Betterment and Praxis

I’m going to assume that if you’re reading this, you more or less understand the situation in Minnesota and I don’t have to explain it to you! That said, I do have a section of local news sources, below. But to answer the question most people want to ask: yes, things are really as bad here as they look in the media. ICE officers are lawless thugs who are kidnapping my neighbors, and the claim that they’re doing us a service by removing violent criminals is a bald-faced lie. You probably knew that already, but just in case, there you go.

I guess I should briefly introduce myself: my name is Naomi Kritzer. I’m a science fiction and fantasy writer. (I have a book coming out in June.) I also write an election guide for Minneapolis and St. Paul, which a lot of people here use when they’re getting ready to vote in local elections. I lived in Minneapolis from 1995 through 2012, and I have lived in St. Paul since 2012. I love my community and also wrote a post of ideas for local people who are looking for things they can do right now.

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/41438755

    git clone https://github.com/GreatSealUSA/Reddit_Commentary.git 

 

Look for the .zip file in the Piles folder, HTML of Reddit commenting to grep and analyze leading up to Pentagon / Department of War annexation of Venezuela. Some comments already removed that are now saved as .html files inside the .zip package. USA mind-fucking of the population via social machine systems.

Betterment and Praxis - what I spent since New Years Eve doing, analyzing the build up to the Department of War annexation. Happy New Year.

Research basis
University of Toronto teachings
https://www.organism.earth/library/document/mcluhan-mcmanus
MARSHALL MCLUHAN IN CONVERSATION WITH MIKE MCMANUS
September 19, 1977

• "Yes, all forms of violence are a quest for identity. When you live out on the frontier, you have no identity. You’re a nobody. Therefore, you get very tough. You have to prove that you are somebody. And so you become very violent. And so identity is always accompanied by violence. This seems paradoxical to you? That ordinary, ordinary people find the need for violence as they lose their identities. So it’s only the threat to people’s identity that makes them ... — terrorists, hijackers: these are people minus identity. They are determined to make it somehow, to get coverage, to get noticed."

• "Everybody tends to merge his identity with other people at the speed of light. It’s called being mass man."

• "Invading privacy — in fact, just ignoring it. Everybody has become porous. They got the light and the message to go right through us. By the way, at this moment, we are on the air, and on the air we do not have any physical body. When you’re on the telephone or on radio or on TV, you don’t have a physical body. You’re just an image on the air. When you don’t have a physical body, you’re a discarnate being. You have a very different relation to the world around you. And this, I think, has been one of the big effects of the electric age. It has deprived people, really, of their private identity."

For the People Leftist Library Project (FTP) has developed a toolkit to encourage public library defenders to conduct local People’s Assemblies (PA). A People’s Assembly (PA) involves a facilitated gathering where all community members discuss key community issues and collectively problem-solve and decide how to address them.

In the space created by PAs, everyone’s voice, thinking, experiences, ideas, and visions receive equal hearing and value. The PAs empower every participant to exercise their agency and power. Accordingly, PAs are a form of direct participatory democracy that places unwavering trust in those assembling.

Library defenders can conduct a PA to advocate, organize, and mobilize for their local public library. Ultimately, PAs are effective strategies for identifying and addressing the issues most impacting a library institution, its staff, and—perhaps most importantly—its patrons. For example, PAs can address issues related to hyper-policing in public spaces, book bans, and accessibility. Facilitated properly, PAs can uplift and empower communities to co-create their ideal local library.

The rise of authoritarianism in the United States had devastating consequences in 2025. It was a year of unrelenting injustice, maddening and terrifying at once. Amidst the cycles of heartbreak and hope, resistance surged to unprecedented levels. Along with mass demonstrations and powerful boycotts, there were countless acts of creative protest that rekindled spirits, made us laugh out loud, and kept us rising up.

In nonviolent struggle, creativity is an enduring superpower — and we’ve seen it working powerfully for us in 2025. It broke through the stranglehold of fear. It helped us scrape past defeat by the seat of our pants. It tapped into the strategic potential of nonviolent struggle. It gave us a superpower at a time when power seems stacked against us. From Jan. 20 onward, unexpected, unusual and off-the-wall actions kept our movements nimble and courageous.

Here’s a blow-by-blow of how creativity served us well as millions of people moved into action.

Welcome to the NYC Directory of Resources and Aid (DORA) — a community-powered map and directory connecting New Yorkers to essential resources across all five boroughs.

What You'll Find Here

• Food pantries, community fridges, and food distros
• Shelter and housing services
• Medical care, mental health, and safety resources
• Legal services, immigration support, and more

October 18 stands as a massive organizing opportunity. Bring petition sheets for ballot initiatives and gather signatures while you march. Distribute flyers with specific instructions on contacting state representatives with concrete demands: arrest ICE agents who overstep their authority, fire and criminally charge police officers who fail to prevent abuses of power, pass state laws barring Trump from appearing on ballots if he attempts a third term. Push your state to ban local agencies from cooperating with unconstitutional federal actions, encourage Attorneys General to investigate and charge corrupt politicians, establish state-level safety nets to replace threatened federal benefits, join multi-state compacts for healthcare and civil rights protection, and expand voting rights, voting hours, and ballot access in states like Texas where suppression is systematic. Bring literature explaining these measures and how to pressure legislators to adopt them. The gathering of two million people is wasted if everyone just walks and goes home. Turn the crowd into a recruitment and coordination network for the sustained campaigns that follow.

The day after the protest, join or create a working group focused on economic noncooperation. Strikes and boycotts create costs that force negotiation, but they require preparation. Build strike funds. Establish mutual aid systems for participants. Identify strategic targets: which companies profit from authoritarian governance? Which supply chains can you disrupt? Which elected officials depend on donors you can reach? The forces you’re fighting have billion-dollar budgets and write the laws. They’re betting that protests will be merely symbolic.

Connect beyond your usual circles. Jane McAlevey’s research on successful organizing shows you need 10 committed organizers for every 100 participants. Engage people through their multiple identities as parents concerned about schools, workers seeking dignity, or congregation members following faith. Movements with diverse participants generate more public support and signal broad coalitions. The oligarchs you’re fighting spent 50 years building infrastructure and executing long-term strategy. Match their patience and coordination.

Hope isn’t passive. It’s not some gauzy filter or fluffy feeling. It’s a lens. A stance. A refusal to let cynicism have the last word.

The FBI drugged Fred Hampton, then shot him in the head while he slept. The next morning, Black Panthers served free breakfast to 50,000 children.

While the federal government was assassinating their leaders, the Panthers kept serving eggs, working to survive and organize while being systematically attacked by the U.S government’s law enforcement and intelligence services.

By 1980, the Party was mostly finished, crushed by assassinations, frame-ups, and infiltration. But for a few crucial years, they proved something that matters for us today: even under lethal state repression, communities could coordinate their own survival and influence political machinations. Though the programs didn't outlast COINTELPRO, they lasted long enough to prove the models worked.

Hosted by the Brooklyn Public Library, this Burner Phone 101 workshop introduced participants to phone-related risk modeling, privacy-protective smartphone practices, the full spectrum of burner phone options, and when to leave phones behind entirely.

In August 2025, I hosted a Burner Phone 101 Workshop at the Brooklyn Public Library. Below is a summary of the workshop with key points in bold and additional resources that participants helped crowdsource.

Faith traditions call us to welcome the stranger, protect the vulnerable, and love our neighbors.

In the face of renewed ICE enforcement actions and immigration raids, we must be ready to act swiftly, courageously, and in solidarity.

This action plan equips faith communities to respond immediately and meaningfully when immigration enforcement threatens the well-being of undocumented individuals and families in our communities.

This guidebook offers practical tools and principles for peacekeepers, rooted in the belief that nonviolent discipline is not just a tactic — it’s a strategy for resilience. By projecting calm, modeling solidarity, and preparing for the unexpected, peacekeepers help movements withstand pressure without fracturing. If fear is the goal, then solidarity is the antidote.

For the April 1, 2025, Illinois Consolidated Elections, I created a voters’ guide to contested public library board elections. This wasn’t the initial plan; I intended to cover all the boards with elections. But the effort was Herculean, even with a group of dedicated volunteers, and ultimately, it wasn’t the guide’s goal. So rather than try to cover every public library election on the ballot, I focused exclusively on those elections where there were more candidates than open positions (that is, they were contested elections).

One thing worth emphasizing before diving in, though, is that the goal of this project was fact and information, not perfection or completionism. I knew from the start that I would not have information for every library in the state because Illinois is a big state with many rural communities whose information isn’t as easy to access as suburban or urban areas. Setting aside perfectionism in exchange for accuracy was crucial.

A couple of preliminary steps are worth mentioning since they will impact everything going forward. First: find out when your next library board elections will be held and plan to have your voter guide prepared a couple of weeks in advance. This will give you a personal deadline for when you need your information to be as updated as possible. You don’t want to have your guide available too early, as you’ll miss a lot of information about candidates in the weeks leading up to election day. Groups like the League of Women Voters often hold candidate forums two or three weeks before an election, and local newspapers begin publishing candidate questionnaires then, too–assuming you have local newspapers covering these municipal elections. You can learn a lot from these; providing links to recordings or articles is extremely helpful in your guide.

Then, build your timeline and project around your available time and energy. For the April 1, 2025, election, I began my work in December 2024. Though information about candidates on the ballot wouldn’t be available until late February, this gave me a lot of lead time to do some preliminary research. I did this project in addition to working full time, parenting, and other things, putting in probably 3-5 hours a week at the beginning and closer to 7 or 8 as the election got nearer. Find people to help you with some of these tasks, and/or get more local on your guide to make the lift easier. State library advocates helped me develop a school board election guide similar to Frank’s, while I put together the public library guide myself. Illinois has fewer public libraries than school districts, so this was doable.

Environmental activist and author Robin Greenfield is known for his fully committed experiments in ecological living. His most recent book, Food Freedom: A Year of Growing and Foraging 100% of My Food, covers his efforts to live entirely independently from the industrial food system. Greenfield succeeded only by relying on others who guided him in his gardening, fishing, and foraging, and came to understand the profound power of community and how naturally that flows through food.

Here are Greenfield’s suggestions for strengthening your own food community.

We need more discussion spaces and more spiritual and emotional support groups. While some on the left are dismissive of gatherings and activities that are not grounded in productivity, we must acknowledge that the connective tissue we need to move, build, and care collectively is lacking. In addition to not being bonded to one another, we often lack the skills to build those bonds. Plenty of people and products are primed to exploit those shortcomings. We must present alternatives, issue invitations, and welcome people into the messy process of building relationships.

There is a common admonition that often circulates on social media, especially among leftists, that goes something like: You don’t have to ask what you would’ve done during the Holocaust, or any other historical atrocity. You're doing it right now. These words are valuable in that they encourage us to abandon fantasies of who we would have been in another context, and to live our values here and now.

As an organizer, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the gulf between what many people believed they would do in moments of extremity, and what they are actually doing now, as fascism rises, the genocide in Palestine continues, and climate chaos threatens the survival of living beings around the world. Some of these disparities can be chalked up to the simple truth that people often are not who they imagine themselves to be. This truth reminds me of the lyrics of Joe Henry’s “Our Song,” in which Henry refers to the vicarious thrill we derive from watching movies:

We push in line at the picture show / For cool air and a chance to see / A vision of ourselves portrayed as / Younger and braver and humble and free. /

Fantasies about who we would have been—and what we would have done—in moments of profound injustice serve a similar purpose. They allow us to imagine braver, more purposeful versions of ourselves. But when we’re confronted with the reality of catastrophic injustice in the world around us, we are forced to measure those fantasies against reality. The results can be profoundly depressing. Many people have discovered that they have more in common with those who witnessed atrocity and simply went about their lives, perhaps uttering words like, "That’s a shame," or complaining that someone should do something.

In the rhythm and rhyme of history, we all have historical counterparts. Contemplating who those people are—and how we might judge their actions in parallel with our own—can be daunting, or even devastating.

However, it’s important to remember that such measurements are not fixed. Our lives, our character, our part in history—all of these things are the product of choices we make on a continuous basis. Each day, we make decisions about how to move in the world and how to relate to others. We choose what to extend to others, and what to hold in reserve, in order to sustain ourselves and our loved ones.

It’s easy to pass judgment on ourselves and each other for what we’re “already doing” or failing to do. But as an organizer, I’m concerned with what might motivate or allow people to act differently. After all, the people whose actions we have admired during historical moments of resistance, rebellion, and rescue were not simply born into heroic collective action. Many of them witnessed harm and wickedness for years, or even decades, before something moved or enabled them to participate in constructive moral action. Some were slow to join the struggles they eventually helped to enliven. Some were afraid. Some initially supported moderate, reserved actions. Some were complicit until, one day, they could bear their complicity no more. Others didn’t believe change was possible until they were recruited into strategic projects. Many were moved to action by profound loss or the threat of profound loss. They had to find their way, just as many of us must now find our way through this moment.

So what’s holding us back?

I'm generally hesitant to post ZDoggMD videos and rarely watch them on my subscription feed, as he can get a bit woo-woo. But given the title and the events of the past few months, I decided to give this a watch.

It made me feel less alone in what I'm encountering in middle age. Basically, the knowledge that Carlin was right about everything -- and anything else was a lie. There's still the requisite woo-woo, but it's minimal.

We’re a network of lawyers helping to get workers the justice they deserve.

Hundreds of thousands of federal workers have had their basic rights violated on the job—including tens of thousands who have been fired illegally. Federal workers have an urgent need for legal support.