anyone whose heart still works.
a note on ICE & resistance + reading recs, a movie review, & more
Dear friends,
This week I recovered from jet lag, recovered from a sinus infection, and didn’t recover from the state terror I witnessed on my screen. Most days were filled with unhealthy amounts of phone time and compulsively checking Signal threads, some with folks on the ground in Minneapolis, others with my neighbors gearing up for the likelihood of increased ICE presence in Cleveland.
It’s important to remember that the state kills people everyday; Renee Nicole Good is one of many people ICE has murdered, and one of even more that the broader state has (whether by police or inaccessible medical care or any number of deadly side effects of poverty). But it makes sense that the past week left most of us in a heightened state of distress and urgency—it is meaningful that a real-time video of an execution still has the ability to fuck up our nervous systems. There are many people and institutions who would benefit from our numbness, or our avoidance. These same people and institutions also benefit when the urgency hurls us into burnout. Learning the rhythms of liberation work is a lifelong process, and when the stakes are life and death (the stakes are always life and death), it is understandable that we will never get it exactly right.
I had a week of urgency and Signal alerts and then freeze and then ‘what can i do besides Venmo, i guess i will venmo,’ and then read and read, and then avoid with substantive things (art) or avoid with slop (scrolling), but then yesterday I unfroze through real life connection. I hosted a meeting at my house to plan for the equinox celebration at our local radical social center and I got to be in a room with people who care deeply, who I see show up every day in big and small ways. It was like medicine to be in that room, to remember all the roles and layers and moments of struggle—to remember that struggle is sometimes burning death squad vehicles in righteous rage, and struggle is sometimes brainstorming kid-friendly crafts to include at the community gathering. Being involved in movement work is like this: soberly confronting the most extreme situations of state violence, letting our hearts break and our rage boil, getting to work in the streets and in our meeting spaces, and then…..stitching back together. Breaking bread and planting seeds and laughing hard, and letting those moments of ordinary and indispensable connection nourish us for the long haul.
I used to write things about ‘movement work’ and know that only a small portion of people would see themselves in it. Worlds of activism and organizing have often been internally and externally branded as exclusive; but my gut tells me that the majority of you reading this could consider yourself part of the movement now. The streets are full of unlikely agitators, first-time protestors, really anyone whose heart still works. Anyone whose heart still works—who knows none of this is okay— is on the side of liberation now. And there are still more of us than there are of them.
***
Below, some more anti-ICE related reading (above the paywall), a podcast rec, an anti-capitalist horror novella worth a pre-order; a new movie that felt like the best of indie 90s rom-dramedies; some late 2000s music nostalgia; and other things that got me through the week.
love & solidarity,
raechel
Reading.
An overview of the shifting nature of the Minneapolis rapid response network that’s been mobilized to fight ICE, and a great reminder that we can’t just copy models of response to the needs of the particularities of our local communities.
Danez Smith writes an elegy to Renee Nicole Good.
Various newsletter writers whose reflections and insights have felt grounding in response to this acute moment of horror: Margaret Killjoy, Nic Antoinette, Amanda Montei, Ann Friedman who handed the newsletter over to Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg, and Sara Thankam Mathews’ smart and moving “snuff film political economy.”
