Mutual aid is basically a fancy term for
helping each other. For an intellectual perspective on it, we turn to
the anarcho-communist writer and thinker Peter Kropotkin, who wrote in
his 1902 text, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, that the concept is foundational to our systems of survival.
“It
is not love and not even sympathy upon which society is based in
mankind,” Kropotkin wrote. “It is the conscience — be it only at the
stage of an instinct — of human solidarity.” Kropotkin went on to argue
that society is based on “the close dependency of every one’s happiness
upon the happiness of all” and “the sense of justice, or equity, which
brings the individual to consider the rights of every other individual
as equal to his own.”
The organizers we talked to seemed to agree
that this moment of crisis is also a time when communities can come
together and be stronger than ever.
“In times like these … it’s
important to transform our relationships and practice community care via
mutual aid,” Nehanda said. “Disabled people are often not thought about
or valued, especially in times like a global pandemic, when we are the
most vulnerable.”
Petty told Teen Vogue, “We have the
ability to organize ourselves and build the infrastructure to get what
we all need when the state and formal institutions fail to do so.”
Ratto
pointed out that “secondary impacts,” like people being out of work,
under quarantine, socially distant, and other social and economic
disruptions, will be as much a part of the crisis as the health impacts.
“We
can all start small,“ Ratto said, “with the people who live on the
floor of our apartment, or the people who live next door and across the
street from us on our streets, and check in and exchange contact
information.”
“There’s nothing new in America about people not
being able to work, being laid off or not having a job, or not having
access to food, or not having access to reliable transportation, or
facing any of those problems,” Ratto continued. “It’s important to keep
the mindset moving forward, [and] that the lessons we learn from this
about how communities can take care of each other and how neighbors can
come together [are] a potential solution to some of the hardships of
coronavirus, but also a potential solution to some of the hardships that
will continue to exist.”
With all of the COVID-19 news and panic going on, the U.S. Government
has been sneakily trying to pass the so called EARN IT Bill which would
remove end-to-end encryption on messages and calls, and allow a scanning
software to read all of them. Websites that don’t comply will lose
protections. This would require any message you send with a US based
service to have the messages scanned by the US govt, and punishes any
company that keeps your messages private.
shared from @anarcblr via copy-paste because reblog was glitching.
I really didn’t think this could be legit but…after some googling, I’ve come to the conclusion that. It is. It’s legit. And it is every bit as horrifying as the article makes it out to be.
Call your senators. Do not sleep on this. This is patriot act tier bullshit.
Call. Your. Reps.
In 2013, information leaked by Edward Snowden showed that Skype had a backdoor which allowed Microsoft to hand over their users’ messages to the NSA despite the fact that those messages were officially declared end-to-end encrypted. This bill will force ALL communications platforms to provide this backdoor to the government or else be sued into bankruptcy.
Creating a backdoor to all forms of encryption is just a means for hackers to inevitably obtain access to the private conversations of whistleblowers and political dissidents.
In the worst case scenario, this even includes compromising the security of organizations obligated to protect your private information including your healthcare records or financial records like social security numbers.
On this day, 18 March 1834 the British Tolpuddle martyrs were sentenced to 7 years’ transportation to Australia for attempting to organise a union. They had been trying to fight pay cuts for agricultural workers, but were shipped to Australia in appalling conditions. However the draconian sentences provoked a public outcry, and a mass campaign in their support eventually forced the King to pardon them.
This is a history of the events: https://libcom.org/history/tolpuddle-martyrs-1834https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1377191582465988/?type=3
