The things we can change: Weekend reads for November 16, 2024

What we're reading this week

Hey, folks! Anand here. Happy (?) weekend!

What a time we live in. I’m still processing it all, as are many of you, I’m sure.

To process, I read. And so, in what has become a Saturday ritual for our subscribers, here are some readings we commend to you.

These “Weekend Reads” aren’t just a collection of links. They’re carefully curated to stretch and challenge you, and to help you consider what you otherwise might not. They are a perk for our supporting subscribers, who make what we do possible.

A theme of this week’s reads is the real changes that can and must be made, in the short and long term. In the readings below, you will hear about how blue states can protect the vulnerable, how the Democratic party must decide whether it serves the donor class or the people, how a real opposition can build political power and more. And, as we’ve discussed several times this week, legacy news organizations need to recognize their flaws and radically change their role, but podcasts, short- and long-form video influencers, and independent newsletters like this one — along with their readers, listeners, and viewers — need to start building the media of the future.

But first, we’ve been asking the most thoughtful people we know to reexamine their presuppositions, abandon their priors, and imagine what a renewed, revamped fight for democracy in the challenging years ahead might look like. One of the thinkers we talked to this week — the writer Heather McGhee — has an unmatched ability to diagnose political ills and suggest a cure:

I think this is why in late-stage capitalism, in an era of astounding inequality, clear populist messages continue to win the day. An anti-status quo message; throw the bums out. Politics will keep whipsawing this country back and forth until there is a fundamental political realignment and the Democrats get more coherent on the class agenda so that they are not co-opted by phony populism.

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We hope The Ink will be essential to the thinking and reimagining and reckoning and doing that all lie ahead. We want to thank you for being a part of what we are and what we do, and we promise you that this community is going to find every way possible to be there for you in the times that lie ahead and be there for this country and for what it can be still.

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Readings

When were the Democrats woke?

I don’t think we’re that far apart as it may seem. But the thing I’m sitting with is, we do need to be able to speak to Americans in the mood that they're in. And the mood that they're in today is one of change, one of wanting to understand the cultural changes that are happening in the country around race and gender and sexuality. And also their pocketbooks, their pocketbooks are empty; things cost too much. And so we need to do all of the things. I think what I’m frustrated with is there’s been all this talk this past week about how Democrats need to abandon the “woke” part of their party and very little talk about abandoning the billionaires who are part of their party, who are harming our ability to speak in terms of class warriors and not just cultural warriors.  [Waleed’s Substack]