Welcome to Dispatch #41! Last Dispatch we highlighted the word “Moral Disengagement” as our People’s Dictionary word which describes the phenomenon where people's morals become unlinked from their actions, causing them to support or perform otherwise unthinkable actions. This week we want to expand on that a bit more so scroll down to check out an article by Albert Bandura to explain the 6 tactics that are commonly used to make this happen. Once you know these 6 tactics, you’ll start seeing them pop up everywhere!
In addition, we highlight an artist whose work speaks to the contradictions of everyday life inside the United States - Martha Rosler, a 4-part video series about the ways television changed how we consume art & images, a new article breaking down China’s economic threat to the United States, and more!
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Easy Actions to Take
Why: Ten civilian volunteers carrying medical aid to Gaza were kidnapped and are being held hostage at secret detention centers in Libya. Pick your country in the link and demand their immediate and safe release. Organized by Newscord
Why: Supply chains are a critical for maintaining Israel’s violent campaigns and act as a vulnerable chokepoint. Putting pressure onto complicit private companies, in addition to boycotting, is an easy and effective way to exploit this vulnerability. Organized by Wage Peace Australia
Why: The bipartisan NO FAKES Act of 2026 (S. 4591 and H.R. 8915) would establish a federal right to control the use of your own voice and likeness in AI-generated content. The bill would establish clear legal protections against unauthorized digital replicas while preserving important exceptions for news reporting, parody, criticism, and other First Amendment-protected speech. Organized by 5Calls
Little (Movement) Wins
Meet the Facilitators & Interactive Q&A for the Next Economy MBA
LIFT Economy's Next Economy MBA is a nine-month online learning course for entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs who want to learn key business fundamentals (e.g., vision, culture, strategy, and operations) from a socially just and environmentally regenerative perspective.
Join a free intro session with the LIFT Economy team to learn more about the Next Economy MBA and explore whether the upcoming cohort is a fit for you.
Flashback: Why Neurodiversity is Humanity's Secret Weapon by Ray
Be sure to check out our last Deep Dive essay, a love letter to our neurodivergent comrades out there! So much stigma surrounds mental health and neurodivergent minds, but in this essay we argue that neurodiversity is actually an essential evolutionary adaptation that we need to survive and solve the world’s biggest problems. Read this to learn about the roots of neurodivergent stigma, why cognitive diversity is important, and where neurodiversity movements need to go next.
Featured Piece
The 6 Ways Our Morals are Manipulated by Albert Bandura
Last Dispatch we briefly discussed the term “Moral Disengagement” to describe how people’s morals can become unlinked from their actions, causing otherwise normal people to support or perform unspeakably immoral acts. This short article by Albert Bandura, the psychologist who coined the term, describes the 6 primary mechanisms that causes Moral Disengagement to happen. These 6 tactics create the cognitive dissonance necessary to have otherwise normal people start to support or perform horrible things.
You'll see these used by Israel to justify their attacks on Palestinians, police to justify increased incarceration, or tech oligarchs to justify unregulated AI, and a lot more. It's important for us to put a name to these tactics because then we can more easily spot it and call it out in the future.
Content Worth Consuming
- An Eye-Opening 4-Part Series: Ways of Seeing by John Berger
- Why: This is a foundational 4-part video series by the media and art critic John Berger that analyzes how television has changed the way we experience art and images, where now the meaning of images are decoupled from their source and change depending on context. We found this series incredibly interesting and relevant to our present moment because the effects that John Berger describes can be applied to social media and our current moment x1000.
- An Article Breaking it Down: The real reason the West is warmongering against China by Jason Hickel & Dylan Sullivan
- Why: We are always big fans of Jason Hickel’s work and this short article is no exception. This article does a good job in breaking down the extractive relationship that the United States has with countries in the Global South and how China’s advancements are upsetting that balance. Internal politics aside, this piece explains clearly that the fearmongering around China by US politicians and media is a product of a larger economic struggle currently unfolding (a dynamic we also talk about in our Youtube video, Project for the Next American Century).
- A Reminder: Will My Organizing Group Care If I Stop Showing Up? by Aaron Flarin
- Why: Aaron is a young organizer in New York City who consistently posts short videos about how to organize in our communities. In his first Substack article, he offers an concise and important reminder that power is built through relationships and that the way to build resilient organizations is to cultivate stronger relationships with new and old supporters.
- A Music Video That Brings Joy: LA Cumbia Del Movimiento Music Video by LA Bamby
- Bamby Salcedo is a Mexican American transgender rights activist and a founder of TransLatin@ Coalition, an advocacy group working to support transgender Latina women. This beautiful music video was shot in various Latin communities around Los Angeles and is a wonderful celebration of Mexican heritage and transgender beauty, promoting solidarity through music and dance. A little something to brighten your day!
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“The problem is not corruption or greed; the problem is the system that pushes you to be corrupt.”
–Slavoj Žižek
Conscious Creatives: Martha Rosler
Martha Rosler is a Brooklyn-based conceptual artist whose practice has spanned photomontage, video, installation, performance, and writing for over 50 years. Martha’s work is rooted in exposing the hidden structures of power and contradictions in everyday life through simple juxtapositions and a wry sense of humor, exploring themes of war, violence, media, capitalism, domesticity, and the built environment. Her pop art collages began as a protest against the Vietnam War, but have evolved to include subsequent American wars including in Iraq and Afghanistan. While her work has not made her popular with large galleries (whose board members often are profiting from the structures she critiques), she has earned a dedicated following among artists, activists, feminists, and pacifists.
House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home (c. 1967–72) is perhaps her most recognized series. Rosler spliced documentary Vietnam War photography into glossy magazine spreads of American home interiors, linking consumerist comfort to imperial violence, and distributed the images as photocopied fliers at anti-war marches, deliberately bypassing the art world. She returned to the series in 2004 and 2008 in response to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975) is another major work - a six-minute video parodying TV cooking shows such as those popularized by Julia Child at the time. Rosler names and demonstrates kitchen tools in alphabetical order, her gestures growing increasingly forceful. The piece questions the domestic roles imposed on women and what it means for a woman to express herself within those constraints.
Martha Rosler has often been labeled an activist-artist, and her work certainly speaks to extremely heavy and relevant issues. On that label, Martha has said, “You have to earn that title. You don’t get to designate yourself an activist.” In response to criticism that an exhibit about homelessness didn’t actually lessen homelessness in New York, she responded, “I am an artist. I make art…Activism is an on-going process, and it’s true that I worked with activists on that project, but one thing is certain: activists don’t expect intractable problems to be solved by an exhibition or a political campaign and certainly not in six months.” Now in her 80s and a celebrated artist with major retrospectives at MoMA, the Jewish Museum, and Tate Modern, she remains an active voice in art, politics, and critical writing. Her work reminds us of the power politically-charged art can have to reveal the many contradictions in everyday life, but also that it is also only part of the solution to create systemic change.
Resources & Tools
Here are some recent adds to the directory. Please share these links with anyone that might find them helpful:
- 💰 Pay Back Pride | A tool by Gen-Z For Change to track the donations that corporations have made to anti-LGBTQ+ politicians and PACs despite claiming to support the queer community.
- 📚 Foundations & Futures | The most comprehensive collection of Asian American and Pacific Islander histories and perspectives available for free and online for high school, college, and lifelong learners. Created by the UCLA Asian American Studies Center.
- 🌎 The Ultimate Guide to Traveling Without Money | A comprehensive guide by Shareable.net for moneyless travelers on how to find transportation, food, and shelter, and the philosophy behind it all— the why—and the core values of moneyless living and collaborative consumption that propel people onward through the world.
- 📓 Activist Burnout Guide | A guide by the Activist Handbook and the Federation of Young European Greens on how to navigate burnout as an activist and how to prevent it.
- 🌳 World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) | A really cool non-profit organization linking visitors with organic farms/farmers from around the world that will host you in exchange helping or working on their farm.
➡️ Explore More on our Directory!
Know any resources that you think would be a great add to our directory? Share it with us! (We only see so much from our corner of the world)
If you're new here, don't forget to sign up to get full access to our directory and free newsletters sent to your inbox every other Sunday. Till next time, do your best and take it one day at a time. Care for yourself and the people around you. Believe that the world can be better than it is now. Never give up. And remember, you're not alone. We always have each other.
With Love & Light,
Elisa & Ray
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