SO I LASTED exactly two days back on social media before my body started doing that thing again. You know the thing — where your thumb develops its own consciousness and starts scrolling without your permission, where you wake up at 5am convinced you’ve missed something earth-shattering on Twitter, where your nervous system basically becomes a human notification center.

Two. Fucking. Days.

And I’m not alone in this. Studies show social media use increases anxiety and depression by up to 25%. Y’all, that’s a lot! It literally rewires our brains, hijacking our dopamine systems until we’re just rats hitting the lever for another hit of outrage. We’ve got an entire generation developing tech-induced ADHD, unable to focus for more than eight seconds because that’s how long a TikTok video trained them to pay attention.

But it’s not just our mental health that’s fucked — it’s our entire political discourse. Misinformation spreads six times faster than truth on these platforms. Six times! Foreign governments are using our feeds to manipulate elections, algorithms are amplifying the most extreme voices because rage equals engagement, and we’re so busy arguing with bots that we can’t organize against the actual fascists at our doorstep.

And here’s what’s really getting me: We’ve somehow convinced ourselves that awareness is activism. Like knowing about every single injustice, every moment of fuckery, every fresh hell served up by the algorithm is somehow . . . what? Helping? We’ve turned doom-scrolling into a moral imperative. “But I need to stay informed!” we tell ourselves, as if watching the world burn in real-time through a six-inch screen is the same as grabbing a bucket.

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Look, I’m definitely not saying social media has zero value. It’s been INSTRUMENTAL in getting the truth out about Palestine when mainstream media won’t touch it. We’ve seen genocide in real-time because people on the ground could upload directly. In addition, Black Lives Matter organized through hashtags. #MeToo broke the silence.

Yet here’s also the problem — the same platforms that occasionally let truth slip through are actively suppressing Palestinian voices, shadow-banning Black and Brown accounts, and removing content that makes their advertisers nervous. They’ll let us see just enough horror to keep us scrolling, yet never enough to actually organize effectively against it.

So when I finally stopped opening those apps (again), something became blindingly obvious: We’re so busy consuming outrage that we’ve forgotten how to create change. We’re so deep in the forest of daily horrors that we can’t even see there IS a forest, let alone find our way out.

Here’s where I keep landing: Real change happens in living rooms, not algorithms. It happens when your “conservative” uncle actually sits down with you at Thanksgiving and has a conversation that doesn’t end with someone storming off (yes, this is painfully hard). It happens in book clubs where suburban moms suddenly realize that maybe, just maybe, the system isn’t *broken* — it’s working exactly as designed. It happens over glasses of wine in backyards where people feel safe enough to say, “I don’t understand this, help me understand.”

But here’s the thing — we’ve all but abandoned these spaces. We’ve retreated into our digital echo chambers where everyone already agrees with us, and we mistake likes for impact. Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg is literally buying Hawaii while we argue in his digital colosseum. The billionaire tech bros have us exactly where they want us: Isolated, anxious, and too exhausted from performing activism online to do the actual work offline.

Nothing says “late-stage capitalism” quite like thinking we can dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools — especially when those tools are literally designed to keep us scrolling, not organizing.

And while we’re scrolling, we’ve somehow turned politicians into celebrities, hanging on their every viral moment like they’re dropping a new album instead of disappointing us with the same old shit. We wait for their direction, their permission, their grand plans — as if they’re our kings. But here’s the plot twist: We’re not their subjects. They’re ours. We’re the ones who decide what this culture looks like, what values we embrace, what future we build. Politicians? They’re just the boring-ass secretaries who are supposed to write down what we’ve already decided and make it official.

So what does real organizing look like in 2025?

Look, I don’t have all the answers, but I think in part it looks a lot like your neighbor’s kid teaching their grandparents about climate change over Sunday dinner. It looks like starting a “difficult conversations” group at your local library. It looks like those Muslim and Jewish families in my neighborhood who’ve been meeting monthly to figure out how to protect each other when the fascists come knocking.

This isn’t Kumbaya feel-good fuckery, as we hold hands and sing folk songs. It’s mapping escape routes and sharing lawyers’ numbers. It’s infrastructure building. It’s creating systems that work when the official ones fail us. It’s practical as fuck.

And here’s the sneaky part — sometimes the best political conversations aren’t “political” at all. Like, watch Succession with your boomer parents and suddenly you’re talking about wealth inequality without anyone getting defensive. Start a book club with The Fifth Season and watch people naturally start connecting systemic oppression to geological catastrophe (trust me, N.K. Jemisin knows what she’s doing). Hell, from what I have heard The Good Place may have done more to get Americans thinking about moral philosophy than any academic text ever could.

The trick is using stories as trojan horses for the conversations we desperately need to have. Speculative fiction, fantasy, and sci-fi especially — because when you’re talking about dragon hoarding or dystopian governments, people’s defenses come down. They stop protecting their political identity and start actually thinking. Stories give us the distance we need to see our own systems clearly. When we can explore privilege through the lens of who gets to wield magic and who doesn’t, suddenly we’re having revelations about redlining and educational access without anyone having to admit they were wrong about anything.

It looks like understanding that changing culture isn’t about winning arguments online — it’s about creating spaces where people can actually change their minds. And guess what? Nobody ever changed their mind because a stranger yelled at them on Facebook. But they might change their mind when someone they trust helps them connect the dots between their own struggles and systemic oppression.

Want to talk about capitalism without saying the C-word? Watch Reservation Dogs (image below) together and let the conversation flow naturally about who owns land and why. Need to discuss patriarchy without your uncle shutting down? Yellowjackets will get everyone debating whether women in crisis would *naturally* turn violent (spoiler: that assumption itself is the patriarchy talking). Even something like Everything Everywhere All at Once becomes a gateway to discussing generational trauma, immigrant experiences, and the weight of infinite possibilities under capitalism.

Books work even better. A book club isn’t “political organizing” — it’s just neighbors drinking wine and talking about stories. But read Parable of the Sower together and watch people start connecting climate change to their own growing anxieties. Read The Water Dancer and suddenly you're discussing memory, land, and what we owe our ancestors. Trail of Lightning opens up conversations about Indigenous relationships with land that no lecture ever could. The conversations that emerge from The Water Knife will do more to illustrate climate apartheid than any PowerPoint presentation ever could.

This isn’t just about the U.S., either. American cultural hegemony means our toxic discourse gets exported worldwide, like some kind of imperial anxiety disorder. When we’re too busy fighting each other online to organize effectively, it ripples out. When we model dysfunction, the world watches. But when we model actual community building, actual culture change? That ripples out too.

The work is slow. It’s uncomfortable. It doesn’t come with instant dopamine hits or viral moments. You can’t measure its impact in retweets. But it’s the only thing that’s ever actually worked. Every successful movement in history happened because people talked to each other face-to-face, built trust, created networks of care and resistance that no algorithm could infiltrate.

I don’t love what social media does to my nervous system or our collective sanity, yet I am staying on there. Because here’s the thing — these platforms can be incredible for finding your people, for disabled folks, for people who can’t leave their homes, for sharing mutual aid requests, for those moments of genuine human connection across distances. And yeah, awareness does matter. There are people who depend on social media voices to feel less alone in this hellscape. That is important and I personally do not want to abandon anyone.

But I’m done treating these platforms like they’re our saviors. We’re putting all our eggs in two broken baskets: social media and politicians. Both systems are rigged as fuck. Both are designed to keep us feeling powerless while maintaining the illusion of participation. Zuckerberg and Musk aren’t rebels — they’re the establishment wearing hoodies instead of suits. These platforms might let us cosplay at revolution, but they’re owned by the very people we’re supposedly revolting against.

So here’s how I’m using them: I post. I share. I signal-boost mutual aid and Palestinian voices and whatever else needs amplifying. But I refuse to confuse that with the additional work. I refuse to let the algorithm convince me that tweeting is the same as building.

The real work, for me — the work of fundamentally transforming culture — happens when I close the socials and show up how I can. Awkwardly. Imperfectly. Repeatedly.

So, fellow peasants, time to get uncomfortable in some living rooms. The revolution will not be tweeted — but it might just happen over coffee in your kitchen. Or over a book. Or during the credits of a show that just blew your mind. Because that’s how culture actually changes — one story, one conversation, one “holy shit I never thought about it that way” moment at a time.

Your next *holy shit moment* is waiting in someone else’s living room. Go find it.

SOMETHING IS SHIFTING. Do you feel it? In every progressive space I’m in, people are hungry for a new culture on the left. We’re exhausted by the politics of division. We’re done with cancel culture. We’re ready to build movements wide enough to hold all of us — because that’s what it’s going to take to save this world we love. All of us.

I keep hearing many of the same words being used in our spaces.

Solidarity.
Belonging.
Revolution.
Community.
Liberation.
Love.

All of which sound great to me.

Yet here’s the thing about these words: They’re not just taglines on shopping bags and hashtags in your posts. They demand a fundamental shift in how we operate. They’re verbs, not nouns. They require us to reject the comfortable binaries we’ve been fed. To resist the seductive pull of performance. To actually give a fig about each other in real, messy, imperfect ways.

We’re talking about building real coalitions across difference — not for symbolic wins but for actual improvements in everyone’s lives.

Universal healthcare.
Housing as a human right.
Education that doesn’t bankrupt you.
Jobs that don’t destroy your soul.
A planet that isn’t on fire.
Trans kids who get to grow up.
Women who control their own bodies.
Communities in the middle of America who aren’t abandoned to economic fuckery while being told their poverty is their own fault.

Maybe we’re finally ready for justice that connects instead of separates, transforms instead of punishes? Maybe we’re ready to actually live the principles we hashtag?

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But let me back up. Because to build this new thing, we need to be honest about what hasn’t worked . . .

Looking back at recent social justice movements, I see both their power and their contradictions. We were often punitive while talking liberation. We built new hierarchies while denouncing hierarchy itself. And identity politics — a tool meant to illuminate oppression — sometimes became a wedge driving us apart rather than the bridge bringing us together (mainly looking at you, white male leftists, who turned unpacking privilege into a competitive sport where you somehow still won every time).

I’ve experienced this firsthand. We all have. We’ve all been booed off stage, chewed up, and spat out — not just by the fascists (that’s expected) but also by supposed allies. I’ve always found the messages that cut deepest came from people who claimed to be on the same side as me. People so busy policing how others show up that they forgot to show up themselves.

I’ve seen far too many well-meaning people believe they need to chain themselves to buildings in order to make their resistance count; to prove their worth, their solidarity, their revolutionary credentials. And look, those big gestures have their place — they definitely matter — but they’re not what we ALL need to do. It doesn’t work that way. I mean I knew someone brilliant who genuinely believed they needed to scale a 300ft high landmark to show they cared enough about Palestine. But what breaks my heart is that they didn’t understand what so many of us don’t understand . . .

The quiet work nobody sees often moves mountains more than any spectacle ever could.

Listen, no shade to anyone who’s fallen under that spell. I have too. We all have. It’s seductive, thinking that the loudest action is the most effective, that visibility equals impact. But we need to recognize it in ourselves and just be authentic. Just be fucking real. Show up as yourself, not as who you think the movement needs you to be. Stop beating yourself up because you can’t scale monuments or lead marches or whatever heroic shit you think “real” activists do. Just do what you can, as often as you can, and for the love of all that’s holy, stop judging yourself and everyone else for not being revolutionary enough. And remember — ‘what you can’ looks different for everyone. For some, it’s marching. For others, it’s surviving another day. All of it counts.

Because right now, while we’re arguing about whose activism is pure enough, real shit is happening. In LA, they’re deploying the National Guard against people protecting their neighbors from ICE. In Gaza, human beings are being genocided. In state houses across America, they’re legislating trans kids out of existence. In board rooms, they’re deciding which communities to poison for profit. In small towns, people are choosing between insulin and rent.

The conservatives? They’ve been playing the long game for decades. DECADES. And y’all, I am here to tell you, they don’t all agree — the corporatists think the religious zealots are useful idiots, the libertarians can’t stand the authoritarians, the suburban soccer moms clutch their pearls at the militia types — but they show up together when it counts. They’ve been placing their bricks, one by one, meticulously building their vision.

Meanwhile, what are we doing? Writing lengthy diagnoses of problems without solutions? Crafting hot takes that get clicks but don’t get people fed? We’re so busy performing our credentials online that we forget to actually BE radical — which, at its root, means getting to the root of things and changing them.

Here’s the thing: The system doesn’t really give a shit about your individual consumer choices. It’s built to persist regardless. Capitalism keeps extracting wealth whether you shop organic or not. White supremacy keeps killing whether you’ve read all the right books or not. The machine grinds on because it’s a SYSTEM, not a collection of individual behaviors.

We have to reject binary thinking. We have to stop pretending that there’s only one way to resist, that you’re either a revolutionary or a sellout, that you either burn it all down or you’re complicit. That thinking keeps us small. It keeps us fighting each other instead of the systems crushing us all.

You know what I think is actually radical? Understanding that we can reject systems while surviving under them. For instance, we all know the Black Panthers fed children through their breakfast programs using resources and infrastructure from the very system they opposed — because those kids needed to eat TODAY while the revolution was built for tomorrow. ACT UP infiltrated government agencies and pharmaceutical companies while simultaneously shutting down the FDA — because people were dying NOW and couldn’t wait for the system to be overthrown. The Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted 381 days, and every single one of those days, Black folks still had to get to work, still had to earn money, still had to exist within the very capitalism and white supremacy they were fighting. Every successful movement has thrived in this messy contradiction between revolution and survival.

Fred Hampton understood this when he built the Rainbow Coalition (see photo) — bringing together Black Panthers, Young Patriots (poor white Southerners), and the Young Lords (Puerto Ricans). You think everyone in that room agreed on everything? Hell no. But they agreed on one thing: The system was crushing all of them, and they were stronger together than apart.

And on that, organizers from marginalized communities have always been at the forefront of these movements because they’ve had no choice; their survival has always depended on resistance. We, all of us, need to continue centering their voices, learning from their strategies, and following their lead. But — and this is an important but — that doesn’t mean sitting on your ass waiting for someone to tell you exactly what to do, it doesn’t mean turning them into your personal revolutionary Google, and it doesn’t mean that every person with a marginalized identity that you meet speaks for their entire community or has all the answers. Nobody elected them spokesperson, and they can be just as wrong, or confused, as anyone else. Treating people as walking encyclopedias of oppression instead of complex human beings isn’t solidarity; it’s another form of performative (racist, bigoted, ableist) bullshit. Real solidarity means listening to many voices from affected communities, recognizing patterns in their experiences, and following their collective lead — not cherry-picking the one person who tells you what you want to hear.

How do we move beyond binaries? Beyond performance and into action? How do we get people to care less about posting and more about community? How do we get people to SHOW UP however they can?

How do we take down one brick and replace it with another? How do we fundamentally change the culture of our homes, our communities, our states, our countries, our world?

How?

Well, we show up. Authentically. As who we are. How and when we can.

It’s not just “fuck capitalism” — it’s building resilience outside capitalism NOW. Start that tool library. Create that community garden. Build that mutual aid network.

It’s not just “fuck the system” — it’s creating alternative systems that make the old ones obsolete. Set up that free clinic. Organize that childcare collective. Start that community defense network.

It’s not just saying it all needs to burn while sipping a Pinot — it’s lighting controlled fires that clear the way for new growth. Run for that school board. Organize that tenant union. Build that worker co-op.

For instance, perhaps your resistance might be . . .

• Creating a bail fund

• Joining the anti-ICE protests around the country

• Growing food and sharing it

• Running for school board to protect trans kids

• Filing pro bono asylum cases

• Offering your couch to someone facing deportation

• Filling a community fridge

• Teaching English at the library on Tuesdays

• Checking on your elderly neighbor

• Setting up a phone tree for ICE raids

• Starting a free breakfast program at your local mosque, synagogue, or church

• And shutting the fuck up when necessary.

All of it matters.

All of it chips away at the systems.

Mutual aid isn’t charity — it’s creating networks of support that exist outside state control. It’s disabled folks teaching us what real interdependence looks like, because they’ve never had the luxury of pretending they don’t need community. It’s proving we can take care of each other without the state’s permission. From LA to Gaza to rural America, people are already doing this. Not waiting for permission. Building it, brick by brick.

It’s not something you have; it’s something you DO. And it knows no borders — not the ones on maps, not the ones we draw around who belongs in a radical club and who doesn’t, not the ones between “online” and “real life” activism.

A verb.
A constant.
A place of becoming.

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Listen, if you’re still waiting for the perfect way to show up, if you’re still worried about not being revolutionary enough — this is your sign to just fucking start. We don’t all have to climb the same mountain. We just all have to be climbing.

The fascists want us divided. They want us so busy fighting about tactics that we don’t notice them stealing everything that isn’t nailed down. They want us performing resistance on social media instead of building it in our neighborhoods.

Nothing says “fuck your systems” like communities that take care of their own. Nothing terrifies authoritarians more than people who’ve figured out they don’t need them.

Because here’s the thing about bricks. Like I said above, when you take one out, you better be ready to put another in its place. Otherwise, the whole thing collapses and guess who gets crushed? Not the people in the penthouse. They've got helicopters and offshore accounts. It’s always us at the bottom.

But brick by brick, we can build something new. Something that centers our universal needs for dignity and freedom while honoring our different experiences. Something that transforms instead of punishes. Something that includes instead of excludes.

We’re at a crossroads. We can keep doing the same shit — the performance, the infighting, the gatekeeping, the replication of hierarchies and systems we claim to oppose — or we can build a movement actually capable of winning. Not just winning elections or policy battles, but winning the world we deserve. Where kids in Gaza can dream about the future. Where trans youth can just be kids. Where communities aren’t sacrificed for profit. Where showing up imperfectly is better than not showing up at all.

The old culture is dying. What we build next is up to us.

None of this ‘phoenix from the ashes’ stuff happens overnight. Rome took centuries to fall. And I don’t know about you, but ‘letting it all burn’ isn’t the revolution I want; it’s a multigenerational catastrophe that will hit the poorest first. Because — quick reminder — it wasn’t the emperors who starved during the Roman Empire’s collapse.

So enough with the regression.
Enough with the binaries.
Enough with the performative bullshit that keeps us small.

We have work to do. Tangible actions, not theory. Bricks to place, not stones to throw. Communities to build, not comments to post.

Because history is made by the humans who show up and do something for the collective good. Not by those who perfect the art of critique while the world burns.

P.S. In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been offline for a while — dealing with health stuff, immigration battles, and a few other things that aren’t fully resolved. Yet watching what’s happening right now, I couldn’t wait on the sidelines any longer. Sometimes you just have to show up imperfectly rather than wait for the perfect moment that never comes.

THEY’VE DISAPPEARED COVID.GOV, and I feel a mix of heartbreak and outrage.

COVID.gov wasn’t just another government website. It was a centralized hub of critical information — a lifeline for millions seeking testing locations, treatment options, vaccination sites, and up-to-date guidance during a global health crisis. For immunocompromised folks, elderly populations, and those with limited internet access, this website was often their primary connection to life saving public health resources. Its sudden disappearance **poof!** isn’t just an inconvenience; it’s a deliberate severing of a crucial communication channel.

Yet, true to form, the media’s attention has already moved on. A story that should be a five-alarm fire has been reduced to a momentary headline, a fleeting outrage quickly forgotten. This is how normalization happens — not with a bang, but with a distracted scroll. We cannot let this become another footnote, another missed warning sign in our collective memory.

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This isn’t just about a missing website. It’s about what that website represented: Our collective agreement that public health matters. That saving lives matters. That we, as a society, have a responsibility to each other.

While you’re reading this, someone with Long COVID is searching for resources that no longer exist. A family is trying to find out where to get tested. A newly infected person is looking for treatment options. What they’ll find instead? Trump plastered in front of the words LAB LEAK.

Please read that again.

The United States government has decided that political theater is more important than keeping people alive. They’ve replaced vital health resources with conspiracy-mongering about “True Origins” — a five-point manifesto of discredited narratives that even their own intelligence agencies have studied extensively and found implausible.

And it makes my blood boil and terrifies me all in one.

These aren’t just numbers.
They’re mothers, fathers, children, friends.

Lives utterly transformed or ended while a government website now tells us who to blame rather than how to protect ourselves and each other.

This isn’t just a website redesign. It’s a calculated political move in a time of escalating tariffs and geopolitical tension with China. It’s about creating a convenient villain, an “other” to point at while people continue to suffer and die.

And this abandonment of public health isn’t limited to COVID. The same systemic neglect that’s erasing COVID resources is now playing out with other preventable diseases. Look at what’s happening with measles right now — a stark illustration of how quickly hard-won public health gains can unravel when institutional support crumbles.

We’ve seen this pattern before, and it’s infuriating. More than 650 people infected across multiple states. Multiple unvaccinated people dead, including children. A preventable tragedy that our HHS Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., initially dismissed as “not unusual.” Only after children died did he reluctantly acknowledge that vaccines might be worth considering — and even then, he framed it as a *personal decision* rather than an urgent public health measure.

I think about the parents who have lost children, who are watching their little ones suffer — all because an adult in power decided their narcissism was worth more than decades of science. All because a *liberty-based* system has failed its supposed fundamental duty: To protect people.

Want to know what an actual professional response to a measles outbreak looks like? Back in 2019, then-HHS Secretary Alex Azar said: “We cannot say this enough: Vaccines are a safe and highly effective public health tool that can prevent this disease and end the current outbreak.”

No equivocation. No nonsense about cod liver oil or vitamin A. Just straightforward guidance that prioritized saving lives over political posturing.

The contrast to today is both heartbreaking and infuriating.

For marginalized communities, the stakes are even higher. The same people who suffered disproportionately during the height of COVID — Black and Latino Americans, Indigenous populations, low-income families — will be the first to feel the impact of this abandonment. The same populations with reduced access to healthcare, who often live in more crowded housing, who can’t easily take time off work — they’re the ones being sacrificed while politicians play games with public health.

And I can’t stop thinking about the white supremacist wave that’s coming next — as the narrative shifts from protecting public health to scapegoating an entire population, setting the stage for a predictable and devastating rise in anti-Asian hatred. We know this script. They know this script. We’ve all seen this movie before, and it’s shameful that we’re willingly watching the sequel.

The human cost of this rhetoric is already documented: In 2021, Anti-Asian hate crimes increased by 339% nationwide compared to the year before. Stop AAPI Hate recorded more than 11,000 anti-Asian incidents between March 2020 and May 2023 — verbal harassment, physical violence, discrimination. About one-third of Asian adults say they personally know another Asian person who has been threatened or attacked since the pandemic began.

While reported incidents decreased somewhat in 2022, researchers described this as part of a “cyclical pattern” tied to rhetoric from leaders. When the U.S. government starts actively promoting anti-China narratives again, people will be attacked simply for “looking Chinese.” Children will be bullied in schools. Hatred will be normalized, starting with a government website and ending with violence in our streets.

The measles outbreak shows us exactly what happens when public health becomes politicized. Vaccine hesitancy, fueled by misinformation and conflicting guidance from authorities, creates gaps in immunity. Those gaps become gateways for preventable diseases to surge back into communities. What starts as a few cases in a remote area can quickly spread to urban centers, schools, daycares, and hospitals.

We had effectively eliminated measles from the U.S. by 2000. Now it’s back, killing American children in 2025. How long before other vaccine-preventable diseases follow the same path? How long before COVID surges again, but this time without centralized resources to help people access treatment or testing?

But we don’t have to merely accept this as inevitable. I refuse to believe we’re powerless in this moment. When institutions fail us, we still have each other. Communities have always found ways to protect their own, especially when governments abdicate responsibility. That’s where hope lives — in our collective power to care for one another.

• Get vaccinated. Take responsibility for your own health and that of your community. Make sure your vaccinations are fully up to date — COVID boosters, MMR, everything. If you have children, vaccinate them. The temporary discomfort of a shot is nothing compared to the suffering of measles or COVID — or the grief of losing someone you love to a preventable disease.

• Become a source of reliable information for your friends and family. Not everyone has the time or ability to sort through medical journals or track down archived resources. Be the person who helps others navigate an increasingly confusing landscape of health information. Host community information sessions. Create resource lists. Be the public health advocate your neighborhood needs.

• Document and share when you see public health resources disappearing or being replaced. Take screenshots. Use the Wayback Machine. Create community resources to fill the gaps left by our government’s failure. Build mutual aid networks to support those with long COVID, those who need help accessing vaccines, those who need reliable information. The solutions are in our hands.

• Build alternative information networks. Start local COVID support groups. Create neighborhood resource guides. Develop multilingual information packets about testing, treatment, and long COVID support.

• Support grassroots health initiatives. Donate to and volunteer with community health organizations. Support clinics serving marginalized communities. Help fund mobile testing and vaccination efforts.

• Keep wearing masks. They’re not just a personal choice — they’re an act of community care. Masks continue to be an effective tool in preventing the spread of COVID and other respiratory diseases. Wear them in crowded spaces, around vulnerable populations, and when you’re feeling unwell. Your mask protects not just you, but those around you who may be immunocompromised or at higher risk. It’s a simple act of solidarity, a tangible way of saying, “I care about your health as much as my own.”

What’s happening with COVID.gov isn’t just about a website.

It’s about a systematic effort to replace science with ideology.
It’s about a systematic effort to stoke xenophobia.
It’s about a systematic effort to deflect and blame.
It’s about abandoning the most vulnerable among us while pretending to have their interests at heart.

But we don’t have to accept that abandonment as the final word.

We can build something better, together. We can protect each other. And in doing so, we might just create the kind of community-centered public health system we’ve always deserved.

GAS MASKS. HELMETS. HEAT RESISTANT GLOVES. The acrid smell of pepper spray hanging in humid air. Umbrellas reinforced with aluminum foil to deflect tear gas canisters. Emergency medical supplies stashed in unmarked backpacks. Encrypted messaging apps pinging with real-time police movements.

This was Hong Kong in 2019.

Hong Kong was my home for nearly 13 years. I worked in Central’s glass towers, lived on the outer islands’ quiet shores, breathed this place into my bones until it became part of me. And those 2019 protests hit me in a way I hadn’t felt before. They catalyzed the process of dismantling my comfortable Western expat illusions and forced me to stare directly at truths I’d been privileged enough to ignore . . .

Rights aren’t given.
They’re taken.
And they can be taken back in an instant when power decides they’re inconvenient.

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Fast forward to now, and I am in the United States. A place where we are facing the multitude of things that power — wouldn’t you know — has decided is inconvenient.

And what are we doing about it?

Well, let’s talk about last weekend’s HandsOff protest where, having seen so many photos, I can’t help but think the most strenuous activity for many seemed to be deciding between Mimosas or Bloody Marys at their post-activism brunch.

Despite my sarcasm here (oh hey, coping mechanism) I’m not here to criticize people who showed up. Getting off your couch is step one. And I appreciate — or at least hope — that most people believe they were there for the right reason.

Yet the reality remains: That kind of “protest” is not actually helping anyone. Not feeding anyone. Not housing anyone. Not ending state violence. Not stopping deportations, or bombs, or anti-trans-legislation. In fact, to my mind, it’s actually detrimental to our progress.

Y’ALL. We need a fucking reality check.

This kind of protest is never going to push the needle. In Hong Kong, I witnessed young protesters come prepared for the worst case scenario, not Instagram. They used hand signals when speaking would reveal their positions. They left fake transit cards to help fellow protesters escape. They formed human chains to pass supplies across police barricades. They used lasers to disable facial recognition cameras.

They understood what they were up against: An authoritarian regime with decades of experience in making dissidents disappear.

Just.
Like.
Ours.

Now, to be clear: I’m not suggesting everyone should adopt these exact tactics and start communicating with hand signals (though I can think of a couple of hand signals I find particularly effective). Different contexts and different times require different approaches. Yet, what struck me most about the Hong Kong protests wasn’t the way people protested necessarily, but the strategic clarity and commitment. The clear understanding of exactly what we were facing and what meaningful resistance required in that context.

This is the mentality we need to bring to our own context — not through identical methods, but through sustained, community-focused resistance that actually addresses people’s material needs. Creating the world we need, not the world we have.

Hong Kong wasn’t playing revolutionary for socials. Many of the protesters were still in high school, risking everything — their freedom, their futures, their lives — because they understood something fundamental . . .

Remember the summer of 2020? When people across this country faced rubber bullets, tear gas, and mass arrests while protesting police brutality after George Floyd’s murder? Didn’t it seem that for a brief moment, much of America-at-large understood what real resistance looked like? People showed up day after day, risking their safety, their freedom, their jobs. They pushed back against militarized police forces while demanding fundamental change. That movement faced brutal repression precisely BECAUSE it posed a legitimate threat to power. That’s what happens when protests actually matter.

Now remember the campus encampments across the U.S. this past year. Students set up tents and occupied spaces to protest their universities’ investments in companies disgusting enough to profit from the genocide in Gaza. They didn’t just show up for a nice little afternoon with their Insta passwords — they built communities of resistance that lasted weeks upon weeks. And it was incredible. They anticipated the pepper spray, the riot police, the arrests. They created radical systems of mutual care and protection while staring down the full weight of state violence.

And what happened? They were labeled as extremists by the same media outlets that fawn over “democracy” protests in other countries. Called antisemitic for opposing the slaughter of Palestinian civilians. All while their supposedly progressive elders tut-tutted about their *tone* and *methods* — as if freedom was ever won by asking politely.

Something all these protests had in common is that none of them ultimately succeeded in their goals. Hong Kong’s autonomy was tragically crushed. Police brutality against Black people continues unabated in America. And Gaza is still being massacred before our eyes.

Yet ask yourself this: If each of these protests had been supported by many more people truly understanding the stakes and building broader, more sustainable approaches to resistance, would we be better off today? If comfortable people everywhere had recognized that meaningful change requires both visible solidarity AND sustained work that addresses people’s material needs, would we all be safer now?

Close your eyes and picture photos from the HandsOff protest this last weekend. What were people carrying? What were they wearing?

Now scroll down to see the vibe of Hong Kong protesters in 2019. . .

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Spot the difference?

One protest was sadly theater designed to make participants feel good without threatening power. The other was people who understand exactly what’s at stake and came prepared for the fight of their lives.

One gets Instagram coverage, the other gets tanks.

Again, I’m not saying everyone should go out and buy a gas mask. What I am emphasizing is our urgent need for collective purpose and direction — the kind that fuels sustained, community-centered action addressing people’s actual material needs.

Creating the world we need.

Personally, I’ve come to believe we’re beyond the point where traditional protests make a difference. If marches and signs couldn’t create meaningful change during the so-called “progressive White House” of 2021-2024, they’re certainly not going to move the needle now.

Instead, I’ve just chosen to direct my energy toward different approaches — mutual aid, building community, divesting from as much “big” capitalism as possible, and strategic silence.

But if you want to understand why I’m so frustrated with mainstream protest culture, consider this . . . there is a post that went viral this week that perfect embodies much of what I am talking about. After attending her first protest with HandsOff, a white woman posted on Threads:

No bouncy castle.
8/10.

Like she was reviewing a fucking day spa on Yelp.

I’m not here to pile on this woman specifically — yes this post was fucking absurd, privileged, and so white it could be a Lululemon loyalty card — yet she’s just a symptom, not the cause. And ultimately her post perfectly captures the absolute fuckery of American protest culture. The entitlement. The consumer mentality. The complete disconnect from what’s actually at stake.

We are literally facing fascism in America. Have been for a long time. Not metaphorically. Not eventually. Right fucking now. And people are turning up to “resist” with picnic hampers and expectations of entertainment for the kids.

This isn’t resistance.

It’s cosplay.
It’s capitalism.
It’s white supremacy.

Fascism thrives when opposition is performative rather than effective. When we’re more concerned with the optics of resistance than its impact.

When I read that Thread about the bouncy castle, I wanted to scream until my throat bled. Not at the woman particularly but at the entire culture that has reduced resistance to a form of entertainment. At the insidious notion that fighting for your life, your rights, your future should be fun and comfortable.

It shouldn’t.
It can’t be.
That’s the whole fucking point.

We need to get serious with strategic, sustained, community-based actions that create real alternatives to the systems failing us.

We cannot fight fascism with bouncy castles.
We cannot fight fascism while ignoring state violence.
We cannot fight fascism by staying quiet on genocides.
We cannot fight fascism by ignoring children mining in the Congo.
We cannot fight fascism while our tax dollars are bombing children.
We cannot fight fascism by voting once every four years and calling it a day.
And we cannot fight fascism without accepting the United States is built on stolen land with stolen labor.

But we can fight fascism with mutual aid.
We can fight fascism by offering our homes to those in need.
We can fight fascism with boycotts that hurt our convenience.
We can fight fascism by quietly growing food in community gardens.
We can fight fascism with strikes that bring industries to their knees.
We can fight fascism by supporting Land Back with money and resources.
We can fight fascism by creating systems of care that operate outside state control.
We can fight fascism by recognizing that real resistance isn’t always loud and visible.
We can fight fascism accepting discomfort as a necessary part of meaningful change.
We can fight fascism by creating alternatives to the systems we oppose rather than just shouting at them at a protest.

If we don’t understand the *actual assignment* and still think about resistance as nothing more than casting ballots every few years, or a weekend activity that should accommodate bouncy castles and Instagram photoshoots, then we’re missing our chance to build the resilient communities and radical solidarity that might actually save us when systems fail.

And that’s not on the fascists, folks. That will be on us.

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• SORRY, YOUR BOOTSTRAPS WON’T SAVE YOU: A GUIDE TO MUTUAL AID IN THE AGE OF BULLSHIT

• THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE IN YOUR INSTA FEED

Value my perspective? Keep it available for everyone . . .

As journalists and writers are being increasingly targeted for speaking truth to power, I’ve been repeatedly advised to put my writing behind a paywall for my own safety.

However, I think it’s crucial that everyone should be able to read perspectives on imperialism and state violence regardless of financial situation. Yet this model only works if those with means step up. A paid subscription isn’t just supporting my writing — it’s ensuring these perspectives remain accessible to all.

If you value my work:

- Share and subscribe for free

- Yet if you have the means, please consider a paid subscription.

For those who prefer to support outside Substack, you can also contribute via Ko-Fi or Buy Me A Coffee. Thank you.

THERE WAS A TIME I THOUGHT resistance meant content creation.

I believed that crafting the perfect post, getting enough likes, building a following large enough to “raise awareness” was the right path to change. I measured progress in shares and comments. I confused virality with victory.

If that version of myself existed right now I’d love to ask her:

• Hey Jo, did that carefully crafted thread explaining why *your team* is morally superior to *their team* stop a single bomb from falling on Gaza or Yemen?

• Did the exhaustive discourse on whether ableism is acceptable when directed at politicians we dislike fill even one empty stomach?

• Did posting hot takes on Elon’s dumbassery help the people of Myanmar after the most powerful earthquake to strike their country in more than a century?

That Jo would have been defensive.

She’d have crafted a razor-sharp reply, dripping with sarcasm, that would have earned fire emojis from fellow #resistors.

Current Jo just wants to know who got fed.

Viral posts don’t free anyone.
Engagement metrics don’t protect communities from state violence.
Follower counts don’t house or feed people.

If they did, we’d all be living in utopia by now, saved by the acid-tongued wit of blue-check commentators and a well-timed written eyebrow raise. Fascism? Don’t worry guys, I Tweeted.

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Sure, social media can sometimes raise money, create connections with like-minded people (which I deeply appreciate on the platforms we’ve built), and provide starting points for further education. But awareness and information don’t mean shit if that’s the extent of the work.

Theory alone doesn’t save lives. Practice does.

Perhaps more than ever, the gap between digital outrage and tangible outcomes is becoming increasingly and painfully obvious. We see actual fascism unfolding in real time, and turn it into ‘content’ to, ahh *checks notes* stop the very fascism we’re seeing?

Exhibit A: This week, the greatest hits of authoritarian fuckery played out on a residential street in Massachusetts while someone filmed from a distance at a window. Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University, was handcuffed and detained by masked Department of Homeland Security agents while on her way to break fast during Ramadan.

Imagine if instead of just filming from a distance, those ICE agents had to face twenty neighbors gathering in the street — documenting badge numbers, photographing vehicles, live-streaming the encounter, calling attorneys on speakerphone, forming an unmistakable circle of witnesses.

To be clear, before Todd jumps down my throat: The filming was valuable. I’m not criticizing whoever documented this incident, and that video may well prove vital in legal proceedings. But at this moment in history, when the playbook of authoritarian tactics is being deployed openly on our streets, documentation alone won’t turn the tide. We need more. What protected civil rights workers in the ‘60s wasn’t just cameras — it was communities standing together in physical solidarity.

When masked agents show up to intimidate and detain, their strategy relies on our fear, passivity, and us being trained to believe our only role is safe digital archiving. Folks, we’re not filming a nature documentary here. This isn’t Fascists in Their Natural Habitat: Please Don’t Disturb the Racist Predators During Feeding Time. This is us witnessing each other be systematically dehumanized and detained. And if we allow our fear to dictate our humanity none of this gets better.

While ICE agents are physically detaining people in our neighborhoods, our virtual spaces have become battlegrounds of their own — but with far less meaningful impact.

I spend very little time on socials these days. I genuinely love it here on Subbers, but find the traditional social platforms overwhelmingly and intentionally divisive, propagandized and harmful. The very small amounts of time I am on there, the bulk of what I see is American people weaponizing individualism, binaries, identities, and exceptionalism.

And no, I very much don’t just mean MAGA folks. Some of the vicious rhetoric I’m seeing online from those who identify as liberal or progressive is astounding. Yesterday I saw a former Dem State Rep saying “FAFO” to Palestinian Americans for not voting for Kamala. Another woman who lost her job said: “I get a little solace knowing that some of the people that wanted this for me are getting it a lot worse.”

“For me” — as if refusing to vote for a genocide enabler was somehow a personal attack aimed directly at her cubicle. “Getting it a lot worse” — you mean the systematic and racist obliteration of families, homes, and futures? The starvation of children? The bombing of hospitals? THAT kind of worse?

Look, of course I feel for this woman losing her job. That’s scary and destabilizing. But to frame it as some kind of perverse justice that people facing literal genocide are *getting it worse* because they didn’t vote how she wanted? That’s not just misguided — it’s a moral collapse that perfectly illustrates how imperial thinking corrodes basic human empathy.

Look, do I have all the answers? No. But I do know for certain that giving free reign to one government — because that’s what it is, ONE government with two parties — to bomb children is bad. And if you don’t understand this, I really don’t know what to tell you.

This understanding doesn’t make me an “accelerationist”. It doesn’t mean I’m not thinking of vulnerable folks in my community. It means I am extremely worried about everyone’s safety when so many people are straight-up condoning imperialism in one form or another.

Remember that bipartisanship people say they so desperately want? Well, we have it: On mass murder.

Right now, while we’re fighting online, the USA continues dropping bombs on Yemen. Israel continues its assault on Palestinians. Trans people continue to be erased. Real humans are suffering and dying. And what are we doing? Having circular firing squads about linguistic purity tests and ideological litmus tests.

When we create hierarchies of which injustices deserve our active resistance and which ones just get our digital sympathy, we’re essentially playing musical chairs with human rights. Eventually those unsettling carnival tunes will stop playing with you standing, and you’ll be left clutching nothing but your collection of #resistance tote bags wondering why nobody’s showing up for you.

I don’t have to agree with you or even like you to recognize your humanity and the way you’ve been shaped by a system MADE to propagandize you. I was propagandized by it too — still unpacking that shit every day. The most powerful empires don’t just conquer land and resources; they conquer minds and narratives. Recognizing this isn’t about moral superiority — it’s about accepting that we’re all swimming in the same toxic river.

And that’s what I believe collective liberation actually means — understanding that my safety depends on yours. That neutrality isn’t neutrality at all. That imperialism abroad eventually comes home. That if I let them take you today, they’ll come for someone I love tomorrow.

Like how they came for Rumeysa Ozturk.

We’ve turned resistance into content creation, and the fascists are counting on it. They’ve factored our angry tweets into their operational costs. They know our outrage has a 24-hour shelf life. And they’re betting on our preference for digital solidarity over physical presence.

The revolution won’t be in your Instagram feed and the path to freedom won’t be paved with likes and shares. It will be in the meals shared, the rent covered, the bodies that stand between fascism and its targets.

It’s time to put the phone down, and pick each other up.

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Want to read and do more?

• SORRY, YOUR BOOTSTRAPS WON’T SAVE YOU: A GUIDE TO MUTUAL AID IN THE AGE OF BULLSHIT

• THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE IN YOUR INSTA FEED

Value my perspective? Keep it available for everyone

As journalists and writers are being increasingly targeted for speaking truth to power, I’ve been repeatedly advised to put my writing behind a paywall for my own safety.

However, I think it’s crucial that everyone should be able to read perspectives on imperialism and state violence regardless of financial situation. Yet this model only works if those with means step up. A paid subscription isn’t just supporting my writing — it’s ensuring these perspectives remain accessible to all.

If you value my work:

• Share and subscribe for free

• Yet if you have the means, please consider a paid subscription.

For those who prefer to support outside Substack, you can also contribute via Ko-Fi or Buy Me A Coffee. Thank you.

SO THE WORLD’S ON FIRE. Literally, metaphorically, politically — pick your poison. Every morning brings fresh fuckery to our doorstep: Border agents playing fascist bingo, politicians competing for who can say the most horrifying thing with the straightest face, Climate accords abandoned.

Meanwhile, our social media feed resembles a doom-scrolling Olympics, and everyone wants you to be perpetually outraged about everything all at once. We all seem to expect each other to have nuanced takes on global geopolitics while simultaneously plotting revolutionary action from our couch. It’s exhausting, and — spoiler alert — it’s designed to be.

Yes, I’ve said this before, but I cannot say it enough: This perpetual state of reactive outrage isn’t an accident. It’s the point. The *flood the zone* strategy pioneered by certain political operatives works precisely because when we’re drowning in outrage, we can’t think straight, can’t organize effectively, and can’t build anything better. We’re just treading water, desperately trying not to go under in our best Jack-at-the-end-of-Titanic impersonation.

But there is another way. One I’ve been thinking about while my hands are covered in dirt and I’m researching what grows well in Connecticut besides cynicism and property taxes.

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Because here’s what I’ve realized: I cannot control whether the U.S. rejoins the Paris Climate Accord. I cannot control whether politicians suddenly grow functioning moral compasses. I cannot control the Electoral College or the Supreme Court or the next headline designed to make my blood pressure rival Mount Vesuvius.

But I can grow food.
I can build and nurture community.
And I can help sustain spaces where human dignity isn’t up for debate.

And oddly enough, there’s a profound peace in that realization.

When you’re planting seeds, they don’t grow faster because you’re anxious about the state of democracy. They don’t care about your Twitter follower count or how many likes your last post about climate collapse received. Seeds respond to consistent care, conditions, and patience. That’s it. That’s the deal.

In our hyperconnected, hyperpolitical world, we’ve forgotten something essential: “Resistance” doesn’t have to look like a clever protest sign, a viral post, or a perfectly crafted argument that finally convinces your conspiracy-loving uncle. Sometimes — often, even — it looks like a community garden. It looks like a mutual aid network. It looks like teaching your neighbor’s kid how to save seeds or repair a bike instead of buying new.

The system wants us to believe that only massive, global policy changes matter — that our small actions are meaningless without governmental action. And yes, we absolutely need policy change. But waiting around for politicians to save us feels a bit like expecting arsonists to join the fire department.

The problem with so much *activism* these days is that it’s become theater, a competition for who can be the most radical, the most outraged, the most visibly committed. We’ve forgotten that meaningful change has always happened through thousands of small, unremarkable actions that never made headlines or garnered likes.

Consider this . . . every tomato you grow is one less trucked across the country burning fossil fuels. Every meal shared with neighbors is a tiny rebellion against corporate food systems designed to extract maximum profit while providing minimum nutrition. Every skill you learn — gardening, preserving, repairing, building — makes you less dependent on systems designed to keep you perpetually consuming and discarding.

That’s not just gardening — it’s climate action.
That’s not just cooking for others — it’s mutual aid.
That’s not just learning how to fix things — it’s resistance.

Every community fridge stocked with local produce.
Every tool library that reduces consumption.
Every ride share that eliminates car trips.
Every rainwater collection system.
Every solar panel installed by neighbors helping neighbors.
Every repair café that keeps perfectly good stuff out of landfills.
Every seed saved and shared.
Every local food network that bypasses corporate supply chains.

This is how we build climate resilience from the ground up while the talking heads debate whether climate change is real between commercial breaks. This is mutual aid with a side effect of emissions reduction. This is community power that doesn’t require permission from people who profit from our collective destruction.

Constant outrage, however righteous, is still constant outrage. It exhausts you. It clouds your thinking. It leaves you perpetually reactive rather than proactive. And most importantly, it doesn’t actually build a damn thing except ulcers and social media, umm, *clout*.

The paradox is that the most radical thing you can do in a world that wants you perpetually consuming outrage is to resist that outrage and instead create something. Anything. Grow food. Start a tool library. Teach someone a skill. Build community resilience. These actions aren’t just coping mechanisms — they’re the building blocks of the world we’re trying to create. And unlike posting the perfect hot take that gets you 15 minutes of digital applause, these actions actually fucking work to reduce emissions, build resilience, and create systems that operate outside the profit motive that’s cooking our planet.

When the news makes you feel helpless, remember this: You were never meant to solve global problems as an individual through the perfect expression of outrage. You were meant to be part of a community that creates solutions together. The mistake isn’t caring too little — it’s thinking you have to care about everything equally all at once, alone.

So no, I’m not spending my days crafting the perfect outraged thread or the most devastating political analysis. I was offered that path, by the way — invited to important places, offered money to post political content that carefully avoided connecting too many dots. But the second I started talking about systemic issues rather than individual villains? Suddenly I was “divisive”. Funny how that works.

These days, I’m growing food. I’m working on some writing with a dear friend. I’m in the early stages of planning a community fridge project. I’m learning the art of shutting the fuck up. I’m contributing to spaces where questions like “do people deserve to eat/be housed/receive medical care?” aren’t up for debate. And honestly? I sleep better at night knowing I am helping actual people.

This isn’t a purity test or a competition for Most Radical Human©. We all have different capacities, different skills, different circumstances. Not everyone can grow food or build mutual aid networks or divest from capitalist systems entirely.

And let me be crystal clear about something: Choosing to focus on what I can tangibly control doesn’t mean I’ve gone politically blind or morally numb. I still see the full spectrum of global fuckery. I still bear witness to human rights abuses across continents. I still cry in the shower after scrolling through my social media feed. I still try to help others connect the bloody dots of imperialism.

But I’ve stopped performing my awareness like it’s an audition for Woke Broadway.

Instead, I channel my resources where they actually create change — sending money directly to grassroots organizers with minimal overhead instead of NGOs with seven-figure CEO salaries — supporting bail funds that get people home tonight instead of think tanks that produce white papers nobody reads — sustaining mutual aid networks that feed people today instead of political campaigns promising to maybe feed them after the next election cycle.

Being aware and being effective aren’t mutually exclusive: They’re partners in actual revolution.

You don’t need to a PhD in ‘Instagram Infographics’ to enact change. You don’t need a massive following or perfect hot takes. The beauty of this work is that it scales from the smallest personal choice to community-wide transformation. I.e., everyone can do something. Everyone can find their way to contribute, however small, to the world they wish existed.

The system wants us endlessly outraged, perpetually reactive, constantly exhausted. It wants us sharing our shock online rather than creating alternatives offline. It wants us debating the latest atrocity rather than growing food for our neighbors.

Refuse that role.

It’s a game where the house always wins and we always lose. Find your peace in purposeful creation instead.

I’m at peace with what I’m doing. Are you?

A ten-year-old with brain cancer — who was receiving life-saving treatment — was kicked out of the land of the free and quite literally dumped in Mexico.

Yes, you read it correctly.

A child.
With brain cancer.

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Yet before I go, I need to pause here — because the fact that I even have to mention her citizenship status to prove her worth to some bad-faith readers reveals something beyond grotesque about our collective values. Since when did a piece of paper determine whether a sick child deserves medical care? Since when did arbitrary borders drawn by ye olde colonizers determine whose suffering matters?

So why was this child expelled from the country where she was receiving critical treatment? Because her parents lack a different piece of paper. They’re “undocumented” — an inhumane clinical term that somehow justifies separating a sick child from her doctors.

Just like virtually every non-Indigenous person who showed up on this continent at some point in history, they came here seeking a better life. And the hateful hypocrisy is sickening — watching the descendants of immigrants, many whose ancestors arrived without papers, proper authorization, or any legal right whatsoever, now deciding which families deserve humanity.

So instead of getting to her doctors, this ten-year-old ended up on the floor of a detention center, under harsh fluorescent lights — her mother describing the fear as “horrible” and “frustrating”, repulsed by this inhumanity as she watched her precious, sick daughter lying on the cold floor.

Hours later, the family was literally dumped on the Mexico side of a Texas bridge, abandoned to fend for themselves.

No, this is not hyperbole. And yes, the absolute fuckery of it all takes my breath away.

Again, let’s be painfully honest here: This didn’t happen by accident. It is literally the system working exactly as designed. As Tom Homan, the border czar, plainly stated: “families can be deported together” regardless of status.

I keep thinking about what this girl must be feeling — what her family must be feeling. She still struggles with speech and mobility on the right side of her body. She needs medication to prevent convulsions. She needs regular check-ups with specialists to monitor her recovery.

And now she’s now in Mexico, in a place her mother describes as so dangerous they “can’t sleep at night”. Think about that for a second. A child who survived brain cancer, who needs ongoing medical care to live, who struggles with speech and mobility, who needs medication to prevent convulsions — is lying awake at night in fear, in a place where she can’t get treatment, can’t go to school, can’t even feel safe enough to sleep.

And her country — THIS country — put her there. Deliberately.

And let’s also be crystal clear about why this region is so dangerous . . .

It’s dangerous because it’s controlled by cartels that exist primarily to serve American demand for drugs. The brutal irony is staggering: American policies have helped create and sustain the very violence they’re supposedly protecting themselves from at the border.

Oh, and she’s not the only sick kid in the family. Her 15-year-old brother has a heart condition that could kill him without proper monitoring. He wears a heart monitor that tracks his heartbeat. He’s not getting care either.

As their mother said through tears: “The authorities have my children’s lives in their hands.”

And they don’t care.
They don’t fucking care.

The truth is, we’re witnessing the culmination of a deliberate political strategy that has now dropped any pretense of decency. This administration isn’t even bothering with the polite euphemisms anymore. They’re just saying the quiet part out loud: Certain lives matter less. Brown lives. Immigrant lives. Poor lives.

This girl’s parents have lived in America since 2013. They’ve worked multiple jobs to support their family and they have no criminal history. What possible threat do they pose? As opposed to billionaires stealing our social security for example.

But (again) logic is not the point. And (again), cruelty and control is.

Because cruelty and control rallies the base.
Cruelty and control wins votes.
Cruelty and control makes certain U.S. Americans feel like something is being done to address their manufactured fears.

And also . . . this isn’t just a Republican problem. Like, where’s the Democratic outrage? Where are the elected officials of the supposedly compassionate party staging sit-ins at detention centers? Where are the emergency bills to stop this madness?

They’re nowhere to be found because, and a thousand percent complicit in the same system. They might theatrically tsk-tsk as they wave their fingers and issue strongly worded statements, but they won’t fundamentally challenge the dehumanization at the core of U.S. American immigration policy.

Look, I can already hear the keyboards clacking as some readers formulate their rebuttals: “But there have to be laws!” — “Their parents broke the law!” — and the always-compassionate “We can’t just let everyone in!”

But mate, you can leave it the fuck out of my comments section. I’m not interested in debating whether a ten-year-old American citizen with brain cancer should be able to access medical care in her own country. Like I am not all about binaries, but that’s not a debate. And if your moral framework leads you to justify this, the problem isn’t with the immigration system — it’s with you and your fucking racism.

And for the *America First* crowd who will inevitably respond with the ol’ “But they have no right to be here, they’re making things harder for us, they’re taking what’s ours” — I have a question: Do you hear the profound irony in what you’re saying? You’re/we’re on stolen land, while claiming others don’t belong here.

If we’re really going to play this *who belongs here* game, then none of us — except the Indigenous and those forcibly made to come here, i.e. Black people — have any more *right* to be on this land whether your family arrived three weeks ago or three centuries ago. What’s the fundamental difference between today’s undocumented immigrants and the undocumented Europeans who first settled here without permission? Oh right — the latter committed genocide along the way.

And this story is just one small piece of a much larger pattern. While we’re deporting sick children to Mexico, we’re also funding the mass killing of Palestinian children. We’re turning a blind eye to the slaughter in the Congo. We’re ensuring through our foreign policy and economic imperialism that people in the Global South remain desperate enough to risk everything to come here — only to treat them like criminals when they arrive.

I don’t have easy, comfortable solutions that won’t disrupt your life. Because real solutions require sacrifice and solidarity. They require us to protect immigrants by any means necessary. To keep quiet when ICE comes knocking. To organize, donate, and put our bodies on the line when needed. To stop making ourselves the victims when we’re not the ones being deported or detained.

The mother of this deported child said something that keeps echoing in my mind: “I don’t wish anyone to go through this situation.”

This is the United States of America we’ve built: One where the victims of our cruelty have to teach us what compassion looks like.

And if that doesn’t make you furious, I seriously don’t know what will.

FELLOW PEASANTS, it’s a perfect time for another historical refresher . . .

Remember when we pretended the government spying on its own citizens was a conspiracy theory? Ahh, thems were the days — back when we thought the FBI might actually be out there catching criminals instead of creating them.

How adorable we were with our misplaced trust. Fast forward to today, and the recent arrest and threatened deportation of Mahmoud Kalil isn’t an accident or oversight. It’s the blood-stained blueprint of American power, and it’s been running in the background of U.S. policy since before most of us were born.

In 1967, the FBI quietly launched a covert operation with a mission statement that could’ve been written by a comic book villain: “To expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” Black and Muslim activists and civil rights organizations.

Not to catch criminals or protect Americans — to “neutralize” people who dared question the racist status quo.

They called it COINTELPRO, and nothing says government fuckery quite like an ominous acronym. While it started as an FBI program, make no mistake — this was the U.S. government’s playbook, executed through its agencies, with full knowledge at the highest levels.

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The tactics were as shocking as they were effective: Fabricating evidence, spreading false rumors, planting provocateurs, and even assassination. And these weren’t rogue agents — this was official policy, signed off by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover himself, who (as I keep mentioning) actually called the Black Panther Party “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.”

Not the KKK.
Not actual violent extremists.
Black and Muslim people organizing for their rights.

When Martin Luther King Jr. became too influential, the FBI didn’t just surveil him — they sent him anonymous letters encouraging him to commit suicide.

Let the bureaucratic sadism of that sink in for a moment.

When the Panthers and another group called U.S. Organization had tensions, the FBI, according to their own declassified memos, directed field offices to “exploit all avenues of creating further dissension” and submit regular reports on “imaginative and hard-hitting counterintelligence measures aimed at crippling the BPP.” They even sent fake letters between groups to incite violence.

And it worked.

Fred Hampton, the charismatic 21-year-old Black Panther leader in Chicago, was assassinated in his bed during an FBI-coordinated raid. The Bureau had an informant drug Hampton’s dinner before police fired 99 shots into his apartment.

Malcolm X? His murderers were finally exonerated in 2021, more than 55 years after the assassination, when it became clear the FBI and NYPD had withheld evidence that would have proven their innocence. We shouldn’t just be asking “who killed Malcolm X?” but “what did the FBI know about it, and for how long?”

After 9/11, the playbook got a glossy rebrand as *counterterrorism*, but the tactics remained painfully familiar. The FBI created a network of more than 15,000 informants, many targeting mosques and Muslim communities with no evidence of wrongdoing. They manufactured plots by targeting vulnerable individuals — often those with mental illness or financial problems — and then claiming heroic prevention of attacks they themselves orchestrated.

The NYPD’s infamous “Demographics Unit” mapped entire Muslim neighborhoods, infiltrated community spaces, and monitored the daily activities of thousands of innocent Americans. Countless Muslim Americans found themselves on no-fly lists, subjected to *voluntary* interviews, or pressured to become informants against their own communities — with refusal often resulting in immigration consequences or trumped-up charges.

Sound familiar? It should. It’s called fascism, white supremacy, and COINTELPRO with better technology and a bigger budget.

And this is the United States.

Teleport to 2025, and we’re watching the same movie with updated special effects, just with different U.S. government agencies taking turns in the spotlight.

Mahmoud Khalil’s case follows the script to the letter. A Palestinian refugee turned activist, who earned his master’s degree from Columbia University, suddenly arrested and detained by ICE agents with his Green Card revoked. Why? For being a vocal spokesperson for Palestinian rights during campus protests.

And now the President of the United States is bragging about it on social media, like a fucking eight-year-old bully: “Following my previously signed executive orders, ICE proudly apprehended and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a radical foreign pro-Hamas Student on the campus of Columbia University. This is the first arrest of many to come.”

The message isn’t subtle: Speak up and we’ll crush you. The only difference is that COINTELPRO operated in secret, while today’s version plays out in broad daylight, with the President himself cheerleading the suppression.

Remember 2017, when the FBI invented a new category of threat called “Black Identity Extremists”? It was COINTELPRO’s “Black Extremists” label with a fresh coat of paint. The U.S. government claimed that “perceptions of police brutality against African Americans” might spur violence against law enforcement. Not actual police brutality — perceptions of it. As if Black Americans were just imagining being killed by police. And just like their targeting of Muslim communities after 9/11, they created a problem to solve that wasn’t there.

The U.S. government’s own leaked documents from a few years back exposed an FBI operation called IRON FIST (I swear I’m not making this up), designed to “proactively address this priority domestic terrorism target by focusing FBI operations via enhanced intelligence collection efforts.”

Translation: We’re going to spy on Black activists and try to trap them into doing something illegal, just like we’ve been doing to Muslim communities for decades.

The million-dollar question: Why is the government no longer hiding what it’s doing? Why arrest Khalil so publicly when they could have used their historically more subtle methods?

It’s simple. They’re proud of it.

This isn’t about security or protecting Americans. It’s about sending a message: “This is what happens when you challenge us.” The public nature of these actions isn’t a mistake — it’s the point. Fear works best when everyone can see the consequences of stepping out of line. Don’t speak against American foreign policy if you’re a Brown man with an accent, even if you’re a legal resident with an American wife who’s eight months pregnant.

As William C. Sullivan, an assistant FBI director, once testified: “No holds were barred. We have used these techniques against Soviet agents. They have used them against us. We did not differentiate. This is a rough, tough business.”

That attitude never went away. Instead it got promotions and medals.

But here’s where today differs from the COINTELPRO era: We know their playbook now. Today’s movements have learned from history. They’ve evolved. Adapted. Become smarter and more resilient precisely because they studied how the U.S. government destroyed earlier movements by targeting individual leaders. You can’t cut off the head of a movement that has no single head.

This doesn’t mean the government’s tactics don’t work — Khalil’s case demonstrates they still can silence individuals effectively — but movements have become harder to crush entirely.

Khalil told CNN last year, “Our movement is a movement for social justice and freedom and equality for everyone.” And for that, he’s being held in a detention facility in Jena, Louisiana, awaiting a hearing that will determine whether he’ll be deported. His crime wasn’t violence or lawbreaking — it was advocacy. It was using his voice.

The FBI’s tactics require shadows to be truly effective. When we drag them into the light, they lose some of their power. In fact, the fact that we’re openly discussing these tactics is itself a form of resistance. Awareness is the first step toward accountability.

So what can we do?

Our collective resistance is always stronger than their individual targeting.

The patterns are clear: From Malcolm X to Fred Hampton, to Muslim communities after 9/11 to Mahmoud Khalil today, the U.S. government has perfected its targeting of those who speak truth to power, who defy its fascism and white supremacy.

They can arrest Khalil, but they cannot arrest our revolution. And the most powerful weapon against their machinery of oppression is our solidarity.

They want us isolated.
Disconnected.
Silenced.
Afraid.

But we don’t have to be.

Never forget that today is not a spectator sport. It’s tomorrow’s warm-up.

NOTE TO READERS: The Progressivists runs on righteous rage and reader support. While we’re committed to keeping our truth-telling free from paywalls this only works if folks with means step up to fund the fuckery-fighting.

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“IT MEANS THAT THE U.S. FEDERAL GOVERNMENT is now at war with humanity.”

When climate scientist Michael Mann uttered those words in response to the Trump administration’s latest assault on climate science, a chill ran down my spine. Not because it was shocking — but because it articulated something so obviously true that we’ve been dancing around for decades.

So, let’s talk about this war. Because wars have casualties, strategies, and endgames. And this one’s no different.

This isn’t just standard-issue climate denial. It’s a dramatic escalation.

We’re moving from “bruh, it’s not even happening” to “it’s sooo happening and it’s like good for you!” — which is essentially the gaslighting equivalent of being punched in the face and told it’s a gentle-exfoliating massage with a steam.

Yet before I go on, I need to add something crucial to Mann’s insight . . .

While this administration’s climate approach represents a shocking new front in the war on humanity, the truth is that the U.S. government has been waging different versions of this war for generations. There was no golden era of American benevolence.

My mind immediately goes to the countless coups orchestrated across Latin America, the never-ending wars in the Middle East, the callous disregard for Indigenous lives, the centuries of brutal enslavement and its ongoing legacy, the racial terrorism directed at any community challenging white dominance, the industrial prison complex, and the systematic neglect of the poorest Americans.

The U.S. government has been waging war on various segments of humanity since its bloody inception — AND also, yes, climate catastrophe represents something even more finite: An annihilation on the very ecological foundations that sustain all life on Earth.

It’s American imperialism gone global and geological — expanded to include not just targeted human communities but the entire web of life on the planet. All of us, all the time, all at once — which makes Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s recent comment that “the Pentagon does not do climate change crap” especially terrifying (imagine being so dedicated to ignorance that you proudly announce it like it’s a virtue).

So, yes, the U.S. federal government is now at war with humanity. But this isn’t new. It’s merely escalated a centuries-long conflict to its final, existential stage.

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This brings me to a personal story that illustrates how deeply this fuckery has seeped into our culture . . .

My husband has a Masters in Climate Science, yet when he offered to explain the basics to my climate-denying uncle, we were promptly disowned and written out of their will. Yes, really. Not because the conversation was condescending — it wasn’t — but because suggesting that Fox News might be wrong about science was apparently an unforgivable offense. Jesus wept.

Now, do I care about being written out of a will? Absolutely not. But I do remain fascinated by how willing people are to reject reality — to deny the existence of rising seas while their ankles are already wet — to protect the interests of politicians who don’t know they exist, couldn’t give a fuck about them, and a capitalist structure that will eventually consume them too.

It’s the ultimate expression of narcissism — this idea that the world revolves around human constructs and interpretation, that nature will bend to accommodate our convenience, that money can buy escape from planetary boundaries.

Because here’s what climate-denying capitalists fail to understand: Wealth won’t protect them when the wildfires come, when the floods rise, when the food systems collapse. Yes, wealth might buffer you temporarily. It might buy you a nicer evacuation hotel with a good wine list, a better air purifier, a more remote sanctuary with great croissants. But eventually, the bill comes due for everyone. Just ask the wealthy residents of Pacific Palisades how their bank accounts protected them from the horrific flames in December.

And both are suicide pacts dressed up as salvation.

When Trump’s administration fires climate scientists and scrubs climate data from government websites, they’re not just attacking science — they’re attacking our collective capacity to respond to existential threat. It’s like ripping out the smoke detectors while the house is already on fire, then selling us all tickets to stand closer to the flames.

The truly disturbing part? None of this is accidental. Trump’s Budget Director and anti-climate bureaucrat Russ Vought and the Project 2025 crowd have explicitly stated their intention to cut “climate fanaticism” (also known as “basic scientific literacy”) from the federal government while expanding executive authority and protecting fossil fuel interests.

They CONSTANTLY tell us who they are. Are we ready to believe them?

And God, it makes me angry. Because this isn’t just abstract policy anymore. It’s about whether all children will inherit a world of possibility or a world of suffering. When I look at all kids’ faces, I feel a rage so pure it could power cities. The same people who claim to care about future generations when it serves their political narratives will sacrifice those very generations for short-term gain without a second thought.

What makes it all the more tragic is that the people working hardest to deny climate change are also those most vulnerable to its effects. Not the billionaires bankrolling the denial machine — they’ve got bunkers in New Zealand. I’m talking about everyday people who’ve been convinced to fight passionately against their own interests, against the future of their own grandchildren. Even wealthy individuals who believe their money creates a forcefield against reality will find that nature doesn’t accept bribes.

So yes, the U.S. government is at war with humanity — with our present and our future. But it’s a war being fought with the enthusiastic support of millions who’ve been convinced that their liberation lies in their own destruction. And that’s the part that keeps me up at night.

Because how do you fight a war when half the casualties are cheering for the bombs?

I don’t have easy answers. But I know this: Reality doesn’t care what any of us believe. The rising seas won’t stop because some bureaucrat decides they’re actually beneficial. The fires won’t extinguish themselves because acknowledging them is politically inconvenient.

Sometimes, in quiet moments, I’m overwhelmed by a sadness so vast it feels bottomless. I grieve for the world we could have had — the one where we met this moment with courage and clarity instead of denial and delay. I grieve for the relationships severed by ideological chasms too wide to bridge. I grieve for the parts of our humanity that we’ve sacrificed on the altar of consumption and convenience.

But grief isn’t the end of the story. It’s the fuel.

The first step in any resistance is to name things truthfully. So thank you, Michael Mann, for calling this what it is: A war on humanity.

The second step is to recognize that this war won’t merely be won through polite disagreement or appeals to reason. It will require direct action, civil disobedience, and dismantling the systems that have brought us to this point. We have to realize the ballot box and *permitted* marches have proven woefully inadequate against the machinery of ecocide.

This isn’t abstract. It means creating community resilience networks that operate outside capitalist logic. It means learning to grow food, harvest rainwater, and generate energy locally. It means normalizing degrowth and voluntary simplicity as acts of resistance. It means sabotaging the machinery of extraction wherever possible and necessary. It means building dual power structures that can sustain us when both the climate and political systems collapse. It means reconnecting with ancestral wisdom about living within planetary boundaries. And perhaps most importantly, it means rejecting the individualism that has isolated us from each other and the earth, and instead building collective power that can actually challenge the forces destroying our world.

The planet is writing its own testament right now. And unless we act with unprecedented clarity and conviction, it may be humanity’s last chapter.

I refuse to surrender to despair. I refuse to accept that the story ends with billionaires in bunkers while the rest of us burn. I refuse to believe that humanity is incapable of rising to meet this moment.

Because underneath all my anger and grief lies something else: A stubborn, irrational hope. A belief that we are better than our worst impulses. That we might yet choose life over profit, community over isolation, truth over comfortable lies.

I, for one, am not ready to let the story end that way. Are you?

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REMEMBER YESTERDAY when I told you they were disappearing Mahmoud Khalil? Well, turns out things are somehow getting worse.

The fuckery continues to escalate. On Monday, a federal judge in Manhattan had to issue an emergency order barring our government from deporting Khalil while the court reviews his detention. Yes, you read that right — a JUDGE had to step in to prevent this administration from yeeting a legal permanent resident out of the country for the crime of *squints at phone* speaking at a protest.

And wouldn’t you know it, but the highest-ranking officials in our government can’t even explain what crime Khalil supposedly committed. When House Speaker Mike Johnson was directly asked this question today, he went on some unhinged rant about *aspiring young terrorists* on student visas.

Except Khalil doesn’t HAVE a student visa, you breathtaking douchebaguette. He has a Green Card and is married to a pregnant American citizen. Johnson’s either deliberately lying or is so spectacularly uninformed that he’s making policy decisions based on complete fiction.

Neither option is comforting.

The Trump regime is using an obscure provision in immigration law that lets the Secretary of State expel foreigners whose presence might have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences”. That’s it. That’s the standard. This vague-as-fuck language is now being weaponized to override constitutional protections for permanent residents.

“But this only affects immigrants,” some of you might say.

Wrong.
Dead wrong.
And also, fuck that exceptionalist mentality.

What happens when the definition of “adverse foreign policy consequences”" expands? What happens when the Trump administration decides that criticizing its relationship with Russia, or Saudi Arabia, or whatever dictatorship they’re cozying up to this week constitutes a “foreign policy problem”?

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And where the hell are the Democrats? MIA as bloody always with only FOURTEEN of them — out of how many hundred?! — signing a letter calling for Khalil’s release. That’s it. Fourteen. While a man with *constitutional rights* is literally being disappeared for political speech, the vast majority of Democrats are apparently busy checking poll numbers or workshopping clever infrastructure tweets.

The letter, signed by reps like Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Ayanna Pressley, correctly points out that “Khalil has not been charged or convicted of any crime” and was “targeted solely for his activism and organizing”. It calls this an attempt to criminalize political protest and “a direct assault on the freedom of speech of everyone in this country”.

But where’s the rest of the party? Where’s the leadership? Chuck Schumer represents New York, where Khalil was kidnapped, and he’s said . . . nothing. Hakeem Jeffries? Nothing. This should be a five-alarm fire for anyone who claims to care about civil liberties, and yet unsurprisingly the silence is deafening.

The silence from the so-called free speech warriors is equally stunning. The same people who lose their minds over students protesting a transphobic author’s book tour are suspiciously quiet when the government literally detains someone for their political views. Nothing showcases the hollow center of their principles quite like this selective outrage.

Today they’re using this against a Palestinian activist. Tomorrow it’s environmentalists challenging their climate policies. Next week it’s journalists reporting on government corruption. The slope isn’t just a teeny-weeny bit slippery — it’s a goddamn vertical drop into fascism.

Remember what I said yesterday about community protection? It’s more crucial than ever. Create those alert systems. Build those mutual aid networks. Support immigrant defense funds. Protect your neighbors without volunteering information.

And for fuck’s sake, stop thinking this couldn’t happen to you.

The federal court hearing for Khalil is scheduled for Wednesday. His lawyers are fighting to have him transferred back to New York from Louisiana — a transparent attempt to isolate him from legal support. This is how it starts — not with dramatic midnight raids on citizens (yet), but with testing the boundaries on those with slightly fewer protections. Seeing what they can get away with.

Spoiler alert: They’re getting away with a lot.

If you want to do something concrete right now, donate to the Justice for Mahmoud Khalil fund. Your money will directly support his legal defense, help his pregnant wife during this nightmare, and contribute to getting him out of that Louisiana detention center and back to New York. The fund is already getting massive support with more than 2500 donors stepping up, but we need to hit $250,000 to cover all the legal, medical, and family support costs. Don’t have cash? Share information about his case without the both-sides bullshit. Every person who learns about this case is another potential ally against this creeping fascism.

Folks, solidarity isn’t just a hashtag. It’s recognizing that Mahmoud Khalil’s fight is our fight too. Because when they finish with him, they’ll come for the rest of us.

This isn’t hyperbole.
This is happening.
Right now.
In America.

The question isn’t whether it will get worse — it’s how much worse we’ll let it get before we actually do something about it.

Free Mahmoud Khalil.

SO HERE WE ARE AGAIN. Another day, another erosion of human rights that has everyone clutching their well-worn copies of the Constitution while actual people suffer. How many times do we need to see this play out before we change our approach?

Let’s talk about what’s happening to Mahmoud Khalil, pictured above. A Palestinian graduate student and Green Card holder. Married to a U.S. citizen who is eight months pregnant. Arrested in his university-owned residence near Columbia’s campus by ICE agents who claimed they were revoking his immigration status. His crime? Being a visible advocate for Palestinian rights during campus protests.

And now? No one knows for sure where he is. According to ICE’s online records, Khalil has been moved to a detention facility in Jena, Louisiana — 1300 miles from his pregnant wife and legal representation. His attorney initially said ICE agents claimed he was being transferred to a facility in New Jersey, but when his wife tried to visit on Sunday, he wasn’t there. The government shuffled him across the country with no warning or explanation.

Hey y’all, there are terms for governments that make their critics disappear.

Authoritarian.
Dictatorships.
Fascist.

Not approaching fascist.
Not fascist-adjacent.
Not fascist-curious.

Fascist.

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Guys, I’m not saying our outrage isn’t warranted. It is. But I am saying our outrage isn’t helping Mahmoud. Or the countless other immigrants who’ve been rounded up while Americans stood around debating the finer points of constitutional law as if fascists give a flying fuck about legal arguments.

Because, again, that’s what this is — fascism.

The real deal. The kind where government agencies snatch a legal resident from his home for political speech, threaten his pregnant wife, and then shuffle him around the detention system so his lawyers can’t find him.

The Department of Homeland Security even admitted it in their statement, saying Khalil was arrested “in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting antisemitism” because he allegedly “led activities aligned to Hamas”.

On Fox News, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan falsely claimed Khalil had “violated the terms of his visa by locking down buildings and destroying property” — assertions contradicted by Columbia’s own records, which show Khalil was not among those who occupied buildings. But who needs facts when you have propaganda networks to spread your message?

Secretary of State Marco Rubio also made their intentions crystal clear, posting on social media: “We will be revoking the visas and/or Green Cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.”

This is the imperial boomerang at work. The tactics we tolerate against others eventually get used against us. The surveillance methods developed for “counterterrorism” abroad become the tools to monitor domestic dissidents. The military equipment tested in war zones gets handed to local police. The dehumanization of foreigners becomes the justification for stripping rights from citizens.

When we look the other way as imperialism flourishes under the party supposedly championing progressive values, why are we surprised when the party that openly embraces white supremacy grabs those exact same tools and uses them with even greater enthusiasm?

Israel’s influence over U.S. politics isn’t just a foreign policy issue — it’s a domestic threat. The same forces on both sides of the aisle that helped get Trump elected are the ones pushing for increased crackdowns on pro-Palestinian voices. The same surveillance tech developed by Israeli companies gets sold to U.S. law enforcement. The same dehumanizing rhetoric used against Palestinians gets repurposed against immigrants and activists here.

And now they’ve come for Mahmoud. And none of us are safe.

Look, I get it. Some folks want to believe the system works. They want to believe that if we sternly point to our constitutional pocket books with enough righteous indignation, the courts will step in and justice will prevail.

*Points even harder*.

Yet while they’re busy pointing, ICE is loading more people into vans. While they’re debating legal strategies, families are being torn apart. While they’re explaining the finer points of the First Amendment, someone else is disappearing into the detention system.

FOLKS.
PLEASE.

Outrage does not work.
Calling our reps does not work.
Raging on social media does not work.
Composing the perfect tweet about due process doesn’t work.

Strategic silence coupled with concrete action works.

When ICE comes knocking in your neighborhood, you didn’t see anything.

You don’t know anyone.
You work long hours.
You mind your own business.

The less information they have, the harder their job becomes.

No explanations.
No justifications.
No helpful suggestions about who else they might ask.
Just someone who knows how to shut the fuck up.

The Gestapo was effective because ordinary Germans reported on their neighbors. So don’t be that person. Full stop.

But silence alone isn’t enough. We need active, community-based resistance:

1. Join or create local mutual aid networks that operate outside government control. Food distribution, childcare support, resource sharing — these sustain vulnerable communities when official channels fail them

2. Support immigrant legal defense funds

3. Create community alert systems — some neighborhoods have developed text chains to warn about ICE presence in the area

4. Build relationships with immigrant-owned businesses and offer support when needed — sometimes this might means simply showing up as customers, sometimes it might means providing safe spaces

5. Support sanctuary movements, whether religious or secular, that protect people at risk of deportation.

None of these depend on government goodwill or constitutional protections. They’re about people protecting people when systems fail. And they’ve worked throughout history — from the Underground Railroad to Danish citizens protecting Jewish neighbors during Nazi occupation to modern sanctuary movements.

Because all I know is the performative outrage isn’t working. The clever signs aren’t working. The constitutional arguments aren’t working. Oh and hey, wouldn’t you know it, but the guns certainly aren’t protecting us from tyranny, despite what 2A enthusiasts promised.

The fact that they’ve moved Khalil to Louisiana — as far as possible from his support network, legal representation, and pregnant wife — shows exactly how this system operates. Isolation is a tool of oppression. Community is our defense.

So please, enough with the shock and disbelief. This is happening. It’s been happening. It will continue happening. The question isn’t whether it’s constitutional — the question is what the fuck you’re going to do about it.

Free Mahmoud Khalil.
Free every person unjustly detained.

And for fuck’s sake, start building the community networks we’ll all need to survive what’s coming.

Not next month. Not after the next outrage. Today.

NOTE TO READERS: The Progressivists runs on righteous rage and reader support. While we’re committed to keeping our truth-telling free from paywalls this only works if folks with means step up to fund the fuckery-fighting.

If you’ve got the financial bandwidth to support our independent, no-holds-barred writing, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your subscription ensures we can keep serving unfiltered reality to everyone — not just those who can afford it.

Come on, y’all, we need some serious slow claps for the revolutionary power of it all.

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Yes, there was Rep. Al Green, from Texas who came with more of a fuck-this vibe than the rest and actually disrupted the proceedings by shouting down the fascist with, “You have no mandate!” Expectedly however, security promptly dragged him out like he’d tried to throw a shoe at the president (ahhh, remember that?) — which is the first time in modern history someone’s been booted from a presidential address to Congress.

Honestly, it’s about goddamn time someone finally broke *squints at phone again* ahh, yes, “decorum”.

And also: Democrats . . . is that all you’ve got?!

Senate Democrats stood when Trump walked down the center aisle but don’t worry guys, they *didn’t applaud*. Something that I’m sure gave Trump pause, made him reconsider his life choices, perhaps even shed a tear at such forceful opposition.

Twenty House Democrats held up black and white signs saying “Save Medicaid” (pretty please with sugar on top) and “Musk Steals” — and Rep. Rashida Tlaib brought an erasable whiteboard with scribbled messages like “NO KING” and “THAT’S A LIE”.

Remember when dictators throughout history were defeated by strongly worded signs and whiteboards?

Me neither.

While Rep. Green is accepting removal from the chamber and saying, “It’s worth it to let people know that there are some of us who are going to stand up”, the rest of the Democratic leadership sat quietly the entire speech, stone-faced, with their hands in their laps like they were waiting for a colonoscopy. Maybe just there for the ice cream after?

Is it just me or does this tired Democrat performance feel like a high school production of “Resistance: The Musical” where everyone’s parents has to pretend they’re impressed by the effort?

Great job, Jonathan darling. No you didn’t sound pitchy, like, at all.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Serbian parliament (below) just saw opposition lawmakers throw smoke grenades and tear gas inside the chamber to protest against their government. In South Korea last month, investigators scaled walls in freezing temperatures, cut through barbed wire, and sent a thousand officers to arrest their president after he tried to declare martial law.

But here in America, our bold opposition tactics consists of Democratic women coordinating their outfits in revolutionary wine-mom resistance. Freedom-fighter Pelosi and the gals showed that pesky fascism who’s boss in their pink outfit parade to “send a message to Donald Trump”. Because nothing, like nothing, says we’re serious about fighting our slide into dictatorship like the brunch-ready hues from the Resistance Spring Collection.

Don’t forget the chardy, Nance! *Taps fascism’s nose with a boop!*

While Al Green’s actions are not enough (like at all), at least Green did something apart from working on his resistance fan kicks with his fellow theater-majors (honestly, Jonathan, you stole the show).

Once again, the Democratic leadership’s response to fascistic overreach is to follow proper channels while those channels are being demolished behind them. They’re still pretending that if we just play nice enough, follow the rules enough, somehow democracy will magically save itself.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries perfectly captures this institutional surrender when he shrugs and says, “What leverage do we have? They control the House, the Senate and the presidency; it’s their government.”

Their government?

I’m sorry, did I miss the memo where we, the people, decided this was the Trump Family Fuckery Estate LLC? This broken system has Democrats responding to active demolition of democracy with strongly worded letters and calls to vote harder next time.

While Elon Musk sits in the gallery, violating House rules by drinking water and filming with his smartphone (the horror!), he’s also been given access to the Treasury Department system that controls trillions of dollars in federal payments. Democratic Reps. Judy Chu and Gwen Moore barged into House Speaker Mike Johnson’s office to confront him about this, and that’s a start — but where’s the mass coordination? Where’s the unified, relentless resistance?

When fascism marches through the front door of our democracy, you can’t defeat it with signs and symbolic gestures. You can’t fight it by following the rules it’s actively changing. You can’t resist it by maintaining decorum and dignified opposition. And you certainly can’t stop it by hoping voters will save you in two or four years while you do everything possible to avoid rocking the boat now.

Yet, as I was reminded this morning . . .

“But Jo! Hakeem is right. Their hands are tied! Wha can they *actually do*?”

Funny you should ask, Todd. As it turns out history is full of politicians who didn’t let not controlling directly the levers of power stop them from actual resistance.

For example, they could . . .

• Organize mass civil disobedience campaigns like Gandhi and Nehru did during India’s independence movement — which successfully ended centuries of British colonial rule without firing a shot

• Support strikes and boycotts while continuing to serve in government, as ANC members did in South Africa — tactics that directly contributed to dismantling the apartheid system despite its seemingly unshakeable power

• Create support networks for activists and whistleblowers, following the example of anti-apartheid politicians who protected those fighting the system — building the infrastructure that eventually brought down a racist regime

• Establish legal defense funds as politicians did during the civil rights era — providing the resources that won landmark court battles and legislative victories against systemic racism

• Set up protection networks for vulnerable populations, similar to what European parliamentarians did during WWII — saving countless lives while preserving democratic ideals during the darkest hours.

You know, ORGANIZE.

But I mean, I also get it. Like why do all that when you could just wear pink and call it a day?

Humanity doesn’t remember the politicians who politely held up signs while democracy burned. But history venerates the ones who put their bodies, careers, and comfort on the line when it actually mattered.

So, Democrats, if Al Green’s solitary outburst is the most resistance you can muster while authoritarianism spreads like wildfire through our institutions, then you’re openly resigning yourself to being complicit in Trump’s fascism and need to get out of the damn way.

Because our world needs so much more than symbolic gestures right now. We need people willing to risk something real, not politicians who think their ‘meh’ approach to literally everything is the kryptonite to *squints one last time*, oh yes, actual fucking authoritarianism.

P.S. Please read Qasim Rashid’s analysis on Trump’s 2025 Joint Session speech if you want more on what Trump said.

NOTE TO READERS: The Progressivists runs on righteous rage and reader support. While we’re committed to keeping our truth-telling free from paywalls this only works if folks with means step up to fund the fuckery-fighting.

If you’ve got the financial bandwidth to support our independent, no-holds-barred writing, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your subscription ensures we can keep serving unfiltered reality to everyone — not just those who can afford it.

Yes, I know it sounds like a Jason Bourne knock-off that you’d be forced to watch at 2am on a flight, but it’s not. It’s the historical pattern where tactics, technologies, and systems of oppression that empires first develop and use against colonized populations abroad eventually return home to be used against their own citizens.

Exhibit A:

The surveillance techniques perfected in Iraq? Coming to a protest near you. The militarized policing tested in Afghanistan? Now on your local street corner. The criminalization of resistance movements overseas? Welcome to your campus, kid.

Yes this is fucked.
Yes this is unconstitutional (whatever that means).
Yes this is fascism in its purest form.

Yet, should any of us be surprised by this?

Fuck no!

Breaking news: Man who literally ran on fascist platform in an increasingly fascist country implements fascist policies. Citizens shocked. More at 11.

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Fellow-peasants, this isn’t an I-told-you-so moment, I promise. This is a “can we please recognize we’re all in this together now” moment, as we watch the inevitable collapse of imperial power structures many have been warning about for years.

Remember last year when many of us were in the streets protesting for Palestine? Remember when we were begging the Democrats to stop funding a genocide? Remember how we were called antisemitic, told we were “helping Trump”, were dismissed as extremists by the same people who are now wringing their hands about fascism?

Well, here we fucking are.
All of us.
Together.

And the painful truth? This isn’t even about Trump. This imperial fuckery has been unfolding for years.

The massive expansion of the border-industrial complex? The continuation of brutal deportation practices? The endless stream of weapons to Israel as they turned Gaza into rubble? The unwavering support for a military budget that could solve homelessness multiple times over?

All bipartisan imperial policy, baby.

We can’t keep feeding the beast under one administration and expect it to be tamed under the next.

This is why we protested under Democrats. This is why we fought so goddamn hard.
This is why we’ve been focusing on mutual aid and community defense matters more than often performative protest signs and Instagram stories. This is why we insisted Democrats do more than *checks notes* just not be Trump.

Because the empire was always going to collapse inward. The tools of oppression were always going to be turned against the citizens at home. The persecution of Palestinians, the exploitation of the Global South, the militarization of our borders — these weren’t just foreign policy mistakes. They were practice runs for domestic authoritarianism.

You want to know who really helped Trump? The people who knew Biden was struggling but dismissed legitimate concerns about his ability to govern. The people who placed party loyalty above moral courage, defending the indefensible while calling themselves the “resistance”. The people who cared more about power than protecting vulnerable lives as they pledged loyalty to Harris and her promises of “the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world” — all while that very lethality was enabling an active genocide.

A FUCKING GENOCIDE.

Like, how do you “fight fascism” when you’ve already embraced its tools?

And now we’re supposed to be shocked when Trump threatens students and protesters? We’re meant to be outraged that he’s targeting universities for allowing free speech? How did we think this would play out? When Democrats funded “anti-terror” tactics against Palestinians that include monitoring activists and academics, when they applauded the arrests of Gaza protesters on campuses, when they remained silent as protestors were labeled antisemitic for opposing genocide — did we imagine those tactics wouldn’t eventually be deployed with even greater force by someone like Trump?

The empire always comes home. The chickens always come to roost. And the surveillance state folks cheered for under Obama and Biden is the same one that Trump will now unleash with fewer restraints and greater hostility.

The hardest thing to reconcile is how predictable this path has been. For years, grassroots organizers, anti-imperialists, and yes, campus protesters, have been raising alarms that what we do abroad will eventually be done to us at home. It wasn’t about being right — it was about preventing exactly this moment. That the surveillance state, the militarized police, the criminalization of dissent — these aren’t just foreign policy problems, they’re the infrastructure of domestic fascism in waiting.

But too many Democrats and liberals were comfortable with empire as long as it had a friendlier face. As long as the president tweeted the right platitudes while signing the checks for bombs. As long as the police brutality was justified with the right language. As long as the persecution of protesters was done in the name of “safety” rather than explicitly authoritarianism.

When folks cheer as campus protesters demanding an end to genocide get arrested under a Democratic administration, they can’t act surprised when a Republican administration takes it ten steps further. When they stay silent as Palestinian supporters are labeled “Hamas” by Democrats, they can’t be shocked when Republicans use that same playbook to criminalize all dissent.

And now here we are. Trump isn’t creating fascism from scratch — he’s just taking the imperial playbook and applying it more openly, more brazenly, without the polite veneer of liberal democracy.

What makes this moment different isn’t the threat itself — it’s that it’s no longer hidden behind procedural norms and bureaucratic language. It’s right out in the open, in all-caps on Truth Social.

So what now? Do we just despair and watch it all burn? Do we retreat into nostalgic fantasies about the “good old days” under Democrats?

No, Jan. No.

So yes, fight Trump’s threats against protesters with everything you’ve got. But don’t stop there. Fight the entire fucking system that made those threats possible.

Fight by divesting from imperial capitalist power wherever possible. Like, no John, you do not need that navy colored Tesla. Fight by joining or creating local mutual aid networks that operate outside state control. Fight by supporting legal defense funds for protesters. Fight by joining tenant unions and organizing against evictions. Fight by supporting independent media that challenges both Republican and Democratic imperial narratives. Fight by learning from colonized peoples who have survived centuries of imperial violence. Fight by creating networks of care for the most vulnerable in your community — immigrants, homeless people, disabled people, LGBTQ+, Black and Brown folks — who are always the first targets of state violence.

And what we’re seeing now isn’t surprising when viewed through this lens. Some of us saw it coming, some of us didn’t, but now we all need to face it together.

We’re all living through exactly what happens when imperial chickens come home to roost — and we’ll need each other to find a way forward.

NOTE TO READERS: The Progressivists runs on righteous rage and reader support. While we’re committed to keeping our truth-telling free from paywalls this only works if folks with means step up to fund the fuckery-fighting.

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He was READY, y’all. Ready to defend the honor of millionaire politicians from my apparent betrayal . . .

Li’l Johnny said.

And when I explained that I was questioning a system that converts political power to personal profit while encouraging us to believe in saviors, he doubled down:

And there it is. The crux of the matter: *My side* . . . well that and me having to liver with it.

This exchange perfectly encapsulates the dangerous and chronically relapsing #BlueNoMatterWho mindset that has infected our political discourse (like that embarrassing high school phase you thought was buried until your cousin Janice kept tagged you in throwback photos).

According to John’s worldview, my allegiance should be to millionaire politicians rather than to communities and actual human beings. My criticism of the revolving door between politics and celebrity automatically makes me a Trump supporter, because in his binary thinking, there are only two options: Unquestioning loyalty or treasonous opposition. It’s the same MAGA “love it or leave it” ultimatum — yet brought to you by John’s In This House We Believe yard sign.

For those in the back who might have missed the memo: *My side* is not defined by party loyalty or devotion to political celebrities.

My side is the homeless veteran sleeping under the overpass because our leaders decided banks were more worthy of bailouts than human beings.

My side is the parent working three jobs who still can’t afford healthcare for their children because pharmaceutical profits were deemed more important than human life.

My side is the Palestinian family whose home was destroyed by bombs stamped “Made in USA” because racism, I mean *geopolitical leverage* was considered more valuable than their right to exist.

My side is the trans teenager contemplating suicide because politicians decided that pandering to bigotry was more expedient than protecting vulnerable lives.

My side is the community that organizes food distribution when government assistance runs dry, the neighbor who helps an elderly resident navigate insurance paperwork, the activist who puts their body on the line to protect water sources from corporate contamination.

This dualistic way of thinking allows politicians to claim progressive credentials while governing as corporate centrists. It enables the weaponization of identity politics without the corresponding commitment to material change. It permits the steady rightward drift of the Democratic Party because they know their base has been thoroughly convinced that the only alternative is fascism.

And worse yet, it redirects our collective energy away from building actual power within our communities. Each moment spent defending millionaire politicians is a moment not spent organizing tenant unions, establishing mutual aid networks, or building the horizontal power structures that might actually improve people’s lives.

When John says I’ve “done nothing” because I criticize politicians, he reveals the poverty of his political imagination. In his world, political engagement begins and ends with defending party elites and voting every few years. The daily, unglamorous work of community building and collective care — work that exists largely outside the electoral sphere — simply doesn’t register as legitimate political action.

But here’s the beautiful truth that Blue MAGA can’t comprehend: Real change has never come from uncritical devotion to political celebrities. It comes from ordinary people organizing together to meet their needs and challenge power. It comes from recognizing that no politician, no matter how charismatic or progressive-sounding, will save us — that we must save ourselves and each other.

And if that makes me a traitor to “my side” in your eyes, then perhaps we were never on the same side to begin with.

Because my side — the side of human dignity and collective liberation — has always understood that politicians are meant to serve communities, not the other way around. My side has always known that worship belongs in churches, not voting booths. My side has always recognized that real power flows from the bottom up, not the top down.

So I’ll keep criticizing the celebrity-political complex without apology or qualification. I’ll keep reminding us that our hope lies not in saviors but in solidarity. I’ll keep believing in our collective power to build something better, right where we are.

And I’ll keep extending an invitation to the Johns of the world — because when you finally tire of defending people who don’t know you exist, we’ll be here building something that actually serves your needs too.

After all . . . the revolution will not be performed by celebrities with talent agents.

NOTE TO READERS: The Progressivists runs on righteous rage and reader support. While we’re committed to keeping our truth-telling free from paywalls this only works if folks with means step up to fund the fuckery-fighting.

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FELLOW-PEASANTS, today feels like a great time for a little historical reminder . . .

Remember how the labor movement didn’t win us the eight-hour workday by voting harder? Remember how they went on strike, organized, and created mutual aid networks to support workers during walkouts? When faced with violent suppression from both government and corporate powers, remember how they persisted, building power from the ground up rather than waiting for political saviors?

Remember how the Black Panthers didn’t rely on politicians to address hunger in their communities? Remember how they created free breakfast programs that ultimately fed 20,000 children daily across 19 cities? When the FBI targeted them as the “greatest threat to internal security”, remember how they responded not by seeking celebrity advocates but by deepening their work in providing community healthcare, education programs, and organized community defense?

And remember how ACT UP (pictured above) didn’t count on establishment figures to address the AIDS crisis? Remember how when politicians and media were content to watch a generation die, they disrupted the system through direct action — shutting down the FDA, infiltrating pharmaceutical boardrooms, and creating underground networks to distribute treatment information while building community care structures?

So what’s got me dragging out these history lessons today? Well, I think now is an excellent time for folks to remember that it’s us — not politicians, not elections, not corporate media, not Instagram activism — that saves us.

And why today?

Well, because this:

You see while Gaza burns, while trans kids are being legislated out of existence, while deportations accelerate, while food banks run empty, and while climate disasters multiply, our recent “progressive leaders” are busy negotiating speaking fees and book advances.

*Heavy fucking sighs*

Now before Chad swoops in here with his “but they’re private citizens now!” tirade — Chad, mate, I get it. I don’t expect anything else from these people.

This isn’t about them.
It’s about us.

Because let’s be clear about what’s happening: While we’re suffering from their broken promises and broken system, and people around the world are being bombed with weapons they approved, our supposed bastions of progressive hope are working with a talent agency to monetize their public service.

This is the revolving door in action — public service as a stepping stone to personal wealth — and yet another predictable chapter in America’s long-running obsession with political celebrity; a phenomenon that has consistently failed to deliver actual change.

Side bar: When Jimmy Carter left office with debts of $1 million, getting rich off of public service was considered, frankly, unseemly. Yet now in our current capitalistic hellscape? Why it’s the expected trajectory, of course!

From White House to CAA1, where the same folks who represent Brad Pitt broker six-figure deals for our drone strike approvers to wax poetic at Goldman Sachs.

What a time to be alive.

Remember when Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan slid effortlessly onto the board of Fox Corporation after years of pushing policies that devastated working Americans? Or how Trump’s cabinet became a revolving door of corporate grifters who leveraged their government roles into lucrative private sector paydays?

Remember when the Clintons amassed over $153 million in speaking fees between 2001 and 2016? Or when Obama left office and immediately collected $400,000 for a single speech at a Wall Street investment firm? The same Wall Street that had crashed the economy and faced zero consequences under his administration?

Yep, this elite enrichment pipeline is the real bi-partisanship in America, the unspoken agreement to cash in after preserving capitalism’s chokehold on actual progress.

History shows us that political celebrity has never been an effective vehicle for substantive change. Like the New Deal didn’t happen because Americans worshipped FDR — it happened because mass movements, labor organizing, and direct action made the status quo untenable. Civil rights legislation wasn’t passed because of LBJ’s charm — it passed because Black Americans and allies put their bodies on the line in sustained resistance, facing fire hoses, police dogs, and brutal violence for years.

Right now, while former politicians who told us they were our last line of defense against fascism negotiate book deals, real change is happening through ordinary people building power together . . .

Mutual aid networks across America are feeding and housing people when governments fail. Tenant unions are stopping evictions. Community defense networks are protecting vulnerable neighbors from violence. Workers are organizing new unions despite corporate resistance.

These efforts don’t make headlines like celebrity politicians, but I promise you, they’re creating tangible change in people’s lives.

Sustained collective action such as:

• Creating or joining mutual aid networks — from food distribution to skill-sharing to childcare cooperatives — these networks meet immediate needs while operating outside that bureaucratic maze designed to keep us stuck and dependent

• Building relationships in your community (you know, like actually knowing your neighbors and creating communication networks that don’t depend on social media)

• Supporting independent media that provides accurate information about conditions on the ground, especially from affected communities

• And — here’s the biggie — recognizing that electoral politics is just one tool among many, and often the least effective for creating substantive change.

Fellow-peasants, the politicians-turned-celebrities signing with CAA aren’t coming to save us. They never were. But the good news is, we don’t need them to. We have always had the power to save ourselves — we just need to stop outsourcing our hope to people who inevitably disappoint us.

Frederick Douglass said it best: “Power concedes nothing without a demand.”

Not a polite request, not a well-reasoned argument, not a vote — a demand, backed by organized people willing to disrupt business as usual.

That’s how change happens.
It always has been.

So, puhleeeease all, let’s stop waiting for political celebrities to rescue us from the fucked-up system they continue to personally benefit from — and instead let’s turn toward each other to build the world we need, right where we fucking are.

Because we are the ones we’ve been waiting for. Not these establishment pRoGreSsiVes (*scoffs*) trademarking their resistance in between between Goldman Sachs speaking gigs.

I mean, come on now.

JOCELYNN ROJO CARRANZA, pictured above, was eleven years old when she died by suicide in Gainesville, Texas earlier this month.

Her “crime”? Having immigrant parents. Her tormentors? Classmates who threatened to call ICE on her family. Her protection? None. The school knew and did nothing.

This isn’t just yet another extremely tragic headline. This is what happens when 11-year-old children absorb America’s tsunami of undeniable hate and weaponize it against their 11-year-old classmates.

And make no mistake, it is a fucking tsunami.

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Can we just cut the shit about land of the free? I mean at this point, hate crimes have blown past “isolated incidents” into full-blown crisis territory. The FBI’s latest data paints a picture clear as fucking day: Nearly 12,000 reported hate crimes in 2023 alone. And that’s just what gets reported and logged. Reality? Waaaay more.

More than half of these attacks target people based on race, ethnicity, or ancestry. Another quarter are aimed at religious minorities. Add in the attacks on LGBTQ+ folks (pushing a quarter of the total when you combine sexual orientation and gender identity), and you see exactly what’s happening: A systematic assault on everyone who threatens America’s precious white, Christian, heteronormative and patriarchal power structure.

Meanwhile, we’re serving our kids a daily diet of normalized violence — kids that then relentlessly bully little girls like Jocelynn. We’re funding genocide in Gaza while calling it *self-defense*. We’ve got military operations running worldwide, drone programs that rain death from comfortable control rooms in Nevada, and billions in weapons sales fueling conflicts across the globe. And we’re ignoring mass deaths in Sudan and Congo because American media only pretends to cares about Black death when it can be weaponized and capitalized.

And that’s just the violence we export. At home, Indigenous children are still disappearing at terrifying and largely ignored rates. Trans kids are still being legislated out of existence in half the country. Black children still face disproportionate violence from law enforcement. And our immigration system is still so fucking broken we’ve had children appearing in court without lawyers or parents.

This is the water our kids are swimming in.
The poison they’re drinking every day.

I’m raising two white boys in this hot fucking mess, and let me tell you, “not raising racists” ain’t it. Being *not racist* in a system designed for white supremacy is like being *not wet* in a hurricane. The force of this shit is too strong for a $12 umbrella from Target.

What we’re really up against is a country that’s turned hate into policy, violence into profit, and oppression into tradition. A system where children learn to weaponize whiteness before they master hopscotch. A culture where “see something, say something” has become code for be a fucking snitch and rat out your neighbors to ICE.

The violent fuckery runs deep, folks. It’s in our textbooks that whitewash colonization. It’s in our movies where Brown people are terrorists and Indigenous people are extinct. It’s in our news coverage that calls white shooters “troubled”, while forgetting the Black victims’ names. It’s in our social media feeds where actual genocide gets branded as *conflict* and apartheid as *complicated*.

And our kids? They’re not just passive observers in this shit show. They’re being actively recruited as foot soldiers in America’s endless war against the ‘other’. Those kids who bullied Jocelynn? They didn’t come up with that ICE threat on their own. They learned it from watching us — all of us — participate in and enable systems of oppression.

We need to stop pretending this is about individual bad kids or openly racist families. This is about a system working exactly as designed. When children turn immigration status into a weapon, they’re not failing the system — they are the system.

That means teaching them the power of strategic silence when authority comes calling. Teaching them that *safety* built on someone else’s terror isn’t safety at all. That *security* achieved through oppression will always backfire. That every system of power that asks them to snitch on their neighbors is a system that will eventually come for them too.

Because right now, somewhere in America, another kid is being bullied about their immigration status, or race, or gender identity. Another child is learning that their existence is political. Another student is sitting in class wondering if today’s the day their classmates make good on their threats to call ICE.

Jocelynn Rojo Carranza should be alive right now. She should be making TikToks, playing her French horn, getting her nails done with her grandma. Instead, she’s become yet another devastating casualty in America’s crusade for Christofascist power and control. A war that sacrifices children every day in order to keep the bulk of us terrorized, compliant, and divided.

This is the work.

Not just raising kids who aren’t racist, but raising kids who actively fight racism. Not just teaching them to be kind, but teaching them to be accomplices in the struggle for justice. Not just showing them how to casually doggy-paddle in America’s poison waters, but teaching them how to build lifeboats.

Because if we think shit is bad now, what the fuck do we think happens when our kids perfect the lessons of our complicity?

NOTE TO READERS: The Progressivists runs on righteous rage and reader support. While we’re committed to keeping our truth-telling free from paywalls this only works if folks with means step up to fund the fuckery-fighting.

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“SAM HAD A HEART OF GOLD and wouldn’t hurt anybody.”

These words from Linda Nordquist …

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A man in Tunisia responded with that gut-wrenching photo of Kim Phuc Phan Thi — ‘Napalm Girl’ — running from American bombs in Vietnam in 1972, captioned with just one word . . .

“Overnight”.

And there it was. The perfect encapsulation of American Exceptionalism in action: The genuine belief that the United States’ current global reputation is somehow new, somehow unexpected, somehow unearned.

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To my American readers who already get this — and I know that’s most of you — this piece isn’t meant to preach to the choir. Nor is it meant to shame you in any way. Rather this piece is to help you be the bridge others need.

Think of this Substack as talking points for those conversations with those in your life who still believe the American fairy tale. It could be your cousin who has that horrendous “These Colors Don’t Run” bumper sticker, your Aunt Cheryl whose Twitter bio is a string of emojis and #Resist, your bestie whose feed is full of rainbow flags and pro-military propaganda, or that dude you work with that thinks a passport is something people in other countries need.

For context for those who don’t know: I’m Australian, married to an American, and we’ve lived everywhere from Hong Kong to Sydney to the States. My husband and I were talking yesterday morning about national propaganda, and how fascinating it is that Americans can clearly see through North Korea’s bullshit — their “paradise on Earth” propaganda — yet somehow miss the red, white and blue fog churning away in their own backyard.

From the moment American kids can walk, they’re force-fed a steady diet of “greatest country on earth”, “leader of the free world”, and “home of the brave”.

The propaganda machine runs on a $841.4 billion military budget — more than the next nine countries combined — while more than 27 million Americans lack health insurance and teachers buy their own school supplies. We’re talking about a country that spends roughly $100 million on a single F-35 fighter jet but claims it can’t afford to forgive student debt or provide universal healthcare. A nation that proudly calls itself “the land of the free” while housing more than 20% of the world’s prison population.

And like any good propaganda, it works. It works so well that more than 50% of Americans don’t even own a passport, while their country maintains more than 750 military bases in 80 countries. Why leave when you’re already in the *best place on Earth*? Meanwhile the reality is that America ranks 29th in global democracy rankings (“flawed democracy” for the eighth consecutive year) and 55th in press freedom.

And that’s just the highlight reel.

My husband’s wake-up call came about six weeks into living abroad. That’s how long it took for the American Exceptionalism programming to start glitching. He discovered something that most of us non-Americans already knew: The world’s relationship with America is . . . complicated.

And by complicated, I mean that while American soft power might have people worldwide drinking Coca-Cola and watching Marvel movies, they’re doing it while protesting American military bases in their countries and counting their dead from American-made bombs.

The rest of the world isn’t exactly lining up to buy the *Team America: World Police* t-shirt — they’re too busy trying to survive its peacekeeping missions. Ask a Vietnamese person about American liberation. Ask an Iraqi about Operation Freedom. Ask a Palestinian about American support for democracy. The gap between America’s self-image and its global perception isn’t just wide — it’s a fucking canyon.

But here’s the thing — this isn’t meant to be a dunking session on Americans. God knows we’ve all got our national delusions to work through (looking at you, Australia, with your *laid-back larrikin* mythology while running some of the world’s most draconian immigration policies). The difference is in the scale of consequence. When the world’s most powerful military force, its largest economy, and its most influential cultural exporter is running on a cocktail of selective amnesia and superhero complex, the fallout isn’t just domestic.

The American empire — and yes, it’s an empire, even if that word makes some folks choke on their freedom fries — has been built and sustained through violence, both overt and structural. From Native American genocide to Hiroshima, from Vietnam to Iraq, from CIA-backed coups to the School of the Americas’ greatest hits.

And it continues today, in real time: In Congo, where more than six million have died in conflicts fueled by the minerals that power our phones and electric cars, American corporations continue to profit while the media stays silent. More than 46,000 Palestinians dead in Gaza — most of them women and children — with U.S. weapons and unwavering U.S. support. The receipts are longer than a CVS printout, and they’re being generated faster than ever — yet they’re conveniently missing from the standard American history curriculum.

The good news? This programming isn’t irreversible. The antidotes are simple, if not easy: Education, travel, and the willingness to face some uncomfortable truths. It’s about learning to question the stories we’ve been told, to look beyond the star-spangled banner to see the full picture.

To my American readers who are already nodding along — you’re the key to this whole deprogramming project. You’ve seen behind the curtain, you’ve done the work to unlearn the myths. Now comes the harder part: Helping others see it too. Not with smugness or superiority, but with persistence and clarity.

Because let’s face it — realizing your country is the bad guy really, really sucks. It’s like finding out you’ve been cheated on the entirety of your 30-year marriage.

The first step to fixing a problem is admitting you have one . . .

Houston, we have a big fucking problem.

NOTE TO READERS: The Progressivists runs on righteous rage and reader support. While we’re committed to keeping our truth-telling free from paywalls this only works if folks with means step up to fund the fuckery-fighting.

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HOLD ON TO YOUR GUMMIES, FOLKS, because it’s time for your weekend autopsy of:

• How two white male billionaires are running America like their latest failed startup

• How this is what happens when the unholy trinity of capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy treats democracy like something to gut, flip, and abandon when it no longer serves their egos

• AND how right on cue, Americans across the political spectrum are performing our assigned roles in the outrage theater while systems of power are busy cleaning out everything from humans in Gaza to humans in our government agencies.

I know, I know — that opening is A LOT. But so is *gestures at everything*.

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Now, while I am tempted to keep up the bullet points to further emphasize:

• Just how

• Fucked

• We are

I am resisting the urge and instead want to focus on how we discussed how all the systems working exactly as designed and how this week gave us a masterclass in how empire operates . . .

From watching the Super Bowl turn prime-time entertainment into approved resistance (while also tackling a non-approved bit of resistance squarely to the ground), to seeing Google Calendar quietly erase Black History Month in Black History Month, it’s been another doozy. Because nothing says American empire quite like packaging Black pain for profit while simultaneously erasing Black history.

And because one system of oppression loves teaching another how to dress up its violence in respectable clothes, this week also brought us a changing of the, ahem, guard at Health and Human Services. That’s right — vaccine skeptic, “medical freedom champion”, and blender-enthusiast RFK Jr. just got confirmed as Health Secretary.

But here’s the thing about RFK’s confirmation: While Americans are rightly losing their minds about Trump appointing this idiotic anti-vaxxer — even Mitch McConnell voted against him — we’re overlooking how trust in the medical system eroded in the first place. When 38 million Americans live in poverty, when cancer patients face bankruptcy, when people are forced to ration insulin while watching healthcare executives get gold-toilet yacht-rich, at one point people are going to look for alternatives. What a fucking nightmare that the alternatives people are looking to extremely harmful false solutions.

But now, back to the white supremacist bromance and Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and how they’re busy cleaning house faster than a germaphobe with OCD. Thousands upon thousands of federal workers received pink slips this week, because apparently the best way to make government more efficient is to *checks notes* fire everyone who knows how it works.

While courts are frantically trying to block these mass firings, tragically the damage is already done. I mean, who needs to formally dismantle agencies when you can just fire all the people who make them function? It’s like removing all the load-bearing walls from an old Alabama church and then acting surprised when it collapses on your white nationalist meeting.

The numbers are staggering: More than 3000 workers cut at the U.S. Forest Service, more than 1000 at Veterans Affairs, 405 at Homeland Security including critical cybersecurity staff. At some agencies, like Housing and Urban Development, managers were told to expect cuts of up to 50%. And at the CDC? Nearly 1300 employees (about 10% of the agency’s workforce) were given two hours to collect their belongings and leave. Behold their idea of *efficient government*, i.e., gutting the agency responsible for, oh you know, protecting us from the next pandemic.

And while we’re all distracted by Dupe Doggy DOGE’s government purge, can we circle back to why so many left-leaning folks are acting shocked — SHOCKED! — that Trump wants to “clean out” Gaza, while also forgetting that this has literally been U.S. policy for decades? Yes, Trump’s ethnic cleansing plan is monstrous — and also yes, for the past 18 years every U.S. president has tried to force Egypt to accept displaced Palestinians rather than, oh-I-don’t-know, stop supporting the illegal occupiers.

Yes, we should be outraged — but we should be fucking furious at ALL of it, and not just Trump, the billionaire grifter who just can’t be bothered with keeping the quiet part quiet.

This is exactly how the system wants it: Keep us fighting about the face of empire while empire keeps doing its thing. Keep us debating whether Trump or Biden is worse while both parties perfect the art of selective justice. Keep us distracted by the latest outrage while they methodically dismantle every protection we’ve ever had — and dismantle ENTIRE groups of people abroad.

Want to know what really terrifies them?
That we might stop falling for it.

That instead of performing our assigned roles in their theater of selective outrage, we might actually start building something they can’t control. That while they’re busy with their spring cleaning, we might be planting seeds of real resistance.

We’ve got to stop pretending Trump invented the machinery of destruction when he’s just running it without the usual PR polish. And most importantly? We HAVE TO keep building networks of mutual support that can survive whatever spring cleaning comes next.

And I cannot say this enough: These networks will not be built and sustained entirely through hashtag activism or LinkedIn solidarity posts, but through actual community care: Supporting families without questions asked, building local support systems while empire tries to convince us we’re alone, choosing collective action over individual comfort.

Because while they’re busy trying to clean out everything from government agencies to Gaza, we’ve got some cleaning of our own to do — starting with the cobwebs of propaganda that keep us thinking the problem is solely about who’s in charge and not about American Exceptionalism’s machinery always humming along perfectly.

See you next week, if empire’s efficiency experts haven’t marked us all as redundant.

WANT TO RESIST THIS MACHINERY OF DESTRUCTION? Share this with that friend who’s still crafting the perfect dunking tweet while empire burns.

NOTE TO READERS: The Progressivists runs on righteous rage and reader support. While we’re committed to keeping our truth-telling free from paywalls this only works if folks with means step up to fund the fuckery-fighting.

If you’ve got the financial bandwidth to support our independent, no-holds-barred writing, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your subscription ensures we can keep serving unfiltered reality to everyone — not just those who can afford it.

P.S. After many of you DMed me about keeping The Fuckery Report more frequent, it’s back to being weekly (or bi-weekly, depending on how long I can sustain this amount of writing), since you said you found it a helpful way to connect the dots between empire’s weekly greatest hits :)

Instead, I’m just asking for one small thing. You know, just the dismantling of imperial power an…

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