Beloved friends,
Generally in this newsletter I make my opening essay something beautiful and life-affirming. I follow it with a selection of general resources for living, and then speak to resistance. This is carefully laid out so folks trust that they can come here for nourishment and healing. Beloved friends, I will not be doing that this week; I'm going right into resistance. But the path there IS through love. I hope you'll stay with me. My aim is that you will finish this feeling galvanized, connected, and resourced. I know that not everyone is going to choose to read on, however, so I'd like to get this at the top:
If you'd like to connect in real time, I'll be hosting an online gathering this Friday, January 30th from 6:30-8pm Pacific Time on Zoom: Connecting in this Moment for discussing this moment in the world from a spiritual stance. Free, all welcome; yes, you, and please feel welcome to invite folks. We will discuss whatever is on our hearts. If you would like to submit requests for topics or questions in advance, please feel welcome to do so. If you gather with me regularly, please note: this is a one-time event link, not the usual one.
On Sunday night an old friend contacted me, mentioned my recent words about reaching out to MAGA people with lovingkindness, and said that while they loved my message, they found it hard to deal with in the current moment – this moment in which most of us have seen and all of us are aware of the public execution of Alex Pretti. I imagine that this is something that many people who listen to me speak about unconditional love as the foundation of human living are feeling, and I woke the next morning in the dark before dawn from a dream in which I was asked to give public words upon the topic of love and anger. So here we are.
My heart, too, is filled with sorrow and rage. I watched the lady in the pink coat's video of Alex's murder on Saturday morning, and when she began to scream after Alex was shot, so did I. She screamed words at the agents – I think it was "What have you done?" and I... was simply screaming, wordlessly, with my whole body, in wild, electric agony.
And yes, I am here to speak to you of love. Of how we can see this in ourselves in this moment, how we can use it to orient. Because I do truly believe it is at the root of human being. Yes, wounding and fear lead people to act in other ways, but I can feel in myself, and I believe that in you, we are still rooted in love. And this is how we win: in love.
I do not hear my screams as something other than love; I hear them, in fact, as precisely love: heartbreak and horror arising from my love of life, my love of humanity, my love for the person I had never seen before who was now losing his life. The rage that people are feeling – in Minneapolis, in the streets, at home, all over – that rage, too, is love, a furious fire arising in response to the absolute wrongness of what has been done, of what is being done – because love. Love is at the root, and everything else arises from that.
It is a tragedy that what arises can be terrible when people are wounded, ill, afraid. I speak to that often in my teaching; today I shall simply gesture to it, because my aim today to support you, so my focus is you, is us.
We are grieving. We are furious, bereft, numb; all of the things that can happen when we grieve are happening among us, and most of us will feel most of those things at some point within us.
Grief is terrible.
Grief also comes with gifts. One terrible gift of the pain of this moment is clarity. People are waking up, feeling moral clarity. We feel fervently that this is not right, this is not what we wish for our world to be like. This is an incredibly important moment. Personally, interpersonally, and on the vast scale of interpersonality that is politics, because politics are simply how we organize ourselves together in our living; politics are values enacted at large scale. This is a moment filled with possibility.
The clarity that comes with grief expresses in meaning-making. There is an astonishing eruption afoot of art right now, songs and poems passing hand to hand all over. Billy Bragg and Bruce Springsteen have fresh protest songs out, but I like young trans musician Sasha Allen. Many people have told me they have found comfort in Amanda Gorman's poems for Renee Good and Alex Pretti this week. People have written ICE OUT in 100 foot tall letters on Lake Nokomis in Minneapolis, with snow letters in the day and candles lit upon them at night. The Twin Cities Drum Collective gathered over two dozen percussionists in minus 15 degree weather to set up drum kits across the Stone Arch Bridge for an event called DRUM IN, ICE OUT; they just lined the arch with drum kits and played. People are making everything they love an act of resistance, an act of moral clarity. The knitting pattern for the red pointed tasseled hats that Norwegians made and wore to protest the Nazi occupation of their country in the 1940s is blazing through knitting needles.
This poster by local-to-me artist Shannon Kidd sits at the top of this newsletter; it's been on the bulletin board in the Little Temple at my home beside instructions for reaching our local ICE rapid response team since summertime. It's also on the fridge in the kitchen. It's there to remind me, to remind us, all the time. Right now, we don't need reminding. It's right here. Sharon has these and other resistance posters and she'll just send you some, and you Venmo her if you can.
Another way we make meaning is with our living itself, our daily actions. We can all take action. We all should take action right now. I promise you, beloveds, when you look back at this moment, you will want to know that you acted for good.
As our understanding, our scientific and human understanding, of trauma has grown in recent years, we've learned something. What causes someone to shut down isn't "compassion fatigue". We don't run out of compassion. What happens is now described as despair paralysis. Despair paralysis can come about when we experience tragedy and feel like we aren't able to do anything about it. Right now there are two important aspects to avoiding despair paralysis.
One is to take care with the amount of information you take in, how you take it in, and how you process it. A beloved member of our community whose spouse is trans said to me earlier this year about the horrors "I have to budget how much I think of that". This stuck with me; it's so wise. Budget implies a limit. Taking in news or social media until you are a quivering mass of rage, tears, or numbness doesn't do anyone any good. There has to be a limit. Budget also implies a dedication: it will be done. There will be time spent gathering information, understanding what is happening, carefully. There will be time spent considering this. There will be time spent feeling about this. And there will be guardrails. In short, it is important to look, and it is important to look away.
On Sunday, I spent some time on social media. I gathered information. I read and watched what other people were saying and feeling and this helped me to connect with my own feelings. I shared some things on my Instagram story that I hoped would be useful for others, and then I very carefully stepped away. I knew that this week I'd be holding space for people in big emotions and I took time to ground myself at home. I watered the plants and examined the buds on the orchids and amaryllis, which help me tap into slow motion time. I cooked food. I ironed the handkerchiefs that we use to wrap the eye pillows in the Little Temple to keep them sanitary, because every time that soft, smooth hankie touches your face, it says that I spent Sunday afternoon at the ironingboard, thinking of you with love. The smoothness of the handkerchief is my love in action.
Sunday evening I peeped again and got that note from my old friend. Friend, I hope that this is a better answer than I gave you Sunday.
The other important aspect of not falling into the dark cavern of despair paralysis or numb robotic function is to do something. Anything. Knit those red hats. Make art. Call your Congressional representatives. Write to corporations that are doing business with ICE. Learn how to boycott those companies and do so. Volunteer at the food bank. Take soup to your neighbors. Watch your single mom friend's kids so she can have a night to sob or take a bath or whatever she needs. Someone in our community is gathering books for children in her Minneapolis community who are stuck indoors because it's too dangerous to go outside. Someone is driving people from the train station to the prison near her town so they can visit their loved ones. The park services all over are asking for volunteers because of funding cuts. There is so much that can be done. It can be political, personal, environmental, social, solitary, in the streets, at home.
If you've been reading this for a while, you know I've been taking daily resistance action since the end of September. Monday-Friday, I do something. I sign a petition, make a call, write a letter, volunteer for something. I cannot express to you the magnitude of difference this has made in my heart – and as that has normalized, it is growing. The more I do, the more I want to do.
If you need inspiration for why to act, read or listen to Rebecca Solnit's Hope in the Dark, which does an exquisite job of pointing out how social change and political revolution creep along slowly, slowly, slowly, and then, suddenly, something gives way and everything shifts. This moment, this moment where we are awake to our pain and our certainty that this is not right, this is not the world we want: let this be the moment where you become the change you wish to see in the world.
I've gathered some possibilities. There are so. many. more. Everything is good enough. Start anywhere. Don't like these? Send me more!
Action breeds hope. It helps. It helps you, and it helps us. It's how we will win, in time. Because we will. This season will pass. Together we will determine when that happens. Let's lean in.
I love you. I hope to see you Friday if you wish!
Dahlia
In the Streets: Ice Out
ICE OUT protests continue to take place all over. Just search "ICE OUT" and the name of the place you live and the internet will tell you what's up! I'll be donning my vest and getting out in the streets here this Saturday after meditation, acting as a member of the Safety Team for our local protest.
In the Streets: No Kings
The date for the next No Kings march has been set: Saturday, March 28. I know this because I got an email about it from the national Indivisible organization about it this morning. I am impressed with their communications. They do not spam me with a zillion fundraising requests; they are keeping it focused and effective.
Standing against Corporate Collusion and Profiteering
The FreeDC Project has a web page that has form letters where you can in seconds write to the CEOs of Target, Hilton, and Enterprise about their support of ICE. I learned of this from Jess Craven's Chop Wood, Carry Water. Cut Off the Spigot is a woman who is dedicated to "find where else to shop beyond badly behaving companies, massive corporations like Amazon, Target & Walmart, and private equity firms". She's on Substack and Instagram. Here is a page about who to boycott and why from BoycottCitizens. Here is an article about ICE boycotts in The Nation.
Being a Glorious and Entirely Legal Nuisance
Mood Kandi is a nonbinary creator who used to do tutorials about raver-style beading, and they still do, but also, they now have tutorials that say, "Calling all annoying younger siblings, silly geese, and professional nuisances" to actions like booking refundable reservations at hotels supporting ICE and then cancelling them just before the point you'd lose your deposit. Here they are being magnificently bright and charming on Instagram. Here's that clip on TikTok. Amanda Nelson, historian and public voice of good on Amanda's Mild Takes (YouTube, Substack, Instagram) suggests making as many Freedom of Information Act Requests as you can stand from DHS to waste their time and money as an act of sand in the gears resistance, using bureaucracy to slow bureaucracy down. Her instructions on Instagram, or just right to the DHS FOIA page. There were those folks who lined up at Home Depot to buy $2 ice scrapers and then lined up again to return them, effectively shutting down Home Depots all over.
All About Minnesota
Stand with Minnesota is an incredible compilation of organizations you can support in Minnesota that two women made. Are you seeing this link all over, too? Two women made this. YOU CAN DO ANYTHING TO HELP!
Getting People Out of MAGA
I wrote about this recently on Facebook (yes, Meta sucks, but over 42,000 people have seen that post and only a couple hundred read this newsletter) and in this newsletter. Same words in both places. In the FB post I set myself to responding to every person who engaged. Lot of powerful conversation in there. Here is a friend of friend speaking to that from a less emotional/spiritual, more strategic perspective. And if you can't even, there are other folks who have already left MAGA who have made getting others out their form of service to this moment: Leaving MAGA.
Anything That Moves You
The 3.5% rule was formed by Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist who observed that when this small percentage of the population of a country protests nonviolently against an authoritarian government, that is the threshold at which they are likely to fall from power. This number is so small. You can be part of this. Anything you want to do can be a part of this. Sing in the streets, knit, be a nuisance, join your local ICE patrol, curl up by the couch to write letters. Every resistance action matters. Talk to your friends and family. Invite anyone you can along. This is a moment of grief and rage, but also a moment of tremendous possibility.
How will you show up? When you look at history, who do you admire? This is history; we are in it, now, always. And you get to choose how you show up. Let your true heart lead you. We are love in action. Let yours shine.
Here's a good quick summary for using and sharing. Thanks to Jenifer.
Supporting Me So I Can Support You
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