Reading things is not activism

On resilient grief and choosing IRL over URL

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Since last week’s devastating election outcome, my inbox has been flooded with exhortations to grieve, to read, to heal, and to plan. Others corralled and curated the takes into a meta-buffet of opinions and suggestions. It’s simultaneously ”too soon” for a post-mortem and yet a “business as usual” mentality requires consistency in order to stay financially afloat.

In my favorite post-election newsletter thus far, Ann Friedman wrote about rejecting the premise of grief as a finite phase to be gotten through. Instead, she suggests, we might welcome grief as a praxis that casts inertia aside in favor of engagement. I take this as an invitation to a resilient grief that casts aside passive content-binging as “processing.” As Kate Lindsay of Embedded put it, “We’re spending all this time indulging voyeurism and inventing people to be mad at and then looking up at the real world and asking who let it all go to shit.” Like her, I worry about the danger of endless link consumption, specifically that taking in more content is an effective way to process the grief and then returning to complacency. In other words, reading things is not activism.

Looking back on last week, I was in some sort of numbed state flying an overstarched flag emblazoned with the international symbol for “I thought this might happen.” Being right is cold comfort, especially in the wake of incisive postmortems that made it clear that this was the Democrats’ fight to lose. As a progressive, that is a bucket of cold water sloshed on the face: I did not do much in the approach to last week other than cast a ballot. While I spent the week grieving the loss of already-eroding protections of abortion access, LGBTQ+ rights, and immigrants, there was also chest-tightening grief (tinged with shame) for the laissez-faire attitude of a certain type of privileged progressiveness.

This is neither a moment for clicktivism nor for rushing to sign up for activities I will only quit in a few months. (Hello, 2016.) Instead, I am carefully selecting ways to engage in the political issues I care about and laying the groundwork for building community wherever we land after our move to the US next month. There is also the arduous task of packing up our lives in London, which in a strange way, makes it feel like I am Doing Something. Putting things in boxes feels good, as does settling in with an episode of my favorite ComCom™ (community comedy). I do not want to put my dismay at the political landscape in a metaphorical box, but rather to turn toward resilient grief as that matter, like those that bring me closer to people and make progress toward the issues I care about.

We may think we want distraction ad infinitum, but what we need is coalition compassion for the burnout that has us turning toward capitalism rather than community. Of course, I will still want the hot takes, the cold takes, the cozy reads, the comfort watches, and the neoliberal panacea of self-help literature—I am a product of the times, after all—but I wish to twin them action. To choose IRL over URL more often.

Perhaps, I might find a way that allows action and resilient grief to go forth hand in hand. I don’t think the answer is to eschew creature comforts entirely, nor is it to throw one’s hands up and call this the turn of history’s wheel. If it’s not clear yet, I only have questions, no answers. To pretend that a quitting late-stage capitalism cold turkey is an option is naïve. Acting from a question, for now, seems like a good first step.

I’m not ready to offer recommendations for civic engagement that I haven’t yet pursued myself. And perhaps this has all sounded like more handwringing in advance of proof, a debit on an empty account. In the liminal space created between my ambition and my action, I am taking solace in writing to you again, to see it as a vital sign of hope in the midst of burnout, ennui, disappointment, and fear. As Sarah Elaine Smith wrote in “a reveille against shame”: “Wanting to make art is how you know you’re not dead. And if that’s all it accomplishes, that is good enough.”

Another mantra for today and the next day and the next might look like: I am choosing community and connection in the face of dissociation and disconnection. Action can be as simple as something my friend Cat did the day after the election, when she picked up pastries for her daughter’s underpaid daycare teachers. As she put it, “When it feels like whole systems are breaking down and you feel totally powerless, doing small human things that show people we think of them matters.”

I couldn’t have said it better. Less alienation, more connection.

If you’re mad as hell and want to protect reproductive rights:

For those who are passionate about reproductive freedom (everyone here…I hope?), check out an incredible organization Wyoming United for Freedom started by mom and other activists from across the state. Wyoming was affected by a trigger ban post-Dobbs, and Wyoming United is fighting to protecting and expanding access to abortion and other reproductive rights.

Before we jump into the recs, a poll!

I’m playing around with when I publish the newsletter. Which day of the week are you most inclined to take time to read it?

After the paywall:

• A beautifully-written page turner

• A new folk-pop album

• Homeopathic tablets that help avert a cold

• Advice that helps meet peoples’ needs

• A video of something that made me feels as much awe as the total solar eclipse

And more recs…