Category: community

Transformative Mutual Aid Practices

This was a morning when I didn’t seem to be led to write anything. Then, as I was searching using the keywords prefigurative and mutual aid I found references to Transformative Mutual Aid Practices.

I’ve just recently become aware of traumas I hadn’t known I was suffering from. My Des Moines Mutual Aid community practices many of the things listed below. This awareness of healing comes from experiencing our care for each other, including those who come for the food.

I’ve heard Indigenous friends speak of the intergeneration traumas in their communities.

My Quaker meeting has recently discussed healing.

So, I was interested to see this zine, A Call for Prefigurative Mental Health Support and Communal Care Within Radical Groups and Organizations. Creative Commons licensing allows sharing material from this zine.

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This zine has a lengthy list of things related to mental health and communal care. Here are a few.

  • Many of us experienced childhood and adolescent traumas and continue to experience traumas based on our individual intersectionalities
  • We understand the mechanics of the harms and traumas inflicted by the prevailing social order’s oppressive and exploitative systems
  • We must recondition ourselves towards caring for each other; communal care is ongoing radical action
  • Alone we are vulnerable, but together we are strong; therefore, genuine community is paramount
  • We acknowledge that the architecture of capitalist society is colonizing white supremacy culture; it is an architecture of domination, abuse and exclusion
  • We focus intensely on the concept and practice of mutual aid
  • We endeavor to decolonize our thinking, group interactions, and architecture of group processes
  • We center acting in solidarity across groups in ways that build unity through diversity
  • We emphasize prefiguration within our organizations as necessary to counteract the abuses of prevailing society and manifest community and liberatory ways of being and living
  • When we do not prefigure communal care into our group structures and routines, we unconsciously recreate the alienation, racism, homophobia and transphobia, hierarchical ableisms, and neuro-homogeneities of capitalist society, along with their negative effects
  • If we don’t practice solidarity with our own comrades, we cannot expect to practice solidarity with others
  • Knowing what we know about how prevailing society operates to oppress, exploit, and traumatize vulnerable people, a group or org that does not actively engage and support the mental and emotional wellbeing of its members is not revolutionary
  • Many folx who show up to our groups do not stay because they sense the group is non-supportive or unsafe for their being

A Call for Prefigurative Mental Health Support and Communal Care Within Radical Groups and Organizations

https://mutualaiddisasterrelief.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/A-Call-for-Prefigurative-Mental-Health-Support-and-Communal-Care-for-Radical-Orgs.pdf

What can prefigurative community care that supports the mental health and wellbeing of all members look like?

1. Create space for an in-depth group discussion focused on the concept of your collective as an organism with a life of its own. Talk about your group as an organism that can flourish with everyone’s nurturance or get sick and die from everyone’s lack of care. The objective is to create group consciousness and ownership, and to arrive at and agree to incorporating new features that will consistently support the mental and emotional health of members.

    2. In addition to your regular monthly meeting, commit to a regular monthly restorative gathering for wellbeing. This is for members only. It could potentially serve as a welcoming way for prospective members to dip their toe in, as opposed to their first engagement being a meeting or an action. In organizing circles, more often than not the more powerful, demonstrative, or vocal members guide their groups, narrowing opportunities for other modes of expression, communication, and consciousness to emerge. Monthly nurturance counterbalances that tendency. The focus here is on creating a predictable format for restorative connection, communal care, and wellbeing among comrades.

    Based on years of creating group cohesion and deep trust among vulnerable students from disparate backgrounds, the author recommends a specific format: a regular relaxed gathering where individuals enjoy solo projects alongside each other (when two or more people work on one project, it tends to disrupt the group dynamic). Each member brings a relatively quiet activity that they will work on, such as creative writing, drawing, crafting, reading, planning or visioning, designing, etc. At the start, folx will want to greet each other and it’s interesting to get to know each other through hearing what everyone else is going to work on. Once y’all get started, talking will become secondary to the texture or feel of the group-as-relaxed, meaning that talk should not be allowed to take over the ability of everyone to generally stay focused on their activity. This container fosters individual and collective nervous system soothing, group nurturance, authentic group communication, divergent group thinking, and organic group relations. Relaxing, restoring, and recreating together is very powerful medicine.

    Many of us only experience each other in supercharged situations like intense meetings, protests, street outreach, and community work. Our groups attempt to balance those experiences out by having social gatherings such as potlucks, bar karaoke, and game nights, which have their own place. However, social containers do not foster egalitarian ommunity-building or the types of experiences required to build the trust comrades need in order to open up and be vulnerable with each other. In addition, social gatherings often reenact the ableisms and other -isms present in dominant society. This monthly gathering allows members to relax and encourages other parts of their beings to emerge within the safety of the calm group in ways that round out both the individual and the group experience. It fosters care of the self via meaningful recreation; it cultivates group consciousness and group heart via the commitment to be more patient, open, and authentic with each other; it provides an antidote to alienation and isolation, restoring the communal bonds that dominant capitalist society strips away.

    A Call for Prefigurative Mental Health Support and Communal Care Within Radical Groups and Organizations

    Prefigurative societies and mutual aid

    I recently wrote about the article, Prefigurative Societies in movement by Marina Sitrin, Popular Resistance, December 21, 2022. It begins “something new is happening – something new in content, depth, breadth and global consistency. Societies around the world are in movement.”

    [Note: I try to avoid using so many quotations, to speak from my own experience instead. But as this is new to me, these quotes are how I’m beginning to understand prefigurative societies. A bibliography can be found below.]

    I immediately identified with the idea of prefigurative politics or societies because mutual aid communities model prefigurative societies. Both of these concepts emphasize rejecting vertical hierarchies.
    (See: https://quakersandreligioussocialism.com/2022/12/23/prefigurative-politics/).

    What has been taking place in disparate places around the world is part of a new wave that is both revolutionary in the day-to-day sense of the word, as well as without precedent with regard to consistency of form, politics, scope and scale. The current frameworks provided by the social sciences and traditional left to understand these movements have yet to catch up with what is new and different about them. Specifically, the theoretical frameworks for Protest and Social Movements are not sufficient to understand the emergent horizontal and prefigurative practices. I suggest we think beyond these frames, and do so first by listening to, and with, those societies and groups organizing from below – and to the left.

    …
    People from below are rising up, but rather than going towards the top – ‘from the bottom up’, they are moving as the Zapatistas suggested, ‘From below and to the left, where the heart resides.’
    Power over, hierarchy and representation are being rejected, ideologically and by default, and in the rejection mass horizontal assemblies are opening new landscapes with the horizon of autonomy and freedom.

    Prefigurative Societies in movement by Marina Sitrin, Popular Resistance, December 21, 2022

    I’m glad to be learning about this way of looking at justice movements because this captures what my Mutual Aid community is like. Helps me better understand the work we (Des Moines Mutual Aid) are doing. And suggests ways to expand justice networks.

    From the beginning of my experiences with Des Moines Mutual Aid (DMMA) I knew I was in a special place. My experiences with DMMA began before I first went to the food distribution project, when Ronnie James joined us at a vigil I had organized in support of the Wet’suwet’en peoples, who are trying to stop the construction of a natural gas pipeline through their beautiful territories. I was impressed that he made the effort to join us, and that he knew of the Wet’suwet’en struggles.

    I was grateful when he patiently taught me about mutual aid over several months of text messages. And then agreed to show me the free food project. I don’t know that ‘show’ is the right word. I don’t remember that we spoke about a commitment to continued participation. I planned to just see the work in person and that would be all. That the experience might help me create a mutual aid community near me.

    Instead, I’ve attended almost every week for nearly three years. One of the principles of Mutual Aid is to draw people into the work.

    Mutual aid is essential to building social movements. People often come to social movement groups because they need something: eviction defense, childcare, social connection, health care, or help in a fight with the government about something like welfare benefits, disability services, immigration status, or custody of their children. Being able to get help in a crisis is often a condition for being politically active, because it’s very difficult to organize when you are also struggling to survive. Getting support through a mutual aid project that has a political analysis of the conditions that produced your crisis also helps to break stigma, shame, and isolation. Under capitalism, social problems resulting from exploitation and the maldistribution of resources are understood as individual moral failings, not systemic problems. Getting support at a place that sees the systems, not the people suffering in them, as the problem can help people move from shame to anger and defiance. Mutual aid exposes the failures of the current system and shows an alternative. This work is based in a belief that those on the front lines of a crisis have the best wisdom to solve the problems, and that collective action is the way forward.

    Dean Spade. Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next) (Kindle Locations 163-171). Verso.

    Prefigurative societies in movement captures the dynamic nature of these societies. Prefigurative politics is expressed graphically by the cover of this book that I’m beginning to read.

    “The old pattern of social action began with a strike in a workplace, backed by a general strike and demonstrations. In the new pattern of action, the mobilization starts in the spaces of everyday life and survival (markets, neighbourhoods) putting … societies in movement, self-articulated from within. And not laying siege, as transpired under colonialism two centuries ago, but rather boring from within until cracks emerge …” 

    Raul Zibechi

    If we want to reach a future society with different basic institutions than we have now, these institutions need to be developed – at least to some degree – before we get there. In other words, achieving fundamental social change requires us to prefigure that change in the here-and-now. Prefigurative Politics is the politics of doing that.

    What is Prefigurative Politics? How large scale social change happens Paul Raekstad and Eivind Dahl

    “Today, around the world, people resort to alternative forms of autonomous organization to give their existence a meaning again, to reflect human creativity’s desire to express itself as freedom. These collectives, communes, cooperatives and grassroots movements can be characterized as people’s self-defense mechanisms against the encroachment of capitalism, patriarchy and the nation-state.”

    Kurdish scholar-activist Dilar Dirk

    The movements emerge from necessity. Using horizontal assemblies and forms of self-organization overlooking for their needs to be met by those with institutional power. This is sometimes due to their demands on the government or institutions falling on deaf ears, and other times is a part of an initial vision of self-organization and horizontalism. The participants in these movements have generally not been politically active, and most identify as a grandmother, daughter or sister, neighbour. They do not organize with party or union structures and do not seek representative formations. They come together in assembly forms, not out of any ideology, but because being in a circle is the best way for people to see and hear one another. They strive for horizontalism because they do not want to replicate those structures where power is something wielded. They do not begin talking about taking over power but through their grounded organising, they end up creating new theories and practices of what it means to change the world.

    Prefigurative Societies in movement by Marina Sitrin, Popular Resistance, December 21, 2022

    Bibliography

    Prefigurative Politics WikiPediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefigurative_politics
    Paul Raekstad and Eivind Dahl
    What is Prefigurative Politics?    		https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/paul-raekstad-and-eivind-dahl-prefigurative-politics
    University of Virginia. Louisiana Lightseyhttps://globalsouthstudies.as.virginia.edu/key-issues/prefigurative-politics
    Prefigurative Societies in movement by Marina Sitrin, Popular Resistance, December 21, 2022https://popularresistance.org/prefigurative-societies-in-movement/
    Prefigurative Politics. Building tomorrow today. by Paul Raekstad and Sofa Saio Gradin
    Prefigurative Politics, P2PF Wikihttps://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Prefigurative_Politics
    Prefigurative Politics, Catastrophe, And Hopehttps://itsgoingdown.org/prefigurative-politics-catastrophe-and-hope/

    Prefigurative politics

    Fleeting thoughts often return to my consciousness. One of my life’s goals has been to catch those thoughts or prayers before they disappear. Because when they reappear, they are significant. Perhaps that gap is needed for the thought to incubate. For me to become ready to accept the thought.

    In the early days of being in my Mutual Aid community, a fleeting thought was “this reminds me of the way Quakers used to be”. And “I wish Quakers today were like this”.

    What about Quakers changed? Why are we no longer the way we used to be? In part it is because we have become too invested in the status quo.

    Quakers have always believed we should let our lives speak. How we live should reflect our spirituality. What is the way we live now saying?

    But my fleeting thoughts reveal our methods of resistance and social change are no longer effective. The society we (White Quakers) grew up in, the State, is itself unjust.

    As my friend and Mutual Aid mentor, Ronnie James, wrote:

    I’m of the firm opinion that a system that was built by stolen bodies on stolen land for the benefit of a few is a system that is not repairable. It is operating as designed, and small changes (which are the result of huge efforts) to lessen the blow on those it was not designed for are merely half measures that can’t ever fully succeed.

    So the question is now, where do we go from here? Do we continue to make incremental changes while the wealthy hoard more wealth and the climate crisis deepens, or do we do something drastic that has never been done before? Can we envision and create a world where a class war from above isn’t a reality anymore?”

    Ronnie James

    Prefigurative politics

    Yesterday I learned of a new (to me) concept, prefigurative politics. Returning to fleeting thoughts, my Mutual Aid community is an example of prefigurative politics. When my thought was “I wish Quakers today were like this”, I’m realizing I mean embracing the concepts of prefigurative politics, for example, Mutual Aid.

    Something new is happening – something new in content, depth, breadth and global consistency. Societies around the world are in movement. Since the early 1990s millions of people have been organizing similarly, and in ways that defy definitions and former ways of understanding social movements, protest and resistance. There is a growing global movement of refusal – and simultaneously, in that refusal is a creative movement. Millions are shouting No!, as they manifest alternatives in its wake.

    Prefigurative Societies in movement by Marina Sitrin, Popular Resistance, December 21, 2022

    Prefigurative politics are the modes of organization and social relationships that strive to reflect the future society being sought by the group. According to Carl Boggs, who coined the term, the desire is to embody “within the ongoing political practice of a movement […] those forms of social relations, decision-making, culture, and human experience that are the ultimate goal”.[1] Besides this definition, Leach also gave light to the definition of the concept stating that the term “refers to a political orientation based on the premise that the ends a social movement achieves are fundamentally shaped by the means it employs, and that movement should therefore do their best to choose means that embody or prefigure the kind of society they want to bring about”. [2]

    Prefigurative politics, Wikipedia
    1.  Boggs, Carl. 1977. Marxism, Prefigurative Communism, and the Problem of Workers’ Control. Radical America 11 (November), 100; cf. Boggs Jr., Carl. Revolutionary Process, Political Strategy, and the Dilemma of Power. Theory & Society 4,No. 3 (Fall), 359-93.
    2. Leach, D. K. (2013). Prefigurative politics. The Wiley-Blackwell encyclopedia of social and political movements, 1004-1006.

    Buffalo Rebellion Community Call: Des Moines Black Liberation

    I am so glad to be part of the Buffalo Rebellion
    (See: https://quakersandreligioussocialism.com/buffalo-rebellion/ )

    Last night we had a Community Call via Zoom to reflect on the past year, hear updates of work being done, and what the future might hold.

    The main accomplishments of this year were

    Using Zoom breakout rooms, we got to know each other better and hear what work we are each doing. I talked about being involved in Des Moines Mutual Aid, and that I’ve been talking about this in our Quaker meeting. That I hoped more people of faith would become involved in Mutual Aid. There were only two other people in our breakout room. One said he had attended Quaker meeting in Connecticut, and the other said this resonated with her.

    Des Moines Black Liberation Collective

    1. Removal of armed school resource officers from Des Moines Public Schools

    Jaylen Cavil of Des Moines Black Liberation Collective (https://www.desmoinesblm.org/) reported on something I hadn’t known about, getting police out of schools. From my time in the Kheprw Institute community in Indianapolis, I knew how children of color and their parents distrust and fear the police. It was an awful thing to bring the police into the schools. The school to prison pipeline is a horrible situation and Des Moines Black Liberation Collective (Des Moines BLM) was recently about to get “school resource officers” (SRO) out of the public schools.

    Before the pandemic, armed officers known as ​“school resource officers,” or SROs, from the Des Moines Police Department would patrol the school hallways. But during the summer of racial justice marches and protests after the police murder of George Floyd, students, parents and community members spoke out against SROs at Des Moines School Board meetings. In the end, the police contract with the schools was terminated. After scrambling to make remote schooling work during the long, mournful slog of the pandemic, Des Moines Public Schools (DMPS) were left to find a way to reimagine school safety — and fast.

    The district moved quickly to implement restorative practices, an increasingly popular educational model for school safety, violence prevention and mediation. 

    The 2021 – 2022 school year was a huge opportunity with the highest of stakes: DMPS could become one of the only districts in the nation to succeed in concurrently removing SROs and implementing restorative practices, or the district and its students could be thrown into crisis.

    The City That Kicked Cops Out of Schools and Tried Restorative Practices Instead. Here’s what happens when a school rethinks punishment by ANDY KOPSA, In These Times, DECEMBER 12, 2022

    Vanessa says she sometimes asks to go to the ​“Think Tank,” a designated area created by RP staff for kids who violate school rules. While in the Think Tank as a punishment, students cannot talk, have outside meals or snacks and must turn off electronics. But the Think Tank can also be a respite; for Vanessa, it’s a safe space to deal with the anxiety that drove her to wander the halls.

    “I would get overwhelmed and then I would ask to go to the Think Tank so I was able to do my work,” Vanessa says. ​“And Mr. Musa had snacks.” The snacks made a lasting impression.

    When I drop by Roosevelt’s Think Tank with Mr. Musa, eight kids have opted to be there in lieu of suspension. Two girls are there because of a scuffle in the bathroom, though they say they were bystanders. Then there are a couple hallway roamers and two boys caught vaping.

    In the Think Tank, students are required to do school work. In many cases, that’s a back catalog of assignments and writing about what they did, how it made them feel and how they might handle it differently in the future.

    The subtle, important difference between the Think Tank and traditional in-school suspension, according to Jake Troja, DMPS director of school climate, is that students are there by choice. In the past, the message from the school district to students was, ​“You have a suspension, that’s it,” he says. Now, RP staff have a new message: ​“We’d love [for students] to be in class, but we can’t do that, so here’s another option.”

    “It’s about power and authority,” Troja says.

    …

    The district asked for reform — such as installing ununiformed and unarmed officers in schools — but the Des Moines police department responded, in February 2021, with a surprise termination of the contract. Sgt. Paul Parizek, Des Moines police public information officer, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

    Des Moines schools had already begun training teachers in restorative practices in 2018. With the $750,000 saved from the broken contract, the school district funded 20 new positions and hired specially trained RP staff across the city’s five public high schools. The district even invited Sellers and other students to observe the hiring process, and students picked up on red flags that staff missed, Sellers tells me, like candidates who called students ​“delinquents.”

    The City That Kicked Cops Out of Schools and Tried Restorative Practices Instead. Here’s what happens when a school rethinks punishment by ANDY KOPSA, In These Times, DECEMBER 12, 2022

    2. Prison letter writing and abolition

    Jaylen talked about Des Moines BLM’s support of Central Iowa Democratic Socialist of America’s (DSA) prison letter writing project. This is something I’ve been involved with in several ways. Jade, my friend from Des Moines Mutual Aid is the organizer for this project that a number of us from DMMA participate in. https://landbackfriends.com/2021/11/28/prison-abolition-letter-writing-project/

    I am writing to you as a part of the Central Iowa Democratic Socialists of American prison abolition group. I am inviting you to join our solidarity and pen-pal network. We are connecting with people incarcerated in Iowa because we believe the struggles of people both inside and outside of prison walls are intertwined. Specifically, we recognize the need to eliminate systemic injustices produced by the current criminal justice system.

    Please let me know if you are interested in taking part in this project. I would love to receive any information from you so that we can make a case to those on the outside to take action on the demands of incarcerated people.

    We are the Central Iowa chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Promoting the concept of democratic socialism through political action, direct service, and education. We are building for the future beyond resistance.
    https://www.facebook.com/CentralIowaDSA

    Quakers for Abolition Network

    My blog made it possible for one of my new friends, Jed Walsh, to contact me about the work he and Mackenzie Barton-Rowledge are doing related to abolition of police and prisons. I wrote a little in their article that was published by the Western Friend, https://westernfriend.org/article/quakers-abolition-network.

    3. Des Moines BLM and Des Moines Mutual Aid

    Jaylen also spoke about the collaboration of Des Moines BLM with Des Moines Mutual Aid. Mutual Aid is the alternative to the capitalist system that drains all the resources that should be invested in our people and communities. That houselessness is by design because those in power want us to feel desperate, so we can’t focus on change.

    He told of the City of Des Moines periodically razing the houseless camps, which served no good purpose because they are rebuilt shortly after. Last year it cost about $30,000 to provide propane and heaters for those in the camps. Funds for this purpose are behind now.

    Information about camper support and to make donations can be found here: https://iowamutualaid.org/camper-support

    https://iowamutualaid.org/camper-support

    4. Demands for the Department of Corrections

    Help uplift demands from individuals incarcerated at Anamosa State Penitentiary https://linktr.ee/demandsfordoc

    Jaylen asked us to send emails to the DoC to support the demands of incarcerated individuals.

    In subsequent posts I’ll report on the other work that was presented at this Buffalo Rebellion Community Call last night.

    You can read more about these issues in the Iowa Mutual Aid publication, We Gather Here in Disservice of the State

    https://iowamutualaid.org/zine

    https://iowamutualaid.org/zine

    See beyond our own time

    My Quaker meeting plans to discuss questions to not only stimulate discussion, but to begin to form a plan to meet our survival needs. We need to establish a baseline to know what Friends think about our present condition and what to do about it.

    Survival needs are ranked as:

    • Oxygen/air
    • Water
    • Food
    • Shelter
    • Physical, mental, and spiritual health

    So, the questions are:

    • What will we do to prepare for when clean water is no longer available? (Coming through water lines or even available to buy).
    • What will we do when food is no longer available from grocery stores?
    • What will we do for shelter? Survival will require us to live near water and food supplies. And each other.
    • How do we govern our communities? Who is included in our communities?
    • What to do about energy?
    • What to do about safety?
    • What medications and diagnostic equipment (blood pressure, thermometer, etc) should we stockpile?
    • What are our children thinking? Can we find ways to engage those who aren’t now involved?
    • How can we gather and store things like books for when digital technologies are no longer available?
    • Who already has such plans that might help us?

    Mutual Aid now

    Yesterday I wrote Faith Now and suggested Mutual Aid as a framework for faith now. So, I’ll describe more of my experiences with Mutual Aid.

    I’ve spent the last couple of years involved in Des Moines Mutual Aid (DMMA). Much of what I’ve learned can be found here: https://quakersandreligioussocialism.com/mutual-aid/

    The are several reasons for my excitement about, and continued involvement in DMMA. The first time I went to the DMMA food project I was immediately aware I was in a special place. There was a greater diversity of people than I had found in any other gathering in Iowa. “These spaces become intergenerational, diverse places of Indigenous joy, care and conversation.”

    There were usually around a dozen of us. There is a signup sheet on the Internet. So many people wanted to come to help that we had to limit attendance. This was also important for social distancing because of the COVID virus. Wearing masks is mandatory. No mask, no work.

    As I spent more time in this community, I often heard people say these Saturday mornings together, putting together boxes of food and handing them out, were the highlight of their week.

    Care is shown when each person coming to help is greeted by name, and how as we moved around, filling the boxes of food, when we came near each other, we would exchange a few words, asking how we were doing. When asked how you are, more than a surface “OK” was expected.

    Whenever a problem came up, you were welcome to ask anyone what to do. The answer was always given in a positive manner, and usually ended with “but do whatever you think is best.” Taking initiative and critical thinking were expected.

    I remember a specific instance early in my Mutual Aid experience. I was helping move the tables we usually set the boxes to be filled upon from the basement of the church to the yard outside. That was because the church that let us use their basement was holding a COVID vaccine clinic there that Saturday morning. Ronnie, who helped facilitate DMMA taking over the free food project, asked me, a relative newcomer, to tell him what he could do to help.

    Since we were all working toward the same end, there weren’t the tensions of someone telling you to do things a certain way. This is the non-hierarchical way that is the foundation of mutual aid. This also meant our work was done very quickly and efficiently, as no one was waiting for someone to tell them what to do. In just one hour we put out sixty boxes and proceeded to add the vegetables and food from three sources into each box.

    The vegetables were waiting for us when we arrived. There might be about a dozen boxes full of peppers and other vegetables. Someone would arrive with a car full of boxes of dated food from one source, and someone would arrive with the van that one of us drove to another source to be fill with donated food. All this food was carried into the church basement, and each bag opened and the food from it distributed. It’s hard to give you an idea of how much food that is, but it all got distributed quickly.

    Four long tables were setup outside. When we finished distributing all the food, we carried those boxes out to the tables. People coming for the food knew to park in the parking lot of the school cross the street from the church. When we were ready, one of us would direct those cars, one at a time, to drive to the tables. We would open the car door, greet the people, and put a box of food in the car. This is one of my favorite parts, seeing how great my friends are at interacting with those in the car.

     There is an aspect of self-determination and ethical engagement in organizing to meet our peoples’ material needs. There is a collective emotional lift in doing something worthwhile for our peoples’ benefit, however short-lived that benefit might be. These spaces become intergenerational, diverse places of Indigenous joy, care and conversation, and these conversations can be affirming, naming, critiquing, as well as rejecting and pushing back against the current systems of oppression. This for me seems like the practice of movement-building that our respective radical practices have been engaged with for centuries.

    Maynard, Robyn; Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake. Rehearsals for Living (Abolitionist Papers) (p. 39). Haymarket Books. Kindle Edition.

    I learned about the Des Moines Mutual Aid food project from a series of messages about it with Ronnie James who I was getting to know. The more I learned the more I wanted to see how that was done. From experience I knew a level of trust needed to be established and we need to be careful about inviting ourselves into these situations. Finally, the spirit led me to ask Ronnie if it was alright for me to participate. He said, several times, that it was fast paced, which sounded like a caution. I later learned several people had not been able to keep up with the physical demands. And I’m seventy years old. But he said yes.

    That first Saturday morning I was a bit apprehensive. I’m not good at meeting new people and wasn’t sure what to expect. As I met people, they were polite but reserved. I imagine part of that was the mistrust of the old, white man. And the people were protective of each other. I was told we were all expected to take any of the food ourselves, and then I began to help fill the food boxes.

    One mistake I made was not taking any of the food myself. When after a few weeks someone in a pleasant manner said I never took any food, I realized I hadn’t been participating in the mutual aspect of this. So, I began to take something each week. There were some awesome cakes from Whole Foods. I realized my sweet tooth was noticed when someone asked me if I wanted something they had come across. Just one example of how we learned more and more about each other.

    I had thought I’d attend just once or twice, just enough to see how this worked. But from the start I began to see all the wonderful things about Mutual Aid that I’m writing about today. I was ‘hooked’ as the expression goes. It didn’t take long to feel accepted and begin developing deep friendships. I’ve attended almost every week for the past two years.

    It was only recently, though, that I’ve recognized the healing aspect of this work. It is difficult to learn of the wrongs of the past. The atrocities white people executed on others. The damage done to Mother Earth. And the wrongs continuing today. The injustices we are complicit in. Helping meet people’s survival needs is something we can do now. This is what I meant when I wrote Faith Now yesterday.

    And then the second part of the talk is an evocation of the healing that is necessary and possible, a gradual elevation of the human spirit. It’s about the mobilization that is needed and which is within our reach. Then people know you’ve spoken truthfully, and you have evoked in each person a desire to help, to take care of their families, to have self-regard. I see this pattern in every talk I give.

    The World We Still Have. Barry Lopez On Restoring Our Lost Intimacy With Nature BY FRED BAHNSON, The Sun, DECEMBER 2019

    My reference to faith now comes from being led to call on Quakers to apply our spiritual practices to critically evaluate the systems we live in and take for granted. That are unjust and must be replaced. We must reject capitalist systems and systems of dominance. Build Beloved communities where everyone is cared for. Mutual Aid communities are a template for doing so. Are radical in the sense of freeing us from the power systems we find ourselves living in.

    By faith now I mean today. Every day we live in this settler, colonial, capitalist society, we continue to be oppressors.

    Faith Now

    Queries

    • How are we working to deal with existing chaos and preparing for further collapse?
    • Do we provide for everyone’?
    • What is our relationship with Mother Earth? Do we honor and conserve the resources we use?
    • What systems of dominance, of vertical hierarchies are we involved in?
    • Do we work to ensure there aren’t vertical hierarchies in our communities, in our relationships with all our relatives?
    • Do we have the courage to follow what the Spirit is saying to us? To not force those messages to conform to our existing beliefs and practices.
    • How do we connect with communities beyond our Quaker meetings? What are we learning about spiritual connections beyond our meetinghouses? Are we sharing these spiritual lessons with others?
    Kheprw Institute (KI) Indianapolis
    On the First Nation-Farmer Climate Unity March, 2018

    Faith Now

    Faith Now can refer to what the state of our faith is at this moment. And/or it can be an admonition to focus our faith on what is happening now.

    My witness has been so many people, including people of faith, are driven by the past. This is obviously true with religious practices demanding adherence to some set of rules. Rules created in the past. Rules designated by systems of dominance.

    One of the reasons I have remained a Quaker is the minimum of such rules. We say we believe the Spirit can speak to us now, that ours is a living faith. We use a set of queries (questions) to help us continue to examine our faith. This can make our faith less passive.

    It is not my place to judge other’s faith and practice. But there are things that have troubled my spirit for a long time.

    One is that Quakers do have unwritten rules. As a recent example, prior to the forced separation because of the COVID pandemic, I was told, many times, that Quaker business decisions could only be made when Friends were together physically. When I lived in Indianapolis, I had suggested using programs for remote connections to my meeting in Iowa, but that was universally held to be unacceptable. We see how that has changed. What are other unwritten rules? Identifying them might account for why we are attracting few new attenders in this time of spiritual poverty.

    And there is the universal challenge of living our daily lives consistently with our faith.

    White Quakers were and continue to be settler colonists. Our ancestors claimed Indigenous land for their homes and farms. Ever since, we have continued to live on and profit from these lands. And have engaged with capitalism and systems of dominance and control that come from this colonization.

    There is the devastating history of churches’, including white Quaker’s involvement in the institutions of forced assimilation of native children and genocide of Indigenous peoples.

    I’m also devastated by the use of fossil fuels. Speaking from my own experience, when I saw the smog when I moved to Indianapolis (1970), I was led to know I could not be part of owning cars. My faith showed me how to go about this, helped me get through the significant challenges involved. I’m of course not the only person to have made the same choices. And I’m challenged today having moved to a small town in Iowa. The sprawling way our cities and towns are designed coupled with the absence of mass transit is a challenge. But we would not have built cities this way if we had chosen to build mass transit systems instead of the massive infrastructure for cars. Building all the streets and highways. Parking areas, traffic control systems, so many gas stations, extractive systems for coal and oil, and pipelines.

    Had the decision not been made to follow the path of cars, we would not be in accelerating environmental collapse now. Think about that.

    We are in perilous times. I believe spirituality and spiritual connections are key for survival. https://quakersandreligioussocialism.com/2022/11/17/spiritual-connections-for-survival/

    My reference to faith now comes from being led to call on Quakers to apply our spiritual practices to critically evaluate the systems we live in and take for granted. That are unjust and must be replaced. We must reject capitalist systems and systems of dominance. Build Beloved communities where everyone is cared for. Mutual Aid communities are a template for doing so. Are radical in the sense of freeing us from the power systems we find ourselves living in.

    By faith now I mean today. Every day we live in this settler, colonial, capitalist society, we continue to be oppressors.

    The following quote expresses this eloquently. People are desperately hungry to have a purpose, to do something concrete to help others.

    You and your relations, my friend, are (still) busy building a different world at the end of this one. This is something I’ve emphasized over and over again in my own work. I cherish the belief and practice that it is never enough to just critique the system and name our oppression. We also have to create the alternative, on the ground and in real time. In part, for me, because Nishnaabeg ethics and theory demand no less. In part because in Nishnaabeg thinking, knowledge is mobilized, generated, and shared by collectively doing. It’s more than that, though. There is an aspect of self-determination and ethical engagement in organizing to meet our peoples’ material needs. There is a collective emotional lift in doing something worthwhile for our peoples’ benefit, however short-lived that benefit might be. These spaces become intergenerational, diverse places of Indigenous joy, care and conversation, and these conversations can be affirming, naming, critiquing, as well as rejecting and pushing back against the current systems of oppression. This for me seems like the practice of movement-building that our respective radical practices have been engaged with for centuries.

    Maynard, Robyn; Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake. Rehearsals for Living (Abolitionist Papers) (p. 39). Haymarket Books. Kindle Edition.

    Following is a diagram I’ve been developing for several years. I’ve written a lot about these things on this blog (Religious Socialism, Mutual Aid, and Abolition of Police and Prisons).

    Faith Now

    • Spirituality can show us how to live with integrity now. How to be examples to others. This is how change happens.
    • The Creator can help us heal the wounds of the past. And the wounds that continue to be inflicted.
    • The Spirit can guide us through the coming chaos.
    • It is by the Spirit we create connections among diverse peoples.

    We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the life that is waiting for us.

    Joseph Campbell

    Queries

    • How are we working to deal with existing chaos and preparing for further collapse?
    • Do we provide for everyone’?
    • What is our relationship with Mother Earth? Do we honor and conserve the resources we use?
    • What systems of dominance, of vertical hierarchies are we involved in?
    • Do we work to ensure there aren’t vertical hierarchies in our communities, in our relationships with all our relatives?
    • Do we have the courage to follow what the Spirit is saying to us? To not force those messages to conform to our existing beliefs and practices.
    • How do we connect with communities beyond our Quaker meetings? What are we learning about spiritual connections beyond our meetinghouses? Are we sharing these spiritual lessons with others?

    Running throughout (Lopez’s book) Horizon is the question of human survival. The multiple threats we now face, especially the very real possibility of climate disaster, expose the tensions between human aspiration and ecological reality. Perhaps what is most needed, Lopez suggests, is for us to lament what we’ve destroyed, but also to praise and love the world we still have. “Mystery,” he writes, “is the real condition in which we live, not certainty.”

    Bahnson: You’ve confronted the darkness you see on the horizon with anthropogenic climate change. How do you talk about this with audiences? People need to know what’s coming, yet if you overwhelm them with depressing news, they might freeze. How do you strike the balance between educator and artist?

    Lopez: Whenever I speak in public, I write out a new talk. I begin by stipulating, with a modulated voice, that things are way worse than we imagine. And I offer some examples: the collapse of pollinating insect populations; the rise of nationalism; belligerent and ignorant narcissists like Donald Trump; methane gas spewing out of the Siberian tundra. You’re saying to everybody, “Let’s take off the rose-colored glasses now and see what our dilemma really is.” And then the second part of the talk is an evocation of the healing that is necessary and possible, a gradual elevation of the human spirit. It’s about the mobilization that is needed and which is within our reach. Then people know you’ve spoken truthfully, and you have evoked in each person a desire to help, to take care of their families, to have self-regard. I see this pattern in every talk I give. To remember, geographically, exactly where you are speaking that night, and to know whether there might be a full moon outside the building; to offer that sense of immediacy and groundedness; to underscore the specificity of the moment; and to be sure that you implicate yourself in the trouble. It all helps in these situations. If you attempt any version of “I know, and you don’t” or “This is not my fault” or “I am the holy messenger, and you’re the fools,” the evening ends in darkness. You have to be in it with them.

    The World We Still Have. Barry Lopez On Restoring Our Lost Intimacy With Nature BY FRED BAHNSON, The Sun, DECEMBER 2019

    Spiritual connections for survival

    For many years I’ve been praying, thinking, writing, and discussing how we can prepare for an increasingly dystopian future. In an article in Friends Journal, Donald McCormick asks “why is there no vision for the future of Quakerism?”  I wrote about my vision in the article What is your vision for the future?

    The increasing threats from environmental devastation and chaos lead me to share more of my vision, which has been evolving over the past several years. It’s taken me a long time to write this article, I think because I haven’t found resources available to check on what I’m saying here.

    I’ve always believed the greatest problem to solve is how communities of the future organize and govern themselves. We’ll have to do things differently because our present systems are collapsing. Which is often not a bad thing since those systems are based on colonialism and capitalism.

    Spirituality

    Spirituality is especially important now as we experience increasing environmental chaos, which will contribute to further social, economic, and political collapse. We will have no choice but to band together for the survival of us all. The alternative is tribalism with its violence, destruction and death.

    We will need the help of those who know survival skills that we don’t. It takes time to build the trust necessary for these connections. It is urgent to do this now. It is by the Spirit that we can engage with everyone around us, of all cultures, identities, ethnicities.

    • Spirituality can show us how to live with integrity now. How to be examples to others. This is how change happens.
    • The Creator can help us heal the wounds of the past. And the wounds that will be inflicted in the future.
    • The Spirit can guide us through the coming chaos.
    • It is by the Spirit we create connections among diverse peoples.

    Kheprw Institute (KI)

    One set of my spiritual experiences relates to my introduction to a community of people of color, the Kheprw Institute (KI). I wrote about this in detail at: https://jeffkisling.com/2021/03/14/white-quakers-and-spiritual-connections-with-the-kheprw-institute/

    At my first meeting with the KI community, I was asked a number of questions. When I said I was a Quaker, one of the adults (the group was mainly teenagers) spoke about the history of Quakers related to the underground railroad. When she finished, all eyes turned to me. I said I was glad my ancestors did that, it was the right thing to do, but we try not to take credit for things we have not done ourselves. When I was asked to speak more about that, I wasn’t sure what to say. I remember clearly that an answer came from the Spirit, which told me to not only say that Quakers believe there is that of God in everyone, but to also look into the eyes of each one there and say, “and that includes you”. Each person smiled at me when I did that. That ended the questioning, and I was welcomed into the community. We had this spiritual basis for our work together.

    But that was just the first step. Trust was built, but slowly. With permission, I invited members of my Quaker community to engage with KI’s monthly book discussions. This was one way we began to get to know each other. But it was two years after this introduction before I was invited to teach a class on photography for KI.

    Kheprw Institute, Indianapolis

    First Nation-Farmer Climate Unity March

    Because of my lifelong commitment to care for our environment, I’d always wanted to learn about Indigenous peoples and their sustainable lives. I jumped at the opportunity to do so when I heard about the First Nation-Farmer Climate Unity March in 2018. The intention was to build a community of native and nonnative people by walking and camping together along the route of the Dakota Access pipeline from Des Moines to Fort Dodge, Iowa (94 miles). Many long hours walking together, for eight days, along empty Iowa gravel roads was very effective in creating the beginnings of trust. There were about fifteen native and fifteen nonnative people, which allowed each of us the opportunity to share stories with every other person.

    I’d hoped there would be ways to learn more about their spirituality, and to share some about my own. But I knew there was a huge barrier between us related to Friends’ involvement in the institutions of forced assimilation of native children. It is uncomfortable to admit this, but at the time I wondered how much awareness there was about the Indian Boarding Schools. I was soon to learn how profound that trauma was, and how it was passed from generation to generation. Is a deep wound today in every Indigenous person I know. I discuss this in detail in White Quakers and Native Peoples and other writings.

    I didn’t know if, or how, the occasion might occur to talk about this during the March. Or whether I should.

    But I vividly remember when the Spirit told me to say, “I know Quakers were involved in the Indian boarding schools and I’m sorry that happened” to the native person I was getting to know the best early in the March. I was worried saying that would upset him, open wounds. But he just nodded his head, and we kept walking together. But later in the day he said, “I want to tell you a story”, and proceeded to tell me a story related to him and his mother and the boarding schools.

    At various times the Spirit led me to bring this up with each of my native friends. Every one of them and their families have had traumatic experiences related to forced assimilation. And the removal of native children from their homes continues in the guise of child welfare.

    This is something that should not be taken lightly. A certain level of connection and trust is important. This is not about us (White people) and what we would like to see or do. There should be clear spiritual guidance.

    I’ve found my Indigenous friends to be deeply spiritual. I like the sign, Earth is my church, carried by my friends Foxy and Alton Onefeather during the March. That says a lot about why I feel my friends are spiritual, their reverence of all things human and nonhuman. And their practices such as smudging, putting down tobacco, expressing thanks to the Creator each time they speak in public. Their humbleness. One friend often says “we are just pitiful people” during her prayers.

    In the four years since that March, various combinations of us have had numerous opportunities to work together.

    And yet again, that trust has been built, is being built slowly.

    Foxy Onefeather holds sign on First Nation-Farmer Climate Unity March (2018)

    Spiritual guidance

    Quakers believe our lives must be guided by the Spirit. But far too often people haven’t found, or don’t try to discern that spiritual guidance. They try to figure out how to do justice work on their own or in conjunction with like-minded people. with the best of intentions. That phrase usually indicates not listening to those affected by injustice. And indicates not having discerned what their faith is trying to tell them.

    And that often results in unintended, harmful consequences. A common phrase to keep in mind is nothing about us without us. This is especially challenging for White people who are accustomed to their privileges. Often not even aware of those privileges. We would not need to qualify what our intentions were if we were following the leadership of the communities facing injustice.

    One horrific example of best intentions gone wrong were the Indian boarding schools. A policy of forced assimilation of native children into White culture was thought by many to be a way to help Indian children adjust to the enveloping White society. But tens of thousands of children suffered physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. Thousands died. Genocide. And that trauma has been passed to each following generation, including todays. Every one of my native friends has been affected.

    This is an example of difficulties in making connections between different communities and/or cultures. With this horrific history, and ongoing trauma, how can a bridge ever be built between these two cultures, White and Indigenous? Or between White and BIPOC people and communities? (Black, Indigenous and other people of color)

    But for others, especially in the government and military, this policy and horror was exactly what they intended.

    Mutual Aid

    The Spirit also led me to become involved in a Mutual Aid community. And led me to be involved in efforts to abolish police and prisons. I’ve written extensively about these things on my website Quakers and Religious Socialism, Intersection of Mutual Aid, Abolition and Socialism.

    How to create connections between different communities or cultures

    Returning to Donald McCormick’s question, “why is there no vision for the future of Quakerism?” I’ve tried to express my answer here. In these increasingly trying times, spiritual guidance is crucial. Sharing this with others is a gift Quakers have to offer. But we need to understand the history and concepts of oppression. Of Quakers’ role in oppression. And discern how the Spirit is leading us.

    Frontline communities are figuring out how to live when the systems that are supposed to serve them no longer do, if they ever did. White communities will look to these communities and their solutions for our own survival.

    I was recently surprised when a Quaker friend said I had a way of finding and connecting with oppressed communities. Which made me realize something I hadn’t expressed before, which is we must seek out these communities ourselves. Be guided to these communities by the Spirit. Search for these opportunities. Searching social media is usually very useful. And we can learn what our Friends and friends are doing and join those efforts.

    Following is a list of things I have been learning from my experiences related to making connections between different communities and/or cultures.

    Confederating counter-institutions

    As I was sitting in the dark this morning praying about what to write, I noticed the light from the sunrise reflecting on the clouds in front of my windows. So, I went out to take some photos. Photography has been one of the threads of my lifelong foundational stories.

    On my way to Mutual Aid Saturday I stopped at Easter Lake, even though it was raining heavily. So, I rolled down the window and shot the photos from within the car.

    Easter Lake, Des Moines, Iowa

    I usually avoid the subject, but American politics is in the news as the Midterm elections approach. The Republican party is no longer participating in the democratic means of governance. That is such a radical departure, and the damage can only be minimized by not electing those politicians.

    But even if the Democrats win control of the Senate and House, they will continue to be beholden to corporate financial influence and White superiority. Continue to use armed forces throughout the world. Or as one of the most glaring failures, will continue to support the fossil fuel industry. For example, releasing millions of barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserves and supporting carbon (CO2) pipelines.

    Whatever happens in the election, our political, economic, and social systems will continue to fail, and fail completely in the face of environmental catastrophe and chaos.

    I see all of this through my experiences with Mutual Aid, which is as much about building beloved communities as it is about supporting people’s survival needs. It is important to build Mutual Aid communities now in preparation for continued collapse.

    There will continue to be a need to transition from the current, dominant systems of governance to alternatives such as Mutual Aid. This process is referred to as “dual power”.

    Dual Power

    How do we effectively build political space where direct democracy, mutual aid, solidarity, and an ecologically sustainable human existence can prevail? To start with, we need to be able to provide for our immediate needs. In doing so, we must organize to seize control of powerful nodes of production, reproduction, and realization while simultaneously cultivating models of the society we wish to live in.

    Dual power is a strategy that builds liberated spaces and creates institutions grounded in direct democracy. Together these spaces and institutions expand into the ever widening formation of a new world “in the shell of the old.” As the movement grows more powerful, it can engage in ever larger confrontations with the ruling class—and ultimately a contest for legitimacy against the institutions of capitalist society.

    In our view, dual power is comprised of two component parts: (1.) building counter-institutions that serve as alternatives to the institutions currently governing production, investment, and social life under capitalism, and (2.) organizing through and confederating these institutions to build up a base of grassroots counter-power which can eventually challenge the existing power of capitalists and the State head-on. In the short term, such a strategy helps win victories that improve working people’s standard of living, helps us meet our needs that are currently left unaddressed under capitalism, and gives us more of a say over our day-to-day lives.

    Dual Power: A Strategy To Build Socialism In Our Time, DECEMBER 31, 2018 – CAUCUS STATEMENT. DSA
    LIBERTARIAN SOCIALIST CAUCUS

    Building counter-institutions

    In this graphic the concepts under Red/Green New Deal are counter-institutions that are being built now.

    Confederating counter-institutions

    Buffalo Rebellion

    The recently formed Buffalo Rebellion is an example of confederating counter-institutions.

    Buffalo Rebellion is a new coalition of Iowa organizations that are growing a movement for climate action that centers racial and economic justice. The Earth Day Rally will be an afternoon of honoring Mother Earth through sharing stories and visions for climate justice and taking action together for a world that puts people and the planet before profits for a few.

    Following the Earth Day Rally, Buffalo Rebellion will be holding two days of immersive training to develop 100 grassroots leaders who will build local teams to take on climate justice issues in their community and come together to create a thriving state-wide movement.

    Formed in 2021, the Buffalo Rebellion is comprised of seven Iowa organizations: Great Plains Action Society, DSM Black Liberation Movement, Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice, Sierra Club Beyond Coal, Cedar Rapids Sunrise Movement, SEIU Local 199, and Iowa CCI

    Buffalo Rebellion

    I believe that world-ending and world-making can occur, are occurring, have always occurred, simultaneously. Given that racial and ecological violence are interwoven and inextricable from one another, more now than ever, Black and Indigenous communities—who are globally positioned as “first to die” within the climate crisis—are also on the front lines of world-making practices that threaten to overthrow the current (death-making) order of things. Put otherwise, our communities, quite literally the post-apocalyptic survivors of world-endings already, are best positioned to imagine what this may be. This, after all, is the radical promise (if as of yet unachieved) that was and is extended to us by the world-making projects of abolition and decolonization.

    Maynard, Robyn; Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake. Rehearsals for Living (Abolitionist Papers) (p. 31). Haymarket Books. Kindle Edition.

    But it’s not just that mutual aid can ease material conditions or help striking workers so that they have more power against the bosses. Its assault on the existing power structure runs much deeper. Consider this: if mutual aid can meet the food needs of everyone in a city without them having to pay for the food, what’s the point of paying for food in the first place? Start asking questions like this, and you can quickly start to unravel the capitalist economy itself in that local area. Capitalism is based upon a network of institutions that draw their power from control and exclusion. Free access is capitalism’s poison. By building up the capacity to universally provide resources on a non-market basis, we plant the seeds for capitalism’s ultimate destruction.

    In all this, we must remember that mutual aid runs not from the socialist movement to the grateful workers but is something workers do for each other on an egalitarian basis. We must work to ensure our mutual aid raises each other up as opposed to charity which hands down from “on high.”

    Dual Power: A Strategy To Build Socialism In Our Time, DECEMBER 31, 2018 – CAUCUS STATEMENT. DSA
    LIBERTARIAN SOCIALIST CAUCUS

    Buffalo Rebellion

    Foundational stories now: Protecting Mother Earth

    [My foundational stories are related to the intersections between my Quaker faith, protecting Mother Earth, and photography. My faith led me to try to share my spiritual experiences and show my love for the beauty of Mother Earth through photography.]

    Yesterday I described where my story related to photography is at this time. Today I write about where I am regarding protecting Mother Earth. The beginning of my stories about protecting Mother Earth and the water can be found here: Foundational stories about care for Mother Earth.

    Concern for Mother Earth has been a constant in my life. I was 20 years old when I moved to Indianapolis and was horrified by the thick, noxious exhaust from cars. I couldn’t be part of that and have lived without a car since then (1970).

    My foundational stories now

    Protecting Mother Earth

    It took a while for me to become comfortable with the term Mother Earth. But vocabulary can affect how you feel about something. Having Earth as your Mother describes a living relationship. This is one of the many things I’ve learned from my Indigenous friends.

    It is a dichotomy that today, despite knowing the many ways our environment and so many other things are collapsing, I have more hope than I’ve had for years. That’s because of the coalitions of people coming together to heal each other and Mother Earth. We can’t be so paralyzed with fear about what may be coming that we don’t enjoy the beauty all around us.

    Following are some ways I’m involved in protecting Mother Earth now.

    • Buffalo Rebellion
    • Mutual Aid
    • Wet’suwet’en
    • Bear Creek Friends Meeting

    Buffalo Rebellion

    Last night I participated in a meeting of the Buffalo Rebellion, which I’m proud to be a part of. This coalition of environmental activists is one of the things that gives me hope. Realizing we are all working on similar things, this coalition is being built to empower our work and support one another. Last night someone remarked that we’ve all suffered trauma and are all in need of healing.

    Following is a description of the Buffalo Rebellion, including a link to a recording of my friend Sikowis Nobiss describing it.

    The topic this month is on a newly formed Green New Deal coalition in Iowa called Buffalo Rebellion formed to protect the planet by demanding change from politicians and convincing the public that climate should be a priority. Buffalo Rebellion, is a coalition of grassroots, labor, and climate justice organizations growing a movement to pass local, state, and national policies that create millions of family-sustaining union jobs—ensuring racial and gender equity and taking action on climate at the scale and scope the crisis demands. It was formed in November 2021 and consists of: 

    The root causes of what we are fighting against are capitalism and colonialism

    The subject of last night’s gathering (at Iowa CCI and via Zoom) was CO2 (carbon) pipelines, the latest man-made environmental threat. Iowa is at the center of this problem because most of the ethanol plants are located here, because ethanol is produced from corn, and releases carbon emissions in the process. The carbon dioxide in the carbon pipelines is a hazardous material and could cause deaths if there is a rupture. A CO2 pipeline in Satartia, Mississippi ruptured last year, sickening dozens of people. First responders’ vehicles could not run because of the absence of oxygen. READ: “The Gassing Of Satartia” (Huffington Post, August 2021)

    Sikowis talked about what is below the crust of the earth also being a sacred space, and we don’t know what disturbing that with pipelines and fracking will cause.

    The only way to address fossil fuel emissions is to stop burning fossil fuels.

    Mutual Aid

    Des Moines Mutual Aid has been the focus of my work for the past couple of years. How is this related to the protection of Mother Earth?

    • Being in a Mutual Aid community, we support each other and help each other heal.
    • Mutual Aid members are encouraged to use critical thinking to anticipate and solve problems. And immediately implement solutions, not waiting for permission from anyone.
    • Mutual Aid is about eliminating vertical hierarchies and the damage those hierarches do to a community. And how they harm Mother Earth.
    • Mutual Aid communities are explicitly local. There is no need for fossil fuel transportation and energy production. Our Mutual Aid communities are or will be “walkable”.
    • Our Mutual Aid communities are an example to others of how we can escape capitalism and colonialism that are the root causes of injustice
    • Our Mutual Aid practices are about sustainability and protection of Mother Earth
    • “These spaces become intergenerational, diverse places of Indigenous joy, care and conversation, and these conversations can be affirming, naming, critiquing, as well as rejecting and pushing back against the current systems of oppression”. Maynard, Robyn; Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake.
    • “…capitalism and colonialism created structures that have disrupted how people have historically connected with each other and shared everything they needed to survive. As people were forced into systems of wage labor and private property, and wealth became increasingly concentrated, our ways of caring for each other have become more and more tenuous.” Dean Spade
    Ronnie James, Des Moines Mutual Aid

    …in Nishnaabeg thinking, knowledge is mobilized, generated, and shared by collectively doing. It’s more than that, though. There is an aspect of self-determination and ethical engagement in organizing to meet our peoples’ material needs. There is a collective emotional lift in doing something worthwhile for our peoples’ benefit, however short-lived that benefit might be. These spaces become intergenerational, diverse places of Indigenous joy, care and conversation, and these conversations can be affirming, naming, critiquing, as well as rejecting and pushing back against the current systems of oppression. This for me seems like the practice of movement-building that our respective radical practices have been engaged with for centuries.

    Maynard, Robyn; Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake. Rehearsals for Living (Abolitionist Papers) (p. 39). Haymarket Books. Kindle Edition.

    In another example of how our work is interrelated, my Mutual Aid friends support the Wet’suwet’en.

    Wet’suwet’en

    The Wet’suwet’en peoples have been struggling for years to prevent the construction of the Coastal GasLink liquified natural gas pipeline from being built through their pristine, unceded lands.

    https://quakersandreligioussocialism.com/?s=wetsuweten+wet%27suwet%27en
    https://jeffkisling.com/?s=wetsuweten+wet%27suwet%27en

    There was one particularly significant Spirit-led event in my life related to the Wet’suwet’en. When I first became involved with the Wet’suwet’en peoples was when they were asking allies to spread the news about their struggles, since there was no mainstream media coverage.

    In February 2020, some of us were already planning to be at Friends House in Des Moines. We decided to hold a vigil for the Wet’suwet’en on the street in front of Friends House prior to that meeting. I created an event announcement on Facebook, that was shared by my friend Ed Fallon or Bold Iowa, an Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement.

    As anticipated just those few of us who were planning to attend the meeting at Friends House anyway showed up. But the Spirit-led part of this is that Ronnie James, who I didn’t know at the time, joined us. Ronnie is an Indigenous organizer with twenty years of experience. He was surprised anyone in Iowa knew about the Wet’suwet’en peoples, so he came to see who was attending, a good organizing technique.

    Ronnie and I began to exchange messages over the next couple of months. I was intrigued with the stories he was telling me about Des Moines Mutual Aid community he was involved with. When I felt we had begun to know each other well enough, I tentatively asked if I could attend the food giveaway that Ronnie/Des Moines Mutual Aid held every Saturday morning. This was a continuation of a variation of the Black Panther Party’s free school breakfast program in Des Moines from the 1970’s.

    I thought I would just attend a time or two to see how that worked. Instead, I’ve been there almost every Saturday morning for over two years now, and Ronnie is one of my best friends. One of the many good things about Mutual Aid is how it attracts and keeps people engaged.

    I continue to do what I can to support the Wet’suwet’en. We are presently organizing another gathering at Chase bank to call attention to their funding fossil fuel projects. Some others from the Buffalo Rebellion will be involved.

    Bear Creek Friends Meeting

    The small, rural Quaker meeting I’m a member of continues today to try to find ways we can help protect Mother Earth. This is one way to bring a Spiritual approach to these problems which I believe is very important.

    Members of the meeting have supported the annual Prairie Awakening/Prairie Awoke ceremony that takes place at the Kuehn Conservation Area, just a few miles from the meetinghouse.

    Bear Creek Friends Meeting

    It is difficult to reduce fossil fuel use in rural areas.

    One thing we realized we could do was encourage more use of bicycles, since many members lived close to the meetinghouse just north of Earlham, Iowa. And encourage Friends in urban meetings to use bicycles when possible.

    The Minute we wrote, and that was approved by Iowa Yearly Meeting of Friends (Conservative) was referred to as a Minute on “Ethical Transportation”.

     Radically reducing fossil fuel use has long been a concern of Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative).  A previously approved Minute urged us to reduce our use of personal automobiles.  We have continued to be challenged by the design of our communities that makes this difficult.  This is even more challenging in rural areas.  But our environmental crisis means we must find ways to address this issue quickly.
     
     Friends are encouraged to challenge themselves and to simplify their lives in ways that can enhance their spiritual environmental integrity. One of our meetings uses the term “ethical transportation,” which is a helpful way to be mindful of this.
     
     Long term, we need to encourage ways to make our communities “walkable”, and to expand public
    transportation systems.  These will require major changes in infrastructure and urban planning.
     
     Carpooling and community shared vehicles would help.  We can develop ways to coordinate neighbors needing to travel to shop for food, attend meetings, visit doctors, etc.  We could explore using existing school buses or shared vehicles to provide intercity transportation.  
     
     One immediately available step would be to promote the use of bicycles as a visible witness for non-fossil fuel transportation.  Friends may forget how easy and fun it can be to travel miles on bicycles.  Neighbors seeing families riding their bicycles to Quaker meetings would have an impact on community awareness.  This is a way for our children to be involved in this shared witness.  We should encourage the expansion of bicycle lanes and paths.  We can repair and recycle unused bicycles, and make them available to those who have the need.

    Minute approved by Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative) 2017