On 4/14 at 5:30 (ET), join Anita Varma as she discusses SOLIDARITY IN JOURNALISM: HOW ETHICAL REPORTING FIGHTS FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE in a virtual discussion w/ Lewis Raven Wallace. bit.ly/3OrWgJX @anitawrites.bsky.social @interruptcrim.bsky.social @lewispants.bsky.social @columbiaup.bsky.social
"A society without solidarity is no longer a society at all." - Anita Varma www.scu.edu/ethics/all-a...
A WHOLE CIVILIZATION WILL DIE TONIGHT My son needs lunch, and I have to put his backpack together, but a whole civilization will die tonight, so I'm wondering if they've closed their schools. Like, a snow day, maybe, except instead of snow it's "keep your children home so if you die, you die together" — instead of "well open back up once the plows have cleared" it's "we don't know if we'll be here tomorrow, hold your babies tight." It's just "talk" I'm told, which I've been told before. "It's how the president makes his deals." But I've never heard anyone talk about other human beings this way, and I'm not certain I can look my son in the eyes if we all agree to stomach it one more time. A civilization will die tonight, but as I zip up his backpack and kiss him off to school I think: if this is what we call leadership then I'm not entirely sure ours isn't already dead. @michaelfdubois Mukad A QuBoy @michacifdubois
Brutal.
Unlearning individualism has been one of the steepest journeys of my last few years, trying to write a book about unlearning while letting go of expertise, authorship, ownership over ideas. I have Black feminist and Indigenous epistemologies to thank for guidance. The struggle continues...
Solidarity in Journalism by Anita Varma comes out next week! An important book about what journalists can do when we move in solidarity with oppressed communities. We'll discuss the book online on April 14, from 5:30-6:30 eastern. Register here: www.interruptingcriminalization.com/events/all/s...
More of this, please. I want to see it all fail. I want the theft slop bullshit to collapse into a vat of its own bullshit. May it crash so hard that the dot com burst of the early 2000s seems like a mere blip www.cbc.ca/news/world/s...
Go fash lose cash bb
So cool to be among the finalists for this lovely award along with another Beacon author!
This was a fun interview with @kettering.org - we explored the role of challenge, tension, and good questions in creating fertile ground for #RadicalUnlearning. Thank you Alex for being a great reader and interviewer!
Rest in power Breonna Taylor. Today, we mourn six years without her, and six years without justice or accountability.
(Feeling contemplative on a Friday night when U.S. is at war...grasping for the points of connection and power against the overwhelm and nihilism...wishing to somehow share with people this glowing ember of hopefulness about humans that I am blessed and cursed with.)
Also guilt and shame are really interesting, because they can be de-mobilizing but they can also create necessary cognitive dissonance. In psychology speak guilt is "pro-social" and helps us, you know, act right or at least desire to. But if we stop at guilt we become frozen or even reactionary.
My thing is not, like, we should never use guilt and shame as tactics. I'm all for it when targeting the powerful. But if our goal is bringing people into movement, and action, we need to do like Mariame and Kelly said in Let This Radicalize You and create invitations, not just make statements.
So often the story we are told is that everyone is set in their ways. But I want us to look closely at who benefits from that story. If we don't believe people change, why would we ever take action?
As I'm going around talking to people about radical unlearning, I keep being struck by how relieving the conversations feel. People are hungry for spaces where they can vulnerably explore what they/we have wrong about ourselves and each other. People WANT to unlearn and transform.
“Honest to God, it feels like a lot of people are out to get our babies,” MJ says. “I’m gonna be damned before I let some grown-ass adult disrespect my child and not stand up to that. People need to get over themselves and touch grass. Find Jesus — the brown one. Go to therapy.”
Respectfully, of COURSE the New York Times is manufacturing consent for war in the Middle East. Been doing that. Will continue to do that. I am not sure that we need "proof" so much as we need divestment from all news outlets who invest in empire.
Oh don't worry, I appreciate my sex!
Parents in the South are organizing to support their trans kids. And it turns out, the vast majority of parents with trans kids support them, contrary to the myth that it's so very hard to do. May these courageous families set an example for all. @translash.org translash.org/wire/parents...
Psst, little secret, I'm making a new book. It is NOT about pigs (that one is coming too!)...it's about...how...journalism...can be...amazing...and change...the world...???!!! A Theory of Change for the journalism we need!
I have a storrrrrry coming out tomorrow and you know what? It's a little bit uplifting!
apropos of this, I really enjoyed @mskellymhayes.bsky.social latest interview with @lewispants.bsky.social on how people change their minds and engage in meaningful unlearning, it entirely tracks with my own personal experience
Why thank you!
“We don’t necessarily need to persuade a lot of people that we are right. We need to persuade a lot of people to do things, to take risks and do things, and to feel that what we do matters. And so unlearning apathy, unlearning a sense of nothing I do matters. That might actually be the thing that gets people into the streets.” - Lewis Raven Wallace
@lewispants.bsky.social: "I think it’s really easy to get caught up in the very intellectual academic kind of, what do you think? What do I think? What do we each think? As the main thing that matters when that’s not really how the bigger picture movement gets built." truthout.org/audio/the-sc...
I talked with @lewispants.bsky.social about the art and science of transformation, how people *really* let go of harmful beliefs, and how we can cultivate the conditions that make unlearning possible.
Premature death at the hands of armed agents of the state is merely a hazard of being Black in America. It’s not enough to “abolish ICE”; we have to abolish the police force and replace it with a radically different form of public safety.
Sadistic, the whole thing. Structurally so — but the structure is revealed
Virtual meetup Journalists and Media Makers Concerned About Criminalization March 5 3pm - 4:30pm ET | 12pm - 1:30pm PT
Journalists and Media Makers Concerned about Criminalization Meetup!
March 5, 2026, 3pm-4:30pm EST
We welcome journalists, activist media makers, & communications workers who want to discuss criminalization & abolition!
Short application here: bit.ly/JournalistsMeetupReg
Got a chance to be a part of a study group with @lewispants.bsky.social on their great book Radical Unlearning: The Art and Science of Creating Change from Within tonight.
Highly recommend a read. Feel like I'm just getting started.
bookshop.org/p/books/radi...