Checking Out is Not an Option

But neither is burning out. Finding joy and hope in WNC.

Greetings from Western North Carolina! 

Kym had a conference up here this weekend, and so I took the opportunity to bring some of the kids up here for a quick trip to see friends, breathe mountain air, and visit with my parents. 

On Friday I kept finding myself feeling resentful of the time it was going to take me to drive up here - shouldn’t I be using that time to be more productive? I’m so behind on emails! I need to write this weekly column! Etcetera… 

But also on Friday, my friend Danya reminded me to take my own advice: that this is a marathon not a sprint, that we need to embrace those pockets of joy, rest in the presence of our fast changing children, treasure all the beauty the natural world still has to offer. Joy. Peace. Health.

Rest is not my natural state. During my career as a social worker, “self-care” always seemed indulgent to me when the families I was serving were working so hard and faced so many challenges. But eventually I learned that those communities had built-in forms of self-care. In communities that have faced generations of oppression or left family and country behind in search of a better life for their children, struggle was always offset with community resilience that white folks like me don’t have in our culture. Their moments for joy may have been few, but they were rich. 

Another reason I get anxious about rest now is that I worry about the rapid speed of Trump’s authoritarian aggression as well as the public settling into a “new normal.” I’m concerned that if we stop fighting for a minute, it means that we are giving in. Nothing has been more striking to me this week than this piece by M Gessen in the New York times (gift link). Gessen’s experience living in Russia during rising authoritarianism makes them concerned that we have already crossed the line where Americans are becoming too accepting. The article is not encouraging, to be honest, but it is worth reading. Here’s an excerpt:

“We humans are stability-seeking creatures. Getting accustomed to what used to seem unthinkable can feel like an accomplishment. And when the unthinkable recedes at least a bit — when someone gets released from detention (as Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi was a few weeks ago) or some particularly egregious proposal is withdrawn or blocked by the courts (as the ban on international students at Harvard has been, at least temporarily) — it’s easy to mistake it for proof that the dark times are ending.”

Warning: Dark times are not ending soon. Another warning: Checking out is not an option if we want to save democracy. And a third warning: Burning your energy to the ground does not allow for effective resistance. 

So while I’m using this trip to the mountains as a time to rejuvenate, I also have my eyes wide open. And Western North Carolina is quite symbolic for so much that is terrible about this moment, as well as so much that is inspiring. I could not possibly document all the many ways the new administration is inflicting harm on this region still reeling from Helene. Some acts - like withholding FEMA funding and cancelling BRIC and Americorps programs are brazen. Some are less direct, but still tremendously harmful - like the number of people here threatened to lose their health care by Trump’s MAGA Murder Budget. And, zooming out even further, what an affront to a community devastated by a major climate disaster to scoff at the “climate religion.” Even cutting funds that allow the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association to help predict and prepare for future hurricanes. What an insult it is to the lives lost in Helene to cancel all efforts in place to help limit the fast progression of such disasters in the future. 

On a more positive note the resilience out here gives me tremendous hope. Everyone here is working for a comeback. It is striking to hear the stories of how communities came together, both in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane, but also in the long months that followed, and even today. Partisan politics were put aside, humanity returned. The naked truth, that so often seems hidden these days, was impossible to ignore and so everyone got on with the simple business of building back. 

These days the first thing you will hear from anyone from the mountains is: come here, spend a lot of money. And that isn’t a request for their own personal gain or benefit, it is a plea for their entire community to recover. The region is rebuilding, but it has a long way to go. Kym was a little saddened to see how easy it was to quickly get a six person table at one of our favorite Asheville restaurants- Salsa’s. We want to go back to the times it took us a couple of hours to get a table there! So my message to you all- head to the mountains, spend money! 

Being out here also gives me hope because of the tremendous leaders in the mountain communities, like Canton Mayor Zeb Smathers, Fletcher Mayor Preston Blakely, and Boone Mayor Pro-Tem Dalton George. Where some are ringing their hands worrying about who will lead the Democratic party forward, here we see next generation leaders who are both inspirational and effective. If you know other WNC hometown heroes, would you give them a shoutout in the comments of this post?

A trip to the mountains is a reminder that we can recover from hurricanes and we can recover from Trump. And in the hollers and valleys all over this region, people set aside petty hatreds and refocused on values of community and love of a place. 

Western North Carolina is now working to build back, not in the same way it was, but stronger. Mistakes were made and adjustments made for the future. We can do the same on the national stage - but only if we fight for it. Only if we examine our weaknesses and learn from them. And above all, only if we don’t get complacent. Just as Western North Carolina can’t rest easy and assume that will be the last hurricane they ever see, we also need to stay alert and vigilant. We can’t let the new regime become the new normal. So as we live our lives fortified with joy and fellowship, we need to remain outraged at every new abuse, we need to speak up at every new abuse. And we need to stay focused on all the ways we will seize on this time to build back stronger than ever before. 

What you can do this week

• Call Sens. Tillis and Budd: Keep the pressure on to get them to reject the MAGA Murder Budget. Lean on them to avoid trillions in debt and to spare thousands of lives. 

• Don’t forget to sign up for the June 14 No Kings Nationwide Day of Defiance. Organizers need good estimates of how many people are attending so that they can be adequately prepared. I’m going to try to be at the launch of the Hillsborough event and then head to the one in Chapel Hill.

• Srdja Popovic emphasizes how you need creativity to fight authoritarianism. This week with one group, we spawned the idea of secretly distributing a particularly good high school newspaper around in local fast food restaurants. Another person recently suggested collecting all of the creative signs from protests and posting them along roadsides. What ideas do you have?

• There are still tickets for the benefit concert for my friends Lynn Blakey and Ecki Hines. Lynn and Ecki are amazing musicians and beautiful life forces, and it is an absolute tragedy that they are both facing serious cancer at the same time. Join me at this all star show headlined by one of my long-time favorites, Alejandro Escovedo. Thanks to Rene for posting a couple of clips of Lynn and Alejandro singing together on the Facebook version of last week’s post.

• Find Joy: The other night Kym ran in to tell me the first fireflies of the season had arrived. There are no fireflies where she grew up and those first spring nights are like magic to her. They should be to all of us. There’s nothing quite like the June dusk in North Carolina to calm the soul. 

Onward,

Graig