One thing I’m really bad at is asking for help. I’ve fully internalized the toxic individualist ideology that I should be able to do things on my own. I’m bothering people if I ask for help. I’m being selfish and inconsiderate. I’m terrified of them saying no, and then feeling like a loser for asking in the first place. Only losers need help. If I ask for help it means I can’t cope. I’m weak. (And what’s worse than being weak?!) I’m dumb. If I really need help, well… a civilized and decent person pays somebody to do that. Basically, if I ask for help then I’ll eventually die alone, a dumb, weak baby who simply couldn’t hack it, who couldn’t figure out the most basic things, like how to live a whole life without ever once having to rely on another person for something. Truly embarrassing stuff.
Okay, I’m exaggerating a bit. But also, all of this applies solely and exclusively, to me.
The weird thing is, I love being asked for help. I am genuinely honored to grab that package off your porch so it doesn’t get taken while you’re out of town. Or give you my extra stick of butter or can of tomato paste. Or watch your kid for 30 minutes because your hair appointment is running late and you can’t get there to pick her up from gymnastics in time (this one is really special). I know it takes a certain amount of trust for you to ask me to help you, and I don’t take that lightly. Or rather, the only way I take it lightly is that it makes me feel buoyant. Connection! Huzzah!
My daughter recently had lice. If you’ve had a kid who’s had it, or if you’ve had it, you know the pain. Your scalp is probably crawling as you read this. Well, I have a good friend whose daughter also had lice earlier this year. Having gone through it, she learned a thing or two, and shared her wisdom with our friend group. It was that wisdom, in fact, that probably helped me catch my daughter’s case fairly quickly. But not only was her mentorship indispensable… folks, she literally came to my house, big box of supplies in hand, and spent two hours combing bugs out of my daughter’s hair with me. An act of help, and love, that I would’ve never been able to ask of her, that I attempted to resist, in fact. But she did it anyway, because she knew I’d need it. A model citizen. A model friend. A model of the kind of care we will need to give each other in the coming months and years. Meg, you’re the literal best!
Surprise! This is actually another post-election post. But wait! It’s not gloomy!
People need help. And people are going to need help more than ever once this administration takes charge.
I’ll be blunt in a way climate people are not supposed to be: now that Trump/MAGA Repubs are in power for the next four, very crucial years (at least), we’re pretty screwed. There’s no telling right now just how hot and destabilized the climate will get, but we know progress will slow to a near standstill, or be reversed. So, instability, insecurity, and suffering will likely skyrocket both domestically and globally. We, and especially our kids, could very well see the partial or complete collapse of domestic and global systems we’ve taken for granted as stable for generations. Our kids will bear the brunt of all this. It’s abstract now (unless you’re one of the millions and millions of people who are already on the frontlines), but it will become less so as years go on.
So, creating the culture and infrastructure of helping each other, and bringing communities together in ways that we never really have before in this country, is the name of the game now. It just so happens these are also the things that will help us resist authoritarianism.
Some of the things that I always think about, but which have been running endlessly through my head since last week, include:
Community defense, as in: How do we protect women from men? How do we protect our immigrant, refugee, and asylum seeking neighbors? How do we protect our trans neighbors? How do we protect everyone from the violence of the state?
Community disaster preparedness, knowing what kinds of disasters may hit where you are and how to weather, well… the weather.
Mutual aid and political education, without talking explicitly about politics, especially electoral politics.
Organizing that actually meets people where they’re at instead of assuming everyone who didn’t vote for Harris (or just didn’t vote) is a Proud Boy/trad wife/worthless idiot.
Community skill and knowledge sharing opportunities. Know how to keep chickens or do basic automotive maintenance or perform CPR? Cool! Teach us!
Puncturing holes in our notions of private property (ahem, looking at us, suburbanites). Got a brown thumb, but a sunny spot in your yard that would be good for a kitchen garden? Why not offer the space up to a plant-loving neighbor to tend? Got space in your front yard to plant some fruit trees? Great! Invite your block or neighborhood to come harvest when the fruit is ready.
There are so many ways we can transmute our fear and anger into building stronger, more connected, more equitable, and more resilient communities, even if we don’t all agree on government policy or speak the “correct” language. We don’t know what’s coming; we don’t know how bad it’s going to get. But if we get creative and imaginative, if we recognize our collective power and unite around it, who knows what we can do?
I want to share some readings and listenings that have helped me find a more generative political imagination in this past week:
Ursula Le Guin, always. Last week I reread her essay, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, which is nothing short of a retelling of human history as we understand it in a relatively brief essay. If you want a masterclass in how to look at things from a different and more generative perspective, this is it. And also, I’ll never not recommend The Dispossessed.
10 ways to be prepared and grounded now that Trump has won by Daniel Hunter in Waging Nonviolence
Labor Now Needs to be an Anti-Fascist Movement by Bill Fletcher Jr. in In These Times
The Sky is Falling; We’ve Got This by Margaret Killjoy
Now We Fight for the Future by J.P. Hill
Any episode of Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, a podcast by Margaret Killjoy about radical movements throughout history, and how they organized, fought for, and sometimes won, rights, freedoms, and a better world. I particularly enjoyed the episodes on the Easter Rising, The Young Lords, and the Lakota Resistance.
Lastly, I haven’t read it yet, but just ordered Lifehouse: Taking Care of Ourselves in a World on Fire, which is about community resilience in the face of the climate crisis. I connect virtually everything back to the climate crisis because it’s the stage on which all oppressions and struggles play out, and which will inevitably make them more acute.
We know that people tend to help each other in the aftermath of disasters. In crisis situations, humans seem to have an innate drive to care for each other. The question is, how do we engender and sustain this drive in times of prolonged crisis, unfolding over years and decades rather than days, weeks, or months? It’s hard to say, but it certainly can’t hurt to begin creating robust cultures and infrastructures of care. The best and most powerful form of resistance we have, whether to authoritarianism or climate chaos, is coming together and helping each other out.