"The anxious posturing, the vigilant search for mistakes and limitations, the hostility that crushes a hesitant new idea, the way that critique becomes a reflex, the sense that things are urgent yet pointless, the circulation of the latest article tearing apart bad habits and behaviors, the way shaming others becomes comfortable, the ceaseless generation of necessities and duties, the sense of feeling guilty about one’s own fear and loneliness, the clash of political views th...at requires a winner and a loser, the performance of anti-oppressive language, the way that some stare at the floor or look at the door. We know these tendencies, intimately. We have seen them circulating, and felt them pass through us.

"Over these last 10 years, we have learned the hard way that building community safety is complex. The experience of collectively creating safety has forever changed us. We still believe that our communities can address violence without the police, and that LGBTSTGNC POC communities have long histories of doing this work. But we still have so much to learn, skills that need to be transferred and supported. Our overall takeaway is that people who work to create community safet...y need to be willing to grow, change and sometimes be wrong. Our ability to be flexible enough to grow with the changing conditions of the neighborhood, and the needs of our community, keeps our work relevant, vibrant and useful. Our lessons are not unique, but we hope that you will find them useful to create safety within your own communities -- that you feel empowered to challenge violence within your community, and that our movements will continue to reduce state control over our bodies."
http://www.truth-out.org/…/36812-10-lessons-for-creating-sa…

"For the Brujas girls, their crew is about more than skating: it’s about friendship, and the radical potential of sisterhood to foster real support systems, outside the mainstream social norms. They see the preventative and healing power of friendship as a source of collective empowerment, especially in the context of Western medicine and philosophy, where it’s discouraged to tap into extra-spiritual realms.

“So much of our world is described through patriarchal, rigid, acade...mic, medical ways, and concepts of understanding the world scientifically,” Arianna says. “Traditionally behind those perspectives are just men. In traditional indigenous cultures, which a lot of our cultures are derived from, women were in charge of health and community and motherhood and wellness and food. Not in ways that were demeaning but in ways that were powerful.”"

"It is well-past time to shift the debate in some other directions, and I’d like to suggest one that I think is particularly relevant: to underline the absurdity of settlers claiming any land as ‘ours’ on Indigenous territory. Straight up: if you care at all about the cost of shelter here you should care about the return of Indigenous land.
It is impossible in Vancouver to separate discussions of inequality from land and property. All too often that tends to turn into ‘afford...ability’ arguments, which are fine, but the root of our current crises has to always return to the fact that this is Indigenous land. Any concern with the cost of housing, with who gets to stay here and who has to leave, about who feels precarious and who feels secure—all of that has to be historicized in context of colonial rationalities.
http://www.straight.com/…/matt-hern-fencing-stolen-property…