Resources for Wildfire Recovery
Anti-Recidivism Coalition Fire Fighter Fund
National Day Laborer Organizing Network Immigrant Fire Relief Fund
Pasadena Humane Society Emergency Help Needed for Wildfire Relief
Illustration
Get yourself some flowers today. 💐
Inspiration
“All the great movements for social justice in our society have strongly emphasized a love ethic.” — bell hooks from All About Love: New Visions
In this issue, I’m inspired by by bell hooks writings on love. Her writings on love provide a guide to get through this time rife with chaos, confusion, and attacks on the most vulnerable in our society. The constant barrage of news is designed to overwhelm us, to make us lose hope, and manipulate us into complying. bell hooks reminds us that love is our way forward, beyond the pain and darkness and into a future that is expansive with room for us all. What is truly at the heart of organizing and movements fighting for inclusivity, safety, and opportunities for marginalized and discriminated communities? It’s love.
“To begin by always thinking of love as an action rather than a feeling is one way in which anyone using the word in this manner automatically assumes accountability and responsibility. We are often taught we have no control over our "feelings." Yet most of us accept that we choose our actions, that intention and will inform what we do. We also accept that our actions have consequences. To think of actions shaping feelings is one way we rid ourselves of conventionally accepted assumptions such as that parents love their children, or that one simply "falls" in love without exercising will or choice, that there are such things as "crimes of passion," i.e. he killed her because he loved her so much. If we were constantly remembering that love is as love does, we would not use the word in a manner that devalues and degrades its meaning.” — bell hooks
It is nice to feel love and to feel loved by others. But to really love, it is in our actions and consequently as hooks describes it is in our actions that we have responsibility and accountability. We do love; it doesn’t do to us.
“Love is an action, a participatory emotion. Whether we are engaged in a process of self-love or of loving others we must move beyond the realm of feeling to actualize love.”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions
hooks thinks of love more actively, rather than as a passive nice, warm, fuzzy feeling. To love would mean to transform the act of love itself, and thus to transform the world around us.
“The word ‘love’ is most often defined as a noun, yet we would all love better if we used it as a verb.” – bell hooks from All About Love: New Visions
Ideas
I, and you reading this probably know Hannah Arendt best from her seminal work The Origins of Totalitarianism— a text which unfortunately feels as prescient as ever. One evening as I was pursuing The Marginalian and going from article to article, I came across this one about Arendt’s writings on love. I learned about “love of the world” which was central to her ideas. Totalitarianism thrives on fear, division, and isolation— a false notion of “self-sufficiency” and not needing others, makes what is human null and goes without saying, but without love. The emptiness of totalitarianism and fascism can be combated by the fullness of love. “Fearlessness is what love seeks. Love as craving is determined by its goal, and this goal is freedom from fear.”
Along the same lines as hooks and Arendt, the brilliant James Baldwin described how the isolation and despair, among many other failures in our society, come from our inability to truly love, beyond the feeling itself. The less we choose to act out of love, the more separation and distance we create between ourselves and others. We feel a false sense of safety and security in our separation, even though we are all connected and part of larger things, like our community, state, country and our shared humanity.
Love has never been a popular movement. And no one's ever wanted, really, to be free. The world is held together, really it is held together, by the love and the passion of a very few people. Otherwise, of course you can despair. Walk down the street of any city, any afternoon, and look around you. What you've got to remember is what you're looking at is also you. Everyone you're looking at is also you. You could be that person. You could be that monster, you could be that cop. And you have to decide, in yourself, not to be. - James Baldwin from Terence Dixon’s short film, Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris
I bolded the most striking part of the quote; that the world is held together by just a few people. These very few people that Baldwin talks about can be read as the powerful, and their love is a will for power, a love of self-aggrandizement and ego. It could also be the love and passion of simple kind, actions of those of us motivated by a love of craft, faith in community, trust in each other, or even naive, hopeful optimism for a better world. These readings are not mutually exclusive. Our role is to join these ranks, whichever side our hearts take us.
Ending Quote
Love is Walking Hand in Hand by Charles M. Schulz beautifully captures love as a verb and how love is in our actions. Here are a few of my favorite excerpts from this sweetly illustrated book.
Love is having a special song
Love is hating to say good-bye
Love is getting someone a glass of water in the middle of the night
Love is a phone call
Love is committing yourself in writing
Love is liking ideas
Love is the whole world