Charles ☭ Hutchins @celesteh@mastodon.social

if obama couldn't nominate a new justice before the general, trump can't nominate a new justice before the midterms.

I'm set to have my second phaloplasty person on Wednesday and I am feeling extremely stressed about it

#SCOTUS just refused to hear arguments about a murderer who got the death penalty instead of life in prison. In some states jurors vote on what punishment somebody should get after that person is found guilty. In this particular case, multiple jurors said they thought gay men ~enjoy~ being in prison, so they voted to kill him. https://www.snopes.com/news/2018/06/25/gay-man-sentenced-death/

(The president appoints the courts. Voting matters.)

#homophobia #deathpenalty

I remember when the Communists for Kerry and the Billionaires for Bush had a brief but loud tiff in the streets of NYC.....

Democratic Communists of America

Just joined the Democrats Abroad international progressive caucus with the goal of getting some regular meetings going in London in the autumn.

Democrats Abroad UK did not help organise or even help advertise the family separation protest at the US embassy on Saturday. When I asked why not, they complained about ~communists~ being involved.

Guess what bloody picture appears on DA International's web page as their first rotating banner picture? (It's got like 4 people in it and is thus communist-free)

A: I was photographed next to a communist banner

B: http://warisboring.com/a-childrens-gitmo-on-the-border/

Which is worse?

[CW on the link for child abuse]

Pearl-clutchng about communists in 2018 is a willfull misidentification of who our enemies actually are.

Also, when full automation comes, capitalism is fucking over. We can all become serfs to the people who own the robots, or we can look at some form of anarchism, communism, whatever. We need to be thinking about not just winning now, but the looming future and what kind of world we want. A lot of shit is about to happen very quickly. The pentagon is making plans, so maybe we should too?

The UK has no progressive caucus. The LGBT caucus has meetings that are cocktail parties. One of the guys from yesterday's protest complained to the chair that he was photographed next to communists. I was under the impression that she thought this was a good reason not to be involved in them.

I am going to investigate forming a far-left caucus. There's no way I would be doing this if I wasn't an expat, but this is an emergency in america.

Extremely loud canadians outside, singing the candian national anthem and clinking beer bottles.

(Some of you aren't into voting. The right wing LOVES this about lefty youth. And also, it's extremely hard to be active in US politics from overseas, but there are enough voters outside the country to swing elections.)

The highlight summary:

* Fully automated gay space luxury communism showed up with a banner and then did some kind of action.
* The protest was intersectional, multi-ethnic and anti-sexist.
* Attendance was decent for a saturday afternoon demo in front of the weirdly-located embassy.
* Democrats abroad may not be willing to /join/ a lefty coalition or promote their actions, but at least sends bodies and does voter registration, which is a good thing they do.

The lowlight summary:

* A corporate planner encouraged everyone to be civil.
* Democrats remain staunchly anti-communist.
* Cops with machine guns made comments to each other about where should have been allowed to bicycle

The guy standing next to me realised we knew each other from various professional connections just as the communists with their pink banner made a short call to action, ending with 'Let's not be convenient!' They marched off.

I wrapped up the conversation with the music guy and went after them, but, I guess true to their word, I couldn't figure out what direction they went in. Or what inconvenient thing they did.

They were Plan C http://www.weareplanc.org

Trump wants it to be 1933. Corbyn lives in 1977. Apparently DA is in 1955, not associating with young (obviously queer) communists?

I objected and the guy was nice and eager to get me involved when I said I was interested in being part of the far left fringe of the party. (Will such a course of action suck away all my energy or get them to join a broader leftist coalition? (I do already know the answer, but it's hard to be involved in US politics from outside the US.))