map witch ebel ⛧ 🧙‍♀️🗺️🌍 @ebel@moytura.org

New #OpenStreetMap project: Mapping & Tagging #Irish pubs! I'm using `theme=irish` tag (as per discussion on tagging@ & talk-ie@ lists). Now to search the #OSM database to find them and tag them.

Engineer shows off her awesome mechanical dinosaur costume https://boingboing.net/2019/10/12/engineer-tests-out-her-awesome.html

Half the time you talk to capitalist bootlickers about private property, they're arguing about the ability to own your own home and the land it stands on.

Which is literally what communists want: not to pay rent to landlords--you own your domicile and don't owe anyone for land rights anymore than you "steal" the air you breathe.

What most leftists mean by abolishing private property is unused land or concentration of the MOP within a small group of elites--excess property that one person or co-owners could not possibly work themselves.

The same goes for businesses: if the business cannot be run by its owners alone, then there needs to be a distribution of either ownership or profits until we can find a better system where profit is no longer necessary.

I think the problem with nonviolence comes down to how the state has coopted and redefined the term "violence"

Private property has no rights. Smashing a storefront or torching a cop car isn't "violent" because it doesn't actually harm anyone

If you define nonviolence as "not causing direct harm to any individuals except in self-defense against a direct attack" then I think a huge number of radicals would agree with that. But when most people say "nonviolent" what they mean is "nonthreatening," and yeah, that's gonna be ineffective, almost tautologically

Part of why we say "solidarity not charity" is because the way charity is typically presented gives moral superiority to the givers - and often, moral inferiority to the receivers (or sometimes "takers," if they decide to be particularly transparent about it)

Truisms like "it is better to give than to receive" implicitly contain "it is wrong to receive help." It's wrong to ask for the support you need, to want it, even to accept it when offered. Panhandling, for instance, is often portrayed not just as shameful, but immoral - even greedy

Solidarity, and especially mutual aid, are meant to reject that dichotomy. Everyone at Food Not Bombs eats together, volunteers and otherwise, and talks to each other. Our Free Store puts "it's free because it's yours" all over its reading material - it's not a gift, not a blessing, not charity. And that makes *such* a big difference