#unionize everything

With everything being horrible, and life unaffordable, I haven't been in a position to celebrate birthdays or Christmases the way I would like, for some time. Gradually, they became less and less reasonable, then became completely unattainable. This has been like a living nightmare for me, for being a very birthday (usually not my own)/Christmasy person. I've had to spend my entire life in survival mode, but it has in particular been a very hellish reminder of how rotten modern life has become (and it was already shit).

Now, I've had to pivot to mostly just trying to survive the day, and maybe think of something fun to spend my time doing that isn't work, or that at least doesn't feel like it. So this year, on the night before my birthday, I ended up deciding to watch Bruce and E Street's 1979 concert from the No Nukes tour, and even though it's been especially hard to enjoy anything for multiple years, and I feel increasingly disappointed in Bruce, this was the old days, when they kicked ass, and the concert showed why they're pretty much the tightest group of people who have ever performed together. They're on the same psychic wavelength, and it shows.

Over the course of around an hour-and-a-half, I absolutely dug in, was dancing all over the place, doing the call-and-responses (I've been doing this my whole life, I know the cues), and then cried a whole bunch during Clarence's "Jungleland" solo. Aaaand then immediately rewound and filmed it on my phone.

It ended up being this really incredible energizing experience, and gave me the sense that in that moment, something good and necessary was happening to me, for the first time in a long time. I even had this vision of myself, outside my body, revolving around myself first as a child in cup headphones listening to this same music, the room evolving around me as I grew into the present. It felt like something, when nothing has felt like anything in a very, very long time.

Some time has passed since that day, and I can't say that things have noticeably improved, at least not in the ways I've been striving for, but at least I've got the video to remind myself that it still could be a harbinger of change. And so, I share it with you:

Distraction tactics⭐️why there is no Dem resistance⭐️an automated government⭐️folding a fake ceasefire into an AIPAC rebrand⭐️Mamdani falling in line as new AOC⭐️and MORE!!