Tootfinder

The #IWW #GDC as an antifascist organization was always kind of a hack. It was a beautiful hack and it worked well for what it did.
In 2016, as Trump was rising, I found info from the Twin Cities GDC. They were super organized, building an amazing community defense organization. When we (Seattle) went to set up our chapter, following their lead, they were extremely supportive. When I got shot, Twin Cities folks were at my house keeping my partner safe. They literally flew people out to support us. They very much remain in my mind when I think about what mutual aid looks like.
Unionism is an important strategy of a larger fight. But it's important to realize that it's not the other way around. The GDC was built to defend the union, because there wasn't something larger to do that work. It filled a gap.
When we organized against Trump, we tried to make the GDC the greater thing. We tried to make the GDC into the vehicle for social revolution against the fascist threat... And it sort of worked. We were able to do a lot.
But that was never what it was built to do. It was always built as an appendage of the IWW. This contains its own problem. If Unionism is the revolutionary movement, then it becomes impossible to build a truly revolutionary society. Unionism centers "workers" which implicitly decenters those who can't work in the traditional sense (the young, the elderly, those physically or mentally able to work). It also decenters care labor that hasn't yet been widely commodified. Sure, there are all types of hacks to patch the holes, but the fundamental construction starts from the wrong assumptions.
It felt, for a while, like things could go another way. Like that our ability to bring members in could shift things a bit, maybe set the GDC on more equal footing with the core focus of the IWW. But that was always an illusion, far less important to think about than the crushing terror of the regime we were fighting.
Now, I will absolutely trash talk the IWW on occasion but in the end I do think they're doing good and important work. Any criticism I have should be taken with a grain of salt... And I know I do have a lot of salt. Again, Unionism is an important strategy. It's useful both in improving immediate material conditions and as part of the most powerful weapon we have against the capitalist system: the general strike. It's important, I can't say that enough. But it's not sufficient.
I've been thinking about this a bit recently, and I wonder if there are any other GDC organizers or former organizers who might be feeling the same. Feel free to DM me. I'd like to get some more perspectives and see if my understanding from several years ago deviates significantly from what other folks are feeling right now.
I'd also like to bounce some ideas around that come from my own organizing experience.

So the US had a huge case using high-level informants.
Bukele wanted back 9 informants who could expose his govt's deals with that same gang to lower the level of violence,
fueling his image as a crime-fighter.
That Rubio made a deal was known.
That he reneged on informants was not.
https://

Elizabeth N. Saunders (@profsaunders.bsky.social)
So the US had a huge case using high-level informants. Bukele wanted back 9 informants who could expose his govt's deals with that same gang to lower the level of violence, fueling his image as a crime-fighter. That Rubio made a deal was known. That he reneged on informants was not.

When you're trying to get #Google to help them fix a problem they have in relaying an email to a list (they are forwarding as if it they are originating your non-GMail email, thus incurring an SPF failure) their helpful support team to the rescue (see image attached).
FYI... the second thing they want is a screen cap of the client SMTP config.
Very temped to send a screenshot wit…

🆓 Government gestures leave roots of Indonesia protests intact
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/09/02/asia-pacific/politics/indonesia-protests-root-problems-intact/

Government gestures leave roots of Indonesia protests intact
Experts say little has been done to address the economic inequality fueling the unrest, leaving deep resentment to linger and flare up again.

The Stanley Parable: completed!
The Stanley Parable is an odd narrative game, where you are effectively given instructions by the narrator.  As an office worker, you suddenly realise that everyone else has disappeared, and it feels that the point of the game is to understand why.  If it were a traditional game, that would be the case. The game is most fun, or rather funny, when not following instructions.

#TuneTuesday (Nov 18)
“Problems” is the first song I heard from the American band Arizona and I took an instant liking to it. And for a song about mental health, it surprisingly sounds cheerful and upbeat. But I guess a bit of positivity can sometimes help when you’re feeling down. 🤗
P.S. I subsequently learned that keyboardist David Labuguen is Filipino-American and I thought that w…

So I grew up next to #Chernobyl and this is, well, TERRIFYING.
A story for y’all: I’m from a city called Zhytomyr, 2 hours west of Kyiv in the North of #Ukraine. We were downwind of the Chernobyl #nuclear power plant when the 1986 disaster happened.
I wasn’t born for another 12 years, but my childhood was filled with stories and the aftermath of it all. Things like:
- My grandmother worked as a head doctor in a hospital and rehabilitation facility exclusively for children of Chernobyl victims to treat the extremely high prevalence of Tuberculosis and other severe health complications. (To specify: these were SECOND GENERATION of exposure).
- A lot of the kids in that facility were orphans, because their parents died young from health problems.
- My uncle’s wife was born in Pripyat. She was 1 year old when the disaster happened. Her parents were told to evacuate while given no information about what happened. They had to pack up their things and rush out to an unfamiliar city with their baby, never to see the rest of their belongings, apartment, or hometown again.
- When I was a kid, it became so common to see weirdly mutated animals and insects that even 2-3 year olds would make jokes about “Chernobyl mosquitos” and I wouldn’t even flinch seeing occasional giant bugs, dark frogs, weird-looking dogs.
- We’d frequently hear of nearby farms having issues with their animals being born too mutated to survive or random outbreaks from contaminated water / food. Crops would randomly fail. People would get poisoned on a regular basis. This all got less common as I grew up.
- My mother still remembers being a little girl, 10 years old, and looking outside from their balcony at the clouds blowing over from Chernobyl that day. People were told to not go outside and to shut all the windows, but not given an explanation as to why. My mother swears that the rain looked different. They weren’t able to go and buy more food for the kitchen for multiple days.
Anyway - nuclear safety isn’t a joke. I don’t understand how this level of carelessness can happen after Chernobyl and Fukushima.

https://www.404media.co/power-companies-are-using-ai-to-build-nuclear-power-plants/

Some leftists have criticized #NoKingsDay2 as useless. Though it was the largest protest in US history, it didn't change anything. I would go further to say that protests like these generally won't change anything. Dictators aren't forced to step down by 2% of the population coming out for one day. If they're forced to step down by protests, those protests are sustained. They are every single day. They are accompanied by general strikes.
We've been watching that happen all over the world. Portland in 2020 gave us a taste of that in the US. The George Floyd Rebellion was the type of resistance that actually brings down dictators like Trump. Occasional protests, no matter how large, can simply be ignored. That is precisely the reason the US developed a militarized police force in the first place. You need more, more than the largest protests in US history, more than Occupy, more than the resistance of the 60's and 70's, more than, and different from, anything we've seen in our lives.
And yet... Each protest has grown, and grown bolder. Some have grown more persistent. If you think of protest as the path to achieve change, you will lose. It is not. But it is a path to escalate. Some people, some otherwise comfortable white folks, came out for their first time. Some people got pepper sprayed for the first time. Some people questioned authority, stood up for the first time, and have had an experience that will radicalize them for the rest of their lives.
Protest is not useful in and of itself. It is training. It's making connections. Authoritarian regimes rely on the illusion of compliance, so visual resistance does actually undermine their power.
Liberals like to teach that non-violence is all about staying peaceful no matter what, that there's some way that morality simply overwhelms an enemy. I remember reading Langston Hughes' A Dream Deferred in high school. I said it was a threat. My teacher said, "you're wrong, he was a pacifist." Pacifism is a threat. If you can spit at me, beat me, shoot me, and I will not move, if I have the strength to absorb violence without flinching, without even rising to violence, what will happen when you push me too far?
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
For peaceful resistance to work, there must be ambiguity. It must not be clear if or when the resistance will stop being peaceful. Peaceful resistance with no possibility of escalation is just cowardice.
My critique then is not so harsh as some other anarchists. If you think that protest alone will work, you're probably going to lose. If you are prepared to escalate, if you are prepared to absorb violence without flinching, then it could be possible for protest alone to topple the dictator. The cracks are already beginning to show.
And then what?
The problems that lead to the George Floyd uprising were never resolved. The problems that lead to Occupy where never resolve. The DAPL was built, protesters were maimed, it leaked multiple times (exactly as predicted). Segregation never went away, it only changed forms. The fact that immigrants have different courts and different rights means that anyone can be arbitrarily kidnaped and renditioned to an arbitrary country. We never did anything about the torture black site. FFS, people can still be stripped of their voting rights and slavery is still legal in the US. The people who control both parties in the US are killing our children and grand children with oil wars and climate change.
Toppling the dictator does nothing to resolve all of the problems that existed before him.
No, #NoKingsDay was absolutely not useless. #NoKings and related protests are extremely useful but they aren't sufficient. But, I think we still need to challenge the movement on two points:
How do you escalate after you're ignored or brutalized?
What do you demand after you win?
#USPol

And you don't need to accept the trap of authoritarian masculinity on logic alone, the proof is right there in male influencers like Andrew Tate and their followers. These dipshits get so obsessed with gatekeeping they don't realize that the gates they're tending keep them in, that the more walls they put up to protect their privilege, the smaller their identity can be. They huddle in tiny pens, terrified of crossing imaginary bounds that they imposed *on themselves.*
They have built their own torture chambers and locked themselves inside, and for what? They turn themselves into dragons, hoarding what they see as valuable while repressing every emotion including joy. And if they let themselves experience joy, they would, perhaps, realize that all these privileges are inconsistent with it. They might, perhaps, recognize that they have built up these privileges so they don't have to admit that their suffering and fear are not, in fact, admirable. They might have to face the fact that they have lived lives that are deeply pathetic, might have to face the fact that only empathy can give one access to deep satisfaction, might have to face the fact that they have lived their whole lives on a treadmill, going nowhere.
But I assume that they won't ever do that, because to do so would force them to face the enormity of the emotional debt, the pain and suffering they have inflicted on the world, and those are big feelings. It's far easier to hide in a hole, forever alone, making up silly rules to keep everyone inside scared and keep everyone outside from seeing in.