Since no one is coming to save us...

In How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community, Mia Birdsong says “We have to try to build a stronger shield against systems of oppression and work to lessen the damage they do. And since no one is coming to save us, I’ve found that the most effective path forward is with others who need these same supports.”

Since no one is coming to save us, the most effective path forward is with others who need these same supports.

Today especially, I feel the need for “a path forward with others who need these same supports.” 

I need to be with other humans who know how terrible this day is for democracy, humanity, and the planet. 

I need to be with others whose neurodivergent brains are not something to fix or beat out, but – when accommodated and allowed to work as they do – actually come up with the best, most creative solutions to the problems that are going to be mounting even higher, even faster now. 

I need to be with other business owners whose work is helping to build a better world, who are adamant about building that business the human way, not just to keep ourselves out of the capitalist human-eater but to help others escape it too.

And I’ll tell ya, I feel like I’m finding that path with those others on Instagram (and thus here on email, at my free Tuesday Coffeehouse Table, and just in general friendship). Even though Zuck sucks (and he’s such a dork, both total understatements) and he's – together with X and Tik Tok now – totally in Trump’s pocket, I don’t want to give up that space.

I chose not to participate in the Meta ban this week because this space is too important for us to abandon it now. No, it’s not really the commons or the safe third space we might have hoped it was, but for now, it is where we’ve found community and this community is going to be the thing that gets us through the bad shit that’s coming.  

Some friends were talking about how the vibes were so much better on Tik Tok, that you could be more free, more casual, more yourself there vs. having to be more “professional” on Instagram. But aren’t we the ones who set the vibe on these platforms? (Aside from the algorithm, which will for sure lead a certain way but can’t yet dictate what you create.) So while we have these spaces, let’s really “do them” YOUR way. YOU set the vibes, attract YOUR people, (maybe make sure to also get their email address or phone number or bat cave address), but basically, let’s STAY to spite “them,” to continue building and organizing and all the things they’re trying to ruin these spaces to stop us from doing.

Because as Mia Birdsong also said, “It’s not about getting as much out of it as we put in. It’s that our output is transformed into a wholly different material that’s not possible to create alone like we are spinning gold from straw or transforming paper cups into nebulae. It’s only in an environment with others that this generative, multiplying power can be created.”

It’s only in an environment with others that this generative, multiplying power can be created.

Be you.

In these spaces.

In SPITE of them.

For your people.

So your people can be them.

So we can build something better together.