I believe in us

Stay safe. Stay strong. Stay warm.

Image from Women’s March Minnesota

When my son and I bought our land, an RV was conveyed with the property. I don’t know anything about RVs. But now I was the proud owner of a not-insignificant asset, no idea how to take care of it, and winter was coming.

I found a nice, local guy and his wife who do mobile RV repair and maintenance. They came out to help me get all the systems shut down for the winter. And what we discovered was that the prior owners had walked away without emptying the black water tank into the septic system. RV guy said I’d have to do that before winter, the implication being that *I* would have to do it because he wasn’t going to. The flexible pipe coming off the exit valve was old and damaged, and I wasn’t paying him enough to deal with that.

Fair enough. So, I went out there a few days later with flex tape in hand, did my best to patch the pipe, and opened the valve. For about 30 seconds, old toilet contents filled the pipe in a torrent, completely thwarting my taped patches, fountaining out anywhere they could find the smallest crack.

That’s kind of how it feels to live in the United States these days, like a flood of foulness is rushing out of every crack, assuming you're lucky enough to not yet be getting the hose right to the face. Except it’s not just a thirty-second torrent, face-first or otherwise. It just goes on and on.

We are drowning in our own shit here. And it’s tempting to make comparisons, especially when talking about ICE, to the Nazi Gestapo. Certainly, CBP head Greg Bovino gets off on cosplaying an SS officer. But it’s important to remember that the Nazis based much of their strategy on the United States. On the tactics employed by white supremacists post-Reconstruction and on the Jim Crow Laws, which sought to control and terrorise previously enslaved Black Americans. This is homegrown shit we’re flailing in right now.

If you’re overwhelmed, that’s understandable. Anyone paying attention would be. Please make sure to keep breathing. Eat real food, sleep as well as you can, and ask for help when you need it. It doesn’t aid anyone for you to run yourself so ragged reading the news or trying to contribute that you go under, where the only way to survive is to tune everything out, encasing yourself in a bubble of ignorance or nihilistic despair.

That’s what they want, for the majority of Americans to ignore or justify whatever doesn’t directly hurt them. Don’t give in.

What the administration wants to turn the United States, the Western Hemisphere, and the world into is not inevitable. We, by which I mean the vast majority of humans who do not, in fact, agree with them, can prevent the future they’re scrambling and bullying to define. We can turn this shitty ship around.

All you need to do to help turn the ship is one real, concrete thing every day. One thing. You can contribute to resistance and community in Minnesota. You can support immigrant rights organizations in Maine, ICE’s latest focus.

You can read up on the work of the Somali community in Maine, then push back against racist, false narratives that paint all immigrants as criminals and drains on the state. In 2023, I featured a podcast here, The Sum of Us, which profiled Somalian farmers who had managed to revive the dying town of Lewiston, despite horrible racism spurred on by then-Maine Governor Paul LePage and a right-wing media spinning lies. You should listen and share it.

You can contribute to Liberation Farms, run by the Somali Bantu Community Association, or find an immigrant farming association in your own state and support them. You can spread the good news of how immigrants are keeping our rural areas alive in Maine, Minnesota, Arkansas, Wisconsin, Maryland, and many, many other states.

You can strengthen ties of mutual aid in your own community. Contribute to or volunteer at food banks, community health clinics, homeless shelters, and job training programs. You can monitor drop-off and pick-up at your neighborhood school. You can join your local ICE watch.

You can support a union.

You can help staff voter registration tables and support efforts to increase turnout for the midterm elections. Not because electoral politics will save us, but because it is a potential avenue to leverage power.

You don’t have to wait until November, either. You can hold your elected representatives accountable right now. Email, call, or show up at their offices. We pay them. Make them do their jobs.

If you have a Ring doorbell camera, you can get rid of it. Amazon (Ring is a subsidiary) has faced accusations of collusion with law enforcement for years. Now, it has publicly announced a plan to join the Flock AI network of community surveillance cameras.

You can make art. You can gather with friends and neighbors to discuss strategy and share food. You can speak up in your religious community, your PTA, and at your job. You can join local protests, attend city or county council meetings, and run for local office. You can boycott corporations that support the systematic undermining of democracy.

It’s so bad right now, friends, but we can and will save us. Rest up if you need to, gather your people around you, and then choose today’s one action. If you need help deciding where to start, reach out. I’ll do my best to help.

I believe in us.

Stay safe, strong, and warm.

XO,

Asha