Hello from a hotel room in Dublin, a week into my Irish travels. I’ve missed it here; I just spent the weekend in Derry with dear friends whose children are now old enough to have opinions and ask me to read a bedtime story (well, at least the older one did) and in the time between the EU elections and the Irish local elections and the goddamn Westminster elections we managed to take some time for talking about the things we need and want and love, to walk in parks and on the beach, to talk about the world we thought we’d be living in at this age and the world that we find ourselves in instead.
The world full of horrors and also full of things that bring joy to a child’s face.
My latest piece is about Palestine and the student encampments and the concept of safety and what it means after twenty-three years in a post-9/11 security state (as opposed to the pre-9/11 Cold War security state), what it means to young people who have never known anything else, how they have returned to an old protest modality in order to make their universities take notice but also in order to keep one another safe, to experience community care, to create a space where their grief is seen and mirrored and valued. To risk being brutalized because they know that what is happening half a world away is so much worse.
I say all the time “the kids are all right,” which possibly sounds more condescending than I mean it to. I remember a political meeting sometime in I think 2010, when student protests were just starting to kick off, and an irascible (I say that with love) comrade was grumbling about how the Left needed to grow up and get serious, and someone asked him “what about the student protesters, do they need to grow up” and he said “they’re the only grownups in the room.”
This is how I felt, talking to students across the US the past few weeks: these are the only grownups in the room.
Speaking of grownups in the room: the European elections have reminded me of Yanis Varoufakis’s Adults in the Room, the story of the way that Syriza was crushed by the EU institutions, and have me thinking once again about the politics of seriousness. I have been threatening to write a piece about seriousness since shortly after my last trip to Ireland, in fact, inspired in part by an ill-fated fling but also by the struggles of Left politicians to be taken seriously by an establishment that, Varoufakis should remind us, wants to crush them regardless of how many concessions they are willing to make, how many graphs and charts and PhDs they can muster to note that actually, the establishment is the one that has lost the plot, that is driving us into the ground.
I will leave it to someone else to talk about Macron; I haven’t the stomach.
There is no amount of seriousness that will make empire/the capitalist class/its lackeys in various legislatures and presidential palaces listen to a reasoned debate. The bombs hitting tents in refugee camps remind us of this again and again.
But. High energy yearning, you ask? It’s the title of a playlist that a friend shared with me that is despite it all bringing a smile to my lips and an extra swing to my hips when I have it going in my headphones. Because it is spring or summer, depending on how you calculate such things, and though it’s chilly here in Ireland and I have a bit of a cold I am goddamn determined to find some optimism (of the will, indeed) this season. Because there is no other option and because I love this time of year and the people that I have been spending the last couple of weeks with and the ones I will see very soon.
Because I think there is something to the prefigurative nature of the encampment, something that struck me from the first time I visited Occupy Wall Street. That I find every time I see my fear and rage and heartbreak reflected back to me in the face of a comrade, a friend, a lover who gets it. Because this world is designed to strip the joy out of our lives unless it is in consumption (and yes yes I’m talking about playlists but in my communist utopia we definitely still have pop music) and I point blank refuse to let it. Because healing from all the various wounds of this life comes with finding some pleasure deep somewhere in our bodies. Because in the midst of this hell I know with a certainty I have never felt before that I am loved.
I think, as Gargi Bhattacharyya wrote, that “Heartbreak is at the heart of all revolutionary consciousness. How can it not be? Who can imagine another world unless they already have been broken apart by the world we are in?”
(Read her whole book, on grief, one that led me to places that I needed to go to write my own.)
We are here, in this movement, in these conversations, in this mess, because we are yearning for something better. Because somewhere deep down we believe it is possible. I have been struggling with my ability to imagine better lately and I have been realizing over again what Mariame Kaba means by “hope is a discipline,” in that I am actively pushing myself to imagine what I want, whether it is a tiny thing or a huge one, whether it is someone’s arms around me or a free Palestine in our lifetime. I am sitting down to allow my yearning to have shape and form. To put some energy behind it. To know that attending to relationships formed in struggle and in respite is a way of building that world, too.
Anyway. Thank you for indulging me, as usual. I have written a lot of things in the past couple of months and podcasted some more and my book is moving through the world and if you are a journalist or podcaster and you want a galley let me know and I’ll get you on the list.
Writing
At In These Times, where I just keep going, apparently:
The aforementioned piece on students and Palestine and safety and care. A report from Memphis, where the state government overrode the much needed reforms that organizers fought for and won after Tyre Nichols was killed by police. And a long read on the Mercedes union drive that came up just short last month.
And at the American Prospect, part of a print issue on pricing, I wrote about surge pricing, Uber, and how workers can begin to beat it.
Podcasting
Heart Reacts episode 2 is live! On Patreon, Spotify, Apple Podcasts and probably anywhere else you get your podcasts. We are planning on getting episodes out every other Wednesday from now until who knows what. As usual, send us questions!
Troublemaking
More soon; in the meantime this page is usually up to date. And if you click through you get a preview of my new fancy website…
And someone else’s dog
Lu is skeptical of my plans.
thank you as always - your words always give me hope and remind me that we are not alone in this shitty world. And we do need joy in our lives.