Good morning!
Welcome to Issue 50.1 of Digestable, your thrice-weekly mouthful of things happening in the world, minus alarmist pandemic news.
Today’s news, fermented:
As we crawl into Daylight Savings and spring approaches, where is the new world we were told might be possible with a ‘Democratic administration’?
I know I’ve been down this road before, but new forks just keep appearing, and this question keeps being the question.
While new challenges (the intersecting pandemic and climate crisis, the rise of fascism, so on) emerge, there are models and plans that light the way. I recently revisited an article from last fall about Fannie Lou Hamer’s food cooperative, an all-you-need operation with affordable housing, fresh food, access to land and food sovereignty, and a nearly self-sustaining business model.
Hamer’s model sought to bolster food security for Black families, but beyond that, was built to reorganize systems of access and resource flows otherwise not built to support people. She was building the next world.
Countless Black writers and visionaries have talked about how ancestors dreamed of a future they in no way could picture, but had enough faith in the potential of descendants to invest in that future nonetheless. We too are in this moment, one in which we could give up in the face of colliding catastrophes, but if we are to lay any foundation for our descendants, there is no time to squander.
In recent weeks, I’ve learned about an amazing project in Los Angeles that seeks to build the next world. It’s called Downtown Crenshaw, and is a Black-led effort to purchase a mall and convert it into an all-you-need development that is community owned and led. Faced with the threat of an outside developer coming in to transform an economic anchor of South Central LA, community members organized to raise $180,000 (!) and are working toward purchasing and redesigning this 40-acre swath of land.
If you’d like to support this effort, you can sign the petition endorsing the mall purchase, or make a donation.
There are also future-making efforts under way that directly test the intentions and ambition of the new administration. The For the People Act, which would re-establish democratic access and norms (in the face of long-term erosion of voting rights) is supposedly a top priority among Democrats in both chambers of Congress.
And there is H.R. 40, the House bill introduced and reintroduced over the last many decades, the bill to explore reparations—one of the most overdue righting of wrongs alongside land return to Indigenous folks.
May we, in our quest for repair and future-building, become as adaptable as the severed heads of these sea slugs.
(via)
*Hot Goss*
Brought to you by the superb Latifah Azlan.
It has been three days since Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan Markle sat down with Oprah Winfrey for their two-hour tell-all and the aftermath has been, well, quite the carnage really. So here are some round ups!
Who asked about Archie's skin color?
A day after the tell-all aired, Oprah made an appearance on CBS Morning to sit down and discuss her interview with the Sussexes with her BFF, Gayle King. The morning show also aired exclusive clips of bits of the interview that did not make the final cut on Sunday night. By that point, no less than millions of people around the world had known about the fact that someone (cough Williamcough) in the British Royal Family had asked Harry questions about his son's appearance while Meghan was carrying. And on Monday morning, Oprah confirmed that although Harry still refused to disclose the identity of the questioner even off-the-record, he did say that neither of his grandparents were part of the conversation around the baby's skin color.
Prince Charles' reputation pretty much took the biggest hit
Watching the interview on Sunday night, it was pretty obvious that both Harry and Meghan still hold fond views of the Queen and Prince Philip. On multiple occasions, the two of them stressed how privately supportive the Queen was of the couple, although it was insinuated that as head of the monarchy and the institution of the monarchy, the Queen probably could have done more to stop the abuse and bullying Meghan had to endure from different people. And although Harry was quite terse when talking about William, it was the subject of his father, Prince Charles, that elicited the most palpably emotional answers from the prince. You could tell that Harry was deeply, deeply disappointed in the way Charles reacted to and handled the whole affair. He even revealed that his father stopped taking his calls in late 2019, just before the Sussexes decided to step back as senior royals.
All in all, it has been a bad year for Charles, PR-wise. Season 4 of Netflix's hit series The Crown reminded us and introduced an entire generation to the shambolic marriage the late Princess Diana had to endure -- the very same one in which he cheated on her, neglected her wellbeing, and with which he drove her to the brink of madness. Then this Sussex interview with Oprah revealed just how cowardly he really is. So just like that, more than two decades of Charles' image rehabilitation has gone down the drain, and we all go back to thinking he's the absolute worst at not just being a husband and partner, but apparently at being a dad too. And Charles knows that -- it's why the most he could do when asked about the Sussex interview yesterday was to chuckle nervously and quickly walk off. This must be karma for what he did to Diana and for subjecting the rest of us to that infamous phone call with Camilla we all read about when it leaked.
What has the official response from the Palace(s) been?
In the first 24 hours since the interview aired, Buckingham Palace and the other Palaces (such as Kensington Palace and Clarence House) laid pretty low, with reports saying that press offices across the institution were locked in crisis meetings all day Monday to assess their options and how best to respond to the allegations and revelations made in the interview. But the monarchy did release a statement eventually and it's... pretty tepid. The Palace basically said that people remember things differently and they'll deal with the issues privately -- very much in contrast to the whole dog-and-pony show they tried staging prior to the interview with the smear campaign against Meghan that immediately fell flat. The lesson here is that HR is never, and will never have your best interests at heart. And always keep receipts of the shit people try to fling at you. With the many times Meghan casually said 'emails' and 'letters' during the interview, there was no way the Firm could double down on denials and dragging Meghan anymore because they know she can back at least some of her claims up.
The first casualty of the Sussexes' interview
And finally, to end this column on a triumphant note, I'm happy to report that Piers Morgan will no longer hostGood Morning Britain after years of screaming into a camera about literally anything and everything under the sun like the peed-on snowbank that he is. All week, Piers has been ranting and raving about the Sussex interview to an almost completely unhinged degree, culminating with him walking off set yesterday, when guest Alex Beresfordcalled him out on his pissy pants baby bullshit. Can you imagine spewing bile on national television for years on end, bullying people on and off air for ages and ages and ages, and then cracking within 5 minutes of being called the hypocritical madman that you really are? Anyway, all of that is to say that it was announced yesterday that Piers won't be returning to the show. It's unclear whether he quit or was fired but who cares really! Hopefully he'll remain off air for a good time to come.