We received the following letter from a Seattle resident:

As an older (72), extremely low income, partly disabled, single trans-woman in Seattle, USA, I accept global end-stage capitalism has many faces, including Trump’s and Putin’s.

This same, absolutely terminal, end-stage capitalism has a local

Jeff Bezos
His image of Seattle is white, straight and most of all rich

face—Jeff Bezos of Amazon—who is leading the forced relocation of vast numbers of Seattleites who happen not to be rich techies, including and especially me.

It is not lost on me that most (all?) genocides in history and currently (Native Americans, Palestinians…) have included a forced relocation component in their mass murder.

Force someone to move from their home at gunpoint (armed King County sheriffs enforce local evictions), and their spirit, their will to resist is likely broken. They become easier prey to outright murder. End-stage capitalists and colonial conquerors have practiced this for millennia.

In significant addition for me, transgender women in WA are again being targeted this year via signature gathering and media campaigns in support of the latest demonic version of the “bathroom bills”.

I walk in to pee. I walk out a felon.

Enhanced sentencing has been discussed by the cretins behind the bathroom bills. You know, felonies with minimum sentences of 10-20 years.

At 72, would this be a death sentence for me?

Am I being targeted like the Jews in 1930s Germany? Like the Palestinians now in Israeli-occupied (post-1948) territory?

So, I betray being a bit of globalist by these citations.

But, what gets me in the streets is local:

(1) fight those fucking bathroom bills however I can; and

(2) organize among the Unhoused who know about forced relocations.

I prepare to move from my home of these last 11years. I have lived here longer than anyplace else in my life. I am rooted here.

But Jeff Bezos commands me to move under fear of being shot for resisting his cops.

He wants my place for some of his young, rich techie army.

And, so, I must go. Where? When? How?

No one is proposing capitalism be overthrown to save my home. No one.

I wake wide-eyed in the morning stressed and despairing. I crash at night to nightmares about forced relocations. No wait, that’s real. That’s my life.

So I help organize against Seattle sweeps (forced relocations) of the Unhoused Camps, when I can. These folks know daily what it is to be rousted from their homes.

Unhoused in Seattle

Is Syria an abstraction for me? I’m sure it is. But I’m exhausted.  And still wince when I read about E. Aleppo.

Is Iraq less of an abstraction for me? Maybe. Because of higher-profile American mass murder there for decades?

In struggle & rage,
A Comrade in Seattle

Protester in Ferguson, August, 2014