Reblogged seananmcguire
Reblogged thebibliosphere
A 22 yr old in my org got drunk tuesday night and kinda shit on the fact that I'm running a community cleanup for our chapter. Said something along the lines of "i didn't join up to pick trash." Which really bothers me and it took me a while to figure out why. The whole point of the community cleanup is that we're returning to the neighborhoods where we knocked doors for A4 to help clean up their streets and provide material improvement for free in an effort to build inroads with those neighbors.
Like... if your socialism doesn't include picking uo trash, I'm guessing it also doesn't include doing the dishes, babysitting, or anything else that is important but not prestigious. Idk man, fuck off with that shit. You'll pick up trash and you'll like it until you understand why picking up trash isn't anyone's job but your own. I hate that attitude. If helping and doing activism was always fun and visible and impressive, everyone you know would already be doing it.
The first thing the new york chapter of The Young Lords (Puerto Rican American communist civil rights group(Worked alongside the black panthers))did upon forming their group was reach out to their community in east harlem, they asked their community what problems needed to be addressed and consistently the number 1 problem brought up was the trash.
In their chairman Felipe Luciano's words, “So we’re on 110th Street and we actually asked the people, ‘What do you think you need? Is it housing? Is it police brutality?’" Luciano says. "And they said, ‘Muchacho, déjate de todo eso—LA BASURA!” [Listen kid, fuggedaboutit! It’s THE GARBAGE!] And I thought, my God, all this romance, all this ideology, to pick up the garbage?”
And so the young lords responded to their communities needs and they picked up the trash. This was at a time (1969) when there were literal tons of garbage lining the streets, trash collectors would pick up some garbage every now and then but would leave most of it behind, they also refused to sweep the streets, and only allotted 6 big dumpsters in that entire 40 block area. This was due to racist/classist stances held by the almost exclusively italian american trash collector union.
The young lords stepped up in this situation, they go and ask for brooms and bags from the trash collectors union and get refused and insulted. They go back later and steal the brooms and bags, and get started cleaning their neighborhoods. This is a band aid and it doesn't fix things but it does show their community these people care, these people will listen and put in the work, these people are our people, it was the basis of community organizing, building trust and responding to people's actual needs.
While this did help and build trust the problem persisted and so the young lords came up with a program they called the garbage offensive (or maybe the trash offensive i forgot). They started sweeping all of the trash onto the side of the street and waited for the trash collectors to come by, when they refused to pick it up, the young lord would pile that all into trucks and haul it off to 3rd avenue in Manhattan(a much richer whiter area that gets high traffic). They dumped the trash into the middle of the street (not just bags of trash, we are also talking furniture, broken sinks, etc.) and then hauled off and they did this almost daily. They forced people to pay attention. The whole community started to get involved in this, kids, young men and women, and older community members too. They all started to join in on dumping the trash in the richer parts of the city to make people care and pay attention.
These protests got larger and bolder, they would sometimes pile up the trash high and then light it on fire, over turn cars and make a party out of it sometimes too. Police were called and showed up and attacked as they do but the protests persisted.
The Young lords published their demands and sent them out in a press release and their demands were listened too. In that years mayoral race every single candidate had to address the trash problem and promise solutions.
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This is an important lesson that direct action often pushes reforms, if we want reforms the best way to get them is to act and make the state react to us and catch up with our demands.
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Their demands included increased sanitation workers, hiring black and puerto rican sanitation workers, increased dumpsters, increase in pay to sanitation workers, end having to pay off your sanitation workers to ensure your trash gets picked up etc. Many of these demands were met and in the coming years the trash does end up getting picked up regularly and the problem does get dealt with.
The Young Lords end up going on to do so much more. They occupy hospitals, steal supplies from the government, and try to build towards a revolution in america. But it starts here, it starts with the trash it starts with all the small menial hardships. We can talk about revolution all we want but if our neighborhoods are unsanitary, our neighbors hungry, our needs uncared for nothing will come of it. The revolution you want to build however radical you are must start rooted in your community, their wants and needs. And part of that is picking up the trash, starting a community run daycare, and all the little unglamorous day to day struggles that weigh people down.
Thank you for this addition! I'm going to read it to the volunteers who come out to trash pick with us today 🤘
Reblogged my-darling-boy
Me at least twice a week
Reblogged loverlylight
ST. DENIS MEDICAL 1.08 • Gimme the Scuttlebutt
Reblogged
foaming at the mouth over this
FINALLY, no more "the pokemon z framework entry was just scheduled futureproofing with no true indication of the existence OF an actual Pokemon Z version". FINALLY we DO have definitive proof that Pokemon Z was a REAL development project that got scrapped and had its Zygarde elements awkwardly shoved into Su/Mo to make up for that
still believe that one of the greatest bits of all time was on January 6th, 2021 when. well. you know. and twitter was understandably an echo chamber of panic and fear and Justin McElroy just tweeted a selfie with a filter that was like “have a delicious national spaghetti day” followed by 3 tweets that were like “fuck. i’m sorry. i don’t know how to delete scheduled posts” and as i type this two years later i’m laughing
a belated delicious national spaghetti day to you all
Reblogged thefrostflower
I appreciate the sentiment but I don't get all those "we made it to the longest night of the year! the light will start returning soon! it's all uphill from here & we're halfway there!" posts because like. Oct-Dec is the easier half of Winter. Jan-Apr is way harder. there's no big holidays or decorations, everyone is kind of over the whole Cozy Hygge Sweaters & Cocoa vibe so they're just tired & restless instead, and the whole thing is so drawn out & uneventful that it feels like it lasts 10x longer
the cold season Oct-Dec:
the cold season Jan-Apr:
Y'all need Mardi Gras in your life.
It's
- a holiday sometime in the middle of Cold Time Jan - Apr
- The literal point of it is to be hedonistic
- A costume holiday
- A parade holiday
- A Music holiday
- A Feast Day
Turn your
Into
And I am not suggesting you travel to New Orleans.
I am suggesting that you Throw. A. Bacchanal. In. Your. House.
On a Tuesday
Make it a masquerade
Eat all of your favourite foods
Drink, Smoke, or otherwise imbibe to excess
Loud music
Dance
Colours! Sparkles! Lights!
Build a float and march it around your neighborhood to show it off.
Entice the people who come to stare at you to join the party.
Let a cake decide who throws the party next year.
Spend a week leading up to the party throwing smaller parties to get all the prep done!
Rinse and repeat every year sometime in the darkest months.
You dont need to be Catholic. You just need to recognize that this part of the year is often thin, colourless, and humdrum for us all and rage against it.
If you do practice lent, get your yayas out before your difficult fast!
If you are a theater kid and your favorite week was tech week, man are you going to have fun!
If you love a potluck where everyone tries to out cook one another, boy are you going to love this.
Its a time to meet people, and make things together, and shake the cobwebs out of your house, your body, and your soul.
GUESS WHAT TODAY IS!
THE FEAST OF FOOLS!
The 6th of January is the official end of Christmastide and the beginning of Epiphany. And on that note, let's talk about how much of Christmastide has been abandoned because it ::checks notes:: makes the rich people uncomfortable to be confronted with poor people and the theme of Christmastide being merriment and reversals and generosity, I think it's really fucked up that people treat holidays like due dates, where there's too much lead-up and then the day arrives and it's like it's already over. That's unnatural. We need a war on capitalism and how it's destroyed holidays.
Let's talk about the purpose of merry-making and holidays about fun and the dire need humans have for rituals. I'm going to talk about Christianity because it happens to be one of their relevant holidays for that, and because most of what I know about the psychosocial purpose of holidays comes from my studies of Christianity and Christmastide lore specifically.
Christmastide was (and by 'was' I mean in the Middle Ages-Early Modern period), roughly, a month long, no matter where you were in Europe. December 5th (Krampusnacht) to January 6 (Feast of Fools/Epiphany). It encompassed all kinds of sub-holidays like St Tibbs Eve, La Befana Eve, Childermass (blessing of the toys), and all kinds of stuff, depending on where you lived in Europe. But there's a reason we use the term "Christmas season", because it used to be MORE THAN ONE DAY. Christmas Day was one small part of Christmastide! It was smack in the middle, there were celebrations all through! What we would recognise as the ancestor to trick-or-treating and carolling was done all through it, poor folks going door to door, demanding the rich give them charity, reinforcing bonds with poor neighbours with jokes and songs and traditional rituals (like Mari Lwyd!). It was sometimes--especially in Britain--called Wassailing. Wassail is also a hot drink of mulled apple cider, and the apple part is important, because Wassailing is also done to the apple trees, singing to them and giving offerings so they will bear lots of fruit next year. There were all kinds of rituals like this, proper holiday rituals that strengthened community and gave us something to look forward to, something fun to do together to fight off the seasonal depression.
I'm not christian and never have been, but I grew up in christendom and as a child I really liked the idea of Christmastide, the old kind, from when I first read about it in Catherine, Called Birdy. It filled in the blanks and explained a lot of the diminished skeumorphs still present in modern versions of the holiday. A singer from very young, I loved how much music was a part of the holiday, and always had been, and how much coming together was a part of the season. I didn't grow up where we even had winter, but now that I do live somewhere with really terrible winters, I get it.
And then I learned about all the monsters and ghosts, all the fun rituals, that happened in Europe and had been tradition for hundreds of years. From the relatively modern Pantomimes of the British to the march of the Christmas monsters in the streets, to the Feast of Fools and the tradition of reversal (and psychosocial function of pressure release) it embodies, leading into the Epiphany and Carnival season.
The fact that, in my country, Christians have largely abandoned their liturgical calendar is kind of upsetting, especially given how many of them still say they practise their religion. But I would argue it's also kind of why everyone here is so fucking messed up. Because holidays serve a psychosocial function, they have a very important function in a community. They serve as pressure release, or as reinforcement of community bonds, or as a re-centring of community values, or other very important things. I know the USA was founded specifically by Christians who purposely and specifically abandoned every single fucking holiday because they were unfathomable levels of fucked up, but that's kind of my point: I firmly believe the deep-seated isolation, fear of neighbours, and general hostility is because there's no fucking holidays to help people fucking cope with life.
We need to take holidays back from capitalism, we need to divorce them from capitalism and we need to take them out of private isolation and bring them back into the community. Tbh I would not mind Christians as much as I do if I interacted with them in situations other than them trying to convert me, which is the only time they ever interact with me. It's the only time most of Christianity interacts with anybody in their wider community, that's why so many of us get so fucking irritated with them! But if someone knocked on my door in December and sang a song or told a joke and asked for wassail? That's different. I'm not part of that religion but there's a vast and palpable difference between being aggressively told I need to join up or else, and someone giving me a gift because in their religion it's a time for gifts and togetherness with everyone. I don't care why you are making me laugh or reminding me my neighbours wish me well. If more people cared about neighbours and songs and the humble pleasures of the world, no matter why or who they think told them to, it would be a better world.
As we move into the Christian Carnival season, that season of absurdity and mockery, of satire and spoof and clownery, remember there's a reason for that. There's a reason they decided to put that theme smack in the middle of the worst part of snowcountry's winter. It may not have been a direct decision, but there's a reason it happens when it does, all the same.
My point in all of this is: people NEED celebrations. We need all kinds of celebrations, but especially the merry ones. We need to make merry or what is the damn point of anything we do? There's a reason it's a human right to peacefully assemble, and speak freely, and holiday celebrations are a huge part of that. The fact that in the US, any kind of assembly is now being criminalised is stifling our human spirit and destroying community by making it impossible to actually see and interact with our community.
It's only the worst part of the year if you don't have a holiday to celebrate. You don't have to adopt Christendom's holidays. But take inspiration from them. Make up a holiday season that brings warmth to you, that goes on for more than a single hour. Humans made up all religions, and all holidays. There's nothing stopping you from making up your own holiday right now.
Make merry.
Reblogged nukenai
you may think misogyny is good because it is made up of miso, which is delicious, and gyny, which is woman. and girl miso sounds great. but 👆 it is not girl miso
getbentdaily-deactivated2025122
"Miso" is Greek for "hatred". "Gyny" is Greek for "woman" Misogyny literally means "hatred of women".
The word "misogyny" is always associated with the unnecessary hatred and abuse of women. No one ever thinks about this word in a positive light.
will you ever forgive me
jesus christ did i fucking kill them im sorry
Reblogged spartalabouche
for those wanting to help venezuelans affected by the bombings through donations, these are currently the best ways to go. will add more links as more is set up
Reblogged ofgeography
Just got a chatgpt ad where the use case was "can't decide a new years resolution". I can't think of anything more sad than needing a robot to tell you what your own ambitions are. Loser shit.
