tagged: Politics

Some of you know me because of a daily political newsletter project I ran in 2017-2018 centered on American politics. I am eight years older and wiser, with much more clever and original ideas, so I come to you now with a new project: a weekly political newsletter slash website centered on Toronto.

The project is called Show Up Toronto, and it launches today. The scope may be smaller geographically but it’s not any less ambitious, just more focused. My current goal is to aggregate public organizing, mutual aid, and advocacy events from around the city, so that it’s easier to discover how to get involved in organizing even if you’re not already plugged into the right social media circles. I am also actively interviewing organizers in the city for a related research project, and if you are an organizer in Toronto I would love to hear from you.

On the advice of a smart friend, I wrote a manifesto for the project to serve as my own north star, which I’m reposting below. I think it’ll be clarifying and engaging even for people who don’t live in Toronto. If you do, sign up for the newsletter or RSS feed and tell your friends.

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I feel objectively worse than I did in 2016. We have so much more information about how bad things are going to get now, and the fascists have had eight more years to prepare for how to roll out cruelty en masse on day one. We have so much less slack in ameliorating the worst impacts of climate change, after yet another eight years of inaction. I’m terrified.

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On January 20th 2017, the 45th President of the United States was inaugurated. On January 21st, millions marched around the world in protest. And within a week, it seemed, we started burning out on the sheer volume of garbage news that was being shoveled at us every day.

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(This post first appeared on Medium.)

Is it okay to cry?

Yes.

Really? I’m not being too emotional?

No, really. Go ahead and cry. This is a fucked-up thing, and it would be weirder if you weren’t upset.

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Donald Trump is President-elect of the United States of America.

This was a shock, but it was also not a surprise. It is always a mistake to underestimate the depth of bigotry.

I have spent most of the day staring off into nothing. I have not gone more than half an hour without tearing up or outright crying. I am already sick and tired of reading postmortems but I cannot stop clicking them like a hamster on speed, looking for something that could have saved you, could have saved us. I am angry at everybody. I am angry at everything. I want to tear shit up and burn things down. I want to disappear.

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