This month I’m turning the microphone over to my friend Alex Rich after we had a conversation in which he said some things I could never say nearly as eloquently and clearly as he did. I’ll be back next month with some actual strategy tips.
Take it away, Alex:
Beth wanted to make this week’s newsletter about self care.
It’s been a bad week. Progressives tend to feel the trauma of a week like this more intensely than most folks. Self care is important. Self care isn’t the wrong answer.
But, moments like this are unique among all the time we spend on this earth (if we are brave, wise and fortunate). Moments like this determine the trajectory of all the moments that follow. What we now defines the communities that we live in moving forward.
I’m stealing Beth’s microphone this week hoping with all my heart that I don’t come off as a Kanye interrupting a better story about a better artist (and I’m gonna let Beth finish), but I want everyone lucky enough to be a part of this community to take a beat and be present in the inflection point that we currently find ourselves in.
Alex Pretti and Renee Good were the best of us. Their courage and character moved the world, but they did not do so alone. When senior leaders in the federal government trotted out lies designed to erase their heroism, the truth of Renee and Alex’s sacrifice was borne out by the courage of their neighbors. Their neighbors stood their ground, recorded what happened and refused to be silenced. They did so without resorting to violence in the face of cowardly brutality designed to create a false narrative. Renee and Alex showed us the best of individual human courage. Their neighhbors showed us the irresistible force of collective moral action.
My favorite Beth talks center on the fact that Solidarity is a verb before it is anything else. For Solidarity to be a real thing in our world, it must be practiced by people of courage and moral conviction. Solidarity is our only refuge in the face of facist evil.
This week I encourage you to reflect on the courage of the people of Minneapolis, Minnesota. They’re facing down fascist murderers with the kind of courage and committed Solidarity that are the very finest elements of our flawed species. I want you to spend this weekend engaged in self care, but I also want you to recognize that the best form of self care is reaching out to your neighbor…and asking them how you can help. Our committed connection transcends the evil that seeks to divide us.
We survive this moment of beshitted fascists by making Solidarity a verb. We survive this evil by getting to know and love and support the most vulnerable among us. We thrive by building and sustaining community in which we all stand for each other, no matter what anyone else brings to try to break us apart. Today, Minneapolis, Minnesota is the moral capital of our nation. I hope we can all learn to emulate their courage.