| | [#mnrising Dispatch] September 2020 The leaves change color, the days grow shorter, and the temperatures drop as we mark the transition to the autumn season. The cycles of our natural environment are recognizable even as our human conditions become increasingly unfamiliar. Our country and communities are burning: from wildfires, from centuries of racialized aggression and oppression, and from the widening social distance betwixt one another as COVID and our polarized perspectives challenge our sense of collective trust. Rather than turn away, these dual pandemics call for us to turn toward one another and invest in the community fabric that remains as well as to sew together new threads.
Activating an anti-racist lens to our historical and current challenges as a nation, casting votes for Presidential and municipal elections to advance greater civility and inclusivity within our elected leadership and culture, and supporting mutual aid and connections in our daily lives and communities are part of the key ways we can show up for ourselves and each other right now. Specifically, there are opportunities to text voters with CAAL during upcoming phone banks, write letters to voters to increase turnout, and continue learning and engaging via the opportunities within this Dispatch. Through all of this, tending to individual and communal social and emotional well-being are critical, and ultimately may result in healthy practices and ways of being we might not have otherwise developed if not for our time in quarantine. Take good care as we all make a new way. | | | | | | | | |
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