finding love for the roots

a letter to my greatgreatgreatgreatgreat grandfather.

dear papa TJ,

i've been composing you a letter as i traipsed the streets of washington DC today. i stood and looked at your monument, daring to get close but not quite close enough. i had forgotten such an homage existed at all until i spotted it on the google map - it's that big of a deal. and, like all decisions in my life, once i decided i wanted to visit it, i was determined.

my determination didn't get me quite all the way there. truth be told, i ran out of time. the tribute to your mark on history is so, er, monumental, that i underestimated how long it would take to get to its foot. i watched it like a beacon as i walked down from the white house, across the mall, past the washington monument, over a small footbridge....and then i had to turn around, the building still too far away and across the pond.

i usually talk about you like a demon, use your name for shock value. "my greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreat grandfather was thomas jefferson." see? i can own it so well. name the demons of my past. naming is half the battle, right?

i've been thinking a lot about love lately. about how to love really deeply even people it's easier to hate. i found myself wishing today that we could have a conversation, you and i. that you were still alive, and we could drink tea together and i could learn to not just hate you but to understand you. i'd pick a really good fight, a whole series of them, again and again. and i'd try to really listen, too. i bet we'd have a lot to discuss. there is certainly a lot i'd like to ask you. i want to learn how to love you fiercely - and fight with you fiercer.

because, you're my people. i am of you. belonging is such a fundamental desire; belonging not just in the present but in a context of people who came before and people who come after. i want to figure out ways to know you, to own you. i want to kick and scream and yell at your bad parts (that'll take awhile...) and i want to find the kernels of goodness that must be there, too. hating you, feeling guilty and righteous on your behalf, kinda just makes me hate myself, feel guilty for myself. and i'm in a place in life where i'm learning new layers of how to practice self- love, self-respect, have patience for my nuances. new depths of how to love, respect, and have patience for other people. one of those depths i'm realizing needs exploring, needs loving, are my roots - all of them, even you.

to be continued. for now, it's time for bed.

xo,

jessie

family philanthropy retreat: some reflections

a few weeks ago resource generation hosted the 4th Creating Change Through Family Philanthropy retreat, a 40 person conference for young people with family foundations. i was truly moved by the weekend. it was pretty darn incredible. and i was equally as challenged by the question: how does philanthropy exist in a framework that is working towards true liberation, self-determination, and the redistribution of wealth and power? can it?

the night i got home from the retreat i felt so much passion. i was deeply humbled by the experience- by the complex stories of everyone there, the million little ways in which people are doing what they can, in their particular lives, to affect change and work for justice. what you make of life is so much more complicated than simply you-- it's about the messages you've been handed down, the legacy you're expected to carry on, the demands of "success" by those around you, the life you've come to know and also are trying to question.

i also re-remembered how much of this work actually has nothing to do with money. it has to do with the dynamics that money creates....often dynamics that go so far back and so deep that we loose sight of their direct ties to the money itself. but they are ever-present. power dynamics. definitions of self-worth. teachings of what it means to be good, to be successful, to be smart. expectations and prophecies to fulfill. the squashing of imagination, of creativity and risk-taking. and the fear. so much fear. this shit is scary. trying to break cycles, live life differently, envision the world transformed...it's hard to stand strong in the face of pushback and uncertainty and pressure. or even know what "standing strong" always means when facing tough choices.

as i take more time to reflect on the retreat, i continue to be in awe of what truly "creating change through family philanthropy" can mean, what people who participate in it every day are working to make it. i also continue to wonder about the existence of philanthropy as we know it, when, to me, it doesn't actually have a place in the just world we're fighting for. janine lee, president of the southern partners fund and keynote speaker at the retreat, brought up this MLK jr quote:

"Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary."

so i wonder, how do we do this work simultaneously? how do we 110% work towards a vision of a world without the injustice that makes philanthropy necessary, while practicing philanthropy ourselves? are there ways to do this? there need to be... because i am (slowly but surely) learning that change takes time, patience, and strategy. more importantly, it takes everyone-- not just the folks who are most directly affected by injustice, not just the activists that live off the grid, not just the young wealthy folks whose parents are on board with redistributing their entire trust funds. no, true change needs everyone to do what they can, where they are, to work towards justice.

but... what practices of philanthropy are non-reformist reforms of the system? by that i mean, how can we rise up to the responsibility of philanthropy if it's what we're handed, and use that responsibility to chip away at the system of philanthropy itself rather than re-empower it? how do we- can we?- work within philanthropy while trying to create a world where it doesn't exist? seriously folks, i'm wondering- do you have thoughts?

to stand in our own power in this work is fucking nuanced and fucking scary. embracing the power in our privilege while trying to totally overhaul the balance of power socially/politically/economically/globally...is.SO.complex. but damn. if everyone at the CCTFP retreat, if everyone in the RG community and beyond in our networks could fully take on the task of the responsibilities we have access to...we could help shift things in a major, major way. this community has so much potential, and i really saw us grappling with it at the retreat. and that felt pretty neat.

xo.

post- MMMC

so much, so much. not coherent yet, maybe never will be. but what i'm left with is such an intense and visceral understanding and appreciation for the ways that deep ideas, emotions, reactions, knowledge can seep into my being without my even knowing it.

for the first two days of MMMC i was fully present, but almost to a fault. there was something about being there as an organizer, no longer the new kid, that made it harder to access my own vulnerability. but somewhere around saturday morning (in no small part due to Tyrone and Tiny's workshop, to be sure) i really felt...alive. for the rest of the weekend, and into today, i've remained in this incredible place of thought, of struggle, of challenge, of confusion, but also with such peace, such tranquility. i don't feel lonely in it. for the first time in a long time, i don't feel lonely with these feelings.

MJK, i wish you had been there. all of my personal and organizing work around wealth and class certainly doesn't center around moving home, nor should it. but it was a topic that continues to make it's way into all those spaces, no matter what aspect of privilege i am talking about. or even, what aspect of humanness i am talking about. what MJK writes in the recent post up here, or what i wrote about for Enough this summer, it all builds and shifts. and every time i talk about it, it feels more nerve-wracking, but more possible.

three scary things still swirl in my mind. scary isn't bad. it's just....tenuous excitement...maybe? thanks to those of you this weekend in particular who reminded me i'm not alone in these worries.

scary #1: who and what i think is cool don't necessarily think moving home is cool.
i get thumbs up and support for my decisions, sure. but at the end of the day, the radical, mostly-queer, mostly-privileged, mostly young folks i turn to as my "community," who i look to for guidance about life-choices, are not making this decision. they are living in communal houses or co-ops or lovely, loving families of choice. the cool rich kids movement, as billy wimsatt coined much of the RG world, tends to supports certain models of rebellion over others... parents = not cool. where you came from= everything wrong with the world. presenting alternative, more nuanced models is hard. and scary. and feels unpopular. wasn't i supposed to get over this anxiety in middle school?

scary #2: what if i wake up when i'm 40, having lived with my folks for 15+ years, and feel terribly, deeply, regretfully ALONE?
this sounds dramatic, but it's so real. beyond the scariness of making unpopular decisions- no, underlying the scariness of making unpopular decisions- is the fear of being alone. i have always feared being alone. not alone like, i can't depend on myself (in fact, i am sometimes a loner to the point of my own detriment) but alone like, really, deeply resisting the dominant paradigm of partners and children and nuclear families. living with my folks doesnt prevent that scenario, but it certainly would change the decisions i made leading up to that dreaded mid-life morning.
someone recently made the excellent point that moving in with my parents and working on building multi-generational community still actively includes relationships with people my own age. but fighting the idea that long-term relationships and people to grow old with (not just lover-types, but all types) have to be within a certain age range is fucking hard.
beyond that-- even validating my relationships with my parents, or their/my older friends is incredibly difficult! i was home over a weekend last month and spent all saturday night cooking, drinking wine, eating, talking with my folks and close family friends. was that genuine fun, authentic relationships, and community? for sure. did i feel like i was missing out on my "real" life, not attending a queer dance party or having brunch with my young friends in brooklyn? for sure. how do i validate, to myself as much as anyone, the time i spend like this? again, the middle-school cool factor rears its head.

scary #3: what if i turn into my parents?
this is a different kind of scary. in many ways, i DO want to turn into my parents (mom, i love you). or at least learn a hella lot from them. but in other ways, i honestly want to make different decisions. i'm not sure i want to live in such a sheltered place (like literally, on the street i grew up on). i'm not sure i want to offer my kids- if i take that path- a guaranteed private college education. or trips to other countries. maybe i will. i have no idea. but i want to make sure i am pushed to have those different options, and worry i'll fall into old patterns too easily if i'm at home (this includes lots of not-so-good-for-me adolescent habits that creep up from time to time when i spend too long at home). will i be a perpetual 16 year old? i wasn't very happy at 16. i worry.
i also worry that in moving home i'm totally mooching off my privilege, futher burrowing into the cushion of it rather than pushing against it. but it's not like i can ever step out of it, so on my better days i say, why not just dive headfirst into it?

xoxo.

this made my day

my mom reads my blog. and loves it.

special guest post by martha jane! on actually moving home.

This piece was inspired by Jessie’s post about moving home after attending the POOR conference. I read it and, since I had recently moved home, felt a lot that resonated. Here are some of my thoughts on the experience.

Since I graduated from college I’ve lived in several different gentrifying neighborhoods. Most of the time living in these neighborhoods left me feeling some combination of guilty and out of place. As much as I saw myself as a gentrifier and therefore a person with systemic power I continued to feel powerless in terms of making decisions about where I lived. I repeatedly felt that I had no affordable options that would allow me to avoid contributing to the process of gentrification. I was deeply troubled by my complicity in this violent process. I spent a lot of time talking with friends in the same situation about what our best choices and options were, and how much power we really had when it seemed like so much was decided for us by banks, city planners, realtors, etc. While I resisted gentrification by engaging in economic justice and housing rights organizing, getting to know my neighbors and supporting local organizing, I was constantly bothered by the fact that the physical presence of my body in the neighborhood where I lived was contributing to a cycle of displacement. One year later I still have no good answers for this conundrum but I have found a solution that works for me: one that I am finding to be surprisingly fulfilling, radical and transformative.

I recently suffered a bike accident and had to go home to my parents’ house for surgery and recovery. The moment I got here something clicked. Living at home feels like the most right thing I've done since college. Let me back up for a minute before I lay out all the reasons why living at home is beautiful and radical and fulfilling for me and let you know some things about what home is for me. My background is upper middle class and white. My family is queer and Jewish, academic, liberal, socially engaged and connected. For me home has never been a place of violence or insecurity. Unlike many people close to me, I feel more safe and loved and in the home of my family of origin than anywhere else. I think that my ability to do the things I most believe in and am most committed to- writing, organizing, art- is owed in large part to the longstanding support of my family of origin.

I know that part of the reason this change feels so right to me is that I have always felt better at intergenerational relationships than anything else. In the past I’ve felt ashamed of this but right now I’m finding it allows me to do the really important work of building relationships of trust with those who have different views from me. In the past I have mostly lived and spent time with communities of young white activist queers. I have felt pretty alone in these communities and I’ve come to think this is because a lot of my peers have had a real need to distance themselves from their family and family's lifestyles, and this has translated into a sort of urgency around building community. I’ve a hard time plugging into this way of building community because of my strong relationship with my family of origin. At this moment in time, I’m coming to see this as a gift that helps me contribute to change and growth of all the communities I’m part of.

So. Living at home feels like the most right thing for me emotionally and politically, and right now, like the place where I can do the most important work. There are a number of reasons why: first, there is a room for me here in the house my parents own. Sharing space with my family, for me, means I am not paying rent to a landlord somewhere else. This means that the money that would go to rent can go to other things such as organizations whose work I believe in and individuals in need. It also means that the hours I would have to work for pay in order to pay the rent are lessened and I can spend more hours volunteering, organizing, writing, doing childcare and contributing to my family and community in important ways.

Being able to contribute to and build with my family and community of origin had proved to be invaluable for me. Because I have grown up in this family/community there are concrete ways that I know how to contribute. For instance, taking care of my baby sister and other young people and dogs in the neighborhood as well as cooking, cleaning and shopping. Contributing this way to my family and community very solidly feels like work I should be doing. It makes a lot more sense to me than many things I have been paid to do as work in the past; for instance, being a youth-worker in communities where I have no experiential context or connection to the youth I am working with and so can’t really provide good mentorship. While I am living at home I can support (financially and otherwise) radical youth work that goes on in communities that I am not part of (but care about) and provide it for the communities that I am actually part of.

Contributing this way to my family and community means getting up close and personal with the class my parents and their friends are in and how it functions and sustains itself. This is incredibly important work for me, because I want to make sure I don’t become them. That is to say, I want to develop strategies to avoid hoarding the wealth my family has and break the cycle of the bourgeoisie reinventing itself generation after generation. In the past, I have feared that, after growing up in a home of extreme comfort, I would gradually retreat to a similar lifestyle as I got older without being conscious of it. Now I am realizing all the complex ways that class sustains itself that I was not able to really notice as a child, and understanding concrete ways that I can make different choices from my parents.

Because I am doing the work of spending time and contributing to my family and community of origin I am sustaining and building relationships of trust with many individuals whom I wouldn’t otherwise. This means I am seeing people in this class and culture more and more as allies. I am listening to them more deeply, with greater compassion, and understanding and valuing the ways they contribute to the world. Because we are building trust I am able to challenge them to question things both easy and hard, like their reliance on liberal media, or their spending habits and choices about how to give and invest money. Conversations like these require a lot of trust built. I am realizing that dialogue between radical and liberal politics has huge potential for making both sides grow. I also see value in things I didn't before, such as the work my mom and her colleagues do as scientists. There is the reality that my parents and people they are connected to in the world of wealthy liberal professionals, have a lot of power. The more time I spend with them, the more they grow to care about things I care about. For instance, after years of conversations about prison abolition, my mom, of her own initiative, wrote and read something about the prison industrial complex and abolition at a Passover Seder last spring.

Last year when I graduated from college, I and many people I knew moved across the country to be engaged in a large community of social justice activists involved in a number of liberation struggles including anti-racism work, anti PIC activism and economic justice. While I learned a lot from spending time in that world, from this vantage point I am seeing the way that staying at home can be more effective than following a larger activist community. That kind of activism needs to happen everywhere and especially in places where there are much fewer people already doing the work. Also, when my family and community learn about the local social justice struggles I am involved with, they want to learn more and contribute to these struggles.

Here at home I am constantly entering new spaces of young people and being asked where I live. When I say I live at my parents house they have to get over the idea that that means failure in order to connect with me. And they always do. I think presenting this model of returning to your family/community as opposed to growing up and moving on and being independent starts to dissolve some of the allure that capitalist independence has. While I understand that for many this is not an option, in the class I come from moving away after college (often to another city), is so deeply the norm that young people from my background are often very surprised to see me challenge it (is the rupturing of continuity in family and community part of what allows this privileged class to keep reinventing itself? How?)

As a writer, artist and organizer the business of owning where I come from has always been very important to me. Returning to the place I come from and doing work in my family and community of origin feels to me like a very empowering and meaningful way to do this. It is, after all, work that I am in a unique position to do.

Moving home; community

This is a journal entry/rambling essay i wrote after the POOR revolutionary giving session in june. it is also posted here. take a peek...

6/22/09: HOME

On the first morning of the session several POOR Scholars spoke about home, family, community; leaving, staying, the privilege wrapped up in it all. I latched onto that theme and it stayed with me through the rest of the weekend- and clearly beyond.

I've always known it is a privilege to be able to leave “home,” and that it is part of a larger, constructed trajectory that includes actively separating myself from where I was raised, my parents, my immediate family, as part of a "successful" growth process. But lately I've really been sitting with just how much of a privilege it was for me to be able to leave, to have the opportunity to be individualistic- in a very "little girl makes her own way in the big world" kind of way. Some of that was awesome- college, living on my own at age 18 in grand New York City, getting to resettle here- or anywhere I wanted, for that matter- after I graduated. Not only could I leave my parents and younger sister behind, but I fully knew that they would be taken care of, that they would not only care for themselves but would actually continue to support me in explicit and implicit ways, even from afar.

None of this do I out-and-out regret; like with many privileges there also come opportunities I wish everyone had, opportunities that even many "privileged" people don't have, like being able to reflect on this home as a place of unconditional love and safety. But precisely because this home was such a place of love and safety, I'm starting to realize a huge loss in "building my own life" as separate from where the majority of my lived experience has been. What I'm beginning to discover are these losses, and just how exciting it feels to think about regaining part of what I've lost.

Some weighty realizations have been clues that I'm feeling a loss of home and community. Whenever anyone asks about my home, neighborhood, or community, my first thought is not where I currently live, Brooklyn, but the place I grew up. I’ve known since I moved to New York City last year that it wasn’t where I wanted to settle forever, but it's fascinating to me to unpack how far that's penetrated— I wasn’t consciously aware before of just how deeply I feel that Northampton is my home, and certainly hadn’t recognized how that emotional affiliation could really affect how I choose to spend my energy and think about my organizing. We spent a lot of time at the POOR session discussing relationship-building, and also the centrality of the literal space we inhabit; how each goal and need and struggle is totally unique to the time, space, and place in which it's enmeshed, and the ability to meet that goal and engage in that struggle is contingent on truly authentic and interdependent relationships. So I was forced to ask myself, how am I engaged (or not) in needs and struggles surrounding me, if I don’t consider them part of my home or my community? And how am I building (or not) real relationships with folks literally nearby if I don’t feel in my gut that my roots belong here? And, most of all, how am I copping out, by allowing myself to opt out of any given neighborhood meeting, local election, protest, block party, neighborly conversation, etc. on the basis that the place I’m in currently isn’t really where I want to end up and so do not need to invest? Of course this is all in the context of a much larger picture of displacement, gentrification, etc., and shows how my physically being here (in Brooklyn) without really emotionally being here is feeding that cycle. And there's the proof that displacement and the whole dang system we've got going that robs land and resources really does hurt everyone- as an owning/ruling/displacing-class person, that trajectory is beginning to bite me in the ass in the form of community-less-ness.

Hand in hand with this I recognize the ability to be able to return home (to Northampton) is equally as privileged and complicated as the privilege to leave in the first place. Many folks who are very much like me in appearance and politics simply cannot return to a place they called home for any number of reasons. It can be violent, unsafe, hostile, or just downright unpleasant for folks' emotional, mental, and physical well-being. But I don't have such complicated history. I am lucky enough to come from a home that I love very much, that is nurturing and supportive of (most of) my choices, and that is somewhere that does not negatively affect my personal, emotional, mental, or physical health. Having somewhere I can definitively call "home" to begin with is a huge opportunity and privilege in its own right, let alone the option to return to it...the consistency, security, and structure (literal and metaphorical) of such a situation is something I totally take for granted. Some folks have no other choice but to stay, whether or not they care to continue living in such immediate and often co-dependent circumstances with their given family members; others have no other choice but to leave. The opportunity to return to a place that feels healthy, safe, and loving is something to be prized. I’m left wondering, what would it mean for me to return home? I’ve been indoctrinated with the idea that living with your parents is indicative of failure, immaturity, over-reliance, or just plain uncool. But really, why the hell is that?

I get excited thinking about all the things I could do if I moved back in with my parents- a new way for me to think about leveraging my privilege! There are no people I can imagine being able to live more collectively with, in terms of basic resource-sharing. Even if I did pay them rent, split utilities or grocery costs, the difference between that and my $900+ a month for rent and bills in Brooklyn is staggering. How much freer my funds would feel; and what a better usage of literal space and habitat- it's not like anyone else would be living in my bedroom in my folks' house if not me. No doubt gentrification and displacement are giant, complicated matters, but simply put: if I'm not committed in my gut, then taking a step back from this place that is gentrifying so rapidly and intensely could be a tiny iota of the part I can play in affecting change. There's no doubt that my family contributed to the "revitalization" and "upgrading" (aka, gentrification and displacement of other peoples) in Northampton over the past decades. But whether i like it or not, my personal history and knowledge are rooted there, including concrete things like a house- that someday will be in my name- with a door already designated "Jessie's Room." If I feel good about committing to that space, why move elsewhere and gentrify anew; if i have the option, why not save on rent, save on space, share my mom's garden, cook my dad dinner? Not to mention capitalizing on more explicit privileges, like how my father is a city councilor and buddies with the mayor, or my mom sits on the board of several local organizations. If i actually knew the hot-button issues, if they were part of my town and my day-to-day, I think i could really help to challenge political decisions- something that for the very first time feels exciting to me. I hear first-hand about zoning laws that would limit who can ask for money on certain parts of the sidewalk; controversy over where to haul our trash; the complications around re-building public housing units. Influencing those at the table from behind the scenes- which is exactly the privilege I carry- could hopefully help to shake up the white liberal status quo. And because of personal safety nets and privileges, I feel like I would have the courage to push back in a way I often don't in other places.

I get really jazzed think about all the new ways I could get to know my hometown if I returned. I'm trying to push myself to give more credit to my emotional and visceral and spiritual needs, something the WASP in me has often shortchanged. It's kinda no surprise I’ve fought this fundamental feeling of Northampton being my home for so long, and yet I’m still surprised at my own profound excitement and comfort when I think about returning. I think about all the knowledge I have of the town, the layout, the space, the history. Even at 23 years young I've seen it change, seen the large and small battles that are fought-- between elite colleges and working class residents, middle-class teenagers and war vets living on the street, newly wed lesbians and anti-marriage queers. I also realize how much I have to learn about all that goes on that I’ve been totally sheltered from. The excitement and potential in recognizing that is really, really powerful to me. I always talk about the importance of organizing my own communities, in the places I know the ins and outs of. And particularly as someone with class, race and educational privilege, my access to those community ties is an especially strategic and useful way of broadening and strengthening social justice work. It is empowering to think that I am truly organizing folks from similar backgrounds, in a place I call home, and i feel it rising in my chest as I think about the possibilities in returning.

I've also been thinking about all the positive side effects if moving back home felt viable for the long term. My mother literally said it would be a "dream come true" if I moved back to Northampton-- what I hear in that is not only joy but also comfort and stability in knowing that I, physically, would be sticking around as my folks aged. when I proposed the bold wealth redistribution plan I cooked up a few months ago, their primary concerns were about family- and self-care, and all the "what if's" and "just in cases" that go along with the individualistic social culture of capitalism in general and our particular upper-class community in particular. But I imagine that moving back in with or near my parents would alleviate a lot of these fears of (in)security and (lack of) support systems, allowing for more and radical options in my redistribution of wealth. I truly think that the security of my physical presence would comfort their concern about our individual and collective well-being and long-term ability to thrive.

Phew! There's some of what I've been mulling over these past many weeks. These are all thoughts in progress, and I don't know how they will actually play out over the coming years. Would I actually move back in with my parents? Would I actually like it? Am I totally romanticizing these opportunities, or inventing cool enclaves of radical organizing in Northampton that actually don't exist? As much as all of what I've been thinking about excites me, I am also envious of other folks I know who thrive in chosen families, who have done the hard work of building community for themselves in NYC and elsewhere. Am I just running away from putting down new roots? I honestly don't know. But I'm excited to keep thinking on this, and having conversations about it, and discovering in what ways this resonates, provokes, excites, bores, or otherwise affects the personal politics of resisting capitalism.