Notices by wet forest moon folklorist (seachanger@alaskan.social), page 4

I don't know the final vote tallies, but its clear that both of Trump's wins were in large part due to depressed turnout on the Dems side. that's good news for us because it means we can beat fascists back by recruiting and organizing from the vast ranks of the politically disenfranchised. Sanders pulled people out of the woodwork with a simple story that named villains, channeled anger, condemned racism and sexism, and built community by bringing people together. lets learn from that

Trump reminds us of what the US is - a deeply sexist and racist society built on genocide and slavery. It's who we are and have been. But recall that less than 20 yrs ago, Obama was elected on the promise of what the US could become. Sadly he then chose capital over the American people with the bank bailouts, he dropped drones overseas, etc. We became very disillusioned.

Crucially since then, the Democratic Party machine has only denied that disillusionment rather than address it head on.

Out of Obama's failures came populists. On the right the tea party and Trump doing birtherism. Truly disgusting stuff. Named immigrants and leftists as the villains.

On the left came Occupy Wall Street. Small but mighty, post partisan. Named billionaires and corporate greed as the villains. Organizers from Occupy Wall Street then drafted Elizabeth Warren to run for POTUS, she declined. So they created the People for Bernie Sanders and we caught *fire*.

Then the Democratic Party crushed us.

Now we have people like David Brooks saying, well, hold up, maybe, just maybe, a Bernie Sanders like movement could have won here. Maybe that's the direction we need to go!

But we know that if we try to go in that direction, legacy media, the Democratic Party machine, and many MSNBC-pilled liberal rank and file folks will tell us to fuck off into the sun.

I am going to go in that direction anyway. Centrists failed. Left populists have work to do

re: USPol takes today

its fair to critique Kamala's campaign (always important when you lose by wide margins) but it is *the Democratic Party machine* that

1) put Biden in by orchestrating a 2020 coalition to stop Sanders

2) promised Joe would be a one term president

3) ran Biden a second time without a primary while hiding the 2024 cognitive issues we were all yelling about back in 2020

so its not just Harris's mistake (there were some), or Biden's hubris. the failures are systemic

trying to figure out how to explain to some of my friends/networks that our emotional exhaustion as white women is not actually the main problem we're facing now or in the days ahead

white women really are so not tough. we have been coddled for so long that we really think the world needs to stop when we feel politically overwhelmed. we want to retreat into our privilege and do self care. we want to do a march and then go home. we need to learn how to be of service and in political community even when we think we can't go on

@inthehands that’s prob the other half I forgot! and smart. center the vulnerable people and humanize them

disarm irl trump bullies by changing the subject and interrupting their negative vibes with silliness or basic redirects/changes of subject. their targets (and you) will be safer if they are redirected rather than challenged

my bernie bro, krystal ball:

"But the real problems for the Democrats go much deeper and require a dramatic course correction of a sort that, I suspect, Democrats are unlikely to embark upon. The bottom line is this: Democrats are still trying to run a neoliberal campaign in a post-neoliberal era. In other words, 2016 Bernie was right."

https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/bernie-would-have-won

"The path not taken in 2016 looms larger than ever. Bernie’s coalition was filled with the exact type of voters who are now flocking to Donald Trump: Working class voters of all races, young people, and, critically, the much-derided bros."

"While that has always been used as an epithet to smear Bernie and his movement, with the implication that social democracy is just a cover for or gateway drug to right wing authoritarianism, the truth is that this pipeline speaks to the power and appeal of Bernie’s vision as an effective antidote to Trumpism. When these voters had a choice between Trump and Bernie, they chose Bernie."

I'll add that prob the single most politically impactful event of my life was the 2016 Alaska democratic caucus in my rural town of 3K people (which now votes trump 2-1). The line to caucus for bernie was out the door and down the stairs. it was a collection of rural people who will never again caucus in the same room, given covid and trump etc. But at that time we were so happy to be together, speaking up and out against corruption. We were something like 100+ for Sanders and 12 for Clinton

it’s gonna be a challenge to get our coalitions on the same page going forward. but please, however you diagnose our situation or express your rages, please, do not punch left

do not punch left, move left. the right has shown you who they are. move in the other direction

when you punch left, you act to marginalize the human beings in your orbit who in fact care the most about protecting vulnerable people.

think about the repercussions of that. think about the voices in your life who may not speak up anymore because you insult or demean or ignore or dismiss them.

each person brings their truth and skills and experience. you need your leftists friends right now, don't hate on us

first impulse for action. work on persuading my actual neighbors on my actual street who are sad/grieving/angry to join a signal chat with me so we can be better connected. I’ve tried this before but people weren’t able to understand what signal was. maybe now it will make more sense

i've learned that grief is ultimately love turned inside out. the contours of our grief trace the lines of our love for what we lost or what might else have been. and when we share both sides of that coin, when we make it collective, we find the beating heart of whatever we're building next. i propose we have some faith in that, and that we embrace the idea of faith. because we have precious little else with which to fight these fucking fascists, and i'm not going down without a fight (for love)

it remains true that what we focus our attention on tends to grow. i know in the coming days i will need to practice redirecting my attention to my own grieving - to outing my relationship with sorrow rather than suppressing it - so that i can spend more energy on being of service, and less energy on being an asshole.

i don't know what works for you when it comes to grieving, but i do know that i will need your love and jokes and shared visions to tend to mine. there is big power in leaning into our common humanity together, and in mirroring each other's deep hopes and dreams for the world. i think choosing to walk toward one another and to keep seeking connection in the face of cultural atomization is a form of faith, the kind of faith that alchemizes communities and ushers people through the worst horrors

grief requires tending, a form of labor, but the advantage of social/political grief is that we have many hands to make light work -- there are millions of us on this planet to help hold it. even when we feel so alone in the absurdity of loss, we can breathe and remember how many wanted the same world as we do, and we can feel how that world is very much alive in our hearts and collective imagination