Progressive Political News

We speak with esteemed historian scholar Ellen Schrecker about the Trump administration’s assault on universities and the crackdown on dissent, a climate of fear and censorship she describes as “worse than McCarthyism.” “During the McCarthy period, it was attacking only individual professors and only about their sort of extracurricular political activities on the left. ……

Across the country, Republican lawmakers have been working to undermine or altogether undo the will of the voters by making it harder to pass amendments and laws through citizen-led initiatives. In Missouri, the 2025 legislative session was dominated by Republican lawmakers trying to reverse two major measures that voters had put on the ballot and…

Earlier this year, as President Donald Trump was beginning to reshape the American government, Michael, an emergency room doctor who was born, raised, and trained in the United States, packed up his family and got out. Michael now works in a small-town hospital in Canada. KFF Health News and NPR granted him anonymity because of…

Part of the Series Struggle and Solidarity: Writing Toward Palestinian Liberation Is the U.S. genuinely aiming to save Gaza’s population from starvation? Or is the true purpose of Israeli-U.S. aid in Gaza to empower Israel to prolong its war while pacifying Palestinians with minimal food supplies amid mounting international pressure? After Rafah was completely destroyed…

For just $61 billion, Canada can get in on Donald Trump’s latest scheme: a space-based North American missile defense system that Trump has called the “Golden Dome.” Trump posted the amount of money he would expect Canada to pay on his Truth Social account on May 27 — the same day that King Charles was…

For many people in the United States, libraries are lifelong fixtures—from getting one’s first library card and listening to librarians read aloud “The Very Hungry Caterpillar,” to cramming for college exams or checking out a book with advice on raising your first baby.

But public libraries across the country are currently at risk due to an Executive Order by President Donald Trump, which calls for the elimination of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), a federal agency responsible for nearly $300 million dollars in funding for museums and libraries. 

Conor Moran, the executive director of the Madison Public Library Foundation (MPLF), says that institutions like libraries are left in limbo while they await possible programming cuts. 

“I’m not the only person in the world saying this, but the hardest part about it is the uncertainty right now,” says Moran, who is responsible for private fundraising on behalf of public libraries throughout Madison, Wisconsin. “The hardest part eventually will be the lack of funds, but right now it’s the uncertainty.”

Staff at libraries and museums across the country are uncertain if the cuts will even go through. On April 7, the American Library Association (ALA) and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), filed a lawsuit in response to the Executive Order. The lawsuit resulted in a temporary restraining order blocking the immediate dismantling of the IMLS—buying time for public libraries and museums as a federal court considers the merit of the case. Despite this victory, ALA President Cindy Hohl calls for continued community support.

“Right now is prime time for every American to show up for our libraries,” Hohl said in a May 1 statement, calling on the public to show acts of support for these public institutions such as, “urging their Senators and Representatives to sign ‘Dear Appropriator’ letters in support of federal library funding.”

Over the past fifteen years, IMLS has awarded nearly $70 million in grants to Wisconsin museums, libraries, and other institutions, according to the city of Madison. While the MPLF is not currently receiving any funds from the federal agency, it does have a long history of grant work using funds from the agency. Prior to Donald Trump’s Executive Order, Moran says, the Madison Public Library was using a multi-year IMLS-funded grant to create tools to help librarians evaluate their current programs.

Although public libraries themselves in Madison are not currently receiving any IMLS funding, partners of the library are, meaning Madison public libraries could be affected in a number of ways, losing services like free Internet access. 

“That’s the number-two thing that we do as a library system: connect people with the Internet,” Moran says. “So how do we react and adapt if that’s the kind of thing that ends up going away? Right now, there aren’t any concrete effects that I can respond to. That does not mean that they’re not coming.” 

Despite the uncertainty, the Madison Public Library’s 150-year-old downtown location still draws a line out the door each morning when it opens, convening unhoused people, students, and other community members eager to utilize the library’s wealth of free resources. 

According to Moran, the word “resource” doesn’t even begin to encapsulate all the services that Madison’s public libraries provide to their surrounding communities. “‘Resource’ understates it,” Moran says. “I like to say that libraries are a promise we make as a community to the community.”

This promise includes 4,700 free programs each year, Moran says, including educational opportunities for students in the carceral system, pro bono tax preparation services for community members, and even a free clothing mending service every Thursday morning. 

Diligent service to the community is par for the course at public libraries across the country. The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh (CLP), established in 1895, provides a wide variety of programs for more than 2.9 million visitors each year. In addition to more basic literary and technological resources, the library offers materials and services for nonprofit organizations, online programs for language learning, and expansive genealogy and history and collections that allow patrons to research their family history. It even offers use of electronic musical instruments such as synthesizers.  

“Comfortable library spaces in neighborhoods welcome people to read, to think, to learn, to share, and to teach each other,” CLP’s website states. “Children and teens learn and grow; adults exchange ideas, acquire new skills, and expand their understanding; and every person in our community has access to ideas, information, and items—in person or electronically.”

In many cities, libraries have also played a key role in the fight against book banning campaigns, which often target literature written by or about people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and women. In 2022, the Brooklyn Public Library established an initiative called Books Unbanned in partnership with the Seattle Public Library, the Boston Public Library, the Los Angeles Public Library, and the San Diego Public Library. The initiative was conceived as a response to elected officials, board members, and administrators across the country seeking to censor books in schools and public libraries. 

“You have the Seattle Public Library and Brooklyn Public Library making a library card available to anyone nationally,” says Moran, “so you could then use their collection and check out books that might have been banned in your neighborhood or your community. That’s incredibly far reaching.” 

According to a 2024 report, created in collaboration between the Seattle Public Library and Brooklyn Public Library, Books Unbanned has had an extensive reach, garnering virtual cardholders from all fifty U.S. states. The report includes testimonials from cardholders, such as one twenty-two-year-old from North Carolina who said that their public library has been instrumental in “finding trans and LGBTQ+ information and seeing characters like me when no one in my small, conservative town could openly talk about such things.” 

In addition to these more specialized services, the vast majority of libraries across the country provide more basic services such as learning programs for children and Internet and computer access. 

In April, The Progressive spoke with patrons of the Madison Public Library, and it was these universal services that most people said they would miss in the face of funding cuts. 

“When I was in middle school and high school, we didn’t have computers at my house, so that’s why I went to the public library: to print and use their computers,” says Leaura Manuel, a freshman at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Another University of Wisconsin–Madison freshman, Mary Abbe, fondly recalls her childhood local library in Eagan, Minnesota. “My mom loves the library,” she says. “She would drop me off there when she went to work and I would stay there all day.” Abbe recalls the library having a 3D printer, green screen room, and groups events like a knitting club in which she participated. 

Given how many people rely on the immense resources traditionally provided by public libraries,  library-lovers see the potential impact of Trump’s Executive Order as high stakes—and their efforts to protect public libraries aren’t falling on deaf ears. In April, lobbying librarians helped persuade Ohio state lawmakers to ensure that the state will increase funding for public libraries in the coming year, rather than pursue the budget cuts originally proposed in the legislature following the federal library funding cuts. 

Moran says that the Madison Public Library Foundation experienced an unprecedented increase in donations on Library Giving Day, which took place eighteen days after the signing of Trump’s Executive Order. 

“Right before Library Giving Day, which was on April 1, we took part in that national push to have people support libraries, and we saw double the amount of money that we raise on a regular year,” he says. “People came out in droves to support their library, and what we’re kind of reading into that is, libraries are really important to people, and that remains true, but also that people are willing to support libraries.”

One of the most effective ways to support public libraries also happens to be one of the easiest: showing up and using their resources. “Those numbers really matter when we’re having city budget conversations and they matter when we’re talking to legislators,” Moran says. 

Moran is confident that in these trying times for many U.S. institutions, community members will rise up to support their local libraries. 

“We had a library here before we had electricity, before we had sewers, before we had garbage collection,” Moran says. “This is something that Madison has stood for for a century and a half—it’s not something that this community is going to stop supporting just because something happened at the federal level.”

I have never craved danger, because I have lived too many lives of it. I’ve witnessed and experienced violence online and offline and been told repeatedly, “It’s not a big deal.” I’m chronically hypervigilant from various traumas, and the Internet does not assuage this. Being online is messy, beautiful, and loud with too many heartbeats. It won’t get us free, but it’s a helpful tool for many of us to continue to exist in a world that doesn’t care if we live or die. 

Social justice issues have received much more visibility through the use of social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, Snapchat, and TikTok. For me, digital activism means using social media as a tool of respair. I learned of this fourteenth-century word from a 2017 article in The Economist. “Respair” means the “return of hope after a period of despair.” Perhaps the nineties and early aughts weren’t exactly a period of despair, but it may have felt like it to millennials in various marginalized communities. If it didn’t feel like despair to us then, it certainly does now as we try to navigate and survive a global pandemic, multiple genocides, and increased fascism. In the early aughts, we wanted more ways to collaborate and more efficient ways to discuss global injustices so we could do something about them. The immediacy of digital activism allows for instantaneous communication, visibility, and resistance. It allows for our voices to be heard—on our terms. Social media platforms—never static entities—continue to reinvent themselves in (often) not great ways. Thus, this book only captures what was happening at the time of my writing (between 2015 and 2024).

I have found belonging in online spaces more than I’ve found it offline. This grew exponentially when I created the “Guerrilla Feminism” Facebook page in 2011 and its Instagram account in 2013. I’m an elder millennial who had a childhood without the Internet. I was a teenager when I first got it. During my time online, I have witnessed courageous vulnerability in private Facebook groups for survivors of sexual violence. I have taken advice from people on Herpblr, the online hashtag associated with Tumblr’s herpes-positive community. I’ve swam through the Sensory Processing Disorder Reddit board, seeing myself in each post. I, too, have been rejected for who and what I am. I, too, wanted to create something where people felt like they belonged—even if just for a moment while they browsed my posts on social media.

These essays are about my history and present on social media and the broader Internet, as I search incessantly for belonging. The first essay discusses my childhood, upbringing, and the background of Guerrilla Feminism. The second is about how I’ve navigated my disabilities amidst feelings of unworthiness. The third focuses on herpes and finding belonging with other herpes-positive folks. The fourth is about my trash bag-size dating trauma. The fifth discusses the act of trauma storytelling online for clout and the concerns I have with seeing and participating in this. The sixth speaks to hypervigilance and what this can mean for our movements. The seventh focuses on beauty filters, artificial intelligence, and aging. The eighth is about my ambivalence around motherhood/parenting. The ninth is about friendship during a global pandemic and multiple genocides. The final essay discusses my current fears about using social media for activism and asking where we go from here. All of these essays have an ongoing thread of searching for, finding, and losing community in online spaces and off.

This is a love letter to all of us who have found (and still find) belonging in online spaces. For those of us who cozied up to medical Reddit threads that made us breathe a sigh of relief, felt believed when we joined a private Facebook group about feminism that acted as a digital consciousness-raising group, and settled into the unsettling stories of #MeToo on Instagram and Twitter because we saw ourselves in them. We are here online and off. We can find these spaces online and off. We belong to ourselves and each other. All I’ve ever wanted in my life were friends, co-conspirators, love. I have this in some ways, and in others I’m still searching, longing. I think of the Internet as my online playground. It can be messy, loud, and crowded. It can also feel like a peaceful cottage in the woods, depending on the spaces (and people) you find. I write about and hold both/and all of this. As a human with multiple marginalized identities, I have struggled to find and feel belonging because of disabilities, illnesses, trauma, and online abuse. This is a book about a life of ambivalence, hypervigilance, and a never-ending search for belonging and love.

People keep punching me in the face on the Internet. Everything I post is problematic. Everything I am is vexing. When I post about my personal experiences within my varied marginalized identities on my personal Instagram account, I’m told I’m taking up space. I am not the “right” kind of disabled. I am not the “right” kind of former sex worker. I am not the “right” kind of queer. I am not the “right” kind of feminist. I have spent years apologizing for who and what I am. I have spent years trying to erase myself. I wrote a tweet once that said: “Some of you have never had to change and grow in front of hundreds of thousands of people and it shows.” Even those who follow me expect me to be infallible. I’m in the panopticon and my followers are in the guard tower. I can’t live inside this pressure cooker. I have always tried to be open and honest when I have fucked up, and yet, that’s not good enough. In the online world, you are either good or bad—there is no nuance, no in-between, no shapeshifting. I want to disappear. I want to be a bog witch nestled somewhere off grid where no one knows me and those who do can’t find me. Baba Yaga was misunderstood.

At its core, social media is meant as a distraction. It doesn’t like nuance, and it’s set up to add to our already hypervigilant and fragmented selves. Author Aurora Levins Morales writes, “We are a society of people living in a state of post-traumatic shock: amnesiac, dissociated, continually distracting ourselves from the repetitive injuries of widespread collective violence.” I understand the protective reasoning for people to continuously distract themselves, but it doesn’t help any of us. For example, pretending we aren’t all witnessing the Palestinian genocide at the hands of Israel and the United States on Instagram doesn’t disappear this pain and trauma. We owe it to humanity to look, to watch, to cry. Using social media in this way is subverting its intended use of distraction. We are instead practicing hyperawareness and attention.

When I think of the Internet these days, I immediately feel paranoid and unsettled in my body. My stomach swirls, my jaw clenches, my fingers freeze. Opening up Instagram stokes my ever-present hypervigilance. I don’t feel like I belong in these spaces anymore. Maybe I never did. I don’t know if I want to belong in the current digital climate. With callouts, misinformation, and feminist infighting, I’m feeling more ambivalent about my presence in online worlds. But if I can’t find belonging where I once used to, what does that mean? What does that say about me?

Despite having a large following on social media, I am planning my exit, or at least planning to divest from Instagram. I’m at the point where I don’t want to build community online unless it’s private and small. I question how community can be built on social media when there is typically a “follower” and a “leader.” I gag at users with large followings who talk about what a great “community” they have. It’s not a community—it’s a performer with an audience. It’s a parasocial relationship. It’s not reciprocal on either end and there’s a clear hierarchy and power dynamic. We simply cannot use social media platforms as our only method of mobilizing and organizing. We can barely use it to disperse factual information, and these platforms are always changing. We can’t trust the algorithms. We can’t trust these systems that keep us in a holding pattern of staying on social media. The platforms will eventually die out. It’s far too dangerous to depend on Instagram, TikTok, or Twitter for our ideas and our communication. Many of us use these apps to knowingly or unknowingly engage in distractive callouts, “cancellation,” and disinformation.

The fragmentation that occurs online spreads like frost. There are still entire groups of people committed to callouts as their brand of “activism.” A callout is attention-grabbing, both for the person being called out and any witnesses. It’s meant to be this way. It needs to be. Callouts aren’t all negative, though they’re often talked about like they are. They can be quite helpful in curtailing and/or ending harm caused by an individual. Callouts, when sincere and respectful of all parties, can be beautiful messy moments of learning and growth in real time. The issue with callouts on social media, however, is that the entire experience becomes a spectacle. Any audience, even a “feminist” or “social justice” one, loves a good spectacle. Hundreds, thousands, potentially millions of people are watching. It’s free entertainment that never ends, because social media apps don’t have open and close hours. I’m concerned that the Internet has made us all so detached and desensitized, we forget, or choose not to see, someone’s humanity. 

Excerpted from the book The Guerrilla Feminist: A Search for Belonging Online and Offline by LaChrista Greco. From Iskra Books. Copyright © 2025. Reprinted with permission.