Minnesota, Beauty, Friendship and 3.5%
What feeds our souls at a time of crisis.
As my readers, you all know that I don't usually bust out with a bunch of spontaneous stuff, but I'm having a lot of complicated thoughts today after a couple of really complicated weeks and I thought I would share those thoughts with you.
Three and a Half Percent
We’ve heard a lot lately about research that shows that non-violent protest by 3.5% of a population has never failed to achieve change. I think we reached that 3.5% yesterday, and I'll be damned if it doesn't feel like the tide has turned. Maybe it was the contrast between our crowds and the total lack of turn out for Trump's idiot birthday parade. But in any case, it feels good. I talk all the time about how we, the people, actually have the power, it's just that we can't always feel it. Maybe now we can feel it, and that’s an immeasurable win!
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Neighborhood Beautification
After two weeks of non-stop travel and work, all I want to do is work in my yard.
I ran across two videos this morning that struck a chord. The first talks about a book that Malcolm Gladwell is reviewing in The New Yorker. It’s called Unforgiving Places by Jens Ludwig, about the causes of spontaneous violent crime. They found that doing things like cleaning up empty lots, planting grass and trees, and painting walls, reduces the murder rate in the neighborhood, and not by just a little. Apparently, living in a place that looks bleak and uncared for contributes significantly to violent crime. Creating an aesthetically pleasing environment cuts down on that hopelessness, and this has an enormous impact.
The second video was from that Nathan guy in Australia who tackles wildly overgrown laws and yards for people who can’t do it themselves and can’t afford the help. The time-lapse videos are enormously satisfying! He had come here to Chicago, specifically Englewood which is a pretty tough neighborhood. Local organizers brought him to meet a pillar of the community who had lived there her entire life. He cleaned up her whole yard and then talked to her about all the amazing things she is doing to care for her community.
These two videos hit me about how incredibly important it is to take some time, if we can, to make the environments we live in nurturing to us. This makes perfect sense. As we deal with these incredibly difficult circumstances, there is something about beauty, or just making things aesthetically pleasing, that takes away some of the pain and stress that are carrying around.
One thing that I bet really helped people leading up to this “No Kings” event was making the signs. Sitting down with some poster board and coloring and decorating like we did when we were kids, is one of the ways we heal ourselves so that we can keep going.
Another is spending time with friends.
My Trip to Minnesota
Last Friday, I took a train up to “The Cities” to do message trainings with an Indivisible group at a beautiful Unitarian Church and with folks from the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. The DFL is not just highly functional (high praise for any state Democratic committee) but even innovative. Ken Martin was a terrific chair for many years, and the new chair, Richard Carlbom, is superb.
I went up a few days early because I really needed to spend some quality time with my good friends and collaborators.
On Sunday, a very dear friend drove into town to spend the day with me. We went to the Walker Art Center where we saw an exhibit of Egyptian contemporary artist Anna Boghiguian that included huge interactive installations and studies on paper. She travels the world and creates works about struggle and revolution.
In the installation below, if you walk to the back of the room and turn around, the other side of all of these images are of war and destruction. Her intent was to depict something we are all experiencing right now, that surreal juxtaposition of the beauty and joy of everyday life with the fear and stress of fighting oppression and violence.
Her works on paper felt like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Picasso collaborating on some full-color studies for Guernica. They were extraordinary.
Dinner with Friends
We had a wonderful time at the museum and later joined other dear friends and collaborators for dinner, for delightful conversation and a lot of political plotting and scheming. It made me think of Albert Camus (bear with me) because, as somebody who does not believe in a formal religion, I depend very much on the satisfaction of fighting against suffering and oppression and for a better world, to provide the meaning in my life.
I don’t claim to entirely understand Camus, but he talked a lot about the struggle for freedom and against fascism. I think he was trying to say that, even if the fight is hopeless, a reason for living can be found in the struggle itself and in the camaraderie of those you struggle alongside. Camus was probably not thinking in terms of dinner in sushi restaurants, but the principle still applies. There are moments that you look around and think, “Yes, it's all worth it.”
Here's the sad part.
The friends that I had dinner with last Sunday were also very close friends with former MN House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, who were assassinated in the early hours of yesterday (Saturday) morning. The suspect, identified but still at large, also shot State Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, who survived and are in recovery. My heart goes out to all of them and their families and friends.
I want you to know who Melissa Hortman was. E. J. Dionne interviewed her and Governor Tim Walz in 2023 about the “Minnesota Miracle” (gift link). Democrats won a “trifecta” in the 2022 elections and used it to pass much of their legislative wish list and it had an incredible impact.
“I thought this would be a once-in-a-generation opportunity, and it should be viewed that way,” Walz told me. “And I've always said you don't win elections to bank political capital. You win elections to burn the capital to improve lives.”
The “Minnesota Miracle” showed what can be done when Democrats actually gain power and use it the way it should be used, and Former Speaker Hortman was a driving force behind the effort.
Dionne writes about her (gift link) in the Washington Post today:
“Hortman lived her highly constructive life in politics in the knowledge that achieving change democratically requires painstaking work: planning, coalition-building, persuasion, conciliation, vote-counting. She achieved far more using these humble, but ultimately exhilarating, tools of self-government than any violent fanatic ever will.”
“These humble, but ultimately exhilarating, tools of self-government.”
This is hard (but ultimately exhilarating) work under the best of circumstances. It can be dangerous and sometimes even deadly. But whether your fear and stress and pain come from immediate personal danger or the larger threat to our freedom and the damage to our country and our future, this is going to take time, and as I have said many times before, we need to take care of ourselves and each other.
There is no substitute for spending quality time with the people you love and the people you fight alongside, but there is also solace to be found in beauty, whether in art in a museum, a mural on a neighborhood wall, or just the satisfaction of tidying up an overgrown yard.
The last two weeks have been overwhelming and inspiring, and yesterday alone was simultaneously heartbreaking and exhilarating. I finally replaced the broken piece on my “weed whacker” and I'm going to go out and neaten up some edges. Whatever you do that gives you peace, make sure you do it!
Thank you so much for reading this and for subscribing. THANK YOU to everyone who worked to organize the “No Kings” and affiliated demonstrations, everyone who attended, and everyone whose hearts were there even if your body couldn’t be. And THANK YOU to everyone who created and shared content showing how peaceful and positive these demonstrations really were!
Also - Happy Father’s Day!
In solidarity, always,
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Contact me at antonia@antoniascatton.com or (202) 922-6647
I was fortunate enough to be at your training with the DFL last week. Your message was spot on. We need to be on constant offense. Thank you for pointing out that we are being innovative and you will see more of that innovation over the next 18 months.
It’s been a long, hard, awful few days here. We will mourn a giant in our state. A leader in our state. Someone we will strive to live up to. This will hurt for a long time.
It was amazing to be a part of the 80,000 who showed up on Saturday in St Paul, even though we were asked not to attend for safety reasons. We will not give in to the evil that wants to silence us. We will fight every day to make life better for our state.
Thank you for your time and your guidance!
I want to see this NEWS REPORTED that 3.5% of the US population turned out yesterday!
WE HIT OUR MARK! This must turn the tide. And we must not let this feeling fade or drift away! MORE PLEASE! Work in your garden. Celebrate with your neighbors. Make peaceful plans to keep the pressure on in every corner of life. The big message of this moment is: Democracy is not a form of government or a cause of activists but a WAY OF LIFE that every one of us must CHOOSE to live by. Thank you for everything you do and teach us, Antonia!