#collective action

[igottatho]

The media giants won’t tell us this, but there are protests happening all over the US. With the coordinated BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) movement, large corporations like Sbux and Wackdonalds are feeling the hurt - collective action Works.

Text for the tweet below the cut, for those comrades who need it.

I found this via Instagram yesterday, Feb 14.

A screen grab of an Instagram post, titled: ‘Golden Gate Bridge Briefly Blocked by Activists Calling for Cease Fire in Gaza’

Post credited to kqednews and reads: ‘Activists calling for a ceasefire in Gaza blocked traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge this morning around 7:30 a.m. Traffic was closed for about 20 minutes and reopened by 8 a.m.

Israel is preparing for a military offensive in Rafah, a city and location of a border crossing at the southern end of Gaza where Palestinians are seeking refuge but unable to leave, prompting warnings by President Joe Biden to not proceed without a plan to protect civilians.

In the Bay Area, protestors had previously blocked the Bay Bridge in November to draw attention to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.’

The image shown is taken from the Golden Gate Bridge, where 4 activists are wearing masks and holding a large banner-sign that says “STOP ARMING ISRAEL”, behind them you can see traffic lined up.

Original post here.

[thoughtportal]

join a union

the power of collection action

[thrivingisthegoal]

Hey y'all, there's a great Instagram acct called gogreensavegreen that just released three awesome resources for getting involved in collective action!

I'll include the link, they're going to be updating them and helping them grow, and they're AWESOME. Collective action is huge! Individual action is great for getting motivated, connecting with the earth, understanding resources, and growing passion, but these resources will take you further. I love just scrolling through them.

If you care about this and don't really know where to start THIS is for you. If you feel hopeless about our situation THIS is for you. If you find it hard to find like minded people THIS is for you!

Please boost and spread the word about this. We need as many people taking action as possible, and maybe this will help someone out there find their niche, their calling, their hobby, their action!

[politijohn]

WGA reaching a tentative agreement with studios after striking for months shows the profound strength workers have through organizing and collective action. SAG-AFTRA next. Then UAW.

Join a union.

Solidarity forever

[thefirsthogokage]

Global strike for Palestine tomorrow! Don't forget to keep posting!

[macleod]

I've seen a number of people on here proclaim that you should not, under no circumstances, take photos at a protest, but: Sharing photos of protests is a great way to amplify the impact of collective action, raise awareness on important issues, and encourage more people to participate.

But: We also have to keep in mind that surveillance is on the rise, including the use of facial recognition tech, which can put people at risk.

So here is a quick basic guide, courtesy of DigitalRightsWatchAU, to protecting people's biometric data when posting protest photos:

Conceal or obscure people’s faces in photos 

Before you upload photos from protests to social media, remove biometric data by concealing or obscuring people’s faces and using proper communication channels.

Use Signal. 

Signal is a great encrypted messaging app that protects your communications. It also has an in-built feature to blur out people’s faces.

We strongly recommend using Signal to communicate with people white protesting (and anytime, really!), and this added feature makes it easy to protect the identities of people in your photos. 

Be selective – choose photos that don’t show people’s faces. 

With some careful photography and curation, you can upload photos that capture the scale and energy of a protest without revealing sensitive information — no need to edit them! 

Here are some ideas:

take photos at a distance, capturing the crowd rather than individual details of faces,

position yourself behind the march, showing only the backs of heads, 

focus on signs, flags and other details to emphasise the protest vibe without showing people’s faces. 

Remember it’s good practice to ask people before taking their photo whenever you can. You can also explain to them that you just want to get their sign or outfit but not their face – let them know you want to protect their privacy! 

Extra tips:

Doing this does not remove the metadata from your image. Image metadata is generated automatically and usually includes details including the time, date, and GPS location, and information about the type of phone used – this can be used to pinpoint where you were and when. To easily remove metadata, take a screenshot on your device and delete the original. 

For extra protection, delete the original photos that show people’s faces from your phone after you have made a version that obscures the faces. Even if you don’t intend to upload them online, if your device is compromised or unlocked and you have the originals sitting there, you’ve done all that work for nothing!    

What about videos? Videos are trickier to edit to hide people’s faces and may require additional time, effort and software – this isn’t always possible while you’re on the go! We suggest focusing on minimising capturing faces in the first place when recording video footage. 

Focus on harm minimisation rather than perfection. Taking protest photos without revealing people’s faces can be hard – there are a lot of people moving around which makes it difficult. The goal is to minimise sharing others’ biometric information as much as possible. Just try your best!   

When you want to capture details: recording incidents 

Recording incidents such as use of violence by law enforcement can be a powerful tool of accountability. It pays to be prepared. 

Here are some tips from Melbourne Activist Legal Support on observing police at protests:

Record in landscape mode. It captures more of the scene. 

Hold your device steady and move it slowly. Smooth, clear footage makes better evidence. 

If taking your phone to an action, make sure you don’t take sensitive data with you. 

Context is important. Recording moments before an arrest can be as important as the arrest itself. 

Try to take clear steady images that capture the police officer’s badge name or ID number. 

Don’t hinder an arrest when observing or you may end up arrested too.   

Try not to narrate. Your recording may not capture key information if you’re speaking over it. 

Police do not have the right to hinder you recording public interactions. 

You can also check out the resources from Witness for in-depth guides to recording incidents to protect and uphold human rights. You can also get advice and tools from the National Justice Project’s CopWatch.

[alpaca-clouds]

Understanding Individualism vs Collectivism

Making that post about individualism and capitalism yesterday, I got some questions, that showed me the same problem as the person I was talking about had: A lot of people do actually not know what individualism and collectivism mean. So, let me try to explain.

I had kinda hoped that Abigail from Philosophy Tube might have made a video on this, but no such luck. So, I guess I have to try and explain it, even though I mostly know it from sociology, rather from the philosophic origins where it comes from.

Basically, both concepts originate with socialist philosophy in the early 19th century, which correctly identified the early capitalist society as individualist and saw the dangers coming with it. It argued that an individualist society will be harmful on a societal level, because the society at large would always focus on the self, rather than the other. Capitalist philosophy however picked this up was like: “Yeah, awesome, right?” And especially in the 20th century they really started to run with it, realizing that they could use it to make people into better consumers.

Now, individualism does not mean “a sense of self”. This is not connected to it. You will still have a sense of self in a collectivist society and nobody says that you shouldn’t have. Rather it means that the focus of everyone should be on the individual. Both themselves – but also the individual actors in society. It is as such not a surprise that the idea of “Great Man Theory” came up and started to thrive during early capitalism in the 19th century.

So, if individualism does not mean “a sense of self”, what does it mean?

I would argue there are two aspects to it. Once the aforementioned tendency to put the individual above the society and apart from it, but also to create and sell a personal philosophy that people are defined by their differences from others, rather than what they have in common. It tells people that they are all so very different from everyone else, which is a useful political tool for capitalism to fight collective actions such as unions, but also collective action for things like environmental protection. In the same vein it is used to keep people riled up against one another within society, as they focus on their differences, rather than what they have in common.

The most anarchistic professor I had at university put it very well: “If you as a worker talk to a factory worker from Bangladesh, you will find you have a lot in common. In fact you will always have more in common with this other worker rather than any billionaire there is.”

Which brings me to the other aspect that individualism is about: It sells you an individualistic dream. Which is why capitalism focuses so much on those rags to riches stories (that tend to be lies most of the time). “See, this millionaire started out his business in daddy’s garage. So you can also become a billionaire if you have the right idea.” Fellow leftist might know the saying: “You are just one bad day away from homelessness, but you will never be a billionaire.” Which is basically the counter argument to this.

See, capitalism tries to convince you, that “I am the better system, because in me you could become a billionaire,” to sell you not only on your own exploitation, but the exploitation of the masses.

And more than that, capitalism also has realized that it can use individualism to make you a better consumer. I alluded to this a bit further up. But the long and short of it is, that capitalism pushes this idea of “you are, what you consume”. Your individuality is defined by the things you spent money on. Maybe by you having the most expensive things, but also by you having maybe the weirdest things or something. You know, the “not like the other girls” girl will probably spend as much, if not more on the things that make her special, as “the other girls”.

This also goes into the whole idea of greenwashing, pinkwashing and rainbow capitalism. All this is about getting you to consume something to gain some sort of individual aspect from it. Basically, through buying the “green” stuff, you are a better consumer.

Ironically this also goes into the entire anti-shipping discourse, which basically also says that your goodness as a person is defined by the things you consume.

Capitalism is selling you your identity. Your individual identity.

But sadly this is an idea very, very deeply engrained into the heads of most who have grown up in capitalism. Because it is everywhere in media. Sure, there is some media that calls it out, but most of it actually peddles the idea of the individual.

Because this is the second aspect at the core of individualism: The myths that only individuals can change something, rather than a collective. Which is what I call out so often when I am talking about the entire punk-genre stuff.

Even though it is less punk, let me take Star Wars as an example, because it is an amazing example of this. Especially the original trilogy, in which the Rebellion battles the Empire. However, the evil Empire is not defeated because the Rebellion manages to somehow outwit or outmaneuvre the Empire. Or because maybe the collective of the workers in the Empire turn against it. Rather it gets defeated because Luke, the individual, turns Darth Vater, an individual, and defeats the Emperor, the individual. Which goes back to this idea of the “great man”. It is those unique individuals who will save the world, rather than collective action.

This idea of some individuals being the ones to save the world, rather than we – the people – as a group and ourselves, is used to keep the people pacified under capitalism. They are waiting for “a good billionaire” to solve climate change, homelessness and all the other problems for us, rather than getting active themselves. They keep telling themselves: “Hey, under capitalism everyone can be a billionaire, including myself, and also my life isn’t that bad right now. So who cares that under socialism/communism everyone could be lifted up?”

Look, folks. I am saying this lovingly. But you are not as much of an individual as you think. You are your own person, but you are not unique. In fact, if you talk to a random person on the street – no matter who they are – and you and them are not instantly judging each other for one reason or another, you will find that you have a lot more in common than you think. Capitalist individualism just taught you to not see this, because your empathy can be its undoing.

[sundog-blr]

Heads up folks, Artists Against Apartheid is pulling together a network of actions/protests for MARCH 2! You can find more info and even register your own local action here!

[cfiesler]

TL;DR Fans are very good at collective action. Like, remember how Archive of Our Own started with a LiveJournal post saying: hey can’t we do this ourselves? I’m always just amazed by what fans can accomplish. :)

Here is a link to the video I’m referencing, about a recent incident where fans banded together to help folks whose fanfic was being stolen. 

Also here are links to my Slate story and paper about AO3 referenced here.

I hope y’all don’t mind the occasional TikTok share! Sometimes there are nice prompts for talking about fandom stuff over there.

[igottatho]

Breaking News! UC Davis Breaks from Israel!

Link to video full of cheering HERE.

Original tweet is by user @CocktCapitalism , an anticapitalist podcast “that pairs crafted beverages with stories distilled from our capitalist hellscape.”

I’m looking for more sources to help us understand what UCD is and how divestment works and why this is significant, will add as I find them :)

ETA: some recent info about this protest movement can be found here via the UC campus newspaper “the Daily Bruin”.

ETA 2: Define “Divestment”- “the act of selling off a business or businesses, or of no longer investing money in something: a campaign to encourage divestment from fossil fuels” source

ETA 3: Some relevant Background on UCD’s divestment from Fossil Fuels (and how that hasn’t been perfect) c. 2020 can be found in the Guardian here.

ETA 4: this is hella old (1986) but relevant for how UCD’s divestment impacted the South African apartheid and its subsequent ending, can be found via WaPo here.

Text description beneath cut for the comrades who use it.

A tweet from @CocktCapitalism, which reads:

BREAKING: UC Davis has divested from apartheid Israel. The bill prevents the ASUCD’s $20 mill budget from being spent “on companies complicit in the occupation and genocide.”

This is huge. University divestment efforts played a massive role in ending South African apartheid.”

Two images are included, one is a still of people cheering (link above) and the other a protest poster/ flier which proclaims UCD Has Divested, with red and green Palestinian colors.

[thoughtportal]

[probablyasocialecologist]

The five-year contract, effective after ratification, includes:

A universal $65,000 salary floor;

Immediate raises of at least 10.6 percent for all members, with 12.5 percent raises for the lowest earners, and annual wage increases now based on actual pay rather than contract minimums;

The first contractual agreement on hybrid work in Times Guild history;

A ban on the use of nondisclosure agreements in cases of workplace abuse or harassment;

Expanded benefits, including $50,000 in fertility coverage and paid sabbaticals of four weeks for every 10 years worked at the company;

An agreement on paths to expand our newsroom, including into local markets across the country, with new jobs that will be part of the union and pay fair minimum salaries.

The deal also includes a lump sum payment to staff members and about 70 temporary and casual workers, equivalent to 7 percent of wages earned since the last contract expired.

[indiesellersguild]

There's a really scary situation brewing at Etsy right now

tinyurl. com/etsyforcedrefund

(Space added to the link for Tumblr search functionality.)

[angelsaxis]

I love this song!

[ecrivainsolitaire]

The Open Art Guild Project: a proposal to empower collectively owned art

Over the last few decades we have seen the degradation of copyright, the blatant manipulation of intellectual property law in order to monopolise wealth and the exploitation of artists in favour of an economy of artistic landlordship: massive corporations holding the prole artist hostage to their increasingly unoriginal library of content produced not to encourage creative enlightenment, but to hold on to properties that ought to be already in the public domain. The capitalist owns the IP, so the capitalist keeps getting richer, while the artist is more and more oppressed, overworked, underpaid, scammed out of their rightful intellectual property, deplatformed, and automated away whenever possible. This is unsustainable, and the arrival of new technologies for digital art automation has overflowed that unsustainability to its breaking point. We cannot continue down this path.

The Open Art Guild is my proposal to remedy this. This proposal consists of two main parts: a copyright standard, designed for the fair distribution of income and the collective ownership of intellectual property; and a distribution platform, planned to empower artists big and small to profit from said intellectual property without being under the thumb of corporations or fighting one another under senseless infighting caused by bourgeois class warfare. The artist should not fight the artist over ownership of rights. The big artist should not see the small artist as a threat, nor should the small artist see the big artist as an obstacle to their own growth. Through mutual empowerment, both may prosper.

The Open Art Guild License

The Open Art Guild License is built upon the current Creative Commons 4.0 License. This license is irrevocable until the work qualifies for public domain according to all relevant legislations, provided that the artist remains a member of the Guild. In order to participate in the Guild, an artist shall follow the following precepts:

The artist shall only publish works under the OAG License that have licenses available to the public. This means public domain, open source, Creative Commons and works created by other members of the Guild. Works derived from privately owned media, such as fanart of intellectual properties not part of the Guild, shall be excluded from the Guild. If the artist did not have permission to use it before, or if the artist only has individual permission, the work will not qualify for Guild submission.

All works created under the OAG License shall be free to adapt, remix, or reuse for other projects, even commercially, provided that the artist doing so is also an active member of the Guild, that the projects derived from it are also under the OAG License, and that the artist follows through with their dues and obligations.

Whenever the format permits, the artist shall provide the assets used for the works in their raw form in a modular fashion, including colour palettes, sound assets, video footage, code, screenplays, subtitles, and any other elements used in the creation of their work, in order to facilitate their reuse and redistribution for the benefit of all other artists.

The artist waives their right to 30% of the total profit generated by works submitted to the guild, regardless of where it is published. This revenue shall be redistributed in the following manner:

10% shall be designated towards the maintenance of the Open Art Guild platform. In absence of a platform that follows the requirements to belong to the Guild, this percentage shall be donated towards a nonprofit organisation of their own choosing dedicated to the protection and distribution of art in any of its forms. Some examples may include Archive.org, Archive Of Our Own, Wikimedia, or your local art museum or community center. Proof of donation shall be made publicly available. The artist shall empower the Guild, as the Guild has empowered the artist.

10% shall be designated towards the Open Art Guild legal fund. In the absence of a fund dedicated to the protection of the OAG, this percentage shall be donated towards a nonprofit organisation dedicated to the protection of the legal rights of artists in any of their forms. Some examples may include Creative Commons, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Industrial Workers of the World, or another artist union like the WGA. Proof of donation shall be made publicly available. The artist shall protect the Guild, as the Guild shall protect the artist.

10% shall be designated towards the Open Art Guild creator fund. In the absence of a fund dedicated to redistribute the profits of the OAG, this percentage shall be donated to other members of the Guild, prioritising small creators. Alternatively, it may be directed towards the recruitment of new members to the Guild via donation and an invite. Proof of donation shall not be required, but the receiving artist(s) is(are) encouraged to declare in their own platform that the donation was received. The artist shall give to the Guild, as the Guild has given to the artist.

The artist shall continue to create Guild submissions for the duration of their membership, with a minimum of one submission per month in order to guarantee their continued support. The artist shall live off of labour, not property.

In return for these duties, the artist shall receive:

Permission to adapt, remix, or reuse any of the works in the Guild’s archive for their own derivative works, fan fiction, remixes, collages, or any sort of transformative application, provided dues and obligations are in order.

Protection of their intellectual property as part of the collective works of the Guild by the legal fund designated and sustained by all paying members, to prevent non Guild members from trying to exploit their works unauthorised.

If an artist strikes a deal for non-Guild adaptation, the proportional dues shall also be paid to the Guild fund and members by the non-Guild institution in charge. Said deal shall not be allowed an exclusivity clause, and all works derived from a Guild work shall follow through with their dues in perpetuity. If the non-Guild entity chooses to terminate the business relationship, all intellectual property rights over the adaptation shall irrevocably be granted to the Guild as compensation, guaranteeing the distribution to the creators and the legal fund, as well as the follow-through with whatever payment terms the Guild artist has agreed to.

No Guild artist shall prosecute another Guild artist for use of works under the OAG License, provided that the derivative work also follows the OAG License terms. If these terms are violated, amicable resolution shall be sought by both parties. If litigation becomes inevitable and compensation is required, said compensation will also require the 30% dues to fund the Guild and its members, no matter which way it sides. In no case shall an artist, Guild or non-Guild, be left without recourse.

If an artist becomes unable or unwilling to continue to pay their dues, the artist shall be given an option to suspend or cancel their membership. If a membership is suspended, the artist will be excluded from the creator fund until their dues are renewed. No compensation shall be required of the artist for the suspension period, and all protections other than the creator fund shall still apply. If a membership is cancelled, all works published by the artist under the OAG License shall automatically be granted a Creative Commons 4.0 License instead, in order to protect Guild members from litigation by non-Guild members.

Membership that has been cancelled shall be renewable at any time, provided that the former Guild artist has not engaged in predatory litigation against Guild member or the Guild itself. The Guild shall determine what constitutes predatory litigation on a case-by-case basis. Licenses that were lost during cancellation shall not be given back, as CC4.0 is irrevocable, but new works shall still qualify for OAG Licenses.

These protections shall not be conditional to the artist’s moral values or the content of the works created. All works that do not break the laws applicable to the jurisdiction from which they were submitted shall be treated with the same respect and granted the same rights and obligations, in perpetuity and throughout time and space within the known multiverse. The Guild shall not exist to police art, but to promote it.

Open Art Guild License Template

All submissions of Guild works and projects shall include the following legend, both in English and in the publication language when applicable. Point 4 may be omitted if the artist chooses not to submit the work for dataset training.

This work was created and published under the Open Art Guild license, and has been approved for reuse and adaptation under the following conditions:

For personal, educational and archival use, provided any derivative works also fall under a publicly open license, to all Guild members and non members.

For commercial use, provided redistribution guidelines of the Guild be followed, to all active Guild members.

For commercial use to non Guild members, provided any derivative works also fall under a publicly open license, with the explicit approval of the artist and proper redistribution of profit following the guidelines of the Guild.

For non commercial dataset training of open source generative art technologies, provided the explicit consent of the artist, proper credit and redistribution of profit in its entirety to the Guild.

Shall this work be appropriated by non Guild members without proper authorisation, credit and redistribution of profit, the non Guild entity waives their right to intellectual property over any derivative works, copyrights, trademarks or patents of any sort and cedes it to the Creative Commons, under the 4.0 license, irrevocably and unconditionally, in perpetuity, throughout time and space in the known multiverse. The Guild reserves the right to withhold trade relations with any known infractors for the duration its members deem appropriate, including the reversal of any currently standing contracts and agreements.