Amplify5: What can we do?
The long road to Esperanza Radical
This week,
, who writes A Reading Life, wrote“… the extreme right has been on the rise everywhere in Europe.”
Petya mentions this in the context of a conversation with her sister in Bulgaria about November 5, 2024 … one of those days that may become burned into our calendars. And, we have to ask “why?” Why in these days, with all we know about the violence and wars that come with dictatorships, why are we headed that way again?
Petya’s subtitle: Scattered reading by a scattered brain for a scattered heart may be the best description I’ve read for these times and she continues: “So, my brain has been super scattered and I am really having a hard time focusing.”
Yes. Yes, indeed. Even in my reading, I’m craving happy endings and the belief in the soft cadence of love marching toward a predestined resolution.
Part of me wants to crawl into bed with a Kindle stuffed with peace, love and happy endings.
Another part wants to rip off my clothes and ride, like Joan of Arc, on a silver-white horse, war-crying into battle.
One delightful surprise of the DNC was the recognition of what a dynamic, compelling speaker Michelle Obama is. How does one family hold two such powerful speakers? Sharing it here in case you want to see it again.
Her call to “Do Something” has resounded down the weeks
Determined to do something without going quite as far as dear Joan, here’s where I landed: I’m going to dedicate upcoming Substack Saturday posts to sharing informative, inspiring, and illuminating writing in an attempt to calm my own inner torment and share a candle’s worth of light into the strange time we are entering.
Wednesday posts will be kept open for other directions.
While I am taken with the thought that the far right seems to be gaining ground across the world, it needs more research, so I’m starting this series with highlights from conversations around what we can do now.
This is the platform I’m going to stand on: political parties come and go, wealth ebbs and flows, cities rise and fall, but this land we call America … with it’s mountains and deserts, prairies and coasts, rivers and lakes, this land is our home and everyone here is our neighbor.
Holding the center …
we need each other …
we need to come together with compassion …
we need to listen and care for each other.
For 248 years, the Constitution has provided
our guidelines and our wisdom,
we need to trust it as we go forward.
who writes The Beautiful Mess reminds us Hatred Hasn't Won saying:“Yes, there are some really miserable human beings doing some incredibly cruel things to a whole lot of people; many from Senate seats and mega church pulpits and capitol buildings and television studios. This gives their vitriol a megaphone, it magnifies their enmity, it earns their sickness greater bandwidth than it deserves. The venom those relatively few people produce commandeers the headlines and writes the loud narrative of impending disaster. It's a story you read and re-read all day long. It becomes gospel truth.
But that is not the whole story. It is not your story, or mine, or the story of tens of millions of people like us who are profoundly disturbed right now; those of us sick to our stomachs and moved to tears. We are furious, and that fury is an alarm ringing out in the center of our chests. In that place, hatred has not won. In that place, love and goodness are still in power. In that place, life is defiantly breaking out. In that place, hope is a rising flood.
We need to stop listening to the miserable people who thrive on lies and hate. They are the toxic minority. Their only power comes from the attention we give them.
Sam Horn, one of my favorite inspirers, writes The Better Newsletter, and isn’t quite on Substack yet but I hope she’s on her way. In her latest newsletter, she tells an insightful, and true, story about an oil tanker and a dog.
In all of our disasters, we go to great lengths to save our pets, our animals, and our neighbors. I’m still chewing on Sam’s story and think you might like it also.
Meghan who writes
posted the following story on Notes:“After 9/11, that very evening in Washington DC, I ran to my Serbian immigrant father-in-law who had lived through WWII and an internment camp ….I ran to him and said, “Tats, what do we do? What am I to think?”
He put down his Turkish coffee, looked at me and said, “Welcome to the rest of the world.”
We here in the US have been blessed with peace and prosperity even though it hasn’t been evenly available to all. Other countries have not been as fortunate as we have been … Ukraine … Israel/Gaza … Afghanistan … others. I hope we can create greater peace and hope for everyone here and have it spread out to the wider world.
, who writes For Such a Time as This? Decoding America 2025, recommends:Become a Jedi Master of Purposeful Disengagement.
Here’s how I define Purposeful Disengagement:
Ordering every aspect of life to achieve non-violent, non-confrontational defiance while supporting others of like mind.
Communal living is messy … so many different priorities and positions. Our constitution was created to facilitate our processes of making decisions that are fair and just. Everyone needs to be part of the conversations and the processes that support that objective.
who write Permaprendices (Perma-learners) are two of the Substackers who are helping me learn Spanish (although I’m sure they didn’t intend for it to be used that way). I have been so buried in our election I didn’t even know there was a lethal flood (over 200 dead) in Valencia, Spain, where Andreu injured his ankle.Their post, and the comments to it, of Nov 7th, brought me the term “Esperanza Radical” (Radical Hope).
They say, “No hay nada más revolucionario hoy en día que mantener la alegría. Un abrazo grande 🥰.” There is nothing more revolutionary nowadays than keeping joy. A big hug.
Un abrazo grande a todas!
I found this to be quite an interesting post, more the I first thought it would be.
I feel the world has many bad people or misguided people as well as some just plain stupid people but they do not have control over my life, sadly just some of the things that affect my life
Joyce- thank you. Your writings give me another direction to look… for now.