these times are beyond words. the loss of so much that is sacred. the seemingly irreparable political divides in our country and world. the brazen abuses of power by the state. and on top of it all, a pandemic virus that makes it dangerous to hold our loved ones dear; to grieve and cry and scheme and strategize and build and push and breath and simply be together.

this may sound silly, but i think often of an iron and wine lyric: “they say time may give you more than your poor bones could ever take.” and here we are, our poor bones taking what time is giving us, as much as we are able, knowing there is more to come.

our political horizon is a frightening one.  it is as though we are watching the sea withdraw, knowing a tsunami is coming. while we may not be able to prevent the tsunami entirely, we can at least prepare ourselves and our community as best as possible for what is anticipated. we hope you can join us in our september dialogue, to be in deep and nourishing inquiry about how to build political power in the face of a contested election, impending fascism, and a violent and overwhelming threat to all life.

Guiding Questions:

  • How are we preparing ourselves, our loved ones, and our communities for the very real prospect of a contested election, impending fascism, a failed state, and the denial of democratic due process? What skills, relationships, and practices do we want to build to be present to, and prepared for, these possibilities?
  • How are we holding the somatic experiences of this political moment – fear, outrage, numbness – in skillful ways that allow us to be present to our hearts and bodies but not stuck or demobilized?
  • What does resistance and political action look like in the midst of a global pandemic?

Resources/Suggested Readings:

Referenced during dialogue:

Dialogue Notes:

These are rough, uncut, unfiltered, and anonymous notes taken at the dialogue. We get that these may not be very readable to those who were not in attendance at the dialogue, and, honestly, sometimes even to those of us who were. We still feel it is important to keep them available as part of our accountability process and for archiving and reference purposes.  Some of these notes have been digested/transformed into blogs.

  • ws = white supremacy, ag = affinity group

Checkin: Name, pronouns, land acknowledgement, what’s coming up for you with these questions, resources and themes? What brings you here tonight?

  • Feeling depressed, powerless, overwhelmed, but reading resources and analysis led to feeling more connected to strategy for collective action and more committed, but scary
  • Fear, overwhelm, compounding grief, despair about fires, haven’t grappled with post-election but have been doing phonebanking for run-up to elections
  • Need space to process and feel, uptick in coverage of this risk, news makes me constricted/sad, learning about phases and possibilities around post-election, shedding assumptions around structures I thought we had
  • Peeling away layers of ws, growing into spirituality, able to hold more as i grow into activism, this post-election concept is new to me, yom kippur = being with uncertainty, exhausting – don’t want spirituality that leads to apathy, but instead creativity and forward thinking of imagining of what we want to create, expand into communities
  •  Rage, despair, losing ability to trust gut feelings, staying engaged and aware without being sucked into manipulative media, how to sort fake media/hype vs what are realities, confusing, fear, drawing parallels to WWII and the nice people who “let it happen” with their privilege, cautiously optimistic, what inevitabilities do we create with our beliefs
  • It’s been a year of losing home and belonging, have had tunnel focus on survival, finally feel able to expand out but have catching up to do, rage, reviewing scenarios, commitments
  • Have been trying not to feel lately, as it has been too much, have been doing charity work bc mitigating pain of those more impacted is what i can do, being census worker has been hard, but has been eye opening/lesson in not making assumptions
  • Want to focus on building relationships/concrete effort, sitting with physical exhaustion, wanting to learn from international movements, how do we build power 
  • Need to continue to build connections and get out of my head, overwhelmed by need, fear, rage
  • Balancing how much of my attention is going to something I don’t want to affirm vs needing to know in order to understand and combat it
  • What is a good use of my time right now, feeling numb, feeling stress response, fear of all outcomes
  • Need to work with resources relationally and haven’t had capacity to sit with terror, staying focused on concrete thing in front of me that i can impact, trying to find actions that feel loving
  • Part of me wanted not to show up, just moved and still adjusting to not seeing my people, feeling hopeless about white folks, that ws has been so successful on a level that many have been in denial about, coming to terms with possible outcomes, need to in order to resist, how to show up in CA or where to go
  • Holding frustration, read Toni Morrison’s eulogy for James Baldwin, how he held so much his whole life
  • Dean Spade – how the body experience of reading news alone and digesting it alone is brutal on system, reduced capacity, how to not let “not knowing” not get in the way, difficulty sleeping, wheels spinning, fear, here for it

Taking a breath together, witness where we are at in this moment

  • Naming the complexity of how we are holding these feelings/experiences, some of us are needing to hold feelings at bay and some are needing space to feel into them.. Responding to impulses of fragility
  • As people who have been outside traditional politics, how are we holding/feeling the need to invest in this political structure 
  • Why don’t I want to participate? What is it about white womanhood and fragility? A Black woman in collective said your silence creates harm, feeling fear and on the edge of dysregulation, we know what WS and patriarchy feel like, scary on deep somatic level, work as a white woman holding my power, to what extent am I willing to show up? How does that relate to history and the past? Do I secretly think I’m going to be okay and I’ll survive this. 
  • What kind of transformation can come when there is more participation on every level?
  • Feels obscene to be facing down the amount of work that need to go in to reclaiming the ability to govern ourselves, even in this moment.. We can’t sprint for 4-5 months, perhaps if i felt like my life was at stake, I would leave my job and focus more.
  • Thinking about past person in a revolutionary cadre, everyone quit jobs – we thought revolution was coming so why stay in capitalist jobs?? But I don’t believe that we are on the verge of a revolution, but do think the existential threat to my life is greater than it’s ever been. So why am I showing up every day and doing my job? What level of crisis will it take to make these changes? Playing out scenarios. And thinking about going to Philly.
  • I remember in primary when biden started pulling ahead – remember a quote from Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, – radical black tradition of pragmatism – it’s idealistic to fight for something, one step has to be getting 45 out of office, don’t know other way forward
  • Offered a returning to having a body in a different way – led body tapping activity
  • Hearing far fewer people talking about not voting, fight like hell for the lesser of two evils, and fighting for basic survival in society and building mutual aid, need to care for each other in ways these systems aren’t going to, building closer relations
  • Need to be in our bodies – radicalness of acknowledging relationality, physicality, countering forces of colonization
  • When I started tapping, I felt a 180* change, leah penniman in ny food justice – tells story – what right do we have to give up when people who are facing annihilation fought to sustain themselves and their families, how to move towards decisions that align with life rather than annihilation – rather than staying small
  • Sitting with reality and metaphor – what i want to protect, what i will risk harm to protect, i struggle with what i will risk harm to protect (physical or psychological), the threat of incarceration scares me more than death
  • How to know what to trust – is this the moment to throw down or is that belief being fed by hype and seeds of division – confusion leads to uncertainty
  • Emergent strategy, pleasure activism – connection between “grind culture” and slavery – now is not the time for white people to rest, but also have to think about the long haul – what does it look like to have pleasure, rest, relationship be a part of what we create
  • 45 is so emblematic of our country, so how are so many of us disowning him – how have I been complicit in pieces of what he stands for
  • Wanting someone to just tell me what is the plan, so i can just jump in, hard to push into the visioning, 45 is doing everything he said he would – we have to take him at his word
  • Resonate with contradiction of 45 – his fallacy/constant lies and truthfulness – hard to hold
  • Feeling realignment with need to articulate how this month of fighting for biden is one part and other is building, hard when talking with those who may not vote around why to engage at all, why flex the muscles of engaging
  • Nuance is coming up for me, it’s clear that we need to get 45 out of office, worried about what happens in a country when so much racism gets located in one person, what happens when he is voted out, how are we using nonviolent protest against violent people
  • The question about what would we be doing in WWII, then i’m thinking “okay i’ll phonebank” – had this response of self-pressure to turn up in a way that is absurd, maybe others have felt
  • Something to be said for trusting our body.. Feeling the opposite ends of the continuum. Read a novel of watching the rise of fascism and what do i do as i watch it. Not trying to play out old idea of if it’s hard then it must be the thing i should be doing
  • Gratitude for encouragement for return to body, can feel anxiety coming back and want to keep that practice in mind. In this political moment, can start to spiral around what to do. Couple quotes I’ve been returning to around strategy.. Angela davis in june on Democracy Now – “But the election will not so much be about who gets to lead the country to a better future, but rather how we can support ourselves and our own ability to continue to organize and place pressure on those in power. And I don’t think there’s a question about which candidate would allow that process to unfold.”
  • Phonebanking feels right for now, but when is the moment when the way i need to show up will change, have learned this year that there is no way to predict what comes next – knowing i may not be the visionary, but that there are visionaries and I trust that I will be ready to follow them – what matters is a small crew of folks who trust each other – allows safe participation
  • How do we form affinity groups, how much do we each need to be bold and push and develop ideas, opportunity in this time for collective self-governance, if election is contested and we do not push back, even if normal channels of power are enough to reign in 45, if we are not the ones pushing it, then we did not push forward our vision
  • How are we making connections beyond CA and what are we doing to build infrastructure to be ready to move quickly, every entity needs to be reorienting around this
  • One opportunity we have in CA.. (hard bc it supports the narrative of 45 that CA is unruly) – but we have access to tech companies – what can we do now to demand tech companies to regulate content? Thinking about anti-KKR protesters having accounts shut down around pipeline protest
  • Facing partner and housemates who are opting out of getting involved right now, and feeling uncertain how to hold, envy/resentment when others don’t step into political work
  • Feel that, coupled with feeling that what I do is never enough – don’t want to put on myself the old story of if it hurts, i should be doing it – how to cultivate the wisdom to know the difference between new and old story
  • Question from adrienne maree brown – “Am i satisfiable?” Intense over-accountability alongside this never knowing if it’s enough – that is common in my community, how does this match up as well with my own conditioning
  • Tension between grinding (giving my entire body to the legal system – believed it was the right thing to do, even if i was breaking) – moved away from the work – are we obsessed with the idea of being a martyr, glorifying, is it helpful to be in too many places at once? Giving space to rest and nurture thoughts – or maybe i’m blowing sunshine – is shame around not doing enough getting in the way of doing what we can
  • Especially in this punitive culture – to what extent are we just punishing ourselves – what conditions would I need to be able to choose this, feeling haunted by the cultural byproducts of the carceral state
  • It’s hard when the work doesn’t feel equally distributed.. The hard stuff should be distributed, everyone does our part – we need a spreadsheet to distribute responsibility – like being in the streets – that’s what makes it doable
  • Also feel resentment, if we want to effectively move then we have to do some stuff that others don’t want to do, but what we hate, some others enjoy – we don’t have to do 
  • How do we plan, given that we can’t plan anything this year, that you don’t know what tomorrow will bring.. Just like in uprising, didn’t go into streets with ag, went with housemates bc they were my pod. Completely unplanned.

Checkout – one concrete idea you have for post-election, or something you’re walking away with

  • Want to fuck with tech, not making commitments in nov or dec to be available
  • Feeling grounded, maybe be a poll worker, continue conversations with ag and housemates
  • Hadn’t thought about after the election until getting this invite, make a plan and stop denying the reality of what we might be facing, connecting to organizing where i live
  • Thinking about how i might work in my local communities to mitigate impacts – also thinking about what it will mean if all 3 branches of gov’t are in the hands of the right wing
  • Feeling the absence of in-person connection and just the moment of turning off zoom, continue the work of building ag in several spaces, need to start having conversations with my ag so that i know we’re ready to hold onto each other
  • Commitments – continue phonebanking, but will connect friends to doorknocking, will be in another city and will start reaching out to local groups there for that time, continue with left roots on strategy planning
  • Have been phonebanking, building relationships, will also be phonebanking to get people in the streets after election, plug in locally, start thinking with ag, try to be agile
  • Get out from under so much work to have the time to plug in, start seed the vote and carroll fife, thinking about my strengths, organizing friends and classmates
  • Campaign here in florida, need to build with long haul activist friends, offering trauma healing work to others to help clear nervous systems
  • Continue local and national phonebanking, talk to classmates
  • Organize others around prop 15, look for opportunities locally and with seed the vote, hold and reflect on boundaries, organize with others instead of alone
  • Seed the vote and invite a jewish queer coven to join me, I honor my ancestors and my existence in this new year