CALLING ALL LESBIANS AND THEIR SUPPORTERS, URGENT NEED FOR ACTION!
ONE OF THE ONLY LESBIAN BARS IN THE UNITED STATES IS IN IMMINENT DANGER OF CLOSING AT THE END OF THE MONTH!
this is one of the ONLY brown and black owned, brown and black RUN lesbian bars in the united states. this dyke bar saved a historic building where poetry, music, and community has thrived for decades in denver when it was in danger of being demolished and turned into apartments.
unfortunately the repairs needed to keep the old place alive have been a lot for the owners, who are local lesbians who have worked tirelessly (and drained their life savings and taken out all that and more) to make this space happen.
this bar is my second home; it’s a place where other lesbians, ESPECIALLY BLACK AND BROWN LESBIANS, are able to have events, make community, and be free to be themselves. there are so few lesbian bars in the country and WE NEED TO SUPPORT THEM WHILE WE CAN. they are posed to close and the end of april, at which point denver’s historic mercury cafe (the space they took over and saved) will likely be destroyed and turned into another soulless gentrified complex of buildings in what was once (AND ALWAYS WILL BE) denver’s historic black neighborhood, five points.
don’t just save the pearl for colorado lesbians, save the pearl for YOU and for every lesbian and queer person who doesn’t have a place to go be transgender, be in drag, and be in or find love. SAVE THE PEARL BY DONATING AND SHARING!!!!!
A reminder to the "the American government wouldn't..." crowd. They have. They have made their own internment camps before. They have rounded up innocent citizens and immigrants before. The victims of which are still alive to this day and trying to share their stories with the world, they have been trying to warn us for a long time.
George Takei (as seen above) is a famous example of this. He has written about his experiences time and time again, even publishing a book talking about his time in these camps. He may be famous now, but at the time he was just another kid forced from his home. To this day he still firmly dedicates himself to trying to educate and inform people, trying to spread awareness with his platform.
The American Government can and will do terrible things. Do not let anyone convince you otherwise.
ICE just held a dude down with like 6 agents and executed him point blank while he was on the ground on Nicollet ave, where a leftist gun permit class is being held this weekend
The directive is part of a sweeping, nationwide effort by U.S. immigration authorities to identify anyone and everyone trying to film their conduct, including not just ICE but other agencies like Border Patrol as well. The ultimate goal is to create a watchlist of anti-ICE protestors, which the Trump administration believes are part of an organized network of domestic terrorists.
It's important to note at this point that the Trump administration has issued a "National Security Presidential Memorandum" called "NSPM-7" which was written to allow his administration to target pretty much anyone who disagrees with Trump/anyone who organizes to protect their neighborhoods against the currently unconstitutional policies and label them "potential domestic terrorists." This extends not just to people trying to hold ICE accountable for kidnapping and intimidation, but anyone holding what the Trump administration holds "anti-Christian" or "anti-American" views.
The Trump administration isn’t only targeting organizations or groups but even individuals and “entities” whom NSPM-7 says can be identified by any of the following “indicia” (indicators) of violence:
anti-Americanism,
anti-capitalism,
anti-Christianity,
support for the overthrow of the United States Government,
extremism on migration,
extremism on race,
extremism on gender
hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family,
hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on religion, and
hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on morality.
The insanely broad language of this Presidential Memorandum (how are we defining 'traditional views??' How are we defining 'Hostility??') basically says "I can target and black-bag anyone who disagrees with me." And it also targets perfectly legal funding networks for leftist activism like bail funds and mutual aid. And now it's being used to target and intimidate anyone recording ICE activity by declaring such activity as a "potential indicator for radical leftist terrorism."
Please support the wife and son of Renee Good as they grapple with the devastating … Mattie Weiss needs your support for Support for Renee G
it sucks that we have to do this all the time but here’s the gofundme page for the family of the woman who was murdered by ice(is) in minneapolis today.
She was a mother of a 6yo child whose father passed away in 2023. Renee was remarried to a woman - so, to put it bluntly, not only has a child been orphaned by both biological parents, but the possible ramifications of a same-sex stepparent keeping custody amidst all the scrutiny and awful, virulent rhetoric to come makes me nauseous just to think about. Not only will Renee's wife and child need support for therapy and other immediate financial impacts of such a traumatic loss, an ample legal fund may be needed as well. I hope I'm wrong. But in case I'm not, please consider giving as and how you're able.
Let this radicalize you, rather than lead you to despair.
I’m case anyone thought I was joking in my last post.
I and all my fellow Jews are currently living under a stochastic terrorist threat. Educate yourselves. Our lives are at stake. I’m begging you to reblog this.
Antisemitic incidents in the United States rose by about 400% in slightly over two weeks since war broke out in the Middle East after Palest
don't loose hope, there is love in life, there is community. people are coming together to protest all over the world, people are finding solidarity with each other even among the horror, people want to help. over the course of hours i saw hundreds come together from all over the world online to buy e-sim cards for the gaza reporters (they've succeeded in getting internet access to key online press reporters and are working to connect more), i've seen stories of people coming together in their grief and joy. despite the darkness there really is love. and i do believe that it is fundamental to the human condition.
Palestinians prepare food for the displaced families in the south of Gaza Strip. 10-28-2023
The director of the New York Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights of the UN (UN OHCHR), Craig Mokhiber, has resigned in a letter dated 28 October 2023
Craig Mokhiber, United Nations Human Rights office director in New York, has resigned from his position in protest of Israel’s counterattack
the resignation letter can be found embedded in this tweet by Rami Atari (@.Raminho) dated 31 October 2023.
The letters are here:
Transcription:
United Nations | Nations Unies
HEADQUARTERS I SIEGE I NEW YORK, NY 10017
28 October 2023
Dear High Commissioner,
This will be my last official communication to you as Director of the New York Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
I write at a moment of great anguish for the world, including for many of our colleagues. Once again, we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes, and the Organization that we serve appears powerless to stop it. As someone who has investigated human rights in Palestine since the 1980s, lived in Gaza as a UN human rights advisor in the 1990s, and carried out several human rights missions to the country before and since, this is deeply personal to me.
I also worked in these halls through the genocides against the Tutsis, Bosnian Muslims, the Yazidi, and the Rohingya. In each case, when the dust settled on the horrors that had been perpetrated against defenseless civilian populations, it became painfully clear that we had failed in our duty to meet the imperatives of prevention of mass atrocites, of protection of the vulnerable, and of accountability for perpetrators. And so it has been with successive waves of murder and persecution against the Palestinians throughout the entire life of the UN.
High Commissioner, we are failing again.
As a human rights lawyer with more than three decades of experience in the field, I know well that the concept of genocide has often been subject to political abuse. But the current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist settler colonial ideology, in continuation of decades of their systematic persecution and purging, based entirely upon their status as Arabs, and coupled with explicit statements of intent by leaders in the Israeli government and military, leaves no room for doubt or debate. In Gaza, civilian homes, schools, churches, mosques, and medical institutions are wantonly attacked as thousands of civilians are massacred. In the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem, homes are seized and reassigned based entirely on race, and violent settler pogroms are accompanied by Israeli military units. Across the land, Apartheid rules.
This is a text-book case of genocide. The European, ethno-nationalist, settler colonial project in Palestine has entered its final phase, toward the expedited destruction of the last remnants of indigenous Palestinian life in Palestine. What's more, the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, and much of Europe, are wholly complicit in the horrific assault. Not only are these governments refusing to meet their treaty obligations "to ensure respect" for the Geneva Conventions, but they are in fact actively arming the assault, providing economic and intelligence support, and giving political and diplomatic cover for Israel's atrocities.
Volker Turk, High Commissioner for Human Rights Palais Wilson, Geneva
In concert with this, western corporate media, increasingly captured and state-adjacent, are in open breach of Article 20 of the ICCPR, continuously dehumanizing Palestinians to facilitate the genocide, and broadcasting propaganda for war and advocacy of national, racial, or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility, and violence. US-based social media companies are suppressing the voices of human rights defenders while amplifying pro-Israel propaganda. Israel lobby online-trolls and GONGOS are harassing and smearing human rights defenders, and western universities and employers are collaborating with them to punish those who dare to speak out against the atrocities. In the wake of this genocide, there must be an accounting for these actors as well, just as there was for radio Mules Collins in Rwanda.
In such circumstances, the demands on our organization for principled and effective action are greater than ever. But we phave not met the challenge. The protective enforcement power Security Council has again been blocked by US intransigence, the SG [UN Secretary General] is under assault for the mildest of protestations, and our human rights mechanisms are under sustained slanderous attack by an organized, online impunity network.
Decades of distraction by the illusory and largely disingenuous promises of Oslo have diverted the Organization from its core duty to defend international law, international human rights, and the Charter itself. The mantra of the "two-state solution" has become an open joke in the corridors of the UN, both for its utter impossibility in fact, and for its total failure to account for the inalienable human rights of the Palestinian people. The so-called "Quartet" has become nothing more than a fig leaf for inaction and for subservience to a brutal status quo. The (US-scripted) deference to "agreements between the parties themselves" (in place of international law) was always a transparent slight-of-hand, designed to reinforce the power of Israel over the rights of the occupied and dispossessed Palestinians.
High Commissioner, I came to this Organization first in the 1980s, because I found in it a principled, norm-based institution that was squarely on the side of human rights, including in cases where the powerful US, UK, and Europe were not on our side. While my own government, its subsidiarity institutions, and much of the US media were still supporting or justifying South African apartheid, Israeli oppression, and Central American death squads, the UN was standing up for the oppressed peoples of those lands. We had international law on our side. We had human rights on our side. We had principle on our side. Our authority was rooted in our integrity. But no more.
In recent decades, key parts of the UN have surrendered to the power of the US, and to fear of the Israel Lobby, to abandon these principles, and to retreat from international law itself. We have lost a lot in this abandonment, not least our own global credibility. But the Palestinian people have sustained the biggest losses as a result of our failures. It is a stunning historic irony that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in the same year that the Nakba was perpetrated against the Palestinian people. As we commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the UDHR, we would do well to abandon the old cliché that the UDHR was born out of the atrocities that proceeded it, and to admit that it was born alongside one of the most atrocious genocides of the 20th Century, that of the destruction of Palestine. In some sense, the framers were promising human rights to everyone, except the Palestinian people. And let us remember as well, that the UN itself carries the original sin of helping to facilitate the dispossession of the Palestinian people by ratifying the European settler colonial project that seized Palestinian land and turned it over to the colonists. We have much for which to atone.
But the path to atonement is clear. We have much to learn from the principled stance taken in cities around the world in recent days, as masses of people stand up against the genocide, even at risk of beatings and arrest. Palestinians and their allies, human rights defenders of every stripe, Christian and Muslim organizations, and progressive Jewish voices saying "not in our name", are all leading the way. All we have to do is to follow them.
Yesterday, just a few blocks from here, New York's Grand Central Station was completely taken over by thousands of Jewish human rights defenders standing in solidarity with the Palestinian people and demanding an end to Israeli tyranny (many risking arrest, in the process). In doing so, they stripped away in an instant the Israeli hasbara propaganda point (and old antisemitic trope) that Israel somehow represents the Jewish people. It does not. And, as such, Israel is solely responsible for its crimes. On this point, it bears repeating, in spite of Israel lobby smears to the contrary, that criticism of Israel's human rights violations is not antisemitic, any more than criticism of Saudi violations is Islamophobic, criticism of Myanmar violations is anti-Buddhist, or criticism of Indian violations is anti-Hindu. When they seek to silence us with smears, we must raise our voice, not lower it. I trust you will agree, High Commissioner, that this is what speaking truth to power is all about.
But I also find hope in those parts of the UN that have refused to compromise the Organization's human rights principles in spite of enormous pressures to do so. Our independent special rapporteurs, commissions of enquiry, and treaty body experts, alongside most of our staff, have continued to stand up for the human rights of the Palestinian people, even as other parts of the UN (even at the highest levels) have shamefully bowed their heads to power. As the custodians of the human rights norms and standards, OHCHR. has a particular duty to defend those standards. Our job, I believe, is to make our voice heard, from the Secretary-General to the newest UN recruit, and horizontally across the wider UN system, incisting that the human rights of the Palestinian people are not up for debate, negotiation, or compromise anywhere under the blue flag.
What, then, would a UN-norm-based position look like? For what would we work if we were true to our rhetorical admonitions about human rights and equality for all, accountability for perpetrators, redress for victims, protection of the vulnerable, and empowerment for rights-holders, all under the rule of law? The answer, I believe, is simple—if we have the clarity to see beyond the propagandistic smokescreens that distort the vision of justice to which we are sworn, the courage to abandon fear and deference to powerful states, and the will to truly take up the banner of human rights and peace. To be sure, this is a long-term project and a steep climb. But we must begin now or surrender to unspeakable horror. I see ten essential points:
Legitimate action: First, we in the UN must abandon the failed (and largely disingenuous) Oslo paradigm, its illusory two-state solution, its impotent and complicit Quartet, and its subjugation of international law to the dictates of presumed political expediency. Our positions must be unapologetically based on international human rights and international law.
Clarity of Vision: We must stop the pretense that this is simply a conflict over land or religion between two warring parties and admit the reality of the situation in which a disproportionately powerful state is colonizing, persecuting, and dispossessing an indigenous population on the basis of their ethnicity.
One State based on human rights: We must support the establishment of a single, democratic, secular state in all of historic Palestine, with equal rights for Christians, Muslims, and Jews, and, therefore, the dicmantling of the deeply racist, settler-colonial project and an end to apartheid across the land.
Fighting Apartheid: We must redirect all UN efforts and resources to the struggle against apartheid, just as we did for South Africa in the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s.
Return and Compensation: We must reaffirm and insist on the right to return and full compensation for all Palestinians and their families currently living in the occupied territories, in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and in the diaspora across the globe.
Truth and Justice: We must call for a transitional justice process, making full use of decades of accumulated UN investigations, enquiries, and reports, to document the truth, and to ensure accountability for all perpetrators, redress for all victims, and remedies for documented injustices.
Protection: We must press for the deployment of a well-resourced and strongly mandated UN protection force with a sustained mandate to protect civilians from the river to the sea.
Disarmament: We must advocate for the removal and destruction of Israel's massive stockpiles of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, lest the conflict lead to the total destruction of the region and, possibly, beyond.
Mediation: We must recognize that the US and other western powers are in fact not credible mediators, but rather actual parties to the conflict who are complicit with Israel in the violation of Palestinian rights, and we must engage them as such.
Solidarity: We must open our doors (and the doors of the SG) wide to the legions of Palestinian, Israeli, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian human rights defenders who are standing in solidarity with the people of Palestine and their human rights and stop the unconstrained flow of Israel lobbyists to the offices of UN leaders, where they advocate for continued war, persecution, apartheid, and impunity, and smear our human rights defenders for their principled defense of Palestinian rights.
This will take years to achieve, and western powers will fight us every step of the way, so we must be steadfast. In the immediate term, we must work for an immediate ceasefire and an end to the longstanding siege on Gaza, stand up against the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, Jerusalem, and the West Bank (and elsewhere), document the genocidal assault in Gaza, help to bring massive humanitarian aid and reconstruction to the Palestinians, take care of our traumatized colleagues and their families, and fight like hell for a principled approach in the UN's political offices.
The UN's failure in Palestine thus far is not a reason for us to withdraw. Rather it should give us the courage to abandon the failed paradigm of the past, and fully embrace a more principled course. Let us, as OHCHR, boldly and proudly join the anti-apartheid movement that is growing all around the world, adding our logo to the banner of equality and human rights for the Palestinian people. The world is watching. We will all be accountable for where we stood at this crucial moment in history. Let us stand on the side of justice.
I thank you, High Commissioner, Volker, for hearing this final appeal from my desk. I will leave the Office in a few days for the last time, after more than three decades of service. But please do not hesitate to reach out if I can be of assistance in the future.
Sincerely,
Craig Mokhiber
End of transcription.
Emphasis (bolding) is my own. I have added links, where relevant, to explanations of concepts the Director refers to.
here the article linked in the third tweet. also worth noting a haaretz article was recently published with many of the names of the israelis killed in the attack, and 48.8% were soldiers and police officers
shein has taken down the selling of the israeli flag, stopped its collaborations with the country's influencers and also cancelled free delivery services to the country. do you know how fucking insidious you have to be for SHEIN to cut ties with you??? SHEIN???!!!
it makes me physically ill. a Palestinian on twitter's last post was about burying their six-year-old cousin without his head. a Palestinian boy on youtube dreamt of 100k subscribers on his gaming channel. and yesterday he reached 500k, but he has been killed in the bombing of the gaza strip. the class of 2023-24 in Palestine has ended early because there is no student left alive. literal children who were the teachers, artists, doctors, scientists, scholars, writers, engineers of tomorrow.
when is it enough? statistics released by Palestinian officials about the numbers of martyred isn't enough. photographs and videos of fathers scurrying to piece together their children by gathering their body parts isn't enough. presscons surrounded by dead bodies beside a bombed hospital isn't enough.
yet, somehow, the narrative they are pushing is conflict between two faiths. it is absolutely not. this is no religious conflict. this is colonization, occupation, genocide. it's systematic oppression of Palestine and its people.
the word peace has never angered me as much as it has now. and it should anger you too. there can be no peace under violent oppression. there can be no peace after 75 years of ethnic cleansing. there can be no peace in occupied Palestine.
peace is the product of white supremacy, they prod and kill anyone other than them but when retaliation occurs, it is suddenly rabid savages, unjust savages...
according to the last three annual reports on children and armed conflict published by the un secretary-general, 2,985 children total were killed in conflicts spanning 24 countries in 2022. 2,515 in 2021 and 2,674 in 2020 across 22 countries.
in the last 3 weeks, at least 3,195 kids have been killed in gaza. this means that the number of children killed in gaza not this entire year, but since october 7th exceeds the number of children killed in conflicts around the world per year since 2019.
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