Welcome to "Box Out The Right"

Or, we're in a generational struggle for the souls of young men ....so why not start sharing my writing?

Hey all,

For someone who is supposedly a writer, I have spent a long time scrolling away and not actually posting on any social media platforms – i.e. giving away my eyeballs and time to our tech overlords for free – and mostly not publishing my writing (with a couple meaningful exceptions). Long ago, I even tried to swear off writing (poetry in particular! yuck!) in favor of doing something that “would have more of an actual impact in the world,” in a kind of weird, privileged pretzel of self-justification….more on that at some point, I’m sure. But the truth is, as someone who has primarily been working as an organizer and fundraiser in social justice movements for the past decade plus, I have actually maintained a writing practice, spotty as it may be. I write when I need to process the brutality of the world, or its wonder. I write when I’m working my way through a tough conflict, or I’m watching someone I love work their way through one. I write because, often, it feels restorative – magical even – to make something out of this strange collection of symbols we learn as littles (my own son is just beginning to recognize and form them).

For much of the last decade, my writing practice has essentially taken the form of journaling in a series of ongoing “notebooks” (i.e. google docs). Up until now, I have been hesitant to share anything from these publicly for any number of reasons, among them: garden-variety perfectionism; how intensely vulnerable sharing writing can feel; a (perhaps reasonable) fear of “getting called out” for slightly more controversial entries. Maybe most of all, it has just felt like a kind of exercise in ego that feels scary and easier, ultimately, to just forego. While it’s true that I’ve never liked the trying-to-be-published part of being a writer – ack, it’s so exhausting! – at the same time, I really admire my friends who have figured out how to get their work out there in a way that works for them, because it means the world gets to experience their guts and heart and brilliance. I’m at a point where I actually want this for me, too.

Maybe most of all, I am feeling called by the moment we are in to be a bit more courageous. It feels like such an important opportunity for reflection and self-examination, after such extreme defeat. What are the lessons we are taking? Where have we fallen short? What are we up against, truly?

So: I’m going to start posting here, on Substack. I’ll start with what are essentially my notebook entries from the past decade, following my way back through the seasons and pulling out old entries that feel relevant. I’ll also post whatever I have the chance to write now (which may be very infrequent, as a parent of two littles… but who knows, maybe this will help keep me accountable?). With everything going full fascism at the outset of this second Trump term, there feels less to lose and more to gain by just putting things out there. Why not just publish here a bunch of what might otherwise not see the light of day? I mean, how much light of day do we know is left for us ever really? (Can you tell I’m also writing this on my birthday?)

Some of you might know me from my earlier life as a poet and writer. Some of you might know me from my decade of work with Resource Generation, or my work now with Movement Voter Project, as a fundraiser and organizer of wealthy communities. But what has always drawn me to movements for social justice (or whatever we want to call this group of us, now, resisting authoritarian right-wing forces that are on the rise here in the U.S. and globally) is the inner transformation work and the relational hurdles to getting there; the ways many of us with historically powerful bodies (white people, men, etc.) are held back from feeling belonging (or even, I would argue, real, life-flourishing power); the ways this takes shape in our bodies; what might be paths back to each other, and how it might feel in the dark as we get there, fumbling, on all fours.

It is my hope that – amidst many missteps and mistakes, maybe especially in the missteps and mistakes – there are lessons in this offering that can form one small part of a kaleidoscope of what it will take us to win, and survive, together, these next four years; to develop an embodied strategy that will actually shift people who our coalition is currently losing (and help collapse the murderous and self-annihilating algorithm-pathologies that currently seduce them); and to begin to create a world where all of us can find joy and thrive to the greatest extent possible.

But if nothing less, I’ll be less of a chicken about putting my work out there 😝

I welcome feedback and conversation, however you’d like. Let’s see where this goes.

Read Part 2 of “Welcome to Box Out the Right” here.

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P.S. A note on the (tentative) title of this Substack: “Box Out” is a basketball term, and refers to the action of physically moving another player out of the way so that you (or a teammate) can rebound the ball. To do it well, you must have a) discipline, b) a lower center of gravity than your opponent, and c) a love for contact. It’s also, for me at least, immensely FUN. There is a whole politics/philosophy of organizing that lives in that, which again, will probably be a whole other post at some point. But for now I just need a placeholder title and hey….this is what I’ve got.