PREFACE TO THE 2021 EDITION

When this book went to press at the close of 2019, I was alarmed by the rise of fascism, white supremacy, and widening inequality, yet I never anticipated the levels of fear, dysfunction, and insecurity to which our country would descend in 2020—far too many to list but notably these:

  • nurses forced to wear garbage bags as protection against the COVID-19 pandemic while police are outfitted in the best armor money can buy and actively engaged in suppressing protests across the nation
  • surging domestic violence stirred by angry rhetoric that places blame on the least powerful, with the shelters for victims of violence, as for the homeless, desperately underfunded in a time of greatest need
  • COVID deaths twice as high among people of color: a legacy of decades, even centuries of underfunded healthcare for these communities
  • 45.7 million unemployment claims while the wealthiest 1 percent continue to post record profits
  • the literal sacrifice demanded of essential workers—predominantly women of color
  • thirty to forty million renters at risk of eviction; 80 percent of them black or Latinx, a direct result of the lack of educational, job, and advancement opportunities in those communities
  • the shootings and murders of black men and women by police:
   Rayshard Brooks, twenty-seven, sleeping in his car
   Breonna Taylor, twenty-six, sleeping at home
   Ahmaud Arbery, twenty-five, jogging
   Jacob Blake, twenty-nine, with his sons watching in the back seat
   George Floyd, eight minutes and forty-six seconds, calling out for his mother
  • lightning fires, 4.76 million acres burned, a direct outcome of the widespread refusal to address the impact of climate change
  • forced sterilization of immigrant women in ICE custody and other inhumane actions against people seeking refuge

These incidents are not random nor merely the result of a really bad year. The dangers we face today are undeniably the result of choices made over four hundred years by politicians from both sides of the aisle and the interests that fund them. Their choices put into place the “framework of fear” that scapegoats black, indigenous, and other people of color while obscuring the real harms, from climate change to inequality to ongoing state violence.

Before the pandemic, seven hundred people a day died from poverty. Before George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, a black person was killed by police or vigilante violence every twenty-eight hours. Before 2020, we spent fifty-three cents of every federal dollar on the military. The lion’s share of city and municipal budgets went to police departments. The very things that accelerated the suffering and death of black and brown people—policing and prisons—were recession proof. Meanwhile, after every recession since 1980, access to healthcare, education, housing, and meaningful employment—necessary for the lives of all people, black, white, and brown—was slashed and burned.

There is no denying that Donald Trump escalated the hateful rhetoric that animates the “framework of fear” while rolling back human rights advances and the rule of law itself. Still, this legacy cannot be laid at the feet of any one president, no matter how god-awful he has been. The man in 2020’s White House is not the sole source of our suffering and insecurity. Regardless of who occupies the White House, we must defund the machine of fear and dehumanization. In its place, we must build a system of care that prioritizes public health and mental health, the restoration of relationships, and investment in our communities. Our overall community health can only ever be as good as the health of our most distressed communities.

If COVID-19 has taught us anything, it’s that the lack of infrastructure and a lack of a culture of care can ultimately harm each and every one of us. As of October 2020, over two hundred thousand people had died due to COVID-19. Only the Civil War period exceeds this moment in terms of deaths due to a single cause: when three-quarters of a million people died in the span of four years. And only the Civil War saw as deeply divided a country as we have today.

I fear a new civil war is threatening. My wife and I have been committed nonviolent organizers all of our lives. For the first time, we have given thought to what for us is nearly unthinkable: do we need to get a gun to protect ourselves and our children? We have not done so. It is my fundamental belief that if a new civil war erupts, it is because we have never truly healed from the wounds of the last one nor from the harms that preceded and followed it. We must rally the nation now. But this time cannot be a call to take up arms but rather must be one to open our hearts. It can’t be a call rooted in fear but one rooted in empathy. This is, in fact, a moment to Defund Fear and to turn away from a culture of policing, prisons, and punishment.

This book is about how we got here and how we can move forward together into a safer future, by rejecting the politics and practices of fear and by embracing a politics and practice of care and compassion.

This moment is so full of heartache and pain. But perhaps we can take solace in the words of the twelfth-century Persian poet Rumi, who wrote, “You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.”