YES! Thanks for sharing this piece (and more broadly, folks, myself included, should read and support Scalawag-it's great). Here's my favorite part:
"But for the Springses and their elder neighbors, the collective is actually the cure. Despite great swathes of isolation, their Black farming community—though small—is strong and supportive. Intergenerational co-ops serve as a way for communities to retain vital knowledge for self-sustainability, while also offering a place for people to be in relationship with one another."
"You are allowed to mutter something about how all White things merge into one and eventually flow into Burning Man." Hilarious line that I didn't know I needed to explain Many Things!
What a fantastic post. Last week I was in a totally different town and ran into someone I'm on a bike/pedestrian committee with and he's now running for office, and we talked a bit about how people think a little bike/ped committee is low-key and, I dunno, just does bike to school days, but in reality it's filled with the tension of participatory democracy and you learn *so much* about how to get things done and also how things fail just by being involved with something like that.
This post was so wonderful. (And I am one of those White people with all of the above-mentioned opinions.) My fiancé and I are on a road trip right now, and I read it aloud while she drove.
This is something we’ve talked about before, how we want to stop just reading the news and being sad/mad and get involved instead. Her area is going to be abortion access (we live in Texas). I’m not sure yet where I want to focus.
Do you have any thoughts/suggestions for how to find/decide where to get involved? I know the obvious answer is whatever is of interest, but I have a lot of interests and areas I think should be different! And to be honest, so many of them feel pretty hopeless much of the time. It feels to me that starting small will help. And, as soon as possible, moving from thinking about it and intellectualizing it to meeting other people.
I’d be curious to hear anyone else’s experiences of moving from inaction to getting involved.
Thanks for this! And I hope the road trip is going great! Where are y'all going?
Also, love this question, and always down to talk more if you'd like more detailed/specific advice, but what I often find has helped a lot of folks is picking three-four folks you like/trust/have a hunch are thinking about some of the same things you are and sending them an email or text that's like "hey, I'm really pissed off about _____ and ______ and tired of just being angry about it but I don't know what to do" or alternately "it'd be very cool if ______ happened and I don't know if anybody's working on that but I'm curious in learning more." That email/text, in turn, would be an invitation not to come together or plan or launch anything, but to ask get a few people's smart energy/question/ideas whirring about whatever issue you were talking about and then delegating some next-step fact-finding... having one person go research if anybody in the area is already working on this, another search for cool national models, stuff like that. I think a lot of folks get stuck because they're like-- I can't get people together to do something if I haven't figured it out, but people actually love getting together in a space where they're being trusted to figure out a puzzle together, often much more than a space where they're just given marching orders.
It’s going great! We’re on our way home to Austin now, but we were out in California. We thru-hiked the John Muir Trail!
Thanks for that awesome advice. I can totally see the figuring-out-a-puzzle-together space being more productive (and fun!) than the marching order space. And I have a few folks that would be excellent candidates for that text.
There's a great piece out this week on Scalawag that tells the story of two farmers in Mississippi who are trying to keep alive that tradition of the old farmer coops https://scalawagmagazine.org/2022/08/black-farms-in-mississippi/
YES! Thanks for sharing this piece (and more broadly, folks, myself included, should read and support Scalawag-it's great). Here's my favorite part:
"But for the Springses and their elder neighbors, the collective is actually the cure. Despite great swathes of isolation, their Black farming community—though small—is strong and supportive. Intergenerational co-ops serve as a way for communities to retain vital knowledge for self-sustainability, while also offering a place for people to be in relationship with one another."
"You are allowed to mutter something about how all White things merge into one and eventually flow into Burning Man." Hilarious line that I didn't know I needed to explain Many Things!
What a fantastic post. Last week I was in a totally different town and ran into someone I'm on a bike/pedestrian committee with and he's now running for office, and we talked a bit about how people think a little bike/ped committee is low-key and, I dunno, just does bike to school days, but in reality it's filled with the tension of participatory democracy and you learn *so much* about how to get things done and also how things fail just by being involved with something like that.
That was a very niche line, placed there for a very specific variety of reader and it makes me VERY VERY happy that you found it.
More importantly, though: "filled with the tension of participatory democracy"-- yes! that's it!
😂
This post was so wonderful. (And I am one of those White people with all of the above-mentioned opinions.) My fiancé and I are on a road trip right now, and I read it aloud while she drove.
This is something we’ve talked about before, how we want to stop just reading the news and being sad/mad and get involved instead. Her area is going to be abortion access (we live in Texas). I’m not sure yet where I want to focus.
Do you have any thoughts/suggestions for how to find/decide where to get involved? I know the obvious answer is whatever is of interest, but I have a lot of interests and areas I think should be different! And to be honest, so many of them feel pretty hopeless much of the time. It feels to me that starting small will help. And, as soon as possible, moving from thinking about it and intellectualizing it to meeting other people.
I’d be curious to hear anyone else’s experiences of moving from inaction to getting involved.
Thanks for this! And I hope the road trip is going great! Where are y'all going?
Also, love this question, and always down to talk more if you'd like more detailed/specific advice, but what I often find has helped a lot of folks is picking three-four folks you like/trust/have a hunch are thinking about some of the same things you are and sending them an email or text that's like "hey, I'm really pissed off about _____ and ______ and tired of just being angry about it but I don't know what to do" or alternately "it'd be very cool if ______ happened and I don't know if anybody's working on that but I'm curious in learning more." That email/text, in turn, would be an invitation not to come together or plan or launch anything, but to ask get a few people's smart energy/question/ideas whirring about whatever issue you were talking about and then delegating some next-step fact-finding... having one person go research if anybody in the area is already working on this, another search for cool national models, stuff like that. I think a lot of folks get stuck because they're like-- I can't get people together to do something if I haven't figured it out, but people actually love getting together in a space where they're being trusted to figure out a puzzle together, often much more than a space where they're just given marching orders.
It’s going great! We’re on our way home to Austin now, but we were out in California. We thru-hiked the John Muir Trail!
Thanks for that awesome advice. I can totally see the figuring-out-a-puzzle-together space being more productive (and fun!) than the marching order space. And I have a few folks that would be excellent candidates for that text.
This came around to my inbox at a perfect time. I needed it. Thank you thank you
❤️❤️❤️