When the soldiers come to your town, this is what I'll say about you

I won't just talk about how you don't deserve this (because of course you don't deserve this)

Mural by Mauricio Ramirez, Pilsen, Chicago

Every place is easy to love, because every place is home to people worth loving. I love Chicago and Portland, just as I love Los Angeles and Washington D.C.. just as I will love the next city where the Trump administration will deploy its masked men and gun thugs.

I could tell you why I love those cities, about lakes and rivers and people who I miss dearly. I could tell you how I used to live in Chicago, how I worked with refugees and immigrants there who were, in so many ways, the best of us. I could tell you that when you grow up in Missoula, Montana, 80% of the people you most admire move to Multnomah County and, once there, create beautiful things. I could tell you about my nephews (tall and brilliant), about lifelong friends (hilarious and full of grace), about so many people I adore.

That’s beside the point. Or it should be. A city’s safety from federal assault shouldn’t be dependent on whether we can marshal a sufficient quantity of assurances about how “it’s a nice place, actually, nothing like they say on Fox News.” We shouldn’t be stuck in the same rhetorical cycle every time a new city is placed in Trump’s crosshairs. You are familiar with this loop, I assume. The President of the United States spouts off something grandiose and untethered from reality. Portland is “war ravaged.” Chicago is a “death trap.” Washington D.C. is more dangerous than Afghanistan. Los Angeles needs to be “liberated” from “animals.” We then reply in turn. “But those places have parks, and brunch. They are not war zones, or they weren’t, at least, until the troops came in.” The loop is not our fault, mind you. How can we not respond? How can we not muster every resource at our disposal to keep the troops at bay? When we feel most hopeless, how can we avoid pointing out, plaintively, that these places have geese and espresso?

I don’t begrudge these responses. If your city is under siege by your own government, the last thing you need is a lecture. When masked men with guns occupy apartment blocks, when they fire tear gas canisters and bullets (sometimes rubber, sometimes lead) onto streets where children play, when entire municipalities are deemed to be “enemies, domestic,” you shouldn’t be tsked tsked by some stranger with a keyboard.

I understand, because if and when the gun thugs come to my city, I will of course want to yell out BUT WE ARE HUMAN. Look at us play. Look at us go about our lives. Look at us not be…

Not be what?

That’s where I struggle, you see. Because again, this is not our fault, but when we say “you can not do this, President Trump, we were not a war zone before your troops came, we were peaceful and docile and brunching” we are also saying something else. We are insinuating that some places are war zones, not just temporally but ontologically.

Now, I trust our hearts. I know we don’t mean to infer that other places deserve this treatment. But the question still hangs in the air. What about the places where you can’t stage a tranquil picture? Gaza and Sudan, of course, and the hundreds of peoples’ homes where suffering has been deemed inevitable, but also the corners of “our cities” far removed from boutiques and brunch. The corners where gunshots ring out with regularity. The corners where our neighbors sleep on the streets. The corners that don’t show up on any “one perfect weekend in….” itineraries.

There’s another layer there. It’s been gnawing at me, again not as a judgment, but as a dilemma worth naming. Because let’s say that the troops did come to my town, and I were to show you pictures of my life at its most privileged and pacific— playgrounds and pastries, brewpubs and ball games. It would beg questions, I hope. About whether this city treats all of my neighbors as well as it treats me. About whether I am bothered by it all.

In case it’s not clear, I am working all this out in real time. We all are. There is no blueprint for living in an era of little Reichstag fires everywhere. But here is where I am landing (with love).

Please, stick up for your home town however you see fit, but know that what I need to hear most isn’t an assurance that your city isn’t a hellhole. I don’t need the reminder that there are parts of your town where young professionals work in open concept offices and flirt with each other at Edison bulbed bars, where kids play everybody’s it tag and teens beg their parents to let them stay out late. I don’t need to know that you can run along your city’s waterfront, or enjoy a meal at the kind of restaurant where the waiter spends ten minutes describing the concept of small plates.

What I need to know, desperately in fact, is how much you care. Because it is true. Because it will make me braver as I fight with and for you. Because it will remind your neighbors that they care as well. Because the opposite of fascism isn’t a line for brunch, it’s thousands of neighbors who aren’t quite sure what being in the streets together will accomplish, but who couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.

I do love Portland and Chicago. For many reasons, but most of all for the same reason I love every place. Because you care so much, you Chicagoans and Portlanders. Not perfectly, of course. Not without lapses. And not, one could argue, in large and consistent enough quantities to stitch together a broken world. You are not exceptional; you are saddled with the same limitations of timidity and self centeredness as the rest of us. But I know you are out there, hearts on fire. I know you doubt your numbers, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t actually enough of you. I know that many of you are scared and confused and exhausted and it is not at all clear what to do or how to do it and that, my friends, is all the more reason to show your care in whatever way you see fit, first whispering, then shouting. We love each other. We don’t know how to love each other all the time. But we are trying.

Please don’t worry about being called performative. Care in public. Prove to your neighbors that they too can care in public. Show the regime and their gun thugs that we aren’t going to stop caring in public (not in your city means not in my city). Now is not the time to bemoan that you should have cared more, sooner. Now is not the time to win cool cynical Internet points by rolling your eyes at your neighbors’ supposed fecklessness. I don’t care what you think of other people’s “in this house…” yard signs. Your neighbors are getting thrown in unmarked vans. Just care. Out loud.

It is not hard to see the care, if you are looking for it. This was a horrific weekend in Chicago. The agents of terror were on a rampage all over the city. But everywhere they went, so too were neighbors’ hearts exploding for one another. Love was in the streets. In the gas station attendant aiding tear-gassed protestors. In the neighbors who banded together to prevent a kidnapping in West Lawn. In the ad hoc networks of educators and caregivers walking other people’s children to school because their parents are too afraid to leave the house. In the protestors who keep showing up at the Broadview Detention Center, despite the assaults, despite the tear gas, despite the declaration of war. In the community pillars like the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and Organized Communities Against Deportations, providing centralized rapid response services and coordinating neighborhood-based support networks.

You care, Chicagoans. You care so much. You cared before the troops came, and you are caring more and more every day. We need your care. We are grateful for your care. It is inspiring us, truly. I hope you feel our gratitude. I hope you know that we mean it when we ask how we can help.

You too are full of people who care, Portland. And I hope to God that you won’t be called to care in the face of even more soldiers and thugs. I hope that you can focus your care on your neighbors who most deserve to be enveloped in love and support. I hope that you join activists in your community who host free breakfasts in the park or who help your most unfairly villainized neighbors find a warm shower, a safe place to sleep and a dignified opportunity to speak their minds. I hope you help the carers as they organize to repatriate land, protect preschool for all from billionaire attacks, and stand with migrants, today and every day.

You don’t have to prove to me that your city shouldn’t be a war zone. No place should be a war zone. Whatever the President says, that’s not why you were targeted. The troops are there to make you give up. They are there to convince the rest of us that you are our enemy. They are there because fascism wins when you and your neighbors are reduced to pitiable abstraction. But it won’t work. Not because your parks are pristine or your affluent areas are teeming with monied energy. But because of your hearts. The size of them. The fight in them. The power of them, beating together, for neighbors you know and strangers you’ll never meet.

I am writing this today for Portland and Chicago. I hope I won’t ever write it for your town. But if I have to, I will. Because your place, too, is home to hearts on fire. Millions of them. Most of all yours.

End notes:

1. Keep your eyes peeled for an extremely powerful guest essay by

   Sara
   Sadek of
   Folkweaver
   later this week. I’m so excited to get to share this with you.

2. Last week I told you a very boring story about how the other half of my job (the Barnraisers Project, where I run organizing trainings) had to switch payment processors for donations, which meant that we lost all our recurring contributions (at least for now). In response, a ton of you responded by upgrading to a paid subscription. I am immensely grateful, and hope I can show you that gratitude in practice. If you too want to help out, thank you. Every contribution is immensely helpful in keeping this little ship floating.

3. You know how, for the last couple weeks, I have said that I will be announcing the dates/enrollment instructions for new Barnraisers classes? Well, that announcement will come next week (and the courses themselves will be in November). Two hour classes. Virtual and free. About how to actually build community. Very fun. Sign up for the interest list here.

4. I am very grateful to many Chicago and Portland friends for teaching me about the great work happening in your cities. I am compiling recommendations (including the ones I linked to above) in this document. If you’d like to suggest an addition, please just email me and I’ll add it in. And special thanks to Portlanders extraordinaire

   Satya Doyle Byock
   and Lydia Kiesling for their recs (do you already read their writing? Oh my goodness, you should). Thanks, pals. And Chicagoans, I know that there are so many organizations to add in on your end— I focused in the short term on folks who are responding to the current crisis.

5. An update on This Week in Breeders, the podcast I co-host with the incredibly charming and wise

   Sarah Wheeler
   : Last week, I told you that Sarah’s mom might be our only listener, but I can now confirm that my mom listens too and assures me that she likes it. Can both our moms be wrong? Why don’t you be the judge. We officially have two episodes out in the world— our first public one and our first paid subscriber bonus. Did you know that White Pages subscribers get a discount on a subscription (so too do subscribers Sarah’s newsletter Momspreading). Pretty good deal, if you ask me.

6. As it turns out, the potlucks hats are very popular! I am not surprised. And also, because (a). I do want more of these out in the world and (b). I am a softy, I have responded to this demand by ordering more. I promise this offer won’t available be in perpetuity (usually it’ll require a larger donation, so that I’m not going broke on merch), but for the next week or so, if you are a new paid subscriber and you really want a hat,I make no promises but if I still have enough left over I’ll send you one. Just toss me an email with your address (and maybe your favorite potluck dish- I’m always looking for new ideas).

   garrettbucks

   

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