What you missed in October and other recommendations

Hey Sowers,

Although technically not something that happened in October, I'd be remiss not to mention the crowing of Zohran Mamdani as the mayor of New York City yesterday. With the Green Party of England and Wales having doubled their membership numbers since Zack Polanski was elected leader on a platform of eco-populism, 2026 could be a turning point in the fight against fascism in the Anglophone world.

This week is also a special week on a more personal level because it's six months since Sower was launched. I'm so proud of the work me and the team I have around me have produced for you in that time, and there's already some other great things in the pipeline. A big thank you to all of you for subscribing, especially to those who have donated or taken out a paid subscription. If you're able to, please consider joining the latter group as every cent goes a long way to maintaining the longevity of the newsletter.

If not, however, there's another way you can help. If every single one of you was to convince only one other person to join Sower for free, we'd be able to meet the subscriber goal we set out to achieve by the end of the calendar year. Please consider sharing your favourite article with you friends or family and encouraging them to join. (The three objectively most popular are here, here, and here.)

Regardless, thank you for being here, and I hope you find something inspiring in this month's round-up.

Stories of action

• A four percent surtax on incomes over one million dollars in Massachusetts, the USA, raised 5.7 billion dollars that was used to fund bridge repairs, bolster literacy programs, and address the transportation system’s budget deficit. Taxing the rich works!
• Indigenous nations are planning to open a tariff-free trade corridor across the USA-Canada border. The move will help restore ancestral trade routes and give the involved Indigenous communities more control over the resources on their land and how they're used in trade relationships.
• The Dutch city of Arnhem plans to ban recreational wood burning as it's damaging to people's health and can exacerbate conditions like asthma.
• Almost 4000 people have signed up to a lawsuit in the UK, the largest ever brought in the country over environmental pollution, against major poultry producers and a water company for "extensive and widespread pollution."
• Black women are at the forefront of attempts to make food more accessible to people in rural Mississippi, the USA, by opening grocery stores and organising in their local communities.
• Book exchanges have been opened across the UK to mark the 90th anniversary of publisher Penguin Books. Those involved in the scheme hope it can help build community and build connections between locals.
• Staying on the topic of books, after the state of Iowa, the USA, passed a law banning books with sexual content, a group of high schoolers created a Banned Book Club to read them. The kids are alright!
• The council in Cardiff, Wales, has voted to make parking permits for cars scale with weight so that SUV owners have to pay more. The move is an attempt to tackle car bloat, and get more people cycling, walking, or using public transport.
• A county near Baltimore, the USA, has erected a memorial for those who died of COVID-19. Sometimes I feel like we don't collectively acknowledge the trauma of the pandemic enough, so it's good to see this kind of recognition of the lives lost.

Other interesting reads

• If I could ask you to read one essay (other than my own, of course), it would be this one on the connection between slaughterhouses and modern capitalism. It's easily the best essay I've read all year summarised by this quote: "no fight against the slaughterhouses will ever be successful if we do not also confront capitalism. Likewise, no fight against capitalism will fully succeed unless we also fight against slaughterhouses."
• Enjoyed this essay by Kelly Hayes in her newsletter Organizing My Thoughts, in which she writes about not giving into cynicism even when it might feel like resistance is futile, and she encourages people to get off their devices and take action in the real world.
• Survival of the fittest as a natural phenomenon is used to justify the existence of a capitalist economic system. An essay published in The Revelator challenges that idea by arguing that the natural world has many examples of cooperation over competition.

Other media

First came across Fckuers last year, and they're a bit of an enigma in that they're very much American, but their music and style is very British. Their music is a blend of different electronic genres, and while I do like some of their singles – Homie Don't Shake, Bon Bon, and I Like It Like That – some of their tracks don't really hit for me.

My new Hungarian flatmate also introduced me to Samurai Drive, a band who combine new wave, blues, and electronic sounds – I really like their song I Would Never have to Know.

Otherwise, I've really been enjoying the trip-hop inspired Delusional by Erika de Casier.

Got any news stories or other recommendations that you think other readers would like? Share them in the comments!