Taking Care of Each Other

Hi Friends,

I’m sure you’re inundated by election-related emails and messages and news and I hope that you’re finding ways to manage anxiety, fear, and stress right now. I imagine that this week is going to be one for the history books, no matter what happens.

I’m reaching out now to share a message of hope, love, and encouragement. The paths we are walking are longer than our lifetimes and while the threats we face sometimes feel overwhelming and impossible to manage, times like this have happened before and they will happen again. Our work still remains, our need for rest and taking breaks continues, and the fundamental centrality of solidarity and community is unshaken.

I am still solidly guided by my confidence that how we take care of each other is what matters most.

Here are some people and organizations that have given me strength. Some are resources I have recommended to you in the past and some are new:

- Valarie Kaur has a new book out, called Sage Warrior, and I attended an event with her that was partially about her books, but mostly felt like active community building and grief holding and authentic connection. Her work has changed my life. “Our most urgent task is to alchemize our pain into energy and action. And the only way to do that is together. The labor is long. Let us fortify each other. Who will you breathe with today? Who will help you push?”

- Rabbi Alissa Wise has a new book out, called Solidarity is the Political Version of Love, and I heard her speak at a book event with her co-author, Rebecca Vilkomerson. Their words were all about organizing and staying the course for the long-haul and attending to our needs in the short-term.

- Lyz Lenz said in a recent newsletter, “The only real solution to managing our fears is collective action. The only real peace is the peace that comes from being part of the community. You are not helpless here and you have more than your vote.”

- Nicole Cardoza at Reimagined (formerly Anti-Racism Daily), said in a recent email, “If you’re feeling a sense of dread or overwhelm, remember: we are the leaders that will get each other through. Let this be an opportunity to shift your solidarity from institutions to each other. Voting is good, but committing to the collective wellbeing of your neighbors is better. So is showing up at your local school board and community council meetings, protesting against injustice, boycotting and divesting, and doing the deep work to evolve your own relationship to what institutions try to teach us. The good fight isn’t over until we give up on ourselves and each other. And I’m glad to be in this fight with you.”

- David Dean shared resources and encouragement, and outlined the “Block and Build” strategy that he uses for short- and long-term action. “Throughout history, moments of rising political repression have often resulted in splintering and infighting on the left that has ultimately led to the destruction of once-promising movement-building efforts. Regardless of our political strategy in this moment, it is incumbent upon all of us to see one another as comrades and engage in good faith discussion about our political strategies.”

- The Catalyst Project shared recently, “If we are thoughtful and intentional about how we treat each other, we can address conflict in generative ways. This can strengthen our movements in the coming months and years. Deeply committed, principled, and thoughtful leaders are advancing different strategies to win power and create change on the scale that our communities need. In this political moment, where so many of us feel so exhausted, it can feel difficult to look for common values and approach each other with humility. We can practice both humility and also principled struggle.”

- Eleanor Hancock at White Awake wrote recently, “Finding a way to immerse yourself in a supportive, loving community is also vital. I encourage everyone to find, build, act, spend time within a political home — even if this home is fragmented or spread out over a variety of different groups and relationships.”

- Heather Cox Richardson shared detailed information about facism, based on a pamphlet created by the US War Department for the US Army in 1945. Please be informed about the tactics used and how to respond to these threats to democracy.

- Nadia Bolz-Weber shared in 2021 about respecting our individual capacities for what is enough and resisting the constant clamoring around us that we must do more and more and more. “I only have so much water in my bucket to help with the fires. The more exposure I have to the fires I have NO WATER to fight, the more likely I am to get so burned, and inhale so much smoke that I cannot help anymore with the fires close enough to fight once my bucket is full again.
So I try and tell myself that It’s ok to focus on one fire.
It’s ok to do what is YOURS to do. Say what’s yours to say. Care about what’s yours to care about.
That’s enough.”

I also wanted to share this resource called Dismantling Antisemitism, which gives really in-depth detailed guidance about how to engage with this important work.

Breathe. Push. Rest.
Block and Build.
Connect with your people.
Repeat.

Emily

Listen. Amplify. Follow. In Solidarity. 

Common Shared Humanity

Hi Friends,

I hope you all had an enjoyable summer. I have been reading I Never Thought of it That Way: How to have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times by Mónica Guzmán and it has been shifting my perspective, yet again. Isn’t learning wonderful?! I highly recommend the book and I’m hoping to share some resources related to what I’m learning and seeing that might help illustrate just how essential these perspectives are for creating the world we want to live in. In case it’s not clear, that world includes every single one of us.

The goal is to reduce the divisions among us and to find ways to connect over our shared humanity.

I’ll start with a very clearly laid out opinion piece by Nicholas Kristof called “Here’s Why We Shouldn’t Demean Trump Voters” in the New York Times last month. He rightly points out the classism that many progressives engage in, even as we fight against sexism and racism and how important it is that we learn to stop doing that, not simply because it is expedient for the upcoming election, but because it undermines our moral values to demean any group of people for any reason.

Much has been said about Michelle Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention last month, but I was particularly moved by Phillip Bump’s focus on her phrase that most of us “will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth.” He explains the genius of her phrasing: “Her line overlapping affirmative action and generational wealth wasn’t offering “affirmative action” as a pejorative term. It was, instead, contextualizing a different way in which people are boosted by circumstances that aren’t always under their control. It was a defense of affirmative action programs that noted how wealth built in an explicitly unfair economy was its own form of unearned advantage.” I share this here to highlight the ways in which most of us have more in common in our experiences of (economic) systemic oppression than not.

There was a story in the Washington Post recently about a Black couple hosting parties at their home and their neighbors calling the police. The article by Ellie Silverman does a good job of capturing the nuance and complications of the situation and it made my heart ache. I share it here to highlight the situations that arise when people don’t reach out and get to know each other as people, but treat a situation as something for the police to handle. I can see so much lost opportunity for everyone involved to create a connection and the ability to treat each other as people instead of a problem.

The next story is by Abha Bhattarai about how the unhoused population in our country increasingly includes working people. Besides raising awareness about this growing problem (again, along economic lines), I encourage you to consider your assumptions about the unhoused population and consider that who you might see on the sidewalks and streets is not a complete picture. For example, ask your local school or school district about their programs for unhoused children and learn more about the less visible unhoused population in your community. Did you know that it costs less to provide basic preventative support for people (housing, food, medical care, etc.) than it does to address the challenges they face when things fall apart (prison, ER visits, clearing “encampments,” policing and crime)? There are multiple studies that prove this, but we’re way behind because of fear, ignorance, and a lack of connection around our shared humanity.

Another article that broadened my understanding of the complexities and brilliance of humanity is the Washington Post Opinions series highlighting government employees. Michael Lewis wrote about Chris Mark of the Department of Labor in an article called “The Canary” and I found the entire thing riveting. But what keeps running through my head is the way the article brings out the personal story, the relationship he has with his father, the ways he has adjusted his perspective and understanding of the world because of his experiences. “But Chris had been endowed with a deeper-than-usual desire for fairness. He had a powerful father and a powerless mother and wound up feeling powerful sympathy for the underdog. He’d ended up working for the institution best equipped to help the unlucky defend themselves from the lucky. And the effect of his work had indeed been to make the world just a little bit less unfair.” I am so grateful for the problem solvers who are passionate about their work for its own sake.

If you’re interested in another perspective-challenging experience, I want to highlight Robin Givhan’s article about artist Hank Willis Thomas. His description of the conundrum of race is poignant “‘And so there I am: [Race] is not real. But the impacts are real! But it shouldn’t exist. But it does!’” The images of his work are striking, particularly “The Cotton Bowl” and his statuary with hands and arms is very moving to me. “Thomas strives to link our past to our future, to communicate urgent and difficult ideas when words fail us, when politicians make matters worse, and when moralists and terrorists all lay claim to God’s unique favor. As we struggle to communicate across the divides — political, racial and demographic — perhaps a monumental sculpture or a disruptive photograph can help us better recognize each other’s humanity.” [emphasis mine]

Food for thought (and action!).

Emily
Listen. Amplify. Follow. In Solidarity.

Repair

Hi Friends,

I hope you’re all doing well now that summer is (almost officially) here. I don’t know about you, but our spring felt like a frenzy of activity even though I try so hard not to overschedule our family. So far, I have been spending more time outside, in the garden or on walks in the neighborhood, identifying our local birds and plants, seeking connections that will help me feel rooted and supported. I hope you also have time and space to slow down and feel connected to your community. Maybe upcoming Juneteenth celebrations are a good opportunity for that.

I started reading Braiding Sweetgrass a while back and then put it down for a time. I picked it back up recently and it has again shifted my perspective so foundationally. Robin Wall Kimmerer writes so beautifully, and her deep beliefs in reciprocity, abundance, respect, and restoration of our relationship with the Earth are so inspiring. She writes,

“We need acts of restoration, not only for polluted waters and degraded lands, but also for our relationship to the world. We need to restore honor to the way we live, so that when we walk through the world we don’t have to avert our eyes with shame, so that we can hold our heads up high and receive the respectful acknowledgement of the rest of the earth’s beings.”

We have lost our relationship with the earth and this isolation and our harmful systems also contribute to the loss of our relationships with each other.

I want to highlight two recent articles about how our culture contributes to the burnout of BIPOC women leadership, even in spaces that work towards inclusion and equity. The first is by Chris Talbot-Heindl, who writes for Community Centric Fundraising, entitled, “Let’s Talk About How Nurturance Culture Can Improve Our Movement.” The second article, by Kerrien Suarez and Whitney Parnell (of Service Never Sleeps), called “‘We Specialize in the Wholly Impossible’: Navigating Three Black Women Tropes in Leadership” is essential reading for anyone who works with Black women in leadership roles (which I hope is most of us!). I recognized every one of these tropes acting upon women who I love and respect and I am grateful for this article for raising awareness and showing us how we can do better.

The 70th anniversary of Brown v Board took place this year and I wanted to amplify a resource shared by Anti-Racism Daily called the Segregation Explorer map. Check out your area (or anywhere in the US) to see trends in race and income by school, district, and state.

I appreciated a reminder from Anti-Racism Daily about the four levels of oppression and how to work to recognize those levels even when what we’re witnessing might feel individual in the moment. These skills take practice.

I have been thinking a lot over the last few months about how to shift beyond acknowledgement to action. Here are two areas in which I encourage you to learn and hopefully take action to engage in shifting the power dynamics in our systems.

Decolonizing and repairing Indigenous communities
- Learn — All My Relations podcast, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States
- Shift Wealth — Decolonizing Wealth Project
- Shift Power — NDN Collective
- Shift Opportunity — Rock the Rez

Legacies of Slavery and Reparations
- Learn — The Cost of Inheritance (PBS special)
- Contribute — The Jamestown Foundation, Reparations4Slavery, The Reparations Project
- Raise Your Voice — Redesignate Arlington House as a National Historic Site
- More Ways — Coming to the Table’s (CTTT) Guide to the Reparations Movement

More opportunities to learn:
- Esther A. Armah’s Emotional Justice
- Garrett Bucks’ The Right Kind of White
- James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time
- White Awake is offering “Radical Genealogy: Research Skills for Liberatory Ancestral Recovery” in July

Please continue to engage in advocating for human rights and against genocide. The Catalyst Project (Anti-Racism for Collective Liberation) shared a speech by Lara Kiswani at the People’s Conference for Palestine last month about the importance of organizing. The US Campaign for Palestinian Rights is encouraging a Summer of Resistance. White Awake is running a summer “Study & Action for Palestine” starting June 17 (register by June 16).

My guiding values for all of this work are more and more clearly centering around Humanity. Healing. Belonging. Love. Sending so much love and hope to you during these challenging times.

Emily
Listen. Amplify. Follow. In Solidarity.