(Adults ONLY, I'm 26) This is a personal and a business blog (cause I lack personal boundaries. I guess lol) To share my art, (please request before art/work use. 🖤✨) write and share the occasional anecdote as it suits me, and to reblog relatable/funny/news things.
Among those arrested in Atlanta today were Noelle McAfee, Chair of the Philosophy Department at Emory University. You can hear her ask the PhD student taking the video:
“Can you call the Philosophy Department office and tell them I’ve been arrested?...I’m Noelle McAfee, I’m Chair of the Philosophy Department”
I have a wee bit of free time before I'm due for adulting again. I'm gonna watch this, practice some singing, and probably try to learn something...or draw something...something. She's got (VERY) adult humour and smoking references so, no minor viewing- mmm'kay?
I think she's doing Overwatch (2?) today. I missed the beginning...and I don't play Overwatch. (Nothing against it- just not my type.)
DON'T LET ANYONE CONVINCE YOU THAT WHAT YOU DO FOR PALESTINE IS USELESS AND POINTLESS. DON'T LET THOSE LOSERS EXHAUST YOU. JUST LET THEM BE. YOUR TIME IS TOO PRECIOUS TO BE SPENT ARGUING WITH GENOCIDE SUPPORTERS. STAY AWAY FROM THOSE ASSHOLES AND JUST KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK. FREE PALESTINE 🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸
This IS BEYOND unacceptable -FU to Doug Ford and ANY politician/public figure in the Ontario Legislature who agrees with this. A keffiyeh is a traditional scarf worn by many Arab people, and people in West Asian communities. It does represent/symbolize Palestinian resistance and solidarity (among many aspects, of course), but that's not a crime -and trying to censure someone's right to wear traditional garments because you'd rather pander to zionists (as this article notes, many wear religious wear every day in office), is the real issue here -this is discrimination. This is legislated discrimination and is hateful.
platforming palestinian joy is just as important as sharing the suffering they're enduring during this genocide. despite continued displacement and bombardment, you cannot steal their joy and spirit. happy birthday to this sweet baby 🖤🇵🇸 may they grow up to see a free palestine
“No one came to Google to work on offensive military technology”
- Vidana Abdel Khalek wrote in her mail resigning from Google on March 25 addressing to company leaders, including CEO Sundar Pichai, announcing her decision to quit in protest over Project Nimbus.
Under that lower court decision, a protest organizer faces potentially ruinous financial consequences if a single attendee at a mass protest commits an illegal act.
It is possible that this outcome will be temporary. The Court did not embrace the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s decision attacking the First Amendment right to protest, but it did not reverse it either. That means that, at least for now, the Fifth Circuit’s decision is the law in much of the American South.
For the past several years, the Fifth Circuit has engaged in a crusade against DeRay Mckesson, a prominent figure within the Black Lives Matter movement who organized a protest near a Baton Rouge police station in 2016.
The facts of the Mckesson case are, unfortunately, quite tragic. Mckesson helped organize the Baton Rouge protest following the fatal police shooting of Alton Sterling. During that protest, an unknown individual threw a rock or similar object at a police officer, the plaintiff in the Mckesson case who is identified only as “Officer John Doe.” Sadly, the officer was struck in the face and, according to one court, suffered “injuries to his teeth, jaw, brain, and head.”
Everyone agrees that this rock was not thrown by Mckesson, however. And the Supreme Court held in NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware (1982) that protest leaders cannot be held liable for the violent actions of a protest participant, absent unusual circumstances that are not present in the Mckesson case — such as if Mckesson had “authorized, directed, or ratified” the decision to throw the rock.
Indeed, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor points out in a brief opinion accompanying the Court’s decision not to hear Mckesson, the Court recently reaffirmed the strong First Amendment protections enjoyed by people like Mckesson in Counterman v. Colorado (2023). That decision held that the First Amendment “precludes punishment” for inciting violent action “unless the speaker’s words were ‘intended’ (not just likely) to produce imminent disorder.”
The reason Claiborne protects protest organizers should be obvious. No one who organizes a mass event attended by thousands of people can possibly control the actions of all those attendees, regardless of whether the event is a political protest, a music concert, or the Super Bowl. So, if protest organizers can be sanctioned for the illegal action of any protest attendee, no one in their right mind would ever organize a political protest again.
Indeed, as Fifth Circuit Judge Don Willett, who dissented from his court’s Mckesson decision, warned in one of his dissents, his court’s decision would make protest organizers liable for “the unlawful acts of counter-protesters and agitators.” So, under the Fifth Circuit’s rule, a Ku Klux Klansman could sabotage the Black Lives Matter movement simply by showing up at its protests and throwing stones.