A Syllabus for Staying Grounded
Essays on Sustaining Solidarity & Building Courage
PHOTO BY JESS DRAWHORN
Inspired by your feedback, we have put together a syllabus of essays from our Substack that taken together speak to what it might look like to cultivate solidarity, build courage, and practice community care in the midst of sociopolitical chaos and ecological crisis. Some of these essays are from the archives; others are more recent.
Scroll down for the syllabus, and please share with anyone who you think might benefit from it! We are so grateful for your sustaining support.
HOLDING MULTITUDES
We must stay grounded in reality at this moment. Over the past few years, I’ve felt troubled by an emphasis on the idea that morality and strategy are inherently the same. Refusing to engage with the systems that ultimately provide the backbone of our society is dangerous territory. When we only sit in spaces with people who echo back our own ideas, our shared visions are incomplete. And when we only work with what’s been given to us, we foreclose diverse possibilities. The task is to live rooted in both realms, to balance what is here and now with the broader vision of what could be.
—KAILEA LOFTEN
How can we conjure a vision for moving forward that’s rooted in reality? Loam Editor Kailea Loften reflects on lessons learned from movement work.
WE ARE OUR OWN FIRST RESPONDERS
I want everybody around the world to realize that we are our own first responders. All we need are logistics and access to the resources and we can take care of ourselves.
—VALENCIA GUNDER IN CONVERSATION WITH AMIRIO FREEMAN
How do we build autonomous systems of care? Environmental justice activist Valencia Gunder reflects on organizing as a creative and community-oriented practice in this conversation with writer Amirio Freeman.
BUILDING A POLITICS OF SOLIDARITY
What’s really healthy about where progressive spaces have taken an appreciation of identity is honoring that there are differences in our identities and experiences and what we can offer. These differences are extraordinarily valuable. But we can’t get stuck in the unique and the particular. We have to constantly be coming back and forth to what is universal? What puts us into relationship with one another?
This becomes really important when we don’t have enough of a sense of who we do have shared interests with. Who are we aligned with, even if it’s not with every single last little footnote of our ideological manifesto? Who do we have enough shared interest with to build something big and ambitious, and move it forward, and then defend it?
—LUCÍA OLIVA HENNELLY IN CONVERSATION WITH LOAM
How do we hold space for complicated conversations? Climate strategist and Zen practitioner Lucía Oliva Hennelly shares practical tools for strengthening our political analysis.
FAITH AFTER THE STORM
When you're in solidarity, you realize that your sister, your brother, or your nonbinary cousin are all one. And then when you realize you’re one, you don’t want to hurt them because you wouldn’t hurt yourself.
—REV. LENNOX YEARWOOD JR. IN CONVERSATION WITH AMIRIO FREEMAN
How can we move from charity to solidarity? Rev. Yearwood offers a blueprint for finding the sacredness in our surroundings.
Wonderful.