Category: resist

The Right Side of History

Karen

Some things I’ve seen and read lately about the campus protests for Palestine:

And finally, this essay by David Roth in Defector spells out the ironies between non-violent protests with clear goals and the violent institutional responses. It’s not a good look for the institutions.

 

There is something terribly clarifying in how eager the people in power at these universities have been to betray the trust of everyone invested in those institutions. Institutions that otherwise exist from one exploratory committee to the next will change university policies on the fly so that their local uniformed violence workers will get their chance to thump some young skulls; administrators whose notional jobs are upholding communities of learning and care gladly consent to being upbraided by clownish golf hogs and half-fascist nullities in Congress and then do exactly what they were told to do, whatever the damage to those communities.

Links About Queer Joy And Trans Rights

Karen

Lyz Lenz’s newsletter was a guest post today from Molly Monk, about making a community in a red state (Cedar Rapids, IA)

Our lives are different from the heterosexual homes that feel more insular, built around husbands, wives, and children. We build our lives with and around an expansive network of friends and loves. You don’t have to be queer to do this (and there are people in my community who aren’t), but being queer makes it easier to imagine a life, a happy life, outside of the traditional nuclear family. Whether their family rejects them or not, most queer people have had to at least confront the possibility that they’d lose support from their loved ones for being who they are. Once you decide to choose being yourself over the traditional expectations of family, a whole new way of living opens itself up to you — one that’s free of gender roles and expectations and full of beautiful possibilities.

 

Alok’s statement has stuck with me since I saw it last year:

 

Sophia, on TikTok as “Trans Elder Sophia,” shares her perspective 40 years post-transition (if you have a young person in your life, show them this):

@transeldersophia #trans #transgender #transsexual #transwomen #transeldersophia ♬ original sound – Sweet and Saucy Sophia


“They can try as they might to erase us. They won’t. […] No matter what laws they pass, trans people will continue to be born.”

 

Rep. Bowman’s shows us how to be a straight/cis ally:


“They’re not taking your lunch money. Let them live their lives.”

Amen.

Election Burnout

Karen

Here’s Anne Helen Petersen with an opinion piece about election burnout and how terrible we all feel–physically on edge, mentally ready to check out.

Imagine running a marathon, seeing the finish line and then having someone on the sideline yell that you need to turn around and run all the way home. That’s what this election burnout feels like. The unknowns—about the virus, a potential cure, just how long all of this will last—just continue to cascade. The approach of winter feels like being in a dark tunnel closing in on both sides.

But don’t check out! Wanting to check out is what people in power are counting on. Not to go full conspiracy theory, but this burnout has been designed:

This arduousness has not been accidental. The response to this virus didn’t have to be another battle in the culture war. Voting doesn’t have to feel like a mythical hero’s journey. Applying for unemployment, taking a Covid-19 test, feeling confident that people will respect rules about masks—none of it should be this hard. That difficulty was always the point. Make things hard, and infuriating and time-consuming, and eventually people will give up—or at least fall in line.

Hang in there. It’s going to be more than one more day, probably, so keep caring. Pay attention. Make a plan to resist a coup, which is a thing I never thought I would be researching or linking on my “lifestyle” blog that has about 10 readers.

These aren’t normal times; nobody feels normal. But we’re not alone.

Choice

Karen

This week’s reminder to resist your usual thought patterns and knee-jerk angry reactions comes from David Foster Wallace’s 2005 commencement speech to Kenyon College.

But most days, if you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she’s not usually like this. Maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness.

Of course, none of this is likely, but it’s also not impossible. It just depends what you what to consider. If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won’t consider possibilities that aren’t annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.

Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re gonna try to see it.

“There are other options.” Sometimes all you have to do is choose the other thing–compassion, kindness, gratitude.

 

Thursday Inspiration

Karen

It’s not formatted like it belongs on Pinterest, but I thought this quote was a good one in case anyone needs a little nudge to “resist business as usual.”

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, a chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.”

W. H. Murray in The Scottish Himalaya Expedition, 1951

[You often see this ending with a Goethe quote and/or the whole thing attributed to Goethe–but today I learned that’s not correct (and that there’s a Goethe Society of North America). The more you know!]

Words For The Year

Karen

resistance_of_the_heart_against

 

I have this poster (from the OG hippies Bread & Puppet Theater in Vermont) ready to frame and hang up for my reminder for 2017 that things don’t have to stay the same. I can change. I can fight.

I want to re-examine a lot of whatI’ve just accepted as How Things Are, like “You have to go to an office to work” or “I don’t have a lot of muscles” or “There will be time for that later”.  And RESISTANCE is a good motto as we face the next four years: let’s not get used to what we’ve elected.

From the post of a blog I follow that clued me in to the existence of this poster:

My friend sent me a small poster that says, “RESISTANCE of the heart against business as usual.”  I look at it constantly as I work and am becoming my own little rebel unto myself, making the changes that need making, destroying old habits, learning new rhythms, and being ok.  Just being ok.

So here’s to making the changes that need making, whether that’s pursuing a dream now or speaking out when you hear someone spewing hate.

Other useful links:

Tell Me What You Did Today And I’ll Tell You Who You Are

A 20-point Guide to Defending Democracy Under a Trump Presidency