TWO HOURS AGO: an incredible photo taken by a ut austin student capturing something deeply poetic in my opinion, a line of state troopers eagerly waiting to arrest student protesters standing just behind a sign that reads "what starts here changes the world. its starts with you and what you do each day."
An absolute badass
vetted fundraisers from today. please keep sharing and donating as you're able, it really does so much; even if your individual action feels small, you are helping to save lives.
june 29th:
14-year-old Hala El-Hissi, her two siblings (the younger of whom needs hepatitis treatment), and their mother (€8,459/€16,000) - @halaelhissi, @nadasaftawi, verified by @/sar-soor
Muhammad Al-Azayza and his family, including two children, one with Down syndrome (kr6,738 SEK/kr200,000 SEK) - @hamouda-az, verified by @/sayruq
Ahmed Ziad, his siblings, and their sick parents (£2,733/£30,000) - @ahmed-ziad, verified by @/nabulsi
Basel Ayyad and his family of eight, including his daughter who needs urgent treatment to preserve her eyesight (CHF1,506/CHF60,000) - @basel-1995, verified by @/sayruq
Safaa Abd, her husband, and their two young children (€952/€50,000) - @safaabed, verified by @/90-ghost
Wafaa Alnhal's family of 15, including four children and a newborn (€20,277/€50,000) - @wafs-posts, verified by @/nabulsi
Alaa Al Khateeb's family of six, including her mother who needs medical treatment (£25,391/£56,000) - @alaaalkhateeb, #99 on @/nabulsi and @/el-shab-hussein's spreadsheet
Haneen Atya's family of ten, including several young children, a newborn, and her mother who needs urgent treatment for a stroke and bleeding ($38,011 AUD/$70,000 AUD) - @haneenatya34, verified by @/el-shab-hussein
Mohammed Okal's evacuation and education (kr3,228 NOK/kr90,000 NOK) - @mohammedokal-2, verified by @/90-ghost
Mohammed Adly Haboub and his family of four (he turns 20 today) (kr14,191 SEK/kr300,000 SEK) - @mohammedhaboub, verified by @/90-ghost
Siraj Abudayeh, his wife, and their three young children who've lost their treasured home ($1,398 CAD/$82,000 CAD) - @siraj2024, verified by @/nabulsi
Hadeel Adnan Abu Nasser and her family of 12 (they lost her father in a bombing and her brother to malnutrition; Hadeel is responsible for all her family) (€1,126/€20,000) - @hadeelgaza, verified by @/90-ghost
not yet vetted:
Reem Mohamed, her husband, and their two young children (€1,925/€20,000) - @rem096
i know you likely see posts like this every day, but please don't tune them out. every one of these families and individuals deserves to live safely and pursue their dreams. any contribution you make keeps someone's bright future alive
the orcas sunk another yacht in the strait of Gibraltar on Sunday. this time it was a 49 foot (15 metre) vessel. there have been over 700 incidents since May 2020 and in Spain, there's reports of them happening "daily." at least one species is attempting to put the rich at the bottom of the ocean and i think that's neat.
Helen Mcfarlane was a radical journalist, admired by Karl Marx, who was the first translator of the Communist Manifesto into English. But why did she vanish from history?
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a period drama must be in want of a feisty heroine who finds love at last.
But our heroine, Helen Macfarlane was no fictional character and her life would have shocked Jane Austen's smocks off.
Helen was the very first translator of the Communist Manifesto. Not the one we know today, but a version that carries her own unique voice.
Her version begins: "A frightful hobgoblin stalks throughout Europe. We are haunted by a ghost, the ghost of Communism..."
She was moonlighting as a revolutionary journalist, writing under the male pen-name 'Howard Morton' in the fiery pages of 'The Red Republican', one of the very earliest Socialist newspapers.
This is your reminder to keep boycotting
[source]
Don't stimulate the economy and participate on local action, the site below contains more info about the strike.
The strike is mostly in the US, but you can help regardless of country, you can also share info, boost posts in social media and put posters in your city about Gaza.
Let’s start with Oregon – what does this mean for unhoused people in Grants Pass?
It means that Grants Pass can enforce its 24/7 citywide ban on public homelessness. The question was whether cities should be able to jail or fine someone who has no other alternative but to live in public space – the unhoused folks who are considered “involuntarily homeless”. The city was already allowed to arrest people who had declined offers of shelter. Now, Grants Pass will likely be fining people who have no shelter options.
When you fine someone who can’t pay, the fine can eventually turn into a misdemeanor. Studies have shown that it doesn’t help an already poor person to be driven into debt. Fining someone makes them less likely to emerge from homelessness, including by ruining their credit score and making them unable to afford basic needs like food.
Beyond fines, the city of Grants Pass is going to eventually jail more people. This is punishing people who have done nothing more than exist in public space. This case was about whether you can punish people for the unavoidable consequences of being human. The supreme court said yes.
How do you expect the decision will impact other jurisdictions across the west?
This is quite possibly the most consequential decision in history up until this point relating to homeless rights. It’s hard to overstate how important it is.
I think more cities will attempt 24/7 citywide bans on homelessness. I think it will encourage cities to shift away from investments in evidence-based approaches like adequately investing in affordable housing, permanent supportive housing and diversion and shift toward more law-and-order, enforcement-led efforts to essentially jail and banish already marginalized people from public view.
Grants Pass argued it wasn’t criminalizing the status of homelessness, but criminalizing the act of camping in public. The supreme court majority in its ruling on Friday concurred, and said that criminalizing an act does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment.
Presumably cities could in the future go even further than Grants Pass has, as long as they frame their laws as prohibiting public camping, instead of prohibiting homelessness, although I don’t think that issue has been fully resolved by today’s decision.
Donald Trump and others have used increasingly dark rhetoric, threatening to force people into “tent cities”. Will the ruling embolden those kinds of efforts?
I think we could see the forced displacement of unhoused folks into what I would call internment camps out in the middle of nowhere – a mass migration of unhoused people from one place where their existence is banned to other places where the laws don’t ban their existence. Many cities already have authorized camps in far-out locations that are completely invisible to the general public. I learned about one that was bordered by a dump, a recycling center and railroad tracks – the quintessentially least desirable place.
The idea of rounding up unhoused folks and forcing them into camps or out of the jurisdiction entirely is obviously very concerning. And it should be of grave concern, because once something is invisible, you don’t know what’s happening to the already really vulnerable people living there. Trump has publicly contemplated using his federal authority to move people into the middle of the desert where they won’t bother anyone by existing. It’s a very dystopian vision of internment camps and the likely abuses and neglect that would come from that. It’s terrifying.
Prior to this ruling, cities already had quite a lot of latitude to restrict camping, correct?
Yes, cities could already sweep encampments as much as they like. In many cities, they’ve been sweeping tents at record rates. They could also already enforce anti-camping laws if there was something that could be shown to be an urgent public health or safety issue with respect to a particular encampment – for example, if an encampment was blocking a whole sidewalk. Cities could sweep without even giving notice in those circumstances. Under the previous standard, cities weren’t even required to provide adequate shelter. It just said if the city lacks shelter, it can’t jail or fine someone, which to me should be so straightforward, and yet somehow here we are.
How do you expect legal advocates for unhoused people will respond to this ruling?
The dehumanizing message of today’s decision is going to galvanize civil rights attorneys. It has to. Anytime somebody’s basic right to exist is threatened, civil rights activists have to regroup. And cities should not approach this too cavalierly. There will be legal consequences for cities that pursue 24/7 citywide bans on homelessness. All this decision does is remove the protections for unhoused folks under the eighth amendment of the US constitution. States across the country have analogs to the eighth amendment in their state constitutions. States can and often do interpret their state constitutional provisions to be more protective than the federal constitution. The eighth amendment at its core is really about how much we value the humanity of vulnerable people. So it’s crippling from a human standpoint to have that protection removed. But there are other avenues that homeless rights advocates and human rights lawyers can still pursue. They can make arguments under other federal constitutional provisions. There are still due process arguments under the 14th amendment. You can still argue there is selective prosecution. There are arguments that could be made under the fourth amendment [which protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures]. There’s the Americans with Disabilities Act [ADA], and most chronically homeless people would likely qualify as someone with a disability who has protections from state-sanctioned abuse.
😢😢😢😢😢😭😭😭😭💔
Ocala, FL.
Gunshine State is cesspool for white scumbags.
My heart breaks for Ajike Owens and her sweet beautiful children.
My mind sharpens on stopping Florida and shitbag racists like Ron DeSantis from influencing our country.