A yarn lover’s guide to social change

I cannot be the only one who gets very, very tired of starting every essay or every email with “the news is uniformly grim.” And this feeling is amplified a thousandfold for those of us who aren’t receiving a paycheck because we’re federal workers, or who didn’t get SNAP benefits yesterday, even though everyone reading this newsletter paid for them.

Friends, no matter where you are positioned, you are on the front lines.

You may be feeling a crushing weight of insecurity, from food insecurity to income insecurity to the insecurity of having brown skin and knowing that ICE raids are happening in your city, to making plans about where you can and can’t safely go because of this threatening presence. Or you may feel waves of insecurity when you read the news in the morning or when you talk to friends who are more affected than you. Or you may be avoiding the news and social media to try to hold on to a personal sense of calm. No matter where you are in the front lines of life in America these days, I feel it too, and I want you to know: Same, friend, same.

Aside: Hannah Rosenberg’s excellent book of poems, entitled Same, is newly out, and if you buy one book this month, it should be this one. Page 157 features the poem, Same, and it captures the beautiful moment when we connect “to share one simple message: same. Same, same, same.”

What I have to offer you today is a short guide to being a yarn lover —whether you are a knitter like me, a crocheter, a spinner, a weaver, or in any other way a yarn crafter —and to deeply desiring social change, commonly defined as being a leftie.

I like to think of this as the politics of wanting everyone to be okay. The people who look like me and have families like mine, and also the people who look different from me and have families that look different from mine. Even the people who don’t wish me well. And especially the people who are marginalized by our society in one way or another way or any way. Because here’s the thing: each of us will be marginalized at some point and in some way. And I want a society that has room for all of us to have a safe home, plenty to eat, health care, and an abundance of love, connection, and yarn. In short, all the things that help one to thrive.

1. Spend extra time with your yarn. I know this feels like a counterintuitive recommendation for social change. After all, spending time with your yarn is pretty darn enjoyable, and change is supposed to be hard. But here’s the thing: when you are with your yarn, working it on needles, hooks, shuttles, or spindles, it is modeling—for yourself or for anyone who cares to see—what it looks like to disconnect from consumer culture and connect to something generative.

Social change, at its heart, is generative, too. We can march when we are angry, but I believe that the quiet, steady drumbeat of creating something is the feeling we need to sustain. Anger burns hot. Creation burns steadily. Give your body and mind the sense of something new being made, over and over.

2. Choose your issue. Right now, when everything needs changing at once, it’s really easy to get overwhelmed. Remind yourself that there are enough of us to tackle everything. As the pretty cool 19th-century French political philosopher, Alexis de Tocqueville, said, America is really cool because people just pitch in and do what’s needed. They all have a charitable-mindedness. John Steinbeck wrote about this uniquely American feeling in Travels with Charley in 1962, a hundred years after de Tocqueville wrote Democracy in America. Same thing.

All you have to do is your part. Are you impacted by the shutdown? You’re doing your part. Are you more insulated and don’t (yet) feel the impacts? Donate to a food bank. Your tax dollars have already paid for SNAP benefits, and the current administration is stealing them, but we can still care for people. You don’t have to do everything; you just have to choose something.

3. Express your solidarity. My takeaway from the No Kings marches is that solidarity feels good. Really good. When times are hard, more often than not, the thing that helps the most is to know you’re not alone. Reach out to someone on social media who’s shared something vulnerable. Tell your neighbor who planted a yard sign. Tell someone in line at the coffee shop who’s wearing a t-shirt with a sassy quip. Let them know: hey, friend, same. You don’t have to solve the problem; you don’t have to sink into despair. Your job is simply to express: I am with you. You are not alone.

4. Prepare for the long haul. I am a big fan of Heather Cox Richardson’s daily Letters from an American. She’s a history professor at Boston College. Her letters place our current federal administration’s actions, which feel shocking and anti-American, in the context of history. And they let us know precisely how long the struggle for social change has been going on. There are roots of today’s news headlines in the Reconstruction Era, when elite white enslavers succeeded in reconsolidating power and thwarting Black liberation. Her letters connect today’s news to the 1920s and the era of robber barons, whose power was only temporarily dampened by the Great Depression, FDR, and World War II. Social change is the long game.

Most of the white folks I know, including me, haven’t been very well-connected to the realities of social struggle and liberation. But the struggle is on our doorstep, and maybe this time, we can join the long game for liberation—for all of us. Fortify yourself by learning history, getting curious about how today’s news connects to the past, finding the throughline, listening to songs, and reading books of liberation. Here’s my own Apple Music playlist of favorite liberatory anthems, with my personal 70s soul and funk twist.

5. Expand your personal world. Social change happens when there is a strong enough groundswell of ordinary, head-down people living their lives who start to agitate for change. It’s not because political leaders “do their job” and enact fair laws. It’s not about which president is elected. And it’s not when enough social media posts express enough outrage, no matter how much social media platforms try to foment outrage.

Social change happens when enough people rise together and demand something different. All the pillars of our modern life, from capitalism to consumer culture to the invisible forces of race-based caste in the U.S., conspire to keep us separate and feeling like keeping our heads down is the only way to be safe. I believe that changing this feeling—going from heads-down safety to heads-up understanding—is the fundamental first step of social change. Read seminal books to understand the invisible forces of culture that are sapping our belief in collective power. Read novels that open windows and doors into the lives of people different from you, and read books that show you a mirror to your own diverse perspective.

I was in one of my graduate classes recently, and we were lamenting anti-trans legislation being passed in many states and feeling heartsick about the road our gay, lesbian, and queer colleagues were facing, specifically talking about the harm of conversion therapy (banned in 2020 and being re-proposed in some states). I was reminded of a beautiful book, The Ship We Built, by Lexie Bean. It’s a tender story of a young trans person (semi-autobiographical) who their parents ultimately force into conversion therapy. But the book isn’t about this difficult experience; it’s about a young person’s inner world of survival, resilience, and understanding their own identity.

I believe social change starts when we make room to understand experiences that may be very different from our own: the harm that not understanding can cause, and the hope and beauty that are possible. We can’t imagine a different world into being until we see what is.

And with that, I recommend that you go back to item no. 1 and spend more time with your yarn today.

Before I share my graduate school experiences, I want to give you a quick heads-up that I’ll be sending a regular shop-related email tomorrow morning.

(If you wish to opt out and NOT receive it, click here and turn off the option for “New Yarn & Kits”.) “Yarn .) Otherwise, I’ll be sharing something gnome-related and inviting you to join me for a very particular kind of December activity.