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December 31, 2024

New Year's Edition: Reimaginations vs. resolutions, my favorite longreads of 2024, and supporting caregivers in classrooms.

What’s your New Year’s Reimagination?

We’re entering the new year with a different take on resolutions! This year, we encourage you to reimagine one aspect of your life. Whether it’s your romantic relationships, your career, or your definition of community, consider: what do you want to reimagine?

Reimagining is no small feat. It requires us to…

1. Visualize beyond what we can see, placing faith in possibility

2. Get out of our comfort zone by practicing new ways to engage with ourselves and others

3. Be audacious in claiming the future we imagine

Each month, I’ll be sharing tools to help redefine and rebuild whatever you’re focusing on, and we’ll use the comments to share how we’re doing! In the meantime, you can decide on your focus by reflecting on the following prompts:

• What would a traditional New Years resolution look like once you've reimagined this aspect of your life?

• How will you look/act/behave when you’ve realized what you’re reimagining?

• What stories have shaped your understanding of your current state? How do those stories help you get where you want to be? How do they hinder?

There’s just a few hours left to help DonorsChoose reach their $3,000,000 goal! Today (and whenever you can) support teachers providing their students with warmth, food, and other direct needs. 100% of your donation goes to classrooms, and many classroom projects are matched for the holiday season, so your impact may go twice as far! Here are some examples of classrooms you can support:

• Ms. Timmons in Timmonsville, SC needs $135 more to add a fridge to their classroom to help keep food cold and fresh. All donations matched!

• Ms. Anaya in Los Angeles, CA needs $161 more more for their emergency kit in the case of a school shooting. All donations matched!

• Mr. Davis in Paterson, NJ needs $89 more to bring scrub sponges, advil, deodorizer, tissues, and Clorox wipes to their classroom. All donations matched!

• Ms. Collins needs just $107 more to provide snacks during her classrooms’s Lunar New Year celebrations. All donations matched!

Before, I’d link directly to classrooms, but because of your wonderful generosity, they would be fulfilled so quickly that other readers would be faced with a ton of dead links! If you can’t find the story I mentioned on this link, it means the classroom has already been fully funded. There are over 2,000 projects that could use the support of our community, so don’t let that stop you. You can also use the search filters to find classrooms closest to you.

Four years after protests against police violence, Khalif Miller is still calling for justice from prison. The Philadelphia native was arrested during the uprisings against police brutality in 2020, when hundreds of protesters faced federal charges and stricter punishments. Prism >

Hospitals are desperately understaffed. Could co-ops be an answer? Unionized staffing cooperatives like alliedup can offer workers not only better pay and benefits, but critical support and a measure ownership over their professional futures. In These Times >

New data shows just how bad the climate insurance crisis has become. Two congressional reports make clear that, with increasingly frequent hurricanes, floods, and fires, "the model of insurance as it stands right now isn't working." Grist >

Doctors warn thousands of Palestinians could die this winter from cold, hunger, disease. A new United Nations report finds that Israeli strikes on and near hospitals in the Gaza Strip have "pushed the healthcare system to the brink of total collapse." At least six babies have also died of hypothermia in recent days amid plunging winter temperatures. Democracy Now >

Luigi Mangione street and protest art crops up around the world. A Seattle mural portraying the accused UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter as the iconic Nintendo character is among many similar works in recent weeks. This article provides an interesting lens to how his actions have tapped into growing unrest. Hyperallergic >

How an empty internet gave us tradwives and Trump. Trump excelled at tapping into the information ecosystems where minority and young voters express their identity. I love anything Tressie McMillan Cottom chooses to share with the world, and this article is no different. I highly recommend following her on TikTok if you’re a fangirl like me!

More than 3,100 Indigenous students died at boarding schools in the United States between 1828 and 1970. The new estimate is three times the number of deaths reported earlier this year by the Department of Interior, according to a new investigation by The Washington Post. Democracy Now >

Biden commutes sentences of 37 of 40 federal death row inmates. Just three federal inmates are still facing execution: Dylann Roof, who carried out the 2015 racist slayings of nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina; 2013 Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of life Synagogue in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history. PBS >

His father bankrupted the Klan. Now he's going to Congress to continue the fight. Though Democrats will be in the minority in the House, Shomari Figures says that his mission hasn't changed. Capital B News >

A list of longreads that I’ve appreciated this year.

Real cowboys don’t say ‘yeehaw’. Black country aesthetics are now mainstream. Absent are the rural Afro-Texans who sustain the heritage and traditions of Black cowboy country life. Prism >

 In 1967, a Black man and a white woman bought a home. American politics would never be the same. What happened to the Bailey family in the Detroit suburb of Warren became a flashpoint in the national battle over integration. Politico >

The tragedy of Palestinian journalist Wael al-Dahdouh. After his wife and two of his children were killed in Gaza, Al Jazeera journalist Wael al-Dahdouh became famous around the world for his decision to keep reporting. But this was just the start of his heartbreaking journey. The Guardian >

Black Earth. In North Carolina, a Black farmer purchased the plantation where his ancestors were enslaved— and is reclaiming his family’s story, his community’s health, and the soil beneath his feet. Bitter Southerner >