Jul 10, 2023 8 min read

are we still pretending?

i started writing this newsletter as nine "justices" undid bare minimum legal protections for no other reason than because that is what they were given their lifetime appointments to do, for no other reason than as a fuck you to the rest of us who don't benefit from power being left to do as it will.

i'm finishing this newsletter with my heart and gut roiling in different directions from the death of yet another beautiful, brilliant child lost to a world whose manmade structures and systems have a daily body count, from preparing to spend another three weeks inside a jail writing with other creative, flawed people who cannot leave their cages, fed to the same structures and systems.

i am fucking angry and am i writing to ask you, are we still pretending? is it possible that we still believe that this archaic american system could ever produce anything but what it always has—wealth for the few at the expense of the many?

it's okay if we don't know what to do with this reality, if we don't know where we should go next or how we can get there, but good god, how much longer can we deny what is literally in the air?

in case you need one more reason to believe this shit is untenable, unreformable

Meanwhile, while lower federal judges must comply with a lengthy Code of Conduct for United States Judges, the nine most powerful judges in the country are famously not bound by this code of conduct — although Chief Justice John Roberts has claimed that he and his colleagues “consult the Code of Conduct in assessing their ethical obligations.”

The result is that the nine most powerful officials in the United States of America — men and women with the power to repeal or rewrite any law, who serve for life, and who will never have to stand for election and justify their actions before the voters — may also be the least constrained officials in the federal government.

And much of the blame for this state of affairs rests with the Constitution itself.

Refusal

every single one of us has the ability to refuse to engage with harmful systems, to use our voices to counter the narrative that continued "progress" is happening in our names. we live in a world where "globalization" means that the same handful of corporations and the men they have enriched are puppeteering projects and policy across the globe. in addition to showing solidarity with the most impacted, we need to be vigilant for the ways that these same moves are being used in our own communities where our resistance and refusal are crucial as well.

Don't call the police

refuse to put more people in cages. this resource is a directory of resources, national and by city, that empower us to solve problems without the threat of incarceration.

Cop City

refuse to have our money and resources invested in a system that makes none of us safer and snatches the most marginalized of us away from our loved ones. read more about cop city, the "domestic terrorist" playbook that's being used against activists, and the plans to build more of these fascist training centers across america.

A fire that destroyed eight Atlanta Police Department motorcycles was among several acts of vandalism in recent days by a group of "anarchists" aimed at stopping construction of a new public safety training center, Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum said Wednesday.

Opponents say they worry it will lead to greater militarization of the police and that its construction will exacerbate environmental damage in a poor, majority-Black area. They are hoping to force a referendum on building the project. The "Stop Cop City" effort, which has been joined by activists from around the country, has gone on for more than two years.

(Read more here).

come to this virtual film screening with me!

Join Interrupting Criminalization, Project Nia & Dissenters for a virtual screening of the new documentary, "#NoCopAcademy," which tells the story of Chicago's 2017-2019 campaign to stop a $95 million cop academy and invest in Black youth and communities instead. The film features interviews with youth leaders and organizers from the campaign, and shows how they grew from a small group of committed individuals to a city-wide movement that shook the very foundations of city hall.

Following the screening, we'll have a discussion on the connections between #NoCopAcademy and the current fight to #StopCopCity in Atlanta, including suggested ways for supporters to take action in solidarity with the #StopCopCity fight across turtle island.

El Tren Maya

refuse to support "public works" that further displace and disenfranchise indigenous people. as transportation inevitably changes, watch for the tried and true policy of building in and disrupting communities of the most marginalized among us.

Among verdant mountains and brightly colored political murals, more than 1,000 activists, Indigenous leaders, and community members gathered at CIDECI, an Indigenous center for integral learning, in San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, for an international meeting entitled “Global Corporate Capitalism, Planetary Patriarchy, and Autonomies in Rebellion.” Their mission: to unite, resist, and collectively mobilize against large-scale infrastructure projects.

The meeting, held on the weekend of May 6, 2023, marked the culmination of “El Sur Resiste,” a ten-day resistance caravan organized by the National Indigenous Congress that traced the path of the Train Maya—a $6.5 billion tourist railway under construction in the Yucatán Peninsula. The caravan and subsequent meeting aimed to foster solidarity among affected communities, amplify Indigenous voices, and shed light on the violent consequences of megaprojects in southern Mexico like the Train Maya.

Reparations

in the light of the destruction of affirmative action, the most minimal concession that enslavement and genocide have a lasting impact, reparations continue to be the mandatory first step towards this country being anything more than an endeavor in racial capitalism.

This year’s demand for reparations—which will call for a Marshall Plan–like public investment, not the individual payments that have dominated the conversation elsewhere—will arrive with more force. African countries, about two decades after they were first asked, have agreed to support the claim, and CARICOM officials have built alliances with reparations activists in the U.S. The letters are expected to say the time has come to negotiate reparations to improve infrastructure and human conditions in the Caribbean. Come to the table, they will say, or prepare to see much of the Caribbean in international court. Lawyers who won a reported £14 million ($17.86 million) settlement in 2012 on behalf of three Kenyans brutalized by the British have been retained.

Reparations are more than possible and great thinkers are already problem solving around the who, where, when, why, and how. Here's a great primer:

Revolution

there is no reforming a system that was built to protect the powerful at the expense of the rest of us. revolution begins in the mental preparation.

"We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings." – Ursula K Le Guin

“Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”: The lofty ideals to which France has long aspired are embossed on coins and carved above school doors across the land. Yet they are the polar opposite of what some French people who are Black or brown saw in a shocking video of a police officer shooting and killing a 17-year-old delivery driver of north African descent during a traffic stop.

More than 200 cities and towns reported arson attacks on public buildings, vehicle fires, clashes with police, looting and other mayhem in six nights of unrest. The violence was nationwide — from blue-collar ports on France’s northern coast to southern towns overlooking the Pyrenees, from de-industrialized former mining basins to Nantes and La Rochelle on the western Atlantic coast, once hearts of the French slave trade.

there are large and small ways to contribute to changing a system you know in your bones is wrong. many people more studied than me have written about them extensively:

in my heartbreak and anger, i am bolstered by the fact that there are more of us who believe another world is possible than we know. you reading this means the world to me.

as always, i hope it was useful.

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with hope,

katie wills evans

this newsletter is a compilation of things related to what i believe is the three pronged path forward: refusal, reparations, and revolution. the work begins in the considering, in the believing. the work has already begun.