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Donna Ladd said what she said. 😘

@donnerkay.bsky.social

14K followers 2.5K following 6.3K posts

Truth to power, always. DM tips. Editor, Co-founder, CEO, Innovator: Mississippi Free Press, JXN Free Press, Youth Media Project, Solutions Circles • she/her • MY views here • Substack: donnerkay • Read: mississippifreepress.org

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Donna Ladd said what she said. 😘 @donnerkay.bsky.social · Jul 4

If you didn’t read my popular Democracy essay on whiteness, today is a good day as so many of us are grappling with how to respond to the rapid loss of freedom and decency in our nation.

Finding solutions has much to with facing the constructed use of “whiteness” to divide and conquer us all.

Mississippi Free Press @mississippifreepress.org · May 30

DEMOCRACY: “We need to become a powerful majority to turn back bigotry & inhumanity amid this fierce urgency of now—not as a coalition of humanity that agrees all the time, but one united to save democracy & to finally realize the dream of so many who gave their lives to save us,” Donna Ladd writes.

Democracy | ‘Whiteness’ Is an Ancient Con. We Can Defeat It.

We don’t need “a coalition of humanity that agrees all the time, but one united to save democracy,” Donna Ladd writes.

www.mississippifreepress.org

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Donna Ladd said what she said. 😘 @donnerkay.bsky.social · 18m

“Good fences make good neighbors.”

#CappBob + #GizmoStauffer

Black Shih Tzu lies on a walkway as an orange and white cat sits looking at him from the inside of a screen porch.

Donna Ladd said what she said. 😘 @donnerkay.bsky.social · 36m

We don’t go quietly into the night. To fight the TDN bullshit of picking up our boxes and racks with papers in them we organized with other publishers and spoke out to national media. It was hard and time-consuming, but we beat Goliath. That fight is part of Free Press DNA:

aan.org/aan/gannett-...

Gannett Quietly Closes Distribution Network in Jackson • AAN Publishers

A few years ago, threatened by media giant Gannett's attempt to control local print distribution via The Distribution Network (TDN), the Jackson Free Press and other local publishers banded together t...

aan.org

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Donna Ladd said what she said. 😘 @donnerkay.bsky.social · 36m

Thank you. We will survive and thrive, drawing on 23 years of Free Press tenacity in Mississippi. People are foolish who don’t understand this and think they can easily push us aside.

Just ask Gannett what happened when they played unfair with Jackson Free Press. We went national on their asses.

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Donna Ladd said what she said. 😘 @donnerkay.bsky.social · 1h

Well, as you can tell from my little post storm just now, there are very real challenges to that happening right now. And the problem with any journalism chain is that it needs healthy competition or it will cut journalism resources/people locally in order to keep taking in more and more newsrooms.

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Donna Ladd said what she said. 😘 @donnerkay.bsky.social · 1h

… who face gift the Hobson’s Choice of whispering among ourselves, hoping the problem gets real notice as it gets worse—or facing economic retribution for going public, which hurts our people.

We should not be in this place. But here we are.

Donna Ladd said what she said. 😘 @donnerkay.bsky.social · 1h

And the newsrooms set to be hurt the most are women- and/or not-white-controlled. Go figure.

Donna Ladd said what she said. 😘 @donnerkay.bsky.social · 1h

We’re already in the territory of efforts to try to attack, discredit and hurt funding of local newsroom leaders who dare to talk out loud about the mendacious folk trying to do this. I know this firsthand as someone who signs checks to support numerous livelihoods.

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Donna Ladd said what she said. 😘 @donnerkay.bsky.social · 1h

We need more people start noticing this, including inside the industry, and step up to make sure that our existing journalism ecosystems are protected. If not, it’s some point we’re gonna be looking back on this time and saying why didn’t we do more to help local newsrooms shore up against chains.

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Donna Ladd said what she said. 😘 @donnerkay.bsky.social · 1h

If not, they will beat down good “competitors” not run by people like them but any means necessary, and we’ll end up back in the same place as journalism power resets. I’m not being hyperbolic. This is a real threat to journalism in the US. Too many folks seem to fear these types for some reason.

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Donna Ladd said what she said. 😘 @donnerkay.bsky.social · 1h

That is very dangerous trend, largely led and controlled by white men, mostly from old-school media models out to “beat” and dominate the industry, not enough people are talking about now. They pepper in words like inclusion, impact and equity, but don’t walk talk. The con needs to get more notice.

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Donna Ladd said what she said. 😘 @donnerkay.bsky.social · 1h

Yes, there’s truth in that. But even in sectors that where we see an improvement like local nonprofits, there’s a disturbing move toward chains to control and run local nonprofits from outside the state, while trying to hurt and miss characterize existing good newsrooms in competitive ways.

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Donna Ladd said what she said. 😘 @donnerkay.bsky.social · 1h

With what I learned growing up in Mississippi, I damn well knew it could happen again. Still, when I wrote about early online hate, white supremacy, and Holocaust denialism for the Village Voice 25 years, some New York journalists chided me for giving it attention. It already had big audience, fools

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Donna Ladd said what she said. 😘 @donnerkay.bsky.social · 1h

I know. But it did have its problems before now, and that’s a big reason that this moment is here. Big media just wouldn’t report certain history, in no small part because they were complicit, even as all of it was embraced once again. Too many believed it just couldn’t happen here, or again.

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Donna Ladd said what she said. 😘 @donnerkay.bsky.social · 1h

I do love my every-morning meditation, thinking, planning pile. My sanity begins here early daily. Lots of birdsong too.

Donna Ladd said what she said. 😘 @donnerkay.bsky.social · 1h

Yes, and … it’s about dehumanizing and rejecting certain Americans, increasing the country’s “white” birthrate and reversing the 2045 whiteness cliff when supposedly superior white people become the minority in the United States.

It’s not like those motives are hidden very far from the surface.

Joshua Reed Eakle 🗽 @joshuaeakle.com · 22h

In Chicago, four vehicles descended and eight ICE agents moved in to kidnap a child.

She screams, “I’m 15,” as ICE yanks her from the car and kneels on her neck.

This is not about immigration enforcement.

It's about terrorizing Americans.

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Donna Ladd said what she said. 😘 @donnerkay.bsky.social · 2h

Yeah, principled peters on display. 😒

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Donna Ladd said what she said. 😘 @donnerkay.bsky.social · 2h

Yeah, well, I’ve had practice rolling up my sleeves during attacks, as you know.

a girl with blonde hair and a red bow tie is standing in front of a fence

ALT: a girl with blonde hair and a red bow tie is standing in front of a fence

media.tenor.com

Donna Ladd said what she said. 😘 @donnerkay.bsky.social · 2h

By the way, here are my most recent truth-tellers. Good news is that running my own newsroom means that I can give myself any word count I want, even writing a 10,000 word essay when I feel it’s merited. 😏

www.mississippifreepress.org/category/dem...

Democracy | Donna Ladd

www.mississippifreepress.org

Donna Ladd said what she said. 😘 @donnerkay.bsky.social · 2h

Methinks that more male opinion writers posting on social media need the skin-toughening experience of a woman leading a truth-telling newsroom (including real racism history) in Mississippi and writing columns challenging power and systems and naming names in my home state for 23 years. Periodt.

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Donna Ladd said what she said. 😘 @donnerkay.bsky.social · 2h

No, it doesn’t.

And it always stabs a bit to know how much more fragile men will be paid (and asked) to opine than smart women writers. And the space/s they’ll get to do it in.

a close up of a woman 's face with a turtleneck on

Alt: a close up of a woman 's face with a turtleneck on digging and blowing her bangs upward

media.tenor.com

Reposted by Donna Ladd said what she said. 😘

Auschwitz Memorial @auschwitzmemorial.bsky.social · 4h

12 October 1892 | Edith Stein was born in Wrocław. She was a German Jewish philosopher who converted to Catholicism & became a theologian & a Carmelite nun.

She was murdered in #Auschwitz in August 1942.
Stein was beatified in 1987 and canonized in October 1998.

Black and white portrait of Edith Stein seated with hands clasped, wearing a dark blouse and a wristwatch, looking directly at the camera.

Black and white photo of Edith Stein wearing a traditional Carmelite religious habit, featuring a solemn facial expression.

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Donna Ladd said what she said. 😘 @donnerkay.bsky.social · 2h

There’s more ignored/buried/sanitized history to report here—but know all this has never been about “small government.” It’s about who government should serve and who it shouldn’t to the Vought types. US mainstream media has never covered this well, allowing it all to grow and be sanitized publicly.

Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 3h

Sunday reading:

I wrote about the aggrieved extremist who is currently firing thousands of federal workers and ravaging state capacity based on conspiratorial nonsense - and about mainstream media’s infuriating tendency to sanitize Russell Vought and the regime he serves.

This week’s piece:

We need to talk about Russell Vought – But Properly

Why certain mainstream outlets insist on sanitizing Vought as a devout “small government” conservative – and what actually animates his war against pluralistic democracy

steady.page

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Reposted by Donna Ladd said what she said. 😘

clyde bruckman's ghost's final repost says free link @ultralaser.bsky.social · 3h

today in making segregation great again

Victor Ray @victorerikray.bsky.social · 3h

Attacks on the federal workforce are also attacks on Black workers, who are overrepresented in the public sector.

Black unemployment is 7.5%. I'm reminded of Coates' observation that Black Americans regularly experience conditions that would be considered a crisis if whites faced them.

Black Unemployment Is Surging Again. This Time Is Different.

www.nytimes.com

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Reposted by Donna Ladd said what she said. 😘

kshap @kshap.bsky.social · 13h

Heart breaking. Excellent reporting @youthmediaproject.bsky.social @mississippifreepress.org
https://

“The 17-year-old son watched as ICE ripped his father from him. “It all felt like a lot to bear…”

www.mississippifreepress.org/a-long-way-from-home-mississippi-father-faces-deportation/

ICE Left a 17-Year-Old on I-20 After Arresting His Father. The Mississippi Dad Now Faces Deportation.

A 17-year-old watched as ICE arrested his immigrant father, Hector, on I-20 in June. The family faces mounting legal fees and the risk of deportation.

www.mississippifreepress.org

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Donna Ladd said what she said. 😘 @donnerkay.bsky.social · 3h

Oh so many times this. Gotta reread Arendt asap.

Bill Kristol @billkristolbulwark.bsky.social · 3h

Pope Leo quotes Hannah Arendt:

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist."

www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news...

Pope Leo calls for news agencies to stand as bulwark against "post-truths," lies and manipulation

Pope Leo XIV has encouraged international news agencies to stand firm as a bulwark against the "ancient art of lying" and manipulation.

www.cbsnews.com

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