Love your column, this one especially, thank you! I have another item to add to your/our wish list of what we want to manifest (womanifest?) going forward. As a recovering network news journalist who left corporate media to cover what I could not get on the air (at CBS Radio); environmental news, I would make climate education mandatory because clearly we have an eco-literacy crisis in the U.S. How do I know? Half the country voted for a fossil fool (or deny-o-saur as I call them). Although there are likely environmental studies courses available at many high schools and universities thats not doing anything for the adults in charge for at least the next decade. And because there is very little/if any support for independent environmental content creators like myself we desperately need funding! I shouldn’t have to pay to produce and promote my own interviews with Solutionaries—29 years and counting—in order to provide a critically needed public service! Thanks for listening.
I feel you, Anya. But I’m cautiously hopeful for the longue durée. If you were writing in 1934, with the depression in full swing, the Great War still ever present in memory and 10 years of even greater tragedy ahead, you’d probably have said the same thing. And yet just twenty years later, in 1954, with your kids having their own kids, things probably seemed pretty normal for your grandchildren. Let’s just hope they don’t need to go through a Holocaust to get there.
I think it is wise to take the long view and agree on the comparison to the mid-20th century. the post America world order has some great potential . But almost all scenarios for climate change suggest in 20 years it will be far more chaotic and disrupted than today.
"Unclenching" is exactly the right word for what this piece does. From Iowa, I would add one thing to the reconstruction list: rural broadband, rural healthcare access, and the gutting of farm safety net programs all need to be part of this conversation or we will keep losing rural communities to the politics of despair. The forward work only works if it reaches people who feel left out of it entirely.
Oh, it did my heart so good to read this piece this morning. Thank you so much. So nice to face what is and feel something other than the overwhelm and despair. Grateful...
I'm also emailing it to so many loved ones who aren't on Substack. Gah, I needed this! It's like I can mark this as the very moment I see that indeed, the tide will turn.
I love your spitballing.
Also - I'm so with you on "shoot it in my veins." That lil video did my heart good too. Political leaders you'd actually feel good about leaving your small children with?! Amazing. More of that, please.
Sustainable/climate resilient building materials. Bike lanes. More and better public transit. An overhaul of education into something that taught things beyond how to take tests.
I’ve read this a couple times…thank you for all the wise, kind things you put into the world.
Your “spitballing” at the end of this piece is the closest thing I’ve seen to a real comprehensive path out of this polycrisis… and in a way that actually builds something new and better. Fantastic and much-needed thought leadership. ❤️
Loved this. Reminds me of how so many people are also waiting for "prices to go back down".......as if prices have ever, in the history of the whole world, gone down as time went on. There is no "cheaper" world to go back. We just have to hope our government and politicians will create policies and regulations and programs that reflect our current (and expensive) reality, and revolt if/when our government and politicians don't do so. The issue here is our government and politicians haven't been creating policies and regulations and programs that reflect our current reality for far too many generations now, and not enough people are revolting in response.
If I were a better writer, I could have written this essay myself. You express my own thoughts better than I could have done, even though I trained as a historian. The opposition in our country needs to start getting ready NOW to enact a reform program such as that announced by Peter Magyar for Hungary (and by Gonsalves, Chadbourn, and you yourself for our own country). But I see no evidence of such a thing happening within the current opposition. Where is our shadow cabinet? Who is coordinating and publicizing our proposals for reform? We cannot remain complacent, relying on the ongoing disasters that Trump 2.0 is inflicting on our country to convince our fellow citizens to throw these unspeakable creatures ("bums" is too polite a characterization) out. What do we have to offer voters other than "we're not these guys"? Mr. Gonsalves is right in noting that reform and reshaping our government is going to be a generational task. And you are right in noting that we can't go back, because what we thought was tried and true turned out not to be true in the current environment. But we can't just wait for the Democratic Party to get going on this. It might be time for a 2020s equivalent of the 1850s Republican Party to emerge.
I am in complete agreement with your proposed agenda, though I would probably move SCOTUS reform to the top of the list, because so many of those proposals would be DOA at the present Court. I would add reform of the current Congressional rules to the list, along with a prohibition on stock trading by national office holders and their immediate families (blind trusts, maybe?). But this is a wish list. We should not commit ourselves to an all-or-nothing agenda. Take what we can get for now but keep on pushing. As President Obama noted, the arc of history won't just bend by itself.
I wish there was someone who came to mind easily who could a) be elected, and b) work through that list with success. The Dems have a pretty deep bench, for sure, but most of them are still captives to the "normal" narrative, I think. This assumes, of course, we'll make it to 2028...
I mean he seems to be a solid anti-fascist. And he's obviously an amazing communicator. I compare him to Fetterman in that they were both held up as the direction the party needs to go in, to bring back the white male working class. But Fetterman has turned out to be more into wielding his own power as an iconoclast vs working in coalition, to the point of flirting with switching parties.
It's really interesting reading the coverage on Magyar. It seems like the work of several terms and also of government on different levels. The first person you need is a democracy/anti corruption person , to clean house and tax wealth. Magyar is no liberal at least not by European standards But he is staunchly anti corruption.
As you tax wealth you pair it with dividends to make people's lives better.
Mamdani is focusing on achievable and tangible gains, which expands the electorate, but it's at the cost of cozying up to power (both Trump and Hochul). At the same time he is trying what Obama failed to do: turning his election campaign into a durable organizing structure--continuing to collaborate with and strengthen the orgs that got him elected like the DSA. That makes the city more participatory-democratic over time.
Wow I just wrote about why companies cannot pledge to offset the human and the environmental costs of AI like they would for their carbon footprint, and Bores went and proposed a legislation for it! Will be watching his congressional race closely.
Weighing in as a Brit. What I would say is if you do ever get an adult in the White House again, they will need to be brutally honest about all this and what it will cost, right off the bat. Keir Starmer has bottled it, despite his huge majority. If he'd done a Churchill style Blood Sweat and Tears warning the day he was elected, people would have backed him. But he didn't, he just let everybody think he'd fix it somehow without raising taxes, and now we're staring down the barrel of a Reform victory.
There are so many people not already in government who have ideas and concrete workable plans that need airtime. I’ve been reading The Red Deal. Black Voters Matter just issued a statement that is far more than just restoring the Voting Rights Act. So many people have important ideas in movement work. But instead we’re usually stuck with bad or often at best palatable politicians.
Love your column, this one especially, thank you! I have another item to add to your/our wish list of what we want to manifest (womanifest?) going forward. As a recovering network news journalist who left corporate media to cover what I could not get on the air (at CBS Radio); environmental news, I would make climate education mandatory because clearly we have an eco-literacy crisis in the U.S. How do I know? Half the country voted for a fossil fool (or deny-o-saur as I call them). Although there are likely environmental studies courses available at many high schools and universities thats not doing anything for the adults in charge for at least the next decade. And because there is very little/if any support for independent environmental content creators like myself we desperately need funding! I shouldn’t have to pay to produce and promote my own interviews with Solutionaries—29 years and counting—in order to provide a critically needed public service! Thanks for listening.
Love this Betsy!! NY State has just passed a new climate Ed law!
I feel you, Anya. But I’m cautiously hopeful for the longue durée. If you were writing in 1934, with the depression in full swing, the Great War still ever present in memory and 10 years of even greater tragedy ahead, you’d probably have said the same thing. And yet just twenty years later, in 1954, with your kids having their own kids, things probably seemed pretty normal for your grandchildren. Let’s just hope they don’t need to go through a Holocaust to get there.
I think it is wise to take the long view and agree on the comparison to the mid-20th century. the post America world order has some great potential . But almost all scenarios for climate change suggest in 20 years it will be far more chaotic and disrupted than today.
"Unclenching" is exactly the right word for what this piece does. From Iowa, I would add one thing to the reconstruction list: rural broadband, rural healthcare access, and the gutting of farm safety net programs all need to be part of this conversation or we will keep losing rural communities to the politics of despair. The forward work only works if it reaches people who feel left out of it entirely.
Rebecca Schweitzer, Des Moines, Iowa
Thank you for providing that perspective ! So important that everyone be included in this.
Oh, it did my heart so good to read this piece this morning. Thank you so much. So nice to face what is and feel something other than the overwhelm and despair. Grateful...
Thank you Erin for sharing!
Thank you for writing!!
I'm also emailing it to so many loved ones who aren't on Substack. Gah, I needed this! It's like I can mark this as the very moment I see that indeed, the tide will turn.
I love your spitballing.
Also - I'm so with you on "shoot it in my veins." That lil video did my heart good too. Political leaders you'd actually feel good about leaving your small children with?! Amazing. More of that, please.
Sustainable/climate resilient building materials. Bike lanes. More and better public transit. An overhaul of education into something that taught things beyond how to take tests.
I’ve read this a couple times…thank you for all the wise, kind things you put into the world.
Your “spitballing” at the end of this piece is the closest thing I’ve seen to a real comprehensive path out of this polycrisis… and in a way that actually builds something new and better. Fantastic and much-needed thought leadership. ❤️
Thank you! It's enlivening to imagine what comes next.
Loved this. Reminds me of how so many people are also waiting for "prices to go back down".......as if prices have ever, in the history of the whole world, gone down as time went on. There is no "cheaper" world to go back. We just have to hope our government and politicians will create policies and regulations and programs that reflect our current (and expensive) reality, and revolt if/when our government and politicians don't do so. The issue here is our government and politicians haven't been creating policies and regulations and programs that reflect our current reality for far too many generations now, and not enough people are revolting in response.
If I were a better writer, I could have written this essay myself. You express my own thoughts better than I could have done, even though I trained as a historian. The opposition in our country needs to start getting ready NOW to enact a reform program such as that announced by Peter Magyar for Hungary (and by Gonsalves, Chadbourn, and you yourself for our own country). But I see no evidence of such a thing happening within the current opposition. Where is our shadow cabinet? Who is coordinating and publicizing our proposals for reform? We cannot remain complacent, relying on the ongoing disasters that Trump 2.0 is inflicting on our country to convince our fellow citizens to throw these unspeakable creatures ("bums" is too polite a characterization) out. What do we have to offer voters other than "we're not these guys"? Mr. Gonsalves is right in noting that reform and reshaping our government is going to be a generational task. And you are right in noting that we can't go back, because what we thought was tried and true turned out not to be true in the current environment. But we can't just wait for the Democratic Party to get going on this. It might be time for a 2020s equivalent of the 1850s Republican Party to emerge.
I am in complete agreement with your proposed agenda, though I would probably move SCOTUS reform to the top of the list, because so many of those proposals would be DOA at the present Court. I would add reform of the current Congressional rules to the list, along with a prohibition on stock trading by national office holders and their immediate families (blind trusts, maybe?). But this is a wish list. We should not commit ourselves to an all-or-nothing agenda. Take what we can get for now but keep on pushing. As President Obama noted, the arc of history won't just bend by itself.
I wish there was someone who came to mind easily who could a) be elected, and b) work through that list with success. The Dems have a pretty deep bench, for sure, but most of them are still captives to the "normal" narrative, I think. This assumes, of course, we'll make it to 2028...
Graham Platner?
We'll see! I'm worried he might be another Fetterman
Say more…curious why you’re worried. 😧
I mean he seems to be a solid anti-fascist. And he's obviously an amazing communicator. I compare him to Fetterman in that they were both held up as the direction the party needs to go in, to bring back the white male working class. But Fetterman has turned out to be more into wielding his own power as an iconoclast vs working in coalition, to the point of flirting with switching parties.
It's really interesting reading the coverage on Magyar. It seems like the work of several terms and also of government on different levels. The first person you need is a democracy/anti corruption person , to clean house and tax wealth. Magyar is no liberal at least not by European standards But he is staunchly anti corruption.
As you tax wealth you pair it with dividends to make people's lives better.
Mamdani is focusing on achievable and tangible gains, which expands the electorate, but it's at the cost of cozying up to power (both Trump and Hochul). At the same time he is trying what Obama failed to do: turning his election campaign into a durable organizing structure--continuing to collaborate with and strengthen the orgs that got him elected like the DSA. That makes the city more participatory-democratic over time.
Obviously if it suits them it suits them if you know what I mean....
Brilliant, thank you.
Wow I just wrote about why companies cannot pledge to offset the human and the environmental costs of AI like they would for their carbon footprint, and Bores went and proposed a legislation for it! Will be watching his congressional race closely.
Weighing in as a Brit. What I would say is if you do ever get an adult in the White House again, they will need to be brutally honest about all this and what it will cost, right off the bat. Keir Starmer has bottled it, despite his huge majority. If he'd done a Churchill style Blood Sweat and Tears warning the day he was elected, people would have backed him. But he didn't, he just let everybody think he'd fix it somehow without raising taxes, and now we're staring down the barrel of a Reform victory.
Yes the mirroring / parallels between us and UK have been fascinating for the last decade at least.
There are so many people not already in government who have ideas and concrete workable plans that need airtime. I’ve been reading The Red Deal. Black Voters Matter just issued a statement that is far more than just restoring the Voting Rights Act. So many people have important ideas in movement work. But instead we’re usually stuck with bad or often at best palatable politicians.
Ugh, Anya, so well said.
💯