Wages & Revenge

Science fictional politics.

[wagesandrevenge]

Draft Motion Language for Unions and Orgs Who Want to Support Overdose Prevention Ottawa

You know this already but it’s worth repeating: Overdose Prevention Ottawa is fantastic. And they need our support, so they can go on saving lives and pushing the state to actually respond to the opioid crisis. To that end, I’ve put together some sample motion language you can use to get your union or org to lend some financial and political support to this amazing, essential, community-led project. Feel free to edit as needed. Link to a Google Doc version below. 

Draft Motion to Support Overdose Prevention Ottawa

Whereas there were 865 opioid-related deaths in Ontario in 2016, a 19% increase over the previous year(1),

Whereas more than 2 people die each day in Ontario due to opioid overdose(2),

Whereas more than 700 Ontario health care workers have signed a letter calling on the Provincial Government to declare a health emergency in response to the opioid crisis(3),

Whereas a supervised injection site operating out of Sandy Hill Community Health Centre has been approved for Ottawa but has not yet begun operating,

Whereas emergency overdose prevention sites in Toronto and Vancouver have been successful in both providing harm reduction services to drug consumers and pressuring provincial and federal governments to respond to the crisis(4),

Whereas the pop-up sites in Vancouver alone have reversed over 770 potentially fatal overdoses,

Whereas a group of local health care workers, nurses, harm reduction workers, and volunteers called Overdose Prevention Ottawa (OPO) have set up an emergency overdose prevention site in the City(5),

And whereas OPO has a number of ongoing operating costs, including food and water for volunteers and clients, gas for vehicles, storage for supplies, and the purchase and repair of equipment needed to operate the site,

therefore, be it resolved that Organization Name shall:

1. Make a donation of $NUMBER to Overdose Prevention Ottawa(6),

2. Prepare and send a letter of support to Mayor Jim Watson, Councillor Mathieu Fleury, Police Chief Charles Bordeleau, and Ottawa City Council(7),

3. Distribute information to members on how they can support Overdose Prevention Ottawa(8),

4. Share information about Overdose Prevention Ottawa, including our letter of support, via social media;

5. Aquire a naloxone kit to be kept in the office, and ensure staff are trained in its use.

Moved by: Seconded by: Date:

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

1 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/eric-hoskins-opioid-crisis-1.4266578 2 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-opioid-deaths-1.4077099 3 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/harm-reduction-workers-open-letter-emergency-opioid-crisis-overdose-deaths-1.4264783 4 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/pop-up-overdose-sites-1.4247208 5 https://overdosepreventionottawa.wordpress.com 6 https://www.gofundme.com/OverdosePreventionOttawa 7 https://overdosepreventionottawa.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/opo-support-letter.pdf 8 https://overdosepreventionottawa.wordpress.com/support/

Google Doc version here!

[wagesandrevenge]

A plot generator created using @TinySubversions GenGen tool. 

[wagesandrevenge]

Again, this is why we need science fiction. We often can’t imagine that things could be different because we can’t imagine alternative systems. Ursula LeGuin just gave an incredible speech at the National Book Awards, where she talked about this and said people can’t imagine a world without capitalism. Well, there was a time when people couldn’t imagine a world without the divine right of kings. But the writers, the visionaries, those folks who are able to imagine freedom are absolutely necessary to opening up enough space for folks to imagine that there’s a possibility to exist outside of the current system. I think it’s been a concerted effort to erase those possibilities. These systems that we live under are incredibly unnatural. This is not the way we’re supposed to live. It takes indoctrination to get us to a point where we believe that this is the way things should be. When we take a small step outside that, we are able to break that indoctrination and see that this is not the only way, and in fact there are as many ways to exist as we can imagine.

Inteview with Walidah Imarisha, YES!, December 2014

[wagesandrevenge]

ACAB From Ferguson to Ottawa

Some things for those of us in Ottawa to keep in mind when thinking about the murder of Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson: 

Let’s not forget Ottawa Police Constable Martin Cardinal repeatedly slamming a woman’s head against the trunk of his squad car. 

Let’s not forget Ottawa Police Constable Steve Desjourdy, charged with sexual assault after forcing a woman to the ground in the cellblock, stripping her naked using a pair of scissors, and leaving her nearly naked in a cell for 3 hours.  

Let’s not forget that Desjourdy was assisted with his assault by Ottawa Police Special Constable Melanie Morris, who was also videotaped repeatedly kicking an unresistng man she had just dragged into a cell.

Let’s not forget the 15 officers and special constables named in a variety of lawsuits, all alleging the use of brutal force on people in the Ottawa cellblock in 2008. 

Let’s not forget Ottawa Police Constable Kevin Jacobs, found guilty of brutally beating an 18-year old he’d already handcuffed and arrested during a routine traffic stop.

Let’s not forget Ottawa Police Constable Shyldon Safruk, the off-duty cop who pursued a taxi driver down the Parkway in his SUV, then proceeded to shout racial slurs while severely beating him in an airport parking lot until other taxi drivers intervened.

Let’s not forget the fact that the Ottawa police regularly practice racial profiling, and continue to do so despite the fallout from a 2005 incident when a teenager was pulled over, taunted, and punched by an Ottawa cop.

Let’s not forget that time that an unnamed Ottawa police officer and a CSA worker threatened to take a mom’s kid away unless she consented to an illegal search.

Let’s not forget that most people targeted by police violence are people of colour, are women, are sex workers, are poor. 

Let’s not forget that the majority of Ottawa cops are white males between the ages of 34 and 44, and that more than 1000 Ottawa cops made more than $100,000 in 2013.

Let’s not forget that, according to the Ottawa Police Service’s own statistics, of the 380 complaints filed against them in 2013 only 9 resulted in disciplinary action.

Let’s not forget that in almost every one of the above incidents, the officers involved were never found guilty of any crime. In the rare instances where they were, their punishment amounted to being docked a few days seniority or, being suspended with pay or, irony of irony, having to work the police customer service desk for a few weeks. 

Let’s not forget that these are just a few examples, of incidents we know about that managed to make the news. Let’s not forget that police violence is an everyday reality for many people in Ottawa. 

Let’s not forget that standing in solidarity with Ferguson also means organizing to resist police violence and white supremacy in our own neighbourhoods. 

ACAB

[wagesandrevenge]

Here’s the thing. If you’re going to build a game world, or any story world, around the concept that Racism Is Bad… great. Glad to see it. Doesn’t get done enough. But in the process, you cannot play the false equivalency card — Racism is Bad but so is fighting back against it — and have a moral leg to stand on. The problem with the false equivalency in this situation is that you’re essentially arguing for maintaining the racist status quo… but being really, really sorry about doing so. Which is as useful as balls on a cow.

NK Jemisin's review of Bioshock Infinite.

[wagesandrevenge]

Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Definitive Oral History of a TV Masterpiece

[wagesandrevenge]

[wagesandrevenge]

[wagesandrevenge]

To me, these questions about technology are interesting because they force us to rethink the truisms we currently hold about punishment. When we ask ourselves whether it’s inhumane to inflict a certain technology on someone, we have to make sure it’s not just the unfamiliarity that spooks us. And more importantly, we have to ask ourselves whether punishments like imprisonment are only considered humane because they are familiar, because we’ve all grown up in a world where imprisonment is what happens to people who commit crimes. Is it really OK to lock someone up for the best part of the only life they will ever have, or might it be more humane to tinker with their brains and set them free? When we ask that question, the goal isn’t simply to imagine a bunch of futuristic punishments – the goal is to look at today’s punishments through the lens of the future.

Hell On Earth: Radical life extension would give humans the power to create an artificial hell for criminals. But should we?

[wagesandrevenge]

The Olympic Games are what they are: a floating, rotating boondoggle-shaped shitcake of graft, venality and cronyism, with a spotty icing of athleticism spread thinly on the top to mask the taste of the shit as it goes down the gullet. Barring some sort of active revolution, that’s not going to change. Sochi’s problem is that this time, they heaped extra shit into the cake and skimped on the icing, and what icing it has is also made of shit. You can’t mask the taste. At this point it’s not worth it to try.

John Scalzi on why he's Sitting Out Sochi.

[wagesandrevenge]

And so I cringe a bit at the term ecosocialism — it’s too earth-toned. What we need is a cyborg socialism that points not to the primacy of ecology, but to the integration of natural and social, organic and industrial, ecological and technological; that recognizes human transformations of the natural world without simply asserting domination over it. The Left doesn’t need to go green — to save the planet and the people on it, it needs to go red.

Editorial, Jacobin Mag #13

[wagesandrevenge]

Tea Party Facebook Group Posts BioShock Image Satirizing Tea Party

Slightly modified from the original post on Kotaku: "The National Liberty Foundation is a Florida-based group of radical conservatives associated with the right-wing group that calls themselves the Tea Party. Yesterday, they posted an image (not the one above) which looks a whole lot like an anti-immigrant cartoon. Well, it is an anti-immigrant cartoon; it's just from the video game BioShock Infinite, where it's used as propaganda for the Founders, a jingoistic, xenophobic group that runs the floating city of Columbia. They're the video game equivalent of the Tea Party, and they're portrayed as a nasty group of racist white men. In other words, this Tea Party group just Facebooked an image meant to satirize the Tea Party."

[wagesandrevenge]

"An introductory text to Afrofuturism is most welcome, if uneven."

[alyruko]

Made this for the shirt contest but I like it better as a campaign poster… idk

[wagesandrevenge]

The android is just another way of speaking about the new other, and I consider myself to be part of the other just by being a woman and being black. There’s still certain stereotypes that I have to fight off, and there’s still a certain struggle that we all individually have to go through.

From an interview with the brilliant Janelle Monae in Elle magazine.

[wagesandrevenge]

[jjarichardson]