Day 286 of quarantine I have discovered www.webstaurantstore.com
It is, I BELIEVE, a website intended to be used by restaurants for bulk ordering food and utensils. And this is bringing me such unbounded delight scrolling through and recognizing that I, a single individual, ALSO can order ridiculous obscene enormous offensive-to-all-common-sensibilities shipments of BULK FOOD, to my LITTLE LITTLE APARTMENT, for PENNIES on the dollar. I have this god given power to flood my entire living space with bulk grains and it is one single button click away from my reality.
30 POUNDS of chocolate for $100. 20 POUNDS of peas for $13?? $13!!!! I will wake up every single morning from now on knowing that a box of donuts and a sack of dried split peas heavy enough to bodily injure someone both carry equal monetary weight. 25 POUNDS OF ONION POWDER for $50. Do you understand the enormity? the accessibility? the potential here? With the single click of the button I can put myself in a position of bequeathing more than a humanly comprehensible amount of onion powder in my will. AND IT WOULD ONLY COST ME $50 TO MAKE THIS A REALITY.
But what gets me
What truly gets me
is the 50 POUND BAG OF RICE
FOR LESS THAN $20
Do you know how much that kills me? How much I’m losing my mind? that I can order MYSELF WORTH OF RICE for something to the tune of $50? I can OUT-RANK MYSELF WITH RICE, DEMOCRATICALLY OVERRULE MYSELF WITH RICE, IN MY OWN APARTMENTfor the fucking PENNIES that is $50
I’m so sorry for the normal person I’ll be after quarantine because the cabin-fever version of me I’m inhabiting right now is perhaps just uninhibited enough to follow through on this dream I’ve just discovered of out-ricing myself.
real talk though, if you had a large number of people in your community who wanted a particular food item and couldn’t afford it (for instance if you’re in a food desert and need produce or if you’re a part of a large disabled and/or overworked community who all need prepared frozen food), you could pool funds and get an order from a supply store like this.
it requires organizing for finance management, ordering, transport, and distribution, but if you build a stable mutual aid network, it’s genuinely within the realm of possibility.
This idea is called a buyers club (or buying club, buying coop, etc) and it’s a great time-tested method of mutual aid. And there are guides and tools for starting your own at managemy.coop
In the following analysis, anarchists from Germany explore how events from German history should inform those who are resisting the consolidation of authoritarian power in the United States today.
Greetings from Germany. Even though we have seen many videos of police murdering people, it still enrages us every time. After the murder of Renee Good, we reflected on what we could do to support the opposition to Donald Trump.
We have decided to share our experiences from Germany and German history in hopes that this will help people in the United States to defend themselves against attempts to control, pacify, and divide. One of the central elements of the Nazi rise to power in Germany was the fact that the leaders of the Social Democrat parties participated in the crackdowns suppressing a series of uprisings.
In addition, we want to call on everyone else in the territory claimed by Germany to support the resistance in the United States with all resources available. If Trump is stopped, we may also have the chance to defeat authoritarianism here.
“Remember Renee—Don’t let the state destroy all good in the world.” A poster in remembrance of Renee Good seen somewhere in Germany. You can download the design in Appendix I, below.
Being “Peaceful” and “Law-Abiding” Will Not Stop Authoritarianism
Before the Nazis took power, Germany had one of the largest workers’ movements in the entire world. This movement was dominated by the Social Democratic Party (SPD). From 1919 on, the second strongest power was the Communist Party (KPD). Consequently, the German workers’ movement has always been strongly focused on elections as a means of acquiring state power.
Despite this focus on the parliamentary route, the rank and file of the German workers’ movement has repeatedly been compelled to resort to other means. In 1918, a revolution organized by workers and soldiers overthrew the emperor and created the first German republic, creating a government led by the Social Democrats.
In response, a nationwide general strike took place with millions taking part. In the Ruhr area, workers went a step further: tens of thousands armed themselves and drove the police and military out of the region, establishing workers’ councils. In the cities where the anarcho-syndicalists were strong, people also expropriated companies. The workers were so powerful and the regular German military so weak that the most important industrial region of Germany, a region with millions of inhabitants, was liberated from the control of the state.
An anti-fascist workers’ militia in the town of Dortmund during the Ruhr Uprising.
After the strikes, direct actions, and militant struggle stopped the coup, the same social democrats that the workers had helped to victory quelled the uprising. To accomplish this, they made use of some of the right-wing militias that had previously been involved in the coup. They were able to do this because half of the workers withdrew from action after the “legitimate” government was back in power.
To crush the Ruhr uprising, state forces murdered over a thousand workers, including many of the most militant fighters of the workers’ movement. Consequently, they were not able to participate in the resistance to the growing fascist movement in the following decade.
Today, the SPD is in a coalition with the conservative CDU. Its chancellor, German Prime Minister Friedrich Merz, gives speeches in which he speaks of migrants as “a problem in the cityscape.”
In short, the SPD are to Germany what the Democrats are to the United States. The Democrats, too, are trying to pacify the resistance against Trump in order to maintain their own power.
Without the uprising that took place in 2020, the Democrats likely would not have returned to power. Yet after that uprising, the Democrats sought to eliminate the most militant elements of the resistance via repression while doing their best to re-legitimize the same institutions—such as ICE—that now serve Trump once again.
We do not know how history would have turned out if the workers had not let themselves be divided during the Ruhr uprising—if many of them had not given up as soon as the democratically elected rulers were back in power. But the Ruhr uprising was the best chance to stop the rise of fascism in Germany. After that, no large anti-fascist insurrection took place again.
In the long term, it’s better not to compromise, not to let oneself be pacified and disarmed, whether literally or figuratively. Being uncompromising and taking risks is often safer than restoring the status quo.
German SWAT police attempting to suppress resistance to the 2017 G20 summit in Hamburg, in order to defend Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Saudi Arabian finance minister Muhammad al-Jadaan.
The other lesson that we can draw from German history is that civil war is not the worst thing that can happen. After 1933, there was resistance to fascism in Germany, but the resistance movement was too weak to wage a large-scale struggle like the Ruhr uprising.
By contrast, in countries like Spain and Italy, where the workers’ movement was not dominated by social democrats focused on elections but rather was driven by anarchists and socialists focused on grassroots organizing and action, a long struggle took place against the fascist regimes that came to power, involving extensive resistance.
In the case of Spain, after decades of unauthorized demonstrations, strikes, and militant attacks, the capitalist elite were forced to introduce a democratic system as a concession. The foundation for this extensive resistance had been laid by generations of peasants’ and workers’ resistance from which a great anarchist movement grew, culminating in the anarchist revolution in 1936 and the civil war from 1936 to 1939. Although the anarchists were defeated in the civil war, their efforts left such a mark in Spain that eventually fascism was abolished without the sort of military defeat that was essential to ending fascism in Germany.
To be clear, we do not want a civil war. We want a social revolution—we want people to stand so decisively against the state and capitalism, with such unity, that the other side is too small to wage war at all. But if our only choice is between civil war and a dictatorship that will have a free hand to imprison and murder millions of people, then the decision should be clear. Civil war is better.
Democrats in the United States are trying to stoke fear that “non-peaceful” confrontations with ICE and the Trump regime will lead to the deployment of the military. And then what? People will get shot for protesting? But aren’t people already being shot?
What the Democrats really fear is not that people could be hurt in the streets, but that Democrat politicians might lose their jobs. Because they want to maintain their own power, they try to pacify and divide the resistance with rhetoric about the necessity of remaining “non-violent” and “law-abiding.”
What happens when a population unites against a regime and no longer stops at what is legally permitted? We saw the answer in Germany in 1989 when the GDR (the so-called “German Democratic Republic”) collapsed.
At that time, the resistance to the regime was not all “nonviolent.” There were attacks on the police. The demonstrations were not law-abiding—in fact, they were all illegal. Millions of people broke the law. Because of the number of people on the streets refusing to obey, the regime knew that it would have to use the military, including tanks, the quell the uprising.
“No Power for nobody”: Anarchists participate in the largest demonstration against the GDR Regime in 1989. Anarchists, especially anarcho-punks and eco-activists, played an important role in bringing down the dictatorship.
Parts of the government became afraid of escalation. They were unsure whether their military was ready to obey the order to attack protesters. They asked their main ally—the Soviet Union—to support them with troops. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev refused.
The Trump regime is not dependent on Moscow, at least not in this particular way. But it relies on an American state apparatus that is not entirely under its control.
As long the Trump regime is not forced to use the military and all other available forces, as long as the loyal shock troops of ICE suffice to enable them to accomplish their goals, those who are not yet definitively on Donald Trump’s side will not have to make a decision. They will not have to experience a Gorbachev moment in which they might decide against carrying out Trump’s orders.
Escalation always involves the risk of losing. But holding back in this situation means choosing to lose.
The downfall of the GDR also shows that it is not necessarily useful to address resistance directly to the despot, as he will not be the one who hesitates, but rather to those who are not completely ideologically on his side.
In the context of the United States, this would mean not to focus all energy on ICE and Trump. It is important to oppose them, but that will go much better if every time Democrat politicians send local and state police and National Guard to protect ICE, they experience consequences that make it impossible for them to continue to do so.
The uprising in the GDR did not succeed in a vacuum. In many countries in Eastern Europe, the heads of numerous dictatorships were forced to decide whether to double down on repression or make concessions. Any weakening of the dictatorship in a neighboring country made it possible to expand the fighting elsewhere, because it was no longer possible to move troops from one Warsaw Pact state to another.
We want to propose a question. What would it take to ensure that a mayor in the USA can no longer send the police when people try to confront a hotel full of ICE agents? What has to happen to compel a governor to order his National Guard not to interfere? What circumstances would have to prevail on the street to make it impossible for the National Guard of one state to be sent in another?
It’s Too Late to Preserve the Status Quo
While fascists and autocrats are not yet in power in Germany, the day when they could be is not far away. The AFD (Alternative for Germany) is about to become the strongest party in Germany. The AFD represents positions similar to the MAGA movement, and the demographics that support them are similar.
While it has a clearly fascist base, most people do not vote for the AFD because they support its positions. As surveys show, they vote AFD to express their anger at the existing system. Consequently, the AFD is now especially successful in the Ruhr area—the region where the largest anti-fascist uprising in German history took place in 1920—as well as in East Germany. This is not a coincidence. After the people in Ruhr area mined coal for 100 years to support German industry and German wars, the region was left impoverished the way that the Rust Belt in the United States has been since the 1970s.
A survey of AFD voters in February 2025, in which 85% of them claimed that the AFD was the only political party via which they could express their protest.
And who was responsible for this? The SPD—the social democrats who managed the process of economic decline for 50 years while diligently profiting from their posts in the state apparatus until the situation finally became so stark that they could not maintain their majorities.
And here we find another parallel: just like Trump, the AFD does not promise material improvements to its base; rather, it promises hatred and violence. It will not benefit the majority of its constituents. The AFD openly states in its election program that it intends to cut German social spending, just as the Republicans are doing under Trump. Its leaders are primarily recruited from the academic elites; they are not the ones who are at risk from these cuts.
The neoliberal left (SPD) and the conservatives (CDU) who are currently in power in Germany have already partially implemented these cuts on the grounds that doing so would stop the AFD from gaining support. Unsurprisingly, this has done nothing to erode the popularity of the AFD. These neoliberal leftists and conservatives are comparable to the right wing of the US Democrats.
The only other notable political force in Germany is the Left Party, which now represents the new Social Democracy. It’s clear where this will end up. In the neoliberal global order, and due to the decline of the imperialist rule of Europe, the Left Party will not be able to carry out significant social reforms. Like Syriza, it will betray its predominantly young voters—this has already been shown in the decision to abstain from the vote on a pension package, which allowed the law to pass. (At the expense of the younger generations, this pension package preserves the status quo of the state pension without compelling privileged groups—such as Beamte, a special group of state employees, entrepreneurs, and self-employed people such as doctors—to pay into the general pension system.)
To summarize: just as in the United States, where the Democrats do not represent a real alternative to Trump and cannot stop the fundamental causes of authoritarianism, in Germany, there is no real alternative to be found within the state.
The only way out would be a movement that overturns the fundamental power structure of society, putting an end to the state and capitalism. Unfortunately, the prospects for this in Germany are currently very weak.
The Resistance to Trump Is Our Best Hope
In view of all these factors, we could be reduced to despair, but actually, we are still capable of hope. We are able to hope because we have experienced that what is happening in the United States can spill over to Germany. Inspired by the George Floyd uprising, tens of thousands in Germany spontaneously took to the streets against the violence of the police in the summer of 2020—something that has not happened in Germany for decades, because, thanks to their “good training” see Appendix II, the police rarely kill white people from the middle class. Summer 2020 was one of the few moments in the past decades when, for a moment, something other than the status quo seemed possible.
After that, protests continued against police murders, although—being organized by an alliance of liberals, social democrats, and parts of the so-called “radical left”—they were mostly directed at securing the convictions of the policemen involved. As in the United States, this strategy has failed utterly. Instead of becoming more “accountable,” police are expanding their powers in Germany, including the use of Tasers, AI-based surveillance, and the installation of monitoring software.
But if people in the US succeed in stopping Trump and the resistance that unfolds exceeds the control of Democrat politicians, if something better than the old status quo becomes possible, that will also inspire people in Germany and all around the world.
That is why we want to call on everyone in the territory claimed by Germany to support the resistance against Trump.
The only route that promises long-term security is the route to another world.
15,000 people protest in solidarity with the George Floyd Uprising on June 6, 2020 in Berlin.
Appendix I: A Poster in Memory of Renee Good
After seeing the above photograph of this poster hanging in Germany, we’ve succeeded in acquiring a PDF of it, which you can download here.
In their attempts to pacify resistance to the Trump regime, Democrats promote the narrative that a “better trained” police force would be less violent.
The example of the German police shows that this is false. German police are among the most highly trained in the world. German officers receive two and a half or even three years of training. They receive training in deescalation and communication. This does not prevent them from murdering people.
German police receiving training about racism against Sinti and Romani people.
A well-trained police force does not create more freedom and security. It creates a stronger state. It is precisely this “strong” state that has repeatedly made great horrors possible in German history.
In 2024, police in Germany shot and killed 22 people. For comparison, if the population of Germany were equivalent to the population of the United States, this would mean that German police killed approximately 100 people. In the United States, police kill over 1000 people a year, but the figures in Germany do not include those who have been killed by the police in other ways—there are no central statistics about the total number of police murders in Germany, just as there were no public statistics about police murders in the United States until fierce demonstrations brought the subject to light. Firearms are much harder to come by in Germany, yet the police still kill people, even without that justification.
In any case, despite all the training, the number of people that police shoot in Germany is increasing.
Are police less likely to do violence to people because they are trained to “help” them? Consider the case of a deaf 12-year-old, whom police shot on the night of November 16, 2025. The police were sent by the youth welfare office because the 12-year-old had left a residential group of the youth welfare office to visit her family. Shortly after midnight, several police officers broke into the family’s home, pulled the mother, who was also deaf, out of the apartment, and shot the 12-year-old with both a pistol and a Taser. The child survived, though critically injured. The police claim that the 12-year-old had a knife in her hand. If she really did have a knife in her hand, it was a spontaneous attempt to defend her family against the violence of the state.
The reasoning of the police for the operation was that the twelve-year-old urgently needed insulin and therefore had to intervene. The logic is that the state must protect people from themselves by force, must violently rule them for their own good. Training is not the issue here. The problem is the monopolization of force by an institution that exists for the sake of using violence against the general public.
The entrance to the apartment building where German police shot a 12-year-old girl on November 16, 2025. It is located in Hamme, a working class neighborhood in the town of Bochum in the Ruhr Area.
“In the long term, it’s better not to compromise, not to let oneself be pacified and disarmed, whether literally or figuratively. Being uncompromising and taking risks is often safer than restoring the status quo.”
A lot of liberals want to say that what is happening with ICE and the return of imperialism and the use of government forces against protestors isn’t what America truly is.
I reject that–all of this is what America was founded on. It’s been awhile for most of it, I grant you. But Trumpism is nothing if not nostalgia and that includes nostalgia for when white men could do whatever they want to minorities, liberals, radicals, immigrants, and whoever dares stand up against the forces of white power.
I suspect I am going to have a lot of posts about this in coming weeks and months. But let me start with the first one.
ICE is taking its prisoners of the American ethnic cleansing campaign to Fort Snelling. That’s a military instillation in the Twin Cities. If you don’t know Minnesota history, you probably haven’t heard of it. But it has already played an enormously outsized role in American racial history.
For one, Fort Snelling is where Dred Scott was taken by his owner. There Scott labored in slavery for several years. His experiences there led to the famous case, when Roger Taney stated that Black people “had no rights the white man was bound to respect.” And let me tell you what, that’s the attitude of ICE today, even if it more than just Black people.
Second, Fort Snelling was he gathering site for the genocide of the Dakota War in 1862. This land, where the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers meet, is considered sacred by the Dakota. So naturally, it is where the Army gathered up the Dakota during the Dakota War, hoping to kill several hundred of them. It turned out to be only 38, chosen in the end by Abraham Lincoln, the largest mass execution in American history. The actual executions took place in Mankato, but for the Dakota, this is a land poisoned by America. Fort Snelling is also where the Dakota and Ho-Chunk were rounded up in a concentration camp to forcibly remove them from the region after the war. Hundreds died there of the terrible conditions. These were almost all non-combatants, mostly women and children.
During World War II, Fort Snelling became a place where Japanese Americans–locked up in concentration camps based on nothing more than their race–could get out of the camps by agreeing to serve the military as Japanese translators and get training there.
ICE is just targeting anyone non-white and letting the chips fall where they may. As there are a lot of indigenous people in the Twin Cities, that means a lot of people have been targeted and harassed. A friend told me of a Dakota friend of hers whose sister was nearly arrested by ICE (the protestors drove ICE away), for example. She’s brown after all. Several Native people have been arrested by ICE in Minneapolis and sent to…..Fort Snelling.
So, yeah, when I see what ICE is doing right now, I think of it as very much what this nation was founded on. The United States is a nation built on slavery and genocide. This is the latest iteration of this violent race hate. I’m not making any political claims that pointing out the reality of American history is going to help, but I am saying that Trumpism is exposing the truth of this nation’s character.
"when I see what ICE is doing right now, I think of it as very much what this nation was founded on. The United States is a nation built on slavery and genocide. This is the latest iteration of this violent race hate."
On a live watch-along video recorded in late December, the bro-y, backwards-baseball-cap-wearing hosts of the podcast Empty Netters stare at their screens and whisper breathlessly into their mics. The hockey podcast usually offers... More »
It’s an image that will knock you sideways: As snow falls, an elderly man wearing nothing but blue boxers and white Crocs with his hands restrained behind his back is forced out of his home by ICE agents. In the photo captured by photojournalist Leah Millis, you can see a red and white plaid blanket is draped around the man’s shoulders, but his chest is completely bare, exposing him to the harsh elements. It’s something out of a nightmare. It’s something that happened in St. Paul on Sunday.
ChongLy Scott Thao, also known as Saly, is a Hmong American born in Laos who has lived here most of his life. Born in a Laos refugee camp, he’s a US citizen, and St. Paul, Minnesota is his home. His mother Choua, who passed away just three weeks ago, was a nurse who helped American troops during the Laotian Civil War and brought her family stateside post-war as part of a large wave of Southeast Asians seeking refuge. Despite his status, Thao was subjected to the ultimate indignity when federal immigration agents broke down his door Sunday, terrorizing him, his wife and his five-year-old grandson, his family has confirmed. Though he ended up being returned, the damage is done and the message has been sent: If you’re not white, you’re not safe.
“Whatever you think it is, it’s worse,” Brandi Reilly, a neighbor who witnessed Thao’s detainment, told me by phone on Monday about what it’s been like in the Twin Cities of late. Sunday morning Reilly and her partner Kristi Nelson hit the streets of St. Paul for the first time since the occupation began to serve as observers. First they stood watch outside a local church with a predominately Spanish-speaking congregation, and shortly after a call went out to their Signal group that ICE agents were surrounding a nearby home and observers were needed. They went over, the man’s immigration status immaterial to the effort to protect him.
“There were, gosh, 10-15 agents,” Reilly, a nurse practitioner who has many Hmong patients and has watched up close the impact on the community, recalled. “They were surrounding the house. They all had weapons. People were screaming to see a judicial warrant. They were ignoring everybody. Neighbors were outside. They [the agents] had hands on tear gas, hands on their weapons. It was scary.”
Shortly after the men busted down Thao’s door, they came out with their supposed target in hand: A short, elderly, half-naked man being marched out of his home. Photos from that moment show his grandson looking out the window, a pacifier in his mouth. Brandi said Thao had red marks on his face and legs. “He looked like he had been physically assaulted before they brought him out of the house,” she said. “He just looked terrified and broken.”
Thao was then thrown into an ICE vehicle and taken away. Reilly and Nelson captured video of the whole scene, which I’ve posted to Youtube.
“I am so angry and infuriated over what happened yesterday to my brother-in-law, ChongLy Scott Thao, (Thao) that I can’t sleep,” Louansee Moua, Thao’s sister-in-law, posted to Facebook late Sunday night. “Instead of staying silent, I chose to act.” A post earlier in the day from Brandi confirmed that Thao had been returned, and later a statement from Moua posted on the Hmong American Experience Facebook page confirmed the same. “Saly is a naturalized U.S. citizen. He has NO criminal record,” Moua’s statement read. “ICE drove him around for nearly an hour, questioned him, and fingerprinted him. Only after all of that did they realize he had no criminal history and no reason to be detained. They then dropped him back off at his apartment like nothing happened.”
I reached out to Moua for more information about what happened. In response, she shared the text of her Facebook post and later, a statement from the family. She started a GoFundMe for Thao to cover medical and potential legal expenses, which has already raised more than $25k as of this publication.)
In a sad commentary on the current situation, some of those I spoke to remarked on the fact that Thao was thankfully dropped back home, as opposed to somewhere random like ICE did with a teenage Target worker in Minneapolis last week.
DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin shared a statement to X at 1:26pm ET Monday afternoon in response to a post about Thao’s arrest, alleging that the operation was targeting “two convicted sex offenders” with final orders of removal from an immigration judge. She claimed, without evidence, that Thao lives with these two men and that he was detained because “he matched the description of the targets.”
A few hours later, the DHS X account posted photos and information for the two Asian men they were supposedly looking for, writing they’re “the WORST OF THE WORST” as an apparent justification for Thao’s arrest. They did not attempt to explain or prove the men were connected to him, and both appear to be significantly younger than him. I reached out to DHS for more clarity, but in the absence of additional information, it appears Thao was taken half-naked in 10 degree weather simply because he’s Asian.
Moua shared a family statement with The Handbasket late afternoon Monday disputing DHS’s claims. “Mr. Thao is a United States citizen with no criminal record,” the statement said. “He does not live with, nor has he ever lived with, the individuals DHS claims were targets of this operation. The only people residing at the home are Mr. Thao, his son, his daughter-in-law, and his young grandson. They do not know the individuals DHS references.” The family said no warrant was presented, agents did not ask for Thao’s ID, but they “nevertheless forcibly entered the home with weapons drawn.” Moua told The Handbasket that Thao and his family have lived in the home for two years.
St. Paul’s Hmong roots go back at least 50 years when refugees began arriving there from Laos after helping the Americans in the Laotian Civil War (also known as “The Secret War,” which took place concurrently with Vietnam.) Since then, there have been multiple waves of migration resulting in an older first generation community of mixed citizenship status—some non-citizens, but most naturalized citizens, like Thao. Regardless, Hmong people are knit into the fabric of the Twin Cities.
According to the US Census Bureau, an estimated 360,000 people who identify as Hmong live in the United States, at more than 90,000, the metropolitan area with the largest Hmong population is Minneapolis/St. Paul. This past November, the city of St. Paul elected its first Hmong American mayor, Kaohly Her. Mayor Her testified before members of Congress last week who traveled to Minnesota to address the ongoing siege, and shared how the ICE occupation has impacted her community.
“We received reports of federal law enforcement officers going door to door, asking people where the Asian people live, right in our very own city,” Mayor Her said. “I myself have received advice to carry my passport with me, because they may try to target me based on what I look like as well.”
Her’s testimony and Thao’s experience fly in the face of what DHS Kristi Noem has claimed about ICE actions in Minnesota. “In every situation, we’re doing targeted enforcement,” Noem told White House reporters on Thursday. “If we are on a target and doing an operation, there may be individuals surrounding that criminal that we may be asking who they are and why they’re there and having them validate their identity.”
The fear and trauma gripping the Twin Cities comes in many forms. Reilly, the observer, shared how her children grew fearful for her safety after hearing about Renee Good’s murder by ICE. “They came to me and they said, ‘Mommy, we don't want you to get shot. You're a lesbian and they shot a lesbian.”
Even so, Reilly and Nelson feel it’s their duty as white women to help protect their neighbors of color. “We might not have been alive for Stonewall, but by God, we're alive for this,” Reilly said. And what they witnessed on Sunday has only strengthened their commitment to observing and bearing witness.
“While ChongLy was not physically injured, the emotional and psychological harm has been profound,” Moua wrote on his GoFundMe. “ChongLy also lives with severe psoriasis, a chronic condition that is significantly worsened by extreme stress. Since the incident, his health and emotional well-being have declined.”
Thao is considered one of the lucky ones, but that hardly means he escaped unscathed. ICE’s lawlessness in Minnesota and beyond is creating new physical and moral injuries every day that will likely take a lifetime to heal.
"Even so, Reilly and Nelson feel it’s their duty as white women to help protect their neighbors of color. “We might not have been alive for Stonewall, but by God, we're alive for this,” Reilly said. And what they witnessed on Sunday has only strengthened their commitment to observing and bearing witness."
I haven’t started making anything in my new art studio yet, but I organized!
This week’s question comes to us from Gwen Dubois:
How do I keep functioning in a capitalist world?
I am going to tell you a very shameful story.
Erika got me a Kit Kat clock for Christmas. For those who are unaware, a Kit Kat clock is shaped like a cat, with a clock in its belly, and eyes and a tail that go back and forth like a metronome. I’m sure you’ve seen one. They go back to the deco age of the 1930s, and if you’ve ever dated someone with bangs they have one in their kitchen. They’re usually black. Erika got me a kelly green one. (Go birds. Fuck ICE. Free Palestine.) I was very happy to get it.
On Christmas night, after friends and family had all left, I decided to hang up my Kit Kat clock. I rummaged through the junk drawer (I’m kidding, they’re all junk drawers.) until I found two C batteries, inserted them in the clock, then hung it up. The eyes and tail weren’t moving. I gave the tail a little push. Nothing. Hmm. I took it down and checked the batteries, which had expired in… 2018. Batteries expire? I decided to deal with it tomorrow. The next day I walked up to my local ma and pa drugstore (I’m kidding, it’s a fucking CVS) and bought a fresh pack of C batteries. I went home, put in the new batteries, put the clock back on the wall, and… nothing. Gave the tail a little push, and… nothing. This time I decided to see if the clock itself was working. I checked the time, came back 30 minutes later, and… the clock was working. This most likely eliminated the batteries as the source of the problem. By this point Erika was on the internet doing what she does best, research.
Readers, there are a lot of videos out there on fixing Kit Kat clocks.
We tried a few different things and none of them worked. Finally, we found a video that told us the most likely culprit was that the magnets used in the clock to make the eyes and tail move probably weren’t strong enough but could be easily fixed by adding more magnets to the clock. I was into this solution for two reasons: magnets and a reason to go to the hardware store, which I love. So off I went to the local hardware store.
“Do you have 8mm by 1mm neodymium magnets?” (The video was very specific.)
“All we have is what’s in the case.”
They weren’t in the case. No biggie, there’s another hardware store five blocks away, and it was a nice day for a walk. Sadly that store didn’t have 8mm by 1mm neodymium magnets either.
(Fun medical fact! Neodymium magnets come with very large warnings about keeping them away from children and idiotic adults who will think it’s funny to swallow them, except that they’re so strong they’ll get stuck in different parts of your colon and accordion your colon when they attract each other, as magnets do. The results aren’t good, but on the upside the surgery is incredibly expensive.)
Having struck out at the two local hardware stores I could walk to, I decided to wait a few days and go to the even bigger, but still locally run, hardware store by work. (Shout-out to Center Hardware!) Which I did. They had an extensive supply of magnets, neodymium and otherwise (No, I don’t know what the difference is.), but unfortunately, not the specific size I needed.
Here comes the shameful part. At this point I was so frustrated that I opened the Amazon app on my phone and ordered 8mm by 1mm neodymium magnets, which of course they had. A couple days later a shame-filled envelope showed up at my door with one hundred 8mm by 1mm neodymium magnets inside. (I need two.) And, yes, I realize I hadn’t exhausted all other options, including other online options, before resorting to Amazon. But I let frustration get to me and took the easy way out.
None of this specifically answers your question, but it’s related and I needed to get it off my chest. Still, I feel like I at least tried to buy these magnets at three local stores before letting frustration get the better of me. And what I’m maybe saying is that it’s sometimes hard to use the system differently than it's been designed to work. Because at this point, the system is definitely designed to get me to go to Amazon first.
A few days ago I was sitting in the local dogpark when the ever-popular topic of San Francisco’s downtown came up. Apparently another big store had shuttered. And the Old Men of the Dogpark™had much to say about “the state of things” including crime sprees and other make-believe bullshit that was keeping people from doing their shopping downtown. As they’re saying this I’m watching various Amazon trucks circle the park. Finally I asked one of them when he’d last bought something at Amazon.
“Last night.”
“Where would you have bought that before Amazon?”
“Downtown.” Three things are happening here: our options are disappearing, we’re being sold a bullshit narrative about why our options are disappearing, and the evil alternative—which isn’t an alternative at all because it’s killing all its competition—feels incredibly easy. Because it is. You open your phone. Every item you could ever want is there. You push a button. It comes to you. Your city dies.
I’m gonna turn into an old man for just a minute. There was a time, not that long ago actually, when I could’ve walked four blocks to a Radio Shack and said “You got magnets?” And they would’ve showed me a wall of magnets. Then, just to rub it in, I could’ve stopped next door at Tower Records and spent an hour looking at magazines before picking out a record and walking back home. And I honestly miss doing shit like that, but I realize that these are part of my past, and trying to convince people that my past was better than their present is incredibly annoying, doesn’t solve shit, and is deserving of all the eye-rolls you are now giving me. And yet… Radio Shack was fucking glorious. Rant over.
So how do we function within capitalism?
I lied. Rant not over. Not quite. Because the lesson we can take from how “things used to be” is that we used to have options. The endgame of surveillance capitalism is to take away as many options as possible, which sounds to me a lot like a company store. Where your dollar can only go to the one place that provides the thing you need, at the one price it costs, at the one quality it’s offered. And honestly, if I were to look outside and see a lot of joy and happiness and people enjoying their one life here on Earth I’d be inclined to say “Good job, here’s my dollar!” But that’s not what I see.
Half my neighbors are afraid of being shot in the face by the government, and the other half are providing that same government with their own surveillance data by covering their homes in nest cams inside and out. Orwell fucking wept.
Unfortunately, capitalism is here and will probably remain here for the foreseeable future. Even if we, hopefully, start adopting some of the tenets of socialism, we will be interweaving it with capitalism. Which means we need to be more intentional about where we put our dollar, and we need to be aware of what we’re actually trading for our dollar.
Once upon a time (here he goes again), if I went to the hardware store and bought a light bulb that is exactly what I got. A light bulb. Depending on the hardware store my purchase might trigger a subtraction to their inventory database, and if they were really fancy, there might be a record that I bought a light bulb which might could be useful in a few years if I were to go back, be confused, and ask them if they knew what kind of light bulbs I’d bought last time. But for the most part, me walking out with a pack of light bulbs was the end of the transaction. These days, a light bulb purchase is the beginning of a transaction. You screw in the lightbulb, you fire up your lightbulb app, you set up a scenario, you get the light bulb to talk to your phone, you make it behave depending on your phone’s distance to it, or the time of day, etc. All of this creates juicy data that is then bought and sold by the light bulb company, the app manufacturer, and probably Palantir who then sells it to ICE so they know when you’re home. Motherfucker, you just needed a light bulb, man. So yeah, I miss the capitalism where I exchanged my dollar for your light bulb and that was the end of that. Turns out smart homes are anything but. Peter Thiel does not need to know what kind of light bulbs you use. Or when you’re home.
If we are going to keep functioning in a capitalist world we need to be more careful about where we are spending our money. The local hardware store will only be there as long as you keep using it. Same for the local grocery store, the local café, the local record store, the local pet store, etc. And while it might be easier to get something delivered to your door, I’d encourage you to pay those folks a visit once in a while. Those people are part of your community. Jeff Bezos is barely part of humanity. He does not deserve your dollar. The people at Target do not deserve your dollar. The union-busters at Whole Foods do not deserve your dollar. As someone who does a lot of shipping of zines, books, and assorted other shit, Uline does not get my dollar. (Special shout-out to the DSA for sending out their calendar in a Uline mailer. Fuck yeah, I’m gonna call your ass out on that!) And yes, sometimes the right thing is gonna cost. $8 might seem a great price for a t-shirt—and if all you have is $8 and you need a t-shirt, go ahead and get it!—but selling you an $8 t-shirt means somebody somewhere is getting fucked. (To be fair, if you are at a concert and a t-shirt is $80, the person getting fucked is you.)
The TL;DR on functioning in a capitalist world is to move a little slower, with a little more intention. Your dollar helps people stay in business. Be careful where you put it. I’m not saying it’s easy. As I told at the top of the story, I shamefully let frustration get to me and I took the easy way out. This’ll happen. But every time we keep doing it, we get closer and closer to having no other options than having to shop at a company store run by white supremacists.
America has one neck, and it’s the economy. If you want to change how things are going, you have to change where you’re putting your dollar.
🙋 Got a question? Ask it! It’s fun for both of us.
💰 Speaking of where you put your dollar, gimme $2/mo and help me keep writing this newsletter.
📣 There are a few seats left in next week’s workshop. If you’re job hunting this workshop will help you get your dollar. Grab ‘em!
“our options are disappearing, we’re being sold a bullshit narrative about why our options are disappearing, and the evil alternative—which isn’t an alternative at all because it’s killing all its competition—feels incredibly easy. Because it is. You open your phone. Every item you could ever want is there. You push a button. It comes to you. Your city dies.”
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