Going Local Journal 4

This is what democracy looks like

Our Solidarity Brown Bag Community Meeting was packed; 150 people showed up in the noisy Fellowship Hall of the Methodist Church down the hill from my house. Oh what has happened in that room!

In fact, Transition Whidbey, our former run at community organizing in light of global threats (at that time, Peak Oil) met there often. Those of us involved back then were grinning ear to ear to feel our community step up, this time in response to the threats to democracy, essential institutions, and people deemed “other” by ICE.

Diana, the lead organizer, reminded us in the beginning the organizing framework we are using, picked up from several established activist movements.

This graphic helps us contemplate what we can do in each “square.”

Protect People

…means anyone targeted by this administration for deportation or arrest for crossing the powers that be. This administration is targeting refugees, green card holders, documented and undocumented people, protesters for Palestine or any issue deemed not it line, and threatening lawsuits against people and movements it wants to silence.

In line with that, we’ve had two De-Escalation/ Bystander trainings and an online WAISN Rapid Response training. These trained people are already active.

Many people are going either to Seattle or to Oak Harbor on April 5.

Defend Civic Institutions

Whether it’s city councils or county commissioners, whether it is teachers or school boards, whether it’s leadership of non profits and agencies, whether it’s volunteer advisory commissions, all of these civic institutions have been humming in the background, without too much uproar or outrage. A conservative group calling itself “Voices for South Whidbey Education” is recruiting far-right candidates to run against two wonderful, progressive School Board incumbents running for reelection this year.

When a small group of aggressive parents demonstrated against Critical Race Theory, a student initiated and run movement, United Student Leaders, organized a hundreds of locals to march, with dignity, to meet them. USL also pressured our small city council to pass a climate resolution.

Disrupt and disobey

…involves demonstrations, with civil disobedience. My favorite models are Code Pink and Extinction Rebellion (morphed into the Climate Majority). Now Indivisible is rising as a leader of strategic disruption.

This is the part of the resistance to the overreach of the current administration where I hang back. Sometimes not, as with the Tesla demonstration, but I am free to pick and choose because I’m not (yet) a target. And don’t want to be, given the dangers growing by the day. I can show up in the crowd. I can make signs. How much more am I willing to risk. Aye, there’s the question.

While I am doing the outer, lower risk, maybe performative work of demonstrations and letter writing, I intend to do the inner work of “disrupt and disobey”. I’m soaked in the culture I live in, trained to be competitive and striving in work, trained to be submissive and agreeable in relationships, trained to rely on markers of status to be credible, trained to rely on money to meet my needs. Unhooking is the work of a lifetime. I’ve unhooked a lot over the years, especially money… and submissiveness :-), but the warp is in there in both senses - the loom is strung with the patriarchy and my mind has been warped.

This new administration is crossing, daily, the bounds of what I consider decency, fairness, justice, tolerance, respect - all values I thought we shared in this country. This forces me to confront my comfort in having learned to navigate the rules and build a life. In this, I’m being herded into “the other” when I speak out. So it is a question of courage. As they said, “These are the times that try men’s (sic) souls.”

The parts that are the hardest may be the ones that grow us.

Some photos from protests I’ve joined.That first one came right from the heart, was way to long and weighed a ton, so at the Tesla protest a few years later I dialed it back.

Build Alternatives

This is my home plate. A social psychologist noted that “fight or flight” is not the only way people respond to stress. She called this other response “tend” and “befriend.” Take care of the vulnerable, circle up to share resources, build connections.

Build alternatives will be vast, eventually. However the other Washington cuts us off, we can grow together. Kindness. Neighborliness. Teaching. Community beach clean up. Conversation Cafes. Listening. Gardens. Carpooling. Bicycle deliveries. Trading. Medical transport. Cooking. Other forms of currency. Citizen juries. Minding the sewage and electricity. And diplomacy with neighboring communities.

Yea-but… I mean whaddabout… there’s a lot more to 21st century life than this. I mean, the internet, cell phones, fossil fuels, planes, trains and automobiles, cargo ships, household appliances, medical equipment, crypto currency, AI, Starlink, Mars, and war. None of us knows what technologies will stay, will go, will morph, will not be needed anymore. So much more is possible than we can see with the eyes of the civilization that raised us. Nonetheless, Armageddon or Utopia, some levels of self-provisioning as a community is needed.

Solidarity Brown Bag Design

After Diana’s welcome came (my favorite part) an open mic for “offers, asks, announcements.” Anyone could have 1-minute to say what they have they’re willing to want to share, what they need, and what’s happening they want others to know about. Generosity, vulnerability, and invitation – these are the glue of community. People were timid this time, but in a few months there will be a line of people with something to say. Then came a half hour talk on some aspect of community well-being - this time radical neighborliness - and then the after-buzz.

This meeting we talked about neighborhood connections with some delightful ideas about spontaneous gifting (muffins, cards, flowers, coffee) and generous howdy’s while dog walking. It’s simply setting the intention that your neighbors are your community as much as select social, interest or political groups. The speaker called this Micro America - and what a great exercise in “bridging divides” because there’s no social or political screening for the people who move in next door.

Ours is a relational world, not a world of billiard balls knocking into one another trying to gain advantage. The space between things or people isn’t empty, it’s full of something invisible to the eye, yet viscous and buoyant, a carrier wave that we can sweeten with our thoughts and feelings. This became profoundly clear when I sank into a 10-mile radius food system and could feel the generosity of life giving itself to life all around me. The relationships between the roots and the soil, the sun and the tomatoes, the forest and the mushrooms, the farmers and me.

Giving and receiving weaves the web, and the web holds us as the stresses of change grow. In a deep meditation years ago I realized that my name for God is The Great Giving and Receiving. Life gives itself to life in the living world. This is my deep knowing, which is embodied in a prior post on my Desiderata. This is why ‘Building Alternatives” (to the systems of separation) is my home port.

This is big work

Many of us have gone to sleep at the wheel in our democracy, have assumed that bedrock institutions would hold because… because the Constitution… because of checks and balances… Actually, these don’t hold without basic trust, basic civility, basic willingness to peacefully resolve differences, basic agreements that “all men (sic) are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

It’s good to remember that humanity has been at such junctures before many times. It’s good to remember that life regenerates but in ways not predicable by the people in the old systems. It’s good to remember that humans are the infant species, the new kid on the block of species. It’s good to remember that this will take time, even though the destruction of the old systems seems to be happening at literally break-neck speed.

In terms of coming of aging (yes, we got back here), it’s good to remember that we won’t be here long ourselves, so we work without a demand that we see the fruits of our actions. This is all “reminder to self” because half the time I’m scared and the other half impatient and the third half I’m enjoying the ride.