Care is the antidote to violence
This post was originally published on November 30, 2021
Vol. 13
In this Issue: Essay | Read Local | The Big Picture | For Your Earhole | Now Read This | Nature Stuff | Real Life (Events) | Parting Shot
My mid-life crisis and a meandering book report on abolition
When I was very young, my conservative-leaning aunt once shared what I now understand to be an all-too common adage: "You're liberal when you're young and conservative when you grow up."
The opposite, however, has proven true for me (and countless others who've lived through this era of gross inequality and worsening climate crisis). As I age and learn, I've not just become more liberal, but more radical. I was taught by Jenny Pressman not to fear the label.
My radicalism is not the flavor it would have been in my teens or twenties. I've had the good fortune to find mentors in people a generation or two ahead of me who have grown more radical in their politics while also doing the personal work to become more gentle and kind--with themselves and others. The two are not and should not be diametrically opposed, but it is difficult not to succumb to our own traumas and triggers, to lash out, to let our anger turn into despair. I see it too often, causing splinters and fissures in communities that should be united. It seems we need to prioritize radical care, in addition to radical politics.
I just finished reading Mariame Kamba's excellent "We Do This 'Til We Free Us" - which I can't recommend enough - and she repeats a mantra that I am working hard to internalize: "Hope is a discipline." It is not blind nor naive, hope. It must be exercised like a muscle, returned to whenever we feel lost, and practiced forever.
The book's lessons feel painfully relevant to so much that's happening in Wisconsin and beyond. Through a series of essays, interviews, and transcribed remarks, Mariame and her peers make the core argument in favor of prison industrial complex abolition: That the system of "justice" (courts, cops, prisons, even social work) we have now functions exactly as designed, which is to enact vengeance and generational harm, primarily against people who belong to groups deemed less-than. She urges us to work toward something different, something that centers accountability, healing, compassion, and community-based approaches to determining how to get there. She acknowledges how difficult this will be, but what other option is there? The status quo is destroying us. It certainly does not serve us. So we have to be brave and imagine something different, something better. We don't have to have all the answers right now. And we sure as shit should not believe that we must do the work alone, or that any one person or group has the perfect solution.
"Everything worthwhile is done with other people," Kaba tells us. I agree, and yet, even before the age of COVID, it was difficult to find connection. I know I'm struggling to rebuild how I engage with my community--what do I have to offer and where would it do the most good? My level of energy is not what it used to be. My priorities have changed dramatically in just a few years. I am 40 years old now! I think my midlife crisis is one of conscience. How am I truly giving back? How can I put my actions where my words are, to go beyond reading books and engaging in the Discourse and actually, truly be in community with more and different people? To help organize, to push for change? How do I manage figuring all of that out while taking care of myself?
I imagine I'm not alone in this. If nothing else, most of us seem to be in a collective state of grief and anxiety. We are burned out. The world wants to push on, but there is still a pandemic, and we know that "going back to normal" would mean a return to an unsustainable, deeply inequitable world. So much is on fire. Too many people are gleefully throwing fuel onto those flames.
"Care is the antidote to violence," notes Saidiya Hartman. I have to think that means care of the self and care of the community. That is the balance we must all seek to strike. I'm working on it. It's hard. But it's the only way I see forward.
Read Local.
“Don't let a few Alders and Madison's business lobby obstruct Bus Rapid Transit” [Marybeth McGinnis for Tone Madison]
"This is not a question of light rail or a pedestrian mall vs. Bus Rapid Transit. This is a question of BRT or sluggish and inadequate investment in evolving Madison's public transit system. The latter is a death knell to emissions reductions and transportation equity."
This piece does an excellent job of laying out what’s at stake with BRT in Madison, and I urge you to read it. That a vocal, privileged minority is managing to hold up this profoundly overdue and necessary process--largely over one damn street--is unconscionable. This debate highlights the worst of Madison’s white, neo-liberal approach to running a city--an approach that prioritizes the loudest and most privileged voices while ignoring the needs of the larger community.
In college, I drove for a free, nighttime car service. The majority of our riders were women of color working second shift jobs (often one of multiple jobs), mostly as health care workers, who couldn't afford to own a car or take a taxi and guess what? The current bus system didn't serve them.
They were taking care of our elders, our sick, our loved ones. Underpaid and underresourced, they often offered me food because I was a hungry and broke (though still very privileged) college student.
Public transit, particularly BRT, should prioritize them and others like them, not business owners who don’t believe people who ride the bus also patronize their shops or Soglinites who use public art as a weapon against unhoused people.
The Big Picture.
“This tribe helped the Pilgrims survive for their first Thanksgiving. They still regret it 400 years later.” [Dana Hedgpeth for the Washington Post]
“For the Wampanoags and many other American Indians, the fourth Thursday in November is considered a day of mourning, not a day of celebration.”
“Where the Real Story Starts” [Roxane Gay at The Audacity]
“In feminism, we talk a lot about intersectionality but a lot of the time, it seems like people believe that saying the word is practicing or embodying the principle. At some point, everyone needs to stop stumbling over the word and start understanding how the most dire issues we presently face are all feminist issues and concerns. We can’t simply address one problem at a time as if each problem will wait its turn. Reproductive freedom and equal pay and climate justice and police violence and disability justice and the ever-widening class divide and public health and every other important issue are all interconnected."
“Death by a Thousand Words: COVID-19 and the Pandemic of Ableist Media” [Imani Barbarin for Refinery29]
“Non-disabled people only saw the potential outcomes of the virus as either life or death — they didn't account for the gray. Disabled people live in the gray. Even after the virus has left the system and patients are in “recovery,” about one in three COVID-19 patients experience long-term symptoms and disability. They live in the gray now with us too.”
“A Field Guide to Christofascism” [Paul Bowers at Brutal South]
“Christofascism, like fascism, is a fuzzy term that overlaps with other fuzzy terms. It has much in common today with the Christian dominionism of Mike Pence and the Christian nationalism of Franklin Graham. In the evangelical church’s current moral panic over the rights of transgender people, it finds unlikely common cause with the TERF wing of American feminism. To the extent that “Christofascism” is a useful term, it is useful for naming and repenting of a grievous sin within the church.”
For Your Earhole.
I’ve been leaning pretty heavily on music that makes me feel peaceful these days. It’s a needed balm to the seemingly never-ended parade of bad news in the world. I’ve been listening to virtuoso kora player Ballake Sissoko’s record, “Djourou,” pretty much on repeat for the last few months and can’t recommend it (and his other works, including some killer collaborations) enough.
Locally, I continue to adore the deeply groove-worthy tunes of electronic artist Dylan Bryne, whose new EP, “Different Name, Same Groove,” finds new ways to polish up and play with classic house themes. Great music for getting shit down or, as the opening track suggests, to embrace “ass shaking as praxis.”
Now Read This.
Hot Take talks to author Sami Grover on ditching climate purity:
“Behavior change and individual action are crucially important. They just matter for entirely different reasons than we've been told. Rather than each of us obsessing over every aspect of our carbon footprints, we need to learn to see them as acts of mass mobilization—and be strategic about where we invest our time and energy.”
“There Have to Be More Sides Than This” [Lyz Lenz/Men Yell At Me]
“Balance presumes an equal weight to ideas. But the right to live does not exist in opposition to the right to kill. Those two things don’t happen in equal measure. For justice, for freedom, balance doesn’t exist. Instead, the weight of things should tip in favor of life.”
“Never Going Back Again” [Charlie Warzel / Galaxy Brain]
“Since the beginning of the pandemic, the word “normal” has felt so weighted and fraught. So many of us yearned for a return to normalcy, while others reminded us that normal was pretty shitty for a majority of people. Some of us braced and planned for an uncertain future — a Brave New Normal. Others talked about using the moment to usher in a hopeful, more equitable new normal. A different group (usually those with money and power and status) have fought to drag us back to their desired normal, preferably with no lessons learned. Personally, I’ve come to accept that normal is a nonsense word that is mostly a stand-in for feeling comfortable and certain.”
“Just Because I’m a Woman” [Kaitlyn Greenidge]
“The type of womanhood Dolly [Parton] is describing is the kind I always operated from when thinking about feminism. It understands that the limitations of womanhood are structural, not biological, not bound in any sort of essential nature, and that womanhood is not any more exalted or morally righteous or smarter or kinder or empathetic or better smelling than any other gender. The barriers and detriments around it come from expectations—from societies, social groups, other people, oneself—and are not an inherent part of being a woman.”
Nature Stuff.
Mushrooms are cool as heck, y’all: “To clean contaminated soil, central Wisconsin pilot project tries to grow mushrooms.” [Rob Mentzer for WPR]
FIRE. “Reconstructing two centuries of Midwest prairie fire history” [In Defense of Plants / podcast]
Have you been hiking or cross country skiing at Turville Point Conservation Park in Madison? A gem of a spot, right in the middle of the city. Don't sleep on it!
Real Life (Events)
Got your vax? Got a mask? Got a need to see people in real life and enjoy high-quality, super queer entertainment? Join me this Friday, Dec. 3 at 7 p.m. for Kat & the Hurricane Presents--a great night of music, drag, DJing (by me!), food, and local goods for sale--all at the beloved Bos Mead Hall in Madison. More info here. See you there?
Final Frame.
‘Til next time.
Thanks for reading! Hit me up with questions, comments, suggestions, and tips on great hiking spots.