Arinaitwe Gerald, an Batwa indigenous organizer I talk to regularly who lives in southwestern Uganda, is currently having trouble providing for orphaned children he and his wife have taken in in addition to their own children after their mother passed away a bit over a month ago.
One of the children, a 12 year old girl named Immaculate, is in serious pain due to having a cyst caused by goiter. She had been recommended for surgery all the way back in October, but because $700 is nowhere near an amount her late mother or Gerald and his wife can afford, she has still not gotten the treatment she needs and they are even having difficulty getting the $85 needed for an injection that would potentially help decrease the pain and size of the cyst temporarily.
Please spread this fundraiser and donate if possible! Immaculate and her siblings, as well as the Batwa people at large need all the help they can get, and no 12 year old should have to go through all that she is currently dealing with.
They’re still like $400 away from their goal. Like if you wanna donate donate to this
The RCMP are setting up exclusion zones and closed roads to the public and media as officers get set to dismantle two camps on unceded Wet’suwet’en territory.
“During the police enforcement operation, temporary exclusion zones and road closures will be established for police and public safety reasons,” said the news release sent out Monday morning that confirmed the RCMP will enforce a court order requested by a pipeline company trying to build a pipeline through Wet’suwet’en territory.
“Those areas will be clearly marked and media/public are welcome to stand at the perimeter, but no one will be allowed to enter the exclusion zones. These zones will only be maintained as long as necessary.”
The raids have been highly anticipated after a B.C. judge granted an interim injunction in December against two check points leading to the construction site for the LNG Coastal GasLink pipeline.
you know, that whole thing when a colonist militaristic police force storms a indigenous encampment, removes it’s people who live there, all for corporate interest, so we can pump more oil out, and accelerate the death of the planet.
Then once the Cops storm the place, they declare an “exclusion zone” deploy a wifi and cell blockage, AND exclude media. All so no news of it gets out.
You all need to be fucking outraged. We live in a police state, and the moment your life gets in the way of making money, you cease to matter.
Hey Americans, you know how we Canadians all shared information about Standing Rock as it was happening?
We’re having a very similar situation in Canada right now.
Now would be a good time to reciprocate.
This is happening RIGHT NOW.
Nobody on this site besides me and a few other bloggers are talking about this.
Like there are only 2 or 3 blogs in total in the #Wet’suwet’en or #Unist’ot’en or Unist’ot’en Camp hashtags from the past week.
this is happening January 7, 2019
If you’re on twitter, track these hashtags:
#Unistoten
#wetsuwetenstrong
#undrip
#thetimeisnow
Some people to follow who are sharing news about this live:
Also donate to the Gidumt’en checkpoint go fund me:
On December 16, 2018, Wet’suwet’en Hereditary House Chiefs reaffirmed, once again, their stance on oil and gas export pipelines in Wet’suwet’en Yintah (traditional lands). This decision was validated in the feast hall where Wet’suwet’en decisions are enacted into law. While some Wet’suwet’en Indian Act Bands and corporations have signed on to the Coastal Gas Link Agreement, the Wet’suwet’en hereditary leadership–who have jurisdiction over 22,000 square kilometers of traditional territories–have not given their free, prior, and informed consent to any oil or gas company to build pipelines in their lands and waters. The Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs have not made any agreement with the Canadian or British Columbian governments to surrender or permit access to Wet’suwet’en lands for any pipeline corridors or construction activities.
To enforce this decision, the house chiefs of all five Wet’suwet’en clans agreed by consensus to assert control of the Gitdumden Clan territory that borders to the west of Unistot’en lands. As such, a checkpoint is erected at the 44 km mark on the Morice Lake Forest Service Road and will follow a free, prior, and informed consent protocol whereby anyone seeking access to Gitdumden territory will be required to present themselves, respectfully, to spokespeople at the site. The checkpoint will remain in effect until further notice.
We are seeking financial support to get supplies for the checkpoint and it’s supporters as well as any likely legal fees that will be incurred by the members.
** In order to ensure a smooth transition I have added Cody Merriman as a recipient to the funds. He is the partner of the Cas Yex spokesperson Molly Wickham and will be collecting funds for supplies as needed. ** GoFundMe has requested I publicly post this information for transparency to all of our supporters in order to release funds. Misiyh.
Images of Solidarity- Early Asian American activism:
The Oriental Student Union (OSU) at Seattle Central Community College (SCCC) was founded in 1970. It modeled itself after the campus Black Student Union (BSU), which during the 1968-9 school year had used direct action protests to demand black studies and the hiring of black administrators and faculty. When the OSU– led by Alan Sugiyama and former Black Panther Mike Tagawa– decided that the SCCC administration was not moving quickly enough on the its demands that the school hire five Asian administrators, the OSU staged a sit-in on February 9, 1971, and took over SCCC offices more forcefully on March 2, 1971.
becoming vegan because factory farming is unethical is like deciding that since walmart and amazon mistreat their employees you are now going to get everything you need out of dumpsters
in a nutshell, instead of reforming the bad parts of your society, you
try to opt out of it in a way that has really no effect, and wouldn’t
work at all if the majority of people weren’t still part of the industry
you dislike.
there was, for a while, a real movement of people who tried to get everything out of dumpsters, as a way of opting out of capitalism. but the problem was that you couldn’t get what you need when you need it, leading to you being kind of a drain on your community, and someone had to buy that stuff in the first place for it to end up in that dumpster anyway. it was Fundamentally Silly.
going vegan to opt out of farming practices has similar problems. for instance: you (hypothetical vegan you) won’t buy honey, but the bees are being used to fertilize the vegetables and fruit you eat, they’re making the honey anyway, all you’ve done is – well, nothing, because you’re not a big enough demographic to make an impact, but even if you were, honey sales are a much smaller part of beekeepers’ income than crop pollination. and beekeeping is not a big faceless corporate interest. it’s not monsanto. it’s a bunch of single-family or partnership business with a truck or two and a couple hundred hives. the bees make honey after a pollinating run, and the beekeepers sell it for a little extra income. if you made a dent in that, you’d be achieving nothing but making joe beekeeper buy his kids’ t-shirts at k-mart instead of target.
animal farming and plant farming are deeply interconnected. plant farmers grow animal feed; animal farmers sell manure for fertilizer. most non-corporate farmers raise both plants and animals. it’s more economic and gives them more resilience.
if you were a big enough demographic to hit ‘the farming industry’ in its wallet. you would be making things MUCH harder for small farmers than for factory farms. you would be making it easier and easier for factory farms to crowd family farmers out of business. so that’s pretty much achieving the opposite of what you want, right there.
and then there’s the fact that plant farming is just as rife with gruesome factory farm conditions as animal farming, but it’s humans who are exploited in those. i’m not going to level accusations of racism here, but it really is unfortunate how little the vocal internet vegan contingent seems to know or care about the exploitation of the mostly nonwhite workers in the industry. it makes y’all look racist, whether you are or not.
look, i keep saying this, even though folks never seem to hear me: i don’t hate vegans, i’m not trying to stop you being vegan, i do not care what you eat.
my problem is with defensive internet vegans trying to promote their dietary restriction lifestyle as a solution to problems in the real world. it is not. it may create more problems than it solves, or maybe it breaks even, i don’t know. it certainly doesn’t solve anything that can’t be solved just as well without it. it can only look reasonable from a perspective of deep ignorance about where food comes from and how the farm economy works. you basically have to be young, urban, and somewhat privileged to embrace it. and it is, fundamentally, very silly.
Furthermore I’d like you to look at a sheep farm. Actually look at it.
You CANNOT grow crops there. That’s WHY there are sheep on it.
You refuse to use wool, well aside from.the fact that it’s a fantastic fiber and how polluting polyester and other plastic fibers are, it doesn’t harm the animal to remove and in fact is done for their benefit.
Above - a sheep farm (note steep and craggy hills), an uncompressed bale of freshly shorn wool and some sheep being shorn.
It’s not stressful for the sheep. Sheep are dumb. Be confident, dont hurt them and they’re good. Wool is a good fiber - strong, warm - even when wet - renewable and biodegradable.
My issue with Veganism-As-A-Cult is the lack of critical thinking. By all means eat what you want, wear what you want to wear but a blanket ban on all animal products because they’re HARMFUL is in itself an extremely harmful philosophy.
Do you refuse to eat plants that were pollinated by bees or fertilized by manure since they’re a product of animal labour?
Honey doesn’t hurt bees. Wool doesn’t hurt sheep.
What about animals that are going to die anyway? We are currently in the process of exterminating possums in our country as they are a pest and destroyer of our native species. We kill them humanely but they’re still going to die because its them (introduced pest) or our endemic endangered species. We use the meat for pet food and the fur for a lot of things now - in making yarns or fur items - because the alternative is to let it rot. Which is just bloody wasteful tbh.
What would (generic) you prefer we do here? Let sheep die of over heating or the weight of wet wool? Force bees into swarming (90% casualty rate) so we can avoid taking their honey? Leave pest animals to rot and encourage the use of set-and-forget traps since there’s no incentive to check them?
