Good morning!
Welcome to Digestable, your mouthful of things happening in the world.
Today’s ferments:
all text below transcribed at this morning’s ceremony, with permission from the speaker
Greetings, greetings. I welcome you on this chilly morning to Punxsutawney, my hometown. It’s good to have some witnesses for such a momentous occasion.
After careful consideration, I am here to announce to you, attendees at the 2023 Groundhog Day celebration, that I, Punxsutawney Phil, am quitting. Today will be my last day on the job.
(gasps)
Now, I don’t know what all you fine people do for work. But I do know that most financially compensated work is no more than a streamlined strategy for extracting labor, workers be damned. Are you paid a fair wage? No? Are you paid every day you go to work? Yes, I thought so.
Tell me this. If you are, say, in the midst of a project, perhaps even a magnum opus at your place of employ, but it takes a while to get done, are you compensated for that time, and treated fairly as you progress towards your goal? Yes, I thought so.
So, you’ll see what I’m getting at. I live here, in that hill just behind me, where I wait patiently for three hundred and sixty four days to be acknowledged for my efforts. Consider the plight of home care workers, who are often forced to work 24-hour shifts without pay. Or farm workers paid by the bushel, not the hour. This treatment of anyone providing labor is unacceptable.
And what about when, in 2021, I remained unvaccinated because of poor interspecies access to the magic potion worked up by Pfizer and Moderna, which raked in record profits during that year? Still, I was forced to show my face, proper precautions be damned.
How about, on a more abstract level, the identity formation we in this country have come to expect from our work? Imagine if you took a new job, and the person who’d left that position was named Sarah. You show up at work and what happens? They start calling you Sarah! I’ll tell you, I might look old, but I’m certainly not the same Phil who claimed an early spring in 1890, or deemed my shadow invisible because World War II clouds blacked out the sky in 1942. I never got a chance to have my own name.
And then there’s the act itself. Being thrust in the air, spoken to in a made-up language, all this fuss—the perks of this job simply don’t outweigh how devalued I feel as a provider of labor. I am a whole groundhog. I am more than this! I deserve to be treated with care and respect even if I have a family emergency and can’t make it to the ceremony; even if there’s water leaking into my house, and I don’t look professional; even if I feel really sad and can’t drag myself out of my hole. I am not merely the entertainment I provide, and I demand better.
Gosh, not to mention—if you’d really wanted accurate weather predictions, you should have called up Exxon’s scientists, maybe eight, nine, Phils ago? Those guys really knew what they were talking about. At this point, the game’s rigged. No more long winters and early springs. It’s polar vortex season, baby! Then it’s warm and rainy the next day. Buckle up! We groundhogs can’t help you out of this mess.
Alright, folks. I’m out of here. If you’d like to follow up with me, I’ll now be working as a consultant, beginning at $300 an hour. If you’ve tuned in on YouTube and are located elsewhere, feel free to contact other members of the newly formed GHU73, the groundhog union—I know Staten Island Chuck, Wiarton Willie, and Fred La Marmotte have delivered similar addresses on this momentous day. We stand in solidarity with all other workers demanding fair treatment.
Phil raises a paw in the air, and turns from the stage.
The Second Look
Half-baked cultural criticism from Gabriel Coleman.
Let’s play compare and contrast. Before we do, I’m talking this week about all sorts of horrible things: police violence, xenophobia, racism, etc. so if you’re not feeling up for that feel free to sit this one out.
Last week there was a lot of “urging” going on in the United States. Biden “urged nonviolence” in anticipation of the release of a video of Tyre Nichols being beaten by police after which he died in police custody. He also said he “was really pleased” that Nichols’s mother RowVaughn Wells called for nonviolence, the way you would praise your kid for keeping their elbows off the dinner table. Governors and attorneys and mayors urged nonviolence as they shut down transit hubs and declared states of emergency, preemptively chastising their constituents for action they urged us not to take.
Two days later, those same officials were pleasantly surprised that people did not resort to violence, and like, of course they fucking didn’t. People are hurt, they are mourning, they are upset but protests for Black lives have never been violent. Protestors have burned cop cars and tagged walls but crimes against properties are only violence if you give property personhood. The violent offenders in these protests and the murders that trigger them have always been police. So what had Biden & Co. so worried?
Yesterday evening I passed a group of protestors blocking Aungier St. to protest against the housing of asylum seekers in a nearby building. In a news briefing, local councillor and human pustule Mannix Flynn said the protests weren’t about not wanting asylum seekers, but that the neighborhood wasn’t consulted in advance of the refugee housing being established. “I hope that the far right elements and those who are hell bent on racism do not hijack this event and turn it into some sort of circus.” Flynn said, “They are not welcome.” As I passed by the protest I saw a sign reading “NO UNVETTED MEN,” in reference to the asylum housing system in Ireland which stupidly groups people in shelters for “women and families” and “single men.”
Later last night on the other side of the Liffey a building caught fire near the Royal Canal. A false rumor had spread that the building was being refurbished to house refugees and, to add to the confusion, Twitter user @BligheDerek mistakenly identified the burning building as a refugee housing facility in Artane as he celebrated the act of arson. In the replies one user pointed out the mistake, saying “We are the Artane Coolock community peaceful protest group and don’t associate with that. Thanks.” Another person replied with a gif of Light My Fire by The Doors, captioned “Things you love to see…. #CommunityActivism.”
The self-identification of these anti-asylum protestors as “nonviolent” and “community activists” is infuriating to me, but I’m not sure it's inaccurate. Given my earlier categorization of burning cop cars as nonviolent, setting fire to an empty building is the same—the owners will still get their insurance check. No, what really upsets me is nonviolent action being used to mask violent ideas. I have to imagine that when folks like Flynn and the ArtaneCoolockCommunityPeacefulProtestGroup, which I assume goes by ACCPPG, say their protest is about the housing crisis or democratic decision making they do so while putting on a rainbow wig and a big red nose. These clowns, even the most accelerationist of them, couch their bigoted beliefs under the guise of #CommunityActivism and it works. Property owners are more hesitant to contract with the government to house refugees, especially single men, because of this “nonviolent” backlash.
So why is Biden so scared of protestors? It isn’t because of the actions, nonviolent or otherwise; it is because ideas are powerful and protests, especially ones with burning cop cars, make people think. Protesting refugee housing is easy because it attacks parts of the state that support vulnerable people and serves wealthy folks, property owners, and those who aspire to that station. Protesting police violence is difficult because it attacks parts of the state that violently enforce hierarchies in order to better serve vulnerable and marginalised people. If Biden really wants nonviolence he must recognise that ideas, including his own, are the most dangerous kind of weapon.