Hi —

This is the first edition of FRONDLINE, an occasional newsletter from me, (Mike) Barrett Bryan-Soron. I'm an eco-socialist political operator based in Vancouver. Most of my writing will live at barrett.bryansoron.ca, where I'm working through questions about digital sovereignty, movement tech, and what comes after. If you're getting this, you probably already know me!

This first issue is simple: a recap of what I've published, a research tracker I'm maintaining, and a note about where to find me.

What I've recently published

Two essays:

• Using AI in the Data Centre Fight: A Memo for Organizers — The left is arguing about whether to use AI tools. I think that's mostly the wrong argument. What matters is how, not whether. (Published just today.)

• Notes from the Lewis for Leader Campaign on Digital Sovereignty — A post-mortem of the tech choices we made on the Avi Lewis leadership campaign. I write about what we built, what drifted, and what I'd do differently.

Two shorter notes:

• Tyler Meredith's Convenient Confusion — On a bad-faith dismissal of Avi Lewis by an Ottawa policy consultant.

• Fastmail, not Proton — Why I'm now using Fastmail and moving away from Google.

A tracker I'm maintaining

I've been keeping a public tracker of NDP post-election transition reporting: barrettsoron.github.io/ndp-transition-research-2026. For my own private research and reference — aggregates sources on the leadership race, party changes, and what comes next. Linking it here in case it's useful; will have more to share on this ahead.

Update your contact book

My primary email is now barrett@bryansoron.ca (Fastmail — here's why). If you have an old address for me, this is the one to use going forward.

More soon.

— Barrett