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Mat-Su Plunge

House Fire Fundraiser for Local Family MORE ON PAGE 3 OF THE PEOPLE’S PAPER

Friendly faces, the fresh scent of Alaskan air, and people jumping into freezing water! Say goodbye to cabin fever, it’s getting wild in Palmer, Alaska.

Palmer Elks Lodge. The Plunge has been sponsored for more than a decade by the Mat-Su Sertoma Club. All funds stay right here in the valley.

Previous years saw as many as 100 people sign up to participate in the annual Mat-Su Sertoma Plunge.

Take the plunge, get a group together now and be a part of the “Original Valley Dip!” ... Check out matsuplunge.org for more information about this event.

The “frosty” plunge is set for Saturday, February 20, 2021, and will be held this year at the

PHOTOS COURTESY OF CECIL SANDERS

Facebook Banned Me, and Mussolini. "FASClSM should more appropriately be called CORPORATlSM, because it is a merger of state and corporate power." - BENlTO MUSSOLlNl Contributed by Josh Fryfogle I was banned from posting from my page on Facebook, which is a corporation, simply for sharing this quote from a well-known fascist dictator. I added no commentary to the quote, because the current events provided all the necessary context. Why would a quote from a historical figure be so repugnant to facebook, a corporation? You would think with all the hubbub about the (definitely not organized) Anti-fascism movement, and how great a thing it is, that it would be impossible to justify denying us the history of fascism itself - denying a direct quote from Fascism’s founder! It’s important to note that I have never had this happen before. I use facebook (a lot) as an outlet for my own self-expression, mostly essays and thought provoking tidbits. I never violate their terms of service, so I never get got. Certainly, their terms of service ought not include any prohibition on quoting historical figures - that would definitely be fascist, right? And certainly they don’t prohibit the discussion of fascism, which is widely had by the current corporate-preferred political class on the left. In recent years, and more recently more so, we’ve seen social media corporations and corporate legacy media, in lockstep with certain government officials, demanding an end to free expression. They say it’s dangerous. It’s certainly dangerous to dictators and fascists, a fact history reflects.

In recent years, the internet has been used by the People to share information and organize - and the state and corporate powers are making moves to silence and shape this activity. Right now they’re coming for some of those who dissent, but as their continued fascistic trajectory finds it’s path, they will inevitably silence all dissent, finally targeting the left. That’s fascism for ya! Now would be a good time to review the First Amendment, which guarantees our freedom of expression of conscience. For 13+ years I’ve advocated for the individual use of the First Amendment’s freedom of the press clause, and created The People’s Paper expressly for that purpose. That publication facilitates for the individual their right to free press, but we can’t force people to use it. We print 10,000 physical copies per issue, in addition to our online blog, which are distributed far and wide - not only on the internet, but on paper, which can’t be simply silenced like the internet.

I’ve warned over these years that these institutions that we’ve grown to trust, to which we’ve been conditioned to deference, are actually liabilities for Liberty itself. Freedom of press belongs to the individual, and when the individual willfully hands it over to corporate media companies, they’ve simply surrendered their right. Now, we see more clearly the power of paper, as long as everyone has a right to use it, and everyone actually makes use of it. There is no lazy liberty! We must express ourselves, for the good of the whole. To sort out our differences, instead of fascistic suppression of the same. Social media giants have silenced a sitting president, using the internet.

Read that last line again. That’s a profound statement, with more profound implications. Do you think that the state and corporations, working together, are anything other than fascism? The founder of Fascism said that’s exactly what fascism is, and facebook doesn’t want you to know that. Facebook banned me because I simply posted that quote. You might ask, then, why have I use social media at all?

I used it for my own writing - even though I own a local newspaper because if I published all my own writing in the paper, readers might get the impression that this publication is ‘my’ publication. They might, because they’ve been conditioned to, think that I am a journalist - rather than a citizen expressing myself, and inviting them to do the same. So, while I’ve certainly written for this publication over the years, I haven’t published all of my writings in print. Not even close. I write daily, in fact, and prolifically. If I published in print everything I write each month, this publication would be mostly my own writing. See the problem?

Art Show at Bigfoot Gallery in Palmer