On Tyranny and Advent Season

 My juniors are reading Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng; it is a dystopian novel written during the pandemic, thinking about what would happen if the chaos of the early months of that crisis were intensified. I like it because it talks about 21^st century examples and issues—Asian American hate, all of our information on computers and not books—as well as the old favorite of silencing dissent by, as Timothy Snyder would say, obeying in advance.  As we moved through the book, I handed them Snyder’s list of acts against tyranny and asked them to find examples in the book and, if they can not, then in the world. It was hard.  The language is challenging and the concepts are fairly abstract. I spent an hour and a half talking students through different actions. Corporeal politics? The frog outside of ICE. Professional ethics? Teachers can’t tell you what to think but they can present you with challenging assignments that make you think. We are not done with the assignment; each student or pair is going to pull one of the actions out of the hat next week and make a poster, using the graphic version of the book as an example, where they explore how these ideas play out in the book and in our world.

I’ve been thinking about this assignment and the list of actions for about a year now. Some people find Snyder stressful because you can see how authoritarianism, according to his work, is increasing all over the world. It feels both very close to home and very hard to stop. I find him hopeful. Grim, but hopeful. There are 20 actions we can all take to halt the spread of authoritarianism, they just need a bit of grounding in our daily world.

Every Advent, I try to take on a focus. Some years it’s big, like democracy or climate change. Some years, it’s small, like what do I love about my life or daily image in my notebook. The practice helps me get through this, the darkest time of the year, while we are all waiting for the world to shift and the light to return. This year, I want to attempt to ground On Tyranny in daily practice. I will strive to take action on all twenty of his points, but I will give myself a little leeway, because I hope I do not have to “be reflective if you must be armed” or “stay calm when the unthinkable arrives.” For those, I will substitute actions of my own—build community and participate in ritual—because I believe that will also counteract tyranny.  I start on the first night of advent and work until Solstice Eve.

This is the list. Please, join in. There is nothing more empowering than taking action.

• Do not obey in advance.

• December 8: Defend Institutions

  One thing I have been working on since I began to engage in local action is defining who’s responsible for a specific action. Landfill? County. Pothole? City—but it also depends on the street.  Report a Problem! Mental health for low income people? County. Tearing down Sunflower House? OSU. Knowing who to talk to makes you more effective. Spending hours at the wrong meeting is just..a waste of time. I try and connect people with the right person who can make the changes they want to see or explain, better than I, why not.

  On Saturday, I had Government Corner, where I sit in the library for two hours and talk with whoever shows up. It can be fascinating. It can also be exhausting; after the school shooting in Florida I had a woman who had lived in Sandy Hook right before the shooting, moved south right before the shooting there, and then came here. We were both a bit freaked out. Right now, we have an elderly man who loves Government Corner and asks about everything. He wanted to know what I thought about school closures.

  “That’s not my jurisdiction,” I told him. “I don’t tell the school board what to do.”

  He was puzzled.

  “I also can’t talk about the landfill. That’s the county. I have opinions, but not all of the facts.”

  “Other councilors (he named names) are talking about the schools,” he told me.

  “They can do what they want,” I replied. “But, as an elected official, I shouldn’t  talk about their choices here. I can talk about the city.”

• December 2: Beware the One Party State

  The last line of this statement talks about engaging in local politics as a way to maintain a healthy democracy.  Benton county has ranked choice voting, so I am a registered member of the Green Party—have been since Ralph Nader!—because I believe in a multitude of political parties, not just two.  Not everyone has ranked choice voting (it can be a challenging sell to voters) but we can all participate in local politics. Showing up is the most important thing you can do to work for change. Sit in the audience, look your elected officials in the eye, and dare them to vote against what you and everyone else in town has been asking for.  I promise you, it matters.

  I am about to head out to a meeting on downtown and economic vitality, if you want to come along. Madison Avenue room at four o’clock. 

• Take responsibility for the face of the world.
• Be wary of paramilitaries.
• Be reflective if you must be armed.

December 3: Remember Professional Ethics

Education around the country is struggling after the pandemic; students are not coming to school as well prepared to learn and we have been making adjustments. However, some of those adjustments are starting to fray in a way that is reminding me that I, too, have professional ethics. When I give students credit in my class, it means that they have made significant progress on their journey to become better readers and writers as well as thinkers. They don’t all start in the same place; they don’t all make the same amount of progress in the time allotted for many reasons; they don’t all go gracefully along the path. But, my professional ethics remind me that a credit means something—progress.  We have many students this year that won’t make progress. It’s not that they can’t do the work—I know what to do to help those students—or they don’t do the work because they are on what I call a Work Strike because they are making  statement to someone about control in their lives. It’s a softer action. Won’t.  They can, but they won’t. There is pressure to drop the bar and push these students over—but, where does that leave us? Their skills stagnate, then fall behind. I’m a grouchy old teacher—they have to show progress to earn credit. I’ll work with you, but I am not going to do it for you. Professional Ethics.

December 1^st: Stand Out.

Standing out means saying what you believe, even if it goes against the popular will or thinking of the group. I am getting good at this—last night, I was the minority vote three times. Once to not raise the city manager’s salary five percent after a 4 percent COLA; second to not send social service funding to the county to distribute; third to establish sanctioned camping spots in town so that people do not have to move every 12 hours. Each time, I was trying to remember the impact of my decisions on the people who have the least money and influence in our community. Not everyone has the “benefit” of being on the city council, but we can all urge our lawmakers to consider the impact of the decisions on the least powerful.

December 5: Be Kind to Our Language (read books)

When I read the extended piece connected to this action it became very clear—this one is easy! Read, rather than watch screens. He had an extended list of very serious books to consider, but, when I was done with this section, I turned to my other bedside read right now, one of Madeline L’Engle’s journals/ stylized reflections. It was a popular style when I was in college and I have been revisiting some of my old favorites this autumn.  In the pages I read last night, she was musing on how all of writing connects to the issues of the day and what the author is wrestling with personally and politically. And then I flashed back onto A Wrinkle In Time.

I checked A Wrinkle in Time out of the school library one afternoon in mid-March, when the world was washed clean and bright. I read through class, stopped for the bus ride home (car sickness is not fun), and finished it before dinner in the back yard. I remember just…inhaling the story.  It was unique, fascinating and deeply metaphysical all at the same time—and there was something about the very awkward Meg that I could relate to. It wasn’t until I reread it to Mark as an adult that I realized both how deeply strange it is, as a story, and how deeply it impacted my thinking. She is wrestling with the ideas of communism and total control of the mind and free will—the the analogy of free will and a sonnet still resonates with me.

Children’s stories are often deeply radical. In them, we learn to be independent and to work together, to love the world, and to stand up against tyranny. It may be time to revisit some of those lessons.

• Believe in truth.

December 11: Investigate

One of the most frustrating things about our news media is the short clip that everyone is fussing about. It’s a couple of minutes long, at most, taken from the middle of a longer meeting and it is almost impossible to track down the original video. I have spent an ridiculous amount of time trying to find the video, say from when the president of South Africa visited the White House and was shown something… but I never watch the entire meeting.  How do I know how accurate the commentary is if I cannot see the primary document?

This weekend, Robert Reich put out a video on Trump’s mental decline. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQHLciC67V8

I like Mr Reich’s work—I have always found him to be thoughtful, well informed, and able to back up his thinking with deep details. And he has a sense of humor. So I thought I would do a bit of fact checking on the video as part of my Investigate action. He has a clip from a “recent” cabinet meeting where the president is musing on the décor of the Oval Office for 15 minutes. Seriously? Was this part of a conversation about the “renovation” of the East Wing? Because there was no date— Mr Reich, we need footnotes on your work!-- I scanned the most recent cabinet meeting using captions and time stamps—to find the conversation.  Not there. I looked at the first video again and noticed a gold tie, so I started searching for cabinet meetings with gold ties. It took about ten minutes, but I found one back in early July where the tie matched. I scanned that one until the end. Victory. There it was. Fifteen minutes of end of the meeting musing on picture frames and the presidents within them (that section could use its own fact checking, but I am not doing that today) and polling the audience about using gold leaf on the corner moldings. Mr Reich was accurate.

It is deeply frustrating to this trained historian to be unable to find the actual work that every pundit is riffing on. Because we are in such a divided and fractious state of affairs, I want to see the original, in context to understand the full picture. And that takes some serious googling. 

• Make eye contact and small talk.
• Practice corporeal politics.

December 12: Maintain a Private Life

In many ways, this one is easy for me, so I am using it on a Friday afternoon at the end of a long week. I do not have a cell phone. I do not want to be traced everywhere I go and connected to the world all of the time. And, on Friday afternoons, after I check my home emails, I shut the computer off until Sunday and take a complete break.  We call it Technology Shabbat. It has made a huge difference in my sanity. This evening, I will be signing off for 36 hours.

• December 7: Contribute to Good Causes

• For people with a bit of money, this is an easy action, although I have long found that my poorest students are often the most generous when we are collecting change for Winter Smiles at CHS. I give money and time regularly. Today, I spent hours working to distribute the boxes of citrus for the League Of Women Voters fund-raiser. Mark and I have maintained the spreadsheet of orders then he manipulated it to organize delivery routes and email addresses to the purchasers. Today, most of the fruit went out. We’ll spend a few more days mopping up the mistakes before we rethink how to do it for next year.

  If you don’t know, the League of Women Voters has been round for over one hundred years, informing people about voter’s rights, candidates, and local and state politics. It is non-partisan, education focused organization. And you don’t have to be a woman to be a member. J

December 15: Learn from peers in other countries.

We had latkes for dinner tonight. We have latkes at some point during Hanukah every year, but it feels a bit more poignant this year, after the shooting in Australia.

The first year I did not go home for Christmas was right after I moved to Portland. I didn’t have a lot of money; taking time off of work during the holiday season is difficult if you are a cook; it was hard to spend quality time with people who were not family because of their work and family schedules.  I went home in February when everyone was thrilled to see anyone new or different, instead. My roommate in Portland was Jewish. We got along well. I learned a great deal from him and his responses to American winter holidays—Christmas was everywhere, he complained. There was no break from it. In Israel, he told me, it was not this way.  He was right—and, every year, when someone at school sets up a tree, I remember his concerns.

One December evening, I was lying on my bed, recovering from work, feeling a bit depressed and exhausted. “It’s Hanukkah” he told me, “Come with me.” Every Friday night, he made a big bowl of hummus and took it to a huge extended family gathering (not his family). They laughed and sang and ate and had a grand time while small children careened around the space just below everyone’s elbows. That night, I went along. I ate latkes with sour cream for the first time and watched the candle lighting ceremony.  They took me in without question. A few nights later, I went back for the eighth night, when they lit a dozen menorahs and put them all out on the porch, blazing against the darkness. And I was there for Christmas Eve.  Someone gave me a Hanukkah mug. It was a warm, welcoming space for a transplanted Transcendental New Englander.  

I m thinking about that warm space this evening, as we eat our latkes and burn two small candles on the table. And I am hoping that we can all live in a world where we take strangers in, not keep them out. 

• Listen for dangerous words.

December 6: Listen for Dangerous Words

Although I usually strive to hear or read an entire passage before passing judgment on what was said (context is everything!) I did not need to her all of the current administration’s rambling at the recent cabinet meeting where he referred to an entire country’s people as “garbage” to take action.

 December 11: Stay Calm When the Unthinkable Occurs

Last night I went to two hour training on ICE Watch that focused on our rights and responsibilities to our community. The room was packed and seriously silent—this felt like essential information.  I don’t feel ready to volunteer as an observer but I do feel better informed on how to act and what to watch for if I stubble into the situation. I hope to be able to remain calm and repeat the key phrases: “I wish to remain silent.” “I do not consent to this search.”  “I wish to have the search conducted by a woman.” And “I would like to speak to an attorney.” 

We also covered what to look for: a count of officers and vehicles, the location and direction of action, the equipment being used, the activity, and to record the entire action.

The last point covered was to Not Spread Rumors. Fact check statements before reposting. This is just good social media practice but reposting something that is not true can cause real harm to people in our community. Stay calm. 

December 14: Be a Patriot

When I was 17, I won a five hundred dollar scholarship from my essay—What is an American? I argued that an American is someone who believes in human rights and freedom and is willing to stand up against authority to defend their rights and the rights of others. The United States was not perfect—it was 1979 and we were in the middle of the Malaise—but we were a work in progress, reaching for the ideals laid out in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” 

I am not sure where I picked up this idea. New Hampshire was not a radical place in the 1970s and my parents, although they questioned authority constantly, where not liberal hippies, but children of the Great Depression and WW II. My U.S. history teacher was very interested in battles and foreign policy; he tolerated my little notes on my quizzes and taught us well, but did not spend any time on social movements. Some of it came from being a throwback musically, as the songs of the late 1960s appealed to me far more that the music I heard on the radio on the bus every morning.  I think some of it came from my love of fantasy and the heroic journey.  But, by the time I wrote that essay, I knew every reference in the Declaration of Independence  and had a pretty solid grasp of the protest movement I had just missed. And, although, I went on to study literature and material culture (food, architecture, clothing) rather than political movements, I still believe in these ideals, that we are, as a country, a work in progress, and that we are constantly striving to become a better place for all of us to live.

I bought a flag this afternoon. It is time to reclaim it. It will be hanging on our porch on significant—to me—dates.

 

• Be as courageous as you can.

 

December 4: Work Together

I’ve made a few changes—or additions—to the list. Work together is one because I feel like the list is to heavy on individual actions, rather than collective. Together, we can make change. Alone, it is harder.

Last night, I went to a potluck for the Corvallis Sustainability Collation, which has been working on climate education for 19 years. It has been an umbrella organization for dozens of projects and plans in our community and many of the people there have known each other for 20 years. My life has woven in and out of the circle over the years, but it has always been a touchstone of friendship and advocacy. Sitting in the circle last night, I thought of all of the moments when we—people all over the world—have sat in a circle, plates on laps, and worked for change.

December 13: Rituals

This is one of my additions. Rituals ground us in place and community. On Saturday, we are heading to Bald Hill to celebrate Lucia Day with hot cocoa, buns, oranges, a walk, and our friends. It starts at eight AM during the darkest time of the year so it is not for everyone. But people show up, year after year. Ritual ties us together.