🏳️🌈 🌎 Illustrator, Chef, Musician, Gardener & Storyteller 🌻 Seeking Rep 🌻 Re-Imagine Better & Fight for Abolition - GQ & ND
Joined April 2014
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Rayah Jaymes retweeted
The protests in France started with teachers striking because of underfunding and overcrowding. There were rats in classrooms.
High School students then joined the protests. University students then joined the protests. Then trade unions joined.
The French police violently overreacted.
NONE of this has to do with Muslim people or immigrants. Anyone who says it's a Muslim problem is a lying bigot.
🇫🇷 French police have left protesters with injuries that human rights lawyers told outlets compare to those seen in conflict zones, as a student uprising over crumbling schools and the cost of living enters its fifth week.
Over Saturday and Sunday alone, French outlets StreetPress, Index and ViolencesPolicières(dot)fr collected several hundred videos and testimonies. Cases they documented include:
🔸 A 17-year-old in Saint-Étienne whose hand was torn off by a police grenade
🔸 A 17-year-old girl in Mulhouse who lost the sight in her left eye after being hit by a tear gas grenade
🔸 Protesters in Paris, Lyon, Strasbourg and Besançon beaten with batons and kicked while on the ground, including one held in a chokehold
France's police watchdog has opened at least 36 investigations into police violence against high school protesters. Christophe Calvao, president of the Paris Young Lawyers' Union, denounced "an increasingly systematic use of crowd-control measures that would normally be reserved for much more serious situations."
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez has said police "must be able to use all intermediate weapons," and on Tuesday vowed to "step up" for the next mobilization. France Unbowed leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon said his party and unions know how to keep marches peaceful by deploying hundreds of volunteers, adding: "We could at least expect police to do something other than fire indiscriminately into the crowd."
Melenchon also noted that most European countries ban such grenades, and that Nuñez suspended them only to reinstate them "not even 48 hours" later.
🎥 Edited by @samivanderlip. (Compilation of videos circulating online).
Rayah Jaymes retweeted
Yesterday, AutoZone fired me for organizing their first ever union a day after we won the election despite all their conditions against us. Now, we have a GoFundMe to help me, our union, and a strike fund.
Donate to Flood the Zone with more unions !!
gofund.me/dd989eadb
Rayah Jaymes retweeted
It's time to make an example out of these transphobic Democrats. Call Marcy Kaptur's office and respectfully tell her to withdraw her bigoted ad, renounce her transphobia and apologize!
More details here: youtube.com/watch?v=NCApPUry…
Rayah Jaymes retweeted
Of course, even a field trip to visit the animals in The Sameer Project’s therapy program at neighboring Sawarha Camp, cannot escape the reality of displacement and genocide.
Give to Gaza: chuffed.org/project/113327-r…
Here, the young girls of our Refaat Alareer Camp sing “I Am a Young Palestinian Girl.” They sing of occupation and oppression, of relatives martyred, imprisoned and taken from them, and of one truth that remains unwavering: Palestine is their land.
These are children on what should simply be a joyful day out - a field trip from one camp to another. Yet even in their songs, they carry the history and reality forced upon them.
In moments of joy and in moments of sorrow, we never forget who we are. Palestine lives in the stories, the songs and the voices of its children.
Support them, have them grow and learn and be safe and protected in a free Palestine. Sign up to be a month donor to our Refaat Alareer Camp link: chuffed.org/project/113327-r…
Other ways to donate include:
paypal.me/mahertali (Paypal option, please make sure to add a message saying "CAMP")
account.venmo.com/u/Maher-Al… (Venmo option, please make sure to add a message saying "CAMP")
About to have a 9 days getting a fundraiser set up. I've been doing many but this one will be different and I better get some extra help. I always wish I could do more for the communities in need but I'll always do what I can. Screen print party/fundraiser soon!
Do not wait for the disaster to happen before you decide to care. I have just returned from Gaza’s shoreline, and I am furious. What I saw there was beyond heartbreaking.
Tens of thousands of exhausted, torn and barely standing tents are spread along the beach. Families and children are living only meters away from the sea, inside pieces of fabric that can barely protect them from the sun, let alone the coming winter. These are not proper shelters. They are what people have been forced to call home.
In just a few days, summer will end and winter will arrive. We already know what happened last year. Rain flooded the tents, families slept in soaked conditions, and children were left exposed to cold, mud and water. Yet here we are again, with tents that are even more damaged and worn out, and with nowhere else for people to go.
How much more suffering do people have to endure before the world decides that enough is enough? How is it acceptable that hundreds of thousands of people are being left to face another winter without proper shelter? This is not a surprise. The warning signs are right in front of us.
A tent is not a home. A torn piece of fabric cannot protect a family from a storm. No parent should have to wonder whether rain will flood the place where their children sleep, or whether they will have anything dry left in the morning.
Do something before the rain comes. Speak about Gaza. Share what is happening. Demand action. Do not wait for the images of children shivering in flooded tents to appear on your screens before you finally react.
The catastrophe is coming, it is visible, and the world has no excuse for saying it did not know.
Rayah Jaymes retweeted
The image on the left shows the funeral of children in Gaza yesterday, while the image on the right shows the funeral of children in Lebanon today. This is our daily reality.
Are you silent because it's not your child or grandchild? If you are silent during a genocide you are complicit. Shame on you.
Rayah Jaymes retweeted
Stolen lands and emptied cities are being
turned into resorts and "modern cities" to satisfy the
obsession of the billionaires! From Rafa to Capo Rojo to
other areas in the world!
Rayah Jaymes retweeted
From Iran to Cuba, U.S. imperialism must end!
The U.S.'s inexcusable blockade has cut Cubans off from health care, safe food, potable water, and security. And more U.S. sanctions on Cuba will only accelerate the collapse of its already vulnerable power grid.
U.S. foreign policy is responsible for death, destruction, and destabilization. We can and must change that. Let’s become good neighbors!
U.S. hits Cuba with new sanctions as island's crises multiply trib.al/5Ytsc3F
Rayah Jaymes retweeted
Deporting Haitians back to the unsafe conditions they fled is reckless and cruel.
Congress must act now to save lives!
We need one more signature to force a vote on the Dream and Promise Act to protect the Dreamers and immigrant who calls our nation home.
The U.S. government deports more than 100 people to Haiti as it ramps up flights to the Caribbean country. nbcnews.com/news/us-news/us-…
Rayah Jaymes retweeted
Whether it’s “socialism”, a Twitch streamer, working-class candidates, or immigrants, my colleagues always have a boogeyman to condemn… Why? They're afraid to be honest about who they really work for and spoiler alert: it's not working people.
I call on my colleagues to put as much energy into creating a world that works for working people as they are putting into their stupid resolution.
Rayah Jaymes retweeted
A team of researchers led by Juan González have just released an in-depth study on Chicago's Tax Increment Financing (TIF) program.
Its findings show that Chicago has spent around $16 billion in property taxes it collected over the past 40 years to fund real estate development.
Read more here: greatcities.uic.edu/news-sto…
Rayah Jaymes retweeted
The world is ruled through power which emanates from a vast alchemical machinery of death, usually hidden or kept out of view, but which sometimes cracks open to release hell spirits, unrestrained and untamed, into the world.
Rayah Jaymes retweeted
This #art captures how I feel...
Missile hit meters away from me yesterday, but yeah, that's life here. Can't really dwell on it, got studies & dental training to worry about. One wish? Just survive this and finish my school soon. Can u help?
ko-fi.com/dentistlayla
Over the past month, I started my training at uni & treated over 10 patients for free. Now, starting a new round, so really hope u can keep the support coming so that I can keep serving my ppl!
Your backing keeps this mission alive.
Keep supporting!🦷🇵🇸
ko-fi.com/dentistlayla
Rayah Jaymes retweeted
His name was Joan Sebastian Guerrero.
- He was here legally.
- He was authorized to work.
- He had a Social Security Number.
- He did NOT try to harm ICE agents.
- He was NOT target of ICE investigation.
ICE killed him in front of his 3-yr-old daughter.
Rayah Jaymes retweeted
It’s 250 years of freedom for white men only.
It’s 106 years of voting freedom for white women.
It’s 72 years of voting freedom for Asian immigrants.
It’s 61 years of voting freedom for Black people.
It’s 51 years of voting rights for Native Peoples, but we all know that’s a farce when their lands were stripped from them and their ways of life were classified illegal.
It’s 10 years of marriage freedom for queer couples.
It’s 0 years of voting freedom for Puerto Ricans.
Rayah Jaymes retweeted
BREAKING: In a landmark 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court rules that "geofence warrants," which allow law enforcement to collect sweeping smartphone location data over a broad area, constitute an "unreasonable search" and violate the Fourth Amendment.
