Danielle Kay
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daniellekay.bsky.social
Danielle Kay
@daniellekay.bsky.social
2.5K followers 630 following 490 posts
Some things I think about often: community care & mental health, justice, books & libraries, space, the way we tell our stories, equity, trees, music, rocks, the impact of Christian nationalism/evangelicalism, authenticity & sincerity, joy.
📚✨🌒🔭🌲🌳🍁🪴🎵🧠🏳️‍🌈
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daniellekay.bsky.social
okay, but this mistake in the captions is funny
screen capture from the RFK Jr. video at 22 seconds with captions that read "effects on human elves in this country, and I want to thank President"
November 6, 2025 at 5:26 PM
daniellekay.bsky.social
Screenshot from the article earlier in thread that reads: It is that body of thought that guided Gandbhir's decision to work with Pamela Dias, Owens' mother, to chronicle the racism-fueled fear that eventually ended Owens' life. One year after creating the documentary, Gandbhir showed it to Dias, who had given her permission to gather the bodycam footage. Though Gandbhir told Dias she would be more than willing to shelve the documentary and treat it as a way of getting through the grief of this death, Dias decided it was best to release the movie for the world to see. "She takes a lot of strength from Mamie Till, Emmett Till's mother," Gandbhir told Film Comment. "There's a lot of traumatic stuff there, but her attitude is the same: the world needs to see what happened to my baby. The way Emmett Till's mother had an open casket at his funeral after he was lynched, so people could see what happened to him."
October 28, 2025 at 6:55 PM
daniellekay.bsky.social
How cute is this little pepper from my mama's garden?
small green pepper about the size of a palm
September 14, 2025 at 7:49 PM
daniellekay.bsky.social
Books I read/finished in July, August, and these first few days of September. On the left, those I read on my own. On the right, the ones I read out loud to my 5 y/o.

Eternally grateful for words, stories, books, & libraries in my life, and now in my daughter's.
Two stacks of books sitting on a patterned fuschia rug. On the left, top to bottom: The Carrying by Ada Limón; The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood; Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White; Tilt by Emma Pattee; Gliff by Ali Smith; The Testaments by Margaret Atwood; On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder, the graphic novel version, illustrated by Nora Krug; and 1984: The Graphic Novel by George Orwell, adapted and illustrated by Fido Nesti. The book stack on the right, top to bottom: Ramona Quimby, Age 8 by Beverly Cleary; The Island of Adventure by Enid Blyton (WOW I did not know the history of the author or the book until after we read it); Freckle Juice by Judy Blume; The Puppets of Spelhorst by Kate DiCamillo; The Left-Handed Fate by Kate Milford; Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin; and Kid Activists by Robin Stevenson, illustrated by Allison Steinfeld.
September 4, 2025 at 3:11 PM
daniellekay.bsky.social
"We must search out all the pieces we weren't meant to find" keeps echoing in my head, from @mskellymhayes.bsky.social in Let This Radicalize You. It's quiet, simple, powerful, empowering. Any of us can do it, in any context, big pieces or little pieces. It's an anchor with a living rope.
Picture of part of a page from the book Let This Radicalize You by Kelly Hayes & Mariame Kaba. At the bottom of the page is the following start of a paragraph: "To understand the past, we must investigate the stories we were not told, because those stories were withheld for a reason. We must search out all of the pieces we weren't meant to find, the things that disrupt the narratives we've been given." The line "we must search out all the pieces we weren't meant to find" is underlined in pencil.
July 9, 2025 at 1:37 PM
daniellekay.bsky.social
Reading Let This Radicalize You by @mskellymhayes.bsky.social & @prisonculture.bsky.social, fwd by @mayaschenwar.bsky.social.

Crucial reading for this moment.

"Let this radicalize you rather than lead you to despair."

"to believe that even if we don't make it, we are all still worth fighting for"
An open book, lit with amber light, open to page xv in the foreword, titled Radicalization Is Vital. The text reads: This book derives its title from the words Mariame often repeats in times of deep crisis: "Let this radicalize you rather than lead you to despair." As you read the book, I challenge you to follow the title's suggestion: let it radicalize you. To do this, you will need to let your guard all the way down. Let your inner cynic take a nap. Tell your inner devil's advocate to take a few days off. Then let yourself be lifted by the stories of the organizers that fill these pages-people who are stubbornly practicing hope each day and taking imaginative action, in spite of doubts, losses, and heartbreak. If you engage with the book in this way, I'm willing to bet you'll want to take action, too. After all, these days, becoming radical isn't an impulsive dalliance. It's a leap toward allowing yourself to believe in the possibility of our collective survival-and to believe that even if we don't make it, we are all still worth fighting for, to the last breath. If you are up for the challenge, keep turning these pages.
July 3, 2025 at 3:57 AM
daniellekay.bsky.social
Going to channel the unhelpful panic I'm feeling right now into something useful. Treadmill, shower, then read to figure out some actual useful things I can do.

Open to any recommendations—organizations, actions, books, anything. My actual job is important community work but I want to do more.
4 books on a white blanket: The Carrying by Ada Limón; Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care by Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba; Boston Review edition titled Checks & Balances Won't Save Us Now. What Will? by Lisa L. Miller with Eric Blanc, Samuel Moyn, and Kelly Hayes (and in smaller lettering it says "Plus Trump's deportation machine, mutual aid as resistance, and the global right's war on memory); and Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the next) by Dean Spade
July 3, 2025 at 1:15 AM
daniellekay.bsky.social
My May & June books, heavy on the fiction and all over the map genre-wise. A mix of books I read aloud to my daughter, books I received as gifts, book club books, some that came highly recommended by friends, and some I picked out myself. 📚
A colorful stack of books in front of a rust orange background. From top to bottom: Dark Matter by Blake Crouch, One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston, Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, The Puppets of Spelhorst by Kate DiCamillo, Ivy+Bean: Doomed to Dance - book 6 in the series by Annie Barrows and illustrated by Sophie Blackall, How Fascism Works by Jason Stanley, The Last Murder at the End of the World by Stuart Turton, Bluecrowne by Kate Milford, and Out of Oz by Gregory Maguire.
July 2, 2025 at 3:37 AM
daniellekay.bsky.social
This is so powerful. From a speech titled "If There Is No Struggle, There Is No Progress," given in 1857 by Frederick Douglass in Canandaigua, NY.
Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
June 28, 2025 at 1:46 PM
daniellekay.bsky.social
& also also it has a map! & an interesting one, at that! starting off strong here.

The book is The Last Murder at the End of the World by Stuart Turton.
Photo of a two-page spread of a map of a small island in the ocean. There is a big glass dome building in the center of the island, a lighthouse, a few buildings, some trees, what looks like cultivated land, and a walled-in area. There's an inset that is a zoomed-in aerial view of the walled area, with buildings, a church, hopscotch, trees, a fountain, etc. in it—a community. The front of the wall has an ornate gate at center and is painted with palm trees, leaves, and the word LOVE.
June 23, 2025 at 2:18 AM
daniellekay.bsky.social
Okay & also this is one of the sweetest dedications I've read:
Photo of the dedication page of the book, which reads: "To Resa, For having a heart twice the size of anybody else's. For being funny, even when you're grumpy. For listening. And caring. And the cups of tea. For smiling when I walk into a room. For the life that radiates out of you like sunlight. For being with me, even when it's not easy. You're my best friend, and the person I love most in the world. Next time you catch me looking at you and you ask me what I'm thinking, it's that. It's always that."
June 23, 2025 at 2:10 AM
daniellekay.bsky.social
Still trying to add good things to the world instead of just sharing all the awful, so my share today is the lovely page edges of the book I'm about to start reading.
The page-edge side of a book held upright, printed with a dreamy illustration of a lighthouse on a strip of land in the ocean, which is bathed in sunset colors with a starry night sky fast-overtaking the sunset. It is not shown in the picture, but the book is The Last Murder at the End of the World by Stuart Turton.
June 23, 2025 at 2:04 AM
daniellekay.bsky.social
Picked these up today while browsing at one of our local bookstores. I've been following @chanda.bsky.social for a long time and am excited to dig into this soon! & I'm not familiar with Kaveh Akbar's poetry but it grabbed me immediately. Love what I find when I'm not sure what I'm looking for.
Two books partially stacked on a rust orange pillow; books are Pilgrim Bell by Kaveh Akbar and The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spactime, & Dreams Deferred by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein.
June 17, 2025 at 3:32 AM
daniellekay.bsky.social
alt text:
ORDER Upon consideration of plaintiff Perkins Coie LLP's Motion for Summary Judgment and Declaratory and Permanent Injunctive Relief, ECF No. 182; the government's Renewed Motion to Dismiss and for Expedited Judgment, BCF No. 183; the memoranda, declarations, and exhibits submitted in support and opposition; the arguments in support and opposition presented at the motions hearing held on April 23, 2025, and the entire record herein, it is hereby: (1) ORDERED that plaintiff's Motion for Summary Judgment and Declaratory and Permanent Injunctive Relief, ECF No. 182, is GRANTED; it is further (2) ORDERED that the government's Renewed Motion to Dismiss and for Expedited Judgment, ECF No. 183, is DENIED; it is further (3) DECLARED that Executive Order 14230, 90 Fed. Reg. 11781 (Mar. 11, 2025), issued by the President on March 6, 2025, entitled "Addressing Risks from Perkins Coie LLP," is unlawful because it violates the First, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and is therefore null and void; it is further [...]
May 3, 2025 at 1:12 AM
daniellekay.bsky.social
And here's the screenshot from the original post with alt text:
ORDER Upon consideration of plaintiff Perkins Coie LLP's Motion for Summary Judgment and Declaratory and Permanent Injunctive Relief, ECF No. 182; the government's Renewed Motion to Dismiss and for Expedited Judgment, BCF No. 183; the memoranda, declarations, and exhibits submitted in support and opposition; the arguments in support and opposition presented at the motions hearing held on April 23, 2025, and the entire record herein, it is hereby: (1) ORDERED that plaintiff's Motion for Summary Judgment and Declaratory and Permanent Injunctive Relief, ECF No. 182, is GRANTED; it is further (2) ORDERED that the government's Renewed Motion to Dismiss and for Expedited Judgment, ECF No. 183, is DENIED; it is further (3) DECLARED that Executive Order 14230, 90 Fed. Reg. 11781 (Mar. 11, 2025), issued by the President on March 6, 2025, entitled "Addressing Risks from Perkins Coie LLP," is unlawful because it violates the First, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and is therefore null and void; it is further [...]
May 3, 2025 at 1:11 AM
daniellekay.bsky.social
My April books were all over the place! I read TWW for a children's lit book club I'm in with some college friends, read the Milford out loud to my daughter, and the rest were just for me. The Hofstadter was published in 1963 and remains very relevant—I have some issues with it but highly recommend.
A stack of books on a faded raspberry rug. The books from top to bottom: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter, A Lion Among Men by Gregory Maguire, The Raconteur's Commonplace Book by Kate Milford, Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson, In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez, Star Child: A Biographical Constellation of Octavia Estelle Butler by Ibi Zoboi, and The Wednesday Wars by Gary Schmidt.
May 1, 2025 at 11:01 PM
daniellekay.bsky.social
Jason Stanley on the "mythic past":
Photo of most of page 4 in the book How Fascism Works: [...] with wars of conquest led by patriotic generals, its armies filled with its countrymen, able-bodied, loyal warriors whose wives were at home raising the next generation. In the present, these myths become the basis of the nation's identity under fascist politics. In the rhetoric of extreme nationalists, such a glorious past has been lost by the humiliation brought on by glo-balism, liberal cosmopolitanism, and respect for "univer-sal values" such as equality. These values are supposed to have made the nation weak in the face of real and threatening challenges to the nation's existence. These myths are generally based on fantasies of a nonexistent past uniformity, which survives in the traditions of the small towns and countrysides that remain relatively un-polluted by the liberal decadence of the cities. This uniformity— linguistic, religious, geographical, or ethnic— can be perfectly ordinary in some nationalist movements, but fascist myths distinguish themselves with the creation of a glorious national history in which the members of the chosen nation ruled over others, the result of conquests and civilization-building achievements. For example, in the fascist imagination, the past invariably involves tradi-tional, patriarchal gender roles. The fascist mythic past has a particular structure, which supports its authoritarian, hierarchical ideology.
May 1, 2025 at 2:36 PM
daniellekay.bsky.social
from Jason Stanley's 2018 book How Fascism Works:
Photo of the top part of page 48 in the book How Fascism Works. Full paragraph reads: "In fascist ideology, the goal of general education in the schools and universities is to instill pride in the mythic past; fascist education extols academic disciplines that reinforce hierarchal norms and national tradition. For the fascist, schools and universities are there to indoctrinate national or racial pride, conveying for example (where nationalism is racialized) the glorious achievements of the dominant race."
May 1, 2025 at 2:27 PM
daniellekay.bsky.social
So many issues in the U.S. come back, at least in part, to this. The individualistic, cynical belief that someone else being lifted up means you will lose out.

It's almost never the case, and when it is, it's bc some have obscenely more than they need while others don't even have the bare minimum.
Photo of page in Hofstadter book referenced earlier in thread. It's cropped so you can't read any one full sentence, but a part of a sentence underlined in pencil in the center reads: "they fear they shall sink as others rise"
April 21, 2025 at 7:01 PM
daniellekay.bsky.social
Reading some more this morning, and I cannot get over how this is all still so timely more than 60 years later.
Picture of excerpt from the Hofstadter text referenced earlier in thread, p135: "The fundamentalist mind will have nothing to do with all this: it is essentially Manichean; it looks upon the world as an arena for conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, and accordingly it scorns compromises (who would compromise with Satan?) and can tolerate no ambiguities. It cannot find serious importance in what it believes to be trifling degrees of difference: liberals support measures that are for all practical purposes socialistic, and socialism is nothing more than a variant of Communism, which, as everyone knows, is atheism. Whereas the distinctively political intelligence begins with the political world, and attempts to make an assessment of how far a given set of goals can in fact be realized in the face of a certain balance of opposing forces, the secularized fundamentalist mind begins with a definition of that which is absolutely right, and looks upon politics as an arena in which that right must be realized."
April 15, 2025 at 12:54 PM
daniellekay.bsky.social
I bet if you pull back the curtains they installed over it, he's got big old sharpie marks next to all the things he's done so far.
He has: -refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome & necessary for the public good -forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate & pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained [...] -refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Rep in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them & formidable to tyrants only -called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, & distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures -dissolved Rep Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people -refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, & convulsions within -endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, & raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands -obstructed the Admin of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers -made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, & the amount and payment of their salaries -erected a multitude of New Offices, & sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance -kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures. -affected to render the Military independent of & superior to the Civil power -combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, & unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States: For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury: For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies: For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation. He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us [...]* *Redacted the racist language at the very end because there's no reason to include it and subject the people it would hurt to more harm.
April 14, 2025 at 7:50 PM
daniellekay.bsky.social
This footnote on page 124 of Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963) is beyond frustrating.
Picture of the following footnote in a book: 4 "The Klan's Fight for Americanism," North American Review, Vol. CCXXIII (March-April-May, 1926), pp. 38 ff. Cf. Gerald L. K. Smith in 1943: "Our people frequently do not express themselves because there are only a few of us who speak with abandon in times like this, but in the hearts of our people are pent-up emotions which go unexpressed because they fear their vocabularies are insufficient." Leo Lowenthal and Norbert Guterman: Prophets of Deceit (New York, 1949), p. 110. This feeling that the American public is sound at heart but that spokesmen of the old American values somehow lack the means to compete with the smart-alecks of modernism runs through the utterances of the right wing. Cf. Senator Barry Goldwater in The Conscience of a Conservative (New York, 1960), "Our failure ... is of the Conservative demonstration. Though we Conservatives feel sure that the country agrees with us, we seem unable to demonstrate the practical relevance of Conservative principles to the needs of the day. ... Perhaps we suffer from an over-sensitivity to the judgments of those who rule the mass communications media. We are daily consigned by 'enlightened' commentators to political oblivion."
April 14, 2025 at 11:42 AM
daniellekay.bsky.social
Ooh this is fun! The tall stack is my increasingly precarious up-next pile, and the short one is what I'm currently reading.

Happy so far w/ my current reads! Reading the Milford aloud to my daughter with hefty on-the-spot edits because she loved Greenglass House but this one is not for a 5 y/o 😅.
Tall stack of books on top of a shelf with a woven white and black runner on it. Books from top to bottom are: Binti - The Complete Trilogy by Nnedi Okorafor; Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel; If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin; Voyager: Exploration, Space, and the Third Great Age of Discovery by Stephen J. Pyne; How to Raise an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi; Resistance, Rebellion, and Death: essays by Albert Camus; Civil Disobedience and Other Essays by Henry David Thoreau; Freedom is a Constant Struggle by Angela Y. Davis; Classical Mechanics by Leonard Susskind & George Hrabovsky; Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon; What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo; Heavy by Kiese Laymon; Math Without Numbers by Milo Beckman; The Highly Sensitive Parent by Elaine N. Aron, Ph.D.; Another Country by James Baldwin; The Last Interview and Other Conversations with James Baldwin; Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury; and If We Burn by Vincent Bevins. A short stack of four books sitting atop an rust-orange pillow. From top to bottom, the books are: A Lion Among Men by Gregory Maguire; The Raconteur's Commonplace Book by Kate Milford; Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter; and Decolonizing Therapy by Jennifer Mullan, PsyD.
April 13, 2025 at 8:57 PM
daniellekay.bsky.social
It is indeed those EO and page numbers (I'll put the National Archives/Federal Register link in a comment). Listen – I am so careful not to get swept up in conspiracy theories, but this can't just be a coincidence, especially coming from anywhere near Stephen Miller. Just right in our faces.
Screenshot from Federal Register website via National Archives confirming that the page and EO numbers match the quoted post. Title of EO is "Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism" from 02/03/2025.
April 12, 2025 at 4:25 PM
daniellekay.bsky.social
Finished In the Time of the Butterflies and started this Hofstadter this weekend. Julia Alvarez continues to awe me with her writing. The Hofstadter is from the early 1960s yet feels painfully timely 60+ years later. The Alvarez – which culminates in an event in the DR also in the 60s – does too. 🦋
Two books side-by-side on a goldenrod pillow. On the left, In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez, with a purple background, and simple painted black outline of a person with long hair and an outline of a bright orange butterfly over the face and top of the head. In the right, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter, with a white background and the title in big, bold, all-caps bright blue lettering next to a bunch of bold, horizontal red stripes.
April 7, 2025 at 3:39 PM