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Gestures to celebrate America’s so called “independence” fell flat amidst a rogue court, a dysfunctional congress and a disenfranchised voting body.

All of which calls us to ask “freedom for whom” in a country that was only ever imagined, designed and created for some. Some benefit from an archaic system rooted in lies. Some cheat and steal to maintain power and privilege. Some climb to higher heights by stepping on the backs of others.

But many believe we deserve so much more. Many believe in medicare for all (70%), many believe in gun control (84%), many believe in higher taxes for the rich (64%), many believe in curbing climate change (80%).

What has made this country unique, is not it’s founders or founding documents. It’s the will of the people to imagine better and fight for actual freedom for all, not some.

The future is shaped not by maintaining form but by inviting change. The opposite of form is messiness, disarrangement, disorder. And perhaps that is what we need to practice if we are to bring about an America that has never been.

We must go from form to freedom. We must let the structures that have created this state of unfreedom fall. We must let go of our attachments/addictions to the false promises of modernity. And we must embrace the change and uncertainty that is inevitable and essential to our shared liberation.

Kerri (she/her)

NTK (need to know)

1. The US supreme court has dismantled our rights but we still believe in them. Now we must fight. The court is part of a gang of reactionaries clawing back rights we already won, which means we can win them back

2. How to Stave Off Constitutional Extinction. Amendment has become a lost art. And a constitution that can no longer be amended is dead.

3. America’s unique, enduring gun problem, explained. What is unique is the US’s expansive view of civilian gun ownership, ingrained in politics, in culture, and in the law since the nation’s founding, and a national political process that has so far proved incapable of changing that norm.

4. How can inner work help with climate action? We know that climate change affects mental health – but we’re just beginning to grasp the role of the mind in the crisis itself.

5. Seven lessons for leaders in systems change. Understanding how systems maintain themselves and how they change has very practical consequences that go to the heart of education for sustainable living.

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Solidarity

July 4th was the earth’s hottest day ever recorded. Bill McKibben wrote that “no human has ever seen it hotter”…ever. By 2050, the population is estimated to reach 10 billion people, 70% of whom will live in cities with urban heat islands. That is 7 billion people living in unsafe conditions. Here are some community action items for mutual aid from Brown Girl Green:

1. CONNECT: Check in with older adults, people experiencing homelessness, and people with disabilities. Bring tents, covering, items that provide shade for unsheltered people. Lend your car or house as a safe place to cool off. Hand out frozen water bottles to unhoused people. Offer rides to cooling centers and water stations near you.

2. PARTICIPATE: Donate your skills and services. Volunteer to plant trees in urban heat islands. Advocate. for renewable energy in your home, workplace, school and more. Convert vacant paved lots to community gardens, urban farms and parks. Invest in drought friendly plants, native flora and fauna.

3. GIVE: Give money to mutual aid programs that directly support neighbors in need. Give part of your paycheck to Indigenous people who steward the land you live on. Give money to BIPOC urban farms and community gardens.

4. TOOLKIT: Check out this grassroots disaster relief toolkit.

5. FOLLOW: lacommunityfridges, waterdropla, inthistogether_la, blackfreedomfactory.org

Source BrownGirlGreen, Art by @dscochris and @goldengreengee

Practicing Justice

In 1995, Toni Morrison warned us what the rise of fascism in our time would look like.

Let us be reminded that before there is a final solution, there must be a first solution, a second one, even a third. The move toward a final solution is not a jump. It takes one step, then another, then another.

Morrison then laid out the pathway to fascism in ten steps:

1. Construct an internal enemy, as both focus and diversion.

2. Isolate and demonize that enemy by unleashing and protecting the utterance of overt and coded name-calling and verbal abuse. Employ ad hominem attacks as legitimate charges against that enemy

3. Enlist and create sources and distributors of information who are willing to reinforce the demonizing process because it is profitable, because it grants power and because it works.

4. Palisade all art forms; monitor, discredit or expel those that challenge or destabilize processes of demonization and deification.

5. Subvert and malign all representatives of and sympathizers with this constructed enemy.

6. Solicit, from among the enemy, collaborators who agree with and can sanitize the dispossession process.

7. Pathologize the enemy in scholarly and popular mediums; recycle, for example, scientific racism and the myths of racial superiority in order to naturalize the pathology.

8. Criminalize the enemy. Then prepare, budget for and rationalize the building of holding arenas for the enemy — especially its males and absolutely its children.

9. Reward mindlessness and apathy with monumentalized entertainments and with little pleasures, tiny seductions, a few minutes on television, a few lines in the press, a little pseudo-success, the illusion of power and influence, a little fun, a little style, a little consequence.

10. Maintain, at all costs, silence.

Source: Excerpt from Howard University 128th Anniversary Convocation Address

We-ness

Pull the thread.

Thanks for subscribing to WELLREAD. For the last six years we’ve been providing folks with the need to know (NTK) news, calls to actions and resources for how to stay engaged and resourced along the way. But now, we’ve added an option to “upgrade to paid” to help sustain our work. While we will never put our content behind a pay wall, we depend on the support of our community to keep us going. 💛