I love hearing people’s radicalization stories. How did you get radicalized. Tell me your radicalization origin story.

it happened in two parts for me. the first was that I started med school and was exposed overnight to people and attitudes I'd been sheltered from all my life, and many of those people weren't shy about telling me how sheltered I'd been. that was the thing that primed me.

Staying up all night for days watching livestreams of police being used as a military force against black people on the street protesting in Ferguson. It was horrifying.

My son fell and ended up in the PICU with a brain bleed at 21 months old. We were unemployed and out of state, so once we knew he was out of danger, I fully expected the medical bills to destroy us. And then the state just... paid for it. Because they automatically insure kids. Socialism rules.

Getting called a nick gurr my first day at the new high school I transferred to when my family moved to Los Angeles from Portland. I expected it in Oregon and thought it surely would get better in ~*LA*~ and I was wrong as hell

Living in Hong Kong during the protests. Changed my life. Fuck acab. Fuck the CCP. Fuck the US. Burn it all down.

I was 9 in 1979 and my mom went through the annulment process w/ the Catholic Church after her civil divorce. They put her though hell, charged her a fuckton of money, and she got a decree that said our family had *never happened*. I knew damn well it had happened. (European history was fun later.)

The murder of George Floyd and the subsequent protests showed me just the grimiest lies that out institutions feed us as well as the horrible consequences of them. It was really intense and actually fairly bleak.

Terri Schiavo was the first time I realized that a huge chunk of folks did not respect the law, could not be reasoned with on key issues that threatened people’s livelihoods but conflicted with their religious ideas, and had privileged access to politicians (or were elected officials).

Even as a kid the Book of Mormon seemed kinda.. off: “that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them… they shall be loathesome unto thy people, save they shall repent..” https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/2-ne/5

As a union steward in the US, I cannot overstate my appreciation and gratitude for the Disney musical Newsies. It comes up in so many initial 1:1s 😂