The War on Work

Shame is a powerful weapon of control. 

Crooked, lying, fake. These are the slurs mainstreamed by Donald Trump to describe the work of journalists and truth-tellers. It is projection and deflection in action. The language weaponizes shame to deride and devalue the work of those holding power to account. Journalists not practiced in the art of shutting down bad faith arguments are put on the defensive, explaining and re-explaining concepts like the truth and justifying the purpose of their work. The corruption is de-centered, the fraud forgotten, the thread for accountability unravels. 

This is how we lose the plot. 

Again and again and again.

“The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing”. — Toni Morrison 

Back in 2017, I was in New York to attend the Sidney Hillman Awards honoring journalists who pursue investigative reporting and deep storytelling in service of the common good. David Fahrenthold, now with the New York Times but then with the Washington Post, was one of the honorees for his work covering Donald Trump’s corruption, mismanagement and misrepresentation of his charitable giving and his abusive comments about women on the 2005 Access Hollywood tape. In Fahrenthold’s acceptance speech he quoted then-Washington Post editor Marty Baron: 

“We should not absorb the idea from Donald Trump and his advisors that we, as journalists, are at war with the administration. They may be at war with us but we are not at war with them. We can’t think of ourselves as combatants in a war because that comes with the idea that there are rules, standards or morals that we can relax because the war takes over, the war becomes the most the important thing. Our credibility and our standards, our ability to judge things for what they are and not be swayed by what we want them to be is the most important thing we have right now. As Marty said, ‘we are not at war, we are at work.” 

Seven years later, the Washington Post abdicated its own rules, standards and morals when owner/publisher Jeff Bezos blocked the paper from issuing a presidential endorsement for the 2024 election. “I see this as a betrayal of the core principles of the Post," Marty Baron declared in protest. And that was the entire point, to devalue and render the work of speaking truth to power frivolous and irrelevant to the core function of the democratic process. “People should try to imagine the world without a Washington Post…we would be weaker as a democracy,” Marty Baron warned as he spoke out against the decision. The attack on the Post from doing its job sparked an internal insurgency inside the paper that did not matter in the end. 

Whether or not we choose to accept it, the war has come to work. 

'Right to comfort’ is a concept in sociology that refers to an often-unspoken belief that comfort, especially emotional and psychological ease, is a deserved state for those in positions of power or privilege. “This pillar is rooted in the belief that individuals have the entitlement to feel comfortable at all times. It places personal comfort above the well-being of others and perpetuates a culture where discomfort is avoided at all costs. This can hinder growth, perpetuate inequality and limit our ability to address systemic issues.” 

When your work is telling the truth, addressing inequality, pursuing justice, creating mechanisms for accountability, advancing any kind of systems-level change— you are in the business of continuously manufacturing discomfort. The ‘right to comfort’ prioritizes bypassing conflict to maintain existing power structures. People’s rightful and reasonable reaction to injustice becomes the issue rather than the systems or actors who enable injustice. In practice, one of the methods of retaliation that unfolds when discomfort is created is undermining the validity of the work that surfaced injustice in the first place. It is the performance of legitimate critique in Trojan horse. The purpose is to derail. Your labor is devalued, derided, mocked and minimized.

The change agent becomes the problem. 

• When the attacks on the work of Kimberlé Crenshaw and the academic credibility of intersectionality and critical race theory snowballed into an avalanche, I thought about Marty Baron’s “We are not at war, we are at work” and the right to comfort. 
• When brave survivors brought the serious workplace sexual abuses perpetuated by Louis CK to light only to be be minimized and mocked in order to facilitate his return to the public spotlight, I thought about Marty Baron’s “We are not at war, we are at work” and the right to comfort.
• When efforts to invest in DEI are deliberately and relentlessly challenged as racialized attacks against meritocracy to the point that entire sectors consider prioritizing equity and inclusion a liability, I thought about Marty Baron’s “We are not at war, we are at work” and the right to comfort. 
• When activist (and friend) Angela Peoples was photographed at the 2017 Women’s March holding a sign correctly reminding the world “Don’t Forget: White Women Voted for Trump” only to be attacked by white women and characterized as divisive I thought about Marty Baron’s “We are not at war, we are at work” and the right to comfort. 

Woke, whiny, weak.

Shame is the weapon of control. 

The resistance to calling calculated and deliberate attacks acts of war plays into a performance of respectability politics. Even Michelle Obama has abandoned this posture. Why are we yielding our democracy to these lesser rappers we never voted for in the first place? How have legal protections historically intended to protect Black people from Jim Crow laws now being used to bludgeon DEI and force through re-segregation?

Intentionally bad faith arguments have reshaped how we hold ourselves, our purpose and our work in the world.

This week we witnessed Kendrick Lamar win 5 Grammys for a diss record that beautifully and joyously united a culture around a clear, directed point of view— quite literally an ‘Us vs. Them’. The truth, even harsh truths that discomfort the powerful, deserve to hold a space in the public square. True tranquility comes with the exhale of expression. Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” Grammys sweep reminded me that the most transformative fights are small wars waged out of values and love. Peace is not achieved merely through the absence of conflict and war, peace is earned through the rigor of rooting out oppression.

No profession or industry is perfect. But this was never about professionalism, this is about worth. It is time to get out of the business of shadowboxing with toxic actors who never have and never will see us as enough. It is time to ask and answer a different set of questions for ourselves and take action. 

What is worth fighting for? 

I am back in Washington, DC this week. It has been an intense experience leaving Los Angeles, a city recovering from a collective trauma to come back to Washington, actively under attack by Trump & Elon Musk, enduring its own collective trauma. The battlefield is work and fear is the wildfire that cannot be contained. The entire federal government is in chaos. Who gets to belong? Who gets to have rights? Who gets to matter? What makes your worth? Who gets to be? Who gets to decide? 

This is a war on worth.

The lives and livelihoods of real peacekeepers— our country’s humanitarian workers, farmers, educators and public health leaders are in jeopardy.

The high roads are closed. 

Take Action

• Support USAID workers
• Follow USAID Saves Lives calls to action here.
• Support Heartland Alliance, one of the many critical human rights organizations impacted by work stop orders. They support survivors of war and violence with food assistance, mental health care and healing justice.

Read

To be of use
by Maggie Pierce

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

Sabrina Hersi Issa is a human rights technologist. She is committed to leveraging innovation as a tool to unlock opportunity and dignity for all. She does this through her work in technology, media and philanthropy. This is her personal newsletter.