darthfabulous42069

joined 2 years ago
MODERATOR OF
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

So I propose a solution:

We start and fund a non-profit organization designed to produce basic living essentials and sell it at the cost to manufacture, regardless of market pressures. Then we all collectively buy from this non-profit and have a functional means of production legally owned and controlled by the people.

Set up strict rules to ban anyone who has ever worked in any upper management position in any for-profit basic essentials producing company from ever holding any position of power in the non-profit. No one from the corporate world at all. No one from any position in state or federal government. No lobbyists or consultants or members of their think tanks or any of their goons.

Use open source designs for the factories and everyone in the community works together to automate them as much as is possible.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I wonder what it would take to convince people to fight for what is right.

 

A dramatic brawl on the Montgomery, Alabama, riverfront pitted people standing up for a Black riverboat worker against a group of white people who began beating him for telling them to move their illegally parked pontoon.

The Saturday night fight, which was captured in multiple videos posted to social media, appeared to unfold largely along racial lines. And many social media users celebrated footage of the riverfront dust-up, which showed the white assailants get the tables turned on them by Black people who rushed to the riverboat worker’s aid.

“This is not … 1963 anymore,” read one comment, alluding to the year before the signing of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibited discrimination on the basis of race.

Montgomery police confirmed they responded to reports of a disturbance on the 200 block of Coosa Street in the area of the Montgomery riverfront park. They said officers had “located a large group of subjects engaged in a physical altercation”.

“Several subjects have been detained, and any charges are pending,” a police statement added, without elaborating.

The brawl appeared to start when a pontoon boat prevented a larger river boat from docking. When a Black riverboat worker objected, he was attacked by a group of white men.

The conflict escalated when a group of about six Black men from the riverboat confronted the white party. Cheered on by bystanders, they beat three white men and two women, at least one of whom could be seen first striking others by running up and throwing her body into them from behind.

At least two of the women jumped or were pushed into the river. A third was beaten over the head with a folding chair, video showed.

After the arrival of police officers, the brawl subsided – and then briefly reignited before police began cuffing the participants, Black and white.

NBC station WSFA of Montgomery reported that four arrest warrants have been issued in connection with the altercation and “there’s a possibility more will follow after the review of additional video”.

Police also appealed to the public for help in determining what had happened.

 

A voting rights group in Florida filed a lawsuit against the rightwing governor and presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, saying his administration created a maze of bureaucratic and sometimes violent obstacles to discourage formerly incarcerated citizens from exercising their right to vote.

Florida voters in 2018 overwhelmingly passed a constitutional referendum, called amendment 4, that lifted the state’s lifetime voting ban for people with felony convictions.

Yet what ensued in the years since 2018 was an aggressive campaign, led by DeSantis, to sow confusion and fear among formerly incarcerated people. The Florida Rights Restoration Coalition (FRRC), which championed amendment 4, said state officials have continued to disenfranchise 1.4 million Florida residents – roughly a quarter of the state’s eligible Black voters.

 
 

Rightwing organizations in Ohio are trying their best to tank the abortion rights constitutional amendment that’s on the ballot in November. Their latest tactic? Link the language of the referendum, which would protect abortion rights, to the conservative boogeyman du jour: demonizing trans people.

The “how” here is a bit confusing, though. There are two upcoming elections in Ohio. In November, citizens will vote on enshrining (or not) abortion rights in the state constitution. Earlier this month, advocates turned in more than 700,000 signatures (more than double the requirement!) to get the amendment on the ballot.

But first, in August, citizens will vote on amending the state constitution amendment process, a ballot initiative called Issue 1. Currently, like most reasonable places, only a majority of voters need to approve a state constitutional amendment. But conservatives want to raise that threshold to 60 percent, which would have the immediate impact of making it harder to add abortion protections to the constitution. It’s the August election is where anti-abortion nut jobs and transphobes are united in an attempt to tank the success election of a massively popular social issue.

Protect Women Ohio, a conservative coalition of “concerned family and life leaders, parents, health and medical experts, and faith leaders in Ohio,” are releasing a series of ads telling parents to vote in the August election in order to help sink the November amendment, which by its interpretation, will “allow minors to get sex changes without parental consent.” Caught (:60)

In the last four months, the group has launched a number of ads as part of a $5 million ad buy, but it’s only in the past two months that PWO has really leaned into the transphobic angle.

And, like all other anti-trans activists, they’re not telling the full truth. The November amendment that seeks to protect abortion rights at the state level—a winning tactic around the country after the Supreme Court gutted Roe v. Wade—is limited to reproductive healthcare. It reads: “Every individual has a right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions, including but not limited to decisions on contraception, fertility treatment, continuing one’s own pregnancy, miscarriage care, and abortion.”

Gender-affirming care is not mentioned at all. Jonathan Entin, a professor emeritus at Cleveland’s Case Western Reserve School of Law, told NBC News that it’s “a big stretch” to include gender-affirming care in the amendment’s purvey. “Opponents have latched on to the ‘but not limited to’ language to say that this could provide a constitutional right to, among other things, gender-affirming care rights. That’s not a legally persuasive argument,” Entin told NBC News.

While it might not be a “legally persuasive argument,” the attempt to link a popular issue (abortion access) to the latest conservative boogeyman is transparent. The right to abortion is familiar and easy to understand and now, voters have gone through more than a year of horror stories about what happens when you take away that bodily autonomy.

Being anti-abortion means being a political loser. Anti-abortion candidates for federal office, like Herschel Walker and Mehmet Oz, flamed out. Anti-abortion referendums lost last year in ruby-red states like Kansas, Kentucky, and Montana.

 

Because not gonna lie, that was my favorite of the Civ games, if it counts as one.

 

A Republican LGBTQ group has blasted Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) over an ad released by his presidential campaign that the organization called “homophobic.”

Log Cabin Republicans, the largest GOP organization representing LGBTQ individuals, said in a tweet that DeSantis’s message for his presidential campaign is “divisive and desperate” and is alienating swing-state and younger voters.

“Conservatives understand that we need to protect our kids, preserve women’s sports, safeguard women’s spaces and strengthen parental rights, but Ron DeSantis’ extreme rhetoric goes has just ventured into homophobic territory,” the group said.

The DeSantis campaign released the ad on Friday, the last day of Pride Month, attacking former President Trump for statements he has made in support of the LGBTQ community. The post accompanying the video states that Trump “did more than any other Republican to celebrate” Pride.

The ad features clips of Trump saying he would “do everything in my power” to protect LGBTQ citizens and expressing support for transgender individuals to use the facilities they choose.

It then shows a series of headlines discussing policies DeSantis has passed as governor of Florida concerning the LGBTQ community, including a ban on transgender individuals using the bathroom that is in line with their gender identity and restrictions on access to gender-affirming care.

The ad also features various figures and headlines attacking DeSantis for his actions, calling the policies “Draconian” and DeSantis “dangerous.”

Log Cabin Republicans argued that DeSantis’s rhetoric will cause the party to lose “hard-fought” gains it has made.

“This old playbook has been tried in the past and has failed – repeatedly,” the group said.

“Ron DeSantis and his team can’t tell the difference between commonsense gays and the radical Left gays. He, sadly, sees them all the same. His naive policy positions are dangerous and politically stupid,” it concluded.

 

So here's a table of the legal status of LGBTQ+ Americans, by state and by what kind of law each state has. It's... not looking good out there right now, but as long as we all have each other, we can make it.