holding onto hope #3: on the fight for the collective good
navigating the chaos with Black women at the forefront of resistance, survival, and transformation
I lost my mind when I read that Uber is launching a new rideshare service for commuters in major cities that will “operate on a public-transit-like schedule.” Oh look, a corporation is hijacking and rebranding something that already exists and marketing it as a new model for transportation. How innovative!
This week’s North Star reminder — and yes, I’m type-screaming it: PUBLIC GOODS BELONG TO THE PEOPLE. From college to cash to catching a damn bus, we shouldn’t have to use “premium” services because corporations disguise public theft as progress.
HELU is fighting to make higher ed a public good again:
Higher Education Labor United (HELU) is confronting privatization with a labor-led federal policy agenda that affirms higher education as a universal right. The Tr@mp administration’s all-out assault on how we learn and work is alarming, but it’s really just the latest chapter in a decades-long political project1 to intentionally destroy public institutions. All so a few wealthy, white assholes can hoard more money and power than anyone should ever have.
The student debt crisis is an end product of this systemic subversion, showing what happens when the government guts public resources, rewrites the narrative on shared investment, and forces us to pay into a tuition-based business model and extractive lending system that only exist to offload the cost of education onto individuals.
Of the nearly 43 million Americans who are being suffocated by student loan debt, Black women have the highest average balance of any group. Because of the ever-present shadow of racism and sexism in our economy and society, we’re left with no choice but to borrow more just to afford the same education as everyone else. That’s why Angela Peoples was saying “Dont f**k this up, Joe” when debt cancellation was on the table. And it’s why we need a future where public colleges and universities are pillars of democracy, equity, and inclusion — not a mechanism for private profit.
Demos is fighting for racial equity through public banks:
Today’s unequal and unfair higher education system is one of the many root causes of racial wealth inequality. Led by Taifa Smith Butler, Demos wants to disrupt how we organize our financial system, calling for public banking as the pathway to “inclusive, accountable, and independent governance with a clear public-purpose mission rooted in social, economic, and racial justice.” For more than 150 years, modern banks have failed to promote the public good and instead perpetuate predatory practices that literally finance economic segregation. “Public banking unlocks resources the public already has and puts them to work for the common good.”
Poetry for the People:
June Jordan taught us that a commitment to care is the most crucial form of politics. On June 23, SISTORIES is hosting “June Jordan as Method: Politics, Poetry & the Political Moment,” a ✨ free ✨ workshop led by the incredible Monaye from 6 to 8pm ET.
They ask, “How do we understand June Jordan and Black feminist work as a method while under the Tr@mp regime and beyond? What does it mean to let the words move and heal you? And what can we pull from in the writings of Black women to inform our methods as this political moment calls for many experiments?” Register today.
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Fuck you, Ronald Reagan!!