📣 Warm & Fuzzy Is Not a Strategy: Why Protest Alone Isn’t Enough (And What Comes Next) - the “We Ride at Dawn” Edition
We’re 80+ Days Into Project 2025 — Where’s Our Plan?
Hey friend—
I’ve been watching the uprisings — the chants, the town halls, the cardboard signs, the sea of bodies in the streets across the U.S. and around the world. Against fascism. Against the Cheeto. Against Musk’s chaos carnival.
And yet… I’m haunted by the same question over and over:
Where is the plan?
Because as George Lakey makes devastatingly clear in How We Win, real change doesn’t come from momentary protest. It comes from sustained campaigns with clear strategy, specific targets, trained organizers, and next steps.
And right now? All I see is fire without formation.
Energy with no engine.
Noise with no north star.
We are no longer warning about Project 2025.
We are now living inside it.
The Right has its plan. It’s moving. Quietly, efficiently, cruelly.
Day by day, they’re reshaping courts, rolling back protections, targeting agencies, rewriting norms — all according to a strategic blueprint they wrote years ago.
And we?
We’re still reacting tweet by tweet.
Rally by rally.
Scandal by scandal.
Like it’s all just one more bad season of America’s reality TV.
So where’s our counter-plan?
Not just for today — but for 2029 and beyond.
Where’s the roadmap for:
Holding ground now while institutions are being gutted?
Protecting marginalized communities under coordinated assault?
Rebuilding stronger, fairer systems if and when we reclaim power?
Where’s the “Project Rebuild” that’s already in the works?
Who’s planning for the next Day One?
Because without that? We’re just a crowd.
And they’re a machine.
So here’s what I’m asking — no, what I’m demanding — in this moment of clarity:
🗣️ If you're reading this, it’s time to speak up.
Tag them. Email them. Share this. Call them in — and call them out.
Liz Cheney. Pete Buttigieg. Adam Kinzinger. Jasmine Crockett. AOC. Bernie Sanders. Hell, even Taylor Swift if she wants to wield that influence.
Ask them: Where is our strategic response to the current crisis?
Who is organizing the counter-campaign for the next five years?
What are we doing now to resist — and later to rebuild?
Because we’re showing up. We’re ready.
We’re loud.
We’re organized.
And we are done settling for vibes over victories.
If this pisses you off, good. Let it.
If it inspires you, even better.
If it makes you uncomfortable, you might just be waking up.
Whatever you do, don’t scroll past this moment.
Don’t go back to sleep.
Don’t mistake the sizzle of protest for the structure of change.
Warm and fuzzy doesn’t save democracy.
Campaigns do.
And I, for one, am done marching without a map.
So saddle up, friends.
We ride at dawn.
And this time, we want answers.
—
Kimberly
Letters From a US Expat
🇺🇸✈️🇪🇬
📚 Resistance Reading Room
Featured Read: How We Win by George Lakey
This week, I cracked open a book that should be in the hands of every person who cares about justice, resistance, and reclaiming power:
How We Win: A Guide to Nonviolent Direct Action Campaigning by George Lakey.
Spoiler alert? It shook me.
Not because it was dramatic or flashy — but because it was real. It’s grounded in decades of data and global movements, and it lays out something many of us know in our gut but haven’t had the language for:
Protests don’t win change.
Campaigns do.
That simple, hard truth is one I’ve been holding close all week.
Lakey explains how governments, corporations, and systems of power count on us to get loud and then go home. They know we’ll burn out if there’s no infrastructure. They bet on our exhaustion — and too often, they win.
But movements that make real change? They have plans.
They name targets. They build teams. They train. They act with direction, not just outrage. And they stick with it.
It’s giving blueprint energy. It’s giving “we don’t just need hope — we need a damn Google doc.”
So if you’re feeling fired up after this week’s main letter and wondering what to do next — start here.
📖 How We Win by George Lakey
→ To buy your own
→ To check out a copy from the library
Let’s stop spiraling. Let’s start campaigning.
🛠️ What I’m Doing This Week
In the last newsletter, we introduced the idea of the Pick 3 — choosing where you’ll lead, where you’ll follow, and where you’ll take one consistent action in support of another cause. A quiet framework to organize our activism and preserve our capacity.
This week, I’m putting that into practice myself.
I’m in the process of choosing my Pick 3 — not to check a box, but to anchor myself. To move with clarity instead of just reactivity.
Right now, I know two things with crystal clarity:
💥 I want to be part of demanding a coordinated, strategic resistance to the U.S. Project 2025 machine — not just protesting, but building pressure, structure, and long-game counterpower.
💔 I want to remain in deep, intentional solidarity with the people of Palestine — by following, amplifying, and materially supporting those doing the frontline work of justice.
So this week, I’m actively sourcing the organizations, leaders, and groups that align with those two roles.
Not to just “support them,” but to commit to them.
This is how I build a life of resistance that’s sustainable.
This is how I fight with fire and focus.
If you haven’t done your own Pick 3 yet, I invite you to sit with it this week.
Start with your gut. Let it speak.
The moment is asking us to move with direction, not just passion.
Need help picking your 3? Drop me a reply — I’ll help you map it.
✨ Riotous Joy (Tiny Spark Edition)
Follow Your Giggle: A Camel Manifesto
There’s just something about camels.
These plodding desert ships with their swaying hips and sideways smirks, stomping down Cairo streets with the full confidence of a creature that genuinely does not give a damn.
Cars? People? Crosswalks? Please. Camels go where camels want to go. They don’t rush. They don’t flinch. They don’t perform.
And I LOVE them.
You know how some people shout “Cows!” on road trips when they pass a field of them? (Maybe that’s just a Midwestern thing… hello, Indiana?)
Well, Walid and I do that every time we see a camel — because they make me giggle. Always have. Always will.
Camel motif pants? Got ‘em.
Camel Christmas ornaments? Not to be found — so my dad made some, and Walid and I painted them together.
Camel anything? Count me in.
Camels are my joy. And joy is my compass.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve followed a simple mantra:
“Follow your giggle.”
If something makes my soul giggle — a place, an idea, a moment, a person — I lean in. It’s led me across continents. It’s led me to new work, new love, new life. It led me to Walid (we giggle daily). It led me to our fur-baby Lily. It led me here, with you.
And in times like this — heavy, burning, breathless times — joy is not an indulgence. It’s oxygen.
So this week, I invite you to ask yourself:
What makes your soul giggle?
A color? A memory? A weird little animal with attitude?
Find it. Make space for it. Protect it.
The fight is long. Joy will keep us human inside it.
We Ride at Dawn
We will not be exhausted into silence.
We will not be cute when coordination is needed.
We demand a plan.
And if the leaders won’t build it, we freakin’ will!
With sass, solidarity, and stubborn hope,
Expatriated, not excommunicated. Still raising hell—wherever injustice lives.