Evan Casper-Futterman

MLK 1968: It may be true that morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. It may be true that the law cannot change the heart but it can restrain the heartless. It may be true that the law can't make a man love me, but it can restrain him from lynching me.

I made this point in my dissertation about transforming institutions and economic democracy and I feel silly having missed this point about BS jobs being a counterpoint to the long march thru the institutions

all this is both foolish and unnecessary

Introducing the New York City Policy Forum A new project dedicated to governance in New York City

The NYC Policy Forum is new initiative that seeks to build—through convenings, research, and publications—a network of committed experts with the vision & policy know-how necessary to deliver on the widespread demand for a more affordable NYC!

Details 👇

nycpolicyforum.substack.com/p/introducin...

I’m no legal scholar but (2) sounds familiar as the rationale for mayoral control of schools in NYC

TRUMP [after spending 5 minutes with Zohran]: surplus value, it’s a very wonderful thing, very wonderful, and they’re stealing it. Can you believe that?

We’re going to be looking very strongly at the bourgeoisie, what they’re up to

On the left, some argue that economic populism is the only grounds for building a working-class movement that can reverse class dealignment. In this view, the left should simply pursue a politics of class while identity issues, such as immigration, gender, race, and sexuality, should be downplayed in political organizing. Others go further and treat conservative views on those topics as working-class majority views that the left must learn to embrace. But this new common sense contradicts reality. Setting forms of identity, such as race, against class as fundamentally opposed bases of politics misrepresents how building working-class power works on the ground, both today and throughout history. Dismissing the social differences between working-class people as irrelevant ignores the key building blocks of class politics. And a left that embraces the right’s divide-and-conquer rhetoric on criminal justice, gender, race, and immigration will only deepen political divisions within the working class. Subscribing to either view would doom the working-class solidarity needed to win.

This outstanding essay by @itsmccarthy.bsky.social in Hammer and Hope captures a frustration that I have long felt with a certain strand of left opinion-makers. hammerandhope.org/article/iden...

they're going after holocaust survivors

Flaming Hydra is a coop. All you can do with your share is sell it back to the coop (for $1), and nobody can have more than one.

You have to be ready for growth to take a long time. Journalism is a public trust that should be accountable to readers alone, and that means readers alone pay for it.

If you think about politics in these times as fundamentally about building a new kind of social order, rather than rejiggering institutions or party platforms in order to deliver someone’s more favored policy outcomes, contemporary politics makes a lot more sense.

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

I wrote up these definitions and examples for this page for the BCDI website a few years ago, before we merged with northwest bronx community and clergy coalition. Thanks for sharing!

Building Resilient Organizations - The Forge Click here to listen to Maurice Mitchell read this article. Haga clic aquí para leer el artículo en Español.   Maurice Mitchell talks with Cyndi Suarez of Nonprofit Quarterly about the inspiration beh...

Maurice Mitchell wrote an important internal memo/essay on this point (among others) calling for reflection for those for whom this particular call is coming from inside their own house forgeorganizing.org/article/buil...

"Community organizing is both a science and an art — a science because it is grounded in a systematic understanding of power and oppression, an art because it demands creativity, empathy, and adaptability in order to build relationships and trust." - James Forman

He learned a lot as HUD secretary. The candidate of experience!

Rent Freeze Proposal Chills Cash-Starved Owners of Bronx Buildings Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani’s pledge is raising alarms as bankers refuse to finance regulated buildings where costs outstrip income.

This article on on NYC landlords unable to pay their expenses gives a foretaste of what I suspect the pushback to a rent freeze is going to look like. www.thecity.nyc/2025/08/07/b...

Ganz killing it here, combining a critical methodological perspective on how polling is done with fundamental political theory about what politics is & what it involves:

This is the most prefigurative option I’ve seen but probably comes with some cost in terms of reduced reach/customer base until it grows more. resonate.coop

This is a Hall of Fame reader comment on a very reactionary op-ed about Zohran Mamdani's victory that was published in my local paper today.

I really don’t mean this as a dunk and am glad to see lots of people suggesting truth and reconciliation. But as I understand it these paths are by definition exclusive of eachother: We can have truth and reconciliation or we can have prosecution and incarceration. Both have merits and risks.

gonna give the ol "support independent, worker run, reader funded media" sign a good tap here

A Man Was Murdered in Cold Blood and You’re Laughing? What the death of a health-insurance C.E.O. means to America.

"Thompson’s murder is one symptom of the American appetite for violence; his line of work is another."

Jia bringing the 🔥

A lot of things are going to get worse and I'm feeling a lot of dread and sorrow about that. But I am eager to try to find some way to put all that to work in the service of fixing all the things the worst and cruelest people are so determined to break.

One academic theory I think helps explain these democratic socialist to MAGA swings that AOC is documenting is Hirschman's "Exit, Voice and Loyalty."

I think these voters think the solution is exit and they see both Bernie and Trump representing that anti-establishment energy.

another curmudgeonly thread for the many of you who will be entering organizing spaces.

all other things being equal, when confronted with one team of people recruiting you to Be a Thing and another team recruiting you to Do a Thing, please give serious thought to joining the second.

i tried to get at this from a different perspective when it comes to the information environment. lotta people aren't dupes out there falling for fake news. they're willing participants and its something worth reckoning with

I keep coming back to 1876 as the analogy: not the end of competitive elections or the establishment of a nationwide one-party state, but a catastrophic blow to constitutional government from which it took 90 years to sort of recover.
But the North was able to avert its eyes from the consequences, 1

Emma holds a microphone as she delivers her victory speech.

Emma speaks to the crowd and news cameras at an election night watch party.

Emma covers her mouth, crying after receiving the news that she won. She’s standing next to two white men looking over her shoulder at the election results.

Emma hugs her campaign manager moments after her race was called.

We’re all hurting. I don’t have all the answers.

But I know that things won’t be this bleak forever.

I ran against a MAGA incumbent in a “safe red” district in KY as a progressive, openly queer, 28-year-old trans woman.

And I won.

Please, don’t let your heartbreak turn into apathy or cynicism 💙

I understand the allure of wanting to be a "carry guns and wear leather jackets" Black Panther but there's a case to be made that the most dangerous ones were the "feed kids breakfast and teach them about settler colonialism" Black Panthers