Do Not Obey in Advance: On the Importance of Mutual Aid in These Cruel American Times

This past Tuesday we had something like a repeat of what happened in America eight years ago when, against expectations, Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton. Then, as now, it felt terrifying and revealing—not of any particular American “dark side,” which has been hiding in plain sight from this country’s inception, but of the willingness of so many to accept a politics of cruelty and greed masquerading as patriotism.

This is what I wrote a few days after Election Day 2016:

Many are grieving a vision of America that now feels dead. Some are in a state of deep, stunned mourning, while others are letting anger and action move them forward—most are struggling for a balance between the two. The stakes are high for all of us, for the planet, but they are so much higher for people of color, Muslims, LGBTQ Americans, immigrants, women—all of whom have been made into targets by the ugly rhetoric of the [Trump] campaign and its relentless exhumation of this country’s foundational ugliness.

It saddens me to read this now, eight years on, and see no need to change it for the present moment.

However, as we did then, Literary Hub will continue to “use its platform as a space for bearing witness and calling to action, for testimony and prosecution, for lamentation and, when possible, celebration.” But 2024 is not 2016, and things are now decidedly darker: we know what Trump is capable of and, worse yet, what those around him aspire to.

In 2024, those of us who can must to do everything in our power to protect those at risk, the millions upon millions of Americans who’ve been targeted by MAGA Republicans for the last eight years: Women, people of color, queer people, immigrants (documented or not), people on the economic margins… It’s a long list; most of us are either on it, or love someone who is.   

But what can any of us do in the face of a fully weaponized federal government soon to be populated by bullying sycophants, unhinged ideologues, YouTube grifters, and joyless martinets? For our part, as a literary and cultural magazine, we will return to and reaffirm those principles we hold dear:

art is both mirror and goad
justice should be a verb not a noun
anger and humor are invaluable weapons against the authoritarian

Clearly, though, we need to go beyond symbolism and slogans, beyond the merch-ready rhetoric of Resistance 1.0. We need to look to the people who’ve been doing the hard, unglamorous work of mutual aid, who’ve created and sustained the kind of networks of care that too often serve in this country as the only real safety net for those in need. (As Steven W. Thrasher points out today, the pandemic gave us a rare glimpse of what a true American safety net might look like.)

So in the coming weeks (and well beyond that) Lit Hub will give space to the writers and thinkers and activists who’ve worked tirelessly over the years to hold this country accountable to its foundational ideals of equality and justice, who’ve shown us how much power we hold if we come together in common cause. To that end, we will be offering practical guides and resources for how you can help, whether it be through mobilizing political action yourself or donating money to those who can.   

We also believe firmly in the importance of art and literature as sources of inspiration and beauty, as both sustenance and salve in the face of the all-too human cruelties of life in 21st-century America. As ever, we will have plenty of that on the site, too.

As I wrote eight years ago:

Some might say there is privilege and indulgence in the consolations of art when so many lives are at stake, but in this dark moment there is no one way to respond, no timetable we can impose on how sadness shifts to resolve.

So even as our hearts break, we go on living. For our part, as a publication invested in the power of books and literature, I think now is the moment to throw out lifelines, to do what we can to offer even the smallest antidote to the kind of despair that makes so much sense this week.

Because to forestall despair is to create a useful space for anger and action, which will come next, and which will not stop.