Must-Reads and Some Thoughts on Naming Our Mistakes
“The people you can easily like and trust are not a large enough force to overwhelm fascism.”
Greetings friends,
From the tornado that recently devastated St. Louis to the right’s blueprint for destroying the American left, here are some of the most important articles I’ve read this week. (If you’re looking for articles about the Republican budget nightmare, I’ve created a special section for that.)
- Tornado Daze by Sarah Kendzior. “For a tornado to destroy what so many with so little have fought so hard to preserve is more than gutting on a material level. There is a cruelty to it, a potential loss of memory and culture, that feels unbearable.”
- ‘Chilling’ Effect on Protesters as Cop City Prosecution Drags into Second Year by Timothy Pratt. “Nearly two years into the largest Rico, or conspiracy, prosecution against a protest movement in US history, the case is mired in delays and defence claims that proceedings are politically motivated and ruining the lives of the 61 activists and protesters who face trial.”
- Elon Musk’s Fake Retreat From DOGE by Will Royce. “Any decrees made by Musk will still be gospel to those in government who are loyal to or financially dependent on him. To paraphrase one DOGE official, are they really going to say no to Elon Musk?”
- Starvation in Gaza by Alex de Waal. “Deprived of any nutrients, a previously healthy adult will starve to death in sixty to eighty days. A child will succumb more quickly.”
- FBI Visits Me Over Manifesto by Ken Klippenstein. “Get ready to hear that I’m impeding the investigation, giving people a roadmap to the ‘sources and methods’ that are used to catch terrorists, or whatever reason the national security state soundboard offers up for why the public isn’t allowed to know things.”
- Revealed: Oregon Spent Funds Meant for Addiction Services on Prosecutors and Police Gadgets by Sam Levin. “The funding controversy stems from the state’s high-profile flip-flop on drug policy.”
- AI Therapy is a Surveillance Machine in a Police State by Adi Robertson. “This is starting to seem extraordinarily dangerous — for reasons that have little to do with what a chatbot is telling you, and everything to do with who else is peeking in.”
- FEMA Has Canceled Its 4-Year Strategic Plan Ahead of Hurricane Season by Molly Taft. “Less than two weeks before the start of hurricane season, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency rescinded the agency’s strategic plan, which includes a document that guides agency priorities when responding to disasters, WIRED has learned. A new plan has yet to be put into place.”
- Libraries, Criminalization and Organizing by Mariame Kaba. “Public libraries are institutions that we’ve made together over generations. They offer us a canvas for practicing new worlds while we inhabit the current one. For these and 100 other reasons, public libraries are important sites of struggle specifically for leftists.”
- Project Esther Is a McCarthy-Era Blueprint for Crushing the American Left by Schuyler Mitchell. “Project Esther’s authors make clear that their war on the Gaza solidarity movement is just a Trojan horse for a far more ambitious project: destroying the American left.”
The “Big Beautiful” Nightmare Budget
I know many of us are furious and horrified by the budget Republicans are trying to push through Congress. In this piece, Sharon Zhang breaks down how the bill amounts to highway robbery—gutting programs like SNAP and Medicaid to fund tax cuts for billionaires. Here, Erin Reed details how the bill specifically targets Medicaid coverage for trans people, and this segment from Democracy Now! offers a sharp overview of what’s at stake. I also recommend Brian Merchant’s excellent reporting on how the bill would block state-level regulation of AI.
I encourage you to read, watch, share, and use these resources to better inform your communities. Raising awareness about what’s at stake here is critical.
ICYMI
This week, I wrote about the gap between how a lot of activists believed they would show up in a moment like this one, and what they’re actually doing. The piece includes reflections from activists about what’s holding them back, as well as insights from organizers like Ejeris Dixon and Aaron Goggans about how we can move forward.
Maya Schenwar and I also co-authored a piece that was published in the Boston Review this week about why a focus on “law and order” politics won’t get us out of the mess we’re in.
Upcoming Zoom for Paid Subscribers
I’ll be hosting one of my periodic Zooms for paid subscribers on Saturday at noon CT. If you are a newer paid subscriber who hasn’t received an invitation yet, be on the lookout this week.
On Expecting People to Own Up
Some recent online discourse has revisited the question of whether individuals who erred in major political assessments have acknowledged their mistakes. For example, people who insisted there was no meaningful distinction between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump were wrong. Some people who took this position during the presidential race now seem to recognize that Trump 2.0 is more disastrous than they had anticipated. Some have begun to move with the urgency that the moment demands, while others have not. Rather than focusing on what people are and are not doing, some folks on social media have complained about a lack of contrition among people who were wrong. I have some thoughts about that.
False equivalencies between Trump and Harris are often attributed to “the left,” even though there was no consensus on the left—or the left(s), as Mariame Kaba often says—around the election. Some of us tried to convey the stakes and were sometimes vilified for doing so. Ultimately, no one succeeded in mobilizing the votes needed to defeat Trump. And while the false equivalencies and off-base predictions some leftists espoused were unhelpful, the left is not responsible for the Democrats’ defeat. Biden’s insistence on waging a doomed campaign, and his refusal to step aside sooner, combined with Harris’s insistence that her politics were indistinguishable from Biden’s, despite his losing trajectory, were probably the most decisive factors.
The Biden administration could have spent its final year implementing policies that would have improved people’s lives, but instead spent that time doubling down on its support for an ongoing genocide.
That doesn’t mean that some leftists didn’t make errant arguments or bad calls. Election years are always marked by rampant fuckery on all fronts. But I hate that we’re still fixated on relitigating the role of individual everyday people. Lecturing people about what they thought, felt, or did last fall won’t help us build the power we need now. I disagree with the choices and arguments some people made, but I don’t feel the need to debate the matter now. Our survival doesn’t depend on who was right. It depends on what we build together now. This is a time to get grounded, get organized, and commit to defending each other.
In the present, my judgments hinge on whether people are acting in the interests of our collective survival and liberation. If a person who minimized the threat Trump posed is not taking action against his agenda, or in support of communities that are under attack, I will simply say that I don’t think such a person should be taken seriously in the future.
We should feel obligated to each other, regardless of our previous positions. If that thought infuriates you, because you cannot forgive some people’s prior positions, you should know that you are going to need people you dislike in order to get out of this. You don’t have to become their friends, but you will need them.
The people you can easily like and trust are not a large enough force to overwhelm fascism.
Don’t get me wrong: acknowledging our mistakes is a good thing. We need more humility in our movements. Owning up to our mistakes fosters growth and can help us mend what’s been broken. I also understand why people are hesitant to make such offerings in public. For one thing, leftists are not ultimately responsible for the mess we’re in, and some may be hesitant to say anything that suggests otherwise when we are already under attack. In the realm of social media, “nuance” is a dirty word. Black and white thinking distorts the landscape, rendering all of us good or bad, innocent or guilty.
Some people may also simply be afraid of losing face. Spend ten minutes online and you’ll see: most people are terrified of being wrong in public. People will double down relentlessly, or claim to have already known what they did not, or rewrite their original meaning as needed to avoid saying the words, “I was wrong.” This is a cultural problem. We live in a punitive society. There are no real incentives for the kind of accountability that leads to growth or reconciliation. On social media, apologies are routinely rejected or picked apart because many people don’t want the individuals who have upset them to be redeemed. They want targets, and they want to keep throwing darts at those targets.
So, if you’ve been wrong about something big and you’re not discussing it publicly, I get it. I’m not asking for public confessions. If you offered one, I’d respect it, and I’d hope others would engage with it meaningfully, rather than punitively. It is possible your efforts might help others reconsider their own actions or move past their bitterness. But I don’t think such public gestures are what matter most right now. Smaller conversations, especially with people who share your values and long-term goals, are much more important.
We need more of those dialogues. We need to be able to say what we got wrong or didn’t see coming. That’s how we build trust. That’s how we learn. I encourage everyone to participate in and create space for that kind of dialogue. Because we’ve all been wrong about things. God knows I’ve been wrong plenty of times. I don’t always broadcast those missteps on social media, but I do discuss them with the people I work with. I try to change my behavior, share what I’ve learned, and invite others to move in the direction I now believe is right.
We are living through a moment of collapse and extremity, and what matters most is what we do now. Amid so much crisis, I worry that our fixation on past misjudgments is getting in the way of meeting people where they are and organizing effectively. This is a brutally hard time to strategize. To maneuver effectively, we need more humility, but we also need more grace.
When I organize, I don’t ask people where they stood last month or last year. I care about what they’re willing to do today. Movements are not tribunals for the masses. The goal is not to put each other on trial, exact confessions, or force people to grovel. We will not, as Toni Cade Bambara suggested, make “the revolution irresistible” through a process of redemptive flogging.
I have seen people open up about their mistakes and what they used to believe in movement spaces. I have seen people do this because they felt a pro-social sense of accountability, and, in some cases, because they were experiencing a political transformation. Spaces where that kind of realization and openness can take place, and be met with constructive responses, and even strengthened fellowship, are the product of strong organizing. I want us to build the kind of spaces where that work can happen, and where vulnerability and accountability have generative results. However, expecting such vulnerability and constructive dialogue to occur in punitive, performance-based environments, like social media, is unrealistic—and often disingenuous.
Too many people don’t actually want apologies. They want self-flagellation. They want pile-ons. They want the satisfaction of saying, “I told you so.” However, if we can overcome those desires and impulses, we may have a chance to connect more meaningfully, reflect on the ways we’ve all screwed up, and figure out how to move forward together.
So, focus on what you want people to do. Make invitations. Lead by example. And if you’ve made mistakes (and who the hell hasn’t?), do the next right thing. We need all hands on deck, and we won’t judge our way out of this.
Much love,
Kelly
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