It’s Thanksgiving Day. Just over a week ago, I had a knee replacement surgery, and I’m still recovering. Today is the first day I feel any surge of creative energy whatsoever, so I’m trying to take advantage of it while it lasts and post something. I didn’t really anticipate how much the surgery would immobilize, not just my leg, but whatever that mysterious internal organ is that drives me to keep doing things and achieving things. Being a person who normally pays a lot of attention to politics and world affairs, reads the news, and the pundits’ takes on the news, and listens to the podcasts of the pundits discussing their takes on the news, it was a bit strange to find myself mostly tuning out the world, especially during a ten- day period of such eventful and sometimes mind boggling news.
I had surgery on the day that Congress voted to release the Epstein files. Then, Marjorie Taylor green resigned, making a speech large parts of which could have come out of the mouth of Bernie Sanders. Then, Mamdani met with Trump in the White House, and apparently exerted some mysterious Jedi-level force of charm, so that Trump ended up beaming at him with a look of love in his eyes that we’ve never seen him train on Melania or anyone else. What drugs did they give me?
While still reeling from these glitches in the fabric of reality, the prosecutions against James Comey and Letitia James were thrown out, while on the other hand the Supreme Court made a string of other unfortunate rulings. Trump tried to force a Russian ‘peace’ plan on the Ukrainians, then it turns out that this so-called peace plan was really the Russian wish list, then Trump walked some of it back. And yesterday, a gunman shot two National Guard in Washington.
I’m sure I’m also forgetting a lot of things, and I may have the order of this all jumbled. Altogether, it was kind of a relief to have an excuse for tuning it all out for a few days and binge-watching Project Runway, a perfect distraction for me as anyone who knows me will attest that fashion is definitely not my thing. I always find, if you really want to relax, it’s best to focus on something you don’t have any real interest in, because if I were to watch, say, endless Architectural Digest’s home tours, they might give me Ideas, and ideas are exhausting.
So it’s not that I haven’t done anything this week. I’ve had some major achievements. Just today, for example, I put on my pants! All by myself! Normally I wouldn’t remark on this, but this is what serious illness or disability will do to you: things you normally don’t even think about, like standing up, become major projects requiring thought, planning, motivation, and willpower.
It’s been an interesting experience, being at the mercy of other people’s help. I am really thankful for all the wonderful support I’ve been receiving, from my partner, my stepdaughters, my housemates and friends. I’m thankful for the surgeon’s skill and the care I’ve gotten from the medical staff. I’m all for natural healing and herbal medicine, but there are some things that no amount of herbs can do, and one of them is to replace all of the missing cartilage in the knee once it’s gone. It is truly a medical miracle that, as we age, they can take our old worn-out body parts and replace them with new ones. I’m thankful that, in a time when our health-care system is under assault, Medicare still pays for the whole damn thing. And thankful to that politician I once hated with every fiber of my being, Lyndon B. Johnson, for Medicare!
So it’s a good day to give thanks, but also a day to take stock. Today is the National Day of Mourning for indigenous peoples, a time to recognize that the Pilgrims’ survival, aided by the original peoples of the land, heralded epochs of disaster and devastation for the nations who were here first.
There are thousands of indigenous nations and cultures, all different, yet one common value they share is that of gratitude. When we receive, we are meant to give back, if only with thanks, praise and appreciation. So I am grateful that indigenous folks have survived these centuries of attempts to expropriate and exterminate them, grateful for friendships, teachings and wisdom I’ve received, grateful for the opportunities to participate in some of their front-line struggles for rights, land, and human dignity that still go on today, as indigenous people are on the front lines of every environmental and justice struggle.
I’m thankful for the immense good fortune of my life: I have a nice home to recover in, good food to eat, friends and family to share with. I don’t have to worry about bombs blasting me out of my living room, or shiver in a tent in the freezing winter rains, or hobble to a food line that becomes a shooting gallery to grab scanty rations. Compared to so many people in the world, I’m immensely privileged.
And yet these privileges: food, a home, medical care, safety, are really base-level human needs that truly should be shared by everyone. I would be so, so thankful to live in a world where I could happily do absolutely nothing for a week or two, knowing that everyone else also had access to food, to care, to comfort. Isn’t that the point of society?
We have a warped perspective in this country. The policies that get labeled as ‘extreme Left’, as Socialism or Communism, are actually France, or England, or Germany or other developed nations’ norms. It’s not really a radical idea that everyone should have access to medical care, or that everyone deserves a home, and good food, and the chance to create a life in peace and safety where we can help and support one another. It is, in fact, the underlying ethic of just about every religion, the best of the values that imperfectly inspired our Constitution, and the two and a half centuries of social movements that attempt to correct its lacks.
This has been a dreadful year in so many ways, and our very democracy still hangs in the balance. Yet I am more optimistic now, than a year ago, that we will succeed in pushing back against the fascists and making that better world we dream of. So, gratitude to all who have stood up for justice: to the organizers, the marchers, the sign-makers, the meme-makers, the late-night stand-up comics, the writers, the accompaniers, the phone-callers, the brave among the politicians, lawyers, journalists and educators, the inflatable frogs, naked bike riders, Latin dance instructors, podcasters, substackers, whistle-blowers, videographers, and all the ordinary, outraged people screaming at ICE, “Fuck you! Get the fuck out of our neighborhood!”
How grim the world would be without all these acts of resistance and creation! I am so thankful that, while we are not in the world I wish for and that we deserve, because of the courage and commitment of so many, we are still in a moment when that other world is possible. Already I can feel it reviving, deep inside me—that little voice, that primal urge, saying ‘Rest, now, enjoy this time of healing and reflection, and then get ready to march again with a steadier gate, and make that world of justice real.”
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This post has been syndicated from Starhawk’s Substack, where it was published under this address.