Here is a thing that happens on Twitter: every time there is a labor action, strike, or boycott, someone posts about how they would love to want to help out the workers but they just happen to rely on the service provided by the target of the action and therefore they cannot.
It is therefore, they inevitably argue, not just unfair to ask them to participate in the action/strike/boycott, but actually *ableist*. (This is the most common claim, anyway, but it can be adapted to racist, misogynist, transphobic, etc., etc.)
Now, there *might* be something to this. The first problem is, though, it misses the point of a strike. A strike is supposed to inconvenience people! It's supposed to make their lives hard! That's the whole point! Otherwise, it's an empty gesture, because it can be ignored!
The second problem is, if you are reliant on the goods or services provided by a single corporation, that is *also* a problem of capitalism! It shouldn't be that way! And how do you fix that problem? With mass movements, like strikes, labor actions, and boycotts.
However, these objections are largely irrelevant, because the ableist arguments are inevitably between 99% and 99.99% complete bullshit. Whether they're idiots or just right-wing tools, the arguments these people making aren't just misguided, they're actually completely made up!
Let's look at one that showed up yesterday, concerning the Kellogg strike.
Total bullshit! First of all, there is no food allergy or sensitivity in the world where you can *only eat Frosted Mini-Wheats*. That's made up! It's a lie! You would die of malnutrition! No one on Earth has this alleged food sensitivity!
Second, even if it weren't a lie, which it is, you could get around it by just eating a version of the product made by a different company. This is the most consumerist country of all time! There are probably dozens of versions of Frosted Mini-Wheats not made by Kellogg!
Finally, the poster says FMWs are "one of" the only foods they can eat, meaning "not the only food they can eat". So eat one of the other ones until the strike is over! Why did you even open your fucking mouth?
Here's another.
Bullshit! Total bullshit! Total bullshit lie! First all, there are literally dozens of home delivery services for food. Second, Instacart marks their shit up like crazy! It's expensive as hell! Nobody poor enough to live in a food desert can afford Instacart!
If you're poor and you live somewhere with no good grocery stores, you don't order an expensive delivery service! You just go to the shitty corner store or the Walmart or whatever. You know how I know that? Because that's been me, a bunch of times! BULLSHIT LIE!
Another one was the response to a call to boycott HelloFresh, claiming it was "ableist" because disabled people can't prep their own food. Lie! Total bullshit lie! These people don't even understand the thing they're lying about!
If they did, they would know that *HelloFresh also does not prep the food they send you*! They portion it, but you still have to prep it (as well as bring the box into your home, etc.). And even if they did, there are, again, dozens of competing home food delivery options.
All kinds of similar claims also fall apart under the most cursory examination, including people who claim it's ableist to ask for an Amazon boycott because they rely on this or that consumer good, item, or service that *only* Amazon sells and which they *have* to have overnight.
There's also the people who *have* to use Uber, because wherever they live has no Lyft, taxis, buses, shuttles, private cars, trains, public transit, private transportation through charities, friends, relatives, church services, medical transport, etc., etc.
It's never answered why they have money to use what are, generally speaking, extremely expensive private services on a daily basis. It's also never answered what they did before all of these companies existed, as many of them are less than a decade old.
It's always that they happen to be in a unique situation that forces them to forsake every other possible option and instead use the one huge corporate giant that people are desperately trying to stop from committing one fraud, abuse, or worker mistreatment or another.
It's never them who's doing something wrong; and it's *certainly* not the company who's doing something wrong. It's *you* who's doing something wrong by daring to ask that the world be improved slightly.
In conclusion, this is just another example of America's combination of consumerism and individualism, disguising its profound selfishness as innocent need and disguising any attempt at checking capitalism's power as bigotry.
Hello! First, please give to the Kellogg’s strike support fund!
Also, please consider that thinking a specific person is lying about a disability is not the same as being ableist, or thinking the disability does not exist. People lie about things, and a lot of times they lie using the language of social justice.
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A common myth is that right-wingers only have one joke. This is both unfair and untrue; in reality, they have six. The question is, which six? Let's take a look.
JOKE #1: "My pronouns are [not pronouns]/I identify as [absurd thing to identify as]. Entry-level right-wing humor. Basic bitch shit, they issue you this joke the first time you log into Reddit.
JOKE #2: "[photograph of person joke-teller thinks is odd or unusual-looking in some way] This is how they're going to win the revolution, folks." An improvement on Joke #1 only insofar as you have to know how to upload an image, a minor but important barrier.
For five years now, Bernie Sanders' opponents have described him as not just excessively focused on white voters -- not just racially insensitive -- not just, well, RACIST -- but as UNIQUELY racist amongst Democratic candidates.
(1/10)
Instead, he was delivered a victory in the beating heart of white America by a coalition of working-class men and women of color, many of them immigrants to this country who were being given the first chance of their entire lives to take part in the democratic process.
(2/10)
It is this specific victory -- of satellite caucuses formed by his volunteer's deliberate outreach to communities of color in America's 4th-whitest state -- that the Democratic leadership is challenging, and that the Buttigeig campaign is trying to take away.
Today at @DSAcon2019, there was vigorous debate over Resolution #9 to establish a national antifascist working group. Dissent and debate is always good, but this is an issue of great importance to me, so I tried to do something I rarely do: publicly argue against the resolution.
I ended up not speaking, as I'm a white cis male and we were keeping progressive stack. I was more than happy to yield my time to other comrades' voices. But my history around antifascist action means a lot to me, so I wanted to post for anyone who cares what I would have said.
"I have engaged in antifascist action in a wide variety of forms for the past 30+ years. I have spent time in jail behind this activity. I have been beaten, stabbed, attacked, and harassed by both fascist street thugs and their enablers in law enforcement."
So tired of Bernie Sanders acting like the working class just means white people
So tired of Bernie Sanders pretending like there are no people of color in working-class occupations
So tired of Bernie Sanders only fighting for white working-class industries like health care, education, fast food, agriculture, ride-sharing, food processing, retail, factory work, nursing, and service fields, where there are no people of color at all
Okay. Real busy today but I can't let @tommchenry have all the fun. So let's do bad bosses.
1. At the first day of the first job I ever had, I worked an eight-hour shift and the boss asked me if I could work another hour. He did this four times. He didn't pay me for any overtime for my twelve-hour shift. I was 14 years old.
2. At the fourth job I ever had, our video store got taken over by Blockbuster. The regional boss came in and told us new uniforms were (a) mandatory and (b) to be paid for out of our pockets.