By Laurie Carlsson, Reverb DEI.
I was deep in the struggle we were all feeling back in January – how to make it through each and every day without imploding from anger and heartbreak – when I heard Sam Sanders say something brilliant. On an episode of the podcast Vibe Check he talked about spending his outrage with discernment. “I’ve been trying to think of my outrage and anger as a bank account with money in there that I can spend…my outrage is precious and I wanna use it in the best way that I can.” I was grateful for a concrete metaphor I could hold onto, one that felt both instructive and grounding.
Around that same time, I was having a similar conversation over and over with social justice advocates, in response to the administration’s flurry of executive orders. “This is their strategy – they’re trying to overwhelm us!” we all said. In late January, The Atlantic published a more detailed version of this theory. We were clear that these were the tactics at play, that those who seek to tear down and divide are looking to overwhelm us with the sheer volume of daily chaos, but we were still sitting there smack in the middle of it – scrolling, panicking, and feeling helpless. And as the defunding, persecuting, disappearing, and unraveling continue we’re still there – frozen and exhausted. Everyone sees the storm we’re enveloped in, but no one can seem to find an exit route.
In short, what they’re doing is working. The volume of unjust actions and straight-up atrocities committed by this administration is meant to envelop us in fear – to be so afraid for ourselves and our families that we aren’t able to come together and fight. They’re using a strategy that relies on our complicity and we can’t for the life of us figure out how not to provide it. It’s not that we don’t know what’s at stake here. But with our nervous systems constantly on fire, we are ceding ground on many fronts. To change course, we must first understand where we are. How is fear fueling our inertia, and how powerful could our response be with some solid ground under our feet?
To read more, see PDF below.