Some of you might know the police stole my car (without a search warrant) near the end of May. This was a couple days before they broke into my partner and I’s apartment using pepper balls, a couple of beanbag shotguns, MULTIPLE police cars, and an armored personnel carrier with an officer mounted in the gunner seat.
[Image ID]: Two GIFs. The first shows three police officers forcing me to back up in the hall of my home. One is holding a shield, another is behind him with a bright orange shot gun. The officer on the left is (young?) bald white man flickering his eyes between me and the ground, nametag says E. Kingery.
The second GIF is taken from the floor, when I was handcuffed and my phone was forced out of my hand. The man with the orange shotgun points his finger to the camera, realizing it is still recording. The two officers from the first GIF are standing aside. [End image ID]
[Image ID]: Two photos from my balcony. I sweeped the pepper ball shards into my mop bucket. There was still chemical powder covering the floor up to my door, which makes us cough a LOT. [End image ID]
[Image ID]: Officer Kingery is holding a shotgun with six shells, pointed towards the floor. My partner’s dog is coming up towards him (she was fine). [End image ID]
At first they charged my girlfriend with a misdemeanor, then moved her case to mental health court (WHICH NO ONE KNEW ANYTHING ABOUT) all with our car in the cops’ garage. A few days ago, we got a letter saying that as of Aug 19th the state of Washington is charging each of us with five counts of malicious mischief (which is a felony for property damage, basically). This is all happening whilst we’re organizing a rent strike, dealing with a separate case (don’t get me started on how confusing this legal stuff is), getting our medications in order, dealing with empty eviction threats from our landlord, setting up community aid, removing fascist propaganda from our town, and whatever other organizing effort we can spare (which is never enough). Because of our new charges, our wonderful, experienced, and life-saving lawyer needs to be compensated for his hard work. Unfortunately, that will cost us $5,000 each, for a grand total of $10,000 just for our basic legal fees.
Thankfully, wonderful friends and comrades have organized a gofundme to help pay for the costs. There’s so much happening right now, and everyone is in dire need. That being said, if you can donate even a small amount towards our legal fees we can continue to do activism and NOT END UP IN A COVID INFESTED PRISON!
TL;DR Irresponsible police officers give us felony charges after jacking our car. Lawyers are expensive and we need to pay ours, $10k. We’re disabled trans white working class women.
August 22 2020 - Proud Boys, Qanon cultists, blue lives bootlickers and other assorted far-right scum traveled from all over the US to Portland for a “No Marxism in the US“ march, managing to bus and fly in a couple hundred right-wingers. Local antifascists, actually being from the city, quickly managed to call in a large amount of people to oppose the fascists in response.
The fascists sprayed huge amounts of mace and pepper spray and
beat people,
Proud Boy Alan Swinney pulled his gun and aimed it at people with his finger on the trigger, and Tiny Toese even maced a person in a wheelchair. All the while Portland police stood by and let the violent right-wing mob attack people as much as they wanted, while antiracist protests are attacked by riot police when someone throws an empty water bottle or someone walks in the street.
The coalition of antiracists, hardened by three months of battle with Portland police, held their line, protected each other and after about an hour of skirmishes started driving the far-right attackers back. The nerve of the bootlickers quickly broke and they started scattering in different directions, being chased by large crowds of antifascists, until all the fascists finally fled and left Portland again.
Of course, after the right-wing mob had fled and people were just staying in the area having a good time, making sure no more fascist were planning on attacking, the police finally decided to declare an unlawful assembly, and began attacking and arresting the antifascists still hanging around.
Cops will always side with the fascists because they are a far-right gang themselves, but Portland showed the power of community self defense. [video]/[video]/[video]/[article]
Bonus: Afterwards, the main organizer of the event described the pathetic violent failure of a spectacle like this:
And when they cut your pay/hours/benefits for no reason maybe you can get your XBOX to collectively bargain your employer for you with the help of your PlayStation. Wow! Thanks XBOX!
And dues are assigned on a sliding scale so you would have to be making absolute fuckin bank to be expected to contribute 700 a year
Workers at #Delta have responded to the company’s anti-union propaganda with their own campaign.
So I worked in the Grainworker’s Union for seven years in the late Nineties, and let me tell you… WORTH EVERY PENNY. I have worked so many jobs where my boss tried to pull some stupid fucking shit, from pulling me in every day off I had because they were “so short-staffed!!” (but then not paying me overtime even); to changing the schedule after it was up and yelling at me for not realizing I now worked on my day off when they changed it after I left on my Friday; to not giving me time for lunches; to having less than eight hours between my night shift the evening before and my opening shift the next morning; to mopping in fucking mandatory 2″ minimum high heels. And the union job was the only one where, when they tried to pull shit (because they still do and always will), I could just say “Okay,” and call up our Shop Steward, and say, “He wants me to take my lunch break “in between” changing out the heavy sacks I’ve been emptying every ten minutes all morning, and I need to sit down for thirty goddamned minutes and eat and rest,” and they go, “Okay,” and call my boss back, and then the boss calls you up and goes, “Okay, yeah, just shut down the machines and take your lunch.”
Unions are fucking awesome. The union got us bumped up to danger pay when the job (in a highly explosive environment) used to be minimum wage, in a business where I have literally had a supervisor tell us that if we could keep everything running smoothly with no delays that shift and get everything scheduled loaded up onto the boat, that we’d pull in a full million. For that one shift. Fuck yes, pay us fairly to risk our lives for you!
Back in the Eighties, it wasn’t just government and public sector workers that were unionized, it was around 60% of most jobs in the US (and I believe similar numbers here in Canada), and things were on track to have pretty much everyone unionized when Reagan took over and did everything he could to kill them off. Remember “trickle-down economics”? The idea that if you allow individuals and corporations to make obscene amounts of money, they’d turn around and pump that money back into their businesses and the local economies and benefit everyone, and not just fill out their own bank accounts? How well did that work out?
Thanks to our union, our income was tied to inflation. When inflation rose, so did our hourly wage, by the same amount. Recalculated annually. Afternoon shift? Extra dollar an hour. Night shift? $1.50. Boss tries to make you do something stupidly unsafe? Or make you work through your break? Forget it.
Unions have your back; unions make them behave; unions would stop Jeff Bezos from forcing his employees to pee in goddamned jars rather than taking breaks. Unions are what made the minimum wage a living wage. Union-busting is why it isn’t a living wage anymore, why you have to work two or more full-time jobs to break even in the city, let alone get ahead.
Unions are worth a hell of a lot more than the price of an Xbox paid out over twenty-one paycheques a year at no interest.
Unions or guillotines, Jeff, Delta. You choose. Or we will. And we are getting angry.
This blog is mostly so I can vent my feelings and share my interests. Other than that, I am nothing special.
If you don't like Left Wing political thought and philosophy, all things related to horror, the supernatural, the grotesque, guns or the strange, then get the fuck out. I just warned you.
