Through-Lines
🌀📈 It’s another day of rising chaos up in these United States. Or the planet?
Yesterday we saw more tragedy as we saw all last week in Minnesota, including specifically the US government shooting another US citizen. The US government is stunningly demanding concessions from Minnesota in response. Right now big extreme weather is hitting the entire southern US. If it’s super tragic, will the federal government help? Or even the states? The lists always go on in this era.
I read really good writing out there. I see lots of people doing amazing things. With big courage. And high stakes.
I wonder what I have to offer in this sea of radiance and brilliance and big threats and big danger. Do you wonder also, for you?
🧠💡 For me, I have big ideas. I think we need people being more engaged in communities for the era that’s unfolding around us now. Yesterday I wrote about that in this post on holding society together through fire and ice. Metaphorically or otherwise.
I think we’re going to have to do more for community. Overall. Together. To get through it.
I think we can get there.
I think we’re seeing it more and more. Especially as risks increase and as institutions, laws, and norms are actively and sometimes aggressively eroded or diminished or erased.
I have had a moment this week (due to illness) to catch up more on what’s happening in this country and internationally.
It’s overwhelming.
🌀🌏 Of course it is. We’re in the midst of great disruption, with much more to come.
It feels dis-empowering.
It feels like we’re floating in a society being actively attacked and taken apart by the very entities which were created to hold it together.
It feels that way because that’s what’s happening.
In the midst of all this, we have to get our bearings. We have to find our own grounding.
That might mean that we have to pull back and spend some serious time and effort and maybe money or other resources getting our ducks in a row. 🦆
Finding our own grounding might mean that we’re actively doing things to help people in Minnesota or Maine or whichever United State is currently facing aggressive and created humanitarian crises from its own institutions.
It’s going to be different for everyone. We all have to find the things that resonate.
We all have to meet each other where we are in our particular journeys. Not everyone’s going to be out on the street but not everyone’s going to be behind the scenes either, holding pieces and parts and lives together in the quieter ways.
For me, I intend to be in this for the long haul. I don’t know what that means. Maybe that won’t be very long at all but who knows.
I intend to help people help each other. I haven’t been doing a whole lot of that out in public recently because sometimes you have to pull back and regroup.
🗝️ That’s a key to navigating chaos. Being able to pull back and regroup.
I’ve stepped back to put some pieces in place that will help me help more people over the long haul. That will help me do more with community over the long haul.
Right now that’s meant working full time on another community oriented project, where I am learning a ton. Of course community is everywhere but there are as many ways to do it as there are communities. Learning from other people how they do it is priceless.
We have so many options. Of course those take resources and investment by people... but we have options.
Even in the midst of disruption and disaster, we can create new things. Sometimes that’s where some of the most helpful things come from.
So yes for me I’ve been learning about community in different ways. As neat as that is, I’m not doing it this week because now I’ve got the ‘rona so I’m having a doctor-imposed time-out. Although since it’s the wild west virus-wise up in this country I could just be going out and about spreading disease since that stay-home direction is unenforceable... but I’m taking the old-school public health route and not spreading the funk further.
With that, I’ve had more time to catch up on what’s going on in the world than I usually have since I started this new job thing.
But it’s all the same, what’s going on in the world. It’s rising mess. It’s increasing destabilization.
It’s aggressive taking apart of the things that we as a society have built and evolved over decades and centuries.
It’s undoing of the undoing of injustices that people worked very hard on. It’s so much other undoing.
👀 So in the middle of all that, where do you find the through-lines? The grounding?
➰ Like is there a rope you can grab onto that helps you get through the blizzard from one place to the next?
Well I do think there are places where we can find grounding. I think there are places where we can find courage. Where we find strength. Where we find inspiration. Where we find the wherewithal to keep at it and to help others and help ourselves and to find ways through.
It is in our humanity.
That is what’s shining through in Minnesota. It’s what’s shown through in every other targeted area so far. Like the picture at the top of this post — what shines through the fog on the glass is the heart stuff and the light.
It’s people who love other people and who are willing to go all out because this is what’s at stake.
Our humanity. Loving other people.
💡 Somehow I think we have to get better at talking about this stuff. All of us.
There’s this tendency to point out hypocrisy and to point with surprise and alarm to all of the god-awful things that are happening. To point out the meanness. To react with shock. And those things are all natural.
But what’s behind all of that is the love. It’s saying we love other humans. It’s saying people are valuable. All people. Every single one of them.
It’s not just saying what’s not okay.
It’s saying what’s okay.
It’s saying what we want to see in the world. What we want in our society. What we want our institutions to do for us — not to us.
It’s saying that it’s important to take care of people. That we should heal the sick. Feed hungry people. Make sure people are sheltered. Give people the opportunity to live their lives in the places where they are.
It’s taking the hippy dippy snowflake love and light criticism people always throw around as weakness and putting it out front as strength.
Valuing every single human and meeting people where they are is strength and power soooooo many don’t understand.
Being vulnerable is strength so many don’t understand.
Anyway I’m just saying we can do more of it. All of it.
Minnesota is showing us how it’s done. As it has every other community so far over the past many years that have had to deal with injustice in all the ways it shows up.
I don’t think a mass movement is here yet for all this. But maybe it’s getting there.
The damage is setting in. In so many ways. Communities will not be the same after this kind of treatment by the entities that are supposed to be supporting them.
Right now we are reasonably and understandably reacting with heavy fear.
But we are also as a society reasonably and understandably reacting with love and fierceness.
I think there’s a whole lot more of the love and fierceness to come. For what it’s worth.
And when I wonder what I can bring to the table, at least for right now today it is talking about this. Soon I will be back at it doing it in the ways that I can do.
Any one of us can. Most of us have stories of our own or from the people we know who are out doing the things right now.
It all matters. We go forward together. We help each other forward.
Onward and through.
💡🌟🔦
Help support our nonprofit work if you’re in a position to. Donations cover some of our monthly expenses & help us do free zooms & other engagement efforts. Options for donating include ActBlue, Patreon, and paid Fierce Community Substack subscriptions. Thank you to all who have helped us get this far.
A Nonprofit Note & Volunteer Info (Repeated From Yesterday)
Fierce Community’s work is happening behind-the-scenes for now as we rework the nonprofit’s methodology and approach. Public work will resume once we’ve retooled.
Want to volunteer? Send a note with “volunteer” in the subject line to people@fiercecommunity.com. Here’s what we need the next few weeks —
Evening availability in January/February at least two nights per month for a group Zoom meeting. We’ll work around time zones.
Ability to do Zooms.
Willingness to communicate with other volunteers via email & text — about the work, for coordinating schedules, & for any schedule changes.
An ability to contribute & listen as part of a team.
Patience, persistence, & thoughtfulness for finding ways through this moment, together.
Flexibility, because we’re in a catastrophe. We’re going to need to be able to roll with some chaos & change. (Semper Gumby.)
🔦🌟👣
Vanessa Burnett is the director at Fierce Community. Email people@fiercecommunity.com to set up a conversation.
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.