Building a Country Worth Fighting For

I don't want to leave the country. I keep hearing people joke about it, and I've recently been searching my soul about why it bugs me. I think I finally figured it out, it's about privilege and access of movement. Yeah moving abroad is cool, but this country is headed to a scary place and knowing that so many folks with the means and money to help others are more invested in just taking off honestly sucks. There were these big No Kings protests last weekend where folks got together to protest the administration, but also as a show of force. This country has given us such global privilege that it inclines us to be passive to the way it treats us because of a belief that we're still living so much better. A lot of us are learning for the first time this is not true, but a lot of us have know this our whole lives. I can see folks strain under the weight of oppression they've never had to face, and to deal with that they joke about leaving, or they just leave. For those of you who have just now felt the weight, I implore you to stand firm. Because all jokes aside, some of us can't leave. Be it monetary constraints, lack of experience in fields that make it easy to move abroad, fear of discrimination due to global anti-Blackness or homophobia or xenophobia, or just having people worth staying for, most of us are staying. And definitely the most vulnerable of us are. Heck, most of my friends don't even have passports, I have family that has barely left the state of Illinois let alone the country. And the big thing, the real reason it grinds my gears, is because for Black Americans this is our home country. While we do have vague connections to the African continent, I am not African. The connection to my ancestor is my connection to the American South, that's my homeland, And the ancestors I honor built this country from the ground up, and our people have fought like hell to build a future that we would never live to see. This country has never been the version of it we wanted, but in the pain of that struggle we built beautiful worlds where we were all we were meant to be. And I stay knowing that there are folks who look like me who have taken a heck of a lot worse.

So the real question is actually how do we stay? How do we build a country of fighters when this country has raised us in a world of faraway wars and white picket fences on the home front? And how, when we do take this country back, do we turn it into something that was worth the wait?

News to Know

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson Ups The Ante As He Calls For A General Strike (Huffpost): This is very interesting because it is not getting a lot of national media coverage, despite the video of Brandon Johnson calling for a general strike going fairly viral online and him having said this in front of hundreds of thousands of people. While I do have some critiques of the No Kings protests, it can't be denied the way that it has brought people into flexing their power over these larger systems. It brought all these people together and now hundreds of thousands of people in person and so many more online are thinking about what a general strike would mean and how we could make this happen. Strikes like this aren't built in a day, but this shows that there are people like us as well as those in power who are starting to make bigger moves against this administration and against this capitalist utopia we call the US, We should all do the same.
Second ‘No Kings’ protest draws thousands to the streets in Urbana (IPM News): We also had our own local No Kings! This article has some really great photography so definitely go through all the photos at the end. One thing that was pointed out in the article is that the organizers of the protest specifically asked speakers not to speak on Palestine. Here's a reminder that our current situation in the US cannot be divorced to what's going on in Gaza, as well as the reminder that America's relationship to Israel did not begin on October 7th. The US has been backing that country and keeping it propped up for decades, and the genocide happening is happening with help from our tax dollars to push forth the daydreams of American Christo-fascists. But as this next protest winds down, remember this is just part one of a revolution. It's great that folks came out on Saturday, but the real question is what are you doing when Monday rolls around? What are you building into your routine to help your community and protect the most vulnerable?
Long Covid Is Real — And It’s Changing an Entire Generation (Rolling Stone): This is a story for anyone who has kids in their life they care about, or anyone who just cares about the health of the next generation of American kids. Long Covid has passed asthma has the more prevalent chronic illness in kids, and this article really gets into what that stat means in their day to day. This is the story behind the rash of chronic absenteeism that has plagues schools since online classes became a thing of the past. I remind you all that long covid comes from just regular old covid, and that 60% of covid infections you have either mild symptoms or no symptoms at all. That's why it's important to mask, especially in indoor public places. Cuz maybe it's just allergies or a dry throat when people are coughing or sniffly, but maybe it's not. It's better to test when you're sick and mask than to just assume you're fine and hope that you do accidentally give someone I virus they won't be able to shake.
Meet the (Potential) Candidates: Dr. Emily Lux (The Lavender Newsletter): This is the first of our two interviews of Nikki Budzinski's Democratic Primary challengers! Yesterday we highlighted Dr. Emily Lux, and be on the lookout for our interview with prospective candidate Dylan Blaha. If you're a person who votes in district 13 (which is probably most of you), make sure to give this a read!

Lavender Vibes

Banks of the Rio Grande by Lizzie No: I found out about Lizzie No at our most recent CU Folk & Roots Festival and I am kind of obsessed with her. She's a queer, Black Americana artist out of Nashville, and she has some great songs that touch on life in America and how it feels living here in the current chaos. This song of hers has been really empowering me right now, it's the kind of song you want to scream in a crowd and feel like together you can all save the world. Highly recommend.
True Believer by Hayley Williams Performed on the Tonight Show: I had been procrastinating listening to Hayley's new album of singles because I knew it would be good and I wanted to dedicate time to it. And then I saw this video and my jaw simply dropped. It's such a moving performance, and a reminder that popular music is still deeply political. Especially hearing this song from a Southern woman with a large Black fan base, this is exactly the kind of work I'd expect to see from her, but this was better than I honestly ever anticipated. It also feels like a very stark contrast from the new TS album that feels very much like a white artist leaning into the white conservative world that is suddenly becoming very chic to a certain kind of American (sorry Gaylors). In short, listen to this song and let it make you believe in something.
Cure (1997), directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa: If you're looking for a scary movie you definitely haven't, oh do I have a good one for you! My partner loves Japanese horror movies. I'm a bit of a scaredy cat so I don't always watch with him, but this was worth watching. The movie is a neo-noir thriller about a detective investigating these people who seem to randomly kill someone close to them and then are shocked to have done it. They say it seemed so rational at the time but once it's done they are shocked that it happened. What makes this horror to me is the way that is uses tension and silence to have you holding your breath. It's very much like Spielberg's Jaws in that way, and it's just as beautifully shot. It's under two hours and had us so spooked that we were easily frightened for the rest of the evening.