J River Lerner
In California, it is beginning to be poppy season. Threading their way up through cracks in the pavement and gaps in the sidewalks, their teal, tendril-like leaves soak up the spring sun and rain, growing, building. And then they blossom. Their small, cup-like flowers are an indescribable orange — deeper and more golden than neon highlighters, but a million times brighter than anything else. A backlit sugar maple in the second week of its autumn turning comes close, perhaps. But that is a thing of fall, of fading, a last glorious gasp. Poppies have a glossier shine, the vivacity of things in fullness of bloom.
The poppies grow in groups and clusters, coalitions. A single seed will blossom into a plant with many flowers, but seeds rarely grow alone. And so, in the dirt of abandoned lots and cracks in the cement of the center median, poppies burst forth in great bundles or bushels of bloom. Beckoning the diverse cosmopolitan coalition of pollinators it requires to propagate. Hoping to seed. The poppies are art.
California poppies are perennial plants, in gentle climates. In the rolling foothills of NorCal and the mild coastlines of SoCal, California poppies will regrow each year, creating seeds in these ideal conditions, becoming a thick, brilliant groundcover as new seeds grow to fill in the gaps between the old. On hillsides where poppies thrive and become the dominant vegetation, the entire landscape glows orange, even when seen from a distance. A superbloom.
But poppies don’t just grow where conditions are gentle. They grow much higher into the Sierras and deeper into the deserts than winters should allow. These poppies die with each winter freeze, but still the next spring speckle the high mountains and far deserts with bright beacons of spring. How? These poppies live on through their seeds. In gentle climates, the poppies only seed when conditions are ideal. But in harsher ecosystems, they seed relentlessly, each year, so the next generation can flourish and bloom.
The poppies make me grateful. The poppies remind me why we do the work. They are a reminder that our protests can produce seeds that will help them survive the darkest of times, to grow and flourish in another spring.
What are the seeds that our protests and movements can sow? What are the seeds of dissent? Our seeds are ideas. The slogans, the songs, the techniques of protest and of countering state violence, metaphors that help us show up for our neighbors and beliefs. Our seeds are people. Each one of us, ourselves, empowered and politicized by the experience of speaking truth to power, of standing for our beliefs. And each new person who attends a protest or action or pod-meeting, they are another seed also. And our seeds are our networks. Our organizations, both structured and unstructured, draw us out into the streets not just individually, but together, as a mass greater than its parts, as a united blossoming coalition of voice and action and outrage.
All of these seeds can survive the momentary loss of a movement, the collapse of a political moment, or the brutal repression of one protest, after another, after another.
It’s no accident that we’ve seen Minneapolis and Portland show the fuck the up and turn the fuck out, standing up for their neighbors in huge numbers even in the face of terrible weather and far more brutal repression than elsewhere. The protests of summer 2020 bloomed largest there, were pollinated the best, and bore the most seed.
This winter was a cold one. In Minneapolis and Portland, and all across the United States where families were separated and neighbors pulled from their homes, the last months have been brutal. As Slingshot was collecting articles for this issue, in late January, we reached out to a number of organizers and activists we know in Minneapolis, hoping for their perspective on events on the ground there. Did any want to write an article? But all of our friends, contacts, and acquaintances were busy surviving. Surviving, and getting out in the street, and helping neighbors survive. They were busy and burnt out and traumatized, physically and psychologically battered by weeks and weeks of unrelenting state violence in their communities.
To all the badass activists all over this country, who are too exhausted from activism and organizing to write an article right now, too engaged with sowing dissent to create fun art, too deep in winter to yet feel the burgeoning warmth of spring. To all of you, thank you! May the warmth of Spring bring us energy to bloom, make art, and sow happier seeds. But the seeds you have sown in yourselves and your communities will also bear untold golden gifts in the springtimes to come.
Winter will come again. So will spring. We must find reprieve where it exists, in sunshine and bright flowers. Making friends, making art. Creating coalitions. Cross pollinating. Living and thriving, growing heavy with seed.
Poppies don’t just let their seeds fall. Their pods burst open energetically, audibly. Rather than letting seeds fall, they scatter them.
So scatter your seeds of dissent, as our people, your ideas, your organizations. Bring someone to their first protest, help them feel powerful, if you can, or safe if you can’t. Or, at the very least free. Spread new ideas. Our movements need new songs, and new slogans. Inspiring graffiti and informative zines. And most importantly, organize. Build new community, start new conversations. Ask how we could change things, ask who else we could include. Scatter your seeds of dissent onto the ground ahead of the cold winter to come. Not all of them will grow. Almost all will not. But still we will grow them and still we will scatter them, in the faith that through them, on the other side of winter, poppies like these ones will once again bloom.