Zohran's messaging, Katrina’s legacy, Labor Day

Weekend Reads for August 30, 2025

Happy Saturday, Ink readers, and welcome to the Labor Day weekend! Here at summer’s end, as we do each weekend for our supporting subscribers, we’ve collected below some of the most intriguing writing we’ve come across as we’ve read and researched this week. Among the links you’ll find in today’s edition of Weekend Reads:

• Can victory be salvaged from failure in the war against disinformation?

• Have we learned anything, twenty years on from Hurricane Katrina?

• What would Jesus do — as a political leader?

• How did Serbian students master leaderless resistance?

• Did Democratic inaction make things too easy for Trump?

• A Labor Day reading list

• And, as always, music from an unusual trio of sonic adventurers

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?

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In The Ink this week

All week, we’ve been presenting Anand’s profile of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, excerpted from his 2023 book The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy. Follow the links below for some essential insights into the roots of Ocasio-Cortez’s strategy, and plenty of lessons for our moment.

SUMMER READING: The inside-outside game

SUMMER READING: The inside-outside game, part two

SUMMER READING: The inside-outside game, part three

SUMMER READING: The inside-outside game, part four

SUMMER READING: The inside-outside game, part five

And a reminder: this Labor Day is another nationwide day of protests, and a great time to gather with friends and neighbors to fight oligarchy and remind everyone that America is about workers over billionaires, not the other way around.

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And now, your Weekend Reads

Making Mamdani

“It came from two imperatives of the campaign that we ultimately found video was the best medium,” Epstein said. “One was embedding Zohran in the kind of street-level life of New York City, putting him all over the city, interacting with people over the city in a million different contexts. And, through that, showing a great love for the city, which has become unbearably expensive and far too difficult for people to live in.” The idea was to make Mamdani into a “tour guide to a city amidst an affordability crisis, while also showcasing how the city is the living, breathing antidote to the narrow politics of the Trump administration.” [Defector]