Imagining Greatly In The Face Of Big Change

It Helps To Step Back From The Disaster Details

A sign with the words “WE CAN. Just imagine” on a black surface on a concrete wall. Photo by Marija Zaric on Unsplash.

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🔭 One thing that helps people get through a crisis is to stop focusing on specific details of things that are burning down. 🔥🌊Or being underwater. Or getting destroyed.

🏗️ Or getting intentionally taken apart in this case, like the actual White House for example. 🏛️ Or like how big parts of the government have been dismantled or disappeared since January. 🚔 Or all the specific ways in which law enforcement and the military are being used. ⚖️ Or a thousand different court decisions in different steps along possible appeals processes or making it to the Supreme Court or not and unknown final legal impacts.

🖼️ When you’re dealing with a big disaster, you need to step back and look at the bigger picture.

If you’re over focused on the details and one corner of the incident(s) you can miss the things you need to be doing to deal with the big picture.

I see this over and over and I keep forgetting to talk about it because it’s hard to tell people not to focus so much on the details because the details are awful and also we need the stories to get out and the impacts and all of the awful stuff.

We need it all to be seen and understood, as much as that’s possible.

We need the stories and the narrative. We need the truth.

Like we actually do need all of that stuff.

But we also need to be able to step back from all of it and figure out how to get through it ourselves in the short term and in the long term.

I’m not sure that we’re doing a great job of that right now.

First I think there’s a lot of denial.

There’s also a lot of insulation from privilege from people who aren’t affected yet or who will have more protection than others of us who are more vulnerable and out front in terms of risk.

But also I think there’s a lot of very behind-the-curve reactivity in terms of strategy and tactics and what people are trying to do to deal with all of this.

✔️🌊 It’s a lot and it’s overwhelming and all of that is fair.

But if we were able to lean forward into it more in different ways as groups and organizations and individuals and neighborhoods and communities we could do different things with what’s happening.

And this is absolutely 100% why I keep yapping on about civic engagement and I will until I can’t anymore.

Civic engagement is not just voting. Good heavens. It’s not just protesting. It’s not just writing postcards. It’s not just calling your legislators.

Civic engagement is doing things with other humans together in all kinds of ways. Community and connection. Doing things together. With specific intentions like agendas or goals, or just with the intentions of doing things together.

It can be dance parties. Community conversations about anything. Potlucks and pitch-ins. Problem solving potlucks. Strategies about how to deal with shifting law enforcement presences and capabilities. Educational sessions about the power of federalism and how we can do more with that, or really sessions on any topic. Big alliances working together and figuring out how to take care of people better in the places where we live.

It can be a weekly wine gathering in the living room. A monthly knitting club at a coffee place. An ice cream social. A church function exploring ways we can embrace more diversity in our community (one local church is doing a music event tonight on this).

An assorted group trying to figure out how to scale up community or group gardening efforts in any given town or city.

Ad hoc alliances of people coming together in courtrooms and neighborhoods and other places to help fellow humans have a more fair chance of getting through situations when those humans might be targeted by federal law enforcement.

Lots of people are already doing lots of things.

But we could scale it up so much.

We could get much more strategic. We could think through things as neighborhoods or communities or friends or groups or organizations.

We could lean into possibilities. We could lean into the risk landscape that’s unfolding fast before us.

This is the stuff. This is the stuff I keep going on and on and on and on about.

Our efforts here to hold space and get into this kind of thing are so far flatter than everything in a floodplain after a disaster. It is like pulling teeth trying to get people to get together and talk about this stuff.

This is not sexy. It’s not catchy. There’s not millions of people signing up to talk about this stuff just yet.

It’s not doom scrolling.

It’s not sharing memes and sharing or making tiktoks but really it could be. Like that’s one of the cool things. It could be what people make it. People are already doing so much.

We could be imagining greater. We could be imagining hugely.

I think we can get there. I think we can out-imagine the current bunch of people who are in power and who are not creative but just want to hold on to that power and create more wealth and more power and get rid of things that help the rest of us.

We don’t get there with fear and terror and sharing a million god-awful news items. Which okay that’s fine and there’s a time and place for that.

We don’t get there with big talk about the worst-case scenarios that could come before us, although we definitely need to be willing to see some of those things so we can mitigate some of the risks or be ready to deal with effects.

We do get to the big imagining when we get people together in different ways and figure out things we can do. It can be two or three people that you know well... or it can be big national groups... or it can be anything in between.

Anyway. Our little group here is holding space for this. For big imagining and big ideas and how we can do more of that in this time of great crisis and disaster and disruption. Here are links for doing this on zoom next week, in fact. Plus the whole fall zoom chedule is here.

• Monday, 10/27, earlier evening Zoom

• Thursday, 10/30, later evening Zoom

We might be small now but we could grow really big things. We can help inspire Americans to get through this and to make big changes as we go. Absolutely. That’s absolutely possible.

If you think I’m delusional that’s totally cool. This might not be your thing.

But I’m here to help people make change in the midst of all this. To help people help each other.

Maybe you are too.

Join us. We’ve got good people. We’ll get more. Bring some. Spread the word.

Let’s do some good out here in the middle of all this. We can.

Forward and through -

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Fierce Community encourages civic engagement through connection, community, creativity, leadership, empowerment, & resilience as society transforms fast. It’s about finding ways through & also making ways to change society’s direction even as upheaval progresses. Email people@fiercecommunity.com to set up a conversation.

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Vanessa Burnett is the director at Fierce Community. Vanessa is a social entrepreneur, advisor, and empower-er with a systems-level understanding of the pieces and parts that modern society needs in order to survive. She has over 25 years experience in resilience-building, civic engagement, coalition-building, critical infrastructure, systems thinking, big disasters, catastrophes, wildland fire, emergency management, incident management, land management, park rangering, homeland security, continuity of operations (COOP), continuity of government (COG), technology innovation, public communication, and disaster information sharing. This Substack channel does not knowingly use AI.