Friendship, Bracelets, and Signs
It's no secret that I'm not a Swiftie.
It's not for lack of trying—it's just not really my jam. But I do find the community in the TS fandom to be really moving. As an adult, it can be hard to make new friends and the countless stories of Swifties who started as complete strangers, only to have a chance meeting at a tour stop that led to a deep and abiding friendship, are incredibly heartening. So are the dozens of videos I've seen on social media of girls and women making bracelets to trade with fellow fans.
This impulse to share reminds me a bit of Girl Scout events like the Jamboree, Roundup, Global Leadership Conference, and the pilgrimage many troops make to Savannah, GA to see the birthplace of the founder, Juliette Gordon Low. Specifically, it reminds me of the SWAPS, or Special Whatchamacallits Affectionately Pinned Somewhere, each troop would bring to trade with other troops. Although SWAPS were relatively low-budget and often handmade by the Scouts themselves, I wouldn't want you to think that they were worthless trinkets! In fact, it was the homemade nature of them that made them feel valuable—fellow Scouts had put time and effort into making something for a complete stranger in the hopes that they would not remain one for long.
I have fond memories of my own troop having planning meetings to discuss what message we wanted to send about ourselves and our Council with our SWAPS. As a lover of arts and crafts, I have even fonder memories of the craft nights spent painstakingly assembling those gifts. Like so many troops, we wanted to offer other girls something that we would feel excited and even proud to receive ourselves. Decades later, I still have a shoebox full of SWAPS—some from girls I call friends to this day and others from girls whose names I have long forgotten, but whose warmth and sense of community spirit I will never forget. My mother, who has been fighting a losing battle against my sentimental tendencies for as long as I can remember, has tried in vain for decades to find this box "full of kitschy junk" and send it to a forever home in a landfill. I’m so good at hiding it that sometimes I accidentally hide it from myself. For years.
* * *
The day after the election, I made a trip into DC for a rather poorly-timed doctor's appointment. The trip was long and my irritation at having to make it in the first place was amplified by the election results. My irritation increased with every interaction with a healthcare worker who was not wearing a mask in the doctor’s office, despite signage everywhere that masks were required for anyone who was symptomatic or had come in contact with someone that was. It is flu and cold season. At least three other patients in the waiting area had runny noses and hacking coughs, while I counted 4 out of 7 medical staff that I could observe who had the same. It was evident that every single person in that office had come into contact with someone symptomatic of something. To top it all off, both the nurse and my doctor came into the exam room without masks, despite my being their patient for well over a year, thanks to the debilitating post-viral illness that has changed my life.
After that illness, if you were to ask my body about my immune-system, she'd tell you she's got no bloody idea what you're on about. "Immune system? Never heard of her."
Being an immune-compromised person in a doctor's office during peak cold, flu, RSV, and, yes, Covid season is not ideal, especially because those viruses are all airborne and they like to hang in the air, like smoke. Think of blowing into a balloon—your exhalations fill the balloon, right? Once you force in enough breath to overcome the tension of the rubber, the "air" expands to fill the space. Unless the windows are open and/or there are air filters running, every room we are in operates like that balloon. So if someone's hacking out a phlegmy cough alllllllll the way over there, in short order, some of that cough is going to be allllllll the way over here with nowhere to go but in my lungs. Ah, but I said we are in the room, didn't I? That means that cough-air is in your lungs too.
I do wear a respirator indoors, but respirators are most effective at preventing whatever is inside the wearer’s lungs from getting into the air. They're less effective at preventing whatever came out of that cough from getting into my lungs. Or your lungs. Or another reader's lungs. (I did say we.) That's why the lowest transmission rates are in settings where everyone is wearing an N95/KN95/KF94 or equivalent. My mask protects you. Your mask protects me. Our masks protect eachother.
But alack and alas. As is true most days, I was the sole masker. And I found myself praying that 95% filtration would be enough to keep me from getting whatever was in the air, because even the common cold can land me in the hospital.
While I exchanged pleasantries with the treatment team and updated them about my health, I ruminated on what has become a veritable fixation: "What, realistically, will be the proverbial straw that inspires people in this country to care about other people?"
What will get the troublesome neighbor to wheel his bin back to the side of the house after trash pick-up so it isn't obstructing traffic in the middle of the narrow street for the next three days?
What can I or anyone else say to convince that one coworker to tidy up after themselves, shut the communal fridge properly so our lunches don't spoil, or close the door when they have a call they want to take on speakerphone?
How do we get people to insist that the government cap rents and organize proper housing for folks living on the street or sleeping rough, instead of calling the cops to raid them and trash their meager possessions, which might include critical government documents, their last few dollars, and the only photos of their family they were able to carry?
What will make educated doctors and nurses mask up as a matter of course to prevent themselves, yes, but also their patients from getting sick?
I obviously have a vested interest in people wearing face coverings—ideally respirators!—around me in enclosed spaces (and even outdoor ones if people happen to be ill). But I've had an ulterior motive for trying to convince folks who are still taking precautions to keep doing so and to persuade folks who have dropped these precautions to pick them back up again.
Okay, yes, I also don't want anyone else to end up like me if it can be prevented. You got me—my ulterior motive has an ulterior motive!!! It's ulterior motives all the way down in this joint.
My Real Ulterior Motive™ is that a critical mass of people visibly modeling community care can be a persuasive reminder for pro-social feeling and behavior. “I mask to protect you, you mask to protect me” is excellent public health, but it is also an effective visual shorthand for community care. Visual reminders are especially important because, in the West, fear, self-centeredness, anti-social behavior, and social regression can follow pandemics, if there isn’t a successful, concerted effort for community care.2345
I personally consider one hallmark of that backslide to be the rise of the “I don’t owe anyone anything” mentality dressed up as folk wisdom, virtue, righteousness, or in today’s parlance, “self-care” and “mental health.” There’s some kind of feedback loop between the degree to which a person turns inward and the amount their feeling of isolation increases. While in that loop, isolation breeds a renewed interest in, and support for, cracking down on out-groups.
Since the rise of proto-eugenics, in the West this has manifested as identifying, marginalizing, and passively or actively eliminating “undesirables” based on immutable characteristics.678 This precedes the rise of reactionary movements and leaders. The 1918 flu is the largest scale example in recent global history; its contribution to the rise of fascism in the West is undisputed.9 The outcome of recent elections all over the West are, unfortunately, precisely as anticipated given the widespread refusal to acknowledge the lessons of history and ensure we do not repeat the mistakes of our forebears.
* * *
So, what can we do?
I’m sure you’re seeing social media posts urging you to support existing mutual aid and to build community with your neighbors. I would urge everyone to embrace that messaging. The historical record “predicted” this political moment. It also supports the necessity of mutual aid and community building for resilience and survival.
I also have a special message for white allies. As white folks, you belong to the majority of the population and unless you’re disabled or queer, most of you have not been involved in mutual aid or intentional community building in the past. That’s not a criticism, it’s simply a fact. Folks who are politically or financially “okay” are rarely involved in mutual aid and intentional community building.
What is at America's door now will change that for many of you. I encourage you to join existing efforts. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Anything you can imagine, Black, indigenous, immigrant, queer, and disabled folks have already launched with success. Join their organizations and follow their lead. Do what they ask of you without assuming you know better or best. If what I wrote makes you uncomfortable, please try to stay with me here and once you’re done reading, please ask yourself why you’re uncomfortable. (Please also check out 'I'm Still Here' by Austin Channing Brown and the 'White Allies Handbook' by Lecia Michelle, and read them both with an open mind and an even more open heart. I'm sure your local bookstore or library would love to help you get your hands on these.)
Every marginalized person is, of course, a target. Your disabled and immune-compromised neighbors are more vulnerable than ever now.
I confess, I am burnt out from begging that we be remembered again. But there’s nothing for it, so I’m back to begging. The difference is that this time, I say this solely for YOUR sake.
History is VERY clear:
You can either join in community with *everyone* who is marginalized and ensure that you join a mutual aid network where the most marginalized are centered, or you or someone you care about can find yourself without community support one day because under white supremacy, ableism and othering comes for us all.
I’m not trying to “gotcha” or “I told you so.” I’m not trying to fear-monger or catastrophize.
I’m not saying anything you can’t have concluded yourself by perusing the historical record.
I’m not an oracle. Or a Cassandra. Or any of the synonyms for “seer” that folks have tried to call me—sometimes as a compliment and most often as a pejorative over the years. I’m just a woman who reads history and political philosophy, who looks stuff up on Wikipedia sometimes, to glance up an indeterminate amount of time later from the Library of Congress website or HeinOnline or whichever of the dwindling public scholarly resources is still available for now. I just read and research for fun.
And I’m simply reminding you what the historical record says.
You know what else it says?
It is never too late to start for the first time. Nor is it ever too late to start again.
Just like you can get into a movement routine and improve flexibility, or get back to eating foods that agree with your body better and feel some improvement, or start calling loved ones you haven’t called in a bit because you got busy and then you got embarrassed about how long it has been—you CAN be in community with disabled people again.
You CAN insist the bus driver kneels the bus and enforces access to the accessible seating for anyone who needs it. You CAN give up your seat for someone who needs to sit. You CAN ask a bus or train full of people if they can give up their seat for someone who needs it. (“Hey, if you’re sitting and you can stand, would you do me a favor and give your seat to a neighbor who needs it? You’d be my hero.” It sounds ridiculous, but it works!) You CAN bully your electeds and organize to make sure the elevators in the subway are working. You CAN use the smaller bathroom stall to leave the accessible stall available for people who need it. You CAN speak to a manager when you notice the accessible entrance is blocked. You CAN oppose mask bans that put people in danger by making it illegal to protect their health and put people masking for medical reasons in a position where their rights and even their lives are at the discretion of police who, time and again, have used that discretion in discriminatory ways and have escalated encounters with deadly consequences.
You CAN wear a mask in the doctors office and subway and bus and store again.
Yes. You CAN.
You CAN get takeout or pick well-ventilated outdoor seating instead of dining in. You CAN work with your church and local businesses like grocery stores and theatres and arts and crafts event spaces and cooking classes to organize mask-only hours/days that make it possible for people with disabilities to have equal access to public life.
You CAN hang out with friends who are taking precautions and follow their lead on risk mitigation.
You CAN make your public library and community centers places where everyone is welcome and *safe*. And when you fight to keep the library funded and open and accessible, you CAN model community care and you CAN improve accessibility by wearing a mask, and lugging an air filter and some extra masks with you to the Town Hall or referendum or debate. You CAN join your local mask bloc and help organize your local accessible events.
I promise that doing just one or a few of these things will have more real-world impact than a 2016 safety pin ever did. A mask is a clear symbol that you care about public health, which has long been under attack in the West and is about to see some drastic restructuring in several countries that will have lasting impacts for decades to come. A mask is a sign that you are a safe person because you love your neighbor and cherish their health. A mask shows that you are an ally to working class people and disabled folks. A mask is community care.
* * *
Okay. You know what's funny?
Not funny ha-ha, but more like "my spidey-senses were tingling." When I wrote this up last week, I knew in my heart that the safety pins were making a comeback. I just didn't realize that they would be friendship bracelets with a riot of blue beads this time around.
The thing about symbols is that they can be a shibboleth, of sorts. They can have meaning to one group of people and no significance to another. Or they can have meaning to one group of people and a completely different significance to another. And in this moment, with regard to the friendship bracelets, I can't help but remember the month I lost my evenings to the rabbit hole of semiotics. Semiotics, the study of the communication of meaning, defines a "sign" as any visual representation that communicates meaning or feeling—intentionally or unintentionally—to the person seeing the sign.10
In the West, we know that the green traffic light means "go." And we know that the rainbow flag represents the LGBTQ+ community.
Americans know that the middle finger means "fuck you," but unless they've been to the UK or watched British tv, they might not know that across the Pond, what they're looking for when they want to flip someone off is the two-fingered salute. Just like we learned in that "three glasses" scene in Inglorious Basterds, most visual communication will have one meaning for one group and a different, sometimes completely unintentional meaning for others.
SWAPs are recognized and even cherished by Girl Scouts across the U.S. as a representation of making new friends, but they're meaningless to my mom (and offensive to her sense of tidiness). Maybe friendship bracelets have an established meaning in white women culture—as an outsider, I can't really say whether they do or not. But what I can say, is that friendship bracelets are not a well-established symbol for what white women want them to mean at this time to Democratic voters from minoritized and marginalized backgrounds. Unlike the Pride flag, which originated with the LGBTQ+ community and is generally understood to be a sign of allyship when non-queer folks use it, the bracelets either:
don't hold any significance to the marginalized communities white women say they’re hoping to signal safety to
or
hold a very negative one.
From a semiotics perspective, wearing the bracelets to differentiate yourself as "safe" is really only understood by other white women, so the stated purpose of the bracelets isn't actually being satisfied.
Worse yet, blue beaded bracelets played a dark role in the Middle Passage of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: blue, spun glass beads manufactured in the Netherlands and Venice were traded for enslaved persons in the freeports of the Caribbean, but especially on St. Eustatius. People sold into slavery in the Dutch Caribbean were also "gifted" necklaces of these beads by their traffickers. When the Netherlands finally banned slavery in the Dutch West Indies in 1863, the newly emancipated people cast these necklaces into the ocean and these blue beads are understood by people of Afro-Dutch Caribbean descent to be a symbol of genocide.
* * *
The intent behind a message matters, but the impact matters more.
And at best, the safety pins and friendship bracelets simply do not signify. At worst, they're associated with the enduring harms of a brutal ideology with roots so deep and recalcitrant that it played a direct role in the outcome of this election. Most of all, the bracelets (and the discourse around them) are a distraction from the work of ensuring the safety they're supposedly meant to symbolize.
No one is saying you shouldn’t get together with some friends to do some arts and crafts—in fact, you absolutely should spend time with people who nourish your soul! We’re simply saying that insisting on doing something for our “benefit” that we aren’t asking for isn’t friendship. Or safety. It’s paternalism. And that’s one of the many facets of white supremacy that we’re all fighting against.
Remember how I said that my Girl Scout troop wanted our SWAPS to offer other girls something that we would feel excited and even proud to receive ourselves? How would you feel if you received a symbolic gesture you didn’t ask for and don’t really value instead of something simple and tangible? Would you feel excited? Would you feel proud?
Or would you feel like your new “friend” wasn’t really thinking about what your needs are at all? Because that is how your message is landing.
I know it is painful to hear that’s how your message of friendship is being received. Being on the receiving end of a message that a string of beads is more important than actually being heard or more important than a fellowship committed to change is even more painful.
So please, consider using the money you would have spent on materials or buying the bracelets (especially from another white person!) to donate to mutual aid. Or lend the time you set aside for the bracelet crafternoon to do your part to make sure essential services in your area will be shored up for the coming attacks, like attempts to defund them or dismantle them.
In fact, let's do it together! This week, I'm committing to making sure the library in the neighboring redlined community is well-resourced.
Practice makes progress.
REFERENCES
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