Marcela’s weekly digest: 29th November

Hi, I’m Marcela: I’m a comedian, I live Brooklyn, and I really like to tell people how to feel about the news. After wowing zoomers all over on TikTok by giving them news with a sense of humour and anarchy, I decided to start a weekly Sunday newsletter to share my feelings about more news. 

My weekly newsletter has evolved into this beautiful Tuesday weekly news column for shado which also covers international news. I hope the newsletter keeps you informed and makes you laugh a little. We live in hell and I believe humour helps keep this place a little bit cooler.

Today I’ll be sharing my thoughts on a quarter of Florida voters saying they’ve been homeless in the past few years, Joe Biden trying to trick rail workers into signing a contract without paid sick leave, Hawaiians being deprived of housing on their ancestral land, and English fans booing their own team. 

Onto the news…

News that made say All Landlords are Bad 

Housing is so unaffordable in the so-called United States of America that over 25% of surveyed voters in the place called Florida revealed they’ve been homeless “in the last few years.” As a person who expects anything from Florida, including a Florida man wrestling an alligator while he is being chased by a police helicopter, I’m flabbergasted by this news.

I honestly don’t know why I’m flabbergasted by the fact that a state whose governor spends all his time thinking what would Trump do – and then dials it up – would also deprive so many of its citizens of a basic human right. I know cruelty exists and our society promotes cruelty so that a few can have everything. However, the type of cruelty that results in one out of four people not having a home simply because they don’t have money astonishes me.

Maybe it’s because I still feel guilty about not returning my college roommate’s miniskirt in time that I don’t understand how a landlord can sleep at night knowing they have made someone houseless, let alone lots of landlords knowing they have made one quarter of an entire state houseless. Is there a landlord support group out there to help them deal with their guilt?

There is no landlord support group where Jake the landlord can say: I’m Jake, I’m a landlord, today I’ve made a family of four homeless because I couldn’t steal their labour to buy another Tesla and I’m torn up about it. The support group doesn’t exist because we live in a society where Jake is encouraged to steal people’s labour to buy a new Tesla.

That’s what a landlord does. They steal their tenants’ labour to buy a house or an ugly electric vehicle that’s produced by a fascist. Okay, not all landlords drive Teslas, but all landlords are bad #ALAB and that’s why you should get together with your neighbours and start a rent strike which never ends.

News that made wonder if Joe Biden knows evil maths

Railroad workers in the so-called United States of America turned down a five-year contract negotiated by Joe Biden himself to avert a strike because the contract did not include paid sick leave. Yes, you read that correctly. The president of the so-called United States of America, not Elon Musk, asked workers to sign a contract that doesn’t require their employer to pay them to stay home when they are sick.

Joe saw no issue with an employment contract that does not include paid sick leave even though the workers asked for 15 days of paid sick leave. He said the contract “was a win for all sides and the US economy.” I know I’m a comedian and not a master negotiator, but it seems pretty basic to me that negotiation requires both parties getting a little of what they want.

So either Joe needs to retake presidential negotiation 101 or he practises evil maths where winning only counts if rich people win.

If you picked the second option: you are correct, you get one point! Now you have one more point than railroad workers have paid sick leave. Not giving workers paid sick leave is a strategy for rail companies to increase their profits.

If people can’t call in sick because they can’t afford to lose a day’s wage, then you don’t need as many workers. This evil maths rail companies have used to cut the railroad workforce and generate record profits is what Joe Biden calls a win for the US economy.

Joe might not be Elon Musk but he works for a lot of Elon Musks.

News that made me realise the United States of America is a reverse Roomba

The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has frozen loans meant for Native Hawaiians to build homes on their ancestral land because the land is unsafe. There are multiple areas known as unexploded ordnance (UXO) zones which are deemed unsafe for housing in Hawaii because of the presence of unexploded weapons from US military exercises in the 1940s.

Of course the so-called United States of America military left a very dangerous mess for nearly eight decades. Who do you think they are? A Roomba?

If anything, the USA is a reverse Roomba. It creates messes and goes over the mess again to make the mess even messier. A mess on top of a mess is exactly what is happening with the HUD loans in Hawaii. The loans to build homes in the Waikoloa, a UXO zone, have been on hold since 2014 pending a clean up by the United States Army Corps of Engineers.

The clean up was expected to take months but has taken years because the US Army only knows how to drop explosives, not how to pick them up – as you would expect from a reverse Roomba.

Also, one must ask: why were Native Hawaiians given land riddled with explosives while settler tourists don’t have to worry about detonating a bomb on their way to scuba diving? Why does Mark Zuckerberg get to own a grenade-free cattle ranch and beach while Liliu Ross, a Hawaiian, has to live in a shack because she can’t get a government-backed loan to build a home?

Last time I checked, going to a resort in Hawaii is not a basic need and neither is owning a ranch. Thus, it would make perfect sense that this already desirable land should go to Hawaiians, not to tourists or Zucks.

However, a reverse Roomba that isn’t sorry about genocide never makes any sense so I don’t expect the US government to do the right thing and give Hawaiians explosive-free land back any time soon.

News that reminded me about losing board games as a child

The English team was met with boos from their fans at the World Cup after they drew against the United States of America, a team historically known for being terrible. I get it, it’s disappointing for your team to tie with a team whose country calls the wrong sport football.

However, as someone who has had a favourite team before, I think booing your team at a time when they need you the most is not just plain mean. It’s also a reflection of our society’s toxic culture that claims only winners deserve love when everyone, including “losers”, deserve love.

I’m not saying losers deserve love because I’m the known loser of snakes and ladders in my family. I’m saying losers deserve love because I believe loving losers is actively rebelling against capitalism.

Capitalism treats those who have been defined as losers as disposable, and those who it has defined as winners as heroes. This is why unhoused people are criminalised for not being able to afford homes while Elon Musk, a government-funded billionaire, is praised.

If we all agreed everyone deserves love, not only would we not be booing our beloved teams, we would also spend our time making sure anyone who wants a home has a home and Elon Musk never gets his hands on another company.

In fact, if we believed even losers deserve love, there would be no companies because we would have destroyed capitalism.

Old news that made stop celebrating Thanksgiving 

This week on TikTok I talked about why I stopped celebrating Thanksgiving. 

@feelthenewswithmarcela #thanksgiving ♬ original sound – Feel the News

That’s it for the news. See ya next week,

Marcela