"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.
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/
"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.
This came around to my inbox at a perfect time. I needed it. Thank you thank you