Showing Up and Showing Out

Time to regroup and reprioritize.

Hello, friends.

This is a special-edition of Heavy Rotation that includes more information about our post-election community care endeavors. It’s a combo effort from both me and Christian. Please read it carefully for opportunities to help us build sustainable, intentional coalition with our neighbors.

XOXO,

Lauren

What We’re Doing: Speaking Truth to Power

Once again, our government has failed to get its shit together. Once again, we move toward handling it together.

It’s time to commit ourselves to investing in each other instead of systems and institutions that continue to show us that their interests lie just about everywhere but with us. Come to Rebel Rebel Saturday for soup, info about mobilization opportunities, mutual aid, and community bonding. Change has to start in our own backyard!

This is an opportunity to lean into a very real, very tangible way for us to contribute to the wellbeing of our neighbors, to divest from systems that do not serve us, and to divert funds away from institutions that don’t have our best interests in mind and back toward people we live alongside. This is about bringing power to the people, keeping money out of the hands of those who’ll use it to buy more bombs, and providing community care; giving money is good, but sharing space and investing in the lives of the people in your community has profound implications for resilience and resistance.

Come join us for two hours of community bonding, education about mobilization opportunities, and mutual aid. It’s free. We’ll provide soup (while it lasts, we’ve gotten a lot of interest in this event and we only have one 60-gallon pot!), name tags, and information about 5ish local orgs in need of human hands. You’ll meet your neighbors, fork over your email addresses/contact info, and leave with a plan to make real change. Community care virgins extremely welcome! This is a judgment-free zone, and it’s never too late to get to work.

Can’t make it?

For those of you who are unable to attend but are still interested in learning more about community care opportunities, I’ve created this spreadsheet with a list of local orgs offering in-person volunteer opportunities—be it meal prep, grocery assistance, elder care, help sorting donations, legal advice, spiritual support, childcare, or something else.

Stop giving money to people you don’t know.

The spreadsheet also includes a list of locally-owned businesses to help you divest from corporate-industrial entities like Amazon, Whole Foods, Home Depot, and Target, which are not only ruining labor and local economies, but are also often contributing to backdoor politics and/or destroying the environment.

Shopping locally is not just a cute thing to do on Small Business Saturday; it’s a way to make your actual life an act of resistance. Why give corporate CEOs more money when you could be giving to the people who live and work in your community? Keep the money out of the hands of the people who don’t give a shit whether you live or die.

A note about supporting small businesses: Amazon has created a culture of convenience that has normalized immediacy, urgency, and instant gratification. Small inconveniences like waiting in line or leaving a voicemail and waiting for a call back, while normal a decade ago, are now viewed as unforgivable and unacceptable. Please don’t bring your Amazon-ified brain to small businesses, many of which are run by one single human being. Part of divesting from the corporate-industrial wasteland is unlearning our expectations for instant gratification. You may have to wait. You may have to compromise. You may not be able to get exactly what you want, exactly when you want it, all of the time. It’s actually not normal to eat fresh blueberries in January! Getting fresh blueberries to New England in January requires a lot of stuff that’s really bad for the environment and really bad for labor! Blueberries, of course, aren’t at the root of our current political situation, but they also aren’t NOT at the root of it. The point is, really making your life a life of resistance does mean giving some stuff up. It isn’t always convenient. But now’s the time to decide where your threshold for convenience is, and what you’re willing to support with your spending.

A note about the spreadsheet: It’s by no means exhaustive and includes a lot of places where I personally shop that I came up with off the top of my head. If you have something to add, please leave a comment directly in the sheet. The businesses also aren’t linked yet, purely because I haven’t had time. Google them in the interim.

What We’re Drinking:

Mulled wine season has returned! Shoutout to Curio Spice (included on the spreadsheet!) for providing us with their Flame Mulling Spice to zhuzh up the pot and make a dynamic cauldron of hot wine. Every day, now until April maybe.

What We’re Reading:

The words of our friend and colleague, Ashtin Berry (@thecollectress), here with a reminder that the change we need comes only with a lifetime of work. You get smarter just by following her and digesting her well-studied and thoughtful critiques. A favorite quote: “Your activism should be exhaustive, not exhausting.” Send her a venmo for her work: @Ashtin-Berry

WHAT WE’RE LISTENING TO

It occurred to me on Wednesday, as I channelled my emotions with heavy doses of Bikini Kill, that there’s an entire generation of young people out here who have grown up without a riot grrrl screaming in their headphones about the same things they feel like screaming about. Angry? Scared? Tired? There’s a Sleater-Kinney track for that.