Must-Reads, Sci-Fi Riots and Hard Goodbyes

Your weekly curated list of must-reads is here, but first, there’s a new episode of Movement Memos that I would like to share with you. This week, I talked to Robyn Maynard and David K. Seitz about the Bell Riots, the radical legacy of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and how science fiction can shape our politics. In 1995, DS9 depicted an uprising set in the first week of September 2024. The show framed that riot as one of the “watershed events” of the 21st century – a moment that would ultimately change the scope of human potential.

DS9 was really important to me, as a young person making sense of the world in the 90s, and it’s still important to me today. Whether you’re a fan of the show, or just interested in how stories reflect and reconfigure our politics, I hope you’ll check this episode out. You can subscribe to Movement Memos wherever you get your podcasts. If you need a transcript, you can find that (along with audio and some show notes) here.

Must-Reads

From Gaza to voter suppression, attacks on trans rights, and how Google handed journalists in California a huge defeat, here are some of the most important stories I’ve read this week.

• COVID Vaccine Needle Size Matters—So Why Aren’t We Hearing More About It? by Sarah Stark. “Since COVID-19 vaccines are given intramuscularly, meaning the needle passes through the layer of fat right under your skin and injects the vaccine into your deltoid muscle, the researchers say that longer needles may be necessary for a large percentage of Americans to gain stronger COVID-19 immunity.”
• Member-Driven Organizing is Making a Comeback by George Goehl. “The role of the organizer is to create an arena for people to develop as individuals and a group, to teach and model the fundamentals, and help the group land direction and strategy. It is not the organizer’s role to carry most of the work. It is sharing the work, preparing people to take action, and creating space to digest what happened.”
• “I Couldn’t Ask if She Was Still Alive”: A Girl, Her Mother, and a Bloody Night In Gaza by Lujayn. “We couldn’t move. I felt cold despite the summer heat—until I felt something warm on my hand. I couldn’t see what it was in the darkness. Then I realized it was blood. A piece of shrapnel had pierced my mother’s shoulder—which she was using to shield my head—and it had made no sound.”
• How a Bill Meant to Save Journalism From Big Tech Ended Up Boosting AI and Bailing Out Google Instead by Brian Merchant. “Journalists need to accept the dire state of play. Unless we mobilize, unless big tech’s stranglehold is released, Google is broken up, or the public suddenly gets keen on subsidizing journalism, our industry’s death spiral only stands to accelerate. Ad revenue and subscription rates will continue to decline, and automated AI content farms will proliferate.”
• Latino Civil Rights Group Demands Inquiry Into Texas Voter Fraud Raids by Edgar Sandoval. “The League of United Latin American Citizens, one of the nation’s oldest Latino civil rights organizations, said that many of those targeted were Democratic leaders and election volunteers, and that some were older residents in their 70s and 80s.”
• How Anti-Trans Policies in Project 2025 Could Impact All Families by Orion Rummler. “The woman, a fourth-grade teacher, told Carver about one of her students, a boy who was being bullied because he has two moms. His tormentors — two boys about the same age — lobbed slurs at him and chased him around. The teacher intervened, saying to all her students, ‘In this classroom, all families get treated with respect.’ And that’s when her problems started. Carver said the school administration reprimanded the teacher, telling her that she had broken state law by talking about gender and doing it in a way that infringed on the political choices of the boys’ families.”
• Democratic Platform Defies International Law in Middle East Policy by Stephen Zunes. “While Arab governments have long agreed to recognize Israel in return for the end of the occupation, the platform appears to endorse Trump’s efforts to undermine any leverage Arab states might have in supporting Palestinian statehood by pushing them to recognize Israel beforehand in exchange for strengthened U.S. support for these autocratic regimes.”
• Here’s How Trump’s GOP Could Be Preparing to Contest the 2024 Election by Kenny Bruno. “We must be aware of these structural weaknesses and possible procedural machinations — after all, Trump and his acolytes are definitely thinking about them.”
• As Climate Change Worsens, Deadly Prison Heat Is Increasingly an Everywhere Problem by Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg. “Without a radical departure from the status quo, the human-made crises of climate change and mass incarceration are on a collision course that will put more and more prisoners’ lives at risk. As extreme temperatures sweep across the country, the problem is expanding beyond historic hotbeds in the South and Southwest, bringing more intense and frequent heat waves to states with traditionally milder climates.”

Socialism 2024

This weekend, I will be a speaker at two sessions at the Socialism 2024 Conference in Chicago. One of them will be featured in the conference’s virtual program. The virtual program includes a wide spectrum of great opportunities to hear from speakers Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Noura Erakat and many more. If you won’t be joining us in-person in Chicago, I highly recommend taking advantage of this conference’s virtual offerings. It’s a great opportunity for political education.

Final Thoughts

This week, I made my final trip to Stateville Correctional Center. The prison will be shuttered by the end of September, and most of the imprisoned students I've gotten to know there have already been transferred. I was asked if I was interested in volunteering as a community advisor several years ago when a student who was interested in journalism needed support. Community advisors in the Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project (PNAP) provide support, critique, advice, and feedback to imprisoned students in the University Without Walls program. I was honored by the invitation. In addition to meeting regularly with the student I was supporting, I also got to know other students, including a group of alumni who called themselves The 115 – a number that represented their collective time inside. I had the privilege of attending a conversation with The 115 about my book with Mariame Kaba, Let This Radicalize You, and it was one of my favorite conversations I’ve had with any group about the book. 

Everyone in the UWW program at Stateville received a copy of Let This Radicalize You, and I had a lot of great conversations with the students about it. More importantly, I had many great conversations with students about books I had not read yet. These men are some of the most studious individuals I have ever met. Their commitment to their studies and to forming a rigorous analysis is unmatched. With each visit, I learned from them. 

Over time, some of these men became friends of mine. I thought I would have more time with those friends, and more time to say goodbye, but a couple of weeks ago, we got word that the prison was closing sooner than expected and that transfers would unfold rapidly. I returned to the prison as quickly as I could in the hopes of seeing my friends before they were scattered across the state. I knew that, once they were moved, reconnecting would be difficult. As a person with a partial security clearance through an education program, I am not allowed to contact anyone in an Illinois prison through regular channels, such as sending mail or visiting. The prison bureaucracy demands that all communication happens through official channels, which are cumbersome and difficult to establish. 

My final visit to Stateville was bittersweet. I sat on a review board for a student I have been supporting for the last few years. He made a presentation and the board conferred about whether or not he would graduate. Despite being rushed to make his presentation much sooner than expected, the student I supported will, in fact, graduate. I am so happy for him. I am also glad we had the opportunity to say goodbye.

I missed that opportunity with a number of other students. One student who I was very fond of sent me a letter before being transferred, which an academic adviser shared with me. In it, he wrote, “I’m unsure when or if we’ll get a chance to cross paths again.” My heart sank upon reading those words. I do know that PNAP is working to reunite its student cohorts and is in communication with the Illinois Department of Corrections about transferring Stateville’s UWW students to the same facility in the coming months. IDOC had previously made assurances about transferring many of these students together but broke those promises in recent weeks. That is, of course, the nature of such systems. However, I have a lot of faith in PNAP’s team, and I know they are determined to bring these students back together. I will do all I can to support the restoration of this beloved community, which managed to cultivate so much fellowship and thoughtful analysis in a terrible place.

All prisons are torturous, and the conditions in Stateville are atrocious, even by those standards. During my first visit, I was warned by guards to never drink the water. Due to the prison’s horrid conditions, which imprisoned people and advocates organized against for years, some people view this closure as a victory. However, given that the men who lived at Stateville are not being freed, and a $900 million prison will be built in its place, it’s hard for me to view this as a win. Though I will admit, my thoughts are mostly focused on the men I knew there and how jarring this transition has been for them. I hope they know that I am thinking about them and how much I appreciate them. I hope they know that PNAP hasn’t given up on reuniting them and that I am determined to see and think alongside them again.

My friend’s letter ended with the words, “Together, in a community of solidarity, we can do anything.” 

I will return to those words for encouragement until my friend and I meet again.

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.