emsenn says end food apartheid @emsenn@ecosteader.com

As my computer use continues to evolve, it's less and less likely I'll be posting meaningful things here. :(

The current alternative is that I'll be sending out an email broadcast - once public, once for paid subscribers, talking about the various sorta stuff I talk about.

For now, I'll be using Substack, a proprietary service, since they provide the necessarily payment processing without unreasonable overhead.

https://emsenn.substack.com/p/coming-soon?r=9neis&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=copy

Since y'all have gotten access to all my rambling without any sort of gate so far, anyone who wants a paid subscription, just DM me your email and I'll hook you up.

8 years ago today a distracted driver caused me to be injured in a very very bad auto accident. death was likely, even 6 months on I was being told I wouldn't walk again. lost my career and home.

but! now i have a new home, and can walk around my garden without a cane!

small update: got a comrade who's in from another state coming through to learn from our garden in a few days, so they can establish a similar project elsewhere.

pretty exciting!

no specifics on what i'm up to but it's always a good time to send me money https://ko-fi.com/emsenn

good instance for sex workers?

it's almost summer!

send money to https://ko-fi.com/emsenn & itll go toward stop the bleed kits and such.

What's that like, lefty forum software with votes and stuff?

Uh @technomancy @KitRedgrave uh @68km i'm tagging y'all because you might know

Saturday marks 1 year since I moved (under threat of death) to what's turned into a much better home; we've got a bigger garden, more space inside, there's not racists trying to beat me up every few weeks, all in all, big improvement.

I'd love to celebrate it somehow; probably by buying a tree to add to the garden, or something similar. Help me do so at http://ko-fi.com/emsenn please :D

Yesterday a year ago is when my boss/landlord started destroying my garden because "COVID is over;" within a couple days things escalated to their brother-in-law threatening to kill me and my partner.

Local white anarchists were too busy antagonising and surveilling us for our anti-colonial stance to offer any aid.

But a couple anarchists of colour stepped up and helped us relocate what plants we could, before my boss could haul them away themselves.

Luckily! Someone here in the Fediverse happened to live in an adjacent city, so me and my partner moved before things could escalate further, but we had to leave behind most of our stuff (from bowls & spoons to furniture to books, to the rest of our garden)

It also meant we suddenly stopped being able to host what we called the "cottenboro free market," where we distributed out free food from local gardens & bakeries and stuff, as well as gave away whatever else we got given to share.

Since then, we've been trying to figure out how to integrate ourselves into the local anti-colonial tapestry. We're not at the little crossroads of our town anymore, and that tbh made a lot of things p easy!

Its looking more and more like we're going to focus on being part of a decentralized network of nurseries (you can read more about this sorta stuff from lobelia commons down in bvlbancha, we don't have relevant material yet)

We've got other stuff we're working on, but building up stock of perennials that'll thrive in this region seems to be where we're naturally focusing, as we shape how we spend our energy to what's going on around us.

I don't think I have a point here except to share a bit about what's going on and how we got here; I've gotten a lot of new followers recently that probably don't know that the GAZ is having to rebuild after fascists & apologists ran us out of town.

And I think not knowing that maybe leads folk to expect more... coherence or development from the project than is really feasible, given our past experiences.

i just wanna come here to brag on my cat who has now been trained to watch the kettle and come get me when it's about to boil, so i don't have to

(Watch, someone will explain how the can't post "blow up cop cars" on their anonymous profile accessed through a vpn hosted on a foreign server because then that might be EVIDENCE, and why am I asking people to snitch on themselves, am I a *cop*?

Meanwhile on Twitter indigenous elders go on video using their government names to advocate for just that.

*shrug*

We'll never win when there's a cop hiding in your hearts, my friends.

*checks twitter*
people are openly advocating for firebombing the homes of supreme court justices

*checks fediverse*
people are talking fediverse culture, how open source software is lefitst, something about some big company

---

I know I just have my tiny window into the Fediverse but I am begging people here to interrogate how the transition into late liberalism intersects with decentralized software to further invisibilize the settler-colonial norm which situates radicalism, yes even legitimate radicalism, as a subcultural aesthetic.

Two other questions:

1) Mastodon client for iPhone?
2) Mastodon/Twitter crossposter?

Does anyone here have any experience setting up a collective on OpenCollective and would be willing to help answer some questions I might have as I go through the process?

I encourage collectives to look at how they challenge colonial labour divisions. Do the femme folk cook the meals & do the dishes? Do the racialised folk do the manual & janitorial labour?

Are the privileged people in your collective only bringing skills & capabilities they've secured through their privilege, or are they participating in whatever ways seem necessary to the group based on your situation?

Can't count the number of times I've watched a project fail because the 2 people willing to hammer nails weren't enough, no matter how many white people were willing to donate & make posters.

If someone asks you for help, give them the kind of help they ask for. Settlers are trained to only act if something is their specialty: reject that training and help wherever you can. We need experts, yes, but when the ship is under attack, even the cook comes to the deck.

When war came to Ukraine the GAZ decided we'd use the land we can access to grow more calories than we were planning on. This meant converting lawn into agricultural space, and I'm the only active Groundhog with the skills/capability to do that.

So that's what I've been working on most of my days the past couple months. (Yes, it took a while, between weather, disability, and me using nothing but used hand-tools.)

Yesterday! I finally put mulch over the seed. I'm done! (More or less)

emsenn says end food apartheid
@emsenn
·
46m
When war came to Ukraine the GAZ decided we'd use the land we can access to grow more calories than we were planning on. This meant converting lawn into agricultural space, and I'm the only active Groundhog with the skills/capability to do that.
emsenn says end food apartheid
@emsenn
·
46m
So that's what I've been working on most of my days the past couple months. (Yes, it took a while, between weather, disability, and me using nothing but used hand-tools.)

Yesterday! I finally put mulch over the seed. I'm done! (More or less)

I'm excited because it feels like I haven't been able to do much of anything else, and most of my days have been 10+ hours of physical labor, and now I can catch up on all the stuff I missed out on, like, uh, weeding other beds.