| |  | | | | November 15, 2016 | Letter No. 60 | | | | | | | | | | | | Dear Lennys,
When I called into our Wednesday edit meeting, I was terrified of what the vibe might be. We had all worked so hard on this election, fighting for Hillary. Fighting for our families. Fighting for the country we thought we lived in. I feared that the mood would be grim, and that the team would echo the bleakness I felt.
But instead of a wallow-fest, the edit call became a call to action. What can we do today? What can we do tomorrow? How do we heal? How do we fight? We most certainly did not have the answers. We had puffy eyes and deep hangovers. What we did have was determination. But more than that, we felt lucky to have you. All of you brilliant, thoughtful Lennys, who bring us so much and allow us this platform. And for that we are grateful.
But there's something else I felt about all of you. I felt that you are like me. And while that is comforting and beautiful, we all woke up Wednesday to find we are not enough for right now.
I felt angry. I felt tired.
I felt I wanted to stop preaching to the choir! Or at least not only to the choir.
Lennys: We need a bigger reach.
Today, we are asking for your help.
Today, we want you to share this Lenny with someone who isn't like you. Someone who didn't vote for Hillary or who didn't vote at all. Someone who doesn't support reproductive rights or who may not understand the need for Black Lives Matter or how our LGBTQ family needs us. Someone who can't understand that Islamic Americans are scared, or how the children of immigrants are living in fear that their parents are going to be deported. We want you to forward this to everyone you know who will have to endure and fight whatever the country has in store for the next four years.
As much as this is a supportive, safe community, we need numbers. We are, as always, stronger together.
Please help us grow. Please help us fight.
Love,
Jenni Konner, Lenny co-founder | | | | | | | | | | | | Using Our Authentic Voices | | | | By Symone D. Sanders | | |
"What was your experience as a black woman in politics?" asked a student at Yale University during an event sponsored by the Yale Democrats and the Yale Black Women's Coalition. I shared my thoughts on the presidential election, my time with the Bernie Sanders campaign, the collective power of young people, and what it was like to be a young black woman in one of the craziest election cycles in recent memory.
I told story after story of being the youngest, and oftentimes the only, woman with melanin in the room. I recounted to the students how I often was denied access to "staff only" entrances because individuals working the venue did not believe I was staff. I detailed an instance where a state trooper attempted to remove me from Senator Sanders's entourage for no other reason other than he thought I, a young, black, short-haired woman, did not belong there. I explained to the students that I experienced going to meetings or events where people would address my junior male colleagues assuming they were the senior and I would have to assert that I was in fact the decision-maker and lead point of contact. I had no idea my words, stories, and analysis would be so relevant due to the election of a candidate endorsed by the KKK.
One of the best parts of the evening was the Q&A after where I got to meet the students, take pictures, and hear some of their takeaways and experiences. During this time, multiple young women of color thanked me for demonstrating that it was OK to be our "authentic selves." I held back tears as young African American, Latino, Native American, and Asian American women attending one of the most prestigious universities in the country told me how rare it was for someone, especially a black, twentysomething woman, to come to their campus and deliver a message that underscored one does not have to "put on" or use their "work voice" in order to fit in, be respected, or be successful. They told me it was refreshing to see me standing where I was, speaking my own truth.
Until that cool October evening at Yale University, I had not realized that I no longer had a "work voice." We all know what the "work voice" is — the voice or tone many people of color or women may use in professional settings, but it differs from the actual way she or he normally sounds. The "work voice" is our way of being professional and not standing out in an unpleasant way. We're taught the "work voice" as early as our first intern training program, or honestly maybe earlier, from the television shows we watch. A change of tone or voice may seem like no big deal on the surface. But it can lead to women of color also stifling their thoughts, ideas, passions, and purpose to fit into someone else's box.
There was a time when one could have found my work voice on my voice mail, at the office, on a conference call, or whenever I answered a random number on my cell phone. Then, in 2014, I joined the progressive trade movement. I sat in meetings with people every day who did not look like me, and it appeared they never hesitated to be themselves. They never hesitated to give their opinion. There, I realized if I wanted to be effective in my work environment, my "work voice" would not be enough. I needed to get bold and assert myself as someone who was valuable to the team and had a perspective that mattered. Shedding my "work voice" was a process. It did not happen overnight.
The day I glided onto the national stage, I left my work voice at home. It was with a loud, boisterous, commanding voice that I took the stage in August 2015 in front of 15,000 people in Seattle, Washington. There, I told the story of Michael Brown and the young people who took to the streets of St. Louis and all over America in the aftermath of his death, galvanizing a movement. It was with this voice I exclaimed, "Yes, Black Lives Matter," and it was with my voice, my authentic voice, that I proudly told the crowd I was joining the campaign as Bernie Sanders's national press secretary.
Every day since then, I have used my authentic voice. Whether it was on a conference call to note that what someone was suggesting was culturally insensitive, so "we aren't going to say that," or whether it was in an email asserting, "Respectfully, that is incorrect." Every single day, I rely upon my authentic voice to show up. It was my authentic voice that helped calm the waters during a rocky convention when I exclaimed, "No one stole the election from us." It is my authentic voice that regularly pushes the boundaries in mainstream newspapers about the need for young people to be heard and our role in this election. It is my authentic voice — despite people telling me, "You are only here because you are black," or that no one would "ever pay you to talk again," — that earned me a contract with CNN as a political commentator. The authenticity of my voice has allowed me to harness my political power and even more so, my power as a young woman of purpose.
While speaking with these dynamic young women following my speech, I remembered a time not too long ago when I was uncomfortable with who I was. I expressed to the young women that we do ourselves a disservice when we have a "work voice," and that every single time we decide to show up as someone else or put on a façade, we are in fact losing. And not only do we lose, but the millions of lives we're all called to change and influence lose simultaneously. At that moment, in the hallowed halls of Yale University, two young ladies looked at each other and agreed: "Today, we are going to commit to being ourselves, and we have to hold each other accountable. It starts today."
Make that three.
I, too, refuse to have a work voice and am committed to holding myself and other women accountable in love and purpose. It's my hope that young women near and far will lean in to who they are and embrace their own authenticity. It is my hope that we won't shrink, but rise to the occasion. The truth is that not only do we not need to fit in others' boxes, but a life of authenticity gives us two choices: (1) create our own boxes, or (2) be boxless.
On November 8, 56 million Americans voted for Donald Trump. Going forward, I am committed to using my voice to create change. It is honestly exhausting to wake up every single day and fight, but that is in fact what I intend to do. I know I stand on the shoulders of brilliant, beautiful women like Shirley Chisholm, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ida B. Wells, Barbara Jordan, Carol Braun Mosely, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Donna Brazile, and so many others who never hesitated to use their authentic voices. They are whom I draw my strength from. That is how I intend to move forward. Ladies, now is the time to be exactly who we are.
Symone D. Sanders is a champion of women and the former national press secretary for Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign. | | | | | | | | | | | | Transforming Pain Into Power | | | | By Ai-jen Poo | | |
I landed in Phoenix, Arizona, just four days before the election. The last time I had been in Arizona was six years ago, after the passage of SB 1070, the anti-immigrant state legislation that legalized racial profiling. I had organized a group of women from all over the country to hear and document the stories of the women impacted by the new legislation. We quickly learned that there was a leading villain in the story, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who apparently spent his days and nights imagining new ways to make life unbearable for immigrants. His deputies drove military tanks through residential neighborhoods, raided the homes of immigrant families in the middle of the night, and arrested parents in front of their children. His terror tactics laid the groundwork for the hate legislation that would haunt a generation.
One of the community organizers there, Marisa Franco, is a dear friend of mine. We worked together in New York, organizing domestic workers to pass the first Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights in the nation. She came home to Arizona to organize in her community in the wake of SB 1070. She's a mastermind behind the campaign to stop immigrant deportations and a co-founder of a national Latinx activist organization, Mijente. I found her in Phoenix during this historic election year, leading a campaign to unseat Sheriff Joe Arpaio after his more than twenty years in office. The community that was targeted by Arpaio has spent the past six years organizing. They transformed the pain of his reign into power.
Arizona was a symbol of division and fear. It is now a home for vibrant, inclusive activism and civic participation. One rare bright spot of this otherwise dark election is that Arpaio lost his job, thanks to this activism. What better way to understand that transformation than through the eyes of a feminist organizer?
Ai-jen Poo: Tell us about where you're from and what led you to be doing the kick-ass organizing that you're doing.
Marisa Franco: I'm from the town of Guadalupe, Arizona. The town is a mix of Yaqui, Mexican, and Chicano. My town was hood — like roosters-roamed-the-streets hood. We didn't have sidewalks until like five years ago. Sheriff Arpaio tested a lot of his tactics there, set up checkpoints to check drivers for papers. A lot of people live their whole lives there, like born, raised, and died there. It's the best place in the world to be on Halloween — the whole place turns into one big block party, everyone dresses up, people turn their homes into haunted houses for the children, and every house has a ton of candy and food. It always reminds me that it's often the people who have the least to give that are the most generous.
AP: So how did you get from Guadalupe to where you are today? How did you become an organizer?
MF: From a young age I was always naturally inclined to notice imbalance and injustice. It's just who I am. Growing up, the thing I was really conscious of was gender. I saw older women in the community, or even women my age, get caught up and stuck. Just not living the life they wanted to live. So I pushed to finish high school and worked hard to go to college. I was in high school when Prop 187 was happening in California (the anti-immigrant ballot initiative to prevent immigrants from accessing higher education, services, and the safety net). I wrote articles about it in the school newspaper. I just got involved in everything I could, like MECHA (a Chicano student union/club), service work with children, hell, even a Latina sorority. I even did a legislative internship in DC, which was a reckless failure.
I came across organizing by deduction. At a certain point you want to figure out how you change the game. There was very little in Arizona in terms of community organizing or activism at the time, so I left for ten years to learn how to organize. I did all kinds of work to that end — with public-housing residents and people on skid row, with domestic workers in New York, with immigrant day laborers.
AP: The last time I was in Arizona, it was right after SB 1070 had been passed. It was a movement moment, a moment when people came out of the shadows to resist and people came from all over the country to support. But the tension in Arizona had been building for many, many years.
MF: I left home to learn how to organize, and I came home to find my purpose in organizing. This chapter in Arizona is very personal to me. It's an opportunity to write a chapter and close something, on our own terms.
Arizona foreshadows the impact of many of the trends that are shaping the whole country. Free-trade agreements displaced poor people in Mexico and Central America, pushing people to migrate north for work. Then the border was militarized, so people were forced to cross one of the most dangerous deserts in the hemisphere. Thousands have died crossing the border here; it's like an open wound, literally and figuratively. Arizona is also a major destination for white retirees from the Midwest. It has the largest concentration of white older people, and young millennials of color. Think about that: for a white person moving here to retire, younger people of color rising up to take their political and economic power is not what they came here to see or why they paid to own homes and live here. The right wing made a real investment here in grassroots infrastructure and education to capture that base [of white voters]. The left did not make a parallel investment.
So when SB 1070 hit in 2010, all of those dynamics came to a head. Brown people couldn't take the suffering any longer. It was a painful, ugly time, but it ushered us into a different moment. A generation who had grown up with targets on their backs, their faces pointed down in fear, said, "Enough is enough." It's the final chapter of that era, symbolized by the downfall of Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
There have been a lot of strategies to get us to this point, a lot of different leaders and organizations coming together. One set of groups registered 150,000 new voters in Maricopa County, where Sheriff Joe reigns. Another group led the "Undocubus," where four undocumented people "came out" and said to Sheriff Joe and his supporters: "We're not afraid." It was important that we had the flamethrowers who were willing to do direct action and civil disobedience alongside the civic engagement. In this election cycle, some local groups have embraced the hybridity. The unifying thing has been risk. When you're constantly told to sit down and shut up, you have to be willing to break that norm, not comply, and take risks.
AP: There was a recent burning of a black church in Mississippi. Many people are predicting a rise in vigilante violence as a result of the spread of "Trumpism." The immigrant community in Arizona has been living with vigilante violence for some time. What do you think the rest of us can learn from the people of Arizona about how to prepare for the future?
MF: You need purpose, and you need to be prepared. One thing in tense political moments is to assume that nothing will happen. The other extreme is to be paranoid, which keeps you from moving when you need to move. And then there's risk. People have to be ready to embrace risk. The second you stop embracing risk, you have lost touch with the edges of change work, which is where you need to be to really have an impact.
AP: What do people need to know about how you created this moment in Arizona that might not be obvious from the outside?
MF: A big thing for us was the concept and action of coming out. People usually think of coming out of the closet as LGBTQ (and I have done that too). But in the case of the immigrant communities, people came out of the shadows and declared that we were unafraid. Each of us has closets that we're in, or ways that we're in the shadows, whether it's about being poor, or the work we do, or our criminal record. We are all taught to be ashamed of parts of who we are. How do we find each other if we're all in the shadows? This concept of coming out is about stripping away the things that make us hide. When it happens for many of us together, it's powerful.
AP: With this election I've been thinking a lot about polarization in our country. I have been wondering what it will take to create a narrative and culture that truly embraces everyone, where everyone belongs and everyone has a voice. I think it's a critical question, and Arizona, as a bellwether, can probably teach us a lot.
MF: I've also been thinking a lot about polarization. I'm someone who believes that there are times when polarization is necessary. Sometimes it helps clarify, like an astringent for your face. It can help you find the people who are with you and see clearly who is against you. It's not always about meeting in the middle, because the middle narrative at this point is upper middle class and white. And working-class people smell the bullshit. The middle-of-the-road narrative doesn't work. It's a real mess.
AP: Can you imagine a bridging narrative? It seems like we need new narratives that can hold the aspirations of a new, way more diverse America.
MF: I can. If you have a community that has been exiled, for that bridge to be built, the community has to feel whole first. You have to come to the table whole. Here in Arizona, the immigrant communities and Latino communities have been brutalized. In a new narrative, the community has to be able to speak in their own words. That comes through organizing. Campaigns like the one we are fighting right now are like the salve. They are a mechanism to resist but also to heal.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
Ai-jen Poo is the director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and co-director of the Caring Across Generations campaign. | | | | | | | | | | | | Hillary Clinton Is More Than a President | | | | By Virginia Heffernan | | |
When people told me they hated Hillary Clinton or (far worse) that they were "not fans," I wish I had said in no uncertain terms: "I love Hillary Clinton. I am in awe of her. I am set free by her. She will be the finest world leader our galaxy has ever seen."
I wish, in those exchanges, I had not asked gentle, tolerant questions about a hater's ridiculous allergy to her, or Clinton's fictional misdeeds and imagined character flaws. More deeply still, I wish I had not reasoned with anyone, patiently countered their ludicrous emotionalism and psychologically disturbed theories. I wish I had said, flatly, "I love her." As if I had been asked about my mother or daughter. No defensiveness or polemics; not dignifying the crazy allegations with so much as a Snopes link.
Maybe "I love her" seemed too womany, too sentimental, too un-pragmatic. Not coalition-building, kind of culty. But people say with impunity they love Obama, the state of Israel, their churches, Kurt Cobain. In the end, I wish I'd said it because it's true.
And I'm not alone in my commitment. Millions of Clinton's supporters — we were thanked by Clinton as the "secret, private Facebook sites" — expressed it among themselves, all the time, in raptures or happy tears with each new display of our heroine's ferocious intelligence, depth, and courage. We were frankly bewildered by the idea that anyone would hedge their commitment to her ("You don't have to be her friend"; "Yes, she's made mistakes"; "lesser of two evils"). We didn't remember anyone turning to this stock ambivalence when discussing Obama, Babe Ruth, FDR. If only one reporter — they knew about us — could have published a headline like "Clinton Inspires Historic Levels of Adoration From Her Supporters" about the people who have had their lives transformed by the power of her brilliant campaign, unrivaled effectiveness, and extraordinary career. Just one headline like that, like the ones Bill Clinton got.
Usually a legend is made by men and media — the legend of Kennedy, say, or Jim Morrison — and then, much later, a biopic, pretending to evenhandedness, reveals the legend's shortcomings, his "human" side. The shortcomings are almost always something exactly no one actually believes compromises his heroism. His problem drinking. His mistreatment of women. Well, takedowns of Hillary were always already written. She has somehow made the time to hear out each dead-end line of reasoning about her fake mortal sins, and often she has also thanked everyone for sparing her further moral lashings, as if that were a kindness. Under cover of "humanizing" the intimidating valedictorian, reports and investigations and media clichés vilified her. But the feminist hero never got to be a legend first. And yet she is one, easily surpassing Ben Franklin, Henry Ford, Steve Jobs.
I want to reverse the usual schedule of things, then. We don't have to wait until she dies to act. Hillary Clinton's name belongs on ships, and airports, and tattoos. She deserves straight-up hagiographies and a sold-out Broadway show called RODHAM. Yes, this cultural canonization is going to come after the chronic, constant, nonstop "On the other hand" sexist hedging around her legacy. But such is the courage of Hillary Clinton and her supporters; we reverse patriarchal orders. Maybe she is more than a president. Maybe she is an idea, a world-historical heroine, light itself. The presidency is too small for her. She belongs to a much more elite class of Americans, the more-than-presidents. Neil Armstrong, Martin Luther King Jr., Alexander Fucking Hamilton.
Hillary Clinton did everything right in this campaign, and she won more votes than her opponent did. She won. She cannot be faulted, criticized, or analyzed for even one more second. Instead, she will be decorated as an epochal heroine far too extraordinary to be contained by the mere White House. Let that revolting president-elect be Millard Fillmore or Herbert Hoover or whatever. Hillary is Athena.
Virginia Heffernan is the author of Magic and Loss: The Internet As Art. | | | | | | | | | | | | Survival Kit for Lives Affected by Trump | | | | By Keilicia Ariel | | | |
When I was 15, I stared down the barrel of a gun. My abusive ex-boyfriend was furious that I did not want to continue our relationship. I remember the unmatched fear at my potential loss of life and then the guilty relief when my classmate, whom I'll call Jessica, walked up behind him. He didn't even notice her. I was a black girl from a working class family with immigrant parents, one of whom has since been deported. I was often the only black student in my honors and AP classes in my suburban middle and high schools.
I was waiting for Jessica, someone with more power than me in that moment, to use her voice to literally save my life. She saw what was happening — I'm sure of this because of the wide-eyed face she made — but she slipped out the door and said nothing. There were security guards in our school, and the town police station was a three-minute walk away. It would have taken only for her to say "Keilicia is in danger," but she chose not to, and that could have led to my death. I was extremely lucky that my ex-boyfriend decided not to pull the trigger without her.
That afternoon, a friend I'll call Tiffany walked with me to the bus. I was a little shaken up but otherwise unharmed. The next morning, she waited for me to get off the bus, walked with me into school, and walked me to all of my classes that day. So began our ritual. She was the only other person who knew what happened that day except for Jessica. Tiffany, on the other hand, knew what it meant to feel unsafe because of your blackness, because of your womanhood, because those things existing together signal to some that we are not deserving of protection from harm.
The announcement of the president-elect and the terrifying statistics of his voters' demographics caused the same confused panic I had standing in that hallway, realizing that Jessica had chosen silence. Again, I am wrestling with understanding that kind of apathy. It gives rise to the same questions I had then: How long do I have to wait for someone to notice and to help? Would someone really cling to their fear even if it may cost me my life? America says forever; America says yes.
I try to live each day past survival, but in this moment survival is all I can think about. I am working with others to create a comprehensive list of safety planning guides for self-care and self-preservation, for LGBTQ folks, for those who wear religious garb, for domestic-violence survivors who are too afraid to call the police, for evacuation, for alliance building and resource identification, for family planning, for undocumented residents, for the poor and working poor, and for everyone who will be living in even more danger come January.
The work that comes next must be rooted in the belief that another world is possible if we reach for it, if we reach for each other. Find your people, hold them, and don't let go.
Keilicia Ariel is an advocate for justice in intimacy who works with organizations as large as the U.S. Department of Justice to reimagine the impacts of our sociopolitical standings on our ability to build healthy and fulfilling relationships. | | | | | | | | | | | | How to Hold Anger and Summon Empathy | | | | Words and illustration by Hallie Bateman | | |
The day after Trump was elected, it was sunny in Los Angeles, with a high in the mid-90s, typical for November in Southern California, besides some unusual precipitation causing small, highly concentrated floods throughout the day. Mostly of the eyelids and cheeks. In slow traffic on Sunset Boulevard, a driver heard Obama respectfully surrender on the radio, and a strangled sobbing came forth. In the waiting room at the dentist, a patient welled up. Seeing the tooth business continue totally unfettered by this tragedy was sickening.
I started crying at the sight of the blank page when I opened my computer to write. That brought the storm out of me. Hard, liquid sobbing, for a long while. And loud, so the dog came into the room and curled up at the foot of the bed, shooting me a worried look now and then.
I think I cried at the blank page because the grief is so fresh and tangled up, it's inexpressible. Fear, guilt, powerlessness, anger, confusion. I turn to my friends, my media, and my leaders, and I'm told this must be a wake-up call, a catalyst for serious action. I reblog. I agree. I cry, because concretely I don't know what they mean. I'm still just sitting around on a Saturday. The sun is out and the birds are in the trees, doing bird stuff. I don't want to call them stupid, or racist, but I'm pretty sure now is not the time for that kind of dillydallying.
For expert guidance, I called up Christine Garcia, a brilliant woman who wore a sharp gray pantsuit on Election Day and is a clinical psychologist at UCSF's Department of Psychiatry. Below, I paraphrase and illustrate some of the things she told me: what conscious action could look like, and how to hold anger and summon empathy at the same time.
Build your tribe.
We all have blind spots in different ways, because of our life experiences. There are moments when we're in positions of power, and moments when we're in less power and feel oppressed. It's everyone's responsibility to know their blind spots. This process begins by building a community where you can feel safe, and also challenged. This could be a group of women, a group of writers, or a group of people of all different backgrounds and ages. It's perfectly fine to have a tribe of your close friends, but especially now, it's important to open up to allies who have different opinions and backgrounds. And your tribe doesn't have to be one group. It can be many groups.
Be an ally:
If you become aware of yourself as being part of an oppressive identity group, listen before you talk. Be conscious and aware of your position of power. Be conscious of how you may steer away from these conversations because they make you feel guilty and ashamed. With honesty, bring to light your blind spots and biases. Check your privilege.
Speak up.
When we imagine the changes that need to happen, we may envision new laws getting passed and sweeping national movements, but the painful reality is that this is going to be so, so slow. And it starts with our daily interactions and the way we absorb and respond to intolerance in its many forms.
If speaking up seems difficult, it's because you need practice. Role-play with your tribe. How many times in an interaction do you think of what to say after the fact? Rehearse, prepare, and become familiar with those conversations. When the moment comes, imagine your community standing behind you. Gather your strength from that.
Remain curious about your opponent.
The aforementioned avenues of action and education make sense to me. A whole new regime of reading, gathering, and awakening is called for. I can sign petitions, I can attend protests, I can call out a male colleague for speaking over a female coworker. But what about Thanksgiving, when I see my uncles who voted for Trump? If I can bear to speak with them, should I? What good would it do?
Christine makes a good point: when you go into a situation trying to change someone's position, it shuts down curiosity. While staying true to your position, try to ask questions and listen with an open mind. Know your limits. If you are feeling unsafe or triggered, you do not have to stay or keep the conversation going.
This work is a marathon, not a sprint. Of course, they may not budge an inch, but there will be some, a few, who may have even the slightest shift. Like stomach muscles slowly emerging through a summer of even the most sporadic Pilates, the progress is extremely subtle, but real. (This last sentence is mine, not Christine's, but I think she would agree it's an apt metaphor.)
Trump, in the final days before the election, proclaimed that if he lost, the whole thing would have been a "tremendous waste of time, energy, and money." No patience, that man. We can outwait him.
Use your time to educate yourself and your tribe. Use your energy to speak when it's not easy. Give money to the causes that are important to you. I'm already thinking of a name for my tribe.
We scream at the top of every meeting, then get down to business*.
(*Let me know if you want to join. I need someone to be my uncle in a role-play.)
Hallie Bateman is a writer and illustrator based in Los Angeles. Her first book, Brave New Work, will be published by the Museum of Modern Art in 2017. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The email newsletter where there's no such thing as too much information.
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