Welcome to Another Year. Let's Dance?

A personal note about coping with relentless pressure.

Jan 07, 2026

I always welcome the New Year as a chance for a fresh start. This year, I got to feel slightly less heavy hearted for all of TWO DAYS. Still, Trump may be at his most dangerous precisely because he has been backed into a corner. It is going to get better, but it might get worse first. After two solid years of relentless effort, it is more important than ever that we don’t try to do it all ourselves and that we set aside time to recharge our batteries.

Pope Leo appeared at an electronic music rave to mark the 75th birthday of Archbishop Bernard Bober. Video shared by Padre Guilherme, widely known as the “DJ priest,” showed the Pope blessing the gathered crowd via a projection onto the St. Elisabeth Cathedral walls in Košice, Slovakia on Saturday (8 November).

Thanks, and Happy New Year!

First of all, I want to thank you all for sticking with me and allowing me to take a few much-needed weeks off during the holidays. I got to spend time with my very large family and, despite a “face to face” encounter with the ice-skating ribbon in Maggie Daley Park that left me with two puffy purple eyes, I actually had fun, got a bit of rest, and ate an absurd variety of incredible desserts.

I know you all signed up for content about messaging and I will be back on that beat shortly. I have been working on a multi-part series about freedom, solidarity, and the rule of law, but it turned out to be a giant hairball. While some of my ideas fit neatly into a single issue, others are so vastly interconnected that they tie my brain in knots for weeks, if not months. After this, I will dive back in and attempt to untangle it so I can dish it out to you in discreet, easily digestible chunks. Meanwhile…

Wagging the Dog

After our hard work leading up to the presidential election, I wrote a piece about how to keep fighting without burning out. I recommended picking a role or two and leaning on our community to handle the rest. We did not know then that the second round of Trump would be so much worse than the first, that they would eliminate all the guardrails and engage in wholesale destruction everywhere, all at once, making us feel like we have to fight back everywhere, all at once.

After a year of escalating abuse, I had started to feel that we were getting the upper hand. We’ve been overperforming in elections. Trump’s approval numbers are hitting record lows, especially on the economy. The Epstein files have been dominating the news, and then the release of Jack Smith’s testimony. Then he invaded Venezuela - a whole new level of bullying, but this time, internationally and with military force.

Here is my question. Does Venezuela actually change the momentum? Or is it just an act of desperation, timed to push Epstein, Jack Smith, and “affordability” out of the headlines? The invasion of Venezuela and ludicrous claims about Greenland, while significant in international terms, do not help Trump at home. Clearly it was not well thought out and is not likely to go well, even for his oil company pals. Trump may have been looking for a Bush 9-11 approval bump, but after campaigning against “endless wars” he’s just alienating his base.

Still – it is a significant emotional blow. I thought I was rested and ready after the holidays, but I seem to have lost my resilience. I am right back to feeling defeated, like I’m fighting a war on multiple fronts only to see an attack coming from yet another direction. Rest might not be enough. We may need a more proactive form of restoration.

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Forget self-care. It’s time to party.

No, don’t forget self-care! You should continue to take care of yourself and avoid further burnout. But between the unaddressed trauma and isolation of the pandemic and Trump’s relentless assault on everything we hold dear, we might need to dedicate more of the limited energy we have to doing things that don’t just give us a break, but actually recharge our psychic batteries. It’s great to read a book or binge-watch something. Activities like that take our minds off our troubles for a few hours or days at a time and do not require any effort. But if we really want to heal, we need to do things that reconnect us to the present physical and social world.

We need to GATHER, to TALK, to EAT, to DANCE, to SING.

Once upon a time, before I got involved in politics, I went dancing A LOT. The late 80s and early 90s were the golden age of Chicago house music and there was something marvelously therapeutic about dancing for hours on end in a warehouse full of people all dancing to the same beat, especially one now believed by scientists to be good for your brain.

I have not been dancing in ages. House music dancing is tough on the knees and generally inaccessible before the hour of midnight (way past my bedtime.) But every now and then something pops up and reminds me of that sense of joy and liberation, like the Pope blessing a rave with a DJ Priest, or this wonderful column. Somewhere deep in my half-Puerto Rican soul, I yearn for that feeling and am certain that a dancing binge would go a long way to lifting my weighted-down heart.

Get Outside the Bubble

We’ve been operating in a state of emergency for more than two years, and the urgency is only getting worse. All the more reason to unplug and do things with your family, friends and neighbors in the real world. Get together with your political friends and do non-political things. Wherever possible, move your body and breathe deeply. Go dancing. Take a dance class. Join a gym. Find a pick-up game of basketball or soccer. Go ice-skating (carefully). Start a pot-luck dinner circle or walking group. Learn how to make pasta or throw pottery. Do Karaoke. Join a choir. Go to a concert and sing along with the crowd. Go to a big sporting event and yell along with the crowd. Get the heck out of the house and be with people. I know all of these things take effort, but we can no longer afford to not make that effort. If we lose hope, we’re toast. Remember these two things: getting back into your body is the best way to get out of your head and social interaction is the antidote to despair.

Prioritize and Triage

Some of you may already have a good politics/life balance. If so, please let us know how you are achieving it! For everyone else, please do me this favor: be honest with yourself about how much you are still trying to do. If you are taking on too many roles, try to figure out which role or roles you can give up. At minimum, stop feeling guilty about all the roles you cannot manage to play. It’s not all on you. Let others in our community do what they do best. Triage your political work and leave yourself enough time and energy for battery recharging activities. Do it for the mission. The mission needs you fully charged.

Here are the roles I outlined in my previous piece and where I think the greatest needs are now.

1. Watch and warn. Watchdog significant steps toward authoritarianism and warn people of the signs. (We have top notch people doing this in academia and media. Few people still hold the delusion that Trump is capable of any degree of restraint.)
2. Resist. Make the opposition fight for every inch of ground. Delay. Object. Obstruct. Protest. (Our Attorney’s General and legal groups are doing great, and our call-in and letter writing people have this under control. Keep donating, calling, writing, and demonstrating.)
3. Protect. Warn about ICE. Track abducted people and help them get lawyers. Help women access reproductive services. Support trans people. (This is less about the policy and court battles above and more about helping individuals under attack at the local level.)
4. Push forward. Keeping the momentum going on the transition to clean unlimited energy. We can’t afford to slow down now. (For those focused on this critical mission, keep fighting and let us know how we can help.)
5. Drive change. Work toward winning the mid-term elections. Build voter outreach capacity and make the case for candidates who fight for economic fairness, freedom, and equality, and against criminal corruption and abuse of power. (We’re going to need a lot more people on this one.)
6. Build. Building a new media ecosystem, whether online or in the real world. (This is going to require institution building and probably foundation grants, so - critically important, but maybe looking to 2028 to bear fruit.)
7. Envision. Building a better future requires that we are first able to imagine it. Then we have to share that vision with everyone else. (This is critical to fighting hopelessness and nihilism and I don’t think we win elections without it. I think more of us should shift focus to this.)

This is no longer a “we can sleep after the midterms” situation. We’re deep into “make this sustainable for the long haul or we’re not going to be much use to anyone” territory. I am still trying to do too many things at once. I will do my best to take my own advice, and that means setting aside the time and making the effort to do things that recharge my psychic batteries. I hope you will do the same. Like I said, do it for the mission: the mission needs you fully charged.