Dear Reader,

Everything feels upside down right now. Last week I wrote about My Favorite Mistake in business. I taught Divinity and The Written Word to the most amazing group this weekend and am now in a total research rabbit hole of Shaker women and Medieval Feminist Mystics. Saturday Katy and I celebrated one year of love and I couldn’t love her more. And yet the world continues to shatter me as I try to understand its intricacies.

Yesterday I had the privilege of attending a talk by Minneapolis artist Riley Kleve on mutual aid efforts happening in Minneapolis.

Riley is visiting our similarly freezing neck of the woods to teach at Green Door Folk School, just up the road from my house, a place that I also teach and have found to be a radical hub for community in an otherwise confusing landscape.

Riley began their talk framing that it was being led by an artist, not an activist. This felt so permission giving, that in order to lead, to teach, to share, to stay curious with the group - you don’t need to be an expert. You don’t need to identify as an activist to be a good neighbor, organize mutual aid, share your knowledge around organizing, and put boots on the ground.

Riley has lived in Minneapolis for the last eight years, through the uprisings after George Floyd’s murder and through the current ICE occupation — that to be clear is not over.

They walked us through so many tactics, from ICE Watch and the use of blowing whistles, setting up Signal chats for your block or neighborhood, having affinity groups, bringing vulnerable neighbors staples and ingredients rather than pre made food, GoFund me language requirements, jail support, and so much more.

The group spanned elders who had no idea where to start, organizer and activists already organizing and preparing for the worst to come here (we’re already seeing the beginning stages), and neighbors ready to jump into new and uncomfortable action.

We discussed the importance of using SALUTE when reporting about ICE activity. Riley referred to this zine a lot in sharing tactics with us.

Many great Northern Michigan resources and organizations already committed to abolishing ICE and helping those who may be most affected are happening. The Unitarian Universalist Church in Traverse City has a Justice Information and Events page (check your local UU church!)

I’ll be attending the NoMi Mutual Aid Training a week from today at the library hosted by the NoMi Neighbor Network. One thing Riley said that really stuck out to me was - we can go to our song circles for peace but that might not be the bravest thing we can do.

After the talk some of us circled up to start to vision what a Signal chat here in Cedar might look like — and if you are someone who lives rurally I’d love to know what you consider a “block” or a “neighborhood” when organizing (or maybe you have resources to point us to).

Questions I’m sitting with :

→ How can I know which neighbors on my road to add to a Signal chat? I wish I could just pop a survey in everyone’s mailbox, but outing ourselves where we live doesn’t necessarily feel safe.

→ What am I doing or not doing to risk my safety and where is that appropriate?

→ When is it time to self start organizing and when is it time to gather more information to see who else is already doing something?

→ What resources do I have to lend to mutual aid efforts that need funds? Raffles, time, space come to mind.

→ What can I do to dismantle the ICE presence that is already here at the Baldwin facility where 70 days ago Nenko Stanev Gantchev died while in the detention center?

→ How can I use this newsletter to set aside time and space to ask these questions publicly? To work to translate what works in an urban area to a rural one.

→ How can my teaching, my art, and my efforts always include the most vulnerable without tokenizing or minimizing?

→ How can I continue to get to know my neighbors? Riley’s wish they shared was that a year ago they would have started the work of knowing who was in the neighborhood, so that when crisis hit they weren’t having to catch up.

→ When is the right time to start, especially if it feels clunky?

Now is the time dear readers. Now has always been the time.

→ The next class I am teaching is about self publishing across forms. It’s called Ritual Technologies : How Writers Make Contact. It’s 2 hrs, $55, and happens on Saturday March 7 from 12-2pm EST. Live on zoom and recorded if you can’t make it live.

→ I’m reading Buy Nothing, Get Everything and really enjoying it. (Thank you Nic!)

→ I taught my twelve year old friend Margo to quilt and now want to teach kids. (Thank you Casey!)

→ We also learned about an amazing org that started in Detroit that now has a Traverse City group called We The People Action Fund (Thank you Sailor!)

→ Creative Advising is now available in three packs : save money and gain momentum!

→ My Are.na channel for Divinity and The Word

→ On my watch list : The Testament of Ann Lee (Thank you Anna!)

→ My next book The Practice of Attention comes out THREE WEEKS from tomorrow! PRE ORDER NOW it’s fun and you get free things. May it land on your doorstep on March 17.

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