i don’t put pictures of myself on the internet
Stop the deportation of Yaya!
Yaya used to be an activist of the Gambian opposition movement against president Yahaya Jammeh.
The former army officer first seized power in a military coup in 1994 and was re-elected last year in a widely criticized election. After an arson attack in 2004 Yaya fled the country and applied for asylum in Austria.
The Austrian asylum court, however, rejected Yaya’s appeal, cynically claiming that he could easily move back to Gambia together with his 2.5 year old daughter and her mother.
As he is due to be deported to Gambia, a manifestation was hold on Thursday, May 24, 2012 at 5pm in front of the Police Detention Center PAZ in Vienna (8, Hernalser Gürtel 6-12). After a ralley walked to the new :: deportation centre in Nussdorfer Straße 23. [link to german language text] Some 230 people participated, few passers-by joined the protest spontaneously. It was a loud and powerfull demonstration.
:: Support the campaign for Yaya’s right to stay and sign :: this petition!
A few of our edge friends used to sell drugs, long time ago.
So, no.
really? the best (and, apparently, only) reason you can think of to oppose violently killing people who sell drugs is that some of your friends who are straight edge now used to sell drugs?
and sxe kids still wonder why some people don’t like them.
Oh wow I thought I dreamed this up but no
Remember when that well-regarded cyberpunk blog changed its banner to a knock-off swastika and parteiadler and nobody gave a shit
Also remember when I messaged them and they invited me to ask them about their “spiritual, aesthetic and artistic beliefs” before passing judgement
And how now they’ve changed the banner to something else without acknowledging any fucked upedness on their part
and how still nobody gives a shit
wow.
the cog which is also part of the blog’s banner may be less well known than the swastika and the adler, but is also a symbol which is heavily associated with national socialism; most notably it was used as a symbol for workers featuring in the logo of the DAF (Deutsche Arbeiterfront, German Labourer’s Front), the NS trade union. see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Deutsche_Arbeitsfront.svg
plus, the lightning bolt of course resembles the sig runes that the SS used. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_Schutzstaffel.svg
i’m kind of annoyed by these kids going,
“don’t judge me for not doing drugs, i’m not just ___ (fill in: [boring] [scared] [weak] [whatever people call sober people to put them down])! actually, i don’t do drugs because i know a deep moving sadness since this person i had some kind of contact with did drugs and it was horrible!”
i understand not wanting to do drugs because you’ve had hurtful experiences with drug users. (especially if those people were close to you, in some position of power over you, or had a responsibility to look after you which they couldn’t fulfill.) that makes a lot of sense and it’s true, people shouldn’t be giving you shit for that.
it just becomes a problem if you over simplify the issue, acting as if all drugs were the same and all drug users were the same, and demand people to empathize with you while you yourself appear to have zero empathy for the people who actually end up doing and being addicted to drugs. in your narratives, all users and addicts appear to just be selfish, broken, destructive beings who are barely even people. you don’t seem to try and empathize with why they are doing what they do. you don’t acknowledge their complexities and that their actions - which may very well be problematic - are a result of more than their drug use. you don’t even appear to think they are actually people who think things and want things and do things anymore, you only seem to worry about “what the drugs will make them do”. they’re junkies, they’re druggies, and that’s all they are so they don’t really matter. the only one who matters is you, who has in some way been affected by them.
it just reminds me of my boyfriend’s funeral, when they gave a short summary of his life and they briefly talked about the period when he was living on the streets, which they didn’t even directly refer to as such but only called “a hard time for [him] - but an even harder time for us”. which just, shut the fuck up and get over yourselves. yes of course it sucks to know that this person you care about is a homeless addict who doesn’t accept your help, but you know what probably sucks even more? being a homeless addict and not getting the help you actually need.
things is, there are reasons why people end up being addicted to or otherwise developing destructive patterns around their drug use. usually it’s the result of being unable to cope with one’s issues in another way, which isn’t just an inherent lack of strength or lack of character, it’s a lack of other resources. this goes for both a psychological dependency and the ~physical side of addiction. simply saying drugs are evil and users are terrible helps no one - addicts won’t find ways to deal with their addictions and since users who hurt others due to their behaviour related to their drug use won’t stop behaving that way, people will keep on being hurt by them.
i’m not saying you have to accept and cherish and enable everything that users do, but if you want people to respect you and your history and your resulting choices around drug use, it would be fair to have the same respect for others, and that includes people who do use drugs. otherwise you’re reducing people to nothing but plot devices for your own tragic back story.
