Week 8 2024-2025 in Review
Dear TCC Families,
This review of our first week back will be short. Logistically and practically we navigated heavy rains, more indoor time than has been typical, and brainstormed what offerings and experiences we want to share and center in the coming learning cycle. We made plans for building culture and ways of being together in the weeks ahead.
Emotionally (existentially?) we processed our feelings and many questions leading up to the election. We learned about specific features of our electoral process and their historical roots, and prepared for what we might see and hear as the election unfolded. Wednesday we circled in the morning to process our feelings and needs around what a second Trump presidency might mean, and we agreed, for most in our group, that getting into the forest and around a fire and prioritizing being together - connecting - is what we needed. Humor and joy were necessary ingredients. Walking the creek and being present with the trees and their roots does something to tether us back to the present; the creatures of the forest are not afraid of the future. They're practicing being with one another in their various states and cycles in the now.
We do not mean to diminish the truth that we are headed into an uncertain and dangerous future. And, our work is the same, if not even more determined and focused: collective liberation, with youth rights and liberation a critical element. Showing up for each other and meeting our needs.
Practicing radical care.
We hear the desperation and cries of, "How could this happen?" and "What can we DO?" - maybe even "Who can we blame?" May we breathe, pause, and pull back to the work and the voices that have been here and either calling to us or guiding us all along. This is the work of deschooling. May we turn to one another and ourselves and work the systems that got us here - how do these systems show up inside of us and between one another? How do we perpetuate and uphold these systems on the relational scale that keep us where we are? What work of excavation and disentangling those systems does this moment literally demand of us? adrienne maree brown writes in Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Shaping Worlds that "Small is good, small is all." We can shape significant change in the small scale that ripples and replicates outward in magnitudes.
A feature of white supremacy culture is urgency - we're all seeing it now in the rushes to react and respond and "do" a thing, anything - join another book club, donate to a non-profit, scramble to fix. This is a call to each of us to respond differently than we have in the past. May we resist the colonial urge to blame and point fingers and instead turn inward and to each other. May we resist the urge to rush. May we turn away from punishment and control and towards liberation. May we be hard on the systems and commit to divesting from them - even as they exist within us - and soft on each other. We can move with thoughtful intention while also acknowledging the pervasive sense that we do not have much time.
Many things are true right now, if we pause, and listen: there are no quick fixes here. We also have all the answers we need. We have each other. There are infinite paths forward. We just have to choose them. The work is not "out there," it's within us and in our relationships. The work is in how we show up with one another and the young people in our lives. Grace Lee Boggs said, "Transform yourself to transform the world." adrienne maree brown adds: "[This quote] doesn't mean to get lost in the self, but rather to see our own lives and work and relationships as a front line, a first place we can practice justice, liberation, and alignment with each other and the planet."
What are we willing to do differently, and what are we willing to build?
What within and about ourselves are we willing to change?
From Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower:
βAll that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.
The only lasting truth
is Change."
In honor of change,
Emily, Sarah, and Zoey