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What do we have that they should want? We have a wall to work upon
For the first day of summer proper, I had lobster and ice cream. I mended two out of my three pairs of jeans. I baked a lemon cake for the chorus potluck tomorrow. I bought a tank top on sale. I passed out on a couch for an hour in the evening because I had slept maybe two hours the previous night.
I do not know what to do about the planned mass roundup of immigrant families, obscenely described by ICE as a "family op." [ETA: As of this evening, the roundup has been delayed. May it stay so and may there be no advantage to the White House from the threat of it.] I do not know what to do about children tortured, American concentration camps. I already have a senator whom I call to express support of her unwavering opposition to these monstrous policies (which makes a nice change from my governor whom I call to yell at about everything) and I donate when I can to RAICES and I am feeling trapped by the limitations on my finances and my physical capacities which make it difficult enough already to keep myself alive, but what is the use of being alive if I can do nothing for anyone else? It feels like being cornered into complicity, as if I should be expected to raise my hands and say not I didn't know but so what could I have done? I want to know what to do from where I am, which feels terribly far from any levers of power. Fretting is just thoughts and prayers, secular edition.
I do not know what to do about the planned mass roundup of immigrant families, obscenely described by ICE as a "family op." [ETA: As of this evening, the roundup has been delayed. May it stay so and may there be no advantage to the White House from the threat of it.] I do not know what to do about children tortured, American concentration camps. I already have a senator whom I call to express support of her unwavering opposition to these monstrous policies (which makes a nice change from my governor whom I call to yell at about everything) and I donate when I can to RAICES and I am feeling trapped by the limitations on my finances and my physical capacities which make it difficult enough already to keep myself alive, but what is the use of being alive if I can do nothing for anyone else? It feels like being cornered into complicity, as if I should be expected to raise my hands and say not I didn't know but so what could I have done? I want to know what to do from where I am, which feels terribly far from any levers of power. Fretting is just thoughts and prayers, secular edition.
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I feel sick with helplessness about ICE and the concentration camps. I tell myself that making donations and calling Congress are not nothing, but it doesn't feel like much in the face of such evil.
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They were not planned for the season, but they were really satisfying.
I tell myself that making donations and calling Congress are not nothing, but it doesn't feel like much in the face of such evil.
I don't know who has the power to stop it. It should not rest entirely with the office of the president, but so many of the checks and balances have been destroyed, I don't know where to look. We could sea-change the government any time now, thank you.
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*nods* I know precisely what you mean. In Oregon, we have a governor, two senators, and my local House rep who are all awesome in their dedication to opposing this vileness. I write or call to congratulate them periodically, and I do
Postcards To Voters for out of state activity, but it feels like so little. I remain both sad and horrified that what are becoming death camps (via neglect and deprivation) are not inspiring continuous news broadcasts and the occasional riot. Instead, we get arguments over terminology and apathy.
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I am glad to hear that. I don't know so much about states I don't live in.
Instead, we get arguments over terminology and apathy.
I'm not seeing apathy in the circles I run in, which again I know are self-selecting; I just want to know there are enough of us to change things.
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Like Washington state, Oregon went deep blue relatively fast. 15 years ago it was a pale blue state with a split state legislature and one Senator from each party, but we've had a Democratic supermajority in the legislature for a while. I don't see this changing until the GOP does.
I'm not seeing apathy in the circles I run in
Neither am I, but when I look outside of my friends and chosen family, I see it, and it makes me very sad. Admittedly, distinguishing apathy from fatalism is difficult with people I know only peripherally or only encounter on the fringes of my social media, but it seems to be one or the other.
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I know that apathy exists. I know that enthusiasm for genocide exists. I just feel in some ways as though the fatalism is being reinforced even more than the apathy and that's what I'm trying to avoid being swamped by. I ran into a macro the other night with a quotation attributed to Werner Herzog: "Dear America, you are waking up, as Germany once did, to the awareness that one-third of your people would kill another third while the other third watches." And I had a knee-jerkingly negative reaction to it because (a) some of us have always been aware that it can happen here (b) where does that leave the people who are neither the victims nor the perpetrators and enablers of mass murder? It's a formulation that leaves no room for resistance, except perhaps by the unsuccessful dead. I don't find that useful at all. I understand people have been suffering sea-shocks in their image of America ever since the election of Trump, but at some point you have to stop being stunned and start grappling with the world as it is and shouldn't be. That doesn't mean deciding it's all just fine. (I really appreciated Gessen's article: "Anything that happens here and now is normalized, not solely through the moral failure of contemporaries but simply by virtue of actually existing . . . It is the choice between thinking that whatever is happening in reality is, by definition, acceptable, and thinking that some actual events in our current reality are fundamentally incompatible with our concept of ourselves—not just as Americans but as human beings—and therefore unimaginable.") But I think it also means not overshooting and deciding it's all too awful to do anything about. I know that people are terrible about states of uncertainty, but I don't see any other way to survive.
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Your senator depends on those calls; every one increments the "my constituents tell me to keep doing this" counter, which is hugely, hugely important both for morale among the senator's staff and for press around her actions.
And when you model your values for Fox and your godchild, when you sing and reach the hearts of your listeners, when you write and shift the thinking of your readers, when you smile at a woman in hijab or a Spanish-speaking family sitting across from you on the bus, that's not nothing either. Tikkun olam begins at home.
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I hadn't seen that! Thank you for telling me. That is useful.
that's not nothing either. Tikkun olam begins at home.
I feel you should know that is effectively what my mother said. She also spoke of my writing. I just hope it makes the difference I want it to.
*hugs*
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Two years running the in-town social justice group protested the speakers the local gun club brought to town for Flag Day (one year it was Arpaio, next year it was those national-park-occupying brothers). And this year, they decided not to bring anyone. THEIR OWN MEMBERSHIP decided that because even in the gun club, most people hadn't supported those speakers, but they had been apathetic and let the white supremacists among them go ahead and do it--but the protests got them to speak up and stop. And so this year, no one like that is coming here. That's a triumph. Can we rest? No--but we can take note. The protests **did** accomplish something.
And YES to smiling at a Spanish-speaking family or a woman in a hijab--because INSTANTLY with that gesture, you're showing that there's still friendliness, that they are still wanted here, and that's an injection of hope; that's cultivating community as you walk.
At the meeting I was at where we were talking about the state of things, I was also reflecting on how our society doesn't really support the notion of followers--we're always focused on leaders and dramatic actions. But if you think about wars, it's not just the strategists and the generals who make things happen, it's actually the infantry. You can't win with just generals and strategies. Because our society disparages followers and reveres leaders, it can be lowering to think of ourselves as "mere" infantry, but we're indispensable.
... I say all this to encourage myself as well as you. And I thank *you*
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You have value just being alive, even if that was the only thing that you could manage right now.
Also, you have value as a writer.
Also, you have value as a voter.
Also, you have value as someone who calls their political representatives.
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Thank you. This at the moment is less a manifestation of feeling that I don't deserve to be alive for myself than frustration that it feels like that's not enough. I am trying to hear what you and
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Also, I am reminded to donate to my preferred political party here in Canada.
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What I'm trying to do at the moment (subject to my own limits) is reach out to groups with the same goals and ask them for things to do within my capacity, so that my work isn't what I'm doing but what we're doing, in the hope that a little work combined with others' work is better than a little work in isolation (which is still better than thoughts and prayers and fretting.)
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I am sorry. I hate that the current state of the world is such that these things are not rare horrors but just seem to vary by region.
so that my work isn't what I'm doing but what we're doing, in the hope that a little work combined with others' work is better than a little work in isolation (which is still better than thoughts and prayers and fretting.)
I like that model; it sounds both proactive and sustainable. Thank you for the data point.
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I'd still like you to be all right! No zero-sum games here.
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I do. It's one of the reasons you'd better have gotten used to me telling you that you're a good parent.
Neither of their parents has a body that can be put in the way any longer, but we have tried to model being a real fuckin' nuisance obstruction in other ways.
I've seen it.
(I hear what you're saying.)
*hugs*
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I didn't know about Al Otro Lado, so thank you for telling me about them.
Even when I know that all my skillsets are more useful here than there.
It is just very difficult for me to know what's useful right now. I just want it to stop, all of it. I am trying to get some idea.
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. . . Fair enough!
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"My opinion ... may have little weight with those who ... [support this infamous law], but may help sustain the sinking spirit of some poor disconsolate one, who, having fled the land of the oppressors, is anxiously looking to see if there is any one who will give him a cheering look, or a kind reception ....
"Allow me to say to such an one, that if pursued ... and every other door in Boston is shut against him, there is a door that will be open at No. 2 Beach Street, and fear of fines and imprisonment will be ineffectual when the pursuer demands his victim. If [the pursuer] enters ... it will be at his peril. I am opposed to war, and all the spirit of war ... but I should resist the pursuer, and not allow him to enter my dwelling until he was able to tread me under his feet."
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That's a good thing to say. I'm glad he lived up to it. I had not heard of him.
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It is not fair to judge yourself more harshly than you would anyone else in the same financial or physical situation. (Though I know how hard it can sometimes be to take this perspective.)
When mystics suggest we should "act but not expect" or "do your work, and step back" I suspect they are trying to help us stay effective when facing challenges like this, rather than simply taking the piss of causality. But, ehh, mystics, who knows?
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I don't expect an instant solution to the problem of the man in the White House! (I don't know how some of the damage he and his enablers have unleashed is to be contained, let alone amended or healed.) I just want something that feels like it might work. I am working on reminding myself that it doesn't have to be something I come up with, just something I can contribute to.
(Though I know how hard it can sometimes be to take this perspective.)
(I find it very difficult. I appreciate the reinforcement.)
When mystics suggest we should "act but not expect" or "do your work, and step back" I suspect they are trying to help us stay effective when facing challenges like this, rather than simply taking the piss of causality. But, ehh, mystics, who knows?
I mean, if slightly breaking space-time works under these conditions, I'm for it.