Fun fact: in the 80′s the Dutch Unemployed Union held ‘fridge raids’ to protest against poverty.
They’d find out when a politician of big boss who upheld poverty and starvation wages was speaking at some public even, then they’d carefully break into his house with a LOT of people and they would eat EVERY piece of food in his house and leave the empty dished behind without taking anything else.
Direct action at its finest.
I theoretically disapprove, but at least it’s ballsy as fuck.
I no longer disapprove.
Growth
One time my brother’s construction crew didn’t get paid on time. So he went to the boss’ house at dinnertime and when the boss opened the door my brother walked right in, asking “what’s for dinner?” And while the boss sputtered and protested, my brother started going through his fridge, calmly explaining that since he didn’t get paid, he didn’t have money for groceries, and his kid was sitting hungry at home because they didn’t have dinner. The boss’ family looked on in horror as my brother commented on how much nice food the boss had in his fridge. Until the boss finally loaded my brother up with a bunch of stuff out of the freezer and managed to get him to leave. Everyone got paid the next day and, as far as I know, they got paid on time as long as my brother worked there. Who knew that being supremely annoying could be such a gift?!
I just had a very important question to ask of my American followers, and it’s this: are you OK? Like, honestly? Are you doing all right? Have you got a blanket? Do you need me to pat you gently on the head? Shall I bring you a glass of milk? Some soup? I’m worried about you.
[id: reddit post by user spaghettishoestrings titled “(UPDATE) Just lost my healthcare !” with the flair “Celebratory.”
Post reads:
Original post is viewable through my profile. Apologies, since I’m on mobile, I couldn’t hyperlink. The TLDR: my doctor called me on Monday and informed me that their practice would no longer be providing treatment for gender affirming care as a result of a recent presidential Executive Order, even though the EO was for people under 19. Even though I’m 25.
Also, because it was asked a few times, this happened in Michigan, and I’ve been on HRT for 5+ years. It’s a practice that includes like 15+ physicians, and I think that the decision was made over my PCP’s head, given that she once told me that she literally moved states to be able to provide gender affirming care here.
First off, genuinely, thank you so much for all the replies and messages. I genuinely felt frozen after that phone call and didn’t know where to start, and you all really helped me get my feet off the ground.
A couple people mentioned contacting the ACLU, which, truthfully, I thought, “there’s no way that the ACLU will get back to me” but I sent a message anyway. They actually called me a few hours after my post and we talked about the Executive Orders and my rights. They offered to fax my provider a letter reminding them of my rights and some other legal terms. It’s crazy how a post on reddit resulted in my name being on the official ACLU letterhead.
Anyway, today my doctor’s physician assistant called me and shared that their practice is reversing their decision and they will continue to provide gender affirming care. I’m still keeping a bunch of the resources that y’all shared saved, including Planned Parenthood, Plume, and looking into a private endocrinologist.
This whole experience just reminded me how great this community is. I appreciate y’all <3"
You should contact Chase Strangio from the ACLU, I believe he is looking for reports of folks being denied their GAC due to these EOs. He’s @chasestrangio on IG and Threads.
We have a local, I guess I’ll call it an events complex. It’s where concerts and the fair go. It’s owned by the city.
When Trump started the whole ICE thing, our commissioner sent a letter to the local representatives, telling them they could use it as a detention center for illegal immigrants. Our event center. Where the 4H kids show their fuckin’ lambs.
“The fuck you will” was the resounding reply.
So, when I talk about coalition-building, and working with people you do not agree with or maybe even like, this is what I’m talking about. There was an immediate and vocal show of disapproval, from all sides. We all contacted people we knew would dislike this, REGARDLESS OF HOW THEY FELT ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE. The meeting was packed with people yelling at the commissioners. Of all political stripes. Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Prairie Populist, Independent.
Some were, of course, the tumblr-style arguments about inherent humanity, but–I think more compellingly if you’re actually trying to put the pressure on–there were questions of, ‘How are we gonna get paid?“ "Are you aware of how, as the only event center for more than two hours, much fuckin money this brings into the community? ANd that immigrants of all types make up less than 2% of the population of the entire state?(my argument), "Do we trust the government to pay us?”, “Isn’t there a fuckin’ empty prison in [town about an hour from here]? Are you just being a kiss-ass?’ (offered up by a man I know to be very conservative indeed. BUT HE DID NOT WANT OUR SPACE USED FOR THIS) and, an argument that was so good I was infuriated I didn’t come up with it, "DO you think the bank is gonna want to be known as the sponsor of "National bank Detention Center?” (Which caught on and the bank had to offer up a letter saying how they hoped the commissioners would use the event center as intended.)
They folded. A letter came out a few days ago from the manager of the event center, saying it was decided that the events center would rescind the offer, as “more acceptable alternatives could be found.” They blinked.
That’s the thing. All that happened is that a bunch of people got mad an went to ONE TWO HOUR MEETING. It changed everything.
Several years ago I briefly worked in the warehouse of a nondescript extremely large e-commerce company. I had no other options for employment but desperately needed money. Turnover was like 150%. I worked from something like 7pm to 5am, my commute was 50 minutes each way and before I got paid I didn’t even have the cash for enough gas to get home one night and had to bum $10 off of my kid sibling (this is all to give you an idea of my abysmal mental state while employed here.) You’re not allowed to do anything besides your job, no music or anything and they track your movement on cameras so you can’t even take a breather. The job is real monotonous, you get sent boxes of items of random sizes and you have to put the items into shelves of varying sizes and the shelves come to you, you don’t walk to them. Because the company tracks the rate at which you put items on these shelves, many small items are desirable because you can put a lot of them in quickly. Everything about the place seems almost designed intentionally to break you mentally and turn you into a robot. So I’m about 6 or 7 hours into my shift, feeling on the verge of a mental collapse, and up comes a container with a bunch of small white boxes, bout half the size of a deck of cards. No labels. Great, I’m already happy about whatever these things are. So I go to scan them in, and it gives you the name of the item and a little picture. Sasuke Penis Costume. What? Sasuke Penis Costume. A picture of that red cloud robe from Naruto and one of the headbands with the metal plate on it. I’m thinking, there’s no way. What is a penis costume? Am I hallucinating this? And there’s so many of them, literally about a hundred, and I know I’m going to be spending at least an hour with Sasuke Penis Costume, there’s so many and they’re so small, I’m already excited about the potential efficiency of these, and then I see it’s Sasuke Penis Costume? So the entire shift I’m like, trying to not put these things away too quick, because honestly I’m starting to build a kind of kinship with them. This is quite literally the most exciting thing to happen to me during my whole 2 week employment at the warehouse. I started to see Sasuke Penis Costume as a friend, some reminder of the outside world, a reminder of the humanity I was becoming so unfamiliar with, a reminder the world contained comedy, art, anime, and penis. I really couldn’t tell you if I ended up putting all of them away, the last thing I remember is my desperate need to look these items up when I got home. I needed a link to send to my friends for when I told them this riveting story. I learned that the costume is called the Akatsuki cloak in my fervent search for the item, and wouldn’t you know it, absolutely zero trace of these things exists online. Not on the e-commerce website, not on any specialized penis-costume websites (whose existence I was not privvy to prior to this incident) and no third-party retailer has these. Not even Google images will show me the hypothetical existence of Sasuke Penis Costume. Every few months I look it up, trying to find evidence that it can be bought, that any of this was ever real. My bond, my friendship, and dare I say even love for Sasuke Penis Costume feels as tangible as the boxes they came in, and yet the universe will give me no closure of their fate. Less and less frequently I search for them, each time becoming more and more discouraged that I will ever find them, but unlike their substance on this earth, one thing is inarguably certain. Sasuke Penis Costume exists to me, and it will live on firmly and resolutely within my memory and within my heart.
amhrancas 