zara raven

Resisting ICE, Building Worlds: Care and Survival in Fascistic Times “It’s all hands on deck and we have to fight. This is the only way,” says Leanne Betasamosake Simpson.

I talked to @biidaasamose.bsky.social about what it takes to stay human and protect each other in fascistic times, and how we can build networks of care, defend our neighbors, grieve, and make space for joy. This episode includes some Nishnaabe wisdom and music from Leanne. Transcript + audio:

rest in power, miss major 💗

GiGi Thomas is coming home!!!! GiGi is a Black trans criminalized survivor + sex worker advocate who has been incarcerated for a decade in MD. She has survived violence and medical neglect in a men’s prison, and now she’s getting OUT!

Let’s make her a homecoming fund! Pls give: cash.me/darbyhickey

The Emergency Is the Atmosphere “It’s meant to exhaust us. It’s meant to destroy us."

"There just isn’t enough time. There’s only what we manage to make of it—what we build, what we protect, what we remember to carry to the car. The gas mask. The snacks. The question we forgot to ask. The name of the person taken." My latest.

👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽

Connect with your people offline. Take the chats to signal but also take your close relationships offline entirely. We need to be connected when they shut this all down.

What’s your organizing plan if things go dark? Where do you meet? Who picks up what work? How do we communicate?

Hey remember when the CDC dropped 6 of the 8 foodborne illnesses from the nationwide monitoring system in July and one of them was listeria? Mentioning for no particular reason www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...

It’s terrifying what we are witnessing in El Fashir. The UAE backed RSF encircling the city to starve and exterminate people, while the so-called intl. community treats the UAE as a peace broker.

#KeepEyesOnSudan

Some news.

We're going to be in movement for the rest of our lives, there's a world to win & so much between us and freedom. How do we make struggle sustainable? So ask yourself, what is the best use of my skills and resources. Limit yourself to that work, because you can't be everywhere.

Donate to I'm Suing My Negligent Landlord, organized by Clarkisha Kent If you’ve been following me on Twitter for the last two years in particular, then you k… Clarkisha Kent needs your support for I'm Suing My Negligent Landlord

Hey y’all!

We are OFFICIALLY set to face off with our ex-landlord in CIRCUIT COURT in December.

In the meantime, it would mean the world to me if you would continue to donate and/or repost this fund.

Our current goal is $500 - $1000.

so much of loving someone is accepting who they are, as they are. so much of loving myself then is determining how close you get to be to me, as you are.

instead of asking yourself whether you support "cancel culture" or oppose it, try asking yourself: what are my values? where do i, personally, draw the line? what are the beliefs and behaviors i will tolerate, and what will i not allow close to me?

i have to contact the people whose disney+ account we use and tell them to cancel

when we have our needs met, we can choose more intentionally. and sometimes that seems like a luxury that’s not accessible to many of us at many points of our lives.

for a lot of us, our material needs take precedence. when I was young, I chose intimate relationships to meet my need for housing; it wasn’t about who I wanted to be but if I wanted to be housed. as an adult, I’ve prioritized relationships with people who share in the labor of caring for kids.

something I’ve been sitting with since then is that when we choose our intimate relationships, we’re also choosing who we want to be. which values, practices, and behaviors we want to deepen into. how we want to show up in the world.

ID: small green pieces of construction paper with handwritten questions “Do you feel you’ve had to make compromises to access sex and romance because of identities you hold? how do the politics of desirability inform what you accept and what you pursue? What experiences in your life have shaped how you understand romance? How have your experiences influenced your desire? Do you think we can unlearn the ways oppressive beliefs seep into our desire? If so, how? Have you ever dated someone whose politics radically differ from your own? What level of alignment do you need for closeness? What are your limits?

last week, my friends and I watched Laverne Cox on Olay & Friends, and decided that instead of judging someone else for their romantic choices, we needed to reflect on our own. I wrote up some reflection questions for us, and we shared our experiences with each other.

YouTube video by DECRIMNOW DC #DecrimNow: What media should be telling you about the fight to decriminalize sex work

I’m so grateful we have this video, from 2018, where Pontianna and Louraca and Nona all share about their experiences & why we were working to decriminalize sex work. i have really come to value moments & stories we recorded, our archives. youtu.be/EtLIohf-4Ho?...

glory to the whores

all the harm reductionists I know are so practiced at grieving. I wish we had more solidarity, more support from people who have left sex workers & drug users, and especially those who are precariously housed, at the margins of liberation movements.

my heart is aching from loss these past few years. 3 Black trans women who were part of the DecrimNow DC campaign have died in the past 4 years.

rest in power Pontianna. rest in power Nona. rest in power Louraca. we love you, we’ll avenge you.

friendship is such a powerful, grounding force.

Maps: Israel has attacked six countries in the past 72 hours In just three days, Israel has carried out strikes in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Tunisia, Qatar and Yemen.

In just three days, Israel has carried out strikes in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Tunisia, Qatar and Yemen.

Toni Morrison said that professional success “will never substitute for comfort, friends and love, and doing something you respect,” and she wanted to be remembered by loved ones as “an honest, trustworthy person.”

Like Ta-Nehisi Coates said, “You got to be able to go home at the end of the day.”

I'm saying that Dem politicians' performative rush to condemn violence only reinforces the entitlement that the right-wing feels to a monopoly over it. Those same right-wing forces will target Dems, liberal constituents, and whoever they want by exploiting false equivalency.

Black People: Healing Justice Demands Borderless Struggle We do not need every Black person to show up in the same way. We do need to be clear about what we are naming as care.

"[Healing Justice] is not about affirming each other's disengagement with slogans like rest is resistance while people are being dragged out of their homes and put in cages. Healing Justice calls us... to move from individual relief to collective power." convergencemag.com/articles/bla...

No one *expects* anything he says to be true. This is one of fascism's objectives—to make the truth irrelevant. His lies spin up a violent storyline that people either willingly inhabit or are trapped by. It's fiction with real-world consequences.

These people have had their lives absolutely destroyed by these charges. Years lost that can never be brought back.

The ability of the government to hover a hammer over you and shatter your life with charges that they know probably won’t stick anyway should be all we talk about every day.

in this somatic attachment therapy course, dr. scott lyons repeats the phrase, "between stimulus and response is our freedom," and i love what it implies. how do we slow down enough to become aware of what's happening inside us and make conscious choices rather than acting from past wounds?