This is Staying Power

We have so much already.

Are you (still) here? Great. I am too.

This is where we are now. For the past two years, I have been researching a book about civil resistance during the early years of a pandemic. That research has required but also cultivated a specific mindset. I spend most of my time thinking about how, over decades and centuries, strangers have come together to support one another in times of catastrophe. I consider alliances and coalitions, and a major aspect of my work is respectfully contemplating the purpose and value of protest.

Staying Power is a scratchpad where I will try to bring some of those ideas and ideals together in one space. Mostly, I imagine it is as a space for the historical accounts and everyday practices that either don’t quite fit in the book I’m writing, or maybe they just deserve to be written down more than once.

I will also probably end up writing a lot about using privilege toward building and sustaining resilient communities, and about forming wholesome habits rather than fetishizing easy choices.

There will definitely be anecdotes about community and city meetings, as well as notes on everyday life and conversations in a friendly neighborhood where I know a wide range of residents.

All of these topics dovetail into the collective mindset of folks I know, especially the evermore intentionally communal mood of the past few years. Writing down what we talk about, when we are together in rooms (mostly) without devices, feels urgent.

This wasn’t meant to be a COVID-19 pandemic newsletter. And it won’t be. But a lot of the topics I will cover may feel (unfortunately) uniquely timely as we try to live through yet another worldwide viral outbreak. It is worth saying that it is always the right time to actively support your loved ones and demonstrate what you would do for them in a time of crisis.  

Staying Power is about strategic choices and moral habits. It’s about feeling invested in the place where you live, and about supporting existing services, organizations, stores, events, and programs that have made your city what it is. It is about creative strategies in creating and maintaining a home. It is about appreciating—and even celebrating—what we have, and about imagining our next prosocial innovations.

What it’s not: a handwringing chronicle of all that is wrong, or what has changed and is different from the day I/you/we moved to town.

My thinking and practice is rooted in San Francisco; the choices I make here are widely applicable, while some of the organizations I will profile don’t necessarily have a counterpart in another city. But most do; we are all more alike than we are dissimilar.

Many of my ideas are borrowed from smart folks elsewhere, from authors who write resonant books, and from studying the recent past. As much as some things have shifted in recent years, much has remained painfully stagnant.

Cities change. People differ. For those of us trying to stay put and make our communities even better than we found them, this is about what kindnesses, ethical choices, and tangible actions unite us.

Cheers to having staying power, wherever you are.