Many people are angry, grieving, and turning to despair due to the U.S. election results. Read on for one of many community practices that may help us through. Scroll to the bottom to register for my Astrology for Social Justice Movements workshop on November 17.
This Is When
As organizer YK Hong said on Instagram, “Rage and grief and also. This is when the most people will have the most clarity that that can become focus that can build power. Remember this moment right now. At this moment, so many can be so clear on what is liberatory and what is not. Keep that feeling and use it as your focus now and moving forward.
“This is nothing new to organizers. The most power is built during the most repressive times. You [your communities] have the most power right now, when you feel you have the least.
“Do everything in your power to build hyper local community. … Find each other with security culture in mind. … Build to make Empire impossible. … Organize together so that liberation is the only way forward.” - YK Hong, @ykreborn on Instagram.
ID: a photo of a a black and white poster with a sketch of a hand holding a rock. The text reads, no matter who is elected, we keep fighting. The poster is attached to a saffron colored wall. Poster was received from Josh McGee of the @justseeds artists’ cooperative.
As people hold their rage and grief after the election, their rage and grief for Palestine, Sudan, the Congo, Haiti, North Carolina/Appalachia, for their own city’s unhoused, for those who live in the daily threat and aftermath of police violence and ICE violence, for trans and queer people and women, for disabled folks, for Black, Brown, and Indigenous folks both home and abroad …
As people hold their rage and grief, I am reminded of something that Cyree of @collectivecartomancy on Instagram said.
Why not use intuition and intuitive tools in our organizing spaces, in our movement spaces?
Tarot: Not Just for Personal Growth
Many of my clients love intuitive tools like Tarot, astrology, and dreams as a way to reflect on aspects of a situation in new ways. These tools rely on another language - not logic or science, not even emotion, but a sort of mytho-poetic language that offer several facets and possibilities. They can offer support to the kind of radical imagination that we need when we are faced with the reality that settler colonialism, capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy hurt all of us in the end, no matter what material benefits we may be able to scrabble out of them.
Gather Together
The time for action is now, but we must imagine and learn different ways of being together in order to act in truly liberatory ways. So here are some details on how you could do this Tarot spread. You can also just scroll down to the examples.
Find your people. Gather your people in a COVID-safe way to do this reading together. A group of 4 or 5 people will work most easily for the process suggested here, but you can adapt it as needed. You can start small and build more later. Maybe you’ll focus on people you can talk honestly with, and/or people you’ve worked with before on justice issues, and/or neighbors and local folks who might be reeling right now as well. (NOTE: You might use a Tarot reading to help you decide who you would like to gather with at first, as well.)
Find the wisdom of those you may have othered (especially if you carry a lot of privilege) or those who inspire you. Use quotes from revolutionary Black feminists, from those working for Free Palestine or Congo or Sudan or Haiti, from those working in movements for disability justice, queer justice, Land Back, immigrant justice, Black liberation, and more. * (NOTE: I would advise that you reject quotes that tell you to find commonalities with Trump voters and the like. Give yourself a glimpse of what it feels like to inhabit radical imagination and possibility.)
Use a few of these quotes to help center your gathering. Read them aloud. You may use the quote above. Just make sure to give proper attribution to the freedom fighter who is teaching you. Your group, especially those with money privilege, may decide to take up a small collection to send to the liberationist's Venmo or CashApp as a material thanks.
Set the tone with some conversation about Community Agreements. Keep it simple the first time, and then keep having the conversation as the group evolves. How will your group make sure that the voices of those most marginalized will be centered? Does your group want the tone to be serious and focused on ritual, or chatty and casual, or both but at different times? How are self-care and relational care centered? When conflict and harm happen, how would your group like that to be handled?
You may work with one Tarot deck, or you can ask everyone who has one to bring a deck. In the latter situation, your reading will be made up of cards from several different decks with different frameworks - a good analogy for any group working together for social justice!
Talk together about questions for your reading. They should be the questions and pain that you’re carrying, no need to get fancy. Here are a few ideas to get you started, and there are more in the sample layout below. I would focus on 4 or 5 questions to start, or maybe 1 question for each person present.
Who do we need to learn from, or what do we need to know?
Who do we need to seek out to work with?
What resources do we have to offer?
How can my feelings be channeled into this liberation work?
Where do I need to mind and even weaponize my privilege so I can be in better solidarity?
Once you have your questions, assign a question to each person. (For a smaller group, ask 2 question to each person. For a bigger group, ask a question to a pair or group of people and they can work on it together.)
Lay the cards out in the order and layout you’ve decided.
Each person can share what their card may mean for the group and the work ahead.
Let people take their time with their reading and ask for help if they need it - please discourage people from talking over each other. (You may want to mention this as part of the Community Agreements.)
Decide if you have time and capacity for further group discussion about the meaning of the cards, or if you want to keep it at one person per card.
You may want to follow up with a card for each person to receive guidance about how they might be involved. See the example below.
Before you leave, decide whether things shared in the group stay in the group, or can they be shared? How can people invite others into the group?
Decide as a group if you’ll take notes and pictures to share, how you’ll reflect on this reading going forward, and what your next steps might be.
You can do this sort of reading many times over the course of the next weeks and months, with the same group and different groups.
If you're a group that carries money and/or class privilege, take up a collection at your gatherings to give to your local mutual aid group or BIPOC organizer, artist, or political educator.
Examples
Image: a sample template for a Tarot spread, taken from my most recent Tarot workshop, intended for a group who is deciding how to work together for liberation. Each card is drawn and explored by a different person in the group. The questions include: 1. Where are We Now, 2. Where This Could Take Us, 3. Obstacles, 4. What Lies Hidden, and 5. What to Leave Behind.
Image: a sample template for a Tarot spread, taken from my most recent Tarot workshop, intended for each person to explore what their role might be in a group who is working together for liberation. Each card is drawn and explored by a different person in the group. Each card asks the same question for each different person to answer: what is a good way for me to engage?
I hope this spread is helpful - please write me on my website or at my email, radical.reimagining1@gmail.com and tell me how it went, or if you have questions or further ideas.
Also, if you’d like to explore how to use Astrology for Social Justice movements, I’m hosting a workshop on November 17 on just that topic, using many of the same principles of collective organizing as I have here. Check it out and register here. We have a lot of opportunity ahead and there’s work to be done.
Some organizing folks you may want to research or follow to deepen your understanding and analysis, in no particular order.
@TheDiDiDelgado on IG and Restore National
Creighton Leigh and Voix Noire
The Black Fairy Godmother
@jennyfromtheblackbloc on IG
The Book on Fire podcast and Discord server
The Combahee River Collective
@parentingispolitical on IG
your local mutual aid group, tenant unions, and abolition groups
Mariame Kaba, Andrea Ritchie, and other abolitionists
@dr.devonmprice on IG
Zoe Samudzi, William C. Anderson, both Black Anarchists
@spade.dean on IG
Movimiento Cosecha, Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI), UndocuBlack Network
BDS: Boycott, Divest, and Sanction toward a Free Palestine.