Resistance Through Community
And trying to find joy and love in yet another moment of grief
I don’t know what to say y’all. These last few days have been a lot. On Thursday, the Big Deadly Bill was passed, therefore assuring us movement into a militarized dystopian nation state that decides the health and wellbeing of its people are worth less than signed merch from a tyrant. And the day after we were supposed to celebrate our “independence.” To pile it all on, a raging storm blew through Texas Hill Country causing historic floods that killed a number of young girls from a summer camp and many others.
I can’t help but get weepy about all of that and thinking about the parents who, like so many other parents around the country, dropped their kids off for what should have been one of the best weeks of their life (as summer camp always was for me!) only to face tragedy. And also to be an example of a threadbare weather service thanks to mass government firings early this year. Oof.
Okay, let’s just take a moment to breathe here. Acknowledge the grief. Take a moment to reflect or cry or whatever you need.
We are not moving on from this moment, but we are moving forward and what we need to do with it is to find the humanity and the goodness around us to keep going. To keep resisting. Because there is so much humanity. And we should always, always remind ourselves that. And it is also the time to look to our community to find a way through this.
The assets in our communities already exist. The mutual aid networks, the neighborhood groups, the school communities, the faith communities, even the moms Facebook groups. Hell, we even have an incredible community of wool-clothing stans with a Wool& Facebook Group that somehow has become a place for people to share all the things they can’t in other parts of the internet. There is community everywhere and sometimes where you least expect it.
And also, when we’re thinking about the good that is out there, I want to especially highlight two posts from writers in the Substack-o-sphere that felt so necessary for this moment.
First, the inimitable
— anti-racist organizer and my friend — wrote this at :
A little highlight:
“When I say “love harder than the fascists can hate I mean both caring for those around us who need it the most, while building and sustaining the spaces that we need to trust, know and build with one another.
Should we try to fill in the (suddenly much larger) gaps in the social safety net in the places where we live? In all honesty, we have no choice. I wish so much that I could trust our government to provide a decent, dignified life for all Americans. We’re not there, especially now. And that means that the people in your community plugging in those gaps— the mutual aid efforts, the soup kitchens, the free medical clinics, the immigration rights offices— need your support (both money and time).”
And the other post that I came across through the course of my anger and grief over the weekend was
of — writing about what it could look like to “ground our summer rituals in solidarity.”
The idea of pairing rituals—such as our red-white-and-blue-BBQ-firework-patriotic one—with hope for a better future. It is exactly what we need to think through what comes next.
It is a heavy moment that we must remember and continue to work through. But it’s also a time to move forward in solidarity and love. And, like Christine wrote above, I intend to find ways to do that through all of my summer rituals.
I always need a reminder of how much humanity is around us and how very good it can be. Thank you for this <3