I recently had the pleasure of doing an Abolition 101 workshop for 350 Seattle as part of their Racial Justice Is Climate Justice Learning Series. I wonder if this short workshop might be of use to other groups trying to introduce a discussion about abolition to their members. If you want to see the resource list 350 put together after, which includes some of the things I mentioned in the video and a link to my slides, look here.
Reading Questions for Intro & Ch 5 of Prison by Any Other Name
I am thrilled to be teaching Prison by Any Other Name this semester in Poverty Law. It’s exactly the right text for this moment, helping students get a wide and deep understanding of how police and prison reforms have failed to resolve problems and ended up expanding the very systems that cause them. I am writing reading questions for my students to help them ensure they are finding the themes in the text and to help them go back to the text throughout the semester. I offer this first set here in case they are useful to other people’s classes or reading groups using this book.
Reading Questions Prison By Any Other Name Intro and Ch 5
Introduction
- Schenwar and Law return to the story of Collette Payne again and again throughout the Introduction, talking about her experience with being imprisoned in her home, her struggle with addiction, her neighborhood, her obstacles to parenting and social life. What did you learn from Collette’s story? What points did it illustrate from the Introduction?
- On p. 3 the authors cite research showing that more incarceration doesn’t reduce crime and may increase it. Why do you think is the case?
- Why are Schenwar and Law concerned that conservatives are working on criminal punishment reform platforms? What’s wrong with people like the Koch brothers collaborating with the NAACP in this way? What questions does it raise?
- Why do the authors say that the First Step Act and other Right on Crime modifications might “entrench the underlying principles of the system” (p. 5-6)? What do you think the underlying principles they are refer to are?
- On p. 8-9 the authors introduce the term “prison nation” from Beth Richie’s work, and the term “prison industrial complex” defined by Rachel Herzing. Why are these terms important to the authors? What do they help us see or understand?
- On p. 10, the authors talk about how dangerousness is framed in criminal justice reforms, particularly when conservatives insist we need to make sure the system keeps imprisoning “people we are afraid of.” They then juxtapose this imagined set of dangerous people to landlords, politicians, and corporations who advocate and create policies that maintain socioeconomic inequality. How might we expand on this critical move of redefining who are the “most dangerous people”? Is there anyone you would add to the list of who is dangerous but isn’t treated like they should be locked up? What might this tell us about where we see and refuse to see violence, or how we define violence to make some kinds of harm invisible?
- On p. 11 the authors raise concerns about reforms that focus on more “sympathetic” people. What are they worried about?
- On the same page, the authors point out that many reforms change the look of confinement, shifting it from criminal punishment facilities to medical or psychiatric facilities. How would a disability justice perspective on criminal punishment reform help us see this problem? Are there things you know about the history of disability justice movement work that could help with this expanded thinking about confinement and injustice? Are there questions you have or things you’d like to know about this?
- What is the problem with trying to make capitivity “kinder and gentler” (p. 12)?
- Schenwar and Law argue, like Davis, that contemporary criminal punishment in the US emerged from slavery and colonialism. Did you notice any new aspects to their argument or did it land any differently with you, reading this idea again?
- If white people are equally likely to use drugs, and more likely to sell them than Black people, why are Black people criminalized for drugs more? How does it work? (p. 14)
- At the top of p. 15, the authors provide a very short summary of how neoliberal economic reforms–reduced taxes, reduced social programs, and increased war expenditure–relate to expanded criminal punishment. What specific polices or laws would you suggest illustrate their points? What else do you know about the items they mention, and other features of neoliberalism, that you would add to that point if you were going to expand it?
- Were you surprised to learn that the immigration detention system we have now that imprisons tens of thousands of people didn’t exist before 2005? Does learning this impact anything about how you see that system?
- How do the authors use the example of the 1984 Sentencing Reform Act to illustrate their arguments on p. 17?
- What are the author’s saying about Mariame Kaba’s idea of “Somewhere Else”?
- Why is prison-like drug treatment unlikely to help people with addictions?
- On p. 22, Schenwar and Law introduce the following question to evaluate reforms: “Are these reforms building up structures we will need to dismantle in the future?” Why is this an important question? What are examples of criminal punishment system reforms that don’t pass this test? Can you think of an example that would pass it?
- On p. 23 the authors talk about freedom and liberation. What do you think these words mean to them? What do you think they mean to the right wing criminal system reformers that they disagree with? What do these words mean to you? What do these words have to do with economic systems, punishment systems, health systems, education systems, energy systems, and transportation systems? What would a “free” world look like, with regard to these systems and the basic needs they meet, to you? Where do you think you got your ideas about what constitutes freedom?
Chapter 5
- What evidence do Schenwar and Law provide that community policing and predictive policing tactics make some communitiies into “open-air prisons”?
- The Black Panther Party and other Black liberation movement organizers in the 1970’s famously asserted that the police were a colonizing force in Black neighborhoods. How does this idea relate to what the authors describe in this chapter? How might the police operate similarly to how a foreign military occupies a city? Various historical and contemporary movements for Black liberation have described the relationship between Black people and the US government as genocidal, or as a war. How might those ideas relate to the information in this chapter?
- On p. 143, the authors note that special police officers are assigned to police public housing in New York City. This is also true elsewhere. What impacts might this have that Poverty Law students would be concerned about? How might people living in housing that has special police assigned to it live differently than people who do not?
- On p. 144, the authors talk about how young people in neighborhoods saturated with police have a hard time hanging out anywhere without being harassed by cops. What do young people do in places that are not targeted with this kind of policing? When you think about these different experiences?
- How does the call for community policing expand policing?
- What impacts do you think it might have on young people to be falsely arrested again and again or to see their friends or siblings experience searches, pat downs, being handcuffed, being thrown on the ground or into police cars, again and again throughout their youth?
- How can you imagined that the kinds of policing described in this Chapter might increase sexual harassment and sexual violence by police?
- What is “broken windows policing” and what are the authors’ concerns about it? (p. 148)
- What are the authors’ concerns about police encouraging community members to come to meetings about safety and identify their safety concerns? What do the authors think is wrong with neighborhood watch programs?
- Is there a way to imagine communities keeping each other safe and having an eye out for each other that is different from the way neighborhood watch programs work now? What would be different?
- On p. 153, the authors describe Project ROSE in Phoenix, where social workers patrolled with police focused on arresting sex workers. From the perspective of a poverty lawyer, what is concerning about this project? Here is an article with more details about Project ROSE for more information.
- Our university, like many, sends campus-wide emails about suspicious people and crimes on or near campus. What impact do you think this has? Does it have any relationship to the kinds of policing we read about in this chapter?
- Law and Schenwar suggest that the way “community” is defined in community policing practices is classed and raced in particular ways that have particular outcomes. How does this defining happen and who is doing it? Who is included and excluded?
- This chapter critiques popular ideas about gangs. How do the authors see gangs differently than how gangs are portrayed in popular media and by public officials? What impacts do they argue gang databases have? Check out these two campaigns that show communities resisting these gang-focused criminalization practices: 1) this campaign to get rid of the gang database in Chicago, 2) this campaign to stop gang injunctions in Oakland.
- Are there any activities primarily taken up by white people that are “gang-like” but authorized by law, which might help as a comparison to how the gang problem is framed in the US? Fraternities? Elite sex and drug conspiracies like those exposed by the Me Too movement and the Jeffrey Epstien case? What about the behaviors of police? Can such comparisons help us critically examine what we are being told is dangerous and where we are being told violence happens?
- Why do the authors say that community policing and predictive policing are public relations strategies for police?
- Community policing frames the problem as “mistrust” between the police and the people they police. What do the authors think is wrong with that framing? A similar framing has been used in recent years about immigrants and police, with various reforms proceeding based on the idea that immigrants need to be able to trust the police. What would the authors say about that?
- What evidence do the authors provide that “racism is baked in” the data gathered by police surveillance methods now being touted as the smart and innovative new way to do policing?
- How would you use the analysis and research in this Chapter to argue against the Trump Administration’s new plans to collect increased personal information from immigrants, including DNA samples?
Free Teaching Guide for New Mutual Aid Book
For years, I have been sad about how mutual aid rarely gets taught in classes about social change and social movements. It is such a vital part of movement building and transformation, and often very mobilizing for students to learn about it. I hope this will be changing as the concept of mutual aid is circulating more. I made a Teaching Guide to go with my new book about mutual aid being published by Verso Books in October, wanted to share now in case anyone is considering the book for fall syllabi.
Abolition-Focused Full-Class Group Project Assignment
I feel emboldened in the current political moment about teaching abolition. Abolition is always on my syllabi, but usually my students have never heard of it and resist a lot, so I have to strategize carefully how to introduce and build the ideas. This year is different! Our own City Council is getting ready to fire cops, our public school system has kicked out the cops, the police union was expelled from the largest labor group, and no matter how limited my students’ media silo, they must be aware of the work happening to defund cops and separate cops from many institutions. So I have created a full-class group project that I hope will give them a chance to deeply chew on these ideas and learn how grassroots work for abolition happens.
Here is the syllabus for the class this assignment is for.
Here is the assignment:
Group Project: Plan a Campaign to End SU Collaboration with SPD and Eliminate Campus Security
Learning Objectives:
- Experience working in a group, paying attention to group dynamics, working to establish a group culture of collaboration, sharing work, meeting facilitation, interest in one another’s participation, generative disagreements, and consensus-building.
- Understand what is required to build shared messaging, to develop coalitions, to plan attention-getting actions, and to apply pressure in order to win campaign goals.
- Write effective, understandable campaign messaging in multiple forms (op-eds, memes, flyers, etc.).
- Understand how police and prison abolition efforts are undertaken.
- Understand how law and law enforcement systems are changed through grassroots organizing.
For the purposes of this assignment, the members of our class constitute a student activist organization on the Seattle U campus. Inspired by the global rebellion against racist policing in the summer of 2020, you all came together to work on breaking ties between SU and SPD, and getting rid of campus security. Now you are planning your campaign to do so. This document and this toolkit will be useful resources.
Your group will meet weekly for an hour during the semester during our Monday class times (excluding the first Monday of the semester).
- I will attend the first meeting to support you all in putting various structures in place for your meetings and answer any questions.
- At each meeting, you will need two facilitators, a note taker, and a time-keeper. These roles must rotate between you as much as possible. It is helpful to create a schedule for these roles at the beginning of the project so people can anticipate their duties and be prepared.
- 24 hours before each meeting, the facilitators must circulate a draft agenda for the meeting to all participants so that participants can give feedback, and ask for items to be added to the agenda. Facilitators assess requests, estimate times for each agenda item, decide what can wait until the following meeting if there are too many items on the agenda. Please cc me on these emails.
- Agendas and notes should be kept in a shared folder, through Google Drive or another service. Please give me access to this folder.
- Your meetings should always include a check-in about timelines and tasks so that you can speak directly to each other about progress in the work and share any feedback or concerns you have with each other and do any planning needed to ensure everything is moving along.
- You should form teams to take on particular parts of the campaign development work. You can adjust those teams as you go—you may choose to meld or further split teams as the work requires. You can use some of your weekly whole-group meeting time to do small group meetings, but you also want to make sure to use the whole-group time to ensure that everyone knows what all the teams are doing and is making any decisions that require the whole group together. For example, the whole-group meetings might be a time to discuss drafts that have been circulated of written materials or graphics created by a team.
By the end of the project, the group should produce the items below. The due date for all of these deliverables is December 3. You will have 30 minutes to present them in class on that day in addition to turning in the finished products.
- A 4-5 page persuasive research paper about SU’s relationship with SPD, and about SU’s campus police, supporting the campaign. This document should be written to an audience of students, faculty, staff and administrators at SU who you hope to win over to your aims, as well as the broader Seattle Community from whom you hope to garner support for the campaign. This document is where more detailed information and analysis that supports the campaign lives, since social media posts and other aspects of the website have shorter persuasive information.
- A plan for building a coalition of other organizations and groups who would back your campaign and how you would work with that coalition to win. Who would you reach out to? Why? How would you talk to those you are reaching out to about joining the coalition? What timeline would you give yourselves for doing that? How many people from your group would it take?
- A 1-2 minute video aimed at making the SU community aware of your campaign and convincing people to back your demands.
- Plan for a social media campaign (including to raise awareness about your concerns and pressure the SU administration to concede to your demands).
- A website for your campaign that includes your video, graphics from your social media campaign, your persuasive research paper, a FAQ about your campaign, and anything else you think would be beneficial. You might look at these campaigns’ websites to see examples: No New Women’s Prison, No New Youth Jail, No Cop Academy, Shut Down the NWDC .
- A plan for some kind of online or live direct action to pressure the SU administration to concede to your demands.
Along the way, the group should produce:
- By September 10, a schedule for each of the different deliverables drafting and editing processes and a roster of the teams that will be working on each element. This is a living document that you can change and adjust as you go.
- By September 13, a plan for how to do the research needed and the timeline for that research, how it will be shared with the group by those who do the research, and what follow up will occur to address unanswered or new questions that emerge. This plan must be shared with me.
- By September 20, research being generated by the researchers should be available to those making the social media campaign and video, through presentations, discussions and/or public notes, so that those pieces of the work can be developed alongside the research paper. The written elements of this research should also be shared with me.
- By September 27, a draft plan for building a coalition and working with that coalition to win your demands.
- By October 11, a first draft of your group research paper to be circulated among you for comments. By October 26, a draft that incorporates those changes is due to me.
- By November 1, an initial written proposal to the group regarding your direct action, to be discussed by the group in one or more whole-group meetings until you settle on a plan.
- By October 18, a draft video script to be circulated to the group for comments/improvements. Please share this draft with me.
- By October 18, a draft social media plan to be circulated to the group for comments/improvements.
- By October 25, an “elevator pitch” script draft that you can all use to talk to potential coalition partners or anyone you’re introducing to the campaign to be circulated to the group for comments/improvements.
Each week that one of these drafts are due, you must post the draft by 10am on the Monday of that week, and I will attend the beginning of your whole group meeting that day at 1:30 to give you feedback.
Additionally, each of you will write two 300-word reflections over the course of the semester on how the campaign is going, with a focus on group dynamics and collaboration. These are due to me on September 14 and October 19. These reflections should consider questions such as:
- How would I describe the group’s culture? Look at this chart to think about examples of qualities a group’s culture might have. What do I like about it and what would I like to see shift? Are there ways I could help it shift?
- How am I participating in the group? Do I feel like I might be over- or under-participating? How do I feel when I participate? How do I feel after? How would I like to feel when I participate?
- Are there people I wish I could hear more from in the group? How could I help them to participate more?
- Are there any stuck roles emerging in the group that are making workload uneven, or making some people’s presence more dominant or more invisible?
- What lessons am I learning about participating in groups?
- How is group decision-making going? What principles from our readings about consensus decision-making do I see at play?
- How is meeting facilitation going? What tips from our readings on meeting facilitation have been useful? What am I learning about facilitating meetings?
At the end of the semester, you will each provide a two-sentence (minimum) assessment for every other student in the group that includes the best qualities and contributions they brought to the group and areas for improvements and reflection.
Podcast Episode on Community Care
It was a treat to get to talk to the brilliant makers of the Rebel Steps podcast for their episode on community care. If you haven’t already listened to them, check out all their episodes. They do a great job breaking down the elements of social movement work, lifting up brilliant examples of different tactics, and making it all feel possible. Listen here.
Let’s Finally Get the Police Out of Pride
This op-ed appeared in TruthOut, June 28, 2020.
For decades, a battle has been raging in queer and trans communities about the relationship between our communities and the police. Pride celebrations mark the anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, in which queer and trans people fought back against the ongoing violence they faced at the hands of the police. That rebellion happened in the context of widespread anti-police politics of the 1960s and ‘70s, when uprisings against policing were raging across the country across movements against colonialism and racism. In the years after Stonewall, police forces reformed themselves in an attempt to restore their legitimacy, including by hiring cops of color and some gay cops, having cops march in Pride parades, and creating policies and propaganda aimed at portraying the police as protectors and saviors of women, children, LGBT people and other marginalized groups.
In many cities, especially in recent years, police departments marching in Pride parades have encountered protesters demanding that police be excluded from Pride. As the movement for Black Lives and against police violence grows, more police departments are simultaneously investing in messaging that they are “pro-gay,” and more and more queer and trans organizers are rejecting this messaging.
Hundreds of cities have adopted the police-initiated “Safe Place” campaign since it was invented in 2014 by Officer Jim Ritter at the East Precinct of the Seattle Police Department (SPD), the very precinct now abandoned by police in the face of recent anti-police protests. Ritter created the pro-SPD propaganda campaign four years after Seattle erupted in protests over the police killing of Native woodcarver John T. Williams, and three years after the Department of Justice launched an investigation of the SPD that found “the use of excessive force” and bias.
The Safe Place campaign encourages businesses to put a rainbow police shield sticker in their windows to let anyone fleeing anti-LGBT attacks know that if they come inside the business will call the cops for them. The Safe Place campaign takes a symbol from the queer and trans liberation movement, the rainbow flag, and puts it on a police badge to declare that the police are our protectors. Critics of the campaign rightly argue that police are leading perpetrators of violence against queer and trans people, not our protectors, and that the “Safe Place” campaign is about police PR, not about the well-being of queer and trans people. We would rather see businesses agree to not call the police as a way to make our communities safer.
This summer’s rebellion against police violence has brought the debate about whether police can be reformed, or whether they need to be dismantled, into the spotlight. It raises questions about whether we could reform the anti-Black racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism and sexual violence out of the police. Decades of failed reform efforts make clear that the answer is no. The last 60 years have seen waves of uprisings against police racism and violence, and waves of reforms aimed at fixing the problems. These reforms have diversified police forces, required police “diversity” training, declared that police would not discriminate, placed limits on use of force, and more.Police are leading perpetrators of violence against queer and trans people, not our protectors.
Over the same decades, police budgets were expanding, police were getting more militarized equipment and training, and policing was infiltrating more parts of society with police presence pervading in spaces like schools, parks and housing projects. The lesson is clear: Reforms that declare that police will stop harming hated groups fail. So many of the police forces that have committed recent high-profile killings (not to mention all the violence short of killing they have been perpetrating) already have the 8 Can’t Wait reform policies on their books, but their violence continues uninterrupted. All the police departments marching in Pride and handing out rainbow police shield stickers still have cops profiling, harassing, assaulting and arresting queer and trans people every day.
In the national debate about defunding police, people around the country are learning to differentiate between empty reforms that name a system as “fair” and real change that makes our communities safer and our lives more survivable. Pride is a good time to think critically about the legal systems that govern our increasingly less survivable lives (in the face of economic crisis, global pandemic and ongoing law enforcement violence), while they tell us we are increasingly equal.
This month, the Supreme Court ruled that discrimination against gay and trans people by employers is illegal under the 1964 Civil Rights Act. This ruling has been widely celebrated. Unfortunately, the excitement about what “legal equality” might mean in the lives of queer and trans people does not square with reality.
Being ostensibly protected by civil rights laws does not necessarily translate into increased well-being or decreased violence against hated groups. One needs only to look to the fact that discrimination based on race and sex has been illegal for over a half century. In the decades since people of color and women supposedly became equal under the law, material inequality — meaning actual harm to the survival and well-being of these supposedly protected people — actually worsened in many substantive ways. This period saw the drastic expansion of imprisonment and immigration enforcement in the U.S., targeted at people of color and marked by gender violence, brutal cuts to programs and benefits for low-income women and children, and an expanding racial and gender wealth gap. Discrimination in housing and jobs may have become illegal, but it is very difficult to prove in court, especially since most people do not have access to legal help, so almost no one gets redress.Queer and trans safety and liberation will not be delivered by courts or police departments. It will come from widespread collective action.
The United States’ shift from a legal system of explicit sexism and racist apartheid to one in which the state is cast as the supposed protector of women and people of color constituted what some scholars and activists call “preservation through transformation.” In the face of the global and domestic uprisings against colonialism and racism in the middle of the 20th century, the law changed just enough to make this system appear fair, while preserving the status quo of material inequality as much as possible.
The role of civil rights laws is not to actually change the harms faced by hated groups, it is to frame the very government whose policies and practices most endanger those groups as their protector. As we face a severe global financial crisis and as wealth inequality climbs to dizzying heights, we will continue to see poverty worsen for queer and trans people, especially those with disabilities, those of color and women, regardless of the Supreme Court’s declaration about protecting us from discrimination.
The Court’s other recent rulings, like the ruling green-lighting the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the ruling saying that asylum seekers have no right to object in court before being deported, tell us more about what is to come for queer and trans people, and for all people. The fact that the same court can say we’re equal and then make decisions that endanger our lives should be no surprise at this point, since the NYPD paints rainbow flags on its police cars while continuing to terrorize queer and trans communities.
This Pride season, we should see growing calls to get the police out of Pride celebrations and to get businesses to stop participating in Safe Place campaigns. This increasing rejection of surface reforms and demand for transformative change — including divestment from policing and militarism and investment in meeting human needs — should help us question celebratory declarations of equality coming from the Supreme Court decision. Queer and trans safety and liberation will not be delivered by courts or police departments. It will come from widespread collective action for what we actually need to live: housing, health care, child care, food, clean air and water, and transportation. We are past the point where putting a rainbow sticker or wrapping a rainbow flag around a cop car, a tank, a courthouse, or a brutally exploitative anti-worker economy can be mistaken for victory or liberation.
New Video: Conversation with Dream Defenders, Ujimaa Medics, Mariame Kaba, and Dylan Rodriguez about Mutual aid
“Mutual Aid” is a People’s Movement: Beyond Philanthropy, Charity, and Dependence on the (Police) State
An American Studies Association 2020 Freedom Course recorded on April 22, 2020
Framing questions: * What is “mutual aid,” and how is it different from charity, philanthropy, and state social services? * How is mutual aid part of current and historical freedom, liberation, and self-determination struggles of different peoples? * How are mutual aid efforts responding to the COVID-19 pandemic? * How can people participate in mutual aid projects RIGHT NOW?
Participants: * Rachel Gilmer, Helen Peña, and Dr. Armen Henderson Dream Defenders (https://dreamdefenders.org/) * Amika Tendaji Ujimaa Medics (https://umedics.org/) * Mariame Kaba Project NIA (http://project-nia.org/) * Dean Spade Seattle University School of Law (http://bigdoorbrigade.com/) * facilitated by Dylan Rodríguez Univ of California, Riverside; President-Elect of the American Studies Association (2020-2021)
What Every Activist Should Know Before Going to Law School
About ten years ago I published this short essay in the lefty law journal Unbound about the myths that mislead a lot of people who want social change to think they should go to law school, and the realities people should know before going. This week, Patricia Sully from the University of Washington’s Legal Pathways program hosted a webinar on the topic where I shared some of these ideas and people asked some great questions. Here is a captioned video recording of the session.
Discussing this with some other people led me to learn about this amazing clip which I also recommend you incorporate into your deliberations about law school:
Mad Maps for the Pandemic
This is a difficult time, and most of us are under enormous pressure. We might be experiencing isolation, illness, income loss, fear for loved ones, loss of loved ones, anxiety, and many other painful circumstances. A mad map is a guide we can make for ourselves, usually best worked on in moments were we are feeling more centered or having more capacity, that we can turn to in moments where things go sideways or we feel ourselves slipping into more difficult states. A mad map can be like a little gift of preparation for a future self who is going into potentially dangerous waters. Your mad map could have any areas or categories, could be illustrated or include songs or physical movements. Below are just some starter ideas and examples of potential content. Change all the language and content as you want so it is meaningful to you. It could also be made as a collage, a song, a zine, or in whatever way is best for you. Some people share their mad maps with friends and loved ones. You could include sections on how other people can support you when you are in difficulty or crisis, and what you do not want them to say or do if you are in crisis.
I learned about mad maps first in an Icarus Project workshop, and later read this zine. You might also listen to this podcast episode and check out this worksheet that was distributed with the podcast.
Signs of Off-Center Thinking, Feeling, and Action
What are you noticing you are thinking, feeling, and/or doing that feels sideways? Some areas to think about when making this section might include:
- Obsessively checking for news or information related to the pandemic
- Obsessively checking myself for signs or symptoms of COVID-19
- Over-working on anything (house cleaning, paid job, activist work, etc.)
- Letting the physical space around me get chaotic
- Not eating or eating in ways that make me feel bad
- Not taking meds or supplements that are helpful to me regularly
- Misusing alcohol, drugs, shopping
- Misusing video games, TV, social media
- Avoiding people I love
- Short-tempered, explosive, or over-critical with loved ones
- Avoiding work that is meaningful to me
- Avoiding work I need to do to survive
- Not taking care of bills, paperwork, unemployment applications or other logistics necessities
- Escalating with a date or otherwise escaping through sex or romance highs
- Any other compulsive behavior that feels imbalanced right now
- Lack of sleep or oversleeping
- Over exercising or not moving enough for what my body/mind needs right now
Guidelines for Greater Wellness
In this section, try set realistic expectations, not pie in the sky guidelines that will cause shame or feelings of inadequacy if they are not met. You can always increase and adjust later. Be aware of harsh “should” messages that may show up here, which many of us have in areas of eating, work, exercise, money, etc. Focus on gentle realistic steps toward greater wellness, mindful of perfectionism.
This section might include things like:
- Limit of number of times per day I check news, research information about the pandemic, or look up symptoms online
- Limits on amounts or times of day I do particular escapist or toxifying behaviors
- How often and in what ways I want to move my body
- Goals for making sure I feed myself in nourishing ways
- Goals for meditation, spiritual practices, or anything else that would help but might be falling out right now
- Types of media I want to avoid, might include deleting certain apps
- Limits on amount of or times of using social media (like not upon waking or before bed, for example)
- Goals (if appropriate for your situation) for getting outdoors or interacting with plants, animals, etc.
- People I want to be connected to, how often and in what ways
- People I need to limit my exposure to and what limits
- Sleep schedules or other rest plans
- Limits on working hours, creation day(s) off or other limits on work, including unpaid activist or artistic work if I am overworking in those areas
- Timelines for taking care of essential paperwork or logistics
- Baseline activities to maintain your physical space and hygiene
Bonus Activities that Help
If the prior section is baseline guidance that you are committing to, this section can have things you might aspire to do, things you know would feel good, things that are lovely extras.
- Kinds of movement or exercise that are fun and feel good
- Cooking adventures
- Gardening
- Music, art, literature I want to listen to, watch, look at, read
- Music or art I want to make
- Spiritual practices I want to try or return to
- Additional ways I want to connect with loved ones
- Additional activities that might boost my mood or sense of purpose, connection, or self-worth
- Ways to beautify my space
- Ways I want to be generous to others
- Things I want to try to improve my sleep, reduce my pain, break my isolation, generate a more structured routine, break up a monotonous routine
- Quality time with certain people or animals
Unhelpful/Untrue Thoughts
Painful or difficult distorted thinking increases when we are under pressure. Often it will be familiar thinking that has appeared in other difficult times. Often it feeds behaviors that are bad for us and disconnect us from ourselves and others. Noticing it can give us a chance to interrupt it and see if it can be reduced. Here are some types of distorted thinking that may be coming up, or you can fill this section with whatever is true for you.
- Scarcity thoughts (about anything—food, money, work, self-worth, sex, health, etc.) like:
- I’m not doing enough.
- I’m doing everything and no one is helping.
- I’m not going to have what I need.
- I better get mine before everyone else takes it all.
- Hopeless thoughts like:
- There is no point in trying.
- I have lost everything.
- I ruined everything.
- Nothing every works out for me/us.
- Shame/self-hating thoughts like:
- I’m a fraud.
- I am undesirable.
- I am the worst.
- I don’t deserve help/care/support/love/admiration/survival.
- I am a bad person.
- Superiority thoughts like:
- No one else can do this right.
- No one else can see the truth like I can.
- Everyone else is handling this incorrectly.
- Any criticism or feedback about my behavior is incorrect/inappropriate.
- Hypervigilant thoughts like:
- I better check [the news, my loved ones well-being, my bank account, my body, my symptoms, my food, others’ opinions of me, social media, or anything] again and again.
Helpful Truths to Remember
In this section, call on your most centered self, your inner adult, your inner kind parent, your highest spiritual self or however you think of that part of you that has loving and compassionate perspective. Go through the distorted thoughts above and list what the part of you thinking each thought needs to hear or remember to diffuse the power of that thought a bit. The examples below may help you generate your list.
- Everyone is having a hard time right now. It is okay that I am not functioning “as usual.” I can cut myself some slack.
- Even if I feel alone, I am not alone. There are many people experiencing what I am experiencing. There are people who care about me.
- It is okay to be distracted and disoriented right now, and to feel dissatisfied. I don’t have to try to solve those feelings. I can try to be compassionate with myself about them, and also try not to act out of them in ways that hurt myself.
- There is nothing I have to do, and all that I choose to do will be better for me and others if it doesn’t come from this “must” and “should” feeling, but instead from sober discernment of how I can care for myself and others.
- This is a precious time to connect with loved ones give them my attention. I can do this from a place of desire, not a place of inadequacy.
- It is okay for me to place limits on what I can do for others and say no to things that don’t work for me. Everyone deserves to exist, including me.
- I don’t have to do anything perfectly.
- It is okay to try new things. I can stop whenever I want.
In case it’s useful to read my mad map, here’s what I have so far.
Dean’s Mad Map for the Pandemic
Off-center feelings/experiences/behaviors:
- Checking the news too much/consuming too much info about pandemic
- Distractedness and difficulty staying on one task
- Perfectionism about tasks (mostly related to activist work)
- Irritation/impatience during meetings
- Critical thoughts/comments about myself and others
- Sense of scarcity about time to work
- Avoidance of certain people who know me well who, if I talked to them, I might feel more of my feelings or be held accountable about caring for myself
- Obsessive thinking about tasks, including at night and upon waking
- Craving escapist activities/judging that craving/over-regulating escapist activities
Guidelines for Greater Wellness:
- Only listen to news once a day, and at most one additional podcast related to pandemic
- Meditate every day at least 20 minutes
- Physical therapy exercises every morning
- Walk outside every day, at least 3 times a week a walk more than 2 miles
- Yoga or weights at least 3 times a week
- Time set aside to talk to CB when we aren’t doing anything else
- Centering practice 1-5 times/day with connection to feeling of purpose
Bonus Activities That Help:
- Board games or cards with family members
- Listen to music instead of podcasts
- Put on a fun outfit and go for a walk
- Phone date with CW
- Longer meditations
- Bring in flowers from outside
- Snail mail & crafting
Unhelpful/Untrue Thoughts:
- I’m not doing enough (activist projects, self-care, writing, correspondence with loved ones).
- I’m a bad friend, boyfriend, caretaker of dogs, uncle, sibling, nephew, etc.
Helpful Truths to Remember:
- My conditioning makes me want to respond to the unknown of this time with over-doing. There is nothing I have to do, and all that I do will be better for me and others if it doesn’t come from this “must” and “should” feeling, but instead from choice and sober discernment of how I can be of service.
- This is a precious time to be connected to the people and animals I live with and give them my attention. I can do this from a place of desire, not a place of inadequacy.
- I benefit from my self-care practices and I can notice feelings of avoidance but remember and choose the benefits instead.
- I don’t have to do anything perfectly. No need to use self-care practices as a space to feel inadequate.
Areas Where I Want to Build More Boundaries or Guidelines:
- Start/end times for working
- Focusing on one task at a time, e.g. turning of internet when writing, answering email during a distinct block separate from looking at social media or other tasks
Mutual Aid Disaster Relief Interview!
Roberto Sirvent and I are publishing a series of interviews with mutual aid groups in Black Agenda Report. Check out the second in the series, with Mutual Aid Disaster Relief!
