The Counterpublic Papers vol. 9 no. 14

So in my last newsletter I gave some micro and meso-level ways to work through the current moment with an eye towards getting readers to first do the type of work on themselves that can prepare yourselves for what’s here. One of the complicated blessings of having experienced depression right after the election is that by the time the inaugural came around, I was more or less back. Back enough that I thought about going to the inaugural to document—I didn’t, in part because the inaugural ended up being inside (on purpose), in large part though because it was “Detroit cold.” And being back means that I can now be of service. And being of service means here that I can use my own experience to talk about what worked to get me through to this point. 

But now that we’re here.

In Trump’s first two weeks, he’s taken that “dictator for a day” and extended it. If you read this you already know about the federal spending freezes that were unfroze after protest. You know about the Reagan airport disaster that was likely caused by Trump employee cuts but were blamed on DEI. What you may not know is that as of this past Friday that it is no longer possible to get data on sexual identity from the census. CDC researchers were ordered to retract all unpublished manuscripts so they can be scrubbed of keywords. 

The USAID website no longer exists.

From a friend in foreign aid:

Elon Musk has access to the treasury department payment system. 

Trump started a trade war with Canada and Mexico.

I’ll just start there.

Both the Washington Post and the New York Times ran recent featuring takes on what the Democratic Party should do in response. Here’s Rahm Emanuel (the post):

Amy Klobuchar’s interview with the NYT was similar. 

And I almost forgot, the Washington Post running a story giving people the opportunity to see whether or not government employees should take the Trump buyout (which presumes that the buyout is not a scam.)

In these and related instances we’re looking at a deadly combination of normalcy bias and Clinton-era centrism, pushed by media entities that are themselves far less committed to democracy than they are to ensuring the administration doesn’t sue them (and in the specific case of the Washington Post, grants Bezos access). Politics doesn’t quite exist here as politics, only as some combination of “bread and butter issues.”

I’ve begun to talk to audiences about what to do. And I’m realizing now that part of what I’ve been saying needs to change. I suggested that we’re in a moment of crisis, one in which it is more possible to make substantive gains than before particularly because the institutions we relied on failed and the traditional ideas about how politics is supposed to work have revealed themselves to be bankrupt.

I still believe that. 

But more accurately the inflection point was the election. That inflection point passed. And now we’re looking at rearguard action, action designed to protect the gains that we’ve made rather than generate new ground.  

The blame doesn’t lie with us. The blame lies elsewhere—in the Democratic Party and to an extent in our mass media. 

But the responsibility given that, was (and is) still ours. If the history of nations who’ve successfully beaten backsliding back tells us anything, it’s that institution building of the type we want doesn’t become easier after they’ve been gutted by right wing reactionaries, it becomes harder. 

With that said what do we do? 

Some are suggesting that “rest is resistance.” 

No. Rest isn’t resistance. It’s rest. It’s needed in many cases, but it in and of itself is not resistance. From my standpoint as a social scientist who tries to think like an organizer there are two problems with this formulation—it expands the concept of “resistance” far too much to be of analytical or practical positive political use because it conflates action with inaction. There are obvious instances in which the equivalent of being still does constitute resistance—strikes for example—but simply resting doesn’t fit the bill here. 

(I may expand on this later, but whereas capitalism requires action to function, and withholding or not engaging in that action CAN constitute resistance, authoritarianism requires inaction, because inaction can be read as consent. Rest here is inaction. Doesn’t mean it isn’t a right or that it isn’t needed. It does mean though that without concerted action, at best rest is only rest.)

Again, it’s important. But it’s important at this moment as a way to prepare people for real political activity. And real resistance.

Along those lines if we think about activity in stages and recognize that people are only now starting to come to grips with what we’re facing, and have to be gradually looped in as it were, the first thing I’d suggest people do is add this link. It’s a bot designed to automatically contact all of your political representatives. 

I do not believe our political representatives are going to be the ones to get us out of this mess. But we should work under the assumption that they can be trained to be of service. Making them aware of how their constituents feel about this situation can begin this process.

There are a number of organizations that are going to be at the knife’s edge. These organizations need a combination of funds and labor. Take a little bit more than the funds you can spare, no matter how little, and identify local organizations you can donate your funds to, even if it’s only a few dollars a week or month. For Baltimore folks, I’ve been contributing to Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle and Village of Love and Resistance. Other Baltimore area organizations that can use resources right now include:

The Baltimore Abortion Fund

CASA

Baltimore Safe Haven

At the national level I’ve been giving money to the Debt Collective. A friend of mine shared a spreadsheet of immigration/advocacy support groups and there’s a movement afoot to create safe houses for trans folk. There are also organizations like the Friends, and then traditional orgs like the ACLU. 

There’s obviously more, and I’ll share as you share them with me, but this is one of the first things. 

There are nascent efforts everywhere to begin to bring people together to plot acts of resistance and transformation. If you’re in places like Baltimore or Detroit, places that are to an extent already robust hubs of organizing, find places. I’m going to have a virtual town hall soon-ish and the goal here is to both give people a set of frames that I think can help to figure out where we are and what we’re fighting for and an opportunity to be with likeminded folk and then finally an opportunity to plug people in. 

Unlike 2016, we’ve a number of technologies that enable us to compress space and to an extent time in ways that will be useful going forward. Zoom and the like are the most important here but relatedly I’d say that instagram and TikTok with all of their problems work well. If you have access to these tools, use them to identify people of like mind. 

Oh. 

So I’ve been running this for free because I think of it as a public service and on top of that I’ve other writing commitments that I have to get to. But here’s a list of newsletters and websites that you’d do well to bookmark, and in some instances support monetarily. 

Zeteo

Heather Cox Richardson

Public Notice

Reuters

Bolts Mag

Ground News

The 51^st

Democracy Now

The Real News

The Guardian

The Baltimore Beat

The 19^th

Outlier (Detroit)

The Contrarian (to give you a sense of how the new media works, this is a substack created by disgruntled Washington Post journalists…I couldn’t even find it through google.)

Dan Moynihan

Notes on the Crisis

…

I think I’ll stop there.

For now.

Listen. You are not alone. This is the moment to realize that. We are in this together. Take this opportunity to reach out to someone to begin the work of rebuilding community. One of the words that the Right has seized upon over the past few decades is “responsibility,” often using it as a cudgel against black and poor populations. It’s high time we recognize that wherever the blame lies, and there’s enough to go around, the responsibility lies with us.