Thanks for being here and for being patient with me as the transition to the new website happens (this newsletter will stay here for the time being; I am just exploring ways to wrap up The SELF Project site and weave it in to what I'm doing over at Connective Tissue when that site is live). Shout out to Shelby for helping me keep things cohesive and gorgeous. For real, if you ever need a graphic designer, she's the one to talk to.

Enough! Plays and a Conversation

Last night I acted as the MC of an event held at the university theater, hosted by Ensemble Theater Company of Santa Barbara. It was a series of one-act plays written and performed by students about the experience and effects of gun violence in the United States.

As patrons entered, I presented them with a card that had two questions on it: What are you hopeful will be discussed here tonight? and What are you afraid of potentially being discussed here tonight? As the panel facilitator, I wanted to take the pulse of the audience to see where to dig in and ensure that the conversation was relevant to our local community.

One of the people who had come to see the plays was retired California state senator Hannah Beth Jackson, a strong and consistent voice for gender equality, human rights, and gun safety. She engaged me in conversation about the panel discussion, saying she may not be able to stay for it, and we spoke for a few minutes about the frustration I was hearing from students about the lack of options available to them to solve this problem.

Her response was one I heard a lot that night: "they are more interested in dismantling the First Amendment than they are the Second Amendment. [meaning, I suspect, Republicans] We need to get these youth more politically involved. They have to vote."

The crowd was an unusual mix of 20-something college students and 60+ theater patrons. There was very little, if any, in between. The volunteers from the theater company were enthusiastic about wearing their branded orange Enough! shirts and the ones I spoke with invoked their disgust at Republicans and this administration, and more than once, I heard the refrain that we "need to get these young folks to vote in November."

Part of that is because there is a very polarizing ballot measure on the docket for Californians this November - Prop 50. It was devised as a response to the gerrymandering that happened in Texas earlier this year (an attempt to redistrict so that fewer Democrats are elected in that state), and could have the ability to keep Republicans from being elected in California for as long as it stands. (It is designed to sunset after the 2030 election cycle).

Regardless of how folks feel about that particular ballot measure, I was struck by the vehemence of the 60+ crowd that echoed the refrains I heard before the last presidential election: you just have to vote. Vote, even if it is for the "lesser of two evils" and we will have some breathing room.

I didn't have time to get in to a long discussion with anyone about that last night, but I did wake up at 4:30am today thinking about it and here's what I want to say:

I can't speak for the 20-somethings, but I will say that I don't think I am the only one who bristles at the practice of clinging to voting as a solution to anything, as a primary strategy. If voting as a single act was going to be a solution, then I would have to trust that the people I vote for have earned my trust and will continue to represent my interests and that isn't the case.

Often, voting comes down to one of two things: ceding my accountability (see? I voted. Now it's in their hands. - gestures to the elected official) or giving my power away to someone who hasn't earned it. How often are we told by people running for office that We (meaning the people who agree with us, who are on "our side") need to be in power and then things will be okay? Pretty much always. And then how often has that proven true? During the Obama administration when the Democrats were in power almost exclusively, Roe v. Wade wasn't protected, the Equal Rights Amendment wasn't ratified, we didn't get universal health care. During the Biden administration when they were in power, none of that happened, either.

How often are we told that voting a particular way will give us power, and then when those folks are in office, they hold up their hands and tell us all the reasons they can't do what we're asking because they don't have the power?

The fact is, voting doesn't give us power.

It gives certain individuals authority.

Together, we have power. It didn't take an election to get Jimmy Kimmel back on his show. It took a hundred thousand consumers cancelling their Disney subscriptions. (Don't get me started on how we should have done this for Joy Reid months ago and how it's not shocking it happened in defense of a white man...)

Our power trumps their authority. If we choose to wield it. We have seen it time and again in other countries - citizens standing together in solidarity day after day, marching through the streets united for a cause - and it works. General strikes, ousting political leaders, pro-democracy uprisings.

So why not here?

We want the Easy Button. We want to march one day - preferably scheduled well in advance so we can make sure to have it on the calendar - and have it be done. We want to publicize it, check it off, say we did it, and go home. We want to vote, cede our power, throw up our hands and say "what more do you want from me? I'm the good guy. I voted."

As I perused the responses from patrons of the show last night before convening the panel, I read the same thing over and over again: what can we do about gun violence? Why won't the older generation (the ones in power) DO something? How can we stop this before it gets worse? Here is how I began:

I kept reminding the crowd last night that this is our pain, our experience, ours to grapple with and solve. These young writers and actors are asking us as communities to come together and talk about it, to hear them when they say, as the first generation of young people to live with the daily fear of public gun violence in this country (but certainly not the last), this has to change.

Are we listening?

Are we willing to acknowledge our power and come together to talk about what we can do in our own communities?

By all means, vote.

But don't stop there. Vote as a stopgap and then join others in your community to talk about hard things, to find out where the biggest roadblocks are and brainstorm about how to work on them together.

If you're at a loss about where to begin, I have a couple suggestions. I'm holding three more Preparing to Resist workshops in the coming months and you can sign up here. Or you can check out Garrett Bucks' Barnraisers Project. Or you can find an Enough! showing in your area and go watch and connect with your community afterward.

Let's not give our power away by being too afraid to use it. Let's stop disempowering ourselves before we ever begin. Whether your hot-button issue is gun violence or health care or education or something else entirely, start talking to your neighbors and listening to them about what would make their lives better.

Two Years (plus 75)

I cannot let today go by without acknowledging the horrific anniversary that I've felt in my bones and my heart all day long. The siege of Gaza has been happening for two years and countless Palestinian lives have been snatched away, an entire landscape denuded by bombs and toxic chemicals, and hope is fading.

Ahmed and his family have been able to move to (relative) safety and erect tents to live in away from Gaza City. The photos Ahmed sent me of them building the tents made me smile through tears - they are so detailed because he is a trained architect. A trained architect who has been forced to carry his belongings on his back for more than a year since his home was bombed by the Israeli army, leaving one of his children nearly blind. For what?

Ahmed and his wife and two children are with his brother now, and all of them are sick, dehydrated, and malnourished. Despite the efforts to get them out to safety in Egypt with the rest of their family, I haven't been able to make any headway, so for now, they are trapped. And all the while, US politicians send more money and more bombs and shake hands with Netanyahu and smile for photo ops, knowing that the rest of the world recognizes this as a genocide. Something we all said would never happen again.

And it's not the only genocide happening. It is also not the only one the US is financing. I am heartened by the actions of citizens in the EU, folks on the flotilla, and the governments that are starting to call this what it is. I am hopeful and also filled with grief for all of the ways we find to be cruel to one another in the name of "other."

Parting Thoughts

This is a long missive, and I want to be sure to leave you with something joyful. I am inspired by Adrienne Marie Brown and her notion that joy and ease and play are necessary if we are to sustain the energy to make life better. In keeping with that, there will be a part of the new website called Kari's Playground which serves no other purpose than to share things with you all that give me joy and make me laugh. I won't preview it here so that I can save the fun for when the site launches, but one thing that is sure to live on that page is this photo I took this morning of Felix.

Felix is the hummingbird I see every single morning on my walk with the dogs. He is most often sitting on this wire above a pink peppercorn tree in the neighborhood by the time I get there, surveying his kingdom (in my mind - I have no idea what his real purpose is in that spot), and I often cringe slightly when I walk underneath, hoping he won't poop on my head.

Some mornings, though, he is down around the corner, snatching a sip from a blossom and as we walk past him, I call out, "Hi, Felix!" and he zips ahead of us and settles in on the wire just before we get there. I don't know if he's greeting us. I don't know if he is upset that I call him Felix. I don't know if he has a name for me (I wish I knew that, though - that would be the best). But I do know that for the last three years, nearly every single morning when I walk the dogs, he is there, and it makes me smile every time.

Be well, all. Reach out if you need support. Know that I'm here, rooting for us all. Every one.