All we can save
Some bird wisdom for midwinter and Coup Phase 1.
The weekend before Inauguration, I stood by our driveway with one eye on the dog and another on more than twenty clusters of geese honking their way southwest. They were glorious.
The geese are still going where it’s warmer and there’s food. They’re still taking turns at the wind’s sharpest angle, not burning through their reserves all at once. They’re still flocking together.
They know what time it is.
So many people I know are already direct and indirect casualties in the new administration’s chaos party. From agency administrators and international aid workers to refugee counselors and nonprofit staff, projects are pausing, teams have been furloughed, and both immigration and career journeys are being derailed.
There are real human costs to disruption like this: it’s not just dinner banter, chess moves, or a horse race. It’s the risk of homelessness. Job offers snatched back. Scientific research sunk. Family and refugee petitions delayed. Frustration rising for all of us as we watch unaccountable people paw through the US Treasury and the General Services Administration.
Earlier this week, my local Congressperson emailed the district about what’s been happening in D.C. She told us that several states including ours are suing the administration over the federal funding freeze. I’ve since learned there are other legal challenges unfolding too: suits about the data breaches, the federal worker firings, the frozen grant and program funding, the constitution-flouting orders, and more.1
I'm glad for the work these teams are doing and all the people explaining what’s happening and what it means. I also know it’s not the role of the courts to avert harm. Courts respond to harm after it’s happened or while it’s underway. Sometimes we get lucky and an injunction stops something in progress, but a court can’t unring bells: if data has already been breached and read—and it has—then making that data read-only now is only a start.
We needs other tools to complement the law now. We need people in every role inside and outside the system who will, in Bayard Rustin’s words, “tuck our bodies in places so wheels don’t turn.”
The geese know what time it is. Do we?
Normal’s been breaking down slowly all our lives, sometimes out in the open, sometimes under the surface. Over the last half century, hostility, austerity, populism, and authoritarianism have turned scores of countries around the world upside down. We’re not the first. But if one of the temptations of this era is to minimize what’s happening, zoning out is another.
We’re not in a blockbuster where a wounded ex-spy rediscovers himself as a destabilized country crumbles around him (sometimes because of him and the agencies that sent him there!). That’s not this script.
We’re also not in a play where our cascade of gaffes and tragedies gets tidily resolved in the last act—deus ex machina. There’s no specific script, even.
What there are are complex webs of characters, influences, histories, and relationships—a social system that changes when it must but snaps back to its previous state unless there’s enough mass and momentum to stop the backwards slide.
System snapbacks happen in groups and organizations of every politic, tradition, and size. The US has been snapping back on health, poverty,2 literacy, and inclusion recently, and we’re in turmoil over public accountability and authoritarianism right now.
How are your networks being affected? How can you interrupt the current authoritarian storyline—in any way and any scale?
Flock together: gather a tight circle of folks for a cellphone-free dinner and explore these questions.
Try a role-playing guide to help you plot out your stakes and options.
Jot down what you want to tell your elected officials about how you’re being affected; write down what you want them to do; and practice so you can pass that message along when you call.
Keep in mind: social organizations and activists are strained right now. Nonprofits and foundations are already being scrutinized for their political positions and grantees.3 Racial justice activists have already been prosecuted under racketeering laws. Trans people and immigrants were among Week 1’s executive order targets and have been in the crosshairs in states and nationally for over a decade.
There will always be targets under this kind of cloud. We just have to decide that all the people are ours. First they came for Those People, right? Or maybe they come first for us. Either way, we say absolutely not, we talk mindfully online and off, and we use Signal for mobile messaging when needed. That’s what time it is.
Pace yourself, friends: this is only the beginning. Don’t just gulp down the latest bad news and dissociate. Take in just enough info from trustworthy sources to sharpen your clarity about what you’re going to do, who you’re doing it for, and what you’ll risk to see it through. Strengthen your heart.
There’s an Adrienne Rich poem I recently read in a collection of climate solutions essays:
“My heart is moved by all I cannot save: so much has been destroyed I have to cast my lot with those who age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.
The book All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis centers all we can save instead of all we may not. Chani Nicholas took a similar stance in a recent email: “We can do everything possible to save everything possible,” she wrote. “And everything we save reclaims a world of possibilities.”
All we can save.
Everything possible.
A world of possibilities.
This is the vision to hold in your heart, whatever else is on the way.
And let these beautiful, playful, pattern-making birds teach you how to move through it all: close to home, around something delicious, and together.
Until next time,
Keisha
Four things that aren’t about the coup
The US Department of Justice recently finished a formal investigation of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Two survivors are both now 110 years old. Truth-telling isn’t the same as restitution, but justice and progress aren’t possible without it.
Peter Thiel told Financial Times readers the government should put ancient history like Tulsa to rest and save its truth-telling efforts for more pressing questions—like who killed JFK. He was serious.
Ok, maybe that was a little bit about the coup. So is this.What life skills do wealthy people need to positively contribute to just social transformation? Michael Gast has some notes.
Outgoing Surgeon-General Vivek Murthy’s last act was to write the nation a social well-being prescription for relationships, service, and purpose.
Murthy talks us through his list with Simon Sinek: check out their conversation.
Track push-back lawsuits with the team at Just Security. For more granular updates, you can find Just Security on Bluesky.
According to the Census Bureau, Social Security brought nearly 30 million Americans out of poverty in 2023. Ask yourself: Who benefits from threatening or defunding that program?