Comment on Australian news. Defend genocide or human extinction? Or maybe both?
Sasha@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day agoI’m not hero, but that means a lot. I’m just some punk who had enough of lying around depressed and mourning the future I once thought I had. You don’t need to be like me to help a ton, just talking to people and sharing news is a huge thing. So many ways you can help from the comfort of your own home, calling/emailing MPs or even just telling your more conservative friends and families how important this is.
A couple of points about the $22k and 2 years in prison, those sentences are 1: Draconian and part of anti-protestor laws and 2: Extremely hard to actually get as it’s the maximum, even with priors.
Also we don’t reward the cops! The money is collected by revenue NSW and goes towards community programs, so I’m actually pretty happy to pay into that. My fine will be a maximum of $330 because I was charged under a different thing, but some of the 170 arrestees on Sunday are falling under that $22k maximum one.
We are all giving money to those fossil fuel billionaires, tax payers are subsiding ~$14B towards fossil fuels and those fuckers do not pay much if any tax.
guismo@aussie.zone 1 day ago
You have such a positive point of view. It’s interesting seeing how different people can be. I would focus obsessively on the part of that money that goes to those fossil fuel billionaires. You are focusing on the part where it goes to community programs.
Though I don’t know where it goes. I just assumed it goes to them, like a big part of my taxes that also go to fund the military.
About activism, I’ve done a fair bit and it affected my life a lot. I’m an old pessimist guy. I just try not to help to make the problem worse now (making sure I don’t fund them as much as I can). These things affect me too much. If I had to pay a fine for the activism I did in the past I could end up doing something really bad like destroying my life or someone else’s. I’m a little too radical and I end up turning people away from my causes because of it. Nowadays I try (and fail) to not even talk about to people because I end up making them hate the cause.
I posted it here because I think most of the community agrees with it. Circlejerk you could say. If it was on reddit it would just lead to endless meaningless fights and abuses.
Sasha@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
Radical power is valid, and being angry is extremely understandable. It takes a lot of courage to be able to step back like you’ve done, I respect the absolute hell out of that.
Believe me I’m not all positive about things, I have my personal motivations and I’ve been through enough training to know where and when to focus my energy, that’s all.
I’ve been in fights with people too and I’m easily drawn into them, I’ve honestly only been able to stop myself because I’ve been through a ton of therapy after some particularly traumatic experiences. I’ve spent many a night laying awake furious about what’s happening in the world. Those subsidies are a particular point of pain for me and I hope to be able to do something about it one day, but participating in and organizing a campaign are very different things. For now, I’m on regen as I take some time to process the last week and spend time with my family.
I do really appreciate your post, it’s been a good venting opportunity haha, and amazing to know how many allies there are in this community. ✊