(no subject)

[hungryghosts]

Excerpt from a Reddit post I made. On current events, stubborn altruism, and hope.

They want you to feel powerless and surrender and let them trample everything and you are not going to let them. You are not giving up, and neither am I. The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything and everything we can save is worth saving.

-- Rebecca Solnit, author of A Paradise Built in Hell

In Minnesota, people are chasing off ICE with whistles and car horns. Countless people are patrolling the streets, looking out for their neighbors, not only tailing ICE but delivering food and looking after each other's kids. Those who cannot be on the streets are making warm meals for other people to deliver, organizing spreadsheets and group chats, collecting information, distributing funds, finding their own places in the resistance. They are doing this not just for the people they know, but for those they barely know at all.

Yesterday, hundreds of clergy from all over the country came into Minnesota to stand with them against ICE. Today, Minnesota labor unions organized for a massive anti-ICE strike, with solidarity from dozens of cities. Trump's health, meanwhile, continues to decline as steeply as his popularity; his cruelty has only prompted more resistance, not surrender.

There is a book, A Paradise Built in Hell, that was published in 2009. The writer addresses a common belief: that people are fundamentally selfish, and that when crisis happens, things descend into cruelty and chaos as every person scrambles to look out only for themselves. Her research into multiple real-world disasters, from earthquakes to 9/11, says the opposite: that when crisis happens, ordinary strangers band together to look out for each other, creating these powerful communities of mutual support.

I am not saying this to minimize the horrors that are happening. The horrors are still very real; the day has yet to be won; many lives will be lost in the meantime, and people everywhere will be dealing with the trauma for years to come. In a kinder world, none of this would have come to pass, and I, too, mourn that alternate future. But this sort of thing reminds me that for all the capacity for cruelty that people have, there's also a tremendous capacity for a ferocious, dazzling compassion.

There is a place for all of us.

Links for further reading and support:

• Voices of the MN Occupation: A compilation of ordinary Minnesotans' stories about the occupation, and the resistance.
• Stand With Minnesota: Directory of fundraisers for rent relief, healthcare, legal costs, etc.
• Mobilize.us: Opportunities to organize in your area.

Comments

[lb_lee]

I need to pick up that Solnit book!

A book in a similar vein you might like is called Human Kind. I forget the author’s name, sorry. I don’t agree with him on everything but I am super glad someone recced the book to me and that I read it. A much needed palate-cleanser.

[acorn_squash]

Thanks. I needed to read this.