Must-Reads and the Need to Be Held Right Now

Must-Reads

From recommendations for anti-authoritarian resistance to the rise of non-Christian evangelicals, here are some of the most important articles I’ve read this week.

• Not Everyone Can Leave: Survival Advice From Trans Teens in Texas by Marisol Cortez. “As we stare down the barrel of a GOP trifecta very few of us can flee, may all of us adults be as brave as these teens in refusing the fascist project of trans elimination with everything we’ve got.”
• Here Are 5 Media-Related Actions We Can All Take Before Inauguration Day by Maya Schenwar & Lara Witt. “There’s never been a better time for self-education and community education around media literacy, to arm ourselves with discernment before the second Trump administration.”
• Women Languish at San Francisco’s Jail for Years Without Answers—or Sunlight by Amy Martyn. “Sitting under a yellow fluorescent light that she compares to a McDonald’s french fry, Page says life often doesn’t feel real. She struggles with suicidal thoughts. She is now as engrossed in exposing life at the jail as she once was in fighting her criminal case.”
• Trump Isn’t Hiding Plan to Use Military to Quash Protests and Deport Immigrants by Marjorie Cohn. “During his second term, Trump will not likely be deterred from using the military against protesters and immigrants, even though employing federal troops to enforce domestic law in this manner would be illegal.”
• Trump’s New Oligarchy Is About to Unleash Unimaginable Corruption by Elle Hardy. “After winning the presidency again despite making these corrupt deals right out in the open, why would Trump feel remotely constrained?”
• Recommendations for Anti-Authoritarian Resistance by Scot Nakagawa. “The denser our networks of relationships, the stronger and less isolated we are, and the stronger and less isolated we are, the more creative and effective we can be.”
• “An Imagination Party”: How My Toddler Fuels My Vision for Liberation by Maya Schenwar (book excerpt from We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition). “But if a 3-year-old can dream of cats building skyscrapers, dancing snowpeople, and melodies in the silence of aching grief, then surely, if we put our minds together, we can imagine — and build — a world without cages.”
• The “Cultural Christians” Are Taking Over the Conservative Movement by Elle Hardy. “While many of cultural Christianity’s public figures are tub-thumping Western supremacists, there’s a quietly growing number of Americans who describe themselves as non-Christian evangelicals.”
• The Rape Culture Election by Talia Lavin. “If anything, being a rapist helped him win.”

Trump’s Horrifying Cabinet Picks

What’s scarier than an anti-vaxxer running the Department of Health and Human Services? A man with tattoos linked to neo-Nazi movements leading the Pentagon? For a discussion of some of Trump’s deeply disturbing cabinet picks, I recommend checking out this segment from Democracy Now! about Pete Hegseth and Mike Huckabee, and this one about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. There are transcripts if you would rather read than watch or listen. 

If you need a quick read on the subject, Sam Rosenthal discusses the appointments of Marco Rubio, Mike Waltz and Pete Hegseth here.

Post-Election Safety Planning Webinar

If you are concerned about the safety of our communities and our movements, you may want to attend Vision Change Win’s upcoming post-election safety planning webinar. VCW will host “Post Election: Assessing Safety Risks” on Monday, November 18, at 5:00 p.m. Central Time. The webinar will be moderated by VCW Community Safety Education Coordinator Che Johnson-Long. Featured speakers will include Ken Montenegro from Progressive Safety Alliance and Ejeris Dixon from Ejerie Labs. You can register here.

Zoom Chat With Paid Subscribers

If you are a paid subscriber, you will receive an invitation to our next Organizing My Thoughts Zoom chat on Monday. The chat will take place on Saturday, November 23, at 12:00 p.m. Central Time. I really appreciate these opportunities to engage with the folks who make this newsletter possible, and I am sure people have a lot on their minds right now.

ICYMI

I poured a lot into this week’s feature piece about the need to rethink our approach to direct action and protest under a second Trump administration. I appreciate everyone who has shared the piece and discussed it with others. I think these are important conversations to have right now.

The Need to Be Held

This week’s essay included some thoughts from Daniel Hunter, author of the viral piece, 10 ways to be prepared and grounded now that Trump has won. I really appreciated Daniel’s takes on protest and direct action, and I was glad to share some of those thoughts alongside my own. As we round out this week, I want to share something else Daniel said during our conversation about the importance of making space for emotions right now. The day we spoke, Daniel talked about singing songs from the musical “The Sound of Music” to his young daughter as she got out of bed that morning. As he sang Edelweiss, he began to weep. “What came up for me was just this deep well of sadness about the many things that are happening now, and the coming of more things,” he said. Daniel said that the depiction of the rise of Nazism in “The Sound of Music” struck a chord with him as he sang. Daniel talked about how exhausted many of us feel right now and how important it is to honor “the whole range” of emotions we are experiencing. 

Listening to Daniel talk about singing to his daughter–a loving, nurturing act–while he contemplated the rise of fascism reminded me of the contradictions many of us are holding right now. For example, Wednesday was my partner’s birthday. This doesn’t feel like a time for celebration, and yet, celebrating each year of my partner’s life is deeply important to me. Smiling and laughing with him that day was important to me. Acknowledging more difficult emotions was also important. Being held amid that acknowledgment was essential.

Life is unfurling in profoundly heartbreaking and beautiful ways all at once. This is always the case.

Daniel stressed the importance of tending to our emotions during this time. “We have to really take our inner state seriously,” he said. “This is part of where the warfare is, the battle that's to come, the battle that is now is not just a thing that's happening outside of us. It's also very much happening inside of our own selves,” he said. Daniel noted that unprocessed grief, anger, and pain can lend themselves to despair, which can ultimately be weaponized against us. “Fear, isolation, disappointment, anger, and hopelessness–those are feelings that authoritarians feed on,” he said. Getting “stuck” in surface-level emotions, like fear, can further empower an authoritarian state.

I know I have been talking a lot about our emotions lately and how we should handle them. That’s because I’m worried about us. If we don’t process our hurt, I am afraid we won’t be prepared for what’s ahead. I am afraid that we will be reactive in moments that call for thoughtful, strategic responses, or belligerent in moments when we must hear, hold, and forgive each other.

Daniel described how some people in his life have avoided getting “stuck” in their fear. Some seem focused and determined, and some are relying on what he calls “a long faith.”

In my own life, I am relying on the same practices that have long sustained me in this work. I am making space for anger, love, heartbreak, and hope. I am remembering, as Mariame Kaba so often reminds us, that hope is in the doing of things. Active hope, as Joanna Macy taught us, is about moving toward our values however we can each day. What is the horizon of justice I am hoping for? How can I reach for it today? How can I reduce suffering and support the just efforts of those around me? The answers to those questions keep me going. 

Movement work is not something that I am able to do because I have brushed my feelings aside, but rather, it is how I cultivate purpose amid heartbreak and injustice. For now, I am moving with a clarity of purpose that has allowed me to remain calm. I know that calm is not permanent. There will be days when I will find myself shaking. There will be mornings when I try to sing and find myself weeping. When those days come, I hope that I will make room for that complexity. I hope that others will make room for it, for me and for themselves. I hope we will create the spaces we need to be held in our humanity as we defend our lives and dignity. I will continue to do my best to cultivate those spaces and to remind you, my co-strugglers, to nurture the soft parts of yourselves as we struggle.

We need the good in you. 

The world needs it. 

I hope you’re held and cared for this week. 

Much love,

Kelly