Call Senators re: the PRESS Act
(HT Celeste Pewter, Greg Pak, Senator Wyden)
We need the press. We need them to be investigators, not stenographers. And we need to protect them so that they can keep digging.
(Read more on the PRESS Act here.)
Do you have the phone numbers of your Senators in your contacts yet?
Here's a handy link that can tell you who your elected officials are at the local, state, and federal level: https://myreps.datamade.us
Unrelated:
"Authoritarians aim to destroy the social fabric and to isolate individuals. Anything you do to counter that is good work. We may or may not see heroes in our time, but we can be sure that the most vital work will done on a smaller scale day in and day out by regular people."
Read Andrea Pitzer's excellent full piece, Swept Into The Flood, here:
https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/swept-into-the-flood
Sherrilyn Ifill (former President. & Director-Counsel, NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund) says,
"Don’t throw in the towel. Rest, then call your Senator - Dem & Repub. Tell them you expect them to do their constitutional duty and have real confirmation review & hearings for Gaetz, Hegseth, Gabbard & all cabinet nominees. Don’t let your Senators give their power to Trump w/o a fight."
Here's a clip: https://bsky.app/profile/sifill.bsky.social/post/3laxiugfhik2j
The Capital Switchboard's number is 202-224-3121. To look up your representatives' contact information, try this handy little tool: https://myreps.datamade.us
Put your Senators' and Representative's DC office numbers in your phone. Then add them to your favorites. Consider moving from a default position of never calling them to a default position of calling them all the time.
Unrelated mic drop:
Dear friends and loved ones,
"With this election, we’ve joined the rest of the world. Think of all the other nations that live under moronic, venal leadership. There are models for honorable political lives in those circumstances, but those models are quite different from our dominant notions of citizenship in which we follow politics as a spectator sport and occasionally vote. All over the world there are people in repressive settings who find ways to live as free human beings, act in solidarity with their neighbors, and fashion strategies to resist state power. We’re going to need to get good at practicing that kind of politics.
One of the dangers is that people will instead become demoralized and retreat into denial, that they will seek refuge amid the pleasures and fulfillments of private life. That would give carte blanche to power. There was a term used in central Europe to describe those who opted to retreat into private life under totalitarianism. They were called “internal emigres.” That is certainly tempting at a time like this: to live one’s life in the wholly private realm, enjoying the company of friends, good food and drink, the pleasures of literature and music, and so on. Privileged sectors of our society are already heavily skewed that way. It’s a real danger at a time like this. If we withdraw from public engagement now, we aid and abet that which we deplore."
