Kiana Khansmith
Game of Thrones Daily
Sade Olutola
Today's Document
taylor price
art blog(derogatory)
oozey mess
h
No title available
Origami Around
Misplaced Lens Cap
Xuebing Du
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
One Nice Bug Per Day
Keni
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
NASA
wallacepolsom
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
noise dept.
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Australia
seen from United States
seen from Azerbaijan
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from Uzbekistan
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
@conjuncturemagazine
New article on Conjuncture by guest writer Bruno Lima Rocha, part of a series on Macro-economic structures and their effects on Brazil. On the exploitation of landlords and rentiers on Brazilian Labor as well as Brazilian Capitals reliance on the State to function.
(By: Heinz-Jürgen Voß, first published at: dasendedessex, translation: Antje Dieterich) [A short background information at the bottom by: Antje Dieterich]
Some days ago, I released an appeal for solidarity for a collegue of mine, who was insulted in such a drastic manner I could not have imagined just some years ago. Now, I am getting the answer. The right-wing author Akif Pirinçci is now attacking me too, with slander and crude insults.
For some years now, I have recognized that conservative and radical right-wing writers are completely loosing their inhibitions and attacking differently minded people verbally in an extraordinarily violent manner. Starting point was the writing of Thilo Sarazin, a right-wing author and member of the Social Democratic Party in Germany. Writings by him, Pirinçci, and others had and continue to have a negative impact on the social climate, ultimately producing an air of aggression.
From a denigrating hate speech, supplemented by some willing commentators who then debate physical attacks as a strategy, to actual physical violence is just a short step – it is just a question of time.
Debate and discourse always affect the social interaction in society. Therefore, whoever cares about a democratic society that respects its basic constitutional rights must now stand up. What we face at this moment is the eroding of political conflict culture which is sabotaging the very basis of our democratic social order and – at the very end – will be its destruction.
Aside from the debates about the content – which exist between different groups in society as well as academic ‘schools’ and directions – the shared goal has to be that dispute and negotiation remain possible. This is what we have to work for in solidarity – in society as well as in academia. Slander and hate speech take away our possibility to debate, reflect, and dispute in a fruitful manner.
In a time in which conservative and right-wing populist forces gain more and more support – this is what elections and surveys show us – we have to work on concrete structures to actively oppose such tendencies. The goal has to be that no one is left alone to face any slander or the frequently consequential e-mails and blog entries containing very violent threats.
Starting Point:
- Give support to those who are attacked! If there is a broad solidarity, attacking or mobbing does not work. Therefore with our solidarity we avoid an individualization in conflicts about policy directions and attacks against one differently-minded person after the other.
- Create academic structures that make such a solidarity possible! The number of attacks is growing against contributions out of the fields of sociology, sexology, and the broader fields of social science. We do not have structures to reject these attacks and demand a reasonable public discussion. Therefore, we have to develop structures in social as well as academic organizations that are capable to reject attacks, insults, and slander quickly.
- Aside from solidarity beyond conflicts of content, we should work on concepts to develop an open and positive conflict culture, where academic as well as social debates function in a way that does respect the individual, fundamental rights of each participant of the debate.
For the time being I appreciate a show of solidarity. But that cannot be enough — we need to work on strategic concepts.
Background: The actual conflict this article refers to started in July 2014, when the mentioned author Akif Pirinçci, publicly insulted the professor and writer, Elisabeth Tuider, who works on questions of diversitiy and intersectionality focusing on gender. On his facebook page, Pirinçci posted a photo of Prof. Tuider insulting her personally. In the following hours the comments by his fans went quickly from an expression of disgust to demanding the professor be killed. But the described situation is just an example for a broader tendency that takes place in the discussion culture. Akif Pirinçci, Thilo Sarrazin, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter — we can see and hear a coarsening of debate-culture on the right side of the political spectrum. A debate about our reaction on this tendency starts at this point.
The #YoungLords, a militant community-based group in the 1960s & ’70s, honored with a street naming today in #ElBarrio, #NYC. Photo: Andrew Padilla
(By La batalla de los trabajadores; Trans. by Pablo Pérez)
"The Chilean working class lives in neighborhoods with life expectancies and a human development index similar to those of sub-Saharan countries, and has to survive with unstable and badly paid jobs, which also usually lack of contractual regulations and the minimum safety conditions. The huge wage gap existing between an unskilled worker (who usually gets about $400 per month) and the small faction of high-level managers and shareholders is one of the main causes of this paradoxical situation."
Check out La batalla de los trabajadores here.
Black and Pink: Chicago is an open family of GLBTQ prisoners and “free world” allies who support each other.
(by: Dijair Brilhantes and Bruno Lima Rocha)
Our latest article by our guest writers from Brazil explain examples of the advancement of the market logic within the World Cup Brazil 2014, and how this mode of operation influences within the game, and as always, more of the same regarding the arbitrariness of FIFA.
(by: Daniel Gutiérrez)
"Suddenly, it seemed like a metaphor. Without the beautiful beaches and the picturesque jungles and the glitter of carnival, what do you have? A country neglected by a false promise of order and progress."
Read more-->
a poster that I did after UCAB rendered their vote to cut ché from the budget.
it’s really difficult when something that has shaped you in such tremendous ways is under threat. it’s even more painful when you feel powerless, because you’re not geographically close to that thing, making it hard to be there to protect it. the ché café, both the space itself and the individuals who make up the collective have taught me so much. we’re not going to let it go without organizing resistance.
help us do that. ensure that community controlled spaces continue to exist.
Students at University of California: San Diego, as well as community members from around California have been organizing against the University's evictions of student-run spaces on the campus. This University (UCSD) has a track record of dismantling student spaces, from the eviction of students running a study space in a closed down library (RECLAIMCLICS) in 2012, and current eviction notice as of July 1st, 2014, of the student run organizing Books For Prisoners, as student organization that organizes book donations and letterwriting to the incarcerated community.
this is not an isolated case in one University, but rather a systematic restructuring of the US university system as a profit making institution, turning these non-profit and student run spaces into profitable ventures by the construction companies the university contracts and the companies like starbucks which fill university spaces as profit generating ventures.
Read more at: Save the Che's facebook page.
or your can:
Sign and Share the Petition www.change.org/checafe Check out Che Cafe's UCSD site for more details as well as updates: http://checafe.ucsd.edu/ And their blogspot for info on shows: http://thechecafe.blogspot.com/
To show solidarity, organizers of the Che Cafe have asked community members to call or write letters to these university administration:
Vice Chancellor – Student Affairs, Alan Houston: [email protected] Assistant Vice Chancellor-Student Life, Gary Ratcliff: [email protected] Associated Students (AS) President, Robby Boparai: [email protected] Graduate Students Association (GSA) President, Rahul Kapadia: [email protected]
Protestors Launch a 135-Foot Blimp Over the NSA’s Utah Data (Spying) Center
Activist groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Greenpeace launched the 135-foot thermal airship early Friday morning to protest the agency’s mass surveillance programs and to announce the launch of Stand Against Spying, a website that rates members of Congress on their support or opposition to NSA reform. The full message on the blimp reads “NSA: Illegal Spying Below” along with an arrow pointing downward and the Stand Against Spying URL.
Greenpeace became involved in the project as a plaintiff in a lawsuit the EFF filed against the NSA last year, which accused the agency of intimidating activists with its mass phone metadata collection programs. Their blimp has made earlier appearances to protest coal-fired power plants in North Carolina, overfishing in the pacific northwest, and the Koch brothers in Southern California.
Sign The Open Letter Against Mass Surveillance
(by: Dijair Brilhantes and Bruno Lima Rocha)
The FIFA World Cup is considered one of the biggest events in the world. It should come as no surprise then that the commands of the institution that is run by Seth Blatter should continue to make hundreds of demands against the country that is to welcome the games. In practice, this means that fundamental rights are to be suspended, especially in a country with a “leftist” government. Just another day in the tropical country.
When Brazil was selected to host the 2014 games, the Brazilian government could not imagine the magnitude of social unrest that would unfold. Curiously enough (or not), the class that is most unsatisfied is the real beneficiary of the FIFA competition. The elites that booed and insulted the president during the games’ inauguration are a constant presence in all of the stadiums. This could explain the exaggerated insults. The president of Brazil knew this was going to happen, and was likely why she avoided speaking during the opening ceremony. As you all likely know, the so-called “yellow block” (a neologism invented by a TV channel in a story of incalculable value) gave birth to a reaction even more reactionary....
read more at conjuncturemagazine.org
(By: Roger Buer, text and photos)
Those who are squatting a school at the Ohlauer Straße in Kreuzberg, Berlin are still willing to stay on the rooftop of the building – and are still prepared to kill themselves in case of a police raid.
Fortunately the police has been not instructed to attack the school after the ultimatum of the district exchange has ended. A press conference in front of the main entrance of the former school was held soon after. However, reporters were still not allowed to enter the building. Certainly the newspaper TAZ made this happen. They went to court because of the ban of press earlier that day.
read more at conjuncturemagazine.org
(by: Nick García and Daniel Gutiérrez)
"While organizing around such strong symbols as Google buses has created a short-term success and brought these issues into the mainstream, debates and actions have fallen short of responding to the deeper causes and effects of gentrification both locally and globally. Housing rights activists and journalists have brought up how techies and hipsters moving into low-income communities of color leads to evictions, pricing long time residents out, and racist and classist restructuring of the city, but little focus has been drawn on the broader causes and effects of gentrification, urban policy and political economy, and the groups that have been working to address these issues."
Read more at conjuncturemagazine.org
interview — anarchist writer Cindy Milstein on anti-gentrification struggles in Bay Area
Listen to an interview with anarchist writer, organizer and activist Cindy Milstein reflecting on current anti-gentrification struggles taking place in the Bay Area. This interview details both the gentrification-driven violence taking place, from police shootings, to sustained mass displacement by corporations like Google, but also explores some of the inspiring grassroots organizing taking place to confront the gentrification machine.
In this interview Cindy also reflects on the growing battles for urban space within North American cities, with San Francisco being one of the most extreme examples. One of the points addressed is the urgent necessity to explore alternative relationships to the land, beyond corporate-driven real-estate markets, in this interview Cindy explores ideas about land based alternatives against gentrification.
Read More
The fight to save San Francisco’s Gezi Gardens June 15, 2013
In all the cities we’ve traveled to for our project, we’ve seen so much resistance against the gentrification of low-income communities. But we’ve most recently immersed ourselves in the fight to save San Francisco’s Gezi Gardens, which was once known as Hayes Valley Farm, a three-year permaculture project recently renamed in solidarity with our friends in Turkey.
Gezi Gardens was an autonomous open green space for providing food for the surrounding neighborhood & was recently sold by the city to a private developer, Avalon, to create 180 luxury condominiums. Although the developer has mentioned building low-income housing, investors usually put that money toward shanty housing in other parts of the city to further gentrify neighborhoods & kick out poor people of color to make way for things like trendy beer gardens & upscale boutiques.
Since June 1, dozens of activists occupied Gezi Gardens to fight the privatization of the land & gentrification in San Francisco. Six tree-sitters set up platforms up in the eucalyptus trees as occupiers rebuilt raised beds, set up a library, a free kitchen and a free store. Political ideas & strategies were exchanged throughout the days of the occupation to figure out a way to keep the land that is also home to native birds & hummingbirds, as well as the site of an indigenous sacred burial ground.
The gardens were supposed to host a Liberate our Land festival this weekend, complete with hydroponic workshops, basic gardening teach-ins, local music & food. But in the early hours of Thursday morning, more than a 100 riot cops stormed the farm with batons & guns drawn. Citizen journalists (including us) were threatened with arrest for filming the raid as four occupiers were arrested. The three tree-sitters holding the land after everyone was evacuated were all arrested as well; one even fell from his platform as an officer cut his rope he was holding onto & was later hospitalized. Another activist is still in jail on a lynching charge with a $54,000 bail.
But the resistance continued. Yesterday, Gezi Gardens organizers & supporters marched around the farm, shutting down two intersections during rush hour. The National Park Service was also called to the space after hummingbird carcasses were found, as well as nesting crows in the eucalyptus trees, so the construction & demolishing has been halted (for now)! An archaeologist has also been called to go into the land to confirm that it is a sacred indigenous burial ground.
The struggle to save Gezi Gardens is something many cities are familiar with. As green space in urban areas becomes more & more endangered & low-income communities of color get pushed farther out of cities, resistance becomes necessary. We wanted to share this story with our readers in hopes that this resistance can spread to other cities being threatened with devastating gentrification. Together, we can organize to create a sense of community & a pushback against the capitalist measures that threaten to destroy our neighborhoods.
We’ll continue to update our Facebook & Twitter with times/dates for meetings & the next steps organizers will take. You can also stay updated by visiting HumanBeIn.org. Also keep an eye on our YouTube channel for bunch of videos from the last few days.
Gentrification is Colonialism
Lake Merritt neighborhood in Oakland, CA
What is gentrification? whose fighting it? how does it connect to struggles globally? This weeks Conjuncture article aims to tackle this issues. stay posted!
(By: Antje Dieterich; special thanks to neukoellnbild, photographer)
Berlin, Germany- Tuesday morning the police moved to evict a former school that is being squatted by refugees. The Gerhart-Hauptmann-Schule on Ohlauer Straße, in the neighbourhood of Kreuzberg, Berlin, has been squatted for the last year and a half. It became a central spot for the refugee strike, a movement fighting for equal rights for refugees in Europe during the last two years...
Apartheid in Detroit: Water for corporations, not people June 18, 2014
Biill and Hillary Clinton were up to their ears in more than $10 million worth of legal debt at the end of Clinton’s tenure as president. Donald Trump was bailed out of four bankruptcies. But Detroit residents are having a basic human right – the access to water – cancelled for being late on bills of $150.
In the spring, Detroit’s Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr ordered water shutoffs for 150,000 Detroit residents late on their bills. Orr is an unelected bureaucrat accountable only to Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, who appointed Orr and several other “emergency managers” in largely poor, black communities like Detroit, Benton Harbor, Flint, and Highland Park, to make all financial decisions on behalf of local elected governments.
Orr’s plan will shut off water for 1,500 to 3,000 Detroit residents each week. Neither Orr nor Homrich, the contracting company Orr hired to shut off residents’ water, answered calls for interview requests.
Detroit citizens have been protesting the decision on the basis that water is a human right that cannot be denied to families who need it for cooking, bathing and flushing toilets. Many residents facing water shutoffs are currently on monthly payment plans with the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD), paying upwards of $160 per month as water rates continue to rise, and were given no prior notice that their water was about to be cut off. Last week, the Detroit City Council held a public hearing to discuss a proposed 4 percent hike in water rates.
“The families I’ve talked to in my neighborhood and others around the city are confused about why they’re being hit (in this way),” community activist Russ Bellant told the Michigan Citizen. “Some knew they were behind, but thought they’d have time to pay it. These are people who mow the lawn on the vacant lots next door (to them).”
As the Michigan Citizen reported, residents with delinquent water bills are losing their water while prominent Detroit corporations with much larger delinquent water bills are being left alone. The Palmer Park Golf Club owes $200,000. Joe Louis Arena, home of the Detroit Red Wings, owes DWSD $80,000. Ford Field owes $55,000. Kevyn Orr is arguing that the shutoffs are necessary to pay for the DWSD infrastructure – yet when Detroit raised $1 billion in bonds to pay for new infrastructure, $537 million of it went to banks like JPMorgan Chase, UBS and Morgan Stanley to pay off interest instead.
Community activists are placing blame on the structural, institutionalized poverty in Detroit that forces the people to foot the bill for corporate mismanagement. Detroit’s bankruptcy and urban blight is a direct result of the housing bubble that burst, putting over 60,000 homes in foreclosure and rendering thousands of families homeless.
Dan Gilbert, the billionaire owner of Quicken Loans who is financing much of the gentrified development of downtown Detroit, has been particularly blamed for his company’s role in exacerbating the foreclosure crisis through its intimidation of homeowners, pressuring them into risky subprime lending schemes.
“Instead of going after the corporate institutions who owe millions, they’d rather turn off the water for poor people,” said Demeeko Williams, an organizer with Detroiters Resisting Emergency Management.
To fight back, Williams and other community activist groups like Moratorium NOW! and the Detroit After Party are teaming up to create theDetroit Water Brigade, a mutual aid effort aimed at providing residents with water and stopping water shutoffs with nonviolent direct action. The Detroit Water Brigade has set up a bridal registry on Amazon.com inviting those interested to help purchase necessary supplies like water coolers, cases of bottled water, heavy-duty contractor bags, and orange safety vests.
Some of the more radical direct actions being promoted by the Detroit Water Brigade include distributing flyers instructing people on how to turn their own water back on after it’s been shut off, and how to pre-emptively stop contractors from shutting water for their home. The flyer reads:
“Step 1: If your water is off, have the neighborhood water person or a friend (not you) obtain a water key and turn it back on 1st. (If you expect your water to be turned off, go to step 2.)
“Step 2: Purchase ready mix cement from the hardware [store].
“Step 3: Fill lockbox pipe 3/4ths full with dry cement mix.
“Step 4: Add water to top off. Don’t use rocks because rocks can be sucked out.”
The Detroit Water Brigade is also meeting regularly to train interested residents in nonviolent civil disobedience. Residents are planning to form human chains putting themselves between water lockboxes and contractors hired to shut off water. The water brigade is counting on Detroit’s understaffed police department to not have the resources to arrest and jail everyone participating in the water shutoff demonstrations.
In response to sustained protests from Detroit residents, the DWSD has removed the “Water Shut Off” decals from its trucks.
Source
but #WesternPrivilege means things like this never happen in the west!!!1!!!!11!
Y’all, this is some real shit. If folks can’t get water they can’t live, work, and families risk their kids being taken by CPS for neglect. I was reading up and it looks like folks who can pay are still getting it turned off because they can’t provide proper documentation of home ownership or rental agreements in time. And it’s not like this wasn’t built to happen either with water prices shooting up and another 8% price hike going into effect soon. You need proof that black and brown people don’t matter in the US—Detroit and this water shut off crisis is a pretty clear example. Spread the word and donate to Water Brigade if you can. Maybe if we all start talking about this the UN will intervene like folks in Detroit are asking.
This all definitely happened while we were at AMC.
This is fucked up beyond measure.
