It looks like @RepMarciaFudge is chosen as the new @HUDgov Secretary. Very interesting choice by the Biden-Harris team. We don't know much about what Rep. Fudge thinks on housing, but we think her other positions like support for M4A and Green New Deal are good signs!
HUD right now needs someone who is a fighter. Our early ask to @RepMarciaFudge will be to support a homesguarantee (homesguarantee.com) and start rebuilding the agency to meet that need. She has many committed directly impacted peoples to help her if she chooses.
.@RepMarciaFudge will have her work cut out for her, perhaps more than any @HUDgov secretary in history as we're still on the front end of the biggest housing crisis we've ever seen. We're hopeful she'll roll up her sleeves and get to work, and we're ready to push!
Representative Fudge aside, one can't help but critique the Biden-Harris team for this selection. Rep. Fudge is an agriculture expert who publicly lobbied for that job and was supported by many. Sec of Agriculture will assumedly now go to Tom Vilsack.
The @HUDgov job seems to have been given to Representative Fudge as a consolation prize. This is not only an insult to @RepMarciaFudge's expertise and relevant experience in agriculture, but also does a disservice to @HUDgov which needs to be rebuilt entirely.
Racial Justice is not simply just the # of Black people you put into the cabinet. It's insulting to move Black ppl around like Chess pieces between the agencies that you think they are qualified for. Even @RepMarciaFudge said this recently! politico.com/news/2020/12/0…
This antiquated notion of equity - which is encouraged by leadership of @TheBlackCaucus - must end. @RepMarciaFudge is qualified and has the experience to lead the Department of Agriculture and there are hundreds of Black people qualified with the experience to lead @HUDgov.
Representative Fudge's appointment makes the appointments under her crucially important. We hope those selections draw from a qualified bench of People of color ready to push towards rebuilding @HUDgov to support a #homesguarantee
And as always, we know the real work is in the streets all around this country. We'll see you there.
one last not so manicured tweet:
This is a fucked up reversion to 1980s version of racial equity politics. Vilsack is an asshole and should never be let anywhere near Ag ever again. Let alone bump a qualified Black woman from a job. Slap in the face all around. Fuck this.
just watched a michigan court throw out a ridiculous trump suit. Here was the face trump's lawyer made when the judge announced she was tossing the whole thing
the only problems with trump's suit, according to the judge, is that it was based on hearsay, brought the wrong party to court, couldn't give names of any of the ppl or locations they said broke the law and the relief sought is unavailable because the counting is over.
Hey Yall -
Last year around this time I had a bit of a breakdown. This year is even more stressful, so I'm taking some precautions to try and prevent that from happening again. I want to share some of those things here at the very least to encourage others to prep
I am by NO means a therapist or an expert. I'm just a dude with depression and anxiety. So I'm not giving you a list of things to do, but more a list of shit that I'm doing. You should make your own list.
1) I'm increasing my therapy visits. Usually do every other week but I'm moving to weekly. Honestly, at the moment that may feel like overkill, but it's good to have that in practice before things go wrong.
You know an interesting thing I think alot about? How so much of economic justice organizing is built around the scarcity model. We talk about hating that model, but the constantly make "how come we can afford x, but not y" arguments.
I am VERY guilty here.
It's actually really hard to wrap our minds (and messaging) around the fact that we can afford both a useless billion dollar military helicopter AND healthcare for all. We can afford a ridiculous large steroid driven frat boy police force AND quality schools for all.
I'm really grateful that I spent time in an organization that taught me real difficult messy inspiring beautiful tiring exciting grassroots organizing. I wish everyone on our side had that chance.
I came out of college organizing thinking that what we all needed to do was read Marx and fanon and shit and come up with the best and most revolutionary ideas, then find a coalition of people that thought those same lefty ideas and work with them exclusively. (Slight hyperbole)
What I found out is that college gave me an unrealistic idea of what actual change and organizing is. All the systems that you had convinced yourself you had dismantled in your own politics still exist in our base, and most haven't had the luxury of exclusive thinking about it.