Must-Reads and Timely Escapes

Your weekly curated list of must-reads is here. But first, there’s a new episode of Movement Memos that I want to share with you. In our last episode of the year, I talked with Silky Shah, the executive director of Detention Watch Network. Silky and I discussed the threats posed by the incoming Trump administration, how organizers are preparing to defend immigrant communities, and what actions we can take to prepare and respond. The show notes of this episode include resources for people who would like to get more involved.

You can subscribe to Movement Memos wherever you get your podcasts. If you would like to read a transcript, you can find that (along with audio and show notes) here.

Must-Reads

From the Supreme Court’s illegitimacy to South Korea’s response to authoritarian rule, here are some of the most important articles I’ve read this week.

• The Supreme Court Won’t Save Us — It Was Founded to Defend White Supremacy by Claudia Garcia-Rojas. “Instead of pushing merely to expand the Supreme Court by adding more justices, we should strip it of its authority by shrinking its jurisdiction and its outsized power over our lives.”
• Supreme Court Case on Trans Health Shows How Gender Essentialism Harms Us All by Lewis Raven Wallace. “The spectacle we are witnessing is not actually a debate about whether or not trans youth should be able to access hormones. These state leaderships do not care about protecting trans youth. They care about limiting and controlling gender transgression, protecting an antiquated medical definition of gender, and enforcing patriarchy as a biological claim on reality.”
• South Koreans Prove Democracy Can Survive in the Face of Authoritarianism by Christine Ahn. “Imagine if Americans and members of Congress responded as swiftly and boldly as South Koreans did back on January 6, 2021. We would be facing a very different future.”
• Amnesty International Finds Israel Is Committing Genocide in Bombshell Report by Sharon Zhang. “The human rights group found Israel guilty of three of five acts prohibited in the Genocide Convention, including killing members of the group, causing physical or mental harm to members of the group, and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s physical destruction.”
• ALEC Maps Out Right-Wing Legislative Agenda for 2025 in DC by David Armiak. “Numerous model policies, resolutions, and statements that will likely accelerate the unfolding climate emergency will be considered at the meeting this week. Many of them center around climate delayism or the ‘systematic and coordinated strategy to bring about unwarranted concern regarding a wide range of climate actions for the purpose of slowing down or indefinitely suspending those actions.’”
• H5N1 Bird Flu is Closer to Gaining Pandemic Potential Than We Thought by Michael Le Page. “The H5N1 bird flu virus that has spread worldwide is already better at infecting people than earlier strains. What’s more, a single mutation could allow it to infect the cells lining our noses and throats, making it more likely to go airborne.”
• Having Pardoned His Son, Biden Faces Pressure to Enact Mass Clemency by Mike Ludwig. “Biden points to Hunter’s recovery from addiction to argue that his son deserves another chance. DaMareo said thousands of other families feel the same way about their loved ones serving long sentences in federal prison for drug-related crimes or marred by a criminal record.”
• 9 States Poised To End Coverage for Millions if Trump Cuts Medicaid Funding by Phil Galewitz. “More than 3 million adults in nine states would be at immediate risk of losing their health coverage should the GOP reduce the extra federal Medicaid funding that’s enabled states to widen eligibility … The states are Arizona, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Utah, and Virginia.”
• Louisiana Organizers Fight Against Fossil Fuel Injustice by Xander Peters. “‘I’m going to keep going until my last breath, until I can’t fight anymore on this side of life, until I’m an ancestor, and my children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren carry the torch for me,’ [said Roishetta Sibley Ozane].”
• Idaho Will Enforce Abortion Travel Ban by Jessica Valenti. “An appeals court has ruled that Idaho can enforce most of its anti-abortion travel ban, making it the first state in the nation to do so.”
• Major Health Insurance Companies Take Down Leadership Pages Following Murder of United Healthcare CEO by Samantha Cole. “Following the murder of its CEO on Wednesday morning, United Healthcare removed a page from its website listing the rest of its executive leadership, and several other health insurance companies have done the same, hiding the names and photos of their executives from easy public access.”

Deportation Defense Training

Mijente is hosting a Deportation Defense Series: Skill Up + Crew Up, a three-part virtual series on deportation defense on December 10, 13, and 16. According to the organizers, “This round will be a three-series virtual training, where you will hear from folks who have done this work both at the local and federal level. We’ll be sharing more information on the specific topics we’ll cover as well as upcoming in-person trainings.”

If you can’t attend the training series but want to learn more, consider checking out the Deportation Defense Manual by Make The Road New York.

Struggle Hour

This week, my friend Maya Schenwar and I hosted an event called “Struggle Hour.” Struggle Hour was an opportunity for our community of Chicago organizers to get together, have a drink, eat pizza, and reconnect during troubling times. It was a beautiful event. People were mostly left to their own devices, chatting and socializing. However, midway through the event, we invited the crowd to give shout outs to movement groups whose work gave them hope during these times. Groups like the Chicago Abortion Fund and Chicago Volunteer Doulas were uplifted, and announcements were made about upcoming projects and events. I was deeply heartened by this gathering, and I encourage everyone to rally their communities during these times. We need to be reminded of who we are to each other, and we need to be reminded that we are not alone. Someone suggested that we make Struggle Hour a quarterly event, and I think we just might. People who believe in justice, and who want to believe in each other, need space to simply be human together. Not everything should be about productivity. While some productive conversations did occur at Struggle Hour, people were repeatedly reminded that there was no pressure to focus on work. Sometimes, we need to raise a glass, tell stories, and make each other laugh. Sometimes, what we need most is each other.

The event was co-sponsored by the Doing Justice Collaborative, which is my current political home. The Doing Justice Collaborative is a political education project, and we have a lot of work ahead next year. If you’re making end-of-the-year donations, please consider supporting our work.

Timely Escapes

During my last Zoom chat with paid subscribers, we ended the call by talking about activities that have been emotionally helpful or nourishing for us lately. I shared that, since the election, I have been rewatching a show that was dear to me as a child: Star Trek: The Next Generation.

As a Trekkie, I am primarily a Deep Space Nine fan. I even made a podcast episode about the radical politics of Deep Space Nine and its impact on my own political trajectory. However, before I was an angsty junior high school student, who was ready for DS9’s interrogation of liberalism, I was a child watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. My return to TNG is, in some ways, a retreat from complexity. Unlike DS9, which was groundbreaking in its serialization, TNG was episodic, introducing and resolving conflicts in singular episodes–or, rarely, in a two-episode arc. As my friend Robyn Maynard once said, “Sometimes you really love a cleaned-up and tidy universe in which capitalism does not exist [and] the associated violence does not exist.” Sometimes, she explained, you just want “Daddy Picard” to fix it.

And fix it, he does. As Robyn described, Captain Jean Luc Picard and his noble crew usually solve whatever problems they are confronted with in the span of an episode. When they fail–which is unusual–there is still a sense of catharsis. A lesson is learned, and our heroes move on. 

That’s the kind of escapism I’ve needed lately: a familiar, reliable formula and trusted characters who feel like old friends, fighting the good fight. Meanwhile, my must-watch queue continues to grow longer. New seasons of Only Murders in the Building and From await me, but for now, I am in a holding pattern, like the Enterprise circling some distant planet.

When I was a young person, I remember watching an interview with Gates McFadden, who plays Dr. Crusher on TNG. McFadden talked about meeting a Trekkie who expressed gratitude for the optimism of The Next Generation. The fan worked with children who were psychologically traumatized. TNG was one of the only live-action TV shows the children were allowed to watch due to the program’s hopeful depiction of the future. As a traumatized child who loved TNG, that story resonated with me. Maybe that’s part of why I am returning to the show now. Maybe I want to believe in people, just as I wanted to believe in people as a child, no matter how much human cruelty disappointed me. Maybe believing in people, even when they disappoint you, and refusing to give up, is hard work. Maybe we all need a bit of hand-holding during bleak times and stories about courage and decency that can envelop us, like a hug from an old friend. 

Of course, escapism has its risks, and I am wary of its allure. When we over-indulge in the unreal, we can wind up neglecting the world that needs us and our own well-being. That risk is spiraling in our times as people are consumed by hoaxes and form social bonds with AI chatbots. (I found Josh Dzieza’s recent piece about people’s relationships with “AI friends” fascinating and profoundly disturbing.) Still, I tend to think of my television habits as harm reduction. The work I do requires me to research grim topics, such as climate collapse, the far right, and the violence of policing. The horrors that I study and the ugliness I observe often nag at me. Sometimes, I need to turn it all down and focus on something more digestible, like the gentle valor of an outdated sci-fi series.

Recently, I watched one of TNG’s most beloved episodes: “The Inner Light.” In the episode, Picard experiences an entire lifetime on a strange world, where he has a wife and, ultimately, raises a family. During Picard’s years on the planet, he becomes aware of a pending catastrophe. The planet is dying. When his daughter, Meribor, grows up and becomes a scientist, she reaches the same conclusions about their planet’s fate. When she explains her findings to Picard, he tries to equivocate, eschewing any sense of certainty. When Meribor insists upon her conclusions, Picard’s tone changes. Instead of trying to persuade her that their world is not doomed, he insists upon the value of the moment. “Seize the time, Meribor,” he tells her. “Live now. Make now always the most precious time. Now will never come again."I needed to hear those words. They actually reminded me of something my friend Dean Spade said on Movement Memos back in 2022:

I don’t know where this is going. None of us know where this is going. It’s not looking good, but what do I want to spend the rest of my life doing? Being fully alive, being with other people, being in it together, taking risks, being really, really caring, [and] learning to love people even if they annoy me. Learning deeper love.

That’s what I want to do, too. But sometimes, I need a safe, familiar place to hide out for a while.

Sometimes, I need Star Trek.

Much love,

Kelly

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