The Simplest, Yet Most Complicated of Questions: What Can I Do?

Dear Readers,

I am sorry to say that I will not be able to continue the newsletter in the same way I have been for the last 10 months or so. A couple of weeks ago, I started an exciting new full-time job in a new town. Needless to say, the last few weeks have been filled with relocating, newness, and transition.

As of now, my goal is to post on a monthly basis but may find I need to adjust as I go. To that end, I have suspended all payments for the subscription. You should not have any more withdrawals from your bank accounts. If you see one, please let me know and I will work with the Substack to address the issue.

Thanks to you all for your readership. I will do my very best to continue producing good content going forward, especially as I engage with new facets of the criminal legal system.

Now, on to this week’s newsletter.

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Over the last few months, a number of you have expressed to me that while you enjoy my newsletter, you want to know more about what you can do about what you are reading. Learning about such disturbing and enraging things can leave us feeling frustrated, helpless, angry, paralyzed, fill-in-the-blank, and/or some combination therein—all feelings I have heard described by friends, family members, and colleagues, and have experienced myself.

To honor your feedback and your questions, this week’s edition will provide some meditations on the question — what can I do?

At least, that was my intent.

But then, for the first time since I began writing this newsletter, I drafted a full edition only to find that I could not press “Publish.” Something was/is weighing on me and I am not yet sure I fully grasp it; I am going to try to write something nonetheless.

After sitting with the feeling for a long while, and reading the first few essays in Mariame Kaba’s essential book We Do This ‘Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice, I understood that everything I wrote in the previous version of this edition seemed inadequate.

That my two-dimensional words were not impactful enough to reflect the urgency I feel about everything I write. Certainly, words do not feel like enough when I know innumerable lives are at stake each moment that we enable these systems’ continued existence.

Those are the stakes here! We are systematically disposing of or permanently and irreversibly disrupting lives day after day.

With human beings at the center of everything I write here, and at the center of everything perpetrated by these systems and their actors, there is an enormity to the issues, an overwhelm with the question — what can I do? — or, more importantly, what can we do?— a gravity to our actions in response to the call.

In my own seeking to invite, support, engage your seeking, I came across the following statements by and about two people I greatly admire working for transformative justice—Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and abolitionist, activist and scholar Mariame Kaba.

First, Representative Ocasio-Cortez had been receiving similar questions from her constituents, friends, family, and neighbors and felt compelled to respond. Here is her meditation on the question — what can I do?:

Sometimes people will ask me, “There is so much happening in the world and in the country, and it all feels so big and overwhelming — what can I even do as one person?” What I try to convey every time is that no action is too small, and if you feel so moved, you can and should start with whatever is within arm’s reach or in your backyard. You can even start with yourself.

We live in a culture of grand gestures and big ambitions, but that also means we should be wary of how much “get-rich-quick” thinking can perpetuate beyond money schemes and into the idea that any/all major, impactful shifts happen suddenly and in dramatic fashion with a handful of major figures. The fact is, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Revolutionary and transformative change, from the inside out, happens more like mosaics.

Think of it like this: no matter who we are, how visible or invisible or big or small, each one of us is just one tile. Whether you see that as liberating or disempowering is a matter of perspective. When you have your eye pressed all the way up to the single tile of a mosaic, it can look quite meaningless. A single piece of shattered glass could look worthless. Or perhaps a piece of small painted porcelain could seem beautiful, but too small to “be” anything. Or maybe a stunning rare slab of stone may think itself as the biggest piece when it is really a corner tile. The secret is, it’s all significant.

The two secrets of mosaics are:

1. Each piece (us + our small actions) is far more powerful and meaningful then we know, and

2. Each piece (we) need each other far more than we realize.

When we are able to step back from thinking our own broken, unfinished pieces are not enough, and start to see how all the other little pieces glistening alongside us start to form eyes and ears and abstract beauty and landscapes and symbols and more, we realize that just because we didn’t see the big picture at first doesn’t mean we weren’t part of one. So just do the small thing — for yourself and others. Choose your actions with humility, love, and enthusiasm. It means more than you know, and the world thanks you for it.

Take heart,

Alexandria

**I bolded the segments that really stuck out to me.**

Two days later, as I began to (finally!) read Mariame Kaba’s book We Do This ‘Til We Free Us, a passage from Naomi Murakawa’s Foreword jumped out at me. In it, she invited us to consider the ways in which we can engage with changemaking, specifically the abolition of the criminal industrial complex:

As Robin D.G. Kelley reminds us, “Making a revolution is not a series of clever maneuvers and tactics, but a process that can and must transform us.” Abolition requires dismantling oppressive systems that live out there —and within us. Police not only protect private property and saturate Black, brown, and working-class neighborhoods. They also station themselves in our hearts and minds. Joining an organization, educating yourself about the prison-industrial complex, donating to a criminalized survivor’s defense campaign: these are seemingly small doings to begin a process that can transform us. As [Mariame] Kaba tells us, start where you are. Connect with others already doing the work. Experiment.¹

I share all of this to say that I am seeking to practice what I hope comes through loud and clear in this newsletter — I don’t have the answers and cannot not presume to have them but I am choosing not to turn away.

I am engaging with my own thoughts and feelings, and I am/have been educating myself by reading, listening to, and working with activists, writers, and thinkers who have been on the front lines of this work for a very long time.

While I seek to participate in transformative justice efforts, I understand that I must not assume, as a white woman, that to be part of changemaking means I must lead changemaking. As Rep. Ocasio-Cortez stated, “Choose your actions with humility, love, and enthusiasm.” Sometimes, activism begins with listening, introspection, and self-education.

For some of us, the issues discussed in this newsletter or in the zeitgeist over the last two-to-three years may be new, or you are understanding them in new, urgent ways. But, we must remember that they are not new to those who have been and continue to be directly impacted every day. Our newfound urgency cannot and should not be be foisted onto those who have been directly impacted and harmed by these systems for generations.

Indeed, generations of people have been working tirelessly (or, more accurately, exhaustedly) to disrupt, challenge, change these systems to create and build something better and life-giving in their stead. They are the experts and leaders in this change — even as those with significant financial, social, and political power choose to ignore, criminalize, silence, or delegitimize their voices.

So, in grappling with this question — what can we do? — I endeavor to be open and candid about my own journey, share insights about what I have learned and continue to learn, and, most importantly, amplify the voices of the people who are out there doing the damn thing every. single. day.

To that end, I invite you to take some time with Mariame Kaba’s essay, “So You’re Thinking About Becoming an Abolitionist” because I think it offers tangible ideas for a different future.²

Additionally, and to me, more importantly, the essay offers glimpses of a future that might be beyond many of our current imaginations because of how we have been socialized and enculturated, as well as what we see and may recognize as normal.

While it may seem odd to start with the big, ground-shifting work of Mariame Kaba, I think it is essential to have what visionaries like Kaba are imagining and working toward in our hearts and minds before or as we begin our own self-work and work in our communities.

Why? Because

—and this is crucial—the imagination is acquired. It is learned. It is neither instinctual nor universal. We don’t all operate with the same sort of imagination. Rather, the imagination is a form of habit, a learned, bodily disposition to the world.³

In other words, expanding our own visions of what is possible, of what can be imagined is necessary if we want to become part of changemaking. Pushing up against and sitting with resistance to our own (in)visible boundaries and comfort zones is part of that journey. Mariame Kaba’s work engages all of that and more.

To my readers who see the words “abolition” or “defund” and wonder if this is the right read for you, I implore you to read the article all the way through with an open mind, and more importantly, with an open heart. Ask yourselves as you read — what about this work challenges me, causes resistance in me, and why. Instead of critiquing and pushing away Kaba’s work as impossible, improbable, or whatever else, case closed. Ask yourself why you are resistant to her words and sit with that.

In other words, and note to self, I invite you/me to notice, as you are reading the article, the moments when you feel uncomfortable, skeptical, angry—or any feeling, really—stop and sit with it. Ask yourself what you are reacting to and why.⁴ This work cannot just be cerebral, and instead lives in our bodies and spirits because that is both where our prejudice and where our imaginations live. It is this kind of self-awareness that will be required to be a full partner in changemaking, difficult as it may be.

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Thank you for your patience over these last few weeks of change and transition in my world. I appreciate you!

Take good care of yourselves and each other.

Respectfully submitted,

Amy

1. Naomi Murakawa’s Foreword in Mariame Kaba’s book We Do This ‘Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice, p. xix.

2. I highly recommend checking out We Do This ‘Til We Free Us from your local public library, or purchasing it from an independently owned bookstore in your area.

3. James K.A. Smith, “Healing the Imagination: Art Lessons from James Baldwin,” Image, available at: https://imagejournal.org/article/healing-the-imagination-art-lessons-from-james-baldwin/

4. Resmaa Menakem’s book My Grandmother’s Hands, Ibram Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist, and Layla Saad’s book Me and White Supremacy offer insight and guidance for exploring the physical and emotional reactions to discussions about racism, oppression, colonialism, and violence, as well as emancipatory, restorative, or liberatory language.