The 2nd anniversary of Covid shuttering our known world is this week, mid-March. This week will be odd for a long, long time. I grew up in a city that celebrates an annual week-long death ritual to Elvis Presley, and no matter how you approach it, it’s strange. For most of us, any deaths close to us probably happened over the next year as we awaited vaccinations, but 1200 people are still dying daily in the US. A friend’s sister passed away of Covid just last month, a woman with many of her own health complications.
And of course, war rages in Europe, or at least in an important little wedge of it. Not unlike my feelings about public health departments that have ceased tracking Covid, I find myself wondering exactly why NATO exits if not to stop tyrants like Putin from doing exactly what he is attempting, re-forming an Empire in Eastern Europe.
And in both cases, we’re in the trouble we’re in due to massive cultural failures: failure to wage peace as a goal, failure to teach science literacy, failure to halt clear propaganda, failure to support and enact real movements of the people, be it HealthCare For All here in America or the Orange Revolution in Ukraine.
Clearly, our systems are not able to respond to crises, not the deep and real crises we are facing in global disease and war, and I am afraid not the climate-driven crises of our future. These systems were only functioning well for a small segment of our population anyway, those born into certain zip codes or with privileges of race, class and gender.
Our systems have been revealed as so rigid, they could only shatter under pressure. We need new systems, new ways of living, new ways forward that do not sacrifice but nurture, that do not dismiss but engage.
Our greatest failure has been one of imagination. We have failed to envision what we need, what will serve us, and instead attempt to reform rather than recreate, to return to ‘normal’ rather than set new patterns.
We are in an intersection of crashing values and systems and old world orders, and the wreckage is intense. Sifting through it is an important job, as some things may be salvaged. Some of what we have built will survive, and should. But much will be dismantled, and much that is ancient must be remembered, and re-taught.
I have been writing here about some of our new ways forward, and I’ve primarily been writing about the personal choices and actions. I started this 2 years ago with Life In A Time Of Fear, The Beginning and Life In A Time Of Fear, Connective Actions, thinking I would be able to continue on as I had been, knowing that I had messages that were real and hard, but full of hope and possibility as well.
As I documented last month in A Re-Examined Life, I could not.
It took me a long time to regain my footing, and I am not always sure I am on solid ground still. But I know what I know, and I know what I need to say, and what must be out in the world. And so I am just doing it. Please look through the next few blog posts after A Re-examined Life, the ones over the last 3 weeks, about the Connective Actions we can all be taking ourselves. The 3 post arc starts here.
These personal actions are crucial, because preparing ourselves is the hardest part of it all, although it seems like the next steps are insurmountable. And they will be hard, make no mistake about it. The next steps are the questions of transformative change we must take in our common lives, in our civic sphere.
How adaptive can we be? How much common and mutual care can we show? What are our abilities of personal discipline and community sacrifice? How do we form community when our usual mechanisms fail?
How do we form the society, the policies, and the systems that will enable us to thrive through the crises, those we face now and those that are coming?
We must do better choosing our elected representatives, surely, and this means that some of us, some of our friends and family members, will have to run for office. It means we will need to ask those we trust to run for office. It means that we have to be engaged in that part of the process, the recruitment of people better suited to serve the needs than we’ve had.
We have elections all over the country this year. It will probably be one of the biggest midterm federal elections we’ve ever seen, but more importantly, there are local, regionally and statewide elections at play. 36 Governorships will be decided. Hundreds of ballot measures will be floated. Thousands of School Board directors will be elected. Statehouse legislators will be chosen to fill capitols across the country.
Each of these elections matters -the local races, issue bonds, functionary positions, and judicial retainment as well as who is your Senator. There aren’t any unimportant or too-small-to-notice offices in any of our systems. Civil servants emerge and evolve, and no decent leader springs forth like Athena from her father’s head. We need good people not bound to old processes to craft what is necessary.
In addition to these systems of political decision making, we are often constrained by bad corporate policy and unethical leadership. This is one of the places where collectively, people working together have a great deal of power.
In Denver recently, the regional manifestation of a national grocery chain was treating its workers poorly and the union held a strike. It was over within 10 days, even though the company took the union to court and won the right to curtail its protests. Why did the strike work? Consumer solidarity. The parking lots were empty. Families transferred prescriptions. Grocery aisles were bereft of shoppers. The message was clear and it was heard.
We can do so much more together than we could ever do alone. This has always been true and it will always be true. All negotiations include more players than the usual or obvious suspects, and grasping what this means is a large part of doing things differently. Anything that is predictable is if not preventable, then mitigable. If our usual players and processes could have managed this without war, rampant disease, climate disaster, they would have. They cannot.
It is time for new ways. Join us.