from the river to the sea, palestine will be free. from the river to the sea, palestine will be free. from the river to the sea, palestine will be free. from the river to the sea, palestine will be free. from the river to the sea, palestine will be free. from the river to the sea
not going to get into this w anyone on here but want to say there is a reason Aaron Bushnell filmed his act today & it might v well have been informed by the way the self-immolation in Atlanta was buried in the news & there is a reason he wore that uniform.
one of my favorite parts of lex fridman’s interview of mohammed el-kurd was when fridman asked el-kurd (arnd 26:30), “do you have hate in your heart for israel?” & without missing a beat, el-kurd responded, “why does that matter?”…
nothing but love for the cal poly humboldt comrades who took it to 💯 out the gate. they raised the bar / showed ppl all over this country what it means to be militant & had / are having an impact way beyond their own encampment. please donate to their bail fund!
el-kurd goes on to say “there’s a lot of dignity in negating your oppressor & i think it would be ridiculous today if we looked back at jim crow, for example, & we ask the person who’s lived under jim crow if they have hate in their heart for jim crow…
as if that’s not the absolutely logical & natural sentiment to feel.”
when i told a longtime comrade abt this part of the interview later, he pointed out that the question, given the context, is racist. the interrogation of palestinian sentiment…
tbc: el-kurd also expresses disinterest in the content of israeli hearts in relation to palestinians. he says all that needs to be known is evident in what the zionist entity has been doing to palestinians for many decades.
people who demand “to feel safe” while accepting (even tacitly) profoundly unsafe conditions for people living around them (without housing, food, water, etc.) are scary people.
against the ppl who have been ethnically cleansing their lands & genociding them for many decades, especially in the context of their resistance against that, is def weird. not saying how anyone shld feel; am saying why does that matter?
fuck off with the nonviolence bullshit already. you are quite comfortable with violence. it's just the more asymmetrical the violence the better for you. "the peace of the powerful is the silent war waged against the dispossessed."
one time i was talking to a friend at a university occupation & she told me that, whenever anarchists showed up for an action, there were always ppl complaining abt the anarchists, but that when the anarchists didn’t show up, ppl wouldn’t want to stick arnd to do anything…
Weather Underground was a tragic movement. I knew Trim Bissell, a very promising young poet. So many lives derailed. There was no romance in any of it. Weathermen imagined that US citizens would rise up & storm prisons to release them. Total delusion.
dear radicals, if you do things to advance your politics, the liberals will show up. they will show up b/c of the impact of your actions & the attention they get. they will show up & you will have to outmaneuver them. this thing some of you keep doing...
it's ok & actually necessary to refuse to engage in certain arguments, on principle. some ppl are hell bent on wasting time--their own & that of anyone else who will let them. don't let them. (saying this as much to myself as anyone else.)
was reading a 2009 article on palestine by eduardo galeano & this dedication at the end: “(This article is dedicated to my Jewish friends assassinated by Latin American dictatorships that Israel supported)”
just saw someone saying what Aaron Bushnell did wasn't courageous b/c "he could have done a lifetime of mutual aid to build the revolution"--some statements are so revealing i don't even know where to start & wonder if the ppl who say them hear themselves.
i do think if a person w a huge platform ends up leveraging that platform against the resistance of the oppressed at a critical moment, like naomi klein & judith butler did, they should not be able to just move on as if they didn't do that. nope.
anyone who fell for, in the least, the rumors of mass rape that came out immediately after Operation al-Aqsa Flood needs to take a long hard look at themselves & question where else in their life this susceptibility of theirs might come up.
UPDATE: Workers at the Tacoma port have confirmed to Breakthrough that the docks are hoping to use military personnel to load the Israeli weapons shipment that is currently being blocked.
Workers also told us they have a right to not work under dangerous conditions like this 😉
reminded again of the “unlearn the id & ally politics you learned at your university or from a nonprofit or online from ppl who teach at universities or work in nonprofits. they are tools of counter-insurgency & have made you rlly fucking annoying” workshops i’ve wanted to hold
the man who collaborated with the US border patrol & saw it necessary to throw migrants under the bus to advance labor struggle in the US would def be proud.
another way of saying that “you can’t reform this” is to say “you can’t defund this. you have to abolish it or it goes on.” ppl trying to “defund” literally got their messaging turned against them by both the gop & dems after the riots of 2020. you rlly can’t reform this…
cool to see an "organizer" not just "not condemn" militant action but bless it / to speak abt it as something that must be done. makes me believe that this person is not trying to sabotage militants behind the scenes (a thing I have seen some "organizers" do). that's great.
On Thursday APD, the FBI, GBI, and ATF executed three search warrants and made one arrest in pursuit of evidence related to an act of arson on police motorcycles.
Thursday evening, a journalist asked if organizers [condemn] the arson.
@Maryhooks
from
@CopCityVote
responded:
a person's family isn't always the best source for information on them, especially when the person is a 25-yr-old US airman who came into anarchism & became so committed to a free Palestine he self-immolated & he is from a family of Christian zionists.
still remember the day i posted this. i was sitting down at my office xmas party upset abt this thing i had already been dealing with / trying to be patient abt for years. i thought the tweet might get me in trouble but i was too exhausted by the BS to care anymore…
where you feel you have to reach out & show them you can work with them & listen to them & follow them in the hope that they will support radical action & not keep radical action from happening--to be v frank, you have lost your mind.
co-optation is a process, not an event. it can gain or lose ground. it is important to recognize the patterns & individuals who tend to be involved & work to out maneuver them (frankly). their presence doesn't automatically mean "it's over;" it means it's on.
together, you can make rules abt who is & who isn't allowed at your encampment. you can make "no cops" a rule. you can make "no politicians & no aspiring politicians get to speak here" a rule. you can make "no journalists get to just walk arnd filming here" a rule.
wish i had my old account so i could pull up an old thread i wrote after Arnav Gupta self-immolated in DC in 2019. suffice it to say it is ableist & disgusting to assume ppl with mental health issues can't choose to sacrifice themselves for the sake of their pol &/or moral...
"While the liberals were congratulating themselves for having their nonthreatening photo op parade out in front of the gala, our people were out of sight at work on the veins of the building."
the taking of Hind's House in Berkeley was an autonomous action by young people who rejected "leadership"--not just the "leadership" of the UCB encampment, from which they split, but "leadership" in general. they were explicit abt this the day they took Hind's House...
those insisting on nonviolence & whose priority is always "optics" are literally putting ppl in danger & do not seem to understand what it means to be anti-zionist in the country that is the number one backer of the zionist entity. get serious or get out of the way.
this was January 28, 2012, when occupy oakland / the oakland commune tried to take the kaiser building near Laney college in oakland. here the commune was facing off against a line of police / trying to push past them. 400 ppl were arrested later that night.
begging you to not bring that defund shit back. destroy. abolish. but not that shit. the road to hell is paved w policy (don't care how slick anyone thinks it is) AND many have insisted everyone go down that road before--rlly, it leads to a graveyard for movements & hell, hell.
given what's been going on at ucla & the fact that zionists / fascists arnd the country are watching this happen, too, "we" need to take this threat srsly. "we" need to be ready for fascists with & w/o badges.
like i've said, for all the horror, i believe there is paradigm-shifting resistance going on right now & i'm thankful for that 🎉 (not going to apologize to anyone about that either / yes, i'm celebrating it.)
Yemen -footage of operation capturing an israeli shio in the Red Sea
This is insane. Remember this is a besieged, blockaded country still under an 8 war US-Saudi aggression
the way the ppl who (falsely) claimed that the genocidal settler colonial state of israel didn’t bomb a hospital in gaza a few weeks ago are now arguing that it’s ok for the genocidal settler colonial state of israel to attack hospitals / kill hospitals full of people in gaza.
from a friend: "There are plenty of people joining the chorus against genocide at this moment that aren’t fully against Zionism & the existence of the Israeli state. I think it is a grave error to consider those people comrades."
The callousness, dehumanization, and targeting of Jews on display at last night’s protest outside the Nova Festival exhibit was atrocious antisemitism - plain and simple.
Antisemitism has no place in our city nor any broader movement that centers human dignity and liberation.
ukraine's president publicly appealed to western states for war funding (w/o which there'd be no war) by saying he wanted ukraine to become the israel of Eastern Europe. stop comparing ukraine to palestine.
newly single & grieving an 11 year relationship, but yesterday I had a 13 hour hang out w/young poets / comrades i admire. Other comrades i admire sprinkled in. 2 coffee houses, 2 restaurants, one park, hours long talk in a car. life is hard but i remain thankful for mine.
ppl with radical politics do not become poet laureate of the US. period. ppl who want to believe differently, i love you & i say this b/c i want there to be love b/t us, please stop kidding yourself.
watching the pro-palestine movement in this country learn it has to be an anti-police / anti-state & anti-racist / anti-fascist movement (tactically, too) so quickly--it's been a whirlwind, but depending on how the movement incorporates these lessons, there's real hope here imo.
solidarity is not the result of "privilege." it is the result of commitment to collective struggle & understanding that, despite the sacrifices solidarity might require of individuals in the short term, individuals will be better off in the long term acting collectively.
no srsly protect militants from liberal peace police. i know for a fact that this needs to be said right now. i know what has happened at actions / what liberals do during every intensification of struggle they are doing now, too. do what you can to get them out of the way.
re: Hind's House in Berkeley. the liberals are showing up right now trying to take control of & manage the energy young militants demonstrated against police last night. just know that...
A large banner in California, US, honors Aaron Bushnell, the American soldier who self-immolated outside the Israeli embassy in Washington, expressing solidarity with Gaza and rejecting the genocide committed by the Israeli occupation with American support.
nothing but love for the anarchists & leftists who have been critical of minor-celebrity antifascists from very early on--not b/c they were becoming minor celebrities, but b/c they were/are liberals at best, reactionaries at worst.
that a person can major or minor in something like "resistance to genocide" & then not be allowed to speak abt or take action against actually existing genocide in that context is totally consistent w what i know abt universities, yes.
foolish ppl who can't imagine resistance that isn't about optics & that actually aims for material gains. not everyone's trying to get your fucking vote.
spoke to a college class today & one of the students seized the moment to talk abt how ppl going to demos are going to have to start pushing back against orgs impeding direct action. & yeah that was totally unexpected & rlly cool. srsly wow. amazing.
the world cant be divided into “abusers” & “the abused” / in a way where, on one side, is ppl who have only ever been abused &, on the other side, is ppl who have only ever abused. its also beneath me (yeah, that’s what i said) to get into an argument abt something so ridiculous.
if you're saying the dems in power will be good for left wing & potentially radical movements, you're just letting everyone know how disconnected you are from the part of organizing that involves militants & political prisoners.
if y’all still don’t think that militancy among leftists & beyond is something that needs to be prioritized, invested in, nurtured, protected, not subordinated to electing this or that fucking cog, you have learned nothing & should not be trusted.
“Comrades do get it through your heads, this lesser evil which
Year after year has been used to keep you completely out of the fight
Will very soon mean having to stomach Nazis.”
Bertolt Brecht, in “When the Fascists Kept Getting Stronger”
not everyone needs to get a gun (that's not going to be everyone's thing, no), but fostering support for armed resistance in service of liberatory struggle is important & there is more than one way to do that. i will not be taking questions at this time.
that harris campaign ad putting her in the lineage of ronald reagan is not *like* a creepy fascist advertisement; it *is* a creepy fascist advertisement for people who understand what the US is to the rest of the world.
this is always a risk (that it will be "worse") when oppressed ppl's fight in any way that actually threatens to overturn the conditions of their oppression & using that argument against ppl fighting is never going to be on the side of liberation.
that there are that many ppl chanting an anti-cop chant after midnight (when the cops said they wld come arrest everybody) at Columbia rn is good, yes.
It's past midnight, and turnout of students and faculty has filled the entire plaza of Columbia University. An end to US complicity in the genocide of Gaza remains their focus, they insist, despite media attempts to divert attention to issues like student safety or free speech
when i say you will have to outmanuever the liberals, i mean it, b/c yes, the liberals are dirty as fuck. behind all the concern trolling are ppl trying to maintain law & order / the status quo at the expense of liberatory struggle.
again i ask ppl to observe the distinction between being against genocide & being for resistance (in all its forms) to that genocide. because there is a distinction.