Werd I/O

Whatever you celebrate this December - or even if you don’t celebrate anything at all - happy holidays.

For everyone, this has been an intense year. From America’s attempted fascist coup in January to a shocking global COVID surge at the end of the year, it’s made 2020 - a year so bad they wrote songs about it - look like the warm up act. And that was just the baseline; everyone had to endure life’s inherent ups and downs on top of all this.

In all this, I’m grateful for you. Thank you to everyone who’s read, responded, reshared, and built community with me. You’ve all made my year better.

And to my friends and family: I lost my mother after a ten year fight this year, and there’s no way I would have made it through this year without you. So much love to you.

I’ve been reflecting on what the future might bring, and I’m sure I’ll have more to say on this. I know that 2022 will be about building, figuratively and literally. It will also be about being myself: while I always want to grow and learn, I don’t want to shave off my edges to fit into other peoples’ templates. Between COVID, climate change, and current events, the moment we’re in demands that we show up both authentically and radically, and cast off manufactured expectations to put the full weight of ourselves behind moving forward towards a safer, more equitable, inclusive future. That’s what you can expect from me, and what I hope for from you.

In the meantime, it’s all about community. As a multicultural atheist, these holidays are about togetherness more than anything else. I’ll look forward to spending time with my family and remembering my mother with love and fondness. I hope you get to spend time with the people you love this winter.

‌I’m posting Fairness Fridays: a new community social justice organization each week. I donate to each featured organization. If you feel so inclined, please join me.

This week I’m donating to the Coalition on Homelessness. Based in San Francisco, the Coalition on Homelessness “organizes homeless people and front line service providers to create permanent solutions to homelessness, while working to protect the human rights of those forced to remain on the streets.” This is particularly important in a world where some of the most wealthy inhabitants of the city are actively calling for homeless people to be forcibly relocated, and for homeless shelters to not be built in their neighborhoods.

It describes how it works as follows:

The Coalition’s organizing work is accomplished through two focused workgroups: Housing Justice and Human Rights. Our workgroups both have open meetings on a weekly basis, in which homeless people and their allies determine the policies we’ll pursue, and the strategies we’ll take to meet important goals aimed at ending homelessness, and protecting poor people while homelessness exists.

This includes work on housing justice and human rights, as well as publishing Street Sheet. It’s also worth checking out Stolen Belonging, an art project “which documents the belongings taken from homeless residents during the City’s sweeps, revealing the ways in which such thefts steal a person’s ability to belong in their community and the city.”

I donated. If you have the means, please join me here.

‌I’m posting Fairness Fridays: a new community social justice organization each week. I donate to each featured organization. If you feel so inclined, please join me.

This week I’m donating to the Community Justice Project. Based in Miami, the Community Justice Project supports “organizing for racial justice and human rights with innovative legal work.”

It describes its mission as follows:

‌We are community lawyers. In our legal work we collaborate closely with community organizers and grassroots groups in low-income communities of color because we believe that a more democratic, more just and more equal society can only truly come about through grassroots organizing and social movement. We are a part of that social movement in South Florida and strive to support organizing through our varied and often innovative legal work.

Its work includes racial justice, police brutality, immigration defense, economic justice, and capacity building for social justice organizations.

I donated. If you have the means, please join me here.