Summer 2026 edition

Welcome back to Notes on a Present Future. If this is your first time here, this newsletter uplifts the stories and the work of people shaping the world to build just futures now.

What’s inside

1. A note from my desk

2. Updates (mine and, more importantly, yours)

3. Reading, watching, listening

4. Stay in touch and collaborate with us.

A note from my desk

For those of you who have been reading this newsletter for a few years, you know to expect a micro essay from me in this space, contextualizing what’s happening in the world to our collective work, and surfacing questions of how we are using community, narrative, and power to transform toward better futures.

This edition has a different kind of note. This past spring, I lost my father. The grief has been wrapping around me for months. And it has built a strangely selective writer’s block.

I’ve kept writing for work, because work is in front of me. I’ve written about the World Cup, posted about the Knicks, curated a collaborative zine. I’ve addressed tasks people directly ask of me. But my essay practice has fallen away for now, and my messaging apps and email inboxes are a game of Tetris. (I know some of you have been waiting for responses from me. I will get to them.)

Grief is strange. It bobs and weaves, moves in strong waves and sometimes in slow drips, a daily current that quietly reroutes the course of a day, reshaping, in small and subtle ways, how I relate to the world and how I triage engagement. 

So I’ve been holding this newsletter back for two months, wondering what to write. I kept circling the question of what it means to remain present to the world even in moments when what little I have to say is emerging like taffy being pulled.

Because our presence is a gift, and a duty. At least my Dad would say so. 

My father was among the best of men. That is not hyperbolic. It is a privilege I carry. He was a physician, a caregiver, a host, intellectually curious and politically engaged. Most of all, he was a source of strength for so many people. He cared and he loved openly. Navigating the aftermath of his loss has made me think about how he showed up in the world and what he gave to others – and what it means to carry that example forward. This feels especially relevant now, as we confront rising suffering, oppression, and marginalization, and consider what we owe one another in the face of it.

We are living through political times that ask us to look away from one another, to accept people as commodities, and to become smaller in the face of forces of corruption and extraction. These times mean that many of us are in mourning, personal and communal, and are considering new ways of engaging with the world. To confront these times means to refuse to look away, to be present, and to engage in care. Exactly what mourning complicates. 

I’ll get back to it. Somewhere in all of this, I am starting to feel a tickling at the back of my psyche, an inkling of hope that comes from people continuing to show up for one another and imagine better together. Hopefully that will come across in the next newsletter, when I’ll be marking the fifth anniversary of CfTC. Look for that soon. 

For now, I’ll leave you with what my family wrote about my father, because he truly created a model of how to build a life in a place that wasn’t his own to begin with, and to make it so.

Now, to the updates…

Updates 

Mine:

The Pricing of Belonging I co-wrote this essay with Scott Smith as part of 10fconsortium.org’s ongoing forecast work, building on our forecast,”People as Asset Class.” We examine how migration policy has gone modular, with nations increasingly forking each other's playbooks on offshore processing, bilateral removal deals, citizenship revocation and adapting proven templates to local constraints. We trace how these policies spread, and why the templates that proliferate fastest are almost never the most humane.

10F One to One, Ep 3 Continuing with work on 10F, I sat down with Igor Schwarzmann for an episode in the 10F dialogue series, which pairs 10F contributors with the same set of questions, no host, no moderation. Our conversation snaked through topics, getting into resource holders’ lack of preparedness for our current political moment, institutions with every reason to act and no agency to do it, the unethical state of trying to live a frictionless life, and whether what's actually missing right now is the courage to be specific. 

Grassroots Grantmaking: Philanthropy's Monopoly Era Has Ended The Proximate team released this issue of Grassroots Grantmaking, looking at how the small set of institutions that long defined philanthropy are losing their grip on the field. Jan Masaoka argues the era of foundation dominance is closing as money moves toward donor-advised funds and independent donors. Jessica Dudley talks with us about what it means that most of modern philanthropy's norms are only about 75 years old and open to being relearned. Tirrea Billings launches a new column on how media shapes philanthropic narratives, and Vincent Mwangi and Maria Amália Souza report on philanthropic infrastructure emerging across the Global South. We closed with a caution: decentralizing power doesn't guarantee it becomes more accountable. 

"Yelele Mama" — Exile Key & Yo-Yo Ma For World Refugee Day, Exile Key, the artist collective based in Kakuma Refugee Camp, released "Yelele Mama" with Yo-Yo Ma via Sony Music Masterworks. Their message: "We want the world to stop making victims and start making more music." A striking piece of solidarity and creative collaboration across difference. Congratulations to my CfTC colleague Keefe Murren on this project.

The Truths We Hold As the US marks 250 years since declaring independence, we released the second zine in our political hope series, curated by Lina Srivastava. It gathers artists, creators, futurists, and advocates responding to one question, “What gives you political hope now?”, at a moment when the country's stories about itself are cracking open. Download the zine here.

Yours:

•••For those of you interested in ethical technology•••

Technology in Migration: From Surveillance to Support Antonella Napolitano on the split at the heart of migration tech: government surveillance that follows people everywhere, versus migrant-led tools built for care and resistance, complicated by unaccountable private tech and security companies now central to this space. 

Uncovering the Humanitarian and Nonprofit Sector's AI Governance Crisis Danai Nhando on the AI governance gap in humanitarian work and who really bears the risk: refugees and displaced people with no way to opt out. 

Narratives for the Future New analysis from MERLTech explores how Global Majority voices are reshaping the AI conversation. Rather than focusing on Silicon Valley narratives, it highlights growing calls for regional AI ecosystems, local autonmy, ethical governance, and technologies that reflect local languages, cultures, and priorities. The piece argues that the future of AI should be defined by the communities it serves.

GenAI in Documentaries: Case Studies Archival Producers Alliance case studies on how documentary filmmakers are actually handling generative AI, including questions of consent, transparency, and archival gaps, built with the filmmakers themselves. 

The Synthesis: 9 Red Flags to Look For in AI Documentaries in 2026 Katerina Cizek and shirin anlen's column rounds up the tropes AI documentaries can't seem to shake: the repentant tech-bro, dream sequences of generic "AI slop," the first-time dad musing on human vs. artificial intelligence, and inevitably someone saying "the genie is out of the bottle." Funny, but a real diagnostic for spotting films that mythologize AI rather than interrogate it. 

Deepfakes, Denial, and the Fate of Evidence On The Deepfake Dialogues, a conversation with Sam Gregory of WITNESS on the flip side of deepfakes: not just fake footage passing as real, but real evidence of abuse now dismissed as fake. Covers WITNESS's Rapid Response Force, why detection tools fail unevenly across languages and populations, and why "spot the six fingers" was never the right advice.

•••For those of you interested in aid/dev, human rights, global affairs•••

The UN Secretary-General Race To Save Us From Hell, Mark Leon Goldberg and Anjali Dayal's podcast on the race to succeed SG Guterres: candidate hearings at the General Assembly, then the Security Council's first straw poll, the real test of who can survive a P5 veto. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. 

The Protests Gripping India — and Rattling Modi In New Lines Magazine, Surbhi Gupta traces how the Cockroach Janata Party's satirical protest over exam scandals and student suicides grew into the largest anti-Modi demonstrations in years, escalating after activist Sonam Wangchuk's hunger strike and forced removal, and after police used batons and tear gas on tens of thousands in Delhi.

When History Happens, Sometimes You Know It Ruchira Gupta on the Global Progressive Mobilisation in Barcelona, where, after decades of progressive fragmentation, PM Sánchez, President Lula, President Ramaphosa, and other heads of state tried to rebuild cross-border democratic coordination around six shared pillars: democracy, economy, equality, environment, AI, and peace.

The Ghosts of Thingyans Past Thin Lei Win on watching Hungary's election night from exile, five years after Myanmar's coup leader installed himself as president, and what it means to hold onto home through food when the country itself keeps slipping further away.

Operationalizing Humanitarian Complementarity Oxfam's reflection on its Ukraine response asks what INGOs are actually for as the sector localizes: treating complementarity as a design choice, and valuing the unglamorous work of brokering, accompaniment, and institutional strengthening. 

Can Spain Save Feminist Foreign Policy? Lyric Thompson and Spogmay Ahmed (Feminist Foreign Policy Collaborative), writing in Interruptrr, on Spain hosting the 5th Feminist Foreign Policy Ministerial: unusual for having Sánchez himself champion the agenda, backing it with rising aid spending and migrant regularization even as the model comes under strain elsewhere.

•••For those of you interested in new economic and organizational models•••

The Politics of Time In her Fuller Project essay, Zara Rahman argues the time-starved working mother is a design failure, not a natural state, pointing to Bogotá's care blocks and multigenerational cohousing as models for shifting caregiving from individual burden to collective infrastructure. She unpacks the thinking behind the essay in Distillations/ Constellations #16, exploring the Greek distinction between chronos and kairos under a capitalism that's flattened time into worker-hours alone. Her new book on the same theme, It's About Time, is the first title from Fuller's new publishing partnership with Full Set. Read the essay here.  Read the newsletter here.  Pre-order the book here.

QFP: RAKSHA's Anticipatory Intelligence Platform In early September, RAKSHA Intelligence Futures is launching QFP, a platform built to surface structural pressure in global systems — including insurance markets, sovereign debt, supply chains, alliances — six to eighteen months before it breaks into a headline. Access is by invitation for CIOs, foundation leadership, and sovereign advisors.

The Shifting Landscape of Philanthropy Sushma Raman, a leader in philanthropy and social change strategist, is leading a live workshop on the trends reshaping the nonprofit and funding world, from shifting donor priorities to the evolving foundation-nonprofit relationship. September 10, 2–4:30pm EDT. Seats are limited. Enroll here.

CURA Mahyad Tousi's ritual cinema project, co-created with the Nomanawa Clan in Brazil and the Cofán of Putumayo (Colombia), is a four-act, non-verbal sensory journey: Shadow, Pulse, Spirit, Return. Half of all proceeds go straight to the Indigenous collaborators' conservation and cultural work, not as a donation but as a built-in share of ownership. On June 4th, Cacique Yama Nomanawa and the Nomanawa community made their first visit to New York for @ofrendafest in LIC. Releasing internationally soon. Follow @cura_work.

•••For those of you interested in creativity, storytelling, and the arts•••

Circle Expanded Orbit Circle and Onassis ONX are launching an XR/immersive media program for women and gender-expansive creators, led by Emmy winner Katerina Cizek. Athens, Nov 21–26. 

State of the Documentary Field The Center for Media & Social Impact issued a report, State of the Documentary Field, which highlights the growing risks facing documentary films after the rescission of public media funding. With CPB funding eliminated, filmmakers are losing not only production support but also the public media pipeline that helped attract philanthropic investment. The report also finds that 71% of surveyed filmmakers say pressure to self-censor or face censorship is increasing.

The Most Popular Documentaries of 2026 (So Far) Anthony Kaufman on how Netflix's most-watched "documentaries" — true crime, celebrity biopics, algorithmic docutainment — are crowding out the independent, festival-circuit form almost entirely, even as it makes up barely 1% of Netflix's total viewing hours.

The Films Fighting Fascism This Election Season  Anthony Kaufman is back, rounding up the fall documentary slate taking aim at power: Alex Gibney's film on Elon Musk, Danny Boyle's on Rupert Murdoch, Ava DuVernay's "14th," and more, all landing as the Paramount- Skydance- Warner Bros. Discovery merger saga plays out ahead of November's midterms. 

Horizon Scanning Workshop Changeist's next public foresight training, "Sensing & Sensemaking for a Complex World" (EU Times), runs September 17–18: two half-days on spotting early signals of change, building scanning practices, and working with AI tools in foresight work.

•••For those of you interested in narrativem cultural, and systems change•••

The Social Life of Social Justice Knowledge Deepa Iyer on what happens when a framework she built, the Social Change Ecosystem map, gets remixed into personality quizzes, astrology content, and stickers, stripped of the deeper body of work behind it. A thoughtful case for stewarding ideas relationally rather than treating them as free-floating content. 

New Tech, New Rules: Narrative and Civil Society in the Age of AI and Algorithms A major project with IRIS (International Resource for Impact and Storytelling): a summary report, an essay by Daniel Stanley on AI and democracy, a bibliography from Di Luong, and 10 case studies spanning Latin America, Tunisia, Egypt, India, Nigeria, and Hong Kong. Brett Davidson's companion piece for Global Voices distills the pattern across them: civil society co-opting, countering, and innovating around tech-driven authoritarianism, from The Eternaut's AI-assisted effects inspiring Argentine activists to Hong Kong's ephemeral, hard-to-surveil organizing cells. 

When the Heat Is On Scot Nakagawa argues coalitions fracture under authoritarian pressure for structural, not moral, reasons, and that the fix isn't a stronger coalition agreement but a "springs to river" infrastructure: small, trust-based organizing units feeding a larger, coordinated movement, built before the crisis hits. 

AI and Immersive Media Convening 2025 Report  Electric South's second convening brought together South African artists, technologists, and researchers to shape home-grown, ethical approaches to AI in creative practice. The resulting report introduces 7 Principles and Guidelines for AI in African Creative Practice. 

The Publics We Have Not Built Yet Jon-Sesrie Goff argues digital platforms borrowed civic language without civic obligations, and makes the case for cooperative, place-based cultural infrastructure. 

Reparative Media, Expanded Digital Edition Aymar Jèan Escoffery draws on five years building OTV | Open Television, an indie streaming alternative to Netflix, to argue that community-rooted media practices can heal harm better than conventional DEI programs. 

Reading, watching, listening

What I’m reading: 

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today Marking the 20th anniversary of their digital media publication, Tom+Lorenzo wrote a reflective and urgent assessment of the state of the industry, looking back on two decades of running their independent pop culture and fashion criticism blog. The takeaway is that remaining alive and independent as a for-profit blog in 2026 has become far more challenging than it was in the early days of Google Alerts and buzzy media attention, with today's landscape shaped by collapsing ad revenue, AI disruption, and a hostile social media environment. At the same time, the post celebrates the fact that they have endured through those changes, arguing that surviving and remaining independent in 2026 is an even greater accomplishment than launching the blog was in 2006.

On the importance of building narrative infrastructure Rachel Weidinger's article on building narrative infrastructure breaks the concept into four parts: conceptual frameworks and narratives, social and technical networks, distribution systems, and economic support. She argues movements need all four to counter authoritarianism's narratives, which took decades to build.

Embodiment in the Age of AI. Viktoria Modesta, a bionic artist, reflects on two decades with prosthetics and body augmentation to reframe how we think about AI. Drawing on Vipassana meditation and her own osseointegration surgery, she explores how human intentions can help us govern the use of AI.

You Can’t Drink Data Honor the Earth organizers Krystal Two Bulls and Joseph White Eyes talk with Truthout about how AI data centers, mining, and energy demands are targeting Native lands, and how 888tribal communities are organizing moratoriums, bans, and education campaigns to resist what they call the "AI death cycle."

The Song of Achilles Madeline Miller's Circe is one of my favorite books of the last decade. With all the talk around the film The Odyssey this summer, I decided to read her retelling of the Iliad as narrated by Patroclus, Achilles’ companion and lover. It’s such a lush, beautifully heartbreaking book. 

Tell Me How It Ends Structured around the 40 questions Valeria Luisello translates for undocumented Latin American children facing deportation, this book confronts the reality these young migrants face, exposing both the fear and racism they encounter here and the crises driving them from home. I return to this book periodically. With the latest reports of minor immigrants being denied counsel in immigration court in the US, I had to pull it back out. It’s an essential read for these times. 

What I’m watching: 

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. Honestly, I loved it. I have caught up on all the cultural commentary – including the vast praise and the detractors (including Emily Wilson’s piece in the LRB). What a fascinating gauge for our cultural landscape. And I may write a micro-essay of my own one of these days. In the meantime, I may go again. 

PBS Masterpiece's adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo, is beautifully done. If you can find it, watch it. 

And:

Dance / Flamenco: MESTIZA - SPANISH CHICA | The pulse of Flamenco & electronic music🪭 (Arabic, Latin, Spanish House) 

Dance / Flamenco

Dance/ Modern: THE WESTHOODSTORY

Dance / Modern: It’s Not That Serious • A Dance Film by Ricky Ubeda  

What I’m listening to: 

Lots of alternative and jazz-inflected South Asian music lately:

BombayMami - Love Bomb She’s simply awesome. 

MOHINI DEY - The Dey Way She is a force of jazz. 

‎Sangam & Friends - Album by Charles Lloyd  More jazz. Put this on on a Friday night.

Shanka Tribe | EP | UMOJA This EP is textured, rich, and beautiful.

See you soon.

In solidarity and joy,

Lina

To work with us: Center for Transformational Change

We specialize in strategy, convening, and original productions related to social transformation across displacement, climate justice, equity, and cultural engagement.

To book me for speaking: My Chartwell Speakers Profile

To learn more about my work: www.linasrivastava.com

To support this newsletter, please visit this link and send it to your friends.

To ask to amplify your social transformation project, please email here

To reach me on social media: LinkedIn, Bluesky, Instagram, Mastodon

You are on this list as a member of my community. If you would like to change how you receive this newsletter: Update your preferences or Unsubscribe from this list below.

Copyright 2026, Lina Srivastava. All rights reserved.