Forks is the home of Twilight btw. Every business in town is Twilight-themed.
Yeah… I’ve got my suspicion is that the reason the powerful allow things to change at all is so that they can put their imprint on that change and guarantee that at least some of their privileges pass forward into the next meta. When they DON’T allow the change it takes longer, but they have absolutely no control over how it happens which is quite risky from the perspective of those rich people.
I think we’re very likely past the tipping point for controlled change to end this meta. There’s a reason why we’ve both heard ‘pigs get fat hogs get slaughtered’ about a hundred times in work environments. It’s because it’s true. The hogs are already in the chute. They aren’t dead yet, but the squealing is about to start.
I’d really like to chat up this angle. Mutual aid is not charity. Instead, mutual aid is a revolutionary act. Mutual aid is peeps organizing outside of capitalism to take care of our own needs. It’s building the new world in the shell of the old. The peeps building networks of mutual aid are in it for the long haul, not just for these protests, not just for this pandemic.
Mutual aid is much more than just the $$$. Most importantly it’s true grass roots organizing. It’s also about food (aka food chain security), gear (see “really, really free markets”), skill shares (aka teach-ins), and chore swapping (which is again stepping outside of the capitalist system).
Never forget that solidarity and mutual aid are equals.
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I’ll say something probably unpopular but
The one way Trump wins is if he successfully paints Biden and the dems as lawless people who want to let roving gangs of “them” ransack your house because they abolished police. “Abolish/defund the police” is an absolute gift for the GOP and is exactly what they needed from Floyd’s death.
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Eh. I think he’s already lost the messaging battle on this one. That was a threat maybe a week ago, but now it’s already past us. That old white guy getting fucked up really pushed us past that.
It’s not the 90s anymore. The people are in the streets calling for change, public opinion is rapidly shifting, and the Democrats will never win anything again if they keep trying to pitch their campaigns to white suburban Republicans.
Edit: I thought about this some more, and the two things this type of argument gets wrong is that A)The idea that public opinion can’t be shifted is just wrong, and B)This whole idea of out-triangulating the Republicans isn’t even a proven electoral strategy: Bill Clinton won in 1992 for a lot of reasons, and given that he and Obama are the only Democrats to win the presidency in over 40 years, I think it’s far more likely his win is attributable to being young and charismatic and promising change in the wake of a Bush war in the Middle East and a recession. (Also, Ross Perot took 19% of the vote-- Clinton won with 43% of the popular vote nationwide, and consultants fixate on one specific strategy of his as the Holy Bible of campaigning.)
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It’s so weird how people who are literally actors have popped up in places like NY and ATL as activists doing photo ops with cops. Now maybe some of them are activists when they aren’t acting but some of this shit is fishy as hell
https://twitter.com/wolfthered/status/1270369754432356352?s=21
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There’s going to be a lot of counter-insurgency disinformation tactics to try to neuter the protest energy, whether it’s fake activists trying to hijack the protests, or all the white consultants and the TV personalities who suspiciously in unison yesterday all decided to explain that “abolish police” doesn’t REALLY mean “abolish police,” “defund police” doesn’t REALLY mean “defund police,” etc. Just keep your eyes open, don’t be fooled, and keep fighting.
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if john Oliver and CNN etc are all getting out that message that abolish the police doesn’t actually mean abolish the police then i guess it is all good but you guys are probably under estimating how confusing this will be out of the gate for most people based on the definition of the word.
verb
verb: abolish ; 3rd person present: abolishes ; past tense: abolished ; past participle: abolished ; gerund or present participle: abolishing
- formally put an end to (a system, practice, or institution).
“the tax was abolished in 1977”
Similar:
put an end to
do away with
get rid of
scrap
end
stop
terminate
eradicate
eliminate
exterminate
destroy
annihilate
stamp out
obliterate
wipe out
extinguish
quash
expunge
extirpate
annul
cancel
invalidate
nullify
void
dissolve
erase
delete
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Let’s please resist the urge to go full trumpkin and start claiming fake protestors all over the place.
Also, the most recent usage of the word “abolish” has been linked to abolishing ICE and as far as I know, libs actually want to abolish abolish it. So explaining that we want to abolish abolish ICE, but just abolish (but not really) the police might be, again, confusing.
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Did you read the thread? No one is claiming there are fake protesters all over the place, but it is likely (and seems to be the case here) that there are people cosplaying as activists, whether for their own fucked up reasons or for some other reason, that are harming the overall cause.
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As long as they take all of the funds allocated for military weapons and armor and channel those funds in better ways, seems fine.
Also, it’s extremely counterproductive to complain of the Democrats’ defunding of education when Republicans are by far the more egregious culprits on that front.
Add to the list of police departments that need to be “defunded” (and several officers fired pdq).
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What it means is that by donating to BLM that makes you a proxy donator to literal Nazis who ActBlue would like to run against mainstream Democrats.
I just watched John Oliver and I’m pretty sure he only referenced “defund” not “abolish”.
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