@crballer
Doctoral Candidate at Virginia Tech I study social movements and environmental justice. My dissertation is about how pipeline fighters in Appalachia have navigated escalating state and corporate repression. Free Palestine 🇵🇸
This is an interesting story out of Scotland. I love to hear stories like this (see also: “Raging Grannies”) where elders deploy their grandmother/grandfather identities in activist contexts. I am exploring some of these themes in my dissertation about the MVP!
www.aberdeenlive.news/news/aberdee...
Extreme weather events are not inherently disastrous, they only become disastrous when they impact human systems without the capacity to handle them.
A hazard becomes a disaster because of deficiencies in human-built and human-managed systems.
Excited to host folks from the Stop Cop City fight in Atlanta for their imaginary crimes tour, which highlights the repression this movement has faced. This event is today on Virginia Tech’s campus! If you are local to SWVA, please come out!
At least 500 Awajún Indigenous community Earth Defenders stormed and seized Station 5 of the Norperuvian Pipeline in protest of repeated oil spills by state-run Petroperú. The rivers and land are being poisoned. They demand urgent aid and justice. #3E #EndImpunity #EndAutogenocide
I recently found the “abolition is for everybody” podcast and I’m excited to assign a few episodes to my Social Problems class this summer, encouraging them to think about alternative forms of accountability in the context of mental health, education, and mass incarceration generally.
I am also excited to be able to assign my students important books and articles by some of my favorite scholars and journalists including @nicke.bsky.social, @ninalakhani.bsky.social and @alleenbrown.bsky.social
I will be teaching this course in the Fall and I am excited to have many important conversations with my students about repression, protest policing, infiltration, surveillance, etc. I am honored to continue the tradition of @nickcopel.bsky.social who taught this course at VT before me.
My dissertation interviews have posed an important problem: How do we keep our movements secure in an age of escalating surveillance and repression while also leaving them open enough to build community and welcome new people? Is a “welcoming security culture” a contradiction in terms?
👏🏼”Don’t capitulate.”👏🏼”They’ll take your funding anyway.”👏🏼
This resonated with me: “We have reached a choice point, not about whether we are facing apocalypse but what form it will take.” Disaster research shows that fascism isn’t the only possible outcome of apocalypse. Community, cooperation and mutual aid gesture towards more just forms of apocalypse.
After months of striking, some therapists with Kaiser Permanente stopped eating for five days to bring attention to their union's demands for parity with how the company's other workers are treated.
Palestine solidarity activists are being kidnapped and deported because these movements largely succeeded. They caused a tectonic shift in public opinion against arming Israel and educated a generation about Zionist apartheid and US imperialism.
As we advocate on the supply-side for renewables and against fossil fuels, we need to also be thinking about ways to reduce energy demand. Energy efficiency is low hanging fruit, but we need to also have harder conversations about consumption.
This is why demand-side solutions are so important: renewables are not replacing fossil fuels. They are both going up which means emissions are still going up. Phasing out fossil fuels is a much tougher sell when energy demand is rising.
So overwhelmingly and chaotically bad that it is difficult to figure out the best way to prioritize time and energy
As a Jew, I am appalled and disgusted by the weaponization of my identity to justify Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda of deporting international students who speak out for a Free Palestine. I have experienced more anti-semitism from Trump supporters than I ever have from international students.
We also explore the way a “diversity of tactics” approach can shut down dialogue/conflict in the name of tactical diversity. We explore an alternative approach to building a movement with diverse tactics, one grounded in mutual respect and openness towards conflict, an “ecosystem of tactics”.
I want to share an article of mine published last year. Taking the MVP resistance as its case, it explores the value of radical tactics in a social movement, but also how to bridge moderate and radical factions within a movement. If anyone needs the PDF, DM me.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
I will have to come back to this article when I have more time and space to fully digest it, but I really appreciate this critique.
wow, very excited to see my first publication out in the world... and in my dream journal no less! so thankful to my supervisor @laurenbwilcox.bsky.social and the editorial team @antipodeonline.bsky.social for helping this come into being onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
This decision is likely to significantly suppress organizational support for direct action in the future. An absolute disaster of a decision by a jury with severe conflicts of interest.
💥The coalition is STRONG.💥
"Pittsylvania County faces pollution risks from three proposed fossil fuel projects: a new gas plant from the developer Balico, a massive extension of the existing Transco pipelines (SSEP) and an extension of the ruinous Mountain Valley Pipeline."
godanriver.com/article_a40f...
I think Marvel Rivals made the right decision, given these inherent disadvantages, to make Quick Match cross play and Competitive not cross play.
The free tier of the pass, to be clear.
Nah I earned Lattice in game through the battle pass.
Any Venom tips?
Certain heroes are hitscan (no leading) and others are projectile (leading), so if you are having trouble with lag related to leading shots, it might be helpful to try a hitscan hero.
Timing a Jeff ult to take out a full team is not easy. It’s an error to be that grouped up. Plus there are tons of counters to Jeff’s ult. People just need to learn them.
