Welcome!
Welcome to our new online community on Substack!
Read on for an explanation of why we’ve moved the list(s) here, the benefits we will enjoy, and addressing the concerns some of you have voiced.
Why Southwest Crier?
Hear, ye! Hear, ye!
In America, during the Colonial era, communities often employed town criers to announce important news and information the community should know.
We aim to serve that purpose in the digital age for our community.
After reading their notices, town criers would “post” their notices to the door of the local inn or other prominent location.
This practice led some newspapers to use the word “post” in their title, e.g. The Washington Post.
We hope this site evolves into a source of news and information for the Southwest suburbs of the Twin Cities.
Why Substack?
Good question. Let us count the ways.
To Keep You From Receiving The Same Email Multiple Times
The platform we have been using, Mobilize, is great for helping new people find us but has limited features.
The most obvious limitation is the inability to merge lists. For example, some of you found us through the Emmer protest events, others through the Hands Off event, still others through the No Kings Day event.
Since Mobilize doesn’t allow the merging of all the event lists, Mike is forced to send the same email to all of those lists in order to inform everyone of the next event. Since some of you are on multiple lists, you’re getting the same email more than once.
And that’s obviously a little annoying. Substack solves that problem.
We can still use Mobilize so that new people can find us but we’ll transfer them over to our Southwest Crier community after they sign up on Mobilize.
Just like before, you will still receive updates to your email inbox. If you don’t want to visit the website to stay informed, you don’t have to.
But now you’ll only get one copy! For Mike’s Sanity
Managing all of these lists in order to effectively organize these events and build this movement has been a bit of a logistical nightmare for Mike.
Substack will streamline this process and help keep Mike sane.
And we want to keep Mike sane, don’t we?
For Fostering Our Community
Simply sending out broadcast emails to everyone one the list announcing an event limits our ability to foster this community to in-person events. The individual face-to-face conversations we’re having every week are extremely valuable.
But broadening those conversations to be community-wide gives us the opportunity to collectively share ideas, solve problems, and support one another.
Substack’s commenting system enables that.
For Greater Reach
Substack is the center of gravity for independent, pro-democracy media right now. If you’re not already familiar with some of these outlets, here are a few you that might interest you:
Letters From An American - By historian Heather Cox Richardson
Thinking About… - By historian of fascism Timothy Snyder
Lucid - By another historian of facism, Ruth Ben-Ghiat
Decoding Fox News - By Juliet Jeske
Hopium Chronicles - By political strategist Simon Rosenberg
The Message Box - By political strategist Dan Pfeiffer
Movements - By yours truly
As a result, Substack gives us more opportunities for likeminded people to find us.
For Greater Resources
The beauty of the Substack platform is that it is a seamless blend of email newsletter, blogging, and website features.
Beyond sending out event notifications via email, Substack allows us to publish additional content that could be helpful to the community at large.
For More Advanced Features
Substack has additional features such as the ability to host online chats, publish audio and/or video podcasts, and host livestream video events.
For now, we’re going to start small and stick to the basics but if we want to expand, we have that ability.
For More Beauty
Substack’s features are far more sophisticated than Mobilize.
Our emails can be prettier.
Our blog posts will look better.
Couldn’t we all use a little more beauty in our lives these days?
Your Concerns
Several of you have voiced some concerns about the move to Substack.
Do I Have To Pay?
No.
Substack was built explicitly to help independent writers monetize their own work so they can earn a living.
But we are not doing that, so there is no cost to you.
At some point it may make sense to explore some of the monetization features but that’s well down the road, if we do it at all.
Regardless, there will always be free content.
We want to use this platform to help promote our common cause and to help foster this community.
Email Policy
Our email policy is simple: We will never share or sell your email address. Period.
Privacy
Some of you have expressed concerns about revealing your identity.
Just as when we were using Mobilize to send out emails, you obviously need to give us your email in order to receive the updates.
Beyond that, you can be as public or private as you want.
Use an anonymous username on Substack if you want to participate in the comments without revealing your identity.
If you don’t want to participate, you don’t have to. You can just get the emails like you have been before, and that’s it!
MAGA Trolls
Trolls are an unfortunate reality on the internet. Fortunately, Substack has the tools to deal with them.
Thank you for doing this! Let’s keep Mike sane and happy!
This is great! Thanks so much!