and it starts with a throwback...

the keystone XL pipeline has finally been stopped thanks to indigenous activists.

The company behind the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline said Wednesday it's officially terminating the project. TC Energy already had suspended construction in January when President Biden revoked a key cross-border presidential permit. The announcement ends a more than decade-long battle that came to signify the debate over whether fossil fuels should be left in the ground to address climate change.

Environmentalists opposed the pipeline in part because of the oil it would carry — oil sands crude from Alberta. It requires more processing than most oil, so producing it emits more greenhouse gases.

there is still more work to be done though as water protectors continue to protest Line 3

“For all of the reasons that Keystone XL was shuttered and more, Line 3 needs to be stopped as well,” said Collin Rees, a senior campaigner for Oil Change International. “There’s an increasing understanding that we can’t continue to expand fossil fuels.”

If the pipeline moves forward, Rees said, the Biden administration will be undermining its own authority at international climate negotiations. Other countries – including Denmark, Ireland, and Spain – are moving to ban future licenses for oil and gas drilling.

The 52-year-old pipeline, operated by the Canadian energy company Enbridge, is being replaced because it is deteriorating. Two other Enbridge pipelines have experienced major spills. But the replacement line is on an entirely new route, one that crosses rivers, lakes and wetlands. “Because if there’s a spill, we don’t know what’s going to happen. We don’t fully understand the underground. We want to think we do but we don’t,” Goodwin said.

new york is going to give homeless people what they need, money

a forever shout out to Michael Tubbs for proving that the simplest and most empathetic solution is correct despite overwhelming doubt from his detractors.

The scheme, developed by Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago and financially supported by the city, will give $1,250 a month to 40 participants aged 18-25 for up to two years, with the aim of helping recipients find stable housing .

“Direct cash transfers are supported by a solid international evidence base, and they recognize people’s agency,” Chapin Hall’s Matthew Morton said in a statement.

He added: “Providing direct financial assistance with supports to young people has the potential to empower them to make investments in their own success while helping to counter racial inequities stemming from legacies of injustice.”

if you want to support folks giving material assistance to unhoused people in new orleans or new york, support southern solidarity:

Can't join us on the streets? You can show your solidarity by redistributing your coins to those who need it most. 

meanwhile, elsewhere in new york a socialist is running for mayor

Buffalo is a blue city—all nine council members are Democrats, and there hasn’t been a Republican mayor since The Dick Van Dyke Show premiered—deeply entrenched in the New York Democratic machine, which its current mayor, Byron Brown, chaired until 2019. If Walton wins the primary on June 22—a big “if”—she would not merely unseat a four-term incumbent, she would be the first socialist mayor of a major American city in more than half a century.

The last was Frank Zeidler, who served three terms as the mayor of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the birthplace of “sewer socialism,” a specifically municipal and hyperpragmatic form of socialism focused on how “you can run or plan a city for the working class,” according to Gabe Winant, a historian at the University of Chicago. Zeidler came of age in the Great Depression, reading Eugene Debs and seeing a markedly flawed system not so dissimilar from the one giving rise to a new heyday for socialism today, at least among young people whose adult lives have been marked by vast resource inequality. That is to say: people much like India Walton.

aaand here's a sneak preview of the reflection from the first card from our project: an abolitionist deck

1. harm

• “Prison abolition means … rejecting the idea that harm is criminal, and, instead, assuming that everyone causes harm — some more than others, when not given what they need to effectively prevent their own harm.” ― Camonghne Felix
• “Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.” ― Bryan Stevenson
• None of us are free from having experienced or caused harm. This is part of our human experience and no alternate system will prevent harm from continuing to happen. What harm can you bring yourself to be accountable for without diminishing or making excuses for it? What harm have you endured that still impacts you today? Can you hold space for it and look it in the eye? Can you tell its story and release it? If not, how can you honor your survival today?

order below!

as always, i hope this was useful.

if it was and you've got five bucks a month to spare, click here.

with hope,

katie wills evans