KARECKONING: A MANIFESTO

INTRODUCTION: The Care Bait-and-Switch

So– you live in a country that, fifty years ago, made a deal with its citizens: work hard, take care of others, stay in line, pay your taxes, and you’ll be provided for. A stable home. A livable retirement. Access to education, clean water, safe food, affordable medicine. A social safety net that, while imperfect, at least acknowledged your labor.That return never came.Instead, we find the safety net yanked out from under us. Our leaders and their powerful friends are strip-mining the institutions we paid into our entire lives, and telling us there’s nothing left to give back.We call this the Care Bait-and-Switch.So what now?That’s where you come in. You’ve been contacted because you have the knowledge, the influence, and the demonstrated care to help build a way forward. We’d like to offer you a tool you might use to do it.

PART I: Harness the Rage of White Women

You’ve seen the viral videos—“Karens” screaming at cashiers, calling the cops over trivial grievances, demanding to speak to the manager with theatrical fury. They’re ridiculed, vilified, and memed into infamy.But beneath this cultural shorthand lies something more complex: a struck bargain, betrayed.Karen played by the rules: she was a good wife, a devoted mother, a loyal employee, an obedient participant in systems that told her she would be taken care of.Instead, she’s aging into an environment that offers only insecurity. The institutions she contributed to have collapsed or turned against her. Here she is, raging at her neighbors, in a downstream expression of institutional failure, economic betrayal, and emotional displacement.Perhaps the harm is too much and the distance too great for you to feel moved by reasoning that boils down to, "they're victims of the system too". That's a fair response. Here are 3 reasons to harness the rage of white women that have nothing to do with feeling bad for them.1.) Law enforcement officers are extraordinarily lenient with them. Their remarkable tolerance for white women's antics is mentioned in the comments of every Karen video.2.) They frequently get what they demand. The reason that Karen takedown videos are so popular is because of how often their demands are simply met without question.3.) They influence politics. White women's suffrage was ratified because of a congressman's mother sending him a letter telling him to vote to ratify the amendment. Their proximity to the majority of America's powerful people - white men - makes them a formidable force in shaping policy.To redirect the influence of Karens is not to excuse the harm they've caused. It’s to recognize that rage is energy—energy that can be weaponized downward or harnessed upward.

PART II: Follow the Strategy of Black Women

Black women live at the intersection of gendered and racialized exploitation. They have endured the same systemic betrayal—without the illusion that they were ever meant to be protected.That legacy gives Black women both the lived experience and the analytical clarity to guide structural change. Many are the daughters and granddaughters of civil rights organizers. They carry generational knowledge of how the state responds to dissent. They have studied what builds movements—and what tears them apart.This movement cannot succeed unless Black women lead it.White women, for all their justified rage, risk collapsing this effort into sentiment and spectacle. We’ve seen this before: the tears that derail, the slogans that blur into vague discomfort, the protest that fizzles into aesthetic.Black women know better. And they must be supported, resourced, and followed with discipline. Not because of symbolism, but because of strategy. They know the terrain. They know the cost. And they know what it takes to win.They and their loved ones have already put everything on the line to win rights we all enjoy. It’s time someone else took the risks—and made the sacrifices—for them.

PART III: Redeem the Power of Men

There’s a male equivalent to the “Karen.” Sometimes he’s called “Darren.” Sometimes “Kyle.” But almost always: entitled.Like his feminine counterpart, he was sold the promise given to all of us in the citizen class: provide, stay in line, and you’ll be respected, rewarded, secure.
Now, when he melts down at the pharmacy or rages in traffic, it’s easy to mock him. But again, what we’re seeing is fury at a broken deal.Some men will recognize their own disillusionment in this movement—and that will be enough.Others may need a familiar story to reframe their role.
They may see themselves in the arc of the comic book alliance: the reluctant hero who joins forces with a former enemy to face a greater threat.
Professor X and Magneto. Thor and Loki. Batman and Harley Quinn.This framework allows men to enter the movement without shame.
It appeals to archetype, not guilt.
However much they may have enjoyed watching “Karen” be taken down, they might now recognize that it’s time to team up against our true enemies—corporate greed, institutional failure, and the monetization of care.
Each of us has a critical strength to bring to that fight.And if they can’t see themselves in that arc, perhaps they can see themselves in the deeper truth of the red hat.
Men of the citizen class tried to disrupt the status quo through the current administration.
Their desire for change is relatable. Their drive to create change is admirable.
Their success at making change happen is undeniable.Many are beginning to see that the person they trusted to break the system is now helping keep it rigged—against them.
And at this point, it’s clear: they, their families, and the entire citizen class will suffer unless a new approach is taken.

PART IV: This Is a Class War About Care

Care is infrastructure. And it's actively being dismantled.Unpaid caretaking by women—raising children, tending to elders, maintaining homes, organizing communities—has propped up the economy for generations. When that labor became too visible, it was either privatized or ridiculed.Now we are in collapse.
Childcare is unaffordable.
Healthcare is inaccessible.
Public education is under siege.
Social Security, OSHA, the Department of Education—gutted.It’s not “entitled” to expect the government to care for us.
Every month we worked, the U.S. government took a portion of our paychecks—
and promised that's what the money was for.
Where is it now? Whose pocket did it wind up in?This is a class war, where care is both the weapon and the prize.Rage is rising in the white women who were promised safety.
Strategy is alive in the Black women who have always known better.
Power is stirring in the men now seeing they were never on the inside.While we’ve been splintered by race and gender and blame,
we’ve nearly forgotten the citizen’s oldest enemy:
a ruling class that thrives when we carry more—
and turn on each other instead of them.

PART V: The Kareckoning

What we’re offering you—someone carrying the torch in 2025—is an idea that fuses a viral symbol with untapped power.
We don’t know exactly what to do with it. But you might.We were promised care. And we already paid for it—
with our money,
with our bodies,
with our time,
with our silence.
Where is the return? Where is the safety? Where is the care?If you’ve ever clenched your fists at a hospital bill,
choked back tears in a grocery store,
watched someone lose it over a fast-food order and secretly thought, God, I get it—
you are not alone.We are ready to stop yelling at the cashier and start yelling at the CEO.
Ready to stop demanding to speak to the manager and start becoming unmanageable.This is not a tantrum.
This is the Kareckoning.
It’s a collections notice.We want our money back.

A note: This manifesto is conspicuously narrow in how it names race—centering Black and white women while leaving out those who don’t fit neatly in either category. That absence is not because these women can’t lead, or don’t matter. It’s because the scope of this little spark is limited. Too small, for now, to hold everything it should.That’s why we’re passing it to you. To carry it beyond what it is. To coax it into flame.