It's my birthday and all I want is a revolution🔥

Dearest Community,

Things are feeling pretty freaking awful right now.

UC Berkeley, my alma mater and once a symbol of the Free Speech Movement, just handed 160 anti-genocide protesters’ names to the Trump administration. ICE is offering $50,000 bonuses to expand its hunt for immigrants. The Supreme Court has legalized racial profiling. Organizers are being criminalized, nonprofits attacked. And while the media mourns a white supremacist, it ignores the lynching of Trey Reed, a Black student found hanging from a tree in Mississippi.

Meanwhile, Israel’s genocide in Gaza rages on, and the US has vetoed, for the sixth time, a UN resolution calling for a ceasefire. The UN has officially declared it a genocide, but global outrage and condemnation remain powerless against a rogue apartheid state bankrolled by the US, with billions of our tax dollars funding more bombs.

Countless people nationwide are organizing nonstop to protect immigrants, trans youth, and grassroots movements and still, the backlash only seems to be intensifying. Incremental progress feels woefully insufficient against the speed at which we’re being marginalized. Do you feel that way too?

Some days I just want to scream and burn it all down.

Well, that’s exactly what Nepal’s young people did.

Last week, in what the world is calling the “Gen Z Revolution,” the people of Nepal overthrew their government—and burned it all down, literally. After the government banned social media to silence critiques of corruption and inequality, young people flooded the streets in mass protest. Police killed 19 student protesters, and in response, crowds stormed corrupt politicians’ homes and set the Parliament building on fire. After the disgraced Prime Minister resigned, Gen Z organizers ran a poll on Discord (a popular online messaging platform for gamers), electing the nation’s first woman prime minister. Most of this happened within 48 hours (though the condition was built over many years).

Watching a real-time uprising felt electrifying. This is what people power and class solidarity can do. And I wasn’t alone. I saw thousands of social media comments that said, “This needs to happen in America.” “When are we going to do this?”“If they can do it, we can do it!” “Take note America, we’re next.”

But are we actually ready for a revolution? If this fascist regime continues to destroy our safety and freedom at full throttle, will we be able to organize against it? What would our version of “revolution” look like?

And what would it take for us to win?

Well, strap in my friends and read on. It’s time for a house meeting.

Michelle

Contrary to what we saw in Nepal, where the movement was largely driven by class solidarity, the US is deeply fragmented by race, class, geography, and ideology. White supremacy and “law and order” narratives often pit different groups against each other, making class solidarity difficult to achieve.

Needed Condition 👉 A broader, unifying cause that mobilizes people across divides anchored in shared demands (e.g., living wages, accessible health care, etc.). Organizing that bridges, and political education that helps people to connect the dots across myriad struggles of marginalized communities.

US police forces are among the most militarized in the world, with armored vehicles, assault rifles, and surveillance tech. This makes sustained protests—yes, even peaceful “non-violent” ones—not only dangerous but often unsustainable.

Needed Condition 👉 Cracks within law enforcement (soldiers refusing orders, police defections, lik) or strategies that delegitimize violent crackdowns in the public eye.

Protests are branded as “riots,” principled actions get vilified, and demands are watered down into toothless reforms by the media, politicians, and lobbying groups. Instead of radical re-imagining, they introduce incremental reforms (e.g., prison abolition vs. police training) as compromise.

Needed Condition 👉 Stories, symbols, and language that make solidarity feel moral, hopeful, and necessary, so movements can’t be dismissed as “fringe.” The public is able to discern between incremental changes that accelerate vs. detract from the ultimate goal. People don’t fall for false equivalence between principled resistance vs. using violence to oppress.

Even in crisis, many people aren’t able to risk losing their jobs, health care, housing to speak truth to power—or even participate in a sustained boycott or strike. The cultural emphasis on individual success, survival, and safety lead people to prioritizing self-preservation over the needs of the collective.

Needed Condition 👉 Robust systems of community care and reliable safety nets that exist outside of oppressive systems. Local infrastructures like unions, mutual aids, student groups, community hubs, faith groups to sustain action beyond short bursts and make participation viable for ordinary people beyond “activists.”

South Korea was able to impeach its far-right President because it had a functioning Constitutional Court. Nepal had international leverage. In the US, institutions of all kind are cowering to the administration and the Supreme Court makes biased decisions influenced by partisan politics. As a global bully with hegemonic power, the US faces little external accountability.

Needed Condition 👉 Resilient domestic institutions responding to unjust policies with undeniable public pressure (ex: the latest open letter by 100+ liberal philanthropy orgs, Harvard suing the Trump admin, etc.). Mass civil disobedience and refusal to comply with unjust laws that delegitimizes and disempowers corrupt systems.

We’re no strangers to revolutionary organizing—from the labor strikes that gave us weekends, to the Civil Rights Movement that dismantled Jim Crow, to the queer and trans resistance that carved out the freedoms we now defend. None of it was handed to us. Every inch of progress was fought for, organized for, and won by everyday people who took risks to stand with the people.

I’m not sure our revolution will look like the burning buildings in Nepal. Maybe. But history and our current conditions suggest something else. I believe our revolution will be born out of sustained, everyday participation. I know—it’s far less glamorous than fire in the streets. But foundation-building is how movements endure.

But if we are serious about revolution in this country, we have to stop asking only what do we want to dismantle and start asking what will we build together?

Our revolution will start in living rooms and union meetings, on picket lines and in walkouts, in classrooms and across dinner tables—much like what our beloved ancestors like Grace Lee Boggs and Audre Lorde, and the Black Panthers showed us. It will look like our refusing to give up on one another and the vision of the world we want and deserve. It will look like us showing up daily, telling the truth, mobilizing together, and tending to each other’s courage until the cracks in this system can no longer hold.

And here’s the good news: so many people are already doing it.

Now the question is… where are you in all of this? What future makes your belly warm with hope? What do you see as your role in the work ahead, and who do you want by your side?

These are trying times. But as Mariame Kaba said, hope is a discipline. My hope is that you find courage and possibility in the actions of everyday people fighting for justice and our collective liberation. And I hope that you, too, become a source of hope for someone else.

In community always,

Michelle

Knitting has quickly become an obsessive hobby for me. It’s the perfect way to decompress, take my eyes off screens, and create slowly. This cute top took me over a month to knit but I’m so happy with the result ❤ Is anyone also a knitter? Would folks be interested in doing a virtual knitting club? Let me know!

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