I’ve worked 13 hours straight and had to organize a push to get us fed dinner.

There’s a good chance I’m stuck here for 2 more hours, meaning I get 0 time to do anything except sleep and do this again.

I want to quit so badly, but I’m basically forced to be here because this job market is such shit that it took a year to get this job. And I consider myself lucky to have this.

There’s a thread on lemmygrad from someone that’s also exhausted around the discourse about the American “left”. Yes we suck, yes we are privileged compared to a lot of people, yes our organizing is tame and not effective, yes my material conditions mean I’m not doing adventurism and neither are my comrades.

BUT don’t claim we’re not trying. I know people working two jobs. I technically have 2 jobs and am maybe able to get back on my feet financially in a few months. We still do what we can and it’s not enough but we’re not at that point. Yeah that’s privileged if you call being scared shitless of being homeless and being abused by literally every other human here…

I’m tired

    • Jabril [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      28·
      3 months ago

      Eh, I live in the states now and do work with unhoused people and people in poverty and plenty still drink alcohol, eat treats, watch slop on their big TVs and smart phones, eat out and more. Of course some people don’t but it’s a marginal amount. I’ve literally watched football on a big screen TV in a tent in a homeless encampment in the US

        • LeninWeave [none/use name, any]@hexbear.netMEnglish
          7·
          3 months ago

          I think Jabril’s point is that there are parts of the world where they do not (have access to luxury items, obviously literally refrigerators would be an extreme example to choose - yet it’s still true for some).

          I think it’s not fair to compare what Jabril is saying to Fox News thinking homeless people shouldn’t have refrigerators.

          • Jabril [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
            5·
            3 months ago

            I used to live in a house with no windows, bug nets on beds to avoid mosquito illness, snakes coming and going as they please, no hot water, no refrigerator. Our daily pot of beans just sat on the stove and got turned back on in the morning to heat it up. The only meat was the scrap organs from a butcher friend every now and then. I knew people that only ate rice because the colonial destruction of local knowledge deprived people of the ability to even forage for food, they didn’t even know what was growing naturally around them anymore and otherwise couldn’t afford to buy groceries in general because international tourists fucked the local economy. I never heard people complaining, although the saddest part for me was that some of the younger generation hated their native language and Indigenous features because they blamed their Indigeneity on their conditions.

            • LeninWeave [none/use name, any]@hexbear.netMEnglish
              2·
              3 months ago

              …I wish I knew what to say, but I don’t. Thank you for sharing this. Humanity will never truly be free until we abolish the imperialist systems which maintain this inequality.

              • Jabril [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
                3·
                3 months ago

                And these conditions weren’t even bad compared to other places! Imagine being a miner in the congo, not to mention places suffering from war. When I think of my friends I mostly remember smiles and laughter… To be in Syria, Palestine, Sudan, or so many other places is truly a hell that makes even what I say seem incredibly privileged

                • LeninWeave [none/use name, any]@hexbear.netMEnglish
                  3·
                  3 months ago

                  I think the fact that you have this perspective (that things could have been worse) certainly contrasts with some people in this thread seemingly insisting that there’s no privilege to being born in the global north.