Pick One Thing

I'd apologise for interrupting your regular programming, but this newsletter is never regular. Still, I'll note that this one isn't even about books or writing, except in that, despite the wistful pleas of some people whose intentions I will pretend are benign, you can't keep politics out of art.

Fascism is a word with an interesting history.

In ancient Rome, where politics involved a lot of shouting, some mob violence, a fair amount of judicial murder, and sometimes a good old-fashioned assassination, magistrates were attended by lictors to protect them from the crowds, and also occasionally their fellow magistrates. Bodyguards and bully-boys, they held a bundle of wooden rods, which they could hit you with. Sometimes (not always within the city) those rods were bound around an axe. This was the fasces. If they unbound the fasces, that was the signal to run or fight. They were about to hit you with the wooden rods, or maybe with the axe.

Fascism is rule by the axe.

Fascism is violence, but before it is overt violence - before there are bodies in the streets, or the club, or the library - it is the threat of violence. The people with the axes want to make you run, to make you scared, to make you hope that if you just stay small and quiet, the rods will stay bound and the axe will not come for you.

Honestly? Depending on who you are and where your identity lies, they might not come for you for a while. They might be stopped before they get to you (they will not stop of their own accord–fascism is also the politics of greed, of infinite expansion and domination, which is why it gets on so well with billionaires). But most of us who are not fascists have this thing called empathy where we can care about people who are not ourselves. We see the axe coming for people and groups we care about, and we want to do something about it.

So what do we do?

If you are practiced in organisation and resistance, you don't need my vague meanderings on the subject. You're amazing; thank you for your work.

If you don't have any experience, or if you're wondering where to even begin, or if you can--after all, what can I, one person, do in the face of all of this everything?--please know that I get you. My commitment wavers to this work, depending on my other commitments, my finances, my personal inclinations, my deadlines, my emotional state, and my overall wellbeing.

But I always strive to avoid taking a complete break, because if I stop altogether, it's hard to start again. Because I feel ashamed for stopping, and then I want to avoid thinking about the thing that makes me feel ashamed. And does that help anyone, least of all me? It does not!

This is all incredibly standard and stupidly human. But I want to make it clear that I am not lecturing you from a position of unassailable righteousness, because lol, not me, and also, I am pretty sure, not anyone.

One of my favorite essays about practical activism, by creator and activist Mikki Halpin, turns up in a recipe book called Feed The Resistance. Halpin advocates that you choose three causes: "One you'll be a leader on. One you'll be a follower on. One you'll make a habit of."

Personally, when I'm stuck, three causes is way too many.

When I'm stuck, and feel like I might stop, or when I have stopped and am trying to start again, I give myself permission to pick one thing. Maybe that's "protect trans kids" or "toitū te tiriti" or "free Palestine". That's where I put whatever resources I can spare. Depending on what I have, that might be donating, or joining a march, signing a petition, making a submission, or giving someone a plastic container full of brownies and saying "I can't handle the protest; would you mind handing these out?"

There's a lot going on, and you cannot address all of it. You just can't! That's part of the game plan of the people with axes. They absolutely want us to be overwhelmed to the point of paralysis. But there are far more of us. So trust that other people will be choosing their one thing, and focus on yours.

And then you'll see that issues overlap and community expands. It's the most heartening sensation when you realise that you're part of a movement. That when you think, "Do you see this bullshit?" that other people indeed see this bullshit.

They are ready to help you go for the axe.

That Healey Girl is the newsletter of Karen (or Kate) Healey, a romance and speculative fiction author who lives in Ōtautahi, New Zealand and shakes plots loose by wandering along the river. Please feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone you think might like it!