Lincoln Square marked its celebration day by opening with a conversation that refused to treat milestones as the end of the story. “We launched just over six months ago… and in that time, we have amassed over 11,000 paid subscribers,” Executive Editor Susan Demas said, pointing not just to growth but to the community behind it. Numbers only matter when they signal power, and here they represent independence wrestled away from corporate media. The choice to subscribe becomes more than support — it’s participation in a project built to resist silence.
Let’s get into the discussion held during our kickoff show.
The line that “If ABC wants to stand strong, it can, and it can win this fight” wasn’t Joe Trippi spitballing about television. It was a blunt diagnosis of how power works in an autocracy — victory goes not to those who are right, but to those who refuse to bend. Trump’s push to sideline Jimmy Kimmel has little to do with late-night comedy and everything to do with testing who caves first. What looks like a fight over airtime is really a rehearsal for whether networks will fold when the stakes rise higher.
Media consolidation isn’t an arcane policy debate but the scaffolding of authoritarianism. Edwin Eisendrath warned that “the wealthy right wing [has] bought up so much of the voices that people hear in America,” and the danger sits in that word — voices. People trust their local anchors, the familiar faces who deliver weather and high school sports, and don’t see the partisan script being slipped beneath the teleprompter. Once trust is redirected into propaganda, democracy doesn’t break with a bang; it withers by consent.
The counterweight, as both Joe and Edwin insisted, is organizing. “We have to organize online. We have to organize in person. We have to show up,” Edwin said, not as a slogan but as the only answer left. Polls already show people are ready to protest but paralyzed by uncertainty about where to go. Filling that void is the task, turning exhaustion into participation before despair calcifies into silence. What matters isn’t scale on day one but the simple fact of showing that silence won’t win.
Tune in to this first show of our celebration day — a reminder that democracy won’t be saved by milestones alone, but by what we choose to build on top of them and how we decide to take action.
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