Must-Reads and a Final Ask for the Year

Must-Reads

Your weekly, curated list of must-read articles is here. From the end of El Salvador’s metal mining ban to what Hurricane Helene relief efforts can teach us about preparing for Trump’s second term, here are some of the most important articles I’ve read this week.

• Inside the Country’s First Official Safe Drug Consumption Site by Rebecca. L. Root. “Elsewhere in the U.S., people will shoot up in alleyways and parks, at increased risk of unnecessarily overdosing. But the reality, Rivera said, is that with OPCs, there’s the potential for no one to have to die this way again.”
• I Got Cancer at 35. The Health Insurance System Delayed My Treatment for Months by Michelle Zacarias. “It wasn’t just the colorectal cancer that was killing me — it was the crushing inefficiency, delays and gaps in care that allowed my condition to worsen unchecked.”
• GOP Grabs Control of North Carolina Election Boards, Rushing to Negate November Losses by Alex Burness. “It’s a reminder for voting rights advocates that Republicans will, as Speaker Moore told Steve Bannon, continue to do what they can to mold the democratic process in their favor.”
• Solidarity Activists Are Raising Alarm Over Impending Turkish Attacks on Rojava by Ella Fassler. “If history is any indicator of what’s to come, Turkey and its proxy forces are likely to commit terrible atrocities against Kurds and other minority populations if they successfully seize Rojavan territory.”
• ‘I Received a First But it Felt Tainted and Undeserved’: Inside the University AI Cheating Crisis by Will Coldwell. “If anything, the AI cheating crisis has exposed how transactional the process of gaining a degree has become. Higher education is increasingly marketised; universities are cash-strapped, chasing customers at the expense of quality learning. Students, meanwhile, are labouring under financial pressures of their own, painfully aware that secure graduate careers are increasingly scarce.”
• 'A Death Sentence': Legislature Overturns El Salvador's Metal Mining Ban by Jessica Corbett. “In a win for Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who has dubbed himself ‘the world's coolest dictator,’ the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador on Monday overturned the Central American country's 2017 ban on metal mining.”
• What Hurricane Helene Relief Taught Me About Preparing for Trump’s Second Term by Schuyler Mitchell. “How much good could be accomplished if everyone, everywhere committed to doing some form of mutual aid work today? And how can we think strategically about galvanizing the communities of which we are already apart? Start small. Start now.”
• 'Tragic': Sudan Ditches Global Hunger Monitor as War Expands Famine by Jessica Corbett. “The Sudanese government suspended cooperation with a global hunger monitor on Monday, on the eve of the initiative announcing that the African country's civil war has driven the expansion of a famine first declared at a refugee camp earlier this year and expected to keep growing next year without a cease-fire.”
• How Telemedicine Benefits Became a Casualty of Congress’s Chaos by Laura Weiss. “If extending telehealth was the low bar to clear, Congress managed to do even less.”
• Getting Ahead of H5N1: Declare a Public Health Emergency, Expand Wastewater Testing, and Increase Vaccine Research and Availability—Sooner Rather Than Later by Adeline Williams, Allison Berke, Casey Aveggio, Saskia Popescu, Aurelia Attal-Juncqua. “Building on heightened awareness and the lessons of recent history, we present three recommendations that, if enacted, can curtail H5N1 transmission, enhance preparedness for a potential human epidemic, and foster trust within the scientific and public health communities.”

Clearing the Air

In the summer months, many of us try to stage events outdoors, due to concerns about COVID. In Chicago, at this time of year, that’s simply not an option. While participants at indoor events I organize know to mask up, folks sometimes have to remove their masks to eat, drink, take medication, and whatever else. Whether or not people are removing their masks, we know that good ventilation is also important. This week, I came across a great resource that provides useful information about ventilation and how we can make the air we collectively breathe safer. Whether you are trying to enhance the air quality of a community space, or improve COVID safety in your own home, this guide from Jill Neimark is worth checking out.

A Final Ask for the Year

As the threat of autocracy looms, you will often hear calls to “defend institutions.” Those calls are often met with bitter feelings among many who feel that Democratic officials failed to defend institutions, enshrine our legal rights, and prevent the reascension of Donald Trump. However, the call does remind me that the Trump administration is a wrecking ball and that people take a lot of infrastructure for granted in these times. Much of that infrastructure is now under threat.

Prior to Roe, criminalized efforts, like the work of the Jane Collective, affinity groups that provided “abortion self-help,” and networks that helped people travel out of the country for abortions were the only infrastructure pregnant people in need of abortions could rely on. In our current era of criminalization, almost two dozen states have abortion bans or restrictions in place. Fortunately, we now have a wide network of infrastructure, much of which is operating above ground, that can help people who are seeking to end their pregnancies. Most of us can help a pregnant person whose access to care has been restricted without incurring the risk of criminalization. We can simply support an abortion fund. Abortion funds provide a variety of services, from helping people pay for the care they need to covering the cost of travel, lodging and childcare.

However, as I discussed with Meghan Daniel in October, abortion funds are currently faced with a funding crisis. Some funds have been forced to pause their efforts to provide assistance and focus on fundraising while turning away people in need. Such pauses are heartbreaking for abortion fund organizers, who know just how catastrophic the absence of their support can be for people who need care. While there are many private stories of lost autonomy and opportunities that we will never know, we do know that abortion bans are killing people, as maternal mortality rates increase. We also know that homicide is the leading cause of death for pregnant women in the US. But rather than allowing pregnant people to decide if they are in a safe and healthy position to have a child, and whether they, in fact, want to be a parent, many have been plunged into a climate of risk and precarity against their will. Forced pregnancy is violence, and it is a form of violence that we all have the power to interrupt, thanks to the infrastructure of care that organizers have built across the course of decades. 

We must defend that infrastructure. 

My friend Mariame Kaba has organized an end-of-the-year fundraiser to support abortion funds that I hope you will join me in supporting. Mariame is asking people to donate the cost of a New Year’s drink to the National Network of Abortion Funds and to recruit five friends to do the same. If you would like to participate, you can find a social media kit for the fundraiser (which runs through December 31) here. The goal is to raise $50,000 for abortion care. As of this writing, over $30,000 has been raised. (If you can't afford to donate right now, uplifting the effort on social media and at any New Year's Eve celebrations you might attend could also be helpful.)

As an abortion doula, I find it heartening to see people rally around this effort. I will admit to feeling discouraged as the post-Dobbs wave of enthusiasm for abortion funds waned over the last year. In the wake of Dobbs, our outrage was justified, and anger can be a powerful motivator, but in my experience, it isn’t enough. We need a sustained commitment to one another–in this case, an understanding that my freedom and well-being are bound up in that of a person experiencing a forced pregnancy. When they access care, I am freer and better off. My own happiness and liberation are more attainable. When their autonomy is denied, we are all injured. That sense of connection has to extend well beyond our most inflamed moments of outrage. It has to be an everyday practice and understanding. 

Abortion funds are built on this kind of commitment to collective care and solidarity. This crucial infrastructure and abortion care itself will likely face further attacks in the coming year. Rather than neglect this infrastructure of care and support, we must fortify it. Abortion funds grew out of the rebel care work that organizers carried out before Roe. A defiant commitment to bodily autonomy blossomed above ground and formed a remarkable ecosystem of solidarity and support. We must ensure the survival of that ecosystem.

We live in a time when more rebel care work will likely be required. As gender-affirming care is criminalized in some states and as further attacks against abortion funds and care unfold, we have to be ready to do whatever is necessary to help people exercise their bodily autonomy because autonomy must always be fought for. However, if we cannot sustain our collective commitment to abortion access when doing so poses no risk to most of us, the outlook for more extreme circumstances is bleak. One of the greatest threats we face right now is our own apathy and withdrawal from matters of collective concern. The illusion of our separateness is as destructive as the illusion of normalcy in a world on fire. That’s why efforts like Mariame’s fundraiser and the Debt Collective’s recent effort to support abortion funds are so meaningful right now.

To survive together in these catastrophic times, we must enliven our connectedness. Anything less is a slow-motion surrender.

As a second Trump term approaches, I worry that many people will retreat into their private concerns and allow autocratic policies to unfold without resistance. That kind of thinking and behavior begins with abandonment and forgetting. It begins by simply avoiding issues that don’t directly affect us–for now.

There is no safety in retreat.

I can’t tell you exactly what the struggle is going to look like six months or even two months from now, but as Mariame and I emphasize in Let This Radicalize You, building a culture of care, grounded in a refusal to abandon one another, will be fundamental to any meaningful struggle in these disastrous times. If you don’t know what to do, the answer isn't simply to do nothing, but to do what you can. Reduce suffering where you can. Help people exercise their autonomy where you can. Refuse to cooperate with injustice when you can. For today, please consider joining me in this effort to support abortion funds. It’s a small act, but our small acts add up when we act together.

Much love,

Kelly

Organizing My Thoughts is a reader-supported newsletter. If you appreciate my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber today. There are no paywalls for the essays, reports, interviews, and excerpts published here. However, I could not do this work without the support of readers like you, so if you are able to contribute financially, I would greatly appreciate your help.