politics

“Orwell’s Roses” by Rebecca Solnit

March 31, 2022 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Recommended to me by: It’s by Rebecca Solnit!

Rebecca Solnit starts from an encounter with rosebushes planted by George Orwell almost 100 years before, and expands with her usual grace and skill on his life as an essayist, activist, soldier in the Spanish Civil War, gardener, husband, and father. From there, she delves into his research into coal mining and its disastrous effects on the miners and on the environment; Stalin and his atrocities in the name of communism; Colombia’s greenhouses growing roses for export, with disastrous effects on the growers and the environment; and many more discursions on roses, beauty, totalitarianism, and history.

She shows that Orwell balanced the darkness in his writing and worldview with a joy in the natural world. He grew much of his own food, in addition to roses, in rural England.

Sometimes [Orwell] celebrated what was meant by the roses in “bread and roses”: the intangible, ordinary pleasure, the joy available in the here and now. [Page 92]

Bread can be managed by authoritarian regimes, but roses are something individuals must be free to find for themselves, discovered and cultivated rather than prescribed. “We know only that the imagination, like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity,” Orwell declares at the end of “The Prevention of Literature.” [Page 100]

Clarity, precision, accuracy, honesty, and truthfulness are aesthetic values to [Orwell], and pleasures. […] Clarity, honesty, accuracy, truth are beautiful because in them representation is true to its subject, knowledge is democratized, people are empowered, doors are open, information moves freely, contracts are honored. That is, such writing is beautiful in itself, and beautiful in what flows from it. [Page 231]

I read Nineteen Eighty-Four as a twelve year old on a ten-hour flight between New York and Tel Aviv, alternating between reading a few more horrifying pages and staring blankly at the 747 bulkhead. I have avoided George Orwell ever since, even though the last few years have proved him more and more prescient. Rebecca Solnit fills in the background of how he came to write such a dark book shortly before his death from tuberculosis at 46, and shows him as a whole, extraordinary person.

Recommended to anyone who wants to be a better, more informed citizen of the world.

Available at Powell’s Books.

“As We Have Always Done” by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

June 13, 2021 by Sonia Connolly 2 Comments

Subtitle: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resurgence

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a renowned Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer and artist who has taught and lectured across Canada. With story and analysis, she carefully lays out how Nishnaabeg ways of living, learning, and experiencing are intrinsically suited to reestablish their communities and place-relationship that have been intentionally disrupted and stolen by colonialist settlers.

A single quote out of context doesn’t do justice to the way she steps out of whiteness to center the Nishnaabeg way of thinking and doing, but here is a taste.

Governance was made every day. Leadership was embodied and acted out every day. Grounded normativity isn’t a thing; it is generated structure born and maintained from deep engagement with Indigenous processes that are inherently physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. Processes were created and practiced. Daily life involved making politics, education, health care, food systems, and economy on micro- and macro-scales. […] The structural and material basis of Nishnaabeg life was and is process and relationship—again, resurgence is our original instruction.

The book addresses kwe – the embodied experience of being an Indigenous woman – and the ways capitalism, colonialism, and white supremacy have suppressed and damaged that experience. It also includes 2SQ – people who are Two Spirit and Queer.

I feel changed by reading this book. It affirms that there are right ways, sustainable ways of living, and Indigenous people still know and practice those ways. It supports my own search for connection to place and right ways to live. It reminds and teaches me that Indigenous people are brilliant modern thinkers and doers, interrupting the stereotypes of “primitive,” “lost,” and “in the past.”

Highly recommended!

Land as pedagogy: Nishnaabeg intelligence and rebellious transformation (pdf), an article by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson published in Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson website

Available at Powell’s Books.

“The Politics of Trauma” by Staci K. Haines

December 26, 2020 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: Somatics, Healing, and Social Justice

Recommended to me by: Darryl C.

This book rang true to me from beginning to end. Staci Haines combines embodied trauma work with social justice, and everything she says fits with what I already know and takes it further.

Many healing modalities view trauma and abuse as individual problems. Instead, Haines puts trauma and abuse in the context of our abusive social structures that put individuals in harm’s way. White supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, and environmental destruction divide us from one another and keep us from learning the skills we need to treat each other with care. They keep us divided from ourselves as we try to heal.

Safety, belonging, and dignity are core needs that should be met together for everyone. Traumatic and abusive situations put one in conflict with another – we can choose either safety or dignity, either dignity or belonging. Our bodies deeply learn traumatized ways of responding to the world.

We can form declarations and commitments: statements about our core beliefs and goals that guide our healing. For example, “I am a commitment to be in my skin without apology.” (Lisa Thomas-Adeyemo) We can discover what commitments and declarations we have unconsciously adopted or had imposed upon us. Declarations can be personal or community-oriented or both.

We can find what supports us and practice resilience, reminding ourselves to come out of trauma mode. Social justice organizations can also collectively practice resilience. We can rebuild safety and trust at the embodied, physical level. We can relearn boundaries and requests.

To help someone heal, we blend with the patterns that are already true for them, and help them notice what the pattern has been taking care of for them. As the body is supported and honored, the underlying physical and emotional memories and holding patterns can be released. We can help someone feel allied with, exactly as their body needs to feel it.

For example, make a fist with one hand. With the other hand, try to pry it open. How does that feel? Instead, let your other hand support the fist with curiosity and kindness. How does that feel? What happens with your fist? With the rest of your body?

Trauma is held in the body through bands of tension, or absent slackness. A healthy body has relaxed presence. Somatic opening is encouraged by blending with what is there and allowing it to release and transform. While emotions often arise during a release, cathartic emotion is not the goal.

We can discern what shame is ours and what belongs to others. We can blend with shame, hearing its messages, and look underneath to what it is hiding or protecting. Often shame is preferable to feeling powerless, helpless, or abandoned. We can learn to take centered accountability rather than being over- or under-accountable for our actions. We can sit with the complex questions around our responsibilities. We can learn about forgiveness of others and self-forgiveness. “Even if … [shameful act or belief], I am forgivable.”

We can learn to be present with ourselves and with others at the same time. We can learn to hold contradictions and conflict. We can learn how to have generative rather than destructive conflicts.

Personal healing and social justice organizing can support and serve each other.

I loved this quote at the beginning.

The Church says: The body is a sin.
Science says: The body is a machine.
Advertising says: The body is a business.
The body says: I am a fiesta.
—Eduardo Galeano, from “Window on the Body”

In the original Spanish:

La Iglesia dice: El cuerpo es una culpa.
La ciencia dice: El cuerpo es una máquina.
La publicidad dice: El cuerpo es un negocio.
El cuerpo dice: Yo soy una fiesta.

Highly recommended for activists and healers!

Available at Powell’s Books.

“Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer

May 6, 2020 by Sonia Connolly 1 Comment

Subtitle: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

Recommended to me by: Amy Bennett

A set of essays loosely tied together in chronological order, with themes of sweetgrass and braiding all the way through. Each essay braids together personal memoir, Native American (specifically Potawatomi) ways of living, and colonialist ways of living.

Potawatomi ways developed over generations as people saw what works to live in balance with nature, as a part of nature. Humans are considered the young ones, the newcomers, learning from their more experienced plant and animal family members.

Sweetgrass is harvested in specific ways. Not the first plant you find, because that might be the only one. Take only what you need, up to half of the plants there, either by cutting half of each bunch, or taking whole bunches. Robin Wall Kimmerer is a Professor of Botany, and one of her PhD students showed in a set of careful experiments that sweetgrass thrives when harvested this way, and fails to propagate if it is left completely unharvested. Humans and sweetgrass have a cooperative, collaborative partnership.

White colonialists disastrously interrupted Native American ways of living by stealing Native Americans’ lands and pushing them into entirely different ecosystems, and by taking their children to residential schools and forcibly preventing them from speaking their own languages or practicing their spirituality. The Potawatomi people and other tribes are gathering together the fragments of what remains, and braiding them together anew.

The book ends on a hopeful note, that perhaps enough of us will turn toward collaborative, cooperative ways of living that we will not entirely destroy the ecosystems of this green earth. Fitting right in with that hope, the current Great Pause of this pandemic gives us time to consider what we want to add back in to our lives, and what we want to leave behind to allow cleaner skies, safer streets, and more sustainable lives.

I read this as an ebook, because that’s what I can get from the library in this time of pandemic. It’s an odd way to read a book so rooted in physical experience, and I would have much preferred to have a physical book in my hands. This is a long book that wants to be appreciated slowly, essay by essay, section by section, exploring how all the parts fit together to support each other.

Highly recommended!

Robin Wall Kimmerer: ‘People can’t understand the world as a gift unless someone shows them how’ interview by James Yeh, May 23, 2020

Available at Powell’s Books.

“Turn This World Inside Out” by Nora Samaran

July 2, 2019 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: The Emergence of Nurturance Culture

Recommended to me by: Nora Samaran’s online essay The Opposite of Rape Culture is Nurturance Culture

This book contains three of Nora Samaran’s powerful essays (also available on her blog) and dialogues with other writers that expand on the themes of nurturance, attachment, shame, gaslighting, gendered violence, and repairing harm.

It is a short book that can be read quickly, and at the same time there are a lot of chewy ideas to take in over time. There are also references to more reading on these topics by people who are one or more of trans, Indigenous, and Black who have developed skills of sustainable, relational living. The book holds the question: how do we best move forward from and heal from white supremacy, colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy.

What would it be like to live in a culture where we all could be socially embraced in this way, where we could speak up about harm, could say not to it, without fear, because we know without question that no one in our community will dehumanize another?

I admire Nora Samaran’s insights, and I long for the kinds of communities and relationships she describes. This book brings in more voices to deepen and expand the conversation. Highly recommended.

Available at Powell’s Books.

“Bicycle/Race” by Adonia E. Lugo, Phd

May 27, 2019 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: Transportation, Culture, & Resistance

Recommended to me by: Elly Blue

Adonia Lugo gives us both a warm memoir and a carefully researched overview of her anthropological study of racism in bicycling activism. She shares her background as a half-Mexican, half-white girl growing up in San Juan Capistrano in Southern California, her joyful involvement with bicycling as transportation while studying in Portland, and her direct experiences of racism and resistance as she pursued her PhD research. As part of it, she helped create the first cicLAvia in LA, where streets are closed to cars and opened to bicyclists and pedestrians.

Race and mobility are intertwined because we designed segregation into our built environments and how we police them, and racial equity in the distribution of public money isn’t a metaphor or a goal you opt into; it’s a legal obligation, thanks to the civil rights movement. I wasn’t pointing to the culture of white supremacy embedded in bike advocacy, policy, and planning because I wanted to cause trouble; it was about fulfilling the promise of our shared democracy.

She writes about the successive waves of colonization and conquest that shaped Southern California, the role of racism in people’s preference for private cars, selective police enforcement against people of color, and the reinforcement of white supremacy in the networks of people who set public policy. She writes about how her family’s loving support gave her the confidence to try to create change, and how she realized that entrenched systems were resisting her efforts.

Highly recommended! I read it a chapter or two at a time, with pauses to digest the information about the racist underpinnings of US culture and transportation.

Available at Microcosm Publishing.