clevermanka (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
clevermanka) wrote2023-12-25 08:47 am
clevermanka) wrote2023-12-25 08:47 am
A Call to Disinvest from the OTW and Sign in Support of Palestine
Fellow fans, please read dhobikikutti's post A Call to Disinvest from the OTW and Sign in Support of Palestine as well as the linked Fanworkers International Coalition Statement of Solidarity with Palestine and consider signing.
From the DW post:
dhobikikutti's post A Call to Disinvest from the OTW and Sign in Support of Palestine as well as the linked Fanworkers International Coalition Statement of Solidarity with Palestine and consider signing.From the DW post:
We deserve a liberatory organisation representing our interests. Fanworks only exist because of fanworkers--we need an organisation that is like an international union, not an undemocratic cabal of white, Global North hobbyists. We need fanworker representatives reaching out to other threatened artistic communities across the world, the many who are being arrested, attacked and killed for daring to make art that threatens majoritarian, fascist powers. For fuck's sake, how impoverished does your imagination have to be, to not connect your freedom to make art with Black peoples' freedom to breathe, and Palestinian peoples' freedom to live?
What disinvesting from and dismantling the OTW will look like is individualised for everyone according to their needs and abilities. The OTW has always had a very imperial British "we gave you trains" attitude towards the infrastructure they provide the communities they seek funding and social status from. It is perfectly legitimate to continue to use the trains while working to drive the colonisers out of power.
The most obscene part of the conversation that OTW tries to force fandom to have, of course, is derailing any impulse towards justice that centres the people actually harmed. Because it is inconceivable for the OTW to structurally think of Black fanworkers or Palestinian fanworkers as 'one of us', it expects everyone it interacts with to share this attitude of Othering.
What disinvesting from and dismantling the OTW will look like is individualised for everyone according to their needs and abilities. The OTW has always had a very imperial British "we gave you trains" attitude towards the infrastructure they provide the communities they seek funding and social status from. It is perfectly legitimate to continue to use the trains while working to drive the colonisers out of power.
The most obscene part of the conversation that OTW tries to force fandom to have, of course, is derailing any impulse towards justice that centres the people actually harmed. Because it is inconceivable for the OTW to structurally think of Black fanworkers or Palestinian fanworkers as 'one of us', it expects everyone it interacts with to share this attitude of Othering.