Good morning!
Welcome to Issue 34.4 of Digestable, your daily mouthful of real things happening in the world, minus alarmist pandemic news.
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Today’s news, fermented:
And the sun has risen again.
In the worst hours of election night, I joked to my housemates that I’d paint our kitchen if Biden won (and also took office). That optimistic? one of them said.
Yesterday I realized that, amid the flurry of results and work and adrenaline and a mild hangover, I might be have a painting project ahead of me.
The tide has turned in the last 24 hours; it is neither blue nor red. Rather, it is soggy with the tired politics of a Democratic party that refuses to campaign to the people who want basic human rights and dignity, and align more closely with the growing squad than the Bidens and McGraths. It stinks with the rotting defense of white supremacy that manifested in the more than 68 million people in America who voted for our sitting ‘president.’ It is a king tide, exacerbated by the grief and struggle of this year and the warming rising sea, which the US will, as of yesterday, not take part in mitigating on an international level.
People are in the streets, demanding that every vote be counted. The NYPD cannot seem to stop making the case for its own defunding; they kettled protestors yesterday and arrested almost 60 people. Then a spokesperson said they ‘care about free speech.’ Gtfo, NYPD.
While these last few days have not exactly been awe-inspiring—a deeply broken democratic system, active attempts to prevent people from voting, strong vitals on the white supremacist patriarchy—people cast ballots in record numbers, on horseback and masked, by mail, socially distanced, and with the help of neighbors. People actually want to participate in this democracy; we need a system that enables instead of hinders.
We have to stay vigilant, as I’m sure you’ve read in the thousands of emails from all the organizations you’ve ever given your data to that poured into inboxes across the nation in the last day. Little Miss Flint gives us some joy in doing so; Mateo Nube of Movement Generation gives guidance on how to meet chaos with calm, and prepare for a potential coup. Naomi Klein, Astra Taylor, and Keeanga-Yamhatta Taylor have some thoughts on where we go from here.
For my fellow environmental history folk, here’s a complicated and beautiful history behind a blue belt in the South. For all of us trying to move forward with values and conviction, here are some lessons from a spider.
(via)
*Hot Goss*
Brought to you by the superb Latifah Azlan.
As you can imagine, the news cycle continues to be dominated by coverage of the recently concluded U.S. elections. No results have been definitively announced yet, but the vote-counting continues and so does the waiting game. It was hard to find anything of note to write about today but I finally did come across some ~*Hot Goss*~ so you can indulge in some escapism for 2 minutes this morning.
Late last week, rapper Lil Wayne came out with an endorsement for D*nald Tr*mp, which surprised some people. He wrote words about how he's been impressed with Tr*mp's progress so far on criminal reform and how Tr*mp listened intently to some community plan Wayne presented, assuring the rapper that he "will and can get it done." Yes, insert quippy sentence here about how Tr*mp has been an abject failure in implementing his own campaign promises, much less run the country holistically for the last four years, that it truly takes someone, um, special to tweet that shit with conviction. Idiots, okay? I'm talking about idiots.
Anyway, as you can imagine, Lil Wayne was swiftly shown the door for his profound display of ignorance, not only from fans and casual observers alike, but apparently his girlfriend too. That's right, Denise Bidot, Wayne's girlfriend of the last several months decided to break up with him after his support of Trump. Now obviously, we don't and can't know for certain that this was the deciding factor for Denise to end their relationship. But Internet sleuths noticed that Denise and Wayne had stopped following each other on Instagram at some point and immediately after Wayne's endorsement, she deleted her social media accounts. So it does seem that this, at the very least, was the last straw.
Well, another couple bites the dust and this time, we're not shedding any tears. I don't think Denise or Wayne will be releasing statements on this any time soon so that's the end of that chapter. Tr*mp continues to destroy everything he comes into contact with and still as many people voted for him as they did in 2016. That makes me feel... like I need to continue mainlining carbs and chocolate for the rest of the week until the ~*Hot Goss*~ cycle stabilizes and we get non-Tr*mp related stories again.