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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 18th, 2023

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  • In run-up to the 1964 election, civil rights leaders including Martin Luther King Jr. were given an audience with incumbent president Lyndon Johnson, where he asked them to scale down their protest activity until after the election so he could be confident he could win. They understood correctly that by continuing to protest, they had political leverage.

    Imagine an alternative reality where LBJ had not signed the Civil Rights Act, and instead Barry Goldwater had won and increased the segregation and discrimination facing African-americans. Would you blame them for using the only electoral political leverage they had available, and laugh at their misfortune?

    The only check the worst excesses of the Trump presidency has is the potential for widespread civil unrest. The Democrats aren’t capable of that. Grassroots Palestinian-american organizations are. In building that base of resistance, we shouldn’t make the same mistakes that caused the Democrats to lose the election. In the words of Nate Silver:

    Democrats…often get angry with you when you only halfway agree with them. And I really think this difference in personality profiles tells you a little something about why Trump won: Trump was happy to take on all comers, whereas with Democrats, disagreement on any hot-button topic (say, COVID school closures or Biden’s age) will have you cast out as a heretic. That’s not a good way to build a majority, and now Democrats no longer have one.

    Abbas Alawieh is concerned for the lives of his family and friends under another Trump regime. We all are. He is one of us.



  • I appreciate your transparency. It sounds like this was an honest mistake and not intentional ban evasion. It is true that we hold solarpunks to higher standards of discourse than you may be used to on other platforms. The members may be right to be concerned. I understand many of the people you’ve sparred with in the past have not engaged in good internet etiquette either. But you could really help us out as admins by making a commitment to good-faith debate, at least while using this account.

    I don’t consider your participation in this thread ban evasion. This is not the kind of discussion that should be moved to direct messages. If @auk wants to ban you, we can move this discussion to !meta.



  • We contacted all of the instances where we knew he had bans before granting him membership. In the future I’ll keep you updated on similar controversial choices so you can better protect your community. Greenlighting him may have been a mistake, but we didn’t have sufficient information to gauge the seriousness of his antics. He’s definitely not a bot or a spammer, and wasn’t trying to conceal his identity so we’re giving him the benefit of doubt.