Song of the Week

Listen to this song as you read to help open you up.

Updates!

I’m in Puerto Rico still, visiting family and friends. As I was driving in the car near Mayagüez with my family, my tia said, “Look there’s some Kudzu!” I got excited and asked if we could pull over so I could try and harvest some to eat. I’ve been wanting to try it for a few years. We weren’t able to pull over in time, but it started a conversation about “invasive” species, and my tia told me about the concept of doikayt. The term doikayt means at home-ness. It originated out of socialist Jewish diaspora communities who were working against the idea of the zionist project in Palestine. The late feminist and lesbian activist Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz said, “Doikayt means Jews enter coalitions wherever we are, across lines that might divide us, to work together for universal equality and justice.”

This idea transcends into the idea of “invasive” and “non-invasive” species. Robin Wall Kimmerer discusses how binaried concepts and especially the idea of “invasive” species is reductionist, harmful, and inaccurate for plants and animals alike. On March 18th, 2025, a year and two days ago, I wrote my newsletter about the Alien Enemies Act and how I could feel the tendrils of “us” versus “them” narratives growing stronger, how it made me squirm as I remembered the exact same strategies and acts invoked to incarcerate, kidnap, and terrorize Japanese people living in the U.S. including my own family. Fast forward to June 2025, I wrote a piece for my dojo journal entitled Yoisho where I imagined forming a protective circle around immigrants in our communities.

I wrote, “I’ve been feeling into alternative endings when it comes to being rounded up; a vision I’ve come up with to resource myself that is fueled by hope…In this dream, hundreds of martial artists and other warriors in our community gather in Powderhorn Park. I imagine they are the warrior-leaders we all need– attuned and at-the-ready in a way that sends chills up my spine. They form a circle around the people they are trying to take away. There is a sense of peace and safety that fills the land and sky as they hold their ground.” Five months later and community is casting possibly largest-scale protection spell on behalf of our neighbors that this country has lever seen. I expect it is not the largest uprising yet to come.

Minneapolis is where I have sought and built and fought for kinship. I expect most of you reading this seek the same thing for yourselves and loved ones exactly where you live. Many of us can see what is coming, the broad strokes of it at least. Thank goodness! It’s helped us prepare in so many ways. I hope we all continue to foster curiosity about each other as we enter into more conversations about accountability together. Coalitions without accountability don’t mean very much. Accountability without coalitions make our work small and echo-chambery.

I hope this week you continue to enter coalitions wherever you are, across lines that might divide us, add accountability to the mix, and work together for equality and justice. Remember our Kudzu plant? I won’t pretend to understand it’s impact on biodiversity in the regions where it has landed, but I do know it’s helpful to remember that “good” versus “bad” and “invasive” versus “non-invasive” destroy nuance, which in turn destroys complexity, and therefore any hope of intersectional solidarity and healing. As I write this piece I am sitting on a mountain top, on the family farm, surrounded by reishi mushrooms growing on Australian pines, blue oyster mushrooms in garden beds, wine cap mycelium I just planted, cinnamon and mango trees, bamboo, coffee, thimbleberries, ferns, white pine, banana plants, and guava. We’re all trying to make a home here while being good to our neighbors and the land. My new friend María Reinat Pumarejo said, “we all deserve to live in beautiful places” while she also fights against the displacement of Puerto Ricans against mega-tourism disaster capitalism.

Robin Wall Kimmerer speaks of how not all plants who come to a new land need to act like bullies, who sprawl and dominate with impunity. She says instead, we can be like the plantain, and I’d like to add like doikayt, which tells us to “fits into small places” and “coexists with others” to understand your positionally in the world, and how to use your time on this lovely earth, wisely.

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xoxo Eiko