Archive
A Letter to a Young Organizer
There’s no getting around it. Organizing is hard. But the context you are organizing in right now? It’s a whole different thing. When I was coming up, the expectations felt big. People in the neighborhood were being screwed seven ways to Sunday. So, each night we’d...
With Environmental Justice, the Devil is in the Details
Luxury development, Hawai'i coastline Photo credit: Kai Nishiki It’s invigorating to see some of our leaders finally reckon with the most abiding problem of American climate politics: that green does not always mean equitable. Many well-meaning climate policies have...
Our Next Attorney General Must Boldly Set a Course Toward Justice
Black People Showed Up for Biden; Now We Need an Attorney General Who Will Show Up for Us President-Elect Joe Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris have both struggled to answer for their histories of promoting “tough-on-crime” policies which have harmed Black...
Blessed Be The Organizers
Like all of us, I’ve sorted through many feelings this week. And, there’s been one constant. Gratitude for organizers. If you take organizers and the local institutions they’ve built off the table, Donald Trump is a two-term President. I feel certain of that. To be...
A United Front Is the Right Strategy to Defeat Authoritarianism
1932 paramilitary rally, Spandau, Germany. Photo credit: Bundesarchiv, Wikimedia Commons / cc My political views have pretty much been aligned with those of the activist left for my entire life. I supported Bernie Sanders to be the Democratic Party nominee for...
Making Movement Politics Real
As a young organizer, I was told we shouldn’t engage in electoral politics - that it was dirty, and a distraction. But after a long run of not winning what we most needed, it became crystal clear that operating only in a landscape created by someone else was not...
Caged Indefinitely During COVID-19
Photo credit: Monroe County Sheriff / Twitter / cc In May, Citizen Action of New York, part of the People's Action national network of grassroots groups, learned of a man being held in indefinite detention because of COVID-19. We asked him if he would be willing to...
Follow John Lewis: Don't Let Trump Provoke Violence
Photo credit: Spider Martin GPA photo archive / flickr / cc John Lewis, the Georgia Congressman who led the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and was one of the "Big Six" civil rights leaders who organized the 1963 March on Washington, is being...
We Need a People's Bailout NOW
One of every five working Americans – more than 32 million people – have lost their job to COVID-19. A tsunami of evictions will come unless lawmakers take meaningful action now. Unemployment is rising - again. Hunger is rising, too. And cases of COVID are rising...
Policing Is Not A Public Good
Photo credit: Sgt. Joe Davis, Utah National Guard / cc For decades, we’ve been told that policing is a public good: available to all, for the benefit of all. But in practice, that’s never been true. One of the basic measures of a “public good” is that it’s accessible...
