Big Tents and Best Versions

Nobody wants an emergency, but perhaps we should want some of the remarkable things that can happen during them. On the top of my list of those things is how in the immediate aftermath of a hurricane, a fire, an earthquake,  people take care of each other and work together without the kind of vetting and fretting whether they agree entirely about politics or religion or other matters. We are in an unprecedented emergency in the United States with fallout that poses threats to environments, economies, human rights and even survival beyond our borders, and we could use some of that energy. As political scientist Erica Chenoweth said in Saturday's Meditations in an Emergency interview, "The best study on the subject in my opinion suggests that in the long term, institutions really can’t save us; that civil society and mass mobilization are a more potent check on a backsliding democracy in the long term than relying on institutional checks and balances alone." 

Right now the courts are doing important business as they render verdict after verdict against Trump and Musk thanks to lawsuits brought by states, federal employees, and others with standing. Some of the Democrats in office are being amazing, and others in the opposition party are being waffles, milquetoasts, cookies that crumble, and other  refined-carbohydrate items. As is now clear, the administrative branch of the federal government of the United States is engaging in a coup attempt against the legislative and judicial branches, against the law and constitution itself, and against your rights and mine and the security and stability of the world. They can be defeated and at a minimum held in check, and the sooner they are the more limited the damage. But as Chenoweth points out, it's up to us. Are we up to it?

Us here means civil society, which is who we are when we come together--come together with people who are not exactly like each of us individually. But that means recognizing two really important things, and the last half century or so have hardly been ideal training grounds for recognizing and embracing them. One is that ordinary people when we come together have extraordinary power (and with power goes responsibility). The other is that in this emergency what we have in common matters more than (many of) our differences. I'm not saying be nice to the gender fundamentalist, but maybe be nice to the person who's not up on all the new terminology and theory?

 I want to take an unscenic detour to talk about what I've noticed on social media lately, and doing so is a reminder that being on social media is forever derided and dismissed, but it's where a lot of us connect with each other, gather (reliable or corrupt) information, connect, and express ourselves. I've often found it useful as a sort of laboratory for opinion. And what I've seen lately--and really all along--is a focus on morality and taste rather than strategy and possibility. 

In President Biden's farewell address, he spoke powerfully and bluntly about an oligarchical takeover of this country--not a new message, but one delivered at a time when those words were urgently relevant. On January 15, he said  "Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead." But when I posted that warning on BlueSky, no one wanted to talk about the oligarchy emergency and what we can do about it; they wanted to heap scorn on Biden, and one after another they did it until I deleted the post. Biden himself, about to leave office, didn't matter in the moment; the oligarchical takeover did and does. 

Something similar happened this weekend when I shared a Kansas friend's post on Facebook about his senator, Jerry Moran, standing up against the Trump Administration, specifically standing up for his state's farmers and USAID, which purchases more than a third of a billion dollars in US farm products. "Food stability is essential to political stability, and our food aid programs help feed the hungry, bolster our national security and provide an important market for our farmers," he declared. Lots of people popped up to snark that he was just acting in self-interest, which was a not particularly insightful way to note that he was acting on behalf of his farmer constituents.  

 He was also taking a stand against the heads of his party, which is in this era a risky thing to do--Trump has long threatened to punish any dissent from Republicans, and death threats have become increasingly common for dissenters (someone recently pointed out to me that Mitt Romney could speak out more boldly because he is rich enough to buy all the security he and his family need). But I'm not interested in defending or attacking the moral character of Senator Moran; I'm interested in the fact that he spoke up against the destruction going on, and that was probably a result of pressure from his constituents and a reminder that activism and organizing work.  

 It was a snarky week on social media. Someone I otherwise respect re-posted a guy proposing that all Tesla vehicles should be vandalized (though obviously many people bought them well before this crisis, even before Musk went so far into right-wing rage, racism, and conspiracy theory, and many bought them out of concern for the climate). People lashed out at those who didn't vote for Harris, and apparently some people were sneering at those impacted in a measles outbreak in Texas, though this meant kids suffering the consequences for their parents' anti-vaccination ideology. Going after each other is not going after the Trump Administration; fighting each other produces division when we need unity or at least a broad coalition. I'm not arguing here for having nothing but lofty thoughts; I have plenty of not very nice thoughts, but I try to save them for conversations in private and statements about actual enemies.  

In these comments, people weren't looking for strategy or possibility or the building of coalitions and the reaching out to new potential allies. They were looking for people to scorn. I wonder if this is due to people feeling powerless or rather feeling that the power they have is of rendering verdicts and punishing the flawed, and the subject at hand is who is a good person, rather than how the hell do we address this crisis? It seems like a lot of Americans perceive themselves as sitting in the stands, not playing on the field--that is, they see it as someone else's job to get a goal or prevent the other team from getting one, and see their job as booing the opponents or rendering a verdict on the performance. 

 Many powerful forces--the rhetoric of mainstream politics, the framing of mainstream entertainment and news, the version of therapy that reinforces individualism as it tells us we're here to care for ourselves, end of story--tell us we are consumers, not citizens (and here I mean citizens as members of civil society, regardless of legal citizenship status). That we are here just to meet our own needs and chase our personal desires, within the realms of private relationships and material comfort and security, and that we hardly exist beyond those small realms. It says on the one hand "go have all this stuff" while it quietly discourages us to have the other stuff that is public life, participation, and power. While pretending to point us toward abundance, it deprives us of the most expansive and idealistic versions of ourselves. And most of us really are that larger self, the version that cares about justice, human rights, democracy, equality (withering all that away is a clear part of the right's agenda at least since Margaret Thatcher's "There is no such thing as society").

The idea that we are consumers and nothing but even sneaks into activism--for example, all the suggestions that your only response to the climate crisis should be the pursuit of a very tiny climate footprint, rather than to join something and try to change the system. The fossil fuel industry promoted this privatization of climate action, because it serves them well if we go after our personal consumption and not their production or the transformation of systems. A consumer can buy or not buy something, drive or ride a bike, but a citizen can be an active participant in shaping a democracy or, these days, defending one under attack. Boycotts have been very effective techniques since the British antislavery movement more than two hundred years ago, but they are best when coupled with broader campaigns.

Social media is a strange space that invites us to bring our sharp edges more than our soft insides, our wit than our compassion. But I don't want people stuck in that privatized version of self, or in their sharp edges or even only in their soft insides. I want people to find their heroic possibilities, their public self, their power as members of civil society, not consumers. Meanwhile, another friend sent me a link to an excerpt from the best new book on organizing we've had in a long while, Kelly Hayes and Mariam Kaba's Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care. They write in an excerpt you can read here:

Organizing is not a process of ideological matchmaking. Most people’s politics will not mirror our own, and even people who identify with us strongly on some points will often differ sharply on others. When organizers do not fully understand each other’s beliefs or identities, people will often stumble and offend one another, even if they earnestly wish to build from a place of solidarity. Efforts to build diverse, intergenerational movements will always generate conflict and discomfort. But the desire to shrink groups down to spaces of easy agreement is not conducive to movement building. Organizing on the scale that our struggles demand means finding common ground with a broad spectrum of people, many of whom we would never otherwise interact with, and building a shared practice of politics in the pursuit of more just outcomes. It’s a process that can bring us into the company of people who share our beliefs quite explicitly, but to create movements, rather than clubhouses, we need to engage with people with whom we do not fully identify and may even dislike.

That passage gets at the heart of why the quibbles bothered me; we are in a moment when we need to find common ground and move toward powerful coalitions. In my dreams, we see ourselves as citizens, not just consumers, see in each other future allies, not people who made different choices in the past. We remember our power and we exercise it. In this emergency, I think it likely that we are going to need to pitch a very big tent and invite everyone in who doesn't want to live in a dictatorship, who wants the rule of law, the checks and balances, the Constitution to still be in effect, everyone's human and civil rights protected, who wants to protect the vulnerable. Audre Lorde wrote,  “Your power is relative, but it is real. And if you do not learn to use it, it will be used, against you, and me, and our children."

p.s. Recently Vice President JD Vance decided he was a theologian and claimed that the Christian commandments to love take the form of concentric circles, aka care about the private and personal more than the rest, declaring: "You love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country. And then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world." He apparently meant you didn't have to care much about those beyond your immediate circle.

The pope, who is very much a big-tent pope, just told this Catholic convert off: "While not mentioning Vance directly by name, Francis used his Feb. 11 letter to directly reject that interpretation of Catholic theology."The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the 'Good Samaritan,' that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception," wrote the pope." Full piece in the National Catholic Reporter here: https://www.ncronline.org/vatican/vatican-news/pope-decries-major-crisis-trumps-mass-deportation-plans-rejects-vances?fbclid=IwY2xjawIYatZleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHT_XRkt4RSweThIiOGCf_NS2t2u2YRQSMt11RvwlhC3cAY82Nh_oNin9xQ_aem_OHeZwXGMvMeBXexochLJEw