Looking for the Light
A recent sunrise from our back deck; the rising-gathering of all our imaginings lighting a new day.
Not to get all teacher-y on you, but how’s your summer assignment going?
Remember the Imagination Homework I handed out last month in a post called How to Be More Like the Squash Plant? 🤓📝
I invoked those conniving crafters of race and white supremacy and challenged us to beat them at their own game. We do this by harnessing our Imagination for Good. We dream up a paradigm that values each human life as equal and precious. We foster creativity and rethink our belief systems and institutions. We imagine programs that level the playing field, and we shepherd them into existence. We recognize that our personal well-being is linked with that of all other creatures and the earth, and then act accordingly. You know — small stuff like that. 😉
“Keep Portland Weird” Took On a Whole New Meaning Last Month
This work feels even more urgent than it did a month ago. Non-violent Black Lives Matter protests are still occurring nightly in Portland, demanding structural changes at every level. Thankfully, the agents you saw on the news with teargas and rubber bullets have vacated the federal building and left town. Due to their nightly appearances on that downtown block for those few weeks, many more white people experienced being in the line of fire for the first time — something communities of color are all too familiar with. Moms and dads, military vets, and even right-wing extremists joined the demonstrations. All were targeted, whether they were protesting in support of Black lives, trying to shield BLM protesters, or standing too close to the few young white throwers of bottles and firecrackers whose actions detracted from the message about Black lives and stole headlines. It was confusing and alarming and complicated.
As a result of that experience and many others over the past few years, “how a country slips into fascism” is no longer simply a subject for historians. We discuss it almost daily around here. (You, too? If not, you might start.) And as a left-leaning artist with a public-facing platform, smallish as it is, I’ve now spent time contemplating what could happen to me if our hanging-by-a-thread “democracy” doesn’t make it out of the next election.
It’s been an interesting month. Even though I tend toward optimism, sometimes I wobble. So the words below helped.
“What if this is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb?”
In the expectant spirit of birthing a better world into existence, here’s round two of our homework.
Imagination Exercises, Level Two
Last month my challenges were general: “Imagine better things.” This month I have three specific challenges for you. Choose the one that resonates, or experiment with all three. Here are the categories:
Acknowledge Whose Land You Occupy
Find the Spark of Divinity
Measure Less, Feel More
Category One: Land Acknowledgment
While reckoning with what our country has done to Black bodies, we have to also comprehend that we systematically stole land from the people who were here, while decimating their populations. There’s no polite way to say it. That’s what happened.
One small gesture of respect, which is now widely practiced in Canada, New Zealand, and Australia (other places where Europeans stole land and decimated inhabitants) is land acknowledgment. Here’s how one group describes the practice:
“Acknowledgment is a simple, powerful way of showing respect and a step toward correcting the stories and practices that erase Indigenous people’s history and culture and toward inviting and honoring the truth. Imagine this practice widely adopted: imagine cultural venues, classrooms, conference settings, places of worship, sports stadiums, and town halls, acknowledging traditional lands. Millions would be exposed—many for the first time—to the names of the traditional Indigenous inhabitants of the lands they are on, inspiring them to ongoing awareness and action. ”
I may have mentioned the U.S. Department of Arts & Culture in a previous post. It’s not a “real” government department yet, but I love that they chose to name it as if it were. I also love how often they use the word “imagine” on their site.
Last year I added this sentence to All Hands Art’s web page describing my art space: “The Studio stands on the traditional land of the Chinook-speaking Clackamas and Cowlitz people. We recognize their stewardship of this land, past, present and future, which is also known as NE Portland’s Alberta Arts District.”
I’m not claiming to have done it perfectly, but it’s a start. I’d like to add that language to the introduction of my podcast episodes as well. That’s one of my challenges to myself.
You can read about land acknowledgment on this website, and even download a guide to walk you through it. To learn about which indigenous peoples were — and are! — in your specific area, you can type your address into this interactive map.
Challenge: Do you lead meetings or host public events? Educate yourself, then imagine ways you can begin acknowledging the indigenous history of your area.
Category Two: Find the Spark of Dignity
Q: What do playground bullies, dictators, and liberals have in common?
A: They know how to dehumanize people they don’t like.
We all do it, whether with players and fans of the rival sports team or people from the other political party. It starts with name-calling, and it’s a good idea to nip this habit in the bud.
We humans are wired to take care of each other. It’s unnatural to harm another human, so in order to do it, you first have to see them as non-human or less-than-human. Here’s a not-so-fun-fact that illustrates the point: This is why border patrol agents were brought to Portland to do the Administration’s dirty work. They’d already been trained to see the foreigners at the border as less than human, and had normalized using force against those “outsiders.” According to Madeleine Albright (who wrote a book called “Fascism” so she knows a thing or two), moving agents from the border to cities in the interior is one step in the process toward totalitarianism. Agents’ dehumanizing training at the border helps them inflict harm on their fellow citizens — those targeted as “other” — with less difficulty.
Confessions of a Name-Caller
I participated in the Oakland Teacher’s Strike of 1996, which lasted more than five weeks. It was partly empowering and unifying (on one side), but also contentious and ugly. My school was divided, with almost half the teachers choosing to cross the picket line to teach and get paid, and a bit more than half picketing outside the building each morning, then teaching alternative “strike schools” in the neighborhood for free. Some families sent their kids to regular school, some sent them to our strike school, and others kept their kids home.
There’s a name for workers who cross the picket line, and it’s not complimentary. They’re called Scabs.
Some of our colleagues — many of whom we’d been friendly with before the strike — became “scabs” to us strikers. That made it easier to chant-shout things at them on their way in and out of the school, to block or surround their cars as they left, and to feel contempt for them. While we did not physically harm them, and they did not physically harm us, damage was done. After the strike ended, the resentment on both sides lived on for several years.
When I look back, I’m proud that I made sacrifices so that my fellow teachers and I could have our voices heard and demand better treatment. I’m not proud of some of the things I yelled at my colleagues.
Challenge: To honor the memory and lifelong work of John Lewis, I encourage you to look for the spark of divinity — to find the humanity — in the person or group of people you most despise. (Hint: They’re probably on the news each night.) Catch yourself when you’re tempted to call them names. Imagine what it’s like to be in their shoes. I don’t know how we can expect to ever heal this nation without this type of grace.
For inspiration (because it’s hard!) look up videos of John Lewis discussing his training in non-violence during the Civil Rights Movement, or watch Valarie Kaur’s TedTalk about Revolutionary Love. Those people have suffered so much more than me, and yet they were able to muster love under immense pressure.
Category Three: Measure Less, Feel More
Systems of abuse (like white supremacy and fascism) are about power and control over other people. Again, this goes against our natural wiring, so to pull it off, aside from the dehumanizing we mentioned before, there needs to be a disconnection with one’s own body. A good abuser needs to learn not to feel things because those pesky, soft, weak feelings are going to hinder his ability to inflict harm and maintain control. Denying the wisdom of nature in any form is a useful strategy for abusers.
We can counter that type of system and restore balance by revering nature. Tuning into our body’s needs and rhythms helps us recall the rhythms of nature, which we are, of course, a part of.
Challenge: The clock can be our practice “tyrant” for this exercise. Think of one way you can release yourself from the oppression of time during your day or week, month or year, and be guided by your body’s innate wisdom instead.
For example, you might try:
waking up naturally, without an alarm
eating only when you feel hungry, not when the clock tells you to
exercising — going for a walk or run — until your body feels like it’s ready to stop, rather than for a certain number of minutes or miles
not weighing yourself for a few months, focusing instead on how healthy your body feels on the inside
altering your habits according to the energy of each season (e.g. winter is great for resting and looking inward; spring is ripe for starting new things)
Let’s Keep Naming It and Supporting Each Other to Dismantle It
Disconnecting ourselves from a system we were born into, like white supremacy, is not easy. We have to keep talking openly about its characteristics so that we can see more clearly this thing we are attempting to dismantle. Like shame and mildew, white supremacy cannot survive for long in sunlight. Invisibility has been its genius and lifeblood. It’s survived for 450 years by making us believe that the prosperity of white people is purely the result of our hard work and has no connection to others’ despair. It denies any causal relationship.
Now that we know better, let’s feel appropriately horrified at our own ignorance, then get to work. We can imagine our way out of it, into something better. Every small change makes a difference, and there’s no time to waste.
What About You?
Thanks to the people who wrote last time to tell me about your imaginings! I love to hear whether, and how, my words land. You can use the comment section below (I dare you, brave soul!) or send me an email. Go forth, ye warrior for peace. ❤️