Despair as Emotion, Hope as Politic
Dearests,
It’s been about 9 months since I last wrote to you. I’ve started writing a newsletter a few times about the genocide in Gaza and words have consistently failed me. I don’t yet know how to accurately write rage. But I’m writing to you now the day after the election, still with rage but also mostly with a deep and abiding commitment to us. Us, the collective us. Us, my people. Those who dream of a better world, who can envision it in excruciating detail, and who are willing to fight for it. Below are some themes that have been swimming around my brain, I hope they provide something to chew on.
On Hope and Despair
Mariame Kaba writes, “Hope is a discipline.” It is one of those sentences that circulates endlessly in movement spaces. But I have been sitting with it in new ways this past year. What does hope as a discipline actually mean? Let’s first turn to discipline (not in the Foucaultian sense in this case) - a discipline is a course of study, a format of training, a code. What does it mean to train in hope? To study it? I don’t believe that it means turning away from the deeply pessimistic ecosystem of rising (and already present) fascism we find ourselves in. I think training in hope means choice. It means choosing hope, it means choosing to still believe that we all deserve better ESPECIALLY when that is a painful thing to face because of how far away it is. Hope as a discipline means holding all that is possible at the same time as we hold all the heartbreak of our current moment. It means not giving up on visioning what we will all be doing the day after the revolution even if we don’t actually know if we will get there.
What do we do then with all our righteous despair when we have committed to hope? Despair is a feeling, it doesn’t have to be our politic. This is where becoming more skilled in tending to our own inner worlds and emotions becomes essential to our organizing. Yes, we despair. We feel it deeply, we wail, we cry, we hold each other in it. We don’t organize around it. Our hope becomes that much sharper when we can access the depths of our despair. When we can face our emotions and we trust that there is space to tend to them, we can make choices that are disciplined, values aligned, and strategic instead of ones rooted in how shitty this all feels. These things are in tension. How do we build personal and collective capacity and will to hold them both at the same time?
On the Left
I have felt so disillusioned by the state of the left. And by left I do NOT mean non-profits and the Democratic party, let us be very clear in our language. Things are dire. The tactics we are using are not working, they are exhausting and depleting us. We have to really face the truth of where we are if we want to build something different. I am not saying how dire things are in order to abandon the ideals or possibilities of what the left holds. But I think we need an honest reckoning. What does a strong, effective, dangerous left look like? Can we really envision it? What does it feel like to be a part of it? How do we build it from where we are today?
On Kindness and Love
A few weeks ago, during sukkes, I was at a Torah Study in my neighbor’s backyard. We were looking at this part of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes 4:1-3): “So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of such that were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter. Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive. Better is he both than they, which hath not yet been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under the sun.” And we talked about hevel, which can be translated as fleetingness or breath. And we talked about the Buddhist idea of metta or lovingkindness or khesed. And I felt angry. Lovingkindness will not stop a war and a genocide, making it unprofitable will. I do not have empathy for the oppressors because they have no comfort. I don’t care. Yes, collective liberation means that these systems are not good for anyone but that doesn’t mean that we should extend lovingkindness to those who are responsible.
I often feel frustrated and roll my eyes when people talk about love and kindness as political tools. They so often feel immaterial and ineffective. Where they are effective though is when we materialize them in our care for each other. The systems we live under are so harsh and so cold, it takes real work to not turn that harshness and coldness onto each other, onto the people closest to us. We will inevitably harm each other, what will it mean to love each other when we do? What makes love material? Jail support, and mutual aid, and giving someone your extra prescription meds for free, and dropping soup off when someone is sick, and still masking, and unlearning the ways that white supremacy and patriarchy and chauvinism and Zionism have rooted themselves inside the deepest crevices of ourselves. It is a fierce love. A fighting love. How do we continue to tend to it? Cultivate it? Protect it?
On Giving Up on the Government
Over the past year I feel like we have seen the ways that the government does not give a shit and has never given a shit about people. But still, people are tied to making demands of them, to some ideal of American democracy, to what a politician “should” be/do. I think we need to abandon this ideal “democracy”/”governance.” The government will never save us. They will never give us what we need. How can we bypass them to do it ourselves? How can we make sure that as we do that we are not abandoning people?
At this point, I am much more interested in a politic of refusal and fugitivity than of pleading with the government. I want to scheme together about what that tangibly looks like.
On Risk and Breaking Rules
Something I have noticed when talking to people who are upset and feeling lost, is that there is a tendency to follow the rules, or to obey as default. When arrested for civil disobedience I witnessed people thanking the cops, cooperating more than necessary, letting their guards down. We need to be militant about risk. We need to get better at breaking the rules that are not just and to do that we have to cultivate self-trust, community trust, and critical thinking. We have to unlearn respect for authority in big and small ways. I say this as I also grapple with what it means to be a professor in a college classroom and the authority it grants me. I ask myself everyday, how am I teaching in a way that encourages my students to challenge authority, even mine, critically?
Fascism uses the rules and laws that already exist, and creates new ones. What is legal is not what is just. So then how do we position ourselves in relation to the law?
Oh the possibilities of breaking rules!
On Each Other
For me, one of the major themes of both my life and my intellectual work for the past year has been friendship. I really truly believe that friendship will and must be at the center of what we’re trying to build. Centering friendship (rather than the family or couple or polycule) helps us build towards collectivism. It can be an antidote to the isolationism and hyper individualism that both neoliberalism and fascism thrive on. Do not abandon your friends. I will not abandon you.
I love you, Death to Amerikkka always, More life to us always, Bless me anyways,
Yael
Here are some things that I have found helpful to read:
10 ways to be prepared and grounded it Trump wins | Waging Nonviolence
The key to taking effective action if Trump wins is to avoid perpetuating his goals of fear, isolation, exhaustion and disorientation.
A Talk to Teachers - Zinn Education Project
Article. By James Baldwin. October 16, 1963. Baldwin addresses the challenges of education to prepare children to grapple with the myths and realities of U.S. history.
