The Zombie Dressed Up as an Ordinary Tuesday
“The forced choreography of everyday life continues, even as the stage is dismantled beneath our feet.”
Greetings friends,
I have some thoughts to share and some must-reads for your consideration.
We Are at War, and I Want It to Stop
I have been struggling to string words together of late. I think in single sentences. I think in incoherent volumes. Nothing is cleanly divided. Nothing begins or ends as it should. So today, I am just sitting down to write, hoping that my words form a path worth following.
The only place I know how to begin is here: We are at war, and I want it to stop.
We are at war, and rescue teams are digging through the rubble in Tehran. We are at war, and thousands of people are dead. We are at war, and we are complaining about high gas prices and long lines at the airport. We are at war, and running late for our next appointment. We are at war, with an unstable, ego-driven fascist calling the shots, and no one knows how to rein him in. We are at war, and world hunger is poised to spike.
“Destabilized” is no longer an adequate term for what the US and Israel have done to the Middle East.
We are at war, and last week, a missile struck about 1,000 feet from Iran’s Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant.
We are at war, and there is no way for the US to win, even if you believe in winning this sort of thing. One expert has warned, “We’re now getting into the tail-end scenarios that usually only merit a sentence at the end of a paper, they’re so unlikely and disastrous.”
We are at war, and I am aching. I ache for the people the US government is harming here, in Iran, and in Palestine, where conditions are worsening again, because we are at war. I ache for the farmers in Tanzania who cannot ship their crops, because we are at war. I ache for the protesters in Iran, whose liberatory demands have become secondary concerns, at best, in a country under siege. As Nazanin Shahrokni writes, “Whatever its longer-term political consequences, war unmistakably narrows the conditions under which collective political life can be sustained. It reorganizes political time, compresses political horizons, and redirects attention from public mobilization to endurance.”
I ache in a literal sense, as I struggle with auto-immune issues, back problems, perimenopause, and exhaustion. Always exhaustion. We are all so exhausted.
We are not ready to acknowledge what we are losing or what is already gone. Not ready to fight battles we are afraid we can’t win. Not ready, not willing, not yet. But grief is calling, and close behind it, the reckonings that could be.
There is grief in my apartment. My father-in-law passed away. My spouse is grappling with the absence of someone who was a part of him, as I did in 2017, when my father died. I am trying to be the kind of partner he was for me then, and the bar is quite high.
We are all dragging ourselves along, trying to keep up with whatever version of normalcy has been reconstructed each day. We are weeping and writing emails. We are watching television and scrolling, alternately hiding and spiraling, but rarely grieving as we should. Rarely living fully in the reality of now, because that would mean killing the zombie dressed up as an ordinary Tuesday, and we do not know how to do that yet. Or maybe we’re just not ready.
Steve Bannon is saying that ICE agents loitering around TSA checkpoints are rehearsing for electoral interference. We are at war, and I am thinking about what January 6 could have been if Trump had tens of thousands of federal, fascist secret police at his disposal.
We are at war, and Trump says Cuba is next. We are at war, and Pete Hegseth is asking for $200 billion because, he says, “it takes money to kill bad guys.” Enough money to fund universal pre-K for every child in the United States. Enough money to house the unhoused. Enough money to fund free community college for two and a half years. $200 billion for the bombings to continue. $200 billion for a potential nuclear disaster. $200 billion while farmers lose fertilizer and shipping routes, while thousands die, while prices surge. $200 billion for an endless war waged by corrupt sycophants and clowns.
Never let them ask how you would pay for anything.
This week, I attended an organizing meeting. It was a small obligation kept, amid many things I am unable to do right now. But I know that showing up where I can, to move and think with other people, is the only way out of this. The forced choreography of everyday life continues, even as the stage is dismantled beneath our feet. We can stumble and weep our way through our routines, or we can cry out as a chorus that what’s happening is grotesque, and must be opposed. As ever, the question is not simply what we are saying or doing, but who we are speaking with and acting alongside.
Must-Reads
Here are some of the most important articles I’ve read lately.
- US, Israeli Attacks Have Damaged Nearly 500 Schools, 300 Health Centers in Iran by Sharon Zhang. “Over 82,000 civilian structures have been damaged by U.S. and Israeli bombardments, the group reported this week. This includes 62,000 homes, 498 schools, and 281 medical centers, hospitals, and pharmacies, the Red Crescent reported.”
- What It’s Like to Protest ICE in the Shadow of Dilley Detention Center by Elizabeth Weil. “Garcia appreciated the outsiders coming to draw attention, but she couldn’t take so much of the world around her carrying on with their regular lives — working restaurant jobs, driving kids to and from school. So she put on her Hokas and her rainbow stole and started walking to San Antonio.”
- Iran’s Retaliation Reignites Discontent With US Military Bases in Middle East by Shireen Akram-Boshar. “The large U.S. military presence remains in tension with the wishes of the vast majority of the population in most countries in the region, and it remains to be seen if the current U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, and Iran’s widespread retaliation against this network of bases, will once again reshape the U.S. military presence in the Middle East.”
- Why We Have to Fight Back Against ICE Protesters’ Terror Convictions by Natasha Lennard. “Last week, a jury found eight of the defendants guilty of terrorism charges for simply being present and wearing black at the protest … Throughout the trial, the prosecution treated it as a given that antifascist, anti-government, left-wing sentiment was itself evidence of criminal conspiracy.”
- Airports on ICE by Marisa Kabas. “The presence of ICE was certainly not helping anyone, it wasn’t speeding up security lines, and at worst it was making people uncomfortable.”
- 20-Year-Old Dies in ICE Detention Center Known for Abuse by Julia Conley. “Royer Perez-Jimenez was found unresponsive by a detention officer at Glades County Detention Center in Moore Haven, Florida at around 2:30 am Eastern on Monday. The center operates as an immigration detention facility under a contract with ICE.”
- Iran War Likely Destabilized Gas Prices Through at Least 2027, Fed Report Says by Chris Walker. “According to the EIA’s projections, which were published last week, gas prices will likely stay around $3.34 per gallon for the rest of 2026.”
- How to Build Emergency Response Systems for the Long Haul by Zia Kandler and Moira Birss. “If we want to sustain our movements for what, unfortunately, is likely to be a long struggle, we must begin now to put durable, collective and supportive structures into practice.”
- The World Energy Shock is Coming by Isabella Weber and Gregor Semieniuk. “European and US consumers are still, for the movement, relatively insulated, even if they already see elevated petrol prices that bring a major cost burden to households. The full scale of the effects to come remain hidden in the complexity of the global supply network. Here is a sketch of what might be coming: inflation, redistribution shocks, shortages, stagflation and global financial instability.”
- By Organizing Acts of Public Grief, We Build the Courage to Keep Fighting by Daniel Hunter & Stephanie Guilloud. “We hope that this memorial serves as a model for future acts of public grieving. We created a toolkit to help others lead their own ceremonies to name those killed by ICE, with the goal not of creating an exclusive ceremony but an inclusive and additive movement.”
On Conflict…
This moment is so incredibly disordered. I know people are struggling, and tensions are high in some of our movement spaces. That’s why Tanuja Jagernauth and I will be recording two upcoming episodes of Movement Memos on conflict resolution. We’ve heard from a number of people about themes they would like to hear addressed, and we’re open to more input, so if there’s a question or concept you’d like to hear us explore, please reach out.
Much love,
Kelly
Organizing My Thoughts is a reader-supported newsletter. I’ve been losing a significant number of paid subscriptions lately as more people face financial strain, and I completely understand that reality. These are hard times, and I hope we all see better days soon. Paid subscriptions are what allow me to keep this work accessible to everyone, because I won’t put it behind a paywall. If you’re in a position to pitch in and support the creation of these letters, interviews, essays, reports, and lists, I would be grateful for your support.
