Author: Tim Froehlich

It’s stimulus time, which means it’s time to put the call out for donations again.

If you are financially able – which is to say, you’re not having trouble paying your bills, rent, and putting food on the table – please consider donating your stimulus. If you make too much to receive a stimulus, then set aside $600 (or more!) to donate. A lot of people have spent most of 2020 unemployed, and this stimulus is basically a joke compared to a year without work.

Start by making sure your friends and family are okay. Asking about other people’s financial situation can be sensitive – something I learned in 2020 is that many people are very reluctant to ask for or accept help, even when they’re at rock bottom. Here’s a few tips for navigating these conversations:

1. Give unconditionally and respect their privacy: don’t ask for specifics about their situation. Don’t ask what they need the money for.

2. Make it easy for them to accept help by removing power dynamics: don’t make it a loan, don’t expect anything in return. Owing debts to friends is a terrible feeling and can ruin relationships. 3. Turn it into an expression of love: tell people why you care about them enough to support them in this way. Make their fucking day.

If you don’t know anyone personally that needs help, then look after your local community. Restaurants, bars, clubs, music venues and event spaces have been asking for help all year. Google “<your city/neighborhood> mutual aid” and there’s a good chance you’ll see a variety of local organizations providing many kinds of aid in your neighborhood. The two biggest issues right now are homelessness and hunger, and money towards housing and feeding people is extremely “efficient” in terms of impact. If you want to see what your money does, they’ve all got newsletters and instagram accounts with regular updates. Here are three NYC-based orgs I can strongly recommend:

– Bed Stuy Strong does amazing work – food and PPE distribution, community cleanup, internet access, basically everything they can do to improve equity. Their guiding principles are an excellent, thoughtful read. https://bedstuystrong.com/

– Bushwick Ayuda Mutua is the same thing but for Bushwick. They’re doing reachouts in Maria Hernandez park all the time, and prioritize the hispanic community in Bushwick. https://bushwickayudamutua.com/

– Food Bank NYC is the most impactful org dollar-for-dollar in getting food to people in the city. There’s been record numbers of food insecure people this year and $20 is enough to supply 100 meals. https://www.foodbanknyc.org/

Then, if you’ve given to your friends and community, consider larger organizations. You can’t give to every cause in need, so I recommend focusing on areas you feel strongly about. What are the problems that keep you up at night or suck you in whenever you’re scrolling the feed? For me, I care about drugs, prisons, journalism, and technology, so I’ve been donating to these orgs:

– The Marshall Project provides the best investigate journalism for criminal justice in the country, and they offer a platform for incarcerated people to share their stories. https://www.themarshallproject.org/

– ProPublica focuses almost exclusively on deep investigate reporting, which are high quality and laser-focused on meaningful, relevant problems. https://www.propublica.org/

– Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) is currently running the largest research study for MDMA-assisted psychotherapy, which is a huge step towards decriminalization. https://maps.org/

There’s the classics, too – Planned Parenthood, ACLU – but for me, giving to large orgs is a draining exercise. You mostly get spam in the mail in return, which feels gross. But I do believe in their work.With any organization, it’s strongly recommended you set up recurring donations rather than donating a lump sum. This makes their budgeting process significantly easier and enables them to think more long-term about their work.

Whatever you do, please donate as much as you can. Find the people and causes you care about most, and make their day.

this is probably the first year where i’ve spent significant time thinking critically about Thanksgiving. it’s not that I never knew the history – the genocide, the exploitation, the theft – but the nature of the holiday always felt apolitical to me. it’s just about gathering around food. what could be more harmless? lots of countries have fall harvest celebrations, after all.

this feeling was tied up in the idea that these sins are in the distant past. the damage is done. we can learn about the history, but it won’t change anything. it sucks, but what are you gonna do?

a turning point in my thinking here came through understanding a simple idea: many indigenous people reject the label “Native American” – because they were here before it was called America. the name itself erases their history. i learned how many Mexican and Mexican-American people are indigenous to these lands. here we have this endless conflict over “illegal immigration” – all over land we evicted them from, then we criminalized them for coming back to earn pennies per hour working our farms to fuel our ritual holiday food waste.

from there, i began to understand that this isn’t ancient history. theft of land continues, perhaps most visible through the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Keystone Pipeline. today, right now, the virus is ravaging tribal communities that have been intentionally underserved by our government. the same engines of betrayal and murder are operating today, just as they were 500 years ago.

meanwhile, indigenous culture decorates the landscape around us. our streets, parks, cities, counties, and states use tribal names and language with no understanding of their meaning. i was born near the Natchez Trace, but never learned anything about the Natchez tribe. i grew up next to Cayuga lake, but for all of Ithaca’s woke trappings i never learned one iota of Cayuga or Seneca history. Brooklyn was once Lenape territory, but i’d never even heard that name until early this year. you can see what indigineous territories you occupy through this map: https://native-land.ca/

all of this is an area where i’m woefully unlearned. i’m working through the discomfort of accepting that i’m a settler, descended from settlers, and that is inextricable from my identity as a white American. i have much, much more to learn.

it’s hard. i still feel myself getting defensive when i listen and hear the raw anger of indigenous folks. it often feels hopeless and depressing the more i learn, but we call it work for a reason. it’s not fun. but it’s necessary.

something that’s always tripping me up when I want to spend less time on social media is that i don’t want to lose sight of my friends. it’s nice to see your faces and a bit of what you’re up to. i’m lucky to know amazing artists and writers and organizers and meme curators whose work graces my feed once in a while.

but that’s like 10% of the experience here.

social media is a perpetual nightmare machine, endlessly zooming into our collective anxiety because that’s the most effective way to hold our attention and keep us posting. we have to get away from platforms so aggressively invested in our self-destruction.

divesting from these spaces means exploring other mediums of communication.the other day i grabbed a paper and pen to scribble a note for a friend, and found myself with a grotesque bit of relief: this paper wouldn’t be scanned for advertising opportunities. it was safe and purely personal. i knew who i was writing for: not some pseudo-random algo-mixture of 500 acquaintances, but exactly one person.

so.

if you would like to receive a real-live handwritten paper letter, stamped and sent via the USPS, send me your address. i will write about whatever i can think of and maybe you’ll feel inspired to write back, or maybe not. i don’t mind.

if you would like to send me a letter, i am happy to give you my address. i will promise to write you back.

if you’re thinking “that sounds neat but i don’t really know this guy so that would be weird”, that’s okay. give it a shot! what else you gonna do in quarantine?

Time for another covid check-in.

Daily case rates are spiking, and not just in the US. Today, the EU surpassed our daily new case rate. At the current rate of increase, active caseloads both here and abroad will have exceeded all previous records. We’re in for a hard winter. (https://www.nytimes.com/…/coronavirus-cases-us-surge.html)

THE BAD NEWS: we have a long road ahead of us.

– Reinfection is possible, although seemingly unlikely. We know there is some immunity, but reinfection has been documented among individuals with healthy immune systems. There’s still little information on how long post infection immunity/resistance may last. ANTIBODIES ARE NOT A VACCINE.

– There are consistent reports of lasting side-effects – most commonly mental confusion and physical fatigue. There appear to be significant increases in the risk of stroke or other heart disease during and after infection. (https://www.sciencemag.org/…/brain-fog-heart-damage…)

– The CDC and WHO both appear to be suffering from heavy political influence, which makes it less likely that we’re going to get a coordinated governmental response and makes it harder to find trustworthy data. (https://www.propublica.org/art…/inside-the-fall-of-the-cdc)

– Vaccines are coming, but as of right now it looks like they will be expensive and limited in quantity. There are insane logistical challenges to distributing these. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byW1GExQB84)

THE GOOD NEWS: we are not powerless.

– Masks work. They work so good. There are so many case studies where every unmasked person in a room was infected, while the masked people were not. Wear a mask. (https://www.bloomberg.com/…/this-starbucks-in-south…)

– Outdoors is safe. Period. The only caveat here is AIRFLOW – if fresh air can’t easily move through the space, then it’s less safe and you better wear a mask.

– There are 2 ways to make indoors safer: open windows and air filtration. Open windows are hard to do in the winter, but for short visits or higher risk scenarios, it’s an option. Common air filters are cheap and effective. (https://www.theatlantic.com/…/why-arent-we…/614737)

– There’s a magic number for time spent indoors: 15 minutes. There are few known superspreader events associated with sub-15 minutes spent indoors. By adding masks, distancing, air filters or open windows, and low exertion, then significantly more time can be safely spent indoors. (https://www.npr.org/…/coronavirus-faq-whats-the-deal…)

– Surfaces aren’t the main concern. Keep washing your hands of course, but you don’t need to be sanitizing every five minutes. (https://www.theatlantic.com/…/scourge-hygiene…/614599/)

– Kids seem to be mostly unaffected and aren’t superspreaders. This is especially true for K-6. The main concern is protecting staff. (https://www.theatlantic.com/…/schools-arent…/616669/)

– Fatality rates are dropping and hospital stays are shortening. Generally speaking, doctors know how to treat this.

Get your flu shot, please.

Even if you’re not an activist, there are many ways you can be subtly supportive on social media.

You can make space for the conversation by posting less. Many people will only see a handful of posts each day – what will those be? Will your post be helpful or informative? Will it draw attention to those in need? Or will it be lifting yourself up? Be conscientious about how you consume space.

You can lift up other voices. The way the algorithm works is pretty simple: comments, likes, and shares all increase a post’s visibility, pushing it to the top of everyone’s feed. If you find good information or perspectives, help spread that message. Encourage the people creating and sharing helpful content. Be generous.

You can ignore toxic contributions. The best thing you can do when you encounter an awful take on social media is just to keep scrolling. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram all track how long you look at individual posts – it’s one of their measurements of engagement. Don’t comment, don’t add an angry react – any response from you will increase that post’s visibility for all of that person’s followers. If you feel it’s important to respond, do it through DMs. Be cautious of how you spend your energy.

The movement is still going very strong, even if it’s not on the front page of the news. Minor victories have been achieved, but there’s so much farther to go. To succeed, we have to be thoughtful and strategic.

I’d like to share something I wrote for work today, after the head of HR warned me that abolition is too politically charged to discuss in the workplace:

In the last two weeks, I have personally witnessed acts of extreme violence. I was just a few feet away when two NYPD cars drove into a crowd, running several people over. I watched as a line of police charged into a group of peaceful protesters, grabbing and beating protestors and bystanders alike as they fled. Many of my friends have been pepper sprayed, tear gassed, and arrested during legal, peaceful protests here in NYC, as well as other cities around the country. These are facts. This isn’t just something I saw on the news. I experienced it.

Part of why we’re seeing such widespread and prolonged protests is because millions around the country have also just had this experience for the first time. But the truth is that this kind of violence has been the constant experience of Black Americans for centuries. This is a fact, and it is the reality we’re seeking to change when we affirm that Black Lives Matter. It is deeply uncomfortable to face, and most certainly inconvenient for the workplace.

I recognize the importance of the workplace as a safe space. We’re here to work, and many people of all political persuasions see the workplace as a refuge amidst the instability of the world around us. It can be a place to focus on something less contentious than the deluge of anxiety and bad news we find elsewhere. But I don’t believe we can ignore this moment and maintain a clean conscience.

To disallow conversation about the movement that is currently sweeping across this country is to protect the status quo of overwhelming discrimination and segregation throughout our society. Yes, these are fraught and challenging conversations to have. I recognize that some members of our staff may have loved ones that are police officers who currently feel threatened by this movement and these ideas. But part of how we got here was our unwillingness to have these difficult exchanges – with family, friends, and yes – even coworkers.

Thank you for reading.

Last night I got duped into a PR stunt for the NYPD.

It started with a large crowd of at least 3000, and we marched well into the night. The mood was positive and peaceful, but everyone was prepared for the worst from the NYPD. They’ve been brutalizing protesters, bystanders, and essential workers at night with impunity, and many of us fully expected to be arrested. We all know the curfew is just a blank check to let the NYPD to criminalize everyone.

As the crowd thinned out, a young Black man in a beret was leading the chants with his megaphone – he seemed to be the organizer. The usual shouts of “How do you spell racist // N-Y-P-D” were replaced with more generic messages about unity and peace, and then “N-Y-P-D // raise your first”. A police sergeant started walking along the side with us; I figured he was just keeping tabs on us. A full news crew materialized.

Around 11:00, the man in the beret informed us that the police would be “allowing us to disperse”. He’d made a deal that if we went home at 11:30, no one would be arrested. Again, unusual, but we were down to just a few hundred and we were tiring out. No need to force a confrontation, I guess.

He lead us through wall of riot police, who stepped aside to let us through. We stopped at an intersection and kneeled, surrounded by a hundred police in riot gear. He gave us a speech about ending racism and started to give out his Instagram handle before the crowd shouted him down. We were flanked by camera crews. They let us go, but I heard reports of some people being detained anyways.

When I got home, I started diving in. His social media didn’t show any evidence of political activism. He’s a model and influencer from Arizona, working for a PR agency specializing in “street teams”. He’s been interviewed by three major news networks in two days. There’s a post on his Instagram from yesterday asking if he can borrow a beret (now deleted). Other people on twitter dug up a public Facebook post where he’s defending Trump.

I’m sharing this story because it’s part of the learning process. I’m new to protesting, and as good as my intentions are, if I’m not careful I can end up contributing to the enemy. This was also the first of my four protests this week which had any “major” news coverage, on a day where there were literally hundreds throughout the city. Millions took to the streets this weekend.

Be critical. Be cautious. Pay attention to the organizers and their goals. As we switch into marathon mode after one hell of a sprint, we have to maintain focus and protect each other. We will defund and dismantle the NYPD.

There’s a common misunderstanding about white supremacy, that it primarily describes the beliefs and goals of radical hate groups – people that are easily identified as racists. This focuses on the extremes, making it easy to compartmentalize the problem onto a few bad actors. This is a form of distancing that seeks to absolve individuals from responsibility.

The largest vectors of white supremacy are not neo-nazis: it is the institutions we engage with every day. There is a whiteness built into our technology, government, academia, business, and media that persists across generations. The law itself is encoded with white values. White culture propagates itself through the language and mannerisms we enforce in daily interactions. The ubiquity of this whiteness gives it that most powerful status: the default, the normal, the expected.

The police are, if nothing else, enforcers of the status quo. Their obscenities are an accurate reflection of American attitudes and priorities. We can micromanage the details of their job as much as we please – body cameras, bias training, civilian oversight – but they will remain a mirror of our institutions. Eliminating police brutality without addressing white supremacy is not possible.

When we talk about confronting systemic racism, we must understand that this doesn’t mean weeding out individual racists until we’re left with something wholesome, as though they are unexpected outliers. No, it is the system itself that perpetuates oppression, because that is the foundation of our country. We have created elaborate buffers that disguise this discrimination through mountains of bureaucracy and economic segregation. The benefits of privilege are now constant and invisible, encouraging many middle-class whites to believe white supremacy is not relevant to their daily life.

As a white person, I inherited a moral debt from my ancestors. I didn’t create these institutions, but I am nonetheless complicit. Understanding the existence of my privilege is not sufficient: I have a duty to pursue a better way of life for my community. It’s my job to aggressively expand my definition of community to include more than just those who look and sound like me. It’s my responsibility to become intimately acquainted with the struggles of others, so that I can dissolve my hegemonic assumptions about what is best for everyone.

gotta get some bummer thoughts out.

i don’t know what i should be feeling. there’s relief that we got through the first wave, happiness for warm air and sunshine. but there were a lot of sirens yesterday and it’s hard not to feel paranoid about that. i don’t want to go back to hearing sirens every 20 minutes throughout the entire day. during the peak, it was non-stop, one after the other, day after day.

it’s a an odd thing, because normally you don’t notice the sirens in new york. but you never knew what they’re for – a heart attack, a bike accident – it could be anything. this time you knew exactly what all of those sirens meant. and every one of them stings.

there’s the constant frustration of not knowing what’s happening around the country. are daily cases increasing? deaths? hospitalizations? the dashboards i used to check daily are no longer accurate – our reporting infrastructure is broken, and some states are intentionally misreporting (if they’re even collecting the data). the US has no trustworthy authorities. the CDC has bungled basic guidelines too many times. it’s every state for themselves out there.

even the “established” sources of information feel woefully irrelevant now. it’s not that i doubt their facts, but their editorial strategy is just so ineffective. it’s brutal to read the NYT and Wapo as they flail impotently, whinging about Trump while clinging to this failed idea that journalism should be objective and impartial. to me, their entire brand is summed up by one of their senior editors proclaiming without the slightest hint of irony that he doesn’t vote because that would compromise his journalistic integrity.

i burned out on doing my own research, which involved digging through twitter to find quality takes from epidemiologists and statisticians and journalists watching other countries. it just takes so much work to find qualified experts with well-formed opinions on each new problem. once i hit the brick wall of “nobody seems to know if antibody tests are worth anything” i ran out of gas.

it’s no wonder that conspiracy theories are exploding right now. we don’t have a shared source of truth. it’s been decades since we had that, i guess, but now that illusion has faded, so people are inventing their own truths.

the intense daily sadness of early quarantine has faded. now, it’s just the throbbing ache of living in a crumbling country.

Been trying hard to keep it constructive on social media, but on day 40, I must vent.

Today, I am a bowl of cold noodles. I’m disintegrating into a gelatinous goo of frustration. I am one-tenth of a human being. I’ve been holding my breath for so long. Just keep holding. And holding. And holding. Because that’s all there is to do. There’s no choice in the matter.

Some days, I can see the silver linings. The possibilities for change. The ways this can push us to be better, to grow, to adapt. I take solace in knowing we’re all in this together. It’s cool to feel like we’re all on this same wavelength. That doesn’t happen very often, you know? It makes for a sense of oneness, even if it’s kinda dark.

I know that these are moods. That some days, I will wake up with a tendency to see one more than the other. There’s a good chance I’ll wake up tomorrow or the next day and feel a little better, for no particular reason.

Today, I’m missing the music more than ever. I miss being sweaty. I miss the stupidly loud sound systems, the sticky smell of the fog, the sweet taste of mate, the acidic sting of cigarette smoke. I miss looking across the dance floor, recognizing the silhouette of a good friend and feeling that little spark of excitement as we greet each other.

I miss browsing the events on FB and RA to try and pick out what I’d go to this weekend. I miss the “ooh” moment of skimming IG stories when I see a good flyer and looking up the event to RSVP. I miss waking up on Saturday and Sunday morning to review the posts and see how other parties turned out.

I miss leaving the dance floor at midnight to go outside and complain about all the normies, then sticking it out til 5am when things really get good. I miss rolling my eyes at the drunk bro who’s stepped on my feet three times in the last fifteen minutes. I miss making up an excuse to leave a boring conversation and I’d kill just to get overcharged for a bottle of warm water.

I’m tired of the sirens. I’m tired of thinking about the future and wondering what’s waiting for us there. I’m tired of shitty video calls with all their compression artifacts and lag and asking fifty times every day if you could please repeat that. I’m exhausted with our government – not just the white house, mind you – and I’m so unbelievably tired of being scared for the well-being of my friends.

Thanks for listening. This was cathartic to write.

P.S. If you need help with groceries or bills, please message me. I will help you, no questions asked.

Gainfully employed friends in tech: let us talk. Heart-to-heart.

You’re working from home full-time now. Maybe you were doing that from time to time anyways, so the quarantine hasn’t disrupted your work too much. You’re feeling the same perilous anxieties and mortal frustrations as everyone else, but when it’s all said and done: your job is safe and stable (for now). You’re still pulling in six figures. Your paycheck hasn’t changed.

You, my dear friend in tech – the programmer, the designer, the product manager – you are the beneficiary of some of the mightiest privilege on earth right now. You already had it pretty good, as far as jobs in America go. Paid time off, a dubious collection of “options”, health insurance, cute little vegan snacks in the office kitchen. Now, you don’t have to go outside to earn your living. You are among the least exposed people to the disease, and this change demanded nothing permanent from your way of life.

Your community needs your help. Whatever that community is, there are people in it that are struggling. They lost their jobs and they’ve only got enough savings to last through the next month or two. The government is not going to help. Those paltry $1200 checks? Fuck knows when they’ll arrive. The unemployment office is a shitshow; people are calling thousands of times a day and can’t get through. 17 million people are calling at the same time. America has no safety net.

You need to be giving. You need to be giving generously and repeatedly. A few bucks here and there is not going to cut it. People need to fucking eat. Think about how much it costs to eat for a day and multiply that by 30. Find the people and the causes you care about and make their fucking day.