Some things can't be bought
And other links for your Sunday
This week, I spent a lot of time looking at my phone and reading coverage about the Wisconsin Supreme Court election between Susan Crawford and Brad Schimel. Elon Musk was there, in his cheesehead, offering checks to people who voted and putting the full force of his money into the race.
In 2023, a similar race took place in Wisconsin, between Judge Janet Protasiewicz and Daniel Kelly.
At the time, I interviewed Protasiewicz for this newsletter and wrote: “If you don’t live here, it’s easy to ignore the politicking of Middle America; to dismiss red states as getting what they deserve. But doing so ignores the way parts of Middle America and elsewhere have been gerrymandered into democracy deserts. In 2020, an analysis by the Electoral Integrity Project at Harvard University rated Wisconsin’s electoral maps the worst in the nation.”
I live in the deep red state of Iowa, and a lot of my conversations with friends in politics and journalism lament the way that our parties have been eroded by gerrymandering, rage, poverty, and population decline. The answers are not simple. The problems we have can’t be fixed with money, not entirely. We talk a lot about building email lists and door-knocking; people who have to run, even if they lose. And I, at least, have a lot of anger about a political trend that once encouraged Democrats to focus only on cities.
This week, after Crawford won,
, who lives and works as an organizer in Wisconsin, wrote in his newsletter, “Again, some things can’t be bought. They have to be built. And I knew that, here in Wisconsin, thousands of my neighbors had been building for this election. Volunteers and organized groups alike have been knocking doors for months. A friend of ours, my daughter’s soccer coach, runs the local Working Families Party. She barely took any time off after November.”What does it mean to show up for your community? What does real change look like?
There are no easy answers.
But one of the reasons I think the Midwest is a good proving ground is that this middle place is where we can see everything that’s both broken and worth saving in America, especially for the working class. What it teaches us is a fundamental tenet of feminist philosophy — and, don’t tell them, something even conservative Midwesterners have always understood: We cannot do this alone. Our survival—through disaster, pandemics, and the everyday burdens of child-rearing — depends on one another.
Behind the paywall are all the stories that I and MYAM assistant editor Isabella have been reading and thinking about this week. I keep all the weekly essays and Friday dingus newsletters free and accessible. And I know the economy is in shambles (Girl, the tariffs!), but every subscriber helps me pay Isabella as well as the MYAM editor, and will help me and launch a Dingus of the Week podcast in May! Thank you for supporting independent media. (MYAM editor’s note: I could not in any way have the life that I have if Lyz didn’t pay me a fair wage to make her work better. I wish I could tell you how grateful I am.)