Solstice Reflections
Looking Back
PHOTO BY AERAN SQUIRES
Loam took a sabbatical this year not just because we were struggling financially, but also because we really wanted to sit with whether we felt Loam had value. Our collective attention and endurance is precious. What matters in this moment?
Creating through permacrisis is a tenuous practice. We have to learn how to continually adapt without compromising the raw materiality of our grief, rage, and love. For many culture workers in our community, this contradiction is a source of tension. If we are not disciplined in our daily practices, we might acclimate ourselves to injustice. And if we are always careening from crisis to crisis, we might struggle to sustain action. Dysregulation, however uncomfortable, can awaken us to who needs our attention. Acceptance, however sweet, can numb us to necessary work.
More than anything, we need to get clear on the function—and the limitations—of our work. As Palestinian poet Hala Alyan shared in a recent conversation on practices for care and endurance:
“Poetry and literature and art are not going to save what needs saving, they’re not going to stop what needs stopping right now. They are not a replacement to action, to policy change, to ceasefire, to an end to the occupation, to Palestinian self-determination, dignity, rights [...]
What I would offer [...] is that art fortifies, it sustains. It can help remind us of what we’re doing, and why we’re doing it.”
If our work feels insufficient, that’s because it is. The world can be brutal and unjust, and sometimes, we’re not so sure if anything matters. Not the marching, or divesting, or rallying, or calling. Not the live footage, or the first person testimonials, or the scientific data. Maybe direct action can incite change (we’re grateful to the activists who continue to disrupt cargo ships carrying weapons to Israel) but even then, the scale isn’t enough, not yet, to halt the machinations of Empire.
History shows us that transformation is possible—that people power can stop pipelines, return land, move resources. We know, too, that Empire wants us exhausted, and alone. The surest way to sustain the status quo is to not change our actions or reconsider our values.
But we don’t have to be hopeful to continue to strive. We just have to be courageous, and to care. In “Inciting Joy,” Ross Gay talks about the necessity of bringing our grief with us to the gathering. And when we reflect on how to show up for this moment, we think of what it might mean to carry our sorrow and rage with us. To feel ground down and despairing, and to still strive, still show up, because it’s our responsibility. Our calling.
We recognize the limitations of Loam. This work is not a replacement for action. It is a source, however small, of fortification. But we take that responsibility seriously, and it’s our hope that we can continue to tend to this work for years to come.
As we sink into the solstice, we want to honor those experiences from this past year (below) that helped us come home to Loam.
If you’d like to support Loam, you can subscribe to our Substack or make a donation to our Loam Fund (scroll down to find our campaign). We also know money is tight right now for many of us. Support can look like sharing this newsletter with a friend, or mailing a past publication of ours to a loved one. As we noted in our Welcome Home essay, your attention is a gift we don’t take for granted.
Thanks for being here with us. We hope you find ways to fortify yourself—and your community—this solstice.
In love and solidarity,
Loam
EDITORIAL FELLOWSHIP
This year, Loam Co-Editors Kate Weiner and Kailea Loften were humbled to have the opportunity to work as Editorial Fellows at the Center for Humans & Nature. As Editorial Fellows at CHN, we curated several essays for their “Questions for a Resilient Future” series on disposability culture, kinship, and solidarity.
For us, this series grew from our desire to make space for complexity in our conversations and communities. Our guiding question—how do we come together in a changing world?—emerged from more than a decade of working within the climate movement as organizers, culture workers, and co-editors of Loam. Watching how the politics of disposability has increasingly seeped into, and shaped, our movements spaces inspired us to critically reflect on how to cultivate the relational skills to navigate rupture and repair, better distinguish between discomfort and danger, challenge groupthink, and cultivate a sustaining sense of solidarity within our movements.
Curating this series was really edgy for us. There’s no easy answer to just how we create space for nuance in our movement building without exculpating ourselves from right action. Editing these essays forced us to encounter—and to grapple with–some of our own conditioning in ways that was markedly uncomfortable. But it was also a beautiful experience that helped us hone our praxis as editors and affirm our passion for this project.
In the coming weeks, we’ll share an excerpt from the series with you all. We’re currently collaborating with CHN on a print edition of this series that we’re excited to share with you soon, too!
MESA REFUGE RETREAT
This summer, we had the opportunity to convene in-person at Mesa Refuge for our Editorial Fellowship Retreat. Thanks to the generosity of the Center for Humans and Nature, Kate and Kailea spent a week with Katherine Kassouf Cummings of CHN digging deep into our project; connecting to our California community; and nerding out on editing. In the face of an ongoing pandemic, we don’t take any opportunity to come together for granted. It was such a gift not only to work at the same table, but also to cook and chill and create in a shared space.
When we arrived at Mesa Refuge, we were still negotiating what Loam might look like in the coming years. Our experience at the magical refuge helped us come home to Loam with renewed focus, and love.
PLANTS TO THE PEOPLE
We have admired the work of Herban Cura for many years. Their immersive Knowledge Shares—check out their Living Library here—have truly shaped our thinking and fortified our skills. So we were humbled this year to have the opportunity to join their crew during their monthly Plants to the People gatherings. As a not-for-profit herbal mutual aid project, Plants to the People “seeks to make herbs and plants more accessible to low-income, BIPOC, and immigrant communities.”
Over the course of the summer, Loam shared many of our publications for free with Plants to the People participants. Savoring a good book—and a mug of tea—might be one of our favorite things, so getting to be a small part of gifting that goodness to others was particularly sweet.
LOAM LIBRARY
Loam Library is a mobile library and reading room that works to bring the power of print to the people. This year, Loam brought our mobile library to the Hudson Valley. From May to October, passerby had the opportunity to check out our selection of radical reads. From primers on Palestine to movement manuals on Land Back, it’s our hope that Loam Library can support our community in accessing crucial materials on collective liberation.
In 2024, we hope to find a more permanent home for Loam Library. We’d love it if this space can exist in conversation with a community garden; home workshops; and continue to reach diverse readers.
DOWN TO EARTH DECK
Last year, Loam co-conspirator Amirio Freeman created the Down to Earth deck (DTED) as a tool to spark conversation and connection within our communities. DTED emerged from the Reclamatory Environmentalism Audit. Created in 2018, Amirio developed the audit to invoke “a liberation praxis rooted in cultivating wholeness in the self/the earth.”
Since selling out of DTED in 2022, we’ve had many of you write to us about relaunching the deck. In response to your reflections, we devoted this past year to retooling DTED with the goal of making Version 2 material in 2024!
And for those of you in NYC, stay tuned early in the new year for DTED game nights!
WEAVING EARTH
One of the juiciest developments in 2023 was our merger with Weaving Earth Center for Relational Education. Loam has a new home! You can read more about it here.