this was in North Carolina in response to Samuel Oliver-Bruno being baited by ICE into leaving his sanctuary church. Samuel was taken from Raleigh to George to Texas and has now been confirmed as deported. His wife is medically ill and his son still lives in NC. Here is a link to how to support Samuel and his family: https://www.sanctuaryatcitywell.org/help
Brookhill Village in Charlotte, NC, is being demolished. Hundreds of African-American families are going to be evicted, and their are no plans to offer them any sort of affordable alternative to their homes, which are now being demolished.
Developers like Shook Kelley are actively demolishing the neighborhood and replacing it with higher-end housing that will “attract millenials” without a second thought of what will become of Brookhill’s current residents.
In other words, this is another step in the process of gentrifying Charlotte, making it essentially unlivable for all of the communities that have lived here throughout its entire history.
The developers and architects of this project to displace an entire community have continued shamelessly and unchallenged, what little publicity this event has received has been glamorous news reels, talking of plans to “revitalize” a working-class community.
This Thursday, December 13th, I hope that I can help change that.
A small organization has gathered around the purpose of offering some kind of meaningful resistance – I am proud to say that I have been doing what I can to aid in these efforts.
The main goal of everyone involved has been to organize a community meeting this Thursday in order to rally the community to defend their homes.
However, as you can imagine, this is not as simple as handing out flyers and expecting everyone to be there – I must once again stress that the residents of Brookhill are working class families who work long hours, and need a material reason to show up in opposition to a developer who is literally burning down flyers and posters that mention the event.
The organization, STP Charlotte, has vowed to do their best to
provide transportation to and from the meeting as well as provide food
and child care at the meeting itself.
As you can imagine, this costs money.
If you have the money to spare, I ask that you send what you can to help organize this meeting. This really means a lot to me, but it would certainly mean a whole lot more to the families living in such a precarious housing situation.
Google Pay: ServeThePeopleCLT@Gmail.com
Venmo: @STP-CLT
If you can’t spare any money, consider reblogging this post, and if you know anyone in the area, be sure to let them know.
What’s interesting to me as an Old, who went through Strikethrough on LJ, is seeing how it’s being remembered now in the Discourse here on Tumblr. I’m seeing a bunch of “it was a lot of people who wanted to post child porn” and ok yes that is certainly a take one could have. I’m also seeing “fandom should police itself!” and again, yes, that is certainly a take.
Pull up a chair, friends, let’s discuss.
What people forget about Strikethrough is that while fandom was Loud As Fuck and also, yes, ridiculous (I thought so at the time for that matter I mean COME THE FUCK ON there was a theme song) and possibly the most widely affected group of people, fandom was not the most *profoundly* affected group of people. See, LJ was working off a list of journals handed to them by the group “Warriors For Innocence” who as far as anyone could tell just kinda…searched for some words? And let me tell you, friends, WfI did not distinguish between Harry Potter fanfic that involved Dumbledore and Harry in compromising positions and communities of child sexual abuse survivors. Those second communities? They got shut down, too. So did communities of sexual assault survivors, because one of the words that got targeted was “rape”.
It’s just that the communities of survivors did not have a theme song and icon sets and of course it’s not nearly as ~funny~ and ~woke~ for y’all to have your hot takes about how AO3 and DreamWidth were founded by a bunch of people angry their child porn got taken away when you factor in that survivors were getting hit, too. Kinda like Tumblr is protecting the children now but it’s harming eg sex workers who are following the rules.
None of the communities I was in got lost because of fandom. No, the community I was in that got deleted was sexual assault survivors. Where we were all trying to come to terms with what had happened to us and suddenly, boom, we were told that having “sexual assault” and “rape” in the community interests so that survivors could even find the place was *soliciting illegal activity*. Yeah. That was fun.
As for fandom policing itself, what exactly do people intend by that? Fandom has always had lengthy discussions about what’s acceptable, they were going on in 2007 around Strikethrough. At great and interminable and occasionally kind of nauseating length. One thing we’ve learned in the past 11 years though is that if you provide a reporting mechanism on a platform, it will immediately be weaponized to silence marginalized voices; cf the fash pulling their brigading on Twitter. People have always spoken up and said “that is really not ok” and others have always responded “we disagree” and the arguments have gone on and on and on and the only thing we’ve learned is that asking for platforms to give us a mechanism to report things ends up being weaponized to hurt people who don’t have a damn thing to do with the problem we’re trying to control.
All I really have for everyone for whom Tumblr’s TOS change is their first experience with this kind of thing is hey, listen, the *actual* history is important. Not what you think you know, not the hot takes and the super woke one sentence versions going around – know what actually went down when LJ pulled this shit, and who got hurt the worst by it. Because it wasn’t the Supernatural and Harry Potter fandoms, even though they were the ones being extremely loud and quoting “Hoist the Colors” and making banners and icons (it was a different time, ok). “Protect the children” as a motto will always be used in such a way that it will hurt people who are already marginalized and vulnerable and hurting, we’ve seen it before and we’re seeing it again and already we’re seeing the hot takes about how it’s perfectly acceptable because what’s wrong with you, do you want child porn?
And that’s why all of us who were around for Strikethrough and, for that matter, the actual birth of Tumblr, are tired. We’ve been here before. We’ve heard it all before, word for word. We know who’s going to get hurt, again. We wish people would freakin learn.
Literally nothing you do is safe from the CIA. There are numerous full-on spyware suites developed by them, mostly for iOS and Windows, but also targeting Android, Linux, OS X, and Solaris. Apps thought to be secure (Telegram with encryption enabled, WhatsApp, Signal) were compromised as well, as were a host of other devices (ie smart TVs).
THIS DOES NOT PERTAIN ONLY TO AMERICANS.
If you live in a Shengen area country, your country likely hosts several CIA backed cyberwar experts. They came in via the US consulate in Frankfurt. If you don’t, you likely do as well, but I can’t find anything without sifting through the files myself.
“I have nothing to hide, why does this matter?”: Because there are now multiple thousand “zero hour”- ie “developers get zero hours to fix”- vulnerabilities floating around that no one had any idea existed. The vulnerabilities themselves weren’t leaked, but it’s the fact that someone knew about these and didn’t say.
I hate to make this kinda clickbait-y thing, but this is honest to God one of the most important leaks in history. Our response to this is pretty much going to be life or death for privacy in the developed world. Be loud about this, be annoying about this, and do not shut up about this. Please reblog this and other posts relating to it.
Not just any someone, this is one of the U.S. federal government’s foremost intelligence agencies, the CIA, which even mainstream media has reported operates on a black (off the record) budget, infamous for handing over “full” reports that are almost entirely redacted.
It’s a wonder that anyone out there could believe they are not the subject of surveillance—everyone has something to hide.
The USA can access personal email, chat, and web browsing history. (Source)
The USA tracks the numbers of both parties on phone calls, their locations, as well as time and duration of the call. (Source)
The USA intercepts troves of personal webcam video from innocent people. (Source)
The USA is working to crack all types of sophisticated computer encryption. (Source)
The USA monitors communications between online gamers. (Source)
The USA can set up fake Internet cafes to spy on unsuspecting users. (Source)
The USA can remotely access computers by setting up a fake wireless connection. (Source)
The USA can use radio waves to hack computers that aren’t connected to the internet. (Source)
The USA can set up fake social networking profiles on LinkedIn for spying purposes. (Source)
The USA undermines secure networks [Tor] by diverting users to non-secure channels. (Source)
The USA can intercept phone calls by setting up fake mobile telephony base stations. (Source)
The USA can install a fake SIM card in a cell phone to secretly control it. (Source)
The USA can physically intercept packages, open them, and alter electronic devices. (Source)
The USA makes a USB thumb drive that provides a wireless backdoor into the host computer. (Source)
The USA can set up stations on rooftops to monitor local cell phone communications. (Source)
The USA spies on text messages in China and can hack Chinese cell phones. (Source)
The USA spies on foreign leaders’ cell phones. (Source)
The USA intercepts meeting notes from foreign dignitaries. (Source)
The USA has hacked into the United Nations’ video conferencing system. (Source)
The USA can spy on ambassadors within embassies. (Source)
The USA can track hotel reservations to monitor lodging arrangements. (Source)
The USA can track communications within media organizations. (Source)
The USA can tap transoceanic fiber-optic cables. (Source)
The USA can intercept communications between aircraft and airports. (Source)
And this leak shows that the CIA has all of these technologies and proliferates them to other entities who want this information all the time. You need your privacy to protect yourself and your information. If you have nothing to hide, you have plenty to hide:
The line “if you’ve got nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry
about” is used all too often in defending surveillance overreach. It’s
been debunked countless times in the past, but with the line being
trotted out frequently in response to the NSA revelations, it’s time for
yet another debunking, and there are two good ones that were recently
published. First up, we’ve got Moxie Marlinspike at Wired, who points
out that, you’re wrong if you think you’ve got nothing to hide,
because our criminal laws are so crazy, that anyone sifting through
your data would likely be able to pin quite a few crimes on you if they
just wanted to.
Some of the potentially sensitive facts those records expose becomes
obvious after giving it some thought: Who has called a substance abuse
counselor, a suicide hotline, a divorce lawyer or an abortion provider?
What websites do you read daily? What porn turns you on? What religious
and political groups are you a member of?
Some are less obvious. Because your cellphone’s “routing information”
typically includes information about the nearest cell tower, those
records are also a kind of virtual map showing where you spend your time
— and, when aggregated with others, who you like to spend it with.
We simply cannot possibly know when something is going to incriminate us and the State is not above scapegoating individuals or coercing them into submission. James Duane, a professor at Regent Law School and former defense attorney, notes:
Estimates of the current size of the body of federal
criminal law vary. It has been reported that the Congressional Research
Service cannot even count the current number of federal crimes.
These laws are scattered in over 50 titles of the United States Code,
encompassing roughly 27,000 pages. Worse yet, the statutory code
sections often incorporate, by reference, the provisions and sanctions
of administrative regulations promulgated by various regulatory agencies
under congressional authorization. Estimates of how many such
regulations exist are even less well settled, but the ABA thinks there
are ”nearly 10,000.”
The complexity of modern federal criminal law, codified
in several thousand sections of the United States Code and the virtually
infinite variety of factual circumstances that might trigger an
investigation into a possible violation of the law, make it
difficult for anyone to know, in advance, just when a particular set of
statements might later appear (to a prosecutor) to be relevant to some
such investigation.
Not just the State, but anyone could draw suspicion against you if they had the right information with the right circumstances. We are entitled to our privacy, and these institutions must be held to account.
Reblogging because the links in the bulleted list were broken, as someone brought to my attention.
“Big Pharma” okay are we talking about how privatization and monetization has deeply corrupted the field of medicine or are you talking about how you think chemicals in the water are making the frogs gay
“GMOs”? Are we talking seeds that grow sterile plants and patenting genetic modifications then destroying any competition no matter how small they are? Or are we talking life saving rice with vitamin a to make sure kids don’t go blind in regions not suited for other high vit a veg? … or are we talking about your chidoodle?
Conversely, “alternative medicines”? Are we talking the traditional practices of non-Western societies which have an ancient history of being the cultural tools that allowed communities to take care of the health of their members and are nowadays rigorously studied within these communities to adapt them to the needs of the contemporary life, and can offer important prompts to modern medicine? Or are we talking about a white woman who traveled to India twice, followed a five-hour seminar and knows everything about inner energies now
When I was younger I was very right-wing. I mean…very right-wing. I won’t go into detail, because I’m very deeply ashamed of it, but whatever you’re imagining, it’s probably at least that bad. I’ve taken out a lot of pain on others; I’ve acted in ignorance and waved hate like a flag; I’ve said and did things that hurt a lot of people.
There are artefacts of my past selves online – some of which I’ve locked down and keep around to remind me of my past sins, some of which I’ve scrubbed out, some of which are out of my grasp. If I were ever to become famous, people could find shit on me that would turn your stomach.
But that’s not me anymore. I’ve learned so much in the last ten years. I’ve become more open to seeing things through others’ eyes, and reforged my anger to turn on those who harm others rather than on those who simply want to exist. I’ve learned patience and compassion. I’ve learned how to recognise my privileges and listen to others’ perspectives. I’ve learned to stand up for others, how to hear, how to help, how to correct myself. And I learned some startling shit about myself along the way – with all due irony, some of the things I used to lash out at others for are intrinsic parts of myself.
You wouldn’t know what I am now from what I was then. You wouldn’t know what I was then from what I am now.
It distresses me deeply to think of someone dredging up my dark, awful past and treating me as though that furiously hateful person is still me. It distresses me to see others dredging up the past for anyone who has made efforts to become a better person, out of some sick obsession with proving they’re “problematic.”
Purity culture tells you that once someone says or does something, they can never go back on it. That’s a goddamn lie. While it’s true that some remain unrepentant and never change their ways and continue to harm others, it’s important to allow everyone the chance to learn from their mistakes. Saying something ignorant isn’t murder. Please stop treating it that way. Let people grow.
Still call it out and question it ….
Bruh. No. Listen. Call out what people do now, absolutely. If they haven’t changed, call them out on their record. This post is explicitly not about people who HAVEN’T changed. What this post IS saying is, if someone is making an effort to be a good person, don’t go digging around in their past for evidence that they were once for what they’re now against, or once against what they’re now for, as “proof” of what they “really think,” because people’s opinions and beliefs can change.
The obsession with finding shit in someone’s past and then claiming that a questionable or even sordid past negates all possibility of a good present needs to become extinct. Gold-star activism and purity culture are bullshit and we need to collectively reject the fuck out of them.
If someone has changed for the better, don’t harass them about what they were like before they fuckin’ changed. That’s shitty and it needs to stop.
Site Title 