The Nest
The following are select articles authored by members of The Mockingbird Movement. These stories highlight recent instances of oppression witnessed by our community and bring attention to issues that we believe the public should be informed about. Additionally, these articles share personal accounts of the experiences and events that have inspired individuals to embrace activism
Anonymous Member
I don't even know where to start with what radicalized me. I was put into an Christian school at an early age (pre-k until 6th grade) , I had a family member that would make frequent racist remarks. I didn't understand what they were saying at the time, I just understood that they were being hateful, so I spent a lot of my pre-adolescence fighting them on their and the rest of my family's hateful views.
Fast forward to right before the pandemic, my mom went into hospital for a /supposedly/ in-and-out treatment. There was a hole in her stomach from taking too many OTC pain relievers. Initially the plan was sew it up and send her on her way, but the more they did, the more issues they found. Suddenly they decided she was "too dehydrated" and pumped her up with 8L of water and sent her home. She was working for Walmart at the time and every day she was in hospital they called and asked if she was coming in to work. When she said she couldn't, because, HOSPITAL LOL, they said "oh you have to go to our app and REQUEST OFF FOR THIS every DAY you won't be in"
eventually they fired her and she lost her insurance through them
her body shut down bc she couldn't process fluids that had been given to her due to the dehydration, her whole body swelled like a water balloon, and they declared she was dying.
they said there was nothing more they could do other than give her morphine, which she got hooked on
we brought her home because she didn't want to go to hospice
she was delirious and speaking gibberish. she clawed up my dad and sister. they sent a hospice nurse to check on her once a week and I begged for an explanation that she clearly couldn't give
dad made the decision to strap her to the bed because she kept trying to rip out the bag that was attached to her now non-functioning gallbladder
they told her she wouldn't see another sunmmer. she lived until june 22, 6 days before her birthday. three years ago.
none of the lawyers here will touch the hospital that killed her.
After witnessing so much social injustice in my life and feeling... this powerless to do anything on my own about it, it really opened my eyes seeing my mother played around with then tossed to the side like a broken toy. Knowing that if she was treated with such disregard, there are others being treated ten times as worse.
Earlier this year I started feeling awful and wound up in the ER myself. I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's but no one would prescribe me the medicine I needed because my labs were "normal." I was having trouble breathing, tachycardia terrified me every day, I lost a lot of weight, and there was nothing I could do other than "diet and exercise!" It took a second trip to the ER to get put on thyroid meds, and now I'm several thousands of dollars in debt over it.
I'm sick to death of this busted-ass system and something's gotta give. And I don't understand why we let them get away with murder and mistreatment."
Anonymous Member
I can’t say what exactly radicalised me. I can’t recall a time where I didn’t have the feelings I do but I can speak on what radicalises me now.
Last year, train staff in my city went on strike due to an insulting collective agreement that would strip their benefits. They worked to rule, highlighting that the trains cannot operate without staff not taking their entitled breaks or agreeing to extra shifts to cover for insufficient staff numbers. The company who run the trains are partially funded by the city council and they send their money offshore to their parent company. Everyone complained about the delays and cancellations instead of the company exploiting its workers. The government highlighted the train strike among a couple others when introducing a bill that would dock 10% of workers pay for those who use work to rule strike action.
My friend’s ministry recently came back to union negotiations after months of ignoring the union to offer a 0% pay rise for the next 3 years. The Chief Executive of that same ministry received a 6% pay rise at the time, an extra $36k($20kUSD) a year making her yearly salary over $600k($333kUSD). A 6% increase for my friend is $3k($1.6kUSD). My friend is currently working to rule.
Any time I go to the supermarket something has gone up in price, recently milk by a dollar. The price of butter is on average $6($3.34USD), that’s if it’s on sale. Doesn’t sound like much but I come from a country with 5 million cows. During the pandemic, I worked in a supermarket. The only reason we received hazard pay was because another store in the franchise with a union received it and it made national headlines. People would thank me for working during lockdown but when it was all said and done, they took their masks off and went right back to treating service workers like shit. My government blames me for ruining the local economy. They want me in the city five days a week to buy lunch and coffee, an average spend of $25($13.90USD) on top of my $12($6.60USD) train fare per day. They also just made over 9000 people redundant, a good proportion who live in my very city.
The average rent in my city is $680($378.15USD) per week. I pay that amount to live on the outskirts, 30 minutes drive from CBD. In the actual city it’s much higher. These houses are often poor quality, damp and mouldy especially. My friend’s asthma worsened in their CBD apartment after water from the above flat leaked through their ceiling, their clothes and belongings covered in mildew. The HOA for the building asked them to clean the mould themselves, after ignoring an order to remedy the problem.
The government gave landlords across the country a tax break that has ballooned to $2.9b($1.6b USD). They said it would mean landlords wouldn’t have to raise rents. Trickle down, all that usual stuff. The rents still rise. The government reintroduced legislation that allows for no cause evictions. It’s common for people to weigh up which problems to report in case they get evicted. A friend who works for the national tenant bond system says landlords constantly try to take their tenants full bond for no good reason after the tenants move out. Taking your landlord to the Tenancy Tribunal can get you blacklisted from other rentals, even if your landlord is in the wrong.
At work I opened the newspaper and flipped through to see two articles next to each other. The Prime Ministers ‘positive’ conversation with freshly elected Trump and the Government public apology for child abuse survivors in state care. These events happened on the same day. At this apology event survivors were only given 5 minutes to speak, a small proportion of the 200,000 people abused over 49 years. The Prime Minister left before all of the speeches were finished. My wisdom tooth got infected three times before I finally had to get it removed. I couldn’t afford the dentist or the time to get off from work so I would go on antibiotics when it started playing up. I was dreading the cost more than the needles and drills. It was $1300($722.54USD). I had to use a buy now pay later scheme to pay for it. When you live in a country with public healthcare, it’s not often people have health insurance. It’s not related but you can use buy now pay later for petrol now, just so you know.
My grandmother bought her house in the 80’s for $40k($22.2kUSD). That same house is worth over $700k($388.8kUSD) today, it’s not in nicest neighbourhood by any means. I would have to save $300k(166kUSD) for a deposit to buy it and have enough to service a mortgage, insurance and rising council rates while on a 7% interest rate from the bank. 20% deposits no longer cut it. The government stripped all programmes for supporting first home buyers. I’m most likely going to have to buy with others, something that has become normalised in the last five years here.
The things I have highlighted are a part of the reality of living in my country and city, the experiences of myself and others I know who live through these things everyday. I’ve barely scraped the surface, let alone the issues we, as humans, face on a global scale. If I did, this would become never-ending. When Trump was elected again, people expressed interest in moving to my country to get away from his government. The truth is the grass will never be greener anywhere you go when the entire world is in drought. I can’t map out what exactly radicalised me, but as long as the world continues in the direction it is, there will always be something to keep me radicalised. Even if it’s the price of butter.
Anonymous Member
“Growing up, my siblings and I were caught in the mess of a profoundly broken foster care system. As children, we bounced between unstable relatives before eventually landing in foster care. My biological mother had her first child—me—at 18, while still in high school and living in a women’s shelter. By the time she was 23, she had three children: me, my little sister, and my little brother. My first “home” was a shelter, and I found myself back in emergency shelters at ages 10 and 12.
My family was already poor, but entering foster care stripped us of even the little we had. When the state took custody, we left with nothing but the clothes on our backs. We were taken out of our schools and placed in facilities with other displaced children, ranging from infants to teenagers aging out of the system at 18. At the emergency shelter, we didn’t attend public school. Instead, a single teacher attempted to teach kids spanning grades 3 through 8 in one classroom. Unsurprisingly, this left me academically behind. Looking back, I can’t help but question if this system is broken by design—taking underprivileged kids from their families under the guise of protection, only to leave them without the resources or stability to succeed.
After three court-ordered extensions at the children’s shelter, many nights in my caseworker’s office at the CPS building, and more emergency overnight placements than I can count, I was finally placed in a foster home. There, I was enrolled in public school for the first time in years—and it was immediately clear how far behind I was. Beyond how far behind I was in academics, social skills and in knowledge in the “culture” of preteens in the 2010s, I was struck by how vastly different life was for kids my age.
I’ll never forget walking into my first foster home. It was a modest 2,100-square-foot house with a family of 5, and to me, it felt like a mansion. It was the first time I had ever been inside an actual house. I didn’t know what Disney was and thought Spider-Man, Superman, and Batman were the only superheroes. Despite being the same age as my classmates, I had lived a completely different life.
Fortunately, I met my best friend in high school, and during my senior year, I moved in with their family. To this day, they are who I consider my true family. As an adult, I realize how lucky I was. Many others in the foster care system aren’t as fortunate. So many kids age out and are thrust into adulthood with no safety net—no family to turn to when life gets hard. Many of these kids endure unimaginable hardships, only to be set up to fall into the same cycles of poverty or trauma the system was supposedly designed to protect them from.
Having lived through these different stages of life—growing up dirt poor, being adopted by a middle-income family, and later finding a home with a family that was modestly well-off—I’ve been able to view life through multiple lenses. The stark contrast between lives based on income is staggering. The quality of life—your very survival—is so deeply tied to money, a concept that is, at its core, entirely man-made.
The U.S. Constitution claims to grant us the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, yet these ideals come with a price tag that most people cannot afford. My experiences growing up, watching how money shapes lives, and seeing firsthand how broken systems perpetuate cycles of poverty have fundamentally shaped the way I see the world”.
Anonymous Member
“I grew up in the rural south to a family of blue collar workers and military men. I watched my grandfather develop lung cancer and pass away due to the chemicals he was exposed to at the paper mill. The paper mill has fought my grandmother for decades to prevent paying a settlement for his death and the stuff they exposed him to. My military family member have had a long list of health complications and various cancers because of the stuff they were exposed to. My mother raised my sister and I by herself and was not able to afford basic medical care for her children despite working for a massive University and is still paid minimum wage to this day. We were barely able to afford food, let alone medical care.
Going through college when I was homeless, I didn't qualify for financial aid because it was expected that I would have parental contribution towards my tuition even though I was not on speaking terms with one parent and the other made too little to be able to assist me. Then when I went back after 25, I was told I made too much to quality despite only making barely above minimum wage at the time. So I racked up credit card debit to avoid predatory student loans. The same loans I watched my mother take on to provide us a better life. The same loans she will die with because at this point they already have accumulated so much interest she owes over 100k for them. While her University still pays her minimum wage, even though she now has a masters degree.
I am also going through my own cancer diagnosis this year and I have had nothing but headache after headache between my providers and my job. My entire existence to this point has radicalized me. I never want anyone to have to face any of the struggles I have faced”.
Renegade For Justice
“I find it strange that I must explain what radicalized me, as if being human isn’t authority enough to advocate for humanity. We are at a point in history where to be human is radical. To explain what radicalized me, I simply need to say: I am human. And my humanity has made me radical. Humanity is more than existence; it is the capacity for empathy, compassion, and moral consciousness. It is the ability to recognize dignity and worth, to act with kindness, and to make ethical choices even when it’s difficult. Humanity is reflected in how we treat others—especially the vulnerable, the powerless. It is not just about survival; it is about love, justice, and connection. My humanity radicalized me. The word “radical” comes from the Latin radix, meaning “root.” It originally referred to something fundamental, something at the core. In the nineteenth century, it became politicized—those who sought deep, foundational change to systems of power were called radicals. Soon after, the U.S. government weaponized the word, twisting it into something dangerous, something to be feared. Their existence depends on us not rising up, not demanding that our worth and dignity be seen and take up space. I imagine a society where the government serves its people—organizing services, ensuring safety—where everyone is free, not just in legal terms but in financial equity and the right to love, to live with purpose and joy. Every person on this planet has worth, simply because they are alive, breathing the same air as me. That alone—the sheer miracle of existence—demands dignity for every human being. I have seen what humanity can do when we unleash human potential. We create vaccines that prevent millions of deaths. We advance medicine to repair a hole in the heart with minimally invasive surgery. We build devices that hold all the world’s knowledge in the palm of a hand. We decipher the symbiotic relationship between pollen and bees, the mechanics of gravity, the necessity of wildfires for forest renewal. We create paintings and poetry and music that move 2 emotions like wind. When given the space to love and create, humans are capable of extraordinary things. Yet, my belief in human worth makes me a radical. My insistence that every person deserves dignity labels me an extremist. That is preposterous. Calling me radical is an act of control—an attempt to turn me into a villain so that you feel afraid. If you see me as a threat, then you are more oppressed than you know. It was not my twenty-six months of incarceration for DUI Negligent Homicide that radicalized me. It was not the eleven years of an abusive relationship, nor the night he left me for dead, bleeding in a frozen driveway. It wasn’t the $120,000 in student loan debt. It wasn’t the failed court system that awarded custody to my abuser. It wasn’t the thousands of jobs I applied for but never got. It wasn’t the arm that will never heal because the prison refused to reset the bone. It is my humanity that radicalized me. It is in the moments when I’ve stared up into the dark night sky and contemplated the concept of an infinite Universe that is ever-expanding. It is when my children come to me for comfort, and I nuzzle my face into the crux of their necks so that I can hum into their hearts. It is when, time after time, a person has looked at me through ugly cries and tears, wondering WHY? Why is their skin color radical? Why is who they love radical? Why is who they are radical? Why is where they’re from radical? Why can’t they afford life-saving medical treatment? Why can’t they just get a job that makes enough money to meet basic needs? It is in those moments, when I don’t have a good answer, that I am my most radical. Because I know that the purpose of life is not money or wealth or amassing things and stuff. I am quite certain that the purpose of life is to love, to be loved, and to appreciate the awe and wonder that we exist at all in the first place. If that’s radical, then I will die on this hill. I will fight for my radical views of humanity because our lives – my children’s lives – depend on it. It is time for us to all be radical – to demand humanity as a non-negotiable component of society. If we don’t demand humanity now, the bright light that shines within each of us will be silenced.”.