Remember, EM POC only!

This message is to my EM POC comrades: Angel loves all of you.

Especially as of late, I have truly been feeling like this community has worked wonders in keeping me stable when it comes to handling the massive jar of mayo that this site can be sometimes.

soviet-heart

How are you all?

  • Nyarlathotep7 [they/them,comrade/them]
    ·
    22 days ago

    Am I the only person who finds it a little weird when white people start calling other white people cracker (half this site)? Like we can't even be racist to white people without them stealing that too smh

    • TheDeed [he/him, comrade/them]M
      ·
      22 days ago

      Every single day I am reminded that literally everything in america goes back to white people being racist if you go back far enough

      • LGOrcStreetSamurai [he/him]
        ·
        21 days ago

        literally everything in america goes back to white people being racist if you go back far enough

        My favorite variant of that is "White people being so racist they sabotage a good thing that would even help them because that thing would also help other people." It's so wild to think people are so racist-ly stupid they would harm themselves to make sure other people also are harmed. Utterly unhinged.

        • Belly_Beanis [he/him]
          ·
          20 days ago

          Voting is a prime example. I cannot imagine caring so much about what other people are doing that I would deliberately stand in line for hours just to make sure they stand there for hours, too. You'd think every state would have mail-in ballots, e-mail ballots, plenty of voting stations, etc. etc. just to make the process as convenient as possible.

          But no. People would rather spend a vacation day off work to go stand in line for hours than make it easier for us undesirables to vote. And voting is like the simplest thing to do. Reactionaries are against healthcare, education, etc. because they think it's better 1,000 innocents die than one guilty person get something they maybe/possibly/sometimes don't deserve.

          • LGOrcStreetSamurai [he/him]
            ·
            20 days ago

            Reactionaries are against healthcare, education, etc. because they think it's better 1,000 innocents die than one guilty person get something they maybe/possibly/sometimes don't deserve.

            Fuckin' exactly man. It's so fuckin' stupid that this nightmare world we live in boils down to people thinking other people shouldn't get what they FEEL other people don't deserve. Such a selfish and vile mindset

  • frauddogg [null/void, undecided]
    ·
    edit-2
    22 days ago

    If not for this comm I wouldn't be on the fediverse as a whole anymore tbh. White leftists do a phenomenal job at reminding me how little daylight exists between them and their full-fascist settler brethren

    EDIT: I'm half tempted to figure out how to set up an instance of my own specifically for Black and Brown folk. Call it 'The Cookout', and have a bit of banning posters who express whiteness with either "invitation rescinded" or "was never invited to the cookout" as their ban message

    • TheDeed [he/him, comrade/them]M
      ·
      22 days ago

      Iirc there is a mastodon instance specifically for black people so I think something like that for Lemmy could definitely work!

      I don't use Twitter or its clones because I prefer message board style formats so I'd enjoy that

    • CommunistCuddlefish [she/her]
      ·
      22 days ago

      White leftists do a phenomenal job at reminding me how little daylight exists between them and their full-fascist settler brethren

      Word. I have accounts on other fediverse instances and I never fucking use them for that reason, they're not all that different from reddit. Hexbear at large is the only place that seems decent and if it didn't have this comm I don't know that I'd want to be on this site either.

      If you did make a Cookout I'd join

    • Angel [any]
      hexagon
      ·
      22 days ago

      There will be soy burgers at The Cookout.

    • xj9 [they/them, she/her]
      ·
      18 days ago

      I run https://novo-atlantis.null.media which is meant to have a vibe kinda like that. We're super tiny, the only active posters are myself and an anarchist belarussian refugee. My white friend owns the actual server hardware, but they aren't involved in admin aside from the hosting. I threw a bunch of shit up so we'd have a TOS and to avoid the massive racism problems on the fediverse, we only do allow list federation. There's a lot of spanglish in there and I had hoped to build some kind of border vibes thing, but I've been struggling just to live.

      Happy to change things up too if you want to collab. Won't hurt my feelings if you don't

      • frauddogg [null/void, undecided]
        ·
        18 days ago

        negl the vibe of that landing page is pretty cool; atm, the Cookout is little more than a scant assortment of ideas in the back of my head while real life's got my hands a bit more tied than I'd like

  • mango [any]
    ·
    22 days ago

    I feel like a lot of online queer spaces are absolutely overrun with white libs who don't think that they have the capacity to be racist, despite... constantly being very ignorant and offensive. Really, really weird bubbles. Has anyone else experienced this?? 😭

    • Angel [any]
      hexagon
      ·
      22 days ago

      Somehow, they also end up being shocking degrees of discriminatory within the LGBTQ+ community. Transphobia, enbyphobia, and bi/panphobia are shockingly common in mainstream LGBTQ+ spaces, meaning I'm not talking about those obscure "LGBDroptheT" type forums with a very small base of users.

      • mango [any]
        ·
        22 days ago

        For sure. I'm remembering all the tweets that used to come up during June that were like "happy pride month to everyone EXCEPT FOR (LGBTQ+ identity that the poster personally hates)" ??????

    • Blockocheese [any]
      ·
      edit-2
      21 days ago

      That's all marginalized groups that aren't based on race, unfortunately

      Edit: actually not even the ones based on race are immune from thinking they're above any form of bigotry

  • Flutterpuff [she/her, doe/deer]
    ·
    22 days ago

    Hi! Comrades! I'm from somewhere in Southeast Asia. I just picked up drawing as a hobby recently because I've got more free time from work after those crazy OT periods, still... no overtime means no overtime pay for me, so I'm kinda struggling with money issue now, so I have to use some of my savings to pay bills 😕. Factory job sucks. And wow, can't believe I've been on this instance for 1 year already.

  • CommunistCuddlefish [she/her]
    ·
    edit-2
    22 days ago

    My long term relationship that we both thought was for life is imploding right now, and it’s not even because of anything new and recent, it’s because we finally figured out some unhealthy dynamics got set years ago when we were in worse situations in life and dealing with crises and now that we’re looking at it it’s just unbearable. A lot is my fault, some is their's, but in another way it's neither of our faults, it's just an unavoidable tragedy. It's so depressing to confront how we both were utterly set up to fail in this (or any) relationship by the combined forces of capitalism, systemic racism, and systemic patriarchy. I don't want this to sound like a cop-out, I don't want to say "oh my difficulties with emotions and relationships are not my fault because the systems did this to me and I bear no blame," I can see clearly (now, when it’s too late to prevent them) the mistakes I made. But it's incredibly frustrating and heartbreaking that when they were happening I couldn't have done anything else because of how I was malformed by all the trauma of living in the belly of a racist, murderous empire surrounded by toxic hateful racist monsters. At every step of the way we've been trying our very best (I've been doing therapy for years, and they tried but they just couldn't find a therapist who wasn’t a capitalist radfem shitlib that would gaslight them and do more harm than good), but at every step for years and years and years the traumas carved into us from early childhood through adulthood sabotaged our efforts. They ask, "why did you do X horrible thing when we needed you to do Z?" and when I examine it it's genuinely just because of how the racist fabric of America destroyed my family and destroyed me to the point that X was all I was capable of doing in those times of stress. I didn't get to have a safe environment in which to grow up healthily -- I had a fucking nightmare forced upon me when I was just a little kid and it broke me, just more subtly than it broke my other family members. But it broke me nonetheless. I ask them "why did you do Y when we needed you to do Z?" and when they examine it it's because of how abuse at the hands of the toxic patriarchical fabric of America starting from a very young age carved such deep liabilities and weaknesses into them that they couldn't be healthier. And then our traumas intersected in bad ways. If just one of us hadn't had our fatal weaknesses, we could have maybe helped the other. But with both of us having them, our attempts to help each other actually led us to fall into unhealthy dynamics instead and now the traumatic memories of those dynamics make it -- I think -- impossible to move forward and heal together.

    Even with this understanding, even with these big breakthroughs, it may be too late. I think it very likely is even though we desperately want it to not be too late. They said "I don't want us to have to split up. It would be a horrible tragedy. It should be a simple choice: We love each other and didn't mean to do harm, now that we understand what went wrong and how the systems did this to us it should be obvious that we just stay together and fix things together. The reason it's not simple for me is that everything's been so traumatic I don't know if it's possible, healthy, or even ethical for us to try to stay together and fix things together."
    And I get that, I really do. It’s not a cop-out, it’s true. So much traumatic shit has happened that I can't humanely and ethically ask them to stay. Asking is pointless anyway -- they already want to stay and make it better, it's just a question of whether that's even possible or healthy for them to try to do, or if too much harm has been done. It's not a decision to be made, it's a yes/no fact that has to be uncovered and then whatever that fact is, we’ll have to deal with it even if we hate it.

    CW bleak, self-harm, despondency, doomerism

    I'm so tired of living in the aftermath of being broken by the system. I'm so tired of living with the harms still perpetuating, still ruining my life and destroying any chances I think I have at happiness. I’m tired of causing harm to the people I love — I want to give love, joy, safety, health, and nurturing to my loved ones but instead I’ve brought pain and suffering. I don't even want to fight back or strike against systemic oppression anymore because I’m so broken and exhausted. To keep going is too painful. Even if now I manage to fix some of the shit that was done to me, it will always have destroyed the most important relationship I’ve ever had and robbed us of our life together. I’ll always have to live in the aftermath of that loss, and the loss will never go away. Every moment I exist hurts too much already and it looks like it’s just going to get worse from here on out. I've been through loss and grief enough times before and I know that it doesn't really get better even with therapy, it just makes the next one worse and the next one after that even worse. I thought I'd escaped that cycle finally; now that I know I haven't, that I can't, that this path was set for me before I even hit puberty, I just want to sleep forever. Let me fucking rest. Life is torture and I don't get why people who say they love me want me to keep being tortured. I have to endure, for now, I have responsibilities and it’s uncertain how things will shake out. My beloved has asked me not to give up and so, on the off chance that somehow things work out, I have to keep going for now. But I see nothing but torment ahead and I resent the loved ones who need me to stay alive for making me suffer the torture of existence instead of finally finding the peace I so desperately need.

    What a cruel, pointless life. It's inhumane to do this to people. It's inhumane to make kids deal with systemic trauma that just breaks them and turns them into broken adults. I wish my parents hadn't emigrated to America, but they couldn't have predicted what the global war on terror would have done. Maybe if they'd stayed in their birth country we'd have been killed by it anyway, though it’s enough on the periphery of the battlegrounds so far that maybe not. Sometimes I think maybe being killed by it would have been preferable to being trapped in this broken life I've lived anyway. I look at pictures of me when I was a kid before the cataclysmic harms were done to us, and I look at pictures of me after, and it's stark how visibly dead inside I've been since.

    I hope reincarnation is real. This life has been a tragedy and a waste. I want a do-over. I’m incapable of believing in anything so spiritual or metaphysical though so I don’t even get that fiction as solace.

    I envy white people here, at least the ones with semi-healthy families (unlike my poor, traumatized partner). For all that there's something so fucked up and fundamentally wrong with many of those white folks, they seem happier. They have their own traumas to be sure, but they don’t have the trauma that comes from being nonwhite in this KKK society and right now, looking at how that racial trauma has destroyed my life, I envy them for not having been brutalized that way.

    • pyx [she/her]
      ·
      22 days ago

      doomjak

      you have a very beautiful way of writing and explaining your hurt. I am so deeply sorry for your pain. sending you love and solidarity

      • CommunistCuddlefish [she/her]
        ·
        19 days ago

        Thank you. All my best writing is born out of immense suffering. I wish I didn't have to suffer so much. I'm so tired

    • hexbee [she/her]
      ·
      20 days ago

      It sounds like what you and your partner have is really beautiful, I'm so sorry about everything you've gone through.

      cuddle

      My partner and I reached this point once before, we broke up and lived separately for a while. I'm so so thankful that we made our way back to each other and now our relationship is stronger than ever. I hope you make it through this time as unscathed as possible, and live long enough to know happiness again. Much love comrade.

      • CommunistCuddlefish [she/her]
        ·
        19 days ago

        Thank you so much. I shouldn't have checked this at work I'm sobbing right now. I'm so scared and heartbroken. When they told me about the longstanding problems they thought I'd leave them over it, but instead I said I wanted to address all the problems so that we could look back on this as the moment we really turned things around and made our relationship healthier than ever. They said they would like that, but since then it seems they've broken too hard to be able to do the work with me. Thanks for giving me a shred of hope that even if we break up now we may be able to reconnect.

      • CommunistCuddlefish [she/her]
        ·
        edit-2
        17 days ago

        Update: They left. They left and said they cannot ever come back, even if they heal their trauma, even if I heal my trauma, because the relationship itself is too damaged. They also said they're just starting to realize their trauma was way worse than they had realized, and contributed much more to the bad dynamics than they'd thought -- earlier they thought it was mostly mine that was the problem, and as we were discussing the breakup they realized just how much harm their trauma had done to me and even brought my own out too (which hurt them in turn).

        We were just doomed. We were just fucked from before the start. We were completely and utterly set up to fail. I'm glad you and your partner were able to reconnect, but my partner is too principled and stubborn to be willing to do that with me -- when they say it's over and they'll never be back, they mean it in a way that I cannot doubt. Honestly, your case is probably a great outlier, most people never reconnect after splitting up.

        I don't know what to do with my life now. I restructured so much of my life to be devoted to them. I got through the brutal work days because I wanted to provide for them. I worked on myself to be better because I wanted to grow and heal for them.

        • hexbee [she/her]
          ·
          17 days ago

          I can feel your love and pain through your words, I'm sorry for your loss.

          your case is probably a great outlier

          I do think it's rare, and it involved me being homeless, so not the happiest story either to be honest, but I'm just about putting it behind me recently.

          I restructured so much of my life to be devoted to them.

          The interconnectedness, deep solidarity and true comradery are one of the most divine things about a close relationship. However in an extremely atomised society such as ours, where these close bonds are only ever seen as "normal" between romantic partners, they are tested and strain immensely under the weight of the pressures we are each made to indure without the support of a wider community.

          advice, take it or leave it

          As you enter this new stage in your life, I'd encourage you to read up a bit about queerplatonic partnerships. It's at least one potential direction for your life going forward. And even if you bounce off the ideas, I hope it would at least help you to start to see an outline of a future you're happier with.

          My relationship with my partner also looks very different today than it did before. We're trying to live a life where we're two close by points in a wider network of support. We're having mixed results though to be honest, solidarity seems to be hard won these days.

          However bad what happened was, I hope you will still hold within you the belief that you're worthy of being loved. It seems like you've grown a lot together, and even though your paths must diverge, I hope you will carry your love for them forward with you as you begin to rebuild your habits and routines. Stay strong out there

  • Skeleton_Erisma [they/them, any]
    ·
    21 days ago

    I passed the ELDT

    which basically means I have satisfied the minimum FMCSA requirement to start the commercial skills test.

    I also backed up a bus three times today and didn't hit any cones or encroach the boundary lines!

    meow-bounce

    • Comp4 [she/her]
      ·
      22 days ago

      Its to late atm. Im gonna check it out tomorrow after work.

  • hexbee [she/her]
    ·
    20 days ago

    Hello my friends soviet-heart

    I'm eastern european who sadly ended up in the ukkk, so I'm posting here to say hello. I'm very aware that I don't really experience racism like a lot of my comrades here, so I won't take up too much space mouthing off, unless I've got something to share in the replies or need to scream about some xenophobic bullshit, hope that's cool.

    Sending love to all my em poc comrades kris-love

    • sweet_pecan [love/loves, they/them]M
      ·
      edit-2
      19 days ago

      yall are the EM in em poc, if you experience structural racism or your people have been pogromed/ ethnically cleansed and that shit still affects you this is a place for you. if your life experience is indistinguishable from the ethnic group at the top of the hierarchy in which you live this is not the space for you. also you must be mindful not to talk over poc!

    • RomCom1989 [he/him, any]
      ·
      20 days ago

      Ummm,I honestly thought we weren't allowed here lmao

      I'm kinda replying here because I am only surprised to see this

      That's why I usually avoid this comm,btw if the anti-cracker-aktion rule applies to us too, please remove this comment

      • hexbee [she/her]
        ·
        19 days ago

        If I'm getting the sidebar right, then I think it would be different if I was living in my own country, but I'm in england and english people really don't need much prompting to start acting like chuds. I definitely don't get shit for my looks (unless it's about me being trans) like a lot of people in this mega would, which is obv a huge privilege. But the moment I need to introduce myself with my name I can see the xenophobe gears turning in most ppl here >.> Finding a job sucks for the same reason

        • Neptium@lemmygrad.ml
          ·
          19 days ago

          Honestly, I mostly lived in the Global South but I am also now living in the UK. I wouldn’t say I personally experienced the worst of the racism here either.

          I’d say Eastern Europeans are definitely welcome here but I am not a mod.

          Regardless, I hope the job hunt goes well for you

          Show stalin heart hands
          (if I am understanding you right). A family member of mine was struggling aswell but got offered a really good one a couple months back.

          • frauddogg [null/void, undecided]
            ·
            19 days ago

            I honestly didn't think there'd be many eastern europeans who came to this comm if only for the sheer number of eastern europeans regardless of country that I've known who felt comfortable with such virulent anti-Blackness that you'd think they were Tennessee natives; but it's also not rly my call to make either

            • sweet_pecan [love/loves, they/them]M
              ·
              19 days ago

              Eastern Europeans who experience structural racism/targeted white supremacist violence are allowed. they are the EM part of em poc . they still gotta be mindful of their privilege though, and not talk over poc, or they will be banned with prejudice.

            • Neptium@lemmygrad.ml
              ·
              19 days ago

              Yeah, I’ll just respect whatever the mods decide. Can’t say I am an expert in Eastern European racialisation.

            • hexbee [she/her]
              ·
              19 days ago

              Yeah this is very real. I've met many eastern europeans in the ukkk who are very quick to use their whiteness to figuratively climb on top of the brown people around them. Or if there's no systemic fuckery going on, they're still happy to just say slurs to feel superior or something. I actually reached a stage where I promised myself I'm only making friends with other immigrants who I can gossip about brits with from this point on, which worked out great for me tbh.

              As for eastern europeans in their own countries... yea, it's so shit. Great replacement nationalism galore.

              Personally I find this comm a breath of fresh air online; even when I take breaks from hexbear as a whole I still check this mega every few days

          • hexbee [she/her]
            ·
            edit-2
            19 days ago

            Thanks! Although I was talking more rhetorically, since I'm disabled and couldn't possibly work a job. Not that that will stop the DWP from trying... Glad your family member was able to find somewhere good!

            In terms of racism, I'm glad you haven't encountered too much trouble, but I do find that quite surprising. Maybe it really depends on where in england you are as well.

            When I was a kid I lived in a racial enclave of white brits in the countryside for a good few years, where I was 1 of maybe 3 ethnic minority people in the whole village. I have many unpleasant memories from that time, including a dude I didn't know who asked for my name, and then started following me home because he was 100% sure that I was making it up for the sole purpose of fucking with him. Similarly, I know someone from SEA who went to uni in a beach town in the south, and they were assaulted on the street at one point by a stranger, amongst a slew of other perhaps less intense hate crimes (intense enough to fuck up their mental health tho). My partner has also been ejected from a company they worked at after standing up to a white woman who was harassing them. Not to mention the terf island of it all... Not a big fan of this place overall, always thinking of escape plans.

            Edit: & assuming you're the same person as hexbear's Neptium, it's nice to see you back! I always appreciated your SEA headlines posts in the news mega

            • Neptium@lemmygrad.ml
              ·
              19 days ago

              In terms of racism, I’m glad you haven’t encountered too much trouble, but I do find that quite surprising. Maybe it really depends on where in england you are as well.

              I am just saying personally, it could’ve been worse. Hell, some of my friends and family had slurs shouted at and overall disgusting and nasty behaviour like you mentioned.

              And to add on to it, my disability basically makes me a recluse so can’t really be a victim if I am not outside but generally the areas I am in (treading carefully here so I do not dox myself) I see more non-white people than white people. At most it is a 50/50.

              Edit: & assuming you’re the same person as hexbear’s Neptium

              Yup same person and thank you! I took a break from that as I am bit busy at the moment. I may continue again later but I’ll need to find a more efficient way at compiling news.

              • hexbee [she/her]
                ·
                19 days ago

                I am just saying personally, it could’ve been worse. Hell, some of my friends and family had slurs shouted at and overall disgusting and nasty behaviour like you mentioned.

                Riight I gotcha. Yeah I definitely haven't seen the worst of it, but feel very aware of it because lots of people around me deal with it way worse, so I relate somewhat.

                50/50 sounds pretty good for britain tbf! Glad you're avoiding the worst of it I suppose, but I know how hard it can be to be isolated as a disabled person, solidarity with you there. Thankfully I've managed to escape that village a while back now and much happier where I am right now.

      • Belly_Beanis [he/him]
        ·
        19 days ago

        It is the "ethnic minorities" comm. Eastern Europeans may not experience colorism and whatnot, but they are often excluded from whiteness.

        Again, this just shows how arbitrary whiteness is. It's not about defining specifics. It's about excluding the other.

        IMO Eastern Europeans probably fit the comm so long as they don't try and pull the ladder up behind them. But it is ultimately up to the mods and I'm half cracker so I could be out of line.

        Also, are there any Roma/travelers here on Hexbear? I don't think I've seen them if there are.

      • sweet_pecan [love/loves, they/them]M
        ·
        edit-2
        19 days ago

        yall are the EM in em poc, if you experience structural racism or your people have been pogromed/ ethnically cleansed and that shit still affects you this is a place for you. if your life experience is indistinguishable from the ethnic group at the top of the hierarchy in which you live this is not the space for you.

        also you must be mindful not to talk over poc!

  • Neptium@lemmygrad.ml
    ·
    22 days ago

    Read a pro-NATO article written by a white guy based in Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.

    A classic angmoh/mat saleh (cracker) moment

    And again we face the consequences of Sukarno not carpet bombing Singapore.

  • sweet_pecan [love/loves, they/them]M
    ·
    22 days ago

    everything sucks so fucking much, everything is so fucking pointless, nothing ever gets better white people will never get better, they will always just try to hurt you for fun.

    • sweet_pecan [love/loves, they/them]M
      ·
      22 days ago

      they dont want to get better, they never will, they take pleasure from hurting people. all they want to do is hurt black people. nothing will ever fucking get better.

    • Belly_Beanis [he/him]
      ·
      21 days ago

      My contempt continues to grow. Yesterday I was pointing out racism as a motivator for Trump supporters. Like clockwork, whitey came out with "Well some of them are just undereducated and don't know any better." When I responded with how the cruelty is the point, they are deliberately racist, and stop trying to dismiss the choices they actively choose to make, it was time to move on to another subject.

      I've known MLK was right before I read Letter from a Birmingham Jail. It's like I've known it my whole life. I'd rather fight to the death than deal with these fucking """"moderates"""" who constantly run cover for racists that hurt people just because they're white in a white supremacist system.

  • homhom9000 [she/her]
    ·
    20 days ago

    I want to join the Black community group at work but one of the future events is about black folks in the military and it turned me off. Maybe I should join anyway to bring the revolutionary energy that's needed.

      • homhom9000 [she/her]
        ·
        19 days ago

        I felt like a minority amongst the minorities 😭. Like, they felt like the fraternity/sorority Hilary banks type

        • frauddogg [null/void, undecided]
          ·
          edit-2
          19 days ago

          Oh no, not the HBCU greeks

          If there's anything my time in the workforce taught me it's that you can't trust anybody who still wears an Alpha Kappa or Alpha Phi pin years out from attendance of a Divine Nine; they'll pitch you under the first bus that profits them to go by

  • Rania 🇩🇿@lemmygrad.ml
    ·
    18 days ago

    I hate how socialism got washed out of poc historical figures, like many activists and revolutionaries were outright open socialists like literally you read their autobiography and they say in it "we must achieve socialism" but no one talks about it.

    • Angel [any]
      hexagon
      ·
      18 days ago

      This reminds me of how V***h claimed that Fred Hampton is one of his biggest inspirations for why he became a leftist, even though the funny-clown-hammer says a lot of anti-"tankie" stuff. Leftism is seriously just flashy aesthetics for so many people, especially many white "leftists."

    • Rojo27 [he/him]
      ·
      18 days ago

      Its part of the process of propagandizing the populace in America (and of course that gets exported due to America's soft power).

      I'd like to think I had a relatively decent education, but it wasn't until late in high school that I started getting exposed to the more leftist elements of the Civil Rights movement. Even then I don't remember learning much about some of the leaders of the Black Panthers because usually they are just mentioned in passing. Malcolm X is always presented as a problematic figure. MLK is completely white washed and you're beaten over the head with "I have a dream" and the effectiveness of peaceful disobedience. And thats not even going into international POC socialist leaders.

    • Al_Sham
      ·
      edit-2
      15 days ago

      deleted by creator