Jurgis recollected how, when he had first come to Packingtown, he had stood and watched the hog-killing, and thought how cruel and savage it was, and come away congratulating himself that he was not a hog; now his new acquaintance showed him that a hog was just what he had been-one of the packers’ hogs. What they wanted from a hog was all the profits that could be got out of him; and that was what they wanted from the workingman, and also that was what they wanted from the public. What the hog thought of it, and what he suffered, were not considered; and no more was it with labor, and no more with the purchaser of meat. That was true everywhere in the world, but it was especially true in Packingtown; there seemed to be something about the work of slaughtering that tended to ruthlessness and ferocity-it was literally the fact that in the methods of the packers a hundred human lives did not balance a penny of profit.
Upton Sinclair
I read The Jungle a few months ago and its aged so depressingly well. Nothing has changed, it was obvious what was happening long ago, but we’ve done nothing but watch it get worse.
We haven’t done nothing. There’s Rojava and the EZLN building whole competing systems. There’s loads of people doing mutual aid or building cooperative economic structures all over the world, and those movements are gaining a lot of traction as people are waking up to how shit things are.
You don’t usually hear about all these projects, in the same way you may not notice termites hollowing out a structure until it’s far too late to save it.
I hope you have noticed that Rojava is next to Turkey, has lost much of its territory to Turkey, and can lose the rest anytime. Definitely fighting against it better than a certain UN member state too bordering Turkey (I’m being ashamed of Armenia here), but still.
EZLN may be in a better situation. Mostly because in Latin America “live and let live” seems to be not such an idealistic approach, since I’m confident there’s a lot of force which could squash them.
I read The Jungle a few months ago and its aged so depressingly well. Nothing has changed, it was obvious what was happening long ago, but we’ve done nothing but watch it get worse.
We haven’t done nothing. There’s Rojava and the EZLN building whole competing systems. There’s loads of people doing mutual aid or building cooperative economic structures all over the world, and those movements are gaining a lot of traction as people are waking up to how shit things are.
You don’t usually hear about all these projects, in the same way you may not notice termites hollowing out a structure until it’s far too late to save it.
Do you have any links at hand for all that?
If not, I will try to add find and them to this chain for future reference.
Oh thanks for reminding me!
Anark | Liberation in Action Playlist
It used to be really hard to give a good list of these sorts of movements, but this series by Anark just puts it all in one place.
The first video is him just reading off a list, but this is the list in written form, which I find much easier to parse: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1W1wWjWNXhvHjMzzyxT5z5Es_kE6xmTYSadGSJfuVtpE/edit#heading=h.p04t775v871g
The next few videos are deeper dives into some of these, and the series is ongoing, so this playlist link should stay current as he releases more.
Thanks for the quick reference links!
I hope you have noticed that Rojava is next to Turkey, has lost much of its territory to Turkey, and can lose the rest anytime. Definitely fighting against it better than a certain UN member state too bordering Turkey (I’m being ashamed of Armenia here), but still.
EZLN may be in a better situation. Mostly because in Latin America “live and let live” seems to be not such an idealistic approach, since I’m confident there’s a lot of force which could squash them.