WDA MN Newsletter
2025-09-06
Happy September!
I have hope this week, even though I'm discouraged by the cruelty, destruction, and misinformation going on. One person can't and doesn't have to do everything, because millions are doing something to defend science, to end gun violence and school shootings, to end the genocide in Gaza, to protect health care, to defend the US Constitution, to protect the environment, and to end Trump's militarization against us all. There are so many issues that people are working hard to change. It's heartening. Rebecca Solnit, in an interview, said. "...I use hope. And by hope I mean a kind of positive engagement with uncertainty...we don’t know what’s going to happen. In that lack of certainty is a sense, sometimes, of possibility. That means that if we try, we might win something and it’s worth trying..."
So many are rising to support democracy. So many are responding with compassion and a deep search for knowledge. You are one! For example, it's exciting to witness the creativity in Carter Meland's lyric essay "Crossing Cuyahoga," with its path of surprise, surrealism, humor, and double-tracked guitars.
This week, I traveled to Itasca State Park and noticed hundreds of acorns falling from the trees. Stepping on them risked slipping. This week I also learned about activist Theodore Parker, a Unitarian minister and abolitionist in the 1800s. About change, he said "Many acorns must be sown to have one come up; even then, the plant grows slow; but it is an Oak at last." It is this oak that I look forward to, the vision of a compassionate system of government by the people for the people.
— Sheila
From the Journal
Crossing Cuyahoga
"Crossing Cuyahoga" is a piece of creative nonfiction that tackles Lou Reed and other rock 'n roll animals, misrepresentation of Native peoples, burning rivers, transplanted livers, and a possible end to the Trump era...
— Carter Meland
from
The Massachusetts Review, Volume 61, Number 4, Winter 2020, pp. 742-746
Events
Valeria Luiselli's Tell Me How It Ends
from the Loft
- When:
- September 6, 2:30–3:30pm
- Where:
- The Loft at Open Book
Mpls, MN
Valerie Luiselli was a translator for kids attending Immigration Court. The Loft Book Club has chosen her book, Tell Me How it Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions, for discussion.
Expression! A Fall Poetry Festival
Sponsored by Cracked Walnut
- When:
- September 18, 7:00–8:30pm
- Where:
- East Side Freedom Library
1105 Greenbrier St.
St. Paul, MN
As part of the Cracked Walnut Poetry Festival "Expressions!", poets/writers from Writers for Democratic Action will read works speaking out on political, social, and cultural occurrences in our country. Participants include Diane Jarvenpa (spokesperson for WDA), Kate Kysar, Michael Kleber-Diggs, Margaret Hasse, and Donna Isaac.
Alexis Pauline Gumbs on Survival is a Promise
The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde
Sponsored by The Givens Collection & The Loft
- When:
- September 17, 6:30pm
- Where:
- The Loft at Open Book
Mpls, MN - Cost:
- $15
Join The Loft, the Givens Collection of African American Literature & Moon Palace Books for an evening with writer Alexis Pauline Gumbs discussing her new book Survival is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde.
An Evening with Terrance Hayes
Sponsored by Literary Witnesses and The Loft
- When:
- October 2, 7:00–8:30pm
- Where:
- Plymouth Congregational Church
1900 Nicollet Ave
Mpls, MN - Cost:
- Free
This free event will include a reception and book signing. Books will be available for purchase from Milkweed Books. We recommend entering off LaSalle Avenue; free parking is available off Franklin Avenue.
Don’t miss the opportunity to join the Loft for a creative writing workshop with Terrance Hayes, the next day, October 3.
Twin Cities Book Festival
Sponsored by Rain Taxi
- When:
- Saturday, November 8, 10:00am–5:00pm
- Where:
- Union Depot
St. Paul, MN
25 Years of Celebrating Books & Book People
Rain Taxi’s Twin Cities Book Festival is the annual Minnesota gathering for readers, writers, publishers, and purveyors of all things literary. The TCBF features dozens of presenting authors, special children’s programs, and a wide variety of exhibitors featuring new and rare books, quirky literary curiosities, and more.
Opportunities
“The Power of Bridging: how to build a world where we all belong by john a. powell
Free Book & Book Club!
from Black Garnet Books and the Bush Foundation
"Black Garnet Books and the Bush Foundation have teamed up to bring you The Power of Bridging: how to build a world where we all belong by john a. powell. Bush is offering free copies of the book to anyone located in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and the 23 Native nations sharing that geography. We just ask that you use your free copy to try and practice how you might be a bridger in your life.
"We have over 5,000 orders and are working to get orders out to you as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience. You will receive an email confirmation once your order has shipped."
It Can't Happen Here
Participate in a staged reading
The Minnesota chapter of Writers for Democratic Action seeks to bring a staged reading of Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here to local communities. We have the script. If you (as an individual or as an organization) would like to participate or partner with us, please write to hello@writersfordemocraticactionmn.org.
In 1936, It Can't Happen Here, a stage adaptation by Sinclair Lewis of his own bestselling novel, opened simultaneously on 21 stages in 17 states across America one week before that year's presidential election. It served as a warning against the rise of fascism in America.
It Can't Happen Here – Again by Writers for Democratic Action is both an homage to the 1936 production as well as a call to action now. Since the return of Donald Trump in 2024, more than a hundred productions of this free, easily mounted script have been performed in theaters, living rooms, churches, bars - everywhere folks gather to say No! to the rise of Fascism in America.
Rhythm and Revolution: The America at 250 Poetry Project
Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library
- Deadline:
- October 31, 2025
In celebration of the 250th anniversary of signing the Declaration of Independence, the Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library is conducting an open call for new/original (unpublished) poetry. Inspired to AASLH, his upcoming anniversary is an opportunity for us as a people to engage with history and reflect upon the full sweep of our nation's past "beginning millennia before 1776 and continuing to the present – to build a stronger future."
The Friends of the SPPL hope that the poetry recognized through this project adds to meaningful dialogue and mutual understanding. Submission deadline: Friday, October 31st, 2025. For guidelines and more information, click the link and scroll down the page for all the details.
A Welcome Holiday
Call for work from Writers for Democratic Action (national)
- Deadline:
- October 28, 2025
"Need a holiday from anti-immigrant rants? Let’s flip the narrative by going all out for National Immigrants Day on October 28. If you’re surprised to learn this holiday is on the calendar, you’ll be more surprised to learn it was Republican President Ronald Reagan who put it there in 1987, famously saying, 'More than any other country, our strength comes from our own immigrant heritage and our capacity to welcome those from other lands.'
"He should know. When the president was shot in 1981, immigrants saved his life.
"There are plenty of stories like this to refute the current fearmongering and demonizing. As to who is a legitimate American, the census bureau estimates that 98% of the population is descended from immigrants."
Voice of Democracy Essay Contest
Sponsored by the VFW
- Deadline:
- Oct. 31, midnight
- Where:
- Bring the entry form to your local participating VFW Post
The VFW is dedicated to promoting patriotism and investing in our future generation. If you are a democracy-loving high school student interested in a $35,000 college scholarship or a patriotic middle school student interested in winning $5,000, these scholarships may be for you.
The 2025-26 theme is: "How Are You Showing Patriotism and Support for Our Country?"
Our Opportunities Page
We will keep an evolving list of opportunities on our website. We welcome your suggestions.
News & Resources
We Were Made for This
"We live and die by stories, are fed and freed by the good ones, trapped and sometimes quite literally killed by the bad ones"
from Meditations in an Emergency (Rebecca Solnit)
"Twenty years ago, on August 29, 2005, a huge hurricane hit the Gulf Coast. New Orleans's levees failed, as had been predicted, and much of the city went underwater. Although the authorities had issued a mandatory evacuation order, they had provided no resources to the many who were too poor to evacuate. They were left behind. The levees broke, the city flooded with water polluted by sewage and by the oil refineries all around, the power went out, supplies were scarce. Almost immediately after the storm hit and the city flooded, mainstream news organizations and government leaders began cooking up stories about those mostly poor, mostly Black people who were left in the city--racist stories that they were marauding hordes, murderous gangs, rampaging looters.
"The fictional stories about savage mayhem had real consequences. The flooded city was essentially sealed off, and thousands were trapped in the hot, befouled, broken city. Across the Mississippi from New Orleans, the sheriff of Gretna and his men literally pointed guns at those who tried to walk across the bridge to dry land. The federal government prevented rescuers from entering the city. The police chief decided protecting retail goods was more important than people.
"FEMA, the Federal Emergency Response Agency, had been rendered incompetent by nepotistic appointments and a right-wing government convinced that terrorism was the only threat that mattered. FEMA officials suspended search and rescue operations, claiming it was too dangerous, and the police shot at a significant number of unarmed Black people, maiming and killing some of them.
"There is a story about human nature that serves authoritarianism well: the idea that we are either too feckless or too vicious to function in the absence of strong authority backed by the threat of violence"
"...we have great agency, including the ability to stop telling a particular story...maybe to notice what the story does, whether it helps or hinders..."
Why I Write
"What I have most wanted to do...is to make political writing into an art."
—George Orwell
from The Orwell Foundation
"What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art. My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art’. I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. But I could not do the work of writing a book, or even a long magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience. Anyone who cares to examine my work will see that even when it is downright propaganda it contains much that a full-time politician would consider irrelevant. I am not able, and do not want, completely to abandon the world view that I acquired in childhood. So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information. It is no use trying to suppress that side of myself. The job is to reconcile my ingrained likes and dislikes with the essentially public, non-individual activities that this age forces on all of us."
Digital Security Education
Explore resources, training, and other services you can use to protect your work and your sources in the digital age
from Freedom of the Press Foundation
"Freedom of the Press Foundation’s Digital Security training team is dedicated to safeguarding journalists, documentary filmmakers, and their sources from digital threats. Our team of experts provides training services and resources designed to protect you from surveillance, prevent hacking attacks, mitigate online harassment, and much more."
AI is Starting to Secretly Edit Your Files
from Mark Hurst (Creative Good)
"One of the scarier headlines I’ve recently comes from the BBC: YouTube secretly used AI to edit people’s videos (August 24, 2025). This is just as I predicted on Techtonic a few weeks ago in my episode on three emerging dystopias (July 28, 2025), in which I warned that Big Tech AIs would – at some point in the future – start modifying the primary sources that we rely on as sources of truth.
"I never guessed that it would happen so soon."
Online News Publishers Face 'Extinction-Level Event' from Google's AI-Powered Search
from NPR
"Publishers worry about a time when Google stops sending traffic to websites altogether. Tech observers and publishers have dubbed such a scenario "zero-click" searching, or Google Zero. It's an event that would be catastrophic to many major news sites and other online publishers that rely on traffic-based online advertising revenue, according to advocates for the media organizations.
"'Google is using our content without compensation, offering no meaningful way to opt out without disappearing from search entirely — and then turning around and using that same content to compete with us,' said Danielle Coffey, who leads the News/Media Alliance, which represents more than 2,000 outlets. 'It's parasitic, it's unsustainable and it poses a real existential threat to many in our industry.'"
Hypertext Resistance
Reading lists ::: lists of links
from Northern Action
web building ::: spiderwork
"The old-school act of reading, questioning, puzzling, integrating, reflecting and sharing articulate, transparent links to information is one of our superpowers of resistance. We cede it at our peril. It is the relational agency provided by the hyperlink in digital spaces that gives us ladders/bridges to each other and to particular writers/journalists/artists — sources that are being subsumed, consumed, erased by the AI profit machine ..."
"Palestine is a moral litmus test for the world,"
— June Jordan
Israel bombed Gaza hospital a second time, killing rescuers, say health officials
Israel’s attack on hospital in Gaza may constitute a war crime on many fronts
from the Guardian
"Israel bombed the main hospital in southern Gaza on Monday and then struck the same spot again as rescuers and journalists rushed to help the wounded, killing at least 20 people including five journalists, health officials said.
"The first strike hit the top floor of a building at the Nasser hospital, killing the Reuters journalist Hussam al-Masri and others. Journalists and rescuers then rushed to the scene to help the wounded, when a second bomb struck the same spot, 15 minutes later.
"A live video from AlGhad TV captured the moments of their killings, showing civil defence workers wearing bright orange vests and journalists raising their hands to shield themselves seconds before the second bomb kills them. A second video showed the aftermath of the bombings, with the bodies of the first responders and journalists lying on top of one another, bloody and covered in dust."
The Israeli Assassination of Journalist Anas al-Sharif and Five Colleagues in Gaza City
Israel has now killed 238 journalists in Gaza
from Drop Site News
"The prominent Palestinian journalist Anas al-Sharif was buried in Gaza City on Monday, a broken slab of rock used as a headstone, one day after his assassination by the Israeli military. Five other journalists —four from Al Jazeera, Mohammed Qraiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Moamen Aliwa, and Mohammed Noufal, and one from media outlet Sahat, Mohammed Al-Khalidi—were killed alongside him and also laid to rest.
"All six were killed on Sunday night in an Israeli airstrike on their media tent outside Al-Shifa hospital in what the Israeli military proudly proclaimed was an assassination targeting al-Sharif. Israel has now killed 238 journalists in Gaza, according to the Government Media Office."
We Teach Life, Sir
Rafeef Ziadah: poet
from Rafeef Ziadah
"Today, my body was a TV’d massacre that had to fit into soundbites and word limits."
"Civil rights activist Angela Davis says that Ziadah’s words 'hit you right in the heart. They are more powerful than any weapon.'"
Resisting Erasure: Capital, Imperialism and Race in Palestine
Rafeef Ziadah: essayist, journalist
from Politics Theory Other podcast
"Adam Hanieh, Rafeef Ziadah, and Robert Knox on their new co-authored book, 'Resisting Erasure: Capital, Imperialism and Race in Palestine'. We spoke about the inadequacy of framing the question of Palestine and the Gaza genocide solely as a humanitarian issue and how the Israeli project of settler-colonialism has been part and parcel of the expansion of European and American capitalism."
My Undesirable Friends
a Staggering Portrait of Russian Journalists in Dissent
"In Julia Loktev’s epic documentary, filmed before, during, and after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, several courageous Moscow reporters see their worst fears realized."
Coming soon ...
Fighting the Firehose
How to Counter Right-Wing Disinformation Without Playing Their Game
"The modern right’s media strategy is built on volume, speed, emotion, and repetition.
"It borrows from Russian propaganda playbooks, supercharges them with American capitalism, and distributes it through everything from podcasts to Facebook groups to memes. It's powered by think tanks, billionaire donors, fringe influencers, and culture war entrepreneurs.
"The goal isn’t to persuade people logically — it’s to shape the entire information environment. To confuse, demoralize, distract, and isolate."
So how do we fight back?
"Not by shouting into the void. Not by trying to fact-check every lie. But by using strategic, tested, and community-driven techniques - many drawn from how Eastern European democracies pushed back against Russian disinformation without becoming authoritarian themselves."
Learning About Scripted Violence
from the Anti-Authoritarian Playbook (Scot Nakagawa)
"Chip Berlet’s work examines how political rhetoric, especially coded language, can incite violence by portraying certain groups as existential threats, thus encouraging individuals to take violent action. His analysis highlights the responsibility of political leaders, media figures, and activists in shaping discourse that either promotes or discourages violence."
Nakaga always provides a clear breakdown of what is at stake, how authoritarianism works, and strategies to fight back.
Build your click-through agency by clicking on the link below. This practice is an act of resistance in an age of rising AI summaries that ask you to passively receive their generative text wthout clicking through to any original source of information — to accept them as a truth oraclei without the need for transparent logic or the citations behind their conclusions.
Writing Letters to the Editor
from Defend Research
"General guidance
- "Find the venue: Identify the newspapers in your community and get the details on their requirements.
- "Make it local: Your letter should respond to a recent article or event impacting your community; local connections to national issues must be clearly established.
- "Foreground the major points: make your most important points in the first paragraph, knowing that letters may be edited and that readers may be skimming.
- "Focus on impact: use your personal experiences and/or local statistics to illustrate the local significance."
- Keep it short: Letters should be about 150-300 words, as they are often edited for space or clarity; being concise gives you more control over your message.
- Identify yourself: News outlets will not print anonymous letters, so use your name, how you are connected to the community (resident, teacher, city employee, etc.), and any relevant professional affiliation."
Tell the USDA to Keep Their Hands OFF the Roadless Rule!
Writing Prompt
- Deadline
- September 19
Tell the U.S. Department of Agriculture to keep their hands OFF the Roadless Rule! America's roadless areas are far too important for wildlife, fish, and clean water to be handed over in a sweetheart deal to the timber, mining, and oil and gas industries.
Postcards to Voters
Writing Prompt
Postcards to Voters are friendly, handwritten reminders from volunteers to targeted voters giving Democrats a winning edge in close, key races coast to coast.
Write to us!
We want to hear from you. Send us an email and let us know about your projects. Please respond to hello@writersfordemocraticactionmn.org. We want to grow our list of resources on the WDA MN website, so send us the names of your favorite news sources, reading lists, podcasts, subscriptions, and other resources.
Thank you for being a part of Writers for Democratic Action.