"Can't afford food? Blame billionaires, not immigrants"
Poster spotted in Toronto

Freight graffiti for Sonya Massey. On July 6, 2024, Sonya Massey, a 36-year-old African-American woman, was murdered in her home by deputy Sean Grayson of the Sangamon County Sheriff's Office in Woodside Township near Springfield, Illinois.

“The Democratic Party didn't just change their nominee, they have changed their message in the final hundred days before the election.”

https://www.axios.com/2024/08/01/kamala-harris-joe-biden-president-strategy-election

NEW: Billionaire Elon Musk has created a PAC collecting voter data from those living in key states through an online "register to vote" form that does not directly register people to vote.

All of this in an effort to help Donald Trump become president.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/02/elon-musk-pac-voter-data-trump-harris.html

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On this day, 2 August 1924, James Baldwin, renowned gay Black author and social critic was born in Harlem, New York City. Frustrated with endemic racism in the United States, he moved to France where he spent most of his life. However, he did return to the US during the civil rights movement and played an active role in fighting racism, despite the official movement's homophobia, encouraging civil disobedience and taking part in the March on Washington in 1963 and the Selma march in 1965. Baldwin believed racism to be a central tool of US capitalism, telling journalist Joe Walker: "Racism is crucial to the system to keep Black and whites at a division so both were and are a source of cheap labour… The price of any real socialism here [in the US] is the eradication of what we call the race problem."In 1968 Baldwin also pledged to refuse to pay tax in protest against the Vietnam war. For these "subversive" activities, Baldwin was subjected to illegal surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who collated 1,884 pages of documents on him. This collection of writings by Angela Davis begins with the letter sent to her by Baldwin: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/products/if-they-come-in-the-morning-angela-davis To access this hyperlink, click our link in bio then click this photo

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On this day, 3 August 1492, Christopher Columbus set sail from Palos, Spain, for the “Indies,” with disastrous consequences for the people who already lived there. There are popular myths that he discovered the United States and proved the earth was round. However, he never even set foot in what is now the mainland US, and the fact that the earth was a sphere had been known since the days of the ancient Greeks. Columbus himself believed the earth to be pear-shaped. He landed in what is now known as the Bahamas, where he and his crew were greeted by the Indigenous Taíno people, who lived in village communes and held all property in common.Columbus began immediately imprisoning and murdering the Indigenous people and enslaving them in the search for gold. The Taíno people began fighting back but couldn’t defeat the Spanish, with their advanced weaponry and armor, so many began to kill themselves and their children to avoid a worse fate. Within just two years, half of the 250,000 Indigenous people on nearby Haiti were dead. More colonisers came, and the genocide of the native population continued across the Caribbean and the Americas. Despite all of this, today, in many places across the region, Indigenous communities survive and continue to resist.Exactly 500 years later, in 1992, Indigenous peoples around the Americas organised protests against celebrations of the event. Our latest double podcast episode explores them, and the 32 years of Native American resistance which are followed. You can support our work like this, and listen early, by joining us on patreon at https://patreon.com/workingclasshistory Link in bio

TIL obesity results in more chronic health issues overall than smoking, drinking or poverty. While all of the listed issues harm health, it was found that obesity was linked to a wider array of chronic health issues. [source, comments]

The mask came off for a brief minute at a Foreign Relations Committee meeting where US Senator Todd Young asked how the US can better position itself to “exploit” the African continent. The US ruling elite is in a panic over how to compete with China’s dominance worldwide, which has resulted in some very frank statements like this one.

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"Stop bombs on Gaza"
Seen in Ljubljana, Slovenia

The wave of racist attacks taking place around the UK is, in part, the consequence of right-wing billionaires acquiring control of social media. After Elon Musk bought Twitter, he reinstated the accounts of Tommy Robinson and many other fascists. One of Tommy Robinson's key henchmen posted the video that contributed to setting off this wave of attacks. Musk has continued to stoke the fires.

While liberals may respond by calling for more crackdowns on "extremism" on social media, such crackdowns would inevitably target the anti-fascists who represent the last line of defense against despotism. Instead, let's start by asking what it is that billionaires like Elon Musk stand to gain from scapegoating immigrants and promoting civil war, then consider what it will take to stop them.

https://crimethinc.com/twittercanary

Warum Privatisierungen alles schlimmer machen:
https://taz.de/Ausverkauf-der-Stadt/!6010700/

Nigerians have taken to the streets against the decadent ruling elite and the crushing poverty they are enduring. State forces launched teargas, live bullets, and hot water at protesters. A curfew was implemented in the northern states of Kano and Yobe. Amnesty International reported that 13 protesters were killed and 300 were arrested.

The protests come on the heels of uprisings in Kenya and Uganda, who have protested similar issues. In Nigeria, food inflation is at 40% and according to the UN, 32 million people across Nigeria are starving. Nigerians cannot afford fuel despite the country being one of the largest oil exporting countries in the world.

10 days of protests have been organized under the slogan “End Bad Governance in Nigeria.” The organizers have stressed that these issues cut across ethnic, tribal, and religious lines, stating, “we are not slaves.”

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