WTF IS Happening And What to Do

A panel discussion of smart people and a less smart me.

April 5, 2025

From Marc Cooper and Susan Zakin

I’m turning over todays post to my good friend and awesome writer/author Susan Zakin from her substack Journal of the Plague Years. Following, is her post from a panel she recently moderated on where we are and what do we do. I am one of the panelists. You can see the enter post and the VIDEO here. And you can also subscribe to the Journal on the same page as I encourage you to do,

Below you will find an audio version of the panel. And below it some opening remarks from Susan.

WTF Is Happening and WTF Do We Do?

SUSAN ZAKIN:

After the election, I felt as though I wanted to do something. I’m a journalist, not an activist, but this clearly was an all-hands-on-deck moment. I would have happily spent an afternoon a week doing anything to help save the country from what I knew was coming.

But nobody was telling me where to show up, or what to do.

It was like playing tennis with a partner who had disappeared. (Was it the Democratic Party?)

We had originally talked to the events organizer at the wonderful Village Well bookstore in Culver City, California about an event to promote our magazine’s anthology. This quickly morphed into a panel of really, really smart folks who could give people 1) an understanding of exactly where things stood on crucial issues like immigration, the environment, and upcoming elections, and 2) actions they could take that would be effective, not just feel good gestures.

Zahra Aghajan, neuroscientist and disinformation researcher;

Jason Berlin, founder of the highly effective voter registration organization Field Team 6 on how we’re positioned going forward;

Marc Cooper, longtime Nation columnist and USC journalism professor who has reported on two coups d’etat;

Jean Guerrero, New York Times columnist, author of Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda on immigration, and

Sammy Roth, Los Angeles Times climate correspondent.

I rather awkwardly moderated, hiding from the camera as the diehard print journalist that I am.

I hope you’ll take what you need from this panel. I read the news for hours every morning, but I learned a lot.

We are grateful to all the panelists and to the Village Well IN Culver City, California, a fantastic bookstore.

We thank you for subscribing.

Susan Zakin, Editor

Journal of the Plague Years