On Sunday, June 16, Dani and I held our second American Id Open Hours session for the summer. We talked about the week’s political news, the pressures of online activism, and the history of humanitarian efforts to harness public sympathy.
Below, paid subscribers will find a summary of the evening’s conversation.
First, though, for those who haven’t had the chance to stop by, Open Hours is an experiment in "small-batch civics" that we started in the summer of 2020. Meeting on zoom every other week, Dani and I help people deal with the mounting political crises of our historical moment. Sessions are informal and intimate, following the diverse interests of our attendees.
We’ve helped people talk to estranged relatives, grapple with national tragedies, strategize antiracist initiatives, design pro-democracy curricula, reorient their research, secure professional events, prep for MSNBC appearances, deal with Nazi doxxings, process the weekly news, and (above all) learn more about history, politics, culture, and activism.
For those who need specialized assistance, we also hold After Hours sessions, where we offer professional consultations and project workshops.
Over the past four years, we’ve talked with tons of wonderful people, & there's no telling who'll be in the zoom room on a given week. Our guests are activists, artists, historians, journalists, therapists, podcasters, rabbis, philosophers, politicians, lobbyists, lawyers, speech writers, political scientists, linguists, novelists, actors, producers, photographers, comedians, designers, musicians, teachers, students, administrators, executives, programmers, business owners, life coaches, gamers, comics buffs, old friends, new friends, family members, & even a couple adorable babies.
For more information, you can contact us at our website. Or, drop me a note here on Substack.
And now, here’s a summary of our June 16 meeting.
To open the session, Dani and I covered the news that we had been following over the week, including SCOTUS’s ruling on mifepristone (the most common abortion drug) and their finding that “bump stocks” don’t turn semi-automatic weapons into machine guns (basically overturning a ruling from 1934 meant to reduce machine-gun violence by literal crime bosses, like Al Capone). We noted that we’d also been tracking the continued rise of far-right political parties in Europe.
As our guests were sharing their concerns, one worried about renewed Covid denialism, noting that Governor Hochul is calling for a transportation mask ban right as New York is seeing another spike in cases. She pointed out the harm this would cause to immuno-compromised people and also worried about the antisemitic weaponization of fears over Jewish safety. In producing reactionary policies, officials have used antisemitic incidents to strengthen the surveillance state, disproportionally harming people of color, Muslims, and Jews.