Days Since Adriana Last Mentioned her Thesis: 0
musings on accessible writing, building community, and taking action
Welcome back bffs <3 this week, i’m excited to delve a bit more into what Sunday Scaries actually is and, of course, talk about my th*sis. (Sorry)
Before reading, I want you all to know that after every single sentence I write, I have to convince myself really really hard that it isn’t gibberish. Also a little bit of my brain melts.
Here’s to hoping this makes some kind of sense <3
having a leo moment...
As you may or may not know, I am a leo sun (july leos ftw). For my astrology-averse friends and readers, no fear - you don’t need any real interest or knowledge for this newsletter.
I bring up this fun fact, calling back to newsletter #1, in which I discuss the nature of this project, only to emphasize that Sunday Scaries is deeply personal for me. As leos are often (mis)represented within the zodiac as self centered and egocentric, it makes sense that I would choose this very public platform to voice unprompted thoughts, feelings, and opinions.
Starting a newsletter is a testament to this era of my life in which I am working hard to feel more confident, to appreciate my own “half-baked” thoughts, and as a way to keep critically thinking, reading, and writing. Simply stated, it’s a project of prioritizing myself.
However, in thinking about what else this part of my life is truly characterized by, aside from sitting across from my mom and staring at her she works from home (which is actually a great time, tbh), the personal work I’ve been able to do because I have so much down time has also made me think a lot about my role as a community member, and as someone who truly yearns for a more joyful, just, and liberated world.
the feminine urge to detest politicians
On twitter about a week and a half ago, a trending video of newly-inaugurated NYC mayor Eric Adams garnered a lot of pushback and criticism from many people on my timeline. In a press conference on the city’s COVID response, Adams referred to service workers as “low-skilled,” stating that they didn’t have the “academic skills to sit in a corner office.”
Referring to any worker as low-skilled is not just incorrect, but also an intentional way to perpetuate rhetoric that affirms policy choices to abandon service industry workers in crises like the pandemic. As someone who only has lived experience doing work comparable to that done in a “corner office,” I can genuinely say that this work requires nowhere near the physical, mental, and emotional labor of service work. Literally what is sitting at a desk making sure your slack doesn’t go “offline” compared to dealing with 7 entitled customers breathing down your back and threatening to berate you to your manager….
White collar work is so often just a replication of social hierarchies to stroke the egos of white, wealthy, able-bodied people, and the idea that you need a degree and a bunch of credentials to do it is just the classic wicked combo of capitalism + elitism. (surprise, surprise)
Aside from Adams’ clear error in linguistic choice -that was rightfully torn apart-watching a longer clip of the video gives us a bit more context (and more to critique).
His “low-skilled workers” comment was part of a larger conversation about how the city’s workforce is inherently connected, and that the push for office workers to continue working from home, instead of going back to the office (while retaining their 5-6 figure salaries), prevents service workers from being able to do their jobs - for example: if he works from home, the finance bro who would otherwise have to get his suits steamed at the cleaners and his ten dollar latte and breakfast sandwich before he goes into the office, is no longer paying these providers of a service.
Upon first analysis, this makes sense - it isn’t fair for office employees to get to stay in their beds or on their treadmill desks and work all day while service industry businesses go bankrupt? Right?
But this is where Adams’ analysis ends. This is where most liberal political analysis ends.
What if we question not just the instance, but the circumstance?
Why does our economy function so that one population of laborers is dependent on another to get paid? (especially when getting paid is the way to get healthcare, housing, food and other necessities)
Why do white collar workers get to advocate for wfh during the pandemic to avoid getting sick, and service workers cannot?
How can we reimagine social welfare, so that labor does not correlate with your deservingness to survive disaster?
In the days following Adam’s remarks, I’ve seen about 40 million tweets responding to them, and because most of the people I follow are leftists/socialists/marxists, or just extremely critical of capitalism and the US political system, they regurgitate similar rhetoric.
I appreciate that twitter can be a source of communal education and affirmation in this way. I think it’s good that people of like minded, anticapitalist views can provide commentary and analysis on political happenings, and find each other. My main question here is: what do we do with that?
It’s great that so many people are in agreement that Mayor Adams’ word choice was flawed, and indicative of the existing oppressive system, but what do we do with that? Yes, we can stand with the workers that he disparaged on twitter and contribute to larger conversations about language and ideology, but how do we tangibly change workers’ reality?
Where are the mutual aid funds to support striking service workers? Who was encouraged to start reading up on labor history and anti capitalist theory? Who is having the conversations in person with friends and family about this? Are people engaging with their local community workers’ rights organizations?
These questions aren’t to insinuate that i do/participate in all of these things (because I don’t), or that I think that these actions are the only, or the best solutions. I am not an expert on this topic, nor any kind of authority figure on movement building more broadly. I still have so much to learn, especially having spent the last 4 years in the “ivory tower” reading, writing, and unsure of how to put words into action.
But, when things like this happen on twitter - a lot of echoing discourse about one specific topic - I do get really antsy and frustrated thinking that these conversations don’t leave the godforsaken bird app. It makes me feel a sense of doom, actually, to see the same things repeated over, and over, and over, again about how screwed we are, but no proposition as to what we do. These otherwise thoughtful, brilliant, and accessible conversations become confined to social media, where people can forget about them once they’re off the timeline.
I think, like many other people, that I have a lot more questions than answers, and I definitely don’t think this newsletter is any kind of groundbreaking action that is going to eradicate social evils. But maybe it can be a reminder for you all and myself alike that important conversations don’t have to stay on twitter, or on the internet at all. They can, and should, translate into our lives - and maybe sunday scaries can guide that transition.
note to self: do not pull 3 (non-consecutive) all nighters in the span of two weeks ever again
Aside from the multiple breakdowns, time spent staring at the wall having no thoughts at all, and the many emails in which I was shaking and crying to my advisors about severe writer’s block (generalized anxiety disorder + undiagnosed adhd), my thesis is a really meaningful piece of work to me.
The topic I chose felt so special because it was grounded in academic theory that I’d been able to observe in practice for all of my life.
an abstract is just a fancy word for tl;dr:
This project is an interdisciplinary analysis of radical care and its employment as a strategy for community resistance. It explores the scholarship of radical care abstractly, and then places it within a context of Puerto Rican resistance during the 1960s and 70s in New York as led by the Young Lords Party, an organization focused on sustaining Puerto Rican diaspora communities in the US through direct action, as well during the last four years, through the grassroots organizing efforts for disaster relief on the island, after Hurricane Maria in 2017. By exploring the ways in which institutional mechanisms of the United States’ imperial project in Puerto Rico have historically and contemporarily created and profited from disparities in care for Puerto Rican diaspora and island populations, this project explores how community care addresses these disparities through immediate material solutions and employment of the radical imaginary as a way to envision a world where care is an innate ethic, not an act of resistance.
And now, a tl;dr for the tl;dr: My thesis essentially looks at the existing scholarship and histories surrounding community care (or radical care) and then places it in a Puerto Rican historical and contemporary context.
The definition of radical care that I use in my work is:
“a set of vital but under-appreciated strategies for enduring precarious worlds...in the face of state-sanctioned violence, economic crisis, and impending ecological collapse, collective care offers a way forward” 1
Strategies that I explore in my thesis as forms of community care include mutual aid, direct action, and cultural projects - like art, music, and dance, that have all been very useful for Puerto Ricans on the island and in the diaspora alike, as well as other marginalized populations in response to government neglect. Think - the Black Panthers’ free breakfast program2 or Puerto Rican mutual aid networks (centros de apoyo mutuo)3.
While none of my relatives may be Young Lords, the personal connection to this work lies within an incredibly strong, intentionally created ethic of community care that has always surrounded me. My work emphasizes that, above all, when governments intentionally fail, neglect, and abandon us, all we have is each other. We have our shared resources, our networks, and the imagination of a better future that we can cultivate together. These are lessons that I learned from my family, friends, and neighbors. To cook for, to host, to advise, and to love the people closest to you. To care for the people who care for you.
While writing my thesis and planning for my presentation, I remembered times that I’d shared work with my immediate family, and they joked that they had no clue what I was talking about. At the time I laughed and brushed it off, thinking that they were mostly kidding, and just trying to give me a big head (leo moment).
I recalled those memories because i didn’t want my thesis to be like that. Making the research I had done accessible was crucial to me, because I wanted it to mean something. I wanted people to care about what I had to say.
I was so proud and excited to share all that I had learned from historical figures and members of my personal community alike. It felt so important to me to impart knowledge that encouraged people dear to me to think differently about care, mutual aid, and what it means to radically reimagine our world. And they couldn’t do that if my work was full of academic jargon and dense theory.
I hope that I did a good job presenting my work and that people were able to understand it. I hope that people got the moral of the story: that only we take care of each other. That we can build a better world by viewing our own interpersonal relationships as a blueprint for that - which is easy when those relationships emphasize care, abundance, and joy.
And exactly as I hoped for my thesis is what I hope for sunday scaries; that it is readable, relatable, funny, sparks curiosity, encourages thoughtful discussion, and reminds us our communities will lead us into a better world - so we should continue to invest in and nurture them.
me when i get to the got damb point:
Everything is political. I don’t mean that in a “democrat vs republican, you liberals want snowMEN snowWOMEN and snowPEOPLE” way. I mean it in a, “everything we do, from how we treat ourselves to how we treat each other is both impacted by and impactful of the structures of power and privilege that exist in our world” way.
We should start living more intentionally with that knowledge. In the beginning of this week’s issue, i recalled how sunday scaries is a personal venture for me. But, it’s also an opportunity to build a community of people invested in critically thinking about how our daily lives are politicized, and how we can begin to put more meaning and intention into everything we do. it’s not just a practice in my own writing or confidence, but it’s created with the hope that people reading will engage with it in a meaningful way. To funnel the echo chamber into something a little bigger.
What will you do with this newsletter? Not as a source of indisputable knowledge, but as a starting point for a conversation, an action, or even a thought.
In the coming weeks, I hope to be something of a catalyst for conversations that you’ll have with your own communities about therapy, the changing nature of friendships, home + moving out (or not), body image, parental relationships, sibling relationships, and more.
I hope to contextualize more personal topics within a more social/political framework. I hope to provide some insight on how to work through applicable challenges, and above all, explore how these topics are relevant to building stronger communities, and a better world.
Before closing, I feel like it’s important to restate that I’m not (nor will ever claim to be) an expert on any of the topics covered in sunday scares, and I genuinely don’t think everything I say in here is/should be the “final word.” I have too much work to do in therapy to pretend to be some kind of authority on social justice (c’mon low-to-average self-esteem).
This newsletter is meant to be one piece of a bigger commitment to our collective social responsibility. I am but a perpetually curious person who wants myself, my family, friends, and peers, to imagine and desire more for ourselves and our reality.
Thanks for reading, and come back soon! (consider this my commitment to biweekly updates)
What I learned on tiktok this week was…
Hi‘ilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart and Tamara Kneese, “Radical Care, Strategies for Uncertain Times,” Radical Care, 2020, Page 5.
Pellizzari, Taylor. “The radical history of the free breakfast program.” Solid Ground Groundviews, September 2014th, 2020. https://www.solid-ground.org/the-radical-history-of-the-free-breakfast-program/.’
Red Apoyo Mutuo. “About Us.” https://redapoyomutuo.com/about-us.
Loving this bestie, youre making points as always
“That we can build a better world by viewing our own interpersonal relationships as a blueprint for that - which is easy when those relationships emphasize care, abundance, and joy.” Anna this is so beautiful and totally the shit!!!! Love reading your Sunday Scaries!!! Keep them coming.