Court anxieties, Netflix ruins the movies, organizing for the future: Weekend reads for January 4, 2025

What we're reading this week

Happy first Saturday of 2025, readers of The Ink!

It’s shaping up to be a tumultuous year already, so we hope everyone’s enjoyed some time to rest and recharge. And from what you’ve told us, it looks like you’re all focusing on the stuff that counts — the things that give you life. We’re hoping to be part of that, by bringing you more conversations with the smartest folks we can find about the issues that matter most, and by finding some of the most interesting writing out there each week. Today, we’ve got some great advice on what it takes to get organized in tough times, some thoughts on the Supreme Court’s deep-seated anxieties about criticism, a deep dive into how Netflix got so awful, an essay on why everyone’s been avoiding the real issues driving men to abandon institutions as women achieve and advance, and more.

But first, if you missed it over the holidays, we hope you’ll read our conversation with progressive visionary Felicia Wong, the longtime head of the Roosevelt Institute, the think tank where many of the ideas that drove the Biden administration’s best policies had their beginnings. She talked to Adam M. Lowenstein about what the Democrats need to do in the years ahead, and how it all comes down to recognizing the paramount importance of a single word: class.

So this idea that Democrats are losing workers is not new since this November. I think what is new is that many people in the mainstream media, the mainstream punditry, are really seeing this class shakeup. We’re seeing the term “class” used a lot more since this election — which, by the way, I think is a good thing because it shows us that we understand that we are in the middle of an economic realignment [and] a political realignment. We are in a place where many voters don’t feel like either party, Democratic or Republican, is a home for them, is fighting for them, is looking out for their interests.

This shift has already taken a lot of time. I would mark it beginning in 2016. Obviously 2024 was another marker. Right now, [as] I did say in that piece, “we are all post-neoliberals,” but who’s going to win this class realignment fight? Nobody knows. It’s a jump ball. The question of whether a more egalitarian, class-forward approach will win — which is what I would call a progressive approach — is highly dependent on what we build next.

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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

Get organized

The work before us will take many shapes. I have heard some people express dismay that some tactics, such as street protests, are not being pursued heavily in this moment. While a drop off in that kind of visible protest can be a bad sign, it can also indicate that people simply recognize that a tactic that was consuming a great deal of time and energy is not garnering the result they are seeking. The health of our movements should not be measured by our willingness to doggedly recreate the same patterns of action. If people are evaluating what’s working and what isn’t, and committing themselves to pursuits they believe will best address this moment, and make the most of their capacities, that’s a good thing. I see that kind of evaluation and reconfiguration happening in some of the communities I am a part of, and I am heartened by it. Not everyone is doing what I would do, or what I believe is most urgent, and that’s okay. [Organizing My Thoughts]