Must-Reads and Resisting the Anti-Revolution

Your weekly curated list of must-reads is here. From Israel’s war on Lebanon to abolitionist parenting and smart glasses with facial recognition technology, here are some of the most important articles I’ve read this week.

• ‘American Death Squads’: Inside Trump’s Push to Make Police More Violent by Asawin Suebsaeng and Tim Dickinson. “According to lawyers, advisers, and other sources who’ve spoken to the ex-president about policing since last year, Trump has discussed or been briefed on a variety of ways he could mold law enforcement in his MAGA, blood-obsessed image, should he reconquer the White House this November.”
• A Secretive ICE Program Trains Civilians on Firearms and Surveillance, Documents Show by Maurizio Guerrero. “The training also covered ICE’s guidelines for ‘use of force,’ encompassing deadly force. One presentation slide suggests yelling ‘drop the gun’ as a potential cover when employing lethal force against someone.”
• US Backing of Israel’s War on Lebanon Deters Support for Harris in Swing States by Mike Ludwig. “Leaders of the large Muslim community in Minneapolis gathered on Wednesday to warn Democrats that voters are despondent and at risk of staying home on Election Day after months of watching Israeli forces kill and displace civilians in Gaza, the West Bank and now Lebanon.”
• When Abolition and Parenting Intertwine by Tamar Sarai. “From letters shared between incarcerated parents and their children, to interviews with writers and activists, over 30 pieces featured in the book provide offerings on topics such as collective caregiving, navigating copaganda, and reflections on how abolitionists can learn from and be inspired by children’s innate ability to dream up new worlds.”
• Someone Put Facial Recognition Tech onto Meta's Smart Glasses to Instantly Dox Strangers by Joseph Cox. “The project is designed to raise awareness of what is possible with this technology, and the pair are not releasing their code, AnhPhu Nguyen, one of the creators, told 404 Media. But the experiment, tested in some cases on unsuspecting people in the real world according to a demo video, still shows the razor thin line between a world in which people can move around with relative anonymity, to one where your identity and personal information can be pulled up in an instant by strangers.”
• Maylia and Jack: A Story of Teens and Fentanyl by Lizzie Presser. “Until recently, opioids almost exclusively claimed the lives of adults. Since COVID-19 began, though, the rate of overdose deaths among teenagers has rocketed, more than doubling in three years. It’s not that more teens are using drugs, but that fentanyl has made the supply deadlier than ever. Many know or discover that the pills on the street are tainted but don’t want to stop — until they can’t. In a matter of weeks or a couple of months, they’ve become addicted. Today, over 300,000 kids under 18 are estimated to have an opioid-use disorder.”
• We Charge Genocide: The Shofar Calls Us to Account on Rosh Hashanah by Brant Rosen. “I cannot remember a Rosh Hashanah when the collective moral stakes were any higher for the American Jewish community than this year. I would even go as far as to say it may be the most morally consequential High Holiday season of our lifetimes.”

Supporting Mutual Aid in Asheville, North Carolina

Writing this week’s feature piece, Neighbors as Lifelines: The Power of Mutual Aid in Asheville, was an incredibly emotional experience. I was moved by the love and solidarity organizers in North Carolina have shown their communities and by their stories of loss, overwhelm, and survival. I was honored by the trust local organizers placed in me. I hope we will all rally to support them and that we can stay engaged with their struggle for the long haul, because this is going to be a long-haul recovery. If the stories highlighted in the piece have inspired you to support mutual aid efforts in Asheville, I hope you will consider donating to Aflorar Herb Collective. This farm-based mutual aid project has formed a crucial mutual aid hub. Given the geography of the area and the lack of gasoline presently available, many people are still isolated and dependent upon local mutual aid efforts and supply drops to survive. Aflorar’s small crew has been making deliveries and helping isolated communities set up new mutual aid hubs in order to broaden the network of care. Let’s help sustain that work. If the piece moved you to strengthen your own solidarity networks, you can find a list of resources at the bottom of yesterday’s piece.

Hating Twitter

Like a lot of people who still use Twitter for activism and professional reasons, I absolutely hate that app. If you follow me there, you may have noticed that I’ve been sharing my Bluesky starter pack with some frequency. Starter packs are premade follow lists created by Bluesky users. Most are pretty specialized, like Climate, Energy, and Environmental Journalists or News / Current Events / Journalists / Explainers. My starter pack is just a collection of 150 people, publications and organizations I follow (a much larger package than most starter packs, in part because it’s not governed by a specific theme). I made it in the hopes of persuading more people to give Bluesky a shot.

As Twitter continues to deteriorate, we need to broaden our communication networks. If you’re concerned about reach, I also think it’s worth mentioning that while I haven’t stopped using Twitter, it’s not unusual for my written work to get more engagement on Bluesky. The trick to having a good experience on Bluesky is to follow a lot of people – way more than you would on Twitter. Starter packs can help you curate an interesting feed. I also switch between feeds that other people have created, like a feed about abortion news or a feed that’s nothing but cats. I post more of my passing thoughts on Bluesky than on Twitter, because I just enjoy being there more. I hope some of you will consider giving it a try. I know Bluesky isn’t perfect, but as Twitter becomes increasingly Nazi-fied and less useful in moments of crisis, building alternative networks feels not only desirable but deeply important. If you enjoy using Bluesky, I encourage you to make a starter pack, or to share your favorite starter packs on Twitter.

Upcoming Conversations

On October 10, I will be in conversation with Maya Pendleton, the cofounder of the upEND Movement. Our talk will be the keynote conversation of upEND’s 2024 convening. upEND is a collaborative movement that works to abolish the existing child welfare system, which is built on a model of surveillance and separation and is more accurately described as a family policing system. I am really looking forward to this conversation, which will be livestreamed. Be sure to sign up if you would like to participate in person or at home.

If you’re a paid subscriber, you will receive a message from me soon about our next Organizing My Thoughts Zoom session. These sessions are an opportunity for me to hear from you all about what’s on your minds and respond to any questions you might have. I really enjoyed our last conversation and I’m looking forward to chatting this month.

Anti-Revolution

Something I may or may not discuss with Atef Shahat Said during our chat at the Chicago Humanities Festival today is the concept of anti-revolution. In 2022, Ilya Budraitskis wrote:

Anti-­revolution tries to prevent an imaginary revolution, whose terrible spectre constantly pursues the ruling powers and heralds their demise. This approaching imaginary revolution does not have obvious roots in society, and it lacks an apparent strong-willed political subject – in fact, its potential future participants know nothing about it. But this imagined revolution lives a full life of its own in the consciousness of state authorities, and it has been outlined by experts in dozens of documents.

Budraitskis was talking about Putin’s Russia, but as Wim Carton and Andreas Malm write in their new book, Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown, Budraitskis could have just as easily been describing the maintenance of a climate-destroying status quo here in the United States. In Overshoot, Carton and Malm talk about the mass climate movements of the late 2010s and the economic theories and policy maneuvers that have shored up the fossil fuel-driven realities of our time. I may have more to say about this book soon, but for now, I wanted to raise the concept of anti-revolution.

For leftists in the United States, these are not revolutionary times. That’s bad news for those of us who are concerned about the fate of the natural world and, by extension, all life on earth. Hurricane Helene offers a stark reminder of the catastrophes ahead. Meaningfully addressing the crisis at this late stage would require a radical reorientation of energy use and economic life. Trillions of dollars in assets would have to be stranded. This would require revolutionary social intervention, as we can hardly expect the ruling class to willingly sacrifice such fortunes. Instead, we are living in the violent throes of normalcy.

Leftists who talk about revolution often seem to do so as a rhetorical exercise. Rather than fostering bonds between people, enhancing anyone's organizing capacity, or seizing any form of leverage, they participate in a kind of moral curation – as though the political landscape will be reshaped by the power of critique, shame, and exclusion. When disqualifying people from political participation (or relevance) is the primary function of one’s politics – well, I don’t think I have to explain the inefficacy of such approaches, given the regularity with which we witness their futility.

The only revolutionary project that’s presently gaining steam in the United States is being helmed by the right. The right-wing techno-fascists are devouring industries while furthering the alienation, abuse, and control of workers. They have disrupted the flow of knowledge and information with their plagiarism machines. They have debased facts and reality with an endless flow of fascist myths and misinformation on social media platforms. In J.D. Vance, they may soon have a man who, while arguably human, was built by Silicon Valley, an aging heartbeat away from the presidency. Their aspirations of ripping the current system apart in order to create a patchwork of corporate fiefdoms ruled by tech billionaires (and perhaps, trillionaires) are within the realm of realization.

The success of that vision would be disastrous for the planet, of course. Tech billionaires are unapologetically devouring more energy than ever in the service of AI data centers. The voters who would aid their ascent are Republicans, and Project 2025 has marked environmentalists as downright anti-human in their politics. It’s important for the right to paint environmental activists as enemies of humanity because such depictions justify violence, and they plan to deploy more violence against us should we choose to defend the natural world. They killed Tortuguita for taking action at the intersection of state violence and environmental violence, and they will kill again.

Liberal democracy and capitalism are in divorce proceedings. What will the aftermath of such a process look like? Some would prefer more democracy and less capitalism, while others want the reverse. Those who are invested in the status quo have crafted policies and established norms that wrap unthinkable conclusions in bureaucratic rhetoric. They deem mass death inevitable and insist that emerging technologies (as in, shit no one knows how to make or do) will mitigate the damage being done now. Global temperature limits become irrelevant as addressing "overshoot," sometime in the future, becomes the new standard. The ruling class has convinced the public that this approach is either correct or unstoppable.

We are always told that this system is either correct or unstoppable.

Do not accept the lie that this death-making system, which is by no means eternal, is unbreakable or inevitable. Because if we do that, the anti-revolution has succeeded.

So, if we are determined to save the earth and each other, what should we feel called to do in this moment? Unfortunately, I have no formula or blueprint to offer. I will share some thoughts on strategy next week, but remember, I'm just like you – an organizer working the problem.

For now, I want to close the week with some questions:

Why haven't we formed a revolutionary movement to defend the earth?

Do we believe that our elected leaders will address these problems?

(I can already hear you saying, "Fuck no.")

Do we believe the climate crisis is simply too far gone and that the fight is now unwinnable?

(I suspect that some of you believe this.)

After so many years of mass marches and land defense, have we lost faith in our tactics?

Can we imagine what a full-court press against the fossil fuel industry would actually look like?

Will ongoing crises, like Hurricane Helene, inspire the strategies and upheavals our movements need, or will such catastrophes foster eco-fascism and strengthen our enemies, before getting washed out of the news cycle?

Can we abandon the politics of superiority and disqualification, and organize with people whose beliefs and choices disappoint us?

Can we admit that we need those people? 

Who is building power in the face of catastrophe?

Who is disrupting the status quo?

Who is fighting for the natural world?

What do those struggles look like right now?

How can they be supported?

How can we prepare for the next major shift or crisis that might yield new opportunities?

Isn't this beautiful world worth fighting for, no matter the odds?

Much love,

Kelly