Nov 8, 2024: fixing the world
In my family’s profession (commercial fishing) we deal with rope a lot. It is called ‘line’ in the fishing world, and it’s what holds it all together. Fisherfolk are very good at coiling it, running it through hydraulic booms, lashing boats to docks with it, and using a small metal tool to splice two ends together. In working with rope you’re always seeing how many different threads form strength, and I think that’s very much a concept we need to be chatting about today.
We just had an election between two political projects and it’s on us to examine the threads that make up the relative strengths of both lines. I think if we’re unwilling to look at the filament level, if we’re only able to condemn or defend the two ropes, we will be stuck with them. as we all know, a lot of justice & democracy rests on reweaving ours and fraying theirs.
All of us are experiencing anxiety, and rightly so. We are sailing into uncharted waters for sure. Like the ocean, the future doesn't care if we live or die, or if justice prevails. But to paraphrase a great poet, even as “the world owes us nothing, we owe each other the world.” Which I take to mean: nothing is pre-written, the level of love and compassion we're able to pass forward into the churn of human evolution will be determined by the choices we make now.
Some older cultures hold the belief that we're always required to be “fixing the world” – the Karuk who live in the heart of Klamath River country are one. They self identify as fix the world people (pikyav is the verb). Some Jewish people interpret the Tikkun olam tradition in a similar way – fixing the world through our deeds.
Tending rope and nets is similar. If you're not always fixing, you're vulnerable to storms.
Are we able now to see ourselves as people who are perpetually repairing?
The ideology of perpetual fixing is pretty cool I think. It holds that we're always broken and yet always capable of repair. But there's a warning in it: if we lose this self-identity, as communities subservient to our own collective repair, than we just keep breaking.
This is my way of asking us to be humble in our pain this week, to avoid taking personal insult with our mandate for coalitional repair. We have gotten some things wrong. And we have lost. we can still get many things right. The future is unwritten.
And i'll be clear, we've lashed our strongest lines to the forces of capital, and they've led us right here. We have to see that political strand for what it is and in my view, we need to turn away from money and toward eachother. We need to repair.
Capital loves the image of the lone fisherman out on the stormy seas. In reality fisherfolk stay in when it’s stormy and when we break down we tow one another home and then tie together into safe harbor, mended lines lashing a broken boat to a working one.
A fishing community is always repairing its gear. Boat repair is 75% of the manual labor we do.
If we took this personally, if we were insulted by the fact that our boat can break down, we would be in fact preparing to sink. So instead we're always replacing parts and overhauling gear and checking lines. Northern waters don't fuck around and we absolutely don't want to find out.
Let me be honest: the people who control the Democratic Party do not share this ethic. and that's why we're here today.
I have been on our fishing boat at times when sudden changes of circumstances, tide, ocean topography, wind, current, shift and we find ourselves in very rough seas. It's terrifying. Up and down stop making sense because you're getting swirled around and turned sideways. You trust in the engine and the rudder because that's all that stands between you and capsizing: your forward momentum and ability to set direction. This is why we rely on a culture of repair.
And so if we find ourselves taking direction or in coalition with folks who refuse to consider the need to repair, or who twist our words when we try to suggest a new course, or who are intent on saying only other people should repair; let's reflect on the consequences of those beliefs as a cultural ideology: warning! shipwreck ahead!
We were asked to let very well paid political consultants and experts lead us toward a monied center, to set down our own material needs and embrace also the political needs of corporations (even though a corporation's only goal is to take all of our money). It’s a strategy that worked very well for the people paid handsomely to implement it, but a strategy that has also wrecked us in the storms we now have to navigate. Let's set about repairing together. As always, many hands make light work.
Postscript: Consider also that the Karuk people were core to the effort to un-Dam the Klamath River and Bring the Salmon Home, the largest dam removal project in history. It wasn’t the white environmental groups, who sometimes helped and sometimes hindered; it wasn’t the agencies, who had to be forced by courts to follow their own laws; it wasn’t the dam-owning corporations, who took the money and ran. It was the people who survive genocide and act together to keep fixing the world.
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