“They will tell us …”
Neil Postman in 1990.
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Em Burnett
@elburnett
learning about open source organizing/ luddites/tech/ the commons but really mostly tweet about Maine politics 
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they/themWabanaki landJoined April 2009
Em Burnett’s Tweets
Nope there’s no good word for niece/nephew that doesn’t sound like you’re just a small little chicken nugget (nibbling) but thank you for asking- isn’t it all so silly and fascinating?
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Like, god bless my aunt who just really can’t seem to get the pronouns right but I deadpanned with her and told her to call me “narphew” now and that was fun (she was in for the joke)
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Something that rarely gets discussed in pronoun “debates” is that there are a lot of us who would rather undermine the idea of gender completely through play, trickery and tomfoolery than to enforce a new authoritarian gender order
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Shakespeare took great delight in confusing the audience about gender, and I’m gonna give you just two examples because I’m waiting for take-out. 1/3
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If you've never protested an eviction, counseled tenants, tried to stop displacement, fought to make new units affordable, etc, I don't care about your opinion on housing .♥️
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We’re asking readers to not engage in any platforms tomorrow and stand with us on the digital picket line! Read local news. Listen to public radio. Make something from a cookbook. Break your Wordle streak.
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The New York Times covering trans issues (parody)
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“W/o proper legal protections and rights for private tenants, such as rent caps, tenancy security even in cases of house sales, and the option of indefinite tenancies, all that separates a good landlord from a bad one is the wafer-thin concept of decency.”
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decline of journalism into a prifit-driven corporate megaphone is a major part of it imo.
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is there any good writing on why everything is a conspiracy theory rn? like, everything…
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Like- “providing community input on a comprehensive plan that gets updated every decade or so” or “attend the most boring meeting ever from 7-10pm on a weeknight” is a pretty low bar for democratic engagement
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There’s very little democracy involved in land use and planning. It’s all about power.
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It’s actually insane that fully self driving cars will be everywhere without our consent but a bus or bike lane goes needs years of community and environmental outreach. It’s honestly cruel.
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Love this so much. 0 candidate call time & no feeding the bloated consultant budgets.
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Most, if not all, of our money we raised came from social media posts. Our posts were filled with transparency and education about the City of LA's finances and how the city operates. Our posts were filled with resources we created. Our posts were also fun and had good graphics.
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The results of this survey couldn’t be more clear: Democratic voters don’t like being spammed, they’re annoyed by it, and many of them declined to donate or volunteer because they don’t want their contact information to be sold to other campaigns. 15/18
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Our Hidden Gem of the Week surveys how social movements in four European cities have fought touristification, evictions, and other symptoms of the commodification of housing.
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YIMBY is based on a total lie: that capital can/will build in pursuit of lowering housing cost, which is utter fantasy that anyone within real estate finance would laugh you out of the office should you ever claim such. They only invest/build when/where price growth is perceived.
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YIMBY is an international neoliberal agenda intended to create wealth through increased commodification of housing that is pushed by the most powerful financial actors on the planet, promoted by the biggest newspapers & enacted by every big city mayor & loads of electeds.
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Retweet if you think our government should bring back indoor mask mandates. #BringBackMasks
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This support looks like.. running errands, baking bread, childcare, massages, food, roses, parties, etc
Basically any and all undervalued care labor
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Electoralism alone will never save us. We need robust movements and to the limited extent that checking a box on a ballot does any difference, we should have strong community support for each person serving in these violent institutions.
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The urgency and stress itself is toxic. It’s awful and not remotely close to healthy.
But add in the visibility piece of being a “first?” Or just being a marginalized identity at all. How can someone survive that?
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Politics is an urgency culture. Staffers and electeds are often in a constant state of adrenaline and stress and reactivity. Highly visible, put on a pedestal.. nothing people love cutting down more than symbolic figures of ire (who also happen to be real people)
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But when you do have amazing and progressive people in office, the first of an intentionally excluded group.. I think.. how much support do they have? Did some elected convince them to run and make it sound like a good job? Can they survive the trauma of this experience?
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As I’m sorting through my own painful experiences in politics, I no longer appreciate or am very excited by “firsts” in office. I fear for them.
Representation is not at all enough, for one. It’s often used as a symbolic way to enable oppression of the group they “represent.”
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Replying to
They’re not reporting on, analyzing, or describing our world to us, they are shaping narratives in their own image and interests and hoping most of us are soothed enough by the simplicity of their stories not to notice our own experiences pounding at the door.
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Last night's victory for Question C, An Act to Protect Tenants, enacts some of the strongest protections for tenants for any city on the eastern seaboard. 1/
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It’s not broken if it’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to do, example 5 bajillion
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Just wanted to say that political punditry is more broken than polling, because people who write opinion pieces literally are never held accountable for being consistently wrong, over decades.
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the most important ballot of our lifetime
again...
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"We are committed to fighting on their behalf" says Uber management of the workers they exploit. 🤢😵💫
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please pay no attention to how much money we're making by doing this, we just Love our drivers too much
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I’ve been following #PortlandME politics for 25 years and I do not get the impression that Portland is more divided today than ever before.
I *do* get the impression that certain powerful/privileged people & organizations are currently feeling threatened by the rest of us.
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*raises hundreds of thousands of dollars from wealthy real estate interests and stuffs mailboxes with ‘the earth is falling’ red-baiting messages to scare the city about the possibility of workers getting paid a decent wage… “sigh. this city is just so divided!!”
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I spoke with former Mayors Tom Allen & Ethan Strimling about the divisiveness. Allen agrees w/ Snyder, saying it's the most divisive he remembers Portland politics. Strimling however says it's voters finally demanding their voices be heard @newscentermaine
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The YIMBYs are the All Lives Matter of Housing - mostly white, telling us we need to think about housing “at all income levels”, instead of focusing on the lack of housing for low income communities & gaslighting the displacement of those communities by saying “build baby build”
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YIMBY/"urbanist" synchronized messaging: now we're on the "let us build tiny overpriced apartments" propaganda binge, fresh off the relentless "inclusionary" zoning push. All just one concerted effort to give investors/developers unfettered, unregulated access to neighborhoods.
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One of the biggest drivers of unaffordability is minimum unit sizes.
A 100-150sf SRO can comfortably fit all of one's needs (bed, kitchenette, bathroom, even a desk!). When we mandate a 400sf minimum, a common threshold, we're getting 3-4x less homes in the same amount of space!
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This 1000%! Even though field is not organizing, it still boggles my mind how short sighted campaigns and state party infrastructure continues to be. That is structural and dare I say by design?
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I’m gonna do violence with campaign staff a month out from an election, because why not:
What campaign field does is very important (I did it!), but it’s crucial to understand it’s really not organizing.
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“What we need isn’t exclusionary zoning, inclusionary zoning, upzoning, downzoning, a zoning freeze, or no zoning at all. We need an anticapitalist planning movement.”
- Samuel Stein
period
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Just cause protections mean landlords have to cite a valid reason if evicting a tenant (like nonpayment or a lease violation).
In cities where they've been implemented, they've helped to slow displacement and protect renters.
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I’m a little shocked that there hasn’t been more coverage of the fact that the second largest city in America just passed universal just cause protections for all tenants yesterday... something that New York state tried and failed to pass earlier this year!
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NEW VIDEO: The library has been a long-standing institution in our society, but what if we applied its philosophy more broadly? What if we realised the possibilities of this proto-socialist concept and reintroduce free access to the commons through a library economy?
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Twitter disclaimer: no I don’t think everyone still working in Maine politics is bad. I get it.. I really do. This is just my experience.
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Am in a space to share some of those observations soon in a better format than twitter.
If you’ve been following me and would be interested in listening to some sort of podcast format kind of thing.. I’d love to know what would make a good listen to you.🙏🏻
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Trippy to launch a US senate campaign, portland mayoral campaign, ballot initiatives, charter commission reforms.. all in two years🥴🥴 elevated to a gilded pedestal, beware flying too close to the sun. You’ll either end up incredibly delusional or disillusioned. No in between.
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