How long does it take to become less than what you were? How long does it take to become more than what you are?
SUMMARY
I write summaries for people who have to marshal their time and attention.
Grief for the people of Palestine, rage for the role of the country I live in
Defining “we”: it’s important
Holding back from doing what’s right because of fear
Small learning and small actions that make room: how important are they?
Three small actions, anyway
I live in a country whose government has chosen to bankroll and arm another government and military committed to ongoing, escalating, horrific, genocidal war crimes. My government’s choices sicken and diminish me and all of us who live here. We are living half a life, and over a hundred thousand people are dead, in fear and pain.
“We,” up there, means the people who live in that first country. I’m always asking my nonfiction writing students to define their “we”: what are they claiming membership in, accidentally or on purpose? Who are they including, who excluding, when they say, “We’ve fucked up the earth”? Who is under the umbrella they are opening, and who beyond it, when they chant, “In our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinians?”
I don’t do that chant because I don’t like to say things that aren’t true: in that “we,” some of us are and some of us are not. I’ve been misspeaking a lot lately, it feels like.
Someone I respect said recently that they feel helpless partly because they were sure that the American government would meet any serious challenge to its cruelest operations with extreme violence. Holding back from doing what’s right through reasoned fear of the consequences… the circumstances, the crushing systems, that force that choice are not circumstances that allow for a full life.
Lessons from the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth has been out for just over half a year. I don’t totally know what that would mean even in a “better” time; I don’t know what it means now. The reactions I’ve gotten that make me proudest are things like my friend’s dad telling me his town does have a climate plan, he looked it up! Or someone who interviewed me a while back stating that the book helped them get confident to make and carry out a disaster plan. Or a member of the climate and community resilience efforts I’m part of saying after a tough meeting, “Are we gonna do our breathing?” “We” meant the people who were together in that moment.
It’s always seemed to me that anything that creates more strength, more stretch, for the lives that cruel systems are most eager to crush—human and beyond—is useful work, is social action. As Tiffiney Davis says, you can act more purposefully on what you know and feel if you are fed, if you are housed, if you have slept; if those states of being are not actively menaced; if you can have loving contact with other beings. Making that easier for another person, I thought, is like holding the door for them to go through into more collective action—whichever side of the door you’re on yourself. I think this because people have done it for me, and because plenty of people have told me that meeting their immediate needs and obligations was their biggest obstacle to climate action (which is what we were talking about at the time). It’s a big part of why I wrote my book the way I did.
I’m not sure it’s true.
I embrace the necessity of trying to bring the world of freedom about for most people; to bring it out of the world we have now, which is wounded, and must be tended by wounded people.
I’m not sure how to do that.
Here are two things I did do (the “TODAY” practices) and one thing I will do (the “SOMETIME THIS WEEK” practice) that you could do as well.
TODAY: Here is a letter calling on senators to support, and vote in favor of, Senator Sanders’s bill to block $20 billion in arms aid to Israel. It’s especially good to sign if one of your senators is on the Foreign Relations Committee.
TODAY: The Harris campaign has a Contact Us form. I used it to tell them that to earn my vote, Harris must commit to putting an arms embargo in place now, and working toward a ceasefire when she is in office. You can tell them that, too (even if you intend to vote for Harris regardless, or don’t intend to vote).
SOMETIME THIS WEEK: If you too are horrified and enraged by the US government’s support of genocide in Palestine, talk about it with one or two people you know, work with, or are related to, but haven’t yet discussed it with in this way. (Obviously, use the words and tone that are yours; this is just an outline, not a real script.)
You can say, “Here’s how I came to feel this way. Here’s why I’m doing [X] about it. Will you do [X] with me?” [X] can be one of the two above practices; it can be joining an existing larger effort like pushing your city/town government to divest from Israel bonds, or your institution to stop inviting Raytheon and Textron to the job fair; it can be something we don’t talk about on the internet.
Or if it seems like they are trying to play it off and you want them to stay with you, you can say that. “Please stay with me. I’m trying to tell you about something that matters to me.”
This is a “we” you can be sure of: you and the person you’re with, in the moment you’re with them, if they are willing to be there with you.
I wrote a book, LESSONS FROM THE CLIMATE ANXIETY COUNSELING BOOTH: HOW TO LIVE WITH CARE AND PURPOSE IN AN ENDANGERED WORLD (Hachette Go, 2024). This newsletter holds the ways that what's in it has branched out: new reflections, events and workshops, unresolved questions, further reading, ways to connect and act. I'm glad to be here on earth with you.