This week was a whirlwind, again. Every week feels like a lifetime. So before I dive into the roundup, I want to lift up something important.
The Zora Project Goes Live on Monday
Next week marks a major milestone. Monday, we go live with the first interview from the Zora Project, an effort to collect and preserve the stories of Black women who have lost their jobs—often silently and without acknowledgment.
Why Black women? Because the data tells a devastating truth: between February and April of this year, 300,000 Black women lost their jobs. I wrote about this two years ago in Qualified. I saw the pattern forming. I saw the wall being built. The Zora Project exists to document those stories and ensure Black women are not erased.
Details on how to share your story or support the work are at thesharidunn.com.
This Week’s Highlights:
1. Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics
We opened the week with the President firing the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The reason? The numbers didn’t match the story he wanted to tell. This administration had to walk back job numbers for May and June, which were originally reported as 125,000+ jobs each month—later revealed to be 14,000 and 19,000.
That is functionally zero in an economy as large as ours.
The President’s panic reveals the truth: the economic plan is not working. And when numbers don’t align with narrative, the solution has been to silence the messenger. The proposal? Stimulate the economy by pushing the Fed to lower interest rates, hoping that banks follow suit. But banks aren't dropping rates, and money isn’t moving like they’d hoped.
Meanwhile, tariffs imposed by this administration are being paid by us, the public—not foreign governments. And after collecting billions in tariffs, they offered the public a $600 check, while billionaires enjoy $12 billion in tax breaks.
2. This Is Costing Us All Too Much
This moment is not just economically devastating, it’s spiritually corrosive.
What is the cost of labeling Black and Brown professionals unqualified by default? What is the cost of rewarding unqualified white men with power, while branding DEI as a threat? What is the cost of detaining immigrant families and green card holders, of separating mothers and children, of harassing elders?
This week I released a video campaign titled This is Costing Us All Too Much. Because it is. If you haven’t seen it, I invite you to watch and share. The Democratic Party should have launched something like this already. But they didn’t. So I did.
3. The War on Learning Comes to Community Colleges
As Chair of Oregon’s State Workforce and Talent Development Board, I see firsthand how essential community colleges are. They provide education that goes to work. They serve diverse communities—racially, geographically, economically. They are often the only option for rural, frontier, and urban students alike.
Trump’s administration claims to care about “real job skills,” but his policies undermine the institutions that deliver them. Anti-DEI rhetoric, paired with funding threats, disproportionately impacts community colleges and their students.
This is by design. And it aligns with a terrifying ideological framework known as the dark enlightenment, a worldview embraced by Trump’s inner tech circle: Andreessen, Thiel, Musk, and others. At its core, this philosophy envisions a world where power is held solely by white, Protestant, land-owning men. Everyone else is either a threat or a tool.
It is not an exaggeration. Trump himself has publicly claimed to have “superior genes.” He has praised the “racehorse theory” of eugenics. And if you’re Jewish, Catholic, working-class, or simply not white and Protestant, you are not included in their vision for America’s future. You are disposable.
In a documentary on The Ed Sullivan Show, I came across a post-WWII Army film warning about the dangers of fascism. A white man in the square says “they” are taking “our” jobs. Sound familiar?
The same language is being used now, against immigrants, against DEI, against civil rights. It is not subtle. And the lesson from that film and from Sullivan’s legacy is simple: the fight for inclusion is always urgent, always met with resistance, and always worth it.
5. The Illusion of Escaping Racism Through Wealth
This week I went live with Marlon Weems, a brilliant thinker and former Wall Street professional. We discussed the false promise that you can earn your way out of racism. You can’t.
Black wealth did not protect the people of Tulsa, Wilmington, or Elaine, Arkansas. It did not protect my own family in Mound Bayou, Mississippi, where they removed the railroad line to erase economic opportunity.
Crypto won’t save you. Capital won’t save you. History proves this again and again. The only way out is through. We have to confront the structures, not run from them.
6. The Transmogrifying Power of Laughter
Finally, we closed the week with laughter. I wrote about the comedian Josh Johnson and his extraordinary set on pardons, Diddy, and Jeffrey Epstein. Watch it if you can—especially around the 25-second mark.
Black communities have always used laughter to metabolize pain. My mother was a master of this. She could take tragedy and turn it into uncontrollable joy, if only for a moment. Laughter is resistance. Laughter is medicine.
The Zora Project: Call to Action
On Monday, the Zora Project goes live. If you are a Black woman who has lost a job, your story matters. You can share in writing, anonymously or not, with a voice memo or live interview. Go to thesharidunn.com to learn more.
If you are not a Black woman, but you want to support, you can. Becoming a paid subscriber funds this work. Eventually, I want to be able to provide small stipends, legal resources, and professional connections for the women who courageously tell their stories. $5 a month may be inconsequential to some, but it can mean everything to this effort.
Black women are the canaries in the workplace coal mine. They’ve been signaling something is deeply wrong. When we respond to those signals, we uplift everyone—every gender, every race, every person working to survive and thrive.
The Zora Project is about record-keeping, justice, and truth. It is our chance to build the archive that history would otherwise erase.
Thank you for being here this week. Watch the video. Share the newsletter. Come Monday. And if you can support please do.
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