Notices by wet forest moon folklorist (seachanger@alaskan.social), page 5

"While that has always been used as an epithet to smear Bernie and his movement, with the implication that social democracy is just a cover for or gateway drug to right wing authoritarianism, the truth is that this pipeline speaks to the power and appeal of Bernie’s vision as an effective antidote to Trumpism. When these voters had a choice between Trump and Bernie, they chose Bernie."

I'll add that prob the single most politically impactful event of my life was the 2016 Alaska democratic caucus in my rural town of 3K people (which now votes trump 2-1). The line to caucus for bernie was out the door and down the stairs. it was a collection of rural people who will never again caucus in the same room, given covid and trump etc. But at that time we were so happy to be together, speaking up and out against corruption. We were something like 100+ for Sanders and 12 for Clinton

it’s gonna be a challenge to get our coalitions on the same page going forward. but please, however you diagnose our situation or express your rages, please, do not punch left

do not punch left, move left. the right has shown you who they are. move in the other direction

when you punch left, you act to marginalize the human beings in your orbit who in fact care the most about protecting vulnerable people.

think about the repercussions of that. think about the voices in your life who may not speak up anymore because you insult or demean or ignore or dismiss them.

each person brings their truth and skills and experience. you need your leftists friends right now, don't hate on us

first impulse for action. work on persuading my actual neighbors on my actual street who are sad/grieving/angry to join a signal chat with me so we can be better connected. I’ve tried this before but people weren’t able to understand what signal was. maybe now it will make more sense

i've learned that grief is ultimately love turned inside out. the contours of our grief trace the lines of our love for what we lost or what might else have been. and when we share both sides of that coin, when we make it collective, we find the beating heart of whatever we're building next. i propose we have some faith in that, and that we embrace the idea of faith. because we have precious little else with which to fight these fucking fascists, and i'm not going down without a fight (for love)

it remains true that what we focus our attention on tends to grow. i know in the coming days i will need to practice redirecting my attention to my own grieving - to outing my relationship with sorrow rather than suppressing it - so that i can spend more energy on being of service, and less energy on being an asshole.

i don't know what works for you when it comes to grieving, but i do know that i will need your love and jokes and shared visions to tend to mine. there is big power in leaning into our common humanity together, and in mirroring each other's deep hopes and dreams for the world. i think choosing to walk toward one another and to keep seeking connection in the face of cultural atomization is a form of faith, the kind of faith that alchemizes communities and ushers people through the worst horrors

grief requires tending, a form of labor, but the advantage of social/political grief is that we have many hands to make light work -- there are millions of us on this planet to help hold it. even when we feel so alone in the absurdity of loss, we can breathe and remember how many wanted the same world as we do, and we can feel how that world is very much alive in our hearts and collective imagination

i wish i could say things will get better, but i think we all know that in many ways things will continue to get worse, and so grief has become a thing that lives with us. i've noticed the last few years that the more i name my social grief and let myself feel it, the less reactive and squabbly i am, and the more compassion and energy i have to care for others

the reason to join the breaking points crew tonight is that they are offering independent analysis, free of corporate influence or democratic party kool aid.

it is only through this kind of analysis - i.e. meaning making from election results, that we are ever going to defeat trumpism in this country, even if kamala pulls this out tonight

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEiLtc_XwK0

the painful and frustrating and often incendiary divisions between leftists and liberals we experience on social media has deep roots in liberal cable news and legacy media, where normies have been receiving a worldview for a decade plus that does not originate in the needs or views of the US working class. all too often, the MSNBC/NYT set demonizes and scapegoats leftists, socialists, and anti-establishment populists. but folks we are actually not the problem here and never have been

you could derive many takes from joe rogan endorsing trump 24 after having endorsed bernie 16, but the correct take is that when the democrats destroy their anti-establishment leftists, they send anti-establishment masses over to rightwing populists. it is an incorrect & lazy take to lump bernie with trump as a deplorable

TIL about skibidi toilet which is amazing because I was also alive in 2023

“By November 2023, YouTube videos associated with Skibidi Toilet had accumulated over 65 billion views, while on the social media platform TikTok, the #skibiditoilet hashtag garnered over 15.3 billion views,[1]”

rallying to defend ranked choice voting in Alaska! 🤞🏼

unseasonably warm and dry on the island today so my friend and I went off trail and followed an old ski/snowmobile route to a remote forest service shelter we hadn’t been to before #LingítAani

@streetartutopia hey street art! thanks for sharing here on mastodon - we've been gently reminding you to use Alt Text so your images are accessible to all of our community members, but you keep posting with out it which is definitely limiting your reach/popularity, fyi

@streetartutopia thank you!! I have found it took some getting used to, and i had to slow down a bit with posting, but then its kinda fun to describe the images. i think you'll get a lot more shares with the alt text!

@slothrop

if bill gates or mark cuban or even jeff bezos gave a shit about anything besides themselves, they would give away 99.99% of their own wealth to climate orgs etc, they would break up their own monopolies, and they would fight like hell to tax billionaires out of existence

they actually have the power to shore up democracy and possibly reduce the scale of climate chaos faced by future generations, but its testament to the nature of billionairism that not one will go for broke and use it

A major talking point in the pro Trump blabosphere is that “illegal immigrants” are voting illegally en masse, however

“A comprehensive audit of Georgia's voter rolls -- which include 8.2 million registered voters -- uncovered 20 noncitizens who registered to vote, including nine instances when noncitizens actually cast a ballot. A similar audit of Iowa's 2.3 million voters revealed 87 instances where individuals cast ballots and later self-reported as noncitizens.”

https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/election-fact-check-noncitizens-vote-instances-vanishingly-rare/story?id=115025674