Dear John,

Was our split screen Presidential debate night a kind of metaphor for the year?

On Thursday night, on NBC, Donald Trump was grilled about white supremacy, his COVID-19 evasions, and three, count them, three different conspiracy theories. On ABC, Joe Biden took questions about our shared future: climate change, health care, the courts, gender equality, etc.

If it seems like there are two different universes of political thought, there are. But only one has a foundational commitment to the facts. The first, Trump’s, is a self-reinforcing network of right-wing outlets: Fox News, OANN, Sinclair, conservative talk radio, and online “news” sites. The second is all the rest of our media outlets. It’s a competitive ecosystem where reporters from the Wall Street Journal to Jacobin gain credibility by being faster and more accurate, not more ideologically pure and clickable.

This, dear reader, is not news to you. But it’s a setup for our fifth strategy for this election: preparing for the Presidential transition.

You, like us, may be worried about President Trump and Vice President Pence’s unwillingness to unambiguously commit to a peaceful transfer of power. It’s scary stuff, but it’s less scary when we get prepared together. And, hey, we’re Minnesotans, we know how to prepare for hard times. It’s snowing on October 16th.

Here’s four things you can do today to start getting ready for a difficult November 4th to January 20th.

First, ground yourself in the facts. We may not know the outcome of the election on Election Night. And the results may shift as mail ballots are counted. Some swing states allow ballots to arrive via the mail after Election Day: TX, PA, NC, VA, MN, NV, OH, and MI. And some states that require ballots to arrive by Election Day aren’t allowed to start counting mailed-in ballots early like GA, ME, NH, & WI. In Minnesota, mailed in ballots have until Nov. 10th to arrive. Our state elections can’t be certified till after then.

Second, follow credible sources of information. Our email last week had a huge list of reporters we love. Read them, not Facebook posts.

Third, think about what you could contribute during a contested transition. Could you mask up and go to a socially distant march? Could you organize your co-workers or family? Will you post on social media or hang a sign in your window? What could you do to make sure every vote counts?

Fourth, talk with others. We don’t need to panic, but we do need to prepare. It’s normal to feel nervous about this, but like a coronavirus, we have to be careful not to be super-spreaders of fear.

And remember, some Minnesotans get their information in the other media ecosystem, the right-wing one, and they’re also freaked out. Matching their fear with more fear is a destructive strategy. That’s not us. We make the future. We decide the outcome of this election. We do it by voting. We’re committed to making every vote count.

We’ll spend more time on this over the next two Fridays. We have ideas about how to get prepared, but we want to hear yours too. What are you doing to be ready for a contested Presidential transition?



Here’s what we’re reading, watching, and listening to this week:


SCOTUS
The Republican U.S. Senate hasn’t passed a second COVID relief bill but continues to ram through a Supreme Court nomination. ICYMI: catch up on takeaways from Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearings. See what Republicans are doing with the lawsuit to repeal the ACA in one picture.
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Reproductive Justice
U.S. Senators and Americans shared their abortion stories during this week’s confirmation hearings. Read Crystal’s.
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2000
Twenty years ago, the Supreme Court decided who would be president. Rewind to 2000.
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13th Amendment
Unjust prison labor is fueling COVID19. Today, there’s a movement to change the U.S. constitution and break the racist, greed-driven cycle of mass incarceration. Read about this urgent movement.
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Voting
Rep. Deb Haaland, one of the first two Native American women in Congress says voting honors the legacy of our ancestors. Read her interview.
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Family
Extended family under one roof? It’s becoming more of a thing in 2020 and for some families, it’s not the worst. Read these stories.
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Renter Rights
Minneapolis tenants evicted their landlord. Read the story in the New York Times.
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FDR
“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” – FDR History matters. Listen to FDR’s second inauguration speech in 1937.

VOTE!
Savage clothes on. Ready to vote. Enjoy this viral TikTok aka the best voting ad ever.
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New Moon
Happy new moon in Libra today. Checkout 6 rituals to celebrate.
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That’s a wrap. Send us what you’re reading.

- Kenza Hadj-Moussa & Chris Conry






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