Alice Oswald, Nobody
On this day, 2 May 1967, a group of Black Panthers armed with rifles and shotguns marched into the California State Capitol protesting against a gun control bill which was targeting them. To fight police violence and harassment against Black people, the Panthers used radios to listen to police calls, then members would attend scenes of arrest with law books and openly carrying shotguns – which was legal – and advise arrestees of their constitutional rights. To stop this self defence against the police, authorities brought in the Mulford Bill – dubbed the “Panther Bill” by the media – to ban the open carrying of loaded firearms in public. The National Rifle Association, supposedly a gun rights advocacy group, supported Republican governor Ronald Reagan in signing the legislation. To learn more about the Panthers, check out these books written by former members: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/books/black-panthers https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=618930186946867&set=a.602588028581083&type=3
cruelty is so easy. youre not special for choosing it
"The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain."
-Ursula K. LeGuin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
"Each of us from the moment of his or her birth exists in an environment in which it is easy to do evil and hard to do good.... If I know somebody very well, in ten minutes, if I set my mind to it, I could perhaps say to them things so cruel, so destructive, that they would never forget them for the rest of their life. But could I in ten minutes say things so beautiful, so creative, that they would never forget them?"
—Bishop Kallistos Ware, ParaboaT, Spring 1985
from “Flare” by Mary Oliver
It’s insane that I’ll never see a butterfly migration and not think of you
On this day, 14 March 1879, legendary physicist Albert Einstein was born in Germany. While most famous for his scientific theories which have changed the world, Einstein was also a socialist, and in 1949 wrote a devastating short critique of the capitalist system and its inherent flaws which was published in Monthly Review. In it, he argues: “Production is carried on for profit, not for use. There is no provision that all those able and willing to work will always be in a position to find employment; an “army of unemployed” almost always exists. The worker is constantly in fear of losing his (sic) job. Since unemployed and poorly paid workers do not provide a profitable market, the production of consumers’ goods is restricted, and great hardship is the consequence. Technological progress frequently results in more unemployment rather than in an easing of the burden of work for all. The profit motive, in conjunction with competition among capitalists, is responsible for an instability in the accumulation and utilisation of capital which leads to increasingly severe depressions. Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labour, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals which I mentioned before. "This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career. "I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.” More: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8591/birth-of-albert-einstein https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.1819457841572691/2230476593804145/?type=3
{Juansen Dizon, I Am The Architect of My Own Destruction page 24/ Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 6: 1955-1966/ Alice Hoffman, The Red Garden/ Anaïs Nin, from The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 5: 1947-1955/ Haruki Murakami: Norwegian Wood, page 276/ Michael Ondaatje/ Catherynne M. Valente, The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden/ D.H. Lawrence, from The Complete Works; The Plumbed Serpent/ Jean-Paul Sartre, from No Exit/ Alice Notley, from In The Pines: Poems; "In The Pines,"}
I’ve never been with an addict before, or at least someone who was addicted to something besides working out. The end of the privilege.
I don’t think it’s normal to expect to clean your partners puke
Snoop Dogg ft Kid Cudi: That Tree
A handy guide…
The wisdom of Lucille “Lucy” van Pelt…
Sometimes I wish I had the confidence of an online polyamorous white genxer from the Pacific Northwest who just got a new crystal necklace and is using it as an excuse to post a tit pic to a chorus of praise from excitable bearded pagans & bisexual barnes and noble employees who do burlesque
There's some company, blackstone, blackwater, something like that, buying up houses that go on sale for 30k above asking price. Immediately outbidding anyone who tries to buy. Corporations are also buying property all across america.
Fuck...
Nobody comes to my tumblr for this, but Americans need to understand that THIS is why my generation can't afford to own a house outside of Smallest-Town USA. THIS is also why people my age in bigger cities struggle to find decent apartments that don't consume half of our monthly income.
Housing Speculation is when rich folk, corporations, and wannabe landlords buy up property and sit on it like dragons hoarding gold. The Dutch have a dragon-adjacent term for this because speculation devastated their housing market in the 70s-80s leading to some gnarly Dutch squatting culture. They let homes sit empty, good as money in the bank and watch the value increase as everyone else competes for the remaining houses. That's value they can borrow against, that's a few hundred-thousand dollars if you need some quick cash, that's a property you can rent out for regular income while charging tenants for repairs or maintenance and fining them for wear and tear. If property values go up and laws prohibit raising the rent by a certain degree, in many places they can find shady ways to evict that tenant, make no changes and charge the next renter more. It's probably illegal but if you rent to people below a certain income, you can be assured most can't afford to take you to court.
I live in Chicago. Many of the properties that used to house students, small families, single parents, older people, low-income folks have been gobbled up by little airbnb barons who colonize previously well-established neighborhoods and price out families who've lived there for generations because they can't keep up with the artificially inflated property values. The airbnbs spread like cancer until a handful of people can dominate the "affordable" housing for an entire neighborhood. It's gentrification on meth, but without the kind of localized money circulation or community improvements you get when people live and work and spend within their neighborhoods. It pushes residents further and further from services and resources until all that's left is the locked-in commodififation of an exploitable renting class.
If that wasn't bad enough, it also means that when large areas of habitable property are being hoarded by investors with portfolios of empty houses and airbnbs, that reduces the number of actual residents, which can spoil legislation on a community level. When all the storefront space in a neighborhood like mine is controlled by 4 people, you find the number of businesses and services that catered to lower income families start to become whiskey bars, boutiques, vintage shops, and upscale chain retail, businesses that bring money into the property owners at the expense of community accessibility, turning a once largely Hispanic neighborhood community into a posh little destination for travelers, tourists, and other aspiring business speculators who see every empty building as their next revinue stream. Gut a block of apartments with attached commercial space and build half as many luxury condos above a combination tapas bar and day spa and you've instantly got half as many tenants on that block to vote against your expansion schemes. Replacing low-income residents with higher-rent folks also bakes in support for future "improvements" that further contribute to the commodification of communities.
Property ownership has always been a tool of the most privileged class to extract value from the working class because the only options become rent, move, or live on the street for all they care. At which point, the police will sweep you further and further into the gutter until they have an excuse to send you to prison. This kind of speculation and consolidation allows people with excess resources to buy up the things the rest of us require to function and sell it back to us forever.
These are the same people that invented the fairy tale about how if we work hard enough and save and spend like smart people, then we can be landlords too! We can own businesses, raise families, chase dreams and be happy if we are smart like they are. But if we can't it's because we're lazy little parasites who need to have our lives portioned out to us lest we waste time that could be earning money for the landlord.
I hate these fuckers so fucking much.
Noviadi Angkasapura Untitled, 2018 Ballpoint pen, graphite on cardboard 17 x 11 inches 43.2 x 27.9 cm NoA 343
Georg Wilson (British, 1998) - A Twitch Upon the Thread (2022)
Loren Erdrich (American, 1978) - Your Face Is Bangin' (2018)