how big is this thing anyways?

earlier this week, i had lunch with my friend danya and she made a really insightful comment (rough paraphrase): “part of what’s so weird right now is that we still don’t know how big this problem is. it seems different everyday. it’s weird to know how to act when you’re not sure what you’re responding to.”

i think she was dead on. last week and at the beginning of this week, i was still in mourning and definitely wasn’t ready to act. now i’ve started to see some ways to act, but it’s definitely still not clear to me what’s going to be the most strategic.

every morning it seems like there’s some new front to be paying attention to. nathanael points out that trump says he’s not going to roll back marriage equality and yet he’s appointing anti-gay judges. that’s a fight in the making. maggie share’s trump’s bullshit ten-point plan for black america. she and phil both point out its absurdity. anyone (with any sort of racial or oppression analysis) who has experienced or studied cities knows that his language is a smokescreen. “reduce crime” means change laws to put as many people in jail as possible (apparently, this is already happening on the west coast). “school choice” means de-funding public schools. “equal justice and applying the law fairly” means inequity, because we currently aren’t all equal; having marijuana in a packback can put you in prison, but shutting down the economy gets you a bonus.

right now it seems like there’s a lot of energy to keep bannon from getting appointed. it’s unclear to me if that’s a distraction. obviously it will be helpful either way, but are we rallying people’s attention and energy around that while missing other insidious things happening in the background? or things we haven’t actually been presented with yet?

i’m tired.

why fiction matters (even though i don’t read it)

a few days ago my friend erin wrote about why he consumes fiction. reading his post made me realize a few things:

i don’t value reading fiction myself, but i do value it.

i think our lack of collective imagination at the neighborhood, city, and societal scales is part of what’s wrong with our country. some types of fiction, actually support and encourage the stretching of our imaginations. i think that’s the type of fiction he was referring to when he said…

“If a story doesn’t demonstrate how a character evolves through the story in some way, or if doesn’t reflect on society or our own individual hopes, fears and tendencies, then it’s less interesting to me. If the story doesn’t question or explore some aspect of humanity that makes us rethink our own relationships, then I get bored.”

over the past year i’ve been learning how important fiction and specifically futurism is from people like terry marshall and aisha shillingford of intelligent mischief and kate balug of the department of play. the fact that octavia butler predicted down to the slogan donald trump’s rise to power is amazing. and if she had the skill and ability (and intuition) to see it coming, it seems to me like we should be able to imagine the very real pathway out of it. and, since i believe that the people who are the most marginalized have the best actual handle on how the systems we live in work (and don’t work), i think the futures created by them (i know of afro-futurism, but there must be others… trans-futurism maybe?) are the most powerful and compelling.

i’ve recently made friends with a city planning student named grant and he’s writing his master’s thesis as a series of fictional rural stories. that sort of work that speaks to real situations people are in or can sympathize with now, but paints a series of pathways forward seems so important.

i learned from the center for story-based strategy that people won’t go for real where they haven’t gone in their minds. so, like, how else are we going to know what to work towards for unless we’ve imagined first?

now, i’m much more interested in, feel passionate about, and feel tooled for creating and building right now, but i do know that it’s super important for us to be able to imagine our way forward.

ps - i have actually started to read a little fiction (the parable books by octavia butler and ecotopia by ernest callenbach). it feels weird, though. =|

what can we ask right now instead of how are you?

i’ve thought a lot about (and even done some writing about) alternatives to the ‘what do you do’ question. some of that is because it’s just annoying and boring to repeatedly answer the same question at social gatherings. some of it is because i think it’s in the small, but ubiquitous things that culture shifts. i have a theory that if everyone started asking 'what are you dreaming about these days?’ instead of 'what do you do?’ we’d see a culture shift over time away from our identities defined by our work.

in the past week, i’ve definitely noticed and experienced resistance to the standard question: “how are you?” although, as a general practice, i try to be honest when i answer this question, lately i’ve been feeling real tired of answering it. i’ve also heard people take the question back after they’ve answered it and i’ve heard people say “i don’t really want to talk about how i’m doing.”

i do actually think it’s really important to know how each other is doing, but i also think that this is a moment for culture shifting (even if just at a small scale/geography) intervention. what can we ask each other that moves us in the direction we want to be headed? some ones i’m going to test out today:

• what are you listening to that’s keeping you going right now?
• what (if anything) makes you hopeful in this moment?
• what are you doing to resist and/or fight?

definitely curious about other people’s thoughts on this!

building healthy networks

this is sort of a jumble, but i’m running with it anyways. 

a quote from resilience:

[“In a healthy network, you have to connect on your similarities and compete on your differences… INSERT REST OF QUOTE WHEN I HAVE TIME]

the two things that stand out to me right now about what’s needed are (1) what skills a network weaver needs to have and (2) what a healthy network looks like.

to the first point, network weavers must be “connectors, mediators, teachers, behavioral economists, and social engineers.” as i think about the role i’m meant to play in the upcoming resistance, these are all things i have done. the network can’t solely be made up actors who can wear all those hats, but the people who can have a unique position to hold. and if i’m being honest with myself, i think that’s what i’ll be doing.

to the second point, a healthy network has both cooperation and competition. adhocracy (worth a look up) seems like the ideal state of a resilient healthy network. essentially, it looks like many subunits acting independently in general, but that are able to align and act in concert when necessary and beneficial. part of that means that there needs to be enough information flowing between the different groups to know when to align and when to stay separate.

i can imagine that being important from data standpoint, but also communication and action. amassing too much energy (data, action, whatever) in any one place in the network makes that point in the network an easy target. this resistance will not look like the civil rights movement with a few figure heads; it will much more decentralized.

people who understand how to build networks and systems like that need to be doing it starting now.

and i guess that means me.

😬

resource

• adhocracy for an agile age

no, prayer is not the answer

i am pretty disturbed by the number of times since trump was elected that i’ve heard variations on prayer being the solution. it has sounded like:

• “all we can do now is pray that it doesn’t get terrible.”
• “pray for him and his people.”
• “i’m praying that you stay safe and you do the same for me.”

if i’m honest, it’s crazy talk like this that made me run from church. although i realize that there are conflicting bible verses about whether prayer on its own is effective or whether it must be combined with action, it just doesn’t make sense to me that sitting or kneeling and thinking is itself going to have any serious impact on anything. i don’t want my friends to pray for my safety, i want them to actually do things that help keep me safe. and vice versa: i’m not just going to sit in my bed and think about my family and friends being safe. i’m going to take action that ensures they stay safe. and if those actions seem impossible, i’m going to encourage them like hell to get out.

last week, i found myself saying to ross, “i’m really hoping this doesn’t go as badly as it could…” he responded, “will be up to the righteous to ensure that.”

faith without deeds is dead. and so we go forward, with hope and action, both.

ps - i don’t often still refer to the bible, but i do remember that james 2: 14-26 used to really resonate with me. for the most part, that passage still does.

¹⁴ What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? ¹⁵ If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, ¹⁶ and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good^[a] is that? ¹⁷ So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

¹⁸ But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. ¹⁹ You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! ²⁰ Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless?²¹ Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? ²² You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; ²³ and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God. ²⁴ You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.²⁵ And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? ²⁶ For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.