Volume 1, Resources 20: This Week Has Been The Longest Year
Hi friends! This week. Wow.
So I had a pretty great plan for self-preservation and I sustained it for all of Tuesday. I finished reading 2 books that night. Watched an episode of The Great British Bake Off. I made biscuits and gravy from scratch with good sausage from the actual butcher. I only popped onto Twitter to do some check-ins and tell people to have a stretch and drink some water. I was in a zone and by zone I mean a tiny, fragile bubble of my own making.
That bubble popped at about 3:15p on Wednesday. Someone on the non-Black side of my family (that is, the Asian/white side) DM’d me and was like, “holy shit some of our family really loves white supremacy” and I was like, “Yes, I have been Black in this family for almost 42 years, ask me about My Experience™!”
So then my clown-ass went onto Facebook.
My friends.
I should not have gone onto Facebook.
As someone who has had many emotionally taxing conversations in the past 36 hours, I want to send some special love to my readers who are also racially mixed. Or who are queer in a family that is mostly straight. Or anyone else who is the anomaly in your family. This shit is hard no matter how much of an expert I am at communicating or drawing boundaries.
As I say in the Tweet below, “This is all a clear reminder that racism is not a deal-breaker for many people in this country. Racism is a feature of America, not a bug.”
And right now, your Black friends, your queer friends, your disabled friends are dealing with this not only on the national level as always, but also on the micro level. This is not merely an academic exercise for many of us. The actions of our family, our friends, our “allies” in this time especially are going to be remembered.
This is a resource week but it’s going to look a little different than just a couple straightforward resources.
The first resources are a few Tweets.
I see a lot of my cozy liberal buds here in CA and other “dependably” blue states shitting on southern states right now. “I’m making a list of the places I’ll never go to LOL.” It is ignorant as hell and it needs to stop. The south was the BIRTHPLACE of the Civil Rights movement. If you are not from there or down there, you have no idea the shit the organizers are dealing with. The gerrymandering. The voter suppression. There are Black people, queer people, disabled people, OUR PEOPLE down there who aren’t even safe going out for a run or a drive and you’re going to shit on their fight (which is our fight)? Knock it off.
I’m also coming for all the white people dreaming about running away to the fantasylands of Canada or New Zealand or Australia when they’re only safe for you because of the colonizers. I said what I said. Think before you speak.
A couple of those Tweets are starts of threads and all of those folks are excellent follows. Get some knowledge into your timeline.
The other resource I have for you today is that Headspace has some election-centric meditations that are FREE through November 16th. There are 3 different exercises focusing on Political Uncertainty, Relieving Stress, and Managing Anxiety. I’m trying to figure out a way to play all three at once. I’ll let you know if I have any success.
I’m going to end with some good news!: I finally got a P.O. Box! If you write to me and give me your address on that piece of mail, I’ll probably write back! (Don’t just email me your address. I’m not a machine.) If you’re my friends/family that already mail me at home, please keep sending mail to my home address. For everyone else, I can be mailed at:
P.O. Box 21481, Oakland, CA 94620-1481
Make sure you’re hydrating. Anxiety can make you need to go pee frequently and you have to replace that liquid. Make sure you’re eating and taking time away from the internet. Regardless of who wins this election the white supremacy in this country is in the foundation and our fight continues. We’re gonna need each other.
That’s it for this week! If you enjoy this newsletter, feel free to subscribe, share it with a friend, and/or give me a tip!
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