Every week, I fall a bit more in love with strangers

One truth I'm holding (alongside the other ones)

Last week, I got an email from my sister-in-law in D.C. She wanted our family to know how she spent her Wednesday—how she visited over fifty different Senators’ offices, a letter from sixty PTAs in tow. She talked about the collective fear and anger of D.C. parents as they wrestled with how little Congress cared about their kids. She talked about which Senator’s offices were most responsive, which had the best snacks, which ones filled her with a bit of hope that our elected representatives might still give a damn. That night, she brought home Georgia peanuts and Idaho yogurt and North Carolina sweet potato chips to my niece. It was a day well spent. 

I read my sister-in-law’s letter with pride— at her energy, tenacity and love not just for my niece but a city full of kids. But also, oh God, I ached. I hated that D.C. parents had to schlep around the U.S. Capitol to save their kids’ schools. I took that grief and added it to the pile. You all have a pile, no doubt. There was much to be heartbroken over last week. There was malevolence and cowardice from so many powerful people. There were too many reminders that there are two political movements in America, and that the callous one is trying with all their might to keep the loving one at bay. It was easy to lose count of all of the villains in our midst.

The next day, I got another email. This one was from another kind-hearted, tenacious Washingtonian, a woman who had participated in a recent Barnraisers class. Her story ran parallel to my sister-in-law’s. She told me about how, when news that Congress had defunded D.C. spread through town, a dinner with friends quickly pivoted to an ad-hoc organizing meeting. She talked about how she plugged into an incredible organization called Free D.C., how she too helped coordinate the PTA letters and spent a day on the Hill. She talked about making new connections with other heartbroken strangers, about the coffee date set up with the German woman who posted this message to the activist group text.

Like the German stranger to whom I am now spiritually connected, I too am a zweckoptimismustist at heart. My optimism stems not from the delusion that all our efforts will result in victories. Right now, it looks like the Hill-hoofing Washingtonians may have staved off disaster. The Senate voted to restore the funding that the House had stripped. That victory is written in pencil, though. The House could and very well might reverse it. 

If they do, however, they won’t fully erase the hope that was built the hard way this past week in D.C. That hope came from organizers who’ve been seeding a movement for decades, but who welcomed an influx of new activists with open arms. It came from neighbors finding each other in a moment of sorrow and panic. It came from the fact that— after a week of frenzied, exhausting action— the Free D.C. volunteers gathered for a community meal on Sunday.

Because of the work that I do— writing these essays, hosting trainings and generally trying to offer a degree of buoyancy to caring people who feel like they’re drowning— I am in the enviable position of having friends, strangers and strangers-turned-friends email and text me multiple times a day. At times, the messages are expressions of despair and overwhelm. Though I wish that the individuals on the other side of those missives weren’t hurting, being trusted with their grief is a gift.

Increasingly, though, I am getting messages like the ones I received from D.C. I’ve heard from people who’ve never protested before but who now spend their Saturdays outside of Tesla dealerships. I’ve heard from the founders of neighborhood tool shares and “who needs help?” potlucks. I’ve heard about newly minted town hall meeting disruptors and Know Your Rights clinic facilitators. I’ve heard from teachers finding new ways to proclaim “everyone is welcome here.” I’ve heard from veteran activists trying to hold legacy organizations together. I’ve heard from people who haven’t yet found the group that they wish existed— who want neighbors to care for their kids so that they can attend candidate trainings, or who wish that there was a protest that made space for their disabilities— but who have taken the hard step of naming, for their friends and family, that they are searching. 

I’ve heard from people who are so apoplectic at Democratic leadership that they’re running for office. I’ve heard dispatches from Indivisible chapters and Democratic Socialists, from feminist sewing circles and trans affirming churches. I’ve heard from Idahoans fighting (successfully) to stop cuts to Medicaid and New Yorkers rallying (oh God I hope successfully) to bring Mahmoud Khalil home.

Some of the messages are about large mobilizations. The other week, I received multiple dispatches from my hometown of Missoula, Montana. Apparently, the recent rally for public lands was the biggest protest anybody could remember. I hear about more and more events like that, about shadow town halls for cowardly Congresspeople that attract overflow crowds.

Other times, I hear about quiet, singular acts of defiance. A month ago, I mentioned that I made a bunch of stickers with a message about how “Trump and Musk don’t care about you.” I offered to send them to anybody who wanted one. Hundreds responded, which means that I’m still mailing them off, but every day now I get a new message with a picture. There they are, those stickers, out in the world: in the Chicago Loop, on a rural Florida road, on a trash can outside a Walmart in Vancouver, Washington.

My friends, I assume that you are overwhelmed right now— perhaps with fear, perhaps with anger, perhaps with sadness. If those are the emotions that are propelling you forward, if it is grief that helps you show up for your neighbors, or rage that brings you out to the protest, know that I’m not here to offer any counterpoints. You are correct. It is so bad. We are being attacked and abandoned at the same time.

All I will say is that when I hold up the awful reality of this moment next to the hope of those tiny reminders that we are trying, oh God we are trying, the prevailing emotion I am left with is love.

I am falling in love with you all.

That sounds like rhetorical puffery, but I mean it quite sincerely. I am falling in love with the first-time activists and the long-term tenders of fires. I am falling in love with the angry yellers and the tender care-givers and the people who don’t know what the hell they’re doing yet but are tentatively raising their hands.

I love you all— not in spite of but because care and solidarity are hard to come by these days. You are trying, my friends. You are trying even though the administration has vowed to punish their enemies. You are trying even though there is no real opposition party and all of the teachers at my kids’ public schools are a million times braver and more creative than the Senate majority leader. You are trying even though your lives are likely not set up for the act of trying. You were already too busy, too overwhelmed with demands on your time, long before you were asked to also resist the autocrats. You are trying even though we were told for months that there was no point in opposition. The resistance was passé. Wokeness was dead. Trump had a mandate. You are trying, because you didn’t listen. Thank God you didn’t listen.

I’m not in love with you all because you are heroes. I don’t want any heroes right now. Yes, I wish that the people we elected to protect basic human rights and dignity would do their job, but we don’t need them. We need each other. Everything we wish was a reality right now— a mass protest movement, true networks of care and protection, a dramatically different left wing political party— is ours to create. Yes, sadly, all of those things will take time, effort and bravery. And yes, those are in short supply right now. But I crave them so much that when I see evidence of you all putting the building blocks together, I am filled with an immensity of gratitude that, once again, can only be described as love.

I love you all even more than I hate authoritarianism. I love you all even more than I fear what they might do to us. I love you even more than I am heartbroken by the leaders who have let us down.

I love everything that you’re doing.

I love everything that you’re doing, and I’m so glad you haven’t given up.

I love everything that you’re doing, but I know how hard it is to keep the faith.

I love everything you’re doing, which is why I promise to stay by your side, to do what I can to make showing up a little easier, to keep holding out my hand in hope that you might grab it.

I love everything you’re doing, and I love you.

More and more every week.

End notes:

1. Stay tuned! An announcement about new Barnraisers Project classes (one of the key ways I try to keep my hand outstretched) will be coming soon. If you’re on the interest list, you’ll know as soon as I open them up. Jeez these have been fun.

2. I still have a few stickers left, if you’d like one. They’re free as long as you promise to put them up in public, ideally in a place where everybody doesn’t already agree with you. I’ll probably doing some different projects in the near future, but first I need to get all these out (if you’re waiting for yours, they’re coming soon).

3. Speaking of expressions of love (and all these emails I’ve received) my goal for this week is to reply to most of them, so if you’re waiting for a response from me, I have not forgotten. I promise.

4. I may be writing a full essay with more reflections to this effect, but my book, The Right Kind of White, is one year old and is now out in paperback (well, it will be out tomorrow, the 19th, but you get the point)! It has been a lovely little gift having this book in the world. Like most books, it was neither a runaway bestseller nor a buzzy award winner, but what it is and has been (and still will be?) has been quite nice, as it turns out. It was and is a book about my own life, offered because I have the sense that my story offers something interesting and helpful for all of us in this moment. How wonderful it’s been to have others reach out to it in return (in so many ways), and what a treat that it gets to keep living out in the world (now in an updated form— I added an afterword and fixed a few things that were bugging me). You all, I got to write a book! About community, ego, race, gender and half-a-life spent saying I wanted to help build a better world but getting in my own way! I still can’t quite believe it.

5. Speaking of things that fill me with gratitude, thank you for supporting this newsletter, my work with Barnraisers, and all the ways we’re trying to be useful for one another. I wish we weren’t in this moment, but if we are I appreciate so much the chance to be connected with others who have big, broken, striving hearts.

6. You all, I hummed the hell out of this song as I wrote this essay. Even if you didn’t attend a Quaker college whose choir sang it, without fail, at every performance, I think you’ll understand why.

The full song of the week playlist is on Apple Music and Spotify.