these institutions were never going to save us

In case you missed it, within the last week, the Supreme Court has:

-ruled that Americans have a right to carry firearms in public for self-defense, with no requirement to demonstrate any need for carrying a gun, a radical interpretation of the Second Amendment (New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen)
 
-overturned federal protections of abortion, compromising the bodily autonomy of millions of Americans as dozens of states have immediately moved to criminalize or severely restrict access to abortion (Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health)
 
-ruled that Christian public school teachers have the right to pray and lead students in prayer, despite the separation of church and state on which this country is said to be founded and despite the First Amendment (Kennedy v. Bremerton School District)
 
-ruled that states have the authority to exercise jurisdiction in Indian country because “Indian country is part of the State,” potentially violating hundreds of years of treaties that protect Indigenous sovereignty, a ruling made on the heels of the overturning of Roe v. Wade which Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt specifically linked to fear that reservations would make access to abortion available in ways that dissent from state law (Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta)
 
-limited the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency in regulating greenhouse gas emissions—on a planet in the midst of climate collapse and rising global average temperatures—which has potential implications for other regulation agencies (West Virginia v. EPA)
 
This list is devastating.
These are the decisions of an extremist court determined to eviscerate bodily autonomy, Indigenous sovereignty, and ecological survival in service to a Christian theocracy. This is a death cult protecting mass shootings while compelling forced birth into a country that does not protect the lives of the living. All of this is in the context of over 300 pieces of anti-trans, anti-LGBTQ legislation being argued or going into effect all across this country—so miss me with the “LGBTQ folks are next” rhetoric, they’ve already come for us—as well as assaults on educational freedom that includes teaching the racist colonial imperialist histories and presents of this country.

There are many moments throughout the days in which I feel like I am drowning in grief and rage, and don’t know what to do.
I am trying to remember that these institutions were never going to save us; it is up to us to create livable lives with and for one another.
So I hope you are organizing (in ways that don’t include social media surveillance apps), contributing to community funds for reproductive and environmental justice, voting for the most radical justice-oriented lawmakers, making art, casting spells and saying prayers. Ride the waves of rage and grief into new possibilities for how we will create just worlds at the scale of every relationship and every community, in resistance to state apparatuses that are designed for our subjugation and destruction.