As the government shutdown continues, we’re facing a winter with dire consequences for unhoused and low income neighbors across America. As of this week, the feds still plan to cut SNAP benefits on November 1st and plunge millions of children into further food insecurity, and combined with rising grocery prices many parents I know are frozen with anxiety about how they will make it through this fall and winter. It’s something that makes me (and likely you) extremely upset, enraged at the unnecessary cruelty our society chooses to uphold and frustrated at the human cost.
“OK. So, what are you going to do about it?”
I hear this sentence in my own head, when the anxiety builds and prediction wants to drag me into despair and inaction. I’ve tried to force myself to understand that it’s not something being asked in derision, or thrown out in futility. It is a small check in, to see if I am still choosing to believe in what I say I do. That, despite my brain’s best efforts, I don’t know exactly how things will shake out in the future, and therefore it’s worth trying something. That everything worth doing is worth doing with others. That any human power can be resisted and changed by human hands, and that sincerity and effort are the least likely things to betray me in the end. Survival pending revolution.
Finding a small way to respond to what’s happening lets me answer that nagging question for the day; sometimes it’s contributing to mutual aid for someone, or building on previous efforts. It never feels like enough, but adrienne marie brown helpfully reminds us:
A fractal is a never-ending pattern. Fractals are infinitely complex patterns that are self-similar across different scales. They are created by repeating a simple process over and over in an ongoing feedback loop.
“How we are at the small scale is how we are at the large scale. The patterns of the universe repeat at scale. There is a structural echo that suggests two things: one, that there are shapes and patterns fundamental to our universe, and two, that what we practice at a small scale can reverberate to the largest scale.
The Black Panther Party is oft remembered for its commitment to armed community defense and the free breakfast program started for school children, but there were actually 65 different survival programs the party pulled together to address local community needs; the idea of ‘survival pending revolution’ comes only when they recognized that if those needs weren’t being met, the community wouldn’t survive until it was time to move towards socialism. Everything from free pest control, furniture programs, optometry, drama classes and free ambulances were direct responses to local needs. Anyone who has taught children knows how impossible it is to learn on an empty stomach, and things like the free breakfast program made so many bright futures possible.
Sometimes you stare at what is coming for us with clear eyes and know exactly what to do,, how to protect yourself and save others from the onslaught; other times, the scale is so large that we freeze and even find ways to avert our gaze. 1.4 million Michiganders will have their benefits stopped during the shutdown, and those kind of numbers can often make contributions feel futile. But I’m choosing to act in a fractal manner; donations from my wildlife photos and posters have been going to answer requests for mutual aid for food and medicine — because when EBT benefits are lost, money that went towards other essentials gets rerouted — and it is an attempt to apply pressure to our communal wound. We talk about having a failing safety net, but when you cut one string the others struggle to bear the strain. Bobby Seale and the Panthers understood that you couldn’t push for larger changes while folks had to choose between safety and sustenance.
So what am I doing about it today? I’ve started a fundraiser for Food Gatherers, our local Feeding America partner food bank in Washtenaw County. I’ll be donating from my own budget as well as proceeds from my photo print sales, as food banks are able to utilize cash donations more flexibly than accepting and storing donated foodstuffs, and are often able to purchase food at deep discounts. I invite you to donate if you can, share this fundraiser, volunteer or consider any other efforts to support your own local food banks however you are able. Leaning into our values in this moment helps pull others back from the brink, and gets us unstuck in the process.
I am still finding time to dream. Envisioning a world where our needs are taken care of and our beloved community thrives, interwoven in ways that protect us from the violent swings of the electoral pendulum. But I’m also doing what I can, adding in my fractal actions, to help folks survive pending that longed for revolution.
a Bobolink, a small grassland Blackbird, preparing to land on a flowering tree
Ryan’s Reading Docket
There are a few new books that are coming from colleagues, comrades & co-strugglers that speak to our collective needs in this moment; I’ve signed on as an affiliate to Bookshop.org (largely to get the ability to make the recommendation pages) so these are affiliate links that you have no obligation to use.
Read This When Things Fall Apart: Letters to Activists In Crisis, edited by Kelly Hayes; this book is a series of letters to activists from veterans that have been through countless campaigns, and is clearly going to become a key tool in my own personal kit. Authored by over a dozen other organizers and targeted towards the challenges we face trying to change the direction of society, Read This is a bundle of collected care shared warmly; a strategy guide for getting us to the next level.
Imagine Doing Better: Why Policies Backfire and How Prevention Thinking Can Change Everything, by Paul Fleming; Having worked with Paul both in educational settings as well as organizing together with the Coalition to Re-Envision Our Safety, I can’t wait to dig into his efforts to rethink our assumptions about institutions and structures that do us more harm than good.
Raiding The Heartland: An American Story of Deportation and Resistance, by William Lopez; I had the pleasure of sharing a writing group with Bill, Paul and a number of my other local justice nerds over the past couple of summers (unlike them, I haven’t made nearly as much progress!) and this is a work that is both heartbreakingly timely but also addressing a need in our national moment; both authors are public health professors and in Raiding, the understanding of how deportation impacts not just the individual but a radiating circle of family, friends and community is something important to hold in our hearts right now.
a great egret flying low over a sunlit lake
Thank you for reading creating.care ! I am hoping to get this work in front of more people, so please share it with others if you are able. Subscribers are able to get 10% off of my online print store for wildlife photos and abolitionist posters with the code ‘careiscool’. If you find some of this writing useful, consider sharing the post on social media, or letting me know on Bluesky.