I really think we need to stop looking at /solidarity/ as an innate process where oppressed communities NATURALLY align with other oppressed communities and instead look at solidarity as an OVERTLY coalitionary tactic, one that is borne through learning and compassion
Here are 26 ways to join the fight against police violence if showing up at a protest isn’t an option.
https://echolaliachamber.wordpress.com/2020/06/01/beyond-the-streets-accessible-version/
girl we don't "believe in electoralism" that's just the system we live in!!!
Look I saved all my cynicism about this for after the election so that nobody could complain that I was discouraging people from voting.
You're right. This is the system that we live in. I absolutely do not have to be happy about that, I do not have to suggest that voting is the bare minimum that you should do in that system, and I do not have to suggest that the existence of that system precludes other systems within it.
I'm living in America but I don't believe in that either, so why should I act like a bicameral legislature that is nearly ineffectual even when one party controls both houses, a captured supreme court, and what is functionally a royal without a fancy hat are good things to try to square into a functional system?
This shit sucks but I cannot hit the bricks and so I will be complaining about it while offering suggestions for improvements both within and outside the system.
When I don't offer any suggestions people say that I'm not offering any suggestions. When I offer only anarchist suggestions people say I'm discouraging voting. When I say "research judges and pay attention to local elections because city council members become mayors become governors" you're saying "well that's the system."
Yeah! And it sucks! It should be fixed (or at least marginally improved) instead of accepted and that's why I made suggestions to that end!
You act like California voters just love electoralism and the current system. Yes, I voted to reelect him because if I didn't (as in voted for literally any other candidate because of the way reelection works) a Republican would have been put in office. I actually do jail support because much of my family has been jailed so its a central part of my life, but why Newsom was reelected is so abundantly obvious. You can't be a single-issue voter and ideological purity is a fool's errand.
I voted for Newsom yesterday too, and literally most of the words on that post are about voting.
I'm not sure how it's ideological purity to say "if you're going to whine that you had no choice and all you can do is vote you are overlooking a significant amount of work that needs to be done to make electoralism even mildly functional" then give MANY suggestions for how to improve your individual participation in an electoral system as well as suggestions for how to do things outside of an electoral system if you don't think electoralism works.
I literally offered both options.
I'm going to go ahead and quote myself here:
So yeah if you want electoralism to work you have to actually *get deeply and viscerally involved at a local level in a way that requires a significant investment of time and effort* instead of just saying that there was no one else to vote for.
What about this makes you think that I'm saying both parties are the same, or that I'm saying not to vote?
Here's the thing: at this point I'm not even voting because I think it works, I'm voting because my unbroken 18-year streak of participating in literally every primary, state election, national election, recall election, and city council runoff means that none of you can claim I'm acting like voting doesn't matter.
If you are being criticized for the candidates you elect and then are getting defensive and claiming that you voted for the candidate who was your only choice then I'm not the one saying electoralism doesn't work, you are.
If you are saying that you had to vote for the lesser of two evils and there was nothing you could do to prevent that then I'm not the one claiming that your system doesn't allow for change or diverse opinions, you are.
You voted for a shitty candidate because a shitty candidate was what you had. You are now mad that people are calling your candidate shitty. I am telling you what options your system has to improve the candidates that are available for you vote for, and you are accusing me of being too ideologically precious to cast a ballot.
Look bud, I don't get defensive about voting for shitty candidates. I don't throw up my hands and go "well what was I supposed to do?!?" It's harm reduction. Acknowledge that it sucks and figure out how to improve your local politics so that maybe we'll stop electing state governors who claim to be helping the homeless after criminalizing sitting on the street.
Either that or accept that it probably doesn't matter, vote for the shitty candidate who is least shitty, and get back to doing actual work, which it sounds like you're already doing so it shouldn't be that big of an effort.
But don't expect people to be happy and proud of voting for someone who sicced the san francisco PD on panhandlers as the democratic hope to end the "housing crisis."
Ugh, hate that people can turn of reblogs (fully understand it, you do you, but i'm going to jump off of this regardless). Anyway:
Hi, I'm bitching from inside your state. What you can do is jail support. What you can do is write to prisoners. What you can do is donate to, volunteer with, and support prison library programs. What you can do is materially make an effort to improve the lives of people who are being legally enslaved by our state's laws.
If you believe in electoralism what you can do is research the judges on the ballot and vote for the ones who have a history as public defenders, not as prosecutors. You can learn about prison abolition and talk about it to your more mainstream friends and relatives. You can talk to your representatives about universally ending cash bail, not just means-testing it. You can talk to your normie relatives about why liberal DAs like George Gascon don't cause spikes in crime. You can examine your local city council budget, go to city council meetings, and ask that money currently being spent on police instead be spent on things like permanent housing solutions for the unhoused or a city social worker who can help connect people struggling with poverty to support services. Become a grind about it. Get really, really annoying about it. It turns out it's really easy to harass small city councils. You can vote in primaries, and research candidates WELL before primaries because before Newsom was governor he was Lieutenant Governor, and before he was Lieutenant Governor, and before he was Lieutenant Governor he was Mayor, and before he was Mayor he was on the city board of supervisors, which he was first appointed to and then reelected as an incumbent four times. Did you research your city board of supervisors during the last election, or did you vote straight ticket because small offices don't matter? Who'd you vote for for school board? Were there other candidates who could have run instead? Do you know who they were? Or how you could have supported them? Was your city council entirely made up of people who own businesses in the downtown area? What would it take to help your neighbor, or a local librarian, or literally anyone who isn't going to shit blood over high density housing run instead?
Fuck it, you can go out and collect fucking signatures. It takes about a million voter signatures in six months to get a constitutional amendment on the California ballot. It was the legislative push that failed, not a voter-initiated one. Why are you leaving this up to elected officials? This is a voter issue.
So yeah if you want electoralism to work you have to actually *get deeply and viscerally involved at a local level in a way that requires a significant investment of time and effort* instead of just saying that there was no one else to vote for.
And if you don't think electoralism will work you can still do your due diligence and research candidates anyway and then go out and get a thermos of coffee, a cheap cellphone, a friend, and a bunch of small bills to go take the midnight to five am shift making calls for people getting released from jail in the middle of the night. I know in LA they cut them loose at that hour because buses aren't running and they don't have money or a phone for a cab or an uber or to call a relative so if the cops are feeling bored they'll just go cite a bunch of just-released people for loitering. You and a cellphone and a friend can prevent at least that much.
Interested in volunteering for or donating to a prison books program? Below is a directory of US volunteer programs that send books to incarcerated persons. This list is, to my knowledge, complete & accurate as of Sep. 2022. If you know of other programs I should add to this list, please let me know.
California Claremont - The Prison Library Project La Jolla - Books for Prisoners San Deigo San Francisco - Prison Literature Program
Louisiana New Orleans - Books 2 Prisoners (email books2prisoners@riseup.net)
Minnesota Minneapolis - Womens Prison Book Project
North Carolina Asheville - Asheville Prison Books Program Chapel Hill - Internationalist Prison Books Collective
Pennsylvania Philadelphia - Books Through Bars
Washington Seattle - Books To Prisoners
West Virginia Morgantown - Appalachian Prison Book Project
one more! Illinois: Midwest Books to Prisoners
Signal boosting this addition! This one is also located in Chicago (Wicker Park).
I’ve already reblogged a link to this entire article by @crimethinc, but I wanted to highlight the excellent ‘resources’ section on its own as we approach the election. For an anarchist take on the current climate, a list of upcoming actions, and a dope-ass poster to print and distribute, please do check out the full article as well
Trump’s term is ending as it began, with a likelihood of street conflict. The following guides offer a great deal of information about how to participate in effective protests while protecting yourself and your community.
You can find a lot of important information about general security in protest situations here.
This thread spells out how to protect your privacy via proper phone safety at demonstrations—before, during, and after the protest.
You can read some more tips about protest gear from protesters in Hong Kong here.
You can obtain more graphics on this subject here.
These four zines from the Rosehip Medic Collective include a range of useful information.
This collection of resources that appeared shortly before Trump took office includes more topical material, addressing non-violence, solidarity, white supremacy, colonialism, patriarchy, capitalism, and more.
Posted on January 28, 2022 by J Parampathu
Case readers with the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee are volunteers who assist incarcerated members of the Industrial Workers of the World with filing legal appeals and grievances against their prisons’ administrators. While case readers do not provide legal services per se, they do connect incarcerated people with information and resources by looking up relevant case law, formatting legal documents, and researching procedural requirements. Case readers may be outside supporters or incarcerated people themselves.
Incarcerated people receiving legal assistance from a lawyer may nevertheless benefit from case readers. When incarcerated people are having difficulties communicating with their lawyers, for example, case readers on the outside can follow up with attorneys to ensure that they remain accountable to their clients. Having a case reader advocating on the outside also helps keep both legal offices and prison administrators aware that incarcerated people have supportive communities, which can thereby ensure that they are not denied their rights or simply ignored. Case readers on the outside may also assist incarcerated people by hand-delivering mail and other documents, as well as covering legal fees, with IWOC providing reimbursement.
Maintaining lines of communication is a serious barrier for effective prison assistance, and the nature of IWOC’s work presents unique difficulties to organizing. Legal barriers can prevent IWOC stipends from reaching incarcerated case readers, and related correspondence is routinely subjected to search and censor. Incarcerated case readers may also face reprisal for their activities and be punished harshly.
Brianna Peril, a founding member of IWOC, notes that while incarcerated people working on appeals may not face retaliation for doing so, those who are filing cases against their prisons and administrators, or organizing to improve conditions, are often brutally suppressed. Incarcerated case readers therefore take on immense personal risk in providing assistance to fellow incarcerated people. Peril notes that, while incarcerated case readers know that their work with IWOC puts them at risk of retaliation, they nevertheless continue and persevere.
When asked why case readers may be preferable to traditional legal assistance, Peril answers, “Well, for one, it actually exists.” In other words: Because of the long odds involved with winning appellate cases and the little chance of any monetary reward involved with prison grievances, these cases typically do not attract the attention of financially motivated legal professionals. Traditional counsel is thus often cost prohibitive, and the otherwise free legal aid available to incarcerated people is spread quite thin. Add the additional difficulties of communicating with incarcerated clients, as compared to those still awaiting trial, and case readers can be an incarcerated person’s only hope.
Good grief.
Also! You can get Naloxone (also known as Narcan or Evzio) for free at most pharmacies. CVS, Walgreens, and RiteAid are all a part of a program that provides Narcan for free. If you or someone you know takes any type of opioid for whatever reason, it is always smart to have a few of those on hand. It works like nasal spray and has instructions on the packet.
i know hearing people on this website love to pass around those posts with links to free sign language lessons but you know you need to actually put effort into learning about Deaf culture, too, right?
resources for other Deaf cultures include, but are not limited to:
Why do my interests in canning, couponing, and homesteading overlap so often with blogs with titles like ‘The Obedient Housewife’?
Like, I’m like, “I want to learn to make soap and farm,” and suddenly I see 500 “traditional family” motherfuckers like no you are mistaken. I am just a simple lesbian anticapitalist looking to limit my consumerism as much as possible.
‘these fun crafts will keep your kids occupied until your husband gets home!’ no i want a clothespin crown for me
As a nerd who homesteads, let me share the data I have gathered!
First is my megalist of homesteading-related links I’ve gathered over the years. I’m a mod over at r/homesteading and this is where I’ve put a lot of good sources (not all, admittedly some are still sitting in my bookmark folder waiting to be added). The search function at reddit is wretched, but there’s also been lots of good things I’ve shared there too. Please note that many of these sources are not actual webpages, but PDFs. That’s not an accident, PDFs are where you find the really good in-depth stuff.
Many of my sources are from the Extension Service. They won’t try to relate to you based on your lifestyle or sexual identity or religion or whatever, but due to that, they also won’t be alienating you either.
The Cooperative Extension Service (US only) exists in all 50 states and in most counties. It is taxpayer funded. The Extension Service exists to help people become more self sufficient, for farmers to be more successful, for people to be healthier, for kids to be well adjusted, to figure out how to grow the best plants in your area, etc. Some county offices even offer cheap classes in things like gardening, canning, soap making, and they’re taught by people with training in these areas (I once heard a great talk on composting from a soil scientist that way). Do you want to know what type of plant something is? Do you need help figuring out a plant disease or pest issue? You can now contact them online and get great info.
I HIGHLY recommend checking out your state’s extension service website, because they do offer different types of information, depending on what is grown/raised where you are (and how well funded they are). My county extension puts out a monthly gardening newsletter, which includes a helpful ‘this is the time of the year to do —-’ part.
Here’s an example from North Carolina - check out that left sidebar
Here’s an example from California - this website is HUGE so dig around
Here’s an example from New York - they have a calendar at the bottom, showing how they have things like hydroponic and urban agriculture workshops coming up.
Interested in raising animals? Penn State Extension is really really good. They have tons of free materials and courses available online, some I pulled for my megalist at the top of this.
National Center for Home Food Preservation - they cover the important aspects of food safety, and also have some recipes. Many state Extension Service websites will have lots more recipes.
If you have kids, check out 4-H programs for them. It’s part of the local public school system here. If you’re homeschooling, you can also purchase their science-filled educational and self sufficiency materials (materials are divided by age ranges - Cloverbud Member: ages 5-8, Junior Member: ages 9-13, Senior Member: ages 14-19). One of my coworkers is in 4-H, she’s still in high school, and last year she raised an award-winning heifer.
Congress grants the money for funding these programs, and they’re connected with various universities. There’s a level of cutting edge scientific knowledge and academic rigor you don’t find in blogs or even most books. There’s LOTS of homesteading books filled with outdated information like ‘till the earth every year’ hell I still have older coworkers who do it and I’m trying to figure out how to gently tell them that they’re destroying their soil that way, and that there’s better methods now, methods grounded in science.
Knitting - try this youtube series
Hope this is helpful to someone out there.
HOLY FUCKIN SHIT BLESS
I’m going to quote at length from Riot Medicine because I keep seeing questionable or outright wrong shit about how to treat riot control agents like pepper spray and tear gas, especially if it gets in the eyes. The author is an experienced anarchist street medic who has also expressed frustration with this shit. I’ve slightly reformatted the passages below to make linking citations easier.
URBAN LEGENDS
Because of the prevalence of RCAs at demonstrations, medics have invented and deployed their own homegrown treatments and remedies. Many of these have been shown to be ineffective, and some are actually harmful. Like when administering any medication, these remedies may cause an allergic reaction on their own.
LAW. Liquid antacid and water (LAW) is a mixture of 50% liquid antacid and 50% water. In some countries, LAW is simply referred to as Maalox. LAW is an extremely popular treatment, in part because of its simplicity and the minor cooling sensation patients report when LAW is applied to the skin. Liquid antacid does not belong in the eyes, and although rare, ingredients in antacids may cause an allergic reaction. Research on pain relief provided by topical application of antacid is mixed. One study showed no significant decrease in pain for patients exposed to OC spray after applying liquid antacid [1]. Another showed statistically significant decrease in pain up to the 60 minute mark, but concluded “the difference in [pain levels] may have questionable clinical significance [2].” Anecdotal evidence supports the idea that LAW decreases pain for OC spray on the skin, but it is not recommended even if it is marginally more effective.
Baby shampoo. Baby shampoo has not been shown to be effective when used in the eyes or on the skin for treating either pepper spray or tear gas [1] [3] [4].
FAST. Fixative antacid surfactant treatment (FAST) is a pepper spray remedy originally published on It’s Going Down [5]. FAST was designed to be a more effective alternative to LAW that combined the active ingredients of antacid, sunflower lecithin, and baby shampoo. While there was some experimentation done by the creators to determine whether this treatment was effective, it lacked the rigor [to] make conclusions. More generally, research on the individual active ingredients suggests that they do not provide a statistically significant decrease in pain.
Cow’s milk. Plain cow’s milk is another common treatment for pepper spray and tear gas. Pouring milk into the eyes has risk of infection, and this is especially true on hot days where the milk will not remain refrigerated before use. The stickiness and stench of milk is another downside of using milk as a decontaminant. Most importantly, cow’s milk used as a treatment for pepper spray has not been show to have a significant effect on pain levels [1].
Oils. Mineral oil followed immediately by alcohol (MOFIBA) is an outdated treatment for pepper spray contamination that is no longer used by most medics. The treatment worked by covering small patches of skin with mineral oil to attract pepper spray, then removing it with rubbing alcohol. This was retired from use because if done incorrectly can cause additional pain over pepper spray alone. Similarly, people have used vegetable oil to wash the affected area, wiping the residue off after, and this should not be done either. Both of these methods are harmful because oil will trap the RCA against the skin.
Onion. Onions have been inaccurately reported as effective against tear gas. This belief seems to be most prevalent in the Middle East and North Africa. The reported procedure is to breath over whole or cut onions, and in particular to use onions themselves as part of improvised gas masks to mitigate the effects of inhaling tear gas. RCAs, and in particular tear gas, are lachrymators. Chopped onion releases a chemical which is also a lachrymator. Onions do not mitigate or prevent the effects of tear gas.
Vinegar. Vinegar is another commonly suggested ineffective remedy and preventative measure for tear gas inhalation. Activists suggest using it as a decontaminant on affected skin. It has been suggested to soak a bandana in vinegar then breath through it to prevent inhalation of tear gas. Like tear gas, vinegar is a lachrymator. Vinegar vapor irritates the eyes, and prolonged inhalation will irritate the lungs.
Citrus. Lemon and lime have been suggested to be used like vinegar, both as a decontaminant wash for the skin and with a bandana as a filter for tear gas. There is no evidence either of these have any effect on reducing the irritation associated with tear gas or preventing inhalation.
Hydrogen peroxide. Hydrogen peroxide is another remedy used by activists and medics to treat tear gas and pepper spray. There is no evidence that this has any effect on either, and further, it will cause additional burning sensations if it gets into the eyes or other mucous membranes. Given that pepper spray is mainly aimed at the face and tear gas affects the eyes, nose, and mouth, there is high risk of causing additional harm to the patient even if it was an effective treatment.
Lidocaine. Lidocaine in particular when used as a treatment for pepper spray has not been shown to have a significant effect on pain levels [1].
Miscellaneous. Some activists have suggested a variety of treatments such as using baking soda paste, topical analgesics, or toothpaste to treat affected areas. These are not recommended as they trap RCAs against the skin and may worsen its effects.
SUMMARY
Riot control agents are lachrymators that are sprayed on to protesters or deployed as an aerosol. Symptoms are a burning sensation where exposed, especially the eyes, nose, mouth, and lungs. More serious symptoms like vomiting, syncope, anaphylaxis, and respiratory distress may be present as well as secondary traumatic injuries from fired cannisters. Because these are area of effect weapons, you will often end up needing to triage and treat many patients at once. Many common remedies for tear gas and pepper spray have limited clinical effectiveness, and so decontamination should only be done with water or saline. Flush the patient’s eyes and body with water or saline, and afterwards consider wrapping them in an emergency blanket if there is a risk of hypothermia.
here’s a thread by user a_busy_woman on twitter
„take a community class on how not to call the cops and how to deescalate [...]“
all the links in the thread
