On this day, 3 August 1492, Columbus set sail from Palos, Spain for the “Indies”, with disastrous consequences for the people who already lived there. There are popular myths that he discovered the United States and proved the earth was round. However he never even set foot in what is now the US, and the fact that the earth was a sphere had been known since the days of the ancient Greeks, although Columbus himself believed it was pear-shaped. He landed in what is now known as the Bahamas, where he and his crew were greeted by the Indigenous Arawak people, who lived in village communes and held all property in common. Right away, Columbus began imprisoning and murdering the Indigenous people, and enslaving them to try to find gold. The Arawaks began fighting back, but couldn’t beat the Spanish with their advanced weaponry and armour, and so many began to kill themselves and their children to save them from a worse fate. Colonisers spread across the region, and within just two years, half of the 250,000 indigenous people on Haiti were dead. More Europeans came, and the genocide of the native population continued across the Caribbean and the Americas. Despite all this, today in many places, indigenous communities survive and continue to resist.
This book gives a brief overview of five centuries of genocide and resistance: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/books/products/500-years-of-indigenous-resistance-gord-hillhttps://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1491216481063497/?type=3
If you dare come at me about banning straws, I will throw you into the sun cannon. I’m disabled, I’m crippled, I need disposable plastic straws, and all those pricey ridiculous alternatives aren’t working as well. Plastic straws were invented for the disabled.
Way to shit all over a vital access need because you think straws are worse than corporate greed.
We all care about the turtles, the seals, the oceans, obviously. Notice how the easiest thing to yell about was something that would barely affect anything but appealed heavily to emotional discourse.
The disabled community is huge, and it can be joined by anyone. Most of those As Seen On TV products were invented for us. Society still mocks us and ignores us, and often outright harms us in multiple ways.
Communicate better. Listen better. But stop putting us out in the cold because you are inconvenienced by our simplest needs.
Straws aren’t killing the planet, its animals, or people. They’re a microscopic fraction of an iota of a percentage of the problem. You want to do something? Ban plastic fishing nets. Anything else is just a hollow feel-good gesture at the expense of real living disabled people.
i have an environmental degree and i’ve been saying this since this straw ‘debate’ started: its all a tactic by those in power to distract people’s attention from bigger issues such as fishing waste. don’t fall for it. and don’t be a dick to disabled people who need straws to make their lives easier.
it’s a tactic rich people utilize a lot where they shift the blame for environmental problems on everyday habits and actions of the working class to distract from the fact that its the factories and industries they own and profit from that are to blame for 99% of it
