loveamongthesailors:

nativenews:

http://www.indigenousaction.org/rethinking-the-apocalypse-an-indigenous-anti-futurist-manifesto/

(via a-conspiracy-of-cartographers)

guerrillatech:

(via quiet--batpeople)

stele3:

popthirdworld:

“When I was 26, I went to Indonesia and the Philippines to do research for my first book, No Logo. I had a simple goal: to meet the workers making the clothes and electronics that my friends and I purchased. And I did. I spent evenings on concrete floors in squalid dorm rooms where teenage girls—sweet and giggly—spent their scarce nonworking hours. Eight or even 10 to a room. They told me stories about not being able to leave their machines to pee. About bosses who hit. About not having enough money to buy dried fish to go with their rice.

They knew they were being badly exploited—that the garments they were making were being sold for more than they would make in a month. One 17-year-old said to me: “We make computers, but we don’t know how to use them.”

So one thing I found slightly jarring was that some of these same workers wore clothing festooned with knockoff trademarks of the very multinationals that were responsible for these conditions: Disney characters or Nike check marks. At one point, I asked a local labor organizer about this. Wasn’t it strange—a contradiction?

It took a very long time for him to understand the question. When he finally did, he looked at me like I was nuts. You see, for him and his colleagues, individual consumption wasn’t considered to be in the realm of politics at all. Power rested not in what you did as one person, but what you did as many people, as one part of a large, organized, and focused movement. For him, this meant organizing workers to go on strike for better conditions, and eventually it meant winning the right to unionize. What you ate for lunch or happened to be wearing was of absolutely no concern whatsoever.

This was striking to me, because it was the mirror opposite of my culture back home in Canada. Where I came from, you expressed your political beliefs—firstly and very often lastly—through personal lifestyle choices. By loudly proclaiming your vegetarianism. By shopping fair trade and local and boycotting big, evil brands.

These very different understandings of social change came up again and again a couple of years later, once my book came out. I would give talks about the need for international protections for the right to unionize. About the need to change our global trading system so it didn’t encourage a race to the bottom. And yet at the end of those talks, the first question from the audience was: “What kind of sneakers are OK to buy?” “What brands are ethical?” “Where do you buy your clothes?” “What can I do, as an individual, to change the world?”

Fifteen years after I published No Logo, I still find myself facing very similar questions. These days, I give talks about how the same economic model that superpowered multinationals to seek out cheap labor in Indonesia and China also supercharged global greenhouse-gas emissions. And, invariably, the hand goes up: “Tell me what I can do as an individual.” Or maybe “as a business owner.”

The hard truth is that the answer to the question “What can I, as an individual, do to stop climate change?” is: nothing. You can’t do anything. In fact, the very idea that we—as atomized individuals, even lots of atomized individuals—could play a significant part in stabilizing the planet’s climate system, or changing the global economy, is objectively nuts. We can only meet this tremendous challenge together. As part of a massive and organized global movement.

The irony is that people with relatively little power tend to understand this far better than those with a great deal more power. The workers I met in Indonesia and the Philippines knew all too well that governments and corporations did not value their voice or even their lives as individuals. And because of this, they were driven to act not only together, but to act on a rather large political canvas. To try to change the policies in factories that employ thousands of workers, or in export zones that employ tens of thousands. Or the labor laws in an entire country of millions. Their sense of individual powerlessness pushed them to be politically ambitious, to demand structural changes.

In contrast, here in wealthy countries, we are told how powerful we are as individuals all the time. As consumers. Even individual activists. And the result is that, despite our power and privilege, we often end up acting on canvases that are unnecessarily small—the canvas of our own lifestyle, or maybe our neighborhood or town. Meanwhile, we abandon the structural changes—the policy and legal work— to others.”

- Naomi Klein

This is why the media keeps pumping out articles about plastic straws and avocados that focuses on what we, individually, are doing to destroy the environment, when really the most pollution comes from multinational corporations and the only thing that will save us is global collective action.

(via a-conspiracy-of-cartographers)

a-conspiracy-of-cartographers:

mailorderfictionalcharacter:

people are still patriotic in 2020? grow up? do not ask for what you can do for your country but what human rights violations they are currently committing and why you should hate them. 

do not ask what you can do for your country

ask instead what your country has done to you

(- jean tong, playwright)

hillnerd:

updatebug:

cheeseanonioncrisps:

hermiones-amortentia:

updatebug:

Not saying the movies did Hermione wrong (which they did) but I love how utterly and completely insensitive Hermione can be in the books. Like literally, in book three: 

Ron: My uncle, my actual blood family member uncle who I knew, clearly cared bout and am named after, saw a magical creature that is said to cause death and died one day later. Cause of death not specified. Could have been natural causes. Could have been hit by a freaking bus for all you know. 

Hermione: Yes, well our good friend harry is clearly not as stupid as those wizards who ‘died of fright’. He isn’t going to die. Your dead uncle is an absolute moron. Go what was coming to him. 

Yet it’s Ron who had the emotional range of a teaspoon🤡

Lavender: My beloved childhood pet died while I was away at boarding school. I’m literally holding the letter in my hand now! It’s just like Professor Trelawny predicted.

Hermione (pulling on Sherlock Holmes hat): Okay, I’m going to need the name, age and cause of death of the rabbit. Stop crying Lavender! I’m trying to prove somebody Wrong!

Harry: My one non-abusive legal family member who I clearly loved and trusted and cared about immensely was brutality murdered in front of me in a way which is arguably my fault and which I am definitely blaming myself for and still highly traumatised by. 

 Hermione: Just saying. I told that guy to be kinder to his house elf. Did the house-elf represent Sirius’ abusive past, yes. And was Sirius incredibly messed up from spending years in prison trapped in his worst memories and escape, only to be immediately trapped in a house filled with constant reminders of his worst memories, one of which being the house elf spewing the same racist, bigoted, abusive, retoric Sirius had to deal with his entire childhood? Sure. But I told that guy to be nicer to his damn house elf. 

Harry: Oh my god, I nearly killed a student with a spell from the potions books! His blood is on my hands and I am riddled with guilt about it and shaken to my core about it. 

Hermione: I won’t say I told you so… BUT I told you that book was bad! And I was right! You can’t stick up for the book now, can you? It’s ridiculous, and not you have a reputation for potions brilliance you don’t deserve, which is the thing that’s most important now to bring up.

(via a-conspiracy-of-cartographers)