Chicago Police and the FBI are investigating if saboteurs placed bugs in a breakfast buffet prepared for delegates at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday.

“Multiple unknown female offenders are alleged to have entered a building…and began placing unknown objects onto tables containing food,” the convention’s information center said in a statement. “The offenders are believed to have then left the area. One victim was treated and released on-scene. Along with CPD, FBI-Chicago is assisting in the investigation.”

  • PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S [he/him]@lemmy.sdf.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    arrow-down
    51
    ·
    edit-2
    4 months ago

    Huh, I suppose if you do support Palestine, you can’t be a DNC delegate?

    Of course not, you simply shouldn’t be a DNC delegate if you support Palestine. Because they’ll point at these delegates and use them as props to say “see, we’re listening to Palestinians” while not changing course.

    These are not ordinary voters, these are sometimes local politicians but competing to run the same machine as their more successful national counterparts. These individuals have some degree of power and influence, and they’re choosing to use it for the American Empire.

    Zero pity for these turbo-losers getting bugs in their food. Admittedly, making “putting bugs in food” a popular protest tactic doesn’t set a great precedent considering the food safety implications for everyone else, but food safety concerns are NOTHING compared to what Palestinians are suffering at the delegates’ party’s hands.

    • RageAgainstTheRich@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      28
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      4 months ago

      You are making this the ONLY issue in the world. I fucking hate the israeli government for what they are doing. Fuck israel. But you are willing to let everyone around you burn for this. Willing to let lgbt, people of color, students, poor people and the working class be oppressed and possibly murdered. Because trump WILL make sure of that.

      • Count042@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        edit-2
        4 months ago

        You apparently don’t understand the word intersectional.

        You also need to reread this:

        First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
             Because I was not a socialist.
        
        Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
             Because I was not a trade unionist.
        
        Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
             Because I was not a Jew.
        
        Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
        

        Genocide is something that is binary, and you are either against it or a fascist. There is no middle ground with genocide.

        The DNC has already started to indicate they will throw trans people under the bus next.

      • PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S [he/him]@lemmy.sdf.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        46
        ·
        edit-2
        4 months ago

        Willing to let lgbt, people of color, students, poor people and the working class be oppressed and possibly murdered.

        Sounds like what’s happening right fucking now under a Democrat presidency!

        Comic of Lucy and Charlie Brown where Charlie Brown is falling on his ass because Lucy tricked him into kicking a football and then pulling it away at the last second

        How many times do you have to try to kick Lucy’s football before you realize that she’s punking you?!?

        Voting for President merely ratifies decisions already made by capital. I’m not voting for your candidate, and I refuse to be guilted for decisions already made by capital.

        Because trump WILL make sure of that.

        Trump winning would be an indicator of the trajectory you have no control over as far as the ballot box is concerned.

        But you are willing to let everyone around you burn for this.

        No I am not. I want people to organize themselves against the system, not within it. The system itself is the problem. Having “”“good people”“” is insufficient to get even mediocre change. See self-described socialist AOC speedrunning ghoulification.

        • jpreston2005@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          7
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          4 months ago

          your rhetoric only serves to further de legitimize your position. you’re basically a caricature of a useless tankie.

              • Count042@lemmy.ml
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                3
                ·
                4 months ago

                The genocide is happening now, under Biden, who could end this in a day.

                I have more respect for the people with their ‘single issue voter’ defense of genocide. They at least aren’t living in a fantasy land that Trump is responsible for Biden’s actions.

              • PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S [he/him]@lemmy.sdf.org
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                3
                arrow-down
                7
                ·
                4 months ago

                Will do because the Democrats are the ones in power right now.

                To be crystal clear: fuck the Republicans. No disagreement there.

                But they’re not pretending to be the good guys, sapping energy from radical movements and (as liberals) basically existing to spoil popular revolutions. They’re not pulling possible comrades out the game with their variety of liberalism. That’s why I’m so incessant on pushing back against the Democrats.

                • RageAgainstTheRich@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  3
                  arrow-down
                  2
                  ·
                  4 months ago

                  Sadly we do not have a choice. We either get soggy shit bread, or we get rat poison. There is no third option. We can kick and scream right now however much we want. But we WILL get either one or the other.

                  We need to be alive to organize and fight for this world. We can’t do that on rat poison. Soggy shit bread is no cake either. But at least we live to fight another day.

                  We know a lot wont survive on the soggy shit bread. But NOBODY will survive on rat poison. And we do NOT have a choice right now. And pretending otherwise just hurts the weakest and vulnerable among us.

                  • PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S [he/him]@lemmy.sdf.org
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    2
                    arrow-down
                    4
                    ·
                    4 months ago

                    Sadly we do not have a choice. We either get soggy shit bread, or we get rat poison. There is no third option.

                    Exactly, you don’t get a choice. Which one you’re gonna get will be decided by the people with the money. Your input as a voter is orthogonal to what the upcoming administration will actually do, regardless of whom is the figurehead. You can vote for whomever you want as “hard” as you want, but as hard you force that input, you won’t change the trajectory of the system.

        • RageAgainstTheRich@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          4 months ago

          Most of us are not organizing within the system to fix it. We are voting as a way of putting our foot on the breaks while we organize outside of it. The train is going fast. Trump accelerates it and Harris makes it go slower.

          Voting does not mean we are organizing inside the system. Its a half baked measure we use to our advantage.

          Nobody is saying Harris will stop or reverse the train. But we are not going accelerate the train and hurt even more people than it already is. We are privileged to be hanging off the sides instead of laying on the tracks like many many others.

          • PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S [he/him]@lemmy.sdf.org
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            5
            ·
            4 months ago

            We are voting as a way of putting our foot on the breaks while we organize outside of it. The train is going fast. Trump accelerates it and Harris makes it go slower.

            I got no beef with people voting for Democrats in the general election, even though I disagree with their choice, because it doesn’t affect the outcome of anything. My beef is with these delegates, these people in a position of influence and power.

            Nobody is saying Harris will stop or reverse the train. But we are not going accelerate the train and hurt even more people than it already is.

            Of course we shouldn’t accelerate the “train”, I cannot stress enough that I agree with that statement and that accelerationism is bad, but it is my view that

            1. Voting in the general election does nothing to brake the train. Not near zero, zero. Voting is orthogonal to what needs to be done. If it’ll make you more comfortable, then go vote I guess.
            2. Voting as a DNC delegate requires you to tow their party line and do other things that compromise any intended “braking” of the “train”. This specific vote, as well as any other equivalent collaboration with the Democratic establishment, is what I am irritated about.
            • LengAwaits@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              4 months ago

              Voting in the general election does nothing to brake the train. Not near zero, zero.

              I fear that you’re mistaking your own pessimism for absolute truth, but I’m willing to be convinced otherwise.

              Voting is orthogonal to what needs to be done.

              What, in your view, needs to be done?

              • PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S [he/him]@lemmy.sdf.org
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                2
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                edit-2
                4 months ago

                I fear that you’re mistaking your own pessimism for absolute truth, but I’m willing to be convinced otherwise.

                Indigenous Action did a great write-up on this topic. Although to be completely honest, the point of this thread was really to condemn the DNC delegates specifically. Actually, I brought up voting at all in this thread in response to the suggestion that I am:

                Willing to let lgbt, people of color, students, poor people and the working class be oppressed and possibly murdered.

                As a poor grad student, and sibling to two lovely LGBT POC for whom I would literally kill to protect, this is a particularly offensive implication (from a different user!) that I often see bundled with pro-electoralism rhetoric, so I preemptively brought in Colin Ward’s article against voting.

                What, in your view, needs to be done?

                In the large, abolish all authority and hierarchy by popular revolution. If that is impossible, then approximate it as best as possible in the real world using a basis of popular liberatory actions emulating the end goal.

                In the small, these delegates could use their power to physically and logistically disrupt the DNC until at least the US ending weapons transfers is secured. For everyone else, support protesters for Gaza in your life, show up to the protests if you can, do direct actions [1] if you can … do nothing if you have to, but most importantly, don’t cooperate with the war machine!

                I hope this clarifies what I meant by saying:

                Voting is orthogonal to what needs to be done.

                Because while voting doesn’t necessarily hurt direct action efforts [2], it doesn’t help either. It’s just a completely independent class of activity. It’s like if, on a typical x-y plane (where the x and y axes are assumed to be orthogonal), we need to move in (let’s say) the positive x direction, and people keep spamming inputs in the y direction.

                [1] Just the first part of section J.2, not including J.2.1 and onward. The rest is supplementary.

                [2] There is an argument to be made (and I believe the article I cited makes it) that activism for voting takes time and energy that would otherwise be spent on direct action. Also, technically speaking, voting does literally take time away from direct action for the amount of time you’re waiting to vote and actually in the booth, but I’m an engineer so I’m willing to neglect small-valued terms 😆.

                • LengAwaits@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  arrow-down
                  1
                  ·
                  4 months ago

                  When fascists take power it’s not unheard of for them to line up commies and anarchists against a wall and shoot them. I’m all for ideological utopianism, I’ve lived on intentional communities in the country and anarchist collectives in the city, but preserving your moral superiority is little comfort when you and your family are staring down the barrel of a fascist’s gun.

                  The Answer.

                  • PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S [he/him]@lemmy.sdf.org
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    4 months ago

                    The Answer.

                    From the song’s lyrics:

                    I don’t believe you have the answer

                    I’ve got ideas too

                    but if you’ve got enough naivete

                    and you’ve got conviction

                    then the answer is perfect for you

                    That’s kind of an obnoxious response when you yourself said:

                    I fear that you’re mistaking your own pessimism for absolute truth, but I’m willing to be convinced otherwise.

                    (emphasis mine) followed by:

                    What, in your view, needs to be done?

                    Like you basically asked for my answer after saying you’d be willing to be convinced. You asked “what needs to be done?”, and I replied with things that I think need to be done. If you didn’t ask, I would have kept my mouth shut because frankly I’m pathologically disinterested in telling people what to do, probably to a fault. If you weren’t convinced then that’s fine, but it’s just kind of obnoxious to ask for an answer and then chide me for giving you my answer.


                    When fascists take power it’s not unheard of for them to line up commies and anarchists against a wall and shoot them.

                    Yes, and that’s why we need to prepare ourselves for when they do, which they WILL do regardless of who gets elected as the figurehead.

                    I’m all for ideological utopianism

                    I’m not [2]! I have explained over and over again all throughout my responses in this post’s comment section that I have very practical motivations for why voting is a waste of time. I encourage you to go through my comment history and see what I have said to others in this thread.

                    but preserving your moral superiority…

                    Yo literally the first thing I posted in this comment section was a meme dunking on the delegates and their misery, which is bar none the most engagement I have received on any comment and almost all of it negative. No one here thinks I’m morally superior. And in case you were wondering, I don’t like me either.

                    So let’s explicitly do away with the moral superiority pretense [1].

                    … is little comfort when you and your family are staring down the barrel of a fascist’s gun.

                    Yes, exactly, that’s why we need to build our community defenses against these fascist pricks before they kill us, keeping in mind that we’re in a liberal dominated community on a “civility-at-all-costs” instance where we’re not allowed to talk seriously about revolution!

                    But as I have said to other users, particularly the comment you initially replied to:

                    I got no beef with people voting for Democrats in the general election, even though I disagree with their choice, because it doesn’t affect the outcome of anything. My beef is with these delegates, these people in a position of influence and power.

                    So go vote Democrat if that makes you feel safe, I’m not going to bring it up again because it doesn’t matter, but I’m not gonna pretend that it’s helpful.

                    But also keep in mind that these are the assholes who platformed a cop over a Palestinian in the middle of their genocide…

                    Again, I invite you to reread what I’ve commented to you so far, and to go through my comment history and see what I’ve said to others.

                    [1] Really, my position is, boiled down, that supposedly “practical” solutions that violate common morality (for example, letting people die to save money in *insert industry here*) are not really practical at all. This inextricably couples practicality to morality.

                    Frankly, as a human actor who fails to always act practically, I acknowledge that for similar reasons, sometimes I also fail to act morally, i.e. in laughing at the pain of other humans because they happen to collude with an evil institution. Hence why I reject the idea that I am morally superior, and that I have asserted as such anywhere in this comment section.

                    And in the sense that the means should reflect the ends, I admit that I haven’t lived up to my own ideals, out of anger and irritation at the constant stream of bullshit being foisted on me and everyone I know by these very Democrat ghouls.

                    But I don’t believe that I need to be a perfect moral actor to speak out about Palestine and the fascists at the DNC!

                    [2] For similar reasons as those in [1], ideology should be coupled to practicality, which itself should be coupled to morality. Hence why I’m not interested in anarchism as a utopian ideology where anything is prescribed, but as a practical solution for humanity to overcome capitalism.