Notices by Diligence Jones (deliachristina@sfba.social), page 3

Shit is bonkers in the world right now.

Someone asked: What can I do?

Maybe because it's a gorgeous Sunday and I woke up singing This Is The Day (a praise song from my youth) but I suddenly thought: Be a good neighbor.

Just....Be a good neighbor, dude.

It's wild when a state AG has to sue a local police dept to STOP breaking the law and STOP snitching on private residents by sharing license plate data with out of state depts.

Once that data leaves CA there is NO control over how it's used.

SFPD shares this info as well.

https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-bonta-sues-el-cajon-illegally-sharing-license-plate-data-out

One thing I'm really aware of (as I struggle to process the Chicago raid(s) AND the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the West Bank):

The 'technology' of control (and I'm using that word, technology, in the Foucauldian sense) has been perfected over centuries, and the oppressor deploys it in very similar ways against the oppressed:
- surveillance
- controlling movement + travel
- economic suppression
- medicalization/pathologization
- hyper contact with law enforcement/militarized interactions
- extra legal violence
- apartheid/racial profiling/racial categorization
- separate legal processes
- state-sponsored violence and incarceration

Right now, these technologies are touching BIPOC, the disabled, the poor, and trans people the most *often* and the most consistently -- with devastating impact.

Just a warning that that won't always be the case.

Fucking 🧊 just rounded up a bunch of regular Black folks on the south side of Chicago. FOR NO REASON.

Article here: https://abc7chicago.com/post/ice-chicago-federal-agents-surround-south-shore-apartment-building-dhs-requests-military-deployment-illinois/17908911/

Tik tok here: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTM65EY5P/

Additionally, the White House is absolutely going to go after all the large foundations and philanthropies (which leverage private monies -- not government) as 'terrorist' orgs.

Does the Trump DOJ have legal standing to do so? Absolutely not. Are there actual grounds? Nope.

But that won't stop him, and appealing to the rule of law won't stop him, either.

I can't wait to see which foundations rush to suck his 🍆 first. (Looking straight at F_ord...)

Remember that knee-slapping thread I had about Gavin Newsom and how folks needed to look *deeply within* and interrogate their politics?

WTF.

Let's celebrate Nepalese youth burning down their Parliament and chasing their Premiere into a river in his chonies.

#ThisIsTheWay

we really need to do something about gun control.

TBF, the US has almost always labeled Others as terrorists without due process or evidence.

I mean, Guantanamo. Hello.

The US also literally invaded Irag a couple times because it accused them of 'terror' and 'weapons of mass destruction.' We all know how that turned out.

Like, every time folks react to shit happening now with HORROR, it's like you guys don't even know your own history. Like, ANY of it.

Let me be clear: It is not ONLY that this iteration of America is fascist, rabidly white nationalist, misogynist, and hyper capitalist, but it is that it has finally figured out how to EXPLICITLY ALIGN every lever of government and the body politic to its TRUE nature and intent.

I don't say this to be a downer.

But a Black Woman On the Sidelines Reclaiming Her Time kind of warning.

Because if you say you want to 'get rid of Trump,' then what the fuck do you want to put in his place?

What we had 'before'?

Because that's not 'getting rid of Trump'.

That's putting the mask back on.

ok; i'll say it.

MY life is more important than a fetus'.

i don't know why we tiptoe around saying this explicitly when this is what we (the folks who believe in not being forced to be pregnant) mean.

anyway, that's what popped into my head when i read this.

https://www.texasobserver.org/texas-legislature-bounty-hunter-ban-abortion-pills/

Everyone gushing about Newsom's Xitter and TikTok feed 'sticking it to Trump' realllllly must interrogate their politics a little more closely.

He hates the unhoused, the poor, the indigent, the mentally ill, and the disabled as much as Trump and RFK. And it shows in his policies.

He is about to DOGE CA govt and he wants to be the Dem candidate for President.

Do y'all *actually* want a world that exists for everyone or do you want American fascism with better hair and more charm?

#BensonUpdate

My very very high Schmoopie, back from the vet where he had a battery of tests+scans that cost more than my rent. 😑

Um....I'm watching a Murder, She Wrote I have *never* seen.

Jessica Fletcher is in VA doing research on a distant Aunt of hers and she meets a professor (Phylicia Rashad) whose distant grandfather Samuel was lynched -- and was enslaved by Jessica's distant aunt!! Well, these two decide to solve the mystery of his killing.

And thus ensues a MASSIVE FLASHBACK TO THE ANTEBELLUM SOUTH.

Y'all. Omg they actually said the n-word.

Where did this come from?!?

It's a 90 min movie!!

Someone: You should ask Person for input.

Me: Nah, I don't need their input.

Someone: Some of their feedback will be useful.

Me: Certain folks are *overrepresented* when it comes to opinions.

Listen up, GenXers - the kids today are talking about a commercial featuring some girl named Sydney Sweeney (who is she? I dunno. She's some rich blonde MAGA influencer.)

But she's in a jeans commercial and the cultural discourse it has triggered is about Whiteness and, of course, the far Right.

If you watch it, see the subtext immediately, but are talking to a YoungUn who doesn't see it, try and get them to bone up on cultural literacy with Jack Solomon's very short and very accessible book: The Signs of Our Times: semiotics, the hidden messages of environments, objects, and cultural images (1988).

Yeah, it's an old book but it's a really good one. I read it in undergrad and it did MOAR to strengthen my media literacy than all the toks on the interwebs.

For some reason, I'm wondering if Alex P. Keaton would be a MAGA Senator or the CEO of a rapacious private equity fund today.

@kingrat

Like, the MSM headlines about this meeting say *nothing* about how utterly bonkers he was.

Nothing about that meeting was normal.

I'm reading about Trump's meeting with the president of the Philippines.

While the Philippines has problems of their own, they didn't deserve any of that.

It was basically a version of 'Sir, this is a Wendy's.'

#uspol

"PRESIDENT TRUMP: And I don’t mind if he gets along with China, because we’re getting along with China very well. We have a very good relationship. In fact, the magnets, which is a little complex piece of material, but the magnets are coming out very well. They’re sending them in record numbers. We’re getting along with China very well. And I don’t mind if the president dealt with China. That’s meant because I think he has to do what’s right for his country. Make the Philippines great again. Do whatever you need to do. But you’re dealing with China wouldn’t bother me at all.

PRESIDENT MARCOS: Well, it is something that we have to do in any case."

DUDE.