Strengthening threads of care and protection seems the only way to survive this influx of chaos from the ruling class, which is intentional, which is calculated. When I say care, I mean for yourself and those around you. When I say protection, I mean for yourself and those around you. And for those most vulnerable in this schema. The orders, the freezes, the mandates. They are designed to overwhelm us. To leave us swimming in fear. They are doing their job.
Inflicting fear on people—that they might lose Medicaid, that their government job might be ripped away, that they might be collected from church and imprisoned in horrific conditions, separated from family, before being shipped away—is a tactic for control. Fear shrinks us toward inaction and apathy. It prevents us from creating the world we want.
Pushing this administration’s barrage of irresponsible, cruel actions momentarily out of view, the most important question for any era remains with us: How can I organize to meet the concrete, material needs of people around me right now? Are the unhoused fed in my community? Does my aging neighbor need support in the snow and ice? Am I cultivating connection with those around me; am I countering the growing collective fear with interpersonal love?
For me, the goal is never to pretend I have answers. The goal is always to ask better questions. Right now, in the midst of a hostile government takeover by billionaires who want to profit off the rest of us, including those who voted for them, my question is this:
In the face of growing collective hostility, how might we weave collective solidarity and joy? How can our choices, in the everyday, neighborly, mundane sense of togetherness, build towards communal effervescence rather than despair?
I am asking everyone these questions—including those who voted for this regime. How do we reach, together, towards a happier quality of life for all people? Because this isn’t it. When I ask people who voted differently than me if they think workers should be paid living wages, for example, they say yes. But fear, divisiveness, and mass manipulation of those two things prevent us from going any further.
I have a theory, which is that we are asking people to care about the vulnerable other, but that people cannot care about the vulnerable other until their basic needs are met. The idea is based in trauma studies and crisis management, which generally understands that no growth or improvement can take place for struggling humans until baseline homeostasis has been reached.
People require basic safety, stability, and wellbeing before they can attempt any kind of healing. Put another way, we can ask people to care about their trans and migrant neighbors, but until those people have their fundamental needs met, and feel they can afford rent, groceries, and health care for their own families, they will not be able to offer real empathy to anyone outside their vortex.
It’s too bad, but it’s true.
Living wages. Housing. Economic relief. Safety. Health care. These are the basics, and they remain non-negotiable. Until we have them, we will be looking for repair inside a scenario that makes it impossible to achieve.
For now, our task is to cultivate solidarity and effervescence where we can. We still do not know how much damage this administration is going to do. Our legal system has to resist authoritarian takeover on all levels. But in the face of crisis, intentionally crafted communal resilience can lay the groundwork for another kind of world. Keep your faith in that.
Thanks so much for being here. <3 LM
WE’RE ALL FRIENDS HERE is written by Lauren Maxwell. Can you help us grow? Send this to a friend and ask them to subscribe. Share it on Instagram and tag @lauren_only. If you enjoyed this essay, please heart it and consider becoming a paid subscriber to support more work like this. Thank you so much for being here!