Statement-Wear

Statement-wear is what I'm calling products that I buy which could qualify as virtue signalling but is also useful in the work I'm attempting to do. Not all statement-wear will count for this showing up project. Statement-wear must meet the following qualifications to count as contributions:

1. The people selling the statement-wear must be doing the work. These folks are selling this to fuel their own work of showing up and making things better.
2. The statement made should be stark enough to provoke conversation and impact the perception of not only me but the environment around me.
3. I must feel reasonably informed to provide a couple of sentences of explanation when asked about it by random strangers on the street.
4. If I am asked for more than information than I can provide in that moment, I must provide a way for the person who asked about it to get more information. This can either be by providing personal information for them to contact me and then showing up by doing that research to answer their questions, or by providing them with a reference to a more authoritative source of answers.
5. I must be willing to make this statement out in the world with strangers and not just wear or bring to safe spaces where I know everyone agrees with me.

Even with these caveats I should be judicious and limit my Statement-Wear purchases. Even in these cases there are many problems that are made worse by over-consumption when that consumption is not needed. It is more efficient to simply financially contribute to campaigns doing good work than it is to have some of that money siphoned off for an unnecessary physical product. 

I have several pieces of Statement-Wear I've accumulated over the years and still have great conversations over. My favorite of these honestly has been the Honor the Treaties shirt that I picked up several years ago. The most common question I get asked regarding this shirt is "Which treaties?" to which my first deadpan reply is invariably "All of them?!?" We then transition into a more nuanced conversation about laws regarding keeping native children in native families which was the initial campaign out of the Lakota Law Project. My next favorite is my Don't Forget Flint sweatshirt, one of Little Miss Flint Mari Copeny's fundraisers for her hometown of Flint which was disastrously impacted by terrible water policies.

This travel mug is my most recent pieces of Statement-Wear. As someone who works at Amazon, although not on software used by ICE, I feel it is important that my colleagues know where I stand. I want to encourage an environment were we can grapple with political ramifications of work, build connections with potential allies and set standards for what we find unacceptable. 

Some pieces are statement wear only in specific contexts. These are not items that I would count towards my goals if I were purchasing them today. This is not to say that I wouldn't purchase them. They just fall short of at least one of the standards that I set for myself. For folks interested in following along with your own Showing Up journey, I recommend setting your own standards for what counts and what doesn't count. As with anything on this journey, you don't need to do the same thing as me. Make your own rules based on your values and what you think will make things better.

Special mentions from the above photo are the Project for Awesome socks. I will be recording a video for Project for Awesome this year and taking you all along with me so stay tuned for more information about that. I love fun socks and the Project for Awesome always has a good pack for purchase. Not shown here are a bunch of other P4A socks and a Decrease World Suck shirt. Another special mention is the @jillisblack shirt. Unfortunately the text got cut off but if you want one of your own you can check it out here. She has a bunch of good merch and her content always leaves me with something to consider. The only reason this doesn't count for me is that I don't consider myself terribly good at explaining it to random strangers. I mostly wear it to woke spaces where we can use it as a point for reflecting on our current lives and priorities.

Showing Up with Kiva

One "Showing Up" opportunity that I've taken part in since 2007 is Kiva. Kiva is a non-profit that allows people from all over the world to help raise funds for loans to people all over the world. Usually the folks it helps struggle to get access to funds in a more standard way. In many areas of the world a loan of a few hundred to a thousand dollars is transformative for their business and their community. By accessing capital, these borrowers gain stability and are better able to leverage their hard work in a more efficient way.

These are loans, which means the borrower does their best to repay all the support from around the world. You don't get interest with your repayments and there is a chance of delinquency or default so you could think of it as a risky way to store your money at a negative interest rate, which doesn't sound great. For me though it has been really fulfilling to be able to reinvest in communities around the globe over and over again. It is also nice to be able to grow the fund by "topping off" a loan, which is what happens when I am left with less than $25 in my Kiva account and add more funds to round it out to a full loan segment. There have also been a handful of times in my life when I fell on hard times and withdrawing the funds from Kiva repayments has made the difference between being able to pay bills and not.

Loans are in $25 increments and you have a lot of search options to let you focus on the issues that matter most to you. This has varied for me a lot over the years and frequently shifts due to what is happening politically in the world. There have been times where I put my focus on loaning to Middle Eastern countries that are either under siege or take a lot of Syrian refugees such as Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan. There are times when I would focus on shorter loans in order to get repaid quickly and be able to loan out again to help more people faster. Group loans tend to be better for this. Sometimes I focus on single parents, or youth.

Currently I am focusing on Central and South American countries. While I can't do much to help stabilize countries in the region, more financial stability among the general population will help a bit and as an United States citizen concerned about the plight of refugees coming to our borders I want to do what I can not only for those who come to us but also those who are vulnerable and could be more stable with a bit of resource access for their business endeavors in their own countries. Refugees usually want to be in their home countries but there are circumstances that make doing so unfeasible.

Repayments start rolling in a little after the midpoint of the month. They don't all arrive on the same day so I usually wait until the 1st to add my own funds for "topping off." When you investigate loans you can find out a lot of information such as the riskiness of loans serviced by that partnering agency, what the cost is to the borrower, and what the repayment schedule is. Now that I have been doing this for a long time I usually care less about the repayment period but for new borrowers it can be nice to see the funds come back quicker for re-lending purposes.

This month I'm not waiting until the end of the month to add more funds and round off because I'd like to get this post out ahead of the last minute push to get all the pieces together for my monthly accounting post. I may end up with additional repayments to loan out later in the month but I think I'll wrap them all up into October instead.

This month I'm lending to these two from my repayments:
Endis Roxana from El Salvador for a freezer to help with her fish selling business.
Juan from Honduras for a solar powered freezer for preserving his milk for sale.

My "round-off" loan which is a combination of repayments and personal additions ($16.86):
The Margaritas De Chuatzam Group from Guatemala made up of a variety of entrepreneurs including tailors, nixtamal millers, spare part sellers, and folks raising animals and running small stores.

Like I said, I've been participating in Kiva since 2007. It has been quite the journey and I'm glad that I'm starting this "Showing Up" group to be able to share it with you. I look forward to sharing my loans and contributions here and celebrating milestones with you all. If you would like to join me in contributing to Kiva borrowers, consider signing up with my invite link. Nothing special will happen for either of us other than I will feel warm fuzzy feelings looking at the count of loans made by people I've invited.

Current Stats:
Total Lifetime Deposits: $1,944
Total Lent: $7295
Loans from People I've Invited: 6

I think I'd like to have some sort of celebration when my "Total Lent" stat reaches $10,000. Let me know of any ideas you have for how to celebrate in the comments. It is still a long way out but I'd like to start thinking about it early.

Labor Day Resolutions and Project Kickoff

Hello Everyone!

My name is Whitney Levis and I'm exploring the power of showing up. I've been playing around a bit with this over time in general but now it is time to organize, document, and encourage others. I'm setting up a Patreon for this endeavor as an easy way for folks to encourage me if they find this to be useful. Things may shift as time goes along but it is better just to jump in and get started.

Earlier this year I took part in the Ration Challenge. It was an eye-opening experience that I recommend everyone to try if their doctor signs off on it.You buy the equivalent to the contents of a ration box for a week's worth of rations. Then everything you consume for a full week comes out of that box. It is a fundraiser for refugee rations and as you raise more funds you get access to additional resources for your week. By self funding you get access to one spice for the week, I chose garlic powder. Once you cross $200 raised you get to use salt for the week. My community and I raised $542.30 placing me at #201 in the country for fundraising for this challenge. It really reminded me that people want to work together and help out where they can. It reminded me that there is power in deciding to show up.

Towards the end of the Ration Challenge, the news broke about just how bad the conditions are in the detention facilities, including the ones that are housing children separate from their parents and often separate from their siblings as well. I'm really tired of being right about this administration. I'm really tired of having to explain my frustration with the obvious statement "People are Dying." But here we are. With this news breaking, and my diet having been so unbalanced, I was not in a good place. After taking some time to process my rage and despair with loved ones, I decided that I needed to think through how I can best help and find a sustainable level of dedication I can provide to working on these goals.

My usual level of slacktivism was not cutting it. This isn't to say that slacktivism isn't helpful. It definitely is. I have psoriatic arthritis, and autism, and depression and anxiety. Mostly I can juggle that, keep moving forward in my life, help others, and engage with the world. Sometimes I can't. Slacktivism is a great way for me to do micro-volunteering and for folks who also struggle with a variety of things it may be a good place for you to start too. Being informed and helping others be informed is crucial work and for a long time it was the only work that I could do. While I have gotten feedback from some folks in my life that these information transfer efforts are a great service to them, I am now called to do more than this. It is time to figure out what.

I reflected on my time in Churches. I remember my old Church in Sequim and the dedication that folks there would put towards showing up and going where they were called. While my relationship with faith is complicated for now, my sense of calling isn't. I am called to help people and hold accountable those who profit on the misery of others. In my church we tended to tithe 10%. I'm going to go back to that but do it in a different way. 10% of my money and my time are going to be devoted to showing up to solve the biggest problems I see in our society and the world.

Exactly what I'm working on may vary from time to time as will how I choose to spend my monetary contributions. Currently the default for the monetary contributions is going to be Raices. From what I can tell they are the most efficient way to donate to help get asylum seekers out of cages and reunited with their families and for the moment that is the issue that speaks most deeply to me.

I plan to use this space and my Patreon to talk about what I learn, reflect on experiences of the past, be accountable for my goals, encourage others who wish to join the path, and share resources.

I saw a post recently about Happier Labor Day as this idea to pause and reflect on your labor and make resolutions that will make for a better labor situation for you. What is labor but how we choose to spend our time in order to meet our needs and generate stability and purpose. I think that this project is well aligned to that idea and given that it is right around my birthday. I plan to keep with these initial goals and standards for at least 1 year. I can re-evaluate after that but there should be enough flexibility in the system to make it a year of 10% of time and money.

If you were doing this challenge, what would you spend your time doing to help? What organizations would you donate to? Please leave a comment. I'd love for folks to get their own ideas and set their own goals as we move forward together to make things better by showing up! Who knows, maybe I will be inspired to contribute as well. I will be contributing a minimum of 72 Hours and $420 to this project over the course of September. Stay tuned and let me know your thoughts!