A better future is possible
...if we start telling different stories
Hello, friends. I hope you are taking care of yourself and those around you. Like many of you, I am saddened by the passage of the Big Awful Bill, which will cost many lives, set us back on renewable energy production, and fund even more lawless ICE kidnappings, all while sky-rocketing the deficit. Not only are we handing future generations a planet in climate and ecological crisis, we are handing them a huge debt they can never pay, all so billionaires can have some pocket change.
On the same day, this administration opened a camp in the Florida Everglades with literal cages for human beings. It’s hard to imagine the kind of torture this will be for detainees - sweltering temperatures, being feasted on by mosquitoes, and denied any knowledge of their fate. We treat serial killers better than this. For months, we have been hearing stories of how children have been detained in deplorable conditions, taken away from their families, and denied medical treatment. I have run out of words to describe how this makes me feel, how alienated I feel from my own country when I read these stories.
Today, I am making space for my grief and revulsion. I remind myself that the sadness I feel is not something I should push down or neglect. Instead, I tend to it because allowing myself to become numb or callous will just strengthen the forces in this country that are taking us into a dystopian nightmare.
So, what do we do now? The only thing we can do: we continue to work towards a better vision for the future while doing everything we can to stop tyranny.
Nurturing civil society in any way is a powerful resistance to authoritarianism. This could mean supporting local volunteer groups or associations that perform a public good, or those that simply build community. The impact is the immediate good your hours do, but also the connections and bonds you make with other citizens. And, it is simply good for your mental health.
In On Tyranny, Timothy Snyder says:
“When Americans think of freedom, we usually imagine a contest between a lone individual and a powerful government. We tend to conclude that the individual should be empowered and the government kept at bay. This is all well and good. But one element of freedom is the choice of associates, and one defense of freedom is the activity of groups to sustain their members. This is why we should engage in activities that are of interest to us, our friends, our families. These need not be expressly political: Václav Havel, The Czech dissident thinker, gave the example of brewing good beer.”
For me, it’s gardening. I started with re-wilding my yard, then I expanded my passion into local community gardening. I have been volunteering to help in our local food pantry garden for about three years now. And, considering the attack on food assistance in the Senate bill, supporting food security in my community has taken on special importance.
This year, I started a separate plot to grow food for the food pantry. This new plot is in a newly-opened expansion of our community garden, which is just nearby. The city offered plots for free to food pantry volunteers if they grew food for clients. So I jumped on the chance. It was an opportunity to learn as well as help.
When I first started working the plot, the dirt was hard-packed and dry as a bone. It seemed like the city had scraped off the Bermuda grass that had been growing over it only for a bunch of weeds to spring up in its place. Just loosening up the soil took a long time. Soon enough, though, I was able to work in some fertilizer and plant some beans and okra.
Looking at the health of our democracy, I continue to believe this isn’t the end of the story and the events of this week may produce the burned ground upon which a hundred new ideas can spring up like saplings. I look around at the country we have built over the past two centuries, and I see a thriving civil society, rooted, vibrant communities, and an evolving culture, arts, and music. And… so many stories. I see a collective American story (or stories) that is completely alien to this hurriedly slap-dash and undemocratic affair. And I see many people fighting back with creativity, non-violence, and without fear.
Part of telling a different story is imagining a different future. Here’s a story: the People defeat the MAGA death cult’s dark vision in time. We work together at the local level to put our divides aside and imagine the kind of future we all want. I think most people want to live in thriving communities. They want good education, healthcare, clean air and water, opportunities, protected Constitutional rights, and a livable planet. When we have these things, we have personal liberty, optimism, and hope. In that fertile soil, we can create art, make medical advancements, devise equitable systems that benefit everyone and not just a few. Maybe, in this story, we can imagine looking at young children in our lives with something other than fear for the struggles to which we are condemning them.
Zohran Mamdani, who won the democratic primary for New York Mayor is the kind of leader who has a different vision, a better story for a better future. His climate policies —such as turning newly retrofitted “green” schools into climate resiliency facilities and free busses that cut down on city emissions — are woven into his proposals targeting the affordability crisis in the city. Leaders like Mamdani get it that we either tackle these problems or humanity’s future is seriously in doubt.
For those of us not running for office, every small act, every seed planted, matters. I know it does not always feel like it, but it’s true.
I look at my yard right now and watch as nature takes over and it seems like a metaphor for freedom. These days, I only weed out invasive plants and nothing native from my beds. I came to realize I would need to keep some of the burnweed, fleabane, and common three-seeded mercury. Plants like these are prolific and feed a lot of insects. They also nurture ruined soil, which is plentiful in my yard. I have noticed that, where I have allowed a lot of things to flourish, they seem to thrive better together rather than on their own, in sparsely-populated ground.
It is kind of like I am allowing them to have a party and they are inviting more and more of their friends, who all bring their own drinks and a side dish to share in the collective bounty. This is why I think I have wild tobacco and white vervain coming up like crazy this year. I never planted it. It just came.
Similarly, autocracy creates a monoculture while pluralism and democracy create a diverse and healthy ecosystem.
Ultimately, a starved and irrational worldview should be easy to defeat by the flourishing, proactive, and regenerative energy I continue to see in this community and at the grassroots level throughout the country.
Perhaps they are literally trying to kill us with poison, or starve us of nutrients, air and light, but as anyone with a garden knows, that only works in the short term. We, the People are the weeds and we will keep coming back, again and again, with new life and deep roots.
Keep up the fight!
