Mar 2, 2025 4 min read

Care is A Verb: Resources for Finding Your WE

[Image description: a black and white illustration of the outlines of mushrooms on the ground with a root system spreading out beneath them. Above the mushrooms, there is a red block with white text that reads, “NO FUNGUS” and red text within a white box that continues the phrase “WITHOUT us!”]

“Movements are born of critical connections rather than critical mass.”
— Grace Lee Boggs, ‘The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century’

[Image description: Facebook post by Jessica V., February 20. 34 heart reactions, 12 comments. Profile picture shows a close up of a smiling white woman with brown hair wearing a wide-brim hat. Text reads: Today’s act of resistance: planning a way to build community among my neighbors. This summer (or maybe spring, as soon as it gets nice outside), we will be hosting a weekly front yard hang, every week, on probably Wednesdays, from 7 to 8 PM, in our front yard. We’ll distribute handwritten invitations to all the neighbors on our block, post to sign in our yard each week, and invite anyone just out for a walk to come hang out. Just neighbors, meeting other neighbors, sitting or standing and talking, maybe eating pretzels or something. There will be sidewalk chalk, and some folding chairs, and some blankets. That’s it. One hour. Every week we are in town. If no one comes, will do it again the next week. And the next week. And the next. Because as a kid growing up, I could list the names of every house on the whole block by age 5, and though we’ve lived here almost 4 years, we know fewer than five houses. So this is happening. Now come on spring. Get a move on!]

[Image description: a comic about mushrooms titled “MUSHROOMED.” It depicts four panels with text and illustrations. The first panel shows a drawing of the underside of a single, round mushroom cap, with the caption “After a rain, mushrooms appear on the surface of the Earth…As if from nowhere.” The second panel states, “Many do so from a vast underground fungus that remains invisible and unknown.” This is illustrated with many round mushroom caps and stems, tops and undersides, crowded together. The third panel says, “ what we call mushrooms, mycologists call… the fruiting body of a larger, less visible fungus.” This is depicted with two clusters of mushroom caps and stems growing from a shared underground network of mycelium. The final panel states, “Uprisings and revolutions are often considered to be spontaneous.” This is illustrated with a wide view of two slopes with dozens of mushrooms scattered among them between the bases of two tree trunks; the tree on the right has mushrooms growing up the side of the trunk. Text beneath the final panel reads, “CEL” on one side, and “from Hope in the Dark, Rebecca Solnit” on the other.]

Finding Your We

Before you blossom and fruit into mushrooms, you must connect as less visible fungus and then wait for the right conditions to grow.

Which is to say: Find your WE.

Our movies and novels unfold hero narratives at a quick and steady pace: Beginning, middle, end and SCENE. Precious little time to develop the complex relationships that supplemented their success. In the storification of our heroes, virtue is extracted from those who surround them to fuel their individual rise to greatness. We see them standing alone or in front of crowds, their communities and comrades pushed into the background. The result: we remember Martin Luther King Jr. as ascending alone to the mountain top. His squad, their network, the supporting organizers, strategists and volunteers are cropped out of collective memory.
MLK was one mushroom among many, sprouting from an even more vast mycelium network.

Which is to say: find your fungus! Spread out your tendrils and meet your mycelium. Make a date to get out of the group chat or have the group chat meet up virtually; join a choir (I met Jess of the above FB quote in the choir at our church - she has a pheNOMENAL voice); get into role-playing games (though, fair warning: be prepared to do some improv); invite a few neighbors to start a block club and have a block party, or invite some coworkers to do a book club. There are so many ways to find your WE. ]

Here are a few resources (in addition to the Facebook post and comic shared above): use them to jumpstart your WE-finding, and once you get your WE established, some of them will help you get into some more social justice oriented organizing if you like. I’m encouraging you to start with games and gathering neighbors because you can’t organize with people you don’t trust. And you can’t trust people that you don’t know anything about. If you don’t know where to start, start with getting to know people: find out what each other cares about, and what you might be good at together.

Remember: if you’re doing the best you can, you’re doing enough. Good luck finding your WE!

In love and solidarity,

🏘️ Atena