My last two newsletters had some typos, and the reason is simple: I was in a hurry. Last week I was road tripping around Colorado and New Mexico with friends and felt compelled to write the night and early morning. I had an ambiguous perception of impulses and it was that I shouldn’t hear it. But the world now feels like it’s moving 100 miles a hour, and the news spigot has been transformed into a fire station. And I feel compelled to write about it at the same sustainable pace as the events are moving.
When urgent needs are very realistic, it is difficult for now, remember that moving urgently does not mean that you are in a hurry. These are two different things. We know the rush; hurry, fast, fast, moving at maximum speed. Here, the urgency moves quickly, but intentionally, we do what we need to do as quickly as possible, but we do well. Like many of us, I feel the stress of this moment, but I responded quickly, not the intentional and systematic urgency I am aiming for.
This isn’t about a few typos from last week, it’s time. It’s about how we move towards this new political reality where we have found ourselves. During the first Trump administration, “resistance” was led by it Mass mobilization Abundant amount of time, energy and money will bring together tens of thousands of people for a one-off March. After that, everyone will go home. Things are already a little different this time. We are looking at long-term Powerville with a focus on Tesla’s sustained protests, federal workers’ unions.
This is what is needed to close fascism. The isolated moments of protest must be intentionally located within the scope of greater strategies and movements. Otherwise, they are just sights. But the difficult truth is that long-term work takes more time. It requires money, space, commitment, energy and thinking through difficult questions and decisions. Each of us should be very intentional to commit, recommend and recommend this work. That is the difficult reality of our time – we are called to make sacrifices and put aside a part of our lives to fight the threat of fascism.
Here, it is important to think of yourself as the organizer and take action as much as possible. in Recent works for In these timesSarah Jaffe spoke to the federal workers. Several of these workers from unions and departments gathered together to form a network of federal forces (fun) Resisting Trump and Musk. One of these union members, Chris Druss, said very clearly.
And I couldn’t agree any more. Especially with anyone within the federal government. Organizing work is a very important task for all of us, but those who can fight this beast from within have both special opportunities and special responsibilities. If that’s you, I highly recommend checking out Federation military network.
But we should all give Chris’ advice. It’s time for us all to become organizers. It doesn’t just mean telling people what to do, discussing with them, or trying to spread awareness. It means connecting with the organizations in your community, forming unions, and bringing others into the efforts you are engaged in. It means recruiting people to an organization, strengthening institutions, and collectively increasing the capabilities of all the organizations you are in. It means devoting yourself personally to building power for all of us.
Of course, that’s not easy. For many of us, the biggest barrier to organizing is that there are only 24 hours a day. Work, kids, sleep, time I’d like to spend it on organizing it. There are several answers to this almost universal question. One is to organize where we are. It is part of the power of the union. It’s amazing that you can do meaningful arrangements with your watch. And the powerful union movement will ultimately become one of the most powerful tools of the working class, giving us the ability to control the economy and force change rather than being asked well and ignored.
There are other answers too. One is extremely chastised about our free time. This is also difficult, and often allows you to overexpand yourself. To engage in this marathon rather than getting caught up in a sprint now, many of us need to learn when we can go back and when we can put more on our plates. It is especially important to reassess the relationship with the news cycle. We can stick to every news item and every event, and spend incredible time and even more energy. All cabinet appointments, all hearings, all the debacles of DC are very easy to consume without caution.
But we can retreat. I happened to be reading something I wrote, and there’s something familiar to you from the welcome email to this newsletter, and it’s repeated today. Two and a half years ago, when I was setting this up, I wrote:
And that’s more true than it is now. It’s very easy to get I caught up With each news item, it’s very easy to pass the day easily, worrying about things you can’t control for now and stressing. The current events psychologically strike us, but it can feel physically, it can feel like a threat is immediately, and here we can find ourselves trapped in our room, in our chests, and in our hands, and we can find that we are captured by the latest broken news items. You need to zoom out. You need to be free from the one-minute news cycle. And, strangely enough, it takes time.
If you want to be meaningful and engaged rather than sacrificed by the app or adrenaline, you need to take the time. You need to spend time doing politics with others, not with your mobile phone. I say this for myself as much as anyone. As I mentioned before here, my 9-5 involves joining the news organization’s Twitter. I was paid to respond and react to events, and when the Trump administration began, things quickly became busier. Eight hours a day, I absorb it all and convert it into a series of news, a ton of content. But it requires that sacrifice. And it takes more time than anything.
In Candor’s spirit, this was supposed to be a simple piece. when New ways We have reached the 250th edition. I thought I paused and asked for your support. But instead, I was repeatedly surrounded by the urge to write something else. So here we are 252 years old. I would like to ask for your help. I want to write more time, research, organize, learn more for you, and bring my discoveries back to you. I’m not that good at being late right now, but that’s because it takes time to get late. I was used to writing quickly and editing quickly. After all, I haven’t edited the way I want it to. It’s the pace of social media, the pace of my work, and it feels more and more like the pace of the world.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. I can slow down, we can slow down – it just takes time. So I’ll ask for your help here. If you can support my work, you will give me time. In exchange, I hope to bring you writing to help you slow down. And beyond that, I want to bring you writing that will help us all slow down. The only real way to do this is to be together and we want to bring you writing that will help us rebuild our soceity so that time doesn’t become so luxurious. The only real way to give us more time is to organize and change this world. That way we are not constantly forced to exchange money at a sustainable pace for much of our lives.
Right now I’m reading some great books.”Detroit: I care about dying” about radical organizations in Detroit in the 60s and 70s. At the heart of it is black autoworkers from Ford, GM and Chrysler. At the time, these companies were talking to the world about cutting-edge technology. These were three of the six biggest manufacturers on the planet, telling the public about flashy new systems and automation and processes. They build new plants, hype them, and the media gets on board with it. And, after all, it was really “speed-up” and produced a ton of efficiency improvements. What that means is to speed up the assembly line. Companies demand more and more of the same workers of the same plant. And more cars will be produced, but workers have been injured, lost their limbs, and some have died. But these workers were almost powerless at the time, so they had no choice but to speed up and speed up.
I feel that we are all speeding up lately. All of our work is not on the Detroit assembly line, but capitalists everywhere are increasingly demanding, resulting in anxiety about productivity, efficiency and all the penetration of society. I’m certainly not immune. So today I’m looking for your help. It’s not easy to ask, but I’m not ashamed to ask a reader who is a reader. What I really want is to slow down and create something more valuable to you.
For two and a half years, I have worked about 50 hours a week and write this early in the morning and late at night. And although I have no regrets about what I wrote, I come to places I want to use more. Specifically, I would like to make my writing more useful in these times. And with your help, I think I can do exactly that. But you know, I need one factor that I don’t have much now – time. Thank you for reading this today and if you give me a little more time for you, you have my thanks for my immortality – JP
