5 min read

Re-gifting.

It is my birthday. 

“What do you get the woman who has everything?” my friend asked.

Back in January at the height of the California wildfires, a close friend texted, “If the place that finally feels like peace to you, where you can finally breathe burns down, I’m buying us 1-way tickets to Kenya and we’re disappearing in the mountains.” 

Girl, yes. 

Three weeks later, the roles changed quickly. I was back in Washington in that friend’s living room so fresh from the wildfires I was worried my clothes still smelled like smoke, helping her organize fellow illegally fired USAID colleagues and other radicalized bureaucrats (truly the best kind of radicals, in my opinion). It all still feels like an unfair whiplash. Her job was such a place of pride and reprieve, a hard-won role at place she was proud to spread peace and where she felt she could finally breathe. Where can I get us 1-way tickets to now? How can I help you find a place to breathe? 

We couldn’t make a break for Kenyan mountains right now but I could return the gift she gave me, link arms and double-down in solidarity. I can remind my friend of who is she, what's she's done and that she doesn't have to go through this all alone. "I don't know what's next but we will figure out a way to figure it out." She exhaled.

Re-gift solidarity.

When threats of retaliation are pervasive and real, the direct outcome of regifting solidarity reminds people navigating unsafety of their agency and power. Collectivism has network effects. Collective solidarity networks power.

Instances of institutional retaliation are often falsely conflated with “fairness” or connected with the bizarre pursuit of “an eye for an eye.” But retaliation in imbalanced power dynamics are never equal. It is never fair. There is no merit and no good faith argument to entertain. This is abuse. 

Collectivism breaks witch hunts.

For decades, legal challenges and cultural fights chipped away at power and safety on American college campuses and universities one by one. But in the wake of Harvard rejecting the Trump administration's demands, college administrators are quickly organizing to create NATO-style defense pacts to protect their institutions from being eroded by fascists in the current administration. 

Every single week this hellscape administration is presenting moments to regift solidarity in a way that spreads network effect. Collective solidarity networks power.

South Sudan is the latest unlikely entrant into the group chat. South Sudan is the youngest country in the world and is actively on the brink of civil war. This week, South Sudanese officials refused to accept the entry of a man illegally deported from the United States because he is not from South Sudan. He is from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A different country. To quote American cinematic masterpiece, Mean Girls, “[He] doesn’t even go here.” 

In “retaliation”, Marco Rubio’s State Department revoked ALL of the visas from South Sudan. Everyone. Canceled. No one goes here now, I guess. 

Any country has the sovereign right to refuse deportation flights from another country. Sovereignty is a right. In US foreign policy, these countries are often referred to as “recalcitrant," subject to brutal sanctions, disfavorable everything and noncompliance penalties. In this case, United States immigration policy is being used as a tool to actively blackmail another country to accept forcibly removed residents who are not even their citizens or nationals.

This is schoolyard bully behavior on a global stage. The Mean Girls assessment stands. It is no surprise South Sudan is the target of abuse in this round. The country exists in a delicate, precarious state. South Sudan has experienced more violence than peace in its short existence. What I hope to witness are other global powers re-gifting solidarity to the world’s youngest nation. Who else will say no? We already see which nation has cast itself as the world’s Columbia University (El Salvador). Now who will be Harvard? 

“What do you get the woman who has everything?” my friend asked me yesterday.  

What? 

“You remind her of everything she already has,” she answered handing me a framed photo of my favorite humans. When I saw the photo, I exhaled.

Solidarity. Sovereignty. A right to peace. 

Space to breathe. 

Four years ago, on my birthday in this newsletter (via TinyLetter, RIP!) I wrote about an old dear friend I first made working in the Arab Spring and her wish for me that is my birthday wish for everyone.

"We were talking about the impracticalities of working in war/conflict. I was feeling unrooted, stuck and craving a different life and she was telling me how much she loved France and how she came to call it home. She said: “We go around the world and we have these intense experiences that very few people can relate to and it can wear on your spirit. I’m not ready to walk away and do something different but I knew I needed to understand how to carry this for myself. I decided it is important to come home to a place where you can breathe. So when I look out over my desk and I see the Mediterranean, I feel like I can breathe. That is my wish for you— to find a place where you can breathe.”

I have that now. 

This year, next year and always— my friend's wish for me is my birthday re-wish for all of you— as we brace for yet another hailstorm of chaotic executive orders and destabilizing difficult times, may you find a place you can breathe and find peace.

If you are lucky enough to have that already, may you practice solidarity and do what you can to re-gift peace to someone else. 

Read/Listen

I am choosing
to believe
the future 
can still
be beautiful. 
- Morgan Harper Nichols

"The idea of hope being a discipline is something I heard from a nun many years ago who was talking about it in conjunction with making sure we were of the world and in the world. Living in the afterlife already in the present was kind of a form of escape, but that actually it was really, really important for us to live in the world and be of the world. The hope that she was talking about was this grounded hope that was practiced every day, that people actually practiced it all the time...

Because in the world which we live in, it’s easy to feel a sense of hopelessness, that everything is all bad all the time, that there is nothing going to change ever, that people are evil and bad at the bottom. It feels sometimes that it’s being proven in various, different ways, so I get that, so I really get that. I understand why people feel that way. I just choose differently. I choose to think a different way and I choose to act in a different way"

Hope is a discipline – archived 2018 interview with Mariame Kaba

Recall

Upcoming

Resiliency is a group project.

As democracy is in crisis, how can we show up to create better systems for community safety and resilience through devastation and destabilizing times?

Next week my team is producing a Rights x Tech on Technology & Collective Resilience with John C. Mills the CEO & Founder of WatchDuty.org– the nonprofit technology application credited keeping millions safe during the California wildfires. You can sign up here.

Sabrina Hersi Issa is a human rights technologist. She is committed to leveraging innovation as a tool to unlock opportunity and dignity for all. She does this through her work in technology, media and philanthropy. This is her personal newsletter.