May Day
Weekend reads for May 3, 2025
Hello, friends and readers, and a happy Saturday to all of you! We’ve made it through another week, and on to some rest, some reading, and even some speaking out.
This week, we hit the 100-day mark of the Trump regime, and while it sure seems like it’s been 100 years of chaos and institutional destruction already, we were also reminded by that Trumpism is not inevitable or inexorable. It can be fought, and even defeated.
The state of Maine did, as Governor Janet Mills had threatened, see Donald Trump in court — and won a settlement, restoring funds unlawfully impounded by the White House. Law firm Perkins Coie, meanwhile, refused to comply as so many white-shoe firms had done, and fought the executive order targeting it for its past work with the Hillary Clinton campaign. This week, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell permanently blocked the order, striking it down as unconstitutional.
And May Day — the international labor day — finally became a thing in the U.S., as the growing 50501 movement, immigrants’ rights groups, and a host of other organizations and individuals found common cause with organized labor against the oligarchs and got out into the streets at more than 1,000 rallies nationwide. Actions continue this weekend across America; visit May Day Strong to find an event near you today, and for information on more to come.
Here at The Ink, we’ve been reading (and we did a bit more than usual this week, as we prepared for the launch of The Ink Book Club — more on that in a moment). And as we do for our supporting subscribers each weekend, we’ve gathered the very best writing we’ve come across this week for you below.
As always, don’t doomscroll — bloomscroll! Before you head out today, and through the weekend as you can, we hope you’ll make some space to read and think. And we hope these readings entertain and challenge, and let you go deeper.
Among the links you’ll find in today’s edition of Weekend Reads:
Can we rebuild with community in mind, rather than property value?
What experimental music has to teach us about democracy
Waiting for the knock on the door — in America
Have the robots already come for your job?
A parent’s argument against the “pronatalists”
Schrödinger’s cat at 90, and what the thought experiment tells us about making decisions — and their multiversal implications
You won’t want to miss any of it. Thank you so much to our supporting subscribers for making this newsletter possible. If you haven’t yet joined our community, why not become part of this, and help us build the future of independent media today?
In case you missed it
Read with us
Behind the scenes at The Ink, we’ve been working to bring you something new and exciting — a book club about democracy for our supporting subscribers — and when we finally launched our new Book Club on Tuesday, we were incredibly happy to find that so many of you find the idea just as exciting as we do. We’ve been working with the editor and critic Leigh Haber, who ran Oprah’s book club for a decade, to build a book club especially for subscribers to The Ink, and she’ll be sending out discussion prompts, hosting chats and live conversations, and more over the weeks and months to come.
We can’t wait to read together, and we’re already getting started on our first book: Abundance, by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, a provocative look at a possible future that’s already generated a ton of productive debate. And we look forward to generating even more debate right here with all of you, here at The Ink. For more, some words from Anand and Leigh (and visit the link below for all the details).
Dr. Abdul El-Sayed on radical empathy and reclaiming patriotism
We talked this week with Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the physician, epidemiologist, and former gubernatorial candidate running for Senate in Michigan. He delivered not just an incisive critique of what’s wrong with the country, rooted in a doctor’s first questions to a patient (What’s wrong? How can I help?) but a vision that prioritizes what’s essential and great about America, built on his understanding as a child of immigrants that the United States is — and must remain — a place where you can speak your mind, build the future you want for yourself and your kids, and where you don’t get disappeared for saying the wrong things.
To take on the ills in our politics, he told us, we need to take a position of hope and of love. Not just to beat Donald Trump politically, but to reach out to Trump voters — not to convince them that they were wrong, but to give them the space to understand what’s right.
It’s pretty clear to us now why El-Sayed left medicine for public service — he is a truly inspirational political voice. If you missed our conversation, you’ll want to visit the link below and watch the full video.
And now, your Weekend Reads
The fire this time
Generational wealth is individual wealth, not community wealth. And if the point is to build generational wealth, then selling property, turning it into multifamily dwellings or whatever it might take to make a profit is to be expected. But if we see the struggle of Black Altadenans to hold on to their land and rebuild motivated only by a desire to build monetary wealth, then we misunderstand what’s going on and what made this community special. For most Black residents, Altadena was never just real estate; it was a promise. [Hammer & Hope]
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The.Ink to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.