To My American Friends

I wrote the post that follows on May 3, 2022 just as news was leaking that Roe was about to be struck down. The stakes today are far greater and the threats graver still, but the fundamentals of why the current moment feels so unfathomable and the simultaneous need for us to move from paralysis to action still rings true. Rereading this, I was grateful to my past self for having captured how the early days of the war felt. That self was a bit braver and a bit more clear-eyed. She gave me the courage to get back into the fray. Perhaps she can help you.

To my American friends,

If you woke up to news of the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion arguing to overturn Roe and feel like the ground has shifted under you, I have some hard-won advice based on what I have experienced in the 69 days since the start of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine (and yes, we’re still counting the days). [Today the war in Ukraine is in it’s 1,078th day and Ukraine still fights. It lives on and produces art. It reminds us of what is at stake in the fight for democracy.]

First, grieve. You have a mental map of the world and some fundamental part of it has just been shattered. Give yourself the time you need to experience this devastation. Whether it’s on your behalf, on the behalf of people close to you, or on the behalf of people you’ve never met and will never meet, let yourself experience this loss.

Second, forgive yourself for not doing more earlier. Did I understand intellectually at least 5 years ago that Putin’s Russia was making a hard right turn towards authoritarianism? Yes. Did I continue to travel to Russia and try not to think about it too hard? Also, yes. That is human nature. We may have felt very strongly when Trump was elected or Ruth Bader Ginsberg passed, but then gone on with our lives. Some things are impossible to act on because we want so badly for them not to be true. The only thing that we can change is our behavior in the present and that is all that matters now.

Then, prepare for the emotional rollercoaster. The rage, the grief, the denial—they are all real and they will visit you in turns. But for me the worst was the self-doubt. You may come to a place where you feel ready to take a step to become more politically active, to do something you’ve never done before, but the people around you may not understand. Sure, their inaction will be maddening, but you will also begin to doubt yourself. In word or deed your friends will wonder if you really need to be quite this intense about things and you will begin to feel that maybe you are wrong. This is a useful time to remember that the “road to fascism is lined with people telling you to stop overreacting.” The people around you mean well—they don’t want to see you suffer, but they may also be uncomfortable with your actions. By a collective agreement most of us aren’t overly politically involved and if you begin to talk to strangers on the street about a war, well, you’re breaking those rules (and, yes, that is a real example of a thing I have done many times since February 24th). By breaking those rules, you start to ask something of people that many aren’t ready do. Do not let their discomfort stop you.

Whatever you’re ready to contribute to the fight, contribute it. You don’t have to have all the answers or all the money or all the time. But if you believe in what you’re doing, you have to dig in. It will seem impossible that a day or three days or a week or a month [or nearly three years] of this is possible, but it will keep going and you will need to be ready to be in it for the long haul. Laura van Dernoot Lipsky’s Trauma Stewardship is a place to start thinking about how to stay sane while staying in the work.

Millennials have been sold on a politics of inevitability since childhood (Timothy Snyder’s The Road to Unfreedom has shaped my thinking on this concept—it feels more and more like essential reading these days). Things were bad once, but now they were steadily improving. The Cold War was over, and the democratization of the world was inevitable. The Civil Rights movement had prevailed, a biracial man had been elected president, nothing more needed to be done. Government could be left to the governing and everything would inevitably keep moving in the right direction. Of course, the evidence before our eyes was always in contrast to this promise, but it’s lure is strong. It allows us to cede daily responsibility for the messy unsatisfying work of democracy to others, and as I hope it’s abundantly clear those others are more than ready to step into the void. That, I think, is part of why the events of these last few years have felt like such a betrayal. Not only were they horrific in and of themselves, but for my generation they have also upended the sense we had and were taught to have about how things were and would be.

Whatever you want to do next, you need a community. This moment is about coalition building (even if you will never agree with all of the positions of the people you’re joining hands with). It’s about finding the people around you already doing the work and amplifying their message. When the war started, the major Slavic Studies listhost temporarily froze comments because people were being “too political.” After looking around for someone to do something, I created an alternate space for Slavicists to share resources. At first there was just my rage, but then there was a community of 350 people who were supporting each other. That is a powerful kind of magic, and it is within the reach of all of us, if we can just stop doubting whether our voices matter. Despair, nihilism, cynicism are the enemy as much as the people who actively aim to take our rights away, they are the tools of authoritarianism.

It may feel hopeless, but there is so much we can do. If you have the resources, donate to local organizations supporting abortion rights (especially in states with a trigger law in place in the event that Roe is overturned—if you don’t know much about trigger laws, Handbook for a Post-Roe America is an empowering place to start). If there’s a rally near where you live in the next few days, join it. If you’re a cis man of the right temperament, consider volunteering as an abortion clinic escort. Whether you can sing, or write, or advise on policy, or be a thorn in a local politician’s side, it all matters. Whatever you do now that you haven’t done before is by definition a sea change.

Our institutions are deeply flawed, our elected officials have failed us over and over again, and yet the alternative is what we see in Russia today. If you stop participating in government, the government limits your ability to participate. We aren’t facing 15-year prison terms for turning out into the streets [yet] and we must exercise this right. The most powerful thing we can all do is to show the ruling classes that we are no longer asleep at the wheel.

If you’re still reading this very long post, thank you. I hope something that I have shared will resonate with you and perhaps help you in this moment.

I suspect that many people want to do something more right now and don’t know where to start. If there is interest, I was thinking of using this space to share actions that people can take and create a little bit of community here. Please consider joining me.

If you’re ready to take a small step towards doing something more, there are ongoing efforts to help contact voters impacted in the contested NC Supreme Court election that you can join almost every day this week here.

For a small dose of encouragement, watch the message shared by Elizabeth Warren’s aide at yesterday’s Indivisible rally in Boston: