Thoughts on “Influence” and This Week's Events
For better and worse, what happens online matters. This week’s foul events in Washington D.C. are clear proof of this. There is immense influence online, and it manifests in endless ways.
In the context of the Cottage, influence is what sustains my small business and puts a roof over my family’s head.
In the non-profit world, influence has enabled a myriad of organizations to advance their efforts through means that weren’t available a decade ago.
In the sphere of community organizing, influence is arguably what mobilized the greatest voter turnout in an election in modern American history.
But, in this digitized political era in which we now find ourselves, online influence can fuel the myth of white supremacy, the rapid spread of baseless and even disproven conspiracy theories, dangerous disinformation, and the recent abhorrent rise in hate crimes.
“Racial history does not repeat harmlessly. Instead, its devastation multiplies when generation after generation repeat the same failed strategies and solutions and ideologies, rather than burying past failures in the caskets of past generations.” - Ibram X. Kendi
Pictured: Be Antiracist: A Journal for Awareness, Reflection and Action Book by Ibram X. Kendi
If your elected officials did not represent your values at the Capitol this week, you can tell them so. And remember that they work for your community, and YOU have the power to vote them out. Organizing and mobilizing is a year-round effort, not just something reserved for election years. (Click here to find your representative.)
Read: “The Whole Story in a Single Photo: An image from the Capitol captures the distance between who we purport to be and who we have actually been” by Clint Smith
Read: “White Entitlement on Parade” by Jamil Smith
A note to readers who think I should just “stick to home decor”:
The goal of this blog and my work is to help people feel comfortable, confident and content in their small spaces. But here in America, many Black citizens can’t even feel safe in and around their own homes due the extreme and unrelenting dangers and threats that accompany racism. (One of the most widely known examples of this is, of course, the deeply disturbing murder of Breonna Taylor.)
A note to readers who think the climate crisis and systemic racism are unrelated, and just want me to “stay in my lane” by simply sharing tips regarding what I’ve learned regarding lower waste living, remember this:
”… our racial inequality crisis is intertwined with our climate crisis. If we don’t work on both, we will succeed at neither.” - Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
A note to readers who are white:
It is our daily responsibility to dismantle the myth of white supremacy and the systems of oppression that continue to burden and even destroy the lives of those in marginalized communities.
