#I think my other main criticism of the labor movement is they assume everyone is coming into this with the same knowledge baseline

[marnz]

Some obvious reasons to organize:

The 4 day work week. IWW’s dream is 4 hour days 4 times a week. That’s 16 hours. Wages do not go down. And yeah sometimes there’s days or weeks where that can’t happen—so you get paid OT, time and a half OR comp time, your choice, with a union.

Better health care with lower premiums! This is the best health care I’ve ever had.

Retirement! The world we live in isn’t normal. 401ks—retirement money—are now an unstable, classed thing, and they were invented to be one “leg” of a three legged “stool” of retirement: pensions, 401ks, and Social Security. Except that social security is under threat and most workers don’t have pensions anymore. I do. Protecting our pensions is one of the main reasons my workplace organized. What if everyone had a pension, or hell, the entire stool?

Long commutes bc you’ve been priced out of your city? Yeah we’ll talk about wages but what if your commute counted as work time? This is something unions were interested in fighting for pre the Nixon stomp. Let’s bring it back.

Historically low wages? Raises that don’t match inflation? We can fix that. When I took this job a few years ago, I took a steep pay cut. Thanks to my union I am now making 12% more than my previous salary. Equal pay? Under a bargaining agreement your pay will be standardized. You won’t make less just because you are a member of a marginalized community.

Your boss hates you? Too bad. As soon as you organize you are no longer an “at will” worker. You cannot be fired without just cause and after progressive discipline. Your job is safe and stable. You can focus on other, more important things, like living your actual life.

“What if my employer hates me and breaks the law and fires me or refuses me accommodations or violates our bargaining contract.” My guy. That’s what your shop steward is for.

Some important reasons people may not want to organize:

Racism. The labor movement has historically been super super racist and white, and unions used to deny black workers membership. There is no instance of American life where we can discuss class without discussing race. This is still in play imo—for example, DSA has very low black membership. But unions can also be used to empower workers from marginalized communities.

Politics. It’s illegal for unions to use union dues to lobby but most ppl don’t know this, and a lot of unions are active in politics. Membership is low in more conservative areas for many reasons but this is a big one of them, especially if your union is seen as predominantly leftist. This is to say nothing of how rabidly anti union certain states and workplaces are.

Solidarity. “How am I supposed to have solidarity with _____?!” I’ve definitely struggled with this. But at the end of the day, everyone you work with is more of an ally than your employer in this issue. The bigger your membership the stronger threat you’ll be at the bargaining table and the easier it will be for you to get what you want.

#the union makes us strong #believe it or not this is a very brief post on the topic #this is. not a comprehensive list. #things I didn’t talk about: bargained for bonuses for retention & boosters. inclement weather leave. #in fact I didn’t really clarify that part of the reasons to organize is THE RIGHT TO BARGAIN OVER LABOR CONDITIONS #the length of your workweek & your wages & your commute are all labor conditions #I think my other main criticism of the labor movement is they assume everyone is coming into this with the same knowledge baseline #yeah we aren’t! anyway that’s a separate post

[the-autisticats]

How capitalism harms disabled & autistic people.

This topic is a long-awaited one, and something that not everyone will understand immediately. That’s okay. This post is here for you to learn from, even if you have to return to it more than once and do your own independent research in the meantime.

Before you read this, it’s probably relevant for you to know that I was raised in an anti-capitalist household. My mom has a PhD in Sociology, and her dissertation focuses heavily on the way that female re/productive labor is exploited under capitalism. She has been heavily influenced by the academic work of Silvia Federici, and Chris Knight (an anthropologist).

For over a decade, I’ve been in constant conversation with her on these issues. It has taken me an incredibly long time to fully understand everything, but now I have an understanding deep enough to debate her, educate her, and sharpen both of our knowledge. One of the key things I’ve educated her about is the way that disabled and autistic people fit into the big picture of capitalist exploitation. Now, I will do the same for you.

I think the best thing to do is to give you the general framework for understanding, and then provide you with specific examples that fit into the big picture. That way, you’ll know what you’re looking at when I give you the examples.

First, you need to know what capitalism is, and how it relates to every other system of oppression. Capitalism is an inherently authoritarian, patriarchal economic system, characterized by private ownership of the means of re/production, and the exploitation of re/productive labor to create surplus product/profit for the owners of an enterprise. Under capitalism, everyone is expected to reproduce, to create new workers. Additionally, economic growth (the creation of surplus/profit) has to be exponential, constantly increasing, in order for the system to survive. This means that the ecological boundaries of the planet are exceeded, because the Earth (coded female, of course) is assumed to have an infinite amount of resources to extract and create profit from.

This economic structure necessitates a binary reproductive class system, with reproductive females as the “working class,” and pregnancy as the labor required to produce the end product, new workers. This is why abortion is often heavily criminalized in patriarchal/capitalist societies. It is also why same-sex attracted and gender nonconforming or trans people are criminalized and stigmatized: we don’t conform to the re/productive expectations associated with our sex at birth.

Ethnicity has also been weaponized as a tool to create class categories that we now refer to as “race.” People racialized as white are afforded economic benefits. People racialized as Black are severely economically exploited. In order to fully understand the way that American capitalism developed, you have to understand slavery as the origin point. You must also understand that “race” is a tool that the ruling class employs to keep the working class divided. Because they know that if working-class white people joined forces with Black people and other POC, it would be over for them. MLK understood that, and was assasinated right after the Memphis Sanitation Strike, which was a major part of the the multiracial Poor People’s Campaign (which still exists today, btw!).

It is also important to realize that capitalism, characterized by private ownership, is not the only predatory/authoritarian/patriarchal economic system out there. There were older forms, like feudalism. And the USSR, China, and North Korea are good examples of the way that States can co-opt the role of private ownership and turn an entire country into one large corporation. It is therefore much more accurate to describe those countries as demonstrating a system called “state capitalism” rather than “communism.”

So what does all of this have to do with disabled people? And what does it have to do with autistic people specifically?

Well, under capitalism and other predatory economic systems, everyone is expected to be able to work in a manner that serves the ruling class by producing surplus/profit. If someone is not able to work at the same pace as everyone else, or perform the work required of them, they are no longer of value to the system. In an economy like this, people’s productivity is the only measure of their worth in society.

This has obvious and far-reaching implications for disabled people. So now, let’s get into the specifics that I told you I’d talk about earlier. I can’t think of a way to do this chronologically, and I don’t know how to organize everything I’m about to tell you. But hopefully you’ll be able to pick these pieces up and put them into the framework I’ve provided.

Disabled people are often killed, discarded, and left to die. This is a problem that exists worldwide, because patriarchy/capitalism are systems that exist worldwide. One notable example is the Aktion T4 program in Nazi Germany, which ended up being the precursor to the Holocaust. In this “euthanasia” program, which started in 1939 and continued until around 1945 (even though it technically ended in 1941), around 300,000 disabled people were killed across Germany, Austria, and Poland.

During this program, Hans Asperger (the man who gave Asperger Syndrome its name), saved autistic people he deemed “valuable” to society (for their ability to work under capitalist expectations), and sent other autistic people (who he saw as “unworthy of life” bc of their inability to work in the ways desired by the Third Reich) to die in gas chambers and death camps. This dark history is why the vast majority of autistic people despise the term “Asperger Syndrome,” as it promotes the idea that autistic people who conform to capitalist notions of productivity and intelligence are inherently superior to (and more worthy of life than) autistic people who can’t or don’t conform to those standards.

And you know how I talked earlier about how patriarchy/capitalism want everyone to reproduce? Well, the main exception to that rule is disabled people, because disability is often genetic and inheritable. The system hates it when more “defective” workers are produced. So, beginning in the United States around the 1910s and continuing into the present day, forced sterilization of disabled people became commonplace. Between 1909 and 1963, there were around 20,000 forced sterilizations in California alone.

The main reason given for these eugenics practices was to save money and limit the amount of resources spent on caring for “undesirable” people. Because after all, caring for people who won’t in turn produce surplus for you is just an impractical drain on resources /s. Now, I want you to turn this critical lens to these modern issues:

It is still legal in the United States to pay disabled workers below minimum wage. For example, Goodwill pays its disabled workers as little as 22 cents an hour. (Because even when we do work, our work is not seen as valuable)

Disabled people often lose all of our disability benefits if we get married, even if our spouse doesn’t have the financial means to support us. This means that many disabled people who rely on social security are completely unable to get married. (Because someone else should be taking care of us, we shouldn’t be wasting the government’s money with our existence /s)

The main focus of ABA therapy is on molding autistic children into employable adults. This means making them perform as many neurotypical “skills” as possible, in the hopes that they will be hired to work as “productive members of society.” Regardless of the methods used to try and achieve this goal, it is misguided to try and force autistic people to conform to the expectations of an exploitative system that was not built for us.

There’s so much more that I can and should talk about, but for now I’ll leave you with some things to Google and research:

Murray Bookchin and Abdullah Öcalan, Rojava / The Federation of Northern Syria, Democratic Confederalism / Liberterian Municipalism

Cooperation Jackson

The Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico

Crip Camp / the American Disability Rights movement

Extinction Rebellion

The Poor People’s Campaign

10 Principles of Disability Justice by Sins Invalid

“Ancient Bones That Tell a Story of Compassion,” from the New York Times

Mutual Aid as a political and economic theory & strategy

Matrilineal societies and the “gift economy”

Thank you for listening and learning with me. In love and solidarity,

Eden 🐢

#actually autistic #autism #autistic #ableism #autismacceptance #anthropology #history #sociology #capitalism #patriarchy #disability #disability rights #disability justice

[schraubd]

Collected Thoughts on Excluding Omar and Tlaib

I've got another kidney stone. It struck on Monday, and then I felt pain Tuesday, Wednesday, and today. Thursday was my only pain-free day this week, and I have to assume that was the universe balancing the scales and recognizing that the Israeli government's truly terrible decision to exclude Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) from the country was plenty enough aggravation on its own. I went on a pretty vigorous tweet storm all through yesterday. Below I bullet point most of what I expressed on that site (which, as you may know, I've taken "private"), but my main takeaway is this: There's no serious case that either Congresswoman present a security threat to Israel (I've seen some people insinuate that they might incite a riot at the Temple Mount which -- I'm not sure I can physically roll my eyes hard enough). In practice, the "risk" Omar and Tlaib present is simply that they will hear  mean things about Israel and then say their own mean things about Israel. That's the locus of the complaint about the "balance" of the trip; that's the locus of the accusation that they merely want to rabble-rouse. What people are concerned about is they will go to the West Bank, hear people saying mean things about Israel, and repeat those mean things back to American audiences. But -- and I mean this in all earnestness -- so what? So what if that's what happens? To be clear: I don't think Omar and Tlaib were coming just to say mean things about Israel. But even if they were -- there's no security threat. The state will survive (how pathetic would it be if it crumbled?). It'd be speech. It'd be discourse. That's the price of living in a liberal, free society. Sometimes people say mean things about you. Sometimes those mean things are unfair. Sometimes those mean things are entirely fair. Whatever. It comes with the territory (pun initially not intended, but I'll own it now). It's not a valid basis for a travel ban. It used to be that Israel was emphatic that "come see us and you'll think better of us". Now Israel is terrified that if people come see them--at least, see them unchaperoned, without a constant guiding hand ensuring they see only the choice parts--they'll think of worse of them. That's the sign of a society in decay. To be sure, I think Omar and Tlaib probably would come away from their visit with a rather grim appraisal of Israel's treatment of Palestinians. But then, there's ample basis to appraise that treatment grimly--there's no inherent foul there. People can come to the West Bank and be honestly appalled by what they see. Only police states confuse "people saying mean things" with security threats. A free society can survive--and perhaps even learn from--critics giving it grim appraisals. People talk a huge game about how Omar and Tlaib could "learn" from their trip to Israel and Palestine -- and no doubt they could. But the flip side is that Israel, too, can learn from the testimony of Palestinians laboring under occupation, and from efforts to bring that testimony to the fore. It is wrong -- not to mention insulting -- to treat discourse about Israel/Palestine as if it were a one-way street, where wise, omniscient Israeli/Jewish teachers dribble knowledge onto benighted, ignorant Muslims and Arabs. Below is a recap of my other collected thoughts on the matter (many but not all of which were on Twitter):

This was a terrible and unjustified decision. Let's lead off with that and give it its own bullet point all to itself.

There is no reason to think that this decision was "what Omar and Tlaib wanted" since it made Israel look authoritarian and repressive. That is projection, to avoid speaking the more uncomfortable conclusion that "Omar and Tlaib might have had a point" in suggesting Israel acts in an authoritarian and repressive fashion.

I neither think this decision was solely Trump's doing -- Israel "caving" to his pressure -- nor do I think he played no role in the decision. I think he successfully convinced Netanyahu to do something that he already kind of wanted to do in the first place, even knowing it probably was a bad idea. Trump was like the frat boy friend egging his buddy into doing another shot flight. That Bibi was probably dimly aware it wasn't the wisest decision in the world doesn't mean that he wasn't ultimately fulfilling his own desires. Ultimately, this was a decision of Israel's right-wing government and they deserve to take the full brunt of punishment for it.

I understand why everyone is calling this "counterproductive" from Israel, since it will undoubtedly give a huge boost to the BDS movement. But, as I wrote in the Lara Alqasem case, that really depends on what Israel is trying to "produce". In many ways, Bibi benefits from an ascendant BDS movement, just as they benefit from him; and he likewise benefits from a world divided between conservatives who love everything he does and liberals who loathe him. So the fact that this decision puts wind in the sails of BDS, while further lashing Israel to a purely right-wing mast and alienating it from erstwhile progressive allies, is not necessarily a miscalculation -- it's the intended and desired effect.

On that note, remember the other day when 21 Israeli MKs wrote to Congress and said that a two-state solution was "more dangerous" than BDS? Well, if you ever wanted an example of what it looks like to trade "increased BDS support" for "kneecapping two-state solution support", this was it (even though Tlaib isn't a two-stater -- Omar is -- this act was aimed like a laser at the most prominent base of support for two-stateism in America: that is, Democrats).

On the other hand, shouldn't these right-wing Israelis be more excited to welcome Tlaib than most other Congresspeople? After all, she opposes the "dangerous" two-state solution! Oh wait, I forgot: in her one-state world, everyone gets to vote. That won't do at all, will it?

I love Emma Goldberg description of how Israel will slide away from liberal democracy via Hemingway's description of how he went bankrupt: "Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly." And by love, I mean it gives me a sick feeling of recognition in my stomach.

Justifying the ban on the grounds that Omar and Tlaib's visit wasn't "balanced" because they weren't meeting with Israeli or Palestinian government figures, only NGOs, and these are bad NGOs -- spare me. To tell visiting U.S. politicians "you can come, but only if you speak with the 'right' people/visit the 'right' sites/speak the 'correct' words" sounds like something you'd hear from the North Korean embassy. Omar and Tlaib should be entitled to visit with whomever they want to visit, and come to whatever conclusions they end up coming to. If those conclusions are unfair, we should trust the ability to defeat them with more speech, not enforced silence. But again: we can't conflate "unfair" with "critical". It's entirely feasible that a fair-minded individual hearing testimony from West Bank Palestinians will come to a sharply critical conclusion.

Some of the attacks on the NGOs Omar and Tlaib were scheduled to meet with are the usual chad gadya (has a leader who's linked to a group which kicked the dog ....) nonsense, but there are some groups with some genuinely bad history. I've consequently seen people suggest that we need to also hold Omar and Tlaib accountable for their part in this fiasco for meeting with members of those groups. Fair enough: I'm happy to hold them accountable, weighted and prioritized in proportion to their relative culpability. In keeping with that metric, I might get around to returning to criticizing their draft itinerary sometime in 2035.

Fine, one more thing on the itinerary: Am I correct in reading it as taking Omar and  Tlaib either solely or primarily to the West Bank and East Jerusalem? If so, it's entirely understandable why they'd refer to those locales as "Palestine".

Rep. Tlaib initially applied for a humanitarian waiver to visit her family, which was approved, but then she backed out given the conditions the Israeli government was going to impose on the visit (basically, not engaging in "boycott activities"). The usual suspects are crowing: she cares less about her family than she does about boycotting! I say (a) Rep. Tlaib is well within her rights to not prostrate herself to the dictates of a foreign government seeking to humiliate her, and (b) what about the past few days gives anyone the confidence in the Israeli government's ability to fairly adjudge what qualifies as a "boycott activity"?

The argument that Israel, as a sovereign state, has a "right" to exclude whomever it wants substitutes a juridical argument for an ethical (and practical) one. Sovereign states are formally empowered to do all sorts of terrible and/or stupid things. This was one of them. Hearing nominal anti-BDS folks make this claim -- which could as easily be applied to "universities and academics have the right to collaborate (or not) with whomever they want to" is probably causing another kidney stone to develop as we speak.

The other thing is that Israel is proving itself completely incapable of exercising this "right" in a reasonable manner that distinguishes between genuine threats to national security and unhappiness that people sometimes come to Israel and then say mean things. One of the reasons we liberals seek to limit unchecked government power is precisely because of the suspicion that it won't be exercised responsibly or non-arbitrarily.

Of course, the fact that Israel also exercises the practical authority to exclude people not just from Israel-proper, but the West Bank as well, gives lie to the notion that Palestinians even conceptually could have their right to self-determination vindicated solely by voting in PA elections.

Silver lining: pretty much the entirety of the American Jewish establishment -- AIPAC, AJC, ADL, J Street, Simon Wiesenthal Center -- came out against this decision. Huzzah for that.

Tarnish on even that silver lining: the Conference of President's weak-sauce statement on the matter. "Many of the organizations expressed disagreement with the government’s decision", but "Ultimately, the government of Israel made its assessment of the countervailing arguments and acted upon their conclusion." Really, that's what you're giving us? It's amazing how the Conference doesn't care about the "consensus" of the Jewish community when that consensus is a progressive one.

When a prominent member of or institution associated with an outgroup does something awful, it is natural for members of that outgroup to feel acutely vulnerable. In part, that's because they know that this awfulness will be wielded against them; in part, that's because frequently they have feelings for or connections to the target person and institution, and it is painful to see them act in such a terrible fashion. Of course, that feeling of vulnerability needn't and shouldn't be the primary story as compared to those directly victimized by the awful behavior. But it is not per se wrong, or "centering", to acknowledge and validate the existence of the sentiment; nor is such an acknowledgment necessarily one that stands in competition with recognizing the direct damage of the instigating act.

The next time a Democrat occupies the Oval Office, I have to wonder what sort of penance is going to be demanded from the Israeli government for years upon years of insult and humiliation. It's not going to be back to as it was before. It's not even going to back as it was in the Obama administration. Democrats will -- rightfully -- insist that Israel pay a price for what it's been doing these past four (if not twelve) years. The flipside of recognizing the importance of preserving Israel as a bipartisan issue is that Israel aligning itself fully and completely with the Republican Party is going to come at a cost. It will be interesting to consider what that cost will be.

via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/2ZcVv85

#Ilhan Omar #Israel #Palestine #Rashida Tlaib

[fawriel]

Okay, this is a bad time to post this but I know I’ll need to get this off my chest if I want to get any work done today.

I’ve actually been toying with the idea for a while of really getting into blogging and starting all over with a main blog that, once I’m free of my thesis and my health is looking up, will house not only artwork, but also in-depth essays about... like, social justice on a meta level, I guess you could say. The one thing I know I’m good at is to grasp highly complex issues and recognize patterns and see the connections and distill matters into a relatively simple essence. So I figure I should put that to use in order to help The Discourse. Analyze the way people communicate about things, figure out where communication might be going awry, analyze complicated important ideas and try to find a way to convey them in a simpler way, just... overall try to find ways to make people smarter in how they approach things, I guess. And help people communicate better. Because the one thing that’s been on my mind for so many years is that so, so very many bad things could be avoided if people could just communicate better.

Back at the start of the year when I was on a rare high, unable to sleep with my thoughts racing with possibilities for the future, I even thought that this could be, you know, my future. That it could really take off and I might get people to support me on Patreon so I can do more research and whatnot. But since then, I keep growing more and more sure that I was naive to think that it could work that way. I ... won’t go into all the reasons. There are a bunch, like the fear for my personal safety because extremists might doxx me or whatever. But honestly, sometimes I’m even more afraid of the people whose side I’m on. And that’s a problem.

Like, earlier I saw a post where the OP was like “when poc give me the anglicized version of their name, like don’t worry hun you are safe here you can roll the r” or such. There was another reblog in agreement adding something like “I’d rather risk sounding like an idiot trying to pronounce your name instead of making you give me a name that’s more ‘convenient’ for me”. And then there was a reblog in disagreement. Saying “actually don’t do that”, with the reasons boiling down to “the name I give you is the name I give you and insisting on me telling you my name the way it’s pronounced is like asking me where I’m REALLY from” and “I know you mean well but please examine where you get the idea that we’re doing this FOR you”. And one little thing that really stuck with me, too, is that they mentioned seeing other people “calling out” the original post. And... that just depresses me. As if the OP was something that needed to be “called out”. Like, am I being ridiculous here? Doesn’t it seem like “calling out” should be reserved for people who did something really... bad?

I get the idea behind what the third person was saying, and I don’t want to speak over POC when it comes to the treatment of POC. I recognize I’m no authority on that, I do. But... there seems to be such a deep-seated distrust behind that response. And obviously I can’t fault anyone for that, but. The OP was literally saying “don’t worry, you are safe here”. There was no demand there to be given the “real” name or anything. It was just a statement meant to make people feel safe and welcome. They assumed that POC only give out anglicized versions because it’s easier for everyone involved but deep inside they are rolling their eyes and wishing they could be addressed by their real name the way it’s really pronounced and that offering to learn that pronunciation is a way to make them feel accepted, to show that you’re willing to put in the effort, something like that. It’s literally an effort to do something for the POC, but the response seemed to be working on the assumption that they were still talking from a position of power and expecting subservience from the POC, which, I mean, you automatically speak from a position of power when you’re a white person addressing POC but the OP made an explicit effort to meet them at the same level which... like, what more can you ask for?! I mean. If this person came up to you in real life and was like “hey you can tell me the way your name is really pronounced, I’ll make an effort to learn it for you, no big!” You wouldn’t be like “wow don’t do that geez”, would you...?

Or there was a POC blogger asked by a white person what they can do to be a good ally because they feel bad for not doing as much as they possibly can, and the immediate response was along the lines of “there is no such thing as a good ally, that’s a construct made by white people so they can feel good about themselves, you are and always will be racist”. That’s followed by actual advice on listening and being active and everything. But... it still seems like a pretty suboptimal way to talk about this, doesn’t it? And I’m not saying that because my pride is hurt or whatever. Believe me, I don’t give a shit about being white or male or whatever. I’ve never made these things part of my identity, so an attack on white people just doesn’t register as an attack against me. But... it’s statements like these that make me feel like the biggest danger when trying to get involved in social justice discourse is actually the people on my own side.

I’ve seen the posts about capital-A Allies who just do Ally Things in order to feel good about themselves, about Allies who get pissy when people criticize them for anything and even those who stop being allies because people weren’t being nice to them and praising them for doing what SHOULD be common decency, and... I guess I kinda understand that? I don’t know if I’ve ever actually met anyone like that, but I don’t get outside much and I don’t doubt that plenty of people like that would exist. But I don’t know if that concept isn’t a little too... “big” in the discourse at this point? Like. Being respectful and not talking over people about their own experiences and all that SHOULD be common decency, but the fact is that it isn’t. And people do recognize that it’s a process and you never stop learning, but... can I just say that it’s really hard? Changing yourself is literally the most difficult thing in the world? And... maybe that should be recognized? But I mean. I get the problem with people doing it for their pride, and doing some Ally Things so they can be like “yay now I am A Good Person lol okay done, where’s my medal”. That is bullshit and doesn’t lead to any actual change. And I recognize that, obviously, changing yourself to not be an asshole to marginalized people still doesn’t compare to the shit marginalized people actually have to live with every day of their life. But... changing yourself is still stressful. And pushing people to change themselves by telling them that they are racist only makes it more stressful. It’s hardly surprising that some allies jump ship because, when you look at it from an outside perspective, you’re asking someone with a privileged life to make sacrifices and put in effort, and you’re incentivizing them with shame and peer pressure. That’s... that’s not a very effective sales pitch.

I know that’s not a problem with an easy solution, and I don’t want to pretend like I know the solutions to any problem. But I just... wish I could somehow help people trust each other more. Obviously, that’s... asking a little much. But it would be so much easier and I think the entire movement would be so much stronger if it could be more... lighthearted. Like if someone like the OP of the first post could post something like that and people would react like “that’s very sweet of you dude” or people who disagree would react like “yo for the record, I wouldn’t appreciate that, I’d rather you just accept what I tell you and if we’re getting closer later you can ask me again or whatever”, or such. Or just... in general, if the atmosphere of the discourse wasn’t so full of shaming and finger-pointing and doom and gloom. If we got people to be allies by showing them that approaching marginalized people as equals is an opportunity to make millions upon millions more friends and to join the biggest party in the world, instead of, like, shameful labor camp until you die?

I don’t know. That’s probably extremely naive. All I know is that I’m afraid no one will believe me, if I set out to share my thoughts, that my intentions are good, that I don’t care about my privilege and I’m willing to make sacrifices, that I only want to exchange ideas to help everyone be happy... And I’m afraid that instead, people will call me out for speaking over others, trying to take an easy way out of actually unlearning my prejudices and trying to teach other white people these easy ways out so they can pretend like they’re Good People now and prejudice is done and whoop-dee-dah.

... boop.

#social justice #status report