Must-Reads, Radical Care Work, and a Poem

Your weekly curated list of must-reads is here! But first, there’s a new episode of Movement Memos that I am excited to share with you. I spoke with Angela Hume about lessons from her book Deep Care: The Radical Activists Who Provided Abortions, Defied the Law, and Fought to Keep Clinics Open. Angela and I talked about activists who provided illegal abortions in the 70s (and beyond), organizers who resisted clinic shutdowns in the 80s, and how activists navigated "the war years" of the 1990s when clinics were being bombed and providers were being killed. As Angela says, “There are deep lessons here about comradery, about fellowship, about friendship, about relationality that we can learn from today, and that can inspire us to do good work together.”

This episode was very important to me on a personal level. I love Angela’s book, and, like many of you, I feel very strongly about our struggles for reproductive autonomy. As someone who has been urging folks not to become mere spectators in the electoral circus over the next few months, I hope that Movement Memos can aid people in their efforts to engage deeply with the issues they care about rather than only focusing on what presidential candidates have to say about those issues.

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

Must-Reads

From Palestine to extreme heat, energy-sucking data centers, and resources for resisting disinfo, here are the most important articles I’ve read this week. The list is a little longer than usual, so I have broken it into categories.

Palestine and Palestine Solidarity

• Kamala Harris Will Shift on Gaza Only if We Make Her by Y.L. Al-Sheikh and Nickan Fayyazi. “It is clear what anyone who cares about this issue must demand right now: that Harris tells the American public and the world that Israel can no longer occupy Palestinian land and impose apartheid on millions while enjoying US support and protection from accountability. But we must be equally clear that Harris will not do any of these things without sustained, relentless political pressure from the movement for Palestine.”
• Palestinians in Gaza warm to Kamala Harris, prefer 'anyone over Trump' by Rasha Abou Jalal. “Palestinians in Gaza are closely following the latest developments in the US presidential election scheduled for Nov. 5, with Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee, appearing to emerge as their preferred candidate.”
• What Comes Next for the Palestinian Youth Movement by Mohammed Nabulsi. “Jewish anti-Zionism, for me, cannot just be the negation of Zionism. It has to be an affirmative project of understanding the response to antisemitism as solidarity and internationalism, a confrontation with fascism, with state violence, a project that sees all of these other struggles, including the Palestinian struggle, as part of the fight.” (This interview occurred before the Democratic candidate swap, so some references to Biden are dated, but it’s still very much worth reading.)
• To Stop the War in Gaza, Unions Are Showing Us What Solidarity Looks Like by Zach D. Roberts. “The solidarity movement between American labor and international activists is nothing new. The American Federation of Labor (AFL) boycotted Nazi goods in 1933 and the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. In 1984, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10 stood up against apartheid in South Africa and refused to unload South African goods for eleven days. In 2023, as the mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza began in earnest, the former head of ILWU Local 10, Larry Wright, said, ‘It’s really important that the unions come out and oppose this terrible violence on the Palestinians.’”

Tech Bros Killing The World

(If you missed last week’s final thoughts, I had a lot to say on this subject.)

• Washington Is Giving Tax Breaks to Data Centers That Threaten the State’s Green Energy Push by Lulu Ramadan and Sydney Brownstone. “Remarkably, Washington in recent years has gotten a smaller share of its electricity from renewable sources than it did two decades ago, according to the most recent state data. That’s despite the fact the state produces a quarter of the nation’s hydropower.”

Other Right-Wing Shenanigans

• Far Right Project 2025 Is Ending Its Public Push — But It’s by No Means Dead by Chris Walker. “‘’[Trump] wants to avoid having to answer questions about anything he doesn’t want to answer questions about,’ an anonymous Project 2025 advisory board member told NBC News. ‘Most people I know who are involved with it don’t seem overly worried that this actually constitutes a repudiation and is going to mean anything on January 20.’”
• Christian Nationalists Pursue State Capture — and North Carolina Is Exhibit A by Lewis Raven Wallace. “North Carolina is among the southern states that should be regarded as canaries in the coal mine for ‘state capture’: the process by which the far right is wresting control of U.S. politics in spite of representing a minority of the population’s views.”
• Southern states push new voting restrictions ahead of 2024 elections by Benjamin Barber. “The wave of anti-voting laws over the past four years disproportionately affected Black voters and voters in the South and Midwest. According to the data, at least 65% of Black voters now live in a state that has implemented at least one restrictive voting law. Altogether, 57% of eligible voters live in a state with more restrictions on casting a ballot than they faced four years ago.”

Climate

• Antarctic temperatures soar 50 degrees above norm in long-lasting heat wave by Kasha Patel. “Scientists say it’s also hard to ignore that the entire world has seen record warmth since last July, consistently exceeding an average of 1.5 Celsius of warming above the preindustrial era. As the globe warms, however, the poles are warming at an even faster rate. Recent ice core data and modeling show Antarctica is warming up twice as fast as the global average.”
• Funds to Help Low-Income Families With Summer Electric Bills Are Stretched Thin by Martha Pskowski and Jenaye Johnson. “‘Let’s say that if we get 30 calls a day, at least half of them are asking about funds to help pay their water or electric bill,’ Figueroa said in Spanish. ‘And at the moment we don’t have any funding.’”
• Deceleration’s Guide to Anti-Trans and Anti-Climate Disinfo by Marisol Cortez. “Disrupting disinformation is less about fact checking in real time or arguing with deniers, more about ‘prebunking’—inoculating ordinary folks against common talking points and tactics in advance so as to render them dead on arrival … But how can we prebunk at the grassroots level, preparing our communities to recognize and resist common forms of disinformation? And how can we incorporate prebunking work as a key part of organizing for environmental and climate justice?”

Policing

• UN urges ‘immediate’ action for victims allegedly tortured by Chicago police by Alma Campos. “The UN group concluded that many individuals who remain imprisoned were detained on the basis of torture and ill treatment by the police following flawed and unlawful criminal proceedings.”

Final Thoughts

I am on my people’s land this weekend. I will be meeting with other Menominee organizers and also enjoying our nation’s annual powwow. I always feel grounded when I visit this place. It’s beautiful out here. I am not big on meditation, but there is a wonderfully loud waterfall out here that drowns out my thoughts so effectively that it feels like they’re being carried over the rocks and into the distance. I need that right now.

I wrote a poem this week. I thought I would share it with you all. 

The Comfortable Are Quick
by Kelly Hayes

The comfortable are quick
to assume
“death would be better”
for you or him or her
The comfortable are quick
to surrender 
on the sidelines
with nothing ventured 
folding futures and strangers
into abstractions

The battle-worn know
hell is not hypothetical
The battle-worn know
they have less time 
to comparison shop
between affliction and oblivion
Their manic molecules vibrate
at the speed of collapse
They breathe the fire of grief, 
hope, hatred, and longing
They recreate life
as they lay dying

The battle-worn 
sing lullabies 
at a riotous tempo, 
sweat poison,
punch death in the neck,
then crawl away
to steal another hour
They grab life
like a bleeding, breaking prize
forever slipping out of hand
until they fall

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