Twenty ideas for populist political projects that you could start or join tomorrow that don't involve throwing vulnerable people under the bus

A whole bunch of outreached hands-- for the burnt out, the angry but directionless, and the millions who've internalized the lie that politics "just isn't for them"

IWW supporters honor Everett Massacre victims, Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Seattle, May 1, 1917

I wrote this list for two reasons. The first is that I personally needed it. Though my whole project here is about helping us believe— even in dark times— that we have a world to win through community and connection, I’m also a human being with a frequently busted heart who reads the news every day. In the past few weeks, I have found myself both tired from the usual tornado of back-to-school logistics and more overwhelmed than normal at the crushing waves of news both old (children starved and bombed in Gaza, immigrants terrorized in every corner of America) and new (the headline that broke me yesterday was Trump’s reference to domestic violence as just “a little fight with the wife”). I’ve got a nasty habit, when I get overwhelmed, of falling into reactivity— refreshing the news, hoping that somebody else will solve all the world’s ills for me. Like a lot of us, I benefit from the reminder that there is power in helping ourselves and others get and stay in motion.

Another reason: I’m a true believer in populism. Not the version of populism we’ve been sold lately, a euphemism for any political ideology, usually proffered by hucksters, that purports to take on “the elites.” By this definition, Tucker Carlson is a populist, which should tell you all you need to know. No, I mean the lost version of populism that once inspired multi-racial coalitions of workers in Texas, miners in Colorado, and farmers in North Dakota to take on the banks and railroad barons. A populism that doesn’t care if you’ve read Marx or not, nor what you call yourself politically, but which asks you to care for others. A populism that believes that ordinary people of all stripes deserve a life worth living. A populism that won’t pander to humanity’s lowest common denominator, but which says “no matter who you are, you matter, but so does everybody else.”

This list isn’t comprehensive, and you are more than welcome to suggest additions. I’ve written each entry in the manner of an opening line to an email, or perhaps the top line of a flyer. Could a politician make these their platform? I bet, and I wish they would. But so too could a non-politician use it to kick off a discussion in their living room. Some are the kind of issues that we think of as being partisan, but phrased in a way that I hope welcomes people in. Others are widely popular gripes that haven’t yet been funneled into the narrow sorting hat of political ideology (I was inspired by this poll of “things that most annoy Americans”). Do some of them seem slight, in an era of encroaching fascism? Yes, but we can’t help people connect the dots between daily vexations and structural change if we don’t welcome them into organizing spaces in the first place.

As for the scope and scale of each, I tried to offer a range. Some of are calls for a national movement (or an invitation to join existing ones). Others lend themselves to a small community of neighbors getting together and building something tangible where they live. All of them are a first step. Yes, I’d like all these dreams to become reality, but the means here matter as much as the end— more people coming together, working for something that will benefit as many of us as possible, learning as we go.

Here are some invitations:

1. Your kids deserve to play on safe, walkable streets. Join our movement to tell city hall that we want to live in neighborhoods where we can say “sure, just ride your bike over to your friends house,” not race tracks where we have to fear for our kids’ lives every time they go outside.

2. Do you hate spam calls? What about hidden bank fees? So do we, so we’re rallying millions of Americans to tell Congress and the Justice Department to go after crooks and scammers instead of targeting our neighbors who are just trying to support their families.

3. We’ve got a simple message for our state legislature and Congress: No more tax cuts for people who own two or more houses until we can all afford a simple, decent place to live.

4. While we’re at it: No tax cuts for people who own yachts until our communities all have bus and train service that actually gets us to work and school, to say nothing of roads without potholes.

5. How do you feel about the big corporate grocery store near you (think Kroger or Albertson’s or Walmart)? Do prices keep going up even though every time you go to the store there’s only one check-out lane open? Why isn’t anybody blaming Big Grocery for inflation? Why aren’t there protests in front of their headquarters every day? Why haven’t their CEOs been summoned to Congressional hearings? Because, until now, we haven’t raised the temperature on them.

6. Drug stores provide a necessary civic function, but the big chains (Walgreens, CVS, Rite Aid, Duane Reed) have become hellish mini surveillance states. We’re calling on the pharmacy behemoths to stop treating our customers like criminals, locking up toothpaste and razors and soap. Stop wasting our time or prepare to lose our business.

7. Related to the two preceding actions, so many of the small daily indignities that most annoy consumers (like the lockboxes and self checkouts and omnipresent tipping request machines) are directly connected to the dehumanization of service employees. The only answer is a nationwide service industry unionization drive, supported by employees and customers alike. We’re starting with employees at our local ________ branch and would love if you could join our first meeting.

8. We’re sports fans, but we miss the days of fantasy leagues with our buddies. Big sports gambling companies have ruined sports— you can’t watch a game or listen to a podcast without hearing their ads, and they’re clearly ripping us all off. We don’t blame each other for making an occasional bet or two, but we do want our government to stop the huge companies who get rich while we get addicted.

9. As parents (and grandparents and aunties and uncles and people who care about kids), what we really want is universal free childcare. And we’re gonna rally for it, but on the path to getting there, we’re organizing a child care collective in our town/neighborhood/city. We’re having a planning meeting (child care provided, of course) and would love if you and the kids in your life could come.

10. As human beings who either are or will be sick, what we really want is universal healthcare. And so as we join in the ongoing national movement for Medicare For All, we’re also canvassing our neighborhood to hear all the ways that our neighbors are sick and need support right now— both to build mutual aid networks and so that we can inundate elected officials and healthcare CEOs with hundreds of millions of stories of Americans who are dying on their watch.

11. Ticketmaster needs to be bankrupted. Or regulated to death. So we’re organizing every one of the most online music communities (the Swifties, the Bey-hive, the K-Pop Stans, etc.) in a boycott until ticket prices are affordable for working class people again.

12. Actually, entertainment and recreation are human rights! And while in our own country’s past (and around the world currently) there have been and are still some examples of free civic music festivals and show-stopping public parks (and even amusement parks). We deserve one in our town too, open and accessible to all. Let’s organize together to make that happen.

13. Hey! We’re getting a group of dads and sons in our neighborhood together for a biweekly meeting/hangout because we’re terrified that the only role models on offer are a President who actively hates women and a bunch of podcasters who believe that being a man is just about saying slurs whenever you want. We think that men and boys deserve community, but not one that infantilizes us or gives us a permission structure to be jerks.

14. Vaccinations are good, actually! Because they literally keep us alive! And so we’re organizing die-ins— for everybody who cares about keeping kids and adults safe and healthy— in front of the HHS and CDC and state houses that have proposed or executed on vaccine mandate rollbacks.

15. We either live in a city that’s already been targeted by Trump or one that could be in the future. And we want to start meeting now— connecting both those of us who live relatively comfortable lives (U.S. citizens, people who live in houses, etc.) and those that don’t. We’re going to start by talking about what we need for all of us to be safe, both in the short term and if the worst possible scenario comes to bear.

16. We’re parents with kids in sports, and that means that we know that the biggest crisis in that world isn’t trans kids who just want to play, it’s the youth athletic industrial complex in general. It’s making us broke, it’s selling a false promise of D-1 scholarships for all, it’s taking a potential opportunity for connection and community and turning it into a zero sum Hunger Games, all while colonizing our weekends and leaving us exhausted. Something needs to change, so we’re gathering parents together who love watching our kids play but know that something better is possible.

17. AI shouldn’t be added to any product unless you specifically ask for it. We don’t need an AI pop-up every time we try to do a web search, open up a new document, or use our phone. We’re organizing to ask Congress to finally regulate A.I., especially in the products we use every day. Opt in needs to be the norm, not hack your way out.

18. Unsolicited political fundraising texts are an absolute scourge on our body politic, so we’re boycotting. Everybody who adds their name to the list is committed to never giving money to any politician— even if we’re otherwise invested in their race— who asks us for money against our will. If we signed up for their campaign info, we’re more than happy to hear from them. If not, we need to stop the vicious cycle (of list laundering, of elder abuse, of trust erosion).¹

19. We (especially in White America) have been told that racial justice isn’t a populist issue. But we don’t buy it. We believe- in spite of a concerted half decade long attack on “DEI”— that Americans of all ethnic backgrounds can still see what’s right in front of their eyes. We don’t want to be babied, and we don’t want future generations to be babied. We’re going to descend on school board meetings to request that honest history be taught to our kids, and city halls and state legislatures to ask that they actually make good on the task forces they held on criminal justice and reparations five years ago. We saw what happened when reactionaries attacked DEI publicly just a few years ago. The tide turned. It may seem Sisyphean, as Trump’s goons launch a “control f” war on DEI initiatives everywhere, but that’s all the more reason to declare now that there are millions of us who aren’t afraid of actual reckonings with racism.

20. It feels impossible to take on all the systems that are keeping us broke, sick and scared of each other. But we can start with the three blocks closest to us. So we’re having a meeting of all our neighbors with a simple question “what would it look like to make all of our lives better?” We’d love for you to join us.

End notes:

1. A repeat announcement. So many of you have already signed up to do a solidarity fast for Gaza with me and The White Pages Community the week of September 21st. Thank you! We still have spots on our “team” if you’d like to join us [and if you have questions, the registration website has great answers, for instance about whether you can do it if you’re not a parent (absolutely) as well as accommodations with people who can’t fast for reasons such as health, ED history, etc.].

2. If you are one of the roughly 93% of people who read this newsletter but aren’t paid subscribers, I’d love if you’d consider doing so. It’s cheap, as far as these things go (literally the cheapest Substack will allow) and man are there perks.

3. Speaking of perks, on Thursday I’ll be rolling out a new merch raffle for paid subscribers (much beloved designs, like the “love harder than the fascists can hate” shirt/tote with the jaunty heart, and new ones, like a ball cap that says “POTLUCKS!” on it).

4. And then, on Sunday at 8:30 PM Central Time, join us for our next White Pages “No Longer Summer” Movie Series Live Watch (link here for context). The next one up is Don’t Look Up, a movie which I remember being preachy and self-righteous. Was I projecting my own insecurities about my own preachy self-righteousness? Was I too hard on it? Shouldn’t we be preachy and self-righteous about such an important topic? Or does message matter? And is the movie, you know, any good? Let’s find out, together, in the Substack chat.

5. Ok, that’s all the “perks for paid subscribers” news (forgive me, I’m just legitimately grateful for the people who help me sustain this work, so I try to show it in multiple ways). Back to the “updates for everybody” news. I will be offering one last 2025 Barnraisers offering, another round of single session mini classes on “how to start a group.” Sounds important, given this week’s essay topic, don’t you think? If you’re on the interest list, you’ll hear all about it as soon as I solidify the dates.

6. I began this essay with the admission that I needed to get out of my own head and back in the world of building with other people. I don’t know what helps you when you’re in one of those moments, but one of the most predictable things about me (aside from the fact that I’ve recently learned that I have the exact same middle aged dude aesthetic as Grown Up Steve From Blues Clues) is that my answer is often “listen to a post hardcore singer with a Northern English accent shout ‘WHAT’S THE TRUTH WHEN YOUR MIND’S A LIE?’ over a classic Madchester/Baggie breakbeat.” Did that sentence make any sense to you? If not, I still promise that the song is a winner. This week: “Mind’s a Lie” by High Vis.

   [As always, the full song of the week playlist is available on Apple Music and Spotify]

1. I’m trying as much as possible to avoid responding to potential counter points here, but I can see the argument about how up-and-coming candidates can still tell their story to new audiences without these unsolicited texts. My friends, do you know how many journalists (both people at outlets and indies like me) would LOVE to tell stories of inspiring candidates we trust to our readers? Pitch us, and let us help your story spread. You don’t have to be a scammer!