Please don't stand by

It sure is getting hard to keep up.

I have noticed that the contents of my Sunday blog -- which started with a focus on emergency preparedness -- and this blog have been overlapping more.

Sunday, I referenced a book I had recently read; that has been more of a thing for the Friday posts. Today is going to reference some reading too.

Everything is topsy-turvy now, isn't it?

In this case it is from the preface of Let the Record Show: A Political History of Act Up New York, 1987 – 1993 by Sarah Schulman, which had been featured as part of my Pride Month reading:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2024/12/in-conclusion-pride-2024.html

I kept it for the maximum time from the library. I learned so much from it that I kind of hated to let it go. Doing so required typing out some quotes so I could keep them for reference.

For some context, Schulman was working on a documentary that ended up involving hundreds of interviews.  

She specifically was trying to find an answer for how change happens and if there was a common factor in the people on the front lines.

Here is the part from the preface, which is dense and references two other people's thoughts:

My perception is that the fate of society is determined by very small groups of people. Only tiny vanguards actually take the actions necessary, and even fewer do this with a commitment to being effective. The purpose of that combination is to open up new possibilities and set new paths for the larger community. I heard the second-wave feminist philosopher Ti-Grace Atkinson speak on the subject at the fortieth anniversary of the 1968 Columbia University student strikes, and she observed that women in society can only progress when men progress. If men do not move, women are suppressed. She suggested that these great leaps happen every forty years or so. Unfortunately, they cannot be forced; they depend on the zeitgeist. But in the interim periods, there are small groups of people practicing what the writer Gary Indiana called “the politics of repetition,” trying to stop the rate of giveback and regression. Yet when the zeitgeist moment hits – and AIDS activism was one of those moments – there is a mass surge forward as a movement forces the creation of social space where persistent voices can finally be heard.

I hope that is not true. I hope it doesn't take us forty years to be ready for change. I hope it doesn't depend on men. I especially hope that they aren't basing that on the Civil Rights Movement when I look back at how much has been undone and is still being attacked.

If it is true, I know which side I want to be on.

In addition, there was something else from the introduction.

After talking to many people who seemingly had very little in common, there was a click.

These were people who were unable to sit out a historic cataclysm. They were driven by nature, by practice, or by some combination thereof, to defend people in trouble through standing with them. What ACT UPers had in common was that, regardless of demographics, they were a very specific type of person, necessary to historical paradigm shifts. In case of emergency, they were not bystanders.

Whether that meant working with a hot line or organizing nursing or coming up with and carrying out creative political protests, they couldn't just watch it happen.

These are scary times. If you want to look for the helpers, do it for inspiration but then become a helper yourself. 

That may mean using talents and skills you already have or finding new ones. There are going to be a lot of things that need doing. 

For this blog space, Fridays are still going to be media, whether those works show up on other posts or not. (Some of them surely will.)

Otherwise, February is going to be a series of posts on loving forms of resistance (include self-care) and they will include potential action items.

I use the term "potential" because no one is going to be able to do them all. I do believe that everyone is capable of contributing.  

(I am not completely clear on whether that means just Tuesdays or will involve Wednesdays, Thursdays, and maybe even Mondays yet. Some of this will have to be made up as it goes along.)