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#antiracism
end-otw-racism · 1 year
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End OTW Racism: A Call To Action
A fan protest against the lack of action from the OTW on addressing issues of harassment and racism on AO3 and within the organization
This is a Call To Action for Fans of Color and Allies
AO3 has acknowledged that they have a harassment & racism problem that its parent organization, the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), needs to address. Currently, people can use AO3 to harass others through fanworks, comments, and tags. Just a few examples include: racist Untamed “spitefic” that used anti-Indigenous slurs and was written specifically to lash out at fans of color; a Transformer fic that used its Black-coded character to reenact George Floyd’s murder in July 2020; someone naming a fandom scholar who criticized their Nazi omegaverse fic in the tags of the fic specifically to incite harassment to the scholar; writers using racial slurs against commenters who pointed out racism in their hockey fic; and so much more.
In June 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, the OTW committed to addressing these issues. It has been nearly three years and they have not yet implemented any of the changes they promised, other than a blocking/muting tool that was already in development before 2020. We need to hold the OTW accountable to their own promises. (See the section further down on “Why Are We Doing This” for even more detail.)
As fans, together, we are powerful. We are organizing to protest the lack of action on promises made by the Organization for Transformative works to deal with issues of racism and harassment on their platform, Archive of Our Own.
We call on fans to do any or all of the following actions any time between May 17 to 31, 2023 to send a message to AO3 and OTW that we will hold them to their promises.
On AO3
Change the title of ten (or more!) of your most recent or most popular fanworks to include ‘End Racism in the OTW’ in the beginning, and provide a link to this post in your summary or first/top creator’s note
Post a new fanwork any time between May 17th to 31st with “End Racism in the OTW” either as the title or at the beginning of the title. The fanwork does not have to be long - it can be a 100-word fic, a quick sketch, a podfic of a ficlet, a 20-second vid/edit, a short piece of meta, etc. In the summary or first/top creator’s note, provide a link to this post
If updating any WIPs with a new chapter, add ‘End Racism in the OTW’ to the title and provide a link back to this post in your summary or first/top author’s note
Update your AO3 icon using the profile pic graphic in our Social Media Toolkit
Plan to maintain these changes until May 31, 2023, or longer if you wish
Send a message to the OTW asking for an update on their 2020 commitments!
For Readers: leave encouraging comments on fanworks with the "End Racism in the OTW" title to show your support of this initiative.
On tumblr
Reblog this Call to Action with the tag #End OTW Racism
Update your profile pics and banners using the graphics in our Social Media Toolkit
Follow this account for updates and signal boost our posts
On Twitter
Follow @/EndOTWRacism (remove the backslash) and signal boost our pinned tweet
Update your profile pics and banners using our graphics, and change your display name to include #EndOTWRacism
Use sample tweets and graphics from our Social Media Toolkit to tweet about your fanworks, and use the hashtag #EndOTWRacism
Help us make this a long-term campaign - sign up to help with other anti-racism projects and future actions!
What Do We Want?
Since their June 2020 statement, OTW has been working on updating their Terms of Service (TOS) to address racist and bigoted harassment, but with little transparency and only the vaguest of updates. It has been three years since their commitment to this update - we want to see the results of their work implemented in the next 6-12 months. Their TOS updates and complementary policies should include:
Harassment policies that can be regularly updated to address both on-site harassment and off-site coordinated harassment of AO3 users, with updated protocols for the Policy & Abuse Team to ensure consistent and informed resolutions of abuse claims
A content policy on abusive (extremely racist and extremely bigoted) content; by abusive, we are talking about fanworks that are intentionally used to spread hate and harassment, not those that accidentally invoke racist or other bigoted stereotypes
These points are not particularly new and are not our own innovation; please refer to Stitch's article written over two years ago, asking for several of these very things.
OTW has also already committed to various process-based actions for longer-term works towards centering antiracism, including hiring a Diversity Consultant. The last update that OTW published said that the consultant would be hired within the next five years (after already having had three years to work on it since their original commitment). That is not soon enough. We want to see the following process-based actions implemented:
Hiring a Diversity Consultant within the next 3-6 months
Committing to a policy of transparency on this topic, with quarterly updates on the progress of these projects including challenges and their plan for overcoming those challenges. These quarterly updates should be published on OTW News page and newsletters, not solely discussed in Board meetings
Why Are We Doing This?
16 years ago, Astolat famously published her manifesto calling for a fandom Archive of One’s Own. In that time, AO3 has grown to be a central pillar of fandom, likely far outstripping its founders’ original vision. It is more than just an archive now; it is a central hub of the modern fannish experience. AO3 and the OTW must continue to grow and evolve with fandom over time to remain a healthy and functioning pillar of fandom. To that end, there are several areas in which the organization, as it admits itself, is lacking.
In June 2020, in the wake of the George Floyd protests and the uprising of the Black Lives Matter Movement, The OTW published a “This Week in Fandom” referencing the works of Dr. Rukmini Pande and Stitch, among others in which they discussed ‘making change for a better society’ through ‘conversations about race and racism’. In response, Dr. Pande and Stitch submitted a letter to the OTW calling for a more formal public statement than an offhand reference in a News Roundup that only served to call for thoughts and discussion without any indication the organization intended to do anything, policy wise, to address the issues being raised.
Eventually, the organization did remove the references to the works of Dr. Pande and Stitch and then made an official statement on the issue of racism within the organization and AO3. In it, they identified several things they would be prioritizing to combat harassment and benefit users. Some of those have been implemented (notably those that were already under development). However as of this writing, little else has been done especially in regards to:
Improving admin tools for the Policy & Abuse team
Reassessing the current mandatory archive warnings with the possibility of implementing others
And, most importantly, reviewing the Terms of Service (TOS) to allow the Policy & Abuse team to address harassment that is currently not covered by the existing TOS
By their own admission, the current tools and policies of the OTW are not sufficient to deal with issues of harassment and racism.
Several people who were involved in the founding of the OTW, including previous OTW Board members and staff on the original OTW Content Policy Committee, acknowledge that the founding of the OTW in 2008 and early board iterations failed us as a fandom by not doing enough, and by not even considering the way racism is perpetuated in fannish spaces, despite a long history of racism in fandom.
It has been nearly three years since the original commitment by the organization with little visible, measurable progress on these three crucial issues and a complete lack of transparency on where they are in regards to even beginning to deal with these issues. In fact, in Q&As, it was heavily implied by a member of the board that those calling for OTW to deal with issues of racism (which OTW had already acknowledged as a problem!) were not really fans but outside agitators.
This has cast significant doubt on the organization's sincerity and commitment to their stated goals, and on their position as leaders of a central fan tent-pole. Fans of color are not outsiders. They are right here, members of our community, and they are being harassed and targeted and driven out while space and platforms are being given to racists.
We, as fans of color and our allies, find the current state of fandom and current actions (and lack thereof) unacceptable. Fandom is our space, all of ours. We, as a fandom, have a right to a racism-free space and have a duty to our fellow fans to create that space. Unlike so much of the world, this is a space we can control and make better. It is a space we must make better. To read even more about this movement, visit our FAQs.
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radicalgraff · 1 month
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"Be actively anti-racist"
Seen in a venue bathroom in Nashville
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It sucks but as a white person and supporting ideals like BLM and anti-racism HAS to come from some sort of internal healing where you don't need validation from others around you.
What especially sucks is BIPOC has a much stronger sense of community than white people do, and white people often have to break from the little bit of community that they have to support these movements.
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRqoUDA4/
And this isn't a "Boohoo us anti-racist white people have it so hard" post. It's telling other anti-racist white people that they need to know that they need to rely more on their own internal validation than outside validation to continue to stand up for what they believe in.
-fae
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edenfenixblogs · 2 months
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Some Excerpts As I Read
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Reader Note: I have read The Color Purple and would never dismiss the importance of Alice Walker’s work. However, let’s not pretend that she’s too sacred to critique and treat like any other artist who does something racist. Her work to combat anti-black racism and highlight Black American struggles do not permit or excuse when she engages in other forms of bigotry.
I have never seen someone make a public stink about the extraordinarily racist poem, of which the section quoted above is only the tip of that particular racist iceberg.
In fact, I did not even know that Walker had written this horrible “poem” (if you can call an antisemitic diatribe with weird spacing a poem) —despite being very active in leftist spaces for my whole adult AND adolescent life and being an avid reader or both novels and poetry until 2023.
It was brought to my attention when she caught flak for being a TERF, as an incidental aside to prove that she was actually bigoted in several ways. A trait she ALSO shares with JK Rowling.
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Look at these headlines. This is what comes up when I search “Alice walker transphobia.” They clearly label her as a TERF. But they do not make the same claim about her identity as BEING an antisemite. It is removed from her. Antisemitism is clearly not the focus here, which is fine. It is older news. These stories are reporting on her more recent bigotry. Cool.
These are the first results that come up when I search “alice walker antisemitism.”
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The first result is from The Times of Israel, which makes sense, because that’s a place where a lot of Jews live and a lot of Jews will be upset by the things she wrote. But it also doesn’t make sense, because Walker is American. Why is the FIRST result about her antisemitism from an international newspaper that happens to have a large Jewish readership?
Why is the NYT headline about how Walker feels about her own bigotry, instead of how her Jewish readers feel?
The New York Magazine Article looked interesting so I clicked it. It was interesting. You should read it. It is an Op-Ed written by a Black, Jewish woman named Nylah Burton. Kudos to her. It was important. And non-Jews need to read it. It was written in 2018.
The Atlantic is next and primarily takes on the work of critiquing a different article in the New Yorker which also minimized the importance and harmful impact of antisemitism.
And then things get interesting. Still, on the first page of results, is this juxtaposition.
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Among the many striking things here is the fact that the Jerusalem Post is writing from 2023. Al Jazeera is writing from 2019.
If you’ve read any of the above links or text you will note that yes, Alice Walker’s “offense” is indeed antisemitism. It’s not really debatable. She’s done many, many horrifically antisemitic things.
And yet, Al Jazeera jumps in, unprompted, to defend a known antisemite? Why?????? Oh, because she supports Palestine.
Well…perhaps…just maybe…supporters of Palestine shouldn’t want to leap to the defense of antisemites who spout blatant misinformation about the I/P conflict, demonize the Jews they know personally, and trade in antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Unless of course…they don’t care that they are pushing pro-Palestine Jews out of leftist spaces in the first place.
When did it become acceptable for leftists to excuse someone’s bigotry as long as the bigot agrees with you on other stuff?
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nando161mando · 2 months
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For the people who still think the colony of Israel has a right to defend itself:
They're not defending anything, they're just having fun killing:
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Update 1 (17/10/2023) for the confused and sceptics :
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Update 2 (10/22/2023): To add some context to this post following Reuters (direct link to article) attempt to verify the reality of the IDF Facebook post.
In fact, Reuters failed to verify anything: as the agency admitted in its article, its journalist "could not find the impostor's Facebook account or the publication on the platform social network".
They then contacted "a spokesperson for the IDF", who told them that " the Facebook post was not shared by one of its official accounts. He added there was only one official IDF Facebook page in Arabic that carries a verification tick "
A Reuters reporter also contacted"a representative for Meta, Facebook’s parent company, told Reuters the page was removed".
In this total absence of material evidence, and relying solely on the statements of these two sources which are the least reliable when it comes to commenting and sharing information and facts about the war against the Palestinians (the Israeli army is party to the conflict therefore It is biased and will protect its agents and soldiers- and Facebook has a history of censoring Palestinian content that could be used to document violence and help legally qualify zionist crimes).
Reuters came to this hasty conclusion:
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Their main arguments are that
The Israeli occupation army never admitted to bombing the hospital and blamed Islamic Jihad, so it had no reason to celebrate.
Reuters journalists conveniently ignore the timeline. The IDF message welcoming the bombing of the Baptist hospital in Gaza was published immediately after the attack, while the controversy over the perpetrators of the attack began a few hours after its deletion.
Until the controversy, no one wondered who was behind the attack. The zionist army has always publicly assumed its crimes: it even ordered (according to the clerics who were in charge of the administration of the hospital) on several occasions the hospital to evacuate, knowing perfectly well that it was impossible. It was only when outrage became widespread that western media, including Reuters, began to question the origins of the strike. There's a post on Tumblr that pulls together the subtle changes in headlines to make it seem like Israel never took credit for the attack (even though it destroyed different 2 floors of the hospital a few days before the biggest attack).
There are other videos on Mohammed El Kurd's Twitter account showing the zionist army celebrating its strikes. There are videos on social media of zionist soldiers humiliating prisoners in their custody, so gloating on social media is not a new practice for them.
There is no reason why they should not celebrate what they consider a victory: their ministers have already publicly and clearly stated that civilians who do not leave northern Gaza, whatever their reasons, will be assimilated to Hamas fighters. So everything is consistent; in their minds, hitting innocent and defenseless civilians is legitimate and they are happy about it.
On its Twitter account, the Israeli military removed a video that purported to prove that Islamic Jihad carried out the attack, but ultimately did not prove its claims. So they also have a habit of deleting their own content when they realize that it exposes them more than it helps them.
Other journalists (Al Jazeera uses its own images: it is the only media that remained in Gaza and they filmed all the attacks, information from Channel 4) and independent experts on weapons of war and geolocation worked on the question of identifying the perpetrators of the bombing of the hospital. So far, their preliminary conclusion is that the Israeli military's claims do not match the facts and material evidence on the ground.
Full details of this debate are on the X/Twitter accounts of Lowkey and Mohammed El-Kurd (look for posts made on October 17).
2. I don't really know how Facebook/Meta works: I never had an account on it (I mean I never used it properly: I opened an account years ago, exclusively to follow the activity of a group that I was part of in life but closed it after a few weeks without interacting beyond a few likes), but on Twitter you can hide the checkmark.
Even if the checkmark cannot be hidden, there is nothing in the Reuters "report" to indicate that the Zionist army does not maintain multiple accounts - some with checkmarks and some without - and does not delete accounts that are not officials when it does not suit their interests.
They have a history of spreading fake news: from rumors about 40 beheaded babies, to accusing Palestinians of bombing themselves, to creating fake documents to accuse Hamas of planning attacks on primary schools while manipulating parents by buying YT ads shown during videos aimed at children to improve their image damaged by their violence with families, and to justify the harm they do to the children of Gaza.
I'm only making this long argument because Lowkey and Mohammed El-Kurd deleted the tweets I reposted and I think they shouldn't have done so. I understand why: it actually seems like an insignificant speck in an ocean of real crimes, but I personally consider it symbolic and indicative of the true and greater zionist project: genocide.
Genocide in international law is based on proof of intent to destroy a group, and the zionist army's mocking Facebook post establishes beyond doubt that nothing is accidental on the zionist side, everything is premeditated and based on their superiority complex over the Palestinian people.
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blackcat-brazil · 11 months
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mangopodcast · 7 months
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I NEED YOUR HELP TO UNDERSTAND SOMETHING:
Nowadays no one is racist. Even Nazis get offended if you call them racist. Even people covered with fascist tattoos get offended if you call them racist. Politicians who support racist policies don't see themselves as racist. Medical personnel who mistreat Black and POC intentionally are not *racist. C0ps who kill and harass Black and POC are not racist. Teachers who give Black and POC students a hard time are not racist.
Someone does something racist, you tell them "hey! That's racist" and they start crying, offended. "I'm not racist, how dare you?!" "I dated a Black person once" "I don't see color", and my personal favorite "you're the racist for calling me racist!"
There's no racism in this world because no one is racist. Racism is such a taboo nowadays. You are even afraid to discuss it on scial media.
If no one in this world is racist, then where is all this racism coming from?
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In Brazil’s favelas, activists find common ground with Palestinians in Gaza
Residents of Brazil’s poorest neighbourhoods say they see their struggles reflected in Israel’s treatment of Gaza.
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Cosme Felippsen’s nephew was 17 years old when he was killed by Brazil’s military police in a Rio de Janeiro alley nicknamed the Gaza Strip.
“Almost every favela in Rio has an area residents call Gaza,” Felippsen said, pointing to the bullet holes along the alley walls. Residents have used the name for at least 15 years, he added. “It designates the area where most of the gunfire is concentrated at any given time.”
The neighbourhood where Felippsen’s nephew, José Vieira, died in 2017 is called Morro da Providência. It is one of hundreds of impoverished communities — or favelas — strewn across the city.
Activists and residents say the violence they have seen in the favelas has given them unique insight into the urban warfare currently unfolding in Gaza, a Palestinian territory under Israeli siege. And the parallels they perceive are motivating them to take action.
“Militarisation, armed groups executing inhabitants — many things that happen in Palestine also happen in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro,” said Felippsen, a local politician and tour guide who specialises in Black history.
Continue reading.
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notaplaceofhonour · 6 months
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The Ethnostate Canard
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This is a reminder that the framing of Israel as a Jewish “ethnostate” equivalent to what Nazis want a White Ethnostate to be and the claimed moral equivalence of Zionism to White Nationalism came from Neo-Nazis. It is a Neo-Nazi talking point.
Actual ethnostates are defined by restricting citizenship to members of a specific race or ethnicity, and factually, Israel just does not do that; 73.5% of Israelis are Jewish, 21% are Arab (not counting Arabs in Gaza & the West Bank), and an additional 5.5% are other ethnicities. While Israel does define itself as a Jewish nation-state and does extend a special right of return that guarantees Israel will facilitate the immigration of Jews in diaspora, neither of these things are particularly exceptional—most SWANA countries are explicitly Arab nation-states, and many countries, from Ghana to Ireland to Spain to Armenia, have a right of return for members of specific historically displaced ethnic groups, of which Jews are one.
There are absolutely valid criticisms to be made of the Zionist movement (in theory and in practice), the nation-state model in general, and the fact that specifically Israel’s right of return does not cover the primary ethnic group Israel itself displaced: Palestinians. The latter especially is a common criticism of Israel, and it’s one I am extremely sympathetic to—like, maybe I’m off base here, but I feel like the bare minimum Israel can do for the Palestinians they displaced in the Nakbah and Naksa is to guarantee
full citizenship
return of stolen property if possible
reparations, including an allotment of land
fully facilitated immigration to Israel comparable to what is done for Aliyah
and most urgently a ceasefire and a commitment to never bomb a single inch of Palestinian land or kill a single Palestinian noncombatant again
And I don’t think criticism of Israel & advocacy for the Palestinians is at odds with this: Israel’s oppression & myriad injustices against Palestinians just does not a White Ethnostate™️ make, and we need to be able to recognize the facts of Israel’s injustices while being critical of the narratives we slot them into. Specifically in this case, we need to remember as anti-racists & people who care about equity that a common tactic Nazis, racists, and other bigots like to use is to point to things like affirmative action, Historically Black Colleges, Black churches, Pride parades, “safe spaces”, and such that exist to provide special protections for marginalized & oppressed people, and then say “Well, why don’t we get that too? I (a member of the privileged majority) just want what the minorities have!”
It is important in any of these cases to recognize Nazis are doing this in bad faith, and whatever good-faith criticisms a progressive person can have of affirmative action or safe spaces or how they can be abused, not to adopt the Nazi’s framing of these special protections, lest we label affirmative action “Black Supremacy” and queer safe spaces “Gay Supremacy” or such nonsense. Unfortunately, the left dropped the ball with the “Israel is a Jewish Ethnostate” line.
The word “Ethnostate” really didn’t appear outside its strictly literal definition in academic writing before around 2013-2014, when White Nationalists began to use the previously-mentioned tactic, and incorporated it into their propaganda—they even reprinted Herzl’s “The Jewish State” with a foreword about how to co-opt it—where they started to call the Jewish nation-state of Israel an “Ethnostate” & claim they just wanted what the Jews had, for White people. The two main problems with that is that a) a globally oppressed minority (Jews) getting special protections is not the same as a globally dominant one (White People™️) getting further protections, and b) they didn’t want a White equivalent to Israel (they didn’t want a nation-state); they wanted an ethnostate and they projected that onto Israel.
And this is where the left failed Jews. Because the left only started to use the word “ethnostate” after Richard Spencer called Israel one at a Neo-Nazi rally in Florida—at the same time he said he wanted a “safe space” for White people like minorities had. And the left, rather than looking at the man who makes no bones about hating Jews, and asking themselves, “should I maybe be more critical about accepting how the man who loves Hitler and wants to genocide Jews and gay people frames what safe spaces and the Jewish state are?”, turned around and said, “Nah, he’s right. Jews are like Nazis.”
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a-dinosaur-a-day · 8 months
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as a lifelong dinosaur enthusiast who moved towards interest in ecology in recent years what you said about paleontology being very holistic is very interesting to me. can you list, like, some examples of how that is? and if you think the same could be said of ecology as a field? especially if ecology n evobio share the disproving capitalistic ideology thing
all three are 100%
capitalism operates on a misunderstanding of nature and has an implicitly impossible objective
"infinite growth" in a universe with finite resources is not possible. the end.
and one thing we see throughout the fossil record, and in modern ecology, is how the limitation of resources leads to major changes, thus demonstrating that said limitation exists
furthermore, none really make money. the people who buy dinosaur crap are not that many. the fossils don't lead to profitable technologies or franchises (I'm excluding fossil fuels from this conversation, which are the Exception, but every inherently anticapitalist field has *some* Exception) and most paleontologists are ridiculously broke, and even our top paleontologists don't really get far beyond 100k in terms of salary (which is depressingly low compared to other academics in geology and biology)
it also demonstrates the interconnectedness of all life and how our history is the history of the world, not just the history of humans or even mammals
how much our evolution isn't just dependent on our genetics, but on our ecology, the things that live with us and shape us through life
disproving bioessentialism, the inherent assumption of many other destructive ideologies such as racism and transphobia
how even the rocks have importance far beyond what we give them as they are the primary recorders of our planet's history
how small humans are and how little right we have to bleed the planet dry like we're currently doing
and how, like all species that specialize too quickly and too largely, we are careening towards our own destruction in the process of the planet needing to heal.
I hope that last sentence isn't true, but the fact that we know this at all is thanks to paleontology and environmental science.
All of these fields poke back against the capitalistic, white-supremacist world. So it's hard to get into them, it's hard to stay in them, and it's hard to make a living in them.
Ftr, this is why I study paleoecology specifically, but I think paleoecology should be in common parlance as equivalent to brain surgery or rocket science bc I think I'm breaking my brain
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radicalgraff · 7 months
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"Love Glasgow, Hate Racism"
Stencil seen in Glasgow, Scotland
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flyin-shark · 10 months
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Lmao
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edenfenixblogs · 15 days
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Hi! I’ve been reading some of your posts and looking through the links, and I just wanted to say how grateful I am for you. I’ve been realizing that Jewish history & antisemitism is something I really need to educate myself about, and your posts make it easy to find sources and research to help me get better.
In one of your posts (I can’t remember which one specifically, sorry!) you said that it would be helpful for goy people to reblog Jewish posts, but to say that they’re goy to help show that Jewish people aren’t always alone. Do you have any recommendations for a tag that I could use on posts that would make that clear? I’m kind of struggling with specific wording. Thanks so much, and I hope you have a peaceful day <3
This is such a beautiful message to receive! Thank you! It really made my day!
Anything works! It could be a simple “I am non-Jewish” a lot of people reblog from me with “goy Reblogging” or “non-Jew Reblogging” as the tag. If you’d like a full sentence perhaps “I’m not Jewish and I care” would be extremely encouraging to see for Jewish people who feel alone.
I’m always happy to help. And my inbox is always open, even if this week and next week in particular I’ll be busier than usual. I’ll get to your questions eventually.
💖💖💖💖💖💖
🕊️
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nando161mando · 5 months
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Monday in Dublin. Be there!
With Workers.
Against Racism.
#DublinRiots #Dublin #Ireland #PeopleBeforeProfit #PBP #AntiRacism #Antifascism
@antifainternational @anarchistmemecollective @kropotkindersurprise @radicalgraff
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