Real action starts on the ground.

Real Action Starts from the Ground

Photo by JJ Shev on Unsplash

I really am right here in the swirl with you all, and you don’t need me to tell you that things are pretty fucked up right now. I may have spent the past few years suggesting that we could change course — that we needed to read what was happening, and then simply establish the bonds, practices and sensibilities that could avert America’s even justifiable backlash against neoliberalism from becoming full-fledged authoritarian rule. Try to understand where “the other” was coming from, and reach across the aisle to our red state brothers and sisters and help them see we have common interests and fears.

But I think we all sense now that things have shifted from “something is coming” to “we’re soaking in it.” We’re over the edge of the event horizon and in a different state of being. The other shoe has dropped. People are getting killed. The world has reoriented from the United States as ally to United States as part of a new axis of authoritarian powers. My European friends have sent their condolences.

On the one hand, I’m simply embarrassed. (I was negotiating to do a talk in Berlin, but after Trump told the rest of NATO that none of their countries came to our aid after 9–11, I just caved and told them I’d do the talk for free. Why do they even want to hear from an American, right now?)

But more to the point, I’m as afraid and confused as any of you. And like those of you who are filling my inbox with questions right now, I, too, am asking “what should we do?” How do we prepare for the next assault on our liberties, on another American city, on another human being trying to shield the vulnerable from state violence? What is next? It’s going to get worse, right? Should I buy a gun? What do we do?

Preparation is good and real, and I’ll get to some things we can do at the end of this piece. But this focus on preparing for “what may come” can also distract us — especially if it takes our attention off what is actually here right now. About anything more, we are really just guessing.

And this guessing and speculation can separate us from the moment, and our power. Sometimes, it may be healthier and more effective to respond to what is than strategizing for what may be. It spares us from projecting a logic or intention onto the actions of whoever or whatever is working against us. Putting ourselves into their mind — Trump’s mind? — is an act of mimesis, or mirroring, that creates some simulation of an inner turmoil that makes no logical sense to anyone else, lacks any true predictive power, and only immerses us further into that bizarre world view. What’s Trump thinking? I don’t know. What if we don’t need to know?

The alternative — sticking with what is actually on the ground and already here — safeguards against falling into an ends-justifies-the-means misstep, ourselves. We don’t strike out at the phantom attack preemptively, like an immune system attacking the body’s own cells as if they were pathogens. Or, worse, look at the human beings who have been coerced into their hostile postures as the enemy, rather than confused future allies.

When we are aiming to bring our very best selves to the moment we’re in, whatever we do has to be correct, aligned, and congruent with our values. If you are not doing it in the moment, you are not doing it.

The question that people keep asking me now is “what do we do about this?” And while I think there are many approaches to activism and resistance we can take right now, I want to step back from the “what action do we take” to “what comportment can we embody?” In other words, how do we metabolize this moment? And from there, we can begin to consider what actions or approaches that comportment may engender.

So bear with me. You can act in ten minutes from now if you want to. The problems and chaos will still be there for you to engage with when you get to the end of this piece. I promise. But stay with me for a moment here if you can. If there’s no one crashing through the door, or within earshot crying for help. Let’s take a minute.

Now I never lead this embodied-practice-somatic-guided-visualization stuff, but for a second it may behoove us to “be here now.” So, humor me. Just take a breath in through your nose, and out your mouth. And if you can stand it, just one more time. Thanks.

I’ve been living through a really tough patch lately. You may have, too — as everything seems to happen at once these days. For me, the anguish seems to be coming from the bottom up, the top down, and in from the sides all at once.

My daughter got really sick this month. Hospitalized and everything. They’ve now concluded it’s Crohn’s, a digestive disease — yes the same kid who got surgery for endometriosis last year. And I’m trying to be “always on” for her. Having a kid is like gaining an extension to your nervous system over which you have no control. All vulnerability. And of course I chalk up these so-called auto-immune diseases to environmental toxins, microplastics, packaged foods, antibiotics, forever chemicals. I’ll take time out from protesting those things to help my kid deal with their effects.

Likewise, I’m trying to be present for her, while at the same time seeing the footage from Minnesota — people getting rounded up by deputized Proud Boys; Venezuelan sailors mowed down while clutching to their boat debris; Democrats getting indicted for basic opposition; fake news leading to presidential declarations about Somalians embezzling billions of dollars from daycare funds; Greenland. And all the email and messages from people wanting to know what to do.

And I’m sure all of you are in similar positions, with loved ones confronting the fallout of our artificial civilization, and concentric rings of friends and allies increasingly impacted or at the very least unsettled by what they see happening around them, and in their name.

It is authoritarianism when the government, the president, and the attorney general say that protestors killed by federal agents were terrorists engaged in massacres, that Alex Pretti was an assassin, or that Renee Good “ran over” an officer. When the government makes statements that they and we all know are not true, and they know we know they know it’s not true, but still say it anyway? That’s authoritarianism. It triggers lots of stuff: that abused child feeling, that powerlessness, the sense of horror. But it’s not something that could happen or will happen. This is happening. We’re soaking in it.

We can’t help but ask ourselves and each other: what is next and what should I DO? Between the attorney general telling Minnesota they will withdraw federal agents from the state if the governor turns over their voter rolls, 15 million Americans living in their cars, the collapse of the NATO alliance, Gaza, the extra-judicial beating and killing of citizens like Alex Pretti and Renee Good in the street by masked regime-funded gunmen, the conflation of loyal opposition with domestic terrorism, the threat of an Insurrection Act that could even postpone the midterm elections? Not to mention the environment, which is seemingly on the back burner. Or Larry Ellison’s “Project Stargate” to collect everyone’s DNA and use AI to surveil us biometrically; the Pax Silica plan to maintain control of the AI minerals supply chain; Trump’s bank account in Qatar where he’s collecting both Venezuelan oil money and the billion dollar contributions from authoritarian states for his Middle East Board of Peace? This is it.

I’ve got friends busy comparing the pace of current events with arc of Nazi history in order to project their next move. Is the government intentionally terrorizing people in cities to provoke violence and have an excuse to institute martial law? ICE is buying the old Pep Boys warehouse just up the Hudson to process prisoners. Does that mean New York City is next?

Another way of imposing authoritarianism is to give victims false victories. Try outrageous things and then pull back. Like, shoot some citizens, then withdraw a bit and replace the guy in charge. Or threaten invasion of Greenland, and then compromise by just claiming all the rare earth minerals. Show the victim you can kill them, and then “reward” them with mere abuse. When the oppressor “backs down,” it’s strategic. It means we’ve become ready to accept their terms — which can still change at any time. After all, the bully doesn’t actually beat us up if we give him our lunch money.

We’re all floating somewhere on the multi-axis spectrum between rage and despair, futility and action, or resistance and helplessness. But the gestalt reaction to being terrorized can become the mirror image of inflicting terror. The somatic response, the clench, the inward spasm of fear and rage only creates the same violent impulse in ourselves. Or if not violent, antagonistic, dopamine-driven, out for vengeance, in need of fulfillment, retribution, completion. Like a mousetrap just begging to snap. Gimme an excuse. I have to do something.

The Customs and Border Protection agency itself (the one whose officers killed Pretti) was formed in reaction to the terrorist attacks of 9–11. See? Terrorism works best when it gets its victims to turn on one another, with violence. So let’s hang on a second. Let’s be with this before we do something about this.

We have to metabolize what’s happening in the moment in order to respond, rather than react. Be with it. Feet on the ground. No alienation. This is happening. It’s kind of a bad trip. So make like a mushroom and metabolize, breathe, integrate, then extend.

Metabolize this yourself, individually, so you can find someone else and start to do it collectively. So yeah, call your friend or, better, visit your neighbor. Meet your neighbor. Not in panic, not looking for reassurance, but as that person they will want to turn to for how to be present and alive in this moment.

For it is these connections on the ground — these friendships and interdependencies between real people — that are the greatest inoculation against panic and false polarities. This connection to others is easiest way to stay in the real world rather than escape to the abstracted landscape of ideologies (however enlightened those ideologies might be). Most important, these connections make us tactically defensible as a community against ICE, agitators, fascist gangs…whatever.

Your extreme local, embodied community is your only truly real one. Think of it this way: Whose bodies are closest to yours when you’re sleeping at night? Those are the ones who can keep you safe. You have to know these people, care about these people, or even just recognize these people.

When we know each other, our relationships transcend whatever economic or class or other artificial distinctions have been erected between us. That’s what all those distinctions for. Likewise, all the figures on the TV or pinging us from the cloud are there to distract us and isolate us from our interconnectedness here on the ground.

But let me tell you this: it’s all ground. The figures aren’t real. Even Donald Trump is ground — more so every day. The figures are just extruded ground. Substance phantomized into image. Ghosts empowered by our attention, our desire, and our fear.

Yes, they can be useful. Gods, laws, ideas…they’re what gave rise to ethics, the Enlightenment, democracy itself. But they are abstractions, amorphous, and require real agreement and social construction from people in order to function. They are second-order phenomena. Without ground, the figures don’t help. Without community, democracy can’t even happen. We are the ground. There’s nothing separate.

That’s why I’m taking a step back from activism or reaction, and I’m instead asking we start by just aiming for basic coherence, on an individual level, and then with the people around us.

Who are the people around you?

Who are they? What do they need? What can they offer? I used the recent storm as an excuse to reach out. I put a note and a copy of Team Human on everyone’s door on the floor of my building. Hey, this is me. I’m Douglas. I write books. Thought I’d introduce myself. I’m here if you need anything.

Gotta start somewhere. And it’s not political or lefty to find out if there’s an elder person or someone who needs to be checked up on in a storm or a blackout. Or if you live out in the real world, who has water? Who has a chainsaw? Who knows first aid? I know, that sounds advanced. Like real mutual aid. So how about do it the easy way: Knock on someone’s door and ask for something. An egg. Borrow an egg. And bring one back the next day.

Know these people. Know their faces. This is your squad. You think a war is coming? Okay, it’s your platoon. The more you know and depend on these people, the more resilient you are against any adversary — be it storm or stormtrooper.

Create the conditions for community support, safety, and awareness. Then the good stuff happens. I lived in Greenwich Village in the early 90s at the peak of the AIDS crisis when gay men were getting chased and murdered in the street in great numbers. Those of us who had apartments on ground floors started putting pink triangles in our windows, so gay men knew they could seek refuge with us. They had a place to run. No one else knew what the symbol even meant. But the more pink triangles that went up, the more people realized that practically every home was part of this effort. Not a “movement” toward something, but a state of being. Of presence. Of readiness.

The movement, the activism, the ideals arise from that. They are the figures that emerge from the ground we have prepared and embodied.

And they are local. In Minneapolis, people are joining Signal messaging groups by the block. All the organizing apps were removed from the App Store for fomenting insurrection; so people were forced to create their own hyper-local messaging groups — at the scale of just one city block. Each one has an organizer who can report up to the neighborhood group, and so on. Not everyone needs to be everything to everyone all the time. The network takes care of that.

The more networked we are, the more specialized we can be. The more grounded we are in our area of expertise — be it foraging, immigration, biodiesel, childcare, or local councils.

Without connection to the people and communities where you live, all of these stresses and TV images are food for abstraction. No ground, just figure. And then you are on the path to dehumanization. Before long, you’ll be suffering from some version of Steven Miller’s hallucination of white people being replaced by Somali killer insects.

The only direction that goes is toward force. Brute force. Step on the bugs like that sadistic boy in fourth grade we all knew who would pour lighter fluid down an ant hill, set the colony ablaze, then watch all the burning ants come running out. That’s Steven Miller’s set and setting. Those who don’t agree with him are “Un-humans.” Can we resist the temptation to go there? That truly bad trip of might-makes-right?

“Might makes right” is not even an argument; it’s just the excuse to get to express the sadistic urge. That compromised, vicarious way of experiencing ground through the annihilation of the other. The “dom” energy, except it’s not play. There’s no consent. Just the bam bam bam bam.

Any of us could go to the sadistic extreme. And the best way to prevent it is also the best defense against those who have gone there. Find the others. Join Team Human.

You want to know things you can do? After you’ve grounded yourself, met your neighbors, established bonds? How do you want to help? What would you like to be able to offer? What can you already offer?

You can start by fostering and weaving the fabric of community and interconnection and mutual aid. You don’t have to be on some frontline. Make sandwiches. Creating communities of mutual aid changes how people think about policy and politics. It changes how people vote, who they elect into roles of leadership, which in turn changes America from a place that threatens the sovereignty of other countries to one that understands itself as a member of the global community. We transform ourselves from a country worthy of international boycott into a place people around the world want to visit and support.

Politically? Well 15 republicans crossing over could stop all this. Engage. Join a local chapter of Indivisible. Call your senator and tell them to stop funding the madness. Or, yes, go outside. Take the streets. Join a general strike. Be creative, peaceful, enthusiastic, united activists. With the teachers, ministers, parents, police — yes police — and other protesters willing to do democracy with their embodied presence.

I understand the current administration won a mandate to deport undocumented aliens. But it’s become an excuse to perpetrate violence and create the conditions for authoritarian rule, domination of women, subjugation of people of color, and extraction of the world’s remaining wealth by an elite of billionaires who see us as expendable, lower forms of life. As bad as if we were indigenous.

And what are they really fighting? Us. Team Human. The very bonds of community and mutual aid. Our neighborhoods. A person helping another one. Be that person. A person helping another one.

That’s the most radical, meaningful, sacred, powerful thing you can do. That happens in the moment. In the right now. It’s not a strategy based on speculative assumptions.

It is the first, last and most fundamental premise of self-rule. Find the others. Become the ground.