The doorway in the ruins
Purposefulness now
On the rooftop garden deck of an arts building in Hudson, New York a few weeks ago my friend Hillery pressed a small black glass bottle into my pocket—a flower essence for grief, made at her father’s gravesite. How special, I thought, thinking I’d save it for an important occasion.
It sat on my countertop for a week until one day after opening my phone to news about the pager attack in Lebanon, it caught my eye and I realized “What am I waiting for?” I’ve been taking it every day since then and coming back to that question: What am I waiting for? What are we waiting for? What does it take to get the city population into the streets? Why is anyone still paying the subway fare? Why are the striking longshoremen making an exception for weapons transportation?
This week, alongside the escalating attacks by israel on Lebanon and the ongoing devastation in Palestine, Hurricane Helene ravaged the southeastern US. My family in Georgia lost power and their roof sprung a leak, but they were thankfully fine compared with the wreckage the flooding left behind in North Carolina. Beloveds from Asheville and surrounding areas have had everything taken from them. I tuned into an emergency broadcast just in time to hear a caller say “The farm is lost—I repeat, the farm is devastated.”
The federal government’s reply has essentially been “SOL,” with FEMA declaring itself $9 billion short of functional response despite $8.7 billion being approved for weapons to israel on the very same day. Police officers were photographed guarding grocery stores full of perishable food items from people in dire need. Mutual aid and neighbors helping one another has been the only stopgap getting folks in rural areas what they need. In 2010’s A Paradise Built in Hell, Rebecca Solnit details five disasters that engendered “extraordinary communities” of collective response, describing also the ways that those communities were derailed by government intervention and the arrival of the police and National Guard.
We keep us safe—this is the abolitionist mutual aid slogan that has proven itself truer than ever. What role are you playing? What are you offering? My invitation to you, my supplication really, is to stop waiting for anything. I am reminding myself of this too. What the rapid pace of global genocides, escalating police militarization, and climate disasters has shown us is that there is no time to waste. Find somewhere to get connected if you haven’t. Volunteer with a local mutual aid group. Drop off donations in person and ask “how else can I help?” Organize a supply drive. Text five friends and ask them to match your contribution. New skills, new ways of socializing, and new experiments in support system building are critical. I promise all of us: we are capable of more than we think we are. Don’t wait until you are the one in need.
MUTUAL AID:
🌸 Asheville relief mutual aid funds: Venmo to @pansy.collective, @savoysavoy, @mutualaiddisasterrelief (IG @mutualaiddisasterrelief), @beloved-asheville (These are all connected to individuals and mutual aid groups OTG doing support work. If you so desire I can link you to their profiles)
🌸 Black Trans Collective is raising funds to support Black trans people in North Carolina impacted by Hurricane Helene. Donate via PayPal blacktranscollective@gmail.com.
🌸 moonpence farm is a new medicinal herb & flower farm, being built from scratch in the Manzano Mountains of New Mexico. It's home to Serenus Herbs and the Serenus Herb Bank, a mutual aid care network providing historically marginalized communities with free herbal remedies with no questions asked. By contributing to their land campaign, you are directly supporting Black & Native liberation, helping to keep their disabled & immunocompromised team housed on the land and ensuring the Herb Bank can continue its care work every month. Donate here and share widely!
SAVE THE DATE:
🌼 Flower World’s four-year anniversary event on Sunday, October 13th, more info to come
🌼 A community care day at Flower World on Tuesday, October 15th offering free five-point ear acupuncture, reiki, herbal medicine and more to friends and neighbors in need of some caretaking and resources.
MEDIA ROUNDUP:
This week I attended a book talk by journalist Paola Ramos on her new publication Defectors: The Rise of the Latino Far Right and What it Means For America and was deeply impressed by how succinctly and effectively Ramos and Trymaine Lee described the establishment of racial caste systems in Latin America. The audiobook is queued up next for my studio time today.
I also saw a screening of the documentary Sansón and Me by my friend Rodrigo Reyes, knowing little about it beforehand other than that it was a collaboration with an incarcerated friend. Rodrigo met Sansón while working as a court interpreter at trial and reached out to him following his life sentencing. Across ten years and hundreds of letters and visits, Sansón shared his story with Rodrigo, who traveled to his hometown and worked with Sansón’s family to reenact the narrative. I can’t recommend the film enough.
A very special offering: Water divination workshop for BIPOC with KL Mays and Alice Sparkly Kat in both Philly and NYC
Beautifully moving writing on sobriety: How to Feel Visible by J Wortham
My friend Cody Cook-Parrott is one of the people who have taught me how not to be afraid of the word God. They have written a book of daily secular prayers which you can preorder here.
KinkOut presents POWER OF LEATHER: A yearlong class series presented by CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies at CUNY
SEEING THE WORLD THROUGH SUDAN: Critical frameworks for understanding the crises of Sudan's counterrevolutionary wars reading list
“The Path of Revolution in Lebanon is Our Universe”By Mahdi Amel