Care as resistance

Hope is replaced by despair this morning.

And yet, we cannot afford to despair, we cannot afford to isolate. As the feminist activist Silvia Federici writes 'if you are isolated you have already been defeated.'

I see the pictures of the Trump voters, I see their glee, the masquerade of patriotism, and Elon Musk's unbearable smile.

All we can do now is take care of one another. Acts of care are acts of resistance. 

When this nightmare will be over my daughter will be 7. Theo will be 9, Harry 6, Ben 6, Saadi 6. My daughter and her aunties' children will grow up to do what our generation could not do: become and remain humans.

As Toni Morrison said ‘it is hard and it is necessary for us to become and to remain humans. That means a lot. It means not giving in to the comic book version of who we are, not giving in to all this medieval rhetoric. We know deep down what's right and what's true and what's needed. We got to get there, we just have to.'  So we will endure and persevere and take care of one another so we can get there.

As Toni Morrison wrote 'This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self pity, no need for silence, no room for fear, we speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilization heal.'

Now is the time to get together, to organize, to protest, to teach, to share hope and beauty together. So I am going to start this newsletter and will name it ‘This is precisely the time’ in honor of Toni Morrison’s sentiment that now is the time when artists go to work.

Now is the time to show who we are, what we believe in, what world we want to bequeath to our children.

May this newsletter become a place to share support and artworks as acts of care.

May we channel the rage and sadness we feel today into action tomorrow and tomorrow and for the next four years.

I will leave you today with the artist Zoe Leonard’s rousing call to action from 1992 ‘I want a president’.