Sharing via social media is great! Thank you so much!
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Some of these are silly and some of the pop culture ones aren’t even really a net positive (IMHO) but overall this made me feel hopeful and like fighting is helping
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I really enjoy reading Tangle, in case anyone is looking for a digest that tries to stay as nonpartisan. Not because I have an issue with partisan politics (bleedin blue at this pt), but because it’s interesting to have some cross perspectives featured. For example, someone wrote in with this question, and it felt really good to have some data I can use to discuss with my relatives (the ones that don’t make decisions based on identity and are open to exploration):
Has the crime rate gone down in the communities where ICE has removed the greatest number of immigrants? Stated another way, are we getting a benefit from the costs of deportation and the loss of tax money generated by immigrants?
Lindsey Knuth, Associate Editor made these points:
- Several studies have tackled the deportation/crime-rate question by following the rollout of a federal program called Secure Communities… findings support a similar, surprising conclusion: The policy had no meaningful impact on trends in the crime rate.
- the results complicate his administration’s core assumption — that mass deportation will inevitably lead to a decrease in crime.
- Here we have a program directly targeting criminals that didn’t (statistically) make communities safer, and instead led to decreased reports of crime, by worsening trust between immigrants and the police.
- As for whether the public-safety benefit of deportation outweighs its financial costs, the answer is probably not. As you noted, deportations aren’t free — in 2016, Immigration and Customers Enforcement (ICE) estimated the government cost per removal to be $10,854.
- should Trump succeed in his promise to deport “millions and millions” of unauthorized migrants, and those estimates are running into the trillions.
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Another one!
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Oh that is GOOD.
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Having so many feelings and definitely want to run away to somewhere that feels more safe/stable.
I know that all of my adjectives give me so much privilege, even in this hell-scape of a country (straight, cis, white, rich, etc.) but I’m feeling so scared and helpless.
Anyone have encouraging words or actions that feel meaningful to take? Or do you want to just talk about where we should all go? I think there’s a decent chance spouse and/or I could get jobs in Canada, although less likely to be able to choose a location that we would be most happy with like BC). It’s apparently quite easy to get permanent residency in Mexico, with just a short visit and not needing to maintain a home there but do we really want to be part of the gentrification/expats in Mexico City? Also my spouse prioritizes stability above all and is not actually interested in pursuing a different life.
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Things that are making me feel better (intermittently):
- reading queer good news on Substack / other news sources that are specifically looking at wins
- Looking at all the emails I’m getting from organizations that are still fighting
- Going outside in my town (or to work) and seeing all the people from all over the world who have moved here and still think this is a good place to be.
- Looking at all the multiracial babies on the playground and the queer people and reminding myself that the culture has changed dramatically and that’s not going to be erased in a few years
- Reminding myself of how many times over the history of this country many groups have been much more persecuted that I am right now or likely to ever be and how they stayed and fought and it got better
- I feel a lot better when I’m more angry than I am scared. It’s hard to get there deliberately but it happens by accident sometimes. Fuck them, how DARE they think they get to do this in OUR country. Sometime it helps to think of being too scared to do anything as part of complying in advance. Like they don’t even have to succeed as long as I’m scared they’ll win?
- Elections in Virginia and Maryland in two months, postcard writing and phone banking is starting up
- it feels better to call a representative than to sit in a doom spiral even if it doesn’t individually move any needles
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If things become actually dangerous we will be eligible for asylum
There are at least thousands and probably 10s of thousands of people who they would go after in terms of political activism before me
I do not have children and I have an escape hatch through dual citizenship, so I have decided to stay for the time being. And if I’m staying then I have to figure out both how to live and how to fight. So I’m trying to focus on that and not spend energy on hypothetical future escape plans.
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Courtney Milan’s newsletter is actually phenomenal for feeling slightly better:
Long so spoilered, from June
One of the things that is not fun about being a person who gets immersed in history a lot is that you see a lot of parallels between right now and prior times.
I’ve seen a lot of people talk about 1930s Germany, and I think we should keep those comparisons in mind and be wary of where we are, but I think that the US is not like 1930s Germany for multiple reasons.
I’m saying this not to imply that people can breathe a sigh of relief and not worry. It’s because I’ve seen too many people say things that sound like they’re giving up. They think that Trump is the Fourth Reich, and that he’s won, and there’s nothing we can do about it.
But no, I don’t think we should assume that this country will continue the way Germany did. That doesn’t mean it will be good; there are a lot of truly awful things that I think can happen. But what happened in Germany will not work in the US, for two simple reasons. First, this country is a lot more diverse than Germany in the 1930s, and that poses a serious difficulty.
Second… well, how do I say this? This is not a history book, and my summary will leave out a lot of nuance.
Even back when this country was a collection of English colonies, before they’d swept the country from east to west with a wave of migration, we were a bunch of angry weirdos. This is because one of the ways that England dealt with the huge number of religious dissidents generated by Henry VIII creating the Church of England (and related Protestant/Catholic arguments) was to ship almost everyone ornery off to the American colonies.
We got the Pilgrims. We got the Quakers. We got the Puritans. We got the angry rabble rousers who were making life a little too difficult, sometimes for each other, and they all landed slopped together on the Eastern seaboard of what is now the United States of America where the only things they could see eye to eye on were “fuck the King” and “let’s try and take more land.”
When we first became a country—before we even had a constitution—the motto of the United States was e pluribus unum: out of many, one. This has proved to be more of a guideline than an actual accomplishment.
Much of US history is about the fight between how very many we are, and how very hard—maybe even impossible—it is to herd us into being one.
It is, at times, a despair. How hard is it to treat people with dignity? To believe in racial equality? To allow people to live their lives, to love who they love, without having state interference? Why is it that Texas or Alabama or Florida(the governments, not necessarily the people—lots of good people live in those states) can’t just get with the program and believe in human rights? Will you please stop engaging in voter suppression?
But it is also, in times like this, a light. We have states that were once part of Mexico and states that were once Puritan, states that once enslaved people, and states that once demanded that every human being stand equal.
That’s my second reason why I think that the US won’t go the way of Germany. We are a country of cats. We were specifically sent to this land because of our inability to herd.
This country has always been engaged in a civil war over which direction we’re headed. Sometimes that war is quiet and subterranean. Sometimes, it’s loud and vociferous. Many of the pivotal points in US history break upon this: that every once in a while, we are more many than we are one.
I’ve heard a lot of slogans recently. “Our diversity is our strength” is one I mostly agree with, but I think it’s rather beside the point. Our diversity is an inevitability.
Do you know how hard that side has tried to make this country not diverse? They tried in the Know Nothing era. They tried, horrifically, to destroy Native populations, and what they did was heartbreaking and awful but their descendants are still here. They tried when they expelled most of the Chinese from the country. They tried during Operation Wetback. They are trying now.
They’ve done heartbreaking, awful damage—I don’t want to downplay that—but they’ve never once succeeded, because we will always be many, and we will never be one.
What is happening now is horrific and heartbreaking, and people are being harmed. There will be scars that these events leave that will eventually stop bleeding but never go away. I strongly suspect that things are going to get more awful and more heartbreaking before they start getting better.
But they will not win, because the greatest strength and the greatest weakness of our country is the same: that when you try to make every one of the many places in this country be the same, it splinters, and out of many, we have more.
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Other peoples coping strategies are very welcome though, mine are hanging by a thread some days
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The only action I have been able to add to my life rn is taking on the role of class parent for my kids daycare class. It’s introduced me to the staff, and now I know more parents/kids by name. It makes us all safer to know our local family networks. I highly recommend this
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@Sunflower I hear you on the feelings. This isn’t really a response to you, just my thoughts of late.
I’m at a similar level of privilege and one thing that’s been bothering me lately: whenever I hear others talking about leaving or thinking about leaving the US, I always feel a weird pang of guilt because I am not really interested in doing that. Is it because I will be one of the last people to be persecuted, and am in denial about what could be done to me? Maybe. Does that mean I only care about myself?
It sounds cliche but everyone is going to have to do different things for their survival. For some, that absolutely means that they should get out of dodge. For some, it doesn’t.
I care about stability for my family and me, and I care about staying near others and in my community, small as it is. I don’t see myself as a “fighting” type of person AT ALL, but for someone of my privileges, I think I am better placed where I am, as opposed to looking for a way out.
One reframe that’s helped me is: resistance isn’t just fighting the system and making big changes. It’s also about taking care of each other and learning to live differently. In the past few years I’ve been looking at how to make my family more food secure (by gardening and preserving, etc) and how to strengthen ties with others around us, similar to what @noodle said.
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I have been loving this podcast by a couple of my favorite writers:
I’ve only listened to a few episodes so far. One of their themes is doing a low buy/no buy and they connect this to The Horrors in lots of ways, not just personal improvement or saving money.
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What keeps me is definitely the costs, and I don’t mean financial ones:
- I spent 16 years on various visas in this country not counting permanent residency. The restrictions and instability are very hard! And other countries aren’t necessarily better about this than the US. You’re always subject to removal if policy changes, your status runs out and isn’t renewed, etc.
- Family. The international flight added a rift between myself and my grandparents. Plus visa and border policies can change. What if you can’t go back or they can’t get permission to visit? And if you can it eats all your PTO and it’s always a choice between travel/experiences or visiting family…
- Highly specific to my situation, but my IVF embryos. Not very portable. I don’t even want to move out of the county for a few years.
- Career. I would overcome this if not for the rest, but it isn’t portable, I would have to respecialize. And that isn’t fast.
All this would 1000% be outweighed by being in a group actively persecuted by this government, no question. And no judgement on anyone who does move to leave for any reason.
Instead, the things giving me courage (or just… stubbornness?) in staying:
- My parents and grandparents grew up in Soviet Russia. Granted it was the 70s/80s, not the Stalinist repressions of the 30s. On the one hand, I am now aware of the awful political and social repression they coexisted with. On the other, for most people, it was fine and even good. They have things they miss, or wish we had gotten to experience. So it gives me hope that whatever shit the government gets up to, people will form their communities and take care of each other and make a life within those constraints.
- Then I think of all the other times and places in history that would have felt like existential threats but people kept on. And built something better eventually.
- Also related to Russian origins: I think the brain drain from massive intellectual emigration to US and Europe (and Canada, and Australia) in the 90s+ helped swing the country toward right wing populism/Putin long term. Someone needs to stay to uphold the liberal values. And it should obviously be those not actively persecuted.
- I’m not confident the rest of the world is safe from the same threats. Canada and many European countries and I believe Australia are struggling with a rise in fascist ideologies and parties. And the US has a huge influence on the world economy; a major stock market collapse would affect the whole world, I believe. So it’s kind of like… Safety is an illusion. We have to deal with and adapt to whatever comes.
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This is the major one I’m looking at…granted I’m not particularly interesting persecution-wise which definitely makes a difference (people tend to forget ace exists even in LGBTQ+ spaces so it’s generally ‘hey, random unmarried woman’) but at this point the world economy is pretty solidly tied together, and the US part of that isn’t really avoidable. And as far as the political shifts that seem to be happening…well, I watched a friend insist “Oh, I can just move to Germany and everything will be perfect” ad nauseam right after the US election and then get very quiet after some of the German election results, and it doesn’t seem to be the only place where that’s happening. So I’m currently at stick it out and do what I can.
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So, I’m trying to figure out how to articulate this without sounding flip, or like I don’t care about what’s going on in the world, or like some New Orleans version of a hipster who says “oh, you wouldn’t understand the obscure music that I’m into.” Because I genuinely did not understand this until I lived here.
One of the most amazing things that I have seen since moving here is how New Orleanians still find joy when everything’s going to shit. It’s not about drinking or partying or getting stoned or showing your tits on Bourbon Street so you can get pelted with cheapass beads… well, I mean, those things DO happen, obvs.
But it’s more like - making art and covering it with glitter and throwing it from a float to a total stranger.
Dancing down the parade route dressed like a vampire or a skeleton with people screaming for you.
Or rallying around a bar in the Quarter who’s being threatened by some rich asshole who’s pissed that the bar’s bubble machine is ruining the finish on his Porsche, by showing up and shutting down an entire block with a bubble parade.
Stepping out onto your porch and hearing the high school band practicing (and our bands here are REALLY REALLY GOOD) and realizing that parade season’s coming.
Showing up for each other in various ways. Helping your neighbor clean up after a storm and then having beers with them on the porch. Inviting someone you barely know to Sunday dinner at your house. Putting food in the community fridge.
Seeing a total stranger on the street with money pinned to their chest (this means it’s their birthday) and adding a dollar bill to their stack.
I’m explaining this really badly. It’s not that we are ignoring bad news. We are just expressing joy and creativity despite it.
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I really really love that.
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This is beautiful. The resilience and perseverance and focus on art and community. It’s not unlike Judaism to me. The way we celebrate the new year and then get slammed with Yom Kippur not long after. The way life and death, joy and sorrow are intertwined. It’s all so very human and also so very sublime
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Ha, don’t say the R-word around anyone who lived thru Katrina, but yes, exactly.
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