Substack Notes, Vol. 5.4
Jan. 22nd - 31st
I recently calculated that I’ve written enough words in the past year to more than duplicate the King James Bible. Here are some of my recent notes. For notes with a link in the body, just click on the orange textbox to explore…
I really enjoy the ‘notes’ feature. I’ve always mostly avoided Twitter/X to safeguard my mental health but ‘notes’ allow me to interact with other writers in a way that I’ve rarely done in the past.
I remain grateful for your attention and support. Have a great weekend!
Have we started the fire?
Yes! The fire rises…
“Activists may invoke the father of the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr., when defending blockades. That's understandable. It's also misguided. As I wrote in 2022:
Though King did lead a protest from Selma to Montgomery, famously filling the Edmund Pettus Bridge, it was a march. It did not block interstate and highway traffic indefinitely for the sake of it—a tactic King was not comfortable with, despite pressure in the 1960s to get on board. "Even though King didn't come out and criticize it in public, in private he thought it was a misguided tactic," Brandon Terry, assistant professor of African and African American Studies and Social Studies at Harvard University. "The NAACP thought it was ridiculous." King reportedly posited that such a move pushed the boundaries of acceptable demonstrations and would hurt the movement politically.
Protesting isn't meant to be convenient. But you might find it difficult to convince people you're the good guy when your blockades are hurting the vulnerable people you often claim to stand for…”
-Billy Binion for reason.com
reason.com/2024/01/26/no-blocking-traff…
Responding to: Is Green Activism based on good intentions? by Michael Magoon
