The need to move with urgency & purpose

I came across an article a few years ago I Lived Through Collapse. America Is Already There that spoke to what I was feeling. Sharing it with friends and colleagues, I was met with ‘you’re being too pessimistic, this would never happen here’.

This is what Americans don’t understand. They’re waiting to get personally punched in the face while ash falls from the sky. That’s not how it happens.

The author, a young Sri Lankan man describes his experience living through a civil war. Fragments of normality punctuated by horrific atrocities.

I was looking through some old photos for this article and the mix is shocking to me now. Almost offensive. …Then I’m playing Scrabble with friends. There’s bomb smoke rising in front of the mall. Then I’m at a concert. There’s a long line for gas. Then I’m at a nightclub. This is all within two weeks.

In the early 1990’s, I vividly remember loudspeakers reminding residents to get indoors before the start of a curfew that lasted days/weeks…a timeframe that 7 year old me can’t recall. What it does remember is the urgency to buy and store food, the Nepalese house helper breaking curfew to come care for us, the intensity of sirens.

A year later we would leave Nepal and move back to New Delhi.

Little more than a decade later, I would find myself in Peru. I never imaged smoke coming up out buses along the highway would be my final image of summer well spent.

That summer, at 19, a fellowship took me to a small town south of Lima where I worked with seasoned archaeologists on sites that had yet to be open to public. For weeks, we mapped ruins, drew illustrations of 800-year old pottery and breathed in ocean air.

At 19, I took my safety for granted and followed the lead of people decades older. When we encountered armed militia having strayed from our site, I trusted the people around me to extricate us from the situation. And they did just that.

Those moments, and plenty more of living through curfews (bandh, in Hindi), power outages, water shortages, depleted rations, paying bribes to get cooking gas and a telephone connection all has my nervous system humming along quietly as we (in the United States) face a constitution crisis.

There’s a need to move with a sense of urgency (not the white supremacist kind).

There’s a need to be more deeply in community.

There’s a need to speak back, push back, fight back.

And yet, I’m struck daily by the complacency of the people around me.

In the past week, Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest and detention 5,000 miles away from his home has shattered any faith I had in the rule of law. This reality is the daily nightmare of immigrants - not just melanated folks. A yt German man with a Green Card was detained by ICE.

In this moment, it might seem easy to compost away at your job, or on the couch (or your job from your couch).

We can’t wait until the next general election.

There isn’t a savior coming for us.

In the spirit of taking action, I want to invite you to two events.

The first is a conversation with Deepa Iyer on Monday at 9am PST. Register here.

Deepa has been a movement leader for decades and will lead us through a conversation on our role in this current moment - there are many, and we all need to pick one.

In a few weeks, I’m offering a session on how to strategically organize inside organizations. In a world where the rule of law matters less and less, we have to be resolute in protecting the safety and wellbeing of employees.

Register for free (or pay-what-you-can) here.

No matter who you are and where you are - you have the power to protect and resist.