Ok, we’re here on WordPress instead of Substack trying to continue what we started. Thanks for trusting me with your email address. I want to believe that we’re in reasonably good hands here and that we can pick up where we left off. The format is OK, but it doesn’t feel like home yet. Maybe this is the nature of digital migration over time – accepting a less than optimal solution yet paying more than you were on the previous platform. Alas, everything has its price; strings attached are not always obvious or visible.

Although I’m feeling rather out of sorts with this move. I have been thinking about you, us and this moment we’re living through. So much so, that the usual ease I feel in composing an edition has almost evaporated. Or maybe not evaporated, but it definitely seems harder to access. Suddenly everything feels like a risk. And if we’re being honest, that apprehension may not be entirely misplaced.

We’re entering a phase of global communications that are increasingly consolidated in the hands a very few people and entities where unreliable and potentially damaging AI-generated synthetic texts are rapidly flooding information ecosystems. Meanwhile, we have a whole bevy of billionaire meglomaniacs vying for media attention by displaying the absolute worst human impulses. It’s all remarkably grim, disheartening and overwhelming. If you’re feeling a kind of way about things, please know you are in good company.

Understanding the Assignment

Given the larger context in which our teaching, learning and living are taking place, the need to keep asking myself what this project is for and what good it can do, remains urgent. How are we practicing diversity,equity and inclusion at a time when these particular terms have become flashpoints of backlash? In what ways are we navigating systems which only five years ago promised a host of initiatives to redress historical wrongs and are now walking back those commitments and disappearing them from their websites and strategic plans?

Something that is helping me focus in the midst of serial disasters is training my attention on perspectives that are at present far away from my lived experience. I am not reading for the sake of comparison. Rather, I read to understand circumstances and contexts about which I my knowledge is superficial. And my emphasis is on reading first-hand accounts. Below I am sharing links to three pieces of writing that have shaken me by the lapels and/or left me humbled in their wake.

“Chronicles of Blackness: Surviving the Shadows of Europe and Libya“ by David Yambio on the Refugees in Libya website.

In this powerful essay, David Yambio, President of the organization Refugees in Libya, describes the distinctly degrading and dehumanizing experience of Black African refugees in Northern Africa, trying to reach Europe. Particularly as we are most often exposed to Western politicians’ voices on how to manage the ‘migrant crisis,’ Yambio’s searing words illustrate the hypocrisy and double speak at play in the increasingly restrictive asylum and immigration policies of many European states.

“But Europe pretends it has no part in this. It looks at Libya and calls it a tragedy, as though it were not the architect of the nightmare. Europe funds the militias, builds the detention centers, and calls this arrangement “border control.” It condemns the violence in speeches while handing out money to those who carry it out…

…I crossed the Mediterranean not because I believed in Europe’s promises, but because I had no other choice. This land does not want me, but it needs me. My hands pick its fruit, my sweat builds its homes, my labor feeds the machine that calls itself a civilization.” 

If you read one thing this month, I strongly encourage you to prioritize this essay and to further explore the website which features the voices of African refugees, many of whom remain trapped in detention centers or find themselves at the mercy of human traffickers.

Pause.

A book that took me by surprise when I read it over the break was The Autists, Women on the Spectrum by Swedish radio moderator and author, Clara Törnvall. Part memoir, part social and cultural history, Törnvall describes her experience as an Autistic woman, who was diagnosed only in her 40s. In the process she also examines the social and historical context in which autism and neurodivergence have existed primarily in the West but also in other cultures.

I was struck by the number of misconceptions I brought into my reading and how carefully several were debunked or that my thinking on a particular topic was effectively rearranged to accommodate new information. Törnvall is both generous in her storytelling and thoughtful in her analysis. One observation she makes near the end of the book in the chapter on school and work gives me pause:

“I see a paradox in our time. Our knowledge of neuropsychiatric diagnoses is growing, while the space for being different keeps shrinking. In the era of algorithms, we search more than ever for deviations from what is assumed to be normal… When algorithms replace human judgment, there is no room for considering each individual situation on its own unique terms. The view of what is normal and what is aberrant eats its way into everything.

The space for difference has shrunk.” (p. 165)

The Autists offers a welcome window onto the experience of autistic individuals, particularly women on the spectrum, told in their own words. Refreshing in its honesty and clarity, I highly recommend this book for anyone who lives in the world with other people. Neurodiversity is our reality. Let’s embrace it and learn from it.

One more! Against Technoableism by Ashley Shew is a collection of remarkably accessible, forward-thinking essays written by a disabled author. I believe it was Ruha Benjamin who put me onto this book. Shew provides insights from disability, society and technology studies, and lived experience which push back against ableist assumptions regarding how technologies can and/or should be used by disabled folks. Shew defines technoableism as follows:

“Technoableism is a belief in the power of technology that considers the elimination of disability a good thing, something we should strive for. It’s a classic form of ableism – bias against disabled people, bias in favor of nondisabled ways of life. Technoableism is the use of technologies to reassert those biases, often under the guise of empowerment. “(p. 9)

Add this book to your libraries and order a few copies. A great introductory text for secondary students. I believe young people will especially appreciate the straight talk and humor that Ashley Shew brings to the writing. Refreshing and liberating.

Practicing Solidarity, Preparing for Challenging Times

As you have no doubt gathered, the current range of political and climate threats are taking their toll. I’m worried. Every day that I tune into Bluesky (my social media poison of choice), the volume of bad news is startling. The dominance of powerful US-based (tech) billionaires in the headlines often obscure the very real tragedies playing out in other parts of the world which get far less air time in mainstream media on any given day.

I don’t have antidotes. There are, however, groups of people who are preparing and prepared to meet the challenges of these times. Consider these social studies and history teachers who are leading study groups in their local communities to engage in anti-racist learning where History is being whitewashed.

Finding reliable news sources when it comes to transgender lives has become more difficult in our fraught media ecosystems. Have a look at Assigned Media’s coverage of trans issues which aims to counter widespread anti-trans propaganda with accurate and informative reporting.

Now is a good time in our respective contexts to think about how we prepare for difficult times in which civil and human rights are at greater risk than before across the globe. Noticing the way the Meta has blatantly altered their speech guardrails for US users and erased all DEI initiatives from the company, it behooves us to pay attention. Remember, Meta owns and operates Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp. It would be illusory to believe that such sweeping changes will be restricted to one territory. Mark Zuckerberg’s clear alignment with the authoritarian wishes of the incoming US-president elect’s administration do not bode well for what is to come.

Deep breaths, intermittent joy where we can find it, giving and receiving care as praxis – these are all things which are within our power. Put on our own mask and all that. Take good care, friends. We’re in for a bumpy ride.

Sherri