Collapse is already here

This is a continuation of a recent post, the centre cannot hold, and discussion of the article Collapse Is Already Here — And It’s Spreading by umair haque. The reason I follow umair’s writings is because I agree with his analysis of where we are and learn more from him. In this article he talks about the collapse of the three systems we live in.

economic
social
political

Failing economies

Right now, a wave of mega-inflation is surging around the globe. It’s driven largely by climate change — and our nonexistent “response” to it. Harvests are failing, goods are getting harder and harder to distribute and ship, raw materials harder to source and attain. Inflation is going to keep rising — for the rest of our lives.
Shortages become the norm. You can see them beginning to happen in vivid, shocking detail now. Empty shelves are becoming the new normal. The age of abundance is over.
Our economies have failed. And they’re going to continue to fail.
Collapse Is Already Here — And It’s Spreading. I Don’t Know If You’ve Noticed — But Our Systems are Breaking Down by umair haque, Eudaimonia, May 19, 2022

Failing social systems

Think of how many generations our economies have failed at this point.
Boomers were the last ones to really live the dream — since then, our economies have been in decline, and that decline has accelerated rapidly. Gen X had it worse than Boomers, but not so bad as to cause total despair — enough to be comical. Millennials had it worse than Gen X — and they can’t afford to move out of their parents’ homes, or start families, so birth rates are declining. Zoomers have it far, far worse than Millennials — they’ll never be able to retire, they can’t get decent jobs, their lives are over before they began.
There’s a word to sum all that up — intergenerational inequality. What does intergenerational inequality do? It destroys the possibility of functioning social systems. Someone has to pay for them, after all — from retirement systems to post offices to hospitals and universities and so forth. Social systems must be funded from the public purse. But when people are struggling harder, generation after generation, getting poorer, there’s less left over to invest.
Collapse Is Already Here — And It’s Spreading. I Don’t Know If You’ve Noticed — But Our Systems are Breaking Down by umair haque, Eudaimonia, May 19, 2022

Failing political systems

This is the real reason why young people are apathetic about politics. They know they can’t change anything even if they try. They don’t have the money, so what’s the point? Sure, they can vote in politicians who want to build social systems — and sometimes they do, like AOC or who have you. But those politicians are left powerless in the end, because societies in which generation after generation is getting poorer cannot afford to be functioning societies at all.
Collapse Is Already Here — And It’s Spreading. I Don’t Know If You’ve Noticed — But Our Systems are Breaking Down by umair haque, Eudaimonia, May 19, 2022

The collapse of the economic, social and political systems umair haque describes above are part of the diagram below I’ve been working on for several years.

The economic system is Capitalism (red box in diagram below). Capitalism exerts financial control, and uses criminal justice systems of police and prisons to enforce capitalist policies.

Capitalism once did some funding of social systems: Medicare, food stamps, unemployment insurance, etc.

But now, the collapse of capitalism is leading to increasingly inadequate social services, pushing more people into, or further into poverty.

The answer, it seems to many of us, is to replace the capitalist economic system. As my friend Ronnie James says:

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, Des Moines Mutual Aid

How to replace capitalism and the systems that support it is indicated in the Red/Green New Deal box. Discussions of these things can be found on these blogs of mine and elsewhere.

https://quakersandreligioussocialism.com/

https://landbackfriends.com/

Wet’suwet’en and residential schools

I’ve been following and writing about the Wet’suwet’en peoples in British Columbia as they struggle to prevent a natural gas pipeline (Costal GasLink) from being built through their pristine lands and waters for years. Because of almost no mainstream media coverage of what has been happening there, they asked us to share their stories and struggles on our social media. (see links to many stories at the end).

This video shows the continued harassment of the Wet’suwet’en by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. 5/15/2022. It is especially disturbing because it shows trauma carried from one generation to the next. Especially disturbing because it makes the connection to the Indian residential schools’ atrocities.

Cody and Winih Confront RCMP
Gidimt’en Access Point

For over 2 months the RCMP CIRG unit has carried out a daily harassment & intimidation campaign on Gidimt’en territory. On Sunday, May 15 as we started the build of a new balhats (feast hall) at our Tsel Kiy Kwa village site with elders and children, over a dozen officers were dispatched to surveil & criminalize us.

This day should have been a celebration. A representation of our governance system on the yintah despite being outlawed and all the government’s attempts to disrupt the transmission of culture and our laws to our children.

When confronted with the RCMP’s history of stealing Indigenous children to send them to residential schools & questioned about why none of their deaths are being investigated, despite excessive policing of our territory, officers fell silent.

#RCMPofftheyintah

May 15, 2022
Tsel Kiy Kwa Village Site

“10,000 kids murdered at residential schools. They’re here to harass you. You as a Wet’suwet’en. As a future leader of these lands. They still rip kids away from their parents every day, one at a time. So, you look at them, you remember their faces, because they decided that you’re not allowed to live here. Every time you see Every Child Matters, we’re talking to you guys, because you guys are the ones not looking into their deaths. 10,000 ** kids. That’s a lot of kids that went to school and died. Not one of you guys are doing anything about it.”

RCMP have patrolled Gidimt’en home sites more than 200 times since March 2022.

Following is a letter my Quaker Meeting sent to British Columbia Premier, John Horgan in 2020.

January 26, 2020

Bear Creek Friends (Quaker) meetinghouse is in the Iowa countryside. Many members have been involved in agriculture and care about protecting Mother Earth. A number of Friends have various relationships with Indigenous peoples. Some Friends have worked to protect water and to stop the construction of fossil fuel pipelines in the United States, such as the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines.

We are concerned about the tensions involving the Wet’suwet’en Peoples, who are working to protect their water and lands in British Columbia. Most recently they are working to prevent the construction of several pipelines through their territory. Such construction would do severe damage to the land, water, and living beings.

Bear Creek Friends Meeting, of Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative) approved sending the following letter to British Columbia Premier, John Horgan.

John Horgan.
PO BOX 9041 STN PROV GOVT
VICTORIA, BC V8W 9E1.
Email premier@gov.bc.ca

John Horgan,
We’re concerned that you are not honoring the tribal rights and unceded Wet’suwet’en territories and are threatening a raid instead.

We ask you to de-escalate the militarized police presence, meet with the Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs, and hear their demands:

That the province cease construction of the Coastal Gaslink Pipeline project and suspend permits.

That the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and tribal rights to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) are respected by the state and RCMP.

That the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and associated security and policing services be withdrawn from Wet’suwet’en lands, in agreement with the most recent letter provided by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimiation’s (CERD) request.

That the provincial and federal government, RCMP and private industry employed by Coastal GasLink (CGL) respect Wet’suwet’en laws and governance system, and refrain from using any force to access tribal lands or remove people.
Bear Creek Monthly Meeting of Friends (Quakers)
19186 Bear Creek Road, Earlham, Iowa, 50072

Several of us gathered in Des Moines, Iowa, for a vigil in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en peoples, February 7, 2020.

Wet’suwet’en Updates 2.7.2020 Evening

Our most recent action was a vigil held at a Chase bank in Des Moines, December, 2021. Chase funds fossil fuel projects. You can see the solidarity, including Des Moines Black Lives Matter. https://landbackfriends.com/2021/12/23/iowa-solidarity-with-wetsuweten/

Writings about the Wet’suwet’en from my blog posts:
https://landbackfriends.com/?s=wetsuweten
https://jeffkisling.com/?s=wetsuweten+wet%27suwet%27en

the centre cannot hold

It is increasingly clear we can never return to life as we knew it several decades ago. It is difficult to know where we will go, where we can go from here. Difficult to make sense of what is happening.

After I had written this, I received the latest article from a thinker I follow, umair haque.

When I look at the world today, I see something chilling. Collapse is already here — and it’s spreading. And next to it is the curious juxtaposition of pretending that life will go on “normally.” I’ve warned for some time now that we’re entering an age of collapse, where our great systems will fail — and if you look around now, you can see it beginning to happen.
We’re going to talk about this in three forms — political, economic, and social systems — and on two levels, national and global systems. What’s alarming — oh no, am I an alarmist? — is that now our systems are visibly beginning to fail, and fail incredibly swiftly, in all of those ways.
Collapse Is Already Here — And It’s Spreading. I Don’t Know If You’ve Noticed — But Our Systems are Breaking Down by umair haque, Eudaimonia, May 19, 2022

sensemaking–the action or process of making sense of or giving meaning to something, especially new developments and experiences.
…there remains the most existential risk of them all: our diminishing capacity for collective sensemaking. Sensemaking is the ability to generate an understanding of world around us so that we may decide how to respond effectively to it. When this breaks down within the individual, it creates an ineffective human at best and a dangerous one at worst.
Threats to sensemaking are manifold. Among the most readily observable sources are the excesses of identity politics, the rapid polarisation of the long-running culture war, the steep and widespread decline in trust in mainstream media and other public institutions, and the rise of mass disinformation technologies, e.g. fake news working in tandem with social media algorithms designed to hijack our limbic systems and erode our cognitive capacities. If these things can confound and divide us both within and between cultures, then we have little hope of generating the coherent dialogue, let alone the collective resolve, that is required to overcome the formidable global-scale problems converging before us.
At the collective level, a loss of sensemaking erodes shared cultural and value structures and renders us incapable of generating the collective wisdom necessary to solve complex societal problems like those described above. When that happens, the centre cannot hold.
Pontoon Archipelago or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Collapse. By James Allen, originally published by Medium, June 18, 2019

It seems we’ve reached the point where the centre cannot hold, is not holding.

Our government systems are being hijacked by those intent on dismantling democracy. And they are succeeding. We have lost our voice in governance.
Complex global supply systems and the economies dependent on them are breaking down.
Environmental chaos is rapidly escalating.
There is increasing denial of facts and science.
There is widespread spiritual poverty.
Almost everyone is paralyzed by the onslaught of these crises.

I pray and try to make sense of where we are now and how to get where we want to be. Where do we want to be?

The answer has always been, and will always be, we want to be members of a community, communities. So much of what is wrong today is rooted in the many things that isolate us from being in community.

Recognizing the decline of our communities is not much of an insight, but we sometimes lose sight of the broader picture when confronted by one crisis after another, or multiple crises simultaneously.

My questions these days are which communities are important to me, and what is the health of them now? As James Allen wrote above, “a loss of sensemaking erodes shared cultural and value structures and renders us incapable of generating the collective wisdom necessary to solve complex societal problems”.

This is why I’m so invested in my Mutual Aid community. And am trying to find ways to bring more people into mutual aid communities.
https://quakersandreligioussocialism.com/mutual-aid/

Something important happens when we gather in pursuit of a common goal. First we form rituals that help us relate to and negotiate each other, everything from a civic tradition that allows anyone with a voice to be respectfully heard, to sharing food and music in the local town hall every Friday night, to a labour system that fairly distributes the burden of work. Then, those rituals that stand the test of time become embedded in daily life. The ritual activities themselves and the good they produce help a community identity take root. As identity strengthens, so too does our sense of connectedness — our sense of affection, responsibility and obligation — to one another. When this happens, we then share a greater capacity for coherence and cooperation. And where we share greater capacity for coherence and cooperation there is also greater resilience: the ability to mobilise skills and resources to support the emergence of collective intelligence in response to crisis, enable rapid adaptation and ensure the continuity of the most important functions and structures of the community. This coherent togetherness and the collective intelligence that emerges out of it is the source of human strength and ingenuity. Within it lies our ability to transition from one evolutionary niche to another, even against the odds.
Pontoon Archipelago or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Collapse. By James Allen, originally published by Medium, June 18, 2019

The other community important to me is my faith community. I’ll wait for another time to talk about that.

Let this darkness be a bell tower

Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,
what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.
In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.
And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.

Sonnets to Orpheus II, 29. By Rainer Maria Rilke

It’s time to elevate Indigenous voices

As I was praying about what to write this morning, I was thinking about the title from an email from Grist magazine: It’s time to elevate Indigenous voices

It’s time to elevate Indigenous voices
It’s clear that Indigenous leaders and communities play a critical role in climate action and have already faced significant climate threats. Elevating Indigenous voices is key to staving off the climate crisis, and the news industry must do better.
Our reporting brings light to the challenges Indigenous communities face and grounds these stories through the lens of solution and justice by elevating the Indigenous leaders and ideas that are critical to protecting the planet’s biodiversity and the health of our ecosystems
Donate now
Grist

Although there is colonialism in the idea that it is White people’s privilege to frame these narratives, it is important to make White people aware of the importance of elevating Indigenous voices.

White people cannot begin to have authentic relationships with Indigenous peoples until we have learned and acknowledged the truth about the history of White settler colonists stealing the land and committing genocide against native peoples. And the continued oppression today. To understand the trauma that has been passed from generation to generation. The grief of those living today.

I was blessed to participate in the Climate Justice Summit of the new coalition, the Buffalo Rebellion. A coalition that has leadership from Indigenous people and that is elevating Indigenous voices.

Buffalo Rebellion is a coalition of Iowa grassroots organizations that are growing a movement for climate action that centers racial and economic justice!

Formed in 2021, 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

https://www.facebook.com/IowaBuffaloRebellion

Forced assimilation of native children

One of the most grievous wrongs was the forced assimilation of native children. [https://quakersandreligioussocialism.com/forced-assimilation/]

This is a fraught issue in Quaker communities today. More than 30 Indian boarding schools were run by Quakers.
The first step toward healing for all those involved, White and Indigenous peoples, is truth telling.
Raw emotions are re-awakened as the process of locating the remains of native children on the grounds of Indian boarding schools occurs at more schools.
The first volume of the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report has just been released.

Urge your members of Congress to support the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act (S. 2908/H.R. 5444).

It’s past time for the United States and the faith community to acknowledge the historical trauma of the Indian boarding school era.

I know that. You know that. And this week, we received two strong signs that lawmakers are starting to understand it too.

Act Now

On Wednesday, the Department of the Interior released an investigative report documenting the brutal conditions endured by Native children who were forced to attend federal boarding schools. The next day, a House subcommittee held the first-ever hearing on this critical issue.

The impacts of this tragic era persist today. These schools—more than 30 of them run by Quakers—are inextricably linked to the loss of tribal languages, cultural resources, and dispossession of land. Many of the problems facing tribal nations today, including poverty, violence, suicide, and alcohol and drug abuse, are rooted in the traumatic separation of children from their families and the abuses at these federally sponsored institutions.

Your advocacy is making a difference. We have to keep the pressure on. Urge your members of Congress to support the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act (S. 2908/H.R. 5444).

P.S. Read the Department of Interior report here.

It is long overdue for the United States to acknowledge the historic trauma of the Indian boarding school era. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Christian churches collaborated with the government to create hundreds of boarding schools for Native American children. The conditions at these schools, some of them Quaker-run, were unspeakable.

Now we must work with tribal nations to advance congressional efforts to establish a federal commission to formally investigate boarding school policy and develop recommendations for the government to take further action. Although the wrongs committed at these institutions can never be made right, we can start the truth, healing, and reconciliation process for the families and communities affected as we work to right relationship with tribal nations.

Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL)
Support the Establishment of a Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding Schools

What would it mean to reckon with our past complicity with harm?

As the world falls apart, I wonder where faith communities are? Where are White Christians, White Quakers?

As my friend Lucy Duncan writes, “we as White Quakers like to think of ourselves as ahead or better than dominant culture, but we have been complicit in a system and mindset that are ubiquitous.”

Recognizing the White dominant culture is fundamental for White people to understand. How we learn what we must change. White people must first change ourselves before we will be accepted in communities suffering injustice.

As Lucy writes below, “What would it mean to reckon with our past complicity with harm?” Lucy speaks about slavery and racism.

I tell the stories of early White Quaker relationships to slavery because slavery was never really abolished. If we can reckon with the full truth of our connection to slavery and its afterlives, perhaps we can begin the healing necessary to fulfill the promise of the Religious Society of Friends of Truth.
We as White Quakers like to think of ourselves as ahead or better than dominant culture, but we have been complicit in a system and mindset that are ubiquitous. Claiming the full truth of our history and committing to repair the harms done are deeply spiritual acts of healing our own wounds of disconnection. I would argue it is the pathway upon which we can, perhaps for the first time, discover and invigorate our faith with its full promise.
What would it mean for us to take seriously and collectively as a Religious Society a call to finish the work of abolition, hand in hand and side by side with those affected and their loved ones? What would it mean for us to stand fully with the calls to abolish the police and fully fund community needs instead? What would it mean to reckon with our past complicity with harm and fully dedicate ourselves to the creation of a liberating Quaker faith that commits to build the revolutionary and healing faith we long to see come to fruition? What would it look like to finally and fully abolish slavery?
A Quaker Call to Abolition and Creation by Lucy Duncan, Friends Journal, April 1, 2021

I ask these same questions regarding our past and present complicity with harms to Indigenous peoples. I speak from my own experiences with Indigenous friends. (One place I share some of these experiences are at the website I created about the First Nation-Farmer Climate Unity March https://firstnationfarmer.com/ )

Two interrelated developments are finally bringing attention to Indigenous peoples, forced assimilation, and those who ran those residential schools.

One is the search and finding of the remains of Indigenous children on the grounds of Indian Boarding Schools in Canada and the US.
The second is the release of the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report about what happened in those schools

What would it mean to reckon with our past complicity with harm to Indigenous peoples?

White people need to imagine what it would take to dismantle the White dominant culture. We cannot begin to reckon with our complicity in harm until we have the humility and prayers to recognize the history of those harms, and how we continue to do harm now. We cannot make authentic connections with Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC) until we unlearn our attitudes and actions of dominance.

How do we do that? We look for any kind of vertical hierarchy, and reject it. Vertical hierarchies are how dominance is enforced. Are the structures used throughout our society and government.

We should instead act in ways of horizontal, or no hierarchy. Dismantling vertical hierarchies is the path to reducing or eliminating dominance.

Eliminating vertical hierarchies is the core concept of Mutual Aid. My participation in a Mutual Aid community these past two years has been a real education. A deeply spiritual experience. Mutual Aid is how I’ve been learning to reject vertical hierarchies. Some of my experiences with Mutual Aid can be found here: https://quakersandreligioussocialism.com/mutual-aid/

Recognizing White dominant culture makes it possible for us to look at the past and recognize our complicity with what happened then. And helps us envision how to stop the ongoing harms of White dominance now.

By asking the question where are faith communities (above) I’m implying where should faith communities be? I believe white faith communities should be working on their structures, actions, and attitudes of dominance. Learning about and embracing Mutual Aid is a way to do that.

Queries related to Mutual Aid
Do we recognize that vertical hierarchies are about power, supremacy and privilege? What are Quaker hierarchies?
Do we work to prevent vertical hierarchies in our peace and justice work?
What are we doing to meet the survival needs of our wider community?
How are we preparing for disaster relief, both for our community, and for the influx of climate refugees?
Are we examples of a Beloved community? How can we invite our friends and neighbors to join our community? A Hierarchy Resister

I’ve been working on this diagram to show the structures of injustice, and concepts to address them. This is a work in progress. Relevant to today’s discussion is White supremacy and the way forward via Mutual Aid.

DRAFT: NPYM Minute of Support for Indigenous People

Two interrelated developments are finally bringing much needed attention to Indigenous peoples and forced assimilation as I wrote in Indian Boarding Schools: 1.

One is the search and finding of the remains of Indigenous children on the grounds of Indian Boarding Schools in Canada and the US.
The second is the release of the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report about what happened in those schools

It is my sense that most Quakers don’t know a lot about these institutions of forced assimilation and the role white Quakers played in them. But because of this history, Quakers are in a unique position to educate ourselves and others and create/participate in actions today to help begin healing us all. A number of Quaker meetings and organizations have been working for truth telling and searching for ways for healing.

My friend Mackenzie Barton-Rowledge has shared a draft of a remarkable document from North Pacific Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, a Minute of Support for Indigenous People. I first met Mackenzie as we work on the Quakers for Abolition Network.

This draft Minute includes links to useful sources of information about Quakers and forced assimilation. And most helpful, a number of suggestions for Quakers and their meetings to begin the process of truth telling and work toward healing.

“We commit to courageously and compassionately listen and face the learning required to comprehend settler colonialism and grow relationships with Indigenous people.”

When I talked to one of my Lakota friends about this minute, they nearly cried. They spoke about how meaningful it would be for Quakers, whose “good” relationships with Native peoples were instrumental in the creation of the boarding schools, to be the first majority-white faith community in the US to collectively attempt to heal those wounds.
Mackenzie Barton-Rowledge

On Fri, Jan 21, 2022, Mackenzi wrote:

Friends,

I’m so excited about this minute that NPYM is considering!

We’re finally going to directly engage the topic of #LandBack: that is, returning stolen land to Indigenous people. We’re also going to get into the Quaker history of modeling & running boarding schools for Indigenous children — which means grappling with what acknowledgement of and accountability for participating in genocide might look like.

When I talked to one of my Lakota friends about this minute, they nearly cried. They spoke about how meaningful it would be for Quakers, whose “good” relationships with Native peoples were instrumental in the creation of the boarding schools, to be the first majority-white faith community in the US to collectively attempt to heal those wounds.

My friend also told me about a few of the brutal horrors their parents had each survived at a boarding school, and we grieved/raged about how much has been erased from collective knowledge. Indigenous families should not be the only ones carrying these stories. It is past time for white colonizers, and those of us connected to the religions that directly perpetrated this form of genocide (which includes Quakers!), to help carry this burden, and to take up our responsibilities in the healing process.

Feel free to steal from this minute, or to share it anywhere you’re inspired!

In struggle and solidarity,
from Mackenzie Barton-Rowledge,
zie/hir or she/her
University Friends Meeting on Duwamish land (aka Seattle)
(1/21/2022)

The North Pacific Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends repudiates the Doctrines of Discovery, the basis for European colonization around the world. We acknowledge and regret Friends’ role in the ensuing genocide, land theft, and forced assimilation of the peoples indigenous to Turtle Island (‘North America’), including Friends’ role in operating and legitimizing compulsory residential schools for Indigenous children. We affirm the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

We commit to courageously and compassionately listen and face the learning required to comprehend settler colonialism and grow relationships with Indigenous people. We intend that these relationships will guide us to develop thoughtful, grounded actions to oppose the ongoing systemic dehumanization and material dispossession of the original peoples of the land on which we live and worship.

DRAFT North Pacific Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, a Minute of Support for Indigenous People.

White Christian Problem

Yesterday I wrote Building the Future We Want describing concepts to transition from current systems that are rapidly collapsing. What umair haque describes below as a Theocratic-Fascist Revolution.

At the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives (MMIR) Day dedicated to Reproductive Justice there were signs that had variations of “**** all white supremacist fundamentalist Christians for this attack on abortion.”

And the title of this post from the Great Plains Action Society is “End the White Christian Problem and Keep Abortion Legal.”

End the White Christian Problem and Keep Abortion Legal

Great Plains Action Society

Our MMIR Day dedicated to Reproductive Justice and solidarity with BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and the Disabled communities went well. The draft to end Roe and Casey was leaked just two days before the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Relatives (aka, Missing and Murdered Women and Girls). We honored this day by uplifting radical solidarity within all communities affected by colonial violence when body sovereignty is stolen from us.

We would like to thank the speakers, drummers, ASL interpreters, singer, drone operators, light board artists, projection artists, photographers, organizers, and the crowd!

The livestream is at: https://fb.watch/cWeodvqt27/
Pics by Emma Colman and Jeff Kisling

This was a coalition event organized by:
– Iowa Coalition for Collective Change
– Great Plains Action Society
– The Disability Caucus of the Iowa Democratic Party
– Iowa CCI
– Des Moines BLM
– Sierra Club Beyond Coal
– Deaf Dome
– The Progressive Caucus of the Iowa Democratic Party
– Iowa Abortion Access Fund
– One Iowa

#reproductivejustice #abortion #abortionrights #mmiw #mmiwg #mmir #solidarity

What’s happening in America is a revolution. But it’s not a good one.
Remember the Irani Revolution? The mullahs suddenly seized power from the Shah, backed by a militant faction of religious lunatics. And the next day, Iranis began to live under theocracy. What’s happening in America is a lot like that. A revolution, but not a forward moving one. Sometimes the wheel moves backwards — and crushes everyone under its path. This is such a time. America is having a totalitarian revolution, which combines all the flavours of social collapse, where theocrats, fascists, supremacist, and authoritarians have all made common cause, to slit democracy’s throat.
Revolutions are strange things. Americans are taught to lionise them, because of course their country was born in one. But every revolution has two sides. America’s revolution was the worst thing that ever happened to Native Americans or a whole lot of Africans.
And revolutions are, above all, shocking, surprising things — to the ones being revolted against. The French nobility could scarcely believe they were under the guillotine even as the blade fell.
This is where America is. It is in the midst of a revolution — and it doesn’t yet understand that. History will, because when so many lunatics take this much power this fast, and things change, suddenly, overnight, the only word to describe it is “revolution.” Americans are in shock precisely because, like so many before them, they are now facing the guillotines of revolution, and don’t understand how or why this happened. And yet the blade is falling — on a modern, democratic America.
What’s Happening to America? A Theocratic-Fascist Revolution. When a Fanatical 30% Suddenly Seizes Control of Your Society, It’s Called a Revolution by umair haque, Eudaimonia and Co, May 10, 2022

Building the Future We Want

I wrote about the Rally for Reproductive Justice at the Iowa Women of Achievement bridge in downtown Des Moines last Friday. The event was a case study of how I hope and pray we find our way toward the goal of Beloved community. This is urgent now as the systems we have depended on continue to collapse around us.

White Christian problem

I’m always uncomfortable talking about myself but being asked to take photos at this event represents one principle of how we can work together. White males represent/perpetuate the systems of dominance that we must get rid of. Being a white male, I work to avoid those attributes in what I do.

White people need to wait to be invited into this work. So, I was honored that one of my friends, Sikowis Nobiss, of the Great Plains Action Society asked me to take photos at the rally. It takes a long time for this trust to develop. I’ve been working with the Great Plains Action Society for five years.

There were several signs at the gathering like the one below that say “end the white Christian problem and keep abortions legal”. White supremacy is at the root of systems of dominance and oppression. White Christians should work to liberate themselves from their systems of dominance and oppression. In the process, helping liberate those oppressed by those systems.

I’m going to try to explain how the principles of the Red/Green New Deal in the diagram above were represented at the Reproductive Justice event. The Green New Deal (GND) represents the idea of modeling bold initiatives to address environmental disaster on the New Deal of the 1930’s.

LANDBACK

The Red New Deal stands for Indigenous led Green New Deal. This is represented in the diagram above as LANDBACK.

The Reproductive Justice rally was supported by the many justice organizations in Iowa listed in this graphic. My friend Sikowis Nobiss of the Great Plains Action Society was one of the main organizers (and who asked me to take photos). Other Indigenous friends included Mahmud Fitil who took video via a drone, Donnielle Wanatee, who gave prayers, and Ronnie James of Des Moines Mutual Aid who setup the Wells Fargo Kills Communities banner. Our gathering was just across the street from the Wells Fargo Arena.

NOTE: I have another blog which is about LANDBACK titled LANDBACK Friends.

It is the reclamation of everything stolen from the original Peoples.

Land
Language
Ceremony
Medicines
Kinship

It is a relationship with Mother Earth that is symbiotic and just, where we have reclaimed stewardship.
It is bringing our People with us as we move towards liberation and embodied sovereignty through an organizing, political and narrative framework.
It is a catalyst for current generation organizers and centers the voices of those who represent our future.
It is recognizing that our struggle is interconnected with the struggles of all oppressed Peoples.
It is a future where Black reparations and Indigenous LANDBACK co-exist. Where BIPOC collective liberation is at the core.
It is acknowledging that only when Mother Earth is well, can we, her children, be well.
It is our belonging to the land – because – we are the land.
We are LANDBACK!

LANDBACK Manifesto

Black Liberation

BIPOC stands for Black, Indigenous, and other people of color. White supremacy is the attempt of White people to dominate those who are not white, i.e. BIOPC people. Much of what I’ve been writing about regarding Indigenous peoples applies to black and other people of color. The obvious differences relate to the history of enslavement and continued injustices related to skin color.

From the LANDBACK Manifesto (above): “It is a future where Black reparations and Indigenous LANDBACK co-exist. Where BIPOC collective liberation is at the core.” This is represented by Black Liberation in the diagram above.

One of the main organizations involved in the Rally for Reproductive Justice was Des Moines Black Liberation. The concept of black liberation represents moving beyond the concept of Black Lives Matter.

Abolition

Today abolition commonly refers to abolition of police and prisons. The public lynching of so many unarmed Black and other people of color appear relentlessly because of news and bystander videos. There are incredible inequities of prison populations and long sentences of BIPOC people compared to white people. Prisons are abused to keep BIPOC people off the streets.

There are numerous examples of the success of dispatching mental health personnel instead of police where appropriate.

Mutual Aid

Mutual Aid has been my focus for justice work for the past several years. While Des Moines Mutual Aid is not listed in the organizations supporting the Rally for Reproductive Justice, several of us were at the Rally. One thing they did while I was taking photos was set up this banner calling attention to missing and murdered Indigenous relatives (MMIR).

The Rally for Reproductive Justice was in solidarity with the annual day of awareness about MMIR that is observed at this time. The Wells Fargo banner calls attention to the bank’s financing fossil fuel projects. Pipelines are often intentionally built near native communities. Violence against native peoples occurs from the men in the camps at the construction sites. The Wells Fargo Arena is just across the street from where the rally was held.

The color red is associated with MMIR. Many in the crowd at the rally wore red, and the Women of Achievement bridge was lit in red for the same reason.

Bridge lit in red in support of missing and murdered Indigenous relatives

As shown in the graphic above, Mutual Aid is about getting rid of vertical hierarchies, which is fundamental for building Beloved communities. There won’t be power structures of superiority, dominance, and oppression if we commit to the framework of Mutual Aid.

Conservation

For healing for Mother Earth to occur, it is essential to dramatically reduce extraction and consumption of resources. We must act in a manner that will be best for the next seven generations.

Spirituality (Religious socialism)

My friend Donnielle Wanatee offered prayers during the Rally.

That briefly covers what is included in the graphic above (Red/Green New Deal).

I wanted to mention there were people at the rally to sign for those with hearing impairments.

One of the other organizations supporting the Rally was Iowa CCI (Citizens for Community Improvement) that I’ve just begun to become involved with. One of my friends is Jake Grobe, who is the Climate Justice Organizer for Iowa CCI. Jake and I often see each other at the Des Moines Mutual Aid food giveaway each Saturday morning.

Jake and Sikowis are two of the people who did a great deal of work creating a new coalition, the Buffalo Rebellion. This coalition will do much to help us build the future we want. The Buffalo Rebellion recently held an intense Climate Summit that I was blessed to attend, to build a network of climate and justice advocates.

As my Mutual Aid friends and I left the Rally we said, “I’ll see you in the morning” where we’ll be at our food giveaway.

Rally for Reproductive Justice

Last night we gathered at the Iowa Women of Achievement Bridge in downtown Des Moines. This was a solidarity rally for Reproductive Justice and awareness for missing and murdered Indigenous relatives (MMIR). The bridge was lit with red, the color associated with MMIR.

I learned two friends were connected to two of the women honored by the bridge.

I was glad to see so many of my friends, from Great Plains Action Society, Des Moines Mutual Aid, Des Moines Black Liberation, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, Sierra Club Beyond Coal.

This sign was erected, with the Wells Fargo Arena in the background. Wells Fargo is one of the banks that fund pipelines. Many Indigenous women are taken and/or killed by pipeline construction workers because, as another example of environmental racism, the pipelines are often built near Indigenous communities. I was going to say near Indigenous lands, but it is all Indigenous land.

Whiteness and Quakers

[References to Quakers here pertain to White Quakers. There is little diversity among Quakers in this country.]

There are several reasons I’m led to revisit this today.

Our Quaker meetings have dwindling numbers of attenders. Most of those remaining are elderly and white. Many meetings do not have new people joining.
I continue to hear stories from people of color, or those identifying as non-binary in gender or sexual orientation not being welcome in some Quaker meetings.
Those of us working outside our Quaker communities are often blessed to find beloved communities.
I wish others in our Quaker meetings would join these communities.
Despite the many wonderful aspects of these ‘external’ communities, I sometimes sense a lack of spiritual support for one another there.
There are many who don’t express their spirituality publicly, or in ways “organized” religions do.
Quaker presence will not be fully welcome in these communities until we come to terms with our own racism.

We know that those of us who are white must confront racism in ourselves and in the institutions we care about—our faith communities, our schools, our neighborhoods, our families, our Congress.
Racism and Whiteness, Diane Randall

People ask me if I believe in god… I tell them I pray to creator.
They tell me Jesus died for me… I tell them my ancestors did.
They say I will burn in hell for not following the Bible, but it has been used as weapon to colonize and murder my people…
for me it’s spirituality over religion. I don’t hate people for going to church, but I do hate what the churches have done to us…
before colonization we had our own ways and ceremonies, I choose the path of my ancestors.
Indigenous

For a long time, I’ve been in significant spiritual distress. I’ve been learning a great deal from my Native friends and working in Mutual Aid communities. And they tell me the way white people can best support them is by embracing and teaching others about LANDBACK.

I caused conflicts in my Quaker meeting because I wanted them to join me in the work of Mutual Aid and LANDBACK. Despite my efforts to explain this, they haven’t had the experiences that would make them understand all of this, yet.

At the same time I felt I was letting my Native friends down, because I wasn’t making some of the changes I wanted to make in my life that could be an example of how white people can join the work with Mutual Aid and LANDBACK.

As environmental chaos deepens, with the resulting collapse of the colonial capitalist economic system and the political systems propping up white supremacy fail, we will have no choice but to find alternatives. Ideally those would be Mutual Aid and LANDBACK. This is a powerful incentive to embrace these concepts now.

Mutual Aid and LANDBACK

In the same way I can’t understand the involvement of many Quakers in the slave trade, and having enslaved people, I can’t understand Quaker’s involvement in forced assimilation of native children.

What does this mean for Quakers today? No matter what we say about justice for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and other people of color) folks, those words are empty as long as we continue to take advantage of colonial capitalism and white supremacy.

The news of 215 Kamloops Native children buried on the grounds of a residential school shocked non-native people, who did not know how many of these residential schools existed in the lands called the United States and Canada. Did not know tens of thousands of Native children were forcibly removed from their families and taken to these institutions where thousands were abused in many ways. Thousands killed or died. Though the stated reason for doing this was to assimilate Native children into white society for their benefit, the real intent was to quell Indigenous resistance to the theft of their land by white settler colonists.

My friend Paula Palmer wrote an excellent article for Friends Journal, Oct 1, 2016. “Quaker Boarding Schools: Facing Our History and Ourselves”.

The growing numbers of remains found at other schools has re-opened deep wounds in Native communities. Many have been triggered by these atrocities. One of my Native friends wrote that she was NOT OK. Another told me, “I’m trying not to be enraged in my mourning.”

A Native friend also told me, “The church is the church’s past, which is its future. It continues to see my people as obstacles in its endless conquest. To be blunt, there is too much damage that the church profits from and needs to protect to have any future there.” Vigorous attempts are made to hide it, but history does not lie. He also told me, regarding what I had been telling him about my efforts with Quakers, “I wish you the best. I imagine it’s a hard struggle.”

I cannot face my BIPOC friends if I don’t continue to seek the Spirit, and act on the leadings I am given. Writing is one thing I am led to do.

“Don’t make orphans stand here covered in the blood of our parents and explain to you how this all came to be without doing something about it. “
The Tragedy of 215. Without truth, there can be no healing, by Sarah Rose Harper, Lakota People’s Law Project, 6/2/2021

I am so grateful to my BIPOC friends for teaching me that Mutual Aid and LANDBACK are alternatives to colonial capitalism and white superiority. LANDBACK is how to restore Native lands and leadership.

As environmental chaos deepens, with the resulting collapse of the colonial capitalist economic system and the political systems propping up white supremacy, we will have no choice but to find alternatives. Ideally those would be Mutual Aid and LANDBACK. This is a powerful incentive to embrace these concepts now.

I wrote the following epistle that is modeled from ‘An Epistle to Friends Concerning Military Conscription’

An Epistle to Friends Regarding Community, Mutual Aid and LANDBACK

Dear Friends,

The measure of a community is how the needs of its people are met. No one should go hungry, or without shelter or healthcare. Yet in this country known as the United States millions struggle to survive. The capitalist economic system creates hunger, houselessness, illness that is preventable and despair. A system that requires money for goods and services denies basic needs to anyone who does not have money. Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC) are disproportionately affected. Systemic racism. The capitalist system that supports the white materialistic lifestyle is built on stolen land and genocide of Indigenous peoples, and the labor of those who were enslaved in the past or are forced to live on poverty wages today.

Capitalism is revealed as an unjust, untenable system, when there is plenty of food in the grocery stores, but men, women and children are going hungry, living on the streets outside. White supremacy violently enforces the will of wealthy white people on the rest of us.

It has become clear to some of us who are called Friends that the colonial capitalist economic system and white supremacy are contrary to the Spirit and we must find a better way. We conscientiously object to and resist capitalism and white supremacy.

capitalism has violated the communities of marginalized folks. capitalism is about the value of people, property and the people who own property. those who have wealth and property control the decisions that are made. the government comes second to capitalism when it comes to power.

in the name of liberation, capitalism must be reversed and dismantled. meaning that capitalistic practices must be reprogrammed with mutual aid practices.
Des Moines Black Liberation Movement

Mutual Aid

How do we resist? We rebuild our communities in ways not based upon money. Such communities thrive all over the world. Indigenous peoples have always lived this way. White people once did so in this country. Mutual Aid is a framework that can help us do this today.

The concept of Mutual Aid is simple to explain but can result in transformative change. Mutual Aid involves everyone coming together to find a solution for problems we all face. This is a radical departure from “us” helping “them”. Instead, we all work together to find and implement solutions. To work together means we must be physically present with each other. Mutual Aid cannot be done by committee or donations. We build Beloved communities as we get to know each other. Build solidarity. An important part of Mutual Aid is creating these networks of people who know and trust each other. When new challenges arise, these networks are in place, ready to meet them.

Another important part of Mutual Aid is the transformation of those involved. This means both those who are providing help, and those receiving it.

With Mutual Aid, people learn to live in a community where there is no vertical hierarchy. A community where everyone has a voice. A model that results in enthusiastic participation. A model that makes the vertical hierarchy required for white supremacy impossible.

Commonly there are several Mutual Aid projects in a community. The initial projects usually relate to survival needs. One might be a food giveaway. Another helping those who need shelter. Many Mutual Aid groups often have a bail fund, to support those arrested for agitating for change. And accompany those arrested when they go to court.

LANDBACK

The other component necessary to move away from colonial capitalism and white supremacy is LANDBACK.

But the idea of “landback” — returning land to the stewardship of Indigenous peoples — has existed in different forms since colonial governments seized it in the first place. “Any time an Indigenous person or nation has pushed back against the oppressive state, they are exercising some form of landback,” says Nickita Longman, a community organizer from George Gordon First Nation in Saskatchewan, Canada.

The movement goes beyond the transfer of deeds to include respecting Indigenous rights, preserving languages and traditions, and ensuring food sovereignty, housing, and clean air and water. Above all, it is a rallying cry for dismantling white supremacy and the harms of capitalism.

Returning the Land. Four Indigenous leaders share insights about the growing landback movement and what it means for the planet, by Claire Elise Thompson, Grist, February 25, 2020

What will Friends do?

It matters little what people say they believe when their actions are inconsistent with their words. Thus, we Friends may say there should not be hunger and poverty, but as long as Friends continue to collaborate in a system that leaves many without basic necessities and violently enforces white supremacy, our example will fail to speak to mankind.

Let our lives speak for our convictions. Let our lives show that we oppose the capitalist system and white supremacy, and the damages that result. We can engage in efforts, such as Mutual Aid and LANDBACK, to build Beloved community. To reach out to our neighbors to join us.

We must begin by changing our own lives if we hope to make a real testimony for peace and justice.

We remain, in love of the Spirit, your Friends and sisters and brothers,

Note: Modeled from ‘An Epistle to Friends Concerning Military Conscription’