Resisting ICE, Building Worlds: Care and Survival in Fascistic Times
“It’s all hands on deck and we have to fight. This is the only way,” says Leanne Betasamosake Simpson.
"It’s all hands on deck and we have to fight. This is the only way,” says Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. In this episode of Movement Memos, Leanne and I discuss lessons from her book Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead and the ongoing struggle against ICE in Chicago. This episode features some important Nishnaabe wisdom for those of us living in struggle, and some beautiful music from Leanne.
Music: Son Monarcas and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
TRANSCRIPT
Note: This transcript was originally published in Truthout. It is shared here with permission.
Kelly Hayes: Welcome to “Movement Memos,” a Truthout podcast about organizing, solidarity, and the work of making change. I’m your host, writer and organizer Kelly Hayes. Today we’re talking about what it takes to stay human and protect each other in fascistic times — how we build networks of care, defend our neighbors, grieve, and make space for joy. We’ll be hearing from Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, a renowned Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg musician, writer, and academic. Leanne is the author of eight books and a member of Alderville First Nation. We’ll be exploring lessons from her most recent book, Theory of Water, and the letter she contributed to our new book, Read This When Things Fall Apart: Letters to Activists in Crisis.
Leanne is also a dear friend of mine, and this conversation was very important to me. We spoke on an afternoon when my neighborhood was being hit hard by ICE, and our exchange weaved together her reflections on world-building and natural processes (like sintering) with my experiences on the ground in Chicago — resisting the violence that ICE is inflicting on our communities.
It’s an urgent conversation about water as a relative and teacher, and about surviving, organizing, and staying connected through the violence and uncertainty of fascistic times.
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[musical interlude]
KH: Leanne, welcome to “Movement Memos.”
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson: Thank you so much for having me, Kelly. Hi.
KH: How are you doing today, friend?
LBS: I am a little bit tired and a little bit overwhelmed, but I’m also at a really amazing gathering of Indigenous, Pacific Islanders, South Sea Islanders, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women in Ngunnawal country in Australia. And so I am actually spending my days surrounded by care, so that’s pretty awesome. So I’m grateful for that.
KH: I am so happy to hear that. I could use a little of that energy myself right now. It’s been a rough day here in Chicago. ICE has been hitting my neighborhood and the surrounding area pretty hard. A lot of us have been out all morning and afternoon on ICE patrol. I took a break to come home and talk with you, and I am really grateful to have this moment of connection, across borders and other artificial divides, amid everything that’s happening.
So, I know some of our listeners are definitely fans of your work, and may remember our previous conversations, but for the unacquainted, can you tell us a bit about yourself and the work you do?
LBS: Sure. My name is Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. I’m a status Indian and member of Alderville First Nation. I am Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg, which is the Eastern Ojibwe, and our homeland is the north shore of Lake Ontario, sort of between Toronto and Ottawa in Canada. I started out as an academic, but I quit a tenure-track position over 20 years ago now to base my life and my writing and my thinking and my practice in community. So I’m a writer, I am a musician, and I work for the Dechinta Center for Research and Learning, which is an Indigenous-led, land-based post-secondary education program in the northern part of Canada.
KH: Some of my listeners may remember my experience with visiting Dechinta and getting to experience just a snapshot of the curriculum that you all bring to folks, and I hope folks who missed that episode will check it out because it really was a life-changing experience for me, and I’m deeply moved by the work that you all do. Your most recent book, Theory of Water, began with poetry and song and the observation of ice. Can you talk about why you wrote this book and how it evolved?
LBS: Yeah. I think that one of the things that’s disappearing in my homeland is ice and snow as a result of this climate change that’s being driven by racial capitalism and colonialism. And so I wanted to spend time thinking alongside ice and snow. I had the opportunity when I was working with Dechinta to spend about a month in the spring beside a lake while it was melting and witnessing this incredible transformation from a frozen snowy world to this amazing liquid gathering space where species from all different worlds, from the land, from the water, from the sky were meeting. And then I also had the same sort of reverse experience in the fall of being beside a lake while it was freezing up. And this magnificent transformation is happening in lakes and in rivers all over the northern part of the hemisphere every year. The sounds were incredible, the knowledge was incredible, and that sort of experience became the basis for the record Theory of Ice. And that’s an interesting starting point for a book for me, but writing the lyrics to that record and then performing it and rehearsing it and playing it for different audiences over time was a way of thinking deeply about ice as a relative, ice as a teacher.
And I really, really loved that. So that was the first seed of Theory of Water. The second seed came in writing letters back and forth to the very, very brilliant Robyn Maynard in Rehearsals for Living. And in that book we were pen pals, we were dorky, nerdy pen pals writing through the pandemic, talking about the different communities that we were from, how our movements were linked, how they were different. And in that final chapter, Robyn was sort of prompting me to think outside of the conversations and the letters that we were writing between a Black feminist and an Indigenous feminist and to sort of think in a more worldly way: how could we connect this to other places in other movements? And in my final letter, I started to think with water, because water for me became this connector to all of the living things that I share time and space with on the planet.
It connects me to every single other living thing on the planet. And we all have experience with water. We all start in water in our parents. It’s where we learn what it feels like to be safe. Different cultures, different groups of people, different communities have different experiences with water. And so water then became this invitation, I think. I need Black feminists to teach me about the Middle Passage. I need Pacific Islanders to teach me about the Pacific Ocean. I need people in the far north to teach me about glaciers. I need people who live in the desert to teach me what it’s like to have limited amounts of water. I need Palestinians in Gaza to teach me about what it means to have water weaponized in this moment. I need people in Detroit to teach me what it’s like to suffer health consequences because the water coming from your taps is not safe.
And so that was another, I think, seed—was this invitation for myself to sort of articulate what I was learning from snow and ice and water, but also to write the book in a way that I’m in no way the authority on it, not even for an Nishnaabeg people, but to write it in a way that it was an invitation. And then I think the third seed is that I had this tremendous experience of working with an elder Doug Williams from Curb Lake for over 20, 25 years. He was a tremendous impact on me. He was hilarious. We were great friends. We did tons of stuff on the land with my kids and he had passed away. So I’m also in the book, there’s a thread of me, not confronting grief, but processing grief, processing this idea that this anchor in my life, somebody that I would’ve gone to ask questions to make sure that I’m on the right track to talk about politics and ethics is now in the spirit world.
And so I’m wondering if I can still learn things without having this mentor? I’m wondering if I can learn things directly from the land with the skills that he has passed on to me. And I think I’m also, I think the grief is maybe just bigger than just one person. I think for Indigenous people, when we lose an elder, we’re losing kind of a body of knowledge as well. We’re losing sometimes people who are closer to knowing what life was like before the violence of colonialism. But also I think this present moment that we’re in is one where I find… grief is always right there, this intensification of genocide in Gaza and in Palestine and Sudan and Congo, what’s going on and in Chicagoland, all of these sort of things, linked crises that seem to be coming on a daily hourly basis for me has been also an acknowledgement that there’s some grief in being here again and seeing sort of all the work of elder activists and organizers being undone so quickly in the present moment. So I think that that thread of grief is also, or that seed of grief is also in the book as well.
KH: So much of what you’re saying really resonates with me. I’ve been thinking about how I often walk to Lake Michigan — it’s about a twenty-minute walk from my apartment — and no matter what’s happening in my life or in the city, I feel this deep connection to that timeless, living relative. It’s not just comforting; it’s a sense of continuum, of being bonded to something larger, of feeling its movement in relation to how I move, even how the water inside me moves. It’s also a place where I feel a sense of connection to my father, who is no longer with us, but who loved the water, and had a deep bond with the natural world that he shared with me. My father was taken from the reservation and adopted by white people, like a lot of young children in that era, but he always had a deep sense of connection to the land and water, and I still feel connected to him when I’m close to the water, or when I’m in the wilderness.
As I was reading your book, I found myself really thinking about my own sense of connection to water, and what it means to me, as a life force, and ancestrally, as a kind of bond to people who are no longer in this world. I also thought about the struggles for water that I’ve been a part of, including Standing Rock, where we said, “Water is life.” And in this particular moment, I’ve found the ideas you write about so helpful in reminding me to slow down and really reflect on these natural processes, these ways we relate to the land.
Here in Chicago, we’re living in a state of emergency right now, as are so many people across the world. But when that emergency is hyperlocal, when there’s a constant sense of alarm, it’s easy to lose touch with that slower rhythm, that chance to learn from the world around us.
As someone who sometimes has to forcibly take my nervous system out of “go mode” — I’m always learning and relearning how to come back to a place where I can access all the parts of my heart and mind that can feel and process those lessons. Your book has been such an important resource for me in remembering how to do that — and in exploring what that journey can open up for us.
Early in the book, you talk about a moment when you were listening to Robin D.G. Kelley talk about Antonio Gramsci’s work, and in response to what you were hearing, you wrote down, “This is where we are. We don’t need to be defensive about anti-fascism, but active, engaged and on the offensive.” Can you talk about this moment of realization and what you were recognizing when you wrote those words down?
LBS: I think I was recognizing that world making is struggle and that in the moment that we’re in, our ancestors, whether they’re Indigenous or Black or people of color or people that were organizing throughout history, for something, for justice, for a better world, world making is a struggle. It’s something that you have to fight for. It’s not like the colonial governments, it’s not like fascist governments are going to say, okay, you guys, you’re right. We made a mistake. This is a world that you want to live in. We have to build that world, we have to make that world and that work is struggle. It’s very, very, very, very difficult, but it’s necessary work. It’s work that I feel like I have to be involved in somehow in order to be able to live with myself and to be living and breathing in a way that is aligned with my own values.
And so when I heard those words, and this would’ve been during the pandemic on a skidoo in my local city grooming the ski trail, I remember stopping and sort of making a note on my phone. And it’s not that I hadn’t heard that before, but it just resonated. It just landed in this way where it seemed clear to me what was coming. And it seemed like it was a fight and that a lot of people around me weren’t recognizing or seeing that it was going to be a fight. It was going to be the fight of our lives in a lot of ways, I think. And this sort of feeling frozen or not knowing what to do or feeling overwhelmed or feeling all of the feelings that I think are normal when you’re facing fascism are fine and probably healthy, but that’s not going to get us where we need to go.
We have to fight and fight can look different for different people because we all have different gifts. We are parts of different communities, we have different tolerances for risk, we have different responsibilities. So it doesn’t look like one thing, but it does mean that I think we have a responsibility to be engaged and present and working towards making the lives of our neighbors and our friends and our families, our students slightly better. So I think that, I don’t know, it’s not groundbreaking, but it was the way I think that Robin’s words landed on me in that moment where I was like, this is serious. And it’s all hands on deck and we have to fight. This is the only way.
KH: I really identify with this feeling that you can see what’s coming, when a lot of people around you aren’t ready, or don’t recognize the scale of the threat, or are just freezing up in the face of it. I feel like I have had a sense of what we were barreling towards, politically, for quite some time. I didn’t have a blueprint of the specifics — beyond the blueprints right-wing think tanks have actually drawn up, that reflect their intentions — but the direction has been clear for some time. I think that awareness is embedded in Let This Radicalize You, which is a book that I think a lot of people are turning to, during this time, because people who weren’t ready for certain conversations and confrontations a few years ago feel the urgency now. And I am grateful that those people are coming to that sense of urgency, and I really hope that more people will break the cycle of passive reaction around what’s happening, and figure out what it’s in their power to do in this moment. As you say, that’s going to look different for everyone.
But right now, I see a lot of people whose political energy is being captured and held captive behind screens on social media. Everything is a reaction. Everything is a fleeting expression in a digital space, if it’s expressed at all. And that’s not going to save us. It’s better than being in denial, but not by much, because when our political expression remains bundled up in social media posts, and finds no other active expression, it’s a form of capture. We need a jailbreak from that containment. We all need to find our roles in active resistance.
Not everyone can be on a frontline. I recently wrote a piece that included the story of a disabled woman who ran communications during a day of critical mobilization against ICE in my area. That person was essential. My own actions that day were tied to theirs, and guided by them. And that’s how it should be — we should be working in concert, with everyone bringing whatever they can to the table.
And on the subject of how we come together, can you talk about sintering, and your fascination with this process? What is sintering, and what can we, as people struggling to make change, learn from it?
LBS: Sintering is something that snowflakes do. So snowflakes start out as a piece of dust in the sky world. They fall through the atmosphere and attract water droplets that freeze and accrete and build these sort of crystallized forms of snowflakes. So snowflakes are travelers, they’re moving through different worlds. They start in the sky world, they attract a water world, and then eventually they land on the earth. So they’re sort of like a falling shore. And I became really interested in these areas of overlap in the book because Anishinabe homelands weren’t demarcated by borders, but by these zones of overlap where we would have to put more presence and more energy, more ceremony, more diplomacy into these sorts of areas that we were sharing with the Haudenosaunee or with the Wendat. And so that sort of sets out a really different way of organizing life. When you think of sitting on the shore of the lake in Chicago, you become very aware that you’re sharing space with birds and fish and insects and humans and all different kinds of life in that moment.
And it’s important to figure out how to weave ourselves into the ecosystems that we are a part of in a way that doesn’t destroy ourselves and in a way that doesn’t destroy the other living things that we are in network with. So I think when that snowflake created in the sky world becomes the shore with the water world and then falls to the land, the first thing that it does is it physically sinters or rounds the edges to bond with its neighboring snowflakes. It finds a way of knitting or weaving itself into its new environment. It finds a way of belonging. And when snow sinters, as people who live in places where you have to shovel snow, it lands from the sky and it’s often fluffy. And if you wait and don’t shovel your sidewalk right away the next day you’ve got a harder job because the snow has sintered, it’s become saggier, it’s bonded to each other, it’s heavier, and it has a staying power on trails and pathways in the spring much longer than the unpacked snow.
So sintering became a way of thinking about how we belong to the places that we find ourselves in. And I think there’s lots of organizers and lots of communities, lots of people that are very good at sintering already. But it was interesting to me to be thinking about snow as this relative and as this kind of provocateur that I live with that’s endangered a little bit right now because of climate change, wondering what I could learn about the embodied practice of this part of the water cycle that’s going on around me all the time that I may not be attentive to. Because in contemporary modern life, it’s easy to not spend time at the shore. It’s easy to not think about snowflakes. It’s easy just to turn on the faucet and hope that you’re drinking clean water for many of us. So I wanted to think about sintering as a practice that is coming from the land that I’m a part of, think of it as a teaching, think of it as a practice thinking of how I take care of the ones that are around me in a way that doesn’t destroy them and in a way that doesn’t destroy me so that we can build stronger networks.
And so I see what you’re doing, what you’ve done today, this morning before you came as a practice of sintering as well, the ICE patrol, the mutual aid networks that have become so important. These are all kinds of systems of care. And I think ultimately that’s what Indigenous governance and indigenous politics is about. That’s the big difference. These are just systems of taking care of people and land and plants and animals and water.
KH: I love what you’re saying about ICE patrol as a kind of sintering, because what you said about how snow is so much harder to move once the snowflakes have had time to bond themselves together — that really connects with what we are experiencing here in Chicago. The more time we spend with our neighbors, the more we learn from each other, the more we see each other showing up in the streets, and trust each other — when we gesture toward the whistles around our necks — the stronger we become, and the harder we are to move. ICE agents have terrorized our communities. They have tear gassed neighborhood after neighborhood, but people are becoming more bonded to each other in the face of that threat, and showing collective courage in the streets. We are learning how to resist ICE, while also trying to protect the privacy and dignity of our neighbors, and to keep everyone as safe as possible, while also taking the risks that we sometimes feel called to take, out of love and solidarity. And when people do take those risks, and experience harm, our connections facilitate care in that context.
I’m also thinking about our connection to snow, as it gets colder in Chicago, because I think the reality of what this moment demands of us might feel a little intimidating to some of us, in terms of patrolling and holding our ground in the cold. And I hope it helps folks to think about sintering, and how we can be like snowflakes, during this Chicago winter — bonded to each other, and much harder to move.
In Theory of Water, you write: “The land and the waters, the universe, hold all the knowledge we need to make other worlds. World building is difficult global work. It is sacrifice, both collective and individual. It requires difference and diversity. There is no centre or centring in the creation and maintenance of a network.” Can you elaborate on this?
LBS: So I think that I started to think within Nishnaabeg thought about how we make worlds. And I think the first thing that I realized is that we don’t have to make a world, the world, the planet already exists. Our job is to fit into the ecosystems in a way that doesn’t destroy the planet. And that’s very tricky for capitalists and fascists. They’re not very good at that, but I think lots of different cultures were and are good at that. So the first part of it is recognizing that we are not building a planet, we’re just figuring out how to live with the cycles and the ecosystems that already exist. And I think that the way that the planet functions ecologically has a lot of knowledge for how to live. And so sintering would be an example of that. It’s also within Nishnaabeg thought, if I think of my homeland, I don’t think of my homeland as this state or country that has a fence around it that I guard.
It’s a series of relationships with plants, with animals, with humans, with water, with air, with the land, with beings that are very, very different from myself. I’m very different than beavers or than bears or than moose or than wild rice. But I have to foster and nurture and maintain a relationship across that difference because we’re sharing time and space. And so I started to think of the planet in a deeply relational way that is a network. And so, Nishnaabeg homelands are not the center of the network. We’re just a part of the network. Leanne isn’t the center of the network. My body is just a hub made up of different relationships. And because the planet is very diverse, people in all different kinds of geographies and cultures hold particular kinds of knowledge that I think benefit us all in terms of figuring out the diverse ways that we can knit or weave ourselves into the planet in a way that brings forth more life. And so this is, I think, similar to what abolitionists, Black feminists… there’s lots of different ways into this same sort of thinking.
Ruth Wilson Gilmore has a saying, that we have to change everything, which is very much true because I think that the societies that have colonized us, or that are holding us in the forms that we’re in right now, have not knit themselves into the ecosystems that they’re a part of. They’ve extracted resources out of those relatives and out of those ecosystems for the benefit of a very few rich white men. And so it seemed like, again, an invitation to bring diverse experiences, diverse thinking, diverse knowledge systems to together towards this enormous task of making worlds that don’t destroy the planet.
KH: I love this idea of trying to weave or knit ourselves into the world that is, rather than trying to invent something altogether separate — as though our reality is wholly defined by us or exists in a vacuum. This mentality of separateness, as you’re saying, is the mentality of billionaires and fascists, which is really tied to the billionaire drive to colonize space — the way Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos imagine that we can just transplant the experience of being human anywhere, rather than reckoning with the countless relationships between ourselves and the creatures and elements of the natural world that make our existence possible. They only understand that webwork of relationships as a site of extraction.
I think the wisdom you’re sharing here is especially important for organizers who want to exist in opposition to that extractive mentality of separateness — because we always need to consider how life is already happening, what relationships make it possible, and how we can weave ourselves and our visions into that fabric, rather than trying to project our vision over those realities.
I know you have a sense of what we’re up against here in Chicago right now, because I was lucky enough to spend some time with you when you were in the city recently for a book event. I was actually late for dinner after your event because an organizing meeting ran long, and it was the end of a very long day — but I made it, and I was so happy to see you. During that dinner, you heard from me and some of our friends here about what’s been happening — the raids, the random kidnappings, the tear gas, thousands of people across Chicagoland being disappeared — and the seemingly recreational violence of federal agents, as our bodies and communities are used as props and stages for the production of fascist propaganda.
I’m wondering if you have any Nishnaabeg wisdom to offer to people who are trying to hold the line in their communities right now — here in Chicago, and in other cities being subjected to the Trump administration’s fascist violence?
LBS: I think that my Nishnaabeg culture and ethics has taught me to think very carefully about going into other communities. And so it’s weird when you’re doing book launches because you’re supposed to be promoting the book and you’re supposed to be engaged in conversation with somebody else towards promoting the book. But I think what my Nishnaabeg culture says is the first thing is to be very attuned to the audience and to the community that you’ve been invited into. And so I thought I went, actually, I thought of you, Kelly, and I went when I got to Chicago to walk along the lake, to ground myself and to think about what was happening in Chicagoland and to think about the kind of environment that I wanted to create in the so-called talk, like what does this audience need in this moment? And it became really clear to me that that audience in that moment did not need an academic yelling at them about fascism, but needed me to have a calm voice, needed me to speak slowly, needed me to share the parts of the book that were beautiful and lovely, and that would allow a little bit of space for them to maybe take a breath and maybe relax and maybe we could center sort of together.
So I spent a long time with this book, particularly going into the U.S. thinking about which passages to share, how to share them. I thought a lot about my voice because voice sound is an instrument and it goes inside people. And so people who are stressed and who are fighting very hard, I think in that moment when they’re giving an hour of their very precious time to come and listen to you, might need something specific. So I think that that was the first thing is being very present, for me, and doing a lot of listening to what people were experiencing and the ways that they were organizing. I think that the second thing that was, I think, important was to just see the light that you all were embodying in those moments.
When you’re on ICE patrol, when you are taking care of your comrades that have experienced that recreational violence where just acknowledging the energy, the strength, the courage, the sheer number of hours it takes to be able to do what you’re doing with very few resources and not enough people. So I think being able to see the sacrifice, the exhaustion, the overwhelm, the anxiety, all of those things, but also seeing that that wasn’t stopping people, you all were at the meeting for hours and hours and hours. You weren’t at home doing self-care that day. So you have this ability to push through and to meet that moment. And so I think that being able to see that light, being able to see what collectively you were doing in the face of this enormous fascist violence made me think that my ancestors would be very, very proud of the work that you were doing and the work that you are doing, that you are the ones that are leading the way that you are doing the hard work of world building because not only are you confronting this violence, but you’re embodying the alternative through your practices of care, through your practices of mutual aid.
And so I think that… I am stumbling right now because I saw you guys as warriors, but I think that word is kind of contaminated with kind of bro heteropatriarchy mentality. But I think that’s what I saw. I saw these people who are leading the way who are actually generating the knowledge and the skills that we all need in this moment. And so I just had a tremendous amount of Nishnaabeg respect and I had just a huge sense of pride. I felt very strongly that my ancestors, that our ancestors would be very, very proud of the actions and the embodied politics that you collectively were doing in this moment.
KH: Thank you. That really means more than I can say. I’m deeply honored to be in community with the folks who keep showing up and doing everything they can to defend their neighbors and look out for each other. And it means so much to hear you say that your ancestors, and our ancestors, would be proud of this work.
I think ICE patrol doesn’t appeal to some people because it can be very uneventful. When we do our school patrols, for example, I’ve never seen anything happen other than parents picking up their children — and that’s a good day. We’re there in case ICE shows up, and we hope they don’t. It’s a task where there isn’t necessarily any experience of direct confrontation with what you’re opposed to, and there’s usually no spectacle or visibility involved. You have to be able to put aside your ego, or any need for gratification, and actually feel heartened if it’s a dull morning or afternoon.
Then you have days like today, when we’re patrolling the neighborhood, and the alerts are coming in constantly, and we can’t keep track of how many people have been kidnapped. There was a moment this afternoon when one of our ICE watchers was in trouble, and I rushed to their location. I wasn’t far away, but by the time I got there, they were gone. I found their car in an alley, abandoned, with the keys still inside. Some people nearby, who had seen what happened, told us that ICE had taken that volunteer.
And that’s also a reality of this work. Sometimes ICE gets tired of being watched. Sometimes they get angry about our vigilance and the ways it interferes with their violence — and they try to give us a black eye, whether that means arresting a person who’s filming or observing them, or throwing a tear gas canister at people on a residential street. It’s a lot.
So, that uncertainty, that probability of just walking, or riding your bike, or driving, and observing, and also, the possibility of real danger — I think it’s hard for some people to connect with that. But there are ways of reducing risk, and that’s not to say that anyone who has been harmed or arrested has done anything wrong. But we do find that people are more likely to be arrested when they’re alone, and that maintaining a distance of 10 feet between ourselves and federal agents is helpful, so there are some safety practices that can help mitigate some of the risks people face while ICE watching. And people should know that. It’s not a risk-free activity, but people who get trained up are definitely better positioned to make informed, autonomous choices about how to engage with risk.
I have actually been trained multiple times, because ICE tactics are evolving, and I am always interested in what new people, who are just now joining the fray, are being told about how to engage with the situation right now, because right now is different than six months ago, or even six weeks ago.
I also want to say how proud I am of the people who built the training templates and the infrastructure for this work in Chicago. I am not one of those people. I am a student of that work, and a participant. The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Organized Communities Against Deportations, and groups like PUÑO, in Pilsen, and Protect Rogers Park, in my area, have been developing best practices around ICE watch since the first Trump administration. That work is grounded in the traditions of cop watching, which is a legacy of the Black Panther Party.
And yeah, I am really proud of all of the work people have done, and that people are doing — and all of the care that work entails. Whether that’s figuring out how to find and help people who’ve been arrested, how to support the families of people who’ve been detained, or how to comfort each other. I have a friend who’s a street medic who was still coughing the last time I saw them, because earlier that day, when they heard people were being tear gassed, they ran toward the scene to help people. When there’s tear gas in the street, the self-preserving thing to do is to get the hell away from there, but this person had skills they knew were needed at the scene, so they moved toward the threat, instead of away from it. And I think that’s the spirit a lot of people in Chicago are moving with right now — a spirit I hope people in other cities, who are preparing for similar conditions, can internalize. It’s something I’m proud of in our communities, and yeah… I’m honored to hear that you’re proud of it too.
[musical transition]
KH: I would love to talk a bit about Read This When Things Fall Apart: Letters to Activists in Crisis. I was so grateful for your contribution to this book, which is really a care package for activists and organizers who are struggling in these times — and really, who the hell isn’t? Your letter deals with a very serious topic, and a really difficult one. In fact, as I raise the topic on this show, I am cognizant of how hard it can be to engage with, and I want to caution our listeners that we are about to talk about supporting people who have experienced sexual assault — so please take care of yourselves as you listen. You wrote a letter to an activist or organizer who has been assaulted. This is a letter that I know we all wish weren’t needed, because we are striving to create spaces where people are keeping each other safer, and where bodily autonomy is respected, and yet, we know that our good intentions do not exempt us from experiencing or encountering harms that are replicated across our societies. We know that sexual violence occurs in our movements, and that it is a horribly destructive force. Can you talk about why you chose to write a letter to an activist who has been assaulted, and what you want people in that situation to understand?
LBS: Yes. Well, thank you for asking me about my letter and thank you also for putting together this phenomenal book. You gave me a copy when I was in Chicago, and it’s just so precious and I think it’s going to be really, really important for all of us in the times that we’re living in. My letter comes from an experience that I had of being sexually assaulted two years ago, again, in a situation where it was I guess very unexpected. And I think because I’ve done a lot of work supporting students who are disclosing in my classrooms, I’ve taught a lot about how to make safer spaces, whether that’s in classrooms or in our Indigenous communities. I’ve done a lot of research, I’ve read a lot of books, I’m old. I wasn’t expecting this to happen to me, and it undid me. I froze in the moment. It took me almost 12 hours to even realize what had happened.
I fell apart. And the lucky part of it, I think for me, is that I had enough privilege in my life at this stage of my life where I was able to get into a crisis counselor right away, and I was able to work with her on a weekly basis for three months. I was shocked. I don’t even know why I was shocked, but I was shocked that it had happened to me. It was hard for me to believe that it had happened to me. I was shocked at how much it undid me for so long. And I think on the spectrum of sexual assault, it was on the sort of inappropriate touching end of things, and it undid me. And so when you asked me to write a letter, the first thing that I thought of was, I’m not writing this letter.
This is something that is too close to me. It’s too personal, it’s too intimate. It makes me feel gross and shameful, although I know it’s not my shame. But then over time I kept thinking about this. I kept thinking about how sexual and gender violence is ubiquitous in our societies, how it’s a tool of fascism, how it’s been a tool of colonialism, how it’s a tool of heteropatriarchy, how it’s designed to bring our families down. It’s designed to contaminate our intimate relationships. And I also thought of my privilege and how lucky I was to be able to, for the first time in my life, I think, feel my feelings and go through the process of healing with support because frankly, most people, particularly Indigenous people, don’t have that privilege. And so I decided to write the letter and it was really, really, really difficult because I don’t know, I felt like I didn’t want to make any mistakes.
I didn’t want to make things worse for people. The idea of me just sharing this story and writing this letter felt like I was opening myself up to more vulnerabilities. But I think it was one of those things that was incredibly important to me because of the person that I want to be and how I want to live in the world. And I was really grateful to do it actually with… I couldn’t think have done it with anybody but you, Kelly, because I knew a couple of things. I knew that the book would be the perfect container for this letter. I knew that I trusted you. I knew that you would be careful and attentive in the editing process, and I knew that you wouldn’t let me say anything that was going to cause more harm to other people. So I think that I was also in this situation with you where the container that you set up enabled me to be able to write this, which is also I think a kind of privilege.
And so the letter that I wrote was really, kind of to myself in that moment, in those first few hours after where I couldn’t believe myself, where I couldn’t believe that this was happening where I somehow I didn’t even realize. But I somehow thought that because I knew all about sexualized violence and sexual assault, that it wasn’t going to happen to me. This realization that despite our best efforts, we can’t protect ourselves from this because it’s so ubiquitous. And so my hope was that in writing this letter sort of to myself in those moments, that it would resonate to other people who were living through this and also open up an opportunity to continue the conversation around it.
KH: Well, I’m really honored that you felt this project was the right place, and a safe place, to lean into that vulnerability. I’m honored by your trust, and by your friendship. And what you’re saying about being aware of a threat, and thinking so deeply about it, and caring for and worrying about other people, but still moving through the world as though this thing won’t happen to you — it resonates in a profound way. There are things we can’t protect ourselves from, and most of us don’t move through the world fully reconciled to those realities, because it’s just too much. But I am so glad that, through this letter, to some unknown friend or co-struggler you haven’t met yet, you were able to reach back through time, and talk to the Leanne who didn’t believe themself yet. I hope that was healing for you, and I believe it will be healing for people who turn to that page in the book because they are trying to process a similar experience. It’s a beautiful intervention, and I think it’s going to be really important to people.
I can also really relate to your hesitancy. I remember when I was working on Let This Radicalize You with Mariame Kaba, and she suggested that I tell a particular story in that book — and I immediately said no. It was a story about a time when I felt like I was done with movement work, when I wanted to walk away, and I was adamant that I didn’t want to tell that story.
But that story is in this book, because this project felt different. I think part of that is the format — the fact that this book is a bundle of letters. I felt a sense of freedom around what did and didn’t have to be said. I knew I could tell the parts of that story that felt important, and leave some things out, and that the letter would still be what it needed to be. Because the details of how I wound up in that particular mindset aren’t the point, and they’re also not unique to that moment in any way. The point is how I found my way back, and how I fell in love with people and the world again — and I was grateful to share that aspect of things with people.
And I also knew I wouldn’t have to fight with an editor about what was or wasn’t included, because the editor was me. I knew I could shape what I wanted to share, with an eye towards being helpful, as a very personal communication.
I’m so glad you felt that way, too — and about something so personal. I’m sure people will be helped by it.
And I’m also grateful for Rehearsals for Living, which was a huge source of inspiration for Read This When Things Fall Apart. The way you and Robyn took so many important ideas and so much deep analysis of an apocalyptic moment and wove them into a heartfelt exchange between two people who were really reaching for each other — in the way I think we all need to be reaching for each other — I think that spirit lives in this project, too. If books have a family tree, I think this one is definitely related to Rehearsals.
LBS: And I think that you’ve done something really brilliant in the editorial approach with your book in that I felt like my self-determination was really respected and really honored. And I think that it comes from the letter writing as a format, but also it came from some of the editorial decisions that you made so that I didn’t feel the pressure to add in more details or to tell this backstory or to say things that I wasn’t comfortable saying, sort of like what you just said about your letter. And I think that that has created a book where, because you don’t give all of the context in the letters that when I’m reading through it, I insert my own situation into wanting to leave an organization or wanting to leave a movement or leaving a movement. And that I think then becomes a container of space where I can engage with the letters in a deeply personal way.
And so I think that there’s something that you’ve achieved here for all of us through this little weird book. And as much as it is weird, it’s also brilliant in the sort of ethics and the decisions that you made editorially and in putting this project together. And I think that that will also sort of be a living legacy for all of us who publish things. That there is… If you care deeply for your writers and you respect their self-determination and you sort of deviate a little bit from standard editorial practices, I think that what you generate becomes really powerful in a way that I sort of standard books and standing standard publishing practices can’t create.
KH: I am so touched and honored to hear that, I think I’m gonna cry. I am really grateful to everyone who engaged with this process, including all of our writers, and Sophia Hussain, at AK Press. As Mariame says, “Everything worthwhile is done with other people,” and this book is a reflection of that. And I am grateful to have the web of relationships that made this book possible.
[musical interlude]
Most of us wrote our letters for Read This When Things Fall Apart months before Donald Trump was reelected. I think many of us understood the political trajectory we were on, at that time, but so much has happened since then. You don’t live in the United States, but unfortunately, the impacts of this administration are global, as is the march of fascism. In my conversations with people who contributed to the book, I have been asking, if you were writing another letter for the book today, what would you want to communicate to an activist in crisis, right now?
LBS: I think one of the things that I would want to write as someone who’s not living in the U.S. is sort of a, hey guys, we need to be paying attention to how quickly things can change, how quickly fascists can seize power, how organized they already are in the places that we are living outside of the U.S., and how quickly the tables can turn. This sort of fascist violence, even if it’s not in power in the particular states that we’re living in, is bubbling under the surface. And so one of the gifts I think of the organizers and activists right now in Chicago is you are generating the knowledge that not only you guys need in its moment, but in you’re generating the knowledge and the skills and demonstrating what we need to be doing now for what’s coming. So I think that would be one of the letters that I would want to write from sort of witnessing the work that you guys are doing.
Another letter that I think I would want to write is just, again, in witnessing what you guys are doing, is how to show up for your community even though you’re tired, even though you don’t feel well, even though you’re riddled with anxiety, even though you need a self-care day. Because I see, I think I got a little bit of a sense at our dinner of how exhausted people who are on the front lines on ICE patrol are, how few of us there are, how we need much bigger systems of care and support. But I also sort of see you guys showing up anyway and there’s a certain set of skills that I think organizers and activists develop in order to be able to show up even though they’re not feeling like a hundred percent. So I think that would be actually, that’s a letter I would like to read. I don’t know if I can write that one, but that would be a letter I would like to read.
KH: I think that’s a letter we’d all like to read. And on that note, I want to say something to everyone who’s deeply exhausted and overworked right now. I think one of the keys to surviving and sustaining ourselves in these times is remembering that the heightened state we get into — that state of agitation, of stress, of constantly feeling like the other shoe is about to drop — we can’t live indefinitely in that physical and psychological condition.
So we have to very deliberately create space to feel something else. Recently, I was out in the woods with some of my fellow organizers, just on a brief excursion — an opportunity to reset my senses, to reset my nervous system a little. To be someplace where the dirt smells different than it does in my neighborhood, because there’s more life in it. To be surrounded by the changing colors of the season. To breathe in all of that complexity and remember that all of that is a part of me too — that all of it nourishes me, and that we have these places to come back to, to remember all the parts of ourselves.
And that means remembering the parts of us that need laughter. It means making time for joy. Today, for me, it meant taking a break from my work in the streets to have this wonderful conversation with you, Leanne — one I’m so much better for having, even though it’s hard to step away from the work in front of us sometimes. Because we have to remember the other things that matter, alongside the emergencies. The things that still have to happen — for our own sakes, and for each other’s. The rhythm of the struggle can feel like a constant, rapid drumbeat, but our own rhythm, as individuals, has to slow down sometimes. And that’s okay, because we’re not alone in this. We are not responsible for carrying everything. Nothing stopped happening because I came home for an hour, and when I go back out, someone else will go home. This is how we endure, together.
And please, don’t stop having fun. I know that word might sound strange amid everything that’s happening. But we still need to laugh and sing and dance. At the end of this month — on the day this episode will air, I think — Maya Schenwar and I are hosting a gathering called Struggle Hour. It’s something we’ve done before. It’s like a happy hour for disgruntled activists and organizers. It’s a place to experience fellowship and catch up with people. This one’s Struggle Hour: Halloween Edition, so local activists will be coming by, some will be in costume. We’ll eat pizza, have a drink or two, and maybe do some karaoke. And it does honestly feel absurd to me to be planning something like this right now — and also completely necessary.
Because we can’t lose those parts of ourselves that need to be silly, that need to laugh, that need to sing together. We need that, too. So I hope everyone who’s dealing with this kind of strain right now is making some space — to smell the dirt, to see the colors changing in the trees, maybe to have some pizza and a drink, or wear a Halloween costume. Whatever it is, make some space for everything that’s human about us. We need the wholeness of ourselves intact. We can’t starve those parts of ourselves right now. So please, whatever nourishes you, ask yourself if you are getting enough of it, and if not, what you can do about that.
As we wrap up today, Leanne, is there anything else you’d like to share with, or ask of, the audience right now?
LBS: I have a new record that’s coming out on October 24, so very soon it will be on all the streaming platforms. There’s a lot of struggle in the record. There’s a lot of politics in the record. I hope it’s the kind of thing that the organizers can put on at Struggle Hour in your Halloween costumes and find some joy and some fun, because I really agree with you, Kelly, that’s the fuel that’s going to keep our fights and our movements going. We have a long road ahead and we’re going to have to find ways of making space for that joy. The record is called Live Like the Sky. It’s called Live Like the Sky because our ancestors live in the sky world and there’s a lot of good ways of living that are embodied there.
KH: Well, I am so excited to hear the album, and I am so grateful to you for making time to talk with me today, Leanne, it’s always so good to think alongside you and to get to spend some time with you. And I am sure our listeners are going to benefit from your insights as well.
LBS: Miigwech for the visit, Kelly, it is a really beautiful way to begin my day here. Thank you.
KH: I also want to thank our listeners for joining us today, and remember, our best defense against cynicism is to do good, and to remember that the good we do matters. Until next time, I’ll see you in the streets.
Show Notes
- Don’t forget to check out Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson.
- You can preorder Read This When Things Fall Apart: Letters to Activists in Crisis here.
