Rachel E. S. Loesche
@RiESL

The distribution of wealth globally is dictated by financial bodies with monetary policies that discriminate against most people in most countries, to protect and sustain their own autocratic dominance. It is hard to accept, but if you understand the establishment of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), its illegitimate historical origin, and the way that it uses authority to impose debts to enslave entire continents of people with nothing but custom to defend itself, then you understand that this injustice is real and operates with organs of violent force through its representatives in financial state institutions all over the world. Ultimately, if we are to have a just global society, there must be monetary policies that regulate wealth to allow for a functioning, egalitarian global economy, but until that time comes when crisis or a labor movement big enough forces the IMF/World Bank's hand and transforms it, there is not much to be done beyond direct action mutual aid and strong social support showing class solidarity.

Poor people living in the global south right now are struggling to afford to eat, let alone buy medicines to treat malaria, which is rampant in places like the Gambia, where my friend Buba Kuyateh lives. Since I met Buba and have connected with him on Signal app to communicate about the class situation, I have been able to send whatever extra funds I had available so that he and his siblings and community members could start to feel some sense of security and concern from people with access to such wealth. Unfortunately, I am disabled and do not work, and the only way I am able to send funds is if I raise funds through donations or sales of things I make at home and sell online. This is a constant struggle, but all contributions help. Please make whatever contribution you can afford to help Buba and his communities in the Gambia. Eventually, we hope to have enough funds to organize more powerful political movements to transform the laws and structures creating this unconscionable disparity in security and basic needs.

Liberapay is the best way to support me and my work, as other extant platforms for funds transfers are almost all proprietary software, which hurt the larger political projects that civil rights and free software activists undertake to make a democratic society. The political and social implications of the technological age today are many but often poorly understood. Besides the aesthetic pieces I make to raise funds to support myself and my activist projects, I'm also working to produce literature and journalism that can bring some of the more confusing topics related to free software, civil rights, and macroeconomics into the public conversation, so we can all have an easier time understanding and discussing what matters to us deeply and is often kept out of our eyesight by corporate teams backed by lots of legal aid.

If you can afford to make a donation, please support my work, but if you cannot, please do not hesitate to engage with the materials I put out for free--the distribution of wealth is the exact problem I seek to address in my work, and I do not collect money for profit, but for basic needs and for any minor costs of the anticapitalist work I do. I try to keep those costs down to little or nothing. If you are curious to learn more, please feel free to write me an email and ask any questions you have. I'm eager to connect with curious and likeminded individuals about these issues and projects and how I am addressing the problems we all share. However, there are many different paths to achieve our shared goals, and all of our work, even in taking care of ourselves, is ultimately the best we can do, so please take care of yourself and trust that we are all in this together at the end of the day. Like most people, I'm doing the best I can with the information I have now. Thanks for reading this.

In solidarity, Riesl