Sponsor/Ad Voice (3:18)

Okay. She'll come home from a walk. I said, how was your walk? She's like, yeah, I went on a walk with Ram Dass. It was wonderful.

Abby (3:25)

And I've listened to every single episode. So I just listened to them over and over and over again. Because some people talk about a way to be, but he's always coming from that actual way to be. Like, I can tell he's there anyway, whatever. So he said that at one point, Gandhi planned this huge march, and all the people, like, left their jobs and came to this one place for this march, and they all went through a lot of hardship to get there. And then that morning, some things happened and he was like, this isn't supposed to be happening today. We have to cancel it. And his people around him kept saying, we can't. This is the plan. This is the plan. And he said something like, all I know to do is wake up and feel the truth of things. And so in order to be truthful, I cannot be consistent.

Sponsor/Ad Voice (4:21)

Damn, you said that 40 times to me.

Abby (4:25)

And I just think that.

Sponsor/Ad Voice (4:26)

And every time, it's still so good.

Abby (4:29)

Well, because Abby's always like, but we were supposed to do this other thing.

Sponsor/Ad Voice (4:32)

Yeah.

Abby (4:33)

And I stand in the kitchen and say, in order to be truthful, I cannot be consistent.

Amanda (4:38)

So I think.

Sponsor/Ad Voice (4:39)

Interesting in a marriage.

Abby (4:40)

Real there, though, right?

Sponsor/Ad Voice (4:42)

Yes.

Abby (4:42)

If you're staying embodied and fluid, it's often a changing of everything and a landing in this moment today. So today, Amanda, how are you?

Amanda (4:52)

I'm fucking terrible. And also.

Sponsor/Ad Voice (4:56)

Well.

Amanda (4:59)

I think I have one addition to what you're saying, which is that I want to double click on the. This being an intentional strategy, like the strategy of the overwhelm, the strategy of we can't possibly keep up. And so the news cycles are going. The atrocities. You have New Gaza and fucking Jared Kushner. Is turning a war crime site of genocide into do a real estate venture for war criminals. And who the is he? Like, how did an individual man who has done nothing but defraud the government and the the world is positioned to take over what should be a site of an international tribunal for war crimes and instead turn it into a profit making center? Like it's a real estate deal. You have that and that's like a blip on the screen. It's like I don't even see anyone. That's like one of the 700 things we're supposed to metabolize in one moment. And so that is a strategy. The strategy is a flood. The zone can't possibly acclimate or metabolize it. And so you just feel like, what's the point? The inconsistency is another way to say that is trusting yourself in the moment. So it isn't like not consistent. You're consistently being like, what is my thing today to do? And I unbound by what I thought it might be yesterday when I woke up. Then the other thing that feels very, in light of this strategy of overwhelm, that feels very comforting and grounding to me because I think a lot of us feel like we are just kites in a hurricane and we're trying so hard to like do what is needed. And I think I am prone to rage and to a lot of like bursts of anger in these moments. And there's a place for that for sure. And the like grounding principle is keep your head down and keep organizing. You don't need an individual response to each one of these things. Things if you have an ethos of organizing that you just, when you feel rage, ground yourself in organizing. When you feel overwhelmed, ground yourself in organizing. It isn't, I can't attend to this thing over here because look, oh, I have to go put out all these fires. If you are showing up in any local organization and getting yourself plugged in, you are doing something about New Gaza. You, you are doing something about ice. You are like, what they want to do is for us to unplug and start swirling in the wind. So I think it's both those two things. It's grounding yourself in a local organization that may appear to have nothing to do with the fires that are going on and actually have everything to do with it, whether or not they are particularly intersecting or not, and not being religious about what you thought you were supposed to be doing. Like you're saying, and part of that I think is also the Other antidote to swirling around in the wind is like, they want us to give up. Not just on paying attention to what's going on. Not just on feeling like we're totally ineffective, but also feeling like we're not human, feeling like we are just devoid of any life force. So I think the going back in the grounding and the organizing is also grounding in things that bring you joy. Art that makes you just feel that spark of joy again. Like everything that you can dip in to fill back up the sponge is not just something you do so you can keep working. It is work, too, because that's what they're trying to do. When I get really, really scared and really, really desperate and hopeless, I think, oh, I am doing the work for them. When I am allowing myself to be that way and working against it is like, what's going to make me laugh today? What's going to fill me with joy today? What is some small thing I can do locally that will keep me plugged in, that is contributing to what will take all of this down.

Abby (9:31)

I think, like, we should stay there for a minute about the organizing locally. I know we've been talking about this a lot lately, but I think we really need to talk about this deliberately right now, because I think it's finally permeating, like, at least like white lady culture. I think that one of the beautiful things that has happened lately, maybe over the last five to 10 years, is that a lot of people who have never done it are showing up for protests. That is incredible and great. But what I think now people are starting to understand is the protest is not the everyday work. Think of the protest as like the concert, okay? The protest is the concert. It's like the public event that is the result of day in and day out, the band practicing. Okay? So lots of people at the protest are in the audience. They're just, like, there for the concert. The idea is to be in the band showing up. So what those protests are is there are a lot of people that just come and are just there for the day. If you could see the web beneath the people marching, what that protest is is a ton of different groups that have locally been meeting and organizing and talking to each other and getting on the same page and taking care of each other and serving their communities. Right? So these are tons of different organizations. They're all over your area. You know, the groups fighting for immigrant justice and having meetings all of the time. They are groups that are fighting for queer kids that are in the high schools, that are Doing the work to give them places to exist. They are people that are fighting for zoning, for people to have homes. They're in a million different categories. They're serving kids. They're making sure there's free lunches. There's a million different ways to get into this river. Those people become an ecosystem that then activate to go to these protests, that this is how Minnesota becomes Minnesota. Right. It's not just that everybody showed up one day. It's that all of these people were already plugged in and already talking to each other like this gorgeous spider web.

Sponsor/Ad Voice (11:35)

In terms of your metaphor, the organizing prior to the concert is like band practice.

Abby (11:40)

Yeah. Yeah. Well.

Amanda (11:42)

And it's not just the band. It's that, like, when you think about, like, a concert just doesn't come and you buy a ticket, you got to get somebody to file the permit to show up. You got some. Got to get somebody to sell the tickets. You got to get somebody to make sure there's places to park when you have a concert. You've got to get, like. It's every single piece of that. It doesn't just happen. I think about when people are calling for a general strike, and that's awesome. It's going to take economic pressure for anything, because economic pressure is the only thing that moves anything. Think of Montgomery Bus Boycott, okay? This is the pivotal moment that starts to kind of unravel the whole segregation in the deep South. Rosa Parks was super pissed that day. And so she sat down. She wasn't tired. She was tired of always just having to give up her seat and never being able to rest and always having to obey. Okay? So that looks like a spontaneous act. And. And it is. In that one particular moment, the Montgomery Bus Bus Boycott only worked and started to change the course of history because of people who are working behind the scenes, because of the people who had the infrastructure to make it work. And they identified that Rosa Parks moment to say, this is where we activate right now. Like, there was the Joanne Robinson. She worked for the Women's Political center. She worked for 10 years before then to organize women to make sure they had the. The social structure, to make sure that she was aligning with the churches, aligning, getting everybody's buy in. So that night when Rosa Parks sat down, she said, this is the night, okay? And she went overnight. She worked at the University of Alabama. She printed flyers all night long so they could get them out in the community. 20 women came that morning because she had that network already ready, and they took all of the flyers that she had printed and they started circulating them within the organizations of the community. And they knew that in order to make that work, which they had already identified because they knew they had economic power because 75% of the bus riders in Montgomery were black people. It wouldn't have worked if it. If they didn't have the economic power. If we take this down, it will work. They plugged into all those organizations with whom they had been working for 10 years and they set up the structures that would work. You can't just ask people to not ride a bus. They had whole systems where they had basically like a pre Uber where they had. They identified the people who had cars and they went to take these people to work.

Abby (14:10)

They.

Amanda (14:11)

And they also made sure that they had organized groups of people to walk together miles and miles and miles so that they wouldn't face a violence on their way to walking to work. And that's the way that it lasted 381 days. They hired Martin Luther King after the infrastructure was in place to say, can you run this thing? But it was local on the ground organizations that made that thing possible. So I just feel like if we have a kind of hero idea in our culture that like, who's going to lead us? Who's going to. Nobody's going to lead us. It's going to be groups of on the ground, organized, unsexy as hell work to be able to have the infrastructure so that when a moment comes, we leverage that moment because we have the capacity and the organization to do it.

Abby (15:00)

And I think when we say, why isn't anyone leading? What that is revealing is that we aren't in community because there's so many people who are leading and have been leading in our communities for decades and centuries. And they're usually black and brown women. And they are doing the work and have been doing the work forever. So when we say, oh my God, no one's leading, all we're doing is revealing that we haven't been following. It's not going to be some white lady who stands up and suddenly that's not it. That's not how this is. This works. So maybe we should bring up the whole freedom fleet again like we've been talking about. You get in a boat, the protests are just like the boat parades, okay? They're not the work that's being done every day in these boats. And what you do is you just go and you find somebody that's doing good work in your community. Then you, you show up and you ask, what can I do? And then you humbly do the work that the people tell you to do. And it's not sexy, okay? It's not like you have your Instagram and you're filming yourself being a badass. It's not, it's usually, it's very slow. And person to person, then you develop these relationships, and not only relationship, but you slowly develop a worldview that is constantly talked about in these circles, that is that you're not stunned when these things happen. These are part of what you've been preparing for and teaching and learning in these groups, right? And then suddenly you do feel a little bit less alone. You have your network, you have your community. You know where the call's coming from, you know where to give the call. It feels different. And I think for me, when I have taken my foot out of that world and allowed myself to be absorbed into Internet land, that is where I mean, you know, Abby, like, that's when I start to lose it. That's when I start to buzz too high. That's when I'm completely fear based and ungrounded. You know, we know that we will be lost the more we're lost just in our minds and we're not in our bodies connected to each other. So imagine then how much more lost we are when we're once removed from our minds and we're lost in the collective mind. That is just the absolute most terrifying place to live. So I feel a responsibility to be in social media land sometimes and to speak from there. I think the new, like the revolution will not be televised is what I experience in my body is the revolution will not be on Instagram like it is daily happening in your communities. And the way that we make peace with our bodies is we put our bodies in those spaces and we start loving our neighbors in small ways and following the people who are leading.

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Amanda (19:39)

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Amanda (20:27)

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I think what you guys are both saying is so important, not only for me to hear, but for the person who might be listening, who might feel a little bit out of their depth or league. Right? Like we had Brittany Packnick Cunningham on and I just felt, just listening to her, so astonished and also intimidated in a way. The way that you guys and your brains operate, it feels like varsity level. And I want to like acknowledge the people. To me, I want to acknowledge the people out there who might feel Like, I don't know all of this stuff, and I'm just learning about it. And I feel intimidated about getting active and actually going out into the real world. And one thing that I've been doing is getting on meetings on my computer and just listening. Donating to organizations locally in my community that I think will help move the needle in some way. There are things you can do if you are feeling a little bit like I am in certain moments, because it can feel sometimes pretty daunting. And I'm also experiencing so much rage and frustration and fear and confusion, much like you all are. And so I just want to acknowledge if you are listening and you hear yourself in what I'm saying, like, you also aren't alone. And there are also spaces that you can plug yourself into that can slowly get you to the point of, like, literally going out into the world yourself with your body. Going to a protest is wonderful. Good job. But that can't be the thing that you do that just checks the box. It's like, how can we change the way that we interact in this? Because I also know there are a lot of moms that are listening to this that are like, I can barely keep my head above water because I'm dripping with children and trying to get them to school and trying to pay my rent, and I don't have any extra time to spend and do this. And so I just want to say I hear you and I see you, and I think it is important that you still are included in this in whatever ways you can plug yourself into.

Abby (23:26)

What do you think when you hear that sissy about parents with little ones right now? I mean, I just can't imagine. I have big ones and I'm having. I'm struggling remembering their names and to look at them and, like, to be present with them because I'm so scared of the world I'm leaving them in that I'm just leaving them now.

Sponsor/Ad Voice (23:46)

So. Right.

Abby (23:48)

Do you have any thoughts about that?

Amanda (23:50)

I mean, I think that's what I have so much empathy for, that. I think that's what they're counting on. Our capacity and the way that life has been set up is so that there is not a margin to engage if you're dripping with children because you have to work the long hours and you have to pay for the childcare and you have to do well. Yeah, that's part of the problem. Right. Like, part of how we got here. The reason you can't engage is because of the system that was set up because we did not engage. That is this like vicious cycle that we're gonna have to make a decision on. When I think about black people in the US south had to go to jobs where they weren't getting any wages that were livable at all and they had to keep their families safe and, and they had to go study for the bullshit tests to take the vote. And then they had to wait in the lines that were intentionally long so that they could vote and that with every single thing against them. And if they had just been like it's too much which is what everyone was counting on them doing, then there wouldn't have been any progress. So I just think there's a little bit of like, yeah, it fucking sucks. And onward we go. We have to decide what is elective. I know what goes into our culture right now. I am in a type A crazy ass community right now where I know that when there's a baseball game there's about 17 hours of invisible women labor that goes into the fucking snacks and the decorations and the who's having the party and what's going to happen after. And I do think we need to take an honest assessment of, of what we are putting our energy toward and decide is that the best and highest use of our energy. We are not taking time away from our kids to decide that they actually don't need some of that. And what they actually need is a republic in which they can exist and they can have sustainable infrastructure that we do not currently enjoy. So there's gonna be some hard decisions and it's not necessarily a take your basket that's already overflowing and add more shit to it. It's can you take all that shit out of your basket and decide what you wanna put back in and what is the use of your life? Because I know we have organizing skills. I know it to pieces. I know in 30 seconds we can make a whole ass caravan get exactly where it needs to get to the game. We with all the decorations it needs and all the food and also have you thought about X, Y and Z that we're swear to God our kids need.

Abby (26:43)

God damn. If we could only organize the resistance like we organize a graduation party that.

Amanda (26:49)

Is loving our kids and that's great and there's some of that is joy and you should not stop the things that are both joyful and that you can honestly look in your eye and say this is a good thing for my kids. But if you are doing something reflexively you are doing out of a panic that your kid is going to fall behind that you're doing out of like an anxious well, this is what everybody's doing, so I can't. I'm going to show myself as being different. If I opt out of it, then take a hard look because you might be a leader in your spaces. You might be able to be like, guess what, I'm actually not going to go to that, whatever the hell that meeting is. And I'm gonna be going to this other one. If y' all wanna join me.

Abby (27:36)

Great.

Amanda (27:37)

Or maybe you can suggest to your book club that your book club take on a different project, a different book that leads to different discussions that leads to you finding out what is happening in your community. There are ways to leverage this, and it's not a shame thing, it's an honest thing. I'm the same way. I have to really do an audit of my life and decide what is going to go so this can go in.

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Amanda (30:18)

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Abby (31:26)

We struggle to find the time to show up for resistance work or liberation work because we have to pay our bills, because we have, we don't have enough. Because we have to da da da. Because we alone have to make our families survive. And those things are so connected because we don't have community. That's what we're saying. Like if we get involved in these little things, we have community that then collectively cares for each other and collectively. But the individualism we've been forced to inside of white supremacy and capitalism forces us to be so alone that we feel like we don't have the time because we're too terrified of not surviving in our aloneness. Because nobody can survive alone.

Amanda (32:12)

And then there's another circle of that, which is that the conditions that we're trying so desperately to survive inside of are the conditions that if we were to organize, we would not have to.

Abby (32:25)

Survive inside of the climb to exceptionalism. It's like, you know, the culture, the ethos of all of this is individualism and exceptionalism. The reason that we are so obsessed with spending 80 hours a week manipulating our children's lives so that they might get a scholarship. Some sort of survival of the fittest thing we're doing that is still tied to individualism, that is still tied to, like, I just have to Give my kid the edge so that she can make it, which is so awful and so we shouldn't have to live that way. And also, wouldn't it be amazing if we switch to collectivism, which is like, how do we create a different world where they all get to survive and thrive? Not just through the skin of their teeth and through our manipulation and obsession, but because there are structures that make sure that no one falls through the cracks. They're just all completely tied together and it's a chicken and an egg thing. And I think that you're exactly right that it's going to take a lot of people to opt out of the individualism and exceptionalism and go be in community. But it's like, if I take my eye off the ball, my kid's gonna fall behind and we're still in this old system and it's gonna take opting out anyway.

Amanda (33:41)

But that is all from a place of fear, right? Like, it feels so strong in us because it is a place of fear. Because the reality is, for the first time ever, is that our kids will do less well, quote, unquote, well, than we do. So that is from a very real fear and anxiety. But it is a little bit like trying to bail out the boat that has a gashing hole in it. Like, we are so furiously trying to make sure that our kids are okay and that things are okay and that we're going to make it. But the fear is directed at the wrong solution. Yes, that fear is there and no one's trying to talk you out of it. And what we're just saying is that the fear is rightful and the fear is real. No one's trying to gaslight you out of your anxiety and fear. What we're saying is that put down the bucket that you're bailing out the boat with and use that effort to patch up the boat. Like that's what we're trying to do here. And if everyone just keeps bailing, we're all going to exhaust ourselves and we're all going to continue to be overwhelmed and eventually we're just going to stop and we're going to sink anyway because we're going to get too exhausted. But if we take a hot beat and patch up the boat, then we can all just fucking relax for a hot minute.

Abby (35:11)

There's something about what happens to our bodies. I just can't over state the importance in my body of. I think there's something about watching what's happening, watching the, quote, leaders who are being put in front of us The Jared Kushner's. Those sniveling, unqualified, ridiculous, idiotic white men who are children and are attempting to lead. Watching those people, watching the visual of ice with these rabid guard dogs of white supremacy unleashed as power. Watching these Trump, like, there's just these images that are just. We're watching be put up as leaders. What happens in my body, just seeing that over and over again, is just a disembodied terror. And then what I'm trying to explain to you is to sit in a park with a group that I organize with and watching this couple. Their names are Fernando and Leslie. We sat in a circle for three hours two days ago. And Fernando and Leslie. Fernando knows the history of everything and teaches and teaches and teaches. And then Leslie comes in and says, okay, that's enough facts. That's enough brain stuff. Let's get in our bodies and, like, does all of this somatic processing because of Leslie's culture. She knows the history of her elders and how to do that. And it's just this. I'm just trying to explain to you the difference in my body between watching one form of bullshit tyrannical leadership and then my body being in a circle and watching Leslie and Fernando. There's something that happens to us when we are in the presence of true, wise, loving counsel and leadership. If you don't feel grounded because of where your body's been, which is in front of a screen watching these people, there's a. We shouldn't. It's terrifying. But there is an alternative. There are leaders in every community who are circling people up, who are serving, who are leading, who are organizing. And that is an option for every single person listening here. There is no community in this country where there are not people showing up and organizing and doing good.

Amanda (37:28)

It's such a good point because it's like, no wonder we are all totally and rightfully freaked out and scared when we look and say, look at what our leaders are doing. Look at what this administration is doing. Look at that. Even our, you know, friends, like Democrats, who needs enemies when the seven Democratic Congress people vote for additional ICE spending? When my own Senator Tim Kaine just last week voted to confirm Kristi Noem, and that's not even to mention the Republicans, right? So when we look and say those are our leaders, we should be rightly terrified. And the change is find new leaders and not necessarily electing new leaders at this point. We'll get to that. But find for yourself new leadership. And that means getting plugged into a group because you need the kind of leader that is sane. And it doesn't matter that that leader is not your senator or your Republican. It can be your Leslie. Like you need someone who is a sane, wise, disciplined, knowledgeable leader of integrity. So then you switch it to say, this person in my community is my leader.

Abby (38:56)

That's right.

Amanda (38:57)

That person is my government. Okay. And then you use the leadership and the organization to change your government. But that's not. That was never your leader.

Abby (39:08)

No.

Amanda (39:09)

Trump is for the billionaires. He is. And he's for himself. The only reason he's there is to stay out of prison. The only reason Donald Trump is the president right now is because the cowards in Congress refused to impeach him and make him ineligible for running for the presidency again after he exercised a coup and insurrection on the government. It is your Congress's fault and it is the only reason he personally wanted to be president was to stay out of prison and to pay off his debts. That is not your leader. That is your government. That is the regime. So we are going to need to find new leaders in order to change our government, not wait on new governmental leaders to change our government. This is the Minnesota model. This is what that for generations they've been doing in Minnesota. Minnesota is the only Democratic structure that their party is actually not called the Democratic Party. Their party is still to this day called the Democratic Farmer Labor Party. And the reason they did that, they didn't just look for a third party candidate and, and vote for. They had years and years of identifying and connecting immigrant workers rights with indigenous rights with anti war movement leadership. And they connected that entire group and found a leverage point, which was the economy of Minnesota.

Sponsor/Ad Voice (40:47)

Right.

Amanda (40:47)

Like they didn't merge with the Democratic Party. They force the Democratic Party to come to them because the Democratic Party could not win without them. Because they found their solidarity within all of those groups and they exercise that leverage on the party and that's what it's going to take. I feel like we're waiting. We're like, where's our third party candidate? Where's our. No, the third party candidate comes from the organization that is on the ground. It comes from a group of organizations that together can be prepared to shut down. And until you have the groups of organizations that together can have a viable threat of shutting shit down, you don't have any leverage. You don't have what you need to force a third party candidate or force a party to come to you. But we keep thinking of it backwards.

Abby (41:44)

Yeah. And I think we Think of it backwards, too. Bless all of our hearts. We've been taught that our government people are leaders, right? And so we are looking at them and they are not leading or they are leading us straight to hell. And so we feel scared because we've been told those are our leaders and we think we don't have leaders. Those have never been our leaders. They are, by definition, followers. They do not do what is right. They do what is popular. They do not do what is right. They do what will keep them their jobs. They are not. That is why they are coming to you with all of these statements and saying, somebody must do something. Which I told Abby yesterday. It's like my plumber coming to me and saying, someone must unclog these pipes. And I'm like, actually, that's just what I hired you for. Like, I can't unplug the pipes. That is literally like, they are not leaders. But there are leaders. Your body is scared when you look at them because you think, these are my leaders who are not leading. That is not true. They are not leaders. There are leaders in every town and in every city. And you will know that they are your leader because of how your body feels when you are with them. Because they will be speaking truth, because they will be servants, because they will be full of love, because they will be full of righteous rage that is then turned into action. You will know it. You will not have to ask and you don't have to ask if these government leaders are our leaders. Your body is telling you that is the fear in your body that you are not being led. If you are not being led, it's because you have not found the leaders in your community who are leading. So I think that's the point of this episode right now. Someone might be thinking, but how? How do I find these people? We must apply the same rigor investigation skills that we would to plan our child's birthday party. That we would to plan. We know how to do this. We think of something we care about. Do we care about children? Do we care about voting? Do we care about the climate? Do we care about queer kids? Do we care about housing? And we find the group in our community who's doing that work. And we find a leader who speaks. And our body says, that's it, I'll follow them. And we do what that person says. And then suddenly and magically we find ourselves with a worldview. We don't feel shocked by ice, actually, because we know this is just another manifestation of the slave patrol. This is just another group that is morphed to protect white supremacy. This is suddenly nothing feels like surprises because we've been in circles where people are talking about this stuff and educating each other. Suddenly we don't feel alone because we have phone trees and WhatsApp groups full of people we've met at this places who are taking care of each other. Suddenly we can go to this meeting because somebody's like making casseroles for the kids there. Suddenly we have this situation where we actually have community. And our terror of survival inside of individualism and exceptionalism diminishes while our community grows. Eventually, these government leaders who are not leaders, who are followers, cave to the real leaders who are in our communities and the new world is born. And in the meantime, we give to Caesars what is Caesars and we vote and we do all those things that we need to do, but we have no faith in that system. Our faith is in the people who every day on the ground in these communities are building the new world. But until it's born, we keep one foot in each. We love you. Go find a leader. We Can Do Hard Things is an independent production podcast brought to you by Treat Media. Treat Media makes art for humans who want to stay human. And you can follow us. We can do hard things on Instagram and we can do hard things show on TikTok.