Life Wish #7: Putting care first, individually and collectively
Hello friends,
I’m writing to you from the middle of another week of fucked up history, as the minority death cult wins one more battle in their quest to turn the United States into an unholy mashup between authoritarian theocracy and mafia-run kleptocracy. I’m scared and I’m PISSED.
I believe the death cult may have just written its own eulogy with this overreach of minority rule, and indications are that we will pull through the election and live to fight another day … but weird shit does happen, especially in this year, which has been like 100 pounds of bananas stuffed into a 1 pound sack. Part of me has been feeling very much like I’d like to just go to sleep for the next several weeks and wake up in the spring.
And I feel you, sweet lil overwhelmed, terrified internal part -- dealing with all of this is MORE THAN A LOT. But we mustn't forget the most important part of the next several weeks is what we do with them. Here’s what I’m trying to focus on, as always:
Not getting lost in my phone/the internet. I handle this first, because if not, nothing else gets handled.
Taking excellent care of myself. Swimming and walking and therapy and really resting. I seem to be needing a lot of it the last few weeks and I’m listening to my body on that.
Doing some real work. For my job and for my own joy and for the election, a bit of each every day. Getting my job done. Painting! Writing to you. Hitting up those text banks and phone banks.
All of these put together leave me feeling at least somewhat ALIVE INSIDE, so I can meet this moment and all the moments to come. Big change is upon us and will not be slowing down any time soon, regardless of the results next week.
In some ways it feels like the rona is a dry run for the biggest change coming at us -- the rapid adaptation we’re gonna have to do to mitigate and live with climate change. Both of them are long-term challenges that can only be met by collective action.
But that’s not really our thing in the US -- we mostly do short-term challenges that can only be met by individuals being extraordinary. Our great stories aren’t about communities building themselves up and making change over years and decades -- we like stories about George Washington and Wonder Woman and Michael Jordan, and they should wrap up in a couple of hours, if at all possible.
The American Dream is this: be extraordinary and to prove it in the marketplace by making shit tons of money. The goal is to have an audience, a marketplace -- not a community. We don’t prioritize community at all. In fact we reward folks for fucking communities over ever more efficiently. We lionize the biggest winners, even when they are assholes, because they are forging their own asshole path or something.
What this means is that we grow up learning to value individual expression above community rights. It’s more important for Jeff Bezos to be able to rake in unlimited money than it is for children to have enough to eat. It’s more important for some people to get the chance to be as amazing as possible than it is for everyone to be okay.
I definitely internalized this lesson, just breathed it in along with everything else. And I used what I had learned. After my mom died, when my family was moving several times a year and chaos reigned in my life, I came up with a strategy to get the attention and love and validation that were in short supply at home -- I would dazzle my teachers by being the best student they’d ever had. At least, that’s what I was intending to do. Compared to other kids, I was good in school, so I put all my chips on standing out. I answered every question, aced every test, and didn’t care at all that the other kids hated me. That just set me apart in yet another way. I went all in on exceptionalism, as much as I could, and I’m glad I did, because it helped me survive.
BUT -- it also made it harder for me to trust people enough to collaborate with them. I tend to shy away from lots of community-type commitments, because the way that people often talk in these settings can make me feel like I’m going to crawl out of my skin ... especially hippy-dippy spiritual-bypassing shit. If I’m at some Indivisible meeting and someone says “love wins” unironically, I immediately turn into a rocket ship and blast off, just to get away from them … and I don’t go back to that meeting.
I know my reaction to this kind of comforting but completely made up discourse is big, possibly even outsized -- and I’m okay with it. I have other gifts, and there are good reasons I am the way I am. But the upshot is -- it’s been hard for me to find a political home.
Here’s adrienne maree brown talking about political home, differentiating it from electoral strategy:
[electoral strategy] does include assigning our paid representatives to positions where they are hired to govern, which includes synthesizing amongst many possible distinctions and directions to find paths that allow the majority of people to survive and grow.
political home, on the other hand, is a place where we ideate, practice and build futures we believe in, finding alignment with those we are in accountable relationships with, and growing that alignment through organizing and education.
Ohhhhhhh!! That pain I’ve been feeling all my life is the pain of not having a political home, a place where I can work with others over time to talk about and build and stabilize the kind of future we want to live in! And I want one! Because this is life-long work and it can’t really be done alone!
Now that I have a name for this thing I’ve been wanting, I am starting to look for it, to listen to my body and tune my sense of what works and doesn’t work for me, a specific person who is good at some stuff and finds other stuff very challenging.
What I’ve learned so far is that I need a place that is verrrrrry progressive and whose members are not just earnest but also funny. I can’t operate without both.
As discussed, I also can’t expect myself to listen to people talking about their goofy no-evidence life philosophies, I just can’t. So I won’t feel at home anywhere that has people saying stuff like “oh you know all those people who died on 9/11 agreed to that before they were born” (← something I actually heard from a live person in October 2001). No, sir, please take your massive load of shit and go on a spiritual journey directly into the sun.
And I’ve found that I love volunteering with Millennial and Gen Z organizers. Older folks like to make fun of the “participation trophy” model in education, where everyone’s contributions are recognized and valued, but I myself am TOTALLY ON BOARD. What’s not to like about this, honestly, unless you’re convinced that only extra-amazing people matter?
I’ve been involved in activism since the 90s, most of it led by Boomers and Gen X organizers, and a huge amount of it was oriented in shame. Like this: “You better get out here and do this cause if you don’t everyone will know you’re a poser and you don’t really believe what you say!”
Or it felt unwelcoming. I remember showing up to phone bank in 2016, at a Democratic office in Boulder, Colorado, and an older hippie lady handed me a stack of papers and waved me over to a dirty folding table to set up shop without ever even asking my name.
I do not mean to disparage organizers my age and older — just pointing out a pattern I have observed, and one I think folks of all ages can learn from. In groups where caring for volunteers seems to be the absolute highest priority, the organizing is much more fun and successful. I really appreciate the difference, so I’ve been paying close attention to how it’s done.
It seems to be about valuing us as individuals and also putting all our individual contributions into a collective context. At the beginning of every shift, there is a welcome and a speech to get us all hype -- last week it was Naomi Klein!! This week, AOC and Bernie! Then, at the end of every shift, there is a debrief that underscores the fact that we are part of a bigger movement.
So you get inspired with a big hit of collective enthusiasm. You make your calls, fishing the river of numbers and names for a few hours. Maybe you feel like you had a bad night because you didn’t catch many conversations … but you get on the debrief Zoom and hear about how many impactful conversations the team had as a group, and you start to feel like maybe it wasn’t such a bad night, because at least you got to help that one lady who was confused by her mail-in ballot, and this dude Jesús got someone to move from leaning Trump to leaning Biden, and this other lady Opa got someone to vote for Biden when they hadn’t been planning to vote at all.
And then you feel proud of your contribution, and also like part of an effective team, and also like you want to come back and do it again.
It’s been an eye-opening experience for me, to see how organizers can model vulnerability and encircle everybody and also keep things running on time. It points to the possibility of finding a political home that responds to the world with righteousness AND kindness AND a high level of rigor and respect.
And it reminds me of something amb mentioned on a recent episode of Octavia’s Parables (whew, her work has been teaching me A LOT lately). She said that in many years of organizing and trying to get people to show up for community and political actions, she learned to put the care first. Put the food and drink first. Put the details about accessibility and childcare first. Put the needs of the people who show up first. Because when those needs are met, we build trust to have the conversations we need to have, to do the work we need to do.
Seems to me it’s a never-ending chicken-egg process. Caring for ourselves as individuals helps us heal, and makes us more capable of caring and healing in our communities. As communities heal, more people within them experience healing and liberation.
Personal growth and community growth come from and lead to the same place -- an environment that encircles the needs of all the beings within it, where we shape and are shaped by change, with kindness and care for each other cushioning the whole process.
This is the vision I’m carrying in my head through this dizzying week. A world built on Big Caring Energy, for myself and for all of us. It’s possible! Even with a terrible Supreme Court!
Cause they were neve gonna save us anyway. Not here, not now. How it’s gonna work is we are gonna save each other.
All my love and vibes for good sleep and good voting,
Madge
Linkses (not all happy ones but I tried!)
Lizzo on Letterman’s Netflix show -- a pure delight. He sincerely appreciates her and you love to see it
Always love to hear my favorite aunt Elizabeth Warren sharing her vision for what the USA will look like when we win
Glorious Solange with her impressions on 2020
Historian Lara Putnam does clear and insightful research on the impact and reach of grassroots organizing. Check out this megathread about how the media mostly ignores organizing in shaping its narratives -- it’s like taking a whole class on unfolding history!
Hella opportunities to pitch in this last week at Vote Save America
If you (like me) are a bit concerned about Dolt 45 not going quietly, Indivisible is organizing to Protect the Results. I also found this interview with Bob Bauer, one of the heads of Biden’s election protection team, both illuminating and calming. Either way I’m ready to mask up and get into the streets if needed, and I hope you are, too.
