Fewer pink hats, more kitchen tables and community: A recipe for resisting Trump | Opinion
While protest is powerful, kitchen tables can be the center of the new resistance, a place where we talk, listen and understand how to help each other.
Eight years ago on Jan. 21, 2017, half a million people rallied for the Women’s March in Washington. At the time, it was the largest demonstration in U.S. history. Images from the day show a sea of pink as many of us – myself included – wore hand-knitted hats.
As a lifelong knitter, albeit a perpetually amateur one, I’m a fan of craftivism (the use of crafts for political protest). Along with millions of others, I knitted, gifted, wore and adorned my friends and family with pink hats, a not-very-subtle symbol meant to shout: “This p---- grabs back!”
The Women’s March was the first Trump-era version of the “resistance,” and it became part of a wave of activism against a regime that we feared would be anti-women, anti-queer, anti-immigrant, anti-everything-except-white-male-Christian-hetero-patriarchy.
Here we are again. Donald Trump won the presidency, again. There are deep divides across this country, and across many of our families.
Public displays of alarm play a critical role in social change. But the resistance this time must be different: We need fewer pink hats and more kitchen tables.
Kitchen tables are where we gather. It's the perfect place to start organizing for change.
Kitchen tables have always been the locus of powerful organizing, especially for women and people of color. Kitchen tables are where real work, and real talk, get done. My kitchen table morphs from the place we eat, to where we work and do homework, to where we stuff envelopes for a mailing, to where we make dumplings for a big Lunar New Year celebration. Like yours probably, my kitchen table is where we gather to laugh, cry, talk about important things, gossip with neighbors and hold block association or board meetings.
My kitchen table was also a key set piece for building the Donors of Color Network, the nation’s first community by and for philanthropists of color; Philanthropy Together, the first infrastructure hub to support collective giving globally; and the Asian Women Giving Circle, which I founded 19 years ago.
As co-creators of something bigger than ourselves, we met around kitchen tables to talk, listen, be curious about each other, break bread and build relationships. We asked, “What can we do together that none of us can do alone?”
It is these relationships, built over time and with interest, trust and the articulation of shared vision and values, that undergird the hard, necessary and joyful work of creating social change together. It is these relationships that build belonging and community.
As has been written about by many, we Americans are lonely, stressed and not all that happy. This epidemic of loneliness is directly connected to the fissures that are breaking apart our families, communities, towns and country.
Unlike many social ills, loneliness has a cure and it’s not expensive. The opposite of loneliness is belonging. In my upcoming book, "The Big We," I try to make the case that giving circles are a great vehicle to build belonging. And, not coincidentally, they’re also a great way to practice civic engagement.
Giving circles are groups of people who come together to donate, volunteer and do good together. Collective giving is booming, with recent research describing a field that gave $3.1 billion between 2017 and 2023, engaging 370,000 people in nearly 4,000 giving circles. It’s on track to double again over the next five years.
Giving circle members give more, volunteer more, vote more, run for office more and are, in a word, happier.
During a period when philanthropy has been dominated by billionaires, giving circles offer up a much more democratic form of change-making.
Now is the time to create your circle
Now is the perfect time to join something. Bring it down to the super-local level. Get out there and get educated about what is affecting your local community, then join or found a group to get involved.
For my block association in Brooklyn, it’s rats and trees.
For the Asian Women Giving Circle, it’s uplifting Asian women and gender expansive artists working toward social transformation in New York City.
In these groups, we can all practice the things that build belonging – inviting in, being invited, listening, talking, relating, being curious about one another, being respectful of our differences, finding some commonalities, sharing food, having a laugh, commiserating.
We can practice talking about things that are important to us. We can practice trusting and being trustworthy.
Imagine what might be unleashed if many more of us turned our kitchen tables into hot spots of organizing and of belonging. Add to that table discussion about values and money – that is given or gathered – and you’ve made a giving circle. Maybe you’ve begun a movement.
One plea: To your kitchen table, please add a leaf or two. If we commune only with our “regulars,” we don’t grow and learn.
So invite a few folks who are not among your regulars. Be open to being one of those invited in as well. Invite, expand, accompany, be curious. Ask what you can bring to the table.
Hali Lee has worked in philanthropy for more than 30 years. She is the co-founder of Donors of Color Network, the first national network of wealthy folks of color, and a founder of the Asian Women Giving Circle. Her first book, "The Big We," about how together we are so much stronger than the sum of our individual parts, will be published in March.