Puff the Magic Hater
Menominee | Organizer | Co-author of Let This Radicalize You | Hosts Movement Memos podcast | Newsletter: organizingmythoughts.org | More: linktr.ee/KellyHayes
- Just got back to town and I want to settle in by watching some junk TV, but I feel like I have to watch the final arc of Andor tonight bc my efforts to avoid spoilers could fall apart at any time.
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- That's so great to hear! Thank you!
- Best podcast episodes you've listened to lately? (I prefer informative stuff.)
- I have to fly today. I have been in rough shape physically, so travel is especially hard right now, but at least I'm heading home. It was important to make this trip bc I had committed to speak at a Rainbow Graduation. This is an important time to show up for queer and trans young people.
- The event was beautiful, and I was grateful to spend some time with some of the graduates and some student activists. I may share the keynote speech I gave in my newsletter. Still thinking about that.
- Can’t wait to listen to this!
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- I listened. It's def a good one.
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- 📌
- Lying awake, wrestling with a timeless question: Will the desire for snacks or an aversion to brushing my teeth again prevail?
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- Most likely chocolate.
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- I support your rebellious choices, but sadly, I have easily irritated gums.
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- If there were cereal here, my internal debate would already be over. I may buy some tomorrow.
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- People need to experiment to understand how ideas function in the world. That’s why I’m organizing a workshop on how to run a public assembly this summer. An organizer from the Black Nashville Assembly is coming out to lead it.
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- As part of a constructive apparatus, where people collectively make decisions that affect their own fates, democracy can be empowering (while also messy and frustrating), but most people don't have a meaningful experience of that.
- I'm not Catholic (or religious), but as a Chicagoan, I feel it's now fair to say that God is on our side.
- My friend Ash is being harassed and urgently needs to relocate. Over the years, Ash has helped many people in need. From movement education to jail support to helping people access the care they need, Ash has brought the spirit of reciprocal care to many fronts. Let's show up for him now.
- This is an exceptionally unsafe time for trans people and for Black people. For folks deep in movement work, the risks only intensify. Anything we can do to keep people like Ash, who give so much of themselves, a bit safer is worthwhile.
- Hammock cat.
- No newsletter this week, fam. My apologies, but I recently started a new round of physical therapy, and while I am sure it will ultimately help, we are now in the stage where it just feels like brutality. I am a ball of pain, and my brain is mush. Movement Memos will air as planned next week tho.
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- Yep. I take them often.
- Everyone is, of course, quite right to point out Bill Gates' hypocrisy, but I'm watching him swing on Musk like
- I have ideas that I want to pursue, but my brain keeps refusing to string thoughts together in a useful manner.
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- 62
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- So good!
- Other than Andor, what's your favorite antifascist fiction?
- TV or film, that is.
- Rewatching Rogue One to gear up for the final arc of Andor next week.
- The three-episode arc of Andor that dropped tonight is everything. What an incredible body of art to share at this moment in history. Give Tony Gilroy, Diego Luna, Adria Arjona, and everyone else involved every award right now. Nothing between now and later can change the math on that.
- Also, I am still laughing at the "Kloris, Kloris! We found her!" moment because my mind is a dark place.
- As a writer, I am interested in talking to folks who aren't meeting the political moment in ways they feel good about. I want to talk about what you're not doing and why; what you think you ought to be doing, and what's stopping you. I want to talk about feeling politically/spiritually stuck.
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- I don't understand why you would read this as sardonic.
- I appreciate the conversations that have emerged from this. My apologies for not reaching out to everyone who has volunteered. Many folks have generously offered their thoughts.
- Still thinking about this.
- Bluetorial: The Kent State killings This is the 55th anniversary of the killings of four students at Kent State in 1970s. This event hit me hard when I was 12. In a tumultuous time, this stood out to me as next-level insanity. The possibility of a sequel these days scares me deeply.
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- 📌
- One thing I am NOT doing is actively engaging people with fuckass values EVEN IF they will ultimately benefit from my (political) work. And this has been challenging/not felt "good" because we are often told to "organize everywhere." But actually that has left me burnt out and it infantilizes ppl
- But you are organizing other folks?
- wtf
- "It was the first time in Arizona judicial history — and possibly nationwide — that AI has been used to create a deceased victim’s own impact statement" www.abc15.com/news/region-...
- 🧪 @claudia-lopez.bsky.social brought together a group of reporters, including @scattercushion.bsky.social, @usha.bsky.social, @martinaigini.bsky.social @nicolakimjones.bsky.social and others to ask what advice they have for tackling major reports in their respective beats.
- 📌
- But your kids have too many toys.
- Agreed. It also skips past the big picture in many cases. A lot of what's happening isn't exclusively about cruelty. The spectacle of cruelty is important to this administration, yes. There's also greed, of course, but there are larger designs for society at work here that really must be understood.
- It might still useful to the people who are just beginning to realize how awful these people are.
- Not really. Oversimplifications that eclipse the actual agendas of our enemies are not helpful for anyone. We need to be more thoughtful and strategic than that.
- The DOGE cuts, for example, are coming from Musk's people, and those folks absolutely do have an agenda for what the world should look like (however bumbling and messy they may be). Their end game is bat shit and involves ideologies and social shifts that most people haven't begun to process.
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- Can you say more about this?
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- Def not less stupid.
- What fictional character could help us get out of this mess?
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- I believe she could help.
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- I love and support him, but his track record is not great.
- It's okay to not care about something. I promise you can not care about it without turning it into a whole obnoxious judgey thing. There's real stuff to be upset about. Lots of it.
- The times are bad. Let people who enjoy costumes enjoy costumes. Sheesh.
- "At every turn, advocates and family members are desperately pushing back on the official narrative about conditions inside."
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- If you're a paid subscriber to my newsletter, you'll be receiving an invite this week to one of my periodic Zooms with paid subscribers. I appreciate y'all and look forward to talking. I'll never paywall this newsletter, but I also couldn't make it happen without your support.
