We don't have the right to protest
and other news
Hiii, I worked out twice this week and I’m still very sore! Today I’m sharing my feelings about the federal government disabling an unhoused man, protestors being arrested in NYC for protesting against fossil fuel production, and protestors in Ghana being arrested for protesting against high living costs. Onto the news..
News that made me remind you humans are animals
Brooks Roberts, an unhoused man, was shot and disabled by the US Forest Service police for living in a forest in so-called Idaho. My question for the government is that if you don’t want unhoused people to live in a house, you don’t want them to live on the street, and you don’t want them to live in the forest, where do you want them to go?
Homelessness has increased all over the country with the place called Idaho experiencing a 14% increase in homelessness over the past 15 years. Instead of housing people, cities all over the United States have been sweeping unhoused people from the street. Now the federal government is saying if you live in a forest they will shoot you.
The government acts like it wants unhoused to evaporate into a gaseous state so they don’t take up physical space. This is simply not possible because human beings are not water, they are not able to exist in multiple forms. They can’t be vapor, they can only exist as a solid. As much as the government might seem like it’s too incompetent to solve basic problems, the government does have a basic understanding of physics. The government knows people need to take up space.
The reality is the government wants unhoused people to either die or be imprisoned because we as humans have to pay a tax to exist. If you can’t afford that tax, which you can only earn through selling your life to corporations, then you need not exist. Yes, I’m calling paying for rent a tax because human beings' natural habitat is planet Earth. When we are born there is no option but to live on planet Earth. We can’t turn into rockets and leave the planet. Even the billionaires can’t do that and they really want to!
Human beings, believe it or not, are animals. I know we live in such an anthropocentric society that some people forget we are part of kingdom Animalia. Seriously, I'm not making it up. Look at your notes from high school biology. Animals don’t have to pay rent to live and neither should we.
However, we are forced to pay rent because that’s the only way they can force us to do jobs that no one wants to do. I’ve said it and I’ll say it again, if we didn’t need money to live, no one would be working at the M&M’s store in Times Square.
An additional bonus to being extremely cruel to unhoused people is that it reminds the rest of us what happens if we don’t oblige to the capitalists stealing our freedom. You can quiet quit all you want but don’t you dare think about loud quitting.
Either work or die, is what the government and corporations tell us every single time they sweep an unhoused person from the streets. I feel like at this point it’s almost redundant to say government and corporations because they are one and the same.
News that made me tell you things your teacher should have told you
114 people were arrested in NYC for protesting the ongoing production of oil and gas which are fueling global climate change. The good news is there are people willing to fight for this world despite constant opposition from the trolls who run it. These people blocked the Federal Reserve Bank to demand the bank stop funding fossil fuel production.
If the Federal Reserve was run by people who cared about the planet, the response to this blockade would be OMG, you are so right, we shouldn’t be funding the apocalypse, we will stop funding it immediately. However, since the Fed is run by trolls, the response was to arrest people who really should be celebrated for giving really useful advice.
The bad news is that people are being arrested for protesting, which last time I checked was a constitutional right. I just double checked and it says something about people’s right to peacefully assemble. This leads me to conclude that we in fact don’t have the right to “assemble”. Sorry, but your middle school social studies teacher lied to you. To be fair, it’s not your teacher’s fault, they were lied to too. Or maybe they were scared to tell you the truth because they knew someone’s parents would complain and they would get fired.
I’m here to tell you what your teacher didn’t tell you because I don’t report to a principal.
The people who live in the so-called United States of America don’t have the right to protest as proven by the arrest of the climate activists being arrested and everything that happened during the George Floyd uprising. When we protest the state not only arrests us but also brutalizes us.
The NYPD is being forced to pay 13 million dollars to BLM protestors as a result of brutalizing protestors who were protesting against police brutality. I would say this is ironic, but it’s not. The protocol of the US government is oppressing you more if you complain about oppression. So this is just the American way.
The United States government has shown us over and over again that it doesn’t want people to protest because protesting gets in the way of all the evil that needs to be done so capitalists can exist.
When people keep protesting despite brutalization, the government doesn’t actually give people what they want. They pretend to do something to get us off the street then tell us see you got what you want now go home. They did that when they painted BLM on streets. Now Joe Biden is pretending to do something about climate change by creating a Civilian Climate Corp which will create jobs instead of stopping fossil fuel production.
One thing you can always count on Joe and his team to do is to pretend they are the good guys, while winking at the villains. I don’t have to be Captain Planet to know that creating a climate corp will do nothing to stop the heating of the planet when Joe Biden keeps approving oil projects like the climate change villain he is. Other people have pointed this out too.
Instead of actually doing what we ask for, the government gaslights us to maintain its legitimacy. Then when we go out to the street to keep asking for change the government arrests us. This is because having a right to protest is not the only lie we’ve been told. The other lies we’ve been told is that the United States of America is a democracy and that Joe Biden cares about you. He doesn’t. If he did, he would stop the Willow Project and give us money for weed.
News that made me feel like fancy suits are not worth oppressing people
49 people were arrested outside the presidential palace in Ghana for protesting against the cost of living crisis. Hundreds of people protesting outside the palace would be an amazing opening scene for any revolutionary movie and I highly approve. I love that the people who went to the palace went to the direct source of their problem which is always the government.
Okay, it’s really the government doing corporations’/colonizers’ bidding. However, the government is the middleman to our oppression and a lot of times people are tricked into believing the government is there to help. My favorite thing is when people realize the government is the reason why their life is bad and take time out of their day to make government officials’ lives terrible.
I say this because a lot of times when people’s lives are bad, they turn to xenophobia, transphobia, and other white supremacist tricks that keep us all from realizing who is responsible for us not being able to smoke weed every day under a tree. Okay the last part is just me, but substitute that activity with whatever activity you would do if we were free.
However, the government doesn’t want us to be free and that’s why when people protest the lack of freedom caused by poverty, all governments all over the world respond the same way: with brute force. They do this because they want us to take the oppression and be quiet. If they responded with candy, people would get the wrong idea that demanding freedom is actually okay.
Governments know that people don’t like to have difficult lives, so when people’s lives are getting difficult, governments try to use tricks to get the people not to revolt. The government is always like well, we really want your life to be good but it’s just really impossible to make that happen because of [insert big lie].
The Ghanaian government tried to trick the people of Ghana into believing the cost of living has increased because of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, but the people have not fallen for it. They are calling out the government for mismanaging funds and building things like a 400 million dollar cathedral.
Is there a manual that politicians from all over the world read called how to shamelessly tell people the government doesn’t have money for people’s basic necessities while publicly spending money on unnecessary things?
I personally would be ashamed to get on a podium and tell people I’m building a building for a deity who doesn’t need it while they suffer. I don’t care how many fancy suits I would get from doing this.
Whether there is a manual that directs politicians on how to lie to legitimize a tyrannical government serving corporate interests so they can get more money than they’ll ever need and a lifetime supply of ugly suits doesn’t matter. I’m just happy the people of Ghana are calling out the people who are actually responsible for their problems. Solidarity with the people who have been imprisoned for this brave act and here’s to hoping more people in Ghana and all over the world follow their lead.
That’s it for the news, but don’t go yet
I’m currently reading Shotgun Seamstress by Osa Atoe. It’s a collection of all the Shotgun Seamstress zines. If you are an artist who wants to create art just because you love art, this book is for you. I’m really loving it and I highly recommend it.
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Your favorite anarchist comedian/poet/social critic,
Thank you for another great column, Marcela! I always look forward to your emails appearing in my inbox 😁