Hello adelaide people! After a bit of a break we're looking to restart the #Adelaide #Solarpunk #Community #Newsletter ! This time we want to involve more of the community, & put a big focus on platforming local voices that have been minimised

We need you! Are you a writer, artist or interested in journalism? Have some cool ideas? Message us to find out more or volunteer on the team, no skills needed, and please share to anyone interested

Hey everyone, I know both Zain & his wife, Sophia. We all worked together for #SaveOldGrowth & #StopEcocide work here in #BritishColumbia. What's happened to Zain is unjust & I'm asking you all to please read this whole post & sign the #petition. Thanks for your time & help. Please boost for wider reach.

* Last week, Prime Minister #MarkCarney revealed Lena Metledge Diab will serve as Canada’s new Immigration Minister.

The first thing Diab should do as Minister is bring #ClimateActivist Zain Haq back to Canada by greenlighting his Temporary Residence Permit that has been processing since January.

Zain was deported to Pakistan in January for climate activism that resulted in low-level mischief charges. He’d been living in Canada his entire adult life, and with his Canadian wife, Sophia Papp, since 2023.

Sophia has been given the devastating choice to remain in Canada without her spouse or relocate to #Pakistan , where she doesn’t speak the language and faces significant barriers to her health and wellbeing.

A mere 48 hours before Zain was deported, he and Sophia’s Spousal Sponsorship application was rejected by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) without substantive explanation.

The couple’s lawyer, Randall Cohn, has stated that this eleventh-hour rejection is likely illegal. It also denied Zain and Sophia’s right to procedural fairness, since they didn’t have time to access the appeal process enshrined in the #BillOfRights.

Zain and Sophia’s situation is reminiscent of the #unethical treatment of many #migrants in the U.S.

#IRCC ’s last minute rejection of a young couple’s Sponsorship Application without substantive reason should raise alarm bells for anyone of conscience, but especially for those with a #legal background – and before getting into #politics , Minister Diab was a #lawyer in Halifax. That’s why we have to get Zain’s file on her desk as soon as possible. *

https://info.dogwoodbc.ca/Nzc0LVNITy0yMjgAAAGaojayXiZm_H7wcAp51xUGCu4p2_h2edKAe6DW18ZVVROirXyyQRTyy9tQvopvAaCqJ1jgk0U=

Mark your calendars! This is my org’s biggest fundraiser of the year, happening this Sunday. We use funds from this #ceramics sale to support Black ceramic artists globally in the form of an Annual Award. Since 2021, we’ve distributed over $30k toward the goals of professional support, community building and cultural preservation. We are 100% #grassroots funded and rely on individual donations, so #DEI cuts cannot affect us. Check out last year’s awardees: www.kaaboclay.org

Happy May Day!

Presenting Taotech: https://taote.ch/ which I am working to establish as a not-for-profit: "Tending spaces where life happens so solidarity can emerge."

The website is also a Git repo, the software is a combo of #ikiwiki and #Forgejo.

Taotech aspires to be a spiritual successor to TAO communications and London Commons that will tend spaces both physical and online.

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Regime change in the west

https://hamishcampbell.com/regime-change-in-the-west/

Building #OGB is about power without #powerpolitics

https://hamishcampbell.com/building-ogb-is-about-power-without-powerpolitics/

From MorePerfectUnion IG. Had to share this as #valeriecosta proves each and everyone of us can make a huge difference. #teslatakedown #TeslaProtests #muskrat #trumpcoup #TrumpFascism #AOC #grassroots #unionstrong #usa2025 #TrumpPurge #trump2

Search for a candidate (or two, or ten!) that inspires you and get involved with their campaign.

https://runforsomething.net

#grassroots #grasstoorsorg #runforsomething #supportlocal #uspol

Looking for a way to creatively support queer/trans youth in the south? take a look at https://qords.org/!

We are a week-long radical sleep-away music camp for queer/trans youth ages 13-17 in #NorthCarolina!

Campers get to experience building queer community with peers & elders, & have a week to create a song(s) & perform it at the end-of-camp showcase! In between that, there are many workshops & fun activities!

We have a COVID-19 policy; with multiple testing sessions throughout camp, & mask requirements at various periods. (We are also reworking it so more can safely enjoy camp!)

There are plenty of ways to contribute, including...

-volunteering (we are especially looking out for nurses this year!)
-doing a workshop (examples we've had: zine-making, voice-training, local ecology, self-defense, & more!)
-spreading the word
-donating funds, supplies, or materials

We will be dropping camper & volunteer applications soon, so please follow us to stay updated. Or email us (in our bio) for any questions.

For the past month, I’ve watched in horror the unrelenting attacks on science and scientific institutions in the US: grants frozen, databases deleted, basic words banned, decades of progress undone overnight. And while the US is by far an extreme case, research budgets in other countries are also being reduced (or they weren’t that high to begin with). Plus, the rise of far-right extremism seems to be happening almost everywhere.

But what I’ve also seen during this time are incredible community efforts to back up data, to build decentralized infrastructure, to push back against these attacks wherever possible. And in the context of human health, it got me thinking: medical research already neglects portions of the population, so if traditional institutions won’t prioritize our health anyway, why don’t we?

What if we built a decentralized, citizen-driven research initiative, an open-source database to track and analyze health data from diverse populations across borders? A kind of bootleg science, resilient against institutional neglect and political suppression.

This is a very unbaked, maybe desperate and idealistic thought more than a plan. I have no clue where to start from, or if something similar already exists. But I’d love to hear what people think. Does this sound stupid/impossible/doable? All of the above?

Gdy pierwszoplanowe postacie Partii Demokratycznej w USA nagle zniknęły, nie widać przywództwa, Bernie Sanders jeździ po "czerwonych stanach" ze swoją opowieścią o potrzebie zatrzymania oligarchii i autorytaryzmu. I ludzie przychodzą na spotkania, bo nikt inny nie daje nadziei w tych trudnych dla nich czasach. Bernie wyrasta na lidera, mobilizuje jak zwykle ludzi #grassroots

Czytam komentarze o nim: "Tak, miał trochę racji we wszystkim przez cały czas..."
"Sanders był zbawieniem USA, ale my / oni (głównie DNC) całkowicie to spieprzyliśmy."

Cóż, jak trwoga, to do socjalisty bo liberałom jest niewygodnie teraz reagować...

FYI: Sanders nie należy do Partii. Jest niezależnym kongresmenem. Współpracuje z Demokratami od dawna. Ma 83 lata.

YouTube [EN]:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SD3_ZwzXvgQ

Invidious [EN]
https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=SD3_ZwzXvgQ

Anyone over on #BlueSky who is following #50501Movement - can you please ask them to bridge their account to Mastodon so we can follow them as well!

Their handle is - @50501movement.bsky.social

Here's the direct link - https://bsky.app/profile/50501movement.bsky.social

Thank you in advance! Just trying to boost the #grassroots organizing going on over here!

My old book blog has been defunct for years. But tonight, I've brought it back to life, because I needed a place to write about a book that has fired my spirits lately.

The book is "A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster" by Rebecca Solnit. Since I just spent a couple of hours writing about it at length - (maybe at too much length!) - I won't repeat the whole effort here. I'll just give a couple excerpts from my blog post here:

"It was average people, pooling resources and talents, banding together, improvising creatively, ad-libbing solutions, coordinating with each other, and building practical systems for themselves, which made the biggest impact. ...Over and over, the record shows neighbors, co-workers, and complete strangers rescuing each other, feeding and sheltering each other, organizing themselves before any officially designated authorities stepped in to take over."

"Maybe the real reason this book has affected me so profoundly is because I feel as though we are living in a cataclysmic disaster right now. Vandals and thugs are gutting every one of our normal community functions. We are shielding our heads from an avalanche of falling rubble, with nothing but destruction any way we look. Now, if ever, we need mutual aid, on-the-spot solutions, grassroots communities of care."

Link to my blog post:

https://mariasbooks.wordpress.com/2025/02/16/a-paradise-built-in-hell/

Publisher's info about the book:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/301070/a-paradise-built-in-hell-by-rebecca-solnit/

When I think how amazing is #FOSS, and how miserable are the corporate platforms and arrangements that govern most of humanity, the wish for #grassroots spaces like the fediverse in #videogames seems like the only nice option for a cool #metaverse. On the other hand, maybe it is within the actually functional metaverses, those owned by microsoft and nasty CEOs, those containing hundreds of millions of concurrent players; that the arena for interesting action lies.

The biggest #challenge of the #SocialWeb is that people aren't able to collaborate at scale unless under money-driven artificial #organization structures, based on hierarchy, authority and power dynamics.

In #grassroots movements we think we found a better way, but we haven't. We just found the power of "loose sand" to - at most - sting in the bleary eyes of #Hypercapitalism. Not in the eyes of the crazed billionaires who are the engine of this vile system. They are laughing them bro-balls out.