Inshallah & The Creek Don't Rise

I spent the first 22 years of my life in Indiana. I’ve maintained connections there even since moving to Chicago. For the past three years I’ve attended an annual conference organized by the IU Center for Rural Engagement. The conference brings together people from all disciplines and fields (literally) who are fighting for the well-being of rural and small town Indiana. At this yearly convergence...

Reflections on what it means to fight a world-building project, and why our stories matter during the fight. At the beginning of last year I released an essay called Projecting 2025. Today I am revisiting that essay and sharing new observations as we move deeper into 2026. We discuss White Christian Nationalism as a world-building project. We discuss the "iceberg" model of conflict and what it mea...

To read the full text, go to this link: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/njaj/vol2/iss1/4/ On November 7th, the Nebraska Journal on Advancing Justice published an article that I wrote about the history of Nemaha County, Nebraska, where my mother’s family has been farming for six generations. The article explores what local and family history reveal about America and how the future of family farmland...

A very 2025 story about the failures of people in power and how urban and rural struggles are connected. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lynrye.substack.com

CONTENT WARNING: Graphic language, descriptions of violence Social media and traditional media alike are buzzing with discourse about the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Most of the discourse I’ve seen seems to focus on Charlie Kirk’s character and hand-wringing about political violence. I see all the signs of classic online discourse - people present their hot take and then defend it against detra...

A concert I was scheduled to play in Glencoe, IL sparked backlash due to my stances on Palestine. The day of the concert and the aftermath proved an interesting case study in the politics of outrage, conflict, and "the bullet from behind." This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lynrye.substack.com

This weekend Muslims around the world celebrated Eid Al-Adha, also known as the Festival of Sacrifice. Over the years my relationship to this holiday has grown deeper and my understanding of the story that inspires it has blossomed. But it’s a challenging one, one that required a lot of working through before something finally clicked. This essay is an attempt to share what I’ve learned from Eid A...

Watch the video version here. Gather around children, it’s story time. [Hi, Sweetpea (the cat).] Okay, story time. So I grew up in a small town in Indiana called Bloomington. And in 1968, I believe, there was a firebombing of a Black-owned bookstore. And after the firebombing, the original owners of the bookstore dedicated the lot where their store had been to become “People's Park.” And they work...

For those of you who are not familiar, the start date and end date of Ramadan changes from year to year. The Islamic calendar is a little bit different from the Gregorian calendar. In 2025, Ramadan is basically the entire month of March. But it used to be over the summer. Some of you may know I'm a musician. I have done quite a bit of touring. And so there was a period of years where I would frequ...

As-salaamu alaykum and welcome to Inshallah & The Creek Don't Rise . Just wanted to give a little introduction to what this is. I have been doing quite a bit of political writing recently, particularly in 2024, and been getting a lot of engagement and response to that writing. And so for 2025, I wanted to finally gather the threads of that political writing and create a home for it to continue. An...

As we begin 2025, I see a lot of hand-ringing. “How bad is it going to get?” It’s a valid question. It was a valid question before the election and remains a valid question after Trump’s re-election. That being said, amongst liberals and progressives, especially those who live in urban bubbles or are college-educated/professional class, I am hearing a lot of sweeping fear and despair. This essay i...

My motivation for writing this booklet is JD Vance becoming Donald Trump’s vice president. JD Vance wrote Hillbilly Elegy and claims to be a voice for rural and small-town America. I’m American on my mother’s side, and in that maternal lineage, I am the 6th generation to grow up in rural/small-town America. I cannot stay silent. One of the biggest problems with JD Vance and his Hillbilly Elegy is...

Today I want to tell you about a violent coup and massacre that happened in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1898. It’s little-known incident but one that reveals a lot about American history. * Wilmington, NC circa 1898 North Carolina in 1898 was in the middle of Reconstruction after the civil war. Formerly enslaved people and their descendants were growing a middle class as well as a political clas...

So I’ve been thinking about America’s supreme difficulty with truth-telling. And, seemingly, the lack of capacity as a society for truth-telling. Especially about this society’s history. And how this is coming up with books about racism in the United States being banned from schools and curriculums, and things like that. Just all of this erasure, just all of this combating against truth-telling ab...

Bismillah . I open with an intention. This story I offer with the humble hope that you might be nourished, that you might find even one more little gulp of strength or courage to keep fighting, if you are weary. If this story speaks to you, then take whatever you need from it. The story is a lesson that I learned as a Muslim. It is a lesson I learned from being at Standing Rock in 2016 at the Indi...