Truthout

As the incoming administration vows to “come after” the media, independent journalism is more crucial than ever. In this conversation, Maya Schenwar, director of the Truthout Center for Grassroots Journalism and Truthout’s board president, and editor-in-chief Negin Owliaei talk about the threats to media and nonprofit organizations under Trump, the role and responsibility of independent journalism in increasingly repressive times, and how our editorial work can reflect the moment to come.

Bluesky vs. Facebook vs. X I’ve seen some good posts recently about the engagement on Bluesky vs other platforms and wanted to add some data from Truthout’s pages to the conversation. Please take a moment to share and help us spread the word about how truly nightmarish Facebook and X are.  On Bluesky, Truthout has just under 22,000 followers (and growing!), and our posts typically receive about 150 engagements - that’s an engagement rate of 0.6818%. On X, with 175,000 followers, we see fewer than 20 engagements per post, which works out to an engagement rate of just 0.0114%. Now compare that to Facebook, where we have a hefty 857,000 followers but get fewer than 50 engagements per post - an engagement rate of only 0.0058%. Bluesky’s engagement rate is about 59.64 times (5,964% higher) than X. Bluesky’s engagement rate is about 116.95 times (11,695% higher) than Facebook. These numbers tell a clear story: platforms like Facebook and X have deprioritized independent media in favor of algorithms that censor media, push ads and corporate-sponsored content. Facebook, for example, has not only reduced the visibility of posts from people and pages you follow but also started charging users in some regions to avoid targeted ads and have control over their data privacy. After Trump’s win in the 2024 election, Facebook extended its ad suspension period, directly limiting the ability of left organizations to respond and mobilize. Platforms like Facebook and X are increasingly hostile spaces for organizations like Truthout and our ultimate goal is to be completely free and independent from them. The lack of ads, greed-fueled and politically biased algorithms on Bluesky along with the vibrant, engaged community here is giving us tremendous hope, and we’re thrilled to see so many of you actively supporting our work. You can help us build on this momentum in two key ways: Follow Truthout on Bluesky and engage with our posts. Encourage your friends to join and send them our Truthout folks starter pack. Your likes, reposts, and replies make a massive difference in amplifying our reach. If you can, make a $5 monthly donation at https:/https://lnkd.in/e5i-Byq7 to support independent journalism. Every dollar strengthens our ability to challenge harmful corporate platforms, resist attacks on free speech, and stand against Trump’s agenda. Together, we can build a media landscape that prioritizes truth, community, and independent voices over profit. Thank you for standing with us on this journey!

Today is launch day for "We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition" (co-edited by me and Kim Wilson, Haymarket Books)!! So grateful for everybody who made this book possible, most of all the 30+ writers who fill its pages. Today, Truthout has published an interview Kim Wilson and I did with George Yancy about the book. As Kim and I say, "When parenting and caregiving are erased from the stories of abolitionist movements, we lose something massive. The project of building a liberatory, caring, loving, abundant future must include fully acknowledging the work of birthing, raising, caring for and loving future generations."

On Bluesky? You'll definitely want to follow Truthout there! https://lnkd.in/ekBun3Rk?

Dear Truthout Community, If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done. We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement. Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re shoring up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth. There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset. Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout if Trump were to win. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How would we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now -- breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you? It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force like never before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so. We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way. We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work. Please dig deep if you can. A donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. https://lnkd.in/eTPtTXWp We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together. With love, rage, and solidarity, Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy

Journalists covering Palestinian liberation have always faced a vast scope of censorship. Negin Owliaei and Lara Witt, editors-in-chief of Truthout and Prism, write about how that censorship has grown since October 7, 2023, and where movement media can fight against it. https://lnkd.in/ekeB9UVg

The Truthout Center for Grassroots Journalism is proud to announce the winners of the fourth annual Keeley Schenwar Memorial Essay Prize. The Keeley Schenwar Memorial Essay Prize, awarded to two people who are currently or formerly incarcerated, for essays related to imprisonment or policing, is given in memory of Keeley Schenwar (1990-2020), who was a devoted mother, daughter, sister, friend, writer and advocate for incarcerated mothers. Each year, the selected essays share some of the spirit in which Keeley Schenwar moved in the world (and wrote her own work), a spirit of empathy, vulnerability and resistance. Each winner receives $3,000 and publication in Truthout. We were honored to read hundreds of submissions this year, and were deeply moved by each one. As ever, we wish we could have selected many more winners, and are so grateful to have had the chance to engage with this work. In addition to members of the Truthout team, we are thankful for our additional guest judge Colette Payne, a winner of the 2022 prize. The 2024 winners are Kaylene Albuquerque, author of “My Miscarriage Behind Bars Showed Me the Truth of the ‘Justice’ System,” and I.B. Peaceful, author of “Our Future Generations Deserve Abundance, Not ‘State of the Art’ Prisons.” https://lnkd.in/exYTJuH7

New book alert! I'm SO excited to announce that you can preorder "We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition," the anthology I co-edited with the amazing Kim Wilson, now (anywhere you buy books)!!! I hope the book will be useful to parents, caregivers, and anyone who cares about moving beyond carceral and oppressive systems. This book is not an instruction manual. We offer it as a collection of insights, vignettes, analyses, and glimpses showing how caregiving and abolition intertwine, and how people are putting that into practice every day, in movements and in their homes -- which, of course, overlap! This book is filled with wisdom from incredible contributors: Harsha Walia, Beth Elaine Richie, Dorothy Roberts, Mariame Kaba, Ruthie Wilson Gilmore, Heba Gowayed, Erika Ray, Dylan Rodriguez, Nadine Naber & Stacy Austin, Anya WT, Paul Lacombe, Shira Hassan, Sarah Tyson, Bill Ayers & Bernardine Dohrn, Adrienne Maree Brown & Autumn Brown, Jennifer Viets, Holly Krig, Ryann Croken, Rania El Mugammar, Victoria Law, Keisa Reynolds, and many more. And its gorgeous cover is by Olly Costello! We put our hearts, labor, stories, and spirits into this book and we hope it resonates. We Grow the World Together comes out November 19, but you'll be helping get it into bookstores and libraries if you preorder it now (from anywhere you like to buy books)!! Here are a few of the nice things that people said about the book: "This is the book that I wish I had when my children were young! Taken together, these powerful essays offer an irresistible invitation to embrace the ‘soul work’ of parenting, which is vital collective labor for a liberatory future." --Michelle Alexander "The beautiful chorus of voices gathered in We Grow the World Together invites us to take up the work of parenting ourselves and each other toward becoming and bringing into being people who can live the liberation we long for. As we continue to enact and survive intergenerational trauma on a global and genocidal scale, the practice of parenting toward healing and uprooting all forms of violence, policing, and punishment in all our relationships is key to shifting the shape of societies toward the world we want." --Andrea Ritchie “Everyone who raises a child imagines a bright future for that precious being. This beautiful book teaches us how to imagine a bright future for all of us: children, families, and communities. Abolition is liberation and love. I recommend this work for every reader.” —Imani Perry "This is a book that a lot of people have been waiting for, whether they know it or not. Our movements are always stronger when we take the complex needs of parents and caregivers into account, and We Grow the World Together is a fine example of that principle. This book will enrich our movements and our relationships." --Kelly Hayes

We’re proud to be co-launching the Movement Media Alliance, a coalition of organizations that all believe in the power of media to inform and fuel social movements that transform the world. When our journalism organizations met in November 2023, we had originally planned to focus on covering the 2024 election. Instead, we pivoted because an emergency was at hand: the U.S. government’s support of Israel’s genocide against Gaza and the ways our corporate media outlets were bolstering genocidal rhetoric and minimizing the extent of the atrocities. This became our first collaboration, Media Against Apartheid and Displacement. Today we officially launch the Movement Media Alliance, a collaborative hub to amplify our impact and sustain our work, as well as cover the ongoing genocide and Palestinian resistance. Our members include Truthout, Prism, In These Times, Convergence, Waging Nonviolence, Scalawag, Inquest, The Real News Network, Baltimore Beat, Palestine Square, Respair Production & Media, The Forge and Haymarket Books. Stay tuned for the MMA’s forthcoming project, Communities Beyond Elections.

Kelly Hayes talks with William C. Anderson, Robyn Maynard, Harsha Walia, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Mahdi Sabbagh, and others about the crises of trauma, grief and overwhelm in our communities, and the kind of healing activists need to stay in the fight.