We the People Do the Work

While the broligarchy doubles down on cringe

In celebration of spring and the end of the semester, let’s just focus on good news this week, because let’s be honest, there are way more of us out there doing what needs to get done to make this a functioning society than there are bro-dweebs confused about their newfound power and recklessly installing Signal on unsecured computers to message their wives about the warfighting.

Last weekend there were almost a thousand protests in towns and cities across America, and Rachel Maddow did the best in her extensive coverage, even shouting out Greenville at minute 11:33.

Kathryn Harvey, chairwoman of the Spartanburg County Democratic Party and community activist, launched a podcast this week, The Upstate Tea. She’s a force, y’all. Tune in for all the news you can use to fight the system up here.

In the Lowcountry, We Are Family opened the first community center for queer youth, next to their thrift store Closet Case in North Charleston. Kudos to these activists and leaders for protecting our young people.

Protecting the youth, unlike the House Rep for the Lowcountry. Because this is GOOD NEWS I’m not going to even say her name or what she did but I do love that Esquire nominated her as this week’s Biggest Train Wreck. Indeed.

I’m also not going to talk about the administration’s super cringe proposals to boost the (white) birth rate but read

lyz

instead for the catharsis.

Dingus of the Week: The Men’s Cabinet on Incentivizing Females to Baby

Yesterday was Honors Day at Presbyterian College and it’s always one of my favorite days of the year—to see the brilliance of our faculty and students on display in poster sessions, thesis presentations, creative writing readings, art exhibits and theater productions.

English major and WGST minor (and former Student Government president) Ella Casto-Waters presented on her experience attending the Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations in March, and let me tell you, knowing she is about to graduate and join the world gives me so much hope.

My friend and department colleague Kendra Hamilton (who writes

Escaped from Cultivation

here) won our highest research honor last year, and gave a fire speech at our Honors Day Convocation, calling out book bans, censorship and the assault on higher ed (she might let me publish it here, keep an eye out). She also won Professor of the Year, so we’ll get another fabulous speech at commencement. Check out her recent book on the Lowcountry Romancing the Gullah in the Age of Porgy and Bess (and order for your libraries).

And finally, in some of the best personal news for me, I’m on the cusp of starting my sabbatical, which I’ll devote mostly to this newsletter (let me know if there’s more you want me to cover) and my academic book project on writers from the Anglophone Caribbean and their connections to Cuba. For the book project, I received a British Library fellowship to be in residence for three weeks this summer in the Andrew Salkey archive (Jamaican writer). Getting funding for work in the humanities is always a rare thing, even more challenging when the American president is obliterating federal support for research across the board. So I’m really grateful to receive funding from the UK and have some resources to get the book off the ground.

So while the drunk guy in the corner (the Trump administration) drools all over themselves and breaks things, the rest of us are cleaning up the party and getting on with life. Glad we’re getting through it together.