Friends,
(As long as you implacably oppose Donald Trump and Elon Musk, you are my friend. Friends can of course disagree respectfully about tactics.)
Since the election, I have been flailing. One could stay on constant political alert, making phone calls, attending meetings (virtual and real),
I did that in the lead up to the last election. Which was OK for a limited time, and proud to do my small part for Kamala. But now, it feels like pissing in the wind.
Sure I am retired. But, (forgive the digression, I’ll connect it in a moment), Since retiring, I’ve focused on photography and writing music. And I’m not bad. I’ve had photographs accepted at two local art shows. And my music (well I don’t yet know how to make resonant recordings yet, but I may have a couple of good songs).
Anyway, art nurtures my soul. Whereas making phone calls to people who are mostly annoyed at me for calling them is, to put it bluntly, withering.
A few weeks back, I was thinking about this: If I had to make an artist’s statement (which I’m told I need to do), it would be about how I see the extraordinary in the ordinary. It’s everywhere, and never seems to run out, if you know how to look. Natural Geographic has incredible photos which I could never match. But I see the beauty of nature everywhere — in my yard, in the neighborhood, on city streets -- not just in the woods.
And then it just dawned on me. I live in this beautiful neighborhood, not very bourgeois. Non-descript 1950’s houses, but lots of mature trees and lovely gardens, with patches of woods on the perimeters.
But more importantly, the neighborhood has a good vibe. The people seem to be good and kind. In about an 8 block area, which I walk all the time, I see so many signs that you all know like: “In our home, we believe . . .” and “Black lives Matter” and “Kamala”. People do free libraries and free garden vegetables.
Nevertheless, we live in a world that is so atomized. Indeed, THEY want to keep us that way, divided and isolated, individual and selfish. THEY have taken control of much of social media to serve that end.
So, with that in mind, my wife and I decided to organize our neighborhood. Not for a specific political action (I believe that will flow out of our group(s) organically). But just to acknowledge and care for each other. To build community.
Two meaningful cliches come to mind:
United We Stand, Divided We Fall
Think Globally, Act Locally.
I nervously knocked on a few doors in the immediate neighborhood. And to my surprise, everyone was positive. No one turned me down. I would say my neighbors were aching for this, even if they didn’t know it.
So Sunday, now almost two weeks ago, we gathered at our house. It was only about 10 people.
Of course, it was not just a social event. We prepared an informal Agenda as follows:
AGENDA
A. Welcome and Introductory Remarks (by Rich)
B. Introduce Ourselves: Name and something about yourself; your major concerns; what you would like to get out of this group
C. Discussion/brainstorming about concerns and how we might address. those concerns as a group [It was important to us not to just leave this as a gripe session, but at the same time not to be heavy handed. Let the group lead.]
D. Create means of communication and discuss what information we want to share/receive.
E. Share information about upcoming local actions/protests.
F. Set a next meeting.
Well . . . the meeting exceeded our expectations by a mile and a half. The relief on everyone’s faces to be able to talk about this stuff was palpable.
So when I saw a really encouraging piece today in DKOS, pointing out that pushback is happening everywhere, which the MS media is not even talking about (except the Guardian) I thought I needed to share this little bit of pushback from my corner of Decatur, Ga. And maybe encourage some of you to try something similar.
I still don’t know what the future of our group will be, of course. But we agreed to meet again — April 6.
That will give us a chance to talk about whether to expand our numbers (there seems to be lots of opportunity to do this in our neighborhood, but it is a ticklish issue in my mind because once you get too large, the structure becomes merely a speaker in the front of the room and a semi-passive audience waiting for instruction. I am thinking about expanding by forming cells and then letting the cells subdivide (but remain connected to each other). That way more ideas can percolate through the interconnected groups. But I have to see what the others are thinking.) I will try to give a report about our next meeting.
Our group is also sharing the news about boycotts and local protests.
Finally, while I have your attention, and only partially connected, I keep saying to everyone not to say that Trump is “doing” this awful thing and that awful thing.
Instead, say Trump is “trying to do” these awful things. Because the pushback is real and growing stronger. And he often blusters but quietly backs off. It’s just that the NYT etc don’t report the backing off part with the same lust that they like to report the parade of terribles.
