What’s next?

Ukraine under fire. Covid numbers rising. Occupations and marches popping up the length and breadth of New Zealand.

It’s a vast understatement to say it’s been a week.

I keep thinking about the bravery we’ve seen this week, the humanity in the face of all odds, the determined refusal to let go of the things that are foundational to us and to reject the things that propose to destroy them.

I keep thinking, what’s next?

We know that the intent of the occupations is to sow division and chaos. We know that far right groups are strongly influencing what is happening in New Zealand.

We know that we should be worried.

I’ve really struggled this week with the question of “where to from here?”

I am somebody who hates limbo and so the constant dragging undertow of occupation news without news of the resolution of the occupation has felt incredibly draining.

I’m also angry.

I am angry at these people who put themselves and others at risk of infection. 

I am angry that they are showing up at hospitals where people on the heartbreaking frontlines of this thing are obliged to treat their symptoms but are not likely to be able to do anything about their selfishness.

I am angry that online disinformation has preyed on vulnerable people to the extent that they have been radicalised, that as a society our ability to stop that harm appears non-existent.

I am angry that those who should know better are pandering to a protest that increasingly plays host to democracy-undermining ideas.

I am angry, because anyone bankrolling disinformation for an occupation won’t think twice about bankrolling disinformation for an election.

“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”

- James Baldwin

The pain here is complex and varied and layered and there are people who have genuinely been neglected caught up in this when we should have caught them.

It’s important that we don’t forget that.

It’s important that we create space to learn how to negate that harm.

But there is also a misplaced sense of outrage and injury that has its roots in oppression and extremism that is being fostered. There is misogyny and violence that is being given permission.

I don’t know how we step back from that and I hope that we are listening to the experts who do know.

I am angry, but once the anger is gone, I am grieving the loss of a landscape I love, one that is no longer going to be quite the same, and one that will keep eroding if we let it.

That erosion of norms happens slowly, and then all at once.

So, what’s next? Where to, from this place that feels overwhelming and heavy and pervasive on multiple fronts?

We keep showing our humanity.

Foxy Godmother @FoxyLustyGrover

Fairy Godfolk of NZ Twitter, you did this for the Vaccination Team at Te Käika!

We keep finding ways to help.

Keith Ng @keith_ng

Someone just suggested organising cleanup working bee for when the protesters leave. We're not there yet (and realistically, may not be there for some time), but it struck me as really inspiring and also important to do positive acts of civic solidarity in response.

We take a break. (I am eating Pringles as I write this.)

5G Pixie @indie_pixel

@Writagal Same. I am eating junk food in an effort to create false external satisfaction that counteracts my internal sense of doom and hopelessness.

And we find ways, great and small, to fight back. 

Thomas Rid 🌻 @RidT

One of most formidable images I've ever come across, and I study war for a living: a Ukrainian woman handing sunflower seeds to a Russian soldier, asking him to pocket the seeds, twice, so that "at least" sunflowers will grow when he will be killed.

UkraineWorld @ukraine_world

Ukrainian woman confronts Russian soldiers in Henychesk, Kherson region. Asks them why they came to our land and urges to put sunflower seeds in their pockets [so that flowers would grow when they die on the Ukrainian land] https://t.co/ztTx2qK7kB