In this conversation, Peter Laarman tells Dick and Sharon how he resisted reading the sprawling new biography of James Baldwin—Nicholas Bogg’s James Baldwin: A Love Story—out of deep respect for this great writer. The reviews were all telling Peter that Boggs digs into the details of his subject’s sex life. This turned me off, says Peter, even though I am a gay man who has not been averse to slurping up the salaciousness in profiles of other gay icons. Peter went on to tell us the he resisted in this case, however, because he could not help recalling that Baldwin himself, who wrote beautifully and often about the challenges of intimacy and vulnerability, was forever reluctant to have his sexuality brought under the microscope. He thought it was vulgar. And to the end of his life, he also remained deeply conflicted about his attraction to men and sometimes boys, which is not at all surprising in view of his origin story and the straitened circumstances of his unlikely and difficult rise to recognition and respect. To read this story in full click here

lder activists talk a lot about “passing the torch” to the next generation.

After spending time with AngelMarie Taylor, I’m beginning to think we may have the metaphor wrong.

Young people like Taylor aren’t standing around waiting for somebody to hand them a torch. They have already picked it up. The more urgent question is whether those of us who have been doing this work for decades are prepared to support them, listen to them and help clear obstacles out of their way.

Taylor is a Youth Vanguard Organizer with Black Lives Matter Grassroots, and when I recently interviewed her, I was struck by the contrast between her youth and the amount of organizing she has already packed into her life.

During her years at California State University Channel Islands, she was active with groups including Students for Quality Education, the Black Student Union, reproductive and gender-equity organizing, Students for Justice in Palestine and Students Against Fascism.

But her activism started long before college.

It started when she was 10 years old.

Organizing Because Children Needed Lunch

Taylor told me that she and her siblings sometimes went to school without being able to afford lunch. Rather than accepting that as simply the way things were, she joined student government and began working to make food universally available at her school.

“I started as a student organizer when I was 10 years old,” she told me. “There were so many situations where myself and my siblings were going to school and could not afford lunch.”

That first experience taught her something enormously important: organizing could actually change conditions. To read the full article go to the LA Progressive

Mario is a longtime LA Progressive contributor, political strategist, broadcaster, policy commentator, and now Substack writer. He is also very funny—although he insists he is not a comedian.

“I hear that a lot,” he told me when we recently sat down to talk. “Sometimes the only way to deliver honesty is with a little bit of humor.”

The humor helps, because what we ended up discussing was anything but funny.

We began with California unemployment. From there we moved to federal budget cuts, local government austerity, corporate media, the manosphere, Latino men who shifted toward Donald Trump, the disappearance of pathways into the middle class, and finally to the question underneath all of it:

Can Americans who are being squeezed by the same economic system recognize one another as allies before we are persuaded to fight over the scraps?

Mario thinks we can.

But first, he says, we have to understand the frame.

California Unemployment Is Rising. The Media Is Missing the Role of Federal Funding Cuts

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The Cuts Happened in Washington. The Pain Arrives Locally.

One of Mario’s central concerns is the growing disconnect between decisions made by the federal government and the consequences people experience months later in their neighborhoods.

Federal budgets are abstract.

A closed clinic is not.

A laid-off social worker is not.

A city eliminating services is not.

Neither is a family suddenly discovering that an organization it depended upon no longer has the staff or money to help.

Mario argues that this delayed effect allows political responsibility to disappear.

Donald Trump returned to office and his administration moved aggressively to cut federal spending, personnel, grants, and programs. Elon Musk became the public face of that campaign, at one point quite literally appearing onstage wielding a chainsaw as a symbol of government-cutting zeal.

The theater was memorable.

What happens after the theater is less visible.

Communities can absorb financial shocks for a while. States move money around. Cities tap reserves. Nonprofits reduce expenses. Agencies freeze hiring. Organizations stretch grants further.

Then the cushion disappears.

“And now people are feeling the cuts,” Mario told me. “Many times we don’t associate what we’re feeling on the ground with where the funding source is.”

That distinction matters.