Krista Benson

Libraries Scramble for Books After Giant Distributor Shuts Down Why it might have been and may continue to be harder to get new releases from your local library.

Woooooow, this is bad. Be gentle with your libraries, friends. They're going to be struggling with service for a bit.
www.404media.co/libraries-sc...

You can, in fact, just do stuff. No permission needed. Have an idea? Execute it.

Sixty years ago, James Baldwin debated the racist William F. Buckley and laid out the reality of our country in clear terms that white Americans only recently discovered to be true.

"They're politicians, what are they supposed to do? Literally fight in the streets?"

Unashamed to say this made me cry.

Writing teacher advice for Democratic strategists: Your audience is NEVER everyone, and acting as though it is will lead to generalities that appeal on average but not in specific. You find your audience through specificities. Relying heavily on polls and consultants leads to tepid messaging.

Exploring and planning to potentially buy protein with a platonic friends maybe the most freeing thing I’ve ever explored?

It’s a nonfiction book not focused on trans experiences, but I am non-binary!

Reproductive Justice, Adoption, & Foster Care

www.thirdplacebooks.com/book/9781032...

I laughed so hard that I scared my dog.

It’s rude to just post an unauthorized biography in about me like this. And in first person voice!

Every single story you are hearing from the Everglades Concentration Camp has been and is already taking place in hundreds of prisons and jails in the U.S. That's what PIC abolitionists have been trying to get the public to understand for decades.

I hate fireworks

I don’t like it, not just because of the nationalism, but because I’ve gotten actually hit with fireworks in my face and body. Illuminating.

For the first time in 20+ years, I am single on a major American holiday. And it’s really illuminating to realize that no, I didn’t pretend to think that the Fourth of July was a terrible holiday that I don’t want to celebrate just for the other people I was around. I think this holiday sucks.

That is unique in my experience.

This is my decades long approach to this day, but it’s weird to not feel like an odd person out.

NOBODY in my neighborhood seems to be actively celebrating the 4th. Saw some family barbecuing walking my dog, but no patriotic stuff around. Normally, I start hearing fireworks a week before before and after. I’ve heard almost nothing.

Is “who wants to celebrate the US” more widely held opinion?

I haven’t been single in this Millenium. This will be interesting.

Guys I can explain why for at least 1750 of those years.

The other thing that I’ve been saying for years to scientists: all the DEI stuff y’all do? It has roots in Black studies and gender studies. The NSF ADVANCE program that has touched the life of every woman in American science? Gender studies roots. But folks had fuck all to say defending it. 🧪

Black studies could have taught you that your silence will not protect you. That’s an Audre Lorde reference.

You want to know how to fight authoritarianism? Black studies literally studies and teaches Black survival under authoritarian conditions. 🧪

And the idea that there is nothing that the majority white scientific community could do to intervene in the rise of white supremacist attacks on Black studies *and* eventually American democracy is a complete evasion of responsibility.

The attitude that scientists took — that they were taken care of so they didn’t need to worry about the conservative attacks on their colleagues and liberal complicity with them — has not worked out well, has it? It’s almost like there’s a whole fucking poem about this, actually

Thanks for asking Lynne. A group of us called on scientists & orgs like AAAS, AAS, and APS to start actively defending academic freedom, which could have included educating their constituencies & lawmakers about the risks associated with these attacks. As educators, the least we can do is educate. 🧪

Am I nonbinary? Or maybe I don’t have a gender, but I’m like a trickster fae? Everybody sees something and it’s mostly foreign and ill-fitting and sometimes it’s useful.

You don’t have to love or even like people to work with them effectively. I don’t think there will be one effective strategy of resistance against Trump; I think there will be MANY. An overwhelming rainbow of pushback and outrage.

But again, I ain’t saying nothing. I’m minding my business.

The thing about ACT UP, as Sarah Schulman notes, is that there wasn’t time for protracted disagreements over strategy; people were dying of AIDS left and right.

SO, if some folks want to do X strategy for a protest but you wanted to do Y, ACT UP’s approach was to say “you do X and I’ll do Y.”

Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993 A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993

I’m not going to tell people how to feel about protests… at least not today.

Instead, I’ll recommend Sarah Schulman’s book about ACT UP. It’s not just a history of the organization; she also talks strategy in a very practical way, especially regard coalitions.