Freedom is a funny word in America. You are free to tell your boss to go fuck himself. You are also free to lose your paycheck, health insurance, home, and groceries. You are free to leave your landlord, assuming you can locate another affordable home in this mythical kingdom where wages kept pace with rent. Apparently, if nobody physically chains you to the time clock, every consequence afterward is just you enjoying liberty incorrectly. That is not meaningful freedom. It is a hostage negotiation with paperwork. Before anyone can exercise political freedom, they need food, shelter, medicine, transportation, and time. These are our material conditions. When access to those necessities is controlled by employers, landlords, banks, insurance companies, and corporations, those institutions acquire enormous power over our lives. That is class hierarchy. Class is not primarily about income, education, or whether you drink cheap beer or some nine-dollar fermented lawn clipping. It is about power. Who makes the decisions? Who benefits? Who gets stuck holding the flaming bag of consequences? Who can safely say no? A landlord raises the rent. The tenant must find the money. An employer cuts hours. The worker rearranges their entire life. An insurance company denies treatment. The patient gets sicker. A corporation closes a plant. The executives call it a “difficult decision,” collect their bonuses, and drive home to houses nobody is repossessing. Notice how the decision travels downward, but the consequences never seem to travel back up. That insulation is class power. But no hierarchy survives through force alone. It must convince people that the arrangement is natural, fair, and probably their own fault. That is how consent is manufactured. The landlord becomes a “housing provider.” The capitalist becomes a “job creator.” Obedience becomes professionalism. Exhaustion becomes poor time management. Poverty becomes personal failure. The worker who creates the wealth is described as an expense, while the owner extracting it gets treated like some kind of economic wizard. Everybody below gets a character flaw. Everybody above gets a job title. It is one hell of a magic trick. The person holding your survival hostage gets to call himself your benefactor, and you are expected to send a thank-you card. Capitalism does not usually begin its violence with a police baton. It begins with a schedule you cannot refuse, a medical bill you cannot pay, an eviction notice, a benefit termination, a denied insurance claim, or the threat of losing everything if you stop cooperating. The rent is due Friday, so the baton can remain in the patrol car. Economic coercion performs most of the discipline quietly. But when people resist collectively, the rest of the machinery suddenly becomes visible: union busting, lockouts, injunctions, courts, police, and prisons. Funny how the “free market” always seems to need armed backup whenever working people stop following orders. The system does not care about us. It does not even hate us. Hate would require a personal relationship. It measures our value according to what can be extracted from our labor, rent, debt, illness, and desperation. Liberation does not mean escaping into the mountains, buying the correct products, or becoming the most ethically pure shopper at Costco. Nobody personally boycotts their way out of an entire economic order. Freedom is the material ability to say no without having your life destroyed. One worker saying no becomes a personnel problem. An organized workplace saying no becomes a negotiation. One tenant refusing an increase gets an eviction notice. An organized park gets a bargaining table. Mutual aid makes retaliation survivable. Strike funds buy people time. Public services weaken the control employers hold through healthcare and basic survival. Cooperative and democratic ownership remove necessities from the hands of people who profit by withholding them. That is why the ruling class works so hard to keep us isolated, exhausted, indebted, frightened, and fighting one another over scraps. Private suffering produces shame. Shared suffering can produce class consciousness. Whenever you want to understand an institution, policy, or economic crisis, ask four questions: Who decides? Who profits? Who suffers the consequences? Who has the power to say no? The answers will show you the class hierarchy. The ruling class does not merely own more things. It owns the conditions under which everyone else is forced to make choices. Liberation begins when we organize enough collective power to make our “no” stick.
🚨A 79-year-old with 22 guns and dementia allegedly threatened to kill four Muslim men outside a library on Saturday. Nothing says “responsible gun owner” like promising to kill every Muslim in America. Troy, Michigan police say four men were outside the Troy Public Library offering free Quran translations when Peter Hamilton Northup approached and asked if they were Muslim. When they said yes, he allegedly said, “I’m going to kill all of you,” according to Mohamed Khalil, one of the men targeted. Khalil says Northup then motioned toward the pistol in his back pocket. “When someone comes up to you and says he wants to kill you and he has a gun in his pocket, you have to recognize there’s a possibility of something serious happening,” said Javed Ashraf, another man at the scene. The group stayed calm and called police instead of escalating. Officers arrested Northup, who was carrying a loaded pistol. Prosecutors say he has dementia, no criminal record, and a history of mental health checks — yet still held a concealed pistol license and 22 registered guns. Troy police seized 19 under an Extreme Risk Protection Order. Northup now faces four counts of aggravated hate crime, each punishable by up to 10 years and a $15,000 fine. These are charges, not convictions. This didn’t happen in a vacuum. Michigan Republicans have spent the past month mainstreaming this exact hatred against Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate nominee. —Trump called him a “Communist loser who hates Jews and Israel.” —JD Vance called him “evil.” —Sen. Tommy Tuberville posted that “Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed is a RADICAL ISLAMIST who will do everything he can to destroy America.” —At the GOP’s midterm convention in Dallas, as Ted Cruz warned about “the spread of sharia law” and name-checked El-Sayed, a voice in the crowd shouted “he should be shot.” A Center for the Study of Organized Hate study found anti-Muslim hate targeting El-Sayed rose twentyfold after his primary win. When party leaders openly muse about killing a Muslim candidate, a Troy library isn’t an isolated incident — it’s the same rhetoric with a loaded pistol attached
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How’s your peaceful neighborhood? Mine is torn to shreds. Here are the FBI and National Guard in front of my home, rounding up people in the neighborhood. Near the corner of Otis and Park Pl, nw. And the WORST part, they are handing out flyers with rewards if you turn in your neighbors . This is not fantasy….this is daily life in dc these days. You need no proof…..just the desire to collect cash. In Germany in the 1940's, they instituted Paragrapgh 175. This allowed for anyone to turn in their neighbor for being gay. No proof neccesary. Being accused was enough to send you to a concentration camp, thats all it took. This just in from councilman Nadeu’s office I am aware of patrols by National Guard and increased federal law enforcement presence this morning at Bruce-Monroe Elementary School and in Park View. I have confirmed with my own eyes that federal law enforcement is still present in the vicinity of the school, as children are playing outside for recess at Park View Recreation Center. As the National Guard, ICE, HSI, DEA, and other federal agencies patrol our streets, our residents continue to live in fear. This is unacceptable. Our kids and their families should be able to go to school without feeling intimidated and scared of armed guards lining the sidewalks. Our schools should be welcoming environments for our students, just as our District should welcome all who wish to call it home. Neighbors and parents are out talking with the agents and asking them to step away from the school building, explaining that their presence is scaring the children. Neighbors have reported being told that this activity is part of the ‘Safe and Beautiful’ effort led by President Trump. Of course, I believe that this makes our community neither safe nor beautiful. I have spoken with MPD 4th District leadership and they have agreed to ask federal law enforcement partners to avoid patrolling in the vicinity of the school. (This follows a request I made earlier in the week to have them stop patrolling in North Columbia Heights.) My understanding is that MPD was also present this morning as part of the Joint Task Force. That will keep happening until Mayor Bowser rescinds the cooperation order. I have spoken with school leadership to check in and make sure they have the support and resources they need. Parents and neighbors will continue to be outside the school today during recess and dismissal, and at arrival tomorrow. I want to commend the community members who are out today keeping our kids protected from the reality of the federal presence in our city. I want to thank school leadership for doing all they can with limited resources to keep our students safe. I’m so proud of our community. The National Guard has no business being here in the District of Columbia. The FBI has no business patrolling our schools. It’s time for federal agents to leave our communities alone. It’s time for the Mayor to rescind the cooperation order. It’s time for the MPD chief to rescind the cooperation order. The people of Ward 1 are resilient, as we have shown time and again over the 13 months of this shameful federal occupation. We will continue to stand up for one another, fight for one another, and protect one anothe
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