Thrill-Seeking for Nerds (who want to change the world)

Chag Pesach Sameach! I'm so excited; this is my favorite holiday of the entire year. What is Passover?   Also known as Pesach  in Hebrew, this is basically an 8-day-long celebration of the Israelites escaping slavery in ancient Egypt. It's one of the most important Jewish holidays, and we start the whole thing with a seder : the family eats a special meal together, following a specific order of blessings, readings and songs about the Passover story, and actions like breaking a piece of matzah and washing hands. Setting up for one of the tables for a seder several years ago My family usually has a giant seder with dozens of extended family members crowded into one house, but last year, along with many Jewish families around the world, we gathered over Zoom instead (I'm not sure how I feel about people calling Zoom seders "zeders"...) and this year, it was just my immediate family. I often describe Passover to my non-Jewish friends as "the most social justice-y...

As we transition to a new presidential administration and a new Congress, I'm thinking about the idea of the circumstances of advocacy changing.  It's time to kick off the decade of the Green New Deal, time to strengthen global solidarity and decolonize  global health . This is reason enough to sit down and actually have conversations with each other, even the tough ones. It's also time to continue/resume person reflections. How about changing your mind on a political issue? A painting my friend made at our Sunrise launch party For example, over the past year I wondered if I still maintain that climate action has to be bipartisan. Of course, I'd like it to be! But I don't see Republicans taking the climate crisis seriously. We barely see some  Democrats willing to tackle climate justice at the scale we need, based on the science of climate change, the way it intersects with racism and economic inequality, and the urgency of the political moment. This letter to the e...