Bowtie
This simple quilt block is often made by children learning to sew. It was popularized in the pioneer time, modeled after a common part of their wardrobe. Some say that this quilt pattern was used as a signal during the underground railroad.
![]()
Magda Orlander
Cincinnati Interfaith Workers Center Program Coordinator
Magda works hard to enact the principles she believes in. During our interview we talked about the official work she does and the morals that back them up. She talks about the importance of your labor, the network that ties us all together, and the importance of People. We always got People.
I will start recording now. For the beginning of the recording, if you could just start by saying your name, your pronouns, and why you were asked to be part of this project.
My name is Magdalena Orlander and I work at the Cincinnati Interfaith Workers Center as a Program Coordinator. I was asked to be part of this because my roommate Marlo was a part of this project and they thought that I would be a good fit and recommended me to you. I use both she/her and they/them. My preference is kind of a complicated question. I use both of them.
Do you want to talk about that?
Well, not every language has the capacity or the grammar to say 'I prefer they' or 'I prefer she'. A lot of languages don't have 'they'. It becomes complicated for me to answer that question, but I use both. And I respect both of those as far as they're used with me and as far as they're used with anybody. That's just where I'm coming from.
Tell us a little bit about the work that you do.
In my day job I'm very lucky. I'm very, very lucky. I was incredibly fortunate to get involved with this place and now my day job is helping to run that place.
THERE'S A LOT OF DIFFERENT WORK THAT PEOPLE DO. WORK ISN'T ALWAYS PAID AND EVERYTHING THAT IS PAID ISN'T NECESSARILY WORTHWHILE WORK.
But I happen to be very lucky in that I do work that I feel is incredibly worthwhile. I have incredible fortune to get paid for it. Especially in these times right now. I work at the Cincinnati Interfaith Workers Center, which is an organization that provide support and education for low wage and immigrant workers. This organization has been around for way longer than I have even been in this country. It's been around since 2005. Its seedlings were around before then. Its primary purpose is serving low income and immigrant workers who are confronting issues on the job. Like them not getting paid what they're supposed to be according to the Ohio minimum wage or according to the contract or whatever. Or they're experiencing safety issues or discrimination at the job. Everyone has worked a job and knows that there's all kinds of issues that can happen with the job, right?
WE WORK PRIMARILY WITH LOW WAGE WORKERS AND A LOT OF INDUSTRIES THAT ARE LOW WAGE INDUSTRIES- WHICH, LET'S FACE IT, MOST INDUSTRIES ARE.
What we try to do is support folks who have claims when it comes to violations of their rights on the job, but also support people with the tools that they need to organize on the job. Because at the end of the day, we know that what your legal right is, that's the floor. This is something that we do in training.
EVERYTHING COMES BACK TO THE FUNDAMENTAL OF 'YOU HAVE YOUR RIGHT TO ORGANIZE'. EVERYTHING THAT WE HAVE, EVERYTHING THAT WE'VE GOTTEN, EVERYTHING THAT IS A RIGHT THAT WE HAVE ON THE JOB, COMES BACK DOWN TO THE RIGHT TO ORGANIZE ON THE JOB. AND WHERE DOES THAT COME FROM? WORKERS FOUGHT FOR THAT. PEOPLE FOUGHT, PUT DOWN THEIR LIFE, PUT DOWN THEIR HEALTH FOR THAT. WE HAVE POWER ON THE JOB NOT BECAUSE SOME LAW GIVES IT TO US.
One of the main things that we do is our office line is the Workers Rights Hotline. You call if you've got an issue on the job. You're experiencing issues on the job, you're having issues with safety, discrimination, you worked and you didn't get paid. We call it wage theft. It is a form of theft. That's what we're here for. A lot of people out there don't have representation. It used to be if you needed to figure out your shit on the job, you were in the union and your union handles that or helps you. Companies don't like unions. Capitalists don't like unions.
THE LABOR MOVEMENT IS SO IMPORTANT. WHERE YOU WORK, WHAT YOU DO, WHAT YOUR LABOR IS, YOUR LABOR THAT YOU PERFORM WITH YOUR BODY, WITH YOUR MIND, WITH YOUR CAPACITY IS SO POWERFUL.
And what happens under an industrial system or a capitalist system is that there's a lot of work that goes into harnessing that power and into aggregating it into these supply chains. The bulk of the work really has to do with 'I am using my hands, I'm using my body, I am using whatever tools I have to move one things from one place to another or to put things together or to make things work together'. You need this human labor to do that and to make that happen. It's all part of this big ecosystem. I don't know if it's wrong to say that, because it's not quite biological. But at the end of the day, because we're all humans creating it, it responds to different challenges that are ecological, that are logistical. We all make these things and do these things and use resources that are coming from the natural world. So yeah, maybe this is all ecological supply chains, right? Where you pass one thing into another space and they get transformed into something that is useful in different kinds of spaces. Then it gets passed on and transformed again and passed on and passed on. And at the end of the day we have so many resources that are available to us. There's so many of them. The planet has a finite amount of resources. But that's a lot of resources that we've got and we've got a lot of people who know how to use them. And I'm not just talking about the scientists who are designing supply chains. There are workers at every step of the way. Every single step of the way. Whether that's unearthing a mineral rain or planting and picking seeds in a fields. Or operating a machine that's taking that raw material and analyzing it and putting it in all the different parts of the machines. Or whether it's the worker who is packaging different things. Or chopping up broccolis so that is something that you can use and throw it in your stir fry pan. Even if it's not the worker that is chopping the actual head of broccoli, somebody is putting it into the machine. There are a lot of people. A lot of people.
When people say, you know, the argument of 'well that's an unskilled job' or like 'the person who's doing that shouldn't be paid a living wage', how do you handle that type of opinion?
There's a lot of thought that goes into packaging food and to picking food. I mean, I've gardened. My mom used to love to garden and anybody who is trying to do these things knows that you have to give them time to grow. I don't know how the growing process works, with Kroger's things and with the mass industrial production. But I know that I have picked enough unripe grapes and unripe currants to know that like, 'Oh yeah, you can't foreground productivity'. Thing that is very disturbing to me about a lot of this industrial production is that you can refine so much of this industrial work to a science. To the point of the hour and the day of this is when you cut this and this is when you plant this when you move this. This is how this makes the production line efficient. I am not a crop scientist. I don't really know enough about crops have a qualified answer on that. It's literally their work. I'm just over here just like talking. That's what the workers provide.
I'm gonna change paths of conversation a little bit because there's one question I want to make sure that I ask you. I'm asking everyone in the project this particular question. How would you define your community? Do you think that your community is bonded together by geographic location? Is a certain sharing of beliefs, a certain position on something? What do you think it is that glues your people together?
That's a really good question.
Sometimes it makes people think. And then other times, especially when someone has their identity built around this one particular thing, they're so ready with it. But if you interact with multiple different groups, you have maybe conflicting beliefs with some people and you still get along with them, that can be a more difficult question to answer.
I FEEL LIKE I'M PART OF SEVERAL DIFFERENT COMMUNITIES. SOME OF THEM I FEEL LIKE 'THIS IS MY COMMUNITY' AND I FEEL LIKE I CAN SAY THAT I'M PART OF THIS COMMUNITY. BUT I'M NOT IN CHARGE OF EVERY COMMUNITY. WITH SOME COMMUNITIES I FEEL VERY COMFORTABLE CLAIMING THEM. WITH SOME COMMUNITIES I FEEL LIKE I'M A PART OF THIS, BUT IT'S NOT UP TO ME WHETHER TO SAY THAT I'M PART OF IT OR NOT.
I don't know that if that's because I'm not from here to begin with or if that's because I haven't been here long enough. There are some communities that I feel somewhat comfortable is say like 'I'm part of this community'. I'm part of the worker's center community. This is just me. I'm not trying to be prescriptive. It's very hard to claim 'this is a community. I get to decide who is part of it and who's not'. Maybe that's why that question throws me a little bit.
So how long have you been living in Cincinnati?
It's been about three and a half years. I did spend six months in Cincinnati like four and a half years ago. And then I was away again for six months and then I came back. Six months away to some people means a lot. To some people it means nothing. To some people the fact that I'm not from here means a lot more than the fact that I spent four years around.
That's very true. Some people care a lot about that. So if you left Cincinnati for six months, what made you want to come back here?
I came to Cincinnati for about five months. I went to school at Miami University in Oxford. There was this program there with Tom Denton, who is one of the original architects of this program. He came to my geography class. I think it was the second session that we had. I was as a freshman, it was an intro class. Coming in with 13 years of school I already had like a year's worth of credits behind my belt. And one of the first courses that I took in college was Tom Denton who eventually became one of my mentors. It was the second session of that course and we talked about the Over The Rhine Program. Tom came into the class. This is like my second class freshman year. I'm in a different country. I'm in a different continent. This Dr. Denton guy is talking about this course, this immersion. This is why I'm in college. I'm here to learn about a bunch of shit. But he's talking about doing things in the community and working in the community.
WHATEVER YOUR SKILLS ARE, YOU ALWAYS HAVE BLIND SPOTS. THE MORE YOU CAN WORK WITH THE PEOPLE THE BETTER. TEAMWORK MAKES THE DREAM WORK. YOU DON'T NEED TO DO THINGS ALONE.
He's an architect. I didn't want to go into architecture. He was an architect, but something that was always really important to him is that you build something that people are gonna use. Something that people are going to use, that people are going to live inside of or visit, that people want to thrive inside of. That is going to have all of these uses. Well, why not actually consult them?
MOST PEOPLE WHO NEED BUILDINGS ARE PEOPLE WHO NEED TO LIVE IN THOSE BUILDINGS. THEY ARE REGULAR PEOPLE, HOMELESS PEOPLE. WHY DON'T WE WORK WITH THEM TO DESIGN WHAT WILL MEET THEIR NEEDS?
Again, I'm not an architect. I'm not in the design world. I'm not even close to it in any way. But Tom was. He was somebody that I saw and right then and there I knew. I'm gonna do this program. I'm not gonna do it until I'm older, until I'm closer to the end of my degree, but I'm going to do this. Well four years later I did. Being present in something that was grounded in real life and not just our academic pursuits of 'we're right and we're radical and that's why we're good'. That was never where I came from and that was never where I wanted to be. Whenever I started to get close to being there, that was always a wakeup call for me. It was just like, 'can my mom like see herself in this? Is this something that she would be included in?'
IF A PROJECT WAS SOMETHING WHERE WE'RE JUST IN THIS FOR OURSELVES AND IT'S NOT SOMETHING THAT MY MOTHER OR OTHER WORKING PEOPLE COULD FIND THEMSELVES IN THEN THAT WAS ALWAYS THE MARKER. WE'RE EITHER NOT DOING ENOUGH OR THIS PROJECTS IS NOT WORTHWHILE.
That makes a lot of sense. That's a great story. It's inspiring that you found something to really believe in that early in your college career
I was experiencing a lot of familial difficulty. I had a hard time connecting with other people because of that. You talk to people and your family comes up and then I'm just like, 'I'm always sad'. Then everything comes together and you're just like, 'well let me focus on something else'. I was pretty smart. I read a lot and my mom got me a lot of books and she encouraged that. That was my way out of that. I didn't really start making friends until I was like 14, 15. I'm not saying that because you should be making friends before that. I'm just saying that we moved town so often. I definitely had an upbringing that was very much on the one hand, 'you should read things, you should interrogate things. You should question things. Let's talk about things'. And I also grew up, on the other hand, with an upbringing that was like, 'don't talk to me about your sadness. Or talk to me about your sadness, but I'm going to make it about me if you do'. So anything that I was struggling with emotionally it very quickly became part of the family dynamics. So I actually very much kept it to myself and tried to deal with myself. Which you can't really do that yourself. Someone always becomes part of that. I was kind of lucky because I found a community of people. I was interested in activism. So I got lucky in terms of having emotional outlets for a lot of things. But at the same time, your activism community is not a very good or helpful outlet for your mommy issues. Those were my issues. And daddy issues. This is me in hindsight's speaking. I don't want to make my activist community about my mommy and daddy issues. I'm thankful that I have a union job that lets me have access to mental health care. I think everybody should have mental health care. Regardless of whether they have union insurance or not. But union insurance kicks ass. I don't want to make my friends or loved ones or romantic partners or friendship partners responsible for my trauma. My loved ones, my friends, my chosen family here in the United States, my poly family, my quarantine posse, nobody deserves for me to subject them to all of this bullshit. This is a byproduct of my family. I'm very thankful that I had of a lot of support from various different levels dealing with all of those dynamics. I don't do this because I feel like I have to help somebody. Or that I'm privileged and I have to give some of that away. I have privilege in many ways. But I'm not in this because I need to give back. I'm in this because I'm just sick and tired of the bullshit. I know that, at the end of the day, I cannot be free if you are not. You cannot be free if everybody isn't. We deserve better. That's the point. We deserve better. We all fucking deserve better. I've been in good places and bad places. I'm in a lot of places. I don't have dependents. I do whatever I can to support people who are doing that. I'm kind of a low stakes person in all of this at the end of the day. I've built a life here. But if I need to relocate, it's going to be fucking hell, but if I have to do it I've done that before. I'm not gonna like it. I like my people here. I like the community that I've built here. I don't want to get kicked out of this country. But if I get kicked out I get kicked out. There's power in people. That's what they teach you.
THERE'S MONEY POWER AND THERE'S PEOPLE POWER. LORD KNOWS A LOT OF US DON'T GOT MONEY. BUT YOU KNOW WHAT, AT THE END OF THE DAY WE GOT PEOPLE. WE GOT PEOPLE WHETHER I'M HERE OR IF I GET DEPORTED. I'LL BE REALLY SAD IF I DO. I REALLY DON'T WANT TO GET DEPORTED. I'M NOT GOING TO LIE. I HAVE A STAKE IN BEING HERE PERSONALLY. BUT WE GOT PEOPLE AND THERE'S STILL PEOPLE EVERYWHERE. WE GOT PEOPLE. WE ALWAYS GOT PEOPLE. EVEN WHEN WE FORGET. THE QUESTION IS, HOW ARE WE CONNECTED? WE'RE ALL WOVEN TOGETHER, BUT DO WE SEE IT? HOW DO WE MAKE EACH OTHER SEE IT?
My name is Magdalena Orlander and I work at the Cincinnati Interfaith Workers Center as a Program Coordinator. I was asked to be part of this because my roommate Marlo was a part of this project and they thought that I would be a good fit and recommended me to you. I use both she/her and they/them. My preference is kind of a complicated question. I use both of them.
Do you want to talk about that?
Well, not every language has the capacity or the grammar to say 'I prefer they' or 'I prefer she'. A lot of languages don't have 'they'. It becomes complicated for me to answer that question, but I use both. And I respect both of those as far as they're used with me and as far as they're used with anybody. That's just where I'm coming from.
Tell us a little bit about the work that you do.
In my day job I'm very lucky. I'm very, very lucky. I was incredibly fortunate to get involved with this place and now my day job is helping to run that place.
THERE'S A LOT OF DIFFERENT WORK THAT PEOPLE DO. WORK ISN'T ALWAYS PAID AND EVERYTHING THAT IS PAID ISN'T NECESSARILY WORTHWHILE WORK.
But I happen to be very lucky in that I do work that I feel is incredibly worthwhile. I have incredible fortune to get paid for it. Especially in these times right now. I work at the Cincinnati Interfaith Workers Center, which is an organization that provide support and education for low wage and immigrant workers. This organization has been around for way longer than I have even been in this country. It's been around since 2005. Its seedlings were around before then. Its primary purpose is serving low income and immigrant workers who are confronting issues on the job. Like them not getting paid what they're supposed to be according to the Ohio minimum wage or according to the contract or whatever. Or they're experiencing safety issues or discrimination at the job. Everyone has worked a job and knows that there's all kinds of issues that can happen with the job, right?
WE WORK PRIMARILY WITH LOW WAGE WORKERS AND A LOT OF INDUSTRIES THAT ARE LOW WAGE INDUSTRIES- WHICH, LET'S FACE IT, MOST INDUSTRIES ARE.
What we try to do is support folks who have claims when it comes to violations of their rights on the job, but also support people with the tools that they need to organize on the job. Because at the end of the day, we know that what your legal right is, that's the floor. This is something that we do in training.
EVERYTHING COMES BACK TO THE FUNDAMENTAL OF 'YOU HAVE YOUR RIGHT TO ORGANIZE'. EVERYTHING THAT WE HAVE, EVERYTHING THAT WE'VE GOTTEN, EVERYTHING THAT IS A RIGHT THAT WE HAVE ON THE JOB, COMES BACK DOWN TO THE RIGHT TO ORGANIZE ON THE JOB. AND WHERE DOES THAT COME FROM? WORKERS FOUGHT FOR THAT. PEOPLE FOUGHT, PUT DOWN THEIR LIFE, PUT DOWN THEIR HEALTH FOR THAT. WE HAVE POWER ON THE JOB NOT BECAUSE SOME LAW GIVES IT TO US.
One of the main things that we do is our office line is the Workers Rights Hotline. You call if you've got an issue on the job. You're experiencing issues on the job, you're having issues with safety, discrimination, you worked and you didn't get paid. We call it wage theft. It is a form of theft. That's what we're here for. A lot of people out there don't have representation. It used to be if you needed to figure out your shit on the job, you were in the union and your union handles that or helps you. Companies don't like unions. Capitalists don't like unions.
THE LABOR MOVEMENT IS SO IMPORTANT. WHERE YOU WORK, WHAT YOU DO, WHAT YOUR LABOR IS, YOUR LABOR THAT YOU PERFORM WITH YOUR BODY, WITH YOUR MIND, WITH YOUR CAPACITY IS SO POWERFUL.
And what happens under an industrial system or a capitalist system is that there's a lot of work that goes into harnessing that power and into aggregating it into these supply chains. The bulk of the work really has to do with 'I am using my hands, I'm using my body, I am using whatever tools I have to move one things from one place to another or to put things together or to make things work together'. You need this human labor to do that and to make that happen. It's all part of this big ecosystem. I don't know if it's wrong to say that, because it's not quite biological. But at the end of the day, because we're all humans creating it, it responds to different challenges that are ecological, that are logistical. We all make these things and do these things and use resources that are coming from the natural world. So yeah, maybe this is all ecological supply chains, right? Where you pass one thing into another space and they get transformed into something that is useful in different kinds of spaces. Then it gets passed on and transformed again and passed on and passed on. And at the end of the day we have so many resources that are available to us. There's so many of them. The planet has a finite amount of resources. But that's a lot of resources that we've got and we've got a lot of people who know how to use them. And I'm not just talking about the scientists who are designing supply chains. There are workers at every step of the way. Every single step of the way. Whether that's unearthing a mineral rain or planting and picking seeds in a fields. Or operating a machine that's taking that raw material and analyzing it and putting it in all the different parts of the machines. Or whether it's the worker who is packaging different things. Or chopping up broccolis so that is something that you can use and throw it in your stir fry pan. Even if it's not the worker that is chopping the actual head of broccoli, somebody is putting it into the machine. There are a lot of people. A lot of people.
When people say, you know, the argument of 'well that's an unskilled job' or like 'the person who's doing that shouldn't be paid a living wage', how do you handle that type of opinion?
There's a lot of thought that goes into packaging food and to picking food. I mean, I've gardened. My mom used to love to garden and anybody who is trying to do these things knows that you have to give them time to grow. I don't know how the growing process works, with Kroger's things and with the mass industrial production. But I know that I have picked enough unripe grapes and unripe currants to know that like, 'Oh yeah, you can't foreground productivity'. Thing that is very disturbing to me about a lot of this industrial production is that you can refine so much of this industrial work to a science. To the point of the hour and the day of this is when you cut this and this is when you plant this when you move this. This is how this makes the production line efficient. I am not a crop scientist. I don't really know enough about crops have a qualified answer on that. It's literally their work. I'm just over here just like talking. That's what the workers provide.
I'm gonna change paths of conversation a little bit because there's one question I want to make sure that I ask you. I'm asking everyone in the project this particular question. How would you define your community? Do you think that your community is bonded together by geographic location? Is a certain sharing of beliefs, a certain position on something? What do you think it is that glues your people together?
That's a really good question.
Sometimes it makes people think. And then other times, especially when someone has their identity built around this one particular thing, they're so ready with it. But if you interact with multiple different groups, you have maybe conflicting beliefs with some people and you still get along with them, that can be a more difficult question to answer.
I FEEL LIKE I'M PART OF SEVERAL DIFFERENT COMMUNITIES. SOME OF THEM I FEEL LIKE 'THIS IS MY COMMUNITY' AND I FEEL LIKE I CAN SAY THAT I'M PART OF THIS COMMUNITY. BUT I'M NOT IN CHARGE OF EVERY COMMUNITY. WITH SOME COMMUNITIES I FEEL VERY COMFORTABLE CLAIMING THEM. WITH SOME COMMUNITIES I FEEL LIKE I'M A PART OF THIS, BUT IT'S NOT UP TO ME WHETHER TO SAY THAT I'M PART OF IT OR NOT.
I don't know that if that's because I'm not from here to begin with or if that's because I haven't been here long enough. There are some communities that I feel somewhat comfortable is say like 'I'm part of this community'. I'm part of the worker's center community. This is just me. I'm not trying to be prescriptive. It's very hard to claim 'this is a community. I get to decide who is part of it and who's not'. Maybe that's why that question throws me a little bit.
So how long have you been living in Cincinnati?
It's been about three and a half years. I did spend six months in Cincinnati like four and a half years ago. And then I was away again for six months and then I came back. Six months away to some people means a lot. To some people it means nothing. To some people the fact that I'm not from here means a lot more than the fact that I spent four years around.
That's very true. Some people care a lot about that. So if you left Cincinnati for six months, what made you want to come back here?
I came to Cincinnati for about five months. I went to school at Miami University in Oxford. There was this program there with Tom Denton, who is one of the original architects of this program. He came to my geography class. I think it was the second session that we had. I was as a freshman, it was an intro class. Coming in with 13 years of school I already had like a year's worth of credits behind my belt. And one of the first courses that I took in college was Tom Denton who eventually became one of my mentors. It was the second session of that course and we talked about the Over The Rhine Program. Tom came into the class. This is like my second class freshman year. I'm in a different country. I'm in a different continent. This Dr. Denton guy is talking about this course, this immersion. This is why I'm in college. I'm here to learn about a bunch of shit. But he's talking about doing things in the community and working in the community.
WHATEVER YOUR SKILLS ARE, YOU ALWAYS HAVE BLIND SPOTS. THE MORE YOU CAN WORK WITH THE PEOPLE THE BETTER. TEAMWORK MAKES THE DREAM WORK. YOU DON'T NEED TO DO THINGS ALONE.
He's an architect. I didn't want to go into architecture. He was an architect, but something that was always really important to him is that you build something that people are gonna use. Something that people are going to use, that people are going to live inside of or visit, that people want to thrive inside of. That is going to have all of these uses. Well, why not actually consult them?
MOST PEOPLE WHO NEED BUILDINGS ARE PEOPLE WHO NEED TO LIVE IN THOSE BUILDINGS. THEY ARE REGULAR PEOPLE, HOMELESS PEOPLE. WHY DON'T WE WORK WITH THEM TO DESIGN WHAT WILL MEET THEIR NEEDS?
Again, I'm not an architect. I'm not in the design world. I'm not even close to it in any way. But Tom was. He was somebody that I saw and right then and there I knew. I'm gonna do this program. I'm not gonna do it until I'm older, until I'm closer to the end of my degree, but I'm going to do this. Well four years later I did. Being present in something that was grounded in real life and not just our academic pursuits of 'we're right and we're radical and that's why we're good'. That was never where I came from and that was never where I wanted to be. Whenever I started to get close to being there, that was always a wakeup call for me. It was just like, 'can my mom like see herself in this? Is this something that she would be included in?'
IF A PROJECT WAS SOMETHING WHERE WE'RE JUST IN THIS FOR OURSELVES AND IT'S NOT SOMETHING THAT MY MOTHER OR OTHER WORKING PEOPLE COULD FIND THEMSELVES IN THEN THAT WAS ALWAYS THE MARKER. WE'RE EITHER NOT DOING ENOUGH OR THIS PROJECTS IS NOT WORTHWHILE.
That makes a lot of sense. That's a great story. It's inspiring that you found something to really believe in that early in your college career
I was experiencing a lot of familial difficulty. I had a hard time connecting with other people because of that. You talk to people and your family comes up and then I'm just like, 'I'm always sad'. Then everything comes together and you're just like, 'well let me focus on something else'. I was pretty smart. I read a lot and my mom got me a lot of books and she encouraged that. That was my way out of that. I didn't really start making friends until I was like 14, 15. I'm not saying that because you should be making friends before that. I'm just saying that we moved town so often. I definitely had an upbringing that was very much on the one hand, 'you should read things, you should interrogate things. You should question things. Let's talk about things'. And I also grew up, on the other hand, with an upbringing that was like, 'don't talk to me about your sadness. Or talk to me about your sadness, but I'm going to make it about me if you do'. So anything that I was struggling with emotionally it very quickly became part of the family dynamics. So I actually very much kept it to myself and tried to deal with myself. Which you can't really do that yourself. Someone always becomes part of that. I was kind of lucky because I found a community of people. I was interested in activism. So I got lucky in terms of having emotional outlets for a lot of things. But at the same time, your activism community is not a very good or helpful outlet for your mommy issues. Those were my issues. And daddy issues. This is me in hindsight's speaking. I don't want to make my activist community about my mommy and daddy issues. I'm thankful that I have a union job that lets me have access to mental health care. I think everybody should have mental health care. Regardless of whether they have union insurance or not. But union insurance kicks ass. I don't want to make my friends or loved ones or romantic partners or friendship partners responsible for my trauma. My loved ones, my friends, my chosen family here in the United States, my poly family, my quarantine posse, nobody deserves for me to subject them to all of this bullshit. This is a byproduct of my family. I'm very thankful that I had of a lot of support from various different levels dealing with all of those dynamics. I don't do this because I feel like I have to help somebody. Or that I'm privileged and I have to give some of that away. I have privilege in many ways. But I'm not in this because I need to give back. I'm in this because I'm just sick and tired of the bullshit. I know that, at the end of the day, I cannot be free if you are not. You cannot be free if everybody isn't. We deserve better. That's the point. We deserve better. We all fucking deserve better. I've been in good places and bad places. I'm in a lot of places. I don't have dependents. I do whatever I can to support people who are doing that. I'm kind of a low stakes person in all of this at the end of the day. I've built a life here. But if I need to relocate, it's going to be fucking hell, but if I have to do it I've done that before. I'm not gonna like it. I like my people here. I like the community that I've built here. I don't want to get kicked out of this country. But if I get kicked out I get kicked out. There's power in people. That's what they teach you.