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On the morning he was murdered, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo got out of bed in a house he built himself. He drank a cup of coffee and ate a hot breakfast prepared by his wife. Had he come home that evening, he would have played with his dogs on his porch, because that’s what he did most nights.

At moments like this, we are often reminded that we shouldn’t protest that the human being murdered by government forces was a good person. To do so is to buy into the logic that there exist in our midst monsters so heinous that they must be eliminated extra judiciously. The moment we say “but this time it was a good guy,” we pretend that we are not saying “.... unlike _____” but of course the ellipses and the blank-to-be-filled-in are always there. That’s how you maintain a country more interested in excusing death than nurturing life, with the latter halves of callous sentences.

Whether necessary or not, it sounds like Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was a man who both loved capaciously and was loved in return. According to those mourning him most intimately, he embodied all the things that we claim to celebrate as a country (fatherhood, small business ownership, treating his community with kindness and intentionality).

But not that father. Not that small business owner. Not that community member.

The people who murdered Lorenzo Salgado Araujo claim that he weaponized his vehicle, just like that other cold blooded criminal, Renée Good. Yes, they were looking for a different guy, but he was the guy they killed, so he must have had it coming. They will say many more things in the days to come. They will request your gratitude for removing Lorenzo Salgado Araujo from your life. If a vehicle can be weaponized, so too can a narrative.

I have lived in a culture of death long enough to have metabolized hundreds of stories like this, of human beings no longer with us. I have listened to family members desperately make the case for their relative’s lovability, and then heard the state’s cold counterpoints about the murdered person’s unredeemable rottenness.

This time, I am fixated on the cup of coffee, about how it smelt and tasted, about whether he found a song he loved on the radio after he turned on the ignition, about whether he got a good night’s sleep the previous evening, about the dumbest thing he recently got distracted by on the Internet. Lorenzo Salgado Araujo should still be alive today, not as a reward for being a decent dad and boss, but because we are told that how we spend our days is how we live our lives, and so who are we to decide, for each other, which day will be the one when all that living stops.

Before Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was dead, he was living. He may have been running late. He may not have gotten to savor that cup of coffee. But no matter, as there would be another one tomorrow, just as there would be dogs at home and guys to pick up for work and adult sons to both adore and fret over. There’d be work and home and a new Liga MX season starting this weekend and the chance that, this year, Chivas might win the cup.

Maybe he hated Houston in the summer, or maybe the thick, humid air felt like home. Maybe he said something he regretted a few days ago, or maybe he just heard a joke that just cracked him up so much, that he couldn’t wait to tell the fellas. Maybe that night, when his wife asked about work, he would have said “oh man, I don’t even want to get into it,” or maybe “actually it was pretty great, thanks for asking.”

That should have been enough, because that’s all there is. A day and a routine and the inalienable right to pet your dogs and go to bed and say, well, let’s run it back tomorrow.

-GoFundMe for Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s family.

-GoFundMe for Daniel Tirado Pantoja’s family. Daniel was Lorenzo’s friend and employee. He is currently in detention as a result of the same traffic stop where Lorenzo was murdered.

-SEIU Texas is hosting a protest/vigil for Lorenzo on Saturday, July 11th at 3319 Harrisburg Boulevard, Houston.

-I will update this space with future protests/fundraisers.

-This week’s announcements (unrelated to this story) can all be found at the bottom of my Tuesday essay (including our next Interdependence Relay event, this Saturday in Santa Fe, NM).

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When I criticized Graham Platner a month ago, I promptly heard from a number of people, but especially women in Maine who shared my politics but not my opinion of their Senate candidate. Some of them just told me to get bent. But many others were gracious enough to talk with me about why they still stood by that particular man, even if I had upset them.

We talked, and they gave voice to commitments I share — the need to topple corrupt and unjust systems, the value in social movements welcoming us as imperfect humans, the hope that we can all grow together by working with our neighbors for an unrigged world.

Our exchanges didn’t change my opinion about the man— one forged not from any disagreement on policy, but from a long line of increasingly redder flags (the stint with Blackwater, the misogynistic Reddit posts, the affairs, the Nazi tattoo, the domestic violence accusation). But nor did I leave feeling righteous. I quietly hoped that my gut was off, that Platner was fully accountable to and honest with his community and that, this time at least, the power-seeking man would finally be worthy of defense.

I wanted that not for his sake, but for theirs.

When I heard the news about Jenny Racicot’s accusation, my heart shattered. First, of course, for Racicot herself, who has had to wrestle not only with her own trauma but with all the risks that come with speaking out against a load bearing famous man. And then, again, for Platner’s other accusers, including Lyndsey Fifield, whose story was disregarded by so many on the left because she doesn’t share our politics. Then one more time, for a nation of survivors who received another reminder that, when given the choice between protecting a man’s career and supporting women, it’s always a foregone conclusion.

I told my wife that this one was hitting me hard. She asked, in essence, why this particular story. A fair question, given that nothing about this pattern— a charismatic man cocooned from consequence— was new.

I thought about my conversations with those women in Maine, about how much they reminded me of the countless times I’ve witnessed wives, mothers and female colleagues asked to defend the worst behavior from men for the sake of a bigger cause. I thought about Dolores Huerta, and the ways that, even in movements for justice, women are callously tossed to the wolves but men are always too big to fail.

I also remember the many times my own fragile male ego has taken the wheel— not at the level of Platner’s, to be clear, but in the more prosaic manner familiar to any woman whose ever shared a workplace with men in love with the sound of our own voices.

To be a man, I’ve learned, is to have excuses made for you.

Patriarchy is one of the many terms that we’ve been scolded, on the left, for speaking out loud. We’ve been told that you can’t build a cross-class political movement with “buzzwords.” Too many syllables,I guess. How condescending, that line of thought, to assume that our neighbors aren’t worth being told the truth.

But there’s really no other word for it. Patriarchy, that violent and infantalizing lie. That wicked thief, robbing life from some, dignity from others, and full humanity from the people it purports to benefits.

This story was never about one man. It was always about what happens when we move out of fear rather than hope, when we our so worried about the alternative that we allow ourselves to be more enamored with a single savior than the potential of movements built together.

I don’t take any pride in being “right” about Platner, nor do I blame anybody in Maine for desiring a candidate who spoke to them. It’s not their fault that the candidate in question maintained a greater commitment to his own mythology than to his neighbors.

Liberation has and never will be a game of whack a mole, about finding and shaming a few bad dudes and calling it a day. It is and always will be about naming what we actually deserve.

We deserve political movements that don’t just spout off righteous ideals, but actually love people. All people, but especially those who current systems love the least.

We deserve communities with open, welcoming doors, but also the expectation that we’re all responsible for each other’s care and safety.

We deserve a politics of class solidarity rather than class fetishism, one that actually respects the full mosaic of working people, rather than falling for the one cool trick of elevating whichever white guy sounds most like a Super Bowl truck commercial.

We deserve full honesty about the patterns that keeps us stuck. Yes, it’s capitalism, but never in isolation. There have always been three horsemen riding together— the rapacious greed of capital, the affected blindness of white supremacy, and the unchecked aggression of patriarchy. To jettison the latter two as woke distractions is to lie about the way they all work together.

We deserve masculinity that isn’t so brittle that it feels the need to assert itself with a growl or an explosion.

We deserve boundless political imagination.

We deserve leaders that articulate both our rage and heartbreak but also our joy and collective potential.

We deserve politics that makes us feel more expansive, more hopeful, more trusting of each other.

We deserve more than just loud, charismatic voices who can shout the right thing into a microphone. We deserve potlucks and dance parties and childcare collectives and shoulders to cry on.

A better world is still possible. And I fully believe we’re building it. But not if we accept anything less than we deserve. Not just in some gauzy future, but right now. With each other. And for each other.

End notes:

1. This is an essay about all of us, not strictly about what the Democratic Party of Maine should do next. As of this writing it sounds like, if Platner drops out, there are still options. Personally, I hope that road leads to a different candidate, but one who shares the political commitments that made so many Mainers feel seen and heard. Beyond that, I hope there’s a lesson here for all of us, wherever we live. I do believe in growth, transformation and reparations.

2. As with most of my pieces, this is an essay about prefigurative politics, about not just demanding a different worlds, but treating each other now in the manner we hope will be true when we all get free. That’s why I’m hosting the Interdependence Relay, to celebrate people in all fifty states doing exactly that.

   1. This past weekend, we had an immensely rad Trans Movie Club event in Salt Lake City. This coming weekend, if you’re in or near Santa Fe, New Mexico, you’re invited to come cook mutual aid breakfast burritos with the crew of the SF Burrito Brigade. 3:00 PM Saturday, July 11th at the Commons (2300 W Alameda St).

   2. We’ll be announcing our Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas and Iowa host soon. Keep checking back to find out all our officially announced events.

   3. We’re currently reading applications for hosts in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana and Ohio (deadline July 31st). Apply here!

3. I recognize the irony of including, at the end of this particular piece, my typical pitch to support a white guy who has opinions on the Internet (me) but I’m doing my best to make all this work— the writing and the organizing— not be about my own self aggrandizement but the broader project of us building, together. If it’s helped you, and you want to see this space continue, I’d appreciate the help a lot and don’t take it for granted (which is also why I’m generous with thank you gifts).

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We say many things, but mostly one. Do you see me? Do you acknowledge that I have a story, that I worry/love/ache/hope?

When I’ve been urged to stand for the pledge, to love or leave this place, my reply rarely satisfies. That Baldwin quote, about loving America so much that you must criticize it, doesn’t move this country’s self-declared super fans.

It’s so hard to admit the truth, to ask a stranger to love you. It’s far easier to threaten. And so they do. They sneer…

We will make you revere this land, even if it kills us both. We will mandate it. You will repeat after us: this is freedom. We will teach your children that this place is without flaws. When you attend a sporting event, there will be a pause in the action, and an old man will stand and wave. You will not be given the option to love this man with a question, nor a gentle smile. This man is the army, you’ll be told, and the army is the country. To critique either is to spit in the old man’s face.

Nation states are daydreams, but load bearing.

God bless America and God damn America are both prayers.

I don’t hate the old man. I hope he lives a beautiful life. I hope we all do, especially those never afforded a stadium’s applause.

We haven’t gotten close yet, not in two hundred fifty years.

But we still get to try.

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Can you feel it? There’s a vibe shift afoot, and it spans across the American left-liberal coalition. Self-righteous bloviation and performative nihilism are out. Community care and collective joy are in. I am always beating this drum, but it is not just me now. The Atlantic believes, and would also like to coin a term. Jacobin’s all in, and they’re hoping other socialists hop on board. Vox can’t help but notice that something’s in the air. Counter Punch, vehemently disagrees with Vox’s framing, but in doing so argues that there’s something even more radical and beautiful at play. Amanda Litman feels it. So too, Anne Helen Petersen. And also, presumably, my two current favorite cultural bellwethers, the two gentlemen who don’t know each other handing out free baklava at the Knicks parade.

Petersen asked me about all this, when she interviewed me yesterday for Culture Study. Do I feel it too? Of course I do. Very much so. I even threw out some historic precedents to make the case. "Would you like to hear about Western New York in the 1830s?” I asked, and somehow she was up for it.

I realize that it is both audacious and unscientific to issue a declaration on these matters, but where would we be without audacious and unscientific declarations? “I’m in love!” “This pain can’t last forever.” There’s always next year.” Those too are statements of faith.

And anyway, there is evidence, perhaps circumstantial, but growing. It’s not just that a large U.S. city wth a joy-spreading socialist mayor had an ebullient basketball parade and then elected even more smiling socialists. It’s not just that the defining story of the World Cup has been about good times, man, especially of the grassroots intercultural variety. It’s that people really are grasping— especially in the wake of this winter in Minneapolis— that building care infrastructure with our neighbors isn’t just a pleasant pastime, but an essential and urgent political building block.

Obviously, there’s a difference between applauding green shoots of hope and declaring premature victory. Fascism did not disappear last year merely because Zohran’s campaign was powered by scavenger hunts and post-canvassing happy hours. Institutional racism did not dissipate into a cloud of dust because the residents of Lawrence, Kansas have been nice to Algerian soccer players. Times are rough, and even I concede that it’ll take more than just potlucks to cleanse the world’s million wounds.

But there’s something in the air, and it’s notably not despair. The left, particularly here in America, has every reason to collapse into apathy and sourness. We have so many structural cards stacked against us. And also, isn’t that the rub on us? That we’re humorless scolds whose primary pastime is telling everybody in our vicinity that they’re doing it wrong.

But instead, we’re back to bread and roses. And not just in the abstract. We are baking fresh bread together and delivering roses to each other’s doorsteps. Perhaps not as much as we need to (if you are lonely or hungry and nobody is visiting, then we have work to do), but sparks are being lit.

This turn, it should be noted, is not about clinging to the kind of false hope that ignores all the tragedies of our moment. We live in a world of death and despair, both in the ways of all rigged, hierarchical societies, and in ways specific to MAGA’s barbarous anti-logic. We are cultivating joy not in spite of an awareness of current conditions, but precisely because of it. Prefigurative politics is back, baby. Spread the word.

But that’s only one half of the equation. Since I am now in the business of wild declarations, here’s another one: We are actually in a moment of two vibe shifts at once, with the left and the right are moving in increasingly disparate energetic directions.

When I say there is a vibe shift in American conservatism, it is from garden variety bad to world historically putrid. The right has always been embittered and exclusionary, but recently it has slouched past Bethlehem and straight off a cliff. Here’s a partial scene report.

-Last fall, Charlie Kirk died. What followed was a sweaty attempt, on the part of the entire conservative apparatus, to both make him a martyr and terrorize the rest of us into supplication. It didn’t work. Instead, the brief arena-sized declaration of conservative unity quickly descended into a battle royale between various heirs to his throne, individuals whose ideologies range from garden variety bigotry to actual Naziism. This is not surprising, of course, because that’s what happens when a political movement has no organizing principle other than spite and power lust.

-The current regime’s primary attempt to consolidate power after 2024’s putative electoral mandate was a shock and awe immigration enforcement campaign. After immensely cruel displays of force in Chicago, Minneapolis and other major cities, the effort failed to rally Americans to their side, largely because while we are far from a perfect populace, we still bristle at images of state agents locking up five year olds and murdering protestors.

-Trump and Netanyahu started a war, which has been both awful in the way of all wars, and uniquely stupid in the way of wars led by two vainglorious strongmen with limited understandings of cause and effect. Pete Hegseth was also prominently involved, which dramatically increased the overall level of red-faced rants about warfighters. We did not win that war, even in the eyes of those who believe any wars are winnable.

-The President of the United States, a man obsessed with self-aggrandizing artifice, attempted to turn the reflecting pool in Washington DC an unnatural shade of blue. Instead, it is a goopy algal green and now the regime is arresting bystanders who come too close.

-It’s not just that Trump’s birthday celebration/UFC fight in the Rose Garden was garish and bizarre. It’s that nobody in attendance— at what was purportedly an entertainment event— could even feign having a good time. Everything was too expensive and nothing was presented with care because the UFC, like Trump, holds its own fans in contempt. At the end of the night one of the fighters made a vile circa-2017 Michelle Obama joke, because that’s what it means for comedy to be legal again.

-Trump sure does seem to fall asleep a lot these days, a difficult look for a supposed strongman.

-J.D. Vance just published a book about how being born again as a Christian cured him of ambition, which is why he desperately needs to be the most powerful man in the world .

-Elon Musk has more money than God now but clearly doesn’t know what to do with himself, so he keeps on inciting race riots.

Modern conservatism is sleepy and embittered and tearing itself apart. It is a movement of petulant hall monitors who want to fire you for talking ill of Charlie Kirk and arrest you for pointing at their moldering reflective pool. It might ship you off to war, and then grow bored with the enterprise a few days later.

This was always how this current moment in American conservatism was going to end, with both a whimper and a scream, because while reactionary populism is always sold as a people’s movement, its core ethos is a deep and abiding hatred for people. You can’t welcome your neighbors around the table if you surround it with barb wire and nobody has money for food.

Again, this doesn’t mean that MAGA is dead, nor that the left is guaranteed to take the reins. What is true, however, is that our country— a profoundly imperfect place whose best moments have always come from its most loving residents— is turning 250. Many commemorations of that anniversary (either excoriative or celebratory) have focused on litigating how well we’ve done up to this point. For the right, there’s an aggrieved, defensive pride. For the left, it’s an honest critique, but of the kind that could lead us to also stop trusting our potential to ever do better.

But if we shift the question to not be about the last 250 years but the next, then we have a choice. Will the next page in American history be written by those of us who love or hate other people?

We could really muck this up. Or, put more gracefully, we might struggle to climb this current social change mountain, because the status quo has all the money and power and if history is a guide, those forces will cling to current hierarchies with all their might. They’re going to be so nasty, you all. Nasty and cruel, in way that will require us to get far better at protecting each other. But they’ve chosen their path, which means we need to commit to our own.

As we speak, one movement is tilting towards care and the other is churlishly hurtling into a reactionary abyss. They control the institutions, but we have the momentum. And that may not be enough to dramatically change society in the short term, but it’s more than enough to build our ranks, especially thanks to unforced errors on the right.

Don’t believe me? Pretend that you had no preexisting ideological bent. Whose movement seems like a better time— the one with the potlucks and parties in the street, or the one that hates everybody and looks like J.D. Vance?

It’s time to push those vibes further. More care. More fun. Doors swung even wider. Bread and roses and art and music and everybody finding the place that makes them light up the most. Every invite helps. Every welcome mat begets another. Every celebration makes it a little easier to believe.

End notes:

1. A very good way to grow more hopeful about this moment is to organize a fifty state relay of inspiring community gatherings. Fortunately, another way to grow more hopeful is to take part in that relay— perhaps as an event attendee, but especially as a host. The application deadline for a whole bunch of states (IA, KS, MO, AK, OK, TX and LA) is June 30th. Applying isn’t hard and, if I’m being honest, neither is hosting. It is fun, though. You should do it! And even if you don’t, you should check out our website and get inspired as new event reports from our past hosts keep rolling in.

2. Also, if you’re in the Salt Lake City area and a trans movie night seems like it’s up your alley, that’s our Utah event! And it’s coming up soon— July 5th. Details here.

3. It was also very nice to have one of my favorite pieces of all time reprinted by the terrific at The Double Shift (a great newsletter).

4. Supporting The White Pages! It’s always a great idea!

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1. I have many favorite songs that are essentially faith-filled declarations about how

   political tides are about to change because we’re building something special but as much as I am not one for celebrating mass drownings, my favorite remains “When the Ship Comes In” by Dylan. Too bad he ended up being too cool for political organizing. The guy could write a good movement song when he wanted to.

Hey pals,

It’s Juneteenth, and I’ve got public celebration on the brain.

As should surprise absolutely nobody, I am a real sucker for people coming together and getting really hyped in the streets. For just about any reason, mind you, but definitely including sports. Have I been all in, on both New York City’s basketball celebrations and generalized World…

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I recently watched two videos. The second one is neat. It’s a whole bunch of New Yorkers celebrating in the streets after the Knicks won the NBA championship. At one point a dad says “tonight, we’re all neighbors.” Terrific.

The other video was filmed at Game Four of the playoffs. A man with a microphone interviews fans at the game, curious as to how much they paid for tickets. The dollar amounts are offensively high. There are a lot of references to wealthy parents. It is not a feel good video.

As far as I can tell, the point of the ticket price video is to make you feel astronomical levels of envy and resentment, and also to make you utilize a very specific app the next time you would like to attend a concert or a sporting event. You are supposed to get a tiny peak at life for these be-jerseyed Antionettes and be reminded that they are allowed to have fun in a way that you are not. “DADDY’S MONEY!” they squeal, taunting you, but also revealing a degree of shame. And in response, you mutter, “screw them,” but also, more quietly, “must be nice.”

This is how entertainment works now. You are technically allowed, as a plebe, to be a fan of international soccer, Taylor Swift, or Disney. But there is now a level of fan experience— being in the arena for the historic playoff game, screaming your lungs out on the floor of the Eras tour, spending a truly care-free day at a theme park— that is increasingly only accessible to the brahmins and plutocrats. The trend is well-documented, but also you have eyes and ears and a bank account. You have likely, at some point in the last year, considered, “could I go to Coachella?” or “wouldn’t it be nice to check out a World Cup match?” only to immediately have the blood drain from your face when you see the price.

Here are some sentences I read recently:

“Introducing the Truss Club, a new membership experience designed for those who want the best out of game day and beyond. Membership to the Truss Club provides exclusive access to The Truss, a new two-story, open-air club that transforms how you experience game day. The Truss brings together elite hospitality, elevated culinary experiences, personalized service and an elegant indoor-outdoor atmosphere unlike anything previously offered at American Family Field.”

That prose was written by my favorite baseball team, a breezy explanation as to why public funding from the State of Wisconsin, Milwaukee County and the City of Milwaukee is being spent for a decidedly non-public purpose. Put in non-marketing terms, the Truss Club will be a fancy new space available only to season ticket holders in the most expensive seats in the ballpark. Apparently the Milwaukee Brewers are one of the last teams in Major League Baseball to hop on this cool new trend (“extortion,” it used to be called). They had no choice, trust them. “Fans have increased expectations for their game day experience,” a team representative assures me in a separate press release.

Speaking as a fan, do I have increased expectations for my game day experience? I am told I should. I am supposed to no longer be satisfied with the thrill of drinking a Miller Lite outside in July and high-fiving a few strangers and agreeing with my children, for the millionth time, that William Contreras has the best at bat song. I am supposed to want to be in the Truss Club. Or at least I am supposed to accept that somebody wants to be in the Truss Club, and that they deserve to be there, away from me, because they are rich and I am not and that’s why, in just about every city in America, the old stadium got torn down and the new one got millions in subsidies and the primary difference between old and new was the addition of Premium Spaces.1

It does not matter if I resent the Truss Club or I desperately want to gain access to the Truss Club. What’s important, for the maintenance of a profoundly broken system, is that I accept that the Truss Club is inevitable, as is paying the cost of a used car for World Cup tickets, or being permanently priced out seeing your favorite artist.

The point is to make you feel like there is no realistic alternative. You can go to the comments of that video about the rich kids at the Knicks game and flood the zone with guillotine emojis. You can write 3000 word essays about enshittification and how the end game is to make the median experience so terrible (endless lines, overworked staffers, hot and tired human beings thrust together in ways that bring out our worse) that it incentivizes the fat cats to pay even more to separate themselves from the rabble. You can play the game for a night, maxing out a credit card for a once-in-a-lifetime experience. But whatever you do, you are supposed to accept that this is what it means to be entertained in the United States of America in 2026. Want to have fun? Like, the most fun? Get rich, or die trying.

Which brings us to the street parties. You did not have to be physically in New York City on Saturday night to understand how it must have felt. You do not need to be the kind of person who, like me, watched a million videos of other people flipping out with, around and on top of each other. You do not need to personally enjoy hugging sweaty strangers in the middle of a suddenly car-free boulevard, nor do you need any emotional connection to the New York Knicks. You understand what it looks like for human beings to entertain each other, to be both recipients and transmitters of joy.

You know it looked fun as hell, because before we were offered Premium Experiences you were human, and you knew how to have fun with other humans. You know what transcendence feels like to you— perhaps the swish of a ball through a net as the clock expires, or a series of perfect brush strokes on canvas, or the tone of four voices in harmony, or a perfectly timed punch line or jump scare— and you understand the profound human pleasure of sharing that experience with others.

New York City, I am so happy for you, and so grateful for your mayor’s attempts to democratize spaces and experiences that have been stolen from the public, so I will allow you all your paeans about how Saturday night proved something about your city in particular. I agree that it is easier, with proximity and walkability, to celebrate together. I love all that for you.

But this is not just possible in one city. And it is not just possible when a sports team wins a championship. There is a reason why I am currently hosting a relay of fifty free events in fifty states, and why those events include Polynesian fire knife performances in Hawaii, intimate group discussions in Nevada, trans movie nights in Utah, Indigenous punk rock shows in North Dakota, and family play time in Nebraska.2

We do not all need to have fun in the same way, nor to love the same things, but we are all equally deserving of being entertained, in public, for free.

That is and always has been a political statement, and for any social movement throughout history that actually loves people, it’s also been an organizing principle. You want me to believe that you’re serious about building a better world? Throw the best parties, and make sure that everybody who shows up feels welcome.

I resent the corporations that commodify our joy. I hate this broader system of haves and have nots. And I’ve got plenty of not-too-tender feelings about the wealth hoarders themselves, occupying their luxury boxes and driving up prices for the rest of us. But I also feel sorry for them, because the more they buy into the idea of exclusivity and isolation, the more that they’ll never actually experience the best parts of being alive.

Here’s a rendering of The Truss Club, in case you’re curious.

You’ll notice it’s mostly empty. And half the people are alone. So goes the exclusive experience.

Here’s another image, also including a human being with their arms raised in elation. You tell me which one you believe more.

The most fun place in the world isn’t a luxury box. It is not a Truss Club. It is not backstage at the concert. It’s not on the other side of a velvet rope. It’s always been wherever you are having the time of your life and you run into another stranger and they are having the time in your life and nobody around you is trying to rip you off, they just made a space where you could be together. It’s when you realize that you didn’t have to prove yourself, and how in fact there’s nothing to prove. You remember that you are alive, and you deserve to feel like this all the time.

End notes:

1. A related essay, from the great Rebecca Solnit. And another one, from me, about singing out loud with strangers in a sports stadium.

2. I am very much not a wealthy person, but I offer just about everything I do (my trainings, virtually all of my writing, coaching and support for organizers) for free, without a paywall. There are some things that paid subscribers have access to (merchandise, because that costs a fair bit for me to buy, and our discussion space, because it does help if that community can be safer and more vulnerable), but the vast majority of stuff is just out there, for you. Heck, I'm even using the grant I got for the Interdependence Relay to pay other people instead of myself (hosts all get a stipend). I like doing it that way, though it’s only possible if I also include these little paragraphs about how I really do rely on the generosity of readers. So here you go: I bet you’re not wealthy either, but if you have the proverbial cup of coffee a month to spare to keep a space like this rolling, you’re doing a kindness both to me and to other people who also love this space but can’t afford to support it.

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3. I bet you want to learn more about that relay, don’t you? And even apply to host? Everything you need, right here! And a fun little carousel about it (on Instagram) here. Applications open now for hosts in IA, KS, MO, OK, AR, TX and LA.

4. Here is another video of residents of Zohran Mamdani’s New York being insanely happy. A very happy bing bong to all the people in this video, including the legendary Jane Pauley.

5. In case you are wondering, here is William Contreras’ walk up song. I am well aware that it is not merely his at bat song, that it is very popular throughout professional sports, but I’m sure neither myself nor my favorite catcher believe in gatekeeping.

You’ll remember, a few months ago, when college graduates across the country booed the living daylights out of AI-boosting commencement speakers. It felt great, or at least it did to me, being that I am both anti-AI and instinctually aware that there is nothing more terrifying than being jeered by a crowd 16-25 year olds. I mean, just look at this quote about Google CEO Eric Schmidt from a recent University of Arizona graduate.

“His speech was incredibly disrespectful to students,” said [Olivia] Malone. “We as students are discouraged from using it and penalized for using it. And then to have our speaker be the champion of AI is just like, OK? Why?”

Absolutely brutal stuff. “Just like, Ok? Why?” If I were Google CEO Eric Schmidt I would’ve immediately evaporated into thin air. I generally lean more towards persuasion than public shaming. But still, if I had a billion dollars to fund a social change movement, I’d be tempted to hire thousands of judgmental twenty somethings to travel en masse to every professional writer’s house. At the moment that writer opened up a generative AI tool to “supplement their authorial voice” or whatever, my crowd of gum popping mercenaries would roll their eyes and issue the most powerful retort in the English language.

“Ew, gross.”

On many metrics, the “ew, grosses” are having a moment. AI is now less popular than ICE. Two thirds of us think adoption is moving too fast. Opposition to data centers is the only issue bringing us together across party lines. What’s that in the air? Backlash, baby. Or, as anthropologist Jasmine Sun puts it, the rise of “AI populism… a worldview in which AI is viewed not as a normal technology, but as an elite political project to be resisted.”

Hell yeah to that. Love when an elite political project is resisted. But here’s the rub. Sure, we’re all mad at Sam Altman, but we’re also mad at Jeff Bezos, and we’re still one-clicking him all the way to the bank. Over half of American adults report voluntarily using AI tools, and 40% say that they increased their use in 2025. That’s pretty hefty adoption levels for technology that makes everybody’s writing sound like a LinkedIn post.

You heard this a lot, during this spring’s boo-a-palooza. “Those kids are hypocrites, because they’re the same students who use AI to get out of doing their classwork.” That’s the kind of statement that’s hard to prove empirically, but it rings true. A lot of college students use generative AI, and a lot of graduates booed. Surely, there’s a hefty Venn diagram there. I mean, people even use AI to make anti-data center flyers. The line between anti-corporate crusader and dutiful consumer isn’t as cut as dry as we like to pretend.

The lazy way to square that circle is to just chalk it all up to hypocrisy. Everybody loves to be righteous in a crowd, but we’re all looking for shortcuts when nobody’s looking. But there’s another line from an AI-skeptical member of the class of 2026 that I haven’t been able to forget.

“I think at the beginning we were excited about it and it was this cool thing, ‘Oh, I can write an essay for you,’ but now like, we don't want that anymore and we don’t want it messing with our job prospects and messing with the jobs that we’ve worked for years— so hard for for years— to kind of eligible for.”

That’s from Kareen Gill, who just graduated from American University. And she’s hitting on something both honest and profound. This isn’t hypocrisy or virtue signaling. It’s a political awakening. A group of people was sold a false bill of goods, but then the dissonance became impossible to ignore. That’s literally how political movements start, as long as they’re properly nurtured and new arrivals aren’t scolded for having once taken the bait.

Even as a consistent AI skeptic, I absolutely understand why so many others bought the initial sales pitch. Every time I’ve ever been told that I have to use AI, the argument’s always been the same. It was about being left behind, and how there was presumably no worse fate. “Why would you turn your nose up at a revolutionary new tool? I mean, you’re using a smart phone instead of a typewriter, this is just like that?”

I don’t know, man. These days, I could totally go for a typewriter and a rotary dial phone versus an addiction machine in my pocket, but still. I remember when I didn’t feel that way, when I too was worried about being the last on board with this or that new tech breakthrough. I remember the first time a friend told me about this new thing called Facebook. I booked it as fast as I could to the nearest desktop.

I should also acknowledge here. It’s easy for me to avoid proactively using AI. I don’t have the same institutional pressure that’s been piled on so many of my neighbors. I’m not at a workplace that mandates use of enterprise AI software. I’m not an educator whose district has bought into some fly-by-night ed tech contract. And I’m not one of the many college students whose universities, particularly cowardly in the face of “left behind” rhetoric, essentially assigned Chat GPT or Claude as an institutional study buddy.

Back to the college students. Many of them, no doubt, thought that AI could be a cool tool that would allow them to hack the system. “That professor wants me to waste the best years of my youth writing a term paper? Jokes on them. They don’t know how much I rule at prompting.” But there’s nothing like graduating into a decimated job market and having your resume auto-rejected by robot after robot for the truth to reveal itself. They, the individual AI user, were never in the driver’s seat. The technology they were using was a tool, but not for them. It was always a means to an end—one more way to transfer wealth and power to those already on top of the societal pile. AI looks like your friend, but it’s the kind of friend that schemes behind your back, steals your money, and might also murder you.

There are plenty of ways to make essentially this same point. The nascent scribe who turns to Chat GPT and never actually learns to write. The lonely chatbot user who learns to trust sycophantic lines of code more than other human beings. The kid who thought they found a lifeline in a large language model, until the robot told them to kill themselves.

You can’t win at any consumer-marketed AI, because AI is incapable of mutualism. It’s an insatiable consumption machine. Everything placed in its path is gobbled up and spit out. Books and art and intellectual property. An entire town’s power and water supply. Your attention. And for what? So that the machine itself can grow larger and smarter, so that next year somebody can say “See? AI got better! Everybody loves robot writing more than your drivel; it’s so embarrassing that you ever believed in yourself.”

Why is AI desperate for consumers, even who truly believe that they’re using it responsibly? Because all the prompts get spit right back into the system in the name of “improvement.” We’re at a stage of capitalism where we’re always the product, but this is a business model whose core value proposition is to tell us that we suck and are nothing without it.

When I’ve made previous entreaties against generative AI use, especially in writing, I’ve gone flowery and plaintive. I’ve talked about trust and the social contract of authorship. Earnest, sure, but it suffers the same fatal flaw of most of my entreaties. We all know what we should be doing, but that’s the whole game of commodity fetishism and plausible diability. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s all bad, but my contribution is just a drop in the bucket….”

That’s why I love the booing. It reaffirms the distance between us and this technology. It punctures the myth of inevitability and reminds us that we had a life before the chatbots. Perhaps you’ve used generative AI. We get it. But you can stop at any time.

For a few years now, we have been inundated with messages that using AI is nothing more than a cool life hack. Celebrity Super Bowl commercials took the Goofus and Gallant approach, pitting a savvy AI user against their stuck in the mud luddite buddy. In a sense, the AI industry pitched itself less as righteous than subversive, a window to a future where the haves were renegades and the have nots were a bunch of whiny babies.

But now, the bloom is coming off the rose, which means that it’s time to take out the hedge clippers and finish the job. The original luddites were radical activists, and they were also right. We should say it loudly and proudly and at every possibly opportunity: Generative AI is loser technology and it doesn’t deserve you. The more you use it the more we all lose. Maybe not immediately, but eventually. You will give more of your data, trust, money, water and critical thinking skills to the consumption robots, and what you’ll get in return won’t ever belong to you. It won’t be imbued with your animus or soul. It will be a reasonable simulacra of the kind of thing a human being would make, just, you know, lacking all semblances of humanity.

I don’t need you to argue with me about why you should be allowed to use AI. I’ll just reply with honesty and love: you’re great, but AI is a loser machine. And I hope you don’t use it, not because you need to prove your morality to me, but because I don’t want you to lose. I think you deserve better than a resource-guzzling, death-causing, random word generator.

The consumption machine doesn’t believe in you, and that’s why it wants to trick you, extract as much data and information as it can from you, and then move on. If its intelligence is artificial, so too is its heart. It tells you that you need it, that it’ll make your life better. And maybe it will, up until the very moment that it won’t.

The AI flyer might look better, on a technical level, than the one you could make yourself. Art is hard. Your essay would emerge much more quickly if you used AI at any stage in the writing process. Writing is hard. You may get a more effusive response from a chatbot than a friend. Relationships are hard.

I’m not pretending that there’s nothing consumer-facing AI can do for you. But we’re not so far down the line that we can’t choose each other instead. Not all of us are going to be the best writers, or researchers, or spreadsheet tabulators, or flyer makers. Which means, just maybe, that we have to turn to each other for help. Or better yet, that we can get better at offering to lift each other’s loads.

You’ve heard something to this effect before, and it sounds cliche, but it’s still true. The point of any pursuit is the trying. The point of being alive is living. The point of humanity is other humans. Would you give that all up, for a machine that just wants to take from you? Really?

Or to put it more succinctly.

“… just like, Ok, why?’

End notes:

1. This essay, like all my essays, was researched, outlined and written by me, a human being, without the aid of any AI technology. And I loved writing it, but doing so took multiple days of research and drafting, on top of a nearly full time job running events across the country (for which I’m not currently receiving a salary— we have a grant, but it’s currently funding my professional partner’s time, not my own). I’d love to keep doing this— writing, organizing, and assuring you that, for better or worse, this is all me—but I also like being able to help support my family. If you enjoyed it and can pitch in, great! I’ll work hard to make it worth your while. If not, I understand and am still grateful that you’re here.

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2. This essay might also explain why I’m currently hosting 50 gatherings in 50 states, since the only antidote for a world where we’re told not to trust ourselves and our neighbors is to turn to the people closest to us and build with them. A few updates:

   1. Here’s an Instagram post that succinctly explains our progress and also makes a pitch to apply if you’re in our next region of states (IA, MO, KS, OK, AR, LA and TX). It’s fun (both the post, but more so the experience of hosting— if you live near one of those states, I hope you apply by June 30th).

   2. We’ve literally got an event TONIGHT— a community discussion in the Las Vegas area about our complicated feelings about the 250th anniversary of the U.S. It’s at 5:30 PM. RSVP here for location and other info.

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As you can probably see from the thumbnail, yesterday I had the chance to talk to the legendary pied piper of all things gathering, (whose upcoming book about navigating conflict also sounds incredible). As you may already know, in addition to her life as an author and facilitator, Priya is the host of a terrific newsletter/shared internet space (), where she interviews lots of very interesting people and now also me.

What did we talk about? Lots of things. We went pretty deep on the piece I wrote in February about why your silly little potluck is essential to fighting fascism. It’s actually the first time I’ve gone into detail about why I wrote that essay, and Priya’s questions took us in some directions I wasn’t expecting. Priya also shared a ton of insights from her career in this work (and some key learnings from mentors), and we finished up with me getting to gush about how fun the Interdependence Relay has been already and how the hosts with whom I’ve gotten to work have made me the most optimistic organizer/gatherer on the planet.

While the conversation definitely hit on some topics that will be familiar to folks who’ve followed myself and/or Priya, because it was the first time the two of us have talked in public, it was fun to watch our two approaches towards gathering find each other meld together to create something, well, pretty damned inspiring and heartening. The headline: We think you can do this! Both of us do! We believe that you can build and sustain a beautiful space that’s meaningful not just for yourself but for your community.

It’s not an over-the-top exercise in hope mongering, but I have a good feeling that you’ll leave the conversation feeling better than when you went into it.

Also discussed: The cottonwood tree a couple houses down from me that is the current bane of my existence, the very good signage in the Milwaukee airport, why your friends might not be the best members of the group you start, a story about a journaling club that will make you believe that you too can start a thing, and the very selfish reason why I actually love potlucks.

If you’re a free subscriber, you’ll see a preview of our conversation. The full shooting match is for paid supporters, either of my work or of Priya’s (here’s a link to her version of this same piece). What else do paid White Pages subscribers get? Well some very cool merch (though I’m late in sending the last batch; I’m on it, I promise), including the potlucks hat I’m wearing in this video.

But wait, there’s more, like a really lovely subscriber community, perhaps the best (our discussion last Friday made me tear up repeatedly, which I mean as a compliment). And also fun bonus things like this video (though I try not to overwhelm). Most of all, you get the I hope very gratifying knowledge that you’re helping keep not only The White Pages but also The Barnraisers Project AND The Interdependence Relay running, because yes this is literally how I pay for my kids’ groceries, and dang am I lucky to have this job, but boy is it a tenuous time to make an income from do goodery and newsletterdom (as it turns out, the economy is bad for a lot of people, so if you happen to have the ability to spend a reasonable amount of money per year to keep all this work humming, you are an absolute hero and deserve a hat and also access to a neat video interview).

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Oh, and whether you’re a supporter or not, please check out the relay website. We’ve got reports from Washington state, Oregon, California and Hawaii (Idaho coming soon), dates for our next batch (including a group discussion about mixed feelings about the U.S.’ 250th anniversary, which will take place in the Las Vegas area THIS THURSDAY at 5:30 PM (RSVP here to get the location, and watch this fun video from Stephanie, our Nevada host).

Also: the shirt I’m wearing is not for sale, but we’re giving sweatshirt versions of it as a gift for our relay hosts. Maybe you’d like to apply to be one of those? Did you know that applications are currently open for Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas and Louisiana? But that they close on June 30th? And that in addition to a sweatshirt we also have stipends? And you get to join a really cool community of other hosts? And we make it easy for you? Whoa, lot of cool facts there.

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Welp, I’ve been staring at a picture of middle school me all week, on account of publishing an essay about that time period on Tuesday. As such, I’ve really been sitting with that younger dude for a while now. Good kid, if I’m being honest. He had a lot he was figuring out and a lot to figure out but he was earnest and goofy and tried his best to show l…

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That picture above isn’t one I’d normally choose to share. I have no idea how or why I once scanned it onto my computer but the other day I was looking for another photo and there it was, unexpectedly digitalized.

I know that kid, though. Oh man do I ever. I even vaguely remember the day I took that picture. I had recently moved bedrooms. There’d been some household shuffling as older brothers headed off to college. I inherited not just the space but the furniture from my brother Brian, whom I idolized. The Gandhi poster was mine, but the bedsheets weren’t. I was play acting adolescent maturity. At the time my favorite cassettes were Last Splash by The Breeders, Star by Belly and a mixtape of Fugazi songs that Eric, whom I also idolized, made for me, partly to hip me to a cool band, partly to help me with a music class project. My two favorite authors were Howard Zinn and Dave Barry. The ball cap was from Oklahoma State, where Eric was in grad school. My shirt advertised a group of political satirists who were friends with my parents.

I don’t know why I’m sitting like that.

That’s what stands out the most, looking at this picture now. I remember setting the self-timer on my parent’s camera and running back to my bed before the blinking red light stopped flashing. But why criss-cross applesauce? I have never been able to successfully sit like that. It’s one of the many ways my Gumby-limbed body is forever at war with my best intentions. For my entire life, when I’ve had to sit on the floor for extended periods of times, I’ve defaulted to propping myself up awkwardly on my knees (not recommended, but the best I can do).

But in this picture, it’s as if I was responding to a dare. “Real men sit like a kindergartener during circle time.” “Oh yeah? Well I’ll show them then! I’m gonna bend my legs like a pretzel stretched to its breaking point, clasp my hands politely, and smile in a way that says to the world ‘oh God I hope I’m doing this right.’”

I love the kid in that picture. At least I do now. I didn’t love being that kid at that time. I assume that’s pretty typical, as far as coming of age goes. I also assume that, all things considered, I had it pretty easy.

I mean, sure, socially, Dunloggin Middle School was an absolute mess. In case you’re wondering if wearing “Montana Logging and Ballet Company” t-shirts and regaling your classmates with mini lectures about satyagraha was a ticket to popularity and nonstop make-out sessions, it was not. My only major conflict with my parents was when they put me in karate lessons against my will, on account of being frequently punched, shoved into lockers and tossed into the creek behind our school. I agreed with their assessment of the problem, but not the solution. Did they really think there was any world where I’d be able to physically defend myself? What part of “giant Gandhi poster and uncooperative limbs” did they not understand?

Parenting is hard, or so I’ve come to understand.

The bullies sucked, massively, but they weren’t the full story. My family clearly loved the hell out of me. And also, I was a straight, white, middle class boy, a confluence of identities which doesn’t prevent you from getting your butt kicked, but does cocoon you from so much else. And for all the junk, there was fun to be had. I lived within walking distance of a bunch of kids my age, and whatever social hierarchies we fell into between 8:00-3:00 were shrugged off after hours. Summers especially were pretty damned idyllic— endless games of flashlight tag, multiple sleepovers a week, busting it up at the neighborhood pool when the weather was nice, MTV and Mario Three when it wasn’t.

The kid in the picture laughed a lot, at home and with friends.

But of course he felt unsure of himself. Of course he didn’t quite know how to operate in a weird growing body around other weird growing bodies. Of course he walked shakily on the border between legibility and safety. He wanted to be fully seen, but not noticed. He was terrified of rejection, and would sometimes avoid sticking his neck out. But then there he is, setting up the self timer on his parent’s camera. Adopting a pose that doesn’t quite fit. Smiling, but as if he’s learning to do so for the first time.

I bet you know somebody like that.

I’ve told myself the “middle school is rough for everybody” story frequently enough that it has become my own personal Gospel. I’ve believed it enough to spook myself at the prospect of one day having a middle schooler myself. But now we’re here, and praise the Lord I now have a living, breathing counter-example living in my house.

Growing up is never easy, but I can now attest there are in fact middle schools that are safer and more loving than others. My son and his friends are… doing pretty well, knock on wood, and are generally pretty gentle with each other. I know this is not true for every kid at their school, but the fact that it’s true for a decently sized cohort of teens (across gender, class and racial lines, it’s worth noting) is a testament to some pretty incredible adults in their lives.

I am currently spending more time with middle schoolers than I have since I stopped being one. I hear them when I take carpool shifts, cracking each other up in the back seat of our Prius. I scan my son’s texts and am welcomed into baroque group project drama. I watch them scream their lungs out in celebration at assemblies. I see the way they move together like the world’s most distractible magnets when I chaperone events- drawn towards and repelled away from each other, seemingly at random. Sometimes, in my role as the middle school teacher at our Quaker Meeting, I get a glimpse of them at their most vulnerable, but mostly they just demolish our snack supply. Two different feats, equally impressive.

I did not appreciate middle schoolers when I was one— I was too caught up in my own inner monologue (social threats everywhere!) to notice the actual human beings around me. So what a delight, to be absolutely enthralled by how hilarious/insightful/selfish/worldly/myopic/preening/kind/cruel/thoroughly in motion thirteen and fourteen year olds can be. They are not perfect, these absolute human treasures. They can still make each other cry. They still fail to notice the space they’re taking up, and who it crowds out. But they are doing their best.

The other day, on a field trip with the Quaker Meeting kids to a local chocolate shop, I took a picture of one of our teens hamming it up with my younger daughter, a nine-year-old who adores her. The seventh grader loved the picture, which captured her at her goofiest, and begged me to send it to her. She instructed me to put her name in my phone as “The Diva,” explaining later that “it’s very important to identify yourself as a diva. I mean, if you want to. I also respect other people’s rights not to be divas. That’s equity, I think?” She then disappeared into a throng of teens and tweens literally jumping on each other’s backs, coming dangerously close to breaking a bench shaped like a cow in the process.

To be a self-proclaimed diva, but to also have plenty of time for an adoring nine-year-old. To desperately want a picture of you and that younger child goofing around with a hairnet. To offer a definition of equity that simultaneously makes no sense at all and all the sense in the world. To then pivot from that impromptu story of self/us/now to more silliness and potentially some unintentional property damage. This is thirteen, or so I’m learning. I don’t remember it like that, but surely there was some of that in me too. Taking self-timed photographs of yourself on your brother’s bed is real diva behavior, if you think about it.

If I were to be fully honest about what it is I do for a living, I’d say something about how I try to make sense of a riddle: How do you love human beings (and how do you act as if we are capable of loving each other), what with all the evidence to the contrary.

Not to give away my best answer, but you gotta try different tricks, especially when the news is rotten or when people have been ugly to you personally. One you hear about fairly frequently is reminding yourself that everybody in your life, even the most loathsome and annoying, were once innocent babies.

I’ve tried that, and even suggested it. There’s some truth there. But the problem is that babies are never willfully cruel. Babies can’t get lost in their own heads and forget to give a damn about others. Babies don’t take a joke too far, or abandon their friends when they need them the most.

Also: babies don’t perform for the camera one minute, and then try to disappear into their bodies the next. They don’t desperately hope that their friends never find out that they still sleep with their stuffed animals, or hold their mom and dad’s hands when nobody’s looking, or have far more doubts about the poses they’re affecting than they’ll ever let on.

No offense to those beatific infants, but these days I’ve been picturing us as middle schoolers.

I think of us, living in the past and present tense at once. Walking into frightening new spaces, hoping that we’ll be spared social devastation. Potentially being the worst to each other, but potentially being the best. Ping ponging from hilarious to sensitive to insightful to annoying in a single sentence. Declaring to the world that we’ve figured it out, that we aren’t mostly nervous and scared and in need of reassurance, but having our tentative smiles and wide eyes give us away.

I picture us at thirteen, and see our hearts in their rawest form— malleable, permeable, breakable. I see why we spend most of our days, long after we’ve theoretically passed that developmental stage, still famished for acceptance. I see why we reach out for each other, then push each other way. I see why we cling to hierarchies and structures that are killing us, because at least they’re what we know. I see why we’re hard to love, but how that somehow makes us more lovable. I get why we lie to each other, and why we can never fully hide the truth.

This is the gift of thirteen. I am now an adult writer, which means that I tell a story about myself professionally. If I wanted, I could try to convince you I was somebody I was not (cooler, savvier, more worldly and cynical). But who else could have written this essay than that kid? Still showing off for the camera. Both aware and unaware that he’s the only kid who ever asked for a giant framed Gandhi poster for his birthday. Perennially unsure what to do with his appendages. Asking for love, but maybe also ready to give it. Knowing in his bones that nothing stings more than rejection, but that nothing feels better than belonging.

End notes:

1. One thing that hasn’t changed since middle school is I will always feel naked and exposed whenever I have to ask for help. One thing that has changed is that “asking people to do something nice for you” is literally how I make a living, because that’s how newsletters work. If you liked this essay, thanks so much for considering pitching in. I wouldn’t ask if it didn’t make a big difference.

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2. If you haven’t taken some time to read up on our fifty state relay of community gatherings, there’s so much fun news on our website. Reports from our first four states. Updated info on our next round of events (Bellevue, Idaho was last night, but we’ve got Salt Lake City; Denver; Tucson; Las Vegas; Santa Fe coming up! Join us!). An open application window for a bunch of other states (TX, OK, LA, MO, KS, IA, ND). And just the best possible vibes. You all, look at this map! It’s filling in!

   

3. If you want to hear more about the relay, you should also tune into the live event I’m doing here on Substack with the pied piper of gathering, . Next Monday, the 8th. 11:00 AM Central Time.

4. Very applicable video, to today’s topic:

5. Fugazi and the Breeders are often feted by aging dudes like me who still think too much about guitar-based music, but do you know who also ruled? Belly. Jeez, Tanya Donnelly’s voice is just a one of one, isn’t it?

Hey pals,

First off, remember our discussion a few weeks ago, the “borrow a virtual cup of sugar” one? You might remember that Allison was interviewing for a dream job. Well guess what? SHE GOT IT!!

OK, onto this week. I want to take you on my mental journey as I prepped the community discussion this week.

STEP ONE: I usually start thinking of what my Fri…

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I bet that you’ve heard this story before.

My state is currently in the midst of a high stakes gubernatorial election. We’ve had a Democratic governor for a couple terms now, but Republicans have held both legislative houses (thanks, gerrymandering), so functionally that’s been a wash. But now, we’ve got new maps, and a fairly decent progressive winning streak in state-wide elections, so there is rising optimism that, if we play our cards right, we could have a Democratic trifecta this November. And man, do we need it. Our municipalities and schools are broke (in spite of a statewide surplus), life has gotten harder for working class Wisconsinites across just about every metric, and it’s been nearly two decades since we’ve been able to dream of our government doing wonderful things that might help us.

Now, it’s not guaranteed, of course, that Democrats in Madison will pursue beautiful and decent policies, but at least there’s a chance. And if the past sixteen years of state history is a guide, if Republicans win some combination of the governorship and the legislature, we’ll stay stuck in our current morass. The stakes feel tremendously high, and also fairly scary.

Because our current governor is term-limited, there are roughly a million candidates running for the Democratic nomination. But up to this point, only one of them has truly lit a grassroots spark in advance of the August primary: Francesca Hong, a State Representative, restaurant industry veteran, community organizer, and single mom from Madison. Not only has Hong consistently led the field in multiple polls, but she’s successfully mobilized thousands of volunteers and routinely packs rooms across the state. Organizers and political veterans across Wisconsin— not just in traditional liberal strongholds— share that she’s the only Democratic candidate who has fired up their neighbors.

If conventional political wisdom is to be believed, Hong shouldn’t be in this position: She’s a relatively young Asian American woman, a proud and vocal democratic socialist, and, previous to the campaign, wasn’t one of the biggest names running. She has no mega donors or Democratic bigwigs propping her up. In an era of anti-woke reactionary backlash, she doesn’t apologize for consistently sounding authentically leftist in public. But rather than welcoming her ascent and trying to learn from what the crowds see and hear in Hong, her campaign has instead been dogged by a predictable question.

“But is she electable?”

I know this is how the game is played, but also: what a bizarrely cynical point of political obsession. It purports to be objective, but is in practice mostly just vibes and projections stuffed into a trench coat. Even seasoned politicos admit, when pressed, that they don’t really know what makes somebody electable. Electability isn’t a science. It’s staring at a Rorschach test and then announcing your thoughts on the ink blot loudly, in the general direction of Ezra Klein’s microphone.

Usually, when we talk about a candidate being “unelectable,” we imagine a secondary group of people who we fear will reject that candidate along some combination of ideological, gender or racial lines. In Hong’s case, I’ve heard frequently, from putative allies, that “Wisconsin isn’t New York City.” That’s more efficient, I guess, then saying “I have a caricature in my mind of a backwards rural Wisconsin hick, and that person hates women and/or people of color and/or socialists, so regardless of how I feel personally, I have to calibrate my own vote down to that imagined lowest common denominator.”

I’m being dismissive, so let’s pause and acknowledge the nuance here. Racism, sexism and classism are real forces in every aspect of American life, especially our electoral politics. Wealthy white male candidates are absolutely held to a lower level of scrutiny than women and candidates of color. And of course there are huge barriers to running anywhere in America as a socialist— corporations and rich people have never gone quietly into the electoral night when their power and influence is threatened. If Francesca Hong wins the primary, the Republican general election campaign will no doubt hit world record levels of cravenness. It takes talented candidates and incredibly well-run campaigns to overcome those structural challenges. There’s a reason why voting is more often an exercise in harm reduction rather than wish fulfillment.

It’s also worth acknowledging that there are decent, good faith ways to rigorously consider a candidate’s potential electability , especially in the context of their broader vision, theory of politics, and overall strengths and weaknesses. ‘s recent profile of Hong threads that needle quite skillfully, and is well worth your time.

But even with all that granted, more often than not the “electability “debate is such a reductive way to think about politics. For one, it relies on a static, condescending analysis of our political neighbors. It assumes that the entire electorate is set in stone— that rural voters will always choose the rich white MAGA guy who pretends to be an aw-shucks Northwoods dad over the hip Asian lady who drops f-bombs in her calls to tax billionaires. Now, of course there are plenty of voters with rigid, unmovable ideologies, but a wide swath of the electorate is far more politically confounding than we assume— in Wisconsin, the same electorate repeatedly votes for the same two incumbent Senators— Tammy Baldwin, a staunchly progressive lesbian from Madison, and Ron Johnson, a literal far right conspiracy theorist)1.

But this fixed mindset isn’t just inaccurate it’s also just an immense bummer. To believe in an unchangeable electorate is to divorce politics both from organizing and from joy. Rather than directing our energy towards building the political reality of our dreams, we pre-accept existing conditions as a given. In doing so, we voluntarily give up both our collective power and imagination.

The electability debate is, more frequently than not, a self-fulfilling prophesy. There’s a significant enough body of research on the deleterious effects of this electability obsession, particularly for female candidates, that social scientists even have a term for it— pragmatism bias. Rather than considering what candidates authentically excite us and then asking what kind of organizing and resourcing would be necessary to help them succeed, we pundit ourselves to death. We proactively write off entire communities, turn a blind eye when campaigns don’t contest those supposedly hopeless geographies, and then wait around for another election cycle to have the same point proven again.

Lest this sound like a one-side rant imploring you to blindly support every upstart campaign that is deemed “unelectable,” let me make clarify. The Democratic Party is one of the largest, most unruly tents in world politics, and I don’t expect everybody who generally votes blue to agree with my preferred choice. To return to the Wisconsin gubernatorial election, there are a number of passionate, experienced candidates running in the current primary. Personally, supporting Francesca Hong has filled me with joy and hope, but I can respect those who love different candidates. All I ask of my neighbors is that they spend their energy making the case for their preferred would-be governor, rather than opining about how Wisconsinites are too racist, sexist or easily swayed by anti-defund-the-police attack ads to vote for Hong. Don’t waste your wild and precious life prognosticating. If you’ve chosen your fighter, hype them up.

But if I’m really being honest, I’ve also frequently been turned-off by the way that supporters of “unelectable” candidates contribute to this discursive morass. Yes, it’s an unfair label, and yes there have been real examples in the past few years of party bigwigs using it as one cudgel in an array of dirty tricks against upstart campaigns. But when fans of upstart campaigns devote a significant portion of our emotional and material effort litigating that fight (particularly in online spaces with a gravitational pull towards caustic self-righteousness), we too miss an opportunity to build irresistible political movements.

Instead of focusing on other voters— their needs, their fears, their desire both for different material conditions and for community and belonging— we often spend too much time defensively arguing against “moderates” or “pragmatists” or “party insiders.” That feels righteous and cathartic, I suppose, but it centers the emotions of the already converted rather than our neighbors who are truly unheard. That too isn’t organizing. It’s navel gazing.

To return to Francesca Hong, one reason why I’ve been personally irked by the “Wisconsin isn’t New York” argument is that, while Hong is not trying to just run a carbon copy of Zohran’s mayoral campaign, the two share similar strengths (both of which come from their background as organizers who genuinely delight in other people). Lots of candidates claim that their campaigns aren’t just about themselves, but few actually live it in practice. The reason why Mamdani 2025 felt so magnetic wasn’t just because he is a skilled political communicator, but because he taught his supporters to use his campaign as a way to connect more deeply with their neighbors. He repeatedly threw the best party in New York City, over the course of multiple months.

Hong’s campaign has been just as infectious. Yes, she can fire up a rally, and can listen thoughtfully at a round table, but she’s just as likely to ask her volunteers to join her for an event as she is to encourage them to strengthen their bonds with each other— at dance parties and potlucks and on warm and vibrant online discussion boards. This week, I’ve been invited both to join Hong herself for a canvassing event and to attend a volunteer-organized cheese swap at a beloved neighborhood haunt. In this way and this way alone, the skeptics are right. When it comes to willingness to show up at a corner bar and eat strangers’ cheese, we truly are built different.

The common thread in both the Mamdani and Hong campaigns is a shrewd sidestepping of the whole conversation of electability. Rather than engage in endless circular debates, both campaigns focus simultaneously on making the experience of being a supporter as fun and hope-giving as possible, while also constantly working to earn the trust of those who aren’t already converted.2

What stands out most, in that aforementioned profile of Hong by Dan Shafer, is how little she feels naturally entitled to anybody’s votes. She’s not scolding anybody for not knowing the full history of Wisconsin’s support for socialists. Instead she talks about humility, about how her experience working in restaurants taught her to care for everybody who crosses her path, and doesn’t blame anybody for not previously supporting her or any other left-liberal candidate. In her own words, “you can’t have a party feel like a special club… in politics, your job with voters is to make them feel special. And I think [up to this point, the Democratic Party] has only made a certain group of voters feel special.”

Yes, Francesca Hong has taken to occasionally wearing a shirt with “unelectable” printed in an all-caps sans serif (a good joke!). But she’s clearly not interested in pedantry. She believes that what matters isn’t whether or not you’re skeptical that a Madison leftist can win in a purple state, it’s how she and her campaign makes you feel. She believes that if you’re feeling screwed by forces beyond your control, that you deserve a governor that tries to flip some of those tables for you. She believes that if you’re feeling lonely, you deserve a neighbor who is as interested in getting to know you as they are in whether they can label you as a “supporter” on a spreadsheet.

I’m lucky right now. I currently have at least one candidate running for an election that matters to me who makes politics fell like something other than a bottom-feeding miasma of hopelessness. I know that’s damn well not the case for all of us right now. Too often, American politics is an exercise in accepting less— not just in terms of what candidates are offering, but when it comes to our role and how we, alongside our neighbors, can actually bend moral arcs together.

And while you deserve candidates (and political parties) who make it easier for you to both feel and build hope, there’s also a piece of this that is on us. When offered the choice between one more iteration of a tired debate or a chance to organize for something (or somebody) who legitimately fills your heart and soul, always choose the latter. Make your case, do your best, but don’t accept anything less than your dreams pre-emptively. I can’t guarantee that you’ll win every election. I don’t know what makes an electable candidate any more than anybody else does. But what I can promise you is this: you’ll never regret building. You’ll never regret connecting. You’ll never regret being surprised by your neighbors.

End notes:

1. I should probably disclose: I’ve been a Fran fan for a while now, ever since I watched her spend a significant percentage of her time as a safe seat legislator stumping for progressive women candidates in rural Wisconsin. The two of us are on a texting/DM basis, and also collaborated on an organizing zine last year. So yes, I’m very biased, but I do think this is a very special campaign and candidate and, wherever you live, this is one candidate worth both your attention and (if you’re able) your support.

2. Electoral campaigns are one way we build community, but far from the only place worthy of our attention. For example… perhaps you would like to learn more about a fifty state relay of community gatherings? You know, perhaps one that you can be a part of yourself (and even get a stipend for hosting)? And perhaps one that has a (very easy) application deadline coming up on Sunday June 1st, for hosts in MT, WY, ND, SD, and NE? Whoa, sounds pretty cool.

3. Famously, the Mamdani campaign consulted with the renowned gathering and community building expert on their campaign. Why do I bring this tidbit up now? Because I’ll be joining Priya for one of her Group Life Livestreams (here on Substack) on June 8th at 11:00 AM Central Time/Noon Eastern Time. Should be fun! We’ll be talking about the Interdependence Relay.

4. I hope you got something useful out of this essay. If that was the case, please consider chipping to support The White Pages. I know that this is a time when many our stretched their, and where there are a lot of asks on your plate, so I wouldn’t ask if it didn’t truly make a massive difference. Every new subscription supports not only this newsletter but all of my organizing and community building work as well. Plus, there’s free merch! And the coolest online discussion space around. Pretty neat, huh? Thanks for considering.

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5. Finally, very good Francesca Hong screenshot here (from this video, taken at the Wisconsin Brat Fest). Paul, we love you.

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Reader, I assume that you, an engaged citizen of the world, are up to date on the most consequential news of the week.“What are your thoughts on the shirtless baseball men?” you have no doubt been asked, at the various salons, round tables and ideas festivals you frequent. “What meaning do you make of them, and the way in which they whip their previously-worn shirts around their heads?”

I trust this, but just in case you have somehow been distracted by other matters, (for instance: keeping yourself and your loved ones alive), here is what you need to know about the most important shirtless baseball men of our time.

Who are the shirtless baseball men?

In one sense, the shirtless baseball men are members of the Stephen F. Austin University club baseball team (presumably, this means that they are not as good at playing baseball then that school’s official team, but more experienced at recreational drinking). They came to St. Louis for a tournament, decided to attend a Cardinals game, and subsequently took off their shirts.

In a slightly broader sense, the shirtless baseball men are everywhere, because fans across Major League Baseball have discovered that the math checks out (empty bleachers + dudes - shirts = hell yeah, buddy).

But in a cosmic sense, we are all shirtless baseball men, for we all long for connection and belonging.

When were the baseball men shirtless?

Last Friday, and then nonstop ever since. The next time you are walking on the beach and only see one set of footprints, it is because members of the Stephen F. Austin club baseball team are carrying you, on a blanket made of their shirts.

What were the shirtless baseball men doing?

They were engaging in a storied tradition, credited first to Indiana University football fans a few seasons back. It’s called going “tarps off.” The idea is that you and some buddies make your way to the upper deck of a sports stadium, remove your shirts, and generally whoop it up. This will serve as a siren call to previously unaffiliated bros to join you in shirtlessness, thus creating a formidable bro assemblage (a murder of bros, if you will).

What was once tiny will become impossible to ignore. You will get on television. The athletes on the field will notice you, and it may encourage them to play better. The team may give you tickets to future games, and allow one of your more impressively mustachioed group members to throw out the first pitch. Everybody involved will have one hell of a time.

How were the shirtless baseball men?

They were, and are, doing great.

Why, the shirtless baseball men?

If possible, I’d like to answer this question, not with another question, but with the sound of dozens of world historically pasty gentlemen chanting the“Seven Nation Army” riff in union.

Where are the shirtless baseball men?

Look behind you, broadcast crew. They were there the whole time.

If only I could live every day like it was tarps off day. This story contains every single one of my primary interests: masculinity (is the cure for male loneliness taking your shirt off and whipping it around your head like a helicopter? Petey Pablo has been trying to tell us this for decades); whiteness (in this case, less the social construction of whiteness and more the visceral experience of publicly weaponized mass paleness); and, of course, community (how we find love in hopeless places, such as the upper deck of Busch Stadium).

In case it isn’t clear, my love is unironic and full. I am a straight man, and that means that inside me are two wolves, and even though I frequently pen earnest paeans to books about feminism and resistance to empire, if the Edison bulbed coffee shop where I’m currently writing this were to put on ACDC’s “Thunderstruck,” both of those wolves would immediately start whipping their shirts around. “Let’s gooooooo, baby!” one wolf would yell to the other. “I low key love you, man!,” the other would yell back, and then the barista would politely ask the three of us to take our business elsewhere.

So in honor of those wolves, I say: Bless these fellas, and their distaste for covering their upper bodies. But also, I don’t know actually know anything about them. Once they leave the upper deck, they may very well be pursuing lives that make me very sad, both for themselves and the people around them. Maybe they’re jerks. Or maybe not. I will not be doing any further research.1 Fellas, if in addition to good-natured baseball shenanigans, you love bell hooks and organizing mutual aid collectives, hit me up. I’d send you a shirt, but I know what you’d probably do with it, so let’s go with a hat instead.

But the whole tarps off thing, at least in isolation? It’s basically the ideal scenario for collective male sports fan behavior. Are the fellas picking fights? Nope. It’s hard to rumble when your hands are busy doing the helicopter shirt thing. Are they getting in other people’s personal space? Absolutely not. They’re literally going off into a separate bro section, far away from the general population. It’s like a tot lot for guys.

Come to think of it: every municipality should have a designated bro-zone in their downtown entertainment districts. You know, a place where bros can do all of the things that make us happy (taking off our shirts, scream-shouting “Mr. Brightside,” remarking “hey, remember Mickey Tettleton?” and pretending that constitutes a conversation, following each other on Letterboxd, etc.). A room of one’s bro-own. The fellas get our space, and perhaps even a chance to overcome our internalized homophobia as we embrace one another without the hindrance of fabric. And the rest of the world? You all won’t have to deal with us.

But also, as somebody who literally teaches and writes about how to build community, I say this sincerely. Shirtless fellas, thank you for giving me a new visual case study. This is way better than the now-cliche “first follower” lecture with the hippie dancer. It’s a cute video, but it’s always struck me as too self-aggrandizing. Public invitations matter, not because they automatically constitute “a movement,” nor because the person making the invite is “a visionary leader.” We just really want to find each other, is all, so it’s nice to make doing so easier.

I’ve been a broken record on this lately, but the deeper I get into my current project (a relay of 50 community gatherings across the country), the clearer it gets. What distinguishes the most effective community builders isn’t an otherworldly set of leadership qualities, but their willingness to make an invitation, in public, in spite of the risk of rejection. They make it clear where people can find them, don’t take it personally if others don’t initially show up, and respond with gratitude and joy when they do.

I believe this with all my heart, but I haven’t, up to this point, had a succinct visual aid. So forgive me for a quick Zapruder-film level analysis of the bros. It’s worth it, I swear.

Here’s a view of the tarps off section from that first Friday game. It’s already the seventh inning, which is to say— this effort was NOT an immediate success.2 Where are the bros? It’s hard to tell. At this point, I probably would have packed it in. Seventh inning and it’s still just the initial group? We tried, boys. Better luck next time.

But look what’s happened by the eighth inning! Momentum! Credit to this video, not only for doing the Lord’s work of breaking down the film, but also for unironically commenting “as you can see, there’s now a solid chunk of bros up there.”

By the bottom of the ninth, the parliament of bros is clearly visible from a distance (also, unrelated, but please admire that advertisement for FEET. You take FEET for granted, don’t you? Thank you, Busch Stadium, for the reminder).

Ok, it’s getting serious. This is the point where I might be asked to leave this coffee shop for screenshot-based affronts to public decency. “Sir, that’s too many pictures of bros.” Yes, it is, but check out what happens when the game goes into extra innings. It’s foggy, but if you look right above the empty red seats you can see an orderly stream of suddenly mobilized men rushing in to join the section (here’s the video).

And just as it was predicted, so to has it come to pass. The section is growing, um, exbronentially. 3

Finally, here’s how things looked when the Cardinals eventually won the game on an 11th inning walk-off single. If that isn’t a murder of bros, I don’t know what is. And, for one night at least, do you know what the bros killed?The myth that we are separate from one another.

All right, that’s going a little too far. We are literally just talking about a bunch of fellas (who, it should be noted, showed up on $5 beer/$7 margarita night) being loud and silly together. You may very well be saying, “Garrett, you sweet naive fool, I know how the world works and you shouldn’t praise a bunch of rowdy dudes merely for not doing any visible hate crimes” And you know what? Good point.

I mean, even on the face of it, there’s aspects of this that I don’t fully endorse (for instance: the affiliation with the St. Louis Cardinals, a franchise I dislike for the very principled reason that I live in a different rust belt city with a rival baseball team). And I bet, now that this trend has expanded to other stadiums, we’re just a couple days away from it jumping from cute to gross (“Let’s check in with the Tarps Off Crew… brought to you by Open AI, Zyn Tobacco, Raytheon, and somehow J.D. Vance personally”).

I don’t need you to love tarps off, nor do you have to hand it to the bros. But what I do want you to recognize is that even the rowdiest and least tanned baseball fellas are searching for something bigger than themselves. The section grew, not just because guys love being dudes, but because isolation sucks and togetherness rules and, for one night at least, the barrier to connection was pretty damn low. “Bro, look up there. See those dudes with their shirts off? Let’s goooooooo.”

When given the opportunity, the bros found their people. And if they can do it, you can too. Make the invitation that works for you. I mean, you can even keep your shirts on if you’d like. But please make it. Do it for yourself, based on what you’re seeking, and know that you’ll eventually find the people who need that space too.

That’s complicated in many ways, I suppose, but if you train your heart on the end goal— the bet that others also crave whatever form of connection you personally need for yourself— you’ll do all right, truly. To return again to the words of Petey Pablo, the man who first taught my generation to take our shirts off, twist them around our heads, and spin them like a helicopter.

“This one’s for you? Uh-uh This one’s for who? Us, us, us.”

End notes:

-This is a bonus essay, on the front end of a long weekend, but trust that I shared plenty of fun links and news in the essay I wrote on Tuesday. Also know that this continues to be a fully reader-supported project (at a time when sustaining those isn’t easy) so if you got a kick of this or any of my pieces, I’d love if you could chip in to keep this operation running.

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And yes, I know that technically Petey Pablo was only singing for North Carolinians, but as I’ve learned from some very enthusiastic club baseball team members, if the message resonates, it resonates, man.

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The best thing about being joyfully overwhelmed by a book is that you get to keep experiencing the gift of it over and over. The worst is that, in most cases, you are the only person you know walking around with that New Epistemology Glow. Your friends didn’t read that book, or they did, but it didn’t click in quite the same way. Sometimes, you live your truth in quiet, keeping your bound fount of wisdom to yourself. Or sometimes you make this new book your personality, you wave your arms around and shout things like, “Ok I’m probably not describing it well; let me try that again…”

What I’m saying is that I want to tell you about a book. And then I want to tell you another book, also remarkable, which I would have loved no matter what, but that I appreciate even more given the first book.

Oh, and I should probably be honest that the book in question, 58 Facets: On law, violence and revolution, by Marika Sosnowski, was published in Australia, and as of this writing may or may not be easy to buy a physical copy in North America (though you should very much try to do so, and if you hit a snag, grab an electronic version).

So why am I doing my arm-waving-maniac act about a book that you may or may not be able to purchase, one that (by design) is a bit of an unclassifiable oddity: part memoir, part sociology, part work of legal scholarship, part expose? Because of passages like this (the 41^st of the titular 58 facets).

“We constantly move toward [liberation], we work every day for it through large and small acts of revolution, through small cracks in precedent, through forms of care, of tenderness, of violence, of ingenuity, of resourcefulness, through joy and survival. And sometimes nothing happens for years. And then years—decades even—happen in a few days.”

58 Facets is about a number of things that human beings do to and with each other, from the hope-giving to the horrific. It is globe trotting and time traveling, jumping between Europe and the Middle East and Australia. There are, contained in its pages, Holocausts and Nakbas, dictators and functionaries, violence administered by bombs and statutes, trauma experienced both directly and, generations down the line, as a phantom limb.

Throughout, Sosnowski returns to the framework of checkpoints and camps, imaginary but strictly codified geographies where human worthiness is determined by law. These inventions are everywhere, Sosnowski asserts, not all of them immediately death bringing, but all married by the intertwining of violence and law. They are stories we have always told ourselves: “It is necessary to keep you on this side of a line, or constrained in this space, not because we are cruel because that is the natural order of things.”

To read 58 Facets is to be confronted with the ways in which the prefix “in” feels impossibly wed to the suffix “humanity.” We are so awful to each other that we find ways to reify our cruelty. Who can argue with checkpoints and camps, if we are told the alternative is chaos and disorder?

And yet, that is not the entirety of our being. That 41^st facet creeps up on you, just as revolutionary sparks often emerge when least expected. We are always resisting, us humans, because even if revolution is not a magical switch that, once flicked, will deliver liberation tomorrow, there is something in us that is drawn towards… call it freedom or love or a right ordering of human relationships. We keep trying, even if we don’t know where the trying will get us.

The language of facets comes from diamonds, gems meant to be held into the light in any number of ways. A facet never reveals a single truth. It depends on the angle at which you view it. When Sosnowski introduces readers to the city of Daraya, Syria, where an unorthodox local sheikh named Abdul Akram al-Saqqa inspired followers living under the backdrop of state terror to build a home for a variety of dreams—community care, gender equality, democracy— it’s natural to wonder will this story be tragic or triumphant, will my heart be uplifted or destroyed?

58 Facets has too much love and respect for the people of Daraya, and for you as a reader, to fall into the trap of a binary answer. Instead, you are left with a very different variety of question. What does it mean, to live a life and posses a heart, if that heart will inevitably be split into a million pieces but will also keep beating?

Or, I should say, that’s the question with which I was left, perhaps intentionally, or perhaps because that’s the angle at which I held this book to the light.

I finished 58 Facets a couple months ago, but it’s been with me every day sense, including when I finished an ostensibly quite different book, ’s familial memoir My Mother’s Daughter. My brain couldn’t stop from putting the two in dialogue with each other. There they were again, the camps and checkpoints, the hungry ghosts of shame and longing that pop up generations in the future. But also, that pesky humanity inside us. The draw we have, towards reunion and reparations.

There are camps in Clark-Flory’s book, in particular a long-shuttered home for unwed mothers on the West Side of Chicago. Clark-Flory’s own mom was forced into that home when she became pregnant in college— one of many young women disappeared because their sexuality was a problem to be solved. There are also checkpoints, like the liminal space of the American adoption system through which Clark-Flory’s older sister Kathy traveled after being taken away from their mom.

Clark-Flory, like Sosnowski, is a masterful weaver of the systemic and intimate. Like all family stories, hers is one marred by the worst constructions of human cruelty—patriarchy and racism and American capitalism. There are monsters in Clark-Flory’s narrative, human beings who’ve convinced themselves of the inevitability of camps and checkpoints and the need for some people to be punished to cleanse and anoint a chosen few.

But hers is also a love story, a Velveteen Rabbit tale of mothers and sisters and fathers and aunties and nephews who can’t help but run towards each other, hands outstretched. It is about mourning and raging and then, after turning your insides out a million times over, looking out into the world and discovering that you aren’t alone.

So here I am again, arms waving wildly, desperate to reduce the complicated truths of either book to a trite blurb. We are inheritors and perpetrators of great cruelty; but our love for each other contains the seeds of a million revolutions.

I mean, that’s not an inaccurate summation of my feelings. And friends, if you know me well, you know that I am not above tying my thoughts up in a saccharine bow. But, in the spirit of how much I’ve been pulled into the complex and (ahem) multi-faceted world of both books, I will resist that pull. What if instead I sat with that summative statement, if I treated it less as a declaration and more as a discipline.

What if I turned that sentence over in my head over and again, sometimes as a riddle, sometimes as a taunt, sometimes as a prayer. What if, on some readings, the first clause overwhelmed me so thoroughly that I never got around to seriously considering the second half. What if, at other times, I repeated the latter clause over and over again, until it filled me up. What if some days I was numb, and none of these words meant all that much to me at all.

And what if, one day, I heard the same sentiment, in somebody else’s words. What if I yelled across the room, “YES!’ and they yelled ‘YES!” back and then we found our way towards one another.

End notes

1. I should probably disclose that I am lucky enough to know and admire both authors, though that doesn’t explain either why I felt compelled to write about them. I am fortunate to read many great books by people I know and admire personally. It’s far rarer, though, to read books that I not only love but which I can’t get out of my mind. Neither author goaded me to write about their books in any way, let along with awe and gratitude. I came by that naturally. Also, that’s a pretty nice reason to have a newsletter, so thanks for allowing this to be a space where that awestruck feeling can live out loud.

2. There are links to purchase both books above, but to put a finer point on it: I highly recommend buying and reading both My Mother’s Daughter and 58 Facets, the latter of which is worth any extra clicking you have to do to find an electronic or print copy in your part of the world (the former is a new North American release and should be easy to buy just about anywhere).

3. In case you’re wondering whether it continues to be an immense joy to facilitate a 50 state relay of community gatherings… the answer is VERY MUCH SO. I just got back from a whirlwind trip to San Francisco and Kauai (where I saw some of you! and also where I got quite tired but also where my heart grew quite full).. Those reports coming soon, but in the meantime you should read about the Portland and Seattle events.

   1. A quick reminder that applications for the North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska and Kansas gatherings will close on May 31st. Did you know we give you a stipend to host a gathering? And that it doesn’t have to be a super complicated production? You should probably click this link to learn more, don’t you think?

   2. We HAVE chosen our NV, AZ, CO, NM, UT and ID hosts. They’re not all up on our website yet (we’re confirming a couple dates), but keep checking back through the week. A heads up that. I will not be at most of these myself, but the point of the relay is not my own travel dreams— it’s building a web of inspiring gatherers.

4. You know what makes me very grateful? The fact that I am able to do this for a living, both writing and hosting community gatherings and hopefully making the work of processing this world and building a better one a bit more bearable for you. This sounds trite, but it’s very true: the only reason I’m able to do so is that, at the end of every email I make a pitch to you all to become a paid subscriber and… a few of you do (usually enough to make up for folks who supported previously but whose finances no longer allow them to do so). Please consider! Thank you!

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Hey pals

As you probably know, I’m on the road right now for the Interdependence Relay (very sweet event in San Francisco last night, made even more lovely by the fact that I got to meet some of you in person, either there or at my Oakland office hours).

Now, I’ve got all sorts of fancy answers for what the interdependence relay is all about, but at its …

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It does not feel like it, but January of 2025 wasn’t very long ago. I have beaten this drum before, but it is still insane to remember the discursive fatalism of that cursed month. So much was declared to us, about us. Wokeness? Dead. Past eras of anti-Trump resistance? Cringe. The vibes? Shifted. This second era of Trump? Your fault, on account of your deeply embarrassing concern for others’ well-being.

January, 2026 definitely wasn’t that long ago. And by that point, it wasn’t pundits sowing fear. Minnesota wasn’t just being rhetorically terrorized. Government forces murdered human beings in the streets. Goon squads terrorized schools. Cars were left abandoned on the sides of the road, their occupants disappeared to God knows where.

Across the country, a million panicked Signal groups sprung into action. Rumor networks worked overtime. What town would be next? Yours, most likely. Surely, this was just life now. Ours would no longer be a world where powerful people made life worse for the most vulnerable quietly, and with a mask of plausible deniability. Now, the subtext would be text and the terror would escalate without limit.

And since then?

You could argue that nothing has changed. Donald Trump is still President. We are literally at war. ICE may be more circumspect, but it hasn’t disappeared. The U.S. continues to afford only a small slice of the population safety and dignity. And this administration, aided by its apparatchiks in the Republican Party and on the Supreme Court, are currently speed running through an Orbán-meets-Jim-Crow style mass gerrymander.

And yet here I am talking about how we’re winning. I promise I’m not being brusque, though it is important to define our terms. By we, I mean those of us who wish for a country and planet where everybody is safe and loved.1 And by winning, I’m not inferring that we have fully defeated this or any empire of cruelty. Ours remains a world that worships money and hierarchy far more than care and dignity. That was true before Trump, and remains particularly true under his watch.

Readers, I understand if nothing about this moment feels victorious. This gerrymandering apostasy, to take just one example, is disempowering by nature. Powerful people in suits and robes are picking and choosing whose votes matter and whose votes don’t. Red State Republicans? Deserving of enfranchisement. Black voters? This is America, so you know how that story goes.

If you feel like the fix is in, that no matter how unpopular Trump becomes, we’ll wake up in November to find that dirty tricks and duct tape were enough to manufacture another MAGA victory, you’re not being hysterical. That’s the game. Disenfranchisement isn’t just a structural reality, it’s a spiritual state.

But we are winning. Through collective action and agitation, we continue to reveal that this Emperor is as naked as they come. Even the most callous dictators require a popular base for their dirty tricks. Every strongman’s hope is that, over time, their opposition will become more demoralized and less willing to take to the streets. It matters then that Trump is historically unpopular. It matters that Republicans keep losing elections. It matters not only that anti-Trump protests continue to grow larger, but that the thousands of actions on May Day showcased an increased tactical sophistication.

We are better at countering fascism than we were even a year ago. Yes, they have the guns, but the guns only work if every time you fire them, they’re met primarily by cheers, apathy and cowardice. How incredible that, up to this point, we’ve robbed this administration of that depraved, humanity-destroying luxury.

Nothing proves this better than Minneapolis in January. For all the attention given to the miracle of Minnesotan solidarity, we somehow haven’t adequately celebrated what was accomplished on those snowy streets this winter. Once again, I say this carefully, as somebody who talked to Minneapolis activists on a daily basis during the height of that crisis. On the ground, nothing about Operation Metro Surge felt like a victory. The trauma was and remains immense. Every family that couldn’t be protected was internalized as a collective defeat, and rightfully so. That’s what being a neighbor is all about. Bearing the full pain, together. I know that Minnesotans don’t want shallow praise from gobsmacked outsiders, especially when their community’s wounds are still so fresh.

But it is also true that there’s a reason why ICE has not attempted a redux of Operation Metro Surge in your community. There’s a reason why, after being given the full run of the White House, Steven Miller is finally being sidelined. There is a reason why men with longarms and masks are not parading down the street of every major American city. The administration thought they’d win in Minnesota, not just in terms of arrest numbers, but in the court of public opinion. The regime bet that the opposition would be tepid and easily demonized. Minnesota should have been the model. But they weren’t ready for the grocery deliveries. They weren’t ready for the families taking shelter in each other’s homes. They weren’t ready for the crowds to grow larger and more in love with each other. So they retreated.

And again, I’m sure many of you have cynical rejoinders. “Just wait— they’re just holding out until after the midterms, that’s when there’ll be another surge.” And yes, that could very well be true. But if they were winning, there’d be no need to wait.

You’ll notice that I’m being careful about my tenses here. I’m not guaranteeing that we will win permanently, though I very much believe that we can. I am merely stating that what those of us who oppose Trump have been building— both on the community level and through mass protest– has accomplished far more than we often acknowledge.

We are winning, and I’d very much like us to keep winning.

To give up the game here, I didn’t write this essay because I believe in celebration for celebration’s sake, particularly preemptively. I too am absolutely terrified, but not primarily at what Trump might do. I’m terrified that we’ll give up. I fear that those of us not under daily threat will fall into complacence. We won’t host that organizing meeting we dreamed up a few months ago. We won’t go to the next protest. We will disengage from our workplace’s unionization drive. We’ll let life take over.

I fear that we’ll check the headlines, see that another GOP-run state has passed a racist, crooked map, and we’ll give into the narcotizing spell of nihilism. I fear that we’ll put too much of our faith in electoral politics, and that when we do engage on political campaigns we’ll do so out of fear rather than hope. I fear that we’ll believe, implicitly if not explicitly, that we no longer have to meet our neighbors because ICE isn’t metro surging through our particular town.

I need you to know we’re winning, not for smugness sake, but so that we don’t quit. So that we believe in each other. So that we cultivate short, medium, and long term communities of resistance. So that we win elections, but also so that we remember that electoral politics alone isn’t where democracy is built and practiced. So that we keep an eye on this regime, but recognize that the rot at the heart of empire goes far beyond one politician.

We are not a perfect opposition, but whatever we’ve been doing has mattered, and will keep mattering, more than we can even imagine.

But not if we buy the lie that they have us on the ropes.

End notes:

1. The 50 state relay of community gathering continues to be the most hope-giving thing imaginable and I’d love for you to join us. TWO EVENTS THIS WEEK, LET’S GO! I’LL BE AT BOTH OF THEM!

   1. This Thursday, May 14th in San Francisco— An everybody’s welcome at the table party at Fog City Community Fitness (1649 Valencia). 6:30-9:30.. We’re potlucking (of course) and then, for anybody interested, there’ll be an actual relay race (you know, in honor of the broader relay). RSVP here, please.

   2. Saturday, May 16th in Kalāheo (Kauai)— Yellow House invites you to a celebration of neighbors (complete with fire dancing). 4:00-9:00 at the corner of Papalino and Alelo.

2. If you go to our website over the next few days, you’ll see a few exciting updates, one that’s already live, one that will be soon.

   1. LIVE NOW: The full report from our Portland event! I wasn’t at this one, but working with the organizers on the recap made me cry in the best way (and also wish so badly that I was there). I think all of you will enjoy this recap, but particularly those of you involved in faith communities who are trying to be more welcoming.

   2. COMING SOON: Our official hosts/dates for AZ, NM, UT, CO and ID. There are some cool ones, you all.

3. NOW IS THE TIME TO APPLY FOR OUR NEXT ROUND OF STATES: Montana, Wyoming, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas. YOU’RE UP. Deadline is May 31st, As I’ve mentioned in previous weeks, Applying is not hard! And we’ll give you a lot of support and celebrate your event in so many ways and also give you a hosting stipend. Whoa.

4. Last week, I offered hang out hours for my Bay Area trip (on Thursday during the day at Kinfolx Coffee in Oakland). As of this writing, all the slots are filled, but sometimes there are cancellations so it never hurts to check. And of course, a good place to hang out is the event that evening.

5. As you know, I always make a regular request to consider supporting The White Pages with a paid subscription (it remains one of the best deal in media, I’d argue, both because there are so many free perks, I keep the price as cheap as it ever was, and you’re supporting not just this writing but all my work training and supporting community builders across the country). It would be very cool if you’d do so. AND…

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6. … last week, I also made a broader pitch to support, well, any newsletter authors you love (because it’s a pretty brutal time in our broader field right now). I also promised to choose two new newsletter writers to support myself (because I believe in this work, I already have dozens of subscriptions, which I include in my family’s budget for mutual aid/causes I believe in). First, I chose the single writer whom I’ve been most grateful for these past couple years (Rebecca Solnit, not a surprising choice, but unsurprising choices still deserve support). I then asked paid subscribers for ideas on my second new sub. Thanks to a great rec, I’m now supporting ‘s thoughtful writing about both baseball and the broader world around it. I’m so glad I asked, because my kids and I are in a deep baseball-following moment and I do want to enjoy smart writing about that sport, but I wouldn’t have made that connection on my own.

7. It’s been a while since I’ve written about movies but holy cow if any of you want to talk about The Drama, I’m all in (I hope this doesn’t spoil anything but I was NOT expecting it to hit on so many of this newsletter’s major themes!).

Hey pals,

Hope you’re well. We just celebrated a thirteenth birthday in our house (fun!) and I’m also getting ready for one more relay-related week of travel (San Francisco and Hawaii, then I’m home for a nice long spell).

Here’s the idea of today’s discussion: We don’t all live next to each other (though it’d be pretty cool if we did), so it’s harder t…

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Red Lobster wants your attention. You can tell, because their current ads deploy not one but two separate announcers. There’s the expository guy. He’s a little pushy but at least he sticks to the facts. And then there’s the loud guy. He’s got a deep voice. He sounds like he’s broadcasting live from the submerged city of Atlantis. He says it with feeling, and also reverb.

“Because you’ve been asking… a lot… and we made it happen.”

So claims the not-from-Atlantis announcer. But what’s he talking about? We have been asking for many things. To be able to afford homes, for example, or not to have war crimes committed in our names, or to have our planet still exist twenty years from now.

Oh, this is about shrimp. Endless shrimp. It’s back, or so I’m told, in multiple forms. Every time the less pushy guy shares one of the currently available shrimp offerings, his partner pipes up with a complementary point straight from the bottom of the sea.

“Walt’s favorite shrimp.”

“ ENDLESS!”

“Garlic shrimp scampi”

“ENDLESS”

“Shrimp linguini alfredo”

“ENDLESS?”

“And all new marry me shrimp”

“ALL ENDLESS!”

The duo isn’t wrong. Endless shrimp is back. While the previous iteration didn’t technically bankrupt the chain (the real culprit was private equity and real estate chicanery) it was, by all accounts, an absolute mess. American consumers, who rightfully identified that they were getting ripped off in every facet of their lives, leapt at the opportunity to get one over at least one big business.

Back when Endless Shrimp was a permanent feature, shrimp hoarders would occupy tables for hours at a time, not leaving until they beat the house. The real victim of this behavior was, of course, the chain’s underpaid servers (if you walk into a restaurant with “me against these suckers” mindset, you’re less likely to view your waiter as a fellow victim of capitalism and you’re definitely not going to tip well). For the C-Suite, though, the larger concern wasn’t the dignity of their employees. It was a jumbo-sized hole in their bottom line.

It’s like The Boss once sang. Endless shrimp dies baby, that’s a fact. But maybe the endless shrimp that dies, some days comes back. Put your make-up on, do your hair up pretty, and meet me tonight at the only Red Lobster still open in your city.

I’m not all that interested in the relative success or failure of chain restaurant promotions, but I do care about the various ways corporations try to win our affection (meaningful cultural signifiers, or so I’d argue). And contra the two announcer voices, the most interesting thing about Red Lobster’s promotion isn’t the shellfish, either of the Walt’s Favorite or Marry Me varieties. It’s what’s whispered rather than shouted.

You see, the biggest difference between the current iteration of Endless Shrimp and its unprofitable predecessor is that now Red Lobster wants you to know that you (the shrimp-loving consumer) and they (the company) are in this together.

If you want the full story, I highly recommend this piece by Luke Winkie in Slate, but here’s the truncated version. There are varieties of shrimp on the Red Lobster menu that aren’t officially part of the promotion. They’re on the menu, but excluded from the benevolent blanket of endlessness. But if a customer were to ask for unlimited quantities of a non-official item (for example, Crispy Dragon Shrimp, a food item that I’m assured contains no actual dragon), the server is to welcome them into a cool secret. Their official, handbook-mandated line? “These items aren’t on the menu for this promotion, but I would be happy to make an exception for you.”

It’s like they say, “the exception is the rule.” Except literally, and by mandate. Servers are required by corporate policy to act like you and they are cheating the system, in hopes that when you remember the night you rode the dragon (shrimp), you remember it not as a conspiracy-of-one, but a sneaky secret between you and your best friend (Red Lobster restaurants, a subsidiary of the Thai Union Seafood Company).

This is not a new psychological trick. It’s a classic low stakes confidence game. The most effective way to a mark is to convince them that they are, in fact, in on the con themselves. It’s the same move that car salesmen use when they leave the room to “talk to their manager” before returning with a report that “he didn’t want me to give you this deal, but…”

It’s still striking, though, to see the strategy laid out in grandiose internal strategy documents. A beleaguered but iconic American brand name hedges its survival on two bets. First, that you are tired, angry and aware that you’re on the wrong side of a rigged game (correct). And second, that, by offering you a facsimile of camaraderie and a very real pile of seafood, that they can win your loyalty (huh).

“[This is] about more than just shrimp,” the document proclaims. An absolute work of art, that sentence.

“[It’s] about creating an experience that says, ‘We listen to you.”

“When guests see Endless Shrimp back on the menu, they feel heard and valued.”

I have never addressed a sit-down chain’s internal strategy document, but I’m sure I speak for all of us when I say, tears in my eyes: Red Lobster, thank you. THIS is what democracy looks like.

As Eli Zeger argued in his 2020 essay about companies that talk like snarky teens on social media, this particular iteration of the “brand as friend” canard is the product of the marriage of late stage capitalism (and its reliance on the selling of “ideas” rather than goods and services) and the post-Citizen United codification of corporate personhood. Red Lobster isn’t a restaruant anymore. It’s your rule-breaking, shrimp loving, newly empathetic pal. It sees you. In fact, it is the only one who see you. It gets that you’re broke, but more so that you’re alone. It’s no longer offering you cheap shrimp (the price tag for the promotion has risen markedly since its last iteration). It’s promising you something more important– belonging, connection, a port in the storm of alienation and precarity we’re all weathering.

Red Lobster’s friendship?

“Endless”

Or that’s the idea at least. Apparently, the promotion hasn’t been as lucrative as the company had hoped, at least so far. It’s not 2016 anymore. We’re seeking something more these days. Bread and roses? Perhaps, but definitely not just shrimp.

But Red Lobster isn’t alone, in surveying a landscape of mass alienation (economic, relational, spiritual) and seeing a business opportunity. Advertising agencies are publishing unironic blogs chillingly titled “the loneliness crisis: how brands can step up?” Silicon Valley’s greatest minds heard that you wanted community and responded with sycophantic AI chatbots. Apparently, our tech overlords’ understanding of human relationships is a robot who agrees with you all the time, including when you muse about harming yourself. Even the outright scammers get it. Gone are the days of far flung princes offering you a financial windfall. As you may have experienced personally, the hot new con is… pretending to be an acquaintance and inviting you to a party.

This is a step beyond the classic commodification funnel, as documented in nineties leftist classics like No Logo and The Conquest of Cool. The brands are no longer promising a great deal, or even hipness. What’s on offer now is the dream of a welcoming community, one deep enough to solve for the isolation that the companies themselves helped create.

That’s very depressing, of course, both the reminder that our economy has always been built on the exploitation of vulnerability, and the reality that there’s just so much more vulnerability to be exploited at this particular moment.

But there’s another truth, not a counterpoint, but a complement. How fortunate, for those of us who actually want to connect with other human beings, rather than just make a quick buck off of them. We already have what every corporation in the world wishes they had– the fact that, when we offer a space by our side, to either a stranger or a friend, we actually mean it. We’re not trying to trick you into springing for a Main Deck Margarita Flight to go along with your shrimp. We’re not trying to mine your data or add you to a marketing funnel or load you up with debt and junk. We just think this world would be more navigable together rather than apart.

And as an organizing opportunity? From union drives to neighbor-to-neighbor activism to the precious few political campaigns that care more about building community than personal brand building? My goodness. Why do you keep hearing about neighborism these days, and not just from true believers like me? Because more people are admitting every day how hungry they are for connection, and then taking the risk of making an offering.

The terrible news right now is that the hucksters are going to keep selling us a flim flam simulacra of belonging. Yes, the consultants, but also (I fear) the politicians. I strongly suspect the 2028 Democratic primary to feature a million text messages about “neighbors” and “community” penned by a well-heeled K-Street consultants. But the good news is that we aren’t that dumb. We know the brands aren’t our friends. We’ve lived through the great social media con together. We know what the lie looks like, and now we’d much prefer the deeply imperfect, thoroughly messy alternative.

They’ll offer us endless shrimp. And we’ll say no thank you. We’d prefer each other, please. Even if that’s not on the secret menu.

END NOTES (A BUNCH THIS WEEK, BUT THEY’RE FUN):

1. Oh, that Vox article I linked to above about neighborism? It was really fun to be a part of it and to have quotes throughout. I think the reporter, Sara Radin, did a great job.

2. The 50 state relay of community gathering is real and wonderful! A few updates:

   1. Here’s a nice article about tour Seattle launch and also my thoughts on the night.

   2. Our second event was this past Sunday in Portland at Reedwood Friends and it was the first of many events that I won’t be at personally (I was very jealous) but it was by all accounts INCREDIBLE and we’ll have a write-up on our website soon.

   3. Not one but two relay vents this next week, and I’ll be at BOTH OF THEM!

      1. Thursday, May 14th in San Francisco— An everybody’s welcome at the table party at Fog City Community Fitness (1649 Valencia). 6:30-9:300.

      2. Saturday, May 16th in Kalāheo (Kauai)— Yellow House invites you to a celebration of neighbors (complete with fire dancing). 4:00-9:00 at the corner of Papalino and Alelo.

3. Speaking of my upcoming visit to the Bay Area, because it was so successful in Seattle and Minneapolis, I’m once again doing HANG OUT OFFICE HOURS. On Thursday, May 14th, I’’ll be posted up from about. noon-4:00 at Kinfolx Coffee in Uptown Oakland. Want to, well, hang out? Just sign up for a slot here. Old friends and current strangers alike, everybody’s welcome.

4. We are VERY CLOSE to announcing our hosts for our next group of states: NV, AZ, NM, UT, CO and ID (fun ones!).

5. AND ALSO… NOW IS THE TIME TO APPLY FOR OUR NEXT ROUND OF STATES: Montana, Wyoming, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas. YOU’RE UP. Deadline is May 31st, As I’ve mentioned in previous weeks, Applying is not hard! Perhaps you want to toss your name in, if for no other reason than to tell my intrusive thoughts that they are silly [or more likely, because being a part of the relay is very cool and low impact and we literally give you money (a hosting stipend)].

6. Every week, I make a pitch at the end of these essays to help support The White Pages with a paid subscription. And yes I truly hope you do so! I think we’re doing some really great work thanks to your support (I mean, we’re literally hosting 50 gatherings across the country, and while we do have a great to help pay for my colleague Carly’s time on that, my income comes almost solely from your subscriptions). Man, it’d be great to be able to keep doing this for a living.

   But, today’s pitch is a bit different. Right now is a rough time in just about every field (so if you’re squeezed right now, ignore this), but that definitely includes this weird world of newslettering. Just about every newsletter author I know is having to hustle harder to keep making a living doing this work. Lots of reasons for that (the biggest: when everybody’s broke, discretionary expenses are the first to go), but the fact remains. If there’s a newsletter author you value (doesn’t have to be me!) this would be a great time to show them some love— a subscription if you can manage, a share if you can’t, a nice note if you’ve got the time. I’m going to do so as well, and share back next week about who I chose to support myself.

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7. I got out of the habit of songs of the week, but I have it on good authority that you can easily make this one into a parody song about endless shrimp.

8. I know I referenced and linked to this above but it’s still amazing to me that this is a headline that was written in all sincerity.

   

Hey pals,

Happy May Day! I missed our discussion last week (though I loved that even offering a non-discussion space inspired many of you to still hang out with each other). I'll admit that I’m not 100% online today again— my kids are off school— but let’ give it a shot still, eh?

This question emerged fairly out of the blue. At first, I asked myself “I w…

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Once a year, I get together with my two best guy friends for a weekend somewhere in the greater Midwest. I have already made this joke, but it remains true. What if the cure for male loneliness is… building and maintaining actual friendships? Funny nobody’s proposed that solution yet, but that’s why I’m not the Joe Rogan of the left.

This year we met up in Cincinnati, a lovely town filled with nice people, very pretty hills, and also one anodyne, vertical rectangle that says “Kroger” on it, where entire teams of Harvard MBAs are meeting as we speak to plot innovations like “what if we tried no open checkout lanes?”1

To get to Cincinnati from Milwaukee, you drive for an about six hours, picking up your buddies along the way. At some point, you stop for gas in Indiana. In our case, the gas station in question was somewhere between Lafayette and Lebanon. Was it a BP? A Cenex? Maybe, but if you are ever driving on I-65 and need to purchase aggressively gendered interior decor and/or marijuana themed socks, this is your place.

This was not my first novelty man cave sign. If a cursory Google Image search is to be believed, it’s a surprisingly robust interior design genre, though I’ve never actually seen one displayed in its natural habitat, only gas stations and Cracker Barrel gift shops. Come to think of it, have I ever been in a man cave? Do people still have those? Did they ever? I just assumed every McMansion had at least four, but I never investigated.

That’s the magic of this sign, you see. It is both a time capsule to a potentially imagined near-past, and a very real case study for the morass of contemporary gender discourse. I guess that’s how societal regression works. Everything old is new again, and for sale in an establishment where you can also buy Lunchables and Zyn.

According to this sign at least, there are ten rules of the man cave, just as there are Ten Commandments. Much like that other list-of-ten, these are not just empty platitudes that you hang on your wall (or increasingly teach in all of your public schools). You study it. You analyze it. You go deep.

#1. My cave, my rules

Possession is nine tenths of the laws, or so I hear. But already, we’re off to the internally contradictory races. So much of “let me be a man, damnit” discourse infers the existence of a proprietary spark tamped down by a feminized monoculture. Every man is a unique special snowflake, but not that kind of snowflake. If that’s the case, though, why are everybody’s man cave rules the same? Could one of your man cave rules be “this is a space to honestly reflect on your emotions and responsibiliies for community care?” Sorry bud, ran out of room on the sign. Kind of like how, whenever we talk broadly about the demonization of men, the variety of man we’re demonizing always enjoys the same five things: stoicism, gay jokes, shooting stuff, sports betting and those baseball hats where the text is upside down, so you have to tilt your head to read it and then you’re like “oh, I guess it says Miami.”

#2. Only man decor allowed

Now we’re rolling. Remember that a man cave is a physical space that only exists in the context of cis-hetero home ownership. Ontologically, the man cave presupposes that a fella in a cross-gender relationship is oppressed by his lady’s dominion over the rest of the house. Thank God somebody (the United Nations, presumably) bequeathed the put-upon man a tiny swath of de-feminized territory in the name of human rights. Not unlike how, before 2024, women had seized control of every single lever of power (they even had a hashtag that suggested that perhaps there should be consequence for sexual assault! the nerve!). Feminism had gone too far. Reparations were needed. Like, for example, giving guys even greater hegemonic control of all political and cultural institutions.

But back to the home. This is all he’s got, the man. The right to choose the decorations in his man cave. Like this sign, presumably. Or a VERY COOL picture of Kid Rock and RFK Jr. working out in jeans. Or a 1973 beer poster where a buxomly Nordic woman hoists two-to-three Coors Lights and gives the viewer a look that communicates "I wish to move to rural Utah with you, purchase a $10,000 stove and make Instagram content about bread and fertility.”

#3. Replenish all beer stock

Wait, who are these rules for? Is the woman of the house supposed to enter the man cave on a daily basis, consult these commandments, and then run out to get more beer? Well, if so, she’d better not also try to sneak in a “Live Laugh Love” poster or a picture of the man’s children on the wall. MAN DECOR ONLY! You know, like statues of bighorn sheep giving press conferences at the Pentagon. BAHHHH! WAR FIGHTERS!!!!

#4. Junk food is nutritional

So here’s where the sign starts to show its age. Remember when the fellas used to enjoy junk food? That was before we lost some of our best men in the War On Protein. These days, being a real man means having a bespoke eating disorder. In this man cave, we macromaxxx. We carnivore diet. We bulk and cut. We launch our own line of circa 1987 Weight Watchers shakes, but for cowboys. We slather a rotisserie chicken with cottage cheese and mutter to ourselves, 'Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men… ” until we fall asleep, thumb in mouth, on our man couch.

#5. Farting and belching tolerated

Whichever mid-level employee at the metaphor factory came up with this one deserves a raise. Incredible work. I mean, isn’t all anti-feminist backlash rhetoric, at its core, about how annoying it is to be gently reminded that considering the needs of other people might improve your life as well? Not on my manly watch! You’re saying that I should have authentic relationships with those around me rather than being a boorish sex pest? That I shouldn’t “say slurs” because they make me sound like a butthead? That I shouldn’t lose my life savings on a betting app? Why? Because of WOKE?

What’s next, keeping me from hotboxing my sacred man temple with a firehose of rancid man-flatulence?2 Screw you! My compact, hermetically sealed safe space exists for one reason and one reason alone: expelling unpleasant smells and then just sitting in ‘em! Like a man!

#6. Man controls all remotes

All of them? Fine, whatever.

#7. Sports on TV 24/7

And make it man sports, please. Not lady sports, which have never been of interest to us real men. Well, until we receive vague word that a trans high schooler wants to play softball, in which case we remember that women’s sports is the axis upon which our entire identity spins. Who told you we didn’t like women’s sports? It’s all we think about. Women’s athletes. We’re HUGE fans. We’ve got so many favorites. Like Riley Gaines. And, um, Erika Kirk? Also Mary, Jesus’ mother and, we assume, a champion pole vaulter in her time.

#8. Chick flicks are prohibited

At first glance, this one reads like another vintage 90s Home Improvement-level cracks about how women are from Terms of Endearment and men are from Die Hard, but let’s look at the contemporary media landscape. We’re constantly being told that men are oppressed now because of the supposed stranglehold that Big Woman has on all media. Comedy is illegal now. Television shows acknowledge the existence of trauma. You’d turn on the nightly news, and you don’t even see boobs any more.

But nature is healing. In the past few years, we’ve green-lit roughly five million Taylor Sheridan shows about behatted men staring into the middle district. Kill Tony awareness is at an all time high. The Ellisons now own all media, and Bari Weiss3 is in charge of CBS News For Men and Select Other Real Americans. I mean, even Taylor Swift pivoted away from “chick flicks.” She got the memo. I bet she built Travis Kelce a man cave so big that there’s another man cave inside it. One for farts, one for burps. Not like the rest of our wives, who only enjoy nagging and ruining the workplace.

#9. No bitching. No issues.

Want to play a fun game? It’s called “morally constipated Atlantic column or line from the man cave sign.” I mean, isn’t this basically the message of nine million think pieces about how various leftists are personally responsible for Trump 2.0 and the broader death of democracy? Racial justice activists. “Millennial feminists.” Trans people who would like to go to the bathroom without a weirdo yelling that them. You all bitched! And I— David Brooks or Thomas Chatterton Williams or Helen Lewis— am here to warn you about the sudden emergence of… issues. They didn’t exist, those issues, and we were all doing fine, but then you just had to run your mouth, didn’t you? Are you happy now? You personally willed Pete Hegseth into existence, such was the sheer force of your insatiable bitchery.

I know I keep ping ponging between the sign’s hack 90s gender comedy and our current discursive moment, but it’s striking. The old canards that have propped up emotional/physical labor gaps in heterosexual marriages for decades (women are shrill nags; men deserve both to run everything and to lie around doing nothing) ) are now being reheated as brilliant epistles for the second Trump era. “Take my wife… please” is just the molecular level version of “but what about the boys and men?”

But yes, in summary. If there was no bitching, there’d be no issues. Your move, Critical Race Theory.

#10. Whatever Man Says Makes Perfect Sense

See also: Whatever the President and Vice President say (take that, soft on crime, non-theology knowing Pope), whatever a stand-up comic who loves rape jokes says (“oh come on… are you TRIGGERED?) whatever every corporate CEO says (“great news, the world-destroying robots who occasionally tell you to kill yourself are your children’s legal guardians now)) and whatever the New York Times Editorial Board says (“Sure, Zohran is charismatic, but what if he institutes Sharia Law in YOUR man cave.”).

Although, now that I think about it.. I’m a man, and this newsletter is, on some level at least, my man cave. I think I get the appeal. Whatever I say makes perfect sense, you say? Don’t mind if I do.

END NOTES:

1. You all! I’m no longer just talking about helping fifty rad community builders host a relay of fifty gatherings across the country. I really was in Seattle last week (busy travel week, I know), hanging out with many of you at one of the best potlucks I’ve ever attended (shout out to the Columbia City Neighbors Club). Here’s a nice article about the event, and also my thoughts on the night. Oh my god it was the best.

2. Portland, you’re up next. THIS SUNDAY! NOON PACIFIC TIME! AT REEDWOOD FRIENDS (2901 SE Steele). You all, this is going to be such a fun gathering— Reedwood is a faith community, but it’s asking an inspiring questions about how to be the kind of place that is a good neighbor to those for whom faith communities don’t/can’t feel like home. And also, there’s gonna be singing and pizza. You should come

   

3. THIS FRIDAY IS THE DEADLINE FOR OUR NEXT ROUND OF RELAY STATES (Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Colorado and Idaho), As I’ve mentioned in previous weeks, Applying is not hard! Perhaps you want to toss your name in, if for no other reason than to tell my intrusive thoughts that they are silly (or more likely, because being a part of the relay is very cool and low impact we even provide a hosting stipend).

4. and I made an announcement about our podcast, . We’re taking a break,, but there’s o reason to start singing Green Day’s “Time of your life” or Sarah Mclaughlin’s “I will remember you” at your favorite podcast app, because we’ll be back!

5. This essay’s final line notwithstanding, I do not believe that everything I say makes total sense but I do believe that— in a world where so much ink is spilled keeping the world as it is— that the work we’re doing here matters. I wouldn’t ask you to support if it didn’t truly help (I’m lucky to have this job, but it truly wouldn’t be possible if a few folks every week didn’t raise their hand and say “hey Garrett, thanks for this, I can take a shift helping out.”

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