Our Work Will Not Be Glorious
Persistence.
Please know that the overwhelm, the speed of this, the terror and confusion and panic, is the point. We are absolutely in some serious shit, don’t get me wrong. But we need to find ways to reckon with that while preserving, as a necessity, our reasons for continuing.
Giving into despair, or panic, or any excuse we give ourselves to not wrestle with the truth that we are here now, the only way out is through, and we must ACT, is the easiest way to comply. They are trying to terrify, confuse, and intimidate us into silence or inaction. We cannot allow it.
The writing is on the wall already in blood. If you don’t see it yet, I don’t have time to argue with you. If you have just joined us, welcome, thank you, but please walk humbly. Many people saw this coming and tried to warn you. This is a difficult time for them. Be gracious.
Importantly. Critically. More people are waking up in this moment then I have ever seen. I cannot tell you, or anyone, what your role in the movement is. But I have some advice for finding it. I’d appreciate if you’d consider it.
If you are brand new to being radicalized against the death machine, or to deciding to be involved in resisting it (regardless of which head of the hydra you are working on), start here.
I will tell you first that organizing is often loving, artful drudgery. Anyone who tells you different is selling something. Organizing is cooking for people. Organizing is sending emails. Organizing is answering phone calls. Organizing is meetings. Organizing is talking to people.
Organizing can be almost anything under the sun, but my advice to get started is to find a simple task that needs done, with a massive workload of it to do, as a public service for a group you respect and feel community with.
Find something mundane that would be helpful that it seems no one else has either the capacity or willingness to do, and volunteer to do it. Then show up. Consistently. For as long as it takes. Most people will not be lauded for good work. I respect them the most, tbh.
I have had both the blessing and the curse of being highly recognized very early in my organizing career. Separately from that, I have had both the blessing and the curse of having a very public career in organizing. Please understand this is not common.
I am heavily benefitted in both these regards universally by my whiteness and conditionally upon my being perceived as “masc enough” or “the right kind of masc” (on the other side of this I have a book of gender theory cooking I promise!!!). I am also lucky. And uniquely prepared, in ironic ways.
All this to say — very, very few good organizers are ever lauded outside of being loved and honored by the communities they build and maintain. Organizers hold up a shocking amount of the infrastructure of society. Usually without pay. Often with extreme risk.
There will not often be glory. There will be punishment. (I’ve become functionally unemployable in many ways, chosen to be very publicly trans to the degree I have been doxxed by v scary folks, have lost health, friends, family). I’ve known people who have died. There is risk. We must choose it.
Go now and look at whatever you need to, any fact or quote or video, any evidence of What Is Happening, and remember where we are. How long until they come for you, if you stay quiet, now? Do something. Anything. Yes YOU. Start where you are. Use what you have. Think creatively. How can you help?
How can you help keep someone safe, or alive, or fed, or housed, or warm, or comforted, or absolutely any damn thing you can think of to make someone better off in this world we find ourselves in. We must reach for our courage, our fire, our animal desperation to live, our love for each other.
We must remember where we are. The worst thing about fascism is they will never see it. Those who choose not to. Choose not to ask questions. Choose not to wonder why. What difference does it make what knot they use in the binding?
We must do it anyway. Every person matters. Every spark of hope, or another day lived, or trauma prevented or comforted, matters. We are the ones we have been waiting for. Find what you need, in yourself, and commit yourself to the work of generations. We welcome you.
The world is incomprehensibly enormous and full of cruelty. I can’t pretend I have all the answers (working on a piece on this, soon), but I have ideas. I have ways I’ve inspired. I have information. I have relationships and skills I’ve cultivated. I pry goodness from them. I won’t let them take it from me.
Find what you need. Keep it close. I literally get tattoos on my left arm of Lessons I need to remember. About life. And love. The stuff of organizing, and humanizing. Of revolutionaries and poets alike.
LeGuin was kind enough to leave words of wisdom for these times. She says, “Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.” Tomorrow, my friends, we must get up and get to the work. Thank you for listening. Take care.
