a message from my mother

Shortly after she died I found a particular letter among her things.
It was a proposal to a magazine to write a series of articles on her experiences
living in community with a few other poor single mothers.
Sadly this period was not long and I remember none of it.
I was three when she wrote this. It never really saw the light of day.
I feel it could be the most important message for our time

Our common bond is powerful.
When we let it, our strength flows out of us
and around each other in a wonderful stream...
Without our interdependence,
we would be miserable indeed.
~ my mom

Hakeem Jeffries: "Republicans talk in headlines and Democrats talk in fine print"

like the time I tried brainstorming a bit of counter-propaganda here and all the replies were way over-complicated.

Brian: "where was the disconnect there? We were willing to walk the walk, and yet it wasn't felt..."

Hakeem: "We definitely have to do a better job in communicating with the American people...part of the issue ... that we have had is that Republicans talk in headlines and Democrats talk in fine print"

(ETA: now with a summary of sorts) last I posted this here it sank like a rock. I posted in the lounge where it got a

lot of views and grateful comments
but eventually was locked for being political.
Someone encouraged me to try again here after a bit.
So here it is again

https://wagingnonviolence.org/2024/11/10-things-to-do-if-trump-wins

I'm not great at summarizing and it's lengthy,
so I'll present the title of each section with my favorite sentence or passage from that section.

1. Trust yourself
If you don’t want to read this article now and instead take a good walk, do it.

2. Find others who you trust
I promise I’ll head towards practical resistance strategies. But the emotional landscape matters a great deal. Hannah Arendt’s “The Origins of Totalitarianism” explored how destructive ideologies like fascism and autocracy grow. She used the word verlassenheit — often translated as loneliness — as a central ingredient. As she meant it, loneliness isn’t a feeling but a kind of social isolation of the mind. Your thinking becomes closed off to the world and a sense of being abandoned to each other.

3. Grieve
After Donald Trump won in 2016, we all saw colleagues who never grieved. They didn’t look into their feelings and the future — and as a result they remained in shock. For years they kept saying, “I can’t believe he’s doing that…”

4. Release that which you cannot change
Unaddressed, this desire to act on everything leads to bad strategy. Nine months ago when we gathered activists to scenario plan together, we took note of two knee-jerk tendencies from the left that ended up largely being dead-ends in the face of Trump:

Public angsting — posting outrage on social media, talking with friends, sharing awful news
Symbolic actions — organizing marches and public statements

The first is where we look around at bad things happening and make sure other people know about them, too. We satisfy the social pressure of our friends who want us to show outrage — but the driving moves are only reactive. The end result wasn’t the intended action or an informed population. It’s demoralizing us. It’s hurting our capacity for action. Public angsting as a strategy is akin to pleading with the hole in the boat to stop us from sinking.

5. Find your path
One pathway is called “Protecting People.”

6. Do not obey in advance, do not self-censor
(a thought not directly from the article,
but I see a lot of "we can't do anything" kind of thinking around here,
and it looks to me like a kind of obeying in advance)

7. Reorient your political map
How we position ourselves matters: Are we interested in engaging with people unhappy with the regime — whether because they love the current institutions or are unhappy with Trump’s policies on them? Are we able to tell a story that explains how we got here — and do political education? Or are we only interested in maintaining ideological purity and preaching to our own choir?

8. Get real about power
Power will need to emerge from folks no longer obeying the current unjust system.

9. Handle fear, make violence rebound
They were young people who took a sarcastic response to regular police beatings. They would joke amongst each other, “It only hurts if you’re scared.”
Their attitude wasn’t cavalier — it was tactical. They were not going to grow fear.

10. Envision a positive future
I don’t feel certain, and I’m not predicting we win. But we’ve all now imagined storylines about how bad it might get. We would do ourselves a service to spend an equal measure of time envisioning how we might advance our cause in these conditions.

who would like to participate in my study?

it's a nascent idea I just thought of. Just a few questions at this point:

How many times have you changed residence / moved in your life?
Were the majority of the moves before age 18?
What's your #1 thing to listen to when you're feeling ...
... angry
... lonely
... anxious
... etc.

thank you past self for this music that is helping my day flow with less anxiety and more productivity

has the part where Ben Shapiro got roasted by his audience for his "thoughts"

on the CEO shooting not come through here yet,
or did I just miss it?

we've learned nothing the last 30 years

Toms to the left of me
Bombin' to the right
World good night
He got destruction in his appetite
On a platter a planet
To him it doesn't matter (what?)
3-2 at the plate
Up go the greedy batter (yeah)
Environmental alarm
To all not some
Good God
'Cause we don't get two of 'em

~ Public Enemy

we've learned nothing the last 20 years

Hear the sound of the falling rain
Coming down like an Armageddon flame
The shame, the ones who died without a name
Hear the dogs howling out of key
To a hymn called "Faith and Misery"
And bleed, the company lost the war today, and
Oh I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies
This is the dawning of the rest of our lives
On holiday!
Hear the drum pounding out of time
Another protester has crossed the line
To find the money's on the other side
Can I get another amen?
There's a flag wrapped around a score of men
A gag, a plastic bag on a monument

~ Green Day

A story from my former career: the cigarette scrounger and slick suit guy

I live near a gentrified little city in New England.
I came here 27 years ago, the recipient of a private scholarship to an expensive college.
At the time I liked it very much here, so stuck around. It was less gentrified back then.

But the colorful teens and twenty somethings enlivening the little downtown dispersed as rental rates climbed,
and the variety and distinctness of the shops diminished. There has been a very visible homeless population
as long as I've been here, and it has only increased over the years. Putting on my sardonic humor hat,
at least there are more alcoves for them to shelter in as more shops close.

How I came to this point would be a big digression, but
about 15 years ago I embarked on a career as a street musician.
It was often difficult and grueling, and I burned out on it,
but for a little while it barely covered my necessities,
and it gave me a lot of experiences.

During my time working the street downtown I became familiar with this man who I'd see
scrounging the sidewalk for any cigarette butt with a bit of "meat" left on it. He hardly spoke,
but we got familiar enough to greet each other with a glance or a nod now and then.
I probably gave him several cigarettes over the years. His clothes were filthy and shabby.
I remember how happy I got that day I saw him showered and clean in some new clothes
and how his spirits seemed so lifted by it.

One slow day I was starting to feel like I was wasting my time and energy out there,
when an immaculately well dressed young man walking down the sidewalk stops by me,
pulls out a packed money clip with a $100 on top, looks at it, digs in his pocket again to find
two quarters to tip me with. A maddeningly exasperating experience.
Almost frustrating enough to pack it in for the day,
but I stuck it out for a few more minutes because I can get stupidly stubborn sometimes.

A couple minutes after slick suit guy is gone, the cigarette scrounger comes along.
He stops and digs in his pocket. This is unusual, he's never done this before.
He pulls out the most dilapidated dollar bill I've ever seen.
It had just enough structural integrity to be usable.
He puts it in my all but empty tip jar.
I'm in shock.
I want to tell him to keep his dollar.
But this feels like a gift of the highest order
and I don't want to offend him.
He mumbled something unintelligible and shambled off.

"I'm fucking done."
And I packed up and went home feeling very discombobulated

too many people who say "eat the rich,"

look rich to me.

Feed the poor.

(not necessarily talking about things I've seen on DU,
but in general)