Project 2025, part two

"You mean it gets worse?!"

Hey, friend! You may have heard that my concern about November has manifested in a 6-month social media series across 6 different social media platforms. I’ll provide a link to content in each at the bottom of the newsletter so you get a glimpse into the structure I’m using, but four weeks a month through the end of October, you’ll get a Friday email summarizing a week’s content right here. :) I hope you find it helpful, and if there are other folks in your life you think care about democracy, religious freedom, workers, and other justice issues, I’d be delighted if you shared the newsletter or the socials! I’m putting in a good 30 hours a week this month to put everything into place. I hope it ends up serving you well!

(I asked AI to create an image of a superhero kicking Project 2025 into outerspace, so you and I could have some fun.)d

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What’s going on today:

I want to talk a little more about Project 2025, which is an almost 1,000-page document by extreme right wing organization The Heritage Foundation and 80 of their favorite organizations to dismantle the federal government.

Before you get all excited about that, I mean they plan to eliminate the department of education, they plan to turn the Department of Justice into free legal help for all their friends instead of actually serving justice, and ohhhhh, to reign in that radical leftist governmental body, the Pentagon. Here’s a quote from an AP article about Project 2025: “There are proposals to have the Pentagon “abolish” its recent diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, what the project calls the “woke” agenda, and reinstate service members discharged for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine.”

The Heritage Foundation is already training thousands of people to become bureaucrats who can show up on day one in every division of the government to dismantle it from the inside. I want to make sure that’s something we’re paying attention to as we consider what we’re willing to do for democracy in the days leading up to the election.

This has happened before:

I recently read Timothy Eagan’s book A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, And the Woman Who Stopped Them. Did you know that in the 1920s, the KKK had effectively taken over local and state governments in parts of the south, the Midwest, and the west coast, and they had enough powerful elected officials—and clergy—among their ranks that they were actually poised for electoral victory? I can’t recommend the book highly enough, and I want to note two things: it was chilling how easily they recruited people with an unvarnished agenda of hate, but also, there were enough people who believed in democracy and equal justice for all, and who were willing to do something about it, that they pulled away the veil and the KKK’s rapist murderer con-man leader (DC Stephenson) was taken down VERY quickly. Sunlight turned out to be the best disinfectant then, and it still is today.

People who stood up in the past:

One of my favorite stories in Fever in the Heartland, is about the Notre Dame football team. You know they’re called the Fighting Irish, but do you know why? Well, Indiana was the center of power for the Klan in those days, and the Klan HATED Catholics. When the Klan marched on South Bend, Notre Dame students were told to stay in their dorms. Instead they showed up at the march, tore off people’s hoods, chased the Klan members into their headquarters, bought all the potatoes at a local grocery store (yes that was an intentional nod to their heritage) and threw them at the windows in the tower until the star football player broke the light in the cross of their building. Some say this is where the name The Fighting Irish came from. So a reminder from our movement ancestors at Notre Dame: standing up against injustice can be your best legacy.

What’s making me cranky (we won’t always include this but this week here it is)

One of the things I hate about activism these days is all the folks I don’t want to defend that right wing trolls try to pressure me into supporting. I don’t love Target—they’re not great with labor practices, they bowed to pressure to let their pharmacists refuse to provide Plan B if it “went against their religious beliefs,” they rely on how disposable their products are so we keep buying them. And they really left a trans activist hanging when he did some art for their Pride collection and then got doxxed by right wing extremists playing games with his safety. But because internet trash-starters made up a lie that Target was selling trans-promoting swimwear to children, I’m stuck defending Target. And some beer that the right wing internet trolls decided in trans beer. AND THE PENTAGON FOR BEING WOKE. It is stupid. It is exhausting. And they have too much hate and too much free time and it’s all a distraction from their LITERAL EFFORTS TO DISMANTLE THE GOVERNMENT AND TAKE AWAY CIVIL RIGHTS AND RELIGIOUS FREEDOMS.

If you want to delve more deeply into solutions:

If you want to learn more about Project 2025, the folks at The Conversation have a really good summary, including its goal of eliminating the Fed so we can have “free banking.” Seriously tho.

I may already have mentioned that the org I learned a LOT about Project 2025 was Democracy Forward, a legal defense fund taking on Project 2025 and extreme right wing school boards and so much more, all for free. If these issues matter to you, they’re a great group to follow, learn from, and support.

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Thanks so much for staying in communication with me through substack. I mentioned that this weekly newsletter is a condensing of content you can find on various social media channels. I’m doing videos 6 days a week on 6 channels, so here are samples from each one. I’d love if you followed me there—it sounds different out loud, plus I try to use good memes. :D

Here’s a Motivation Monday reel from my facebook account.

Here’s a Truth-telling Tuesday reel from my Insta.

Here’s a Wellness Wednesday reel from my LinkedIn.

Here’s a Throwback Thursday reel from TikTok.

Here’s a Forebear Friday reel from Twitter. (They temporarily froze my account because I included the phrase “Christian Nationalism” in my caption. Some diamond mine heirs are so sensitive!)

Here’s a Snarky Saturday reel from my Substack Notes. Which I’m still figuring out. It’s like twitter? Or threads? Maybe you need the app to get the full experience?

Like, follow, share—it all helps, since the algorithms have changed my access and presence so much over the past year.

Grateful for you!