In the last few weeks, the public has gotten a rare glimpse into the horrific plight of prisoners locked away in U.S. prisons and jails. With forest fires devastating the West Coast, prisoners continue to suffer and bear the brunt of indifference.
In Rochester, New York, the police murder of Daniel Prude has led to daily protests and continued calls for structural change. In Washington State, police murdered an unarmed suspect, Michael Forest Reinoehl, who was alleged to have been involved in a shooting of a right-wing protester in Portland, Oregon.
By Jenn Schreiter, Unicorn Riot September 28, 2020
Minneapolis, MN – Without waiting for permission, growers began planting vegetables and herbs in an empty lot on Lake Street and 17th Avenue. Their aim was to reclaim the dormant land on behalf of the community who lived nearby, in whatever way they saw fit to put it to use.
“We would like to see those places be used for something that benefits the community rather than just sitting and waiting for a developer to come in and build a condo.“
— Lake Street Open Space volunteer
‘Lake Street Open Growth Space‘ was the name chosen for this squatted garden. A ‘squat‘ is a reclamation of neglected or unused privately-owned property to transform it into a public commons.
In August, we interviewed several volunteer organizers at the Open Growth Space (OGS). They gave us a tour of the gardens and explained the who gave us a tour of the gardens:
Open Growth Space volunteers introduce the various plants & herbs growing in the garden
The scam is to privatize the ”profits” made by socializing the inherent losses. Losses in cash paid by the people, losses in health and suffering by toxic work and pollution. Losses of the ruined environment and massacred animal life, and above all pending mega losses in spiraling Climate chaos. (see also Cancer AlleyAs virus ravages Louisiana, ‘Cancer Alley’ residents Fight Back
$117 BILLION to pay, and that’s just Texas.
”But what about the Magnificent new horizon of the Permian West Texas and New Mexico fields. The Investment of a Lifetime in the pipelines and the Golden Opportunity of cornering the World LPG supply to make Texas the triumphant Plastics Capital of the dying planet”. (note. LPG is the semi liquid pumpable part of gas production used to make plastics etc, its not LNG)
This is the Shale Revolution that Made America Great Again. A State of predator capitalists who believe it’s their God given right to promote little gangster businessmen and trash the planet.. So they are lauded and rewarded and given nearly free interest money and a blind eye to toxic aquifers, tailings lakes and massive methane leaks. Just for a few months often, till the wells become ”unprofitable”…
Then there is too much oil and gas, till it’s ”unprofitable” even avoiding most of the real costs. So bankruptcy is declared, after pocketing the assets. Ruining the small suppliers and abandoning thousands of toxic leaking wells and ponds. So the company is swallowed by Exxon or another Corporation and our heroic entrepreneur still has capital to retire on his Texas ranch or DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN.
Fracking for Plastics, a DeSmog investigation into the proposed petrochemical build-out in the Rust Belt. Over 12.6 million people in the United States live within half a mile of an oil and gas facility.
So who will pay the $117,000,000,000 dollars, in the middle of a pandemic and economic crash? The poor and immigrants of Texas will no doubt be further squeezed, all social programs cut or abolished. Health care will disappear, schools will fester, homes will be repossessed.. But even so this could never never be able to pay off 117 Billion.
Only and uniquely in The USA, because the dollar has been forced on us as world reserve currency, the State can borrow TRILLIONS and sell off the debt to investors to stash in their fiscal paradises. So the toxic ecocidal bubble can seemingly grow indefinitely. Until suddenly one day people are forced to stop ‘make-believing’ in it.
This is voodoo Trump style economics, based on Endless growth on a finite and fragile planet. But if predictions are accurate its days are numbered, and , though the 1% of big capitalists and warmongers may suffer, social and environmental justice movements, now organizing, may yet triumph in the USA.
The state of Texas and its taxpayers could be on the hook for paying up to US$117 billion for the cleaning-up of abandoned wells as a growing number of U.S. oil companies go bust, and the guarantees for paying for the cleanup cover only 1 percent of estimated costs, a report by climate finance think-tank Carbon Tracker showed on Thursday.
Based on a handful of think tank reports and witness testimonies, Western governments have levied false allegations of genocide and slavery in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. A closer look makes clear that the politicization of China’s anti-terrorism policies in Xinjiang is another front of the U.S.-led hybrid war on China.
This resource compilation provides a starting point for critical inquiry into the historical context and international response to China’s policies in Xinjiang, providing a counter-perspective to misinformation that abounds in mainstream coverage of the autonomous region.
Disambiguation: According to the capitalist lexicon, the “Free Market” is the economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition between privately owned businesses. Any sensible person can recognize immediately that neither human beings nor resources are free in such a system; hence, a “Really Really Free Market” is a market that operates according to gift economics, in which nothing is for sale and the only rule is share and share alike. In the interest of not taxing the reader’s patience, a single apostrophe stands in for the two “Really”s throughout this text.
Once a month two hundred or more people from all walks of life gather at the commons in the center of our town. They bring everything from jewelry to firewood to give away, and take whatever they want. There are booths offering bicycle repair, hairstyling, even tarot readings. People leave with full-size bed frames and old computers; if they don’t have a vehicle to transport them, volunteer drivers are available.
No money changes hands, no one haggles over the comparative worth of items or services, nobody is ashamed about being in need. Contrary to government ordinances, no fee is paid for the use of this public space, nor is anyone “in charge.” Sometimes a marching band appears; sometimes a puppetry troupe performs, or people line up to take a swing at a piñata.
free shop in Utrecht, Holland.
Games and conversations take place around the periphery, and everyone has a plate of warm food and a bag of free groceries. Banners hang from branches and rafters proclaiming “FOR THE COMMONS, NOT LANDLORDS OR BUREAUCRACY” and “NI JEFES, NI FRONTERAS” and a king-size blanket is spread with radical reading material, but these aren’t essential to the event—
this is a social institution, not a demonstration.
Thanks to our monthly ’Free Markets, everyone in our town has a working reference point for anarchist economics. Life is a little easier for those of us with low or no income, and relationships develop in a space in which social class and financial means are at least temporarily irrelevant.
Why the ’Free Market Works
The ’Free Market model has several virtues to recommend it for anarchists hoping to build local infrastructures and momentum. First, like Critical Mass or Food Not Bombs, it lends itself to a decentralized approach: so long as the idea is well-distributed, neither hierarchy nor central coordination is necessary to organize a ’Free Market.
Some 200 people demonstrated to demand “political courage” to ban carsThe demonstration included a ‘performance’ to simulate deaths caused by pollution / ACN
Neighborhood and social organizations have cut a section of the Diagonal mainstreet to demand the reduction of private vehicles in Barcelona. For at least an hour, some 200 people took part in a rally , the mobilization, which was choreographed to simulate deaths due to pollution, featured pedestrians and bicycles and was the last event of the ”Let’s confine cars, recover the city ”campaign.
The demonstrators demand an “urgent” shock plan to convert into priority roads for pedestrians and bicycles, in all the streets and accesses of the city; and the application of an anti-pollution toll.
During the rally, music and shouts could be heard in favor of cleaner air. At the end of the event, a choreography was performed to simulate how air pollution causes suffocation, illness and, finally, death.
I’ve been seeing a meme doing the rounds that identifies a set of experiences as internalised capitalism: Feeling guilty for resting, self worth based on career, putting productivity before health, believing that hard work leads to happiness, feeling lazy when you can’t work and using busyness to avoid your needs.
It struck me that this can be as much about poverty as it is about capitalism.
If you are comfortably off, then you might be able to avoid these feelings. But, in reality most people are a paycheck or two away from total disaster. One big, unexpected bill can throw most people into difficulty. If anyone depends on you, then that’s a lot of pressure to be under.
So you work when you’re ill, because you have to try and stay ahead to keep you and your people safe. There is no job security anymore, no certainty, nothing much you can count on to help you if things go wrong, in too many parts of the world.
