🙋🏽♀️ Why Parents Should Care About Mega Meta Lawsuits. Plus, a Mass Convergence in MN, the Economics of GLP-1s & More...
As a mother, I've struggled with screen time for my two kids. There's been a constant pull and push in my house over how much screen time is too much, what my kids are exposed to, and how it impacts their health. In an interview this week about several new groundbreaking lawsuits against Meta, the parent company for Facebook and Instagram, I said to Fairplay's Haley Hinkle, "it really skews the dynamic between parent and child when a parent is basically being put into a position of having to police their children's access."
She agreed. If you're dealing with kids who struggle with social media addiction – or perhaps YOU struggle too – check out this great interview I did with Haley:
HALEY HINKLE: "These cases really recognize that there are limits to what these companies should be able to do, that using advanced techniques to design the platforms that are really targeted at neuroscience and what makes our brains sort of light up and what's going to keep us all scrolling, that's it's really unfair when it comes to kids and teens. And what we have is really the state saying that enough is enough and you've gone too far."
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It's fitting that Minneapolis, which became the epicenter of the 2020 George Floyd protests, and then again, of the 2026 ICE resistance, will be the location of a gathering this weekend called the National Convergence for Democracy Daniel Hunter, of Freedom Trainers, who has trained activists in combatting authoritarianism for years, will be at the convergence and gave me a preview in a fantastic and inspiring conversation. If life under Trumpism is depressing you, you should watch this conversation. I promise it'll leave you feeling more hopeful, and more committed to action.
DANIEL HUNTER: "People will be coming from all over the country to swap notes, share how are we assessing this moment, what are the things that we're doing to resist and go forward. It'll be a chance for swapping, sharing, training, skilling each other up in, both around ICE, around election defense, around the whole thread of authoritarian threat that we're currently experiencing. So it's a way to move from local fights to national, which is the trajectory that we're on right now."
Also, I had the chance this week to interview my friend and colleague, Richard (RJ) Eskow, host of The Zero Hour, a program where I am senior correspondent, analyzing the latest news in weekly appearances. Richard wrote a great piece in The Nation about the larger implications to healthcare of Trump's agreement with Big Pharma on the price of GLP-1 drugs. Check out our conversation - you'll want to listen – whether you care about weight-loss drugs or not:
RICHARD ESKOW: "It's a scam. It's a medicine sideshow, like those guys with covered wagons in the 19th century... And it disturbs me a great deal, Sonali, that neither the media, nor other politicians have sufficiently called this out for what it is, which is a way of multi-tracking more and more of our healthcare into private transactions online, pay-as-you-go, at the mercy of the pricing that the private sector wants, and digitizing it for their own use."
And, as a journalist who has covered the abolition of police and prisons for years, one of my go-to centers for research and data has been the Vera Institute of Justice. This week on my weekly half-hour series Rising Up For Justice, a new-ish show sponsored by FSTV, I got to speak with the wonderful Ellen Flenniken about how Vera Institute has, since 1961, been tracking the impact of policing on our communities!
ELLEN FLENNIKEN: "We are the oldest national criminal justice organization in the United States, and it started first to respond to and fight the injustice of a bail system in New York City that locked people up simply for being poor. And those origins have remained true in Vera's work to this day. We continue to work to ensure that wealth does not determine people's freedom."
👉🏾 Also, ICYMI, here's THE DEFINITIVE PORTAL for all things regarding my upcoming book, Breaking ICE: Community Defense Against State Terror and MAGA Fascism. It has a link to pre-order signed copies, reviews, press coverage, and details of my book tour - which kicks off next week in Chicago!
(Also, psssst.... YOU CAN GET A FREE COPY OF MY BOOK through In These Times Magazine!!)
Finally, my dear subscribers, if you've read this far, HOORAY, and also, don't stop now... go on... you're almost there.
I hope you are enjoying fewer emails from me, and I also hope those among you who have let your subscriptions lapse, or haven't yet taken the plunge, upgrade to a paid subscription soon 👈🏾 👈🏾.
Think about what it takes to make this work happen. I have NO TEAM behind me, no army of producers and engineers and assistants. It's just me. Every day I hear from people who appreciate this labor of love.
But only a fraction actually sustain it.
Expand that fraction. Be the change. Go on, you know you want to.