Author: Slingshot robot #1

By Karen Smith

‘That would be 500 yen’ uttered the 20-something surfer with a ‘naicha’ (Okinawan for mainland Japanese) accent demanding that our family pay for parasols at Nakagusuku beach on Miyakojima Island, where my family on my mother’s side come from. I will never forget that moment; the look of shock on my mother and my second-aunt’s faces. The beach that they once knew to be untouched was now rammed with tourists and litter scattered everywhere. A hipster from the mainland peddling parasols and snorkeling gear from the back of his VW Van seemed to have claimed that space as his own to commodify.

I thought going back to Miyakojima would cleanse my eyes and ears, tired and sore from the noise of fighter jets and the hideous display of US military bases on Okinawa’s main island. Instead, I saw more of the juxtaposed landscape of pristine nature and militarism present on the main island. Military trucks and bulldozers passed by, on their way to clear lands for housing complexes and stations for the Japanese Army. They were adorned with the Imperial Japanese flag, a painful reminder of Japan’s fascist past, but also a real reminder that Japan has not moved on but backwards, into the terrifying reality that many still live to remember, including my grandparents.

Formerly known to the Chinese as the ‘country of courtesy’ the Ryukyu Kingdom (now Okinawa), are a group of islands that had its own bustling economy and served as an important trade route between South-east and East Asian countries. Made up of 150 islands, 60 of which are uninhabited, have various traditions, customs and languages that are distinct from one another, but all share the Okinawan spirit omnipresent across the archipelago. Purveyors of diplomacy and peaceful inter-state trading, the Ryukyu Kingdom was an empire in its own right.

The Kingdom of the Ryukyus was subsequently annexed in 1879 during the Meiji Restoration and became Okinawa prefecture. This, however, did not mean Okinawans were now Japanese, instead mere colonial subjects of Imperial Japan. My grandmother often recalls how she had to wear a ‘Hogen Fuda’, a heavy slab of wood around her neck as a punishment for speaking in Miyako. Ryukyuans, Ainus, Africans and Taiwanese, were among the many indigenous people put on display at Imperial Japan’s ‘Human Pavillion’ (Human Zoo) held in Osaka in 1903.

Fast forward to World War 2, Okinawa was used as a buffer to fend off American forces attacking the mainland. To instil fear of the US and foster allegiance to Imperial Japan, the Japanese Army convinced up to 700 people from children to the elderly to commit mass suicide. The lives of one-third of the total population were lost to the war and rendered 90% of the population homeless. The Shuri Castle, once home to the Ryukyu Dynasty was burnt to rubble. These memories are some that haunt people like my grandmother, who understandably still cannot speak about them.

Japan ‘sacrificed’ Okinawa not once, but twice. As part of Japan’s post-war peace process, full administration of Okinawa was given to the US Being under US authority, Okinawa was excluded from Japan’s post-War constitution as well as the US obligation to guarantee human rights as it was not formally part of the US

27 years of US occupation was fraught with human rights abuses against the locals with Agent Orange even being tested out as Okinawa was used as a base for the US brutal war in Vietnam. After enduring 27 years of injustice, hoping that under Japan’s rule life would get better, Japan yet again betrayed the Okinawan people.

Currently, Okinawa holds over 70% of Japan’s US military bases but accounts for a total of just 0.6% of Japan’s total landmass. Our rainforest continues to serve as a ‘Jungle Warfare’ training centre for the US military. The gang-rape of a 12-year old schoolgirl by US servicemen in 1995 prompted a referendum a year later, on the future of US military bases in Okinawa. An overwhelming majority of 89% voted against it, but the central government were not legally obligated to respect the result. Ignoring the referendums are a regular occurrence. In February 2019 another referendum against another military base was ignored. The most devastating part of this is the fact that the new base is being built on Henoko Bay, home to two coral reefs, 300 endangered species and to the near-extinct Dugong, which will all be destroyed in the name of ‘security’.

In June 2020, the Japanese Prime Minister and openly fascist Shinzo Abe stepped down from his role citing health concerns. Abe, the longest-serving leader in Japan’s history, had no shame in openly discussing his ambitions to revert Japan to its Imperial Wartime state. He was dedicated to denying important facts in Japan’s political history, such as Japan’s use of sex slaves and the forced mass suicides of Okinawan people during WW2.

Abe’s successor, Yoshihide Suga, has vowed to continue Abe’s policies into the future, meaning very little change on issues such as US militarism and cultural & ecological preservation in Okinawa.

But regardless of politics, one thing that has remained constant is the Okinawan will and drive to ensure that their culture and their right to self-determination is never forgotten.

Unlike in the mainland, Okinawans refuse to sing the Imperial Japan Anthem, and the cultural dance ‘Eisa’ remains a mainstay of the high school experience for Okinawan youth.

Protests outside US military bases are common in Okinawa. The majority of demonstrators are elderly Okinawans who remember the sordid, painful history of US militarism in their land.

Expressing too much dissent in Japan can have harsh consequences and is heavily frowned uponw, but campaign groups such as No Base Henoko as well as the vibrant, active Okinawan community in Hawai’i are dedicated to shedding light on an issue that is seldom put on the international agenda.

In the words of Franz Fanon, the immobility of the native is condemned, unless they put an end to their colonization. Perhaps that is why Japan does everything possible to veto any efforts made by Okinawans and refuses to recognize us as indigenous, as that would automatically give us the legal right to claim back the lands that were forcibly taken from us.

Whilst the free movement of people remains a heavily scrutinized and over-reported topic, the free movement of nuclear weapons, military bases and overworked foreign workers across islands in the Asia-Pacific such as Okinawa goes widely underreported. Absence of the voices of Okinawans as well as Chamorros, Nauruans and Hawaiians are the reason why indigenous futures remain uncertain and are close to being pushed over the precipice of fascism and climate devastation.

By Teresa Smith

In September, entire towns in Western Oregon and Washington burned to the ground in hours, while giant fires swallowed vast swaths of land.

As I write this, forests that I used to walk through as a child are still burning — forests of ferns and mossy evergreens that used to sparkle with dew, forests that are now completely dried out.

Thanks to climate change, the climate of the West Coast no longer matches the ecology. We don’t get enough rain in Oregon and Washington to support rainforests anymore, so now they are leaving via fire. Many parts of California are likewise now too hot and arid for their pre-climate-change ecologies, and each year the fires in Cali get bigger and more intense.

These massive fires are going to continue, likely for the next decade or two, until the relics of the old ecosystems completely burn off. This is what climate change looks like. We don’t get to go back to the way things were.

*

Last summer, I had a chance to meet with a few climate scientists and look at climate data and climate models with them.

The thing about this experience that shocked me the most is that I learned that many climate scientists have not been entirely forthright about the data: they have been showing us models that make things look better than they actually are. These climate sciences have been caving in to the pressures of toxic positivity, and so some of them are pretending the crisis isn’t as bad as it is. As one scientist I spoke to explained, “We don’t want to scare or depress people, so we just show them the less intense models.” But the less intense models don’t factor in the acceleration of burning carbon that is actually happening, so they have lured us into a false sense of security, of thinking we have more time than we do. But if you look at the models that match the acceleration of carbon emissions that is actually occurring (for example, the CanESM5 model under SSP585), you see exactly why we have massive fires spanning from the lip of the Pacific to the Rockies right now. Carbon emissions are accelerating rather than going down. Things are worse sooner than most of the projections they were showing us.

It may be too late for the West Coast’s ecology, but we need to fight like hell if we’re going to save other parts of the ecosphere. Otherwise, our entire planet is going to end up a lifeless husk.

*

A number of my friends in carbon-free off-the-grid communities in rural Oregon have been displaced from their homes due to the fires, and the entire West Coast has been choking for weeks under the thick smoke — smoke that is filled with deadly PM2.5 particles.

Perhaps the biggest take-way from all of this is that we can’t simply “drop out” and go create carbon-free communes in the woods. No matter how “carbon-free” our individual lifestyles or communities become, climate change will follow us, wherever we go.

We are having to wake up to the reality of just how interconnected we all are. Many humans are on course to burn down the planet. There is nowhere to hide from their behaviors. If we are going to end climate change, it will have to be a collective process.

*

It is easy to blame consumers, but the reality is: it is the carbon dealers who need to be shut down — through divestment, public policy, and diversity of tactics.

The carbon dealers have been tricking us into blaming other consumers for climate change for decades. In the late 1990s, BP Oil created the “carbon footprint” campaign as a way to direct attention towards consumers and away from the oil companies. Meanwhile, oil companies and private utilities have been actively working to kill carbon-free and lower-carbon alternatives. Those corporations have been fighting to force an economy upon us in which carbon is increasingly put into the air.

Why are the corporations doing this? Because they are legally beholden to their investors to create more money next quarter than this quarter.

The legal impetus for growth is perhaps the most fucked up thing about any corporation: investors can sue CEOs who fail to turn a profit — meaning in the case of oil companies, our whole legal system is compelling them to put more carbon in the air next year than this year. The same goes for private utilities.

If there is one thing that has become increasingly clear: When the energy sector is governed via capitalism, we are committing collective suicide.

Why aren’t there solar panels on every roof? Why haven’t electric cars replaced gas-powered ones? Why isn’t there a light rail system in Los Angeles and in many other key cities?

• Because private utilities have spent the last 40 years dismantling pro-solar policy.
• Because big oil companies fought to sequester patents and crush all lower-carbon alternatives.
• Because automotive companies literally pulled up the light rail tracks in LA and other places because they wanted to enforce dependence upon cars.

It is time to face the fire. The transition to a carbon-free society can’t happen while the logic of capital controls the energy sector. And the transportation sector probably needs to be de-capitalized as well.

Now more than ever, we should be putting every ounce of strength we have into completely ending practices that put carbon into the air.

It is time to endthe production of cars with combustion engines.

We need to de-carbonize the system of transporting things, or better yet: switch to hyper-local production of food and goods.

It is time to de-carbonize the electric grid.

The practice of burning coal for power must go.

We need to remove the logic of capital from oil, from the electric grid, from the entire energy sector, and from most forms of transportation as well.Time is up.

*

If humans survive these times, we’ll probably spend the next few millennia writing tragic poems about how we gave our power over to these deranged institutions called “corporations” that ran rampant and destroyed our air, water, and ecology and caused untold levels of harm for nothing. Nothing the capitalists promise each other will be worth anything on a dead planet, and if capitalists continue controlling the energy sector, that is the only possible outcome.

As we grieve the ecosystems that are now leaving us, we must awaken to the fast work that needs to be done if we such to keep our planet habitable.

How much carbon is going into the air?

• The typical passenger vehicle emits 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide in a year.
• Around 17% of CO2 emissions come from transporting goods.
• At least 1,763 million metric tons of carbon were emitted in 2018 by the U.S. electric grid (that accounts for around 30% of the total 5,268 million metric tons of carbon emitted by people of the United States that year) (source: EIA data).
• 17% of the U.S. power grid is still powered by coal

By Young Carhartt

Sugar Beet Harvesters Everywhere. The Time Has Come. Lock Out, Tag Out, Throw Away The Key. Burn Down The Factory. SOS. Call For Bodies. This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Two Of Us. Fuck The Borders From Wyoming To Minnesota. Against Refined Sugar And Its World.

These are the words that came to mind, just for a moment, when it felt like there was nothing left to lose during the October 2019 sugar beet harvest. During our negotiation with the bosses for more money, safer work conditions and better housing, a Northern Plains autonomous zone flashed through my mind. Trash barricades and tire fires across the sugar beets piling yard, a message to the industrial barons and landlords that their time was up.

But that choice came down between making a statement or making a few thousand dollars. And I was broke. The sugar industrialists knew they could go broke too. Confused by the anger and demands of our large crowd of dirty 20-somethings living out of cars, the Express Employment representative simply said “I mean, you guys chose this lifestyle.”

Take off your mask, pretend to take some deep gulps of the fresh prairie’s air and join me for a moment by the fair confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers. This is not a call to action, just a chance to stretch sore limbs and reflect. On the very stretch of river where Sitting Bull was forced to hand over his Winchester rifle to the US military, you will find the sugar factory and this lifestyle.

The atmosphere of the beet harvest could be gauged somewhere between an Earth First! rendezvous and Juggalo gathering. But instead of sabotaging industrial machinery or getting fucked up, you get paid to operate industrial machinery and get fucked up. For a month of work, you can drive away with an average of $4,000. That’s a huge check if the only other job you can get is as an underwater ceramic technician (dishwasher).

My first season in 2018 was a good gamble. Some more notable memories include punks mobbing the only hotel hot tub in town with bottles of champagne, forming a choreographed dance crew on the clock rather than work, and a lot of downtime in the break room for absurd conversations fueled by burnt coffee and kratom. October 2019 was a different hand of cards; overtime hours were cut, beet pilers were broken and stuck in mud every night and a record number of beets went rotting in the fields. From the farmers who had to pay over $300 an acre for their rotten beets to the workers shoveling a biblical amount of mud out of the pilers, it was a miserable experience.

The large expanse of prairie between the Mississippi River and Rocky Mountains happens to be a great place to raise sugar beets, as some white settlers came to find out. The sugar factory, beets fields and piling yard are located in a place commonly called “the middle of nowhere” but is actually the homeland of the Assiniboine people. It’s much closer to the 49^th Parallel than the closest big cities of Denver and Minneapolis, which are both a 10 hour drive away. It’s a place where you can see the pulsing colors of Northern Lights, if the open flames of oil wells don’t block it out. On a quiet night camping next to the river, you are just as likely to hear coyotes as you are drunken semiautomatic gunfire.

Out on the dirt roads, the only visible connections you can trace back to the U.S. are the oil pipelines. They cut through this part of the planet like a rich kid’s really expensive and really hazardous tinker toy. It is safe to assume that some men very far away from here are making more money than you or I will ever have in our lives, while the water and the communities of people who use it are left with the side effects. The drilling, movement and consumption of oil is of the highest priority. Everything and everyone else is in the way. Water is not sacred, it’s an afterthought. It is slimy on your hands as it comes out the faucet, and it is an unspoken rule to never drink it. It’s like falling into a Beehive Design Collective poster at your infoshop or drug dealer’s wall.

Amidst a mural of factories, railroads, monocropping, gas stations, Trump flags, empty boomtowns, neon casinos, fast food, McMansions and trailer park man camps, there’s a natural world holding it all. You fall through the river valleys where herds of bison, sagebrush, wild horses, prairie dogs, wildflowers, dinosaur bones, tallgrass, prickly pear cacti, cottonwoods, deer and antelope play. It is outstandingly beautiful in a region that is an outpost of American colonialism, and its only role to the rest of the country is based on the extraction of resources. But you land into this mural on a curious detail. It’s an abandoned train bridge and tunnel covered in graffiti. It’s crawling with the laziest, brilliantly creative and soon to be drunk people in the US workforce for the month of October. They’re burning pallets, playing instruments and eating birthday cake: punks.

Coming to the Northern Plains from all directions is this ragtag night crew. Down the highways in busted vehicles with dashboards full of animal bones, dead flowers, faded cassette tapes and parking tickets. Like pages ripped from Steinbeck and thrown into the winds of I-94. It’s a rugged individualism balanced with a queer collectivism. Underneath everyone’s attitudes, dirt & glitter is a mutual understanding that for the length of the harvest, everything, good or bad, would be shared.

American agriculture heavily relies on a large transient workforce of migrants to harvest its food, and this includes the more classical hobo. While over 80 percent of US farmworkers are Latinx, why does the sugar beet harvest specifically attract crowds of punks? If you believe the oral history of 1^st generation punk train hoppers, it began in the mid-90s when East Coast blueberry harvest gutterpunks heard from ski bums that the beet harvest in Renville, MN was easy money. 25 years later you will be run out of Renville by the sheriff if you have so much as a rattail. Not only because the town was host to more than 25 years of punks being out of the gutter and into the operator’s booth, but because somewhere along the line “Burn Down the Factory” stopped being an empty threat. It is worth noting here that one source of the word “punk” is of Native American origin. It’s the Leni Lenape Nation’s word for the wooden dust, ashes and embers useful for starting fires.

The author William Least Heat-Moon defines the Western myth cycle shortly; “A stranger enters town. A stranger leaves town.” Walking down main street I could tell from people’s expressions. I was the stranger. While standing by the cannons of the abandoned military outpost Ft. Buford, it felt obvious that there was a connection between Sitting Bull’s surrender and me getting paid. And one between the buffalo’s extermination and fields of genetically modified sugar beets.

If I tell someone that I spent October at the sugar beet harvest, a certain coziness glazes their face. They think of lush farm fields, smiling faces and sunshine. It looks more like any dystopic-apocalyptic sci-fi film. Darkness and clouds of dust surround heavy machinery on a moonscape of Monsanto dirt, pumping living things into piles. Open flames shooting out of oil wells compete with the floodlights to cast surveilling light on every movement, from coworkers sneaking sips from a Real Tree flask, down to the fox crossing the piling yard in a panic. The constant grinding gears weighed against the constant silence coming in through the night and across the empty fields. The eco-feminist and nihilist voices in my head stage their debates from 6PM to 6AM. 12 hour shifts are a long time to shiver and stare off into truckloads of beets shooting across conveyor belts. Most of my thoughts revolve around how I’ll spend my wintertime and paycheck.

~~Spirits are low for the night shift. We’re a skeleton crew and it’s all hands on deck as the sun begins to set. The line of beet trucks stretches all the way to the horizon. The dayshift is glad to get back to their RV park. It will take hours before any of us hears the cracking open of a PBR can or feels the warmth of Top Ramen. Within 10 minutes the piler I’m working becomes clogged with heavy mud, caking every moving part of the machine. The punk foremen (& in the nightshift’s case the label foremen is gender-neutral) pull up in a beat-up truck to try and help followed by their boss in a much newer truck. The foremen’s boss is known as The Agriculturist, the ultimate decision maker and liaison between the factory and piling yard. She is unimpressed by the night crew’s audacity to ask for more money and has in the past cut our overtime hours as punishment. She throws a shovel in my direction.

I begin digging mud out when there’s a disturbance from the other end of the piling yard. An RV tears across the dirt weaving through empiric lines of beet trucks and kicks up clouds of dust blowing in my direction. The RV screeches to a stop and the passenger door bursts open spilling empty Bud Lite Lime cans across the ground. A scrawny figure in a bright orange safety vest & black ski mask bursts from the RV and sprints towards me and The Agriculturist. He screams like a bat out of hell, “BURN DOWN THE FACTORY!! FUCK YOU!!” hands me a fresh box of Domino’s Pizza and gives the boss middle fingers. The RV’s pilot and comrade in a ski-mask peel away to deliver scammed pizzas to the rest of the night crew, understaffed & hungry on the pilers. I take a slice and pass the rest off to the foremen, all of us covered in mud but laughing for the first time in what seems like ages. ~~

Although the settlers in this part of the US would welcome Trump graciously, it’s hard to imagine that the president, or anyone else wearing a suit for that matter, could ever be bothered to pay a visit. You’d have to see a burning factory and the suspension of law and order first. Since the arrival of Lewis and Clark in 1805, the west has been militarized, bought and sold all to the benefit of rich white men.

In 2020 AD, when every day seems worse than the last, and the only news is bad news, it becomes crippling to feel that there could be something worse than “No Future”. I try to imagine a future that isn’t techno-fascist environmental catastrophe with cops to enforce any inequality. I look for lessons from Sitting Bull, his knowledge that a different world is always possible and is physically right under our feet. I try to imagine a belonging that doesn’t require Usernames or Passwords, a belonging without Terms or Conditions. A belonging that aims for living with the seasons instead of against them. I think of pallet fires in train tunnels and its spontaneous choir of singing voices that can create a night’s shelter. Sharing birthday cake in the darkness and making wishes before the fire goes out.

By R.B.

I open Facebook to a new post from my grandmother – it is an article with a link to a website that reeks of spyware, stating that Nancy Pelosi is diverting funds from Social Security to fund the impeachment trials. My grandmother lives in the rural stretches of the Philippines and I wonder to myself, who the fuck managed to send the message. My family in the Philippines by and large posts this type of fodder, and I subjugate myself to awkward, half English, half Tagalog spats about what I understand to be nationalism and lies, and they understand to be loyalty. Mahal. The posts range from Donald Trump putting “China in its place”, to our beloved Pilipino president -Duterte “cleaning up the Philippines”. sometimes it’s more QAnon flavored content about Trump and Duterte fighting a war against international warlords who are invested in maintaining a lizard run, sex trafficking ring. Regardless, they are always bullshit, usually linking to sites with popup ads for CGI pornography or black market vape pods, with articles reading no longer than 300 words categorized in a word space that exist so far beyond lies it feels more accurate to call them anti-truths. It isn’t too hard to imagine that the Four Chan incels also highly favor Duterte who is infamous for bragging about raping women during his presidential campaign and calling for impunity for those who commit extrajudicial killings in his name, bearing striking similarity to his U.S companion.

Sadly, this is the reality of the working poor of the Philippines – being fed right-wing conspiracies for breakfast and patriotic subservience for lunch, all to remind our people s that we never stopped being a colony of the American empire, and to keep us coddled in the comfort of having American fascists choose our President. Some people would say it is random and bizarre how American political disinformation hits the Philippines sometimes harder and earlier than it even reaches the mainland, but when you think of how the American military tests teargas and rubber bullets on Palestinians prior to employing them on Black Lives Matter protests, it is understandable that they do the same to Pilipinos with misinformation dissemination and surveillance technology.

In the Documentary “A Thousand Cuts” Maria Ressa the Editor in Chief of Rappler, the foremost publication invested in combating right wing media brainwashing in the Philippines, explains why the Philippines was chosen as the premier testing ground for media disinformation and surveillance. She explains that the only population that spends more time on cellular devices and social media than Americans is Pilipinos — probably due to the nature of our diaspora, fueled by the trans-continental need for service labor, of which the Philippines is a top purveyor, and thus to remain connected to loved ones we are always plugged in. Ressa notes that both Trump and Dueterte’s campaigns collaborated with entities such as Cambridge Analytica to run targeted campaign ads, and “independent” media personalities who effectively campaigned to misinformed, rural, and poor populations. They invested in spreading propaganda and dissuading people from believing the word of media outlets who discredited their campaigns and ran stories highlighting their hate and violence inciting message The usage of media misinformation and targeted surveillance technologies that utilize personal data to create algorithms that spread this misinformation more effectively was a linchpin of the successful elections of both Duterte and Donald Trump. With re-elections brewing and the spread of global fascism accelerating alognside the rise of wanna be politicians shaped in the image of these fear mongering models, we must dig deep to understand how these tools are being used to shape a political ethos that stretches far beyond single figureheads.

While the dissemination of right-wing propaganda is an injusticeunto itself, there is another layer of imperial fascism that underlies the intention of its dissemination. Due to poverty and lack of access to information or technology, political lies have the power to spread like wildfire and keep entire generations of the Pilipinos, who had no access to their decolonial history, brainwashed. This is a powerful tool of mobilization that the right employs internationally, and the Philippines is no exception, The fascists governments from Ferdinand Marcus and Duterte monetarily and politically gained through the imperial exploitation of Pilipino labor and natural resources. They, the rich, the political figureheads, have everything to lose if the working classrises against the socioeconomic inequality, the environmental degradation, and the militaristic occupation that is entrenched in fascist, U.S backed regimes.

Yet, there is a class of people that fight against this misinformation, fascism, and continuance of imperial regimes in the Philippines — these people span from indigenous community members unveiling the genocidal attacks and brutal murders of tribal leaders, journalists who cover the contradictory claims of Duterte such as the regime’s corroboration with American government, military, and corporations, and working class Pilipinos who are being murdered in the thousands in the name of the Duterte’s “War on Drugs” that should be more aptly titled, the “War on the Poor”. These whistleblowers have forged a powerful movement against the fascist regime, many of whom have garnered international attention from NGOS to international anti-imperialist, pro-Communist organizers, especially those invested in the liberation of indigenous, working class peoples of the world. And all this attention has been harnessed into international pressure on Duterte.

This pressure has led the regime to violently retaliate against liberation protesters, journalist, and activists in the form of the unholy “Anti-Terror Bill” – a piece of legislation that labels activists who organize against the regime , and journalists who publish writing that could be considered slanderous or “inciting”, as criminals who can be imprisoned or killed with impunity. Language of the bill criminalizes “seriously destabilize(ing) or destroy(ing) the fundamental social, economic or political structures of the country” which is especially dangerous to those who are organizing for a Communist insurgency to take place in the Philippines and for indigenous, farmers, and working class Pilipinos to take arms against the current political system and reimagine a nation built on indigenous sovereignty and collective ownership of the land.One that refutes American and other Western nations’ exploitation of the natural resources and land that the Philippines sits upon. At this time, the Anti-Terror Bill has stated that pro-indigenous, Black Lives Matter, and anti-imperialist sentiments all fall under “violence inciting” language, and are punishable by means of imprisonment and death.–

Liberty and freedom of speech are waning in the islands, and fear is sinking deeper into the psyches of liberation activists, as what started as friend requests from junk accounts laden with their personal information and creepy hits on the internet from anonymous hackers, became bodies on their front door steps, and violent lynchings in village centers, reminding one that maybe we are better off misinformed than dead and dismembered.

It is frightening to think that if the American government uses the information dissemination and tracking systems that the Philippines uses — we too must be cognizant of the potential insurgence of an American “Anti-Terror Bill”. In a similar fashion to the killings of indigenous leaders in the Philippines, we have Black Lives Matter protesters being pushed into unmarked vans, and being held hostage by the Department of Homeland Security in cities across the country, from Portland to Brooklyn, New York. While America too has a rich history of imprisoning and executing insurgents, from Fred Hampton’s CIA backed assassination and Assata Shakur’s detainment, to the disappearance and arrests of the Indigenous leaders of the No Dakota Access Pipeline (No DAPL) protests. We can only imagine that this type of hunting of activists to uptick with the growth of private companies such as Facebook stating that they will sell our information to the highest bidder, all while proving their willinness to hand over our identifying information for political power grabs of fascists. Our information lives on Facebook, White Pages, and the depths of the dark web – we are identifiable, discoverable, and plugged in with our locations and appearances being updated in databases every time we let Yelp use our location or we update a selfie onto Instagram.

While this is terrifying, the answer to how we escape this technological circle jerk of surveillance, misinformation, and fascism doesn’t lie in burning your phone and deleting your social media. It lies in organizing smarter: using Signal, not taking photos at protests, leaving your phone at home when you organize, and not being a fucking snitch. It lies in fighting disinformation with the spread of powerful, liberating information – writing to your friends and family that are posting political lies, and falling into the depths of the hate mongering crevices of the internet. It is reminding those that we live in community with, by place, identity, or any sense that could create belonging with you and another, that the lies on the internet are just that, and what supersedes the faux “community” of the online underworld, is a tangible collection of people that stand together and united against the evils that keep us mutually subjugated . So often we falsely mark the people who fall under the influence of disinformation, such as followers of QAnon or other false prophets, as simply, idiots – that we could never be them or be in community with them. And while this terror of misinformation has taken hold, we must look to the powerful tools of humanization and education so we can ultimately find our mutual liberation to fight against private ownership of information, against the surveillance state, against the misuse of media, and ultimately against the fascist propaganda machine.

By Jesse D. Palmer

I woke up late because it was still dark long after the sun should have come up. When I looked outside, the sky was a dark orange and streetlights were on like at twilight, even though it was the middle of the day — sort of beautiful and like a movie. I had no idea the sky could look like that. I knew it was wildfire smoke, but on a pre-conscious level I just felt fear and dread and doom. Anyone who saw it felt humbled and changed.

Mega-fires and hurricanes. 120 degree heat waves and power cuts. Flooding and drought. People ask, “Is this the new normal?” The scary answer is probably not — we would be lucky if this is as bad as it gets. Climate chaos is likely to get much worse soon if we don’t immediately stop burning all fossil fuels and cut other greenhouse gas emissions like methane. If we continue our present ways for even a few more years, just breathing air, eating food or seeing blue sky will be a luxury or impossible. Rather than 2020 being the hottest year in the last 100 years, we need to start thinking about it as the coolest year in the next 100 years.

Our species doesn’t have to end up this way — destroying itself and taking most other complex life systems with it. None of what we’re currently experiencing is a surprise — it is exactly what scientists have been warning would happen for 30 years. We have alternatives available, but taking them will require massive political and cultural will, right away.

It is an odd twist of timing that the pandemic offers so many lessons relevant to addressing climate change — if we understand and learn from them.

Immediate action or suicidally timid gradualism?

The speed and breadth of the initial global pandemic lockdown in March proved that rapid, dramatic, global change is possible. At least for a short period, planes stopped flying, roads emptied of traffic, and the supposedly unstoppable industrial machines paused. We saw before our eyes that we’ve been told lies about climate our whole lives — the lie that only very gradual change is possible.

The powers-that-be have been setting absurdly mediocre goals — small reductions in fossil fuel dependence by 2050. They are protecting the oil industry, not our lives. Rapid, global, widespread change is possible and can happen if those in power and everyone else wants it to and does something. We can address climate now by abruptly ending combustion of fossil fuels — we don’t have to wait. Just like every sector of society rapidly came up with creative and previously unconsidered alternatives in response to the pandemic, if we wanted to stop emissions we could find a way. There would be a period of disruption and adjustment as we’ve seen with the pandemic. The best historical example of such a rapid change is when most of the world mobilized for world war II — auto factories converted production to tanks and everyone’s lives changed direction in a matter of months.

Systemic change vs. personal change is a false debate

A lot of discussion about climate change is finger-pointing between the need for personal action vs. corporate and government action. As the pandemic has shown, it is a false debate — both are essential simultaneously for a rapid, dramatic, widespread shift. A lot of action to stop the virus, such as mask wearing, has to happen on an individual personal level. And yet social structures are also crucial — individuals cannot invent or deploy tests and vaccines.

A single individual wearing a mask obviously isn’t enough, but if most people do it, then it can make a difference. When wearing a mask, no one will be perfect and wear it all the time, but the more you try, the better. For climate change, just because your personal emissions reductions cannot alone solve the problem, and just because you may not be able to reduce all your emissions all the time right now, it still makes a difference to do your best all the time right now, rather than waiting for others or social structures to change first.

Just like it is more important to wear a mask in a high risk environment like a store or a crowded subway car, individual climate adjustments should be targeted towards the biggest emissions reductions. Knowing and using data is crucial in making everyday decisions. In the US, transportation accounts for 28% of emissions — about 60% of that is private cars. That means the greatest emissions-reduction choice individuals have control over is driving less. You don’t have to be perfect to make a difference — driving a smaller car, driving less miles, driving less often, not idling the engine while you’re looking at your phone — all helps.

Electricity emits 27% — and that is both personal and social, since the decision to burn gas to make electricity vs. use a windmill is beyond individual control, but the decision to leave lights on, run a clothes drier vs. use a clothes line, and waste power is individual. Pressuring the 100 highest emitting companies to switch to zero emissions technology is necessary, but those companies are often filling consumer demands for emissions dependent stuff, so we have to change our behavior, too.

Reducing emissions is like wearing a mask — you do it for other people, not just yourself. Maybe even mostly for others. It doesn’t work unless everyone does it, but it cannot work unless you do it.

The buck-shifting debate between personal behavior and corporate / political action is just an excuse to avoid any change at all. Individuals don’t like change because it is uncomfortable, and systems don’t like change because it’s expensive and more complex than continuing what has worked. But with the climate, burning fossil fuels is suicide. Change is inevitable one way or another. We can make change now, or nature will make the changes for us by wiping us out.

Ignoring science won’t work

Pretending a natural / physical / chemical / biological crisis isn’t real won’t make it go away — and will almost certainly make it worse. The US’s magical thinking about the pandemic has cost hundreds of thousands of lives, whereas other countries that paid attention to science have had much lower death rates. If the US had treated Covid-19 seriously in March, we wouldn’t still all be on lockdown. We could be like the rest of the world — our kids in school, living with some safety measures, and able to be with others in public.

Even from a mainstream, money-focused perspective, the economic cost of ignoring science is higher — for both pandemics and climate change. Idiots argued it was more profitable to open businesses back up quickly, but it is now obvious that the longer-term costs have been far worse.

With climate change, those who want to pretend it isn’t real or is “too expensive” to address now are making the same mistake, except with much higher stakes and more tragic consequences. Human-caused climate change is real and every day we wait to address it now will cost lives later.

So what now?

We must not let the dramatic disruptions of the pandemic go to waste. The pandemic has been stressful because all our routines are disrupted, we’re facing danger, and none of us know what will happen next. But with the pandemic, it will eventually subside. With climate change, once the climate is too broken to grow enough food, there will be no light at the end of the tunnel and no going back to normal. So the pandemic is an emotional and social preview of what life looks like when everything goes to pieces. It’s a red alert warning that there’s not much more time before it is too late. 

Immediately stopping emissions now gives us a tiny change of averting greater chaos and destruction, but the window may have already closed, and if not, it is rapidly closing.

A fundamental problem is psychology. Climate change is much less immediate and in your face than the pandemic. Regarding the US’s failure to handle the pandemic compared to other countries, it has been scary how many people take pride in not wearing masks and how many subscribe to conspiracy theories or baseless miracle cures. This will all be a factor addressing climate — there will be plenty of people clinging to gas guzzlers and claiming windmills cause cancer — but we need to try anyway.

The pandemic started as a health crisis, but triggered an economic depression that is on the verge of unleashing mass evictions. Given all the disruption, there is a desperate need for progressive collective action with a positive, hopeful, inclusive and compassionate vision to heal not only bodies, but the economic and social landscape. Rather than bailing out polluting greedy businesses, now is the time to shut them down, retrain their workers and re-purpose their machines and buildings towards supplying the things people need without burning fossil fuels.

The idea of a Green New Deal is not just building windmills, solar panels, and new green infrastructure — its about employing people who have lost their jobs and re-directing work away from unjust, unsustainable industry and towards a future worth living in.

We don’t want to get back to normal.

The GDP has fallen dramatically during the pandemic and we don’t want it back. Rather, let’s all have more leisure time and redistribute the work that has to get done. We could all be working 20 hours a week if we got rid of bullshit jobs and stopped consuming stuff we don’t need. The 40 hour week was won during the Great Depression 90 years ago — its been obsolete for years. At least during the initial phase of lockdown, you could hear the birds and take a moment to reflect. That seems like a vague memory now, but it’s worth remembering that life doesn’t have to be this hectic all the time.

I don’t know how it is all going to work, and maybe it won’t. But even if we are not successful, fighting for a world worth living in feels like the best way I can think to spend the time we may have left. Now is the time to do something, or better yet, stop doing something that is emitting CO2. We cannot keep living the way we are living.

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Sidebar on cutting emissions

Everyone can take an inventory of emissions — personal and social — and figure out what to reduce first.

The EPA’s Annual Inventory of US Greenhouse Gas Emissions breaks sources down like this:

Transport 28%

Electricity 27 %

Industry 22%

Commercial and residential 12%

Agricultural 10%

So the highest priorities are transport (60% are private cars) and electricity. Electricity generation is beyond individual control, but economically and technologically it is already possible to cut emissions to zero by generating power with wind, solar, geothermal, tidal and wave energy, and existing carbon free sources like hydro-power and nuclear. All these sources have environmental problems on their own — there’s no free lunch. But many are less harmful or easier to manage than emitting CO2. For instance wind power kills some birds, but engineers were just able to reduce bird deaths by 70% by painting one of the blades black. Many more innovations like this are possible. With fossil fuels, their harms feel invisible because they are familiar, but the harms are always higher than alternatives.

The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) found that households accounted for 21.8% of total energy consumption in the US in 2014. In 2019 electricity accounted for 41% of household end-use energy consumption while natural gas accounted for 44%. While electricity can become carbon free, natural gas combustion will always emit CO2 as well as a lot of methane when it is fracked, drilled and transported. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.

So on an individual level, a high priority project is to get rid of all household appliances that burn gas, and replace them with electric. Electricity is already getting less carbon intensive every year almost everywhere as wind and solar comes on line. In the San Francisco Bay Area, 86% of electricity is already generated from carbon free sources.

The EIA breaks down US energy use like this:

43% heating

19% water heating

8% air conditioning

5% lighting

3% all other

For many houses, the two biggest uses are fueled by gas and can be converted to electricity very easily right now. In the case of water heating, its relatively cheap and easy to switch to solar. I installed solar water heating over 10 years ago and the system has already paid for itself with energy savings.

Beyond the Superhero: The Rise of the Superweaver

By The Indigenous Futures Collective

The year is 2020.

For nearly a century, superheroes have been policing the planet. In their incessant hunt for villains, the heroes have destroyed ecosystems, decimated communities, left countless dead and millions imprisoned.

As public attention and investor funds keep flowing towards the superheroes, escalating cycles of violence continue…

But from the shadows, a different lifeway is beginning to emerge, a different way of knowing…

Enter the superweaver.

Where community is thriving—

Where bellies are full and the old teachings are revitalized—

Where lush biodiversity is blooming—

You’ll often find a superweaver there.

She is sometimes hard to spot because she never works alone—she partners with communities, with nature, with seen and unseen parts of the weave. She sets about her tasks skillfully, her keen eyes focused on what she knows needs to be done, her many arms (both seen and unseen) reweaving social and ecological well-being.

Who is this unmasked woman?

Superweavers hold together the social fabric, working across communities to understand and meet their needs, building dynamic, reciprocity-based networks. 

A superweaver has no need for “good and evil.” Rather, her universe is dynamic and rich, impossible to parse into neat polarities.

She has a special talent for identifying individual and systemic needs and helps organize dynamic infrastructure to address the troubles she perceives.

Superweavers aren’t always indigenous women, but more often than not, when a superweaver is standing in front of you, it’s going to be an indigenous woman.

She flexes fluency in the latest technology, even as the ancient elders whisper forgotten languages in her dreams.

Superweavers can be found across the globe doing their dynamic restorative work.

A superweaver does not hide behind masks, uniforms, or alter egos. Rather, she is radically herself, radically situated within her own culture and environment, entangled with and bound to community. At the core of her work is the process of becoming more and more herself, a process that she knows cannot happen under self-concealment.

Superweavers do not believe in “self-sacrifice.” It is from her generosity towards herself that she builds a healthy set of expectations for others. She is quick to intervene if someone is using self-denial as an excuse to deprive others. A superweaver sees self-sacrifice as a tragedy, not an aspiration. 

She is skilled at holding space, at helping stories find a home, and helping the unheard feel listened to.

She is careful to avoid attracting attention to herself unless she needs it, but she also isn’t afraid to be seen.

A superweaver refuses to be transformed into a “savior,” and she knows that if this happens, she has failed in her work. A superweaver wants to be part of communities in which everyone is empowered to play many roles, meaning that no one person or group monopolizes the “savior” role. She understands that any time someone disproportionately presents themselves as a savior, it is because violence is holding their ability to play that role in place.

A superweaver will never tell you to be brave, but rather, let you know it’s okay to be scared.

As she works, she doesn’t just think seven generations in the future, she thinks seven millennia.

A superweaver knows that “A stitch in time saves nine”—that if we build sustainable infrastructure now, it will save us from great suffering in the future.

The superweaver teaches that there is no such thing as a zero-sum game. She knows it is a myth that “one person must suffer for another’s gain.” One person’s suffering is everyone’s suffering—it tears the weave. Life on this planet is a collective project, “We are all in this together, and when we weave our ways well, everybody wins.”

When things are seeming dull, she stirs the pot by bringing together old friends.

When someone is losing motivation, she knows just when to nudge them, to bring them a plate of food and check in on how they are doing, about the project they were trying to get off the ground. But she knows that if she lets herself get stressed and overburdened, her nudges will stop being helpful and become a form of harm. This is why taking care of herself is such a big priority. She understands the value of rest.

Rather than thinking she must rescue the world from some future calamity, the superweaver understands that the calamity has already happened in the form of genocide, ethnocide, ecocide, cultural erasure and colonization. Her work is about removing systems of blight that hold asymmetrical power-relations in place. Her work is to repair social relations so that what is left of the ecologies and cultures of the planet can recover and heal. In this way, superweaver narratives might be considered part of the “solarpunk” or “hope punk” movement.

She brings a richness to everything she touches.

She is someone who inhabits many spaces, who moves between worlds.

She acts from a place of mutual aid: “Your liberation is my liberation!” Those she works with aren’t “victims” to be rescued, but rather have their things of their own to teach and offer. She is likewise acutely aware of the way asymmetrical power relations are forced upon Black and Indigenous People of Color, and because of this, her most common accomplices are those who are not privilege-blind, but rather, understand the BIPOC from within.

She is constantly challenged by those with whom she works towards co-liberation, as she builds reciprocal relationships that constantly gain new layers of meaning. She understands that the process of decolonization is messy, but that you have to be present for the mess of it if you wish to truly repair the weave.

The notion of the superweaver pushes back against colonial binaries of hero/victim that privilege white supremacy and hetero-patriarchy. Instead, the superweaver recognizes that often the work of weaving is one that builds towards sustainability and resiliency through a generative structure, wherein those who have been harmed or “victimized” are allowed a path toward healing, as are those who have perpetuated violence towards an individual or community. Only in this way—through a restorative form of justice—can we truly reweave our relationships to each other, our communities, our ecologies, and our planet.

In places recovering from the most harm, you’ll find her there, doing the work to push back the disorder, making the world luscious again with the threads of her loom, reweaving the wealth of community.

In the shadow of the superheroes, superweavers do their work, tirelessly building relationships between their communities, environment, and traditions, reinventing the economy in their quest towards making a lush, prosperous reality in which everyone thrives for seven thousand generations to come.

Towards seeing and celebrating her.

We celebrate superweaversof the past, like Changunak Antisarlook Andrewuk, aka “Sinrock Mary, Queen of Reindeer,” (1870-1948) of the Inupiat people who defied sexist, racist colonial laws to build infrastructure to support herself and her community while preserving land and traditional ways.

We celebrate superweavers of the present, like Tehontsiiohsta, aka Meadow Cook, (b. 2004) of the Mohawk people, who has been building youth-led infrastructure to decelerate climate change while working to develop food sovereignty and bring attention to the superfund sites on Mohawk land that are poisoning her people.

We celebrate the superweavers of the future who will be forced to contend with the world we set in place for them.

Hear her call.

We call upon artists to lift up the stories of superweavers, to draw attention to the superweaver archetype, and to carry us into the new paradigms that emerge when we center her story and her way of knowing.

#SuperweaverRising

The Indigenous Futures Collective is David Michael Karabelnikoff, Laina Greene, Lee Francis IV, and Samara Hayley Steele.

What we do: We provide free subscriptions to incarcerated individuals in the US who request them. We only publish 2-3 times a year, so there will be up to a 6 month delay between when you request a subscription and when you get a paper.  We do accept submissions of art and articles from incarcerated subscribers but we only publish a very, very tiny fraction. We don’t publish poetry or fiction, and only run personal narratives or stories about your case if they are framed within radical analysis.

What we don’t do: we are unable to provide penpals, legal aid/advice, financial assistance, literature besides Slingshot, or respond to requests for other kinds of help. Usually, we can’t write you back. We cannot use JPay or other inmate email services.

Comrades on the outside: We receive 5-10 letters from incarcerated folks every day. We welcome help reading them and processing subscription requests! — Love, Slingshot

Defunding the Police- A Tool for Abolition

In the previous six months, the slogan “defund the police” has buzzed around every corner of the land. Becoming much more prevalent with the surge of BLM protests across the country, many are left with an inconsistent or jaded definition of what defunding the police means or what it hopes to do.

The general idea of defunding is to divest funds from police and reallocate them to tackle solutions for other areas of community like mental health, education, homelessness, etc. What should be clear is that police defunding at its core is a radical concept and practice that also requires tackling the unjust economic and social relations we exist in

Police and prison abolitionists are concerned with the destruction of policing and surveillance. In the US, these concepts are historically rooted in the oppression of the poor and people of color. Abolition includes the destruction of prisons, jails, the military — any and all institutions that uphold policing and surveillance on marginalized communities. Rather than seeing these punitive measures as solutions for every problem in society, abolitionists hope to build upon intra-communal resilience and regenerate systems of care for all community members.

Much of the confusion around what defunding means comes from both the right and the left. Neoliberal co-optation has twisted it to mean funding alternative various police reform methods like diversity training, body cameras, community police boards, etc. An abolitionist understands that police reform has and does not work — the police can NOT be reformed. What abolitionists hope to do with divestment is the reallocation of funds and power. Abolitionists use divestment as a tool to decrease the reach of police and the Prison-Industrial Complex (PIC). The divestment of funds goes towards the implementation of alternative methods of community care. While such is occurring, abolitionists work towards the decriminalization of areas like drug use, mental health, homelessness, and sex work. Not only to keep vulnerable communities safe, but to destroy the viewpoint that police and prison is the solution for these areas. This work continues until police and prisons no longer serve a purpose and can be superseded by the community systems.

An abolitionist framework is transformative and incredibly imaginative, as abolition itself can take many different forms. Organizations like Critical Resistance and Anti-Police Terror Project are tackling prison abolition and taking police out of Oakland schools. With the idea of care at its center, abolition truly challenges what “rehabilitation” means if it is currently occurring in jails and prisons across the nation. Divestment is only one facet in the larger network of abolition — but it is absolutely necessary.

There is no doubt that the Black Lives Matter protests over the last six months have been historic. For many folks from small towns and suburbs, this was the first social justice protest they had seen or participated in. The collective fire was lit and we saw many BIPOC (Black, indigenous and people of color) organizers and activists funnel that energy into creating grassroots organizations for racial equality where they did not exist before. All of us who work with Slingshot saw each other at the huge protests across the Bay — at times choking on gas while marveling that this was happening on such a scale, everywhere all at once.

Protesting against racist police brutality is not new. It is what animated the Black Panther Party in the 1960s. The Rodney King uprisings in 1993 were also national, huge and based on videotaped police abuse. That was almost 30 years ago and police violence still disproportionately targets BIPOC. There is such a long list of Black “say their names” — stretching back for years and years. This movement continues the fight and legacy of radical movement work led by Black people.

As the months progressed and the demonstrations have decreased, we must ask ourselves how we can stay plugged into the struggle. Especially for white folks who posted, donated, and attended protests — how does this moment transform from a secular self-gratifying time into a commitment to anti-racist work?

For many non-Black folks, the past few months have revealed their own complicity in the systems that kill Black people. Social media flooded waves of info-graphics about different facets of anti-blackness. Yet the work can’t stop there. There are only so many words that can fit on a screen and it would be idealistic to say that all of our political education could come from engagement on social media.

Race is an arbitrary social construct, but what comes out of it — racism, white supremacy, discrimination and oppression — is real and complex. Below what is visible on the surface are layers upon layers of a historical process that all find their center in anti-blackness. The murders of unarmed Black and Brown folks by police are only one culmination of this incredibly pervasive system. This system is built into every single aspect of society. If we truly want to see Black liberation we need to be plugged in for more than a few weeks.

To continue in the struggle, folks have to become comfortable with being uncomfortable. Acknowledging your position in perpetuating anti-blackness is key to understanding how to dismantle it. For white folks, this means recognizing and accepting how you fully benefit from white supremacy. For non-Black people of color, this work is similar, but not the same. You recognize the oppression under which you exist, but you also must accept that you too benefit from your proximity to whiteness. This self-analysis is also not confined to race, and must include analysis of gender, sexuality, and class to be meaningful.

The education that we take upon ourselves has to transfer over into the discussions we have with family and friends. These discussions aren’t comfortable either, but are necessary. If we as non-Black folks fail to do that labor — who are we leaving it to? It is up to all of us to step in and continue this (re)education.

With all the physical, emotional and intellectual labor that has been provided by BIPOC, we owe it to everyone to put in the work (on) ourselves.

Participation in anti-racist work is participation in transformation of the system. This takes no set path and for those of us who have not done this work before, it can be pretty daunting to try to find a practice when we have been so conditioned. Aside from individually educating yourself, there are various other ways you can join the movement. Other issues like gender equity, climate change, houselessness, immigration, and everything else ALL intersect with anti-racist work! The options of how to plug in are truly limitless!

Anti-racist work is not optional; silence is complicity with anti-blackness and white supremacy.

Slingshot is an independent radical newspaper published in Berkeley since 1988.

For people of conscience, life in the US is an ongoing nightmare. Making Slingshot is just one way to address the myriad issues. Yet the issues rarely get better and a question persists how much our efforts are changing things and if at all.

We’re not smart enough to figure everything out and we’re a tiny collective so we don’t have the resources to cover every issue that’s important to us. We have no magic solutions for all the world’s problems. No one does. During these post-reality times, it is important to say that out loud and be humble about what any individual or group of people can do. Because to pretend otherwise just makes us all feel even more paralyzed, anxious and isolated. Nevertheless, we decided to make this paper.

Publications like everything are judged by their worst qualities. Publishing half ass shit written by people who only have a partial grip on their subject is a Slingshot tradition. It is grassroots and allows unheard voices to be heard and sometimes is cute, but to some it feels tone-deaf and disconnected now given the risks and stakes we’re facing.

The anxiety and uncertainty of the pandemic, wildfire smoke and rising fascism made it hard for us to concentrate on making this issue. We’ve needed more time for self-care, which takes time away from writing and editing.

Because it has felt like everything around us is coming to a head while we were making the issue, it was hard knowing the paper would be tragically incomplete and imperfect — missing so many topics and so many voices. We’ve been gripped with doubt and we kept putting off finishing perhaps in the hope that if we waited, some of the missing pieces might magically be filled. This isn’t the last word or the full statement of what we’re thinking about. Slingshot is different from the internet — there is a months-long gap between us writing something and anyone reading it. We can’t respond to each twist and turn. We couldn’t talk about the election (or post-election fascist coup?), because by the time the paper got mailed, it would all be different.

Because of the pandemic, a lot of our normal distribution channels are not working. So if you like what you see in here, you could really help us by emailing us places we can send our paper. Also, more and more stuff is read on-line, so it would really help if you can link to articles you like in your internet world. They are all on the Slingshotcollective.org website.

Shout out to Mike Lee & Aragorn!, people we know who died since last issue.

We dropped the ball on certain key topics, namely, demonstrating how we show up for Black lives. We believe this is indicative of Slingshot priorities, or lack thereof. There is a lack of new and diverse voices in the collective. As our reality becomes more and more dire, we want and need your voice to capture the multiplicities our movements require.

With this issue done, we reprioritize the challenge of how to engage the voices that have been few and far between — namely those of people of color who spearhead paradigm shifting movements. If we are real about our dreams for revolution, it is incredibly clear that we cannot go back to normal, and thus neither can Slingshot in the way we move forward.

We’re a collective, but not all the articles reflect the opinions of all collective members. We welcome debate and constructive criticism.

Thanks to the people who made this: Alexis, Alina, Caroline, Cleo, Dov, egg, Elke, Fern, Gina, Hannah, Jesse, Joey, Juhlz, Kathryn, Rachelle and all the authors and artists!

Slingshot New Volunteer Meeting

Volunteers interested in getting involved with Slingshot can come to the new volunteer meeting on January 17, 2021 at 7 pm at the Long Haul in Berkeley (see below.)

Article Deadline & Next Issue Date

Submit your articles for issue 133 by February 6, 2021 at 3 pm. (we might do a fascist coup emergency issue, too, and if we do we’ll announce a deadline on-line)

Volume 1, Number 132, Circulation 20,000

Printed October16, 2020

Slingshot Newspaper

A publication of Long Haul

Office: 3124 Shattuck Avenue Berkeley CA 94705

Mailing: PO Box 3051, Berkeley, CA 94703

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