We Cannot Give Up on Each Other
We cannot give up on ourselves or on others because this fight is far from over.
It’s a holiday weekend, whether or not you’re celebrating. Instead of skipping out on writing all together this weekend, I thought I’d share four recent posts on BlueSky that I’ve been thinking about.
Each post is screen shot for archival purposes, but they’re also linked so you can save and share them if you’re so called to as well.
People have feelings, and people are entitled to those feelings. But I have noticed an uptick in people coming into my mentions or work to tell me that “we’re fucked” over and over again. This isn’t helpful nor productive. If anything, it’s a reminder that so much of the work being done on the ground to change the course of our political reality is simply not being seen or being deemed not enough.
There’s nothing I can really do about that. As a deeply-engaged activist said to me this week, the issue isn’t about how to get the horse to drink the water. It’s about finding the horses.
Last Friday when the Supreme Court ruled on Mahmoud v. Taylor, there were so many bad and misinformed takes. There is a difference between the feelings this case brings up–all valid, especially around fear and hurt, given this felt like kicking puppies when they had already been kicked several times by the same Court–and what the opinion actually said. I sat on the floor of the convention center at the American Library Association putting together the Books Unbanned booth when the ruling dropped. I felt all of the feelings, and then immediately decided it was not going to be smart to respond yet. I needed to actually read the entire opinion and understand what it said before writing about it.
My mentions that morning were a lot of “we’re fucked” style responses when I said as much. When I said that this wasn’t a book banning case but a case about public education and religious freedom.
We’re not “fucked” unless we want to be “fucked” here. Is this a case that is going to be used to justify a lot more censorship–quiet and loud–and create a chilling effect in public schools? Absolutely. But we don’t need to bow to this case. As it reads, it applies right now ONLY to the parents in Montgomery County Public Schools; they were granted a preliminary injunction that permits them to opt their kids out of such lessons.
“I’m scared” and “what does this mean?” Those responses are ones that are far more productive in the fight. There’s room to have legitimate feelings and room to talk about the next steps.
“We’re fucked” is giving up, and those of us who’ve been deep in this fight since the beginning aren’t going to give up. We’re not going to cave. We’re going to keep providing as much accurate information and as many crucial resources to navigate the implications of this case as possible.
My real worry with Mahmoud isn’t the book censorship. It doesn’t ban any books. I’m worried about the implications of this case for public education, as the reason the lawsuit was even initiated was because several parents couldn’t afford to send their kids to private religious schools and thus, had no choice but to stand up for their beliefs like this. Naturally, one of the folks in the case is among the chapter leadership of Montgomery County’s Moms for Liberty chapter.
Feel feelings. But don’t let those feelings be where and how you read what the future holds. You can feel deeply concerned and scared and simultaneously recognize that we aren’t fucked unless we just give up.
To all of the media outlets capitalizing on that fear: you’re not helping your case in a landscape where the media is position as the enemy. The number of bad takes on this one and the number of takes peddling in fear mongering is shameful.
I actually want to cheat here a little bit and post the above Skeet with the one below. They’re in conversation, even if they’re not.
We steamrolled over the effects of COVID. There was no time to mourn and no time to process before we were all shoved back into “normalcy” for the sake of capitalism. There is no other reason we were made to do things as we always had other than the economy needed it.
The lack of acknowledging feelings and sitting with such life-altering experiences has made us so unable to think through what’s actually going on right now. It’s made us fail to think about our realities in a holistic matter. We’ve been forced to think in binaries that are not the way our brains work.
This has never been clearer than the quickness by which people begin to say “you got what you voted for” and “fuck the red states” or variations therein. It’s not a new phenomenon by any means. My own social media mentions have been flooded with such replies for over four years.
Here’s the reality: I know more people fighting for what’s good, right, and just in red states than I do in so-called “good” “blue” states. These people are on the ground, tirelessly fighting in real time.
But more, these people and so many others in “bad” “red” states are a product of historical politics that have left them gerrymandered to death. They have been disenfranchised from their democratic right to vote in ways that those living in “good” “blue” states could never imagine.
They deserve our empathy, not our wrath. Our wrath needs to be pointed and direct at those in positions of power who have lied to those who haven’t had the same privileges they have. People vote against their interests because they’ve been sold lies and half-truths. They vote against their interests because they haven’t had the privilege of an expensive education and/or the education they did receive was underfunded and poor–thanks to their very disenfranchisement. There is a reason why the current administration desires to eradicate education around mis- and dis- information.
America’s history is one of historical erasure. Never forget that following the Civil War, groups of women took it upon themselves to purge actual history in public schools; it’s the same movement happening now, just with a different name and different array of mostly-white faces. One reason we can’t possibly comprehend the impact of what’s happening is because we’ve been lied to about how this has been the entire foundation of this country. Reckoning with America’s fetishization of the lies it tells itself is why so many of us are feeling so many things at once and seeing it as being unable to feel anything at all. It is also why we believe every move by this administration is intended to distract from another. (Don’t give them more credit than they deserve–they’re just doing a whole lot of things at once and hoping some, if not all, of the things stick).
So many people’s hearts need to make more room, and at the same time, so many of us have hearts so big that we cannot comprehend just how much capacity there truly is.
All of this is in conversation with the kinds of books and stories being ripped from public institutions of democracy: those focused on social emotional learning. Those with people who are different than us, whose lives and stories are entangled with barriers that we could never in a million years comprehend if we ourselves haven’t been there. The more those stories are erased, the smaller our hearts become. The more we read, share, and understand the lessons from those stories, the less we’re eager to situate ourselves in a position of being “better than.”
There are no red states and there are no blue states. There are states where people have had more rights and privileges and states where those with power have done everything with that power to retain it.
This us vs. them mentality, this “we’re fucked” mentality–both are exactly what this administration wants. The more we divide ourselves, the less capacity we have for empathy, community, and care.
I am going to keep fighting, as is every other person who has been fighting. None of us are giving up because this isn’t about the individual battles. It’s about the future we can imagine and that future is limitless. Boundless. If we were to give up at the loss of one thing, it’d be giving up on everything. That doesn’t make the fight easier, but it makes the fight more vital.
We have to care about each other. We have to see what’s happening not as who gets what, but rather, who is suffering as a result of a few billionaires getting a tax break?
The answer is every single one of us.
I want every person in this country to have a right to a good, robust, honest public education. I want every person in this country to have access to a wide array of literature and curriculum and educators and community members who care about truth, who care about liberty, and who care about the future being brighter than we can even imagine. I don’t see myself as an optimist, but I cannot imagine operating in this world without a sense of hope about what we can make. About what so many of us are actively making through the work we’re doing.
We aren’t fucked.
We aren’t doomed.
This work isn’t over.
I saw more people making phone calls, sending emails, and showing up to political offices in the last couple of weeks than I have in years. People are making moves and putting themselves out there in ways that they could never have imagined before, and we need to be cheering these efforts on, not cutting them down.
In Matthew Desmond’s powerful book Poverty, By America, he writes about how America’s divide between the wealthy and everyone else is unimaginable, even if we’ve been sold a lie that we all have the potential to be rich (we don’t). One section of the book talks about policies that happened during COVID and their lingering impacts at the time of the book’s early 2023 publication.
A bipartisan bill helped alleviate evictions during COVID. It was a pretty unprecedented piece of legislation and one that was tremendously effective. But it was allowed to expire, returning us once again to a country that puts the rights of landlords above those of tenants.
Desmond points to a lack of support of this bill by the people as one of the big reasons it didn’t continue. People didn’t notice it was happening, and so, they didn’t write to their representatives about how important and crucial such legislation was. As a result, lawmakers didn’t fight harder for it because they didn’t see that people noticed or cared.
People are on the ground. People are working hard. People care. We need to keep inviting others to join in the work, in whatever way they can, and that includes asking them to speak loudly and positively about the work being done.
I want to end this with a personal experience I had last week.
After putting together the Books Unbanned booth at the American Library Association conference last week, I decided I’d attend one event. It was a screening for the film The Librarians. I knew so many folks in the film, and I knew it would be the one place where I could meet so many people I’ve only ever worked or talked with online.
The film concludes with a panel Q+A session with folks from the film. At ALA, this was several folks whose stories were featured. When the last audience member heard from the cast, Amanda Jones took the microphone and did something I could never have anticipated or expected: she thanked me. She, who has fought so tirelessly for her community and beyond, who has battled nonstop harassment, defamation, and worse, took the opportunity on stage to thank me for my work. It brought tears to my eyes.
But those weren’t tears from what she was saying. They were tears because in that moment, I realized how many people on that stage and in that audience trusted me with their stories. It was Amanda, and it was Gavin, and it was Brooky, and it was Martha.
These four people became some of the fiercest fighters for intellectual freedom, and they were loud about their work, even when it was unpopular. Even when the odds were stacked against them. Even when it made them targets. Even when people kept saying to them again and again that “we’re fucked.” Even when people said to them things about being in a red state (Amanda) or being in a blue state (Gavin and Brooky and Martha). The way my heart grew and still feels such grandness cannot be described in words.
I’m going to keep fighting for them, as well as for everyone else who puts one foot in front of the other, day in and day out. Their stories and this moment in history aren’t done. They are not closed.
The page isn’t turned, and the book isn’t closed. There are chapters still being written, chapters still to be written, and people who are eager to be brought into the story to help make it what we all deserve.
Note: One of the things I really want to talk about right now is what we can do right now to potentially save the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS). I’ll do that in the new week over at Book Riot, since we do have an opportunity to make an impact.