What We’re Doing Now
This one has a salesman, memes, communists, a memorial service, songs, bail, dishwashing, unsolicited advice, a book review, and spies.
I’m working on a project with a salesman…that sounds like the beginning of a joke, but it’s not…and that makes it sound serious, but it’s not that either. It’s literal. The salesman and I recently joined the board of our town’s hyperlocal news site, which is launching a new website any day now. Our project is outreach and fundraising around the launch.
As a salesman, he wants to start with a gap people can help us fill. As a fundraiser,1 I want to start with a vision people can help us achieve. We both know that both approaches are valid and necessary, but we got a little stuck on where to start. Eventually, he took charge of writing the outreach guide, I took charge of writing the initial fundraising email, and it’s all good.
I had the same struggle with the opening of this post. I was torn between starting with the gap or the vision. I didn’t want to write two posts. I couldn’t do what Catherine Lacey does in The Möbius Book (see below), which is to begin the book twice, at the front cover and the back cover. Hypertext was supposed to be the internet’s solution to the limitations of linear narrative, but it didn’t take like that.
Ultimately I decided to start with the gap, which I’ve been thinking about for a long time. The vision came later, on Sunday to be precise, and I’m a slut for chronology. So here we are.
You’ve seen this meme, right?
I hate it.
One reason I hate it is that during the Holocaust I most likely would have been dying in a gas oven, laboring in a concentration camp, or hiding in an attic, so fuck you.
Another reason I hate it is that I respond to it every time by enumerating the things I’m doing, which makes me feel smug, inadequate, or both, and I don’t like any of those feelings, so fuck you.
But I hate it most of all because it is sanctimonious preaching to the choir. Most people who are against slavery, genocide, fascism, racism, and antisemitism (the real kind, not the fake Trump kind) know their history and know they should be doing something now. Those people generally fall into three categories: the ones who are already doing their best (hooray for you!), the ones who are wondering what to do - or what else they can do (you’re on your way!), and the ones who are not going to do anything (ugh!). The best way to help all those people - even the ugh ones - is to invite them to take specific action, not hector them. So fuck that meme.
I have a lot of communists in my life. Real ones, like my husband, a birthright communist2 who passed out pamphlets for the Progressive Labor Party as a child and sang “I’ll sing you one-o / red fly the banners-o / what is your one-o / one is workers’ unity and evermore shall be so” to our children as a bedtime song.3
Unfortunately, now I have to once again talk about death, because two of my people who died in the past year were also communists. Not only that, but they were both Marxist professors, the ones supposedly at the root - or rather a root, along with critical race theory, DEI, and fake antisemitism - of the current attacks on academia. They were also two of the most generous activists I’ve ever known.
One was my high school friend Joshua Clover, who was remembered over and over for his commitment to the nitty gritty work of organizing and community: protesting and picketing for sure, but also putting up the posters, bailing out the arrested, feeding the picketers, and doing the dishes.
The other was my stepbrother Paul Mishler, who died in August. His son began his memorial on Sunday by leading the traditional call and response: “What do we want?” “Justice!” “When do we want it?” “Now!” We ended by singing “Solidarity Forever” and “The Internationale.”4 Everybody stood up, fists were raised, a good number of people knew the words by heart.
There’s a lot to say about Paul, and a lot was said. One of the things a lot of people said was that Paul was an activist from his teens to the end of his life. Like Joshua, he always showed up and he did all the things, from starting the radical newspaper to hosting the meetings to playing with the children. All the things, glorious and mundane, that it takes to make change.
Another thing about Paul was that he was the embodiment of inclusion. He was interested in everybody and everything, he was welcoming, he brought people into movements, he helped people find their political purpose, he shared his knowledge and experience, if you showed up he wanted to work with you.
Neither Paul nor Joshua had to consider what they would have been doing back in the day because they were doing it now and they did it right up until their deaths - not because someone was hectoring them, not because they felt they should, but because they believed things needed to change and they had found lots of meaningful and joyful ways to take action.5
These days, there’s a lot of advice out there about how to take action. If you read this newsletter, you’ve likely seen at least some of it.6 If you’ve followed the advice and are actioning away, hooray for you! If you’re still looking for the right action or feeling anxious about whether you’re taking enough action, here are some things I like to keep in mind:
There are a lot of of ways to take action. You can march on the front lines or you can stay back and do the dishes so other people can march on the front lines. It all matters.
When you find the actions that are meaningful and joyful for you, it is easier to take them.
Ignore anyone who hectors you, virtually or in real life. Look for the people who welcome you.
It always feels good to invite other people to take action with you - both because that’s an action in itself and because then you have company.
In other words, be like Joshua and Paul, but most importantly, be you.
Book(s) of the Week
I reviewed The Möbius Book for this Sunday’s Boston Globe. The Sunday book reviews appear online earlier in the week, so here it is.7
Because we still deserve nice things…
I’m firmly committed to the nice things rubric because I’ve used it forever and also I like it. Nice things are nice. We need nice things. The world would be better with more nice things. But I’m definitely stretching the frame with this story (NYT gift link) about impressive journalism, ridiculous but scarily adept Bulgarian spies, and Russian politics writ large. The content of the story is in no way nice. It’s fascinating, bizarre, occasionally funny, sometimes confusing (it took me a week to get through the first three paragraphs because I couldn’t figure out who was who and what was happening), sad, terrifying, and a close look at one corner of the world’s current insanity. It’s also excellent reporting by M. Gessen, who has become one of the few people whose writing and politics consistently speak to me these days. Hmm, Gessen, and maybe the article too, might be more of a good thing than a nice thing, but good is nice, so here we are. Highly recommended.8
It’s funny to call myself a fundraiser, because I opted out of a career in development decades ago, but maybe once a fundraiser always a fundraiser? Or maybe I just have an inherent bent toward fundraising, because somehow I always end up doing it, even when I swear I’m not going to. But I’m good at it, and it’s a great way to take action, so here we are.
I’m sure the Quakers won’t mind me borrowing their lingo.
One characteristic of a good bedtime song is length, at least in our family where going to sleep was not easy. I tended toward “Mockingbird” and “Leaving on a Jet Plane.” My husband went for “She’ll Be Coming Around the Mountain” and “Red Fly the Banners-O,” which not only has a lot of verses but they get longer and longer as they go.
I love singing “Solidarity Forever” - it’s catchy, we all know the tune, it’s a cinch to join in on the chorus if we don’t, it’s rooted in our musical and political history, and every time I sing it I get to remember singing it on the picket line that one time I was on strike. “The Internationale” leaves me cold - I’m not a communist so I don’t know it, and I find it hard to sing (my husband sang it in French and Esperanto as a child and has no patience with the English). Wait a second, I think the difference between “Solidarity Forever” and “The Internationale” is my whole argument!
The last day of Paul’s life, his son read to him from a book of Marxist historian Stuart Hall’s essays. The last day of Joshua’s life, Sarah Miller read Marx to him. This feels both enormously important and like a predictable coincidence. I’ve wondered if they ever met, and I think probably not: different microgenerations, different fields, different geographies. I’m not sure they even would have liked each other. But I feel so lucky to have known them both.
If you haven’t, and you need some help, please reach out! I’m the queen of helping people take action.
Unnecessary “s” in the first line courtesy of my editor, and that’s all I’m going to say about that.
If you want a straight-up nice thing, go see Jane Austen Wrecked My Life. I went into it knowing nothing except the title, and I was delighted. So if the title appeals, I think you will find it nice.
Billy Bragg's version of the Internationale has a good first verse, and the story he tells of having been given 24 hours to write it -- by Pete Seeger, to whom apparently one did not say no -- is a good one
Just read the M. Gessen piece—thank you! I had missed that and it is breathtaking. And terrifying, of course. Also, Kiese Laymon’s revised edition of Long Division does the same “start here or here” thing with the front and back covers, though to very different effect. You know that, of course, but I can’t resist an opportunity to talk up Long Division.
I am squarely the target audience for that meme and I am grateful to you for articulating why it sucks.