I started writing this letter about death—about the presences who died this year, and about how we mourn. I deleted all that because this year is a chance for life. You’re reading this, so you’re alive. Human bodies are infinitely complex. Therefore your being alive every day is the most complicated and profound event you will ever experience; you are that event. This is the no-bullshit bottom of any humanism: every person’s worth is infinite. And luckily this is true.
What do we do with this fact? We organize our lives around it. If a political ideology states that some people are worth killing or torturing, we ignore it as a failure of imagination. If a person says that some people are better than others because of their circumstances, we ignore it as a failure of imagination. Taking seriously this fact is difficult because that seriousness forbids so much regular-seeming activity. Cruelty, given the thousands of years we’ve been trained to be cruel, is the easiest thing in the world. Care is ugly and hard. It will be until we’re regularly caring.
Strangely, taking seriously this fact becomes easier if you less often form opinions. The more you can see what’s in front of you, the more you can really see, acknowledge, and love, the less you need judgements. Our culture is built to persuade us to constantly manufacture petty judgements about everything, because the more opinions we have, the more money we spend. If the essence of advertising is to convince people they’re not enough, the essence of humanism is the opposite of advertising.
It becomes obvious, if you believe this argument, that money is bullshit.
•
When you pay a lot of attention to suffering and cruelty, you will hurt. If you pay attention to this suffering and cruelty habitually, the hurt will seem permanent. It is not. I learned this while spending much of my free time organizing people to solve problems through my local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, as well as through other organizations. Doing this work with most of my free time encouraged my depression, a depression which eventually broached that mistaken promise: death.
Last year I told my friends I needed to spend less time doing political work. I needed to patch myself up and mend my relationships with my family and close friends. I also needed to live more often in my city instead of in a supposed (i.e. bullshit) national narrative. Life in the United States of America is not a grand moral tragedy. There is no narrative, despite temporary and shifting alliances of people working to harm each other to meet their goals. America is just people doing shit, sometimes in tired and boring ways (i.e. cruelly and in the belief they know a fucking lot), other times in imaginative and daring ways (i.e. with care and skepticism). Imaginative work is most often local, and so less often broadcast. You can find it, or make it. But to do anything at all you have to first be alive. In my case, ignoring much of the news, deactivating my Facebook account, deleting social media apps from my phone, making fewer promises, improving my diet, exercising more often, and playing more games with friends helps me be alive.
When I die the world will not be solved because the world is not a problem.
•
In 2018, when I learned about the United States government routinely torturing kids because they crossed the imaginary line we call our southern border, I joined a group of people in song. We decided to try to convince our Governor of New Mexico to stop helping government agents torture kids at the border. Our means were limited: we felt we needed to act quickly, so we did; about 15 of us said we were willing to go to jail; we decided to be peaceable, but to break the law. We walked to the State Capitol, locally called the Roundhouse, and sat down on the carpet in the Governor’s office and pledged not to move until the Governor acknowledged our demands. We sang songs from the Poor People’s Campaign and read our demands to the Governor’s front desk worker. Within an hour, we were surrounded by about 30 state police officers. I watched the cops as they watched us—they were bored, scornful, nervous, playing on their phones, anxious for it all to be over, amused, tired. Eventually, after the State Capitol building officially closed, the cops tried to trick us to leave the Governor’s office. They said they’d arrest us if we walked out, then tried to persuade each person sitting there—with our arms locked and bodies wrapped in those weird aluminum-looking warming blankets government agents give to the kids they’re torturing—that we were doing the wrong thing, that the Governor is good and friendly, and that our protest was worthless. Some of us talked with the cops, arguing. Others didn’t. We refused to stand or move unless we were being arrested. Two of our group, two older women, were put in cuffs and escorted out. Some cops said they were arresting us, and to come with them—then walked some of us out the office and tried to shut the door, shoving us. When we understood together that the cops were lying, we sat back down or snuck back into the office then sat down. Some bystanders were watching and filming with their phones. One guy kept shouting “Nazi cops” and we gently encouraged him to be quiet. The cops handcuffed the Muslim woman in our group, the only brown woman wearing a headscarf, and we loudly pointed this fact out. The cops took off her cuffs, and this woman, Samia, said she wanted the group to go downstairs to the lobby. We went downstairs and sat down on the tile, singing with arms locked. We decided to stay in the lobby until the Governor acknowledged our demands. We stayed there for eight hours. The cops didn’t let us use the restroom—by this point my bladder was a knife. We negotiated with a sweaty state police officer over and over again. Journalists came and asked some of us questions. The Mayor of Santa Fe came to help, but the cops wouldn’t let him inside the building—or anyone else who was gathered outside, wanting to help somehow. Lawyers were called. More cops arrived. We said we wanted either to go to jail to join the two women who’d been arrested earlier, or to speak with the Governor over the phone. The cops waited, buying time. Eventually, we were surrounded by a ring of about 30 cops with gloves on, ready to move in to force us out of the building. The cop who cuffed me was a guy named Peter. He was as nice as he could be, given his beliefs about what he needed to do in the moment. I was walked outside and put in the back of a squad car. There was almost no legroom; I was amused by that. The cuffs didn’t hurt. I was in pain from needing to piss, but just sat there while he punched in my driver’s license information into his computer and talked with other cops on the radio. He made smalltalk. I learned that his brother, a great fan of New Mexico, had died, and said I was sorry he lost his brother, and that I’m sure his brother was happy he was in Santa Fe now, believing that. Eventually, Peter helped me out of the car and took off my cuffs, giving me my paper citation. I thanked him for being cordial, despite the demands of his job. I met up with the others who’d been cited and released. We ate some food my wife brought us. She drove me home and I peed. Journalists posted their story about what we did.
I had to go to the municipal courthouse twice for my hearings. Both times, the rooms were lit by big fluorescent lights and kept very cold. In the first hearing the judge told me when to show up next time and told me I couldn’t leave the state and to not talk at all about my charges, unless I was talking with a lawyer. During the second hearing the cop who cuffed me was the prosecutor, essentially. The few weeks before this second hearing, I bugged a bunch the lawyer who promised to assign everyone arrested or cited with a lawyer for free. The free lawyer came to the second hearing, prepared and quick. She went outside with the cop to negotiate. The cop wanted me to do 10 hours of community service and stay away from the State Capitol building for 8 months (the harshest charge among all of us cited but not taken to jail). I told the lawyer I wanted to try to get the Health Security Act, a potential state law, passed in January, and that I really wanted to be able to lobby for the bill in the Capitol building and really wanted to try to give corporate, pro-capital lobbyists diarrhea. She left the courtroom and negotiated with the cop some more. I watched a guy with a gun bring in people in chains. The prisoners sat on ugly wooden benches and waited. The judge worked through their cases, trying to be helpful given the beliefs in her head about what she needed to do in the moment. Then the judge humiliated a prisoner, and I watched that. My lawyer came back in and said the cop agreed to 4 months away from the Roundhouse, which lined up well with my plans—I’d be able to lobby for the Health Security Act during the next legislative session. My lawyer said I also needed to avoid breaking any laws, and that if I did, even if they were minor like speeding, I could be arrested. I said fine.
The next two months passed and I tried not to be nervous while driving and jaywalking.
A few weeks later, I did the community service and sent proof of that to my lawyer. She waited a few weeks then talked with the cop. He dismissed my charges “with prejudice”, meaning New Mexico government agents could never hold those charges over my head again.
I plan on being in the State Capitol again soon.
Force is boring and laws are dumb illusions and we should grow up as a species and move past them.
