is it so hard to see people are not waiting to be told what’s possible
07.03.2026 00:56
👍 74
🔁 11
💬 1
📌 1
is it so hard to see people are not waiting to be told what’s possible
Now on SSRN and looking for a good home - "The Case for Professional Disobedience"
Using healthcare professionals as a case study, the Article meets this perilous moment in U.S. history by thinking seriously about disobedience as a response to institutional failures
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
One thing about these big camp systems is that they inflict a tremendous amount of harm through sheer momentum. When a system is built to be both negligent and punitive, it tends to cause suffering by default.
Heads up movement-based researchers. Applications for the UCLA Strategic Labor Research Conference open April 1. Great opportunity to hone skills and network with folks who leverage research for worker justice
“If you want to know how it feels to have slaves, in the modern world – and not be blamed openly for this desire – visit Dubai.”
newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...
Instead, I see Powell as symptomatic of a historical conjuncture in which neoliberal ideas that had been in circulation for decades found a foothold as the prosperous post-war political economic order gave way (to one marked by stagflation, fiscal crisis, & declining industrial profitability)
Re-upping an old essay of mine that Gary Tan hated “The prioritizing of technology capital’s interests over the concerns and lives of everyday people — first responders, transportation workers, the people who rely on access to public transportation —
bayareacurrent.com/the-torched-...
An enraging, enraging case.
It is also worth noticing how the terms of the debate get set. What we have inherited is not primarily a budget crisis in the sense of books that cannot be balanced, but a capacity crisis that has been produced and normalized through decades of staged budget crises.
4/
New essay, "Abolition in Three Movements" in the Prison abolition and political theory critical exchange in Contemporary Political Theory. Really proud to be in conversation with these brilliant thinkers. Shoutout @amc-etc.bsky.social for organizing.
Check it out: link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Essential thinking on “institutional authoritarianism” @genevievelakier.bsky.social
It’s giving middle passage
“So you can call it abolish, you can call it dismantle, you can call it whatever, but our existing immigration system is a funnel to create a concentration camp society. We have to change that somehow.“
Working on Restoring Justice kept me grounded this past year, so I share it w/ excitement & some nervousness.
Written w/ Meredith Elizalde, whose son Nick was killed in a shooting at his high school, we argue for a right to restorative justice.
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
New Interview: www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...
Also former executive director of Secure Communities program under Bush and Obama.
Feel like the unchecked plutocratic control & elite impunity after Epstein has created a real backlash. Phenomenal interview of the economist Clara Mattei. uncompromisingly makes case for democratic control of the economy.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=9M_d...
bsky.app/profile/ocas...
This was such a special interview to conduct: the first in two episodes with historian Peter Linebaugh on the long histories of commons and commoning, connections between enclosures in Europe and imperial conquest abroad, and writing history from below. www.thedigradio.com/podcast/the-...
Defend the sacred
Powerful work
In Gaza, Israel takes truckloads of Palestinian bodies for DNA testing, to make sure they are not Israeli. They seldom return them. Mary Turfah examines what they are doing with the dead, how it structures Israeli power, and why they get away with it.
Good piece by @chashomans.bsky.social tracing the lineage of ICE-watching to BPP and AIM www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/u...
Also the work of @marissaesque.bsky.social, e.g. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Prefigurative legality in action
mitpress.mit.edu/978026253978...
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
For those commenting on the agents' surnames.
This was the search that yielded Laura Rosenbury?
Every social theory undergirding Trumpism has been broken on the steel of Minnesotan resolve. The multiracial community in Minneapolis was supposed to shatter. It did not. It held until Bovino was forced out of the Twin Cities with his long coat between his legs. The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive—because of its diversity and not in spite of it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority. Minnesotans have preserved everything worthwhile about “Western civilization,” while armed brutes try to tear it down by force.
Last week in Minnesota, I watched ordinary people risk their lives to protect their neighbors. In the process, they not only won a significant—though not final—victory against authoritarianism, they proved virtually every MAGA social theory wrong. (gift link) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
David French argued Renee Good's murder is an example of the US having two sytems of law: orderly for friends & belligerent for foes. @victorerikray.bsky.social corrects him: US law has always promised fascism for non-whites & those who stand with them.
groupthreat.com/p/americas-d...
Trusted friends in Minneapolis tell me that this fund is supporting many people but does not have enough money. If you can give, please do: chuffed.org/project/1671...