For the Helpers, 1.2

That's you by the way.

Dear Keeping Time Community,

Many of you let me know that this format worked well for you, so let’s stick with it.

If you’re wondering about the 1.2 in this week’s title—year one, newsletter two. My hope is that the day count never reaches double digits and we never roll to year two.

Stick to the first half of this letter if you’re having a tough week. Read the second half if you’re feeling well resourced.

Please use this as a tool to strengthen and build your communities.

I love you all so much.

The Easier Stuff

Here are three ways to help this week:

1. From your phone

Last week the House passed HR 7147. This is a standalone Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill. This bill means more money for ICE. Congress has to vote on the bill by the 30th of this week. Please call your senators and ask them not to pass this bill. You can find your senators and their phone numbers here.

If you’re new to calling your senators, it’s easy. You just say, “Hi, my name is ______ and I’m one of your constituents. I live at __________. Please vote against HR 7147 this week.”

Often you don’t even speak with a person, you just leave a message on an answering machine. Admittedly this can feel pointless, but a tally is kept: for/against. When a significant percentage of constituents feels the same way, elected officials take note. Think of it less like making a phone call and more like casting a ballot.

2. With your wallet

ICE agents abduct folks on the basis of skin color. The abductions are opportunistic. A high school student in my neighborhood was kidnapped last week as she walked home. This happened despite our neighborhood determinedly watching out for one another.

Many families are sheltering in place. They depend on their neighbors to bring them groceries and supplies, to help them keep the lights on, to help them with their laundry, to help them make rent, and more.

You can be a good neighbor to these families no matter where you live. The Women’s Foundation of Minnesota has an Immigrant Rapid Response Fund that helps families pay rent. Here’s a donation link.

3. With your kids

I love a good thrift shop, and I know that many of you do too. We all remember from Covid Time how boring it can be to shelter in place. You and your children can keep an eye out for children’s books in many languages, unopened puzzles (so they have all the pieces!), and art supplies in great condition. It’s not expensive to ship packages book rate. If you send a care package to me, I’ll pass it along for distribution. If you’d like, you can include a note of encouragement and support.

This week’s joyful thought is from Rev. Amy at Unity Unitarian: “Be encouraged, friends. All that you do with the intention of care matters.”

The Tougher Stuff

1. Preparing your community

Remember the group you moved from text to Signal last week? The one with your running group, or your poker group, or your Atlanta United supporters team, or your book club, or your wine moms?

This week, consider becoming a supper club!

• First, decide when you’ll meet. Let’s say your club decides to go out to eat every Wednesday at 6 pm.

• Next, identify four family-owned restaurants in your neighborhood that are owned by folks who are vulnerable under this administration. If there aren’t restaurants in your neighborhood that fit this description, drive to another neighborhood.

• Assign each restaurant a different week of the month. Your club goes to Restaurant A the first Wednesday of the month, Restaurant B the second Wednesday of the month and so forth.

• Now all you have to do is go out to eat according to your schedule. If you’re the only person who can go one week that’s okay! Sit at the bar and chat with the bartender. Take along a book you found in a thrift store. Relationships are built by showing up consistently over time.

2. Seeking defectors

Many readers of this newsletter either voted for our current president or are members of politically diverse families and communities.

This week, let’s talk about mutual aid.

I was a middle-aged woman when I first encountered the term mutual aid. Usually the person using the term was a couple of decades younger than I and part of a movement they described as revolutionary.

But mutual aid isn’t revolutionary. I grew up in the Southern white working class. Here are some ways mutual aid worked when I was a child:

• My dad washed my hair and my brother’s hair in the kitchen sink on Sunday nights. He did this towards evening when the kids were playing in the street, and he washed all the heads that needed washing, not just his own kids. Everyone went to school clean-headed on a Monday, including the kids whose parents were less reliable.

• My parents had an HVAC contracting business. My dad repaired the air conditioners and my mom did everything else. Repair people come into your house. They bear silent witness to your struggles. My father did a lot of work for free, especially for elderly folks.

• A good friend of my parents lived with us while getting back on his feet.

This sort of care didn’t end once I reached adulthood. Here are some ways mutual aid has shown up in my adult life:

• A dear friend and mentor of mine hosted community gatherings in her home for many years. She always put out a basket for donations and then quietly passed this money to someone in need.

• When I was in my twenties, I lost my car at a moment when I was very car dependent. I lived five miles away from my job. I worked as a security van dispatcher and didn’t get off work until two in the morning. Public transportation wasn’t an option, and I couldn’t afford taxis. Those five miles were a long, scary trek in the dark! A friend of a friend heard about my situation and sold me a good bike for fifty dollars. Five miles are nothing on a bike! (She had not been looking to sell her bike by the way. I’d seen her scooting around town on it just the week before.)

• All of the meal trains.

This is one of the sadder moments of my life. A cousin told me she’d started storing food and water against catastrophe. We were at her daughter’s baby shower, playing together like kids with her granddaughter’s doll house. “You’re not part of my survival plan,” she said. “If you come to my house, I’ll have to shoot you.”

That is exactly how this administration wants us to live. It wants us to believe that kindness is dangerous and that resources are too scarce to share. It wants us to narrow our sense of family until we’re left with nobody. It wants us to sit by ourselves in our homes, armed and terrified.

We can choose differently. We can be people who would rather share our last can of beans with a stranger than live another day fed but alone. The courage we need to make such a choice is already present in our hearts. We know what kindness is because we’ve received it in our lifetimes.

When did a kind word or small act change everything for you? How might your life be different had this moment not occurred?

Would you help a neighbor with laundry if they were too scared to go to the laundromat?

Would you blow a whistle to alert others if you saw your daughter’s friend being shoved into a car by masked men?

This week’s tough love thought comes from James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time: “Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word ‘love’ here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.”

Until next week,

ginger