By Scott Steward
Overcome and grateful for the rest, my activist colleagues, near and far, may you feel the blessing of solstice on these longest nights.
Many rest, taking the season to focus more on charity. The people’s work, to organize and break through the repression, is set to a simmer. Settle down – take the following “caring for the world” paragraphs one at a time, holding a warm mug. Rest and restore. Inspiration will call you to act soon enough.
Our Actions Abroad
Blankets and dollars for Gaza. Here is one of the most effective places to send aid to the children and families in occupied Palestine
Help Gaza survive this winter by donating to @projecthopepalestine. Part of the Taxpayers Against Genocide family of humanitarian efforts that go hand in hand with ending the illegal funding of genocide in Israel/Palestine.
Our Actions Here at Home
Public disgust is unifying resistance, and fractures in the Project 2025 operations may be growing. Perhaps too soon, one can hope that the infantile dismantling of the US study of atmospheric science will inspire more homespun and widespread care for earthways. Science is a part of culture. Investment in science alone, however, is not an adequate commitment – care for Mother Earth needs to be woven into all aspects of human existence.
At home, in Davis/Yolo County, I need to catch up with our Yolo County Climate Action Commission. As a county, we saw CEMEX re-up excavation permits for 20 years, allowing 53 million tons of never-to-return creek bed. Ending the colonial mining enterprise will require deep work to unyoke jobs and traditions from extraction industries that continue to dismantle the food and life systems of 10,000 years of indigenous livelihood.
As we begin a new cycle and the days lengthen, where can we find our horizon of effective collective action? First, we need each other; we cannot do this alone. Locally, we need to focus on more affordable housing by moving away from private development and toward public-financed housing projects, unlike Village Farms (a for-profit non-solution), and by protecting our water. Right now, Yolo County family farm producers are fighting for their lives against international corporate interests that want to export vast quantities of water in the form of olives, nuts, and grapes.
Federally, replace broken leadership with young fighters who are not part of “the best we can do,” bow to the pressure of pro-Israel, forever war, consumer slop billionaires. We have an excellent candidate in Sacramento Councilmember Mai Vang, running against 81-year-old Matsui.
Eric Jones is running for our District 4 Congressional Representative seat against 28-year incumbent Mike Thompson. Mike Thompson’s tenure as a “proud compromiser” has overseen decades of displacing humane needs from government and prioritizing profits over people. Eric Jones, a DC outsider, has already knocked on 25,000 doors and is running a no-PAC people-not-money-first campaign.
We will need this emergent, young, imperfect, hopeful, and relentlessly energetic contribution, like the spring to come.
Rest now, my vigilant neighbors. We can hold it all and do the work. Peace.
Davisite 
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