You don't know me, but I hope you'll stick around.
Letters to the Republic is a sequel to my last short-lived blogging project from WordPress. Previously, I sought only to ramble. Express frustrations innumerable. With the re-election of Donald Trump, I decided to hone it into something more helpful and productive. I don't know if I have succeeded yet, but I assure you I am trying.
Letters to the Republic is ultimately a project intended to reach you, whoever you are, at a moment where the Republic seems diminished, ill, faded away. These are dispatches written in the hope that clear thinking about politics, power, and democratic life might offer something useful: a framework, a foothold, a way of understanding what is happening and what might yet be done about it.
I am not a pundit. I am a political organizer and analyst in North Carolina, someone who has spent years working in the unglamorous machinery of democratic politics. Precincts, campaigns, policy research, canvassing. I write from this vantage point and hope it produces something worthwhile.
If the Republic is going to recover, it will be because enough people understood what was wrong and refused to stop caring. I am trying to be one of those people. I hope you will be too.