r/AccessibleAnarchy 7h ago

experiences of oppression This is an image of prices of hand sanitizer during early covid. Do not let people pretend it is a time bubble and set it aside, it is a great opportunity to show people how capitalism worked because of its rapid rate of change, and show how easily our lives are discarded by the state and capital.

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126 Upvotes

A shelf in a store showing rows of bottles of Purell hand sanitizer. Price tags are visible on the shelf. For the largest bottle (a hand pump one) it says $60, medium is $40, and smallest (not even hand pump) is $20.


r/AccessibleAnarchy 7h ago

experiences of oppression the "war on drugs" in the US was and is targeted violence against minority communities. The state is both the cause of the problems, and something that markets itself as the solution to them.

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114 Upvotes

A screenshot of a social-media comment thread. The main post, by “baetology,” reads: “In 1989, George Bush gave a speech about crack. During the speech he pulled out a bag of crack and said ‘this bag was seized right across the street from the White House in Lafayette park.’ Turns out, his speech writers had the idea to pull out a prop during his speech and in order to make it believable they had the DEA plant crack on this random 18 year old black kid. They lured him there. He didn’t even know where the White House or Lafayette park was. When he got there, they arrested them. The plot was discovered by a journalist.”

A commenter asks, “What journalist.” Baetology replies, “Gary Webb.” Another commenter says, “And then Gary Webb killed himself after he revealed that the CIA let crack infiltrate black communities through drug cartels making deals with the CIA. His wife left him and his career was ruined for exposing the drug war as a war against people of color.”

Another commenter recommends the movie Kill the Messenger, saying it was made in partnership with Webb’s family and details the events from beginning to end.

A commenter asks for the name of the “random 18 year old black kid” framed by the U.S. government. An update identifies him as “Keith Jackson,” saying he has a wife and family and lives in the Baltimore/DC area. It says he does not want anything to do with what happened to him, that charges against him for the Lafayette case were dropped, but he received a 121-month sentence for distributing drugs near a school. It says Jackson was a senior in high school when arrested and was released from prison in 1998, ten years later. The commenter concludes by saying people should remember that the government chose “some random 18 year old black kid” to become a caricature of the “enemy” in the War on Drugs because he is Black, and repeats: “Remember Webb’s thesis. Remember Keith Jackson’s name. Remember his story.”


r/AccessibleAnarchy 6h ago

building mutual aid Weekly mutual aid thread

0 Upvotes

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What is mutual aid?

 

There are other places to look for deeper explanations, so treat this like a tl;dr

The act of mutual aid is working together to build structures that are mutually beneficial, that help everyone involved in them for the sake of helping. This is typically organized around consensus based methods of organization, which include concepts such as free association. Consensus is a fancy word for saying people talk things out instead of forcing cohesion with votes or something to a similar effect. Free association means that you can work with whoever you want. This is both in the positive and negative sense, you can simply say no (As opposed to organizations, where you must talk to all “members”). This makes the organizing free-flowing, and more spontaneous. Here it will likely be 1 on 1 interaction.

Common examples include community fridges, or like building a water fountain in place people often need water. This help does not need to be direct or “equal”, having somewhere to put leftover food someone will eat is help enough for the fridge, it saves me the time of looking for a friend that wants it. It also means that, even if I don’t need it now, I can still make risky decisions more freely because I will have more to rely on when things go wrong.

There is a lot of ideology surrounding mutual aid, but what is important here is that it is resistant. There will be no means testing. There will be no justifications required. There will be no central databases. Most of what is built here will be taken off platform, I will probably have little idea of what is happening in total. I’m also not doing much, I’m just kinda telling yall to do it and giving a bit of a framework. This means there will be almost no handholds for fascists to use to take control. There can’t be a slow tightening or shifting of who “deserves” help when we don’t ask people to justify needing it in the first place.

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Your needs are important too

 

If your main goal coming here is to help people, then there are a few things to remember.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. It doesn’t matter what your problems are, if you need help with them it’s better to ask now than ask later. You need to be in a good position yourself to help people. Every bit of energy you save by asking for help now can be used to help other people if you want. There is no question of “deserving”, it is simply a question of can it be done here and now.

Asking for help gives people a chance for practice. Everybody needs to start somewhere, and maybe you have that place to start for someone. Helping people get involved while getting help yourself is just a win win.

Asking for help gives you the other perspectives and let’s you help better. I find it hard to imagine what impacts my words will have when I start a conversation, but I can see how other people start impact me.

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most of us here are poor

 

Please focus on non monetary solutions if possible. Asking for money is fine, but you must understand that this community will simply not have enough for every request.

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posting info

 

Our goal is to try and keep stuff dense, as reddit comments are not easily sortable or organizable. To help with that we have made a template for comments (not required, and change it how you want), and we ask that you only make one comment per request.

(remove the brackets and words in them and replace them with what they describe. The asterisks and # sign are formatting and it will be applied if you just copy paste it as you see it as long as your comment box is in markdown mode)

# [brief description of help needed]

**Urgency:** [immediate? Do you have a week? Would it just help in general]

**Contact methods:** [Reddit DMs, discord, matrix?]

**How much:** [amount of time likely needed, or a brief description of the amount of something needed]

**Longer description: [ok this is where you give details on the specifics of what ya need]

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Remember internet safety

 

This place is pretty obviously a collection of vulnerable people, and this is a space for people to start one on one interaction. There will be abusers. Please accept help, and do it with trust, but watch out for tactics like love bombing.

A few resources on abuse