The Struggle Economy

 On Saturday at Preston Market we saw these landlord/developer propaganda posters that claimed to have been written by the traders- the actual people who work at the people’s market, that are the market- but it wasn’t signed by the traders. I didn’t pick up on that detail, I just thought the wording of it was so obviously not written by normal people that it may as well have been spat out by those bullshits they call “AI”. The logic of the wording on the poster falls apart before your eyes as you re-read it. 

It wasn’t widely known that the people’s market was privately owned and now the owners are trying to sneakily turn the place into a super lucrative apartment block building site. They’re being such arseholes about it that a real letter written about this by actual traders isn’t signed by any one them. They’re too afraid of being singled out and there’s no shame in that. Landlords can fuck your life and they don’t mind if they do, they'll even pretend to be you, to threaten you.

There’s an emergency meeting of Save the Preston Market tonight at the library and we’re going along to see if there’s any way we can help. We love that market.

I could say that to me this issue is as important as trans rights, treaty for First Nations people, climate justice, proper recognition for autistic and ADHD people, but that’s not the right way to say it. There is no most important issue. What affects you is what’s most important to you, it can’t be any other way, but once you start to separate race and class, for instance, in terms of which one is the priority, you start to run into a strategic and tactical and logistical nightmare. Because life doesn’t run on a schedule, everything is happening all the time, so there’s not much point in planning out a journey of social justice that stops at all the important issues in the right order.

People who struggle need to find other struggling people to help them in their struggle. If I am struggling, a great plan is to show solidarity and take action in support of every other struggle. Let me put it this way: in Australia, unions hardly ever show up to support other struggles. Don’t be that guy. Let me put it another way: on Friday unions showed up for the Trans Day of Visibility, but didn’t allow a trans woman to speak about how cops are fascists and cops are in Trades Hall, where the non-cop unions also have offices. So unions did turn up, but tried to impose a narrative on the event. Don’t be that guy either. Don’t ignore the people you’re struggling with, get down in the dirt with them.

You might think you can’t possibly support every struggle, to which I’d say, you can’t do anything, we are completely powerless, our lives are shit, we are doomed and all is lost. 

So just try to have fun out there.

A short one today that ends more suddenly than usual, but it’s really, really nice outside so the struggle can blow me.