letters from a weirdo

hope — by flightlessblrbs

There’s a dog barking outside. Nothing feels like home, and nothing will feel like home. I am uprooted.

This is what happens when Christian nationalists show up outside your house and your neighbors are on autopilot and can’t be bothered to shake out of their own freeze state to help their marginalized neighbor.

Were it not for a cluster of people who helped us fall back, we might be dead. I’m grateful to still be here to fight. But my life has been profoundly changed. I feel like a ghost in my own life.

Where others are sharing stories about spending time with families during the holidays, still adhering to the continuity of seasonal traditions, I can’t see my future anymore. I don’t know how to plan out the remainder of the year, let alone know if I’ll live to be fifty.

I have great hope that people in the United States will, in the end, stand up to and run out the fascists, but I worry very much that people won’t move fast, bold, and strategic enough to save many targeted people’s lives in time (including mine).

How many people has this regime killed thus far? What is the headcount? How easily we “lose count” when we’ve become accustomed to turning our heads the other way.

Pink Floyd was wrong: we’re not “comfortably numb.” We’ve become terminally unaffected. We have been told our feelings are our weakness, but it is our lack of feeling that keeps us from intervening— and it is our lack of feeling that will enable even more innocent people to die.

That’s the most tragic part of this death machine: if enough people moved themselves to act, this would already be over. This will not be solved with an election or mass protest but by mass coordinated resistance and mass-collaboration with our neighbors to ensure no one gets left behind— that no neighbor is expendable.

I don’t want to be a hashtag or a news story among a fire-hose of depravity.

I refuse to accept that people are more willing to restack information about an atrocity than act to stop the atrocity. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard: “But what can I do?” from a person who demands it of me like a hall-pass. I refuse to give any person a pass.

There is always something you can do. Always.

Related, I do not begrudge that people might make money and a name for themselves when reporting on the suffering of others. That’s the grift of the war economy: it’s the only thing that ever trickles down. If it bleeds.

But it is past time to simply report on what’s happening without also acting in the world, and encouraging others to act in the world. We are witnessing a wave of genocides, ethnic cleanings, and mass atrocities unfold before our eyes. I don’t give a good goddamn about anyone’s subscriber numbers or where they are on a venture capitalist’s leader board of writers. Your newsletter is not a “community,” not in wartime. Responsible writers would do well to mobilize their readers to get involved in their own communities, instead of keeping people in online, trapped in closed communication loops while insisting they’re changing the world.

Suffice it to say, when there’s a war on our democracy, journalistic standards adapt to meet the time. Neutrality is complicity. Roll up your sleeves, journalists.

I’m maybe not on here for the same reasons other people are, which is totally fine. Different strokes and folx. I’m certainly not hiding my face, I could give two s***s about being known. I do give a s**t about getting my life back. I do give a s**t about you loving the stranger.

My posts feature calls to action and getting offline and organized in your communities, because it’s the only way this ride ends. We cannot read, share, like, and subscribe our way out of this.

But if I could charge subscribers in any currency, I’d charge subscribers in weekly acts of solidarity in their communities.

We will not stop the fascists unless and until there are more organized civilian “boots on the ground,” than there are fascists on the ground committing harm. This requires being active in our own communities and engaging in mass-cooperation to care for and shield one another from our abusers.

We outnumber them, yes. But that doesn’t mean s**t unless we also out-do them.

It’s not as if this goal is out of our reach. Our numbers are vast. It’s whether those of us who feel safe enough can be bothered to get offline and into their communities.

The wildest part is people want some magic bullet— some sweeping scandal, fast-food heart-attack, supreme court case, or a military moral epiphany to stop this. But the answer is way simpler than all that: it’s you and me and everyone we know coordinating with each other to restore our democracy. I said simple, not easy.

Organizing against fascism is hard. Living in fascism is harder. Choose your hard.

We are living in historic times.

Someday, trees willing, a wide-eyed child will interview you for a class project. She will ask what you did to stop the demented felon and child rapist from abducting your neighbors and abetting a third world war.

You can either lie to her and hate yourself to sleep, or you can get out there now— while the course of history is most malleable— take risks, and make sure you have one hell of a true story to tell that little kid.

That’s why I’m still choosing to stick my neck out. That’s why I will learn my new community and get involved here, even though I am heartbroken and homesick: I owe it to my students to be a safe adult, no matter where I am.

Being a safe adult means doing everything in one’s power to stop the harm.

So no, I’m not terribly invested in subscriptions. I want solidarity.

I want money less than I want you to get offline and organized in your neighborhood.

The sooner this happens, the more people’s lives you will save. What you do right now affects the course of human history, including whose voices live long enough to tell their stories of this time.

That’s why I’m telling mine now. Just in case.

Thank you Lalisa, P. J. Schuster, Stuart Cohen, Kathryn, Susan Theriault, and many others for tuning into my live video with Anthony Christian! Join me for my next live video in the app.

[note: there are some sound troubles in opening, and a little toward the closing of this video, due to gloriously human imperfection: fingers over the mic. ope. the transcripts are AI slop, and i’m trying to edit them but it’s taking forever.]

this is tragic, and it also reeks of the kind of deadly butler-pennsylvania-style political theater we have come to expect from this increasingly desperate regime.

it’s also a good time to remind you that the regime intentionally installed a 22-year-old with zero experience to head US “terrorism prevention.” it’s also a good time to point out that the prevailing domestic terror we’ve been watching unfold has been at the hands of white nationalists, and now they’re trying to throw off their scent. this feels like just-in-time coordinated false flag s**t.

i’m infuriated. national guard members enlist to serve their states in times of actual emergency, not be used as red-shirts for white christian nationalists trying to hold onto power during a failing coup.

why does this reek?

the guard has not been an aggressor here. they got deployed to stand around, pick up trash, and get stiffed by the trump regime. i also get a clear sense they resent being made to occupy their nation to effect a police state.

remember: trump refers to the armed forces as “suckers and losers.” he’s been using them for props. he already sees the armed forces as disposable. he doesn’t care if they live or die. never has.

for all these reasons, i find it highly suspect that guard members would, in this of ALL moments, be targeted for violence. i know violence “doesn’t always add up,” but things have been not adding up for too long not to notice a pattern.

this screams (once more with feeling): “reichstag fire!”

it reminds me of the shooting outside the ice concentration camp, where the only person killed in the “attack on ice” was an abducted immigrant. and the shooter was killed.

no motive to unpack. odd that.

two people died.

it’s as suspicious as the alleged brown person who stole noem’s purse filled with gobs of cash.

they ever find that purse or nah?

it’s as suspicious as the death of a well-known christian nationalist podcaster, who was getting very critical of the regime and whose death was blamed on trans people and then “the radical left,” when the shooter was homegrown in nat-c culture.

fbi now says the shooter “isn’t cooperating with authorities.”

so i reiterate: the math ain’t mathing.

this reads as a direct attack on our apolitical, nonpartisan military

an apolitical, nonpartisan military has been a cornerstone of american democracy; it’s how we ensure no one tries to “king themselves.” this attack feels as manipulative as it is violent— a ploy to get the armed forces on the regime’s side: “these people hate you and this country!” or some such nonsense.

do not fall for the reichstag rhetoric

this is a regime desperate to start a civil war in order to justify cracking down on a free people. it’s abundantly clear white christian nationalists think the rest of us have no rights.

just today, nazi political figure nick fuentes remarked:

If I were president on day one, I’m bringing the National Guard everywhere. I’m talking hundreds of thousands of National Guard in all the major cities, and we are putting that s**t on lock. It is going to be martial law. […] Well, I would just take away the right to vote for tons of people. Women for sure, but also I’d raise the voting age to like, 25 in general. I would probably take away the right to vote for, you know, maybe people that have no stake, no skin in the game. Because here’s the thing, even the men. I look at a lot of men who are students and, you know, they’re 21 years old and their parents are paying for their apartment and they’ve never had a real job and they’re out there telling everybody this is the way the world has to be. Well, how do you know? You know, if you don’t own property and you don’t know, like, how the trains run. If you know, because if you, let’s say you even own your own home. You need to know a little bit about how the world works. You need to know about weather. You need to know about moisture. You need to know about, you know, like basic things for how we have a human habitation. You know what I’m saying? Property developers uniquely understand these things. Taxes and insurance and code and how money is made. Like, they understand what makes the world go round. An 18-year-old that is renting an apartment and never had a real job and is basically, their parents are paying for everything. They don’t have a car.

read that as many times as you need to.

ask who wins, who loses, and who’s on the hook in this scenario. ask yourselves if you think we can just midterm our way out of this.

christian nationalists do not believe in the constitution of the united states. our own national intelligence has repeatedly warned us that they are the greatest threat to our democracy.

a twenty-year-old guard member, sarah beckstrom, has died. he father held her hand as she succumbed to a mortal wound; that’s how he spent his thanksgiving: with his dying daughter. twenty-four-year-old andrew wolfe is still in critical condition. i can only imagine how his loved ones are feeling. these are kids— people my students’ age. i am filled with rage, especially knowing how many of my students enlist (in part) to be able to afford college or climb out of the debt-hole that is the usa’s economic ponzi scheme. these young people swore an oath to defend our constitution, and they got pulled up and under by a draft-dodger, felon, and insurrectionist for his political theater.

that same treasonous draft-dodger wants to court martial and execute the decorated veteran, astronaut, and senator from arizona, mark kelly, for taking part in a public-service campaign reminding intelligence and armed forces that:

(1) they are being pitted against the american people

(2) they are under no obligation to follow unlawful orders.

and now we see the manipulation at play: an ambush attack on unsuspecting guard members, no doubt orchestrated to turn the armed forces against their neighbors, and to turn neighbors against each other.

sarah beckstrom. andrew wolfe.

these are two real people with friends, hobbies, and dreams.

this regime doesn’t care about actual human beings.

we’re furniture to them. props.

fear is the mind-killer; engaged community is the antidote

white christian nationalists are desperate and will try anything to stay in power. expect a steady string of false flags. they know the other side of this is prison for them.

let me remind you, once more: don’t get trapped in their story. don’t listen if they try to tell you that you suddenly don’t have rights. we don’t listen to traitors who are trying on loop, as project 2025 directs, to subject the american people under the insurrection act. there’s no goddamn insurrection.

do NOT try to argue with an alternate reality and get pulled into the trap:

refuse to turn against your neighbors.

refuse to abide by a fascist trying to restrict your rights.

we must, ourselves, refuse to follow unlawful orders.

if you are asking our armed service members and intelligence not to follow unlawful orders, knowing the risk to their lives (given who’s at the helm), then we must back up our armed forces with our own refusal to follow unlawful orders.

you and i are the only ones backing up our military right now. no one else is coming. they are counting on you as much as you are counting on them.

don’t cower. don’t give up the ship.

do not despair: organize

we do not have to abide by their theater of lawlessness and disorder.

now is time to organize peacefully in your local neighborhoods.

now is time to build parallel systems of support around food, shelter, safety, medical care, solidarity economies, art, play, and kinship.

choose nonviolence and noncompliance with the regime.

we must hold the line for each other— in honor of every single neighbor killed as a prop for weak men’s power-games.

you and i matter.

the who people who died matter.

our neighbors who have been abducted and tortured in ice facilities matter.

our neighbors who have died as a result of war crimes at the hands of this regime also matter.

every single person in this country who has died at the hands of a white nationalist police state matters.

we can’t heal what we cannot feel: we must begin again to matter to each other.

we must turn toward each other.

true patriotism in this moment demands our compassion, collaboration, creativity, and courage to act— to build the world we wish to see in the face of threats and ruination.

we the people rebuke moral collapse.

we will hold the line together.

e pluribus unum.

out of the many: one

wish — by flightlessblrbs

weirdo’s postscript

i drafted a version of the essay, below. and then, feeling a teacherly instinct, hopped online to hold a “home room,” the way generations of educators have held space for their students in times of mass grief and confusion. i am not your teacher, you’re my neighbors, and i am glad to know you. these days, i’m feeling my way toward an expansive version of what community college teacher could be in this moment. there’s a reason jd vance says people like me are “enemies of the people”: it’s because when we learn things in community, we are changed for the better. when education serves the people, it empowers the people.

White Christian nationalists rely on cherry-picked scripture and jurisprudence. These men claim to know both the mind of God and the Founders’ intent. It’s an amazing display of audacity and delusion— all wrapped into an entitlement that the world bend around their limited imagination and false sense of reality.

That’s the thing about white nationalist “logic”: they try to keep you trapped in a story with them, where they’ve got the upper hand and you’re “trapped in the text” with them, making logical and legal appeals for basic human dignity. It won’t work. White Christian nationalists are extremists, domestic abusers, and, as our own national intelligence has warned us: the greatest threat to our democracy. These aren’t people eager to share the world with you, especially not after doing a whole bunch of treason, espionage, child-rape, and looting of the treasury. These people are in for the penny and the pound.

Right now, white Christian nationalists appear to be losing; the wheels seem as if they’re falling off.

It is true that they don’t have the will of the people. In the power vacuum before accountability can arrive, they may attempt to escalate. They may, for example, try to sell you on a story where they have more rights than you do all of a sudden.

If this happens, don’t believe ‘em. Refuse to participate in their charade.

Recall that the white Christian nationalist front, The Heritage Foundation, has a president, Kevin Roberts, who claimed this moment to be a “revolution,” which he said would remain “bloodless if the left allows it to be.” Not only is this an overt signal of violent intent, it is also a covert declaration of war on democracy. Consider that Roberts framed it that way, on purpose, to invoke the image of y’all rising up in the streets in bloody battle.

Do not take the bait.

We are winning this. If they try to flip the script and say we don’t have rights anymore, it’s important to have a coordinated neighborhood safety plan, which include parallel systems of support and nonviolent obstruction (to prevent any more of our neighbors from being abducted than already have been).

These folks are losing right now, but they may try to ideologically ambush us, and it’s important to be prepared for such a scenario. Remember: it takes two parties for gaslighting to work. You can refuse to accept their alternate reality.

We are a free people and, if we work together, we will find our way toward collective liberation. Part of the work means having discussions, now, about coordinated nonviolent civilian defense plans.

Nations all across the globe have such plans— they detail ways that civilians can engage in mass-noncooperation with fascists and mass cooperation with one’s neighbors to bring down a regime. When fascists feel accountability is around the corner, they get violent and try to scare the s**t outta you so that you’ll give up. Don’t.

This is why it’s so important we don’t get caught without a plan. It’s time to start having conversations with your neighbors about community strategies to keep each other safe.

Weirdo’s Notes:

* I recommend Peter Ackerman’s The Checklist to End Tyranny, Gene Sharp’s From Dictatorship to Democracy, and Marshall Ganz’s People, Power, and Change. The first two titles talk about how to topple fascists; the last title talks about how to build local power.

* Learn from our neighbors in Portland, Chicago, and Charlotte. Learn from groups like Southerners on New Ground, and other groups, who have been doing this work for a long time. Remember that there are people already doing critical work in your neighborhoods. Join them. Grow around their work. Give them people-power.

* As I have mentioned, on loop, building parallel systems of support around food, shelter, medicine, safety, kinship, art, and solidarity economies is a must. We can’t resist fascism with frazzled and fractured local communities. The time to plan is now.

i don’t often reflect on fascism as a topic in itself, because it gives near-mystical powers to fascists. boo his. what we call fascism almost always involves talentless hacks backed by powerbrokers who want to drain public coffers. that ain’t fancy— it’s nasty.

but along the way, i think you and i have been made to see view fascism through a narrow window that traps us. these people are weaponizing all of our institutions against us. that’s how power-hoarding works. but there’s a weakness to their plan: it only works so long as you think the only solution and our only agency relies in following weaponized legal and institutional loopholes.

once you realize we have even more agency and collective power when we organize around-and-outside frameworks meant to trap us, a world of possibilities open up for us. choose agency always.

we’re only limited if we believe in their narrow story “power.” i don’t know about you, but i call b******t.

Weirdo’s References

Sarah Kendzior’s Hiding in Plain Sight

Marshall Ganz’s People, Power, and Change

it’s called accusation in a mirror.

i use it to confuse, my dear.

so people don’t catch on me

for what I blame on ye!

Editorial Note: if you enjoy my doodle essays and other commentary on “this freakin timeline,” feel free to subscribe to my blog. No paywall. Ever. We the People.

Hey, hey, neighbors. I wanted to pass along that I’m participating in The Mass Blackout from November 25- December 2nd. Their goals are as follows:

NO SPENDING. NO WORK. NO SURRENDER.

The system isn’t broken. It’s working exactly as designed—for the wealthy.

The Mass Blackout is a nationwide economic action, coordinated across aligned organizations, calling Americans to:

* Stop online or in-store shopping (except for small businesses)

* Stop work

* Stop streaming, cancel subscriptions, no digital purchases

* Remove the regime

If you must spend: support small, local businesses only. Pay in cash.

We’re not targeting small businesses or communities—we’re targeting the corporate systems that profit from injustice, fuel authoritarianism, and crush worker power.

What’s in Weirdo’s Live Podcast?

In this podcast, I explain why I think this boycott is an important part of our collective work. I explain that one needn’t be a perfectionist to participate. Abstain as you’re able. I ask you to directly share a link about The Mass Blackout with people in your contacts, moving around the algorithms and containers meant to suppress pro-democracy organizing.

I also share a story about a conversation I recently had with my friend, John, a Quaker minister, who reminded me of how Obama won the presidency by using Marshall Ganz’s theory of change (now published in People, Power, Change) and that, after elected, this model of organizing was disbanded— not because it wasn’t powerful but because Obama was pressured by establishment Democrats and their millionaire and billionaire donors who were terrified of an energized and organized base of community members across the country.

John didn’t tell me this story to dunk on Dems and wallow in hopelessness; that’s not his style. He did it to remind me of just how powerful WE are when we come together.

To reclaim the ship, our communities, across the country, must relearn how to organize ourselves relying concepts like Ganz’s “snowflake model” of organizing and alongside others. adrienne maree brown refers to a similar style of people getting together as “emergent strategy”— where we build power from the ground up, move toward each other, and learn to move with purpose. I also highly recommend checking out resources and trainings from Strategic Nonviolence Academy and the Beloved Communities Network and to learn models of organizing organizing groups like Southerners on New Ground.

We’re seeing the beginnings of an emergent strategy unfold right now. I just watched an incredibly creative protest, organized by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, happening at Home Depot. We all have many things to learn from our gorgeously patriotic neighbors in Charlotte, NC who watched the invasion of Chicago and PDX and have built a rapid response strategy. It is time to reach out to people in Charlotte and learn.

We need freedom “night schools,” collectives, and civic groups.

We need to weave back the fabric of our communities, not just to remove a traitorous mobster and his band of billionaire criminals but to reclaim our communities and our ecosystem for our children and for all future generations.

This system is cruel, greedy, and death-dealing— and it cannot continue in its current state. We must remember that our children are watching. We can be overwhelmed and scared, but we cannot remain passive. We must alchemize our fear into coordinated action.

My sincere hope is that The Mass Blackout will mark the beginning of rebuilding our collective muscle to work together to get the world every person and every living being deserves. The ancestors are at our backs.

But as my friend, John, reminds me often: It’s not enough to know what you’re supposed to do— you also have to DO it.

John’s a wise guy. Hope you’ll take his advice. I am.

had a penny

made

a wish

that billionaires

did not exist

We are the wealthiest nation on earth. Universal housing isn’t a pipe dream. Visualize it. Talk about it. Learn about it. Organize.

What connects the Epstein files, transnational billionaire criminals, and Christian nationalists? Ellie Leonard, of The Panicked Unpaid Writer, and I discuss these and other questions, in what will (I hope) be the first of many conversations.

Thank you Nick Paro, Evan Stern, MsYuse, Mason/She/Her🩷💜💙, Sandra, and about three hundred other neighbors for tuning into this live video conversation with Ellie Leonard!

If you enjoyed the convo, consider subscribing Your Weirdo Friend. No paywalls. Ever.