“Do You Feel the Same?” by Vilja Saarinen
“As friends have pointed out, we’re like a mix of magnificent things that those working against us have difficulty understanding. They can’t imagine fierceness and care inhabiting the same person, much less a social body that fights to dismantle hierarchies according to ethical principles of shared power. Love is not keeping your hands clean; love is courage.
“When an event with people with strollers and walkers gets attacked, anyone who rushes to absorb the first blows and actively defend them, despite the consequences that might continue for one, two, four, seven, or even ten years, is defending love.
“Anyone who dances Kurdish halay to keep up spirits and calm their friends while the police search their bus, home, or squat do so with an air of elegant resistance. Zap, zap, zapê!
“I am secretly impressed by the determination of the schoolgirl who sat alone in front of the Parliament to protest climate change until she wasn’t alone anymore, and hundreds of thousands of kids and teenagers all around the world joined her. I love all the kids who got inspired, especially the five-year-olds in Tampere, carrying picket signs of animals facing extinction, depicting animals the same size as them. I love each and every one of you!
“And I get a warm feeling thinking of Nelli throwing the ripe tomato—with the proficiency of someone who has done nothing but throw tomatoes all of her life—that hit the Nazi leader on the head at the perfect second in front of a big crowd in Turku.
“That is why I am writing to you, from the many places where I know it to be true. From the moments and movements where I have experienced and felt it to be true. Love as a constant practice.“
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