Bayard Rustin said, “If people do not organize in the name of their interest, the world will not take them as being serious… People will never fight for your freedom if you have not given evidence that you are prepared to fight for it yourself.”

In an interview with Joseph Beam, Bayard Rustin noted, “I do not look upon myself as one who supports this or that politician to get in office, but as a person who says if and when you get into office you must do these things.”

Good evening. You didn’t answer why you broke your promise or what you’re going to do to fix it. prisonculture.substack.com/p/mayor-mamd...

Toni Morrison talking about how she wrote during bus rides instead of staring out the window and the person recently creating a viral dance to the Law & Order theme song while at the bus stop have inspired me to use my time better when on public transit.

A while back, I wrote about how "elite" is part of culture wars but that we need more attention to C. Wright Mills's "power elite," those who "occupy the strategic command posts of the social structure." And how more of us need methodological training to study elites. medium.com/datasociety-...

We need compulsory workshops on the difference between being self-aware and self-absorbed.

It‘s great that June Jordan, Audre Lorde, and Toni Cade Bambara are getting more deserved attention for their teaching, especially their time at CUNY. Their pedagogy gets the most attention, but they also focused on the business of higher ed, like budgets, admissions, tuition, pay, and standards.

Being a union member or a scholar doesn’t magically make us literate about how institutions we’re at operate. For academics, it’s good and needed to have a meta-analysis of institutions, jobs, and bosses, but it takes extra work to know the details of our industry and specific employers.

I tell my students that whatever career they’re considering, study its political economy and understand it as an industry to prepare for labor battles. Many who teach don’t always know these details about our employers. Including those, who, like me, are union members. We’ve gotta be proactive.

About her success, Toni Morrison said, “I never feel guilty" and "I accept and agree with the enthusiasm for my work.” But “For me, success is not a public thing. It's a private thing. It's when you have fewer and fewer regrets.” Accolades are great, integrity and peace of mind are priceless.

Today is Audre Lorde’s birthday. One of her best sentences, written in her journal, is “My feelings are real but not always right.” We’ve got feelings and choices.

Like Octavia E. Butler wrote on her calendar, “Keep your word,” @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social. prisonculture.substack.com/p/mayor-mamd...

OK, let’s discuss what’s happened with the proposed NYC public libraries budget for FY 27. Mayor Mamdani @mayor.nyc.gov released his preliminary budget yesterday. This kicks off the city budget process. [Long thread]

It’s not just a broken promise, it’s even worse than Adams’ percent for libraries in the FY 2026 preliminary budget.

My thoughts on how critical fully funded public libraries are to any Left political project in the U.S. open.substack.com/pub/prisoncu...

While a candidate, @mayor.nyc.gov pledged to commit 0.5% of the city’s budget to public libraries. Unfortunately, Mayor Mamdani has broken this promise in his preliminary FY27 budget, released yesterday, where he allocated 0.39% to libraries. This amount is well below the promised 0.5%

I remembered I saw Jesse Jackson at an event once. And how I smiled at him like a psycho from outside the elevator he was in, lol.

“Have you felt any personal disorientation from what has happened in the world…?” Toni Cade Bambara: “Yes, I’m disoriented…what I have done in response to it is to close in. I don't do nearly the kind of work I used to do. My arena is very limited…because I need to focus and not get too scattered.”

There’s an interview, in front of an audience, where Toni Cade Bambara starts crying, talking about the toll that doing the work is taking on her, and people don’t seem to know what to do with it and just switch to other questions…about the work.

Building new habits. Like Octavia E. Butler told herself, “We don’t have to wait for anything at all. What we have to do is start.”

I just accept that all of us on social media are a bit thirsty or we’d write only in our diaries, lol.

Day didn’t go as planned but it ended on my terms. At the gym.

A guy at the gym, who used to play college football and is diligently working his way back from an injury, said that there’s beauty in developing patience.

Rebuilding my strength and was finally able to do 25 knuckle push-ups in a row.

Some dismiss culture wars as a distraction from real issues, but I don’t think you can truly understand how we got to this current political landscape without understanding the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s, how racist it was, and the impact on policy and politics.

"You can’t plant a seed & pick the fruit the next morning." So many lessons to learn from Rev. Jackson's (1941-2026) 💔words AND his years of on the ground organizing, in interracial coalitions, to challenge racism, sexism, anti-LGBTQ, poverty, unfair labor, militarism, mass incarceration, & more.

New book by Dr. Lee Ann S. Wang, relevant to critiques of carceral feminism as well as the stop Asian hate discourse. The Violence of Protection: Policing, Immigration Law, and Asian American Women. www.dukeupress.edu/the-violence...

Not that there isn’t a bunch of foul stuff published by fact-checked journalism and academic peer review, but think tanks not really having any oversight of what they publish is something.

@prisonculture.bsky.social You may have seen these in your research about Japanese American incarceration during WWII, but if not, I recommend these articles. One deals with gender violence and political memory, the other with abolition. densho.org/catalyst/why... densho.org/catalyst/sex...

My Reverend Jesse Jackson recollection: my mom was a big supporter of his & the Rainbow Coalition. And I met him once, kind of - he came to the weekly protest we went to at the South African consulate's house in Seattle, and there's a picture of him holding my brother.

I was selected for the lottery! I got 74 days to train.

i think jesse jackson was one of the most important american political figures of the post-war era and i think that his 1984 and 1988 campaigns for the democratic nomination still have a great deal to teach about forging a path to a more egalitarian world. RIP.

Jesse Jackson was invited to meet with Occupy organizers by an old friend and ally of the NY left. He showed up at Occupy Wall Street the night the cops planned to tear down the structures and start evicting people. His presence scared them off and kept the occupation going for a few weeks longer.

Jesse Jackson came and met with a group of young organizers, including myself, during the height of Occupy Wall Street to share his wisdom about movements. He sat with us for several hours answering questions and giving advice. He was a giant—but still made time for the little things.

Jesse Jackson was an early and ardent supporter of gay rights. In fact, on July 17, 1984 at the DNC in San Fransisco, the first speech EVER at a national political convention calling for gay rights was delivered by none other than Rev. Jackson himself.

Jesse Jackson visiting the Krome Detention Center in 1981. He exposed the racist policy of mandatory detention of Haitians who were deemed "economic" refugees not worthy of asylum. Image from @tinashull.bsky.social's book Detention Empire.

I appreciate this way of evaluating one's life.

Students would snicker when they saw him on the screen cuz racists had made him a meme, but I was grateful to see Rev. Jesse Jackson support the Chin family in Who Killed Vincent Chin? He could’ve, for “populism,” aligned himself with the white working-class racists who hate Asians, but he didn’t.

Rev. Jesse Jackson at a Vincent Chin rally, supporting the Chin family. RIP. www.pbssocal.org/news-communi...

BREAKING NEWS: The Rev. Jesse Jackson was a lifelong civil rights advocate until his death Tuesday at the age of 84.

The US civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, a pioneer of progressive Democratic politics, close ally of Martin Luther King Jr, and two-time candidate for the presidential nomination, has died at 84. See his life in pictures: bit.ly/3OxOT3f

Jesse Jackson, civil rights icon, dies aged 84

So many social media posts, even about politics, boil down to saying I’m a good person and be like me.

W.E.B. Du Bois would walk the miles to his office and back for exercise and I've wondered what type of shoes he had on, given that he likely was wearing suits.

This is the most casual I've ever seen W.E.B. Du Bois dressed.

Look at W.E.B. Du Bois doing the readings.

When I told my class how impressed I was with Bad Bunny's mobility during the Super Bowl halftime show, my class looked at me like WTF you talking about, lmao.

The strength and coordination one has to have to push a grocery cart filled with garbage cans and other things while staying on beat and revving up the crowd like Bad Bunny did for his WWE entrance... wow. This man inspires me to keep working out.

Kwame Ture said, "While I agree that capitalism reinforces racism and racism reinforces capitalism... I don’t argue about which came first... I say that racism today, even if it were produced by capitalism, has taken on such proportions, such institutions, that it has become an entity unto itself.”

I hate the fact that as a matter of policy, there’s no major aging fund in this country that isn’t tied up to employment or invested in the stock market.