hold steady. ❤️🩹
we know what to do, even now.
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Like so many other people (also you?) I've been cycling through many different feelings around Renee Nicole Good's murder by ICE.
Rage. Fear. Despair. Horror. And thinking of the tens of thousands of Brown and Black people already snatched, stolen, sent to concentration camps both domestic and abroad. This culture of dehumanization is all one thing.
AND I keep coming back to the same core principles that I have through everything. Through all of these horrors, these losses, these fears, these terrifying pivot moments where it feels like everything might be changing.
They're the same lessons I learned from my activist mentors – the ones who forced the world to listen while their generation was dying of a disease nobody wanted to acknowledge– the same lessons that I've learned over the last 35 years of work trying to make change, through wins and setbacks and so many devastating losses.
And though this isn't one of my regularly scheduled missives, I just wanted to offer this infusion, to remind you that you're not alone, and of what you already know:
- Channel your anger into action. (Stay loud now. Put the pressure on ICE, keep the pressure on ICE. It matters.)
- Find your longer-term role(s) in the work.
- Show up regularly, not just when something happens. (This is really, really important.)
Also: YOU WILL FEEL BETTER IF YOU ARE TAKING ACTION REGULARLY. - Give yourself space to feel things. Stay human. Do not lose your empathy.
- Have a practice to nourish yourself.
- It'll get harder before it's better.
(I'm sorry. I'm here always to tell you the truth.) - Another world is possible. We can make it so, together.
- Solidarity is always and forever the only way home.
You know this. (Living it is harder.)
“Movements are born of critical connections
rather than critical mass.” -Grace Lee Boggs
And as a reminder, and/or if you're newer to this community, a lot of this is in past posts:
Concrete tips on making space to Feel The Things:
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg
This fight needs to have so many heads that they'll never be able to successfully cut them all off. It needs to be waged on so many fronts.
Some ideas in here:
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg
More of the meta-strategic thing here:
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg
What is your place on deck? Your role in this larger battle?
If you're not sure, these questions might help you discern:
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg
And we need to be nourishing ourselves regularly so that there's enough bandwidth for action AND so that our spirits are strong enough to say no to the forces that want us to concede, that want us to just follow orders, that want us to play nice instead of doing what's right:
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg
“The world will not be destroyed by evil people but by good people who do nothing to stop it. Hopefully there will always be good people courageous enough to take on the bad guys, this is the only way humanity can hope for salvation.” ― Bangambiki Habyarimana
Sending much love. More Monday.
xo
RDR
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Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg
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