@smathewss
writer, fun guy 🍄. ✍🏾 novel ALL THIS COULD BE DIFFERENT, shortlisted for the national book award, and some other stuff. work in a bunch of places. organizes sometimes. newsletter: http://smathewss.substack.com
MAKE AN EMERGENCY DONATION to Trans Continental Pipeline right now.
They are a Colorado based org that helps trans people relocate there and they are overwhelmed with requests. CO borders KS, and TCP has the infrastructure to help get people out.
GO DONATE.
tcpipeline.org
If you are outraged about what Kansas is doing to trans people— criminalizing their very right to exist, seizing drivers licenses overnight and saying if they drive thereafter it’s a crime, which puts them into the PIC under their gender assigned at birth where rape is routine—I BEG YOU
Benito is a threat b/c he makes art so alluring and enjoyable you want to understand everything about it and then you end up learning about sugar and slavery and colonialism and the Taínos and Hawaii and then you probably have some thoughts of your own, and that's why art is powerful and dangerous
I hadn’t known this. Two men who were accused of sexual abuse on the Shitty Media Men document that I created back in 2017 reached out to Michael Wolff for help as they looked to sue me, and Wolf forwarded their concerns to Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein offered to help. www.jmail.world/thread/EFTA0...
I've been happy this week to see that some people have caught up to the fact that in MN and across the country, the resistance to fascism has actually BUILT ON what came before. The networks created in 2020 and earlier have been reactivated, expanded etc...
Revolutionary Letter one thing i've learned / come to a provisional conclusion about: when it comes to fighting, there are people who will help you fight & there are people who will not & there are people who will stand in the way. find the people who will help / be loud & clear so they know where you are— focus on them, be encouraged by them, encourage them, work with them. don't worry about the people who won't help. they will be of no help even if they are on your side. waste as little energy as possible fighting people who stand in the way, which is to say don't talk don't argue, just get them out of the way of the fight you came for. tl;dr: you don't need or want the people who you know aren't "with you" to be with you. really, you don't
With alt text of the text:
What we found is bleak. Attorneys told us they’re struggling to get information in to or out of ICE and Customs and Border Protection facilities, which are holding nearly 69,000 people this month. And detainees often are forced to choose between remaining in crowded, squalid conditions or leaving the country immediately. Judges in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles have ordered the government to facilitate attorney-client communications at Homeland Security buildings. But attorneys say that doesn’t always happen. Even if detainees get the option, some worry they’ll be punished if they take it.
Lawyers can't reach clients in ICE detention. I've heard it anecdotally, but scale of issue is horrifying.
Bloomberg Law is a legal trade pub so many may miss this. Screenshot from their CA newsletter summarizes "bleak" situation for justice and rule of law.
news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/l...
Photos: Hundreds of S.F. protesters form banner with message to ICE
www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/h...
text of the poem revolutionary letter
every damn day I’m reminded
I don't like to talk about stories before they are fully reported, but I am writing on ICE in a Minnesota town that isn't Minneapolis. However bad you think it is, it is worse. It is a campaign of pure terror whose only strategic goal is more terror. There is no strategy other than to break people.
Judge Biery signed the order with a photo of Liam and two bible verses: The first is "But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven." The second is simply "Jesus wept."
Astonishing thing for a judge to do.
Every time I see someone like Abbott choose self-inflicted decline, I think of this quote from Pedro Sanchez:
"Spain needs to choose between being an open and prosperous country or a closed-off, poor country. It’s as simple as that."
www.theguardian.com/world/2024/o...
incredible work here
4 Black journalists have been kidnapped by the federal government
living like my arranged-married uncles in the 90s Gulf ass
except for the tracking sleep and running far they did not do that shit
Ossoff: "This is a seismic event. This should have people across the country absolutely shook. This is a huge deal. This is an FBI raid on the Fulton County Elections office ... This is a shot across the bow at the midterm elections. He tried to steal power when he lost it in 2020."
again sheer naked ambition should be sending more Dems in the AOC / Crockett / Sanders / Frost etc direction
The online-ification of politics is producing enormous tension here. Elected officials have become accustomed to tweeting or holding a press conference and having words accepted as reality, and in this instance people are noticing that the actual reality on the ground does not match it at all.
“[Liam] keeps asking about that hat and that backpack that are in the picture,” the congressman said. “I think they took that from him.”
www.cnn.com/2026/01/28/u...
thank you for this, so good
"I'm coming to Boston and I'm bringing hell with me."
--Homan in February
"Do I expect violence to escalate? Absolutely."
-- Tom Homan in March
"I actually thought about getting up and throwing that man a beating right there in the middle of the room"
-- Homan in July, referring to a D congressman
On behalf of over 120 civil society groups, I've sent an open letter to @vonderleyen.ec.europa.eu @president.europarl.europa.eu @eucopresident.consilium.europa.eu, urging EU leaders to resist Trump's fossil-fueled imperialism! oilchange.org/news/eu-phas...
@tadziomueller.bsky.social
Never left. Can’t leave. His wealth is entwined, inversely, with the fate of American democracy.
2003: Democrats fund ICE 2004: Democrats fund ICE 2005: Democrats fund ICE 2006: Democrats fund ICE 2007: Democrats fund ICE 2008: Democrats fund ICE 2009: Democrats fund ICE 2010: Democrats fund ICE. 2011: Democrats fund ICE 2012: Democrats fund ICE 2013: Democrats fund ICE 2014: Democrats fund ICE 2015: Democrats fund ICE 2016: Democrats fund ICE 2017: Democrats denounce ICE 2018: Democrats denounce ICE 2019: Democrats denounce ICE 2020:Democrats denounce ICE 2021: Democrats fund ICE aqain 2022: Democrats break fundina record 2023: Democrats break funding record 2024: Democrats break funding record 2025: Democrats denounce ICE for ICE. for ICE. for ICE.
Can we say the truth.
"What we are inside of is not only a media environment but a political economy: death created by the state, its footage circulated on platforms, monetized through attention, and metabolized by viewers."
—Sarah Thankam Mathews on the murder of Renee Good
smathewss.substack.com/p/snuff-film...
ALL THIS COULD BE DIFFERENT: A NOVEL by sarah thankam mathews. there's a national book award sticker--damn! okay!!--and a cover so good that it's probably an acute oil painting, repurposed.
if you were a dirtbag millennial who spent the recession drawing up plans for your commune & ignoring how many cavities you had, this book will feel like a gentle vivisection:
In this special issue, Hammer & Hope commissioned the photojournalist Ashley Gilbertson to show us the Trump administration's arrest and deportation campaign.
hammerandhope.org/article/ice-...
What a spot-on and incredibly sad article on the current state of affairs. Job searching is never fun, but like so many other areas of life right now, it seems to be at an all-time low.
@smathewss.bsky.social www.thecut.com/article/job-...
"goodness has been dying from the scaffolding and the organization of our lives, in a variety of ways, and for a long time. Its withering, its impoverishing, and its murders all deserve naming, deserve observation and sustained action ..." @smathewss.bsky.social
open.substack.com/pub/smathews...
