everywhere and all the time

radical love letter #45

Dear ones, 

Last weekend, majestic redwood trees burned in California, and after another devastating police shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin, cop cars did too. After months of protesting in the streets, we’ve yet to abolish the police. Schools are being forced to reopen and Covid cases are rising again. I did a search for “apocalyptic” in the New York Times archives from March 2020-August 2020 and got more hits than I could count. There is a lot to be afraid of, there is so much heartbreak. And yet through all of this, I have felt, in many ways, more hopeful than ever; I have found myself insisting on silver linings. And although sometimes this can veer toward the realm of naïveté, I mostly understand it as a necessary muscle. “Hope,” Mariame Kaba reminds us, “is a discipline.” 

There’s an oft-quoted line from Antonio Gramsci that says we ought to have “pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will.” It’s an idea that has guided me since I first heard it during college in the early 00s, and in times like these, it feels relevant as ever. I’m interested in unpacking the difference between head-in-the-sand “positivity” and revolutionary optimism. I believe that if you’re a Leftist - or even just a person who wants to see a better world - you have to not only have faith, but you have to look for things that affirm it. You have to be constantly searching for examples of when we win, you have to consistently lift up examples of small tastes of freedom. You have to, as adrienne maree brown tells us, “pay attention to what you want to grow.” Gramsci is helpful in this discernment because we can name, intellectually, what is wrong (we can be Sara Ahmed’s “killjoy”), but when it comes to motivating our next move, we must focus not on what is wrong, but what is possible. 

Every loss I described above could be countered with evidence that if this is an apocalypse, it’s one for the better. Alongside these defeats, we’ve seen evidence that even in the US we can enact spontaneous, militant rebellion that puts a stop to “business as usual.” We’ve witnessed a new generation get politicized, a Tik Tok full of Gen Z youth echoing (and innovating) calls for racial, economic, and climate justice. We’ve received proof that the government is indeed capable of paying us to live, even separate from our labor. We’ve experienced deep and profound compassion, we’ve felt a heightened desire to keep each other safe. We’ve gotten closer to our neighbors. We’ve read more history, we’ve all gained more context. “Abolition” has become mainstream, and although it feels far off, in the words of Critical Resistance co-founder, Rose Braz: “a prerequisite to seeking any social change is the naming of it.” (Oh, and those burning redwood trees? They survived it.) 

We’ve adjusted to impossible conditions. And in this act of living in spite of seemingly insurmountable obstacles, we’ve been doing the work of prefiguring a different kind of life; one in which work is not central to our lives, one in which we are reminded of the potency of the connection we all share, one in which we see, clearer than ever, the life and death stakes of our current system. We have gained wisdom and clarity; mass movements have grown stronger, and so have our hearts. 

The reality of any dialectic is that as long as there is resistance so too will there be repression of it, but the flip side of that is that as long as there is oppression there always be a refusal of it. It is Gramsci’s optimism of the will (and my belief in magic) that demands I pay attention to the latter. We need to name what’s wrong, but we also need to urgently and joyfully and persistently name what’s right. We need to offer our attention to what we want to grow, we need to train our brain to notice those moments when we or people we love act as free as we would in a liberated world. We have to notice them, replicate them, encourage them, demand conditions for more of them, until suddenly they are everywhere and all the time. 

This intersection of faith and politics is profoundly important to how I see the world. You’ll notice the combination in my newsletters already: a juxtaposition of “radical” and “love”; a juxtaposition of critical lefty essays and small things that bring me joy (& make me feel free). The only thing that’s missing is a more concerted effort to make this collective. So with that, I conclude this letter with an invitation: 

Reader, will you send me things that bring you joy? Will you tell me what you pay attention to that feels like freedom? 

All you need to do is hit reply and offer as many or as few things as you’d like that fit under the umbrella of (the newly adjusted category of) “Joy & Attention.” (Maybe you can make it a weekly ritual like I do?) It can be explicitly political wins, or it can be small things that just genuinely bring you radical joy. We might draw on Spinoza’s definition of joy as “a greater capacity for action” to help us: what this week has made you feel invigorated to move forward rather than stagnant in despair? I would be so honored to share what the collective wants to see grow. We’d all love to behold it. <3 

love & solidarity, 

raechel 

Read, Watch, Listen. 

Mindy Isser on the value of the post office. Barbara Smith offers concrete steps to get closer to dismantling white supremacy. A wonderful piece from Kim Kelly on mutual aid, worker resistance, and “no new normal.” An interview with Vicky Osterweil on her new book In Defense of Looting. This incredibly powerful speech from Jacob Blake’s sister, Letetra Widman. A beautiful look at the Black Visions collective of Minneapolis. And this heartbreakingly beautiful essay from Andres Aceves on the El Paso shooting and the burden of Brown fatherhood: “The power of bigotry is that...it breaks your own singular heart and also hunts down everyone you didn’t even know you loved. It surges through the great big world and also settles across from you on the living room couch. ” 

Mutual Aid. 

Kay Ulanday Barrett is an incredible poet, educator, and activist whose work centers disability, race, queerness, (and more). I’ve been a fan of (& inspired by) their work for years. Kay just recently found out that they have to have emergency surgery and is now facing scary medical procedures (extra scary for a brown, trans person), and massive expenses. Please consider donating to Kay’s surgery fund to help ease a bit of the financial burden they’re facing. 

Joy & Attention.

Bike rides. Friend/family visits (even when it’s visits because of heartbreak, and even when we spend six of our hours together on the lawn of the emergency vet clinic waiting to get his pup stitched up). Virtual book club with my old Boston loves. The new Bright Eyes, my god. Melissa Favelino’s Tomboyland. The aforementioned profile of the Black Visions Collective (and the pics of them that are so so Minneapolis <3). Resistance in the streets of Kenosha. Walks. Podcasts. Podcasts on walks. A very good vegan chocolate chip cookie. The kitties. Securing our apartment in Cleveland! Kevin Latimer’s ZOETROPE. Rewatching Schitt’s Creek. Friends’ experiencing success. Getting a message from a vibrator company offering me spon-con merch. Hanging out with super cool, super queer thirteen year olds, and feeling like we are in very good hands. <3 

...& from the collective

(this is where you’ll come in!) 

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