June Links and Thinks

Ideas for your brain and balm for your soul

The great conundrum of the moment is how not to get swallowed by the great sucking mass of awfulness while still tuning in enough to be informed and, hopefully, resist it. So this month I’m going to skip the articles that tell us what’s bad and focus instead on the ones that help us think about how to respond. If you liked my post about the Democratic Party, these links are for you.

But first, did you know I have another newsletter? When They Asked Me To Write, I Bowed is about the craft of writing and the creative process in general. This month’s post is about the art of borrowing. Check it out, and, if you like it, please subscribe. It comes out much less frequently than this one, and every post is free.

And now, onto the links…

On Community, Connection, Democracy, and Resistance

1. Sarah McBride on Why the Left Lost on Trans Rights

by Ezra Klein (The Ezra Klein Show)

Transcript

Podcast

If you’ve had an in-person conversation with me in the past month or so, there’s a good chance I’ve drawn you into the debate in my head about what’s driving the anti-trans backlash. The question was generated by comments I’ve heard both from subscribers to this newsletter and in other unexpected places that signaled to me that discomfort with certain trans issues, particularly trans women playing sports and gender-affirming care for youth, is far more widespread than I had realized, even among people who consider themselves “progressive.” (Polling backs this up.)

This is an issue that I have to do a lot of deep-breathing around, since my life is enriched by many wonderful trans people, some of whom are athletes and many of whom are young. I am frightened for the safety of these friends, colleagues, and family members in particular, and for the safety of trans people in general, and I’m enraged that people in power have chosen this tiny and acutely vulnerable fraction of the population to bully.

All the same, it’s my job to stay curious, even when my emotions are flaring. What I’ve been trying to figure out, in my cooler moments, is where we lost people who started out as allies and then began to feel things had gone “too far.” Why does this topic feel so important, and so frustrating, to so many people? How do we recalibrate without compromising trans people’s right to live freely, fully, and safely?

In her interview with Ezra Klein, Delaware Congresswoman Sarah McBride, who is trans, has many smart and thoughtful things to say about this issue and about democracy, social media, and much else. A quote:

People are hungry for an approach that doesn’t treat our fellow citizens as enemies but rather treats our fellow citizens as neighbors, even if we disagree with them — an approach that’s filled with grace.

On social media we have come to this conclusion, rightfully so, that people’s grace has been abused in our society. That the grace and patience of marginalized people have been abused. And that is true.

But on social media, the course correction to that has been to eliminate all grace from our politics. It’s: How dare you have conversations with people who disagree with you? How dare you be willing to work with people who disagree with you? How dare you compromise? How dare you seek to find common ground with Republicans?

Bonus: If trans people in sports is an issue that concerns or confuses you, check out this episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.

2. The World Has Always Been On Fire: What now?

By Anne Helen Petersen (Culture Study)

A wide-ranging essay that touches on Ocean Vuong, political strategy, and the politics of connection. The essay covers some of the same ground as Rep. McBride but with a unique spin and some very funny observations. (Thanks to reader Bekah Otto for sharing it with me.)

A quote:

What does it look like to cherish other people? To cultivate our empathy for one another, even when our own experiences are so disparate? If a burning world is our lived reality, how do we continue to steer ourselves towards the sort of compassion that might create a different one?

It’s not by policing each other, or parsing others' good faith posts for ill-intent. It’s also not by telling people to stop caring about what they care about. I’m not saying make friends with fascists, because that is always the bad faith interpretation of this argument: you want me to cozy up to people who hate me, who want me dead. Never, not at all.

But we do have to figure out how to create narratives — amongst people who hold very similar beliefs, but also with those who do not — that have a stronger gravity than fascism, or Steven Miller-style white supremacy, or JD Vance/trad-wife pronatalism, or so many other noxious ways of orienting oneself to the world. All of those ideologies are, at heart, antidotes to the deep sadness at the heart of everyday life. We need better ones.

3. What’s so special about 3.5 percent?

by Ben Raderstorf (If You Can Keep It)

If you went to a No Kings protest, I hope it felt good. With five million participants, it may have been the largest protest in U.S. history and brings us ever closer to the 3.5% participation rate that political scientist Erica Chenoweth has found characterizes successful nonviolent movements. This newsletter gives a nice explanation of why mass protests are important. A quote:

Basically, when nonviolent social and pro-democracy movements reach a certain critical mass, they overwhelmingly tend to succeed. To be clear, there are a lot of caveats and limitations (more on those in a second), but this means the United States is quickly approaching the level of civic and pro-democracy mobilization that has, globally speaking, almost uniformly prevailed against repressive regimes.

Bonus: If you’re interested in learning more about Erica Chenoweth’s research and how it applies to the U.S. context, watch this episode of Pod Save America.

4. David Hogg’s Fight for the Future of the Democratic Party

From More to the Story with Al Letson (Reveal)

Parkland Survivor David Hogg has created a PAC to challenge “asleep-at-the-wheel” Democratic incumbents in safe seats. A quote:

We need to show the American people how we’re going to change the Democratic Party. This is a break-the-glass moment.

5. Inside the Scrappy Network of Volunteers Protecting Their Neighbors From ICE by Julia Lurie (Mother Jones)

Volunteers in Waltham, Massachusetts are helping their undocumented neighbors survive the threat of ICE kidnappings. A quote:

Like any mutual aid, the movement is hard to categorize and morphing in real time. Fuerza recently dispatched volunteers to the local food pantry, in case ICE showed up. “Then we realized that the turnout was so low because people are afraid to leave their houses, so we boxed up a bunch of the food and hand-delivered it to their houses,” Bradley-MacArthur says. “We’re building the plane while we’re flying it.”

Bonus: If you’re interested in how other communities are thinking about immigration, check out these two podcasts, each of which explores the fissures within a single rural community, one in Massachusetts and one in New Mexico:

• The Shelter and The Storm: A small town in Massachusetts grapples with a new shelter for immigrants by Ruby Cramer (Washington Post).

• Small Towns Are Getting Hooked On ICE Detention Centers by Rachel Adams-Heard and Fola Akinnibi (Bloomberg)

6. Diary of a Spreadsheet

By Chelsea Kirk (N+1)

Another story about mutual-aid networks. This first-person account tells how a group of tenant activists documented widespread illegal rent gouging in the wake of the L.A. fires. It’s a feel-good story about successful social change and a bit of a blueprint for what grassroots organizing can look like, both on and offline. This is the rare Sigh of Relief link where technology is deployed for good. A quote:

The vibe was scrappy and skill-diverse. Some folks had years of experience in data systems; others were there to observe, learn, or relay information to future collaborators. By the end of the call, we had the beginnings of a plan—and two Signal groups: a developer team focused on building the tool to extract rent-gouging listings from Zillow, and a research team ready to analyze the data once it came in.

7. R.F.K., Jr., Anthony Fauci, and the Revolt Against Expertise

By Daniel Immerwahr (The New Yorker)

A fascinating discussion of conspiracy theories, vaccine skeptics, RFK Jr., and how the left’s relationship with expertise has changed over time. Most interestingly, the piece engages with the ways that public health officials’ certainty around COVID prevention ended up backfiring by failing to engage with legitimate concerns about isolation, learning loss, economic impacts, and more.

A quote:

Which skeptical views merit consideration? Which are denialism? Those questions haunted the Kennedy assassination and the early AIDS crisis, and they returned with COVID-19. As before, the gravity of the situation reduced tolerance for open-ended inquiry. “Doubt is a cardinal virtue in the sciences, which advance through skeptics’ willingness to question the experts,” the Washington Post’s Peter Jamison wrote. “But it can be disastrous in public health, which depends on people’s willingness to trust those same experts.”

8. Hot Earnestness Summer by Garrett Bucks (The White Pages)

This piece is nominally about Zohran Mamdami but it’s mostly about community and connection and how we can’t survive the next four years, much less resist Trumpism, without it.

A quote:

There’s such freedom in earnestness, you all. When we see it in the wild, we might scoff at first, but eventually we too are tempted to let our guard down. If another human being can present like that—so nakedly, so guilelessly— perhaps we too can drop the icy front. No matter how much we pretend not to, we all dream, deep down, of a hot earnestness summer. What’s cooler than being cool? Hosting a potluck.

And, Just For Fun…

Does Luck Exist?

By Eric Boodman (New York Magazine)

I found this piece riveting. Everybody knows someone who seems to have more bad things happen to them than can possibly be attributed to chance, and someone else who seems to live a charmed life, skating through and around every potential disaster. Is this a question of attitude? Of statistics? Of some unquantifiable personal quality? What exactly is luck, and how should we think about it?

A quote:

There’s something about luck that inspires skepticism or rejoinder. Partially, it’s a question of terms. It’s hard to agree what exactly we’re talking about. The word is slippery, a kind of linguistic Jell-O. The critiques come from left and right, from those who see luck as a mask for privilege and those who see it as an offense to self-made men. Voltaire, with the confidence of the encyclopedist, once declared that one can locate a cause for everything and thus the word made no sense. Others dismiss it as mere statistics, still others as simply a term the godless use for God. It can call to mind an austere medieval manuscript, two-faced Fortuna, one side beaming, the other weeping, ordinary humans clinging to her fickle wheel.

What are you reading, watching, and listening to these days? I’d love to share some recommendations in a future newsletter. Let me know me your favorite books, articles, podcasts, TV shows, movies, etc. in the comments. Or, just tell me what you think of these pieces.

With a sigh,

Dashka