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April 11 - April 21, 2021
hold a hard line around the self-care basics of sleep and food.
“When Canada geese are migrating, they take turns at the front of the V—turns being the leader, the weight-carrier, and being the follower, the rester.”
When a goose is injured during migration, two geese will land with it and stay until it is healed or it dies, then catch up with their flock. Flocking is fundamentally about decentralizing the effort for safety and trusting leadership to come from any edge of the flock.
“When Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, almost everything lost its footing. Houses were detached from their foundations, trees and shrubbery were uprooted, sign posts and vehicles floated down the rivers that became of the streets. But amidst the whipping winds and surging water, the oak tree held its ground. How? Instead of digging its roots deep and solitary into the earth, the oak tree grows its roots wide and interlocks with other oak trees in the surrounding area. And you can’t bring down a hundred oak trees bound beneath the soil! How do we survive the unnatural disasters of
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Many trees grow from a common root system underground, are one being reaching up in many bodies—birch, ash, mangrove. Oak trees wrap their roots around each other under the earth. Mycelium, the threading that makes up most mushrooms, communicates between trees, particularly about toxic growth,59 a process called mycorrhiza. Most animals, including humans, sustain parasites and bacteria along and within our bodies, some of which manage waste and keep us well.
Ants tell each other where food is, not hoarding individually, but operating on a principle that the more of them that gather the food, the more food they will have as a community.
“I believe in the honesty of trees. I, like many organizers, have spent a lot of time processing the notion that anything worth its outcome involves everyone’s priorities, desires, visions and perspectives in every phase and around every decision. I look at the anatomy of trees as one of nature’s examples of successful organizing that realizes that our power is in our ability to both be fiercely centered and grounded but also infinitely reaching towards our unique sources of energy, light, and growth. Each tree’s elements are reliant on one another but totally unique in form and function.
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Humans are unique because we compete when it isn’t necessary. We could reason our way to more sustainable processes, but we use our intelligence to outsmart each other. We compete for fun, for ego.
As I have deepened into a regular meditation practice, and regular retreat times, I have grown an appreciation for simplicity, while also understanding that I enjoy it as a visitation—that being in a complex life is actually intriguing and delicious to my system.
“Organizing is to the community what spiritual practice is to the individual.”
Are you actively practicing generosity and vulnerability in order to make the connections between you and others clear, open, available, durable? Generosity here means giving of what you have without strings or expectations attached. Vulnerability means showing your needs.
The easier “being wrong” is for you (the faster you can release your viewpoint), the quicker you can adapt to changing circumstances. Adapting allows you to know and name current needs and capacity, to be in relationship in real time, as opposed to any cycle of wishing and/or resenting what others do or don’t give you.
Just at least consider that the place where you are wrong might be the most fertile ground for connecting with and receiving others.
And in a beautiful twist, being soft in your rightness, as opposed to smashing people with your brilliance, can open others up to whatever wisdom you’ve accumulated.
There is a me that wants to get that sugar devil away from me for good. There is a me that can’t go through physical trauma without ice cream, can’t even imagine that.
Lifting people up based on personality replicates the dynamics of power and hierarchy that movements claim to be dismantling.
“Our survival depends on the relationships we build. Some relationships are utilitarian—and sometimes that’s okay. If I can be useful to others, I should be. I am not important, but what I do—and don’t do—matters. My actions and inactions affect everyone and everything around me. We all play our role. None is more important than the others. But we all affect each other. Some roles and strategies seem insignificant or ineffective, but all together—all our different tactics and strategies and roles can get us what we need to survive, and thrive. But it is not a sure thing. We must fight for it.”
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“Nature has taught me so much about moving with the seasons, that we need to honor times of harvest and times of rest. That the frenetic pace of doing, doing, doing, without being present with each other and the season we are in, what is happening around us, is unnatural and counter to life. So it has made me realize how important community ceremony and celebration is to our efforts to transform the world.” —Brenda Salgado
it is like anything else that traverses time, both fully of another time and fully present in the place when it appears. in the case of grief, the time traveling emotion touches into your sadness over a present day experience of absence, and then drags forward a living satchel of the most tender innocent moments, the smallest memory. or perhaps sucks your heart back in time.
each time-traveling emotion softens me, especially those that return often. it’s so humbling to feel something in spite of logic, time, circumstance, and thinking the feeling is finished. grief is a sharp visitor, her long nails a surprise in my chest. heartbreak is heavy and fireworky, like full-body tears, swollen eyes. joy melts my jaw.
Spell for Grief or Letting Go Adequate tears twisting up directly from the heart and rung out across the vocal chords until only a gasp remains; At least an hour a day spent staring at the truth in numb silence; A teacup of whiskey held with both hands, held still under the whispers of permission from friends who can see right through “ok” and “fine”; An absence of theory; Flight, as necessary; Poetry, your own and others, on precipice, abandonment, nature, and death; Courage to say what has happened, however strangling the words are…and space to not say a word; A brief dance with sugar, to
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There is such urgency in the multitude of crises we face, it can make it hard to remember that in fact it is urgency thinking (urgent constant unsustainable growth) that got us to this point, and that our potential success lies in doing deep, slow, intentional work.
the role of organizers in an ecosystem is to be earthworms, processing and aerating soil, making fertile ground out of the nutrients of sunlight, water, and everything that dies, to nurture the next cycle of life.
Parents don’t know how to raise a child because they read all the books and went to the classes. They figure it out in the dead of night, covered in shit and tears and finally holding the sleeping child, stunned by love.
If you are not going to help birth or raise the child, then shhhhh. You aren’t required to have or even work towards the solution, but if you know a change is needed and your first instinct when you see people trying to figure out how to change and transform is to poop on them, perhaps it is time you just hush your mouth.
We are all learning what it means to be somebodies who shape the future, to operate at the scale of transformation.
“Everything, given time and nurturing, is moving toward balance and healing. The mushrooms that cleaned the land after nuclear trauma…the process of forest growth after a fire…the way our skin heals after a cut…stronger than before. Healing is organic, healing is our birthright.”
“I’ve found that our immediate environments are mirrors for the spiritual turmoil inside of us that we inherited from our forebears. By reclaiming our relationship with the Earth, we can then start healing ourselves and our communities from the inside out and from the ground up.” —Shane Bernardo
Transformative Justice: Acknowledges the reality of state harm. Looks for alternative ways to address/interrupt harm, which do not rely on the state. Relies on organic, creative strategies that are community created and sustained. Transforms the root causes of violence, not only the individual experience.
“Like everything in nature, we all have gifts. Sometimes the gifts don’t seem like gifts, the bee that stings, the stinging nettle that irritates your skin. But when we look at our ecosystem in totality it is clear how each piece is necessary for the whole. It’s a reminder to make room for all of us, in all our fiery, stinging glory.” —Karissa Lewis
Here are a few signs that you may be in an abusive movement, work, family, friendship, or romantic dynamic: you make agreements or set boundaries and they get crossed or broken, and/or you can’t hold the agreements/boundaries yourself. you can’t communicate directly with the person/people about issues or concerns (culture of gossip usually grows here, in the family, office, group). when you raise the issue that agreements or boundaries are not being held, there is no accountability (the other person or people deny the transgression, say they forgot the agreements, say it is your fault,
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I wonder: is this what we’re here for? To cultivate a fear-based adherence to reductive common values? What can this lead to in an imperfect world full of sloppy, complex humans? Is it possible we will call each other out until there’s no one left beside us?
By making these public attacks on each other, we are engaging in the same disposability politics of capitalism and the prison industrial complex that we purport to be against while feeding into state surveillance tactics that are monitoring how we are tearing each other down. Enough is enough y’all. We need each other now more than ever.73
To transform the conditions of the “wrongdoing,” we have to ask ourselves and each other “Why?” Even—especially—when we are scared of the answer.
Demonizing is more efficient than relinquishing our world views, which is why we have slavery, holocausts, lynchings, and witch trials in our short human history.
But if you have each other’s phone numbers, or are within two degrees of social-media connection, and particularly if you are in the small, small percentage of humans trying to change the world—you actually have access to transformative justice in real time. Get mediation support, think of the community, move toward justice.
Real time is slower than social-media time, where everything feels urgent. Real time often includes periods of silence, reflection, growth, space, self-forgiveness, processing with loved ones, rest, and responsibility.
“The plant people have taught me to be generous and not be shy about blossoming, that it is our nature. I think when others see us, it can inspire them to open up and blossom too and we can be a field ablaze with dignity and beauty together.” —Brenda Salgado
In beginning this work, notice who you feel drawn to, and where you find ease. And notice who challenges you, who makes the edges of your ideas grow or fortify. I find that my best work has happened during my most challenging collaborations, because there are actual differences that are converging and creating more space, ways forward that serve more than one worldview.
Imagination is one of the spoils of colonization, which in many ways is claiming who gets to imagine the future for a given geography. Losing our imagination is a symptom of trauma. Reclaiming the right to dream the future, strengthening the muscle to imagine together as Black people, is a revolutionary decolonizing activity.
One of her core questions was, “What time is it on the clock of the world?” My answer to that question has become, “Time to close the gap between vision and practice. Time for those of us who seek justice and liberation to BE just and liberated, to be of this place fully.”
“I love trees. big ass trees. trees weather all storms cuz they’re rooted. my organizing needs to be rooted. rooted in my principles, rooted in the love for the people, rooted in community and a vision that extends to the skies like big ass redwoods.” —Hiram Rivera
A group that is always making decisions isn’t a group that is always learning, necessarily, but learning is an essential function of making good decisions. And in order to learn together you have to be good at humility and curiosity.
Our work strengthens the movement’s capacity for collaborative action. Initially we invested in leadership development and sharing methodology and tools that make transformational leadership and organizational change practices more accessible. Building on that foundation, our work is now focused on building functional self-organizing networks of progressive leaders who can think together, align around a common agenda, and act together to secure and sustain long-term social change.
Can everyone in the organization state the vision and mission accurately, even passionately?
let me pull the weed up by the root and notice the soil that i stand on is this a necessary vitriol is this what i choose now to rant on? is there nothing to build and nothing to grow no more to offer up nothing to know is there a way now that i could let go can i look in the mirror and love me more
We cannot become so jaded that we lose joy in everything because the flaws loom too large. The journey is the work, the work is the journey. The ocean’s ebbs and flows may remind us of this better than anything.”
Black Zen teacher Angel Kyodo Williams once said that our access to the global scale of suffering has become immediate, through technology, but we have not developed the capacity to be with that increased awareness of suffering.
“To sit and be fully aware of the air going in and out of your nose, and nothing else, this sounds really stupid. If you haven’t tried it yet, try it. It is really stupid. Nothing your intellect can do to help you do it. This must be why so many people for so long have used it as a way towards wisdom.”
Somatics is the study of the soma, a Greek word that means “the living organism in its wholeness.” It is a methodology for transformation that helps us understand that change doesn’t come simply from thinking differently. The process involves shifting what we understand, what we can feel, and what we practice, reconnecting us with the incredible data and resilience of the body.
