January 24 Friday roundup

In this week’s “Next Comes What” podcast episode, Andrea reports from DC on inauguration day. See footage of Trump supporters she talks to on the street and watch clips from the MLK memorial she attends at Metropolitan AME Church—and find out what this “tale of two cities” tells us about what we can do. You can watch it on YouTube or listen to it via Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts.

Stories worth reading

Teen Vogue has a great immigration how-to for everyday citizens on protecting undocumented people in your neighborhood.

And since this week’s main newsletter story and podcast episode take place in DC, I’ll also point out coverage of a long-standing issue in the city that a local group has taken on, trying to change the discrepancy between maternal deaths of white mothers and Black mothers in the nation’s capital.

“Black people made up half of all births in D.C. but accounted for 90 percent of pregnancy-related deaths between 2014 to 2018,” reports independent news outlet the 51st. “White people constituted 30 percent of births but did not experience a single maternal death. When it comes to infant mortality in the District, there are similar disparities.”

Read the story and see the amazing programs that are changing those numbers.

Come to Bluesky

Twitter is a cesspit, and Meta’s platforms (Facebook and Instagram especially) are only getting dodgier. Musk and Zuck make my skin crawl. What’s a person to do?

I think Bluesky is by far the best platform out there, and I’m also a fan, to a lesser degree, of Mastodon. Neither one of them force an algorithm on you or suppress links, so you can see what you started following people to see, in the order they post it. I’m @andreapitzer in both places—here on Bluesky, and here on Mastodon.

Beehiiv (the host for this newsletter) still doesn’t have Bluesky icons available to use on my homepage or in the emails I send, but I will add them as soon as they’re out.

Amateur Hour

And starting next week, I’ll begin an “Amateur Hour” department every Friday, where I’ll post a link to something I’ve made or done that is often pretty half-assed but which I did myself. It might be a song I’ll perform or something I baked that week, or a project with a neighbor. In some cases, I’ll overreach and fail—and that’s fine. I had this idea a while ago but never followed through on it, as you can see from this Instagram post of me singing Tom Waits from two years ago.

My sense is that reminding yourself of the things you love to make or do is critical in this time and can be a spur to making changes in the real world too (which I also very much encourage you to do, as you’ve probably guessed by now).

We’ve got a long road ahead, but we’ll figure it out.

In the meantime, if you like what you read here, I encourage new visitors to subscribe, and current free subscribers to upgrade to a paid subscription.