Comrade card for eternity.

"Somehow we survive and tenderness, frustrated, does not wither." - Dennis Brutus

Comrade card for eternity.

“They want us to scatter in fear, to give up hope, and to give up on each other. But we will hold more tightly to one another, plan more strategically, and care even more deeply.” - @mskellymhayes.bsky.social organizingmythoughts.org/the-cost-of-...

The sheer number of videos of the shooting is horrific, but in the vein of what @prisonculture.bsky.social has been saying, it proves how many people cared enough to show up where ICE was and record them. It wasn't just one or two legal observers, and when Good was shot, they didn't abandon her.

Look at the hundreds of people in that community in Minneapolis who ran TOWARDS the danger. Look at those who documented in their heads what happened so they could accurately recount it afterwards, look at those currently out protesting. Pay attention & do your part too.

ICE: kidnappers, murderers, destroyers of the very fabric of society.

Interview with @prisonculture.bsky.social in this one. 💛

Daily orienting questions: What are you already doing? What else can you do? What are you doing together with others?

Two years ago today. My heart, she aches.

It's been hard to write lately. But thanks to my friends - Antonia Malchik and @ladyofsardines.bsky.social - I found cause to put some words on the screen. It's a letter that places two recent essays in conversation with each other. edifiedlistener.blog/2026/01/06/w...

From the birthday letter I wrote my mom in 2017.

The whole issue is pretty great! rethinkingschools.org/magazine/

Comrade card for 3/24/2025.

Made it into the building. Swapping out my 2025 Sojourners for Justice Press calendar for the 2026 one. Counting every tiny accomplishment a win.

Going back to work tomorrow but still haven’t touched my mom’s hoodie.

"Too often, when it comes to U.S. Cold War interventions, the official curriculum is sanitized & disjointed, leaving students ill-equipped to make sense out of their nation’s global bullying." -- by @ladyofsardines.bsky.social (same true now of mainstream media) www.zinnedproject.org/if-we-knew-o...

If we were given the time to grieve properly, what might we decide to change? — @sarahljaffe.bsky.social

Decided in this moment to reread some Galeano. First page: “The more freedom is extended to business, the more prisons have to be built for those who suffer from that business.”

How can you have a war on terrorism when war itself is terrorism? -- Howard Zinn @zinndigital.bsky.social #HandsOffVenezuela Check out the lesson, Whose “Terrorism”?https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/whose-terrorism/

Open Veins of Latin America would be a terrific book to read with others if you have the bandwidth to organizing a book discussion.

Please read this. Whether you are an educator or not, listen.

What a time to be a social studies teacher in the middle of a unit on colonialism & imperialism.

Am lucky to have crossed paths with Michael—& to have talked Reconstruction with him for several hours on several occasions. 💛

This summer, I took myself to the beach for two days & wrote a letter to my fellow educators about “AI.” My mom asked to read it; I told her, “Not yet. Let me get another draft done.” Welp. I should have let her read the first draft because she’s not here to read this one.

Like I said, we talked about death all the time. And still of course also: this is so hard & I ache ache ache with longing for her.

The irreplaceable ordinariness.

If we were given the time to grieve properly, what might we decide to change? — @sarahljaffe.bsky.social

My mom this morning: “I am so tired of people trying to be great; I just crave the ordinary and useful.”

From the comrade card archives. “Grief is and will always be a reflection of our capacity to love, and it is our grief that will keep us human in these times, as fascism attempts to grow where solidarity belongs.” — Tanuja Devi Jagernauth

From the comrade card archives. “Utopia is on the horizon: when I walk two steps, it takes two steps back…I walk ten steps, and it is ten steps further away. What is utopia for? It is for this, for walking.” — Eduardo Galeano

Look, we are not unspectacular things. We've come this far, survived this much. What would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder? - Ada Limón

My mom — who has showed me again & again how to be disciplined, tender, honest, vulnerable, steadfast, & loving.

“And while we are thinking about quick breads — how about Anne’s scones —“

Friends, I don't know how to say this any other way. She was a stone cold fox. Baltimore, 1959.

Well, it appears I am not done mom-posting yet. She kept holding me for all of my fifty years. I am so lucky.

Today will be one week since she was killed. Right now, a week ago, she had just woken up & written her remembered dream snippets on a post-it sized slip of paper; she would be washing her face & "cleaning" (she never said brushing) her teeth; in a minute she'll roll out her yoga mat to stretch.

Today we posted an insufficient, workaday obituary. It will take me (only) the rest of my life to draft & write a more complete one. I am going to end my mom-posting spree (for now) and try to stay off here until after the new year. We'll see. Thanks for all the kind messages. 💛

The grief baking continues unabated.

Pretty OK with this being the last time I posted about my mom before her unexpected death.

Cannot sleep. But haven’t stopped cooking in 3 days. “Dear Urs—OK Let’s start with bagels”

Also my mom.

My one-and-only mother was hit & killed by a car on Wednesday. I am all the adjectives you can imagine: shattered, devastated, bereft. And no hour has passed in the last 48 where I have not felt unbelievably lucky, overwhelmed with gratitude for all the time I got to be her daughter.

My mom dancing to the Jimmy Cliff record in our living room (in front of a big window!) is one my core my-parents-are-so-embarrassing memories.

On my last official day of summer it’s gonna be a two comrade card day. First, some advice from my mom.

Comrade card for 5/12/2025. (Following a sweet conversation with my mom about death over the weekend.)

Familiar! My mom ground her own wholewheat flour in our basement (next the sensory deprivation tank) & there was always cheesecloth hanging everywhere from the homemade yoghurt…it was a lot for a kid who just wanted some capri sun & Doritos.

My pleasure. My mom really got into the ransom notes — her eyes are not good enough to do one herself, but we collaborated on the ideas!

Maybe I'll make Community Muffins when I get home from school. (My mom was part of something called The Learning Community in the 60s/70s here in Portland — thus the name.) These are like cake doughnuts. The ultimate comfort food. My mom's atrocious handwriting is deciphered in the alt-text.

Told my mom I thought she would want to read this. She did & left me a note: "Urs, I am full of tears, not sure the proportion of joy to grief."