This is America
On weathering a coup and imagining otherwise
Make no mistake, we in the U.S. are experiencing a coup by white supremacists who are raiding the federal government. Their goal is to destroy it for their own profit.
I crashed out about it all last week. It was around the time they started deleting databases from federal agencies. I spent whatever day that was having all the feelings about what that loss means — all the work that went into creating those datasets, all the people who would be using them for their work that now can’t, the jobs destroyed in an instant when those datasets got wiped, and the fact-based truth those datasets represented. I felt sad and scared. And, I felt a deep anger bordering on rage. Mostly, though, I just felt heartbroken (and, of course, inspired by the archivists who jumped into action to save some of the data).
I think this segment of our current horrendous news cycle hit me especially hard because part of my job is training young people to analyze those large datasets, and I kept thinking about all of their dreams and how those might be affected with this destructive smash-and-grab heist. These broken men (and the women assisting them) are going to do a lot of damage before this is over.
The question that a lot of people are asking me: is how do we weather this coup?
Some people are planning to leave the country. This may make sense for some who may no longer be able to get the healthcare they need, or can no longer find work here. But for many of us, leaving the U.S. is neither practical nor appealing. So, for those of us staying, how do we make it through this?
Here’s some of what I’m doing to weather this storm:
Do what you need to stay grounded. Breathe, meditate, get centered, find some people working with plant medicine near you, do some work on yourself, journal. Part of why sitting with all my feelings about datasets cleared in a day is because I processed those feelings, and in that process I realized my attachment to datasets. What’s your attachment in this moment? Is it to some idea of what America means to you? This is an opportunity to explore attachments, and let go of them.
Tinctures of news. The 24-hour news cycle is meant to keep us rattled. The constant nerve-jangling-alerts unsettle our nervous system and disrupt the calm summoned with the breathing, meditating and getting centered. You only need a tincture, a teeny-tiny-drop of news to know what’s happening. The cable news industry, and the social media auxiliaries of it, are fueled by our outrage. You can still be informed, and angry, but not be activated by their scheduled outrage triggers.
Take the Long View of History. Over Christmas, I visited Stonehenge and I’m still thinking about the fact that it was created 5,000 years ago, before invention of the wheel. In recent days, several friends have shared with me their concerns about gender in the current moment, from the pernicious “trad wives” and “incels” trends to the assault on trans folks. The reality is that in the span of my lifetime, we have used science and technology to decouple sex from reproduction and that is world historic victory for feminists and queer people. That one change has had enormous social consequences, including women’s liberation from all kinds of oppressive hat tricks of the patriarchy to gay rights to transgender empowerment, and hey, none of us are going back. We’re not going back to the closet, or to willing submission to breeding ourselves to death. What we’re experiencing now is a ferocious backlash against all that from white supremacists who are as wedded to regressive gender binaries as they are to colonialism, but they’ve already lost if you can take the long view.
Pod Up! Find a group of folks near you and spend time together in person. Invite people in, create art together, make zines, have a crafting night, play board games, or host a movie night. As a collective, our ability to be social got broken during the pandemic and we need to work on rebuilding those skills. There’s also historical precedent for the rise in fascism following closely on the heels of a global pandemic, and you could have people over to watch a short film, then have a discussion about it, salon-style.
Follow the Lead of Black people. It’s Black History Month and if no one has told you lately, Black history is American history. As any student of Black American history will tell you, this isn’t the first coup in the U.S. by white supremacists. If you don’t know about it, this is a good time to study up on the Wilmington Coup of 1898 (there’s also an excellent podcast about it, “Echoes of a Coup,” and a PBS documentary about it). I mention that here not merely as a history lesson but to highlight an important way to weather a coup: by listening to and following the lead of Black people. For my white-raised friends: did you watch the Super Bowl Half Time show on Sunday? Did you find all the Easter Eggs? Kendrick Lamar (and Samuel L. Jackson and Serena Williams and SZA!) offered us a rich text, full of symbolism about the white supremacist roots of the American experience. If you found yourself uncomfortable or confused about it, can you get curious and learn what it was about? Rolling Stone has a good write up about it and there are a zillion TikToks about it. Go enjoy!
Listen to Queer People. This is not our first rodeo, living under oppressive conditions, and what I love of about queer folks is the way we refuse to accept the straight status quo, are handy in an emergency, and can show up in style. A lot of us saw all this coming because we did the reading on Project 2025, and well, here we are. Queer folks are still doing this work, and I’d recommend you follow Anne-Christine D’Adesky who is writing about to fight back at Resisting Project 2025. If you don’t have any, get you some queer friends, ASAP.
Listen to Organizers. “Activism makes for a good life,” is some of the wisest advice I’ve ever gotten and it came from Frances Fox Piven, a renowned scholar-activist. Some of the organizers I’m following are: Mariame Kaba, Kelly Hayes (and her wonderful podcast, Movement Memos), and Scot Nakagawa.
IMAGINING otherwise + Acting Locally. One of the main things that white supremacist capitalist patriarchy steals from us is our imaginations. It’s one of the reasons I ended the seminar I taught last semester with this inspiring book, Imagination: A Manifesto, in which Ruha Benjamin challenges us to conceive of a world where everyone has food, shelter and love. What’s your first response to that idea? If it’s to scoff, or dismiss it as naive, then you have work to do on your imagination, and this book is a great place to start. Here in New York City, there’s a guy running for mayor, Zohran Mamdani, and he’s walking around with a bunch of balloons, trying to get people to imagine otherwise.
The next period of time - we don’t know how long - is going to be nasty and brutish. The goal of all this is to get us to turn against one another and make enemies of one other. Our main task is to find each other and figure out how to love one another in the midst of all the terrible destruction by broken, powerful, white men and their acolytes. We are the ones who will save us.