I wish more people realized that they, personally, lost the battle against fascism the day they let a capitalist government, and not public health, convince them to stop wearing a mask and taking other COVID mitigations. If you couldn't resist the appeal of fascist logic when it was an anomaly, if you haven't reflected on your relationship to power since? I straight don't trust you to do anything but bend your knee to whichever power, whenever it comes. I don't care how much you think orange man bad: if you're not still wearing a mask, you're not someone I trust to actually fight. I mean, you haven't - you aren't - when the cost to fight is some PPE and a tolerance for being outside the norm. And tbh if you can't do that? I think it's fair for me to press a giant X for doubt when you start talking about how this new plugin you're working on is going to undermine American Nazism, just a soon as the world knows what an IndieWeb is. Y'all think a psyop is what Musk did to Twitter - and it is. But it's also what happened to you, when you decided you could be a political radical without actually doing anything different than the folk around you who aren't. Just... Please recognize that if you spent the Biden administration walking around grocery stores without a mask, you are a *huge* part of what normalized the level of uncaring social compartmentalization we have today. And so before you make yet another post that beats your guilt over that away with a broom, talking about how you recycled this week so clearly can't be one of those Germans who just went along with things... ...consider that yeah, you probably are. And the sooner you accept that might be true, the quicker you can change how you're approaching things... ...and who knows? Maybe you'll even decide that you don't want to be part of the repeat infection and brain damage cycle. Or - and I hate to say it - maybe you've gotten that viral whack to the noggin too many times already, and you can't actually change your mind anymore - like one of those lead-addeled boomers - and you're too far in your own cognition to see the problem - just like those lead-addeled boomers. In which case? Fight for a society of mutual aid like your life depends on it, because these fash aren't gonna do anything but laugh if you gave yourself health problems so they could get rich. I might say "told ya so" first but at least I'll go out and grab you some herbs to help ease the brain fog.

seeing too much "this is what you get for not voting for Harris" and not enough "this is what happens when I focus too much on voting"

The U.S. government questioning Native Americans' birthright citizenship isn’t just a bureaucratic issue—it’s a fundamental attack on Indigenous sovereignty. Native people are dual citizens: members of our sovereign nations first and foremost, with U.S. citizenship imposed on us in 1924 to erode that sovereignty. Now, the state is threatening to claw back even this imposed recognition, undermining treaty obligations and the legal frameworks that acknowledge our nations’ existence. This is settler colonialism in action—using laws to erase and control. We’ve always existed as independent peoples, long before the U.S. imagined itself into being, and we’ll continue to exist regardless of what the settler state decides. This fight isn’t about fitting into their system; it’s about defending our right to govern ourselves on our terms.

Salon.com

"Excluding Indians": Trump admin questions Native Americans' birthright citizenship in court

The Trump admin is leaning on a pre-14th Amendment law in its fight to redefine birthright citizenship.

#LandBack #IndigenousSovereignty

Hey y'all, didn't get any help with covering the storage unit costs - this'll hopefully be the last time I have to come asking, since my partner's paychecks will start coming in, but right now we need the help to not lose a bunch of the stuff we had to abandon after some white settlers visiting the rez on (essentially) a mission trip doxxed us to an armed gang of sex traffickers that's targeting us. (Yes, it has been... a lot.)

Ko-fi

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$emsenn0 on Venmo and Paypal --- And while I know it's gauche for beggars to be choosers, I'd love if the help we got this time came from outside the same dozen people who have been helping me bounce back after these failed experiments in anarchism for the past few years.

Sitting Bull was murdered on this day in 1890. His story is often reduced to legend, but I and other Lakota are the living proof that his resistance shaped history, and will shape our future. #LandBack

Back in February, I told you that my family and I were moving to Lakota territory to engage in food autonomy and build something rooted in sovereignty. We believed we’d find a space where we could work without the immediate interference of settler systems, where our time wouldn’t be consumed by reacting to settler expectations of our existence. I was wrong. Instead, we found ourselves confronting colonization’s worst scars, not just in the actions of settlers, but in how deeply those scars have been carved into my kin. The family we went to collaborate with had turned the language of sovereignty into a smokescreen for harm. Behind their rhetoric was an armed gang engaged in drug trade, sex trafficking, and child sexual assault. We tried to confront this, to protect the kids who were being harmed, and that’s what made us targets. It wasn’t just my kin who came after us. Settlers who had been drawn to this gang’s performative decolonial rhetoric—leftists, professional organizers, and self-appointed allies—chose to believe what suited their sense of solidarity, ignoring the violence they were enabling. Their intervention wasn’t just misguided; it reinforced the harms of colonization. These were settlers doing missionary work, whether or not they called it that. (Read this post on my Substack, if you'd like:

Looking for Homes, Old and New

Letters from emsenn, an independent theorist using Lakota philosophy to study the world around them.

) When we sought refuge, it was with an elder whose intentions to protect us were undermined by their own reliance on colonized notions of solidarity. A couple professional activists who came to visit the elder revealed our location to those targeting us. Once more, we were forced to flee. Leaving the reservation, leaving my kin, was the only way to keep my immediate family safe. Now, my family and I are in the Great Lakes region, trying to rebuild. It’s exhausting, but not defeating. Through all of this, one truth has emerged: I need to return to the virtual spaces where we’ve built connections, because those spaces have proven themselves as meaningful and uniquely capable of helping me unearth the truths I need to continue this work. Virtual spaces are not free from settler dynamics. They are settler by default, embedded in the same systems of control and coercion that dominate the physical world. Yet, they also offer something unique. They allow for questioning, for stepping back and experimenting with relationships and ideas in ways that the physical world, in its immediacy, often stifles. These spaces let me connect with people who share orientations toward liberation but occupy different positions in life, broadening the possibilities for solidarity. They let me write my truths fully, without being interrupted or dismissed mid-sentence, and without being reduced to “just another Native griping.” They allow for asynchronous engagement, which gives people the time to reflect instead of reacting defensively, trapped by ego or fear. For someone like me, who is physically disabled, virtual spaces also remove barriers to participation that physical spaces often reinforce. They provide a buffer, a space where I can engage deliberately and build relationships thoughtfully. And maybe most importantly, they offer a sense of permanence. Even as I’ve been uprooted again and again, the connections and work I’ve done here remain. They remind me of the story of Iktomi and the ducks.

Of ducks and illusions

Letters from emsenn, an independent theorist using Lakota philosophy to study the world around them.

In that story, illusion—a song, a distraction—traps its listeners in cycles of harm. The ducks, blinded by Iktomi’s tune, danced into captivity and death. Virtual spaces, for all their faults, give us a chance to step away from places Iktomi has trapped us. They make the song of illusion visible, offering a rare opening to question its rhythms and imagine new ways of being. Virtual spaces don’t absolve us of settler dynamics, but they create room to navigate them differently. They allow me to experiment, to reflect, and to connect in ways that help me uncover truths I might otherwise miss. They don’t replace sovereignty or rooted, real-world relationships, but they provide a foundation—a space where I can see the patterns of control more clearly and, in doing so, imagine how to move beyond them. And so, I return to these spaces not just as a refuge from harm, but as a tool for confronting it—an opening to seek and share the truths that have always been there, waiting, beyond the song.

Hey y'all, yesterday me and my family's location got doxxed to a local armed gang that is targeting us so had to leave where we were staying. Need funds to not freeze in 9f nights, please.

Ko-fi

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