200 (and 1)

Photo by Олег Мороз on Unsplash

I was almost forced to write today's newsletter entirely over voice-to-text for you after a little sequence of events took place in my little life. First, my cheap charger for my cheap laptop died, then the more expensive universal charger I bought at Best Buy turned out to not in fact be as universal as advertised. I wasn’t helped by the fact that every PC company appears to have its own unique charger, or two, a delightful feature of this shoddy capitalist system, a system that also makes items sublimely breakable and temporary. I’m fortunate that my brother lives not too far from me and was willing and able to lend me his laptop in a pinch, because without it not only would you be reading a garbled transcript of my ramblings, but I also wouldn’t have been able to do my job yesterday and today.

Briefly wondering if I’d be able to go to work caused just a slight panic, but this charger incident also incited a larger anger in me this week. My little, inconsequential charger had only been in use for less than a year. That’s how long it took to break, almost costing me a day or two of work, an edition of this newsletter, and a night or two of decent sleep. I resent being so reliant on a piece of technology, but the way our lives have been organized I doubly resent that the basic infrastructure necessary for us to function is so brittle, so fragile simply because that allows a few companies to extract more money out of us.

We all suffer from this – appliances having short lifespans, our phones being built to break, and of course the infrastructure of society itself getting fewer updates and infrequent repairs. It’s so mundane, the slow fall into disrepair or the little items that suddenly don’t work anymore one morning. But at the same time, these objects are so vital: our lives and routines rely upon them. And the very companies that sold us these objects, that sold them to us using the vision of easier existences where we no longer need to worry about simple tasks, are the companies giving us these little headaches that pile up and pile up and build into a white rage, at least for me. It might sound unreasonable, but I now live too often with a simmering fury at how I’ve been trapped into broken computer chargers and a phone that has one problem after another and companies that won’t let me talk to a human being about it all. 

Photo by Roman Kraft on Unsplash

This is all, unfortunately, a microcosm of the problems we face. We’re up against a system that views and treats hyper short-term profits as more important than our collective future. We’re up against corporations and ways of doing business that would ignite the planet before letting their profits fall – and that’s exactly what they’re doing. We, the vast majority of people and the ecosystem that sustains us, are disposable in this paradigm, just as disposable as any charger or piece of plastic.

This is what we’re up against. And taking on these ideologies, ingrained into systems that we’re forced to interact with and participate in every day, will take long-term construction – will take the building of new systems and methods that are made to last. It’ll take countless hours of work, the building of relationships, the establishing of organizations and more. It’ll take learning on a massive scale, and unlearning at the same time. I think it’ll also take movements and shifts in society that we haven’t fully conceived of yet, but more on that another time.

If you’re reading this, you know that I want to work towards all of the goals outlined above, both in my personal life and in this newsletter. Specifically, I hope this newsletter can serve as a resource that helps you learn, unlearn, and pick up the tools they need to build a better world. Sometimes it’ll be a link to a resource, article, or book, other times it’ll be a set of ideas that may be new to you. And in still other editions of this newsletter I hope I can share some strategies or tactics that others have used to successfully organize in their neighborhood or at their job, and that you feel you can implement too. Sometimes, what I have to offer might just be a little hope in the dark.

Photo by Florencia Viadana on Unsplash

I’m saying all of this to you today because I just blew by the 200th issue of this project. This is actually number 201, because the last one was written in the midst of a visceral response to the NYPD doing a mass shooting here in NYC. Some moments demand a response, and the people of New York are still grappling with and responding to that horror in a dozen different ways. I hope to respond by organizing against the immediate threat of a Cop City here in our city, as I linked to in my last newsletter. For those of you outside the New York area, your organizing and the way you seek to build a better world will, of course, look different. And that’s good. It will take each of us building in our corner of the world to create a future that is livable, sustainable, and not so easily discarded. All I can hope is that you build, and that what I have to offer helps you in that process.

I will now, almost shamelessly, ask for your help. These milestone newsletters remind me that accountability to a wonderful audience has made me write more consistently than ever before. These moments also clarify for me that I hope to spend more and more of my time on this endeavor. I wish that didn’t take money, but of course it does. So if you’re able to become a supporting reader today, I would be immensely grateful. And I hope that with your support I am in turn able to offer you more assistance, more tools, and more solace on your journey as time passes. 

If you’re able to support, thank you. And if you’re not, thank you. Your reading and sharing and commenting is the reason I write so regularly now. You're the reason that this is now issue 200 (and 1) and the reason this project has already been so transformative for me. I appreciate every one of you - Josh