I’m a community college writing professor. What is so striking to me, in reading all of this talented writing, is also grasping a sense of our underlying “story of us.” I think this story could use more of our attention and tender care.

What we focus on grows and, right now, the story we’re still telling about “us” is that change can’t happen because rich political abusers throw roadblocks in our way. The thing is, neighbor, that’s just not true. You and I have an incredible amount of our own power— but fascists have spent billions of dollars (and bought a gaggle of politicians, to boot) in order to weave stories designed to crush your spirit, induce feelings of powerless, and turn you against your neighbors, instead of organizing together against them.

Political abusers want to take away your first amendment rights, because they know how dangerous a story of our collective power can be. They want you to “stop doing the work” of shaping feelings into words and sentences, because they want you to give up on laboring toward your own story. Why? They know the power of wading through words to arrive at story— and they don’t want you to have it. It’s too dangerous, because what if you start telling a different story of power? No. They want to have ownership of The Story. It is the story of the market, the story of disposability, the story of betrayal, the story of annihilation, the story of brutality, the story of greed.

When you give your mind to a machine to “improve your writing,” it launders your thoughts. It promises you “solutions,” not reading the fine print that what it’s robbing you of is actual innovation— which always always always comes from a stuck place. You’re being conned. Coming to story is supposed to be effortful, precisely because it is powerful. The malignantly rich don’t know that, because they’ve only ever plagiarized to get to where they are. Full offense.

I think one of the ways they try to sell you on all this AI slop is by being perfection-mongerers. Spoiler alert. Perfection is a red herring meant to keep you stuck in a loop of “not good enough.” What if I told you, after decades of teaching writing, that it’s your weirdness, your emotion, your tenderness, and your curiosity that makes your words sing? Perfection is white supremacy— it tells you to be a copy of a copy of a copy, and to never step out of line because difference is suspect. What a curious story.

Do not give up your own ability to come to story— to arrive, however gloriously imperfect— at your own words. At the same time, ask yourself: “what conduct does my writing inspire?” Let the answer be agency. Let the answer lead to connection, courage, creativity, compassion, and our collective liberation.

Stories are emotion, given shape and form. We tell stories to shape belief and inspire action.

Case in Point: If you’re feeling numb, believe nothing you do matters, and stay isolated and powerless— that’s not an accident. There’s a been a decades-long campaign to tell you regular people can’t win for trying, that our voices don’t matter, and even if we had a thing to say we’d probably say it wrong. This, my friend, is a story. It is a story someone else is telling about us. You need to ask yourselves: what do they get out of encouraging us to believe that we’re stuck and there’s nothing to do about it? What conduct does it inspire? What kind of world does it get us?

So if you want to see an empowered populace rise up against coordinated political abuse, it’s time to embrace, in as many ways as possible, our collective power and start telling a new story of us.

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