“so, who am I if not the rain? / at once welcoming & // un-welcomed” – upfromsumdirt, “‘Sometimes It Snows In…’ (Well, You Know The Rest)”
First things first: new Lazy & Entitled Podcast this week! I interviewed the wonderful Bridget Gordon about things we artists can do to fight ICE, Bridget reads her poem “this fickle faith,” Brendan and I read Studs Terkel talking to Rip Torn, and Brendan plays some sick guitar. It’s very fun. Apple | Spotty | SoundCloud
This blog is going to be fun, I promise, but we gotta eat some vegetables first. I want to give a fair content warning (CW) about one the books talked about this week, because it features police torturing a Black woman in its first chapter. It features racism, misogyny, class-based discrimination, a difficult pregnancy, torture of a pregnant woman, and more. It’s a nonfiction book, so, like, I’m not spoiling anything, dude. You can know the broad contours of a story—including its happy ending—while still having a hard time with its contents.
One thing about CWs is that they’re somewhat designed for people who have experienced the traumas being discussed, so that those people can prepare themselves. CWs are not here to prevent scaredycat white boys from confronting the facts of history. I’m past telling people you must read this book, but I do want to say that if you are looking around the United States of 2025-2026 and thinking “this isn’t us?” Please do some reading. Crucially, if you’re concerned about how we get ourselves out of this mess? Please do some reading. Especially read anarchists, in this moment where Democrats are more concerned with appearing to “reforming Trump’s” ICE than abolishing ICE, and the news media is more concerned with asking “how young is 14 really” than it is with getting justice for Jeffery Epstein’s victims. The focus must be on bottom-up organizing, the mindset must be punk rock. We keep us safe.
I do promise this blog gets fun soon.
What I’ve Been Reading This Week
Two books that I’ve really been looking forward to. One even dropped into my lap, thanks to Mallory catching some book club ambitions this year. One is a book by someone I know about through Bluesky, and man, for all its ills, social media still comes through with the artist recommendations. The future probably shouldn’t include social media, but the future must include a way for artists to reach each other across cities, states, continents. These two books have me thinking about the future, too, because they both affirm a simple, beautiful truth: the future will have Black people. Some people may not like it, as we’ll see, but the future includes Black people, and Black people are beautiful (some people need reminding of that). I’m not just talking about my own child, either. I’m talking, of course, about Assata by Assata Shakur and The Shoes of The Fisherman’s Wife by upfromsumdirt.
Assata by Assata Shakur: the last two chapters are genuinely inspirational, so let’s start there. Hope is an overrated feeling, but let us begin with the hopeful. Assata, her daughter, and even her mother survive. They get to leave the United States. The FBI gave her mother a heart attack, but she survived. They live out their days (Assata died last goddamn year) in Cuba, which sounds like a great place. The struggle was worth it. Now, you and I can be inspired by it, we can learn from it. I was particularly moved by this passage on whether or not to have a child (she gets pregnant, consensually and by her partner, in prison): “‘I am about life,’ i said to myself. ‘I’m gonna live as hard as i can until i die. And i’m not letting these parasites, these oppressors, these greedy racist swine make me kill my children in my mind, before they are even born.” As someone who did used to wonder “why bring a child into a world on fire” and subsequently been overjoyed that I brought a child into the world? I’m glad Mallory and I didn’t let the fascists or Exxon Mobil or Robert Kennedy Jr. decide when we have children. And I’m grateful to Assata for validating those feelings.
The struggle is always worth it, because life is struggle anyway. That said, struggling super sucks. Assata is out-and-out framed for a bank robbery and a kidnapping, neither of which she committed. She is held in solitary confinement—which is torture—for over a year. The book doesn’t get into what did or did not happen on the New Jersey Turnpike, only the aftermath. The cops were definitely hunting her, though, and I don’t know how you can look at ICE in 2026 and not understand the need marginalized people in the U.S. to defend themselves from racist cops. Because the difference between the Klan, ICE, and regular cops is barely there. Abolish ICE, and abolish prisons, too.
We would be remiss not to put some focus on Assata’s arguments in favor of socialism. Her criticism of misogyny on the left. Her clear-eyed understanding that capitalism, aka the love of money, is the root of all evil. There’s some noirlike, runaway-on-the-street stuff that would be a fun few episodes if HBO ever makes a miniseries. Assata was committed to liberation, though, so let’s focus on that. One thing I learned from this book is that not only was the Black Panthers’ breakfast program an undeniable good, being disciplined enough to wake up at 4:30 because starving kids are worth your time and effort is even better. I wonder how we could do something like the free breakfast program today. Blowing whistles at ICE is one thing. Sustained neighborhood aid, though?
The Shoes Of The Fisherman’s Wife by upfromsumdirt: I had wildly high hopes for this collection of poems, and it more than delivered. Brother dirt’s mind is fascinating and wholly unique, but still comprehensible (at least to a weirdo like me). If So-crates commanded us to know thyself, brother dirt seems to know and embrace himself in every line.
There is an eye towards outer space and the future, but the poems are rooted in, well, dirt. There is tenderness and harsh truths. There is surprising imagery, there are musical lines, and there are parts where it feels like brother dirt is challenging the reader/audience about as aggressively as he can without alienating us entirely. Again, I’m a pretty weird guy reading this pretty weird book, but I genuinely loved it. Quoting blurbs is something of a lazy way to talk about a book, but Shipwrecked Sailor Blog favorite Ariana Benson is on the back cover, talking about brother dirt “using the English language against itself.” That feels very accurate (complimentary). I can’t recommend this collection enough.
LINKS!
Something to listen to while you browse? As I’m writing this, “Cabin Fever” by Seafoam Walls is hitting really hard. My little size-of-a-baseball bluetooth speaker is rumbling my desk. Video is sick, too. Some contemporary Black guitar geniuses in this band.
- Gonna put some good basketball writing as the links here, to complement Wednesday’s NBA column. BUT FIRST: this week in ICE. Border Patrol Shooting Survivor Marimar Martínez Testifies before Congress by Dave Byrnes in South Side Weekly, Evidence Shows Feds Lied To Justify Shooting Marimar Martinez, Lawyer Says by Melody Mercado and Facebook Removed Chicago’s Most Popular ICE Sighting Page. Now, Its Founder Is Suing by Mack Liederman in Block Club, Identified: the El Paso BORTAC crew rampaging through the Midwest by Steve Held in Unraveled, Right-wing media figures are furious at activists for using whistles during ICE activity by Payton Armstrong in Media Matters, Pursued by federal agents, suburban ICE observers remain resolved by Jon Collins in MPR News, We Are All We Have by Dan Sinker on his blog, Building the camps: the warehouseification of detention and initial thoughts on stopping it by Andrea Pitzer in her blog Degenerate Art, Republicans are the party of separating and destroying families. Never forget that by Moira Donegan in The Guardian, and there’s a FUCK ICE FEST benefitting the National Immigrant Justice Center at Beat Kitchen on Sunday.
- Tanking is an issue. It’s been an issue for a long time, but it’s particularly bad this season. My solution is to abolish the NBA draft, maybe let workers choose where they want to work. Here’s the great Tom Ziller, whose newsletter is the best way I know to keep up with the daily goings on of the league now that I don’t really have time to watch No Dunks, with a diagnosis of the tanking problem and a potential solution.
- Great piece from Kelly Dwyer about how it feels to watch basketball amid all this transaction talk, and how it probably feels to play basketball, too.
- Speaking of basketball feelings, I absolutely love what Katie Keindl has done with Basketball Feelings, the magazine, and really enjoyed this Kylie Cheung love letter to James Harden. I used to be a Harden hater, too, and I still wouldn’t exactly call myself a fan, per se. BUT. To pull back the curtain, I read Kylie’s piece, Ziller’s newsletter, and Kelly’s piece in that order on the same day, and something crystalized for me. I think the entire work structure of the NBA should just be blown up. It’s a really half-baked idea, but I’m so sick of speculation, I’m so sick of projections, I’m so sick of offseason drama. I feel like the NBA has totally lost the plot on what playing professional basketball should be1. So here’s my proposal: No draft, no trades, salary floor, salary cap. You’re eligible for the league when you’re 20 years old, and then you can sign with any team that’ll have you. Roster sizes are 15, and you must have two rookies on your team. Contracts range from one to three years. Players get to decide where they want to work, but teams still get to decide who they want to employ. Salary floor means teams can’t cheap out, salary cap means teams can’t buy championships. No trades means no tossing actual human beings around as “assets,” no draft means you can’t force a teenager to move to Oklahoma City or Sacramento unless they really want to/are otherwise out of options. No draft also means that if it’s your dream to play for the Celtics or the Lakers, you gotta be good enough to merit consideration from them. Both players and teams have incentive to be competent, and there is nothing to tank for. Will this result in less parity and more player movement? Probably! It would also be more meritocratic than the current system. More importantly, we could all get back to focusing on basketball instead of fucking spreadsheets and “assets.”
- Sorry for the mini-essay there. For the fifth link, please check out my friend Logan Trent’s podcast (co-hosted with Adam Tod Brown, whom I do not know, but who I did meet after a comedy show in Chicago like 12 years ago, and was very nice) WNBYay!, on the Unpops network.
What’re you still doing here? I know I’ve linked it before, but I hadn’t listened to it in a while. Let’s hear New Jazz Underground play MF DOOM and ride into the weekend.
If you work in the service industry, may you clean up in tips this weekend. Here are two Assata quotes to ponder during your shifts:
“I didn’t know what a fool they had made out of me until i grew up and started to read real history. Not only was George Washington probably a big liar, but he had once sold a slave for a keg of rum.” – would your boss sell you for a keg of rum?
“I have declared war on the rich who prosper on our poverty, the politicians who lie to us with smiling faces, and all the mindless, heartless robots who protect them and their property.” – who is prospering off of your labor this weekend?
Anyway, good luck with the brunch shift. Let’s hope the dunk contest is good this year.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris
- cool and fun. Professional basketball should be cool and fun. ↩︎