Latest Posts by laurentiuvladut - Page 3

Look at me. We’re going to survive because we care about each other.

And no matter whose ass is in the White House, no one can take that from us. The Underground Railroad. The Jane Collective. Mutual Aid. Women’s Suffrage. The Civil Rights Movement. ACT UP. Historically, we’ve told the government “fuck you, we care”, and now is no different. We are survivors, we will endure, and we will support one another. Because as long as we do, they never win.

Don’t give up.

Don’t ever give up. Endure.

what a miserable day.

reminding myself the world is not fundamentally changed. we have elected our own downfall, but there are birds outside, and my little niece is learning to walk, and I need to go grocery shopping.

(people had fulfilling lives during the fall of the roman empire. I'm reading books from the 1930's, the last time fascism almost consumed us. I am reminding myself of the people of the world right now living under unjust regimes. I am looking to minorities in america, past and present, for tips on thriving with a boot on your neck. I am reaching out to the half of the country who is mourning with me today, reminding myself there is good, there are helpers, we are still here.)

in the future there will be protests, bad news, fights (jesus christ, thanksgiving is still ahead). for now I am just trying to remember how to live. in 2016 I completely shut down and retreated from everyone. I allowed myself to be tricked into thinking I was alone. I don't want to do that again. (I don't want to do any of this again.)

this is how you live through tragedies - any way you can.

FIGHT LIKE HELL

I don’t care where you live. I don’t care if you’re in the USA or not. I don’t care if you’re eligible to vote. If Trump wins, there is a high likeliness of shit going down. It doesn’t matter where you are; the dominos will fall. All it takes is one push.

Gay people, transgender people, ANYONE who isn’t a straight, white, cisgender male is IN DANGER. It doesn’t matter if you’re closeted, it doesn’t matter if you’re voting for Trump because you’re “one of the good ones,” YOU ARE IN DANGER.

And you can cry. You can let tears fall from your eyes if he wins, and you or your loved ones are suddenly in a dangerous situation. You are allowed to be sad. But you need to be mad.

We have been fighting for decades for our rights, and we will fight more. If you can’t do this, I encourage you to flee America if you live there, or if possible, move to a heavy blue state like California or New York.

But I want you to stay. Because there are so many people who can’t leave. People who are trapped in this shithole. That includes me, my friends, and my family. My family has been living in Ohio and North Carolina for generations and we are not going anywhere. So I beg you: stay here.

WE STAND TOGETHER TODAY, OR STAND ALONE TOMORROW.

Don’t let them split us up. They want us to fight. They want us to get into discourse about xenogenders and neopronouns. They want us to vote for Trump because we’re one of the good ones. They want us to be too intimidated to vote. They want us to stay in the closet. DON’T LET THEM HAVE WHAT THEY WANT.

Be loud and be proud. Make your voice heard and let them know that we aren’t going down without a fight. That you are gay, or a woman, or transgender, or a person of color, and that you are a human who will have their human rights even if they have to claw it out of the president’s hands. I don’t think there’s ever been a better time to quote the Hunger Games:

FIRE IS CATCHING. AND IF WE BURN, THEY BURN WITH US.

Stand up for those who can’t stand up for themselves. FIGHT LIKE HELL. They can hang us in the streets, but not without a fucking fight. If you go down, take one with you. It doesn’t matter where you end up in the end: FIGHT. LIKE. HELL.

Don’t be compliant. Don’t let them arrest you and kill you because you think if you go willingly, they’ll spare you. DON’T GO DOWN WITHOUT A FIGHT. FIGHT WITH ALL THAT YOU HAVE.

I want to see you punch them. I want to see you resist arrest. I don’t care if you’re the twiggiest twink of Tumblr, I want to see you biting and clawing. Get acrylic nails, and remember: Thumb out for punching, thumb in for stabbing. Bruises will heal, punctured eyes won’t.

Because remember: If we all go down with a fight, the world will see. Because the world’s eyes are watching. If we sit here and let them hang us in the streets, the world will do nothing. But if we fight. like. HELL. The world will see. And the world will act.

When you fight them, they’ll fight back. The world will see.

When you scream that you have done nothing but exist as they drag you away, they will try to shut you up. The world will see.

The world is watching, and the only way to get people to act, is through their hearts. So FIGHT. LIKE. HELL. Because the world will see.

And remember: It’s totally legal to acquire a gun in the United States of America as of me typing this. Stay strapped because the police are too. Don’t bring your fists to a gun fight.

So. Trump just won. And actually won the popular vote?

What the fuck?

The level of conformism, submissivness to authority, authoritarianism, and ignorance to let this happen is mind boggling.

Well....ugh. I  just going to mentally prepare for the comming economic collapse. Just right when the economic conditions of my own family where starting to improve.

Well, I feel sad, for Palestine, for Ukraine, for the climate, for USA ethnic minorities, for humanity in general.

Let's just hope that the Republicans are incompetent enough that they loose in 2028.

https://gofund.me/5954916f

Vetted by @gazavetters, my number verified on the list is ( #31 )

VETTED by Butterfly nu 1128

Hello, my name is Iman, a mother of five children, the oldest is 15 years old and the youngest is two.

I live with my family in northern Gaza. Our life has turned into a battlefield. We lost our home and were forced to flee and escape with our lives. We have been displaced eight times, moving from one school to another, and we are now living a life of homelessness and hunger

. Even clean water is unavailable 💔😭. My children are suffering from starvation and malnutrition, going to bed hungry every day.

I cry for my little daughter, who is two years old, when she asks for milk, which we don't have, and her frail body survives only on flour and stale bread. She has been deprived of everything. My children long for vegetables, meat, and fruit, which we haven't had in 11 months since the war began. Our bodies have been worn down, our bones are brittle, and my son Mohamed's chest bones are now protruding along with his spine. His body is covered in scabies due to a lack of cleanliness and the absence of medicine. Our bodies are swollen from the intense heat as we live with 40 people crammed into a small classroom filled with displaced people.

My children have been deprived of education, even though they are all excellent students

. On top of everything, there's constant bombing, fear, and hunger every day 🥺. This is why I am reaching out, as I have no income to provide for their basic needs as we try to rebuild our lives

Your donations will be the lifeline for my children, offering them a chance to survive and live through these difficult and harsh conditions. Even a very small contribution will make a difference in their lives. Every dollar counts in helping them through this crisis. Please, join in lending a helping hand during this tough and challenging time.

We are in northern Gaza, bodies without life, starvation is killing us, from the youngest to the oldest. We need your support, even if it's something

October 31. A jack-o'-lantern

Halloween. A holiday that is not native to Romania. But one I celebrated since I was little. And this mounth of drawings was part of the celebration.

And the month basically ends as it begun. With a pumpkin.

October 30. Just another simple tree drawing.

October 29. A simple tree drawing.

Nothing complicated today. I studied and worked, so I lacked the time needed to fully comit.

October 28. An hourglass.

This does not have much to do with Halloween, or October, or Autumn. But it was inspired by me thinking about the passage of time today, thanks to personal stuff. But still, I am not that happy with how the sand looks.

October 27. My attempt at a Raven.

Today, I drew a Raven. It is not perfect, but I at least stopped with the more simplistic trees. Not happy with the legs.

October 26. Yet another drawing.

Yeah, today it is clear it is not in me. So here is another amateur drawing. I tried to combine the colors for the sky, but I dont think it turned out well(mostly because I was in a hurry).

October 25. A fire.

So. Today I worked a lot, had to study, and to clean some mold from some of the more isolated parts of my home. Good news is that it is 25 of October. And here in Romania, that is an actual celebration known as Focul lui Sumedru. It is an old celebration, and not one done in many parts anymore. But still, I decided to just draw a fire.

Well, I don't want to risk it. So here is the reblog.

Reblog or your mom will die in 928 seconds.

I love my mom.

I am risking nothing

I AM SORRY FOLLOWERS, I LOVE MY MOMMY

Will not risk.

sorry followers :(

Reblog or your mom will die in 928 seconds.

I love my mom.

I am risking nothing

I AM SORRY FOLLOWERS, I LOVE MY MOMMY

Will not risk.

sorry followers :(

October 24. A simple, and not that good tree drawing.

Today, I worked a lot, and procrastinated a little. I wanted to draw a raven, but I felt devoid of any passion to do so today. And so I just drew this kind of bad tree in a hurry.

October 23. An October scene

Today I procrastinated a little, but also worked a lot on other stuff.

So anyway, here is a small October scene I drew.

October 22. Another attempt at a vampire bat.

Today I work a little bit more, and I entered into a hurry when I started drawing the vampire bat.

Not the best. There is stil a lot of room for me to improve.

Thanks. I am happy that the genus and species are clear.

October 21. An attempt at drawing a spider.

Today I both worked a lot, and procrastinated somewhat. So I decided to draw something that seemed simple, but more complex then just a tree branch or a leaf. So I tried to draw a spider. And I did it in a hurry. And now that I looked, I am not happy with the coloration I gave it. Well, here is to tomorrow.

October 21. An attempt at drawing a spider.

Today I both worked a lot, and procrastinated somewhat. So I decided to draw something that seemed simple, but more complex then just a tree branch or a leaf. So I tried to draw a spider. And I did it in a hurry. And now that I looked, I am not happy with the coloration I gave it. Well, here is to tomorrow.

October 20. Another tree branch drawing.

Today, a combination of working more, studying more, and procrastinating to the drawing resulted in me not having the time to draw something as complex as I would have wanted. So anyway, here is another attempt at a tree branch.

October 19. A tree branch

So. Today I procrastinated, and has some personal issues. By the time I started drawing, I wanted to draw a bat hanging from a tree branch....but I have seem what the hour was, and have seen that there was not enough time. So I just drew the tree branch.

October 18. My attempt at drawing a bat.

Today I tried attempt to draw a bat. The result was...not the best. I guess it is good for a beginner, but the arm fingers, and the nose and ears are parts I am not happy. On a lesser level, I am also not happy about the feet. But on the other hand....I am happy i drew something today.

October 17. My attempt at drawing a tree.

So...today I procrastinated a little, and so decided to draw something I though would be simpler. So I drew a tree. It is....what you would expect from an amateur like me. Still, it was a good exercise.

October 16. A little owl drawing

So. Today I tried something more complicated. So here is a little owl perched on a human arm. Not happy with the arm proportions, or with the number of feathers, and there I stil some remains from the erased parts. And the rest....it does not seem bad to me, but there is still room for improvement.

October 15. The only full drawing I made today.

Today I drew...a lot. Well, drew a lot if you mean making incomplete sketches. From my poor attempt at drawing an owl perched on a human arm, to several attempts at drawing a spider, they all failed, because I was constantly getting angry at the proportions being wrong. So anyway, here is a scythe. Not the most impressive stuff, but I at least made something. Even if I am not the proudest. Tomorrow, I should really attempt to draw something more complex.

October 14.My attempt to draw a leaf.

Today I really procrastinated, and by the time I started drawing I had only two hours up until midnight, here in Romania. So...I first tried to draw a rat, but I quickly realized it was would be complicated. Then I started a raven drawing, and gave up. And then started a toad drawing and gave up. Up until finally I decided to just draw an autumn leaf(a red oak leaf to be more precise).

The discussions around whether or not to vote for Kamala keep being dominated by very loud voices shouting that anyone who advocates for her “just doesn't care about Palestine!” and “is willing to overlook genocide!” and “has no moral backbone at all!” And while some of these voices will be bots, trolls, psyops - we know that this happens; we know that trying to persuade progressives to split the vote or not vote at all is a strategy employed by hostile actors - of course many of them won't be. But what this rhetoric does is continually force the “you should vote for her” crowd onto the back foot of having to go to great lengths writing entire essays justifying their choice, while the “don't vote/vote third party” crowd is basically never asked to justify their choice. It frames voting for Kamala as a deeply morally compromised position that requires extensive justification while framing not voting or voting third party as the neutral and morally clean stance.

So here's another way of looking at it. How much are you willing to accept in order to feel like you're not compromising your morals on one issue?

Are you willing to accept the 24% rise in maternal deaths - and 39% increase for Black women - that is expected under a federal abortion ban, according to the Centre for American Progress? Those percentages represent real people who are alive now who would die if the folks behind Project 2025 get their way with reproductive healthcare.

Are you willing to accept the massive acceleration of climate change that would result from the scrapping of all climate legislation? We don't have time to fuck around with the environment. A gutting of climate policy and a prioritisation of fossil fuel profits, which is explicitly promised by Trump, would set the entire world back years - years that we don't have.

Are you willing to accept the classification of transgender visibility as inherently “pornographic” and thus the removal of trans people from public life? Are you willing to accept the total elimination of legal routes for gender-affirming care? The people behind the Trump campaign want to drive queer and trans people back underground, back into the closet, back into “criminality”. This will kill people. And it's maddening that caring about this gets called “prioritising white gays over brown people abroad” as if it's not BIPOC queer and trans Americans who will suffer the most from legislative queer- and transphobia, as they always do.

Are you willing to accept the domestic deployment of the military to crack down on protests and enforce racist immigration policy? I'm sure it's going to be very easy to convince huge numbers of normal people to turn up to protests and get involved in political organising when doing so may well involve facing down an army deployed by a hardcore authoritarian operating under the precedent that nothing he does as president can ever be illegal.

Are you willing to accept a president who openly talks about wanting to be a dictator, plans on massively expanding presidential powers, dehumanises his political enemies and wants the DOJ to “go after them”, and assures his supporters they won't have to vote again? If you can't see the danger of this staring you right in the face, I don't know what to tell you. Allowing a wannabe dictator to take control of the most powerful country on earth would be absolutely disastrous for the entire world.

Are you willing to accept an enormous uptick in fascism and far-right authoritarianism worldwide? The far right in America has huge influence over an entire international network of “anti-globalists”, hardcore anti-immigrant xenophobes, transphobic extremists, and straight-up fascists. Success in America aids and emboldens these people everywhere.

Are you willing to accept an enormous number of preventable deaths if America faces a crisis in the next four years: a public health emergency, a natural disaster, an ecological catastrophe? We all saw how Trump handled Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. We all saw how Trump handled Covid-19. He fanned the flames of disaster with a constant flow of medical misinformation and an unspeakably dangerous undermining of public health experts. It's estimated that 40% of US pandemic deaths could have been avoided if the death rates had corresponded to those in other high-income countries. That amounts to nearly half a million people. One study from January 2021 estimated between around 4,200 and 12,200 preventable deaths attributable purely to Trump's statements about masks. We're highly unlikely to face another global pandemic in the next few years but who knows what crises are coming down the pipeline?

Are you willing to accept the attempted deportation of millions - millions - of undocumented people? This is “rounding people up and throwing them into camps where no one ever hears from them again” territory. That's a blueprint for genocide right there and it's a core tenet of both Trump's personal policy and Project 2025. And of course they wouldn't be going after white people. They most likely wouldn't even restrict their tyranny to people who are actually undocumented. Anyone racially othered as an “immigrant” would be at risk from this.

Are you willing to accept not just the continuation of the current situation in Palestine, but the absolute annihilation of Gaza and the obliteration of any hope for imminent peace? There is no way that Trump and the people behind him would not be catastrophically worse for Gaza than Kamala or even Biden. Only recently he was telling donors behind closed doors that he wanted to “set the [Palestinian] movement back 25 or 30 years” and that “any student that protests, I throw them out of the country”. This is not a man who can be pushed in a direction more conducive to peace and justice. This is a man who listens to his wealthy donors, his Christian nationalist Republican allies, and himself.

Are you willing to accept a much heightened risk of nuclear war? Obviously this is hardly a Trump policy promise. But I can't think of a single president since the Cold War who is more likely to deploy nuclear weapons, given how casually he talks about wanting to use them and how erratic and unstable he can be in his dealings with foreign leaders. To quote Foreign Policy only this year, “Trump told a crowd in January that one of the reasons he needed immunity was so that he couldn’t be indicted for using nuclear weapons on a city.” That's reassuring. I'm not even in the US and I remember four years of constant background low-level terror that Trump would take offence at something some foreign leader said or think that he needs to personally intervene in some military situation to “sort it out” and decide to launch the entire world into nuclear war. No one sane on earth wants the most powerful person on the planet to be as trigger-happy and careless with human life as he is, especially if he's running the White House like a dictator with no one ever telling him no. But depending on what Americans do in November, he may well be inflicted again on all of us, and I guess we'll all just have to hope that he doesn't do the worst thing imaginable.

“But I don't want those things! Stop accusing me of supporting things I don't support!” Yes, of course you don't want those things. None of us does. No one's saying that you actively support them. No one's accusing you of wanting Black women to die from ectopic pregnancies or of wanting to throw Hispanic people in immigrant detention centres or of wanting trans people to be outlawed (unlike, I must point out, the extremely emotive and personal accusations that get thrown around about “wanting Palestinian children to die” if you encourage people to vote for Kamala).

But if you're advocating against voting for Kamala, you are clearly willing to accept them as possible consequences of your actions. That is the deal you're making. If a terrible thing happening is the clear and easily foreseeable outcome of your action (or in the case of not voting, inaction), in a way that could have been prevented by taking a different and just as easy action, you are partly responsible for that consequence. (And no, it's not “a fear campaign” to warn people about things he's said, things he wants to do, and plans drawn up by his close allies. This is not “oooh the Democrats are trying to bully you into voting for them by making him out to be really bad so you'll feel scared and vote for Kamala!” He is really bad, in obvious and documented and irrefutable ways.)

And if you believe that “both parties are the same on Gaza” (which, you know, they really aren't, but let's just pretend that they are) then presumably you accept that the horrors being committed there will continue, in the immediate term anyway, regardless of who wins the presidency. Because there really isn't some third option that will appear and do everything we want. It's going to be one of those two. And we can talk all day about wanting a better system or how unfair it is that every presidential election only ever has two viable candidates and how small the Overton window is and all that but hell, we are less than eighty days out from the election; none of that is going to get fixed between now and November. Electoral reform is a long-term (but important!) goal, not something that can be effected in the span of a couple of months by telling people online to vote third party. There is no “instant ceasefire and peace negotiation” button that we're callously overlooking by encouraging people to vote for Kamala. (My god, if there was, we would all be pressing it.)

If we're suggesting people vote for her, it's not that we “are willing to overlook genocide” or “don't care about sacrificing brown people abroad” or whatever. Nothing is being “overlooked” here. It's that we're simply not willing to accept everything else in this post and more on top of continued atrocities in Gaza. We're not willing to take Trump and his godawful far-right authoritarian agenda as an acceptable consequence of feeling like we have the moral high ground on Palestine. I cannot stress enough that if Kamala doesn't win, we - we all, in the whole world - get Trump. Are you willing to accept that?

And one more point to address: I've seen too many people act frighteningly flippant and naïve about terrible things Trump or his campaign want to do, with the idea that people will simply be able to prevent all these bad things by “organising” and “protesting” and “collective action”. “I'm not willing to accept these things; that's why I'll fight them tooth and nail every day of their administration” - OK but if you're not even willing to cast a vote then I have doubts about your ability to form “the Resistance”, which by the way would have to involve cooperation with people of lots of progressive political stripes in order to have the manpower to be effective, and if you're so committed to political purity that you view temporarily lending your support to Kamala at the ballot box as an untenable betrayal of everything you stand for then forgive me for also doubting your ability to productively cooperate with allies on the ground with whom you don't 100% agree. Plus, if the Trump campaign gets its way, American progressives would be kept so busy trying to put out about twenty different fires at once that you'd be able to accomplish very little. Maybe you get them to soften their stance on trans healthcare but oh shit, the climate policies are still in place. But more importantly, how many people do you think will protest for abortion rights if doing so means staring down a gun? Or organise to protect their neighbours from deportation if doing so means being thrown in prison yourself? And OK, maybe you're sure that you will, but history has shown us time and time again that most people won't. Most people aren't willing to face that kind of personal risk. And a tiny number of lefties willing to risk incarceration or death to protect undocumented people or trans people or whatever other groups are targeted is sadly not enough to prevent the horrors from happening. That is small fry compared to the full might of a determined state. Of course if the worst happens and Trump wins then you should do what you can to mitigate the harm; I'm not saying you shouldn't. But really the time to act is now. You have an opportunity right here to mitigate the harm and it's called “not letting him get elected”. Act now to prevent that kind of horrific authoritarian situation from developing in the first place; don't sit this one out under the naïve belief that “we'll be able to stop it if it happens”. You won't.

October 13. My attempt at drawing a witch.

So. Breaking from the strong (nonhuman) animal theme I had up until now, but keeping with the slight Autumn/October/Halloween theme I had, I drew a witch today. She is not the best. I have not been the best with the human face, and I dont thing her chest turned out all that well.

October 12. My even worse attempt at drawing an owl.

Today I tried again to draw an owl. But anyway, I was busy, tired, and got in a hurry, and the owl drawing has been even worse then yesterday. Well. Lets hope that tomorrow I do it better.

October 11. My (kind of bad) Owl Drawing.

So. Today I decided to draw an owl. But some mistakes early on, and me entering in a hurry with the feather details and coloring resulted in....this. Not the worst thing possible, but not as good as I wanted to make it. Still, I can just improve. Maybe tomorrow I will draw more feathers and bird wings, and some other day I will draw another owl.