Political Anxiety→ Live Podcast Recap

by Mikaela Brewer ​for The 44 North

From left to right, and from behind, a view of Kritika, Walied, Diana, and Brennan sitting at a long table in front of microphones. Photo taken by: @calcamposmedia / @calvin.campos

Key Event Insights To Remember & Guide You

*paraphrased from our

 Live Podcast Event: Political Anxiety–How to Take Action and Take Care of Yourself.  

Download this post as a PDF checklist!

How can we truly be informed during the rise of AI & social media’s influence on political discourse?

• Asante Haughton (A): The internet is juxtaposed with the real world. The internet never used to be real—we were told to go outside & talk to real people. Now, the internet is real. Have conversations with real people in our lives about misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories. We’re critical of the internet, but not everyone is. Reach them.

• Walied Khogali Ali (W): AI has changed everything. If it’s taught bias in data mining, bias becomes easy to spread. At a policy level, data is overcharged. Platforms are learning through bias, such as in health care & of racialized groups. Ask how this is impacting our shared understanding of facts. Be involved in how we collectively regulate this data. AI didn’t appear magically—bias is built into all technology & it’s people who build it. We feed it bias to learn from, only for it to share bias back to us. What are we telling AI?

• Brennan Jackson (B): Surround yourself with people who both do & don’t think like you. Facts don’t always align with beliefs, so put effort into fact-checking. Don’t take things at face value.

• Diana Yoon (D): Social media is a tool—we can use it to reach people. It can be a bridge to connect decision makers + politicians where in-person conversations are critically complementary. 

• D: We can’t ignore the rise & popularity of AI & the fact that people are searching for information through it. Ask: What is the bias of each platform & publication you’re engaging with. What sources are being mined? What are you being fed & who’s growing it?

• W: Ask why we would believe information not coming from a trusted source? Trust is a foundation of community. So if we don’t trust Google’s leadership, for example, why would we trust its AI as a source?

• B: AI is not always correct. It’s often blatantly wrong. Use critical thinking!

• D: Ask what we lose in moments where we talk to a machine instead of a friend, neighbour, or family member. Can we lean on our list of contacts? Who might need us, too?

What does a politically safe & just future look like? What are we building towards?

• W: When basic human rights are respected, and our framework is focused on this. We must work to see the warning signs & consequences of not listening to one another. Build strong safety nets. This future is possible when it’s a matter of choice: who we vote for, elect, volunteer with, donate to, and speak up alongside. Exercise the power we have! We need to trust each other & work together. Appreciate the shared values we have. Calls to action cannot be seen as an inconvenience!

• B: Everyone’s perspectives have to be heard. This offers a better chance for understanding & therefore, the changing of minds. Reduce censorship. 

• D: Back to basics: a society where we genuinely care for each other.

What are some frames/wisdom to know and/or lead communication with, in the most empathetic, resourceful way?

• W: Know that this is more than a series of thoughts—this is a collective feeling.

• W: Powerful people don’t want change, and use forms of intimidation to halt discussion of a system that’s harmful. It’s helpful to know that social media divisions have worked. We’re influenced. Research on AI shows effectiveness at convincing people to change their minds. 

• W: Know that the public narrative is not always factually correct.

• W: Attacks on people & rights are not subtle. Laws are being changed & programs dismantled. 

• B: Re: Faith and the Christian community: Trump pedestalled his platform on “Christian values.” If you’re a part of a Christian community and don’t subscribe to his ideologies, do some extra research. What does faith look like in a political climate where it’s weaponized? 

• B: Know that inducing fear sponsors hate & blame, which aren’t effective in change. 

• D: Try not to feel intimidated. We can influence the decisions that impact our lives.

• D: Fear & concern are always valid & needed with the rise of fascism & international conflict. 

• D: Being in a state of powerless fear is not motivating. Organize in a way that tackles anxiety as urgency in a productive way. And reframe urgency: everything feels harder when we’re burning out. If we want to fight the good fight for the rest of our lives, we need healthy rest & stamina.

• D: Know that Instagram blocks news, which changes how folks get information on the landscape of social media. 

• D: We’re losing the ability to gather information, form communication channels, and take action. It is harder to share information, so continue finding & building new ways. 

• W: Past “progressive coalitions” are showing cracks. 

How can advocacy evolve to not only resist political anxiety but also get it back on track?

• W: Solidarity. Evil prevails when good people remain silent. 

• W: Find common alignment & understanding of what our shared, true threat is.

• W: Do not take for granted voices disenfranchised from the process—we must do intentional work to build alliances. Build, don’t sit idle, and don’t assume things are going to get better.

• D: Ask what we can do to influence change: talk to city councillors, MPs, escalate when tactics don’t work, fill out surveys & petitions. 

• B: Be okay with angering people, but without pushing them away through anger. Come from a place of empathy. Not everyone has the same upbringing or access to information/perspectives.

• W: There are no shortcuts. Our best communication form is face-to-face, 1:1. This builds a foundation of trust. We’re kept busy intentionally—exhausted from work, partying on weekends to cope, and then have no idea what’s happening. Some level of privilege—to take time off work for example—is required to join spaces. We need to challenge this fundamentally: how can spaces function if people can’t meaningfully participate in them?

• W: We can’t just show up to town hall now—it’s security-focused & feels unwelcome. Challenge the status quo. Make spaces accessible. Integrate intergenerational conversations to understand how we got here. Not showing up & not caring is the desired outcome by those in power. Sheep can be manipulated & controlled. Take back these institutions & make them democratic. 

• B: Look to leaders who are truly empathetic to the people they’re hoping to serve. Ex. those who are willing to take public transit or spend time living with the houseless community. 

• D: Find mutual aid work & community development outside of government support for local, tangible impact. 

• W & D: Understand who influences the political process. Convince people to participate. Run for office or support someone who truly reflects & represents the community & their needs. Build coalitions that coalesce. Be consistent, work hard, and lead with a vision. 

• A: People will join you, because they agree, but only if you start!

• D: Know that everyone thinks they’re doing the right thing. What is motivating them? Who are they listening to?

• A: Sometimes people are in government because the folks who voted for them are the loudest. Let’s be loud! 

Emily Pauline Johnson’s "The Marshlands": Poetry Analysis

by Mikaela Brewer ​for The 44 North

A foggy marsh at sunrise

A thin wet sky, that yellows at the rim,

And meets with sun-lost lip the marsh's brim.

The pools low lying, dank with moss and mould,

Glint through their mildews like large cups of gold.

Among the wild rice in the still lagoon,

In monotone the lizard shrills his tune.

The wild goose, homing, seeks a sheltering,

Where rushes grow, and oozing lichens cling.

Late cranes with heavy wing, and lazy flight,

Sail up the silence with the nearing night.

And like a spirit, swathed in some soft veil,

Steals twilight and its shadows o'er the swale.

Hushed lie the sedges, and the vapours creep,

Thick, grey and humid, while the marshes sleep.

Note: This poem is in the public domain!

"The Marshlands", by Emily Pauline Johnson (March 10th, 1861 - March 7th, 1913), first appeared in The White Wampum (Copp Clark Co., 1895). Johnson was born and raised on Six Nations Reserve near Brantford, Ontario, and often published under her grandfather’s name, Tekahionwake (“double wampum”). Her work—in publication and on the stage—often braided English storytelling/poetic structure with Indigenous beliefs and storytelling, reflective of being homeschooled by her father, who was a Mohawk Chief, alongside her English mother. Johnson is listed as a Person of National Historic Significance and was one of 12 women considered to appear on a Canadian banknote.

This poem uses a ten-beat line—five sets of two beats—in iambic pentameter. It’s a sort of sonnet blended with heroic couplets that are each one sentence, employing a comma to break the line—not quite enjambment. "The Marshlands" also uses intentional verbs, adverbs, nouns, and adjectives. But what does all this mean, and how does it work? How many verbs, adverbs, nouns, and adjectives can you find? Let’s take a look:

​​A sonnet typically has narrative flow, but it’s also lyrical, brief, memorable, and musical. The heroic couplet is commonly used for moralizing warnings, as "The Marshlands" does. These types of poems are particularly poignant when written to explore climate change iniatives, Land Back movements, Indigenous Stewardship, and the braiding of the three. For example, we’re witnessing this need in real time as many communities endure and recover from the LA fires. Marshes, further, are lands frequently dismissed and exploited because our language for them includes: dreary, swampy/boggy (check out the difference between marshes, bogs, and swamps here!), putrid, damp, melancholic, muddy, brackish, murky, and muggy. Many of us don’t encounter marshes on a typical day, and Johnson makes the inaccessible accessible via her poem—she brings us to a marsh without any of the words just mentioned. This engages (hopefully!) an action-oriented empathy. 

Similar to common nursery rhymes (which are frequently written in rhymed iambic pentameter), the rhythmic form Johnson uses enacts steadiness and peace—it’s flexible and soft while remaining strict and sure of itself, not unlike the laws of nature. The commas serve as gentle pauses—breaths to take in the surroundings—while the periods are a stronger stop to shift to another view in the marsh. Johnson uses an elegant, secretive mystery to entice our curiosity throughout the entire poem.

Circling back to our verbs, adverbs, nouns, and adjectives, Johnson’s word choices paint a picture of night’s onset, potentially amid a storm. However, she infuses a sense of safety, enclosure, and shelter in this space by zooming into the aliveness of the landscape. The approaching night is not portrayed as empty or evil—it’s full of life via rich stillness, sleep, slowness, gentleness, and calm. This is indicative of the generative silence that accompanies quiet rest, of which sleep is through dreaming. There is an ebb and flow of silence and vivaciousness, but both are active and both are alive. In The Marshlands, the combination of form, diction, syntax, and image help us feel this.

What Do We Do With Outgrown Friendships?

by Mikaela Brewer ​for The 44 North

A monarch butterfly perched on a leaf

“And yet what if friendship and love weren’t opposite points between which to pivot but loci that overlap in varying degrees? Under the Romantic ideal of love, we’ve come to expect that every great romance should also contain within itself, in addition to erotic passion, a robust friendship. But we hold with deep suspicion the opposite—a platonic friendship colored with the emotional hues of romantic love, never given physical form but always aglow with an intensity artificially dimmed by the label of plain friendship. Perhaps we need not label these kaleidoscopic emotional universes after all; perhaps resisting the urge to classify and contain is the only way to do justice to their iridescent richness of sentiment and feeling.” 

– Maria Popova, The Monarchs, Music, and the Meaning of Life: The Most Touching Deathbed Love Letter Ever Written 

When Cera and I were girls, not too long ago, there was a small clearing in the forest that secluded our middle school. Our friendship began with the first ribbed stump in that little forest. Here, in Monarchia (as we called it), we were fairies with the wings of monarch butterflies, dining at a polished table of the sturdiest wood. It soon became the last one standing.

This makeshift table felt safer than any at home; I could hide on top of it and breathe fresh air, rather than my own breath beneath Mama’s round, clothed coffee table. Each afternoon, I picked the velcro straps of my knee pads open to air dry, layered on two swipes of lip chap, propped up my skateboard, crossed my legs on that stump, and closed my eyes. I didn’t need to open them to see the trees swirling like spirographs, the early September wind blowing in every direction at once inside my forest cutout. But I did need to open them when that same wind, one afternoon, brought with it a voice hardly distinguishable from the breeze. 

“Are you asleep?”

I opened my eyes, disoriented, and looked into the face of the reddest-haired girl I ever saw. Her eyes were like the tiger’s eye crystals in my earrings, her freckles and lips like stippled copper, and her hair in four uneven braids that fell to her ankles. 

Being twelve, I answered, “I must be. Are you even real?”

Cera smirked and a few crooked teeth poked out. “I mustn’t be, at least not now, because no one ever answers my questions. Even if rudely.”

“Well, do you always ask silly questions? People can’t sleep sitting up, obviously.”

“And yet, everyone does, don’t they?”

Unsure of what she meant, but expecting something deep the way I’d interpret her response now, I frowned.

Cera rolled her eyes and dug her fists into her hips. “Well, aren’t you impossible? It’s called math class.”

I smiled but kept my eyes narrowed. “Okay. Touché. What do you want? This was my spot first.”

Cera brightened and crossed her arms. “A friend.”

Bold. Alright. “I don’t do friends.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Excuse me?”

“Don’t you know this is always how it starts? Iron sharpens iron, doesn’t it?”

I didn’t know what to say to that, and I didn’t get her reference at the time. I turned my back to her and hugged my knees to my chest. A moment later, I felt another back lean gently against mine. I didn’t object, but I did say, “It’s weird how quiet your voice is. It doesn’t match what you say.”

“Gentleness and assertiveness aren’t mutually exclusive.”

“How old are you?”

“Thirteen.”

“I don’t understand half of what you say.”

“That’s okay. Most grown-ups don’t either.”

“What are you a witch or something? Are you trying to cast a spell on me?”

“I don’t know yet, but you’re supposed to find out at thirteen, so I hear.”

“So I hear? Who says that?” I laughed out loud. When she didn’t shift her body or reply, I cleared my throat and added, “I think I like fairies better.”

“Me too, actually. Why can’t fairies cast spells?”

“Do you know any?”

“No, but let’s invent one, shall we?”

She pulled away and turned around to get onto her knees. I began to turn, too, but she stopped me. 

“Stay still.”

I remember feeling swept along, but not uncomfortable. She took apart her braids and finger-combed my long, black hair. Then, she began nimbly braiding them together.

“What are you doing?” I asked without pulling away.

“Linking the spell to us—makes it more powerful.”

“I want to know what it is first!”

“Shh. No, you don’t. Then it won’t come true!”

“That’s for wishes not spells.”

“Who says? We can make our own rules here. And you don’t need words if there’s a physical binding. A braid is most powerful, you know.”

I didn’t know but must have agreed because I let her finish braiding, and when she did, she said in that soft voice, “There, just like monarch butterfly wings.”

We curled up, back to back on the stump, and decided that naps solidified spells even further. I knew something within me had permanently changed when I stirred an hour later at dusk. I tried to sit up, and in doing so, took her whole body with me. We both screamed, “Ouch.”

***

So it went on like this. Every September afternoon was magical, the school day a distant thought, until the sign appeared. We saw it pegged into the ground at the rim of the forest as we were leaving. It was October tenth—I know because I’d just turned thirteen.

“What are zoning laws?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“You’ve never said those words together.”

“I only say them when I don’t care to find out.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, the signs don’t have our name on them, right? So they’re not our problem.”

“But this is where Monarchia is. What if the sign means something bad?”

“I don’t know what it means.”

“Yeah, you said that.”

“Let’s go home and not worry about it, okay? I made a birthday cake yesterday!” Cera smiled and reached for my hand. 

I put it in my pocket. “My hands are cold and chapped. I need some lotion first.”

Cera nodded, and even now, I’m not sure she suspected anything at all.

***

But I did worry. I logged onto my Dad’s computer to do some research, and I didn’t like what I found. The forest was to be demolished. A commercial complex was to be put in its place—a place where there used to be pre-contact Indigenous villages, paleolithic camps, and ancient Lake Iriquois’ glacial shorelines. Farmers grew acres of corn, squash, and beans—the three sisters—and accomplished hunters caught perch and Atlantic salmon. 

In a strange turn, I didn’t feel the urge to tell Cera any of this. I flopped onto my bed so hard it sank, wondering if she’d care when I told her what was really happening. Monarchia was already my sister, and although I’d never truly invited her to be, I felt lost unless Cera was the third.

***

“There’s nothing we can do about it.”

“Yes, there is! We can talk to our school and we can write letters to the mayor. We can at least try. Don’t you care about Monarchia?”

“Well, sure. But it’s just a place.”

“And am I just a person?”

Cera bit her lips. “Yes.”

And something occurred to me. It had been two months, and I hadn’t even told her my name. Nor had she asked.

“Hm. That makes sense,” I said coldly.

“Why?”

“You don’t even know my name.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Impossible. I never told you.”

“Rachel, I care about you. You’re my very best friend. But attachments only make hurt more hurtful, you know?” 

Only I would have noticed the thin film over her eyes just now. I remember wanting to shake my head firmly and clench my fists. I wanted to say the thirteen-year-old version of, “You’re right and wrong at the same time. If you care about me—or anybody past, present, and future—then you should care about a forest being demolished.” Yet, I was so afraid to lose her that I didn’t do or say anything. I just stood there, still on my skateboard, damp palms gripping the bark of a tree, soothed by how she mysteriously knew my name.

But by not doing or saying anything, you almost always lose people anyway.

***

I remember how they stole the forest in loops—like spirographs. It was cruel to mimic the motion of wind-swirled branches, and the dendrochronology of the little stump that mirrored our fingerprints. Cera and I met one final time before the privacy of tree coverage vanished. She hadn’t changed with the transition to fall in late October, and as the forest was deracinated, so was our friendship—flattened like sparkling water left out too long.

Cera had everything to say but what I hoped she would. But it turns out I didn’t need her to say much more; an overwhelming flutter of monarch butterflies appeared from behind a crane, creating an air cloud that, for a moment, didn’t smell like construction. And then they left for their three-thousand-mile journey to Mexico, in time for Día de Muertos. They’re one of the most poignant symbols of maturity, death, and rebirth. And Cera followed them.

From the edge of my driveway that evening, a new moon nowhere to be seen in the sky, the very last thing she said to me was, “I think you are a witch, indeed.” She smiled so brightly it hurt my eyes to look at her.

“Why?” I asked, unlocking my front door.

“You wear my eyes just below your ears.”

***

I couldn’t bear to go back after that. And neither did she, as far as I know. Twenty years later, the tiger’s eye teardrops are still my day-to-day earrings—a gift from a grandmother I never met. Like her, I continue to question if Cera was ever real. She was a grade older than me, so I didn’t usually pass her in the halls at school, but I never saw her again. Perhaps, subconsciously, I didn’t look hard enough. But I do look for her in everyone else—her love and lack weren’t mutually exclusive (I understand what this means now). I outgrew her, but, I’ve never outgrown the intimate friendship she gave me when I needed it most.

I need it now. We all do. 

I’m not thirteen anymore, and chances are you aren’t either. It’s cold approaching February—even colder approaching a Valentine’s Day amid so much isolation, violence, and crisis. I’m trying—rather desperately—to ask myself, “What does love look like—and what can it look like—right now? What do we need from each other?” It can begin like Cera’s. But it has to be more. We have to want more for one another. 

I’m struggling in this world like you—the economy, corrupt governments and leaders, climate catastrophes, human rights stabbed by the stroke of a pen, and so much more. Most days, I don’t know what to do. But what I do know is that intimate friendship is just as endangered as those monarchs and my childhood forest. Protecting it—and activating it as a gateway to community organizing—is to seek out new third spaces that don’t cost money, meet new people, and find collective care. Is it not a start to know what type of witch or fairy you are? Let’s be ones willing to healthily outgrow. Ones who remember not to forget.