TheBird

TheBird, 3 months ago to random

So the #KOSA bill isn't dead yet.

If in USA, please go demand of your reps that it die. It's a censorship act. It has nothing to do with kid's safety. Thanks.

TheBird, 3 months ago to random

To help my friends get on the Fedi, I just downloaded my followers list and gave it to them to upload. Then they can prune and refine as needed.

Seemed easier than throwing them to the winds with the daunting task of figuring out who to follow to build their home timeline.

TheBird, 4 months ago to random

God, I love People's CDC and National Nurses United Union. These two orgs banded together with other similar minded orgs and a lot of experts to fight back against the atrocious HICPAC recommendations that would have caused tremendous harm and a lot more deaths.

Now the CDC is saying "widespread recognition of transmission by air" in response to the HICPAC's terrible recommendations, and are effectively rejecting them.

That's a win we desperately needed. And how did we do it?

People like you and me banded together and FOUGHT FOR IT.

When the agencies in charge are doing harmful actions, we must fight against them regardless and fight to save as many lives as we can. That's work that is beyond just voting.

So remember, voting isn't enough. We need to continue to apply pressure in as many ways as possible.

Let's take this win and celebrate for the moment though. Celebrating wins are crucial to the fight too!!

#Pandemic #PandemicMitigations

Some links that are an overview:

Overview from August: https://www.nationalnursesunited.org/press/nnu-delivers-petition-urging-the-cdc-to-strengthen-proposed-infection-control-guidance

People's CDC's recommendations for CDC and HICPAC: https://peoplescdc.org/2023/11/01/recommendations-for-hicpac/

NNU's update on the campaign to stop the weakening of protections and mitigations: https://www.nationalnursesunited.org/cdc-and-hicpac

TheBird, 4 months ago to random

I don't know if I can or ever forgive Leftists who chose "convenience" and eugenics over people's lives and health.

Like, I don't know how to tell these people that by NOT engaging in pandemic mitigations and normalizing them within our cultures = aligning with fascists and eugenicists.

Maybe y'all don't want to hear that truth, but Covid doesn't care what you think. It damages all parts of the body. It's caused millions (in the US alone) to be trapped in the hell of LongCovid, and it's killed millions more.

We have tools that can decrease the deaths and disablements, and instead, Leftists gave up on their morals, threw it all away, and just left folks like me to die.

So yeah. I don't know how to forgive those folks or if forgiveness is even possible.

If you'd like to redeem yourself, then normalize pandemic mitigations. Fight against fascism and eugenics by taking this pandemic seriously. Work with folks like me and include us. Leave none of us behind ever again.

If y'all continue to not do that, then don't act surprised when disabled folks like myself and my allies treat you with suspicion and lack of trust. Your actions speak for yourself.

#MaskUp #PandemicMitigations #Pandemic #Covid #CovidIsNotOver #Leftists

BlackAzizAnansi, 4 months ago to random

Is anyone else still traumatized from 2020?

TheBird, 4 months ago to random

We are in a massive Covid Surge, so please, please #WearAMask.

Care about yourselves and your community. Show that you care by wearing the mask.

Get Air filters and start using them too.

We got to take care of one another since our governments have decided profits matter more than life.

TheBird, 5 months ago to community

Y'all, I know you want to live in a world where diseases don't exist, where you can go about your day without a care in the world.

But today is not that day. That world is not this reality.

I know you wish to live in ignorance of the thousands who die from disease (Covid in particular), the thousands more who end up permanently disabled, and the thousands that are now immuno-compromised.

But today is not that day. That world is not this reality.

I know you wish to pretend the increasing genocides, such as Gaza, Sudan, Congo, and others, aren't happening, so you can eat happily without worrying the hairs on your head. Despite the fact that tens of thousands are dying, where aid is being blocked, where colonizer states are lying through their teeth and not even trying to hide it.

But today is not that day. That world is not this reality.

I know you wish to chant to yourself that Climate Change isn't real and doesn't effect you. That the world isn't turning more hostile to life, so that you can continue to wander through your days without a care. Except, the weather turns more and more violent, where the permafrost melts and releases feedback gases, where the rivers start to run orange and red, where the sea levels rise, where millions are displaced, where hundreds of thousands are dying, where forest fires leave the sky a permanent orange or grey.

But today is not that day. That world is not this reality.

Ignoring reality doesn't make it go away. Pretending everything is just fine doesn't erase the horrors currently happening. Doing nothing doesn't help anyone, let alone you. This apathy is hurting all of us, so instead of falling prey to this falsehood, wake up.

Wake up and listen to those of us who fight for a better and more just present and future.

What does help? How do you rise up and avoid apathy and despair?

By talking with each other. By recognizing the horrors. By acknowledging the very real grief, by working through that grief with one another.

By supporting one another, by loving one another.

By rising up to stop the horrors through marching, political actions, writing campaigns, and other actions.

By pushing for more sustainable ways of being and fighting to get the policies passed and followed-through.

By demanding cease-fires and demanding aid to those in need.

By helping those who the pandemic has isolated and left to die -- getting them food, healthcare, support, and housing.

By building community gardens and sharing food with one another.

By holding forums for your community and talking through the needs of your community. By talking through solutions and finding an egalitarian way to implement them.

By building community with one another.

By building a community that fights fiercely to leave no one behind. To fight for a present and future where everyone has access to food, clean water, housing, healthcare, in-person and virtual support, and Internet/electricity. Where no one has to fear the bombs of another, where no one has to fear for their lives.

This is all possible. We can achieve such a just present and future.

But it requires work.

So will you put aside your yearning for a falsehood? Put aside your demand to return to a past that never really existed?

To instead, take my hand and fight with me for a present and future where we all are able to thrive and exist as we are without fear?

Because today is that day. Today is that day to fight for that reality.

Thanks for reading.

#CommunityCare #CollectiveCare #Community #Climate #Genocide #Justice #Hope #HopeIsADiscipline #JustMyThoughts

TheBird, 5 months ago to community

We need to build better communities of care and support, desperately.

With how our society keeps refusing to acknowledge the pandemic (covid levels are so high in my state right now that it's dangerous to go out), it makes existing with other people even harder, and often disabled, marginalized folks like me get left behind. Forgotten, and it shouldn't be that way. It feels like the Left is so caught up with reacting to the Right's evils, that we've forgotten how to build up communities of solidarity and liberation.

We should be engaging in collective community care. We should be building that together and not eating up the isolating consumerist culture that late-stage-capitalism throws at us.

We need more media networks focused on building up communities of care and communities based on liberation. We need more support for our most vulnerable and to build that up for all people. We need to create alternate ways of giving and receiving that does not fall prey to the consumerist demands of capitalism. We need to support alternative ways of being that is focused on care, agency, creativity, cooperation, and liberation.

The right built up a powerhouse with its grassroots initiatives to an alarming extent, and it's how this mess we're in got worse.

Yes, we must tear down the racist, transphobic, xenophobic, ableist, homophobic, colonalist, sexist system -- but we must ALSO build up an alternative. We can do both at the same time. This isn't an either/or, and right now? We desperately need to build up that alternative because things are going to get worse if we don't stop all oil and coal use, if we don't stop the rise of fascism, if we don't stop the genocides. Climate change is currently intensifying the suffering, and those in power are using that intensification to consolidate fascism.

In the "Impossible Community: Realizing Communitarian Anarchism," John P. Clark wrote: "Over the past generation of radical social theory, we have heard a great deal more about the 'microphysics of power' than we have about the microecology of community. The dominance of the former approach is, I think, less a reflection of the inherent superiority of poststructuralist analysis than a symptom of the defensive nature of oppositional culture in our time. A heavy focus on the 'physics' of the system of power, and the depiction of social action in terms of various 'strategies' and 'tactics' shaped largely in reaction to this system betrays a certain level of capitulation to a dominant mechanistic, objectifying order. There has been a widespread assumption -- not only among post modernist and poststructuralist theorists, but also among political activists -- that the historical destiny of opposition is essentially a future of permanent struggle against the system of power. For many, the highest aspirations of oppositional culture seem to lie in small tactical gains within a fundamentally immovable system and in forms of enjoyment and creativity possible through struggles within the vast labyrinth of power."

Here Clark calls out the reactionary politics that the Left has fallen into, where we've lost that sense of community and instead react to the horrors with 'strategy' and tactics' without laying a groundwork of community to support one another through our process of dismantling a harmful system. This reactionary politics views the system as immovable and a fact of life, when it is anything but.

He writes: "The ideology of permanent struggle embodies some important truths about our creative resources in the face of dominations, but unless these truths are placed within a larger, more affirmative problematic, they easily become a recipe for disillusionment and nihilism. Such a larger problematic underlies the microecology of community. This approach undertakes a careful exploration of the nature and possibilities of community at the molecular level of society, and directs our hopes and efforts toward a project of regenerating human society and liberating human creative powers through engagement in that project. It sets out from the assumption that society, no matter how mechanized and objectified it may become, always remains an organic, dynamic, dialectically developing whole, the product of human creative activity in interaction with the natural world of which it is an inseparable part. Society is shaped by human thought, imagination, and transformative activity, and is not least of all, the result of the kind of primary relationships that humans beings enter into with one another."

Here Clark describes how community and the relationships we build with another shapes society. Without community and building relationships with one another, we fall prey to the false idea that liberation is only a struggle against domination -- an oppositional strategy. Except, that's not the full picture. Liberation is never just about a struggle against opposition. Liberation is about creating a community beneficial for all, an alternative to the dominant oppression, as well as a strategy/tactics that dismantle the oppression. It's a multifaceted approach that builds up more than it tears down.

Clark continues: "It has been suggested that the most immediate concern in a renewed radical politics must be the creation of strong, thriving communities of solidarity and liberation. Such a form of community is one that is engaged deeply in the quest for communal freedom..."

Our freedom cannot be realized without community.

He writes: "It is the process of replacing a system of domination of the person and community through force, violence, and coercion with a system of voluntary, mutualistic cooperation. It is the process of replacing the domination of the person and community through exploitation, manipulation, and instrumentalization for the sake of power with a system of personal and communal self-realization. And it is in the process of replacing the domination of the person and community through alienation and objectification with a system based on agency, self-determination, and free self-expression."

He provides a crucial call out on progressives: "The respectable Left long ago decided that this discourse [of liberation] was too dangerous, and decided to label itself and its aims as 'progressive.' It is no secret that 'progressive' was invented in part as a euphemism for 'liberal,' the political orientation that dares not speak its name. But the term has also become a generic label for virtually anything that is vaguely to the Left, or begins to look Left in a political culture increasingly dominated by the Right. Thus, the rise of 'progressivism' has been an eminently regressive development. The abandonment of terms such as 'women's liberation,' 'Black liberation,' and 'gay [LGBT] liberation,' has coincided with the marginalization of the remnants of what were once called 'freedom movements,' and the co-optation of their issues by the dominant political interests. In the end, the discourse of 'freedom' and 'liberty' has largely been conceded to conservatives and right-wing 'libertarians,' with lamentable consequences. The dominance of the negative, individualist concept of freedom as 'being left alone' goes almost unchallenged, while the positive, social concept of freedom as collective agency and participation in many-sided communal self-realization is seldom mentioned. It is in this context that the concept of the communities of solidarity and liberation takes on crucial importance."

This callout is really needed because we have ceded far too much to the right in regards to terms, communities, and approaches to society. If we truly wish to stop the rise of fascism and its subsequent genocides and oppression, then we need to do more than just react to the bad. We need to tear down at the same time we build up our own grassroots communities.

Clark continues: "It is essential that we look for inspiration for the emergence of such communities not only in certain neglected chapters in the long and diverse history of radical and revolutionary movements, but also in contemporary examples of grassroots, community-based social reorganizations across the globe. It is crucial that we understand how the successes of reactionary movements (and most notably those of the religious Right) have resulted in large part from their achievements in community buildings, in grassroots organizations, and in the creation of organizational forms that fulfill primary social needs. We must understand the way in which both successful liberation movements and successful reactionary ones have created small communities that embody a highly articulated set of values, ideas, beliefs, images, symbols, rituals, and practices, and integrated these communities into a large social movement."

Here Clark points out how the Left has neglected to examine the radical and revolutionary movements -- especially those in the Global South -- created a strong, liberatory community in their fight against oppression, and it is how they won those fights. Such as the 'Arabic Spring' that happened a decade or so ago, where strong communities of liberation toppled dictators. It wasn't reactionary politics that did that. It was a strong community built on solidarity and liberation, that provided for one another's primary needs, while also sharing a common foundation that intensifies that sense of belonging and collective care.

This is what we need to be building. This is what the Left desperately needs if we want to defeat the rise of the Fascist Right and their genocidal campaigns. Our foundation of care, solidarity, agency, communal self-realization, creativity, and liberation exists in the communities we build with one another, and provides us with the strength in which to stand up and tear down the systems of harm and oppression.

So let's keep working on building that, okay?

Thanks for reading this essay.

#CommunityCare #Left #LeftistThought #Community #Anarchism #Liberation #SocialJustice, #Justice, #Solidarity

TheBird, 6 months ago to Trains

I wish we had more trains in America.

#Trains

TheBird, 6 months ago to random

I don't celebrate Thanksgiving in America (dislike it and wish it was focused on reparations instead). However, this time of the year is just holidays after holidays in general.

I don't celebrate holidays much at all (beyond wishing things were different).

Part of that is due to the trauma of holidays from a family that has abusive dynamics. I will not endure holidays with them anymore.

And another part of that is people have largely forgotten disabled folks who cannot drive to visit. Thus, we end up alone on holidays.

Sure, I can feel happy that other people have great holidays.

What makes it much harder is people's reactions when they ask me about my holiday.

Don't ask about mine and act all weirded out when I say, "I did not celebrate as there was no one to celebrate with. So my cat and I played some games and I slept a lot."

You asked.

If you have guilt for forgetting the existence of people like me, for assuming we had someone, for not checking in on us, then learn from that.

And check in on your disabled friends. Ask them how they are feeling. Ask them what their plans are. Listen to them, and if you have the ability to support your disabled friends who are isolated and alone? Maybe do that.

Thanks for reading.

TheBird, 6 months ago to accessibility

Questions for Leftists:

"Is your anarchy only allowing abled bodied people now? Do Disabled People, like myself, not matter to your movement? Are we not worthy of life and care? Do we not deserve the same access to information as you?"

Being inaccessible means excluding an entire swathe of people from the movement for equality, equity, justice, and autonomy. Anyone can become disabled at any time too, so being inaccessible means that someday the movement may end up excluding you.

Being inaccessible also means complicity and conscious or not agreement with the tenets of eugenics and white supremacy/abled-bodied supremacy. Both fight to erase disabled people of all identities and walks of life. When Leftism fails to be accessible, when they adopt these inaccessible approaches, they are taking from white-abled-bodied supremacy to oppress others. They have failed to be inclusive, to be just, to engage in collective care, and they betray the fight for justice.

Either your movement includes us -- nothing without us -- or your movement is part of the oppression that kills us.

In the fight for justice and for our right to exist, there is no middle ground here. Either be accessible in all avenues and include disabled people of all walks of life OR support those that wish to erase our existences.

Accessing information, accessing physical spaces, accessing transportation, accessing social platforms, accessing virtual spaces, accessing public spaces -- these are all the many elements of accessibility.

Accessibility is more than just AltText, ramps, doors that open with a button, and apps that work well with screenreaders.

Accessibility means that disabled people are able to access all the things abled-bodied people can access in all the spaces of life: physical space, transportation space, information space, community space, justice space, virtual space, and collective space.

To say that this is impossible to include everyone, to not even try to be inclusive and accessible? That is being complicit in oppression and eugenics.

Stop doing that.

It is possible to be accessible. It is possible to create a movement that LEAVES NO ONE BEHIND.

And if we are not willing to utilize our imagination to create that? If we fight against that and claim it's too hard?

Then what the fuck are we fighting for? Because it's not justice. It's not a future that will end oppression. It will only continue the oppressive institutions that harm and kill.

Leave No One Behind. Be Accessible. Talk with disabled folks like me and learn ways to be more accessible.

#Justice #LeaveNoOneBehind #Accessibility

yassie_j, 6 months ago to random

Kolektiva’s low score is amusing

Inaccessible leftism, it seems

RE: https://mastodon.social/users/AltTextHealthCheck/statuses/111437159398619361

skinnylatte, 6 months ago (edited 6 months ago) to random

Coffee people are like: you don’t like this super acidic cup of coffee that I under-extracted and roasted badly? Go to coffee jail, heathen!

Tea people are like: I bought a brick of tea called Old Motor Oil. It tastes like it. I am going to drink it alone for the next 15 years and then I am going to break out the brick of old motor oil I bought 29 years ago, to drink older motor oil. I don’t expect anyone else to drink it

#Tea

seachanger, 6 months ago to random

last night I had dinner with a few friends and one told me at the table they’d just flown in from a work conference (unmasked) and I was like oh so you could be giving us all covid right now, and well the vibe was not the same after that

TheBird, 7 months ago to tumblr

Hey all, so what's a good server and/or client for displaced Tumblr users, especially those who are active in various fandoms?

(For instance #SuperCorp or #Korrasami fandoms which are more LGBTQIA fandoms, and those like them).

Any good suggestions? Please reshare so this can be seen by more folks. I'm asking for some buddies of mine.

#Tumblr is apparently dying as well. So there's some #fandoms trying to find a new home.

#Instance #Fediverse

TheBird, 7 months ago to random

Wearing a mask is a sign of rebellion and refusal to align with oppressors. Masks not only keep us safe from airborne diseases (especially when coupled with air purification devices), but it also protects us from facial recognition systems and other surveillance systems.

If you support #Justice, equity, and equality, then #WearAMask . In order to protect each other, we need to wear masks. So be safe, be kind, wear a mask.

TheBird, 7 months ago to Palestine

This post calls out the harm in demanding condemnation of Hamas before any dialogue about the reality of the situation is discussed. I wanted to add to it to discuss what dialogue is: https://www.tumblr.com/jewishvitya/732874053612879872?source=share

These demands are typical oppressor behavior to demand condemnation of the very group the oppressor set up to fall (in case of Hamas).

Dialogue gets shut down every time someone demands condemnation of x or y. It's a derailment meant to shutter all dialogue.

What do I mean by dialogue? Paulo Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed explains: "Dialogue is the encounter between people, mediated by the world, in order to name the world. Hence, dialogue cannot occur between those who want to name the world and those who do not wish this naming—between those who deny others the right to speak their word and those whose right to speak has been denied them. Those who have been denied their primordial right to speak their word must first reclaim this right and prevent the continuation of this dehumanizing aggression."

The dialogue between people, where we name our world, is many different types of people reflecting together about their needs, the present situation, and how to collaborate on ways to meet their needs. That 'naming of the world' term is meant to symbolize people sharing their stories and needs, and seeking understanding and solidarity with one another, where they work together in collaboration toward a better and more just present. (That can only happen if dialogue happens.)

Palestinians aren't being allowed dialogue. They aren't being allowed to name their own world, as it is being named for them by the intense and cruel restrictions set by Israel. This has been happening for decades, and many human rights experts have rightfully called Gaza an open air prison. Palestinians can't even take refugee in "safe zones" right now because those safe zones keep getting bombed by Israel.

The oppressor in this situation holds all the power. To treat their stories as somehow equal in magnitude is to deny the massive inequality between the two. Israel controls the food, electricity, water, fuel, healthcare needs, and freedom to move Palestinians need for basic survival. This is not in any way equal, and to treat it as such is to engage in a massive gaslighting of the situation. Even the citizens of Israel have recognized the massive inequality and deadly harm of this narrative and actions of their increasingly conservative government (86% oppose their government's actions).

Condemning acts of terror derails from the very real horror of an entire ethnic group being held in an open air prison, their sustenance taken away, and being punished for existing as they are. We need to have dialogue about this, and we need to find a way to stop the deaths. Focusing on condemnation first destroys dialogue and makes it harder to find solutions to stop the deaths of thousands.

Focus on saving lives and not on demanding specific words to prove these lives are worth saving. All lives are worth saving. All people have a right to life.

No one has the right to deny the humanity and right to exist of another human, and yet that is what Israel has done to Palestinians. This injustice has killed thousands of civilians. It needs to stop.

"We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist." -- Robert Jones, Jr.

Justice is what love looks like in public, but justice can never be found in murdering other people, especially in this magnitude. Justice involves dialogue, and dialogue requires all parties be treated like human beings, where the oppressive inequality is dismantled, where their right to exist honored, where they have access to what they need to thrive.

#Gaza #Palestine #Dialogue #EndOppression

Terra, 7 months ago to random

deleted_by_author

Adam_Cadmon1, 7 months ago to random

Does 1400 dead Israeli civilians justify the wholesale slaughter of 6500 Palestinian civilians? Tell me.