Welcome to Them and Us.

This is a newsletter about the people of the Capital Region — Schenectady, Troy, Saratoga, and Albany. This will be a source of essays, reportage, interviews, and narrative stories about the people who live here and the things they are going through.

You won’t find any pretty stories about the latest bar to open on Lark Street. We’re not going to wax poetic about the fancy hats they wear on opening weekend at the Saratoga Race Course, or compliment the entrees offered at the steakhouse at Rivers’ Casino.

This is a region of great inequality, where people struggle to survive on lousy wages, where people are indebted by generations of poverty and oppression. This is also a region with a radical history of anti-rent uprisings, mobilizations for racial and economic justice, and labor organizing. We intend to keep telling the stories that the big newspapers won’t touch, and you can’t get anywhere elsewhere.

A note about the political nature of this newsletter: This is not objective, “neutral” journalism. Frankly, there’s no such thing. Anyone who tells you there is is lying to you, or are themselves interested in maintaining the status quo. This is activist, progressive, with-a-point-of-view journalism. We always will aim to make the powerful uncomfortable. And we will always aim to tell the truth, even if that upsets friends and allies.

This is journalism that realizes that something is deeply broken in this society and this region, and that collective liberation is the only way we get free.


We will offer everything for free as long as we can. If you feel like subsidizing this endeavor, you can always buy a paid subscription. Eventually, we’ll get to the point where we can start paying contributors, but we’re not there now. The only way to get there is to help support this endeavor.

If you’d like to support in a more substantial way, get in touch at themandusmedia@gmail.com.

Thank you, and we’ll see you around!

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Capital District news and stories told from a radical perspective.

People

News and stories about the people of Schenectady, Albany, and Troy.