Hey, pals—it's been a while! And I have some updates.
My experience of Trump 2.0, from the election to the inauguration and beyond, has been interesting in its stark difference from the first go-around. I can't quite put my finger on it. It's not that I'm not angry and scared and sad, but this time there is a distance. I hesitate to use that word because it tends to connote disinterest or "I'm avoiding negativity!" but I mean it in the sense that Trump feels beside the point. I mean that I always knew that I'd continue working on local organizing and action this year, it's just more urgent now. I mean that I trust the big guys who are fighting on the grand scale while I narrow my focus. Maybe I just feel more prepared. I voted for Kamala and I think we would be in a much better place if she had won, but things have been getting worse for a long time. In each of Obama's terms, he deported more people than Trump did during his first term. (Obama holds the record for most removals than any other president.) The wealth gap has been growing for decades. Biden sent $17.9 billion in military aid to Israel from October 7 to his last day in office (and proposed another $8 billion before leaving). Revolution was always the answer.
That, of course, means a lot of things. I'm not about to buy a gun—for a number of reasons—though I don't blame those who do. I do think a necessary component is taking individual power seriously. It's too easy to say one person's decision doesn't matter. (Boycotts work!) And so I'm working on moving away from the big bad—or even just big—corporations that have become embedded in my life. Instagram will hurt. I've kept up with friends online, and made new ones, since LiveJournal circa 2000. I don't know. This is an extremely long-winded way (lol welcome to ME) of saying that this newsletter and my site are now both on Ghost, which is a nonprofit open source platform. I recommend it! It's still free for all of you.
Anyway this isn't a politics newsletter but it kind of is because everything is politics, especially my BOOK!!! Which is coming out THIS APRIL!!!! This newsletter was supposed to be all about that but I'm tired now. So that will come soon, along with book recs... you know, the thing you signed up to receive. In the meantime here are two nice things that two great writers have said about Better:
Better is unlike any memoir I’ve ever read. It’s part cultural commentary, part research, part confessional. Above all, it’s brutally candid and features page-turning anecdotes about her own late-night, early-morning, mid-day episodes of staggering despair. It’s also a strangely and beautifully optimistic reverie on coming clean about our darkest and most intimate struggles while slowly coming to terms with the idea that we might possibly be worthy of love, help, and…life. — Hannah Pittard, author of We Are Too Many
Better is an essential memoir. Part literary analysis of suicidality, part life analysis, Rebolini offers an incisive and necessary look into life of managing mental illness. The writing is intimate, revealing, and destigmatizing in a way that has long been necessary and too often avoided. The result is no simple memoir. Beautiful, propulsive and revealing, Rebolini's approach to her subject is transformative. Better is an act of service to those who have not yet felt seen or considered in discussions around mental health and suicidality. It’s a rare book that serves both as a relief and a rallying cry. — Erika Swyler, author of We Lived on the Horizon
You can preorder it here!!!
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