sacred by nature @opheli - Tumblr Blog

[id: several tweets by Dave McKenna @ djmckenna00

"Something I've learned while in law school is about the social construction of crime. I work in a legal clinic on wage theft cases, where employers have "improperly paid" workers by not paying, paying below min wage, withholding overtime, paid sick time, etc.

Most theft is wage theft. Meaning, the dollar value of stolen wages is greater than the value, each year, of all burglaries + robberies, shoplifting, auto theft, combined. Yet, wage theft is not a crime."

Below this tweet is an image comparing the cost of robbery, auto theft, burglary, larceny and wage theft in billions. Robbery only hits 0.34 billion, auto theft 3.8 billion, burglary 4.1 billion, larceny 5.3 billion, and wage theft accounts for greater than 19 billion dollars. The data is sourced from the FBI and EPF.

"If you steal $100 from your employer, you will get arrested. If you call the police because your paycheck is $100 light, the police will tell you to file a complaint with the AG, and the AG will settle the case for between $50 and $200.

(That's actually not true, because AG's only take on big cases where thousands of dollars are at stake, but they will settle big cases by typically requiring the employer to properly pay what is owed. No jail, no criminal record.)

If the AG doesn't want to take the case, it will give you a Private Right of Action to sue the employer in civil court for what you are owed, plus damages. It can take a 6 to 18 months to win at trial, and months or years to collect on the judgement if you win.

This is what we mean when we say crime is socially constructed. Not all social harms are criminalized. Not all actors committing social harm are criminalized.

I settled a case for $27k for three clients last year. We spent a MONTH negotiating the non-disclosure agreement because the employer stated if all his employees sued him and settled like this, he would go BANKRUPT. His business model DEPENDED on wage theft.

These employers go on to hold elected office. 45 famously used wage theft to improve his finances on construction projects, leaving a trail of victims in his wake. Some sued and he had to pay them. Others didn't have resources to pursue multi-year litigation + got nothing."

Then the user responds to someone else asking a question.

The question:

"Can you explain this reasoning? Why expanding criminal liability is a bad idea? For whom?"

The user replies:

"What should we do about it? Criminalize employers or decriminalize theft or something else?

Wage theft shows that we believe restitution is important. Giving the money back is important. Currently, AG keeps track of bad actors and will increase future penalties for bad actors.

It also shows when harm is committed, we don't have to lock someone in a cage or label them a felon, both of which destroy years of life even after the sentence is over. We can demand restitution instead of punishment.

It also shows how ridiculous the label "high crime neighborhood" is. And the arbitrary and racist response of police surveillance in HCN. Because we defined it that way.

Consider the social construction of murder:

The people committing the most harm aren't in jail, don't live in high crime neighborhoods. And "black people commit more crime" is true only because of how we have defined crimes, and how we then surveil their community in response to find more crimes.

There are so many orgs trying to address harm and create accountability within community + without incarceration. We call ourselves prison abolitionists.

Just a few: @ byp100, @ survivepunishNY, @ justicehealing, @ DeeperThanWater, @ BlackAndPinkBos and @ BlmBoston"

end id]

aenramsden

Link to the source story on Twitter.

If someone works a full shift at a restaurant or other place of business but needs to depend on tips to make rent and cover food and other necessities, they are being underpaid.

If someone works for you and you underpay them for that work, you are stealing money that rightfully belong to them.

If your business model depends on underpaying your workers for the labour they do, then your business model depends on stealing money from your workers.

And if your business model depends on stealing money from your workers, you are not a businessman, you are a crook.

i-am-aprl

A Palestinian coin older than Israel

academic-vampire

My iconic uni graduation cake (ft. Mr. Camus)

othersystems

tamamita

You people are four years old

sabojude

It's always strange how some Zionists will treat Zionism like this closed off Jewish religious practice that only Jewish Zionist's specifically are allowed to discuss. It treats Anti-Zionism as outsiders weighing in on something that doesn't concern them.

Of course, we're already aware that Jewish anti Zionists tend to fall outside the Zionist definition of Jewishness, which further emphasizes that this is merely participants and supporters of a colonialist project who'd rather not see their precious project be treated like what it really is.

Of course, the matter of the fact is that I was involved in on the discussion against my will, by virtue of being a Palestinian. I do not possess the luxury of ignoring the occupation I live under.

It's utterly absurd to subject someone to something, and yet deny their right to express their opinion on the matter. You don't exactly see Haudenosaunee storytellers loudly broadcasting closed oral traditions off a megaphone and then expecting people to ignore it. Because that would be absurd.

And yet, for some reason, people still think this arbitrary rule is one must be followed. The feelings of the occupier and their supporters is treated as if it carries more weight than the livelihoods of the occupied. It's pure liberal idpol. It's using terms about feelings and identity to control the narrative around the reality. Ultimately, though, there's a silver lining, and it's that regardless of how strong our feelings about something are, this has little to no baring on the reality at hand.

reachartwork

(reposting on request of @tamamita)

The stance that Zionism is some inherent aspect of Judaism deserving the same respect we give to the closed parts of the practice is always very silly to me. The reason non-Jewish people shouldn’t weigh in on some aspects of Judaism - sefirot, halacha, rituals and symbols - isn’t because of some iron law of noninterference, but because those rituals are only meaningful to us in the first place; there’s no reason for a gentile to be participating unless they’re specifically invited because why would it be meaningful to you at all in the first place?

Zionism, on the other hand, is just Jewish-flavored ethnonationalism. There is no ritual or mystic component that renders it "only meaningful to insiders." In fact, it necessarily involves outsiders - especially the ones being slaughtered in our religion’s name, but also anyone remotely opposed to the concept of an ethnostate. There’s nothing sacred about that, and you’re perverting the idea of a closed practice to justify fascist bloodlust when you tell people "non-Jews can’t have opinions on Zionism."

Saying only Jews can debate Zionism is like saying only Afrikaners could debate apartheid. Prima facie absurd.

The category of "closed practice" was developed to protect minority communities' internal cultural and religious integrity - it was never meant to shield nationalist policies of territorial dispossession and violence. Conflating the two is self-evidently bad faith and I think a lot of zionists know that deep down.

8blogsthena-deactivated20250309

How it feels to be in public

littelgreencat

This kind of movies >>>>

(I'm not even going to include the Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia here, they're in a league of their own, my favourite movies ever)

vexheart

myfairynuffstuff

David Shrigley (b.1968) - Balance the Ball on Your Nose. 2021.

Hi 👋, My name is Mohammad, and I’m reaching out in a moment of desperate need. I’m a father of three young children living in Gaza, and we are caught in the midst of a catastrophic war. Our home is no longer a safe haven, and the future here seems increasingly uncertain. 💔

I’ve launched a fundraising campaign with the goal of raising $40,000 to relocate my family to a safer place where my children can grow up in peace and have a chance at a brighter future.

Unfortunately, my previous fundraising efforts were abruptly halted when my account was terminated without explanation. However, I remain determined to keep fighting for my family’s safety and well-being. 🫶

If you could take a moment to read our story, consider donating, or simply share our campaign with others, it would make an incredible difference. Every act of kindness, no matter how small, brings us one step closer to safety and a new beginning. 🙏

Thank you for your time, compassion, and support. ❤️‍🩹

https://gofund.me/fd1faea2 🔗

boost!

chrisdornerfanclub

Calling me a self-hating Jew for supporting Palestine is just funny. I’m I also self-hating for being an antifascist? Opposing Zionism is a Jewish tradition that’s just as old as Zionism is. Before the founding of the nation-state of Israel, the main opponents of Zionist ideology outside of Palestine were other Jews! Because those Jews were often anarchist, socialist or communist they were a major target of the Holocaust.

That tradition of Jewish antizionism faced a major setback because of how many of them would die in the camps. Only recently have we started to see a significant resurgence of this tradition, and it still is nowhere near the plurality or dominance it once held. Zionists considered the question settled in 1948 and because so many dissenting voices had died or were forced into diaspora across the world because of the Nazis, there was not enough people to resist these actions.

Still, the Zionist hijacking of the global Jewish community towards hegemonic, uncritical support for settler colonialism abroad was not complete until after 1967. There were still Jewish dissenters in the community, though efforts by right wing Jewish organizations following the aftermath of 1967 to marginalize and demonize criticism of Israel by Jews would set back the cause of Jewish antizionism and internal criticism of Israeli colonization for decades.

Israel and pro-Zionist organizations also spend a lot of money convincing diaspora Jews that this nation works in our interests. If this was a foregone conclusion, there would be no need to build an extensive pro-Israeli propaganda network through every mainstream Jewish organization. Despite the propaganda we’re fed since childhood and the popular marginalization and shaming of Jewish dissenters, large cracks are starting in appear in at least American Jewish support for Israel. More American Jews under 40 are willing to openly criticize Israel and even support the liberation of Palestine into a singular binational state with equality for all its citizens than in many decades. This is obviously not enough. These are rookie numbers and will need to be increased through active political education and engagement with the Jewish masses.

Israel is a kapo state. The earliest Zionists such as Theodore Herzl were willing to openly work with antisemites to achieve their goals. The infamous Belfour Declaration was of course authored by Arthur Belfour, an infamous British antisemite who agreed with the Zionists on the necessity of mass Jewish emigration from Europe. Then there’s the Transfer Agreement between Zionist settlement organizations and Adolf Hitler, which stipulated that if some Jews were allowed to settle in Palestine, the Nazi Party could seize their possessions and assets in exchange. What did these organizations have in common? Their desire for the Final Negation of the Diaspora. Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine when the mainstream media wouldn’t deny, obfuscate or dismiss the neo-Nazism of the Azov Battalion, Israel was providing aid including weapons to this openly neo-Nazi paramilitary. Israel also armed Rodrigo “like Hitler killed 3 million Jews [sic], I will kill 3 million drug users” Duterte’s anticommunist drug war.

The creation of the state of Israel has done nothing to improve the conditions of Jews in the diaspora who are constantly the targets of popular conspiracy theories, intimidation and violence by white supremacists. Zionism actively consorts with the enemies of the Jewish masses and is therefore also an enemy of the Jewish masses, an active threat to our continued existence on this planet.

A diasporic people who have been repeatedly forced to flee their homes through violence while their possessions and assets are seized over a 1000 year period cannot liberate itself through driving another people into diaspora through violence while they seize their possessions and assets. That is not liberation, that is a sick, perverted inversion of the oppression we’ve suffered and now inflict on another people.

There is no pragmatic, good, moral or just reason to support Zionism and Israel as a Jew.

embodiedfutures

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Outspoken activists, everyday students and teachers like you and me, are doxxed on the website for speaking out :(

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