Introducing ANTAGONiSTIC

Unfiltered stories for the fed the F*CK up!

Hi, I’m Julia, and welcome to ANTAGONiSTIC—a newsletter of unfiltered stories for the fed the F*CK up!

I’m an independent multimedia journalist and writer who covers solutions, accountability and social justice. You may know me as the former associate editor at YES! Media, an independent and nonprofit solutions journalism organization that nearly made it to 30 years of age, but will sadly sunset in June. Or perhaps you know me from before my YES! era, or personally, which means you can probably guess where this newsletter gets its name from.

But for those to whom I am introducing myself for the first time, here’s what you should know about me: I believe journalism can bring about justice. Ever since I was a young child, writing has been my way of life. I clung to it for air while growing up in a conservative, Long Island town. That’s where I learned what racism and misogyny was, and by extension, how words and the stories they form (narratives) can destroy people.

Younger me just wanted someone to tell her story. I wasn’t as sure at the time that that someone would, indeed, be me. Yet I went on to study journalism at St. John’s University, where I received a bachelor’s degree in the field and completed a minor in critical race and ethnic studies. While at St. John’s, I worked as a resident assistant and was elected to be the vice president of the university’s student government.

Being VP, I thought, would earn me enough influence to change the institution; an institution that raised the cost of tuition by more than 4% in the summer of 2020—months into the COVID-19 pandemic—while hoarding $2.4 million in one basketball coach’s salary as students struggled to pay hospital bills, afford food and purchase groceries. But being VP did not do that.

That “not” pushed me to become an activist. I was fed up with the limits of what could be won for students “through the proper channels,” as the advisor of student government would say, referring to the bureaucratic and painstakingly inefficient hierarchy of the administration.

As for where ANTAGONiSTIC gets its name from, that’s an act of reclamation. The adjective was the word the advisor used to describe me to succeeding student government-elects, because I did not follow (and often advocated against following) the “proper channels.” In my experience, those “proper channels” did not see justice won for us students; they only delayed our chances of winning or outright sabotaged those chances. The idea of “proper channels” was a method to contain student unrest and suffocate fires of student dissent that formed underneath the administration’s brow.

If I could define that term in my own way, I’d say to be antagonistic is to do things without the system’s permission, whether in slight or major opposition. Like, land a meeting with the new university president, for example. You’d think all student government leaders would be granted this opportunity. *Sucks teeth,* nuh uh. I had to take eight extra steps just to get on his radar in comparison to the president of student government (I actually calculated it), and have a trusted ally on the Board of Trustees to secure my own meeting. Being antagonistic also referred to co-organizing a mutual aid movement on campus to protest the institution’s lack of will to eradicate food and housing insecurity, which I began doing in 2021.

However, when the advisor used the word “antagonistic,” it was not to reflect some admirable quality like a commitment to equity. Rather, the intent was to discourage other student leaders and I from joining forces. And while I had seen this strategy many times before, on television and in headlines, it was personal this time: how narrative is used by people in power to discredit those who threaten that power.

Illustration by Ian King

Since then, I’ve wanted to tell the antagonist’s story—the person who agitates against oppressive systems, the one who threatens, resists and challenges power. Because to those systems, we are not the main characters; we’re the troublemakers, the bad guys. So they make examples out of us: Don’t be like them. Don’t root for them. Don’t cause trouble.

Another thing you should know about me: I try to be as upfront as I can be. This is not a newsletter that treats the perspective of an activist fighting to stop “Cop City” in Atlanta, GA, which bulldozed the Weelaunee Forest to build an 85-acre police training facility, and an Atlanta police officer who is ecstatic about the facility, as of equal weight. In other words, just because a person with authority says something, doesn’t mean they are right.

For too long, journalism institutions have treated the quotes and statements of law enforcement and government officials as undebatable and the standard for truth. That isn’t what you’ll get from me. I will not strip facts of their terrible impacts in order to claim my reporting is “balanced,” and therefore, fair. There is nothing fair about legitimizing systems and institutions that harm and kill people.

Instead, I view my job as a responsibility to document and reveal that harm and share why people make certain decisions to stop it. I do not aspire to be objective, but I do believe in honesty. If I’m being honest, this newsletter does have an agenda: to convince you that if we are to truly build new systems free from oppression, we must learn to comply less and less with our current ones.

I’m very grateful and privileged to have begun this work early in my career. In 2022, I published a zine with New Jersey-based artist

Ian King

—who is one of my best friends—on injustice in education after investigating food insecurity at St. John’s and the administration’s refusal to implement a food pantry. I’ve written about how we can collectively resist book bans for Truthout, and my words have appeared in other publications such as LA Progressive, Scheerpost, Z Network and GEN-ZiNE. At YES!, I covered activism and social justice for the political power vertical—including the struggle to end sexual violence in the era following #metoo, the art and culture arm of the movement for Palestinian liberation and how student activists are resisting repression from the Trump administration.

But now, I’ve been laid off, and the journalism field is nothing short of unpredictable. That’s why I’ve launched ANTAGONiSTIC—my digital home for amplifying underreported perspectives, revealing the harms and contradictions of oppressive systems, and telling stories on how we the people can win.

Substack, however, is far from perfect, and hardly pushing decent. When it was founded in 2017, its founders did so with loose content moderation rules—their claim to fame for having a “hands off” commitment to free expression. White supremacist writers, including Nazis, loved that shit. In 2023, Jonathan M. Katz wrote in The Atlantic that at least 16 of the newsletters he reviewed had “overt Nazi symbols, including the swastika and the sonnenrad, in their logos or in prominent graphics.”

That article pushed another 250 writers who used the platform, known as “Substackers against Nazis,” to sign a letter demanding that the founders clarify their approach to content moderation. “Is platforming Nazis part of your vision of success? Let us know—from there we can each decide if this is still where we want to be,” the signatories wrote. But the platform’s co-founders doubled-down on their complicity and protected their profits, claiming “censorship” wouldn’t help. It wasn’t until prominent writers began leaving Substack that the founders finally agreed to remove some accounts. Before the outrage over appeasing Nazis, was the cozy room Substack made for writers who spewed transphobia and anti-vax conspiracies.

I realize that Substack’s mission and my own are at odds with one another. The platform is a for-profit, multi-million dollar company, and I am an anti-capitalist and independent journalist hoping I’ll see the day where billionaires and white supremacy go obsolete. Naively, I did not know about these issues until a Bluesky user replied to my recent post announcing ANTAGONiSTIC, asking me if I fell and hit my head. While there was a bit of tude in their delivery, they have a point.

While what’s driven me to Substack are the publishing features, technology, social media-like feed (the same reason I—not proudly, just honestly—continue to use the billionaire-owned social media platform Instagram, and work and search on Google), as well as that Substack is completely free to publish (ideal for writers like myself who are just starting out on the independent publishing train), I don’t want its owners to leech even a few cents off my work. It’s also likely that this newsletter will not live here forever—not when non-profit and open-source platforms like Ghost exist. For these reasons, ANTAGONiSTIC will remain completely free to read while on Substack.

But don’t close your wallet just yet. You will have the opportunity to support my work monetarily in the near future (and that support will help me pay bills, eat and eventually afford the maintenance of Ghost or another platform that suits my needs and isn’t owned by a couple of egghead tech bros). Some of you have so generously pledged subscriptions already, and I am so grateful that you find my work worth paying for. If your kindness can expand beyond the Substack walls to a platform that does not publicly defend white supremacist media, I’ll be ecstatic to see your contributions there.

And if you’re unable to support my work monetarily or choose not to at this time, please know I value the minutes you take out of your day to read these small figures on your screen. I’m glad you’re here, too, even if you’re not fluffing up my bank account.

Now, instead of going on and on—because I’m warning you now, I’m a long-form writer—I’ll finish this introduction off with a brief guide on what you can expect to find in ANTAGONiSTIC. In reading my stories, I hope you will be moved, challenged, taught, convinced and validated.

Most of all, I hope that these stories will deepen your connection to your own unconquerable spirit—your inner antagonist—and remind you why it is in which we fight.

Thank you so much for reading.

What is ANTAGONiSTIC about?

ANTAGONiSTIC is a newsletter about power, resistance and not giving up on humanity in the 21st-century. By challenging mainstream narratives that discredit, co-opt or sew division among social movements and the public, ANTAGONiSTIC supports the moral call to disrupt systems in pursuit of a better world.

Who is the intended audience for ANTAGONiSTIC?

ANTAGONiSTIC is for people who are fed the f*ck up with bad people, bad shit and those who defend bad people and bad shit. ANTAGONiSTIC will resonate with you if you believe that the current systems we live under—capitalism, militarism and imperialism (to name a few)—are intrinsically harmful to people and the planet and that they should be replaced.

However, you do not need to fit into any one specific political category, ideology or belief to read ANTAGONiSTIC. You do not need to agree with everything I write. I hope this newsletter can reach people who are not already involved in or understanding of the causes I write about. In fact, I consider it my responsibility to at least try to win you over.

What kinds of stories will I read in ANTAGONiSTIC?

ANTAGONiSTIC brings you the perspectives of people who refuse to surrender to forces of power. You’ll read stories about how activists, organizers, workers, theorists, historians, artists, writers and others are working toward change.

You’ll also read reflections from me on what I’m wondering, grappling with and worrying about—as a journalist, yes, but also as your fellow human being. These stories can take the form of news reports, in-depth articles, personal essays, interviews or profiles.

Feminist theorist Sara Ahmed, who has greatly influenced my work, once said that our lives are data collection. If our lives are data collection, then writing is how we share that data.

What are the different sections of ANTAGONiSTIC?

To make my stories easier to find, ANTAGONiSTIC has three sections:

Unplugged. This section houses personal essays and reflections to see beyond the f*ckery. This is where you’ll get to see and examine systems, structures, news or personal experiences from my eyes.

Tales of Disruption. This section houses stories about people whose only crime was that they gave a f*ck. News articles and investigations, or any piece I write about other people, will typically live here.

ANTAGONiST Skool (coming soon). This section houses audio and video interviews with activists, organizers and other individuals changing their communities. They’ll share first-person narratives about the work they do, what they’ve learned, what keeps them going and any practical advice they have for how to build collective power. In other words, this is where you’ll go for tips on how to make people give a f*ck.

Can I suggest stories for you to cover?

Yes. While my stories are decided by me and me alone after undergoing diligent research, I am always looking for suggestions from people who see something happening in their community that should be written about. However, it’s important to me that I leave time to actually pursue suggested stories and have a process for fitting them into my publication schedule.

When I’m looking for story suggestions, I will send out a survey and post on social media.

Are you open to story collaborations?

Yes. I would love to collaborate with values-aligned writers and journalists on a story that we both agree to pursue. If you are a journalist or writer who is interested in working together, click here to leave me a message.

What if I notice an error?

I strive to provide information that is accurate, verifiable and clearly identifies sources of information. To meet these standards, content is copyedited, fact-checked and proofread prior to publication.

In the event that an error has been made, the correction will be updated within the text and a correction notice will be placed at the bottom of the story identifying the date, time and details of the correction. If you notice an error, please report it to julialuzbetancourt@substack.com with the subject line, “Error - Article Title.” ✸