My parents decided to just roam for the month of December. Who knows why. They said they didn’t want to do holiday stuff until the new year. Found out later they’d had thanksgiving with my nana. Honestly it woulda been fine if they’d just said they didn’t want the kids over? But instead mom decided lying that they weren’t doing it at all was easier.
My transphobic sister is having a baby so they decided to drive down to her state to see her, after telling me they’d come to my choir concert. And again. That’s fine, I get that the baby is a bigger deal.
But mom asked me to look after her chickens while they’re gone. I dragged myself over aching in every bone from overexertion yesterday, including the concert. When I called concerned about one of her hens dragging a lame foot around she told me that’s just how that chickens always been and not to worry about it. Didn’t ask me how the concert had been.
When my betrothed got home I was deep in sadness pits. I told them, “I feel like that chicken. Hobbling around receiving inferior care and attention from my mom.”
They baked cookies and we cuddled about it.
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my post yesterday about why I don't really care if Louis Tomlinson supports starbucks shocked me by actually circulating and getting notes and obviously I like validation and appreciation.... but I feel kind of weird about my big contribution to the topic being something that might come off as discouraging attempts to help Palestine. Feeling powerless in the face of such injustice is horrible and scary and traumatizing and while there are certain things that I do not think make much difference (like boycotting irrelevant targets), that's NOT how I feel about the situation in general! We CAN make a difference and help the Palestinian people! It can feel impossible to fight against all that power and propaganda and military might- but it has been done successfully over and over, colonialism has been destroyed in one place after another a hundred times in the last century, apartheid regimes have fallen, occupations have ended, because over and over, always, even all the military might in the literal world is less powerful than a united front of the PEOPLE. As Ursula K LeGuin said, "We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings", and as Louis Tomlinson said "The power and magic comes from the people, you guys. Don't undermine your role in all of this" and "get off the 'gram and into the streets"!
Under the cut are things you can do that I believe actually directly impact the Palestinian people and the Israeli government, including some easy ones, and the key to a successful movement is to have every type of contribution, to have NUMBERS. However- it is also necessary to have people willing to do the actual work of fighting injustice, not just changing their consumer habits or yelling at people online. I strongly encourage people to explore becoming physically involved in activist work, and not to see it as yet another tiring obligation but rather as a way to help yourself feel less overwhelmed and exhausted. Feeling powerless and defenseless is a trauma that follows us into every corner of our lives, but standing up and working for change can not only save lives, but is good for your own mental health as well, I promise.
I can't make you an exhaustive list of resources, only tell you some tactics that I believe are actually useful. I'm not an expert or whatever, but I have been actively involved in social justice advocacy, activism, and direct action for over 20 years and am drawing on that history of both things that worked and were great and things that were not from my personal experiences. Thank you to @captainrayzizuniverse for helping me (but she didn't see the post any stupid things said by mistake are entirely on me), and especially for pointing out a big (typical white person) slip up, which was to almost forget the very first item on this list:
Listen to, support, and amplify Palestinian voices!!! The whole starbucks issue wouldn't even exist if people just went by this single important guideline and did the things Palestinians were asking for rather than making up other things to do instead. In life altogether, and speaking as a disabled person god does this come up a lot: if you want to help someone, start by asking them what they need and then do that even if it isn't what you think they should want. Don't fucking wing it!!
Join local groups organizing for Palestine: the people united are powerful, but only if they are united and working in large groups! Join a group! This is hard because... how? who? And I can't answer that for everyone but I can tell you that in the US JVP (Jewish Voice for Peace) is doing a huge amount of very accessible recruiting, you can just join (you don't need to be Jewish) and get involved straightaway in the great actions they're putting on. PYM (Palestinian Youth Movement) is not open to everyone to join but you should definitely follow them on SM to keep up on actions and maybe find ways to support. If you're a student I bet there is some kind of group at your school?
Go to protests: protest works, period. The general politician rule of thumb is that anyone who bothers to actually go out and march represents 10-100 voters. When they look at the numbers (like- '500-1000 people protested the most recent bill you signed') they do this math and they worry. But also honestly if it's something you can manage- it's good for you. It helps. Even if you just go alone and don't talk to anyone, being in a crowd of hundreds of people feeling the same things you are, caring as much as you do, it helps. If you can, yell along to the chants as loud as you can. Get fired up and use that energy to keep going and not despair!
Call and write officials: if you live in the US or UK this is HUGE. What I said above about how they count people at protests as standing for more people who didn't bother but agree? Same with phone calls for sure, it REALLY pressures them. Many orgs make this really easy- I get emails all the time with links to send a letter in a single click or click to call and all you have to do is read the script, get on some lists I guess? But many sites also have this feature, JVP does for example
Support BDS: the Palestinian led BDS have been doing the work of isolating and chipping away at Israel for 19 years and like I said, the actions of the masses only work if we are united behind a few strategic targets rather than all over the place; they have made this possible. It's good to avoid buying from the companies they target; even better to work on the big divestment campaigns. For example, student groups pressuring the big universities to divest from BDS targets echo the successful University divestment efforts that helped end apartheid in South Africa.
Send money: money helps, immediately and concretely, and again if we are many, each person doesn't have to do a lot. Do what you can spare, it all adds up. This has been painful with Gaza for sure, with millions donating but aid being blocked. I don't have The Answer but here's a group I found that actually seems to be getting aid in, and here's a spread sheet of gofundmes- note that people who have foreign passports do not have to pay the horrible border crossing fees, so you may wish to focus on funding those who don't have that privilege.
this could maybe be better and there was some other stuff I wanted to say about doing activism to tie up the "activism as self care" thing from above and also bringing it back around to talk about Louis more but I'm tired and I'm hungry right now and this is a lot already. So. Bye lol sorry. send me asks if any of that is something you care about or want to hear
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The kind of Christ Figure the writers intended Jack to be: pure, glowing, wholesome, REALITY-BREAKINGLY POWERFUL DONT WORRY ABOUT IT, too-good-for-this-world White Bread Midwestern Evangelical Second Coming
The kind of Christ Figure Jack ACTUALLY became: everyone debating whether he IS God, or whether he and God are two aspects of the same being, if he counts as "Divine", is he a demigod etc etc etc
@jackgirlbluntrotation @very-offkey-kazoo @wrenchenthusiast
here. im not sorry
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girl help how do i prioritize (not actually asking for advice just ranting). i have a performance tomorrow that's technically part of my final but also the Events of the last week on campus it's technically optional. but that being said i really want to be memorized for that performance and put the time in to make it really good bc even if it isn't graded it's still an opportunity for me to test out new aubrey material (and i'm definitely gonna film it and send it to bellini). i have to turn in a "final" for my independent study which is just my way to get credit for the buddy cole doc, but that final is editing a ten minute piece out of my tour footage and because of the Events i think i will get more grace if it's not a great edit but i need to turn something in by wednesday. i have a final for my history class that's just a presentation and i've already made the powerpoint and researched so i'm confident i can improvise (it's fairly low stakes) BUT i still have to do a quiz for my history class that was due last week but i somehow missed and i haven't been able to get to it bc stressed about finals and also the Events but since it was assigned before the Events i don't think i'll get the same grace as post-Events assignments, and this quiz is worth like 10% of my grade so i need to turn something in like even tho i currently have an A in that class and Cs get degrees i still don't know what grade i'll get on my final so better safe than get a zero on the quiz but i have no motivation since it's not a final like the rest of my stuff (even if the aubrey thing is lowkey not graded??? even before the Events that class had a unique grading system so i already know i've got an A in that class regardless this is just like an optional showcase). and i also have a zoom with bruce tomorrow for the buddy cole doc which i'm very excited for but also will have to plan around the amount of hours in the day i have left to get things done lmao
anyway it's wild being in finals week bc half of me is like "i just wanna go hoooome alreadyyyy" but the other half is like "holy fuck there is too much to do i need an extra week to get it all done"
but anyway less than a week from today i'm gonna be done with my penultimate semester of college (graduating in december!!!) and i have literally zero plans for the months of may and june rn so like. i know i'm going to get incredibly bored super quickly but like one of my favorite inspirational quotes is that tumblr post that was like "in two weeks you will have different problems" and yeah that sure is true
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