Open letter to Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer:

https://twitter.com/DocPhoenix/status/1654453592135286786 https://twitter.com/speakoutsister/status/1654471897143279618 ;

Open letter to Rishi Sunak MP, Prime Minister and Keir Starmer MP, Leader of the opposition from UK women voters

Dear Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer

We are writing to you as women concerned by rising transphobia and attacks on trans people in the UK under the guise of defending women’s rights. We reject completely the idea that the inclusion of trans people in single sex spaces and services they already use is a threat to women. Where it is proportionate, trans women can already be excluded under existing law. Excluding all trans people is practically unworkable and will harm all women by putting added pressures on services.

The focus on trans people as a supposed women’s rights issue detracts from the many important issues facing women today. The cost of living, access to childcare, access to healthcare and violence against women are all key concerns. The Prime Minister and leader of the opposition should focus on these - tackling inflation and protecting women on low incomes, providing low cost high quality childcare, reducing NHS waiting lists, improving access UK wide to contraception and abortion, improving maternity services, tackling police corruption and increasing successful prosecutions for domestic violence and rape.

Women are more likely to support trans inclusion than men. The claim that trans people and trans inclusion threaten women’s rights is false. We call on you both, as Prime Minister and leader of the opposition, to listen to the genuine concerns of women in the UK and refocus on these vital issues.

Signed.

Holy cow, you guys, go read chestnut_pod's amazing meta about democracy, infrastructure, the OTW, and anti-racism, it is incredibly insightful and is making points that are really important about the OTW's internal structure and how it works against any change (even changes everyone agrees are good and right and necessary). chestnut_pod has a ton of practical experience in organizing community groups, and it shows.

For some background: the entire OTW was started by Astolat and her friends. They were (and are) a group of very competent and dedicated people, and that's awesome! but none of them had experience with managing large groups of people, or organizing groups at a large scale, and holy cow it showed. When AO3 started growing beyond what their small cadre could reasonably handle, things started getting dicey behind the scenes. None of the policies and procedures scaled up very well, they didn't listen to people outside their own sphere, there was huge burnout among volutneers, incredible lack of transparency, and a whole host of other problems. This led to major conflict over elections in 2011 and 2015 (the 2015 election was pretty wild), the latter of which ended with the entire existing board flouncing in a huff which allowed a whole new cadre to come in, and many of that completely-new-board had experience with large nonprofits. Things have been better since.

But, and this is the crucial bit, there was no restructuring of the organization. The people running those structures knew way more about how to competently administer large organizations than the previous group had. But the structures were still the same ones that had been fine back when AO3 was tiny and just getting started, but really need to be updated and modernized. And that's never happened!

There is no transparency, there is almost no accountability, and if Astolat-and-company didn't foresee something as being a potential problem back in 2008 there's no way of making sure it gets handled unless it is some volunteer's pet project and something they can do by themselves with minimal support.

chestnut_pod does a great job of laying out why this is a problem, why it's getting in the way of anti-racism initiatives and everything else the OTW wants to do, and what could be done about it.

Here are some of my favorite bits:

(when dealing with large groups of people) It is impossible to have really free and fair elections without proper representative structures. Those representative structures will sometimes mean that the people you elect are going to make decisions in the moment that you don't like. But those same structures will ensure that, when the next election rolls around, there is something you can do about that. In the absence of representative democracy and structures that channel a large base into smaller, more nimble, but inherently rotating, core of decision-makers and buck-stoppers, "direct democracy" ends up just looking like an equally small group of decision-makers undemocratically decided upon via inertia, a group who can't be easily ousted, but who also can't make decisions quickly when called for. The worst of both worlds!

It is my impression that this is absolutely what happened within the OTW wrt the 2020 statement. (For what it's worth, I think it has happened in the past with things like "podfic streaming" and "dealing with certain spam works" -- it's just that those were far less consequential problems and so didn't gain this much traction or attention when the OTW failed to quickly and adequately address them.) Again, credit where it is due: the OTW has a very complicated job which they never really expected to grow to this scale. It was founded by a small group of people who all knew each other and had similar positions on most matters. It was the late naughts. All of this is true, and also, it's now 2023, the AO3 specifically is enormous, and the world has changed! It is simply not workable any longer to have some committee chairs who are not elected and have no term limits, no easy onboarding for new volunteers, and no clear hierarchy between the Board and the committees and between the committees themselves.

...


In short, each of the broken-down problems begs a certain number of questions, the answers to which we do not know, because the OTW has either not seen fit to try to answer them, or has never shared their answers broadly. This is a major problem either way, and I think it is the first thing that needs to happen, because having accurate knowledge is the first step to solving any problem, much less one as complex and multifaceted as the multiple facets of racism as they appear in OTW spaces. Having a good grasp on what the problems really are, whom they most affect, and how, is fundamental to enacting solutions that actually help, and, at the very least, proceeding with the knowledge of how these solutions are incomplete and imperfect, as they inevitably will be.

...

I think where the OTW has fallen down most is in not making that space to hear and listen. A lot of the solutions people propose out there in the wide Internet -- most notably anything about new mandatory tags of in-fic content moderation -- get shot down immediately as impossible. As I argued in the previous section, I don't think we actually know what is or isn't possible, because the OTW has done a terrible job telling us clearly what the impediments are to a variety of proposed fixes. Moreover, the discussion around those suggestions easily becomes acrimonious. Moderation isn't a dirty word; it's vital to having constructive conversations. Just like how having representative structure makes a space more democratic, moderation makes speaking out more democratic, because in an unmoderated space, the loudest voices drown out the rest.

The Autistic Self-Advocacy Network periodically makes plain-language videos explaining important topics, and they're always really good. They just uploaded a whole series on structural racism. If you need a basic but thorough primer on the subject for yourself or someone else, they're excellent. Besides being helpful for people with disabilities, they should also be a useful supplement for your kids if your local school district is trying to get rid of any mentions of racism in the curriculum. All the examples are US focused because ASAN is a US group, so it might not be much help to people in other countries, sorry.


Structural Racism 3: What Is Racism?

Structural Racism 4: What is Structural Racism?

Structural Racism 5: Structural Racism is Still With Us

Structural Racism 6: Structural Racism is Sometimes Hidden

Structural Racism 7: Structural Racism Takes Work To Get Rid Of

Structural Racism in the US Today: Immigration

Structural Racism in the US Today: Housing

Structural Racism in the US Today: Environmental Racism

Structural Racism in the US Today: Mass Incarceration

Given all the legal and social issues around censorship of schools and public libraries, the ACLU has come up with a toolkit for people who want to stand up to censorship. It has everything from talking points to ways to organize your community!

Right to Learn: Your Guide to Combatting Classroom Censorship

thisfinecrew posted: S.2992

There is a bill in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, S.2992, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act. It has bipartisan support, and is meant to Regulate Big Tech. Bloomberg has an overview with helpful graphics, and I have already contacted both my senators to ask them to support it, as they are not co-sponsors (my text below the cut for your use!). There is a similar bill in the House which I have not read as yet.

The above link has a script for what to say on the phone with your senator.

There is currently an act before the senate, the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies in the United States Act, which would establish a commission to investigate past injustices of the federal government's cultural genocide and assimilation practices through its Indian Boarding School policy.

If you would like to contact your senators about it, the ELCA (a Christian denomination) has a widget that will email them for you. It is quick and easy to use, and easy to edit out the religious bits if you wish.

There are several bills in congress right now that affect US treatment of immigrants and refugees, and the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee service has a handy-dandy widget to email or call your Senators/Representative in support of fair and just treatment. LIRS is a Christian organization, but it's easy enough to delete the one line stating your religious affiliation if you wish.

First up, we have the US Citizenship Act of 2021, Biden’s immigration reform proposal. Among its many provisions, it provides DACA and TPS recipients with green cards, setting them on a path to citizenship, improves the family reunification process by reducing visa backlogs, and creates a pathway to earned citizenship for approximately 11 million immigrants in the country without legal status. If you would like to support the Citizenship Act, contact your elected officials.

Second is The Protection of Kids in Detention Act, or PROKID Act, which would provide a critical layer of oversight and ensure transparency, protection, and accountability for all immigrant children in any type of government custody. It would create a permanent Office of the Ombudsman within the Department of Human and Health Services to act as an advocate, subject-matter expert, and independent authority responsible for ensuring that the rights afforded to children by the Flores Settlement Agreement, the 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA), and other relevant statutes are properly recognized, applied, and enforced. To support the PROKID Act, use this email widget to contact your elected officials.

Third, we have the The Guaranteed Refugee Admissions Ceiling Enhancement Act, or GRACE Act, would protect and restore the U.S. resettlement program by setting a minimum refugee admissions goal of 125,000 and increasing congressional oversight over the administration's operations of the resettlement program. To support the GRACE Act, use this email widget to contact your elected officials.


On a related note, if you would like to put pressure on your elected officials to move left, but don't know how, the website 5calls.org/ is an easy way to do it. They always have a list of issues at a national and state level, with information on the issue and a script to call with and a widget to get the right phone numbers for your elected officials.

Really great essay on why stories about "the chosen one who will save everyone/fix everything" are so popular, and why that can be such a toxic fantasy. Here's my favorite bit:

So you know how everything's always harder for undocumented people?  Now is another one of those times.  They tend to work in the sorts of jobs that people have been laid off from, and they also will not be getting any stimulus checks.  People in Washington state have put together a relief fund for undocumented people who have lost their jobs, and since it's being administered through a recognized charity, it is tax deductible.  It's organized by the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, the Washington Dream Network, and the Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network, and it's being run through the auspices of the Scholarship Junkies charity.  If you have some spare cash, you can donate here.  Or see if anyone in your state is doing something similar.