letters from a weirdo

This podcast is a departure from my usual recordings, because I’m reading someone else’s words: in particular, The Lemkin Institute’s “Letter to the American People,” published on March 27, 2025. This letter is a crucial communique that every neighbor in the battle against fascism must read.

My hope in reading it aloud to you here is that it might move you— that it might inspire you to share The Lemkin Institute’s letter with your peers, neighbors, coworkers, parishioners, family members, and friends. And more than that— it is my prayer you might be moved into unrelenting local action to defend your neighbors from persecution.

I also encourage you to read The Lemkin Institute’s public resource, titled “10 Patterns of Genocide.” I encourage you to read it, especially if you are someone who prefers to look away from “stressful” things. There are some times, neighbor, when looking away becomes a crime. This is one of those times. I need you to make yourself aware of the patterns of genocide because many of those patterns are already taking place, and you cannot fight what you cannot (or will not) recognize.

Neighbor, I need you to find your courage. I need you to access your anger and forcefully push back against the reign of fascist cruelty, because it will escalate if we do not challenge every moral injury enacted upon ourselves and our neighbors.

We tend to think of people who enact genocide as monsters, and we do this, in part, because we want to distance ourselves from violent people. But the moment we convince ourselves that such cruelty is inhuman, we fail to recognize the rather pedestrian motives behind such depravity: It’s about greed, control, exploitation, the avoidance of accountability, and the lies that some misunderstood Other is the source of your pain— and not the fascist elites, playing you like a fool and turning you against your neighbor, while they rob you blind and leave you to rot in the ruins.

But there is another reason why, even if we have become accustomed to saying it, that we must avoid calling fascists monsters: Calling them monsters takes away our agency.

Recall that I have often said the word fascism itself scares people off. And why? Because we call fascists monsters. We make them inhuman and flee, cower, or look away while they brutalize our neighbors. This must end.

We are adults. We do not need bedtime stories. These are human beings doing evil s**t for pedestrian reasons, and they know you are scared of monsters, which is why they aim to scare you into submission. And that’s the biggest con of all because fascists, if confronted by a swarm of neighbors who refuse to comply— who refuse to let their neighbors be abused— will always fall.

Fascists are weak.

Their money, guns, bombs, tanks, spyware, propaganda, engineered algorithms, bots, trolls, militarized police, and military might is no match to the army of ordinary decent people who refuse to allow their country and their kin to be destroyed by fascist elites and their bigoted enablers.

It is so so so important for you to get offline, talk to your neighbors, and build support networks right now to keep your targeted neighbors out of harm’s way. Some of these neighbors may not want your help, but others don’t even think to ask for aid, because they have been so thoroughly scapegoated by fascists. They assume you’d reject them. They assume you don’t care and, even if you did, that you wouldn’t back that sentiment up with meaningful action. Your job is to prove them wrong with your actions. Your job is to be the decent human who assembles neighbors and gets people out of harm’s way.

This is a fight we must not lose.

No foreign army will swoop in to rescue us from the fascist whiles of Donald Trump, JD Vance, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, Jeff Besoz, Erik Prince, Sam Altman, Kevin Roberts, Mike Johnson, Russ Vought, and their lesser enablers.

These are not monsters.

These are not gods.

These are weak men, so afraid of the world that they need it to reflect their version of reality, because weak men cannot bear to share resources with neighbors who don’t look, live, love, worship, and think like them.

They must fall.

We must prevail.

We must hold the line— for our neighbors, our country, our future, our planet, and human decency, dignity, and liberty for all.

This Pride, I want to get real with you about gender— specifically how powerful, rich white men have created a massive disinformation campaign, across all media platforms, to get you to hate your transgender neighbors. We have seen this in nonstop media that implies transgender people are a danger to women and children.

But here’s something we don’t question: why?

Trans people have been around as long as people have been on this planet. We not new here.

But circa 2018 or so, trans people suddenly became a popular target in every school board, in every clearly doctored video vilifying a trans woman, in every think piece that turned trans people into a talking point (without ever letting trans people speak for themselves). Instead, we have seen a massive campaign to get a whole lot of people who don’t even know trans people thinking way too much (and way less critically) about trans kids, trans women, and transgender people of all genders.

The drumbeat has always been the same: trans people are predators of women and a a danger to children. They even call us groomers.

If we return to the time period when these transphobic stories began to become ubiquitous, and take a step back, we will recognize that all of these stories started to pick up in the wake of the #MeToo movement—when all of us were holding filthy rich and/or powerful white men to account for their rampant sexual abuse of women, children, and gender expansive people.

In response, these powerful men do what most filthy rich white men do: they change the news cycle to dodge accountability. They pay millions for a massive disinfo campaign to tell you that it’s actually transgender people (a small and largely misunderstood social group) who’s the real danger to women and children.

How “interesting,” right?!?

Because just a second ago we were talking about Harvey Weinstein, the Epstein files, how Trump thinks brags about assaulting women, how ever other week there’s a new story about a white Christian extremist arrested for human trafficking and the sexual assault of children—or how every other month a news story surfaces about a group of “promising young men” who drugged and gang-raped their peer and video taped it.

This was the convo we were having.

And then we got “DARVOed” by rich white men, who manufactured a pariah for the general public to hate so that they could, once again, escape accountability.

And who’d they choose? The people predatory men always choose to scapegoat: someone too vulnerable to fight back, someone on the margins of society because people don’t really understand them. This time, they chose our transgender people.

Neighbor, it’s time to take back the narrative.

This pride month, I want to encourage my neighbors to demonstrate solidarity with trans people by challenging the well-funded hate propaganda spoon-fed to us in the media— a manufactured crisis (kinda like the Guard in Los Angeles) so that you don’t talk about rich and/or powerful white men and their penchant for serially sexually abusing people with impunity (like how Trump is in the Epstein files).

It’s time to call out the b******t as a way to hold space for our neighbors and resist the creep of fascism that keeps rich-ass white men in power and prevents them from ever being held accountable.

Enough.

Being allies means recognizing that solidarity keeps all of us safe from harm and taking the steps to hold the line so that bullies creep back into the shadows where they belong: relived, not celebrated for their depravity.

This podcast is a departure from my usual Sesame Street vibes. This morning’s news of political assassinations has me angry. Be forewarned that my tone would make the ghost of Rush Limbaugh blush. Unlike Rush, my anger is actually justified.

As I have said many times before: It is important for us to be able to access our authentic anger. Organic, slow-to-build anger is a holy emotion. It is information that grows into an embodied awareness that a boundary must be established.

There is a reason rich white men are the first to claim someone has “anger issues,” while they themselves traffic in projected rage and disgusting cruelty wrapped in their gaslit brand of “victim politics.”

Shaming someone’s authentic anger isn’t just emotional manipulation— it has another sinister motive: If they make you ashamed of your anger, you will pretend not to feel it, silence yourself for experiencing it, and bury it so deep that it never finds the right target, or instead surfaces as cruelty to people over whom you hold some kind of power (a child, a spouse, a dog, your students, your parishioners, your marginalized neighbors, your employees). Rich white men have trafficked this politics of victimhood for decades— abusing others and then engaging in a massive cultural gaslighting campaign to frame righteous anger as some kind of moral failure when it’s the exact opposite.

The kind of political violence happening around us at this moment requires our fury so that we can channel it into conviction, courage, and the will to push for political change. It is especially important to access this anger so that we establish political boundaries that keep our communities from descending into barbarism. And that’s an important point to dwell on, because Donald Trump isn’t just grievance politics personified: he is the manifestation of a well-funded campaign to push our culture into political barbarism.

Neighbor, I need you to have “anger issues” right now— because we all need to have an issue with this descent into barbarism Trump is unleashing on our country.

Some of our neighbors just got assassinated, because Donald Trump is encouraging violence and death upon his political enemies. He is not only inciting violence but he is inciting a moral collapse that descends into full-blown fascism.

I need you to love yourself and your neighbors enough to access your anger, and use it to occupy every single elected officials office until Trump and his administration are removed. Trump and his cronies’ behavior has no place in civil society— and “civil society” (that’s you and me) need to access our anger and set this necessary societal boundary.

Enough gaslighting.

Enough political double speak.

We must exercise our first amendment rights and occupy our legislators’ offices— from the city and state to federal levels— until this vile man and his coconspirators are removed from office.

You and I have a responsibility to each other.

We must refuse to fall into helplessness in the face of barbarism, particularly when we outnumber the forces of cruelty and they make a living on our dime.

This must end now.

We are not waiting for the general election, nor are we waiting for midterms.

This must end, right f*****g now.

Experience your anger. Honor it for awakening your integrity. Thank your anger by channeling it into a resolve to set a civil boundary. Communicate that boundary by occupying our elected officials’ offices to get these criminals and brutal avatars of fascism out of our government.

Remember: we are paying for this thuggery and corruption.

We are their bosses.

Our Constitution compels us to abolish a tyrannical government. And this is tyranny.

Patriotism isn’t a feeling, neighbor. Patriotism means paying attention to what’s going on in the world, recognizing you are part of that world, and loving your community enough to set f*****g boundaries when cruel people encourage brutality.

Enough!

Occupy.

Remove.

There’s a lot to want to shout about. I get it. But I encourage you to be as playful as possible at the #NoKings protest tomorrow.

Why? Because play is community-building, attracts bystanders, persuades defectors, and it deescalates law enforcement who have been trained to view protestors as “enemies from within.” It also makes it impossible for a would be tyrant to lie and spread propaganda that smears protestors as rioters and “people who hate America.”

I hope you’re give this podcast a listen and think about how you might bring joy and practice playful resistance with your neighbors tomorrow— and every day.

Be excellent to each other.

Fascism, even the word, induces fear and freeze. But we don’t need that word. Fascism has always been here through its common name: domestic abuse.

If you have had the great misfortune of being targeted by the domestic abuser, you already know this truth: making yourself smaller and more compliant only escalates abuse. These men with their camo, their guns, their face masks, and their propaganda are domestic abusers. Do not submit to their intimidation. Do not listen to any decree or demand for law and order from the very people who are shredding our constitution and sowing hatefulness and disorder.

Do not allow yourself to be gaslit, especially around martial law. Our country has been in many wars, and we have also experienced horrific domestic terror, and in those instances, martial law was not called. Abusers always try to cause chaos and violence, and they always use this as pretext to demand even more control over you. Do not listen to these lawless domestic abusers.

Do not listen to their propaganda.

For decades, rightwing extremists (often in our government) have infiltrated every kind of social justice space so that they could sow chaos and fear— and lie to bystanders about the intentions of their justice-loving neighbors. The media, for decades, have breathlessly parroted the talking points of the powerful to get you to hate the very people whose only aim is to build beloved community and challenge structural violence that prevents the democratic coexistence we deserve.

Rich white men have been jerking our chain for years. And it seems like every single news story that follows in their wake is riddled with fraud, crime, and sexual abuse. It’s so common, many news stories pass without much uproar.

That time ends now.

If you need a visual aid to help you understand how these men operate, I encourage you to look at the wheel of power and control and notice how Donald Trump and his cabal of domestic abusers are using each of these tactics against us. Cowardly men are not creative. They have used the same tactics to seek domination, year after year after year. Their hatefulness may be relentless— but our love for each other is not only relentless but proliferating (love spreads).

We will not let this abuse of our neighbors’ stand. We will not let these domestic abusers come for us and the people we love. Enough is enough.

We will not stop.

We will not submit.

We will never bend the knee.

These traitors are cowards. They cannot rule without our consent, and we refuse to give it.

Where they seek to divide us, we will embrace the scapegoat.

Where they deny food, housing, and medicines, we will feed, house, and care for our neighbors. We do not need to ask for their permission or play by their rules— which are lawless, immoral, depraved, and illegitimate. These men wrap themselves in scripture, hoping we can’t read:

But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.

Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.

Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.

Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.

Luke 6:24-26

Trump can sell as many bibles as he wants and his violent mob can wield cherrypicked scripture as a bludgeon— the truth will remain.

Our ancestors, our deities, and our peace-loving neighbors from around the world are on our side.

Move with courage, mobilize with joy, speak of hope, spread love without reservation, build the beloved communities of our ancestors’ wildest dreams.

Friends, we’re in a dangerous moment right now, and the people who have normally carried the labor of democracy have been targeted by a white supremacist fascist. There is no way to topple fascism without divesting, once and for all, from white supremacy. But white supremacy isn’t just about slurs, discriminatory practices, and social norms that dehumanize an Other. White supremacy is, essentially, the java script that runs through all of your social, political, personal, and private interactions— including even your relationship to yourself. This episode talks about some of the ways white supremacy (that java script) encourages all of us, but especially white people to normalize what’s happening right now.

The thing is: you can dislike fascism, hate Donald, have Black friends and a trans cousin— but that doesn’t mean the virus in your java script isn’t running in the background. And it’s really important we recognize it and hack the code so that we can accurately assess what’s going on around us, recognize we have agency, and use that agency to be relentlessly noncompliant in the face of a Christian nationalist coup.

There is one more reason why committing to divest from white supremacy— to recognize and rewrite the virus operating in your java script: without doing that work, you won’t be able to build the networks of trust necessary for taking Trump down. When we fail to address the malware uploaded into our once-youthful spongey brains, that failure becomes evident in our words, our actions, and even our presence— and failure to do that inner work communicates danger to everyone who happens to be on society’s margins.

There’s no way to be a good comrade and an unsafe person at the same time.

Trust that Donald Trump has been doing everything to tear you away from your peers by planting divisive, untrue stereotypes about marginalized groups. To prevail, he’s banking on the logic of white supremacy, which allows him to think that if he talks about someone with contempt or if he says something so outrageous about his scapegoat that you start to wonder if he’s really a little bit right about what he’s saying. That’s how white supremacy gets you: it encourages you to mind your neighbor’s business, accept lies about them (rarely rooted in fact), and fracture solidarity among your neighbors. Trump et al. knows this strategy works, because he and other rich-ass white men have been playing the same song for centuries.

This podcast isn’t scholarly— it’s an invitation to stumble into the dark and feel things you’ve been told not to feel or even acknowledge. This podcast is a prayer that maybe some part of what I’ve said here becomes a skeleton key that allows you to step out of the smallness you’ve been told to inhabit.

Because neighbor, specifically my white neighbors, we need you to rip out the virus in your code that teaches you, in a million different ways, how to prop up the power structures of white supremacy. White supremacy is the ultimate confidence game, and it runs, almost entirely, on other white people’s complicity. Donald Trump’s entire fascist grift relies on his assessment that whites stick together and all the “undesirables” can go to a hell he’s created for them.

Don’t let Donny win.

And more than that: don’t let him hurt your neighbors.

Today’s podcast reminds us that stories are important. How you describe a thing influences how people view a thing. Right now, we’ve got a lying liar who lies squatting in the oval office and foaming at the mouth to claim that concerned neighbors protesting the abduction, torture, and trafficking of their neighbors is somehow “a riot.” He’s saying it in Los Angeles, in spite of the sheriff’s department, the LAPD, the mayor, and the governor saying protests are peaceful.

Donald Trump is breaking the law and insulting the honor of our armed forces by sending them in to terrify our neighbors for exercising their first amendment rights.

By repeating the lie that what’s happening in LA is a “riot,” you do Trump’s fascist bidding for him. You escalate fascism by framing your neighbors civil rights as inherently threatening— which is absolute s**t because Donald Trump and his jackboots are the ones terrorizing our communities.

Donald Trump is doing this s**t because he doesn’t want you to focus on the fact that he’s in the Epstein files and that his buddy Elon helped him steal the election. That’s why he’s doing this. Please, for the love of carrot sticks and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, stop repeating this b*****d’s talking points.

A central element of our resistance needs to be reclaiming our linguistic sovereignty. Don’t repeat s**t just because people in power are saying it; a lot of people in power got there precisely because they don’t have your best interests in mind. That’s why independent thought, diverse reading practices, critical inquiry, and authentic storytelling are so important.

If you wanna listen to the pod, I talk more about this at length, but if you take nothing else from this podcast episode blurb it’s this advice:

Say the opposite of whatever the regime says. Don’t even repeat the propaganda to deny it. Don’t use his language at all. Rehumanize the people and places he is trying so desperately to dehumanize.

Fascism can only survive through terror management. What Trump and his merry band of fascists are trying to do is scare us into submission. Every time you respond: “America has fallen,” “We’re running out of time,” or “We are in a dictatorship” consider that you might need to take a step back from social media— take a breather for the collective good. It’s okay to think those things and to feel fear, but when you blurt it out on social media, you help the fascists proliferate their program of terror. Don’t help them by inadvertently repeating their outright lie that resistance is futile. He’s putting on a show for you— to try to scare you and get you to repeat this very message to everyone around you. It’s meant to manipulate you, and if you’re reapting their central message, it’s working. Again, fascism can only be sustained through terror, and so much of that is about the spectacle of power. Don’t spread fear.

The messages we ought to be sending are ones of hope and ones that mirror back to people their strength and their love. Practice alchemizing your fear offline and sharing out messages of solidarity on social media. Here’s some strategically hopeful messages you can share to counter the despair-filled messages circulating online:

“We the People of the United States of America are rising up with a fierce love for our communities.”

“We We the People of the United States have stared down tyrants before. Our ancestors are with us; their brilliance is in our bones and they whisper of another freedom summer. We are rising up, and we are just getting started.”

“We the People make this nation great. We the People are the democracy. We the People are the Republic. We are a free people. They may temporarily occupy our buildings and our airways, but we the People are indivisible— and we refuse to be governed unless and until there is liberty and justice for all.”

Do not be cowed, neighbor.

Do not think you don’t have the goods for this moment. All that is required is for you to show up. The universe and your neighbors will do the rest. Move with them— become a murmuration of democracy. Keep going.

Keep coming back. And more important than that: talk to each other like a free people. Build friendships. Build experimental ways to sustain community in troubling times. Because that’s the thing fascism never wants you to recognize— the upside down always coexists with the right side up:

Times of cruelty are also times of divine compassion. Times of cowardice are also times of courage. In attempting to destroy the buildings and binding laws of our democracy, they also guarantee that democracy grows back stronger than it ever was before. The time of monsters is also the age of miracles. The lion lays down with the lamb.

We are not invulnerable but we have also already won. The greatest of these has always been love, and love always wins. And how do I know that? Because I am here with you right now. Because when everything feels lost, you are reaching out. That is ancestral wisdom. We are our ancestors’ wildest dreams. The circle will not be broken.

Link up.

Cry it out.

Feed each other.

Give long hugs.

Look at the stars.

Love your neighbor.

Keep loving.

Keep going.

Today, as I read yet another think piece from the commentariat, I started fuming, because it had the audacity to tell us how “we” fell short or how “we” trusted so-and-so or how “we” are divided. An anger is beginning to waken in my heart in response to media moralizing discourse. It’s an anger that shouts back at these think-pieces with the question “we f*****g who?” because it surely isn’t my ass— or any of the regular people I know.

We have been dealing with politicians pissing on us and telling us it’s raining for years.

They tell us we are too simple and not camera ready and not glossy enough for the donors to run for office— but what this has always been is RICH PEOPLE rigging the game so that only people like them are ever in charge.

And then our media tries to distract us from the bipartisan theft of our tax dollars by chumming the waters every decade or two with a new scapegoat to keep Democrats and Republicans divided. And you know who wins? The same politicians who keep coming back to Washington.

It is this same bipartisan elite political class, who tried to tell us they were these natural leaders, have been so goddamn incompetent that they have allowed our entire government to run by the honors system. Bruh. This is what happens when the dominant social group doesn’t think its s**t stinks and refuses to write anti-corruption laws, because they paint themselves as above it all.

And now the world’s biggest con and shameless traitor, Donald Trump, has invited a cadre of rich people the world over to hack apart our country, our natural resources, and our humanity and prosperity and sell it off to the highest bidder— so long as Donnie Softhands doesn’t have to go to jail. This man who is a f*****g felon and known racist and cavorter with pedophiles. He is a pimple on the ass of humanity, but rich people would rather platform a fascists and make money off of him than care about the longterm needs of our country, our planet, and future generations of free and fair people.

And yet, somehow, in this moment, as democracy bleeds out on the barroom floor, Democrats, who have offered next to zero local political leadership, want to tell the rest of us (actually suffering under fascism) that their think-tanks and focus groups have decreed Dems must strike a middle-of-the road position and swerve from “wokeness.” That isn’t leadership: that’s moral collapse.

We didn’t lose this election to Donald Trump. He and f*****g Elon stole the goddamn election, and y’all are not gonna tell everyday people that the only thing we can do to “fight back” is to abandon our Black, Brown, trans, poor, and disabled neighbors. Hell f*****g no.

I feel a lot of rage about that, which means it’s time to put a boundary in place with the political elite. Here’s my line in the sand:

We don’t have to ask them for f*****g permission. We don’t need their money or their infrastructure to identify an unbought, unbossed candidate, who will fight for ALL of our neighbors— and we don’t need their blessing to campaign and vote for them. They have always needed us more than we need them, and I am so sick of the political Stockholm’s syndrome weighing us all down.

I want plain-speaking people with firery hearts of integrity, who terrify powerful, corrupt people. I want someone who cracks jokes in the face of country club stonewalling. I want someone who knows what it means to be a public servant to all of their neighbors.

I know this leadership exists, because I see it every day in my neighborhood. There are plenty of decent people in the world, who would listen to what their actual community needs, not big business interests, and refuse to be bought by rich a******s. We all know good people like this, but time and again we are told that political insiders get to pick who runs on their ticket, without any real input. I call b******t.

We deserve actual public servants, and I’m going to help you fight to get these people elected at all levels of government. We are taking over the Democrat Party, and we don’t have to ask for their permission to do it.

Writer’s Log: Ever try to go to sleep and have some of your best thoughts come up right as you’re about to fall asleep? It’s me, like every other night. And for years, I’ve laughed at myself and said “If it comes back to you, it’s yours. If it’s not, it never was.” You know how the old saying goes: “If you love someone, set them free.” Anyhow, I been sending a lot of my thoughts free, and these days I’m thinking maybe I should try another tact. Get up and get it out. Normally, I write on here, but if I’m being honest, writing is my second language and storytelling (or at the very least verbal processing) comes first. When I sit down to write, I struggle to keep it linear. Sentences are like bricks, and good ones tend to follow one after the other. This is hard for a person who loves a whimsy path. Anyhow, this is the start of my Weirdo’s Stories in the Dark series, and instead of just sticking to writing, I’m going to do a podcast instead.

The Gist of Tonight’s Story in the Dark: Are We in the Upside Down? Babes, We’ve Been Here for a Long Damn Time

This story in the dark is me responding to a neighbor’s post on Substack about this sense that we’ve all been living in a psy-op since November 2024. I’m also responding to another neighbor’s post who said something like: in the wreckage of government, violence fills the vacuum. And whew boy! Both of those observations took my breath away. I’ve been thinking about those posts all day— to the point that those two contributions to my daily reading inspired this nightly podcast.

And the theme of this podcast/ audio-essay is something like: Okay, what if we really have been living in a psy-ops? And not in the tinfoil hat way so much as in the absolutely batshit way Peter Theil talked about having views so unpopular that the only way he could get them to come to pass is through technological means— wherein he talked about shaping “reality itself.” What Pete seems to mean by reality isn’t that he’s some god but that he recognizes how much we need accurate information in searches, unpolluted social media, comment sections not filled with bots, and accurate unbought information so that we can coordinate with each other.

Pete knows that the natural human instinct is to want to work together, and he thought “What if we weaponize that?” So what we have found ourselves in is another Cambridge Analytica situation— only now we all know the algorithms are jacked because it’s like a “revenge of the dude bros” and they’re throttling every last communication system we have… to the point that people are back to making zines. Welcome to the 80s, babes.

Anyhow, these people bankrolling this nonstop violent nonsense tour? They’re f*****g domestic abusers— but on a national scale. Can you imagine what they do to their partners? People like this don’t have genuine relationships: they have captives. I hope they get out. I hope we all do, honestly.

So, to my neighbor out there who said, “It’s like we’ve been living in a psy-ops,” I think it’s because we are. But I also think it’s important to recognize that we have been in a psy-ops for years. Billionaires have bought all of our news stations, all of our local papers— and even before that they were owned by the rich families. We have been eating the rich man’s news for a long time— to the point that Rupert Murdoch and the Koch brothers strangled news to the point that investigative journalism fell in favor of bland reporting of whatever the cops and the the city officials and the big companies tell you. They have been trying to suppress information for years. Then we got online and made a whole bunch of positive change super fast, and we scared the s**t out of rich people— so they sought to control us even more. These people are f*****g a******s.

Every time we organize to meet public will, they buy a politician to move the goalposts. Let’s be so honest with ourselves: there has been a hostile takeover in our country to the point that many of us don’t even pay attention to what’s happening at the city, township, county, state, or federal levels because we have learned that government is boring, too technical, confusing, disempowering, and new works for us. That is like the biggest psy-ops of all.

They have not only convinced us to “check out” of politics but they have also lied to us and told us that we need to be rich or have access to wealth and prestige in order to be a public servant. What in the entire rich man’s nonsense is that? Every single one of us is more competent than the men currently squatting in a space they not only didn’t earn but, in fact, stole. The entire reason they’re abusing us is because they needed to wrec the government and break the laws and threaten the press even more and unleash hell on our streets because, if we were all just a little less in chaos, we’d have learned what they did and they’d already be in prison.

I’m just saying: “Do not fall for their b******t.” They’re doing everything they can to keep us scared because if we get coordinated, there is nothing they can do to stop us. Anyway, if you want to join me down a whimsy path, play the podcast.

What Can You Do, Right Now, to Make a Difference?

I’m going to close all of my writing by saying something about what you can do, right now, to make an immediate difference in your communities:

If you found yourself nodding along to what I was saying, I invite you to check in with your local community and see if there’s a mutual aid group. Check in with them. Talk to your librarians; they’re wizards. If you’re building a thing from scratch, put up some flyers up in your neighborhood— or use some chalk art. Write something on the sidewalk like: “Democracy Picnic in the Park: Sunday at 2 PM.” Meet up in the park Sunday afternoon for democracy in the park. Bring a picnic and talk about how this moment has impacted you and, more than that, what you want in a functioning democracy when we take it back. I don’t mean a situation where everyone speechifies and the mayor comes out to talk and then the police chief. No. I mean a democracy picnic with regular people, who re-learn the vulnerable work of democratic kinship.

But don’t stop there. Create regular spaces to connect as people who share pro-democracy values. Make democracy walking, running, knitting, crafting, cooking, prayer, hiking, gardening, and volunteer groups. Hold democracy potlucks, outdoor movies, dance parties, karaoke nights, dog walking clubs, or play days in the park. Create regular pro-democracy meet ups where you can make friends, get together, and strategize how to take care of each other during all of this craziness (how to make sure no one gets left behind) and make a local plan for reclaiming your democracy.

Final Thoughts, Before I Leave You with the Pod

Democracy is ours. We won’t surrender our freedom to cruel, dumb a******s who are so afraid of doing inner work that they have to unleash hell on everyone around them. I don’t know about you, but I am beyond done living in an abuser’s world. We are going to end this, hand in hand.

If you’re interested in these kinds of conversations and, most importantly, working to reclaim democracy in your community, you are in the right place. I’m glad you’re here, and I’m going to focus my writing on practical things to help you reclaim our collective sovereignty. We the people are the force more powerful. They can rush at us with tactical gear, but scaring us isn’t the same as power. They know that, but they’re hoping you don’t. There are way more of us than there are of them. Hold the line, neighbor, and make it a joy as you do it. Democracy is beautiful labor.