Letter From The Editor : 4 December 2024

Clarification of our goals here at Resistance Radio - Blue Team Radio

Overview

I want to start off by saying thank you to all the subscribers and readers we have at this point. You are why I do this, and I hope to build a growing dialog between subscribers and this publication, who care about democracy as much as I do. Together we can do amazing things, and we’re going to need that kind of magic in the coming years.

Today, the publication has 19 articles, including 1 political cartoon, 3 deep dive pieces meant to provide informative articles for those who may not be in the know on a given topic, several recommended videos from Robert Reich - who is a far better teacher of core issues than I, a number of current newsworthy items, “Dear Maga” articles - short and concise articles meant for those who might be on the fence, and a number of articles encompassing the primary purpose of the publication: tracking the three branches of government as the new administration takes over. We also are sharing a Google Docs spreadsheet we use to track the cabinet, and actions of Congress and the Supreme Court. I hope it is something you find useful. I have over 300 views of articles in the first 2 weeks in operation. Our goal is to curate a concise set of information that you can consume quickly, that gives you the key picture you need to understand the current state of our government and how its actions affect you and your friends and family.

While the focus is on the ‘just the facts’ style reports, I have noticed the longer form content has had more readers, so I will continue looking for relevant content for that. I am experimenting with a weekly ‘Dear MAGA’ political cartoon - that will hopefully become both entertaining and insightful.

I’ve been in negotiations with my wife to start a podcast here on Substack once a week, to discuss a specific topic from each of our own perspectives. More to follow on that.

I am in the experimental phase of development, so you are encouraged to inject feedback into the publication. What do you like, what do you hate? What types of things do you want to see more of, and visa-versa. Are there things we’re not doing that you would like to see? You can also tell us what you think is good; we could use a bit of encouragement every now and then.

Other Media

Bluesky is the primary means of advertising for the publication, and it seems to be a great way to interact with others in this space. To that end, I will be spending time commenting on items of interest that come across the feed, and building dialogs with others there. Maybe I’ll be talking to you? We currently have 102 followers on the platform after only 10 days over there, and am hopeful we can translate those into subscribers here as we ramp up. I had another account on X/Twitter - it topped out at 300 followers, 50% of whom were sex bots, and it became unusable due to incessant trolling, so I formally deactivated my X/Twitter account. I never really was able to make any real connections with people there. I feel like Bluesky is the place we all needed away from the cesspool that X/Twitter became. My Bluesky page is: https://bsky.app/profile/blueteamradio.bsky.social

Mastodon is a secondary site I also started using before going over to Bluesky. Mastodon and Bluesky both use federated protocols that are open standards. Bluesky uses Authenticated Transfer (AT) Protocol which is a relay protocol; it doesn’t have to talk directly to the specific server holding your data directly. Mastodon’s ActivityPub Protocol is an older open source protocol that drives the Fediverse (Federated Universe) a collection of social networking services, such as Wordpress, Ghost, Threads, and Flipboard all inter-operating using the ActivityPub Protocol. There is also a bridge between Mastodon and Bluesky called Bridgy-Fed. As I ramp up automation, I will probably experiment with federation and bridging between services. My Mastodon page is: https://mstdn.social/@ResistanceRadio .

A YouTube channel is already built, and ready to accept videos, once I get the time to complete setting up my video recording space, and learn how to do fancy things like chroma-key and video editing. I see that as another source of advertisement for this channel, as well as from Substack towards YouTube. Some folks like a quick read, while others like to consume video or audio. My YouTube channel is: https://www.youtube.com/@BlueTeamRadio .

I’m also planning on publishing traditional books in various forms as spin offs from the Resistance Radio publication when shows some traction. I’ll talk more about these ideas when they come to fruition.

Ultimately, our goal is to lower the friction and time needed to gain useful information about government through careful curation of current actions in the three branches of government at the Federal level. I think that will be a full time job once Trump is sworn in, and the 119th Congress gets going full speed - wherever they are going. Our focus is on you. We keep punditry to a minimum. We value People over Corporations. We want you to understand how the actions of the new administration impacts you, good, bad, or in between (and also beat MAGA about the head and body with it as the fallout happens). We have to reclaim the communications high ground, and Resistance Radio is a small part of that goal.

Financially, we are currently running on a shoestring. We are hoping to ramp quickly enough to introduce paid subscriptions here on Substack, add a Patreon, and if things get tough maybe a Kickstarter to inject cash? We’ll see how that goes. Again, if anyone out there has ideas, I’m all ears. We just got our SNAP card, so we’re not going to starve, but I’m worried about keeping the internet going and the bills paid.

Please subscribe, share, and add your comments with any suggestions you might have. Thanks for reading if you made it this far down. We’ll keep the articles coming if you keep reading!

Thanks,

Scott C., Editor, Resistance Radio