white women get back on those zooms
and commit to radically supporting community work + mutual aid
I am asking kindly, I am demanding respectfully, I am wondering what day is the rainy day you are waiting for----white women get back on those zooms and do something more than raise money for a candidate.
I woke up to the news this morning. For the first time since I was nine years old, I didn't watch the results in real-time. I used to watch every election night and asked to stay up late ever since I was little. It is not fun anymore, even bearable.
I started with coloring my map somewhere in elementary school and into doing my mock election of being the candidate who would lose in our class and then in the general. I wrote that I wanted to be the first woman president in my 6th-grade autobiography (I didn’t think it would still be possible today as I cross into my 46th year on this earth). I told my teacher I didn’t have time to practice those new math concepts because of more pressing world problems.
“Today-Kate do the math problems. Tomorrow, save the world. “
I ran for office or leadership in elementary, high school, and college. I studied politics in college and policy in grad school and even walked those halls in DC. Since 2020, I have gotten more involved locally here in San Francisco as a community organizer centered around advocacy for our city kids and educators and some politics along the way. People have asked me to run for office locally. And I have decided that path isn’t for me. I long for personal peace that public office could never deliver. And yet, I am committed to community work and centering mutual aid in San Francisco, the city I love- fourth generation to live here.
I am asking kindly, I am demanding respectfully, I am wondering what day is the rainy day you are waiting for----white women get back on those zooms and do something more than raise money for a candidate.
I wrote some mutuals who organized that zoom that “broke the internet”. To see if we could support mutual aid with this extremely powerful network right after.
They didn’t want to engage then. But maybe now. We can.
Use those networks meeting weekly, organize, and give those funds (finally and more fully) to community work and mutual aid. The night White women raised millions for Harris. And broke Zoom. Folxs of color have been asking for this for decades. Do not create another bureaucracy. Radically give now. In our communities.
When. Is. The. Time?
You are already organized and have made an impact. Can you use that network to give more radically to those in the community who need it right now? Can we center the needs of those in the community and show up in a way that does not center us in the news articles or social media posts or the setting records thinking the work is done? I am talking about rent, food, healthcare, mental health support, and whatever basic needs folks need right now.
Stop waiting for the rainy day - it is here. It is pouring.
You all are sitting on cash. You moved more cash in one night than any other subgroup on their zooms, and it made me wonder where you all were when folxs have needed support in real time. For years.
It reminded me a lot of the commonplace in development when nonprofits ask for a small increase in funding; the answer is that it is impossible. You look at the financials, and millions upon millions sit in the assets.
We must ask ourselves, is the goal to hold onto money until the end of time or move it now when the needs are the greatest?
We must ask ourselves what power + privileges we hold in all forms. Economic, political, racial, social, and socioeconomic, and use it. In this very moment - to actually make an impact in real people’s lives. We are in the greatest social inequality in history highest since 1928, with 70 percent of us living paycheck to paycheck.
And it has been pouring. It didn’t start today. We needed your help, no matter who was elected.
Get ready to risk something. Really.
We are really good at taglines, t-shirts, and doing this once in a while but really bad at making it the daily work. Do not take this personally. It is a fact, and we all know it. Every single one of my friends of color does not have the luxury of doing this as an extracurricular. What would happen if you, too, decided to center community needs and not our voices? You need to risk more than an uncomfortable conversation at Thanksgiving. I really hope we can do it this time.
You will fuck up. But what you can achieve alongside others collectively is beautiful. And hopeful. And forever important.
I have fucked up. I have centered myself. I have centered my ego. I have lost sight of what I was doing. I have centered how good it felt for someone to listen to me after begging folxs for so long to care about our kids. And still, it is worth fucking trying. Our fear of making a mistake keeps us from moving. We need ya moving. And also be willing to accept the mistake (not argue if it's real or not) and do it better next time.
Because the actions we do individually and together collectively can have a tremendous and profound impact. They are the greatest hope I believe in.
I have seen and been part of seeing San Francisco doing just that. In a multiracial coalition across socioeconomic across all types of fields (with folxs with kids and not) coming together to support our youth and educators at least four times in profound ways (since 2022). In providing masks for the whole district when the city and district didn’t during our highest spread of COVID in our schools, water twice to a school with arsenic and lead when the district and city didn’t act and now advocating and closer to a long-term solution, and organizing to stop school closures.
Stop saying you need to do more research. It is offensive at this point. What else do you need to know? I will speak to any white woman committed to doing this work, really. Stop making it people of color’s labor. They have said enough.
Give money if you have it. No amount is too small. If you have benefited from generational wealth, it is time to give more. Give time. Give both.
Just get to moving.
I walked to the beach first thing this morning. I had to see the Golden Gate today and the view. I noticed how quiet it was. The wind moved the leaves. And on the beach, it was just me, one runner, a walker with a dog. The sun started very small along the water. It glowed, sparkling, almost iridescent, in the only way the sun can illuminate the ocean. And with time, it grew very slowly, little by little, until all the water was full of sun. Again.
Some resources below- tap in to share more in the comments
Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next) | Verso Books
How Mutual Aid Helped People Survive Everything from COVID-19 to Hurricane Helene | Teen Vogue
So You Want to Get Involved in Mutual Aid
