November 2022 News Roundup

In Local News:

• According to the article by The Harbor Rat Report entitled “Despite previous court ruling, City of Aberdeen refuses to find adequate space for homeless encampment”. Three years after the city evicted people from their long time home on the banks of the Chehalis River in 2019, and forced them into a small parking lot behind city hall, promising to find them a permanent spot in 30 days, the city is still at a standstill in deciding on which of its MANY land holdings could be repurposed to a permanent encampment for the unhoused residents of the city. The agreement between the residents of the former river camp and the city stemmed from a court settlement in which the city was told to find a suitable permanent spot.
• Our local Chehalis River chapter of Food Not Bombs is looking for volunteer cooks and mobile food delivery drivers. If you can lend any assistance please reach out to them on Facebook or at crmutualaidnet@riseup.net. They are also continuing to hold their weekly community meal behind the Aberdeen library on Sundays at four PM.
  This is a free event, open to all and anyone who wants to come is more than welcome to join. You can show up with a dish or donations or simply a hungry belly.
• The date is November 21 and at the time of recording there is still No Emergency Cold Weather Shelter for the hundreds of people on the streets of Aberdeen facing what looks like a brutal winter with no place to get away from the elements and no way to safely heat themselves. Although the grant funds for the shelter come through the county the Aberdeen city council recently voted to not have one in the city limits of Aberdeen, making the prospect of anything materializing even slimmer. The reason the city council cited was concerns raised about the impact on the local business community. At least 13 people have died already this year on the streets on Aberdeen all of which could have been prevented with adequate housing. Now the city is refusing to allow even a temporary emergency shelter within it’s boundaries. The city continues it’s illegal practice of stealing and destroying the personal property of people camping on the sidewalks in downtown Aberdeen. These sidewalks are designated as ok to camp on by the city’s own map. Chehalis River Mutual Aid Network is running a winter fundraiser to buy warmweather gear for our comrades facing the repercussions of the city’s malice, check them out on social media for more information.
• All this as a new police chief and a new crop of officers at the Aberdeen police department has increased their harassment of local organizers and volunteers and recently cited a Food Not Bombs volunteer for “impeding traffic” – a common occurrence for cars dropping donations or distributing food and supplies to people living at the River St camp. We spoke to the organizer who recieved the 140$ ticket and they had this to say about the ordeal,

Our home collective Sabot media launched its new website and announced many new and upcoming projects:

• The Harbor Rat Report is a grassroots journalism project updating the Grays Harbor community on stories around radical rural resistance, political direct actions, community organizing efforts, housing advocacy projects, and much more. We see a distinct lack of credible investigative reporting on topics of vital importance to our community. We will investigate and write the stories that aren’t being told in this capitalist media landscape.
• We are the inky ones. Flashing eyes in the dead of night. Our claws are sharp, and our wit is sharper. Start yourself a Black Cat Distro today and join us in this revelry by printing this stuff yourself. You could give it to a friend, leave it at a bus stop, wheat paste it behind a dumpster, fill your personal library, sell it to raise money, wad it in the neck of a glass bottle and throw it to sea, use it as tinder for a fire somewhere fun, tie it to a rock and throw it through a police station window, become ungovernable. You can join us, we print posters, stickers, & zines. When sabot media makes content we sneak in the night to seize it and make it our own. We chop it up, rearrange it to our liking, and then hit Control P. We toss this garbage all over town in the hopes someone will read it and get inspired. whoops, it looks like we are out of time. Solidarity comrades. Sabot out!
• Aberdeen Local 1312 is our connection to the capitalist forms of social media on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, & Tik Tok as well as decentralized forms of federated social media such as Mastodon. Through these platforms we intend to share everything from long form videos to short digestible nuggets of content, right down to the dirty core of an idea – the meme. We’re fighting the propaganda war on an unfair battlefield, but it still has to be fought. If we wish to win the battle for a free internet, we must change the battlefield. We need to work together to shift our movement as a whole onto the federated internet. So long as our personal connections remain on their servers our Union and our movement, can and will be deleted. This is the goal of Aberdeen Local 1312 & The Agit-Prop Memer’s Union. Everyday our data and information is stolen and sold off for profit, leading to some of the most violating and deceptive practices by social media companies and advertisers. Just as we must decentralize power and the means of production, so to must we decentralize the internet. Why should social media companies profit from our labor!? Its time seize the memes of production!
• The Saboteurs takes us on the journey of a wild cat named sabot and his companions, both human and animal. We see how a fictional character might partake in praxis on the streets of their city. The critters of the forest aid sabot in his wanton destruction of the old world. They watch gleefully over the ashes as something new begins to take root. Join the pack of militant creatures as they make their way into this bright tomorrow.
• Ask Annie is a column where a organizer from the Chehalis River Mutual Aid Network answers your questions on local current events, how to’s, organizing tips and tricks, and much more. Annie spends her days out helping people on the streets and often gets asked the same questions over and over, often about resources or how people can get engaged in their community. We figured our audience would benefit from being able to have these questions asked and answered in one convenient spot. So send your emails our way and we will make sure she sees them.
• The Communique is a seasonal newsletter that combines stories of regional rural organizing efforts & political resistance, along with local history, art, and poetry to update our comrades in the wider culture of resistance. We feel a lack of representation in what has become a one way relationship between rural and urban radicals. By connecting our stories to the struggle for liberation across the globe, we aim to foster a culture of learning and bridge the divide between the two in order to strengthen the bonds of solidarity between all our communities. We are putting together our winter solstice edition of the newsletter and requesting artist and author submissions to sabot_media@riseup.net with the heading “newsletter”.

In other news:

• Club Q Shooting – Sprout here in post, this story happened after we finished recording but it was important enough that we felt like we had to address it. Late on the night of November 19, just before the start of Trans Day of Remembrance, a mass shooting occurred at Club Q, an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States. Five people were killed, and 25 others were injured, 19 of them by gunfire. The accused, 22-year-old Anderson Lee Aldrich, was thankfully stopped – not by police – but by people inside the club who disarmed and then beat the shooter. This comes in the midst of increasing attacks against the LGBTQ+ community, both from the Republican party and from far-Right actors. While more information is coming out all the time, we do know that the shooter’s grandfather is a MAGA Republican in California and his own father when interviewed espoused anti-gay views. People who knew the shooter have also reported that he often used anti-gay slurs and a video has also emerged of the shooter and his mother shouting racist slurs at an airport. The wider Right has responded by attacking those who stopped the shooter for attending an LGBTQ+ event in the first place while doubling down on attacks on the LGBTQ+ community. Across the US, people held vigils and rallies in solidarity, denouncing the wave of anti-LGBTQ+ attacks and threats by groups like the Proud Boys against Pride and beyond.Anarchists and militant queers and trans people also dropped banners, held vigils, and in Colorado Springs, vandalized the front entrance to the anti-LGBTQ+ group focus on the family, writing, “Their Blood Is On Your Hands, Five Lives Lost.” Focus on the Family is most well known for raising millions to attack same-sex marriage and promote the horrific practice of “conversion therapy.” A statement from the anonymous group who take credit for the vandalism stated:
  

  It is important to us that you understand why Focus on the Family must be held accountable for the ramifications of their hateful theology. You have likely seen the onslaught of anti-trans legislation, of which Focus on the Family is a huge proponent, both in funding and propaganda. With an alarmingly expansive network, they work closely with powerful entities, such as the DeVos family, to promote and fund this anti-trans legislation. Focus on the Family’s goal is to eradicate queerness. Tactics they use to achieve this include indoctrination, media saturation, falsified research, and conversion therapy. We encourage you to continue to investigate the many examples of their culpability, which can be found front and center on their own website.

  The first call for help from Club Q came just a few minutes before midnight at 11:56 p.m. on Saturday night, according to CSPD. Richard Fierro, a veteran and former Army officer, who was at the club to see a show with his family, he recalls seeing the shooter’s muzzle flash, and initially diving for cover with his friend. Fierro and another club attendee, Thomas James, took down the shooter, took away his gun, and beat him with his own pistol until police arrived. Fierro said the next day that he “simply wanted to save the family that I found.” “If I had my way, I would shield everyone I could from the nonsensical acts of hate in the world, but I am only one person,” James said in a statement released Sunday by Centura Health. “Thankfully, we are a family and family looks after one another.”
  Some right-wing media figures and influencers have doubled down on the use of inflammatory rhetoric against the LGBTQ community. The rhetoric mirrors what LGBTQ advocates have warned about for months, most notably false claims that children are being sexualized or “groomed” by LGBTQ people and events. They have also tried to blur the reality of whether or not the Club was actually a gay bar, and call into question the hate crime element of the charges since the lawyers for the gunman have reportedly told the court that they wish to be refered to by the pronouns They/Them. The shooter reportedly heard about the Club event he shot up from the account Libs of TikTok. Libs of TikTok — the name of a social media presence on Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms run by a woman named Chaya Raichik — has catapulted from a relative unknown to a right-wing media force. Raichik mostly reposts videos, photos, and screenshots designed to stir the ire of her followers, touching upon everything from COVID to conspiracy theories about child sex trafficking rings. Yet the vast majority of her output now concerns the LGBTQ+ community, calling out teachers for sharing their pronouns with students and hospitals for offering gender-affirming care to adolescents. Regardless of the motive or the indentity of the shooter this was an attack on the safety and very existence of all LGBTQ people. The reactionary liberal response has predictably been calling for less guns when as radicals we know that the real answer is LGBTQ people being able to arm and train themselves as we cannot expect the state to protect us. The refrain from the aftermath of the shooting has been, “We Protect Us”. This is not a mere slogan.

• In Tacoma, Washington, local high school students shut down a far-Right, anti-trans event organized by TERFs. A tweet written by IGD states: “Looks like high school kids in working-class town of #Tacoma shut down anti-trans rally. “Deep Green Resistance” leader Lierre Keith was in attendance. A month ago Keith appeared on show alongside Keith Preston, a white nationalist who speaks at conferences with Richard Spencer.”
  Terfs off our Turf held a counter protest Nov 13th to oppose the TERF gathering planned for the same day on the capitol steps in Olympia WA.
• In Portland, Oregon despite threats online by far-Right trolls, antifascists held a successful forum and speaking event at a local bookstore. Only one person arrived to disrupt the event though there may have been others who were outside. The situation was handled swiftly, safely, and everything went as planned.
• In Eugene, Oregon hundreds turned out to oppose Proud Boys and neo-Nazis, and defend a community drag event at a local pub. Antifascists helped protect the space from attempts by the far-Right to attack the crowd and eventually sent the fascists running to the cars. For more information on these stories check out the podcast This Is America from It’s Going Down.
• The Center for Especifismo Studies is putting together a militant kindergarten in Janurary. Join them online for a 15-week seminar on anarchist theory, strategy, and militancy using the text, Social Anarchism and Organization by The Anarchist Federation of Rio de Janeiro. Audiobook and study notes are available. If interested please email especifismostudies@gmail.com
• Free them All requests comrades to assist in planning a campaign to address Mental health wait times in WA state prisons:
  • Joshua Marsh spent eight months this year in the Grays Harbor County Jail before receiving court-ordered restoration treatment at Western State Hospital. Hundreds of defendants across Washington state remain in a legal limbo, jailed until a psychiatric bed opens up, as wait times balloon in violation of a federal court settlement. in January of this year, police officers had been dispatched to a local grocery store twice within an hour because of Joshua Marsh. Officers issued him a trespass notice and noted Marsh’s conversation was “nonsensical.” Police were called again after Marsh was found climbing onto a semi truck parked outside. By that evening, Marsh was booked into Grays Harbor County Jail, accused of assaulting officers. He would spend eight months there, waiting to be transferred to a state psychiatric hospital for mental health services. Marsh, who still had yet to face trial as of November 6th, is one of hundreds of defendants across Washington state who remain in a legal limbo, jailed while waiting for a psychiatric bed as state hospital wait times balloon in violation of a federal court settlement. Four years after that settlement, referred to as the Trueblood case, the Washington Department of Social and Health Services — the state agency in charge of getting people into mental health services — is still struggling to meet required time frames. In fact, wait times are getting worse, costing hundreds of people in jails, and their loved ones, weeks or months of their lives. The settlement includes fines, so the failure also has cost Washington taxpayers an estimated $98 million since 2018. The group Free Them All WA is is launching a campaign to coordinate, discuss, and strategize in response to this medical neglect in Washington state prisons. See our show notes for the flyer on the event, and for more information reach out to them at freethemallwa@gmail.com. The initial meeting on Nov 19th will be followed by more detailed campaign coordination meetings, RSVP with the link bit.ly/ftastopdochttps://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/mental-health/wait-times-for-mental-health-services-in-wa-jails-worsen-as-fines-spiral/

• • ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​From @QueerSatanic: The atheistic religious corporation “The Satanic Temple” made news again this month after announcing a “Family Movie Night” at a high school in Bedford County​​​​​​​, Virginia. The proposed showing of “Fern Gulley” in February 2023 is part of the Temple’s After School Satan or “ASS” program and, predictably during this new Satanic Panic, the stunt got local media attention and a new cycle of right wing outraged, followed by a liberal backlash pointing out that TST doesn’t worship or believe in a supernatural devil, and has tenets that claim the Temple stands for nice things. However, in reality, TST remains a collection of for-profit and nonprofit corporations owned by just two men: Doug Misicko a.k.a. Lucien Greaves and Cevin [pronounced “Kevin”] Soling a.k.a. Malcolm Jarry. For two and a half years, they have continued to pursue a SLAPP suit against Queer Satanic, four former members. TST also sued Newsweek for writing an article about them suing Queer Satanic, doxed and harassed other former members who have been critics, and even forced a TikToker to record a “retraction video” and apologize on threats they would subject her to expensive litigation as well.
    We will play that recording from that tik tok now, we would advise listeners of a content warning for Distress, Crying, & Mentions of Sexual Assault, if you would like to skip this the audio clip is 1 minute and 43 seconds long we will be playing that clip in 5…4…3…2…1…TST still has not yet publicly stated they don’t plan to still sue her even after she recorded a video reading their prepared statement for her. But ha-ha, The Satanic Temple sure triggers the conservative Christians, right?​​​​​​​ Anyway, our friends at Queer Satanic have spent about $100,000 now for their legal defense, so support them if you can. Link in the show notes.
  • https://campsite.bio/queersatanic
    https://queersatanic.com/today-is-a-good-day-for-the-satanic-temple-to-release-its-finances/

• The American Indian Policy Institute released a POLICY ALERT saying: Indian Country Fights To Protect ICWA: Haaland v. Brackeen to be heard by SCOTUS. On November 9, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) heard the alarming case, Haaland v. Brackeen. The questions of the case are (1) whether the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) interferes with a State’s power over adoptions and foster care and (2) whether the ICWA unfairly limits adoptions by parents who are not members of the Native child’s tribe. The case is alarming because of its potential to upend the foundations of culture and Indian Law. A decision in the Brackeen v. Haaland case is expected by the end of June 2023.
  • From The Sahan Journal, a non-profit journalism outlet in Minnesota:In an hours-long hearing Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court pressed attorneys about whether a 44-year-old law to shield Indigenous children and families from unjust separations goes beyond the power of Congress.The Indian Child Welfare Act, or ICWA, was passed by Congress and became law at a time when as many as one-third of all Indigenous children were taken from their homes. The vast majority were sent to live with white families or in residential boarding schools.The ICWA grants tribal children the right to foster care placements that favor members of their communities and kin.Plaintiffs in the Brackeen v. Haaland case—three, white adoptive couples and the state of Texas—challenge the constitutionality of the ICWA on multiple grounds. The plaintiffs include Danielle and Jason Clifford of Minneapolis, Minnesota, who tried unsuccessfully to adopt a Native girl after fostering her for nearly two years.
  • Enacted in 1978, the Indian Child Welfare Act is a Federal law that attempts to protect the well-being and best interests of Native children and families. The law was enacted in response to the staggering rate that Native children were removed from their families and Tribes by state welfare agencies and private adoption groups in the 1960’s. The ICWA prioritizes keeping Native children connected to their community and culture by establishing rules that ensure Native children who are removed from their families are placed with extended family members or Native foster homes. It reaffirms the political status and inherent sovereignty of Tribal nations by recognizing that Tribes have a right to participate in child welfare matters involving their citizens. Removing this protection would likely see an increase in the rates of native children being taken from their families once again. If eliminated, this will cause further events like the 60’s scoop and Indigenous mother’s will be further pressured into giving up their children to adoption agencies. Native children and U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland are under legal attack in Brackeen v. Haaland. The powerful people behind the lawsuit include both Big Oil and the State of Texas. If their attempt to have a conservative-majority Supreme Court overturn the Indian Child Welfare Act is successful, the door will be open to the total elimination of tribal sovereignty. Native Children have the highest rates of being removed from their homes, and placed into Foster Care or given to family members within the Tribe. ICWA was enacted to prevent children, from being given to non-Indigenous families. Who’ll abuse and Manipulate them into feeling shame for their heritage as they have done in the past. The 60’s scoop led to Native children being adopted by Foreigners, in Europe and beyond. That resulted in disconnect and alienation for countless children who were forcibly seperated from their families, their lands, and their heritage. Mother’s are often pressured by the State, to give up her kids. Whether that’s at the time of birth, or later down the line. Take action now to stop this horrific attack on Native rights! Please go to bit.ly/lakotalawicwa and sign the petition by the Lakota Peoples Law Project telling Joe Biden and attorneys for the Department of Justice to do everything in their power to protect the Indian Child Welfare Act and defend Secretary Deb Haaland. They desire strong federal protection of Native families and tribal sovereignty. This is a small and simple thing you can do to help but more importantly start talking to Indigenous Organizers to learn how we can make steps to take actions against the ongoing White Supremacist Agenda that has devastated their population as it has so many others
• Elon Musk’s recent aquisition of Twitter and the subsequent blowback, mass firings, and blue check mark fiasco has sent the stock price of the blue bird social media giant tumbling. 
  The goals Musk set out for since purchasing the company have also changed. He had inittialy set out to purchase Twitter with 2 clear goals
  1st, to “Protect Free Speech” and 2nd to “Rid the site of Bot Accounts” Now he claims to turn twitter into an “Everything App”. What he means by this is to turn twitter into not only a social networking site but also a messaging app, payments and cash transfer app, digital market place app, and much more. Essentially trying to copy the homework of WeChat a app based in China used by their population for well… everything. However despite all the other issues surrounding his aquisition of twitter, This idea of turning twitter into an everything app just doesn’t hold water. As compared to Facebook’s roughly 3 Billion users or even tik toks 1 billion users only 436 million use twitter.Musk immediately undertook many restructuring steps such as making Twitter private, dissolving the platform’s board, and enhanced his unilateral power as CEO. Musk began with laying off top executives, before notifications were emailed to around half of the Twitter global workforce that they were being made redundant or that their jobs were at risk. A company wide email read in part, “Given the nature of our distributed workforce and our desire to inform impacted individuals as quickly as possible, communications for this process will take place via email.” A class action lawsuit filed in the US on November 3 claims Twitter locked employees out of accounts, with at least one of the five plaintiffs being “terminated without notice or severance pay”, according to news reports.Twitter has paused its recently announced $8 blue check mark subscription service on Friday as fake accounts exploded. The verified blue check mark was previously only for accounts of politicians, famous personalities, journalists and other public figures that had been verified to be real by Twitter. But the new subscription model, open to anyone able to pay 8$, was rolled out a week after his purchase supposedly to help Twitter grow revenue as the company fights to retain advertisers. “The new service swiftly fell victim to impostors – with users parodying everyone from Pope Francis to George W Bush. The pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly & Co was forced to apologize and lost billions in market cap after an impostor account tweeted that insulin was free and was promptly called out by bernie sanders. Nintendo, Lockheed Martin, Musk’s own Tesla and SpaceX were also impersonated as well as the accounts of various professional sports figures. For advertisers, who have put their business in Twitter on hold, the fake accounts could be the last straw as Musk’s rocky run atop the platform – laying off half the workforce and triggering high-profile departures – raises questions about its survivability” the Guardian reports. Many people have begun to question if Twitter might be close to declaring bankruptcy and what that would mean for the social media landscape. We here at Moltov Now! have just the solution for you! We suggest listeners go check out the federated social media platforms like Masotodon to escape the corpoarte data mining and liberate our internet discussions. Along with these losses Twitter has faced a loss of users as people flock to the fediverse – or the federated social media universe including apps like PeerTube, Pixelfed, and Mastodon. Independent anarchist server Kolektiva has seen an increase in users mirroring the lost followers It’s Going Down saw on Twitter, showing that people went from one app to the other en masse. They also were able to increase the characer limit to an impressive 10k to intice people tired of being needlessly limited to 280 characters. Rant away!
• We are getting the cue that its time for a commercial break, when we return we will be reading from a recent article from The Harbor Rat Report and discussing just who this Terry Emmert fellow is that we keep hearing about, stay tuned and- Hey! don’t touch that! Get that god damn cat out of here!
• Hello Grays Harbor and outside listeners! Let us introduce ourselves. We are The Blackflower Collective, and were a new business on the Harbor. We are a worker-owned and operated enterprise dedicated to the creation of a world in which individuals have the autonomy, knowledge and resources to create fulfilling lives and communities free of oppression. Our mission is to learn together the ways in which to healthily relate to each other and our environment. We seek to sustain and nourish our collective through fulfilling work, personal empowerment and equitable compensation while providing a hub for political thought and culture in Grays Harbor County. For a detailed list of our planned projects and goals check out our website at blackflowercollective.noblogs.org

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