adhdtrek

[adhdtrek]

verso books has made books on palestine, mass protests, and student rebellions free to download on their website

[adhdtrek]

hey guys, I could use your help with something! Sue is a Black disabled mother, migrant, and PhD student at Newcastle University who urgently needs solidarity. Newcastle University is reporting her to the Home Office in retaliation for her complaint about her abusive supervisor, in full awareness of her Stage 5 kidney disease. this is a life-and-death situation.

here's how you can help:

retweet Unis Resist Border Control's tweet about Sue's abusive situation at the University of Newcastle

sign the open letter to Newcastle University by 22 May

pass a motion with your UCU branch (template here)

donate to help Sue find a kidney donor, apply to Leave to Remain, pay solicitor fees, and cover living costs

Sue's story from the #WeAreAllSue toolkit:

In 2022, Sue Agazie, high-achieving in her field, was promised financial support for her tuition fees through scholarships and paid opportunities and enrolled into the PhD programme at Newcastle University Business School with this understanding. When Sue arrived in the UK in 2023, however, she learned that all of this financial promise was a lie; the scholarships that she had been promised never materialised. Instead, she has gone into horrific debt and is having trouble surviving.

For almost a year, Sue sought financial support for herself and her family, including grants and opportunities that would burnish the reputation of her supervisor and university as a whole. However, in that year, her supervisor not only prevented her from applying to scholarships and paid opportunities, but further controlled her research and day-to-day quality of life, with a high-level of surveillance, inappropriate supervisory practices, and escalating harassment of both her and her family.

These practices include this supervisor repeatedly preventing Sue from taking part in important professional development activities, such as research presentations, within the Business School. He also isolated her from her senior colleagues, forbidding her from attending particular activities they were facilitating, or spreading malicious rumours about them. Further, the primary supervisor repeatedly ignored Sue's pleas for support on funding applications and other opportunities that would alleviate the precarious financial situation into which she had been placed, telling her to “stop sending me links to scholarships”.

This behaviour would culminate in the primary supervisor verbally abusing Sue a number of times, and maligning Sue’s husband, alleging that he has been too lazy to financially support her. These inappropriate supervisory practices belie Newcastle University’s commitment to gender equality under the Athena SWAN Charter, for which it holds a Silver award, and for which the Business School holds a Bronze award.

An environment of terror and retaliation

This environment of surveillance, harassment, and terror has grossly impacted the health of Sue as well as that of her spouse and children. In particular, her kidney condition escalated to stage 5 kidney disease, a severe and terminal illness that causes disablement and time-sensitive, highly-delicate medical needs, during this ordeal. The National Kidney Foundation in the United States indicates that “stress and uncontrolled reactions to stress” can “lead to kidney damage.” These compounding issues have also understandably affected Sue's studies, although she has bravely persisted in her research, meeting important deadlines.

Sue raised these issues using relevant avenues of informal complaint, including her supervisory teams and student support services; there are multiple complaints that have been raised in this department. However, she did not receive sufficient support. Further, her severe health issues were not treated with the urgency and importance that they deserved. In October and November 2023, Sue's supervisor accused her of allegedly plagiarising his work in what Sue sees as a malicious act of retaliation and victimisation over her informal complaint, and an attempt to sabotage her reputation not just at Newcastle University, but to prestigious global networks. Following all of this mistreatment, Sue filed a formal complaint against her supervisor in February 2024.

Newcastle University is closing ranks

The university came back to Sue on 5 March 2024 with its response, alleging that she had fabricated the complaint against her supervisor in retaliation for his accusations of research misconduct against her, painting this vulnerable, disabled African student as a malicious liar. The supervisor even denies the relevance of her terminal illness and implicates her young child's behaviour in his response, while maintaining that her terminal illness "has nothing to do with her studies or work pressure here". Sue maintains: “During the time that I was supervised by the primary PhD supervisor, he neither kept in regular communication about my disability nor did he signpost me to relevant services within and outside of Newcastle University that could help me. It is dangerous for the primary supervisor to maintain that my disability would not have affected my studies. His comments show a gross level of disability discrimination that does not befit the reputation that Newcastle University seeks to cultivate as an inclusive place.”

Now, the university is claiming that Sue is not "engaging" sufficiently with the programme, and is threatening to report her to the Home Office, despite a written promise in January 2024 that her status would be unaffected due to the ongoing complaint process, and full knowledge of her terminal stage 5 kidney failure. Adding more insult to injury, Newcastle University Accommodation Service has been hounding Sue for rent arrears, even though they know she is critically ill and in a complaint with the university, surviving with the support of Food & Solidarity. Sue has pleaded with the university’s Accommodation Service for a rent freeze, indicating her urgent health complications and her complaint underway with the university. In all correspondences, the Accommodation Service has ignored Sue’s pleas for clemency. There is real fear that the Accommodation Service will evict Sue, her husband and their child. This will, no doubt, cause real precarity to Sue’s already fragile health condition.

We are appalled that the Newcastle University Business School is utilising obvious misogynoirist tropes to close ranks around a disabled Black migrant student who has been treated horribly, and weaponising her precarious migrant status against her as she attempts to seek justice. We are also aware that Sue is not the only student in this situation and that there have been other complaints in this department. It is a stark illustration of the pernicious institutional racism at Russell Group universities that a disabled Black migrant woman with caring responsibilities has been treated this way not only by a supervisor, but by the institution, as well as the abject way these universities instrumentalise migrant students from the Global South as sources of income that they can afterwards dispose of.

Sue maintains that this ordeal has not diminished her resolve to complete her PhD studies at Newcastle University Business School. She says, “I want to finish my PhD research. But for that to happen, Newcastle University must provide the necessary support for a disabled student in a non-abusive environment. I hope that the university listens to me and we can come to a resolution on this matter soon.”

[adhdtrek]

Hundreds of Jewish anti-war demonstrators have been arrested during a Passover seder that doubled as a protest in New York, as they shut down a major thoroughfare to pray for a ceasefire and urge the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, to end US military aid to Israel.

The 300 or so arrests took place on Tuesday night at Grand Army Plaza, on the doorstep of Schumer’s Brooklyn residence, where thousands of mostly Jewish New Yorkers gathered for the seder, a ritual that marked the second night of the holiday celebrated as a festival of freedom by Jews worldwide.

The seder came just before the US Senate resoundingly passed a military package that includes $26bn for Israel.

[adhdtrek]

The claims of Zionists not to feel safe on campus are by no means new and I do recall years ago when I was going to one of those universities, Zionists would block so much shit, spy on our events, and even try to suspend pro Palestine organisations during a time when we weren't organising protests or sit ins and the most we did was poetry readings, or that one time we built an "apartheid wall" with wood panels in an open area with each panel displaying info about Palestine and the occupation. That was the most we did that year, and the same year we had SO MANY Zionist complaints about feeling unsafe by the org, some of them literally fake crying in front of members of the administration.

Now I know I'm not saying anything new but of course they feel unsafe! Their entire existence has been propagandised by their own community and they have been shielded from any negative blowback by both government and private administrations for decades.

Of course they feel threatened, because why would they want to be faced with this ugly, ugly truth about Israel? They feel threatened by the amount of support and the tides shifting which is a constant reminder that their narrative had failed miserably.

Of course they feel threatened when they feel like they have lost their cozy bubble where they blocked out any mention of Israel being a terrorist state. They don't want to be constantly reminded and confronted by their complicity in this genocide.

Their cozy bubble has been burst and their safe space of genocide and apartheid denial has been burst, and now they are being forced into the reality of what Zionism actually is and what it is viewed as by the rest of the world, so of course they are scared.

[adhdtrek]

somehow the poor cops who we were told are simply too understaffed and underpaid because of Woke to deal with 'rampant rising crime' have found the strength to beat the shit out of college students across the whole country for peacefully saying "divest from the country killing innocent palestinians in the tens of thousands"

[adhdtrek]

It’s crazy to me to like know people who actually got arrested like it was literally in the schools “free speech” zone not to mention IU LITERALLY cancelled an exhibition of a Palestinian artist like 3 months back

#what the FUCK

[adhdtrek]

I don't think now, at the time Iran is viciously defending against US imperialism, is the time to be making left-communist critiques of them.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is not some unimpeachable bastion of anti-imperialism in western asia and it is dangerous to withhold critique just because it is opposed to US hegemony. The IRI is a theocratic ethnostate pushing back against euro-american imperialism while enacting its own centuries-long imperialism on the ethnic and religious minorities that fall within and around its borders. On a weekly if not daily basis, the IRGC, the paramilitary basijis, as well as the regular police harass, arrest, and kill not only such minorities as Kurds, Balochs, and Ahwazi Arabs (don't have to look far for this), but also ethnic Persian political dissidents and gender and sexual minorities.

The history of the 1979 revolution speaks to the development and rise of Khomeinism in the 1970s as a bourgeoisie opportunism that claimed the martyrs of Iranian communists while at every turn promising the disenfranchised baazaaris the protection of their private property. The purge of the Mojahedin in the months after the revolution, the associated purge of all deemed communist, and the immediate suppression of Kurdish autonomy movements in the northwest, all form the legacy of Khomeinism. It is important to be honest about this, to be honest about the reformulation of institutional misogyny and the other ills of Pahlavi Iran under the IRI, while simultaneously recognizing that the revolution was successful in one thing: exorcising the puppeteering hands of the united states from the country. It is important not to fall into the trap of valorizing an imperial power, while understanding that the only liberatory future for the people on the plateau and surrounding regions is revolution from within and below, not external intervention. These are compatible and, indeed, complementary halves of a whole politic!

As a Tehrani, and particularly as an ethnic Persian/Iranian Azerbaijani (Iranian Azerbaijanis being subject to linguistic and cultural suppression, but nonetheless perhaps the most integrated minority), it strikes me as my responsibility to talk about this. And it is something I talk about regardless of what is going on. As an esoteric Shi'a, it especially seems like my responsibility to talk about what Khomeinism has wrought.

And all of that is to say nothing of the fact that in my post I was just critiquing left-Shi'a infatuation with Khomeinism qua ideology, with no mention of the IRI—whose relationship with Khomeinism is varied, nebulous, and I would say secondary to the three decades of theocratic nationalism that has developed since Khomeini's death.

[adhdtrek]

This GFM campaign belongs to Fadi Alshrafi, who you can find on TikTok here. His family is one of hundreds who are on the Operation Olive Branch spreadsheet. He is one of 9 family members trying to evacuate Gaza; as of 2/19, his brother was injured during bombings, his pregnant sister-in-law needs urgent prenatal care, and his father needs medication for Congestive Heart Failure (if you're in healthcare you know how dire it is to go without CHF medication; if you're not in healthcare: heart failure means heart FAILURE. If it goes untreated for too long it will become fatal).

I've checked today (2/28) and Fadi's campaign has reached about 22% of its goal, not even 1/3 of the way there. Please donate what you can, and spread this campaign to help Fadi and his family.

Actions you can take after sharing:

Call your reps and demand a ceasefire and safe passage of aid entry into Gaza (US)

Gaza Action Toolkit

Global Protest List

Millions March list (protests on 3/2 in Puerto Rico, US, Canada)

EDIT: For some reason tumblr isn't letting me hyperlink Fadi's tiktok so I'll add it here:

[adhdtrek]

In the kitchen straight up "chopping it". And by "it" haha well. Let justr say. My vegetble

[adhdtrek]

hired a galapagos finch at my burger joint and after 2 generations it evolved to take peoples orders

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[adhdtrek]

there is so much intimacy in creating something together

#x #yea absolutely

[adhdtrek]

somebody vandalized the pro palestine sign on campus... but the message still rings out loud and clear

[Image ID: two pictures of a sign board propped up against a pole. In the first photo, the sign reads in all capital letters, "Does genocide happen so you can discuss it in class? #CeasefireNow". The top and bottom of the board are decorated to resemble a keffiyeh.

In the second photo, the sign board was vandalized, with black spray paint covering the original message. On top of the vandalism, a new message reads in all white capital letters, "Zionism works in this way: violence not dialogue".

End ID.]

[adhdtrek]

Chen Chen

[adhdtrek]

Carl Fernbach-Flarsheim. "death poem #3." from Anthology of Concretism, edited by Eugene Wildman (Swallow Press, 1969)

#poetry

[adhdtrek]

Bit telling that for years and years evangelical religious extremists have been allowed on university campuses with their bullhorns and horrific imagery where they harass students into physical altercations and when students complain to the university’s administration they just shrug their shoulders citing freedom of speech but when those same tuition-paying students start protesting against war and genocide they call SWAT

[adhdtrek]

Hey everyone, please consider buying the 2024 itch.io Palestinian Relief Bundle- it's 373 games, game-making assets, tabletop roleplaying games, zines, and comics for a minimum of just 8 USD! They have a goal of 100,000 USD, and as of the time I'm writing this post, they have 8 more days to reach it.

Link will be in the reblog!