I have not written a newsletter since March, even as I made notes and began drafting many times. I realized that I was letting perfect be the enemy of good and also finding myself frozen in the face of all that we are navigating in this time.

So am I going to write despite my overwhelm, write into the experience of living in this time of monsters because it is also a time of people; people showing up for their neighbors, confronting ICE and demonstrating at detention centers, trans people helping one another find resources and support, folks doing mutual aid and political education, neighbors resisting data centers in their communities. I want to share some of what I have been doing to practice hope as a discipline (thank you, Mariame Kaba) and build my capacity for care and response in this time. And I want to tell you about my friend Grace and ask you to offer her some support.

I am thinking about a few lines from Margaret Killjoy's The Immortal Choir Holds Every Voice, the third book in her excellent Danielle Cain series (you should buy her books from Firestorm Collective). A character we have followed through a pretty harrowing and transformative adventure is reflecting on how he lives, how he acts in his world:

He'd found strength in providing for others. In hours spent on the phone with friends in crisis, in facilitating meetings and mediating conflict. He did those things because they were the things that would be done by the man he wanted to be.

When I read those lines, I paused, put the book down, picked it up again and underlined those words with my pen:

He did those things because they were the things that would be done by the man he wanted to be.

This, to me, is one way we live and one way we move toward changing ourselves and contributing to changing our worlds. What does the person you want to be do? How can you show up in that doing right now? What resources and support do you need to help you do that?

It is probably at least in part about who you do it with. To quote Mariame Kaba a second time, anything worth doing is done with other people.

Grace Pinson: Showing Up for People Now

Grace Pinson is leaving federal prison on July 20th after 23 years of incarceration; she has been inside since she was 17. She wrote prank letters that threatened the president and has spent over half her life so far in prison but she is getting out. We have been friends for almost a year, writing letters and emails, and after I asked my networks to donate to offer her some support on Trans Day of Visibility in March, I realized it might be possible to support some larger fundraising for Grace's re-entry.

Grace is a trans woman and jailhouse lawyer and she has fought for her own safety and access to care and she has represented herself in court against the Federal Bureau of Prisons - and won! She has lived in the incredibly harsh conditions of prison and found ways to survive and contribute to the lives of friends and family despite being miles away from folks who are important to her. Returning to the world outside after prison is always a big step and the longer one has been away, the bigger that leap becomes. And Grace is returning to an increasingly harsh and dangerous world for trans people.

With support from Let's Get Free, a Pittsburgh-based group that works to end perpetual punishment and supports relationships between incarcerated people and folks on the outside, I have collaborated with a few other folks to create a GoFundMe for Grace. We have raised almost four thousand dollars so far and would like to reach five thousand by the time Grace leaves federal prison in North Carolina on July 20th to return to Oklahoma. This money will help ensure Grace has a softer landing and is able to afford clothes, rent, food, and transportation as she take this giant first step back into the world.

Can you donate and share this fundraiser with your networks? Any contribution is meaningful - consider what you might spend this week on a few coffees or a dinner out and share those funds with Grace. These actions may seem small in one light but from another view, we see how they collect to create an impact.

Organizing

I have been collaborating with folks in my community here in Indiana County, Pennsylvania as we fight to stop the future-eating development of a fracked gas power plant and hyperscale data center campus in the town of Homer City. Concerned Residents of Western PA (CROW)is a community movement opposed to the AI data center and fracked-gas power plant proposed for Homer City, Indiana County, Pennsylvania. CROW is united out of care and concern for humanity, health, safety, and a sustainable future. We have been sharing information with our neighbors and pushing our local elected leaders to take action over the past 9 months, building a powerful network of care and action with folks that have become really special to me.

I share this both to encourage you to take a look at what we have been up to and get involved in this fight - and to highlight that taking action to impact your community is an antidote to despair. Getting to know more of the people nearby and sharing your commitments with one another is a step toward building the world we long to see. A step toward one another in a time when powerful people benefit from our turning and walking away.

Read & Learn & Listen & Act

I also want share a few resources that I hope might be valuable to you as they have been to me.

Mariame Kaba is facilitating the first workshop in Learn to Do: A Training Series for This Moment that is hosted by Raba Danya Ruttenberg from Life is A Sacred Text. Mariame Kaba offers such generous teaching and inspiration to folks either new to engaging in movement work or looking for renewed vigor or encouragement and that is what Finding Your Role in the Work looks to do on Wednesday July 8th. It's on zoom and free and you should attend (and donate if that is possible).

The Prarieland Defendants in Texas have been sentenced from 30 to 100 years for a noise demonstration last year outside an ICE detention facility in solidarity with detainees. You can learn more about the case and how to support the people who are facing harsh sentences designed to repress dissent in the rest of us. You can write letters to folks, which is a powerful way to offer care and solidarity. I spent some time writing on the 4th of July.

In addition to reading Margaret Killjoy's novels, you might also spend some time with her excellent newsletter Birds Before the Storm or listen to her podcast Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff . Both will offer you powerful ways to think about the time in which we are living and how we are connected to the past - and I hope that helps us be the person who contributes to the future.