The instinct that keeps this jam going is a feeling that artists, progressives and journalists should develop a shared consciousness in opposition to the neoliberal status quo.
These groups should have each other’s backs. Artists need a labor movement and a robust countercultural media. Working people need art that speaks to them and an honest public discourse that serves them. And (real) journalists need freedom from repressive, profit-driven corporations, which is to say they need readers to engage with their independent writing and broadcasts.
Subscribing is a free and easy way to expand your involvement with one or all of these fronts on a weekly-ish basis. In streamlined emails to come, you’ll get a favorite finding or two in each category, plus occasional words from guest writers.
Enjoy.
arts.
Passion of the Weiss. Est. 2005 and still hot-to-the-touch, a storied, multi-author pop music blog featuring some of the boldest curation in music journalism.
“Drake and The Weeknd got all the fanfare, but Rochelle’s sound was quietly influential. Where Drake took from the 808’s and Heartbreak Kanye and Aaliyah, Rochelle combined Control era-Janet Jackson with fluorescent British house and 2-step, and the moody Toronto music then starting to take off. Then, the bullshit of the music industry intervened… Now Jordan is poised to continue building on the impressive body of work she’s already created.” -Jayson Buford on Rochelle Jordan
labor.
Yet another Baffler piece, Britt Stigler on labor practices in ballet.
For lit junkies: Book Post’s Lorraine Kreahling on a new translation of Balzac, the best Catholic royalist that ever happened to socialism.
“Balzac created some 2,472 characters in ninety fictional works in a post-revolutionary France, where it must have felt like the ground was constantly shifting… His steady guiding hand in the midst of a crumbling social structure, where ‘gold was the new spirituality,’ as one of his characters puts it, made him particularly good pandemic reading.”
