When you support reluctant writers, you might find a meaningful mentor text and encourage them to "lift a line" and use that mentor's line to help jump start their own poem or essay or idea, and all I can think about is
look for the helpers
which is a favorite mentor line for me, for the days when the world is on fire, burning with hate and harm, yet we know light and love exists.
So we encourage young children, and older children, heck we encourage ourselves to remember to
look for the helpers
that are always there, keeping us safe, helping us heal, documenting the harm so we can go back and know what really happened and we can fight back with truth.
When the helpers are harmed, what do we do then?
Sob and rage and try to catch our breath in the shower, the safest place to cry when you're trying to be strong.
Write and call, and text all our people to write and call and be persistent, those damn full voicemails, they will not discourage us from using our people power.
March and sing and chant, stomp our feet to keep warm and smile under our scarves and hoods and hats, so people know we are glad they showed up, we are community tonight.
Light our candles, put them in windows, braid them with our prayers, find more tears.
Join the calls and show up at the meetings, take our whistles and learn how to use our cameras and call the right numbers and download Signal and teach each other to be safe. We keep each other safe.
Look for the helpers; here we are; we will not give up.
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Alex Pretti was shot & killed helping in Minneapolis, and dozens of fellow humans have died in ICE detention, stolen from their families as our government slips into authoritarian rule. I am staying outraged and taking action, and this poem comes from trying to live in both those places.
I love this so much. And while looking for helpers, I’m trying to be a helper, too. Activism is not isolationism. I think about courage and what that looks like in my life every day. I’ve tried to explain to family how teaching 38 years required a type of love and acceptance of all children if I were to be my best for the learners in my classes. I want to channel that rhetoric more. ‘Preciate your words today.
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