What in the Gestapo is going on in Grand Rapids?

Watch this activist get arrested *mid-interview* for speaking out against U.S. action in Venezuela.

This Lender Said Its Loans Would Help Tennesseans. It Has Sued More Than 110,000 of Them. The Flex Loan, a type of payday loan pioneered by Advance Financial, has burdened low-income borrowers while generating huge profits for lenders. Tennessee lawmakers declined to rein in the lending bu...

Advance Financial has sued over 110,000 borrowers in Tennessee since 2015.

In one county, where nearly half the households make less than $50,000, the company has filed one case for every 32 residents in that time, @tennesseelookout.com and ProPublica found.

By @friedmanadam5.bsky.social

‘Sinners’ Is Set in Clarksdale, Where There’s No Theater. Locals Are Asking for a Screening. The Mississippi Delta town launched a petition in hopes of bringing director Ryan Coogler and his team to the community that helped inspire the hit film.

"Sinners" has made $161 million at the box office, but residents of Clarksdale, Mississippi, where the film is based, are unable to see it because there are no open theaters in town. The Mississippi Delta town launched a petition in hopes of hosting a screening. capitalbnews.org/clarksdale-r...

a formerly enslaved Black anarchist woman led the first American May Day parade in Chicago in 1886 and don’t you forget it!!

Before Executing a Muslim Man, Alabama Denied Many of His Final Religious Requests Keith Gavin made a number of requests about his final moments, all stemming from his Islamic faith. But the prison largely ignored them, as it has with Muslim prisoners in the past.

In his final hours, Keith Gavin’s request for a halal final meal was denied by Alabama officials. "I’m a Muslim, I’m supposed to be eating halal food,” he told Bolts shortly before his execution this summer. “There’s nothing else to eat but junk food.” boltsmag.org/alabama...

'We're citizens!': Oklahoma City family traumatized after ICE raids home, but they weren't suspects A woman says her family’s fresh start in Oklahoma turned into a nightmare after federal immigration agents raided their home, taking their phones, laptops, and life savings – even though they were …

Please highlight this story.

ICE stormed into the wrong house, trashed the place, and made women/girls stand outside in the rain in their underwear. ICE also stole phones, laptops, and cash savings from the family, who moved to OKC two weeks ago.

kfor.com/news/local/w...

Let’s normalize putting the name of the corporation that owns the private prison in the headline whenever something like this happens

Another one for @senschumer and his fellow brave letter writers

Cop City is officially "opening" today. The movement against it carries so many lessons for people everywhere, because the issues are everywhere today: the un-democratic militarization and expansion of policing and state violence, backed by dark money private funding.

Donald Trump stripped funding for legal assistance for storm victims. @ryangrim.bsky.social on his latest Drop Site scoop with independent journalist Sarah Hay:

(The link to the story is provided below)

Terminally Ill People Languish in North Carolina Prisons, Even After Reforms State lawmakers expanded the law for people seeking medical release from prison, but eligibility remains limited.

James Davis wasn't sentenced to die in prison. He has a release date. But with stage-four cancer, he will die behind bars as North Carolina deems him ineligible for medical release.
boltsmag.org/north-c...

Large health insurers made $371 billion of profit since the ACA, 7 insurance CEOs were paid $335 million in one year - all while premiums & denial rates have skyrocketed.

And yet now the WaPo is responding to people's health care anger by insisting corporations are victims.

Kennedy’s Lawyer Has Asked the F.D.A. to Revoke Approval of the Polio Vaccine Aaron Siri, who specializes in vaccine lawsuits, has been at Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s side reviewing candidates for top jobs at the Department of Health and Human Services.

i am convinced that these people are death worshippers who want to spread as much disease and sickness as possible (i also think this is all tied up in eugenic beliefs about the “survival of the fittest” www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/h...

"What these new bureaucratized forms of capitalism are really about is making state power an intrinsic element of the extraction of profit: . You collude with Government to create a regulatory regime that will guarantee widespread debt, then you use the court system to enforce it. There’s a perfect synthesis of public and private power to guarantee a certain rate of profit to those who essentially fund the politicians." . - David Graeber

In understanding how Private Healthcare can get away with what they do - you need to look into their relationship with the state, with Government and politicians.

If history shows anything, it is that there's no better way to justify relations founded on violence, to make such relations seem moral, than by framing them in a language of debt. Above all as it makes it seem that its the victim who's doing something wrong.

When you see the pain and suffering that especially medical debt does to people in the USA, debt really needs to be seen as a form of violence.

Fragmented, but the pieces are coming together. Kind of.

A photograph of the cover of a zine named "Memories of Aaron Bushnell 1998-2024." The cover shows a black-and-white picture of Aaron wearing a long-sleeved shirt—a red shirt that his friends remember him often wearing—standing in front of a car.

A photograph of a zine open to page 7, which reads: My friend Aaron was kind, compassionate, and principled, sometimes to the point of being annoying, and he was incredibly reflective and willing to change to meet my needs in our relationship. He was one of my quickest and best friends. I loved Aaron deeply. I have few regrets from my relationship with him. I was consistently vulnerable and open, which he returned in kind. I told him all the things I felt for him and often. I spent as much time with him as I possibly could and I am very grateful that I did. What I am most afraid of in this moment is that our relationship, our friendship, the deep, deep love I had for him, all of the little intimate moments, the bits, the laughs, the facts about his takes, all of it—I am afraid to be the only person holding that knowledge. I don’t want it to disappear, I don’t want it to be held only by me and my fallible memory. I just want people to know that I loved him.

This zine presents Aaron Bushnell's politics in his own words, along with memories of Aaron from four of his close friends.

crimethinc.com/Aaronzine

Please print these out and share them.

For the longest time the right peddled a self-congratulatory narrative that had as one of its most defining moments of the Civil Rights era the supposedly decisive excommunication of the John Birch Society by National Review’s William F. Buckley.

Welp.

"..The weapons that are being manufactured at this facility are being sold to empires around the world, including Israel, for genocide & violence. Knowing that these weapons are being produced right here in our communities in the heart of empire, we have a responsibility to stand up & take action.."

Israel’s Ruthless Propaganda Campaign to Dehumanize Palestinians Since October 7, Israel has systematically flooded the public discourse on Gaza with a stream of false, unsubstantiated, and unverifiable allegations.

Grateful for principled and professional journalism now more than ever. Quality is evergreen, and there is Truth lying somewhere under the rubble, hanging on by a thread.

theintercept.com/2024/02/07/g...

With All Eyes on Palestine, Don’t Forget Rojava | Novara Media In early October, a major western ally began an air campaign against a small Middle Eastern territory unlike anything experienced in the region’s decades-long liberation struggle. This wasn't Israel...

With All Eyes on Palestine, Don’t Forget Rojava
The Kurds have ‘no friends but the mountains’.

by Dani Ellis
6 November 2023

novaramedia.com/2023/11/06/w...

This wasn’t Israel’s assault on Gaza, but that of Turkey on Rojava: the self-governing part of Syria famous for its role in the defeat of Isis and the implementation of a radically democratic, pluralistic society predicated on the liberation of women.

On 5 October 2023, a major western ally began a ferocious air campaign against a small Middle Eastern territory, destroying vital infrastructure and sparking a humanitarian crisis unlike anything experienced in the region’s decades-long liberation struggle.

rhetoric alone isn't fascism -- fascism is a particular social movement organized around political violence from the right-wing whose goal is to transform politics along "masculine," violent, authoritarian lines

🤔

Wait. You’re telling me an antidemocratic, extreme Right Wing movement funded by a group of billionaires who have tirelessly undermined experts and public education are actively attacking professors and institutions?

The hell you say. I wonder if that’s ever happened before.

Occasional reminder that while elites obsess about whether Claudine Gay should still be president of Harvard, Gordon Gee is destroying public higher education in West Virginia yet remains president of WVU. Where is the investigation into Gordon Gee and the boards of trustees that keep hiring him?

Nation's paper of record wonders aloud whether it should be illegal to attempt a violent overthrow of the government.