i drove into asheville today to deliver supplies for various mutual aid orgs and to, yeah, do some journalism. I took this week off of writing about history, next week's podcast is going to be about the groups doing stuff in western north carolina right now.
what's happening in Asheville right now is absolutely classic "disaster compassion." I lost count of how many grassroots mutual aid organizations are working together to distribute resources. Sure, it's the usual folks, like the progressive churches and the anarchists...
but closed restaurants with power have just set out extension cords with power charging blocks. Today I loaded produce out of a grocery store, handed to us by employees, lest that food go to waste, then drove it to a mutual aid hub.
people are without power, water, sewage, and cell service throughout wide swath of western north carolina right now. I don't want to paint a rosy picture. Countless roads have been destroyed, and people are trapped essentially on "islands" of a sort.
People are working with chainsaw and ATV to rescue the people in the hills, and mutual aid orgs are working nonstop to take the supplies (which usually arrive into asheville) out to wherever they're needed.
the first I heard about federal involvement in the area was... ICE. Instead of showing up to help, the feds showed up to criminalize already marginalized communities.
I have seen some FEMA equipment arriving and I'm sure some things are happening, but it most of the work, it seems, is being done by the same groups that always do it: an interwoven web of formal and informal organizations and, well, just individuals.
The government seems like it's trying to crack down on grassroots disaster relief, which if it does will be an absolute disaster. I don't know enough about that yet.
the way to help mutual aid groups is not to show up, but to help people buy the supplies they need, or to coordinate with dropoff sites in various nearby cities. Basically, rather than having everyone show up, you gather resources nearby then coordinate bringing them in.
(I'm a hypocrite in that, but I've done comparable work before, was plugged in with a mutual aid org, own a large van, and also, you know, am a journalist now.)
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Disaster compassion is real. Here are some things I've seen today and yesterday in Western North Carolina:
The Asheville Tool Library and a repair clinic teamed up behind firestorm to fix countless broken generators and chainsaws, just folks sitting around on their trucks fixing two-stroke engines, cheering as each one starts running and then goes out to where it can save people
Appalachian Medical Solidarity and countless unaffiliated medics and doctors running a free clinic outside of a punk bar under tents and easy-ups, connecting people to meds and first aid supplies
western north carolina is an image of the future. disasters will get worse. This is not a reason to despair. It is a reason to get organized. To get prepared.
In the current crisis, we can clearly see the purpose of individual/family preparedness as a way to help larger collective disaster resilience. The largest problem (that we're currently aware of) is that people are stranded without power, communications, food, water, or gas.
You, reading this, wherever you are: where you live is not so unique and special and safe that you can assume disruptions like this will never happen to you.
A car comes with a spare tire and a jack for a reason. So to, your apartment or house ought to have some basic things:
hitting nazis with heavy objects works. I've talked to antifascists in multiple countries about how the growth of fascism was stopped through militant street resistance.
fascism is a populist movement, and street violence is an important component to its growth. but nazis make poor underdogs... the average fascist wants to be a fascist when he feels like he is winning. He wants to feel strong with his strong buddies.
the antifascist, on the other hand, paradoxically, is effective even when outnumbered, because by showing that resistance is possible, more people are emboldened. Because fascists are a minority, and only win when they go unconfronted.
The very first sentence reads like a fragment: you generally don't say "not only in..." without following up with a "but..."
The second sentence contains a comma splice ("the united mission" is the subject of both the first and second clause, so the comma should not be present)
the word "thereof" seems to serve no purpose except to make the writers believe that they are conveying intelligence and education. It conveys the opposite.
The serial comma is used inconsistently throughout the piece.
I'm going to define some terms, because most of them have become essentially jargon. Socialism, communism, anarchism, democratic socialism, libertarian socialism, authoritarian socialism.
First of all, the meaning of these terms shifts country to country and year to year, confusing matters greatly. An anarchist in 1880s Chicago would also call themselves a socialist. "Communist" had a much broader meaning before 1917. So I'm going to be a bit broad.
Socialism is the broadest umbrella term here. Roughly, a socialist fights for a world without gross economic inequality and generally does so through seeking for workers themselves (or the state, but not private companies) own the means of production (factories, farms, etc)