Also remember the journalists that need support the most are local papers and news stations. The big ones have plenty of donors, and while it’s worth the support, they are less likely to completely collapse than the news that is run in your city.

Go look for that independent source. They will report more news that actually affects you as well.

Small story time because I realize the Neo-Futurists don’t seem to record their show and this should be in writing somewhere.

Context: The Neo-Futurists are an experimental theater company based in Chicago but have spread internationally. They have a show where they do 30 scripts in an hour, so each “play” is like… 2 or 3 minutes.

When I went they had one play called “How to Kill a King”

The lights went dark. Then the projector turned on and said “put your phone and wallet into the bucket”. The cast came out holding buckets, and everyone did just that, including me. Then the cast left the theater with the buckets.

Then the projector said:

“Your possessions will be waiting for you in the lobby after the show”

“Trust that you will have your wallet and phone back at the end of the show”

“Trust that the people around you won’t steal your wallet and phone”

“Trust that the people around you have your best interest in mind, and don’t wish you any harm”

“That is how you Kill a King”

And sure enough when we left, everyones stuff was splayed out on some tables and everyone got their stuff back.

Just as a post script- I know I won’t convince you to hate ice, but maybe I can convince you that I don’t hate you. That the left doesn’t hate you. I need to remember the right doesn’t hate lil’ ol queer me. We hate what we’ve been told about each other.

Renee Good’s last words were “I’m not mad at you”

Frankly, yea you’re right. Our military is absolutely brutally evil. And the reason they were there was to make the rich richer. Frankly when Americans sign up for the military, they should choose a branch and an oil company to serve as well.

I can’t really convince you of anything else, other than know that most everyone I talk to knows we have more in common with you halfway around the world than either of us do with the people who send the military to kill. We don’t hate you, and I’m so sorry what they did to you.

On this side of the world, keeping our class divided will only perpetuate this cycle. War is as profitable an industry as healthcare, so why expect peace or cures if the people in charge are only in it for their own gain?

I’m so sorry for what this horrible country did. No one deserves that fate. But one day hatchets between comrades need to be buried and replaced with guillotines for kings.

If that’s your bar, then we need to deport every Catholic priest and cop. They are much more likely to hurt someone I, or you, love.

We’ve been brainwashed into thinking some brown kid from across the border who’s parents went through hell and back is the problem. Frankly, we’ve also been brainwashed into thinking the angry MAGA capped West Virginian is the problem. It’s not.

You know the problem. It’s your health insurance premiums. It’s your cost of food. It’s your cost of living. It’s your pain. It’s the same pain that made the brown folks come here and the West Virginian vote for a rapist convict.

That pain doesn’t come from a made up immigrant eating a dog. It comes from a group of men that could fit in a school bus who have ensured we stay disconnected and dumb so they can rob us blind. ICE is here to enforce this belief, not keep us safe.

The only way out is to kill a king. The only way to kill a king is to trust your neighbors. 14% or 5%

Focus that rage upward.

I have such distain for our military industrial complex and ICE, but I recognize so much of the problem is desperate people taking desperate measures. They decided it’s better to risk your life in a foreign war than it is to be home watching you and your family whither away with no healthcare, education, or money. I don’t agree but I can understand- debt will put anyone in a pressure cooker. Two things can be true at once- being a stoog for American imperialism makes you horrible, but people who are stooges can still be people to show sympathy for when you consider the factors at play.

When the revolution comes, as all revolutions do, it is only when the military allows the people to storm the gates. In my head we don’t need to thank service members as much as say I’m so sorry what this country did to them.

The same agents who are raping, murdering, and molesting children in the ICE concentration camps? The same ones who brutalized, terrorized, and murdered people in communities so they could deport immigrants, 5% of whom have criminal records?

Yea okay I’ll keep protesting.

I grew up in a household that kept with a healthy Mediterranean diet, no sugar, drinking whatever milk my mom decided was healthiest at the time, salads and kale chips, where cutting the bottom of a broccoli stock would be considered a cookie-

And then I moved to the Midwest. My god the orgasmic feeling of digging into chicken wings for the first time or a corn pudding. I had no clue that everyone here puts marshmallows on sweet potatoes or in a sandwich with peanut butter, like what?

And pizza- PIZZA. Look, I’ve had plenty of pizza before, vegan, peach slices on arugula with a light sauce. But Chicago deep dish? Pizza or not it’s a monument to man’s gluttony. Double dough? My god that thicc slice is choice.

The chef’s here are essentially participating in assisted suicide, and it’s the best thing ever. When I go out now, I’m going to Dr. Kavorkian’s 24 hour diner, extra gravy please.

Yup, avoidant attachment style.

I’m generally seen as pretty emotionally open, but it’s always a front, like a negotiation to give the appearance of warmth but I’m terrified to open any deeper. I feel like what people think is the core us just the rind.

Babies will actually show this behavior as well- so this trauma goes DEEP. It might even be more genetic than behavioral. They’ve shown when a parent leaves a baby for a bit, the baby begins to cry, but when the parent returns, there are three responses (I’ll pretend a baby can speak, but this is what they say with body language):

1. Ah! You were gone but now you’re back! I missed you and I’m happy you are here let’s play with my rattle (stable)
2. OH MY GOD YOU ARE BACK I MISSED YOU PLEASE DON’T LEAVE EVER AGAIN I’M HOLDING ON TO YOU HARDER (Anxious)
3. Oh, you’re back? That’s fine, I’m not gonna look at you. If I stop caring you can’t hurt me again. (Avoidant)

I know I’d keep a pretty clean & minimalist room as a kids- I remember straight up saying “I want to be able to pack up my life and leave at a moments notice and no one will ever know I ever existed” when I was 10. It’s still hard to believe people care about me in any meaningful way.

Weird thing- I had a very supportive childhood. Having a sister with intense ADHD was tough though since she took up 90% of my parents time, so I think that’s where it comes from.

When I had a housewarming party, I put a bunch of googly eyes in a bowl and instructed everyone to become googly eye terrorists in my new house.

It was really fun, and a great surprise to find all my eggs googly-eyed with pieces of paper with pleas for help written on them.

Still finding them to this day.

Almost like it’s propaganda.

If you’re wanting a good faith explanation:

The folks who own guns are almost all conservative and live in red states where there is positive sentiment towards ice. The people who are protesting are all left wing and very likely don’t own a gun, and bringing a gun to a protest is easily how you make what could be a day of bruises and cuts into a day of bloodshed. I’ve been to several protests, and the big message is “don’t give them any reason to mow down the crowd”.

Let’s also consider why we don’t organize like they do in Paris. You get arrested? Fired from your job. You get fired from your job? There goes your healthcare. There goes your housing. Our resistance is slow, not because we aren’t passionate or are too complacent and dumb, it’s because the sad fact that sick, starving, and homeless people make for poor resistance, and I doubt anyone wants that fate.

The system we have is against us in ways far more sophisticated than what you deal with in other countries. We are surveilled by are government, controlled by our cops, and sold by our corporations. But we aren’t dumb. We aren’t weak. We see the hellfire and somehow still go out to do what we can, it’s just we are up against the most powerful domestic military force in the world.

Anyway, I gotta go teach children who didn’t ask for any of this. I don’t know how to keep it together, but somehow they do. If you’re in Chicago, I’ll see you in the streets. ✊