Happy Winter Solstice ❄️ I’m arriving at this season full of tenderness and gratitude after a busier-than-usual Autumn. I thought my content engagement was minimal in these busy months, but when I looked back on my list it was long and juicy again. I hope you enjoy the pieces I plucked from it.

In 1984, Audre Lorde spoke to a room of mostly white students in Germany about white people’s tendency to “perform disempowerment” in relation to racism. “I am not interested in your defensiveness,” she said. “I am not interested in your guilt either.”1 In naming these two manifestations of whiteness – defensiveness and guilt – Lorde was discerning the patterns that many of us still struggle to disrupt in ourselves today.

In anticipation of election day, my co-creator Julienne and I were writing a message to our budding community of white people practicing anti-racism. When did racism become central to our society?, we considered. 1691, I thought: the year the word ‘white’ was first used to describe people in the law. Notably, it was a law forbidding marriage between people of European descent and people of African descent, which by the end of the century could result in punishments “up to and including death by torture.” I opened my calculator app, did some quick math, and realized that the government that would come to be the United States of America has been legally, forcibly dividing and conquering us in service of white dominance for 333 years.

Buon Autunno, amici ~~ I hope everyone found moments of joy and ease this summer. I’m grateful to say I did, alongside a fiery-ness ignited by sticky NYC heat and the most enraging political acts of violence. Many days this summer I felt the heat amplifying my rage toward a system that killed Derell Mickles, Javion Magee, and hundreds of thousands in Palestine, Sudan, and so many made-to-be-poor communities around this country and globe. 

The other night I dreamt I was responsible for teaching Palestinian children to read. Until they can read, the authorities said, they cannot go to school. I was frustrated. In this dream world, Palestinian children already knew how to read. They should have been allowed to go to school, whether or not they could read. And besides, I didn’t even know any young Palestinians. All I knew of Palestinian children is the rate at which they’re murdered, higher than that of all children living in war zones over the past four years combined. All I knew of Palestinian children is that despite that, they continue to dance. 

As the world was uprooting and transforming itself in 2020, I created an intention to soften. I was tired. Tired of being reactive. Tired of my inner critic jumping to conclusions before my heart could weigh in. Tired of ignoring the voices of my ancestors and inner children who were longing to be heard.

For An Encyclopedia of Radical Helping, available for preorder at thickpress.com.

It’s Leo season and New York City is hot! It’s the second week of my 35th year and I’m feeling deep gratitude for the life I’ve lived and trust in what’s to come.

In lieu of writing something fresh this birthday month, I’m sharing a piece I wrote for the forthcoming book An Encyclopedia of Radical Helping.

Happy Summer Solstice, folks. Another season has passed — and a delightful one at that. The upcoming season includes my birthday and many opportunities to float in the sea, but still, nothing beats the cool breezes and bright blossoms of spring.

I hope this season’s content selections offer you new perspectives and open your heart on this long, sunny day.

Libertroph Magazine call for submissions is OPEN!

As I excitedly share with you that the Libertroph Magazine call for submissions is open, I’m filled with so much gratitude for the co-creation process that brought us here.

The home I grew up in is perched on a lush, green hill on Osage and Monongahela land. These days it looks a lot less lush, a lot less green, than it did in my youth. As I processed a recent visit, memories of my inner child playing with the natural world poured out of me.

In honor of the passing of another Earth Day, I’m inspired to share this little prayer for our beloved Earth. May it bring a smile to your face and deepen your devotion to our shared planet, its gifts, and the possibility of its future.

I'm white, but don't tell the government

Breaking news: there’s a new race! People of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) descent are no longer “officially” white, but their own racial category.

Happy Spring, readers! It’s time for the seeds we’ve planted this winter to sprout, to bloom into the flora we’ve dreamt about through these dark months.

After I published my first content round-up at the end of 2023, a couple people asked if it might become a series. I am a person who enjoys organizing links and ideas, and like I said in December, I love a good resource list. Monthly felt too frequent, but seasonal, just right. A moment to honor the passing of a season and the change that unfolded within it.

“Ghosts point to our forgetting…these ghosts are the dead trunks of centuries-old olive trees, which remind us that we live in an impossible present - a time of rupture, a world haunted with the threat of extinction.” – János Chialá

I first learned about the widespread loss of Puglia’s olive trees on the internet. I was sitting in my temporary apartment in Lecce, one of the southernmost cities in Puglia, reading about an exhibit focused on the rapid changes the local olive groves were experiencing after many, many centuries of abundant olive oil production. I was disappointed to learn that both the exhibit and the olive trees were gone by the time I read about them. The exhibit had closed a few weeks prior; the trees had been dying for years.

To strike: scioperare in Italian, “from the Latin exoperāre, from ex- +‎ operō.” 

“Ex: out, away”

“Operō: work” 

Simple, in some ways. To strike is to walk away from work. But if we dig a layer deeper, some other meaning can be derived. 

I was recently offered an attempt at repair from someone who hurt and betrayed me deeply. The betrayal was related to money. The hurt, so much more. 

I thought I wanted and needed my money returned. I thought that would bring repair. Or at least it would be a step toward repair. And maybe it will be, but my initial reaction was rejection – “this isn’t real, he won’t actually follow through on this,” my inner critic immediately said. Then came passive acceptance – “okay, well, it’s not like I don’t need the money.” Then came the anger – “money itself will not repair this hurt, which is about so, so much more than money.” 

I love a good resource list, especially at the end of the year. I have many memories of winter breaks where I’d lie in bed for hours on end clicking links to articles, books, films and TV shows, and of course listening to hours and hours and hours of music. Yet, I’ve never made one of these lists myself. Until now! 

This list is inevitably incomplete, but I hope there’s something in here that touches you. Enjoy in bed with a hot cup of tea and biscotti for an optimal experience.

I sit at the western most edge of the Mediterranean, staring out across the sea toward Palestine. I sit with the heavy weight of grief—lungs contracting, tears welling, face flushing with rage.

It’s been more than two months now since the US-backed campaign to extinguish Palestine went into full effect. Alongside the immense grief, so many glimpses of possibility have crashed through me in this time (thanks to incredible, courageous Palestinians, anti-Zionist Jews, and other organizers). A visual I can’t shake is an ever-growing web of principled people in loving, accountable relationship. Always ready to move as one to defend the collective.

I had a lot of long, hard days in 2022. May 31 was one of the longest and hardest.

When I walked into his ICU room that morning, the air felt different than it had two days before. Pops looked more distant, dying, a body with almost nothing left, excreting its final fluids. I walked to his bedside, wiped some of the fluids from his chin, looked through his meek eyelids and said with confidence: “I’m going to get you out of this situation today.”

Urgency is a barrier to speed. 

Let that sink in.

Does it feel true for you? Even if your answer is yes, it might also be confusing or seemingly paradoxical, right? White supremacy culture has trained us to believe that urgent problems require urgent responses, but too often the energy of urgency actually slows us down. 

In my last piece I reflected on how white supremacy culture depends on us leaving our hearts at the door when we enter workplaces. But how did we come to close our hearts?

“Your people need what has not been expressed yet,” Resmaa Menakem said to us in a Somatic Abolitionism course for people with white bodies. My inner critic questions whether there is really anything that “has not been expressed yet,” but my heart whispers, “let’s see.”

Speaking of my heart, that’s where I want to start.