March 4, 2022
work from home for justice
Hi friends,
It’s March 4th, a date that sounds like an instruction. This week has been long and challenging, so I would appreciate marching orders (lest I turn around and go back to bed).
The debate over Mr. Putin’s next moves is linked to an urgent re-examination by intelligence agencies of the Russian leader’s mental state, and whether his ambitions and appetite for risk have been altered by two years of Covid isolation.
In an essay — “Russia Has Suffered a Crushing Moral Defeat. And Russians Know It” — published yesterday, Alexey Kovalev describes the seeds of an anti-war movement in a nation where dissent is a risky activity.
Kovalev also reports the tremendous hardships that Russians are already facing due to the wartime sanctions, and the horror and confusion of what it means to them to be at war against people who are bound to them by ties of blood and affection. He concludes:
As the country continues to bomb and terrify Ukraine, more and more Russians may wake up to something only a few dare to say publicly: That Mr. Putin is an existential danger not only to themselves but also to the world. And he must be stopped.
There’s been some powerful discussion about the coverage of the war and how it has exposed more plainly than usual the racist assumptions underlying news reporting. The examples are too numerous to recount, but this will suffice to illustrate the problem:
[W]riting in the Telegraph, Daniel Hannan explained: “They seem so like us. That is what makes it so shocking. Ukraine is a European country. Its people watch Netflix and have Instagram accounts, vote in free elections and read uncensored newspapers. War is no longer something visited upon impoverished and remote populations.”
What all these petty, superficial differences – from owning cars and clothes to having Netflix and Instagram accounts – add up to is not real human solidarity for an oppressed people. In fact, it’s the opposite. It’s tribalism.
Race is a social invention — one of the most durable and pernicious — that allows us to discount the humanity of some people and elevate the humanity of others. This isn’t news.
We know it from what Gwen Iffill named the ‘missing white women syndrome.
We know it from the vast racial disparities in our own so-called justice system.
We know it without thinking about it, because it is so pervasive.
My springling sent me a TikTok video, which is not explicitly about race, but is about all of the ideas people invent and agree to.
Watch “Everything’s Made Up” by Flamy Grant.
Anastasia Higginbotham has written a beautiful book for children called Not My Idea, which is about the power of rejecting bad ideas. Which is not to say that it’s easy. We have been steeped in the bad ideas of race and racism our whole lives.
A few days ago, I watched a video I can no longer find, in which a woman who looks like someone I used to work with stood on a line waiting to arm herself so that she could defend Ukraine. It reminded me of a conversation I’d refused to have about which country we should move to when democracy is destroyed here. I felt that this Ukrainian woman had something to teach me.
I never saw the images of Iraqis and Syrians and Afghans bravely arming themselves to fight an invasion by a superpower. If I had, would I have felt the same connection? I don’t know.
The only marching orders I have for today are to pay attention to ideas and remember that all ideas are not created equal. We need to target the ascendance of bad ideas while having compassion for ourselves and others who are in their thrall. Education seems like a too-slow and inadequate tool for the job, and also the best one available.
There will be more action next week.
with love,
L