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Hey fam: I’m back. I’ll do a little personal catchup / beach postcard for you in #3.
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1. Andry
The only news I paid attention to last week was Tim’s conversation with Andry Hernández Romero.
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I took three things from it.
(1) Andry is an extraordinary soul. He’s a walking advertisement for why America needs immigrants: We were enriched by having this man in our country.
(2) Being loud matters. Andry. Mahmoud Khalil. Rümeysa Öztürk. The Trump administration is doing terrible things to innocent people and we should assume that for every case we hear about there are hundreds (thousands?) that are obscured from us.
But when we see these crimes taking place and we’re loud about it, good things can happen.
Andry, Khalil, and Öztürk have all been released. I doubt that they would have been without the public outcry on their behalf. They will get due process now—but only because people were loud about it.
Ever since Cory Booker’s filibuster I’ve been thinking about John Lewis and the idea of “good trouble.” Here’s Lewis talking about it in 2019, at a tribute to Rosa Parks:
Rosa Parks inspired us to get in trouble. And I’ve been getting in trouble ever since. She inspired us to find a way, to get in the way, to get in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble. . . . She kept on saying to each one of us, you too can do something. And for people if you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, do something. We cannot afford to be quiet.
The most frequent criticism I get is that I’m all diagnosis and no prescription. And my response is always the same: If I knew how to fix this thing, I’d tell you.
It’s not like I’m holding back on the solution just to keep you reading. I promise.
I don’t know how to stop creeping fascism. No one does. That’s because these systems are too big, too complex to either be fully understood or consciously “fixed.”
The best we can do is:
Be clear-eyed about reality.
Analyze the problems and understand them as fully as possible.
When we see opportunities to push back against fascism, take them.
Refuse to be quiet.
Hope that the accumulated weight of millions of people making good trouble eventually causes the authoritarian attempt to tip over.
I understand that this is not a satisfying answer.¹
(3) Being organized is powerful.
The civil rights struggle might be the best analogy for the fight against Trumpism. There was no “solution” for Jim Crow. There were just millions of people resisting individually—and then collectively.
At its heart, that’s what I think The Bulwark is about, actually. This is a media company producing a metric ton of #content every day. But why? Because this content brought together a huge audience.
That audience then became a community.
And together, this community is powerful.
Tim wouldn’t want me saying this, but I don’t think Andry gets out of CECOT without Tim in his corner.
Tim got loud on Andry’s behalf. He stayed on the case for months. He helped raise money for Andry’s defense. And he brought this community into battle with him.
So there’s no fix. There’s no solution. There’s just all of us, here together, rallying around each other, staying engaged, and using our leverage opportunistically. Helping where we can. Saving who we can. Making good trouble.
Which is why I’m always exhorting you guys to join Bulwark+ and go deeper with us. It’s not the money—if you can’t afford a membership just hit reply to this email and I’ll take care of you. Really. We do that for people All. The. Time.
But being part of this community is one way we get organized. Getting organized is how we make good trouble. And the more we grow, the more powerful we get.
Then maybe something good happens.