Lucifer (they/them)

The Education Dept. provides a significant amount of funding for our public schools, especially supporting students with disabilities and schools with a high proportion of low-income students.

It’s OK to admit that we’re off the map of our experience. The rules & best practices some of us are accustomed to, in certain situations, may no longer apply. There are some questions I lovingly refuse to answer at this time bc I don’t know. We need more humility. Some of our expertise is outdated.

We should give vcu and whoever else is responsible hell for caving so fast

And one other thing - social media can be great for sharing information, but can also multiply panic and hopelessness and disinformation. Be careful with your messaging.

Social media is also a tool we can use strategically in our fight, but shitposting alone will not defeat fascism.

- My advice to individuals who aren't trying to use a public platform for any sort of info-sharing or organizing is to do whatever makes you feel good. Social media really doesn't have to be your thing if you don't want it to be, but it's worth understanding both the value and danger of it.

- Things don't feel stable enough to rely on just one platform to reach your people. Diversify! Be strategic with what platforms you're using for what content and how those relate to each other.

However, those types of platforms aren't good for reaching total strangers - you have to navigate people there. So we should be thinking about how we can leverage social media to get people onto those platforms that serve us better.

- Where we can, we want to shift towards platforms where we have more over your audience and content such as email/newsletters, websites, and even Discords and Signal or Telegram chats. These offer a lot more flexibility because you don't have to fight an algorithm and you own your audience.

- My rule has always been to not say anything, even in dms, on a social media platform that I wouldn't be okay with having read in a court of law. Even if you think it's private, most of those companies would turn your info in to the feds in a heartbeat.

- Social media can be used for sharing all sorts of important information. It's one of the best tools that we have for getting a lot of people to know about something very quickly. We should lean into that when we need to.

- In order to build movements you have to meet people where they're at. And that's not just in-person, it's also online. Almost everyone uses some form of social media or another, so it's important for leftist and progressive orgs to also be on social media if you're trying to movement-build.

- Because of algorithms, restrictions on political content, shadow banning, and harassment it's harder than ever to get progressive or leftist content seen by people. This decline isn't new - it's been happening for a very long time.

- The people who own these platforms are not our friends. They are owned and run by people who are ideologically opposed to progress and equality. That's always been true, even when the platforms themselves worked more democratically.

As someone who has been doing various forms of digital for leftist groups and progressive nonprofits for over a decade, I have some thoughts on how orgs and individuals who want to resist fascism should relate to social media in this moment:

I've been seeing a lot of Discourse from folks trying to figure out how to ethically and effectively use the internet in light of election results, the decline of Twitter/X, TikTok's recent blatant pro-Trump message (and possible shutdown) and Meta's continued rightward slide. (🧵)

BREAKING: Philadelphia workers have won the first Whole Foods union under Amazon with UFCW.

Since Amazon bought the chain, workers have lost benefits and felt the squeeze.

Now they're fighting back against the multi-trillion dollar giant and hoping this win will be the first of many.

How your email finds me

fuck A.I.
all my homies hate A.I.

A huge tree with many different trunks and green leaves. Moss hangs from the branches and grows along the trunk.

"2025 resolutions: - pour into my friendships and make new ones, put energy into generosity, reciprocity, and healthy conflict - Focus on my physical health - eat healthier, start regular workout routine again, tend to chronic illnesses, go to doctor and massage consistently - Return to consistent organizing and movement work, find ways to make space in the work for our collective feelings and needs - Be less afraid of what other people think, be less afraid of starting things and sharing things - Attempt to pay down some debt, spend less money on things that aren’t important to me - Work on being less attached to outcomes that I can’t control, letting go of needing things to be how I want them"

I spent my New Year's sitting under this huge tree, which is so big and old that it supports its own ecosystem of moss and ferns, and reflecting on what I want from the year ahead.

These are my resolutions as I move forward from this year of processing and introspection and into a year of action: