Surfacing again - with an invitation to shift to a new Substack, 'Resisting Project 2025' and Trump 2.0... and a big thank you to you subscribers....

Dear Subscribers -- I shifted focus, but have a new Substack on the fast-growing resistance to Project 2025 and Trump 2.0. I humbly ask you to join.

Dearest friends and subscribers,

I know, I know, it’s been more than a minute. You likely noticed I sort of just stopped posting the artist-activist profiles for Tell Me Everything oh, months ago now? I apologize for not writing about this lapse earlier. I did mean to pick it up at many points. I was doing so much reporting for the pieces that I was ignoring other pressing matters like paid work. So I took a break, with plans to resume.

Then I came across Project 2025 last year and, well, I totally dove in to sound the alarm and mobilize people in my personal and professional networks. Many of you know I launched GenDemocracy as a nonprofit project to house the Stop The Coup 2025 campaign (www.stopthecoup2025.org). It became a 50-hour a week race since last November to spread the word. Now we are in another extraordinary, unprecedented political moment, facing autocracy. My attention is 100% focused on that.

So I apologize for those of you who subscribed as paid subscribers, and I’ll happily make you auto-paid subscribers to my new Resisting Project 2025 substack if you want to join it, and I’ll have some extra bells and whistles for subscribers at some point. (I’m making the contents free because we are in that political moment, but I’m asking those who wish or can to afford to do so to support this work to consider a paid subscription. Super appreciate that support.)

Truth is, we had great difficulty as a new political project raising funds to fight Project 2025 all this year because most NGOs and donors who we approached said the topic was was too political and they couldn’t risk it, even though we focused on education and community mobilization. They were afraid or their boards were too worried to take that risk or they took a wait-and-see attitude toward the elections, wanting to be optimistic. So our team of six just did the work anyway, and we did get some funding from two wonderful donors that helped us along a bit. We also built a subscriber base of nearly 4000 and have had 180,000 unique visitors to our STC 2025 website, now available in multiple languages. So I wasn’t slacking, okay? And I’m very proud of all we have accomplished. We did our all to get the word out, and the word got out.

We are pivoting to resistance and community survival. The new newsletter will be connected to the campaign and the resistance portal we build out from it. I hope we’ll find more support now, but I’ll still do the work. Nothing to me is more important than bringing forward the strategies and models that work and can stop Trump 2.0 and Project 2025.

You can find the Substack by searching Resisting Project 2025 or maybe my name. I didn’t want to assume everyone would just want to be transferred over. (Plus, I’m a luddite and not sure how to do it. Maybe I’ll get better now.)

The new Resistance substack launched a few days ago. I put a second one out earlier today. So you are again in the founding community, or can be. I plan to post twice-weekly and I’ll be including lessons of autocracy from other countries as well as field reporting from states, groups and activist initiatives. I’m going to focus on finding what works and elevating and amplifying those voices.

There is true hope and reason to resist.

One thing I already learned: we have grassroots models that work against right-wing attacks, so we know what to do. I write about that in the second newsletter. Now we have to apply this model for other states and nationally. But we have the tools. I hope that encourages you; it did me. Not false hope, but genuine evidence-based strategies that have worked.

Did I express my thanks strongly enough? I hope so. I still love the Tell Me Everything series and I loved interviewing artists and activists and writing it. Now, with this new resistance focus, I’ll be including portraits of activists who are resisting autocracy. So there will also be content similar to what you saw in Tell Me Everything.

Again, thank you for initial support. It means everything to know my words resonate with you. I would love to hear from you here and at the new ‘stack and I invite you to tell others about it. The more we are, the more we share, the more we fight together.

Hope to see you there and hear your views, visions, and ideas for how we resist.

With gratitude, in solidarity, and spirited resistance,

Anne-christine