Isaac Luria · Love Letters to the Movement

Something is happening here

Isaac Luria — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 18:14:32 GMT

It’s been super fun and pretty relieving to get Love Letters to the Movement to this pre-order moment. Get your signed copy here with a donation of any amount.

Today, I’m sharing for the first time ever, the full introduction that opens the book. Lucky you! ;-)

“Something is happening here/ But you don’t know what it is/ Do you, Mr. Jones?”
— Bob Dylan, “Ballad of a Thin Man”

I’ve returned often to Bob Dylan’s “Ballad of a Thin Man” following the second election of Donald Trump. Songs have a knack for finding their way to your heart, especially when they have messages you need to hear.

Something really is happening here and, I’m afraid, many of us don’t know yet what it is. At times over these past few years, I have found myself unsure where to invest my own time, energy, and resources in the work of justice. The scope of the changes in politics, ecology, and technology—the flows of history we may have little power to influence, the smallness of imagination in many of the institutions responsible for leading—has, at times, left me bereft.

Getting good and lost is part of the work. It may be exactly what we need now. When we more honestly confront the depth of what humanity is going through and our own role in caging our imaginations, we can crack open possibilities we couldn’t see before.

This book rests on a conviction that when a world ends and a new one is about to be born, we must turn to our ancestors, our liberatory spiritual traditions, and their wisdom. We need to sit the heck down and listen to the elders who are channeling those lessons.

Love Letters to the Movement is about taking a step in that direction, toward the elders and wisdom keepers I have had the privilege of meeting along my journey in justice work infused with spirit.

Prophets with friends

The authors included in this anthology have built organizations, funded movements, and mentored the next generation. These modern-day prophets do more than sit outside the city gates, telling the fully honest truth about society’s moral failings. They are, in the words of my mentor and co-conspirator and movement elder Shifra Bronznick, “prophets with friends.” They bring people together around shared spiritual foundations and tend to the divine spark in all people. They have, in many respects, supported me through pain and heartbreak as I have attempted to do the same for them.

Each of these delightful people is more than the ideas they put on the page; they are beloved to me as human beings who are trying to live as well as possible, to care for their people, to root in wisdom, and to let their lives speak the theology they share on these pages.

Wayfinding

Ancient cultures looked up at the sky, learning over time that the position of the sun and stars could help direct humans on the ground. Individuals within those cultures learned the skill of wayfinding, helping human beings cross oceans and deserts toward promised lands. I am drawn to the voices in this book as our cultural and political wayfinders—wisdom keepers who have spent their lives tending to the spiritual foundations of movements for justice and healing.

The thing about pointing in a direction isn’t that you know exactly what you’ll encounter—what you’ll have to climb over, tunnel under, swim through, or walk around. It’s that you have a sense of where you might be headed, and you can refer back to these arrangements of stars and sky to help guide the way. Our wisdom traditions are constellations in our sky, and these writers are the interpreters of these gorgeous illuminations. They are not offering a strategic plan. They are offering something more durable and useful: specific guidance about how to live now, in these times of extreme change, grounded in love and in the spiritual power that has carried movements through the worst of human history. The voices we need to listen to, to sit with, to dialogue with—they are here. I invite you to let them orient you.

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Here is a taste of what’s inside

Each of the contributors to this anthology brings their own distinct voice and lineage. Together, they offer an experience of multivocality that is one of our movement’s greatest strengths.

Rev. Michael-Ray Mathews opens the collection with a meditation on what it means to stand in the river of ancestral memory when the world around you is unraveling. Through his great-grandmother BigMa who prayed on her porch, and his third-great-grandmother Mama Delsie, born enslaved, who endured the promise and betrayal of Reconstruction, Michael-Ray traces that river through a lineage of spiritual power rooted in prayer, perseverance, and praise.

In my own essay, I wrestle with the way moral frameworks of good versus evil have shaped American political culture in ways that undermine the very justice we seek. I write about how shame is the hidden engine of so much of our political and movement culture—and how we might build the spiritual and emotional scaffolding to hold communal pain, accountability, and healing together.

Báyò Akómoláfé draws on Yoruba cosmology and a poet’s command of language, arguing that the ground we have built our movements and theologies upon is cracking open - and that those cracks are an invitation for reflection and maturation. “God is not above us in heaven or below us in some subterranean depth. God is diagonal, showing up obliquely.”

Rev. Jennifer Butler writes as someone who has spent her career inside mainline Protestant institutions and watched Christian Nationalism distort the Gospel into a tool of political domination. Her essay is an honest reckoning with the ways mainline Protestantism has been too often silent or complicit and a call to reclaim the prophetic voice at the heart of the Christian tradition.

In an interview, Michelle Alexander tells the story of her journey from The New Jim Crow to Union Theological Seminary to the founding of Spirit of Justice. The conversation traces a remarkable spiritual evolution in contemporary public life.

Lisa Anderson offers meditations on the experience of Black women — providing spiritual nourishment for the spaces between what has ended and what has not yet begun. Her essay is a reminder that tending to the soul is not a retreat from the work but the work itself.

Uma Viswanathan visits monks on a pilgrimage, bringing us into an ancient and practical spiritual technology of walking. Uma makes the case that when everything feels like it is spinning, we need practices that slow us down enough to feel the ground beneath our feet and remember what matters.

Dr. Rami Nashashibi writes from the Jerusalem-Jericho road, from Mount Nebo, and from the streets of Chicago’s South Side, weaving together Islamic, Christian, and Jewish traditions into what he calls “the sacred gaze”—a spiritual discipline of holding a vision of liberation even when entry is denied. “The sacred gaze allows us to look directly into the darkness without losing sight of the light beyond it.”

Claudia Horwitz writes from heartbreak after October 7th, bringing her experience as a meditation teacher and movement chaplain into the room. Bouncing between descriptions of her home island of Ocracoke, a thirteen-mile island off the North Carolina coast made mostly of sand, and calls with her mother, she writes about what those practices offer us: “not to make the unbearable go away, but to give us a way to stay present to it… to let it break us open rather than just break us.”

Alexie Torres tells the story of her political and spiritual formation—from her mother’s kitchen table in the Bronx River Houses to organizing marches against the crack epidemic to her current work with the Taíno of Puerto Rico. Through her abuelo Gregorio who ate around the edges of his plate so he could offer food to anyone who came to the door hungry, and through her mama Olga who welcomed strangers into their small apartment, Alexie shows us a glimpse of the soul of the movement.

Rev. Hierald Osorto closes the collection as a pastor from inside under-siege Minneapolis. His lyrical pastoral approach shows what it looks like to stay present and to be with through it all: Posadas in the cold, neighbors with whistles, the refusal to let fear have the final word.

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An invitation

I hope you’ll join me in sitting down, grabbing your favorite beverage or snack, and opening yourself to what they have to say. I am utterly convinced that it is these unshackled visions—and the thousands like them—that have the greatest potential to guide humanity through this painful period toward an age of greater connection, justice, and love. These visions are tunnels to the future, one beyond zero sum games and childish bravado, and toward a generous, life-giving, and welcoming society.

I pray that their words open you up a little, soften you a little, and provide a balm for your neshama (soul) as you move through this increasingly bewildering and bewildered world, as they have for me.

With an abiding belief in the potential of the human spirit,

Isaac

Read excerpts from three of the essays right now

Three excerpts from the book are up on the website:

God Is Diagonal, by Báyò Akómoláfé — speculative theologies at the end of a world
Growing Our Souls, a conversation with Michelle Alexander — on the season of pain that reoriented her work
The Trap of Being Good, by me — beyond the moral architecture of righteousness

Pre-order

Love Letters to the Movement comes out in September. Give any amount and I’ll send you a signed copy. About $15 covers printing and shipping. Anything above that puts books in the hands of organizers, clergy, spiritual leaders, and healers who can’t afford one, and helps me bring these ideas into conferences, convenings, and rooms where they’re needed.

“This book gives voice to an emergent reframing of the calling to justice.”
— Krista Tippett, On Being
“Profound, soulful, and mightily urgent… [a] life raft through an ocean of noise.”
— Valarie Kaur, bestselling author of See No Stranger
“When so many of us are tempted to choose urgency over rootedness, this book is a necessary interruption, and a generous one.”
— Rodney W. McKenzie, Jr.

Pre-order Love Letters to the Movement

New book on faith, spirit, justice

Isaac Luria — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 15:00:07 GMT

The past few years have been a time to allow myself to get good and lost in this work of justice. Beyond the loss, grief, and terror of this period, one of the hardest aspects of this time has been navigating these dark woods without a sense of the way to go.

This is where faith and spirit can ground us.

Learn more about the book

This tightness I felt kicked off a deep personal spiritual inquiry — which resulted in many conversations with friends and colleagues. When we talked, they spoke of love, tradition, spirit, and practices to shift our urgency and fear. They spoke of the magic of human connection and the revolutionary power of the spirit. They spoke of a deep faith and connection to ancestors.

I wanted you to hear their voices and their wisdom. That’s the book!

Learn more about the book here.
Get a signed book here by making a donation.

Ten incredible leaders wrote essays — Michelle Alexander, Báyò Akómoláfé, Rev. Michael-Ray Mathews, Rev. Jennifer Butler, Dr. Rami Nashashibi, Lisa Anderson, Uma Viswanathan, Claudia Horwitz, Alexie Torres, and Rev. Hierald Osorto. Huge gratitude to them and their partnership.

What was clear to me in these conversations about justice was that we’ve had enough strategy memos. What we need now is a spiritual revolution of consciousness, and the maps to get us there.

Get a taste by reading excerpts from Báyò Akómoláfé, Michelle Alexander, and myself on the website:

God Is Diagonal: Speculative Theologies at the End of a World, by Báyò Akómoláfé
https://www.loveletterstothemovement.com/essay/god-is-diagonal
Growing Our Souls, an Interview with Michelle Alexander
https://www.loveletterstothemovement.com/essay/growing-our-souls
The Trap of Being Good: Beyond the Moral Architecture of Righteousness, by Isaac Luria
https://www.loveletterstothemovement.com/essay/the-trap-of-being-good-beyond-the-moral-architecture-of-righteousness

If you contribute any amount at the link below, I will send you a signed copy in September when the book officially launches. It costs about $15 to cover printing and shipping for one book. Anything you give beyond that will help put copies into the hands of organizers, clergy, spiritual leaders, and healers who cannot afford it, and will allow me to bring these ideas to a wider audience via conferences, speaking engagements, and convening.

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About the Book

What sustains and enlivens you when the world is ending and another is about to be born? Love Letters to the Movement is a collection of essays curated by Isaac Luria and written by a glowing constellation of movement elders, offering spiritual and faith-rooted wisdom for these times.

Early Praise

“This book gives voice to an emergent reframing of the calling to justice.”
— Krista Tippett, On Being

“Profound, soulful, and mightily urgent… [a] life raft through an ocean of noise.”
— Valarie Kaur, bestselling author of See No Stranger

“When so many of us are tempted to choose urgency over rootedness, this book is a necessary interruption, and a generous one.”
— Rodney W. McKenzie, Jr.

Get your book

We can’t fight everything all at once.

Isaac Luria — Fri, 14 Mar 2025 21:08:28 GMT

I don’t envy Chuck Schumer. Stuck between bad options – either approving a GOP spending bill or providing an authoritarian with emergency powers during a government shutdown – he went with the former.

A lot of progressives are furious with him for “selling out.” They’re right that this bill will do damage – though far less than the fever dream of the far-right in ending social security, Medicare, and Medicaid and dismantling the entire federal government’s regulatory authority. And it sucks to be giving more power to Elon Musk and Donald Trump to pursue their attacks on the Federal government.

But let’s not just pile on Schumer. We need to be careful not to engage in magical thinking about what actual resistance is possible—thus diverting energy from rebuilding a political coalition actually capable of meaningful opposition.

I think a lot of us are still in a grieving process from November. It is really hard to see the MAGA vision of slash and burn Musk-esque disruption on full display. But remember that this vision is not a very popular one, when seen in full. Trump’s polling numbers are creeping downward. The stock market is in free fall and flashing recession.

The core of MAGA’s appeal is that they can be “trusted to fight for the little guy against consolidated corporate, government, and cultural power.” We have to expose that lie – while earning back the trust we’ve lost.

In this moment of wilderness, we need political jiu-jitsu more than conventional resistance. It’s time to use the energy of the opponent against them.

“Political jiu-jitsu uses our opponent's repression to undermine their sources of power while building our own. Jiu-jitsu is a martial art that uses the attacker's force against themselves, which means the attacker's greater size and strength become a disadvantage to them. Political jiu-jitsu operates on the same principle and occurs when we bravely, nonviolently, and lovingly endure unjust and/or violent repression.” Boundless Love Project [link]

If MAGA’s core idea is that they can be trusted to fight for the little guy, let them overreach by attempting to destroy programs that help the little guy. They will overreach and trip over their own far-right feet, and we will be there to pin them when they fall. Our hostility can actually prevent them from failing, providing an avenue for reframing their failures. Let them try their way and let them fail.

We are seeing this already in the House, where the MAGA leadership has had to delay the longer-term budget vote until September, creating a long period in which they’ll have to defend their deep proposed cuts to constituents.

Their ideas are already causing so much damage that they are providing openings in public opinion for new ideas. We have to show the American public that we see their pain, that we can be trusted to fight the structures, policies, and institutions that are keeping them sick, poor, and in danger, and that we have ideas that might actually work. For those of us on the progressive side of things, let’s note where our actions might end up being a solid foundation for MAGA’s narrative of standing up for the little guy against the cultural elite, and ways we can skillfully shift back to the narrative based on a multiracial working class advocating for change.

Scholar-activist Scot Nakagawa offers a slightly different take, challenging a “wait and see” approach:

This is not just a normal political cycle, and the damage being done isn’t temporary. The Trump administration and its billionaire backers are weaponizing economic pain and government collapse to entrench their own power.

I have enormous respect for Scot (subscribe to his newsletter here). He’s right that the danger of authoritarian takeover is real. We will need ongoing strategic action that undermines MAGA’s core narrative of fighting for the little guy–not to willy-nilly resist anything and everything MAGA does. Otherwise, as we’ve seen in the last few years, our own action becomes part of the cultural and social system of support for the MAGA right. We inadvertently complete their narrative – and like a superhero in need of a supervillain to justify their existence, we become their most helpful ally. Put another away, are we the willing little brother to MAGA, accidentally on the same team and not even knowing how?

This often boils down to class – where we don’t integrate class-based thinking into our politics, or allow it to be swept under the rug in favor of making gender or race primary, thus playing the part of cultural elites. Then, the MAGA folks attack us on gender or race and we react in a way that strengthens their case that we do not get the working class. That’s their jiu-jitsu – and we are part of it. We need to respond in ways that don’t take the bait, integrating working class interests and concerns into opposition to white male supremacy.

Our task is no less than to convince a portion of the millions of people who have believed in MAGA to understand they are being hoodwinked, to lose trust in that vision, and to change their minds. Do you change your mind when you’re being yelled at? Do you change your view of a close friend doing something wrong when you see another person attack them as a liar, a moral scourge, or deserving of a violent response? MAGA’s voters are good folks under a spell from an abusive friend. They need compassion and understanding, as well as counter-narratives showcasing that approach, to become part of building up society rather than tearing it down. We need not let up on telling the truth and our tone and approach matters.

Here’s the hardest part – is it possible that my desire to to move urgently with a sense of moral righteousness might actually be part of a dynamic that props up division and rancor, providing a fertile ground for MAGA? Writer Bayo Akomolafe has helped me question whether my righteousness might reveal a particular form of Christian American savior complex, learned over decades and within the social change industry I have worked in for two decades.

What if the way we respond to the crisis is part of the crisis? - Bayo Akomolafe

While we can get attention when we are mad, we contribute to the deconstructing of pro-social norms that we need to build a compassionate future.

Instead of running to the barricades, I am trying instead to love the part of me that just doesn’t know what to do yet – but in the meantime, I know it involves tending to trusting relationships with my friends and family, building up my community, and trying to make true and beautiful things. Sikh activist Valerie Kaur calls this Revolutionary Love, “the choice to leave no one outside our circle of care.”

What if what is needed in a time of epochal change and shifting sands is to take time to sit in our pain and confusion and to turn towards our fellow Americans with a fresh invitation to build society anew?

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Don’t worry, all my action oriented people, you can still do things!

Here are a few ideas, and yes, most of these do not include watching CNN or doom-scrolling the New York Times:

Grow your network with people directly affected by MAGA’s slash and burn cuts. Reach out to folks you may know who will be hurt first by a slash and burn of federal cuts, especially those that are MAGA-adjacent, and be ready to stand with them when they’re ready. Examples might include veterans groups, trade workers, teachers, elderly and rural voters, and folks struggling with food or housing insecurity, or poverty. If you don’t know a lot of folks in this situation, see what you can do to expand your network. Join clubs, hobbies, community groups, and other places where you can be of service to folks and communities you don’t know. Find one or two places where your energy for your community would be helpful – like a soup kitchen, meals on wheels, a Church, or other in-person live place where neighbors help out neighbors. Throw down on your community and those near to you.

Tend to your spiritual and mental health. We are in a new period of authoritarian overreach that will continue for some time. Developing a good strategy often requires emotional regulation to be able to look clearly at the fact patterns. Are we regulated enough to see with both clear eyes and a loving heart? Are we in touch enough with a big yummy vision to be able to share it with people we don’t agree with? Are we finding some forms of spiritual ground or practice that allows us to touch vision and emotionally regulate when things are scary? All of these things have real potential – and now is as great a time as any to really dive in.

Learn about big ideas that go deep. The scholar Bayo Akomalafe has been a balm for me these days, as he tries to find space for deeper questions about the predicament we find ourselves in. He writes:

I am quite confident that even as the oceans boil, and the hurricanes beat violently against our once safe shores, and the air sweats with the heat of impending doom, and our fists protest the denial of climate justice, that there is a path to take that has nothing to do with victory or defeat: a place we do not yet know the coordinates to; a question we do not yet know how to ask.

I am currently learning more about Abundance Liberalism, a new policy framework developed by wonkish types. The big idea is that liberal governance (think Blue States and Cities) has gotten stagnant and is not addressing core needs like the cost of housing, childcare, or transportation because of bloated government and regulations. It’s a vision for progressive and liberal governance to be much better at delivering on big things like high-speed rail, housing, and other construction projects. I’m sympathetic, and I need to spend more time hearing about how this will help those on the bottom of our social and economic systems specifically [link].

Links

Longer article about political jiu-jit-su here.
Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson.
Bayo Akomolafe - Website and collected writings.
Valerie Kaur - Website and collected books.

As always, I look forward to hearing what you think. Thanks for being on this journey with me.

Isaac

Resistance isn't enough.

Isaac Luria — Thu, 13 Feb 2025 20:23:44 GMT

After years of encouragement from my wife, I started coaching my nine-year old son's basketball team this year. I refused for a number of years because of the time-crunch of modern work and parenting, at least that’s what I told myself. If I had any extra time, I wanted to satisfy my own specific needs — see friends, see music, play basketball myself, get to the gym more, go out to dinner, or finish that lingering work project.

This year, because of the gift of a sabbatical1, I decided to give it a shot. I was pretty nervous that the kids wouldn’t listen to me, that they would think I was just some old guy, and that my son would see the whole debacle play out and be embarrassed. But I quickly felt transported into a new kind of relationship with community, with random children in my town, and the parents who gathered around every game and every practice.

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It wasn’t the usual way I engaged in community — where I went out for a very specific intention, attending Jewish Shabbat services for the singing, voted on a bond measure, shopped downtown, or played pick-up basketball. Instead, I was asked to give my time and love for the game freely, relating to new people, holding leadership and authority over practices and games, and risking more to engage in a more meaningful relationship with my community.

This group of nine-year-olds (we are the Eagles because flying animals rock) grew to trust me, my coaching style, and the limited skills I was able to pass on. I held them accountable to our practice and game plans. I learned from my college roommate Mark – far ahead in his coaching journey – to “catch every player doing something good.” I told the truth when they were slacking and made them run when they screwed around at practice. And every game, they amazed me (and themselves) by stacking up the points when they followed the plan. I’m only a season in and I can’t imagine missing out on the chance to be a coach next season.

It was counterintuitive to take on coaching. It’s not paid, and involves corralling a distractible group of nine-year-old boys after school for 90 minutes twice a week when you could be doing literally anything else–and that’s before the early weekend games. It’s risky because you might be bad at it or get a tough group of kids. From an individualistic mindset I’ve often held in my life decisions, it made no sense. From a deep communal mindset, though, I grew to understand how it made perfect sense.

We have all been bombarded with the statistics about the shifts in community life over the past three or four decades. We’ve seen the data that shows how civic and communal connective tissue has withered as the faith institutions, community groups, sports leagues, and other places where Americans have planned, celebrated, and gathered across relative diversity have been hollowed out. We’ve heard about the crisis of loneliness pervading our communities, leading the Surgeon General in 2023 to declare our loneliness an epidemic with far-reaching negative health outcomes and, in my opinion, creating a fertile ground for American fascism. This data also shows that, by and large, men, younger people, and conservatives tend to be more impacted by the epidemic. Many scholars, activists, and institutions are beginning to respond, trying to resuscitate a sense of belonging in our communities.

But how? Here’s Pete Davis, the Director of the Democracy Policy Network:

… beneath this so-called crisis of “belonging” is a crisis of “membership.” Whereas belonging can be read as an individual feeling that passively arises in us, membership is a type of communal relationship into which we are invited and to which we are asked to actively contribute. Membership can be seen as a form of deep belonging: it’s being such a part of a community that we feel responsible for honoring its past, stewarding its present, and co-creating its future. When this sense of membership is cultivated, we go beyond being consumers, clients, and constituents of the world around us—and, instead, become collaborators, citizens, and caretakers of it. [link]

The notion of membership — of active bidirectional participation where no one person is in charge but we are actively co-creating a future — is helpful to frame what’s missing and what could be different.

We also may need to go deeper still — because membership in any institution requires a resonance with its values, vibes, and offerings. And leadership within those institutions requires openness to your specific skills and ideas, so you might be engaged as the human you are, not be expected to follow the script.

What drew me to coaching basketball–and now has made me a convert–was the opportunity to share my admiration and love of a beautiful sport with my community. Is there any sound as evocative as a cord-snapping, rim-pinging swish after a shot? Or as delightful as the dance of a truly gifted ball handler? Is there any feeling as powerful as the endorphins and sweat and sense of accomplishment after a hard set of sprints? Or the feeling that you put in the work and you were ready for anything the opponents threw at you? Or seeing a parent be deeply proud of their kid for their accomplishments? Or getting absolutely smoked by a better, faster, stronger team, and then looking the kids in the eye to say that I am proud of them, their effort, and their grit — and that we will focus on getting better next week? I mean, come on, it’s sports heaven!

I was scared to get started coaching. But because I took the risk, and the community placed trust in me, I am now part of collectively raising children in our community as a male figure of authority, care, and attention. I sincerely hope they see their sports lives as a laboratory for learning healthy, strong, and supportive masculinity that they take with them throughout their lives.

What does this have to do with Donald Trump and the MAGA moment? How does coaching my kid’s basketball team help beat back fascism?

Hannah Arendt, the legitimately bad-ass historian of fascist and totalitarian movements, saw loneliness and fascist politics as intimately linked.

“What makes loneliness so unbearable is the loss of one’s own self, which can be realized in solitude, but confirmed in its identity only by the trusting and trustworthy company of my equals.” - Hannah Arendt

She describes the process of losing oneself and one’s ability to discern reality when we lose our connections to others. Our communities tether us to reality, help us recognize who we are and confirm our belief in our humanity and society. Loss of social connection, loss of positive experiences of community, and the loss of the ability to test our views, instincts, and information with others in democratic social and civic connection sets the stage for “negative solidarity” or the instinctual, frenzied hatred of all institutions and leaders who construct society. Sounds very MAGA to me.

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, in other words, the reality of experience, and the distinction between true and false ... people for whom those distinctions no longer exist.” - Hannah Arendt

In my case, coaching becomes a concrete antidote to a disbelief in society. Through coaching:

I renewed my faith and trust in humanity — seeing all of the parents loving and cheering on their kids, showing up for them, tired as hell at drop offs and pick ups. For some of the time, we’re in it together.
I saw how rewarding it is to be a trusted adult in kids’ lives that aren’t my own. I taught kids things, kept them accountable to the growth trajectory, and then cheered them on when they learned. The kids LOVED that - and I got to reminisce about the people who taught me things.
I learned to trust that with the right guidance, a random group of kids can learn team spirit, to work hard, to respect their coaches, and to lose and win with grace.
I found a deep appreciation for the town recreation department folks who set the league up all over the area–and whose amazing work our tax dollars support.
I saw how the passion I have for the beauty and drama of basketball can be of value to my community.

Put another way, my town leveraged my passion for basketball into deeper and stronger social bonds, which are a key ingredient to a stronger social fabric.

A lot of you reading this newsletter are the vanguard of the resistance to Trumpism. Developing strategies and initiatives to right our society’s wrongs, leading organizing and political work, distributing resources to folks doing amazing work, building communities to fight racism and nurture belonging — and I’m going to be doing that too when I return to my day job in March.

And I think all of this is not enough to shift the ground on which MAGA grows and thrives. Not without learning, day in and day out, to trust and love human beings working in community by rolling up our sleeves and letting ourselves be swept up in service to our neighbors. We are trained in so many ways to be individuals first, to trample through life with a checklist of needs, especially when we have additional layers of privilege. I am reminded and a little sheepish about how much this has been my approach to life. Now, I’m curious about what it might feel like to also get lost in the service of community as a concrete response to this moment of terrible tearing and breaking.

It could look like coaching, it could look like volunteering at a shelter, or starting a knitting group, or teaching a class at the local school, or substitute teaching, or caring for a neighbor’s kid, or starting a men’s group, or teaching Sunday school, or joining the community garden, or going to dinner with a core group of friends monthly, or joining a local political group, or a reading group at the library, or cooking for the needy. You all know what your passion is and where you find beauty — build on that. And if you don’t know, discuss it with a friend. And if you are already going down this path, deepen it. With enough of us pitching in, we are going to be just fine.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to share the post with your colleagues, friends, and family.

An inspiring report from the Democracy Policy Network for policy makers and agenda setters about who to cultivate deep belonging in cities [link].
Read more about Hannah Arendt and loneliness from a few scholars of her work [link].
“American Men Suffer Friendship Recession,” a 2021 report from the Survey on American Life. [link]
“Loneliness Corresponds with Politically Conservative Thought” if you want to learn more about how the loneliness data correlates with more conservative views. Pretty academic vibe. [link]

Thank you Nathan Cummings Foundation for supporting sabbaticals for staff !

Don't defend bureaucrats, defend people.

Isaac Luria — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 17:18:35 GMT

Like many of you, I am following the news intensely about Elon Musk's hostile takeover of federal government infrastructure. With the force of the presidency behind it, this is a naked attempt to disrupt the capability of the Federal government to fund schools, roads and bridges, safety inspectors, energy projects, social programs like medicaid and social security, diplomatic missions, and more. The plan is to go as far as humanly possible to tear down the federal government’s ability to function, ignoring democratic processes, numerous laws, and enriching billionaires in the process. And then to have a kill switch available to end any government program or department that Trump deems a target.

Their actions require a response.

When we respond, we must be aware that Trump and Elon Musk have laid a trap. They want us to defend the institutions and the bureaucracy, making them look like the reformers. To respond to this takeover, Democrats and progressives must be very careful not to be on the side of the bureaucracy. These bureaucracies has legitimate flaws, are extremely out of touch, and often fails in its attempt to effectively support communities. Bureaucracies and institutions are easy targets, and many liberals find themselves defending the existence of those institutions, rather than the people and purpose they are meant to serve.

Cracks are already emerging in the MAGA coalition. Check out this compilation of regretful Trump voters, the Trump Regrets Twitter account, or Nebraska’s Governor worrying about Trump’s deportation plan’s affect on agriculture. A lot of working class people are getting their SNAP benefits taken away, their child-care taken away, assistance for new mothers and newborns taken away, and many of them voted for Trump. The pain of these cuts will only get worse - creating opportunities to leverage public support against the Administration’s base.

Instead of defending the Department of Education directly or the federal employees who do the best job they can in out-of-touch institutions, the argument to make is how this will endanger funding for local community education, that kids in struggling school districts will not get the education they need, that this will lead to the firing of local, beloved teachers, and that security efforts to protect schools against school shootings will be disrupted. In each case, the most important way of discussing the attack is about how the Department of Education helps your local community while ALSO calling for major reforms of your own to the institutions that are not serving people effectively. If we cannot make this argument, then we will be branded as defenders of an unelected bureaucracy, staffed by wealthy elites, who do not help the people.

Don’t defend due process or Congressional budgeting authority. Of course, this is a legitimate argument, one that should be advanced in court because the rule of law matters. But in the public square, arguments must center on how Elon Musk is raiding the Federal government to line his own pockets and how the programs that help everyday Americans make ends meet are under attack. This fight will ultimately be won and lost in the court of public opinion. We have a opportunity now to develop popular support for aspects of the Federal government that help people.

Keep speaking up! Try to do so in a way that talks about the real human impact of these closures of federal agencies. And remember, that this battle for the takeover of the federal government will need to be won in the court of popular opinion.

Many of know someone who supports Trump. This is a great time to ask them how they are feeling and engage respectfully. By the time this is all over, if we are able to win, it will be because a small portion of the voters who put him into office feel betrayed. There are millions of people like this. Our job is to reach them in a way that they can hear and demonstrates the care we have for our fellow citizens in the face of Musk’s takeover.

Ok, yeah, I should probably mention Gaza.

The Trump proposal, originally a far-right Israeli fantasy, makes me so angry. It is openly advocating for ethnic cleansing of a war-torn population via the office of the American president. In other timelines, an American president would be organizing a donor conference to help rebuild Gaza and to pursue diplomatic options to stop future wars. Instead, he wants a real estate deal. Haven't Palestinians and Israelis been through enough?

But here we are. The plan is a nightmare. It's not possible to execute, it has already received rejections from the vast majority of the world, and American boots on the ground will expose American soldiers to attacks from Hamas and Islamic Jihad the moment they deploy there. It will not receive cooperation from the local Palestinian population (why should it?), and so they plan a forceable removal of Palestinians from Gaza? No way. Some real estate mogul’s fantasy, or a provocative negotiating ploy, but whatever it is, this plan should be dead-on-arrival.

If anything, I hope this pushes more leaders and institutions in the Jewish community, especially on the more centrist and mainstream side, to end the wait and see mode, to reject Trump's approach to Gaza publicly, and not cozy up to his dangerous administration. What else do you need to hear?

Links…

The AFL-CIO launched a campaign to keep Elon Musk out of the Department of Labor called the Department of People Who Work for a Living. Loved the framing.
Arab-Americans for Trump change their name to Arab Americans for Peace after Trump's Gaza announcement - link. Again, cracks are forming. Our job is to push through them.
Video about Trump supporting states reacting to immigration plans (there are cracks in this coalition!)

We need a big conversation about why we lost...

Isaac Luria — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 13:05:14 GMT

The best part about connecting with friends and colleagues in the aftermath of Trump’s second victory has been the rapid exchange of reading, links, images, metaphors, ideas, manifestos, data, poems – anything that might help explain how we got here and where we go from here.

These exchanges of ideas have been life-giving to me, opening doors where I saw walls. It feels right to be having a VERY BIG conversation about humanity’s future during an authoritarian age — to gird ourselves for what comes, to better know our context (a vital part of strategy), and to look honestly at where we have gone wrong.

I think of you — yes, you, specifically, as I added each email to this list carefully and with love — as someone on this journey with me. I would be honored if you would read, engage, and join this BIG conversation with me.

Subscribe now

What will this newsletter do?

Share curated links to stuff that sparked my curiosity. This big conversation has spiritual, political, social, historical, economic, artistic, and ecological dimensions, so drawing liberally from the wells of these disciplines (and others!) feels vital. Look out for data-heavy reports, artistic, perspectives, poems, podcasts, all the things.
Offer thoughts of my own about how I’m processing this information. Obviously, I will bring my perspective as a Jewish and faith based organizer, someone working in philanthropy, someone living in a rural community, as a straight white dude married to a woman and the parent of three kids, as a communicator, and as someone with decades of experience working at the intersection of racial justice, Israel-Palestine, the Jewish community, and the faith-based community.

This is all a grand experiment for me.

I've hoped for years to be able to share in this way with my community. I don't know that I'll have the energy to sustain it, or that it will feel relevant and important to you all, so bear with me as I work it all out on the page. Ok, let’s get to it.

Trump won because he told a bigger, more compelling story about America.

As his Administration inevitably overreaches, we can fight back with our own.

There's been a ton of hand-wringing in the aftermath of the election about the big message that liberals and progressives are offering as a counterpoint to an authoritarian message. Why has Trumpism become so potent in peeling off working class voters of all background and races from a progressive coalition? Why are so many voters, especially men and non-college educated voters, allergic to what the Democratic Party is offering?

I think one of the biggest issues is that we've lost the thread on how to talk about what progressives stand for and where we plan to take the country. By big story, I mean the sense of what we stand for, who we are authentically fighting for, and what our vision is of where the country finds itself and where we need to take it. Liberals tend to do the laundry list thing, by which I mean, listing out a series of policies or positions (for ex., child care, taxing the rich, defending social security, abortion rights, and fighting racism) that we think are important.

This is all fine, but insufficient politically and downright dangerous against narrative warriors like Donald Trump. A laundry list approach misses how most people actually process politics, which is more about feelings and perceptions of trust and distrust in in candidates, institutions, and brands. It is more like what the stories are that candidates are part of — rather than just the ones they are telling. Trump, as a story-line, is about a disruptive, angry business man who isn’t going to take it anymore. He alone can save us. Kamala was about…. um… not going back?

Narrative structures wrap around policy positions, telling a deeper story about what our problems are, what some solutions might be, who is to blame, and who can be trusted to fix it. On these more elemental parts of narrative and messaging, Democrats have been far behind for a long time and our candidates are especially poor at this at the national level.

To me, the big message to combat authoritarianism and to advance democratic politics is that we are stronger together and they are the party of going it alone. We believe in community; they believe in enriching wealthy individuals like Elon Musk.

I am talking about something much deeper than the slogan Stronger Together; something much more elemental that is rooted in the feelings, emotions, and gestalt that we are trying to get across. Grounded in this approach, a policy agenda would follow.

They are the party of leaving you to fend for yourself in a world dominated by corporate greed and complicit institutions. We are the party that does not leave neighbors behind, that lifts up other people, that believes in lifting up your local community. We are about helping one another to thrive in a complex and dangerous world.

Just look at the Federal Spending Freeze of the last few days. They are literally taking away health care from veterans, food from youth mothers and newborns, housing assistance for first-time home buyers, and support for local police and fire fighters. We believe in protecting everyone in our communities; they want to cause them pain to enrich themselves. We are on the side of your local community as it fights back for its neighbor.

They are about isolating Americans from one another, dividing us along lines of race, gender and class, about empowering billionaires, and about leaving you and your family to fend for yourselves without healthcare, without Social Security, and without the power of community. We are proud of our diverse communities and the ways that we help each other out regardless of race, gender, class, party affiliation, or any other part of our background.

They are on the side of big corporations following out your local economy. We are stronger together when we take on economic greed and broken institutions as a community. We think government is a place where community comes together to strengthen our bonds, our economy, and our families.

The classical progressive laundry list of messages and policy goals looks like a list of grievances from specific constituencies, instead of something larger, a big story about what America could be. When we say we're protecting democracy, people's eyes glaze over because they don't know what that means — and if democracy means more inflation and more unrestricted immigration, they’re going to hold their nose and vote for the other guy. Misguided use of narrative provides an opening for authoritarians to step in, to question our commitments to lifting up all people, and instead to be branded as the party of the elite.

I worry that this narrative of stronger together feels like it has gone out of style in progressive community. This skepticism about whether so-called togetherness will ever mean measurable changes in the lives of people who have been left out — it has some truth to it. Too many communities have been written out of America's social and economic fabric, intentionally. There are ways to tell these truths here in ways that strengthens and grows our bonds of community, bridging divides to unlikely allies and building trust in one another. There are also ways to tell the truth that leave potential allies with no way to find themselves in the story you're telling or trigger a shame response (which may get you a short-term victory, but stokes resentment and backlash). This is a question of strategy, as well, because I am not convinced that we have the numbers and the power to leave potential allies on the table — even when it makes us uncomfortable.

We should be figuring out how to appeal to people of all backgrounds via a bigger, more inclusive story about America, including those who support Trump. They are people who are worried about their futures, struggling parents who are trying to figure out how they can afford healthcare and how their kids are going get a good education, people trying to repair their lives after time in prison, to people left out of the economy, and an aging population struggling to make ends meet when grocery prices keep going up.

In each case, a vibrant, diverse, beautiful community is what is needed and is what needs strengthening. We may also need government policy to be better, stronger, and better funded, but what we really need is our community to step up around us. We don't have to be the party of government that suggests government weigh in on every issue nor to defend big government just because. Instead, we need to fight for laws and policies that unleash community on our biggest problems so that we can move forward together.

Tell me what you think! Just hit reply.

Links and all the things.

Smart paper from the Othering and Belonging Institute on how pro-democracy forces unwittingly can find themselves reinforcing the authoritarian frame of “elites vs. the people.”
“[The framework of authoritarian populism] asks us to question whether we are reinforcing the authoritarian populist double lens of “elite versus the people” and “us versus them,” or if we are advancing a different lens to process reality that is predicated on belonging without othering.”
The richer you are, the more connected you are to social fabric in your community, says a new report out from the American Survey Center.
“The class divide in American social capital has grown over the past few decades. Americans with fewer years of formal education participate less often in community life, are less civically active, have fewer close friends, and have less social support than those with four-year college degrees.”
These lines from Aurora Levins Morales’ Red Sea poem always stun me:

“We would cross the water if we knew how.
Everyone blames everyone else for barring the way.”

Full poem here.
An honest and bold accounting of how philanthropy has contributed to a hollowing out of progressive constituency building groups, by Nina Luo. I couldn’t pick just one quote — read the whole thing, especially the parts about Strategic Philanthropy and Trust Based Philanthropy (TBP).
Incredible remix of Whitney Houston. Stay dancing, y’all.