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Hi you.
It’s me.
We Blew It.
There’s a great sports metaphor waiting for me, if I could just remember how sports worked. A team has an advantage. They know the opponent. They have footage of how this opponent works. They are months ahead in being able to prepare for the matchup, and they have the highest paid players in the league. But instead of using that time and those resources to get ready for one of the most challenging contests of their lives, they devote their resources to watching cable news, shooting rubber bullets into groups of their fans, and defending racist statues that even racists don’t defend.
Such is the state of the union right now in the United States. We have wasted such an extraordinary amount of advantage that other nations now pity us — not envy, not hate, pity. They say, “Don’t meet your heroes.” I think this is why. Sometimes your heroes are just broken, hurt children walking around in grownup body suits. How else can you explain that up to 50 percent of Americans may not get a coronavirus vaccine? No mask. No social distancing. No medicine. Can an entire nation be suicidal?
More important, what are we going to do about it?
I have some ideas. Today marks the release of the final episode of my limited-run podcast series, We’re Having A Moment. Yep! We fixed all the systemic racism in policing, so it’s on to new challenges! Please listen to the final episode (and all the episodes because we told a story in a certain sequence). This show works as a record of the now. The spoiler alert is that there’s more to come in the form of another show and ongoing project!
We’re going to rebuild the whole damned system. How about that?
We know what’s broken. We know the problems. We know what we need to do to create a society worth living in. So I’m going to contribute what I can, with your help, to that effort. Together we are going to map out the world as we want it through a project called How To Citizen with Baratunde.
It will be a bigger podcast, not limited at all. We are going to reimagine and reclaim this term “citizen,” taking it back from those who would weaponize it against people who lack the documentation, and instead we will interpret it as a verb, actively inviting everyone’s participation. We will remember how to wield our collective power in service of something beyond selfish interests. That’s the idea behind this whole self-government experiment right?
We are taping the first episode next week with Eric Liu, co-founder of Citizen University. It’s going to be inspiring and I want you to join me. We are making this show with you, taping with a live studio audience (ok, Zoom). I want you to be there to ask questions, chat with each other, and help create this. If you are reading this email, you’ll be among the first to get invited to the taping — patrons get actual first dibs. I’ll send an invite likely in my Saturday newsletter.
How To Citizen with Baratunde is going to pick up where WHAM left off. We are going to reimagine public safety, food systems, labor organizing, and the economy. We are going to highlight people and organizations doing this work right now to benefit the many not just the few. And we are going to give you something to do beyond screaming at your screens.
If you have ideas for people, organizations, companies we should be talking to, reply to this email. I am tired y’all. I’m tired of looking at the ugliness and brokenness. I’m tired of being told we have no power and that the system is rigged. People built this system. People can build something better. I’m ready to focus my energies on what we fight for, not just against. And with an urgent election approaching, I think it’s critical to have a vision of the world we want, not just one we fear.
If this sounds dope to you, please spread this message. Encourage people to join this email list or my text list at 202-894-8844
And now, for your regularly-scheduled content.
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