number nine, with hope
the hope of doing something, plus your weekly recommendations
It is hard right now (or in the past four years/our entire adult lifetimes depending on when you became conscious to the pain and suffering of the world) to not feel sometimes crushed by the weight of it all. We are all at our own place and have our own relationship with the current movement, I cannot presume to know where you started, where you are at now, and what you are feeling today. I do know I have talked to several friends over the past week who have shared feelings of being overwhelmed, of starting efforts to take part and questioning them, of self-doubt and lack of clarity. There are activists and leaders speaking to the issues of policing and protecting black lives right now with a lot of clarity, women like Brittany Packnett and Tamika Mallory and Rachel Cargyle. In spite of the way social media attempts to remove nuance these women, and many others, have insisted upon it anyway, having so beautifully chosen to lead with honesty and vulnerability alongside conviction. There is much to be learned from them more than the issues, but also how to engage honestly in the work of change.
What is asked of you and me at this moment, how are we supposed to be engaging? I think quite simply we are being asked to get involved. This means learning and listening and asking critical questions. If you are anything like me then behind your likes and reposts there are many questions and uncertainties about the best role for you to play, about what this will all really come to, if true change is possible. If you care about others, if you want to be of the solution it is right to feel all these complicated emotions. I certainly believe you should be distrustful of anyone selling you an easy vision of social change, but you should be equally distrustful of anyone leaning on cynicism to excuse inaction.
I am writing to you from a place of assuming that we share the same essential values – we believe that people should be treated equally, that violence at the hands of the state against it’s own people should not be tolerated, that a more just world is one worth struggling for. If we do agree on those values that there is likely much disagreement about how to make them a reality, just as it should be. In my own life I can testify to having held the same values for as long as I can remember yet I think very differently about how to live them today than when I was running my high school’s “diversity club.”
Not to deride my diversity club though, because there were actually many things I did learn from it. The most important thing it gave me was the proof that I could do something to make things better around me. It is easy to look back on that youthful energy as naïve and indeed I have learned that things are much bigger and more complicated than I could have imagined at that age. Still, what we did then was good and honest and open-hearted. Maybe to dream big again we first have to remember the small things that made us want to in the first place.
The trouble is that life has a way of piling on and obscuring truths we may have discovered long ago. Each social issue is like a rock in the garden that when overturned reveals a mess of bugs and rotting earth. And, oh look, next to that rock are all these other rocks you didn’t see before, each revealing uglier truths than the last. How can you ever restore this garden and make it beautiful again? I suppose if you expected gardens to only be full of beautiful flowers and tables set for tea parties you may want to go inside and give up. If instead you understand that the things that create beauty also create decay, that the weeds will continue to come but so will the blooms and with diligence and imagination you can root out the ugliness, well, then you might want to pull on your gloves and get to work. These past couple of years there have been many rocks turned over in our garden, we cannot pretend not to see the rot anymore, but it will take time and lots of sweat for the new growth to take root.
What do we do when we are feeling overwhelmed, when we do not know how to help or what to think? I think the answer is truly quite simple: do one thing that you know is right. Start there. That will not solve everything, no one thing ever does, but it does much more than you may realize. We can and we should dream big, but how do we keep that imagination alive? We can do something that is right, we can do what we can. These are regenerative acts of hope, each one restoring our capacity to do more for one another.
Over the past couple of weeks, I have begun volunteering with a mutual aid network that arose in the beginning stages of this pandemic. Bed-Stuy Strong is an online community, using the tool Slack, where neighbors are posting about needs, advocacy, trading items, and giving updates on local businesses that operates very much offline in action. It’s most necessary function is connecting volunteers and resources with those neighbors who have need, mainly groceries, but also offering to do things like pick up prescriptions, or even share baby or household items. Some are neighbors who are elderly or immunocompromised and just need someone lower risk to go to the store for them, but many are folks experiencing compounding factors who are struggling to afford groceries. Even with food pantries and SNAP benefits and school lunch programs set up by the city, some people fall through the cracks of those programs or they simply do not do enough to help a family make it through the month. The need in Bed Stuy has been so great that the network has made over 6,000 grocery deliveries since the start of the pandemic, most of which were paid for by donations.
Mutual aid networks are an old school community-based effort to take care of one another. They have a rich history in underserved communities where government services or formal charities have failed to address people’s needs, and where coming together to look out for one another was not just pragmatic but an opportunity to build power, self-sufficiency and bring attention to inequalities. The Black Panther Party’s community programs in the 1960s is one of the most famous and impactful examples. Mutual aid programs are not intended to be a solution, they do not tackle systemic poverty and inequality and the conditions that create so much need for the things we need to thrive. They may bring attention to those issues and strengthen the networks through which advocacy, information sharing and political power can flow, but these can be byproducts of bringing neighbors together with loving intention.
My four hours a week of calling neighbors to see what they need and listening to them is not going to change their lives. But it does do something. For myself, each and every interaction leaves me feeling stronger from having that moment of connection to a neighbor, fulfilled that I am able to use my time to help another person, and invigorated to keep going. I cannot know exactly what the impact of this work is on the people I talk to, for those brief conversations tell me so little about the reality of their lives. The amount of space in your mind and in your body that the stress of poverty or need take up is immense. The psychological effects of isolation are long lasting. So I do not question that to lift that burden or to be a friendly ear even for a moment, that matters. It matters to recognize the humanity of another person and to give, without judgement or expectation. It matters that we choose to look out for one another. It matters because it grounds you in the real world. It matters because it gives hope, that people are good and that they care, and that you can do something to better another person’s life. There is hope in the doing.
There is another thing I have taken with me from my diversity club days. We used to tell each other to “be uncomfortable.” We thought we were radical in realizing that discomfort is what was needed sometimes to grow and for taking a stance in opposition to our cookie cutter suburb and the perceived unwillingness of our peers to deal with anything that challenged their comfortable (high school me would have also said shallow and mindless, but I have since evolved) existence. Some of the fatigue we are feeling is because of social media has become a space where we are challenged, in the midst of a pandemic where social media became our primary means of connection it has been transformed into a crucial space for activism and learning and unlearning.
Scrolling through Twitter can make you feel like you are experiencing ideological whiplash, or like you are in a fast-moving car trying in vain to take in all the scenery flashing past your window. Every post is potentially as important as any other, everything is equally urgent or easy to dismiss depending on which mood you are in. Our social media feeds are not so unlike the cable television networks Millennials deride their parents for being glued to, opinions echoing off one another for hours based on one small piece of real news, skewing our worldview and damaging our mental wellbeing along the way. Siphoning our strength and hope by infinitesimal degrees. Being uncomfortable is necessary, as is the ongoing learning happening on and offline about racism and inequality, but there is a point where you need to come back to yourself. A point where tuning into everyone else removes you further from clarity and from growth. There is a point where you need to log off so that you can stay open and flexible in your thinking, think critically, educate yourself so you can feel comfortable speaking up, choose who you follow and listen to carefully. Like writing or therapy or cleaning the house, the despair only grows when we ruminate upon it, immobilized with the reality that there will always be another blank page or depressing day or dirty dish. Any practice takes patience, forgiveness, time and, ultimately, doing the hard work of thinking and acting for ourselves.
Last week we saw the supreme court rule that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in the workplace is no longer legal. This is a win and when I heard about it I was emotional not only because it was a good piece of news, but because of all that it took to get to that moment. The pain and sacrifice of Gerald Bostock, Donald Zarda, and Aimee Stephens who were discriminated against, the dedicated hours of lawyers formulating and arguing their cases, the long journey to the Supreme Court, the LGBTQ+ activists and allies who protested and showed up to lend their support. So many people who did little things and big things to get the country to this moment, where we are brought closer to the true meaning of our founding ideals. So many people who will be able to pursue their liberty and happiness in their careers. I also think about the many people who will continue to be discriminated against, their unknown faces and the lawyers who will take their cases and fight to establish case law that upholds this ruling.
I think about the trans men and women who have recently lost their lives to violence, Dominique Fells, Riah Milton, and Tony McDade. How the Supreme Court, no matter their ruling, would not have been able to do anything to save their lives. You would not dare to say to any of the people involved in this win that it was not worth doing because there will still be pain, hate and violence against queer and trans people. This is not a guarantee, but it is something real and meaningful that makes it more difficult to get away with hate. The hope with which they fought this battle has inspired it in others in ways they will never know.
In Minnesota this past week state leaders were unable to agree on a set of police reforms, leaving the future of change in that state uncertain in spite of overwhelming support publicly and politically. This isn’t to say things will not change, it may however be a bellwether for just how difficult it is to see through change in policing and the difficulty of the many fights we have ahead of us. The forces aligned against progressive change are large and powerful so if you want to be cynical, I cannot stop you, but personally I do not have much use for it. It is easy to get bogged down by the “how” of it all, but I urge you to resist that. To start with, do not confuse rallying cries with policy proposals. Rallying cries are the demands for us to live up to the ideal that all people in this country have the right to pursue life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Rallying cries are that black lives matter and demands to abolish or defund the police. These are not policies or strategies or tactics, they are visions that the work will bring us closer to realizing, day by day.
Maybe you don’t know exactly what you think about all of these issues yet, which policies are right, what strategy makes sense. Maybe you are not an activist maybe your purpose is not in the visible actions of protest and organizing. This does not mean you should not continue to educate yourself, to sign those petitions, to take this on in some way, it is too important not too. The exciting and potentially overwhelming thing about this moment is that people are not calling for small reforms, an overhaul of how we think about taking care of one another is being called for. This large scale change holds so many ways to be a part of it. Start with what you know is right. And keep moving forward.
The hope is in the doing. We all have to create hope for one another, and maybe more importantly we have to each find some ways to sustain hope for ourselves.
recommended for…
a necessary newsletter: The Anti-Racism Daily newsletter is a wonderful resource begun by Nicole Cardoza, a mindfulness teacher, activist, and overall bright light. She approaches anit-racist work similarly to yoga, in that it is a practice that you have to engage with which regularly, which is why her newsletter offers daily insights and actions you can take. Subscribe here.
some hopeful art: Rayo & Honey is a Brooklyn based artist who creates beautiful hand sewn pennants and other “goods with positive intent.” I am in love with her work and the emotional and uplifting affirmations chosen. If you are looking for something to keep you hopeful and add to your space check out her online shop.
something to read: This week I do not have a specific book recommendation, but I do have a bookstore I want to shout out! I ordered quite a few books from The Lit Bar, a black owned bookshop in the Bronx and received my first couple of them today, very exciting. If you are looking to purchase something I encourage you to check out this wonderful shop — just in case you forgot black owned bookstores sell all books, so you know, it doesn’t have to be about racism. I look forward to visiting in person once I am not scared of taking the Subway someday in the unknown future. Shop away.
a beauty moment: In the long hunt for perfect lip balms I feel I have stumbled one step closer to perfection in the Kosas LipFuel in Pulse. This was admittedly an impulse purchase when buying some shampoo (aka something I actually needed) but at this point I will buy basically anything Kosas puts out, they are my favorite natural beauty brand at the moment by a mile. Anyway, this lip balm feels like a non-sticky gloss, is genuinely so hydrating and plumping, the color is perfectly sexy, and I cannot stop wearing it. High recommend for a cute low key summer vibe. I got mine from Credo Beauty, which is like a natural beauty Sephora: pucker up.
If you are interested in learning more about or want to know how to donate to Bed-Stuy Strong you can find more information right here.
P.S. Please wear a mask, it’s important and saves lives and it’s not that hard!
with love,
caitlin rose