Well well well…
Turns out podcasting is fun when you have time to do it, and less fun when you create made up deadlines amidst other more timely projects. The podcast will return, or will it? Stick around to find out.
Anyway - if you expected consistent structure for this substack I regret to inform you that this is a vehicle for me to share what I want and when I want, and that continues to change!
Today I want to share with you what I’ve been reading along with some new music.
I hope you are finding time this summer for joy and being in the sun and in the water.
With love and care,
Pele
Reading
A couple months ago I finished reading “Lost Prophet” by John D’Emilio, a biography on the life of Civil Rights leader Bayard Rustin. This was a fantastic book that told the inspiring and heartbreaking story of Bayard Rustin. I found a lot of resonance in Rustin’s political struggles and our present political moment. Rustin was a radical in the 1940’s and 1950’s who found himself in conflict with radicals in the 1960’s. Rustin wanted the movement for justice to build power within American institutions, while others hoped to overthrow the institutions altogether. The book tells the story of Rustin’s political career alongside his struggles to be accepted as a gay man in the civil rights movement. Lost Prophet is not a mythic tale and deals directly with Rustin’s mistakes and the trials and tribulations of the civil rights movement as it gave way to the Black power movement and the new left movements of the late 1960’s. I listened to this on audible, I’ve found audiobooks are a way for me to read - espeically with longer books like this one.
Recently an old comrade whom I respect dearly, Waleed Shahid, started his own substack. I met Waleed when I was an organizer in college and we found ourselves marching together in many protests in the 2010s. Waleed was a co-founder and former spokesperson for Justice Democrats, and more recently was a visionary behind the “Uncommitted” campaign in the Michigan Democratic primary. A lot of people who I talk with these days from the moderate-left spectrum are frustrated about how politics feels broken and change feels impossible. Waleed’s posts ground our current political moment in American history, and provide very useful frameworks to think about how change happens.
Naomi Klein’s book Doppelganger is a must-read to understand what is happening in our political and social discourse in America and around the world. Since 2016 and the mainstreaming of “fake news,” I have felt like America is existing in at least two very different realities. Klein has put a name to this dual reality, “the mirror world,” where every story has a counter narrative meaning its opposite. From covid to colonialism, Klein explores the duality of world history and politics - all while weaving in a personal story about her own Doppelganger Naomi Wolf.
I thought the mirror world was something that existed in far-right wing circles, but October 7th and the war on Gaza revealed how mirror world duality cuts across political and social lines. Depending on who you talk to about Israel and Palestine, there are two fully fleshed out competing stories about how one side is committing genocide against the other. Naomi Klein writes about how we’ve moved beyond simple disagreement, what we are dealing with is people perceiving completely different realities. Beyond living in different realities, each side is convinced that the other is brainwashed. Klein doesn’t provide an easy answer on how to bring reality back together, but her stories and analysis provide language and a framework to understand our world and the battle for truth and shared reality. Doppelganger was written before October 7th, but the chapters on Israel and Palestine are very relevant to the discourse that has emerged since October 7th. Klein has made her chapters on Israel/Palestine free on her website. You can listen where you get audiobooks or buy the book on her website directly.
Music
There is so much good music this summer. In the beginning of June I followed the Drake vs. Kendrick beef and played “Not Like Us” on repeat. I don’t have any big meaning to make about the rap beef, but it produced some good songs.
Last Friday, two bands I really like released albums on the same day. What a treat!
Lake Street Dive released their latest album “Good Together.” Lake Street Dive continues to put out fun, soulful, catchy music that I love listening pretty much any time of the day. Another band, Lawrence also put out a new album called “Family Matters.” I think of Lawrence as being kind of a Gen Z version of Lake Street Dive. Both of them have great vocals, catchy songs, and they are both bands led by white people who are clearly influenced by Black music culture in America. The leads in Lawrence are brother and sister which is also fun!
In April, Leyla McCalla released her newest album “Sun Without the Heat.” Blending American folk sounds with New Orleans and Creole styles, Leyla McCalla has an original sound that never disappoints. The album features slow reflective songs you might hear sitting on a porch overlooking a swamp alongside fast paced bustling songs from a busy marketplace. I love the title track “Sun Without the Heat” which is an adaptation of a famous Frederick Douglass quote.
The lyrics in the song go:
You want the crops without the plow
You want the rain without the thunder
You want the ocean without the roar of its waters
Can't have the sun without the heat
Douglass’s famous words are:
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.”
Do you have recs for me? Share them in the comments or reply to this email with an album, a writer, a youtuber that has been in your life lately.
Catch ya later,
Pele