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Preventing extremism

Libraries are vehicles for pacifism. It’s less about ~*~*~the power of books~*~*~ and more about democratization of access, but it’s also about getting users to believe in and trust the system that unites us all. The political impact is that libraries as trusted institutions doling out valuable resources for free have the ability to use their resources to arm people with the information they need to navigate their own personal lives, and get people talking face to face rather than from behind their laptop screens -- and it’s generally far more difficult to shout slurs at people in person than it is in a game of DotA.

On both a personal and systematic level, I am constantly stressed about the different types of extremism that affect our world today. I was raised in a belief community that was on the milder side of extremism, and had I stayed in that community and not gained exposure to other belief communities, I may have very well be focused on trying to revoke people’s access to information today, labeling it “evil” or assuming that people who seek it are “misguided.” I found a sense of freedom when I left, and it has taken me fourteen years to deconstruct my previous beliefs and start to have self-esteem. I understand how easy it is to slide into extremism -- especially ritualized human abuses -- when one is trained in an information silo. Once a silo is created, it is reinforced repeatedly and very, very difficult to break -- and more often than not, leads to violence.  Information centers are dedicated to breaking down information silos and educating information users on how to avoid them, which gives me relief but also makes the attempts to limit library power in certain parts of the US right now extremely worrisome. 
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When thinking about the community project my group selected, and thinking about this issue of information silos, I would suggest that the California State Park Archives remember that it is part of a larger community of information curation and sharing. With how difficult it was to gather information about how it fit into the larger organizations–both within the California State Park system and its Photographic Archives–it seems that libraries and archives are not immune to information silos in their own organizations. 

Roman Mars describes libraries as “temple[s] dedicated to the concept of sharing” (FitzGerald, 2019, para. 1). It’s great that archives and libraries exist to share with patrons, but that kind of sharing shouldn’t be limited to the records themselves. It should be transparent in the sourcing, as well–including the organization that is curating the collection. 

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My actions in community engagement and de-escalation

A huge part of my life is pacifism by way of community engagement. I run an organization called Voting Study Party (https://www.votingstudyparty.org/) with some friends, which aims to de-escalate and depolarize political conversations among neighbors and friends by guiding individuals on how to make studying down-ballot issues a fun, social activity. The materials on our website emphasize learning together and guiding people on how to ask questions with an intent to gather knowledge and not to challenge someone else’s deeply held belief.

Due to the high tensions that can surround political conversations, many people think of politics as a conversation to be forbidden around the dinner table. But banning such topics leads to information silos -- which in turn lead to violence and extremism. So the question becomes: what is the fastest way to encourage widespread adoption of such conversational techniques that can keep us away from information silos? How might I convince my local library system to distribute the materials that my friends and I have put together? 

After hearing Mary Ann Harlan speak about school libraries being on the front lines of the culture wars (Harlan & Hirsh, 2022) -- especially in terms of teaching children how to stay away from extremism -- I applied some of the social, community-hub school of thought discussed in this course so far by hosting a community Voting Study Hall prior to the November 2024 primary in Southern California.

Voting Study Party (VSP) collaborated with Altadena Public Library to host two Voting Study Halls: sessions for community members to set aside time and space for researching all of the issues and candidates on their ballots. The event followed VSP's Hosting Guidelines and we (the organizers) established ground rules -- which were also posted in plain sight for reference throughout the event -- before initiating any discussion. 

The idea was to get past propaganda and focus on the practical (and bribe people into doing it by providing snacks!). Together, participants created a 24-page study guide for the November 2024 local election in Altadena, Pasadena, and LA County.

As a group, participants asked questions, shared information from both personal and professional experience, verified informational accuracy. And because we had a librarian present, we were able to point out the library's newspaper and other research resources -- not only letting participants know that they already had access to these resources as library patrons, but also facilitating an introduction to utilizing librarians as partners in information-seeking.

​In a sense, it was a re-introduction to the library as a place for not just checking out books, but also as a place to connect with the people who curate the information available, who are particularly knowledgeable about information accuracy. 

We had a lovely set of conversations with our neighbors and were successfully able to deescalate some hot feelings, and all participants were engaged and stayed to the end of the 2-hour sessions, which is saying something! I hope that other folks will try this approach at other libraries and let me know how it goes. 

IT'S OKAY TO BE RACIST. WHAT'S NOT OKAY is to continue to choose to allow your racist instincts to continue.

Allow me to explain: 

Racism is a lot like anxiety—and, hell, I’m not a psychologist, but it seems like racism is anxiety. And trust me—I know a lot about anxiety. I’ve been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder since 2012, and have been experiencing it loooong before then. An anxiety disorder is essentially where your neurons misfire on a regular basis to tell you that there’s a threat to your survival when there actually isn’t one, and holy hell, it is obnoxious as fuck. For those of you who don’t have anxiety disorders, it’s basically like feeling like a tiger is fucking chasing you and constantly within one swipe, except that you feel that way all the time. I’ve been dealing with my anxiety disorder for almost fifteen years. It’s exhausting. It’s awful. 
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(I need a sticker or something. Or a badge of honor. Do they have anxiety stickers?) 

I’ve been through years of therapy with several therapists, all of whom tell me the same thing: my anxiety is not serving me. It has a net negative outcome on my life. I spend more time existentially worrying—putting energy into worrying about things that are significantly less likely to happen than the level of worry I’m putting into preventing them—than I do actually living and enjoying my imperfect life. It’s taken me decades to embrace imperfection and unfinished projects and not overperforming in my work, but by golly, I’ve been working on it, and I have improved so much. My life is a billion times better because I’ve put in that work. I’m a billion times more relaxed than I used to be.

That doesn’t mean I’m not anxious anymore. Having an anxiety disorder means that I have to spend actual effort counteracting my brain’s instinct to be anxious. It means that when I’m in the car, thinking about how many car accidents happen on a daily basis and how many of them result in death and wondering whether the car seat we have will actually protect our kid and whether we’ve signed a will and whether we’re leaving anyone out of that will and whether they’ll be offended if they’re not included and how I’m going to need to start repairing those relationships that haven’t even broken yet—it means that I have to spend active energy unraveling that spiral as I’m going through it. I have to practice this using the tools that therapists have provided me over the years, and it takes work to re-train my brain. For some people, this comes naturally, and good for them! That’s awesome. For me, though, it takes work to make new, healthy thought-process habits. And that’s okay. 

It’s okay that my brain works the way it does.

It’s awesome that I’m putting the work in to re-train it so that I have more peace in my life.

Having anxiety doesn’t make me a “bad person.” But choosing to continue to allow my anxious behaviors to take over my body, unfettered--that has a super negative impact on my family and my community. 

Having someone with a mental disorder in your family—someone around whom you exist every single day—is taxing. It creates a certain kind of culture in your family that can be unpredictable, or create a kind of mood. And moods are contagious—if you’ve ever been around someone who’s just always smiling or in a great mood, you know how their sunshine can spread toward you, right? Even if it’s not going to brighten up your dark and perfectly crafted moody core, you still get a feathering of sunshine-y aura on your core’s edges. It feels warm, and that feels good. In the same way, being around someone who’s constantly angry can turn your mood south when you’re around them. Think of it like Newton’s laws of physics—that energy cannot be created nor destroyed, only transferred. The energy around you becomes, if only peripherally, part of you.*

And the worst part about being that person who creates that negative energy is knowing the impact you’re having on your family and feeling like a crummy person for doing it, but not knowing how to not do it. 

That’s how being racist feels, too.

​There’s a certain stigma around racism. And there's stigma in ​racism. Stigma is just a shortcut from a word to an assessment: 

You’re racist, so you’re bad.
You’re in the military, so you’re good.
You’re a Democrat, so you’re bad.
You’re a Republican, so you’re good. 
You’re Mexican, so you’re lazy.
You’re White, so you’re evil.
You believe in social services, so you’re a communist, so you’re anti-American, so you’re bad.

Obviously, none of these things are true. People aren’t just one thing or another; they’re multi-faceted, complicated creatures who are all deserving of life, safety, love, and understanding. We’re all more than one thing. Said another way: 
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And racism is really good at doing that! Racism emphasizes the survival and precedence of one particular group of humans who share a common trait—in this case, an assumed “shared culture” based on the experience of sharing a similar skin tone. White people look out for other white people subconsciously; Latinx people look out for other Latinx people subconsciously. Queer people look out for other queer people subconsciously. And so on, and so on. This is what worked for us in tribal periods. 

But the cost of this behavior is expensive. 

At best, it’s hurt feelings.

At worst, it’s war.

Either way, the result is negative. And if we’re going back to our energy-sphere thought framework, it’s contagious, and not in a good way. 

It’s a spiral of anxiety to a threat. And what’s the threat, exactly? 

As a patient with an anxiety disorder, I am well aware that my fear of the things I think may happen has a worse impact on my health than the thing I’m afraid of. The threat is, most of the time, very invisible—if nonexistent in reality. I have to find a balance of calming my invisible threats; I have to acknowledge my fears out loud to slow down the super-fast spiral of anxiety that becomes a harmful shortcut. I have to practice this. 

I am not “an anxiety patient.” I am not an anxious blob all the time. Sometimes, I am confident and unafraid; sometimes, I am brazen and bold. Sometimes, I do things right. Sometimes, I am comfortable in my own body and really happy with how other people respond to me. Sometimes, my practice results in making other people feel happy and confident, too. 

We’re all familiar with how toxic racism is. And being accused of being racist sucks. You know you’ve done something to hurt someone, but surely what you’ve done isn’t as bad as enslaving people, right? How could you possibly be evil when you’ve done so many good things? 

You’re not evil. You’re just not breaking the cycle. 

To be clear: I'm not excusing anyone for engaging in racist behavior. Engaging in racist behavior, much like physically hitting someone in the face, is hurtful toward others. 

But what I do want to do here is de-stigmatize what "being racist" means so that we can help lower our defenses, because ultimately, that's in the best interest of all of us as a society. Lowering stigmas helps to encourage addressing our own individual bad behaviors. It allows us to face the parts of us that are less desirable (in this case, to put it mildly) so that we can set targets to improve, because that's what re-builds trust between friends and neighbors, and we are all dealing with a hell of a lot of trust issues right about now. 

So consider this your invitation, friend: 
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You’re not bad because you’ve done something racist. What you’ve done is painful to someone else, absolutely, and just like accidentally hitting someone in the face and giving them a nosebleed, there’s a need for repair in the moment. Racism is a learned instinct. It’s the equivalent of you flailing around and whacking someone in the face in the process—you didn’t mean to do it, but you sure as hell need to apologize and find your victim an ice pack and help them stop the bleeding. 



​When (not if, because we all do it!) you’re racist toward someone, treat it like causing someone else a physical injury: 

1. Apologize for hurting them
2. Acknowledge that you’ve hurt them
3. Offer them a metaphorical ice pack (educating yourself, promising to do better and following through on it, acknowledging that you’re still learning to challenge your own racist instincts, etc) 
4. Accept that the ice pack you offer them might not help and be prepared to have someone else help you work through the pain you’re experiencing by knowing that you’re the cause of someone else’s pain.

I’m not going to pretend that this process isn’t difficult. I’m not going to pretend that it’s not painful. It’s like that for anxiety, too—it can feel lonely and depressing, like you’ve failed and are worthless because you’ve failed at doing the right thing in the right moment. But don’t be afraid to practice. The worst thing that can happen is that you have to keep practicing. 

Practice disrupts the cycle, and that’s the most powerful thing. We're all cogs in a societal machine, and when those cogs work individually, they make the whole thing better. 
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Not being afraid to practice is better than perfection. 

*To be clear: I am NOT suggesting that you should only surround yourself with positive people, because that can be exhausting. Toxic positivity is a real thing. Don’t fall into that trap. 

NOBODY'S PERFECT, AND EVERYBODY IS RACIST. It's the people who are unapologetic for their racism or deny their own racism that contribute to hate. Hate leads to hate crimes. The words matter. And who's spreading the words matters, too. Especially when it's you. You, who are supposed to be my friend. You, whom I trusted with my love.

You say, publicly, that it's important to stand up for people being targeted for their race. And yes. Yes, it is.

That includes sharing media. Spreading information or misinformation. That includes when your elected officials are posting stuff.

I don't care which side of the aisle you stand on. I care if you ignore someone's rhetoric over and over and over again because you've decided that the entirety of mainstream media is untrustworthy. That all of the people--the writers, the editors, the managers--are influenced by money, that all those decisions are made by money, that no part of the organization is useful.

The thing I can't get past is that you voted for this person who pushed this rhetoric, and not the person who actively tried to push against that rhetoric.

The thing I can't get past is how much it hurts me that you said "yes" to that.

I'm aching. I'm hurting. My spouse and my kid--the person I created, the small human you were so excited to hear about the existence of, someone who is a person affected by racism, too--are at risk here. When you believe that the issues at the border are really about MS-13 and that that justifies the actions taken against people who are classified like me, I'm bewildered. I just don't get it. It seems so obvious to me, and it just sucks. Because you say you love me, but I still have to convince you that Trump is racist, and that he's not actively trying not to be.

I get that you're coming from a different place. But this is so obvious to me that I have to wonder: were you thinking of me when you voted?

Were you thinking of my baby when you agreed that that man should be leading our country?

Were you thinking of my husband when you said that that man should be allowed to continue spewing his rhetoric off Capitol Hill?

The same rhetoric that heavily implied that this virus is because of China?

We don't educate our people well enough to expect them to differentiate between China and the Chinese. Or to differentiate between cause and blame. Or to recognize their own contributions to the problem. So if that's the case, why would we put someone in charge who isn't careful with their words? 

Why would you?

I don't want to blame you for the choices you've made. I want you to accept that your actions have contributed to this moment in time. I want you to understand and own that your endorsement is valuable, and that you have endorsed someone who has contributed to making the world a more dangerous place for me and my family. I want you to accept responsibility for that choice, regardless of whether it's what you intended or not.

Because without all of that, you might love me, but you're not showing it how you think you are. And without that acknowledgement that you see that you're part of this system, I feel scared, and it's hard to feel loved when you're scared.

White friend, I'm begging for reassurance from you. I'm not here to cancel you. I don't want you to cancel me. I want you to tell me everything's going to be okay, that you're using your privilege to help protect me and my husband and my baby, and me.

HOW CAN THIS PLACE BE SO PEACEFUL for me yet so destructive to you?

This valley with its lush green grasses under my Converse sneakers. With its bright blue skies over my box-dyed hair. With its morning birds chirping to each other as I type with my thumbs on my phone. With its desert-yellow flowers I capture on my NatGeo app. And as I get closer to my brother's home in the mountains, I walk on cracked asphalt, passing a plastic, broken Pelon con Rico container on the floor, blown out of a trash can by the high winds. 

I CAN'T STOP THINKING ABOUT THE "GOOD GERMANS" in Nazi Germany. The people who knew Hitler was deliberately committing genocide against Jews but who voted for him, anyway. On purpose. 

People say that they were doing what they thought--believed!--was right, but how could they believe that murdering an entire subcategory of humans was the right thing? My thought process in response to this, as a Jewish person, goes like this: 

1. They should've known better
2. I am a Jew and therefore I can't trust people like that because survival, duh
3. They are bad people because they are--at best--complicit in the murder of no fewer than six million people within the course of a few years.

There are obvious flaws within the system of thinking here, but I want to be transparent and honest, because that's the only way forward, here, so bear with me.

When Trump got elected in 2016 and started generalizing Mexicans in similar ways that Hitler generalized Jews, I of course panicked--because guess what? I'm Mexican, too. My friends told me that I was overreacting when I compared modern early Trumpism to early Nazi Germany, but I was genuinely terrified. Sure, I'm White-passing, and I grew up Christian. But would those things save me if push came to shove? When people start using rhetoric that blames an entire category of people, it's us-versus-them. It's fight-versus flight. It's survival thinking--and there's no reasoning with survival thinking.

 for four years I've been struggling with what to do about my Trump-supporting family. My Mexican, Trump-supporting family. 

Where do you start? How do you explain systemic racism to your eighty-something-year-old grandmother who grew up an American-born, Spanish-speaking, migrant farm laborer prior to Cesar Chavez, who was lucky enough to get access to a high-school education, then insisted on getting her associates, then became a moderately successful real-estate-agent-slash-mortgage-and-home-loan-specialist? How do you explain to a loving, caring woman--who believes that Trump is "strong" and just desperately wants her family to get along--that the man she believes in would kill her if he got the chance?

If I'd tried, she would have told me, "I don't think he would do that." And how do you argue with that?

You can't. Because until it actually happens, it's all hypothetical. But if it does actually happen, it'll be too late.

That's what has been at stake for all of us here: hypotheticals versus reality, and the inability to agree on which version actually reflects reality. We can't agree on what "reality" is, or whom to trust, because we're all in survival mode.

I'm a Quaker. I'm a pacifist at heart--not in a passive way, but in an active way. I'm not here to vindicate people who actively practice racism, but I'm not here to blame them for holding those beliefs in the first place, either. I'm thinking a lot about how to build bridges and how to cope with the fact that the amount of people who voted for Trump last year is overwhelming, and--to queer, non-Christian women of color like me (even those of us who pass for cishet/White)--terrifying. 

​So. Here's what I'm going to do:

For a while, I'm going to let this blog be dominated by my thought processes and my experiences as an individual working through them. Right now, I think, there aren't enough places for people to be honest without being condemned for their honesty or their thought process "imperfections," and that's a problem. If we can't be honest about where we are, how are we supposed to grow?

In order to reach the "good Germans" of modern America, I have to utilize my privilege of not directly being on the receiving end of racism by educating others and educating myself--and doing the difficult work of being in the middle. For me, that starts with displaying my own nuanced experiences, thoughts, and encounters so that other people can see them, too, and maybe see themselves in that, too, and recognize that they're not alone and that change is possible.

I will be honest. And earnest, and wrong. I will be imperfect. But hot damn, I will be transparent, because I can't be the only one asking these questions, and I want to create a culture in which people aren't deemed "good" or "bad," but rather one in which we are free to establish ourselves as learners and be able to identify how we can do better.

his family and keeps trying over and over; moms who got married young and didn't totally know what they were getting into and have to cope with learning how to be moms and wives but also learning how to be PEOPLE; kids who were raised in a narrow mindset who are now learning who they are and trying to understand how they were raised with what they believe now. They're kids, and they're young adults, and they're new to the complexities of handling family relationships and your own beliefs at the same time, and that shit just comes with practice.

​And the thing that the Brown family does that constantly impresses me is practice. No matter how tough and uncomfortable things are, they practice. And they're honest with themselves and each other, when they're ready for it. They keep trying. And that's my (monogamous) family in a nutshell: fucked-up, but trying. And in those moments when we break through, it's beautiful.

THIS JUST IN: HUMANITY IS RUN BY HUMANS. Also newsworthy: different humans have different approaches to running humanity. Also, in case you didn't know: humans are imperfect beings who don't always have the answers to life. 

So why do we seem to have a double-standard to expect our politicians to have the perfect answer to everything? 

The hate online has been excessive during this primary season, as it always is in elections. But in an era where we're starting to accept that self-care isn't a luxury anymore, that it's essential to survival and living, where we're learning to forgive ourselves, we don't provide that same standard to our politicians. ​

​We expel vitriol and we start choosing our candidates by process of elimination: I can only vote for my candidate because the other candidates made this mistake, made that mistake, etc. Also, I'm ignoring the mistakes my candidate made, or I'm rationalizing those mistakes as "not as harmful" to our government/humanity/etc. 

I'm not blaming people for having this reaction, though. I think it's a response to post-traumatic stress. It is a fear-based response. We're so used to having to choose between bad and worse that we're still evaluating a pool full of awesome candidates--brilliant ideas and flaws and all--by purity tests instead of looking at all the ways they work well together. But we don't have to this time around. We have a bunch of good candidates, all of whom would bring something different to the stage, flaws and all. 

Remember: government is a team sport. We're all in this together. Cue High School Musical theme.
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Yes, the Presidency is one spot. It's one leader. But Presidents have VPs, and that's how Obama and Biden worked so well together to unify so much of the country. And they have cabinets, and they have Secretaries of State, and they have assistants, and all of those people shape the thinking of the rest of how the government will be run. 

That's not to say that you can't have a favorite candidate. I have a favorite candidate, and I have people I'm less enthusiastic about, but I also recognize that while I obviously want my favorite candidate to win, everyone on that debate stage (minus the billionaire who bought his way onto the stage) would be better than 45. Everyone there has a particular angle, a particular special talent, to contribute to our government, and with those special talents will also come weaknesses. 

But just like ourselves, a weakness doesn't mean that that candidate can't learn from that weakness. What we should be looking for in our candidates is an ability to evolve and grow and learn, and I think that Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden all have that ability, as evidenced by their records. Each one of them has grown. Each one of them has made mistakes and learned from them. And each one of them would be a level-headed, balanced leader of the United States, because those failures mean that they are constantly fucking trying. 

So: today, on this historic day, don't forget what's at stake: the potential to turn the United States's government into one similar to that of Russia's, or China's, or North Korea's. One where voter suppression becomes so real that our voices are stripped from us completely. One where that thing that second-amendment advocates are so terrified of--the government murdering its people on the streets--could become a reality. And just another reminder: if we do not vote 45 out of office, he cannot be sentenced to prison for his many, many crimes, including the one where he put our entire democracy--our entire COUNTRY--at stake.

We, the American people, have a chance to prevent this. 

The best way to do that is to not shit on other people's candidates. 

The best way to do that is to support each other when we support other Democratic candidates. 

The best way to do that is to vote, not with fear, but with each other.

​I AM FROM HEAT. A place with sun, maybe too much, but it's sorely missed when you take it away. No room for chill, except briefly for a dip in a chlorinated pool. (I don't know what to do with this saltwater nonsense.)

I am from sweat, dried sweat layered beneath wet sweat, protected beneath pimples that make my face sting and make me feel less-than human, less-than beautiful, less-than desirable, but these are my greatest strength: if I do not worry about beauty, I can focus on love, and through that I can bring people close to me to ease my perpetual insecurity.

I am from Christmas tamales with people my parents hate and who also hate them back; I am from putting on a social face and giving all the expected answers--

Yes, I'm doing well in school;
Yes, I love Jesus;
Yes, I love you, too.

Even though I only really like the reading-stories part of school, and the teacher praise when I've done well; even though I think Jesus is a metaphor and I doubt what my church says; even though I see how you all smile on top of your lies. 

BROWN FEET. THE FEET ARE ALWAYS BROWN. Four years ago, and now, they're brown.

Children lay face-down on green camping mats, but no packages of Jet-Puffed or Honey Maid or Hershey's, classic American childhood staples, are nowhere in sight. Present instead are large sheets of Reynolds wrap, silver and shiny like a housewife's wedding ring. A woman in an advert grins overenthusiastically holding a huge box of Reynolds wrap, her hands cupping either end of the box like she's describing how big her husband's dick is. 

I guarantee you a woman did not make that ad.

There's a webpage that's titled: WOMEN IN JOURNALISM NEWSPAPER MILESTONES. It's short. Thirteen women are listed between 1739 and 1976. The author of the article is named Bill. 

In a different advert, in another decade, a boy stands in a yellow rain coat holding Reynolds wrap next to his dog. The boy is pleased. Of course he's pleased: rain boots protect his feet and he splashes in puddles with his beloved dog. 

I call the woman "woman" and the boy "boy." Most of the people who read this will assume the invisible, default word in front of those words:

                             white.

We don't have to specify.