wants us to have leisure and rest from work. 8. Life is greater than our pressures and concerns and work: that is the insight of the Day of rest being the Lord’s Day. Our life is greater than the sum of its parts. Yet, if we do not reflect regularly on this, and be’ thankful to God for all his gifts – of which life is basic – we lose the plot and lose the leisure. That is why we Christians call on ourselves to stop regularly, relax and reflect on life and work and leisure, and to bless the Father for his goodness. And our word for ‘blessing the Father’ is Eucharist. **************************************************************** John Litteton Journeying through the Year of Matthew www.Columba.ie Gospel Reflection God’s self-revelation (self-disclosure) is truly a gift because without it we would know nothing about God’s nature and interaction with us and the universe. We could not even begin to imagine the joy and the privilege of being in God’s presence. The fullness of God’s self-revelation is found in the Incarnate Son of God. Jesus, through his life and ministry, teaches us that his Father is loving and redeeming. We learn that the Father never abandons us. He constantly calls us to return after we have turned away because of our sins. This is the essence of God’s revelation. Yet all people are not equally appreciative of God’s revel­ation. Jesus thanked his Father for ‘hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to mere children’ (Mt 11:25). Ironically, it is lowly and humble people who best under­stand God’s secrets. Significantly, the wisdom that really matters is to be found among those whom the world judges to be unwise. Those who are considered ‘learned’ and ‘clever’ in worldly terms are often unwilling to accept God’s providential care and his command­ments. Instead, it is ‘mere children’, or rather those who have a childlike attitude towards God, who respond wholeheartedly to God’s communication. There is a significant difference between being childlike and being childish. To be childlike means to be trusting. It involves having a sense of wonder and awe. Those who have a childlike attitude appreciate simplicity and the blessedness of life’s ordin­ary situations. When we are childlike we accept our dependence on God, knowing that we cannot be in complete control. In contrast, to be childish means to be manipulative, de­manding and immature. Childishness results from selfishness and an arrogant attitude of self-importance. It is not confined to children. In fact it is found much more often in adults. Childish people mistakenly presume that they are autonomous and that they can be in control of their lives without reference to other people and God. For Christians, conversion involves changing from childish attitudes and behaviour to childlike trust and selflessness. Basically, conversion is about travelling the journey from sinful­ness to saintliness. We need to change from being Teamed’ and ‘clever’, always trying to be in control of life, to being ‘mere children’, graciously accepting our total dependence on God for everything. Only then can God teach us what he wants us to learn. Infants instinctively trust their parents. It is perfectly natural. But as we grow older, we become quite independent of our par­ents and we often reject their values and good example. We may do the same with God. Perhaps we can learn to trust God again. We need to discard our childish ways and become more child­like so that we can experience the joy of being God’s children again. For meditation Come to me, all you who labour and are overburdened, and I will give you rest. (Mt 11:28) ********************************************************************************************* Fr Donal Neary, S.J Gospel Reflections for the Year of Matthew www.messenger.ie A time for rest The invitation of Jesus to find peace in his presence is one of the most popular of his sayings. He is contrasting his message with the burdensome law, which somehow had lost the heart of religion, over-emphasising the externals of laws and rituals. He is not devaluing laws and rituals but putting them in their place. He offers an invitation that everyone can hear; and at many times of life we really need to hear it. These may be times of illness, bereavement, anxiety, depression and worry. It is an invitation to come into his presence, which is a loving presence. It’s not just an invitation to enjoy a restful time, but to rest in the presence of love. Any notion we have of Jesus that is harsh is false: he is ‘gentle and humble in heart’. This is the atmosphere he asks us all to spread. ‘Once you have received the refreshment and comfort of Christ, we are called in turn to become refreshment and comfort for our brothers and sisters, with a meek and humble attitude, in imitation of the Master’ (Pope Francis, July 2014). The church is a place of rest for the weary; the place where we find encouragement in the ordinary situations in our lives, where we are called to respond to those who suffer through pov­erty, homelessness and many other unjust social situations that are part of our world, near and far. Recall last week where you needed to hear these words, or met someone else who needed to hear them, maybe through you. Speak to the Lord in your own words. Take into your hands, Lord, the burdens in my life; help me to trust in you. **************************************