I worked in the nonprofit sector for ten years prior to joining the effort of Occupy Wall Street, in 2011. After watching ten years of political maneuvering, posturing, and the peculiarities of begging the wealthy for financial crumbs, in the halls of the most prestigious nonprofit organizations in New York City, I thirsted for a new way to bring resources for the 99%.

In 2011, while watching activists gather and disperse in the streets, disrupting daily life, and making incredible noise in mainstream media, on behalf of those drowning in our modern economic system, I thought, “Surely equitable policy pushed by Congress will emerge?” 

A few years later, watching the news coverage of the murder of Eric Garner, by police officer Daniel “fueled-by-racism-and-steriods” Panteleo, and the uprisings in the streets growing with each new murder of black and brown people, I thought, “The time to shift and possibly end policing must be obvious, right?” 

With the outrage, most recently, in the throes of a global pandemic, watching nearly a million people die and become chronically ill, in the United States, I thought, “Congress has to pass Medicare for All, right?”

In these ten years, I have focused on the work of public education through the Occupy Wall Street social media pages that still remain. We, as a group of editors, chose the path of education and presentation of possibilities to our audiences, championing unionization, worker ownership, and mutual aid practices. 

Facing enormous police brutality and coordination on the federal level to destroy the camps of Occupy Wall Street, in 2011, we had to pivot. The editors of the Facebook and Twitter pages had to rethink the content flowing through to a community, now over 60 million people a year. 

Today, I look at the promise of Let’s Rethink This and know this platform may be one of many solutions to the silos and seismic shifts in every realm of modern human life. The mission to commit to a practice of Searchlight / Spotlight / Ignite resonates with the core of my foundation. 

We all know of the millions of people, making pivots, differences, and inspiring creations towards equitable sustainability. This will be likely home for them. It begins with shining the Searchlight through conversation on the website, starting the journey to sensemaking. Focusing the Spotlight on those whose solutions and genius will create a significant financial and economic impact. Dedicated campaigns will further Ignite fundraising and press coverage and bring in needed sponsors, investors, and fans. 

I am excited to work closely with Let’s Rethink This’s founder, Jerry Ashton, watching him bring lessons from his success at the RIP Medical Debt charity he co-founded in 2014. To date, this effort has abolished billions of dollars in medical debt. I am ready to find people, like him, who learned how to subvert a system, for the good of the many.

Every week, I promise to bring to you a snapshot of our favorite rethinkers, ideas for your local community, and inspiration for new possibilities. Thank you for joining us, and buckle up, we have a lot of work to do.

In solidarity and hope - Priscilla

The pandemic is not over. 

Last week, with the news of the Delta variant ripping through the United States, I had to rethink my expectations for the next few months. I want to be less stressed about finding work. I want to travel again. I want to attend social functions again. I want to hug and kiss friends and family again, without the side of massive anxiety about the potential of catching or spreading the virus. 

But, the pandemic is not over. 

The pandemic is not over, and now, many people, children, and adults are challenged with the effects of long COVID, without many treatment options in the healthcare system in the United States. 

The transformation of Wendall Potter, written about, last week, on Let’s Rethink This, is a story of one man looking at the work he had been doing, realized the harm he perpetuated through the abusive billing practices of the insurance industry, and is now committed to making systemic changes, beginning with his testimony to Congress. I recommend you take a look if you have not yet read his story. We hope to inspire many more with our coverage.

The pandemic is not over, and people are hanging on by frayed threads, hoping for rental assistance, stalled by draconian processes in state governments, with the likelihood of billions of dollars disappearing, growing more real, every day. The business of government is failing the people, during a pandemic, and it seems to be by design. We have to rethink how we demand what we need to achieve, together.

Demanding a healthcare system for the many, not the few, is imperative. The Impact Physicians family on Let’s Rethink This is one place to understand, from the perspective of medical professionals, why we must meet the challenge of bringing healthcare to all, with transformative rethinking. 

A solid healthcare system, relied upon, by the people, will break through vaccine hesitancy faster than any mandate or law. The collaborative effort, to release healthcare from the death grip of corporations, assisting our neighbors and communities in finding needed health solutions, will be as lush as any fertile victory garden. 

Shutdowns are happening, because the pandemic is not over. 

People are unable to pay rent, living in their cars (if they have one), largely without day to day healthcare, being abused in their jobs (if they have one), and hungry for both food and human touch. Rethinking the future is a herculean task in light of all else we are collectively dealing with, presently. I see you. I know you want to build a better future. The pandemic will eventually end, and we will enter into the years of repair.

In solidarity and hope - priscilla, Editor-in-Chief of Our Newspaper at Let’s Rethink This

I was laid off from a new job two weeks before the COVID shutdown of NYC in 2020. I knew the company had made a purely cost-cutting move, and I knew the city faced economic disaster across every industry. I also knew my paycheck-to-paycheck existence needed rethinking to survive the coming financial apocalypse. 

I prepared the house for pandemic hibernation. With my severance package, I invested in comforts to help us with the coming boredom, like a 62-inch television. Never in my life had I prioritized such a purchase. Still, with months ahead of Netflix and chilling as COVID spread, I wanted our household to be entertained, at the very least. I bought groceries in bulk, instead of my daily market run, to avoid needing to be out in public.

I worked the interwebs to find new computer equipment, before prices and availability ran up and out, along with bulk orders of masks, gloves, paper towels, and toilet paper. We needed money, fast. No one knew, at that time, if a stimulus would even be possible.  I purchased gold jewelry from online estate sales and turned it into a profit in NYC’s Diamond District. I had dabbled in crypto for a few years, so I began buying Bitcoin and Etherum with my earnings, thinking the return would be better than keeping the gold.

 At first, my household laughed at me, “You are overreacting.” I doubted myself but did not see any hope in the daily reports of infections rising and shutdowns across the world. 

Months later, the Diamond District started closing up from the lack of business, an inconceivable thought to all in NYC. We were still living on pandemic time, uncertain, but receiving benefits from the government, and all of a sudden, crypto valuation started climbing beyond any of my expectations. I didn’t make a ton of money, but it helped us through the worst of last year. Because I found myself in this lucky position, I had the time to volunteer to assist important organizing efforts, on and offline, starting with the People’s Strike formation. I built CoronaStrike with another activist and had the time to continue posting to the Occupy Wall Street social media pages, and I volunteered with a local mutual aid center, filling bags of needed nonperishable groceries and supplies, to be delivered,  for all in the area.

I realized how I could use cryptocurrency to realistically cushion our quickly depleting resources; I rethought my approach and started to get serious. First, I started taking the MIT OpenCourseWare class, Blockchain, and Money, in between applying to remote work positions. Then, I started watching YouTube videos about cryptocurrency (shout out to VoskCoin); I became obsessed. I started to understand how the development of the next version of the internet, web3, would be become a place in which we could all benefit, directly, through using the web, for communication, commerce, and the creation and management of commodities.

The most important thing I learned? Money is anything we want it to be; the challenge is ensuring that we can use our resources in the actual day-to-day of living. That meant using a Coinbase account to convert Bitcoin or Etherum into dollars and transferring to my bank account when I needed to. Sometimes this happened in the line at the grocery store, other times it happened in front of an ATM, other times, in my bedroom, as I scrambled to pay yet another bill. Most recently it happened on a layover in Amsterdam because the blockchain moves outside of borders.

In October last year, while browsing Facebook, I received an ad to help “build a new network and earn crypto or cash.” Knowing the possibilities, I answered the ad and became a host for a miner on the Helium “Peoples Network.” A few months later, I found myself receiving cash from this remarkable project. And all of a sudden, our household stabilized in ways I could never imagine prior.  

One of the things I did with this miracle windfall? 

After purchasing a new vacuum, paying a few months of rent, and other needed items (including a few Helium miners from Nebra), I invested in the liquidity pools of Uniswap, after becoming inspired by the offerings of MetaMask. As might be guessed, I am not the only one to see the potential. 

Recently, Consensys held a seminar to present their findings on Crypto use in the Global South. Not surprisingly, my reasons for getting serious about cryptocurrency are the exact reasons for people worldwide.

Source: MetaMask

These are all the reasons why I am so happy Let’s Rethink This features the work of  Adel ElMessiry, defying predatory lending with his Decentralized Lending Network. As the pre-COVID world continues to crumble into dust, new ways of securing resources and frankly, money, is imperative to the survival of the peoples of our planet.

The time to rethink everything is now.

In solidarity and hope, Priscilla Grim, Editor-in-Chief of Let’s Rethink This