NOTICINGS: Parallel polis

Walking the balance beam of powerlessness, government power, and finding our footing in our own power at home, online, and on the street.

Children safe in bed, and a mother consoling her children.  Credit: Joel Angel Juarez

One Mother’s Day, the photo on the left was taken by the mother of the two children in bed. The photo on the wall behind the bed was taken when the mother was two years old. This is an image of what I want for our future. All our futures. Little ones growing up, happily snuggled in their mother’s arms. Little ones snuggled together in bed, reading a book. 

The photo on the right is a mother with her two children. A portrait of so much gone deliberately, sadistically wrong. You know it. I know it. We know it. Her husband and their father came to the US at age two. He has lived in the United States for 40 years and is now in a detention center facing deportation. His seven-year-old told his classmates, “Daddy got arrested for not wearing his seatbelt.” Later, he asked his mom, “Did daddy get arrested because he’s Brown?”

Set side by side, these photos represent the parallel lives everyone is trying to balance every single day since our new president, on January 20, 2025, began his siege of executive orders. What photos would you choose to capture a moment during your day since that inaugural day?

In Philadelphia at the No Kings rally on June 14, 2025, attended by 100,000 citizens, Timothy Snyder, the author of “No Tyranny,” said, “We make a new friend here today, and we do something tomorrow!” His speech was an incantation. 

“We meet somebody today, and we do something tomorrow.

We meet somebody we admire today, and we do something with them tomorrow. 

We meet somebody who is a little more courageous than us today, and we do something tomorrow. 

Today, no kings. Tomorrow, freedom.

There is a better America out there. 

There is a better America underneath; there is a better America we can see. 

There is a better American that we can make. 

History is in our hands.”

History tells us that the power of the powerless overcomes powerlessness when we come together with a purpose. One historic example is Czechoslovakia, where the people took down the communist government in the non-violent “Velvet Revolution” in 1989. In Tunisia, citizens peacefully overthrew the dictatorship of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in 2011.

We continue to learn from the past. We continue to connect with one another. We continue to build on our capacity…a capacity each and every human is born with, the capacity to feel and to express our inalienable rights to be alive in freedom.

Tim Snyder also tells us that each one who laughs or makes a joke is claiming their freedom. One by one, one claims their freedom. Freedom is not given. It is taken.

Now. Between rallies, we can share with one another what our parallel polis looks like on a day-to-day basis. It is something all of us can do, here.

Why? For the sake of each of us, together in community, to know the details that bind us.

Walking the balance beam takes practice. But we love practice! And we’ve got one another, and that is what makes this time bearable, doable, and, maybe, a bit of fun. Make a face. LOL.

I can’t wait to see your photos, where we stick that walk (or backflip) on the balance beam.

_________

NOTES

Václav Havel, The Power of the Powerless, Vintage, November 27, 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAXSHIlHs84
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZmNLKlkUxQ