ye olde shared stuff

Shift Change at the Wheel Reinvention Factory by Hamilton Nolan
Thursday October 16^th, 2025 at 11:09 AM

How Things Work

The Eugene Debs of our time. (Photo: Getty)

David Brooks is a writer who purports to explain America even though he spends one hundred percent of his time shuttling between the New York Times building and the Aspen Ideas Festival. You can see how this might leave a gap in his knowledge. He fills this gap with endless amounts of pop psychology, always ready to latch onto a new sociological theory to explain why poor people don’t understand fancy sandwiches. Brooks is the most prominent example of the “guy you made an excuse to walk away from at the party because every time you said something he replied, ‘you know, I read an interesting theory about that.’” Had he not landed at the Times, he could have had a more appropriate career as a bad personal therapist. There, he could have only misled one person at a time, whereas journalism gives him the opportunity to mislead millions.

Though Brooks’ original position was as the Times’ in-house conservative, you need only spend one second gazing at him giving a TED Talk in a quarter-zip fleece to know that the Republicans left him behind long ago. This leaves him in the odd position of being a man who gives advice for a living while having no idea what just happened to his own party. Needless to say, this has not stopped him from writing things. He engages in self-reflection the same way that a newscaster on live TV picks his nose: quickly, leaving no evidence that it ever happened.

Now, Brooks is alarmed for our country. He is able to see that Trumpism is destroying our country, but his own intellectual toolbox, stuffed with Steven Pinker books and course catalogs from Yale, is comically unsuited to deal this this moment in history. His response is to write a long article in The Atlantic titled “America Needs a Mass Movement—Now.”

If you’re thinking to yourself, “David Brooks calling for a mass movement in the pages of The Atlantic is like me calling for a parade of supermodels to come date me as I sit in my cousin Roy’s garage surrounded by half-eaten chicken wings,” well—yes. Yes, this is accurate. It is a measure of the depth of our national crisis that I am going to try to offer a good faith critique of Brooks’ arguments here, rather than just trying to point and laugh and mutter about how mind-blowing it is that he still has a job. No! No I won’t! Because surviving this descent into fascism will require, ugh, unity, and that will require all of us to accept bizarre new allies, with grace. Or with some measure of grace. Our derision must be leavened with grace, at least.

Watching Brooks waste many thousands of words trying to explain the rise of a racist reality show host who has never read a book as a product of “the writings of people such as Albert Jay Nock, James Burnham, Sam Francis, Pat Buchanan, and Christopher Lasch” is amusing and all, sure. But the broader flailings of Brooks do, I think, have a real value. His sense of being overwhelmed by the daily onslaught of outrages from the Trump administration prompts him to desperately try to construct coherent explanations in line with his existing worldview—something many of us have done! And his sense of dread in the face of onrushing fascism pushes him to the conclusion that, as our institutions fail, only a mass movement will be capable of saving us—something many of us have concluded! In this sense, Brooks is an unlikely everyman in this moment; just another alarmed American frantically yelling, “Why don’t people do something???”

The sentiment is understandable. Even laudable. The specifics of Brooks’ ideas, though, are pretty dumb. Steeped as he is in the world of elite punditry, he sees the problem before us not as one of changing the material conditions of the world, but rather as one of constructing “a more accurate and compelling narrative” that will convince all of the dazzled Regular Folks that they were wrong to follow this fella. This tendency, endemic among pundits, to see changes in society as nothing more than the outcome of a battle between competing thinkpieces leads Brooks to waste much space filtering his desire for a movement through the lens of messaging, as if the key to bringing millions of people into the streets is striking the exact right tone. This allows him the intellectual security blanket of imagining that our uncertain future can be tamed by using just the right Richard Hofstadter quote, and that we can spin up an an “anti-populist social movement” by creating “a competing cascade of mini-dramas.” The solution to fascism, you see, lies in winning the news cycle.

Any story on David Brooks must include this photo by law.

As a writer, I sympathize with this fantasy. What America needs is a better narrative, and who can create it? Heroes like me! This fantasy is shared by millions of relatively educated liberals who cling to the belief that Trump can be defeated if only the wishy-washy media would finally publish the perfect, cutting headline about how This Guy Is Bad. Ah, what a sweet world it would be if it were that simple. In truth, we are in much deeper shit than that. Saving our democracy—and building our mass movement—is going to be much harder than that, and much more disappointingly prosaic.

In the same way that we on the left must gracefully accept our new allies in the fight against fascism, people like David Brooks must also have the grace to be quiet when they find themselves out of their depth. You want a movement? Brother, there are people who have been neck-deep in social and political movements for their whole lives, right here in America. Ask them what to do! They know! One of the reasons why it is hard to build and sustain movements is that it is more fun to be “a wealthy pundit basking in praise for your brilliant insights” than it is to be “one of a million anonymous people acting in solidarity with a million more.” David Brooks does not need to give us any more social theories. The best thing that he, and others like him, can do right now is to learn how to follow, not lead.

The final three sentences of Brooks’ piece are revealing. “Cultural and intellectual change comes first—a new vision,” he writes. “Social movements come second. Political change comes last.” Note that this formulation places visionary intellectuals such as David Brooks as the protagonists of all occurrences. This is false. Note also that the only sorts of change mentioned are “cultural and intellectual”—the things that David Brooks likes to focus on—and not, for example, “economic.” This inescapable urge to place himself at the very center of the world is why people like David Brooks are not incisive political thinkers. And why they are a real pain in the ass in union meetings.

Union meetings! Heard of that? Union meetings happen in unions. Unions are things that once covered a full third of working Americans. Now they cover less than a tenth. That decline, and the accompanying decline of power for the working class and rise in economic and political power of the rich, does more to explain how we got here than all of the books that David Brooks has ever written. Happily, it offers a hint that America has done this before. And we can do it again.

Order my book, "The Hammer"

Unions are part of the labor movement. Movement! There’s that word. The labor movement rose from the awful conditions of industrial capitalism and fought decades worth of bloody battles in the streets in order to reach the point that it could fight its battles in the halls of Congress instead. The labor movement used the simple concept of worker solidarity to painstakingly build real power for people who were treated as if they had none. The power of the labor movement grew strong enough to create America’s golden age of shared prosperity, and has since been ground down by the forces of investor capitalism to such a degree that we find ourselves once again plunged into a morass of plutocracy. But we know how to get out. It ain’t a mystery, brother.

America does need a mass movement now, David Brooks. You’re right about that. Once you realize that, the most productive thing to do is not to write ponderous Atlantic essays implying that you alone can guide us, but rather to join a movement. Join a union and become a part of the labor movement. Join DSA and become a part of the movement for social democracy. Or join one of the many fine activist groups in this country and become a part of the movement for civil rights or reproductive justice or environmentalism or one of the other worthy causes. Movements have been around forever. All of these movements, joining together, unifying in the shared cause of Not Being Fascist, will be the real base of the mass movement that will—in time, we trust—form as the wall that prevents the bad people from dragging us into the bad place.

Mass movements sound dramatic. But they are not built dramatically. They are built through many, many mundane actions. Talking to people. Making a list. Knocking on doors. Planning a meeting. Going to the meeting. Setting up for the meeting. Participating in the meeting. Cleaning up after the meeting. Planning the next meeting. On and on. You get to go hurl rocks at the barricades sometimes, yes, but you can’t just do that part, and not do the meetings. This is why the real heroes of mass movements are… the masses. Not the guy who gets in the spotlight to announce his unique plan to save us all—all the people who actually do all the stuff.

We need someone to take notes at the meeting. David? Welcome to the group. Can you take notes for us today? Thank you for participating. We’re glad to have you here. Truly.

Wild Oysters Make a Comeback in Maine by Kirsten Lie-Nielsen
Tuesday October 14^th, 2025 at 10:12 AM

Civil Eats

The tidal waters of Maine tell stories that go back thousands of years. Along the Damariscotta River, a short tidal river carved out by retreating glaciers at the end of the last Ice Age, the story of the wild oyster is told through heaps of bleached-white oyster shells discarded by prehistoric people The Whaleback Shell Midden, in the town of Damariscotta, is one of the most remarkable: 1,000 feet wide and 30 feet tall, it is a tale of bygone abundance.

While wild oysters were an important part of an Indigenous diet in what is now Maine, by the 1900s they had all but disappeared. Most people considered them functionally extinct, in fact, until this spring, when researchers from the University of Maine published a study confirming their return, often in close proximity to the oyster farms that have populated the waterfront over the last few decades.

“When we think about the emergence of wild oysters, it’s bringing back a part of the ecosystem that has been a part of who we are as people in this place, part of Indigenous people’s connections to this place,” says Heather Leslie, a marine conservation scientist who took part in the study. “It foregrounds the question of not just restoring the non-human parts of the ecosystem but also enabling the Native people to reconnect with coastal ecosystems.”

“When we think about the emergence of wild oysters, it’s bringing back a part of the ecosystem that has been a part of who we are as people in this place.”

Oysters sequester carbon and help filter sea water, making them one of nature’s most beneficial bivalves. Their appearance may be a boon for the ecosystem of the Damariscotta River and the local economy. But the rediscovery isn’t all good news: It is also a sign of warming waters that can imperil other species.

As filter feeders, oysters help to remove natural and unnatural contaminants, such as algae and pollutants, from the water. The state of Maine has encouraged oyster farming as a way to maintain clean waterways, which are at higher risk of harmful algal blooms as waters warm.

Those warming waters are not only more prone to contaminants, they are also becoming too hot for Maine’s most iconic harvest, the lobster, whose migration north will likely upset a longstanding way of life on the Maine coast.

A Comeback Story

Oyster industry experts have proposed many reasons for the disappearance of Maine’s wild oysters. One hypothesis is that the Gulf Stream—a warm current in the North Atlantic that operates like a river within an ocean—shifted gradually in the late 1800s, causing the Gulf of Maine to cool. The change killed off oysters, which prefer slightly warmer temperatures.

Additionally, in the late 1800s, oysters had a heyday of popularity among European settlers—not unlike the booming appetite for them today. The craze for oysters subsided when the bivalve population was severely depleted.

The owner of Maine’s Pemaquid Oyster Company and local historian, Smokey McKeen, has farmed oysters in the Damariscotta River since the 1980s and is an expert on oyster history in Maine. (Photo credit: Kayli McKeen)

The owner of Maine’s Pemaquid Oyster Company and local historian, Smokey McKeen, has farmed oysters in the Damariscotta River since the 1980s. (Photo credit: Kayli McKeen) 

Another leading cause of oyster decline was the rise of the New England state’s sawmills.

“The upper Damariscotta River had 20 shipyards,” explains Smokey McKeen, local historian and co-founder of the Pemaquid Oyster Company. “What were they going to do with the sawdust? Well, why not just dump it in the river?”

Oysters feed on ambient algae, plankton, and bacteria as they draw in the water around them. They can help keep estuaries clear and healthy by filtering out bacteria, but too much sediment, such as sawdust, can kill them.

In the mid 1980s, long after the sawdust had settled, three oyster farms opened in relatively quick succession in the Damariscotta River, bringing oysters back to Maine’s mid-coast waters. One of these was the Pemaquid Oyster Company, which McKeen established with partners Carter Newell and Dave Barry. The company still grows and sells oysters today.

While a few oyster farmers grow their oysters on the flats of tidal seabeds, most raise the bivalves in submerged cages that have holes to allow water, which contains everything an oyster needs to eat, to flow in and out.

Wild oysters grow on rocks at the tide line on Maine’s coast. (Photo credit: Sarah Risley / University of Maine Darling Center)

Until that point, most oyster farms in Maine had used Belon oysters (Ostrea edulis), a popular French type with a metallic taste that McKeen describes as “like sucking on a pocket full of coins.” The three new Damariscotta River farms were inspired by Herb Hidju, a college professor at the University of Maine, who suggested farming with Eastern oysters (Crassostrea virginica), which were once native in the region and have the sweet, rich and briny taste that oyster lovers go crazy for.

At the fledgling Pemaquid Oyster Company, the Eastern species thrived in the nutrient-rich waters of the Damariscotta River. “All the oysters grew,” remembers McKeen, “and it turned out everybody liked them, and we thought, ‘Huh, well, maybe this is more than just something to do on a Saturday morning.’ It became a thing, and it really ballooned.”

“It turned out everybody liked them, and we thought, ‘Huh, well, maybe this is more than just something to do on a Saturday morning.’”

Oyster farming grew in popularity over the ensuing decades in Maine, and truly started to boom in the 2010s. The Gulf of Maine is warming faster than any other ocean body on the planet, creating ideal conditions for oysters.

Growing oysters is providing new opportunities on Maine’s working waterfront as the warmer temperatures push lobsters out toward cooler waters. Maine’s lobster fishery produced more than $725 million in 2021 and provided tens of thousands of jobs for Mainers. In the past four years, however, that revenue has decreased to $528 million, and in 2024, lobster harvests in the state hit a 15-year low.

A 2025 NOAA study of farmed oysters in South Carolina found that an oyster farm of 1 million oysters removed the equivalent of around 300 pounds of nitrogen from the water. State and federal dollars now encourage oyster farms, and programs like Maine Sea Grant see oysters as a climate savior and an alternative to diminishing resources like lobster.

Aquaculture is now an integral part of Maine’s working waterfront, with more than 150 oyster farms along the coast.

Breaking Into the Wild

As Mainers started to farm oysters, they noticed an unintended consequence: Wild oysters began to appear. The new wild populations tend to be near oyster farms and of the same variety thatthe farms are cultivating.

The farmed oysters are not “escaping,” though; they are spawning, in a process often triggered by warm water temperatures. Male and female oysters release eggs and sperm into the ocean, where they create larvae that drifts around on the current in search of a suitable substrate.

The “wilds” frequently attach themselves to rocks along the tide line, sometimes drifting many yards away from the oyster farms that spawned them. Further spawning by the wild oysters can lead to wild oyster populations thriving in intertidal zones even farther away.

These wild oysters are harvested by people holding shellfishing licenses, both commercial and recreational. They currently supply the small but growing market for wild oysters, selling to a few restaurants, seafood markets, and to existing oyster farms that make them available to the public.

Pickers can be salty characters, some of the last true foragers of the coast. They spend long days on the mud flats at low tide, bent over holes that they dig with specialized rakes, seeking out soft-shell clams, the most commonly harvested shellfish in Maine. They often gather wild oysters too; the stationary creatures can be a relief to find as they only need to be pried off the rocks exposed at low tide, rather than dug out of the thick mud.

Once seed oysters reach a certain size in upweller systems, the staff at Pemaquid Oyster Company move them to floating nursery bags. When the oyster seeds reach 50 mm, they are bottom-planted in the company’s large open-water lease and harvested one to two years later. Here, the Pemaquid crew heads out for the first fall bottom planting of 2023, in late November (Photo credit: Pemaquid Oyster Company)

Once seed oysters reach a certain size, the staff at Pemaquid Oyster Company move them to floating nursery bags. When the oyster seeds reach 50 mm, they are bottom-planted in the company’s large open-water lease and harvested one to two years later. Here, the Pemaquid crew heads out for the first fall bottom planting of 2023. (Photo credit: Pemaquid Oyster Company)

These breakout oysters are more than a food source; they’re an ecological signal. And researchers want to understand what their return means.

In 2023 and 2024, University of Maine marine science PhD candidate Sarah Risley, along with professor Leslie, conducted surveys of intertidal zones, counting and measuring oysters to understand the baseline population. And in the spring of 2025, they published the study confirming the increasing presence of wild oysters in the Damariscotta River.

One of Risley’s areas of interest is whether these oysters, most likely spawned from farmed oyster cages, can create their own reproducing populations. “We are thinking about how the connection between the two populations might play into oyster restoration,” explains Risley. “Where the project is moving now is thinking about how we take this information about emerging populations and put it to use creating sustaining populations.”

Farmed oysters come in two varieties: Triploids are essentially sterile, and diploids can reproduce. The farmers on the Damariscotta River largely work with diploids, but there are still questions as to how hardy and reproductive a population “going native” might be. The work that the University of Maine study has begun will inform shellfish harvesters and ecologists on how best to support a wild oyster population in the Damariscotta, where their emergence is in many ways a return to the natural ecosystem of the river.

Still, shellfish harvesters have raised concerns about the possibility of wild oysters outcompeting the decreasing population of soft-shell clams for resources.

Others note that the clam population’s decline had been observedfor many years before wild oysters began appearing in the river. Also, new invasive species such as the aggressive European green crab, which eats the clams and can erode the ecosystem they need to survive, are a more significant threat.

“They may be looking for a correlation where there are more oysters,” explains Jacqueline Clarke, a seafood expert and co-founder of Nor’Easter Oyster Company, in South Bristol, Maine. “But there are so many other factors, like water temperatures, green crabs—all that fun stuff.”

The Next Chapter

Maine’s accidental oyster rewilding may also be a business opportunity. One of the most successful oyster farms in the state is Glidden Point Oysters which, like Pemaquid Oyster Company, farms its bivalves in the nutrient-rich waters of the Damariscotta River.

The farmers at Glidden Point not only sell their own oysters; they also wholesale oysters from other farms in Maine and ship them around the country—and, when they can source enough from shellfish harvesters, they sell wild oysters too.

“I love the wilds,” says Ryan McPherson, owner of Glidden Point. Like all oysters, the taste of a wild oyster is informed by place. Because they grow in the intertidal areas, they’re usually overhung by rockweed (a type of seaweed), and sometimes pick up its briny flavor. “They have more of a toothiness to them,” says Risley.

Oyster farmers pull cages from the dock in Glidden Point on the Damariscotta River. The farm stores oysters in the water to maintain their freshness. (Photo credit: Glidden Point Oysters)

Oyster farmers pull cages from the dock at Glidden Point on the Damariscotta River. The farm stores oysters in the water to maintain their freshness. (Photo credit: Glidden Point Oysters)

Still, selling wild oysters has its own challenges. Wild oysters vary in appearance, without the deep cup and correspondingly plump meat typical of farmed oysters. “They’re variable sizes and they’re inconsistent shapes,” says McPherson. “And they’re harder to shuck, compared to farmed oysters. You have to find somebody who really wants them, wants to tell their story at their restaurant.”

For anyone interested in tasting a wild oyster, the process is not always as simple as heading to your local Maine oyster bar. Wild Damariscotta oysters can be ordered online through Glidden Point Oyster Company, which sources them from Maine shellfish harvesters, but they are harder to find on menus than the farmed varieties.

Jacqueline Clarke points out that while wild oysters have been missing from the Maine coast for many decades, they have been part of the state’s coastline longer than they’ve been absent. “They’ve been around for thousands upon thousands of years, everywhere, up and down the coast, and definitely in the Damariscotta,” she says.

To forage or eat a wild oyster along the mineral-rich waters of the Damariscotta is to bridge the centuries, to connect Maine’s ancient past with its present. In that sense, the new population is not just a harbinger of change, but a symbol of resilience.

The post Wild Oysters Make a Comeback in Maine appeared first on Civil Eats.

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rocketo

2 days ago

seattle, wa

The Annotated History Of A Slur by Stefan Fatsis
Monday October 13^th, 2025 at 12:46 PM

Defector

A few years ago, when the conversation over the racist nickname and racist iconography of the NFL team that maintained racist hiring policies longer than any other NFL team was a sad constant in the sports media discourse, I was embedding with the dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster. Merriam was letting me cosplay as a lexicographer to write a book about the future of the dictionary in a digital world. I traveled regularly to the company's old brick building on a hill in Springfield, Mass.—a few blocks from a strip club called the 5th Alarm Lounge, near the fire station—to watch the language sausage get made, and make some of my own.

That meant I had access to the Consolidated Files: 16 million three-by-five slips of paper, known as citations, or "cits"—pronounced sites—with examples of word usage culled for more than a century from newspapers, magazines, academic publications, trade journals, contemporary fiction, advertisements, radio transcripts, television shows, annual reports, government reports, cereal boxes, photo captions, comic strips, seed catalogs, restaurant menus, car manuals, airline tickets, you name it. The slips are crammed into alphabetized drawers in rows of chest-high, brick- or tan-colored metal filing cabinets of varying sizes and styles that stretch around the second-floor editorial room like dominoes.

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rocketo

3 days ago

seattle, wa

english-history-trip:
Saturday October 11^th, 2025 at 11:49 PM

999 thou short of a mill

english-history-trip:

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4 days ago

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sarcozona

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Epiphyte City

You Have to See This Mamdani Ad
Saturday October 11^th, 2025 at 9:14 PM

Burns Notice

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rocketo

4 days ago

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sarcozona

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Epiphyte City

How to eat with others
Thursday October 9^th, 2025 at 6:57 PM

Mike Monteiro’s Good News

Horizontal painting. Yellow background. Black text that says DON'T RENT HERE. IT'S TOXIC. — *This is the last painting I did at my old studio. I left it behind.*

You can support my shenanigans for a mere $2/mo.

This week’s question comes to us from Milly Schmidt:

Some people have friends with very different politics and they keep them very separate to avoid conflict. Obviously there are benefits of having diverse friends, even politically. Do you think all your friends should be able to be invited to a party or have a meal together?

I love everybody that loves everybody.

I also think that hanging out with people who agree on everything is boring. It’s also close to impossible, thankfully, because you’ll ultimately find something you disagree about. And that tends to become when hanging out gets interesting. For example, this weekend friends will get together and someone will say they’re enjoying the new Taylor Swift. Someone else will say it’s an album for cop wives. And suddenly, that becomes an interesting hangout.

Spending my childhood summers in Portugal, I spent a lot of time in cafés where people would argue about anything and everything. Finding the minor disagreement that would spark the argument was the goal of being at that café. Someone unfamiliar with that kind of environment would walk in and assume a fight was gonna break out. But this was just people communicating. This was people enjoying their evening by having spirited conversations with their friends. Which, counter-intuitively, ends up bringing people together. Because if I enjoy a lively discussion—and I do—the person willing to go toe-to-toe with me is going to be someone I end up treasuring as a friend. As long as everyone understands the rules of discussion. We are arguing about minor things. We’re making argumentative mountains out of molehills. This isn’t conflict, it’s sport.

I also remember one particular evening in one particular café when someone loudly commented about how the previous regime did a lot of good for the country. Mind you, this was fairly soon after the revolution that knocked the fascists out of power. The café got stone cold silent. Every argument stopped. Every conversation came to a close. I have a vivid memory of hearing a spoon slowly stirring an espresso. And I watched as everyone’s head turned towards the man that had just said something positive about fascism. The silence held. And held. Until he quickly downed his coffee and politely excused himself as he walked out the door. Within seconds the café went back to its usual argumentative din.

There are welcome arguments between friends, and there are arguments that end friendships. It’s important to know where that line is for you. While I appreciate having friends with different points-of-view, or even different politics (as you phrased it) I will not be friends with people who want my daughter dead. I will not be friends with people who want, or even tolerate, my neighbors being kidnapped. I will not be friends with people who believe some of us are somehow entitled to more rights than others. And I will not be friends with people who believe if we keep our heads down, as others around us suffer, we’ll save ourselves.

We can argue about sports teams, we can argue about zoning, we can argue about the cost of goods, but we cannot argue about the civil rights of other human beings. We cannot argue about the right for people to live in peace. We cannot argue about the right for other people to love who they love. This is the line where argument turns from sport to a relationship-ending event.

Personally, if I’m having a gathering in my home I want my friends to feel welcome. Not just by me, but by everyone else there. And I need my friends to know that me, my guests, and my house are a safe place. Not just for this particular event, but always.

Think of it this way: if you invite someone from a marginalized community into your home and they ask if there’s going to be someone there that wants them dead, or doesn’t feel like they’re entitled to full personhood, and you tell them that you’re having a separate party for those folks the next night, how do you think that person would feel? You can’t claim to care about someone while also caring for the people who would bring them harm. You really don’t care about your friend in that situation. You’ve made a decision that speaks more to your standing in the social order than their safety. And that’s fucked up.

If you had dinner with a trans friend on Tuesday, and dinner with fascists on Thursday, your trans friend had dinner with a fascist on Tuesday.

Which of course brings us to Thanksgiving. My parents, being immigrants, didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving. But in time, my brothers and I wore them down. We wanted to celebrate the same holiday that our friends were celebrating, which makes sense. We were kids. We wanted to belong. We also wanted pie, which was understandable. Pie is great! And, while I’m not overlooking the atrocious origins of the holiday, the idea that sitting down with the people you love and giving thanks is a genuinely nice idea. One that should actually be extended to all our meals. We sit down with the people we love and we share a meal together. The problem with Thanksgiving is that we’re not sitting down with the people we love, a lot of us are sitting down with the people we feel obligated to be sharing a meal with, even when some of those people want your friends dead.

After my brothers and I had grown apart and eventually moved out of my parents’ house and into our own apartments, we still made an effort to come together for Thanksgiving. Mostly because it seemed to make our mother happy, and despite our disagreement on mostly everything else, we understood that this was important. Still, these were not what I would call enjoyable events. The tone was tense. The possibility of my father’s mood going sideways was always in the air. And we were guaranteed to speedrun from a conversation to an argument to a fight fairly quickly, which my father used as justification for getting up, grabbing his keys, and bolting out the door. Which was how Thanksgiving dinners ended.

After a few of these, my mother started pulling me aside before my brothers got there and asking me “not to rile them up.” Which a few people reading this will understand translates to “don’t tell them there’s racism coming out of their mouths.” My brothers were free to use the N-word during Thanksgiving, the problem was that I wasn’t ok hearing it. The problem wasn’t that my brothers were racist, it was that I was pointing it out. At one point I asked her if she’d ever had one of these asides with either of them. Had she ever asked my brothers not to spew racist bile at the table? It was a needless question, because I knew she hadn’t. Growing up in their house racism was the default. That was the last time I spent Thanksgiving at their house.

Let me say this plainly, for folks wrestling with whether they should spend Thanksgiving with relatives that want their friends dead: Don’t.

In the end, we are defined not just by our actions, but by the actions we tolerate.

If you insist on spending Thanksgiving with your racist relatives, go to fight. Call Uncle Bob on his Jim Crow bullshit. Make sure that the first person who brings up “men playing women’s sports” is met with a face full of mashed potatoes. When Aunt Mary starts reciting FOX News talking points on eugenics start screaming at the top of your lungs. When your brother-in-law starts yapping about the “criminal element” in the city, slap him with a ham. When your dad brings up what a terrible idea it is to have Bad Bunny do the SuperBowl halftime show, pick up the turkey and slam it across the wall. Become ungovernable. Bring airhorns. Bring whistles. Bring the chaos. Making a meal enjoyable for racists is never the goal. There are no medals to be won for sitting silently while a table that is meant for giving thanks is taken over by hatred. There are no medals to be won for being tolerant of people who want your friends dead. If you’re not willing to fight, then you’re just having a meal with racists.

Telling someone they need to be on their “best” behavior is only an issue when their real behavior is intolerable.

A better idea may be to spend the day with people who love and support you. People you actually give thanks for. The friends who have your back. The friends who love you at your fullest, loudest and truest. People only complain about the turkey being dry when the company is terrible. There is never enough gravy to make regret feel like anything but your soul leaving your body. When we are surrounded by people who deserve and cherish our company the meal is always amazing.

Family is a choice. And those whose blood you share had first dibs at making a choice, and trust that they did. I will be honest with you, when my friends tell me that they’re off to spend Thanksgiving with family it fills me with sadness. Not because I’m not happy for them—I am! But because a part of me will always wonder what that is like. We are born ready to love those closest to us. Our parents and siblings had first dibs on our love! I was always ready to love my parents, and there is a part of me that always will, but there is a bigger part of me that refuses to become the person I need to become for them to love me back. They made a choice, and in return I made one too.

I love everybody who loves everybody.

When I invite my friends into my house it’s with the understanding that there is both love and nourishment there for them. There will also be music, which we may argue about. And we might argue about the best way to make brussels sprouts. Or whether pie goes best with ice cream or cheese. (The answer is two slices of pie, one with each.) We might argue about something happening in local politics. We will definitely argue about the new Taylor Swift. But we will never argue about whether one of us belongs there or not. We will never argue about whether anyone there should feel welcome or not. We will never argue about whether someone should’ve brought their significant other, or others. (A heads-up is nice, if only to make sure we have enough pie.) We will never argue about whether someone should have autonomy over their own body. We will never argue about whether Palestine deserves to be free. We will never argue about whether we should look out for our neighbors.

We might argue about the best ways to do these things, and those arguments will get lively. They’ll get loud. Even within our core agreements, there is enough to argue about. There is love in those arguments, and in the end, they tend to bring us closer together.

I love everybody who loves everybody. I hope that includes you.

🙋 Got a question? Ask it here! I might just give you the rambling answer you weren’t looking for.

💀 You like zines? Me too. You hate AI? Me too. I’ve turned an old essay, How to not build the Torment Nexus, into a fun zine that can be yours for $5 cheap! Buy it here!

📣 If you get nervous/anxious/etc when you have to talk about your work, please consider taking my Presenting w/Confidence workshop. It really helps! There’s one next week. Get a ticket!

🍉 Please donate to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund. Shit is worse than ever.

🏳️‍⚧️ Please donate to Trans Lifeline. Reward the bravery it takes to live your realest life.

Read the whole story

rocketo

6 days ago

"Let me say this plainly, for folks wrestling with whether they should spend Thanksgiving with relatives that want their friends dead: Don’t."

seattle, wa

angelchrys

6 days ago

Overland Park, KS

1 public comment

tante

6 days ago

"In the end, we are defined not just by our actions, but by the actions we tolerate."

Mike Monteiro with another banger

Berlin/Germany

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