Caroline Lee
carolinewlee.bsky.social
Caroline Lee
@carolinewlee.bsky.social
Sociologist.
Reposted by Caroline Lee
journalists are workers who deserve to be paid fairly for our labor and I think that far too few consumers of media recognize or even care about this fact
February 4, 2026 at 5:20 PM
Reposted by Caroline Lee
If we're going to have a democracy, we need to include everyone - so we have recommendations for how to do that. The DNC today launching a listening campaign to have volunteers talk to people who voted in 2020 but not in 2024 is a good start - but it will need to be done right.

February 4, 2026 at 7:51 PM
Reposted by Caroline Lee
The people we spoke to - across racial groups, and across geographies in Pennsylvania - told us they feel disconnected from our leaders and our political system, that politics looks like a game played by privileged people. They don't feel like politicians really care about them or their communities.
February 4, 2026 at 7:51 PM
Reposted by Caroline Lee
Today I'm releasing probably the most important scholarly thing I've ever worked on - a report based on talking with 144 people about why they don't vote or only vote regularly, and on what needs to be done to build a democracy that can include everyone.
www.swarthmore.edu/u...
please share!
February 4, 2026 at 7:51 PM
Reposted by Caroline Lee
Some years ago, I was chatting with a Retropolis reader, a young history student, and I mentioned there were several dozen people enslaved in New Jersey up until the day the 13th Amendment kicked in in December 1865.

Y’all. He identified every one of them.
njs.libraries.rutgers.edu/index.php/nj...
February 4, 2026 at 2:45 AM
Reposted by Caroline Lee
And they want us to suffer. Because human care is incompatible with capitalism. As other sectors have profited from automation and outsourcing, care has remained too labor-intensive to be simultaneously profitable, affordable for all who need it, and paid well enough to avoid shortages of care. 2/
February 2, 2026 at 10:42 PM
Reposted by Caroline Lee
As care gets more expensive, and as shortages of human care increase, desperate people may be willing to buy the lie that AI is a reasonable substitute. But really, they'll just be getting, at best, a cheap knock-off, while the wealthy hoard what remains of human care for themselves. 1/
Dr Oz on rural healthcare: "There's no question about it, whether you want it or not -- the best way to help some of these communities is gonna be AI-based avatars"
February 2, 2026 at 10:42 PM
Reposted by Caroline Lee
"In February 2026, AI agents began doing something unprecedented"

It is the second day of February 2026.
February 2, 2026 at 2:53 PM
Reposted by Caroline Lee
I just saw a video of what appeared to be a 6 or 7 year old little girl in agony as someone flushed her eyes for tear gas. ICE is an evil abomination. This is authoritarian, failed-state shit and everyone who helped this along should be held accountable.
February 1, 2026 at 3:34 AM
Reposted by Caroline Lee
YES!!!

Y'all just do not understand Tarrant County. This is...oh well there are the tears. Great work by all the organizers!!
JUST IN: Democrats flip a red seat in the Texas Senate.

Taylor Rehmet wins against Leigh Wambsganss, a conservative activist who helped lead right-wing efforts to take over TX school boards.

With all early vote, and 95% of precincts, in, Dem up 57/43.

Trump won this seat by 17% in Tarrant County.
February 1, 2026 at 5:09 AM
Reposted by Caroline Lee
ICYMI @hebagowayed.bsky.social wrote about the companies profiting from ICE’s ethnic cleansing campaign and why a bipartisan consensus keeps the out-of-control agency funded for our newsletter Group Threat (please subscribe).
Tracking ICE's Profits
ICE is extraordinarily costly to working people & grotesquely profitable for the worst among us
groupthreat.com
February 1, 2026 at 2:16 PM
Reposted by Caroline Lee
The Dept. of Appearing to Take Things Rather Seriously While Wearing a Navy Sport Coat and No Tie is actively searching for a Dean of Comfortably Ordering Wine in a DC Steakhouse Where Denny Hastert Used to Sit Right Over There. The position will pay $580,000. The history department is abolished
Yale is launching a new Presidential Senior Fellowship to expand access to the transformative work of universities. As part of this program, author and columnist David Brooks will join the Jackson School of Global Affairs starting February 1.

Read more in Yale News: bit.ly/49QpJoY
January 29, 2026 at 9:45 PM
Reposted by Caroline Lee
"In 2023, the “Minnesota Miracle” secured one of the strongest social safety nets in the country...None of it would have been possible without years of organizing that built a multiracial constituency prepared to stand together" - @hahrie.bsky.social for @hammerandhope.bsky.social, 2024
A discussion about why Minnesota was so ready to reject ICE/CBP:

"Number one is the rigorous focus on agency-oriented organizing practice, a north star of building multiracial, democratic governing power. We have a majoritarian orientation — we want progressive and popular power."
Our Power Is Organized People
Creating a movement across generations, races, and faiths in Minnesota.
hammerandhope.org
January 29, 2026 at 6:26 PM
Reposted by Caroline Lee
Something important to understand about ICE thugs in the Twin Cities is that they're harassing innocent kids and parents at bus stops and schools every single day. Even after the Pretti shooting. It's terrorism.
January 27, 2026 at 7:30 PM
Reposted by Caroline Lee
Everything they learned in Minnesota they’re applying in Maine from day one. They started off doing fast-moving snatch and grabs on the street, recording and using facial id on observers, and threatening observers directly. They’ll do it all where you live too.
Why is the msm outside of Maine not covering this? It seems like a huge and very troubling story to me. ICE coming to observers houses or calling them on the phone warning them to back off??!! www.pressherald.com/2026/01/23/i...
ICE watchers in Maine say they were threatened by federal agents
Community members have been monitoring the activity of immigration agents in Greater Portland.
www.pressherald.com
January 26, 2026 at 10:27 PM
Reposted by Caroline Lee
Even when they show signs of weakness or forced regret, we must not give an inch. Authoritarian governments still respond to public opinion, which is why sustained pressure matters. We have to keep making clear that these thuggish actions are unconscionable and will not be tolerated. Don’t let up.
January 26, 2026 at 10:07 PM
Reposted by Caroline Lee
There it is. The beautiful, clear, digitized glass negative. And I would have never have thought to look for "bonfire." And no mention that this is Dr. Spencer. This was such a nerdy, but fun journey! A little bit of good news in this dreary world.
WOMAN SUFFRAGE. BONFIRE ON SIDEWALK BEFORE WHITE HOUSE
1 negative : glass ; 5 x 7 in. or smaller
www.loc.gov
January 25, 2026 at 7:17 PM
Reposted by Caroline Lee
Addition: I stumbled across this photo of a suffrage protest in front of the White House. You can see a suffragist way over on the right. Feels super scary.
January 25, 2026 at 8:06 PM
Reposted by Caroline Lee
ICE killing #AlexPretti should remind you of police killing #PhilandoCastille. Both men had concealed weapon permits, did not draw their guns, & were killed in Minn. These homicides are the price of unaccountable policing. These deaths are variations on the same fatal theme.
January 25, 2026 at 4:36 AM
Reposted by Caroline Lee
Some folks could really benefit from reading Carol Anderson's book on the ways the Second Amendment has historically been a tool of white supremacy, become some of the takes are...lacking. (And I guess Dr. Anderson isn't on here?)

www.bloomsbury.com/us/second-97...
The Second
Winner of the 2022 CHOICE Outstanding Academic TitlesFrom the New York Times bestselling author of White Rage, an unflinching, critical new look at the Second A…
www.bloomsbury.com
January 25, 2026 at 11:55 AM
Reposted by Caroline Lee
Worse than Kent State, really than any episode I can think of probably dating back to Reconstruc & earlier b/c

1. continuing, not 1 off.
2. organized, not individual ofcrs losing it
3. literally at hand of federal government, which is
4. immediately lying & circling the wagons to prevent inves.
January 24, 2026 at 10:07 PM
Reposted by Caroline Lee
This was something the Trump administration promised it would not do this time - separating kids from their parents. But of course they are doing it. Because cruelty is the point. And they believe they are above the law. www.propublica.org/article/ice-...
ICE Sent 600 Immigrant Kids to Detention in Federal Shelters This Year. It’s a New Record.
Under a zero tolerance policy, the first Trump administration separated immigrant children from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border. New data suggests separations are happening all over the count...
www.propublica.org
January 24, 2026 at 1:00 AM
Reposted by Caroline Lee
I am not being snarky. I need my colleagues who wrote on covid school lockdowns to engage with this. To be as loud as they have been about prior "learning loss." Hell, you can cite Tom & Mark's AERJ paper so you feel better that there's some econ somewhere in your argument.
January 23, 2026 at 10:05 PM