Evan Casper-Futterman
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ecf.bsky.social
Evan Casper-Futterman
@ecf.bsky.social
150 followers 530 following 7 posts
PhD in planning and public policy. #economicdemocracy. Bronx forever. Maryland for a few years.
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Reposted by Evan Casper-Futterman
jakemgrumbach.bsky.social
MLK 1968: It may be true that morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. It may be true that the law cannot change the heart but it can restrain the heartless. It may be true that the law can't make a man love me, but it can restrain him from lynching me.
January 19, 2026 at 6:22 PM
ecf.bsky.social
I made this point in my dissertation about transforming institutions and economic democracy and I feel silly having missed this point about BS jobs being a counterpoint to the long march thru the institutions
resnikoff.bsky.social Ned Resnikoff @resnikoff.bsky.social · 8d
The case against Graeberism and for Mamdanism dissentmagazine.org/article/the-...
Instead of retreating into facile cynicism about the safety net and regulatory state, people on the left should be trying to occupy the bureaucracy at the state, local, and, after the MAGA putschists are finally expelled from power, federal level—not simply because we need good people in those jobs, but because enough good people in any given department can change its internal culture for the better. A lot depends, for example, on whether state and local transportation departments are staffed by car-brained traffic engineers or planners who are genuinely invested in walkability and developing viable mass transit networks. Just as much hinges on whether state health agencies are staffed by people with a genuine commitment to the cause of universal healthcare, even in the face of brutal federal Medicaid cuts. There’s another reason for occupying the bureaucracy, too. For a movement that wants to transform the state, there is tremendous value in understanding how policy implementation and institutional change happens on a granular level. If you spend some time working inside the bureaucracy and you keep your eyes open, you can learn a lot about the points of leverage that leftist politicians and outside advocacy groups can press to their advantage. On the flipside, you can also learn a great deal about the tradeoffs associated with certain approaches and how well-intentioned but undercooked policy initiatives can produce unintended consequences. These are all important lessons for anyone trying to push any level of government in a more humane direction. But they’re especially important lessons for leftist officials who have ambitious agendas, a finite amount of time in which to implement them, and little room for error.
January 12, 2026 at 6:37 PM
Reposted by Evan Casper-Futterman
mobydickatsea.bsky.social
all this is both foolish and unnecessary
January 4, 2026 at 9:47 PM
Reposted by Evan Casper-Futterman
nycpolicyforum.bsky.social
The NYC Policy Forum is new initiative that seeks to build—through convenings, research, and publications—a network of committed experts with the vision & policy know-how necessary to deliver on the widespread demand for a more affordable NYC!

Details 👇

nycpolicyforum.substack.com/p/introducin...
Introducing the New York City Policy Forum
A new project dedicated to governance in New York City
nycpolicyforum.substack.com
December 16, 2025 at 12:19 AM
ecf.bsky.social
I’m no legal scholar but (2) sounds familiar as the rationale for mayoral control of schools in NYC
December 9, 2025 at 3:23 PM
Reposted by Evan Casper-Futterman
sadvil.bsky.social
TRUMP [after spending 5 minutes with Zohran]: surplus value, it’s a very wonderful thing, very wonderful, and they’re stealing it. Can you believe that?

We’re going to be looking very strongly at the bourgeoisie, what they’re up to
November 21, 2025 at 9:25 PM
Reposted by Evan Casper-Futterman
jwmason.bsky.social
This outstanding essay by @itsmccarthy.bsky.social in Hammer and Hope captures a frustration that I have long felt with a certain strand of left opinion-makers. hammerandhope.org/article/iden...
On the left, some argue that economic populism is the only grounds for building a working-class movement that can reverse class dealignment. In this view, the left should simply pursue a politics of class while identity issues, such as immigration, gender, race, and sexuality, should be downplayed in political organizing. Others go further and treat conservative views on those topics as working-class majority views that the left must learn to embrace. But this new common sense contradicts reality. Setting forms of identity, such as race, against class as fundamentally opposed bases of politics misrepresents how building working-class power works on the ground, both today and throughout history. Dismissing the social differences between working-class people as irrelevant ignores the key building blocks of class politics. And a left that embraces the right’s divide-and-conquer rhetoric on criminal justice, gender, race, and immigration will only deepen political divisions within the working class. Subscribing to either view would doom the working-class solidarity needed to win.
November 21, 2025 at 1:15 PM
Reposted by Evan Casper-Futterman
self.agency
they're going after holocaust survivors
November 17, 2025 at 7:29 PM
Reposted by Evan Casper-Futterman
mariabustillos.com
Flaming Hydra is a coop. All you can do with your share is sell it back to the coop (for $1), and nobody can have more than one.

You have to be ready for growth to take a long time. Journalism is a public trust that should be accountable to readers alone, and that means readers alone pay for it.
josiahhawthorne.bsky.social Josiah Hawthorne @josiahhawthorne.bsky.social · Nov 7
How does one invest in left-wing media without a far-right billionaire coming along in a few years, buying said media, and remodeling it in his own image?

That seems to be a recurring problem.
November 7, 2025 at 6:08 PM
Reposted by Evan Casper-Futterman
tompepinsky.com
If you think about politics in these times as fundamentally about building a new kind of social order, rather than rejiggering institutions or party platforms in order to deliver someone’s more favored policy outcomes, contemporary politics makes a lot more sense.

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
September 30, 2025 at 11:49 PM
Reposted by Evan Casper-Futterman
ontopunk.bsky.social
"Community organizing is both a science and an art — a science because it is grounded in a systematic understanding of power and oppression, an art because it demands creativity, empathy, and adaptability in order to build relationships and trust." - James Forman
September 3, 2025 at 5:46 AM
ecf.bsky.social
He learned a lot as HUD secretary. The candidate of experience!
petersterne.com Peter Sterne @petersterne.com · Aug 11
In urban policy, it is considered bad for someone to be rent-burdened (spending at least 30% of their income on rent). But Cuomo's newly proposed law would *require* that people be rent-burdened. Absolutely insane.
New York, NY – Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, candidate for Mayor of New York City, today announced ‘Zohran’s Law,’ a plan to protect the city’s rent-stabilized apartments from being occupied by high-income individauls, ensuring these limited, affordable units go to New Yorkers who actually need them. Under Cuomo’s proposal, when a rent-stabilized apartment becomes vacant, the incoming individual income would be capped so that the annual rent makes up at least 30 percent of that income. For example, if an apartment rents for $2,500 a month ($30,000 per year), the new tenant’s income could not exceed $100,000. New York City is in the grip of a housing emergency. The city does not have enough units, and the drastically low vacancy rate is driving up prices, squeezing families, and forcing many to leave in record numbers.
August 11, 2025 at 10:28 PM
Reposted by Evan Casper-Futterman
jwmason.bsky.social
This article on on NYC landlords unable to pay their expenses gives a foretaste of what I suspect the pushback to a rent freeze is going to look like. www.thecity.nyc/2025/08/07/b...
Rent Freeze Proposal Chills Cash-Starved Owners of Bronx Buildings
Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani’s pledge is raising alarms as bankers refuse to finance regulated buildings where costs outstrip income.
www.thecity.nyc
August 7, 2025 at 11:48 AM
Reposted by Evan Casper-Futterman
kjephd.bsky.social
Ganz killing it here, combining a critical methodological perspective on how polling is done with fundamental political theory about what politics is & what it involves:
Should we castigate the public for a lack of imagination or common sense? No, the blame lies with lazy politicians and their craven advisers. The approach of issue polling and then building a campaign around it completely ignores the human faculties of judgement and imagination. It assumes that when people hear a question and answer it, they all mean the same thing and that thing reflects a shared empirical reality. They don’t, and it doesn’t. Everyone has very different images in their mind. The key is to put the right images in their mind, hopefully, good, inspiring, grand, and virtuous ones. Politicians need to go back to basics, to the oldest political skill: rhetoric, that is the art of combining reason with imagery that moves the emotions.
August 6, 2025 at 1:56 PM
Reposted by Evan Casper-Futterman
milesperhoward.bsky.social
This is a Hall of Fame reader comment on a very reactionary op-ed about Zohran Mamdani's victory that was published in my local paper today.
June 25, 2025 at 7:31 PM
ecf.bsky.social
I really don’t mean this as a dunk and am glad to see lots of people suggesting truth and reconciliation. But as I understand it these paths are by definition exclusive of eachother: We can have truth and reconciliation or we can have prosecution and incarceration. Both have merits and risks.
edburmila.bsky.social Ed Burmila @edburmila.bsky.social · Jun 17
We are a failed state if there isn’t some truth and reconciliation process on the other end of this that results in a lot of these people going to prison for a long time.
gwynnefitz.bsky.social Gwynne Hogan @gwynnefitz.bsky.social · Jun 17
Here's a longer video of Brad Lander's detention just now inside 26 Federal Plaza as he tried to walk a man out of immigration court, by masked federal agents.
June 17, 2025 at 4:44 PM
Reposted by Evan Casper-Futterman
olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social
gonna give the ol "support independent, worker run, reader funded media" sign a good tap here
laurenmeidasa.bsky.social Lauren Ashley Davis @laurenmeidasa.bsky.social · Dec 18
LA Times owner asks editorial board to ‘take a break’ from writing about Trump

Billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, who said paper is ‘echo chamber’, also blocked paper’s board from endorsing Harris

www.theguardian.com/media/2024/d...
LA Times owner asks editorial board to ‘take a break’ from writing about Trump – report
Billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, who said paper is ‘echo chamber’, also blocked paper’s board from endorsing Harris
www.theguardian.com
December 19, 2024 at 1:07 AM
Reposted by Evan Casper-Futterman
sorayanadiamcdonald.com
"Thompson’s murder is one symptom of the American appetite for violence; his line of work is another."

Jia bringing the 🔥
A Man Was Murdered in Cold Blood and You’re Laughing?
What the death of a health-insurance C.E.O. means to America.
www.newyorker.com
December 8, 2024 at 2:04 PM
Reposted by Evan Casper-Futterman
davidjroth.bsky.social
A lot of things are going to get worse and I'm feeling a lot of dread and sorrow about that. But I am eager to try to find some way to put all that to work in the service of fixing all the things the worst and cruelest people are so determined to break.
December 5, 2024 at 12:41 AM
Reposted by Evan Casper-Futterman
leahstokes.bsky.social
One academic theory I think helps explain these democratic socialist to MAGA swings that AOC is documenting is Hirschman's "Exit, Voice and Loyalty."

I think these voters think the solution is exit and they see both Bernie and Trump representing that anti-establishment energy.
November 13, 2024 at 4:49 PM
Reposted by Evan Casper-Futterman
olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social
another curmudgeonly thread for the many of you who will be entering organizing spaces.

all other things being equal, when confronted with one team of people recruiting you to Be a Thing and another team recruiting you to Do a Thing, please give serious thought to joining the second.
November 13, 2024 at 1:52 PM
Reposted by Evan Casper-Futterman
cwarzel.bsky.social
i tried to get at this from a different perspective when it comes to the information environment. lotta people aren't dupes out there falling for fake news. they're willing participants and its something worth reckoning with
November 8, 2024 at 11:22 PM
Reposted by Evan Casper-Futterman
jacobtlevy.bsky.social
I keep coming back to 1876 as the analogy: not the end of competitive elections or the establishment of a nationwide one-party state, but a catastrophic blow to constitutional government from which it took 90 years to sort of recover.
But the North was able to avert its eyes from the consequences, 1
November 9, 2024 at 1:10 PM