A bunch of Punks
Good morning to everyone, but especially to Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old Muslim Democratic Socialist who routed sexual harasser Andrew Cuomo yesterday in the NYC mayoral primary and has all the spineless cowards establishment Democrats clutching their pearls this morning. Every now and then, the good guys beat the bad guys and deserve a moment of fist-pumping. Godspeed to you in November, sir.
I’ve been sitting on this op-ed by John Cameron Mitchell for a while, and our smashing success of a launch mixer this past weekend inspired me to finally share it. In my remarks I mentioned that one of our key defenses in trying times is gathering. Our power is that the world can’t run without us, and when we gather, we remind each other of that. Check out this quote from his piece:
“Get in the room with other people... Embrace the analog, which can’t be surveilled by artificial intelligence…And as you start making that useful thing, you might lock eyes with the person working at your side, and maybe this time you won’t flinch. The walls of identity crumble in the face of our greatest human strength: empathy.”
His broader thesis is that we need to ‘access the punk’ to find our way through the current hellscape; that punk “isn’t a hairstyle; it’s getting your friends together to make useful stories outside approved systems.” This brings to mind another idol of mine, Kathleen Hanna, who has spent most of her adult life telling stories in outsider systems with her friends. You should read her book.
I love the idea of accessing the punk and want to use it as a measuring stick for Sharp Skirts. As a company focused on women and those who identify female, we’re automatically an outsider system. So we might as well break the mold. This week, I’m sketching out our first workshop and submitting myself to speak some truth at the Texas Conference for Women (🤞). What are you doing? Tell me in the comments.
This Week’s Sharp Skirt
Autumn Williams is Senior Director of Marketing & Comms at Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas. You can find her online on LinkedIn and Bluesky, and offline in Austin, TX.
What’s marinating these days?
Let's talk about the difference between being successful and being effective in communication. Success is binary. Success, once achieved, is what's remembered about the work. "Effective" is the process itself. It forces us to slow down and focus on the impact on individuals, processes, and systems. It inches along, optimizing, long before success is possible. Effective isn't political because it has to consider all sides. Truly effective communications live on after the headline, quote or victory, creating inroads to collaboration and mutual support, protecting constituents, and warding off opposition. Imagine a world where public discourse is framed by effectiveness over winning, and where we might be instead of where we are right now.
Who is your personal hero?
I have many, but honestly it's Martha Stewart. She's a slightly problematic white wealthy woman, but she took domestic art - the unseen and undervalued work of women at home for millennia - and unapologetically turned it into a billion-dollar industry that showed corporate America we do not need the approval of men to determine the value of what we love and what we do. WE determine that value.
What’s your dream business?
Running a beautiful inn and event venue in New Zealand with my sister.
You can have one superpower. What is it?
An antidote to misinformation that doesn't require the subject to experience the direct negative impact of that misinformation to see the truth.
Quote of the Week
“…the maddening invulnerability of the stupid”
Apropos of nothing, this phrase from John Updike’s fantastic novel Rabbit, Run is living in my head a lot these days.