#indigenous women rising | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mostlysignssomeportents · 15 days

Text

The tax sharks are back and they’re coming for your home

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TODAY (Apr 27) in MARIN COUNTY, then Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

One of my weirder and more rewarding hobbies is collecting definitions of "conservativism," and one of the jewels of that collection comes from Corey Robin's must-read book The Reactionary Mind:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Reactionary_Mind

Robin's definition of conservativism has enormous explanatory power and I'm always finding fresh ways in which it clarifies my understand of events in the world: a conservative is someone who believes that a minority of people were born to rule, and that everyone else was born to follow their rules, and that the world is in harmony when the born rulers are in charge.

This definition unifies the otherwise very odd grab-bag of ideologies that we identify with conservativism: a Christian Dominionist believes in the rule of Christians over others; a "men's rights advocate" thinks men should rule over women; a US imperialist thinks America should rule over the world; a white nationalist thinks white people should rule over racialized people; a libertarian believes in bosses dominating workers and a Hindu nationalist believes in Hindu domination over Muslims.

These people all disagree about who should be in charge, but they all agree that some people are ordained to rule, and that any "artificial" attempt to overturn the "natural" order throws society into chaos. This is the entire basis of the panic over DEI, and the brainless reflex to blame the Francis Scott Key bridge disaster on the possibility that someone had been unjustly promoted to ship's captain due to their membership in a disfavored racial group or gender.

This definition is also useful because it cleanly cleaves progressives from conservatives. If conservatives think there's a natural order in which the few dominate the many, progressivism is a belief in pluralism and inclusion, the idea that disparate perspectives and experiences all have something to contribute to society. Progressives see a world in which only a small number of people rise to public life, rarified professions, and cultural prominence and assume that this is terrible waste of the talents and contributions of people whose accidents of birth keep them from participating in the same way.

This is why progressives are committed to class mobility, broad access to education, and active programs to bring traditionally underrepresented groups into arenas that once excluded them. The "some are born to rule, and most to be ruled over" conservative credo rejects this as not just wrong, but dangerous, the kind of thing that leads to bridges being demolished by cargo ships.

The progressive reforms from the New Deal until the Reagan revolution were a series of efforts to broaden participation in every part of society by successively broader groups of people. A movement that started with inclusive housing and education for white men and votes for white women grew to encompass universal suffrage, racial struggles for equality, workplace protections for a widening group of people, rights for people with disabilities, truth and reconciliation with indigenous people and so on.

The conservative project of the past 40 years has been to reverse this: to return the great majority of us to the status of desperate, forelock-tugging plebs who know our places. Hence the return of child labor, the tradwife movement, and of course the attacks on labor unions and voting rights:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/06/the-end-of-the-road-to-serfdom/

Arguably the most potent symbol of this struggle is the fight over homes. The New Deal offered (some) working people a twofold path to prosperity: subsidized home-ownership and strong labor protections. This insulated (mostly white) workers from the two most potent threats to working peoples' lives and wellbeing: the cruel boss and the greedy landlord.

But the neoliberal era dispensed with labor rights, leaving the descendants of those lucky workers with just one tool for securing their American dream: home-ownership. As wages stagnated, your home – so essential to your ability to simply live – became your most important asset first, and a home second. So long as property values rose – and property taxes didn't – your home could be the backstop for debt-fueled consumption that filled the gap left by stagnating wages. Liquidating your family home might someday provide for your retirement, your kids' college loans and your emergency medical bills.

For conservatives who want to restore Gilded Age class rule, this was a very canny move. It pitted lucky workers with homes against their unlucky brethren – the more housing supply there was, the less your house was worth. The more protections tenants had, the less your house was worth. The more equitably municipal services (like schools) were distributed, the less your house was worth:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/06/the-rents-too-damned-high/

And now that the long game is over, they're coming for your house. It started with the foreclosure epidemic after the 2008 financial crisis, first under GW Bush, but then in earnest under Obama, who accepted the advice of his Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who insisted that homeowners should be liquidated to "foam the runways" for the crashing banks:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/06/personnel-are-policy/#janice-eberly

Then there are scams like "We Buy Ugly Houses," a nationwide mass-fraud outfit that steals houses out from under elderly, vulnerable and desperate people:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/11/ugly-houses-ugly-truth/#homevestor

The more we lose our houses, the more single-family homes Wall Street gets to snap up and convert into slum properties, aslosh with a toxic stew of black mold, junk fees and eviction threats:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/08/wall-street-landlords/#the-new-slumlords

Now there's a new way for finance barons the steal our houses out from under us – or rather, a very old way that had lain dormant since the last time child labor was legal – "tax lien investing."

Across the country, counties and cities have programs that allow investment funds to buy up overdue tax-bills from homeowners in financial hardship. These "investors" are entitled to be paid the missing property taxes, and if the homeowner can't afford to make that payment, the "investor" gets to kick them out of their homes and take possession of them, for a tiny fraction of their value.

As Andrew Kahrl writes for The American Prospect, tax lien investing was common in the 19th century, until the fundamental ugliness of the business made it unattractive even to the robber barons of the day:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-04-26-investing-in-distress-tax-liens/

The "tax sharks" of Chicago and New York were deemed "too merciless" by their peers. One exec who got out of the business compared it to "picking pennies off a dead man’s eyes." The very idea of outsourcing municipal tax collection to merciless debt-hounds fell aroused public ire.

Today – as the conservative project to restore the "natural" order of the ruled and the ruled-over builds momentum – tax lien investing is attracting some of America's most rapacious investors – and they're making a killing. In Chicago, Alden Capital just spent a measly $1.75m to acquire the tax liens on 600 family homes in Cook County. They now get to charge escalating fees and penalties and usurious interest to those unlucky homeowners. Any homeowner that can't pay loses their home.

The first targets for tax-lien investing are the people who were the last people to benefit from the New Deal and its successors: Black and Latino families, elderly and disabled people and others who got the smallest share of America's experiment in shared prosperity are the first to lose the small slice of the American dream that they were grudgingly given.

This is the very definition of "structural racism." Redlining meant that families of color were shut out of the federal loan guarantees that benefited white workers. Rather than building intergenerational wealth, these families were forced to rent (building some other family's intergenerational wealth), and had a harder time saving for downpayments. That meant that they went into homeownership with "nontraditional" or "nonconforming" mortgages with higher interest rates and penalties, which made them more vulnerable to economic volatility, and thus more likely to fall behind on their taxes. Now that they're delinquent on their property taxes, they're in hock to a private equity fund that's charging them even more to live in their family home, and the second they fail to pay, they'll be evicted, rendered homeless and dispossessed of all the equity they built in their (former) home.

It's very on-brand for Alden Capital to be destroying the lives of Chicagoans. Alden is most notorious for buying up and destroying America's most beloved newspapers. It was Alden who bought up the Chicago Tribune, gutted its workforce, sold off its iconic downtown tower, and moved its few remaining reporters to an outer suburban, windowless brick building "the size of a Chipotle":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/16/sociopathic-monsters/#all-the-news-thats-fit-to-print

Before the ghastly hotel baroness Leona Helmsley went to prison for tax evasion, she famously said, "We don't pay taxes; only the little people pay taxes." Helmsley wasn't wrong – she was just a little ahead of schedule. As Propublica's IRS Files taught us, America's 400 richest people pay less tax than you do:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/13/for-the-little-people/#leona-helmsley-2022

When billionaires don't pay their taxes, they get to buy sports franchises. When poor people don't pay their taxes, billionaires get to steal their houses after paying the local government an insultingly small amount of money.

It's all going according to plan. We weren't meant to have houses, or job security, or retirement funds. We weren't meant to go to university, or even high school, and our kids were always supposed to be in harness at a local meat-packer or fast food kitchen, not wasting time with their high school chess club or sports team. They don't need high school: that's for the people who were born to rule. They – we – were meant to be ruled over.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/26/taxes-are-for-the-little-people/#alden-capital

#pluralistic #chicago #illinois #alden capital #the rents too damned high #debt #immiseration #chicago tribune #private equity #vulture capital #cook county #liens #tax evasion #taxes are for the little people #tax lien certificates #tax sharks #race #racial capitalism #predatory lending

380 notes · View notes

dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 13 days

Text

Bernie Sanders has hit back fiercely at Benjamin Netanyahu over the Israeli prime minister’s claim that US universities were being overrun by antisemitism on a scale comparable to the rise of Nazism in Germany.

In a video posted on X, the progressive senator from Vermont – who is Jewish – accused Netanyahu of “insult[ing] the intelligence of the American people” by using antisemitism to distract attention from the policies of his “extremist and racist government” in the military offensive in Gaza.

“No Mr Netanyahu, it is not antisemitic or pro-Hamas to point out that, in a little over six months, your extremist government has killed over 34,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 78,000, 70% of whom are women and children,” Sanders said.

The two-and-a-half minute video listed a catalogue of further consequences of the war in the Palestinian coastal territory, including the destruction of infrastructure, hospitals, universities and schools, along with the killing of more than 400 health workers.

Sanders, who sponsored an unsuccessful Senate bill in January to make US aid to Israel conditional on its observance of human rights and international law, said Netanyahu’s government had unreasonably blocked humanitarian aid from reaching Gaza, causing “thousands of children [to] face malnutrition and famine”.

In a blistering conclusion, he said: “Mr Netanyahu, antisemitism is a vile and disgusting form of bigotry that has done unspeakable harm to many millions of people. But please, do not insult the intelligence of the American people by attempting to distract us from the immoral and illegal policies of your extremist and racist government. … It is not antisemitic to hold you accountable for your actions.”

Sanders’ comments were a riposte to a video posted on social media by Netanyahu in which he waded in to protests sweeping American university campuses and claimed not enough was being done to combat a “horrific” rise in antisemitism.

“Antisemitic mobs have taken over leading universities,” Netanyahu said. “They call for the annihilation of Israel. They attack Jewish students. They attack Jewish faculty. This is reminiscent of what happened in German universities in the 1930s. It has to be stopped. It has to be condemned and condemned unequivocally, but that’s not what happened. The response of several university presidents was shameful. Now fortunately, state, federal and local officials, many of them, have responded differently. But there has to be more.”

Netanyahu’s comments came against the backdrop of police deployments to break up pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University and numerous other US campuses. In some universities, faculty members have been arrested, including the chair of the philosophy department and a professor of English and Indigenous studies at Emory University in Atlanta.

Jewish students have reported feeling threatened by the protests and heated atmosphere that followed Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October, resulting in the deaths of about 1,200 Israelis and the kidnapping of more than 200 others.

Videos posted on social media have depicted anti-Israel protesters shouting “go back to Poland” and “go back to Belarus”, apparently at Jewish students. A congressional hearing earlier in April into a reported upsurge of antisemitism at Columbia heard allegations that Jewish students had been subjected to taunts of “F the Jews”.

Last October’s attack triggered an overwhelming and continuing Israeli military response that has so far killed more than 34,000 Palestinians – according to the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza – and led to a burgeoning humanitarian disaster, accompanied by accusations that Israel is committing “genocide”.

In his video, Netanyahu said Israel was being “falsely accused” of genocide and called it part of an “antisemitic surge”.

“Israel tries to defend itself against genocidal terrorists who hide behind civilians,” he said. “Yet it is Israel that is falsely accused of genocide. Israel that is falsely accused of starvation and sundry war crimes. It’s all one big libel. But that’s not new. We’ve seen in history that antisemitic attacks were always preceded by vilification and slander.”

The Joe Biden White House, while resisting pressure to condition or limit weapon supplies to Israel, has voiced frustration over its resistance to allowing more humanitarian aid freely into Gaza and roundly criticised the recent strikes that killed seven workers from celebrity chef Jose Andres’s World Central Kitchen charity.

Protests on campuses across the US continued on Saturday, with some protesting student bodies and universities locked in a standoff that saw demonstrators vowing to keep their movements going at the same time as college authorities moved to close down the encampments.

Police in riot gear cleared protest tents on the campus of Northeastern University in Boston, while students shouted and jeered at them, the Associated Press reported. The university said the protest had been “infiltrated by professional organisers” with no connection to the institution, while some demonstrators had used antisemitic slurs.

The picture of campus antisemitism run amok was lent further credence by Lawrence Summers, a former Harvard president and ex-US treasury secretary, who accused authorities at his former university of failing to act decisively against protesters occupying Harvard Yard.

“This is the predictable culmination of the Harvard Corporation’s failure to effectively address issues of prejudice and breakdowns of order on our campus,” he posted on X. “There can be no question that Harvard is practicing an ongoing double standard on discrimination between racism, misogyny and antisemitism.”

His comments provoked a sharp response from critics of Israel. “Your efforts to portray student demonstrators challenging Israel’s genocidal actions as ‘antisemitic’ are cheap & disingenuous,” wrote Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN). “These students should be commended for their courage & compassion, risking suspension & smears (like yours), to fight the most heinous crimes underway in Gaza.”

140 notes · View notes

noctivagantpodcast · 3 months

Text

I Live On Stolen Land

Consider donating to one of these wonderful charities dedicated to preserving the cultures, livelihoods, rights, and dignity of Indigenous peoples.

First Nations Development Institute. Information taken from their 'Our Programs' page: Grantmaker dedicated to addressing financial inequality and its many, many negative impacts. In additional to financial aid, FNDI provides job training and participates in policy-making and advocacy, often focusing on environmental concerns, food insecurity, and tribal sovereignty. Some examples of current projects include "Fortifying Our Forests" AKA restoring and protecting sacred land in partnership with the Forest Service, Native Language Immersion Initiative AKA ensuring the survival of Native languages, and Native Farm To School AKA connecting Native youth with traditional means of growing and harvesting food.

Native American Rights Fund A registered non-profit that provides legal representation in matters of Native interest, be that a single individual or an entire tribe. Since their inception, they have won cases that made critical contributions to the advancement of Native rights in the United States. Their efforts have helped uphold tribal sovereignty, compelled museums, universities, and other institutions to return the remains of Native ancestors, and protected the voting rights of pretty much everyone.

Redhawk Native American Arts Council This organization's primary focus is on the preservation of Native American arts through educational programs. We can also thank them for granting scholarships to Native students seeking higher education, and for running a youth program which aims to help Urban Indigenous youth connect with their heritage through the arts.

Seventh Generation Fund A "fiscal sponsor" for smaller community groups that are run by and for Native tribes/individuals, with the focus of preserving heritage and defending tribal sovereignty, as well as continued survival post-genocide. One example of their work is the Flicker Fund, a disaster fund dedicated to supporting Indigenous communities during times of crisis, be that a pandemic, extreme weather, or a severe drought. Another is the Traditions Bearers Fellowship, which provides financial support to tribal community members who carry on pre-colonization traditions.

Quiluete Move To Higher Ground Stephanie Meyer committed a serious of egregious acts of cultural appropriation and exploitation, and made a very large fortune off a very real tribe. This very real tribe now finds themselves living in a tsunami zone and unable to afford a move to a safer area. As of 2022, the move of the Tribal School, the most important phase, is complete, but there's much more work to be done.

Indigenous Women Rising Abortion Fund A fund to provide Native individuals and family access to abortion care, menstrual hygiene supplies, and midwifery. Here are two separate articles verifying their status as the ONLY indigenous specific (and Indigenous led) abortion fund. For more information on how the destruction of Roe V Wade has negatively impacted Indigenous women, look here and here.

South Dakota Historical Society Foundation So, this isn't a Native led or Native specific organization, but, they work closely with Indigenous communities in South Dakota to preserve their heritage alongside the state's history. I recently had a lovely conversation with one of their representatives about the Ghost Shirt their society is sheltering until such a time as the tribe it rightfully belongs to can house it safely. Article about the shirt's repatriation with some cool info on the shirt's history is here.

#native american rights #indigenous issues #indigenous activism #native american art

159 notes · View notes

biggest-gaudiest-patronuses · 2 years

Text

This election day, I'm thinking of my Nana.

I'm thinking of how as a young woman, she fled political violence in her native Colombia to build a new home in a more stable country. I'm thinking about how she lived a long life, but not long enough to see her home country elect its first ever progressive president (just a few months ago!).

Coincidentally, I was living in Colombia at that time (in the very city she grew up in), and I was able to witness what felt like a miracle. A very conservative country, suffering from the violent inheritance of colonization and catholic invasion and the war on drugs, against a backdrop of the dangerous global rise of the far right--this unlikely country managed to elect one of the most progressive heads of state in the world, in 2022. That's a pretty big deal.

And I'm thinking about this, this election day, because that election was won by a very thin margin. I'm thinking about how it almost didn't happen. I'm thinking about how it was only possible thanks to the highest voter turnout in 20 year. And I am thinking about the countless number of voters who chose to vote for the first time. I am thinking of the poorest and most disenfranchised citizens who showed up at the polls. I am thinking of the indigenous women who rode 12 hours on public buses to vote at the 'nearest' polling stations. I am thinking of all the money and corruption that went into preventing minority citizens from voting, and I'm thinking about how they showed up in the millions and voted anyway.

I am thinking that I would like to see a miracle like that in my own home country.

So if you're on the fence about waiting in line today to cast your vote, I hope that you will think--about the country you want to live in, the future you hope will unfold, and about all of the people it takes to make a miracle.

Because history may deem us nameless and faceless, but when we show up en masse, we are the ones who make history happen.

And yes, maybe also spare a thought for my Nana. Who was in fact a very angry and judgemental woman who supported the republican party for 50+ years, and who would be turning in her grave right now (if the family hadn't had her cremated). Think about the mean angry ghost of my Colombian grandmother, who very much wants you to not show up at the polls to support abortion and other sinful progressive values. Think about her. Do it for her. Do it for Nana.

#Do it! for her #not a shitpost #serious post #politics #ask to tag #I love you Nana but i disagree SO vehemently with almost all of your personal political and religious values #also you should have treated my mom SO MUCH BETTER when she was a kid. all of your kids really #i see you very much as a victim of religious trauma & childhood poverty #followed by the cultural isolation of being a first generation immigrant with no local hispanic community to provide support #plus the failure of late 20th century mental health care almost certainly compounded by medical sexism #recognize sympathize and am indignant on your behalf for all of those reasons and more #but that truth can also coexist alongside the truth that #hot DAMN Nana you and Papa very much failed to provide your children with an emotionally safe and stable environment in which to grow #and me and my sibs are still dealing with the generational trauma #and who knows how many of my cousins. I HAVE TWENTY-ONE COUSINS AND I DON'T TALK TO ANY OF THEM #that is too many cousins to not be in contact with any of them #(and fyi that's on *one* side of the family. on the other side are a dozen half-aunts-and-cousins I've never met #because Other Grandpa was a Certified Piece of Shit)#Anyway. ANYWAY...#apparently i really needed to overshare today. know what? no judgement. judgement free zone #i have no judgement thoughts or opinions i am finally FREE #........gosh that sounds so relaxing #ANYway #yeah. break the cycle of abuse or your descendants will grow up and critique your parenting choices on third-tier social media platforms #when people say 'they will always be remembered' at a funeral--that is a THREAT #what they actually mean is 'OH HONEYBUN YOU DONE FUCKED UP'#.........i want that in my eulogy actually

2K notes · View notes

probablyasocialecologist · 2 months

Text

Despite the 48 intervening years, the novella still comes easily and disagreeably. Davidson in particularly is frighteningly familiar, a white supremacist assured of his moral certitude, convinced that he has both the right and duty to murder creechies after they rise up from forced servitude and destroy a logging camp, killing some 200 Terrans. Following an interdict from Earth—a member of the new League of Worlds—that the Terran colonists of New Tahiti leave the Athsheans alone pending the League’s audit of the colony’s impact on the indigenous humans (an intervention pushed by Terran anthropologist or “hilfer” Raj Lyubov and two visiting non-Terran humans, a Cetian and a Hain), Davidson refuses to give up his crusade against the creechies. Like H. Beam Piper’s Little Fuzzy before and James Cameron’s Avatar after, Word for World pits the Bad Guy against the indigenous population as a representative of the worst aspects of human (Terran) life: a god-hero complex driven by greed, racism, and self-assured superiority over all life. The Davidson figure (Kellog in Piper, Quaritch in Cameron’s film) is juxtaposed by Lyubov, an anthropologist who advocates strongly for Athshe’s independence, representing a vaguely liberal they’re-human-too response to Terran expansionism. Word for World departs from the eco-capitalist fantasies of similar texts, from the idea that colonial expansion and resource extraction are OK but within reason, by presenting things from the indigenous perspective and not treating the “within reason” perspective as the final word on colonialism. In other words, Le Guin provides a strong case for the Athsheans’ swift and violent retaliation against the Terrans, including the killing of 500 women (newly brought to New Tahiti to “entertain” the two-thousand-plus workforce of Terran men) so the Terrans cannot “breed.” Readers of course are aware that the colony has a brand new ansible, has just learned of the League’s new interdict against conflict with the locals, and might very well lose their colonial charter. This is the “within reason” response: Earth learn that the colonists went “too far,” so an attempt must be made to reign them in; as Colonel Dongh, administrator of the colony tells Selver, temporary leader of the Athsheans upon the Terrans’ defeat, the release of “voluntary” laborers should have been enough to appease the Athsheans. This is the rhetoric of bullies and empires when their former victims are still angry: But we stopped murdering/bombing/enslaving you, so why’re you mad?

#ursula le guin #the word for world is forest #spoilers

76 notes · View notes

afghanbarbie · 2 months

Text

The sex-based apartheid against women in Afghanistan cannot be reduced to, "Afghan men saw Afghan women enjoying freedom and got mad, so they established extremist religious governments to stop it." I am really tired of seeing this misconception and oversimplification spread around by leftists, liberals and feminists – it's racist, and simply not fucking true.

The majority of Afghans want a secular government and for the oppression of women to end. The Taliban represent a minority of Afghanistan's people. The deterioration of Afghan society – in particular, women's rights and freedoms – directly results from decades of foreign intervention, imperialism and occupation. Afghans did not destroy Afghanistan, the United States did, and the USSR paved the way for them to do so.

Had Afghanistan never been treated like a pawn in the games played by imperialistic powers, had we not been reduced to resources, strategic importance and a tool for weakening the enemy, extremism would have never come to power.

An overview of Afghanistan's recent history:

The USSR wanted to incorporate Afghanistan into Soviet Central Asia and did so by sabotaging indigenous Afghan communist movements and replacing our leaders with those loyal to the USSR. The United States began funding and training Islamic extremists – the Mujahideen – to fight against the Soviet influence and subsequent invasion, and to help the CIA suppress any indigenous Afghan leftist movements. Those Mujahideen won the war, and then spent the next decade fighting for absolute control over Afghanistan.

During that time period, known as the Afghan Civil War, the Mujahideen became warlords, each enforcing their own laws on the regions they controlled. Kabul was nearly destroyed, and the chaos, destruction and death was largely ignored by the United States despite being the ones who caused and empowered it. This civil war era created the perfect, unstable environment needed to give a fringe but strong group like the Taliban a chance to rise to power. And after two decades of war, a singular entity taking control and bringing 'peace' was enticing to all Afghans, even if their views were objectively more extreme than what we had been enduring up to that point.

When the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, they allied with the same warlords that had been destroying our country the decade prior and whom they had rallied against the Soviets – these are the people that made up the Northern Alliance. The 'good guys' that America gave us were rapists, pillagers, and violent extremists, no better than the Taliban. And that's not even mentioning the horrible atrocities and war crimes committed by American forces themselves.

So, no, Afghan men did not collectively wake up one day and decide that women had too much freedom and rush to establish an extremist government overnight. No, this is not to excuse the misogyny of men in our society – the extremists had to already exist for Americans to fund and arm them against the Soviets – but rather to redirect the bulk of this racist blame to the actual culprits. The religious extremism and sex-based apartheid would not be oppressing and murdering us today if they hadn't been funded and supported by the United States of America thirty years ago. And despite all the abuses and restrictions, many Afghan women prefer the Taliban's current government to another American occupation. I felt safer walking in Taliban-controlled Kabul than I did being 'randomly searched' (sexually assaulted) by American military police in my village as a child.

Imperialism is inextricably linked with patriarchal violence and women's oppression. You cannot talk about the deterioration of Afghanistan without talking about the true cause of said decline: The United States of America. Americans of all political views, including leftists and feminists, are guilty of reducing or outright ignoring Western responsibility for female oppression in the Global South, finding it much easier to place all blame on the foreign brown man or our supposedly backwards, savage cultures, when the most responsibility belongs with Western governments and their meddling games that forced the most violent misogynists among us into power.

(Most of this information comes from my own experience living as an Afghan Hazara woman in Afghanistan, but Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords and the Propaganda of Silence covers this in much more detail. If you want more on the Soviet-Afghan war and Afghanistan's socialist history, Revolutionary Afghanistan is an English-language source from a more leftist perspective)

#afghanistan #taliban #anti imperialism #feminism #radfem safe #america is a terrorist state #america is a failed state #global south #western imperialism #hazara genocide

60 notes · View notes

fandomtrumpshate · 1 year

Text

FTH 2023 Wrap-Up

Boy has it been a year, guys.

This seemed like the year when anything that could go wrong did, from covid to family emergencies to work obligations to software bugs. We're so grateful to you all for your patience and for coming back year after year to remind us why we do this.

Historically, non-election years have usually seen slumps in both our number of auctions and our donation totals. But this year? You guys blew us away yet again.

We had just as many auctions as last year, which is amazing. But even beyond that: our donation total —just 10% lower than last year's massive record— is 150% higher than our third best year, making it a very close second.

So are you ready for this year's grand total?

This year

thanks to all of you

FTH raised...

$47,361.75!

Which brings our seven-year total to

$239,507.86

Thank you so much to our 616 creators who offered 800+ auctions in over 400 different fandoms and subfandoms, and to everyone who bid! Also a special shoutout to our record 17 crafters who raised over $2500 of this - three times as much as any of our previous craft bazaars!

Your returning mods (@porcupine-girl, @captainbunnicula, @tiltedsyllogism, @anyawen, and @renjunbabygirl) would also like to give our heartfelt thanks to this year's two additions to the mod team, @trickybonmot (who has been a mod before but was returning after several-year absence) and @a-still-small-vox (who is brand new to this whole thing). Given everything that went down this year, the auction literally could not have happened without them. They've been ridiculously awesome.

Creators, be sure you contact your bidders by April 1, and bidders, on your end please respond to their communication by April 15!

Once the fanwork is posted, let us know via our form (can you believe six creators have already finished??) and if you're posting it on AO3 be sure to add it to the Fandom Trumps Hate 2023 collection. If you're writing a fic for FTH and need help from our Regiment of Fan Laborers, email us!

As always, we hope that for at least some people, your involvement in FTH will lead to continued action throughout the year. Sign up for our organizations' email lists, check out their volunteer opportunities, and help boost their signals on social media!

And if you'd like to run your own fanworks auction for a good cause, we can help get you started! Contact us at fandomtrumpshate at gmail.com and we can send you our auction playbook, as well as answer any questions you have about our process.

Your mods are going to be going into post-auction hibernation mode (or, for most of us, post-auction deal-with-all-this-other-stuff mode) for a little while. So if you email us, don't panic if we don't get back to you immediately! We will start actively monitoring the inbox again by April 15 at the latest.

Here is a quick snapshot of the donations to individual organizations - see below the cut for all of the totals!

We hope to see you all again next year!

Amounts raised for each of our individual orgs:

TLDEF $8,594.5 (18.15%) DigDeep/Navajo Water Project $7,037 (14.86%) Rainbow Railroad $5,970 (12.61%) Sherlock’s Homes Foundation $3,169.5 (6.69%) Life After Hate $3,069.75 (6.48%) Never Again Action $3,062.75 (6.46%) Citizens’ Climate Education $2,235 (4.72%) Xerces $2,103 (4.44%) Razom $2,101 (4.43%) Violence Policy Center $1327 (2.80%) NNtEDV $1,157.75 (2.44%) The Appeal $935 (1.97%) Other organizations (that aren’t abortion funds) $1,151 (2.43%)

All abortion funds $5,468.50 (11.54%) Indigenous Women Rising $2,073 (4.43%) other abortion funds $1,184.50 (2.50%) Abortion Fund of Ohio $963 (2.03%) KY Health Justice Network $634 (1.34%) New Orleans Abortion Fund $349 (.74%) Buckle Bunnies $240 (.51%)

#fth 2023 #donation totals

321 notes · View notes

homonationalist · 11 months

Text

At present, it is standard among practically all communities to fête the family as a bastion of relative safety from state persecution and market coercion, and as a space for nurturing subordinated cultural practices, languages, and traditions. But this is not enough of a reason to spare the family. Frustratedly, Hazel Carby stressed the fact (for the benefit of her white sisters) that many racially, economically, and patriarchally oppressed people cleave proudly and fervently to the family. She was right; nevertheless, as Kathi Weeks puts it: “the model of the nuclear family that has served subordinated groups as a fence against the state, society and capital is the very same white, settler, bourgeois, heterosexual, and patriarchal institution that was imposed by the state, society, and capital on the formerly enslaved, indigenous peoples, and waves of immigrants, all of whom continue to be at once in need of its meagre protections and marginalized by its legacies and prescriptions” (emphasis mine). The family is a shield that human beings have taken up, quite rightly, to survive a war. If we cannot countenance ever putting down that shield, perhaps we have forgotten that the war does not have to go on forever.

This is why Paul Gilroy remarked in his 1993 essay “It’s A Family Affair,” “even the best of this discourse of the familialization of politics is still a problem.” Gilroy is grappling with the reality that, in the United Kingdom as in the United States, the state’s constant disrespect of the Black home and transgression of Black households’ boundaries, as well as its disproportionate removal of Black children into the foster-care industry, understandably inspires an urgent anti-racist politics of “familialization” in defense of Black families. Both the British and American netherworlds of supposedly “broken” homes (milieus that are then exoticized, and seen as efflorescing creatively against all odds), have posed an obstinate threat to the legitimacy of the family regime simply by existing, Gilroy suggests. The paradox is that the “broken” remnant sustains the bourgeois regime insofar as it supplies the culture, inspiration, and oftentimes the surrogate care labor that allows the white household to imagine itself as whole. As a dialectician, “I want to have it both ways,” writes Gilroy, closing out his essay. “I want to be able to valorize what we can recover, but also to cite the disastrous consequences that follow when the family supplies the only symbols of political agency we can find in the culture and the only object upon which that agency can be seen to operate. Let us remind ourselves that there are other possibilities.

There are other possibilities! Traces of the desire for them can be found in Toni Cade (later Toni Cade Bambara)’s anthology The Black Woman, published in America in 1970, not long after the publication of the US labor secretariat’s “Moynihan report,” The Negro Family: The Case for National Action. The open season on the Black Matriarch was in full swing. And certainly not all of the anthology’s feminists, in their valiant effort to beat back societal anti-maternal sentiment (matrophobia) and the hatred of Black women specifically (more recently known as “misogynoir”), make the additional step of criticizing familism within their Black communities. But one or two contributors do flatly reject the notion that the family could ever be a part of Black (collective human) liberation. Kay Lindsey, in her piece “The Black Woman as a Woman,” lays out her analysis that: “If all white institutions with the exception of the family were destroyed, the state could also rise again, but Black rather than white.” In other words: the only way to ensure the destruction of the patriarchal state is for the institution of the family to be destroyed. “And I mean destroyed,” echoes the feminist women’s health center representative Pat Parker in 1980, in a speech she delivered at ¡Basta! Women’s Conference on Imperialism and Third World War in Oakland, California. Parker speaks in the name of The Black Women’s Revolutionary Council, among other organizations, and her wide- ranging statement (which addresses imperialism, the Klan, and movement- building) purposively ends with the family: “As long as women are bound by the nuclear family structure we cannot effectively move toward revolution. And if women don’t move, it will not happen.” The left, along with women especially of the upper and middle classes, “must give up ... undying loyalty to the nuclear family,” Parker charges. It is “the basic unit of capitalism and in order for us to move to revolution it has to be destroyed.”

Forty years later, the British writer Lola Olufemi is among those reminding us that there are other possibilities: “abolishing the family...” she tweets, “that’s light work. You’re crying over whether or not Engels said it when it’s been focal to black studies/black feminism for decades.” For Olufemi as for Parker and Lindsey, abolishing marriage, private property, white supremacy, and capitalism are projects that cannot be disentangled from one another. She is no lone voice, either. Annie Olaloku-Teriba, a British scholar of “Blackness” in theory and history, is another contemporary exponent of the rich Black family-abolitionist tradition Olufemi names. In 2021, Olaloku-Teriba surprised and unsettled some of her followers by publishing a thread animated by a commitment to the overthrow of “familial relations” as a key goal of her antipatriarchal socialism. These posts point to the striking absence of the child from contemporary theorizations of patriarchal domesticity, and criticize radicals’ reluctance to call mothers who “violently discipline [Black] boys into masculinity” patriarchal. “The adult/child relation is as central to patriarchy as ‘man’/‘woman,’” Olaloku-Teriba affirms: “The domination of the boy by the woman is a very routine and potent expression of patriarchal power.” These observations reopen horizons. What would it mean for Black caregivers (of all genders) not to fear the absence of family in the lives of Black children? What would it mean not to need the Black family?

Sophie Lewis in “Abolish Which Family?” from Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation, 2022.

#sophie lewis #abolish the family #🌟#reading

178 notes · View notes

rwbyprism · 1 year

Photo

Preorders for PRISM, a RWBY colours zine are now open!

Grab your copy of this rainbow zine featuring 70 of RWBY’s beloved characters now!

🌈 rwbyprism.bigcartel.com

All profits from this zine will be going towards our charities: Yellowhammer and Indigenous Women Rising.

You can read more about them here:

https://www.yellowhammerfund.org/

https://www.iwrising.org/

Bundle details listed below!

🌈 Hue Bundle 🌈

Our digital bundle includes:

🌈 Zine PDF

🌈 Set of 9 emotes

🌈 Set of 4 icons

🌈 Phone BG

🌈 Digital colouring pages

🌈 Chroma Bundle 🌈

Our zine bundle includes:

🌈 Physical Zine

🌈 Zine PDF

🌈 Set of 9 emotes

🌈 Set of 4 icons

🌈 Phone BG

🌈 Digital colouring pages

This bundle is eligible for the early bird bonus sticker!

🌈 Prismatic Bundle 🌈

Our full bundle includes:

🌈 Physical Zine

🌈 Full digital bundle

🌈 Enamel Pin

🌈 Six die cut stickers

🌈 Two acrylic charms

🌈 Two prints

This bundle is eligible for the early bird bonus sticker!

🌈 Early Bird Bonus Sticker! 🌈

The first 50 orders of our Chroma and Prismatic bundles will receive a free Curious Cat sticker!

#rwby #rwby zine #zine preorders #preorders open

190 notes · View notes

canary-prince · 2 years

Text

The Supreme Court Is Going To Be "Reviewing" The Indian Child Welfare Act In October

Yep. They're literally going to try and overturn the ICWA during Indigenous History Month. This is where we're at.

The Indian Child Welfare Act is a federal law that was created to decrease the number of Native Alaskan and American Indian children being forcibly removed from their homes and communities only to be adopted into non-Native homes. This is an incredibly damaging experience that is a key component of colonialism. Additionally, many other tribal sovereignty laws were passed on the precedent of the ICWA.

This coming on the heels of Roe V Wade is incredibly distressing. The combination of forced birth and forced removal of children will hit Native communities incredibly hard.

Here is a page from the Native American Rights Fund that goes into more detail; their organization accepts donations and is one of the entities battling this challenge.

Here is a page from the National Indian Children Welfare Association containing a press release about the pending court case; NICWA trains Indigenous child welfare workers and uses education and resource distribution to create positive home environments for Indigenous children. They offer online trainings for a fee and here is a page of resources about ICWA

And here is a petition created by the Lakota People's Law Project Action Center, asking President Biden and the Department of Justice to use their authority on the ICWA's behalf; LPLP is an advocacy group that was founded in 2004 in direct response to violations of the ICWA in South Dakota. They also accept donations.

More generally, here's a link to the First Nations Development Institute. They are the number one Native non-profit in the US and are in top 3% most highly accredited charities rated by Charity Navigator. They do EVERYTHING: fighting for land stewardship, financial education for Native communities, and trying to repair food inequality.

And finally, here's the Indigenous Women Rising's Abortion Fund; it is open to Indigenous people of all genders and sexual orientation who are seeking abortion care.

#Indian Child Welfare Act #indigenous sovereignty #Land Back #mutual aid #the monster speaks

839 notes · View notes

nonconstories · 10 days

Text

Florida's Six Week Abortion Ban Went Into Effect Yesterday

And Indigenous Women Rising is having their Fund-A-Thon. From now until May 31st, they match all donations 100%, with the aim of raising 100,000 dollars for Indigenous abortion care.

IWR is a reproductive justice organization and mutual aid abortion fund for Native American and First Nations peoples of all genders. They are a tiny operation fueled by passion and sweat and every dollar counts here. Please, spare them a thought and some change? They have a Bonfire store too AND other Bonfire stores selling merch on the campaign's behalf. Check it out!

#Not Stories

21 notes · View notes

diddyrivera · 4 months

Text

additional resources to marxist feminism:

living a feminist life by sara ahmed

the rise and decline of patriarchal systems by nancy folbre

this bridge called my back: writings by radical women of color by cherrie moraga and gloria anzaldua

delusions of gender: how our minds, society, and neurosexism create difference by cordelia fine

close to home: a materialist analysis to women's oppression by christine delphy

(pdf) the feminist standpoint: developing the ground for a specifically feminist historical materialism

(medium) on women as a class: materialist feminism and mass struggle by aly e

(sagejournals) capital and class: the unhappy moments of marxism and feminism: towards a more progressive union

(substack) the marxfem pulpit by abigail von maure (earth2abbs on tiktok)

if anything else related to marxist feminism, just let me know :)

additional resources to eco feminism:

gossips, gorgons, and crones: the fates of the earth by jane caputi

parable of the sower by octavia e butler

neither man nor beast: feminism and the defense of animals by carol j. adams

bitch: on the female of species by lucy cooke

fresh banana leaves: healing indigenous landscapes through indigenous science by jessica hernandez

the intersectional environmentalist by leah thomas

right here, right now by natalie isaacs

feminism or death by francoise d'ealibonne

violent inheritance: sexuality, land, and energy in making the north american west by e cram

animal crisis: a new critical theory by alice grary

unsettling: surviving extinction together by elizabeth weinberg

land of women by maria sanchez

sexus animalis: there is nothing unnatural in nature by emmanuelle pouydebat

windswept: walking the paths of trailblazing women by annabel abbs

andrea smith - rape of the land

andy smith - ecofeminism through an anticolonial framework

carolyn marchant - nature as female

charlene spretnak - critical and constructive contributions of ecofeminism

heather eaton - ecological feminist theology

heather Eaton - The Edge of the Seat

janet abromovitz - biodiversity and gender Issues

joni Seager - creating a culture of destruction

karen warren - ecofeminism

karen warren - taking empirical data seriously

karen warren - the power and promise of ecological feminism

l. gruen - dismantling oppression

martha e. gimenez - does ecology need marx?

n. sturgeon - the nature of race

petra kelly - women and power

quinby - ecofeminism and the politics of resistance

rosemary radford ruether - ecofeminism: symbolic and social connections

sherry ortner - is female to male as nature is to culture?

sturgeon - the nature of race

val plumwood - feminism and ecofeminism

winona laduke - a society based on conquest cannot be sustained

if anyone has any other recommendations related to eco feminism, plz let me know :)

additional resources related to trans feminism:

the empire strikes back: a posttransexual manifesto by sandy stone

(chicago journals) trapped in the wrong theory: rethinking trans oppression and resistance by talia mae bettcher

(philpapers.org) trans women and the meaning of woman by talia mae bettcher

the transgender studies reader by susan stryker and stephen whittle

if anyone has other recommendations related to trans feminism, plz let me know :)

additional resources related to anarcha feminism:

the anarchist turn by jacob blumenfeld

we will not cancel us and other dreams of transformative justice by adrienne maree brown

burn it down: feminist manifestos for the revolution by breanne fahs

reinventing anarchy, again by howard ehrlich

anarcho-blackness by marquis bey

a little philosophical lexicon of anarchism from proudhon to deleuze by daniel colson and jesse cohn

joyful militancy by nick montgomery and carla bergman

wayward lives, beautiful experiments by saidiya v. hartman

we won't be here tomorrow and other stories by margaret killjoy

writing revolution by christopher j. castaneda

paradoxes of utopia by juan suriano

twelve fingers by jo soares

for a just and better world by sonia hernandez

if anyone has other recommendations related to anarcha feminism, plz let me know :)

#feminism #intersectionalfeminist #intersectionality #anti terf #anti swerf #womens rights #marxist feminism #eco feminism #anarcha feminism #trans feminism #queer feminism #pro lgbtq+#pro disabled #pro trans #pro palestine #pro sex worker

36 notes · View notes

forthesakeofthefuture · 29 days

Text

When the people of the State of Israel condemn the entirety of Gaza for being "supporters of Hamas",

was that also a ploy to distract the world from the fact that the entirety of the State of Israel are the IDF, or civilians meant to be drafted to the IDF, or settlers meant to replace the people with their own presence to erase the identity of Palestine as per the colonial vision of the Zionist Occupation?

Then, what does that mean if we apply to the Israeli Occupation the same logic that these israelis and their supporters apply to Gaza?

Do they mean we should kill them all? No mercy, including the children? Is that what these israelis are implying?

But that's too sad.

We don't need to fall to the same foul depths as these people to stop the genocide they are committing.

But I can hear their replying voices already : Hamas charter, kill all jews, that's what they want, that's what palestinians want, we need to defend ourselves, we need to kill them all and their children, we will win, death to arabs.

Hey zionists, you've been stalling for time so your soldiers of settlers pretending to be normal civilians and armed terrorists pretending to be a military can kill more indigenous people without drawing direct action from the people in power, by distracting them with endless talks, crocodile tears and offended shrieks.

But don't you think you've only been embarrassing yourselves?

If only repeating Oct 7, Hamas charter and Hamas sources is enough to make people forget the Nakba, the Israeli leaders' genocidal statements and the very existence of Hasbara. Not to mention the 72 Virgins Uncensored.

"Arabs started it," you've then said, in the midst of your lying, deceitful, murderous nature being exposed like open wires of a machine. "Arabs massacred jews first, so it's only logical we massacre them back. The Nakba was a result of what Arabs did first. They've started a war with us and they lost. This is what you get when you mess with God's chosen people."

You have exposed yourselves enough; Everyone now have seen the true face of the people of Israel, the zionists, God's cursed people. The hypocrite supporters of the Haganah, Irgun and Lehi terrorists.

It's only logical that we fight against people as arrogant, as maniacal, as destructive and as two-faced as you. You have about as much right to complain as Israel having any right to defend itself against the country it is occupying - and are you still arguing that Gaza isn't occupied by Israel after what the world has seen? Or that Oct 7 was a terrorist attack, not a resistance attack, and with that logic Israel has a right to be supplied weapons to retaliate? Feel free to keep talking.

And as for those who to this day still fights for a new day for Palestine, who hear the cries and pleas of the terrorized women, the men frustrated with the silence of the world, and the mourning children, there's no more to be said about it;

The West has united to steal Palestine away in 1917, therefore it's only a given that we now need to unite to take it back.

Unite, rise up. As the zionists have said, stop the tears. This isn't the time for apologies anymore - the people of Gaza need something more. Humanity itself needs more to be done.

#free palestine #palestine #free gaza #gaza #from the river to the sea palestine will be free #gaza genocide #israel is a terrorist state #israel is committing genocide #genocide #human rights #israeli propaganda #israeli lies #hasbara #direct action

20 notes · View notes