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Dear All,
Hello from the Thunderdome. As you might know, there is a lot going on right now in Chicago.
I have been writing furiously and some of the work is listed below, but several other essays are being worked on as you read this, ready for their unveiling over the next many weeks.
I am not doing well—but who is, these days? I am both relentlessly and surprisingly optimistic and also awash in grief.
I’m optimistic because I see people, in the midst of all this madness, finally coming to terms with the fact that we have to let go of everything we held dear in the past.
And people are actively working to save the lives of strangers. I’m still trying to tease and trace out what this new moment is, exactly, and I’ll have more on that soon.
I’m awash in grief because lives are being destroyed, and there is no rescuing so many unnamed, invisible, disappeared people: pets have been forcibly abandoned, friends have vanished, lovers have been lost, children have been separated from parents and siblings and they are now alone in the world—if they are not incarcerated. Parents have no idea where their partners or children might be. I cannot imagine the grief.
And still, people fight back.
These updates will start up again, but they may not be every week. I am still writing and will have some announcements soon, along with new work every week or so. I’m going to include an RSS feed on my site so that you can get news of my work as it appears, but please also check in every week or so. Please know that I have spent the last couple of months gathering material and research and continue to write with your support.
I’m somewhat more active on social media, but in a very deliberate fashion. I post a lot of news items and commentary (mine and that of others) on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, and occasionally on LinkedIn. I can be found on Twitter (@NairYasmin) and Facebook (Yasmin.Nair), LinkedIn, and Instagram (Bekargyan). Starting next week, I’ll go back to my regular habit of posting work from the archive every weekday. I keep comments sections closed on Facebook, the most intimate form of social media, for nearly all my current affairs posts: I don’t have the emotional bandwidth or the time to engage in arguments or discussions about any of what is going on, and I encourage people to simply take the links or posts and discuss amongst themselves. If you’d like to see what I post there, do follow me on FB (I’m not accepting new friend requests, but you can use the follow function) but please understand that I don’t post for the sake of posting—so there may be periods of time where I post nothing at all.
If you like this, please support my work.
I know that a lot of writers feel that it’s necessary to be incessantly online in order to keep up their profiles. Unfortunately, this is certainly true for those of us who are not affiliated with legacy institutions and able to depend on our work automatically reaching large numbers of people via subscribers. Of course, as those institutions wither and die and fire more of their staff, writers everywhere find themselves in the wilderness of social media, desperately trying to get eyeballs to their work in the hope of getting more assignments. It’s a wretched existence for most, and I feel for all of us. That being said: I don’t think it’s good for one’s mental health to always be online and, often, arguing (although you should absolutely do it when it’s strategic to do so!). I don’t know what the solution is, and each person needs to find their own way. Mine is to do what I’m doing right now: post everywhere with some frequency, but not engage directly with too many people.
My “About” section has been revised, and I’ve also got a new post about “Forthcoming Work.” I will rewrite these every season.
Below is what I’ve written these past few weeks, and more is forthcoming—including a review of Kamala Harris’s memoir (there is no sacrifice too great for you, Dear Reader!). Also in the works: a piece on that infamous—whatever shall we call it?—moment between Ezra Klein and Ta Nehisi Coates.
There may not be as many “links from around the web” in the next few months: you will find most of those on my various social media accounts. The news changes every few minutes, and I have to keep up with it. I’m afraid I’m much too emotionally and physically exhausted for more than that, for now. May the Great Kittehs Above help us to move into a better world, one that gives us all time and space to breathe more freely.
If you like this, please support my work.
NEW WORK!
My “About” page has been updated.
And here’s more on my “Forthcoming Work”
I wrote “Transform, Destroy, Transform.”
“On Understanding Charlie Kirk”
“On the UK’s Your Party and Social Media”
“On Kitchen Tables and Cultural Issues”
ELSEWHERE ON THE WEB!
Here’s Lily Sánchez on “The Urgency of Abolitionist Politics.”
I’ve not had the chance to watch it, but there’s a new documentary on the decline of hometown papers.
Josh White has a piece in The Battleground, on the legacy of The Voice, a prominent part of Black British media.
Here’s William Bruno, in Current Affairs, writing about the importance of community colleges.
Nate Bear on “The Liberal Abandonment of Greta Thunberg.”
Here’s David Dayen with “Trump Labor Department Says His Immigration Raids Are Causing a Food Crisis,” in The American Prospect. It’s an eye-opener.
Also in The American Prospect: Sarah Lazare on “How ICE Terror Campaigns Are Used to Discipline Labor.”
Given everything going on, here’s a history of tear gas and protests by Mariame Kaba, on the Interrupting Criminalization website.
Rural America has always suffered from a lack of wi-fi access (unlike much of the world), and this AP News report confirms it (it’s going to get worse for schoolchildren everywhere, but much more so for those who don’t live in urban areas with many points of access).
You must have heard about the early morning raid on a South Shore apartment complex: South Side Weekly has an excellent and exhaustive report that also highlights the role of global capital in what transpired, in “Federal Agents Storm South Shore Building, Detaining Families and Children.”
If you like this, please support my work.
Amidst all the talk about the new rates for H1-B visas, we might forget that these have always been very exploitative. Here’s a 2020 reminder, from the Economics Policy Institute’s Daniel Costa and Ron Hira, on “H-1B visas and prevailing wage levels.”
Books are more important than ever, and prisoners are facing lower levels of access to them. The Liberation Library works on getting books to incarcerated youth.
Kelly Jensen writes about the lack of access to books for prisoners in general, here.
When and why are artists too old? Damien Davis addresses that question here, in Hyperallergic.
Allison Lirish Dean makes the case that we need to “Make Bureaucracy Great Again.”
A list of Some Actions That Are Not Protesting or Voting.
Here is John Cale, God himself, with “Paris 1919.” Mae Duw yn Gymro: God is Welsh (many thanks to @daffyd roberts).
May you find happiness wherever you can. Tomorrow is another year.
I will see you when I see you next.
Image: Lucian Freud, Cat, 1924.
