i hope this helps

Hearts and spirits are broken as the empire does exactly as designed. the election outcomes are still being analyzed by folks much more educated than me, but we know that white men and women decided the election. We know that this outcome is born from a history of anti-Black voter suppression for generations, the racist roots of the electoral college, the patriarchy baked into so many U.S. institutions and cultures.

How can I stay calm and enraged and in solidarity all at the same time? Should I stay calm?

Community can be an antidote to isolation. Thinking of what I have to offer, here are some of my poems plus resources, people, podcasts that are helping me in hopes they may help you too.

With love,

tash

• This piece by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

• And the podcast referenced in the piece above, the brilliant Ejeris Dixon’s The Fascism Barometer 

• This visual and quote roundup from adrienne maree brown   

• Those who through history have fought fascism, detailed in my poem “a short memory”

• Podcasts I’ve appreciated pre-election political analysis from:

  • Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams

  • Undistracted with Brittany Packnett Cunningham

  • Intersectionality Matters! with Kimberlé Crenshaw

• past playlists I made that help me get through: 

  • instructions for staying out of the abyss

  • Morning has Broken, pick me up

  • relax. wind down. sleep

• past poems I wrote about staying alive through difficult times:

  • for those of us having a rough one tonight

  • A note to fellow white liberal people on another day of historic violence and political repression by the U.S.

  • rethinking death

  • list of things that make me want to stay alive

  • four stanzas about anxiety

  • it’s okay sometimes

  • the future is now