On Tuesday, a Florida judge sentenced
Daniel Baker, an anti-fascist activist, to 44 months in federal prison
for social media posts that called for armed defense against possible
far-right attacks on the state’s Capitol in the wake of the January 6
riots. Baker, a 34-year-old yoga teacher and emergency medical
technician trainee, had no previous criminal convictions and has already
been held for 10 months of harsh pretrial detention, including seven
months in solitary confinement. He never brought a weapon near a
government building; he amassed no armed anti-fascist forces; he made no
threats on a single individual.
Baker will, nonetheless, face considerably more prison time than most January 6 defendants, including those who crossed state lines, small arsenals in tow, with the aim of overturning a presidential election….
During his sentencing hearing on Tuesday, Baker’s attorney highlighted the case of a Georgia man who drove to Washington,
D.C., with guns and ammunition and sent private texts threatening to
shoot Rep. Nancy Pelosi in the head. The Trump acolyte had missed the
storming of the Capitol by one day due to car trouble. Like Baker, he
was charged with the interstate communication of threats. Unlike Baker,
he had a history of hideous, racist online speech, and direct threats.
And unlike Baker, he could leave prison soon: He will be sentenced in
December and faces between six months to two years in prison; his eight
months of pretrial detention will count as time served. Taking into
account time served, meanwhile, Baker will spend another 34 months —
almost three years — in prison.“Dan’s case speaks volumes about how the state represses the left
much differently than it treats the far right,” Brad Thomson, civil
rights attorney at the People’s Law Office, who did not represent Baker,
told me. “Here, Dan was sentenced to three and a half years for online
posts opposing another January 6 incident. But for actual participants
from January 6, we’re seeing charges and sentences far below that.”
Thomson added that “every case is unique, but the overall message people
will get from this is that online speech calling for militant
antifascist action will send you to prison for much longer than actually
taking militant action with fascists.”
tbh at this point it is really difficult to ignore that harry potter exists as a dog whistle to signal disdain for trans people. whether or not it always was doesn’t detract from how it functions today.
i go into a store see one employee with a pronouns button and one employee with a harry potter button … guess which one repeatedly misgendered my girlfriend, i’m telling you its usage is blatant.
I don’t personally care if you like the series or not, but you do have to acknowledge how it is being used so you can spot it yourself,
you also have to understand how the rest of us may view you as well if youre particularly vocal about your interest in harry potter, because it has been inextricably tied to the transmisogyny of jk. rowling
so if that is how you want to represent yourself, as a transphobe, for better or worse, it is your decision but this is how you will be viewed whether or not you are.
Because I’m interested, can you explain fully how it’s a transphobic series? I’m not entirely sure I understand. Is it just because J.K. Rowling is… well, viewed in the most forgiving possible light, a bit ignorant (and at worst just a played-straight TERF)?
Because JKR is a straight up TERF, she’s incredibly outspoken about it and has been for years, and is personally pouring a metric ton of money into the UK’s TERF movement which in turn is impacting government policy. Additionally she has said on record that she takes ANY support of or interaction with her works as endorsement of her transphobic ass views. Not a single fragment of her books or the setting is worth keeping in the public consciousness when doing so supports and encourages such a vile human being.
First, it’s important to establish the stakes because these have been entirely omitted from all the reporting on the topic.
Regardless
of what one thinks Walgreens’ business logic is for the closings, one
cannot deny the story—either by design or incident—has become a full blown reactionary meme with a specific political context. As Steven Keehner documented
at FAIR in July, a single viral video of shoplifting at Walgreens
solicited over 300 articles nationwide, not including write-ups in South
Africa, Mexico, UK, and South Korea. If you’re wondering this is,
dollar for dollar, 474,183% more coverage than the one (1) mainstream
media article about Walgreens admitting it stole $4.5 million from its employees over several years. The five Walgreens closings announced last week garnered coverage in The New York Times, The Washington Post, ABC News,CBS News, Yahoo News (which ranthree stories), USA Today, and Bloomberg.
There were reports about the closings on Local TV news stations in
Rockford, Ill., Miami, Albany, Chicago, Dayton, Ohio and Jacksonville,
Fla. Sinclair Broadcast Group, a right-wing media conglomerate that owns
TV networks, ran an article about it that was put on the front page of hundreds of “local” new sites. Walgreens closings have been heavily featured on Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Fox and Friends.
No
reasonable person can view this coverage as proportionate or
reasonable. Again, even if one thinks “something needs to be done” about
the “shoplifting epidemic,” one also must concede this story is very
much not about the internal business economics of a single retail drug
store. It is a political story about the specter of rising crime and weak-on-crime liberalism run amok.
This is an undeniable political reality, however much “nuanced” Bay
Area liberals wish to thread the needle between their nominal support
for Black Lives Matter and their calls to “do something” about
shoplifting. Any basic understanding of U.S. history has shown, time and
again, in this country the inevitable result of crime panics is more
Black and Brown people being put in prisons and jails. The inevitable
and obvious political endpoint of this narrative is to (1) repeal Prop
47, which lowers the felony threshold for theft and will thus lead to
harsher and longer sentences for larceny and (2) recall reform San
Francisco DA Chesa Boudin and, more importantly, send a message to other
genuinely progressive prosecutors that they will be swiftly and harshly
punished for attempting to reduce jail and prison populations. Which
will also, invariably, result in more poor Black and Brown people thrown
into our prison meat grinder. This is not up for debate, or a
possibility: It is a political certainty. Not, of course,
because this is who is doing the actual stealing, but because this is
the demographic of people who are disproportionately harmed by a racist
criminal legal system.
The stakes for this narrative could thus
not be higher. What happens in California has out-sized weight on the
entire country, and the backlash against Black Lives Matter knows of no
more potent vehicle than the Walgreens Closing narrative. With these
tremendous human stakes in mind—and an understanding that reporters play
with live ammunition, and that their reporting has human, material
consequences on poor and vulnerable communities—let’s discuss four key
plot holes in the Walgreens Are Closing Due to Organized Crime
Shoplifting Rings narrative:
click through for the actual debunking, but i want to point out just how intense the recall effort for boudin is and how much the media favour it. the only place this anecdote has been reported on whatsoever is in an independent san francisco paper well into the article:
The deadline for submitting Boudin recall signatures is Oct. 25, and efforts to gather names are continuing—with what appear to be some dubious practices.
Castro resident Chris Vasquez told me that he was walking by the
Market Street Safeway in August and saw a tent with a “Free COVID Test”
sign on it. He had recently returned from a wedding and decided a test
was a good idea.
A technician swabbed his nose, then handed him a piece of paper to sign. It turned out to be a Boudin recall petition.
“It was really sketchy,” he said.
The test was real enough: Vasquez got his results from Crestview
Clinical Labs in Southern California. Crestview is on the list of state
sites that are licensed to process COVID tests.
US police killings have been undercounted by at least 17,000 over the last 40 years. A new study confirms that at least half of the people killed by police were never counted. This is groundbreaking data that reveals a truer scope of death caused by police.
So, this isn’t the first post ever made like this, but I’m trying to do something a little different than just posting a bunch of links. I’m only gonna include resources that are international, common, displayed either as a map or as a geographically-sorted list, and easy to participate in, to make this masterpost as accessible as I possibly can. If you’re reading this post you’re probably an English-speaker with an internet connection, and so with that in mind my goal here is that any given link you click will have a decent chance of having something near you, and there will almost certainly be at least one link on this list with something you can plug into
Groups
Mutual Aid Wiki - A map of mutual aid groups of all kinds, largely (but not exclusively) ones started in response to the pandemic
Food Not Bombs - A map of free public meals from rescued food waste. Can be a little outdated
Intentional Community Directory - A map of communes, housing coops, land trusts, eco-villages, and similar communal living projects
Repair Cafés - A map of spaces where you can show up and have your broken items repaired for free (or volunteer to do so for others)
Sharing Spaces
Little Free Library’s Sharing Box Map - A map of little free libraries that have been converted into sharing spaces for food, personal care, or hygiene items
Freedges - A map of community refrigerators for sharing food
None of these lists are comprehensive, and these aren’t the only resources available either. Try using a search engine or looking on social media with keywords like “[your location] mutual aid”
If you’ve looked everywhere you can think of but are still coming up short, you can DM me (not on anon) with the rough area where you live and I’ll try to find some stuff for you
If you don’t have even a single accomplice to start an affinity group with, there are still actions you can take on your own! Check out my #practical tag for ideas
