letters from a weirdo

This is going somewhere, stay with me, neighbor:

Recently, my husband has been drawing cute little doodles on post-it notes and leaving them on my coffee mug for me to find in the morning. When he ran out of post-its, I found him a tiny square notebook, where he continues to draw his good morning doodles for me. It’s incredible how a simple doodle has been able to tether me to what’s good in this life.

Anyhow, last night, he asked me if I had any special requests. I was deep into a course I’m taking on nonviolent civil resistance and, a bit distracted, I replied: “Make me a protest doodle.”

So, as I was studying how to topple tyrants, my kindhearted dude was scrolling through Your Weirdo Friend’s blog for protest doodle inspiration.

This morning, when I opened the book of doodles left next to my coffee cup, this is what I saw: a drawing of a slingshot and a heart-shaped stone and, underneath of that, the words “be a stone.”

What made his drawing so impactful was that he mirrored back what he saw in me. And, now, in turn, I record this podcast to mirror what I see in all of us.

What I see is not only that we are winning but also how we will win.

Spoiler: it’s not with buckets of bullets and cash, nor is it with bitcoin and artificial intelligence. We prevail by returning to the old ways, which were always waiting for us to find our way back home.

So if you’re feeling laid low today, tuck in, and give this podcast a listen.

As always, if this message resonates with you, spread the good news — not just with a repost but peer to peer, via text, via email, via paraphrase and old-school amplification. Neighbor, you have my enthusiastic consent to copy the transcripts on this podcast and read (or paraphrase) these words, however you see fit.

It’s time for us to share impactful messages outside the algorithms designed to muddy truth with a proliferation of lies and smother hope with manufactured despair. Love wins.

Protests are important, but for them to result in the longterm change you wish to see, that protest energy must be harnessed into a social movement. And to build a movement, it requires people to leave their screens behind, organize and strategize offline, and build genuine kinship and regular opportunities to socialize.

Toward that end, here’s podcast that explains the difference between a series of protests and a social movement. Remember, protests are important but sustained, local movement-building is what upends fascism.

Neighbor, if this article was helpful to you, please consider sharing it via direct text/email to a friend. That personal touch of sharing tends to ensure people actually engage with what you’ve shared, because it shows that the article meant something to you. It might also be an opportunity for you to talk with people in your life about what’s happening. This culture has done so much to tell you kinship and vulnerability are signs of weakness, but it’s in togetherness that we learn to become bigger than who we are and transform the world.

the regime wouldn’t have the ability to abduct, traffic, murder, rape, persecute, and torture its targets, if they didn’t have willing foot soldiers. but here’s another thing we don’t like to think about: the supporters of this regime have partners, children, grandchildren, and friends.

imagine, if you will, that these regime supporters could, themselves, be sanctioned.

there’s good news on this front: they can be sanctioned.

all that’s required is for everyday people to step into their integrity and refuse to socialize with people who support this regime.

this isn’t political differences. what is happening right now is evil, and each of us has the agency to refuse to aid and abet people who are okay with this evil.

remember, neighbor: your values aren’t what you say you believe in— it’s what you’re willing to do and what you’re willing to risk to stand in your integrity, to stand in solidarity with the vulnerable.

if ever there were a moment to go on a long walk and ask yourself what you stand for, that time is now.

if you can’t listen to me, listen to my friend yelmo.

neighbor, i’m gonna send out a special prayer request: when people push out panic-at-the-disco stories about any kind of nonsense this fascist regime plans on doing, take a breath and say: “okay. then what?”

because the fact of the matter is that we have agency.

these people are trying to scare you into a freeze response so that you think you’re powerless— and they have to do this, because their ideas are absolutely batshit, the regime is wildly unpopular, and we actually have way more power than they do.

no one with actual power needs to scare the s**t out of people to legitimately govern. these are mobsters trying to do you a shakedown, and we don’t let stupid trust fund babies jerk us around. we’re smarter, there are more of us, and there are concrete things we can do to prepare, starting right now, to uproot these fascist f***s. that’s what this podcast is about.

give this podcast a listen, and if you like what you hear, don’t just give it a share online: text or email a direct link of this episode with your friends. these rich a******s are trying to throttle every single gd social media platform, because they don’t want us having a birds-eye view of just how unpopular and weak they are.

okay. then what? we go around the algorithm entirely by direct-sharing stuff that matters with the people you know, person to person. billionaires might control these mean internet streets but, as of yet, they do not control who you text and email.

when these a******s act like a******s and try to block us, we move like water. we don’t sit around crying and waiting for someone to save us. we are not disney princesses. we are agential adults who have the collective brains, grit, and empathy to band together and oust a fascist regime.

sure, you could yeah-but, wet-blanket, and sea-lion your neighbors until the day you find yourself in a concentration camp, or you can break up with learned helplessness, get off your screens, and get s**t done.

i don’t know about you, but i’m on team get-s**t-done— not team whine about how helpless we all are, do nothing, hope we don’t get murdered by madmen, and leave the world in a worse place for the young people. we are better than this, and it’s time we started acting like it. yeehaw.

neighbor, the revolutionaries you’re looking for are already in your neighborhood. if you’re feeling lost and wondering where your leaders are and what you’re supposed to do next, you have found this podcast right on time. welcome. tuck in and listen to this podcast.

the people you’re looking for are your neighborhood helpers, your artists, your coders, your taggers, your retirees, your cross-guards, your bus drivers, your scientists, your librarians, your educators, your gardeners, your canners, your hunters, your caregivers, your comedians, your empty-nesters, your writers, your planners, your children, your dreamers, your nurses, your firefighters, your social workers, your retired chemist, your local veterinarian, and your fellow weirdos.

we need all of ‘em. go find the people in your neighborhood.

this revolution starts at home— and it MUST start at home, if we are to have any chance at securing our freedom. revolutions that don’t develop deep roots and informed, local strategies will fail. them’s facts, sugar cube.

this is an at-home vs. away-game kinda situation. we know how to defend our turf and our people. we know how to make ourselves ungovernable. we know how to shut s**t down everywhere in our home-places.

what you’re missing is the art of neighborliness that gets you out of your homes and off of your screens. allow me to help you find your way back to each other.

red and blue don’t matter no more. neighbors, this is fascism. if people are earnestly pissed off about this, then they’re on your side. we are a people who have collectively suffered under gerrymandered, underhanded political skullduggery for decades, if not centuries.

don’t tell me you’re all alone in your rural red area. every single bit of the organizing i have Ione has been in a red area. you only feel alone because you stay at home. get out there, babes. we need you, and we are everywhere around you. this is why these rich b******s keep us exhausted and hopped up on distraction: we are legion, and they can’t have us knowing that by going out there and being people. the need us just struggling to get by.

the literal best way to fight back is to stop reacting to these fascist shitheads, unglue ourselves from the screens, meet up in a public place, and begin to develop a strategy. i have linked to this resource because the word “strategy” means something very particular when it comes to organizing. the more folks who read this in your neighborhood the better.

I promise you: if you get offline and meet up at your local library, or your local park, this weekend, there will be at least twenty people who show up. each of you is a leader. each of you is capable of recruiting other neighbors. we always need to be recruiting. always.

people aren’t getting involved not because they don’t care but because they don’t know how they can contribute.

if you don’t know how people can contribute, check out my earlier podcast, “the bill passed. now what?,” which gets pretty darn granular about almost all the hands we need on deck. listen to it. it’s not like anyone else is stepping up to give you a detailed plan. let it be a weirdo this time. this is a weird f*****g timeline. consider it kismet.

here’s a thing to know: there are 41,552 zip codes in the united states.

every single f*****g zip code is a battlefield these fascists must wage to subdue us. don’t cede a single goddamn one of ‘em.

locals know how to protect each other and fight back at home, even if it’s a group of outsiders. if you don’t know that, it probably means you don’t involve yourself with other people much. that needs to change, immediately, if you’d like to defeat this fascist siege of our liberty and basic human dignity.

just look how quickly they have trained you to accept indignity upon indignity— look how they abuse your neighbors and expect you to just let them.

you are not the child who couldn’t help your mother when your dad beat her anymore. you are an adult now. when you see abuse, you intervene. you uproot it. you stamp it out. you make it an inhospitable place for fascism to grow.

these f*****s intend to drag us all into hell. resist!

neighbors: you know your topography, your streets, your collective assets. we all know somebody who is good at knowing local somebodies— they’re your community switchboards. all you need to do is slowly amass the hundreds of pissed off neighbors around you. they are there. there will be more soon enough. don’t wait on them. organize now with the team you got.

all you need is the courage to go be patriotic people: meet up and make a plan.

do not cower inside!

there are millions of us across the country— way the hell more than 3.5% of the country. babes, at least 65% of this country (voters or not)— and like 90% of all human beings on the planet—do not want this fascist timeline. we rebuke it!

that’s why rich ass fascists do crazy terroristic s**t to try and “keep us in line.” fascists aren’t mean because they’re powerful; they’re mean because they are weak, and they’re scaring you so you don’t think to check them. it’s a con. (read more here.)

neighbors, this has gone on far too long. they have made every aspect of our lives one struggle after another, and even though these men have more money than god and no law they’ll rabide, they have the audacity to want even more: our very lives. are you f*****g kidding me? no. no f*****g way!

get yourselves to a public park or a public library and meet up this weekend, while the iron is hot. whatever else is going on in your life can likely be rescheduled (in the interest of having a future life that’s worth living at all).

it’s time to build local strategies and wage nonviolent resistance on multiple fronts. it’s time for us to exhaust these fascist f*****s. it’s time to disorient them and challenge them in unconventional ways they won’t expect. surprise these shitheads. be aggressively weird about it, just to disorient them.

i promise you: what you’re looking for is already exactly where you need it. assemble. and if you need help, i’m a DM away. likely seriously, dudes, i will help you. reach out. i’m not gonna f*****g rest until we’re in formation. consider me a pro-democracy hotline.

in the meantime, i think it’s time to reread abe lincoln’s gettysburgh address and remember why our fourth grade teacher, ms. cookie quinn, made us memorize it:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham LincolnNovember 19, 1863

Resources I Mention in the Podcast

Peter Ackerman’s. The Checklist to End Tyranny.

Srđa Popović. CANVAS Core Curriculum: A Guide to Effective Nonviolent Struggle.

Southerners on New Ground. Core Organizing Tools.

neighbor, today was deflating— soul crushing even. i understand how hard it is to move in a world of so much depravity. they want you to feel powerless and hemmed in. what this podcast describes is a template for fighting back, with nothing but moxy and a profound love of your neighbors.

it’s time to mobilize, and this podcast explains how to create meaningful, local resistance pods in every zip code. each resistance pod will include eighteen mini resistance clusters, each of which leverages your neighborhood’s collective assets, resources, time, space, and talents.

everyone has something to offer the movement.

don’t think of forming this coalition as an impossible task: think of assembling these local resistance pods as a treasure-hunt— like the kind commonly played at birthday parties.

when you build this pod, you will prevent fascism from taking root in your neighborhoods. fascism thrives on learned powerlessness. do not give these b******s what they want. instead, build a muppet militia— armed with hope, collaboration, and an intentional refusal of the fascist creed: every man for himself.

if this podcast episode has been helpful to you, don’t just share it online. the online, on its own, is useless. the online is where we are surveilled, sorted, and groomed for despair.

instead, share this podcast directly with your friends— peer to peer. invite people over for a meal. roll up your sleeves and take notes. you only need three people who give a damn to get this going and, from there, each of you (i promise) knows somebody who knows somebody to contribute to this neighborhood treasure hunt.

and i do mean treasure: every neighbor who gives a damn and who refuses to surrender their agency in a time of depravity is a blessing to their community. realize, too, that when you build out these resistance pods together, you’re suddenly going to find yourself a lot less burnt out, more supported, more connected, and more hopeful than you have been in years.

fascists want you to think their power is monolithic, unstoppable, unmovable, and timeless. this is a lie. fascism is a ponzi scheme that requires your fear, helplessness, and isolation to thrive.

when you refuse to comply with moral collapse— when you mobilize collective joy into agency and community—it’s not a matter of if the fascists will fail: it’s a matter of when. and if you create these pods, another highly-organized, pro-social way of being will be waiting in the wings.

if you like this idea, don’t just share it. put it into action. you don’t need to be able to do it all: you need to find each other and do your small part. this podcast describes a process that helps you work together to topple tyrants.

alons-y!

Neighbor, I’m really going to try to keep the message that corresponds with this podcast short. So who’s this episode for? It’s for anyone who felt their heart sink and their dread kick in once the US Senate betrayed our country and supported a bill that gives the ultra-rich profound control over our social lives and will further enrich them as they built private forces to starve, surveil, abduct, silence, traffic, torture, persecute, and murder our fellow neighbors. The enormity of this betrayal feels too much. Maybe it feels like numbness, maybe it feels like despair, maybe it feels like an impotent rage that leads to soul death. All of this is by design. So if you’re feeling low, let this podcast remind you of the score. Yes, there is terror and terribleness. The weak always terrorize to frighten the masses into submission so that they forget they are the force more powerful.

I’ve got you neighbor, and we’ve got each other.

We’ve just got to remember who we are.

To close out this podcast description, I’m going to leave you with a poem written by Bonro W. Overstreet called “Stubborn Ounces.”

(To One Who Doubts the Worth ofDoing Anything If You Can’t Do Everything)

You say the Little efforts that I makewill do no good: they never will prevailto tip the hovering scalewhere Justice hangs in balance.

I don’t think I ever thought they would.But I am prejudiced beyond debatein favor of my right to choose which sideshall feel the stubborn ounces of my weight.

Octavia Butler wasn’t a prophet. She just looked around, observed the trends, and clearly surmised where this all plays out. Likewise, my letter to blue state governors— and to all of my neighbors of conscience— is to actually listen to what these people are saying and take them seriously. You are getting stuck in the trap of decorum, traditions, law and order— and human decency. These people are relying on you to refuse to see what’s coming for you. They are weaponizing your need for normalcy and your need for calm. They are also actively gaslighting you. They have signaled at every turn that they mean to commit mass atrocities on American soil, just as they have signaled that they have every intention to invade their allies. I’m not saying this to scare you. I am telling this to prepare you so that, when the unthinkable comes, you do not panic. Remember that these people are nuts, but their numbers are small. Remember that people with legitimate power do not need to use violence. Remember that power only holds if the people choose to confer power to their leaders. These are not leaders. These are theives and domestic terrorists. They have not legitimacy and should be regarded as such. Do not be pulled into their game of “following the rules” while they themselves break the rules and rewrite them. They are counting on your collective docility, denial, and fear to let them commit mass atrocities and human rights violations. Yes, what they’re about to do is scary as hell. But it stops being scary when you refuse to believe they have any authority over you. These are unhinged terrorists. But they only succeed if you panic and freeze. I am trying to orient you to the scene before you so that you can plan. This podcast helps you do it. If you found something of value in it, share it— not just here. Text it to your friends and neighbors. Hell, you have my blessing to take the transcripts from this podcast and record your own emergency broadcast. I need you to wake up to the situation at hand and understand that operating from a place of normalcy while domestic terrorists are moving through a state of exception is a deadly recipe. They need you numb and in denial. I need you awake, level-headed, and prepared to resist the fascists invading your neighborhoods. And I need democratic governors and every military member and law enforcement agent of conscience to hold the f*****g line, before we get pulled off a cliff and into hell. This is still avoidable. This is not inevitable. We still have the upper hand. What remains to be seen is whether you’re able to wrest yourselves from the trap they have so clearly set for you.

Hey, neighbor. These are spooky times— but it’s also important to remember that they’re intentionally spooky times. What’s happening right now, this fascist nonsense, is incredibly unpopular.

Everybody is pissed off at this guy, which is why he’s trying to threaten us with violence and persecution. It’s also why he’s intentionally trying to endanger our safety. While national intelligence ought to be fending us off from domestic terrorism, the regime has funneled all resources to hunting down our neighbors— all while he’s got a drunk leading our military, an addict wrecking our health infrastructure, and a twenty-something grocery bagger as the head of domestic terrorism prevention. It’s also worth pointing out that this homicidally unqualified individual also interned with the Heritage Foundation, the strategic engine behind forcing Christian nationalist extremism on the rest of us by way of a Christofascist techno-feudalism.

In short, it’s a fucked up time. But I need you to remember that they need you scared to pull this off. People with actual power don’t need force. If we don’t let down, their goose is cooked.

There are ten things, in particular, fascists need you to keep telling yourself in order for them to stay in power. This podcast will identify those ten lies, explain why fascists need you to believe them, and orient you to the truths about this moment they don’t want you to see which, if embraced, ensure that we’ll prevail.

Give it a listen.

P.S. I try to keep these short. I try. But I’ve got a mouth on me. Anyhow, speed my voice up— you have my enthusiastic encouragment to adjust the playback speed.

Neighbor, the tyrant thrives on disorientation. I’m here to be a lighthouse and to recruit you to light a candle in your heart and join me.

Plagiarize me.

Why? Because we are at war and our comms have been jammed.

This system relies on likes, shares, algorithms, censorship, surveillance, shadow bans, and getting people locked onto screens and subscription fees. I’m asking you to take my words and share them as if they were your own. Print them out and pamphlet your area. Record it over a ham radio— or your local radio station. Create a Google doc and share it with your friends. Email it to your parents. Share it to a Signal or Discord chat as if this broadcast were your own.

Fascists have taken out our central comms which have, in the past, helped us plan and coordinate and connect. I’m trying to help you build back the communities we actually need to combat the oligarch-induced loneliness epidemic that has been eating us alive for decades. I’m here to give you step by step instructions for building back genuine connections and thriving communities— in person, in digital spaces, in print, and in analog. I’m here to help you develop robust local community networks, zip code by zip code. I’m here to give you a checklist of things that need to happen in your local community, and I will help you connect with the people already in your communities doing these things.

You don’t need to be a community organizer. I’m here to help you organize— to build a well-organized nonviolent front against fascism. All you need to begin are three people who live near you, and we can build out from there.

That’s why I want you to plagiarize me. These people want us unprepared and panicked for the cruelty they’re unleashing, which is why I’m asking you to spread this message (however you see fit, but as wide as you can) so we can be prepared for what lurks in the shadows, refuse to be cowed, and hold the line for democracy.

Neighbor, I know this is a scary time but they need you scared so you cannot see how powerful you are. Pro-democracy movements succeed when they outsmart, outmaneuver, and outlast the fascists. Remember: these aren’t gods; these are broken careless men who desperately need you to believe they are infallible gods so that you submit. Our ancestors compel us to break the generational curse and refuse to let weak-willed white zealots spill blood on our soil, once more, in the name of plunder and profit.

Our land has a never again history it actively tries to disavow, which is why we return to brutality again and again. It’s not entirely our collective doing— all of our capacities for leadership have been browbeaten out of us, because they needed to you believe you couldn’t demand dignity for yourself and for your neighbors.

These are lawless crooks and domestic terrorists. They honestly think so little of our intellect, our talent, and our self-respect that they believe they can scare us into submission and/or trap us into techno-fascism by wrecking our institutions, threatening our government officials, smothering our living-breathing constitution, and engaging in a lawless cruelty meant to provoke us into a violent skirmish that drastically reduces our odds of toppling fascists.

These people are waging war on us, and every move they make is meant to put us on the back foot, induce fear, and drag us into the moral collapse that enables genocide.

I need you to understand that there’s a reason Donald Trump, Kevin Roberts, Curtis Yarvin, and his technofascist boy band are abandoning Ukraine, attacking our democratic allies, and cozying up to other corrupt sociopaths who are engaging in genocide in order to stay in power.

There’s a reason they’re building camps here. There’s a reason ICE is now a gestapo. There is a reason Palantir and X have all of your personal data. There is a reason they’re cutting care to over 16 million of our neighbors, which will lead (if we let it) to a total economic and healthcare collapse.

There’s a reason Russ Vought, of DOGE, keeps on doing a run-around Congress and has repeatedly said that they “don’t need” Congress or the courts. Did you think they’re done with “efficiency”? Friends, they will tell you we don’t need Congress or the courts— what they need is for you to hand over your money, your bodies, your lives, and your freedom and submit to brutality.

These men mean you harm, and if you stay in denial, more of us will perish than would have if you’d have taken this seriously before it personally affected your daily routine. Fascism always comes for us all, because it requires total submission, total subjection. It is a system wrapped in victimhood over the lack of “viewpoint diversity” which, in actuality, means to stamp our all dissent because fascism cannot thrive in a free society.

Fascism requires isolation, fear, and lies to thrive. We must be connected, courageous, and living in the truth.

It all starts by doing a bit more than a share. It asks you to be a lighthouse— to share this, in any way you see fit, with people you know— not for likes or notoriety but for the love of your neighbor and for the love of our country.

My job is not to scare you; it is to prepare you.

We do not have to lose our neighbors.

We do not need to lose years of our lives to these men.

But every bit of what happens next entirely dependent on you refusing to fall into moral collapse and, instead, roll up your sleeves, ready your community, and fight like heck/heaven/hope for our neighbors and for our right to equitable, accountable, representative self-governance.