In his 1954 memoir, Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans, Louis Armstrong paints a vivid portrait of the 1918 pandemic and the connective tissue of solidarity, resilience, and stamina that helped him survive it:

A serious flu epidemic had hit New Orleans. Everybody was down with it, except me…[The city] ordered closed all schools…churches, theaters, movie houses, and other places of amusement, and [banned] public gatherings…Just when the government was about to let crowds of people congregate again so that we could play our horns once more, the lid was clamped down tighter than ever.

He was 17 years old. Or 18, going by the flag-waving musical myth that July 4, 1900, was his birthday. (It wasn’t; biographers converge on August 4, 1901.) The pandemic “forced me to take any odd jobs I could get. With everybody suffering from the flu, I had to work and play the doctor to everyone in my family as well as all my friends in the neighborhood.”

“If I do say so,” Armstrong added, “I did a good job curing them.”

Armstrong continues to cure. He turns 119 today, and the doors to his music are always open, even if the entrance to America’s full range of public accommodations and rights weren’t always: “I had it put in my contracts that I wouldn’t play no place I couldn’t stay,” he said in a 1967 interview.

Armstrong cared for patients in overcrowded hospitals, a fact no less resonant than his towering contributions to music, culture, and American life. “He was the epitome of jazz and always will be. He is what I call an American standard, an American original,” Duke Ellington said of him. “You can’t play anything on a horn that Louis hasn’t played” was Miles Davis’ take.

From 7–10 p.m. ET tonight, catch the rebroadcast of more than 50 musicians paying tribute on the Armstrong House’s Facebook page, and browse some timeless archival photos here.

Defunding police ideally means shifting more of a city’s budget to social services, and we’ve found yet another reason why that’s a good idea: Doing so helped drive down gun violence in Oakland, California, a city long known for high murder rates.

And I mean it has seriously driven down gun violence. As I reported in a new investigation, shootings in Oakland dropped in half from 2011 to 2017, after Black activists convinced the mayor and local residents to invest more in social services—from job training to housing to life coaching—for men who had shot someone or been a victim of gun violence.

Andre Reed, 37, went through a life-coaching program after he was shot eight times at a party in 2018. His coach, Leonard Haywood, helped him find a job and build confidence. I followed them over the course of about 10 months as Andre got his feet back on the ground after the shooting. Today, they refer to each other as brothers.

One study showed that less than 1 percent of Oakland men who participated in the same life-coaching program were rearrested for another shooting in 2018. And only 10 percent were rearrested for any crime that year. That’s major progress when you consider that nearly three-quarters of California men in their early 20s with juvenile records end up arrested again within a few years of their release from detention.

Shootings are rising again during the pandemic—in Oakland and elsewhere. Even so, the city’s gun homicide rate is still half of what it was before this particular life-coaching program kicked into full gear. Police departments in New York City, Chicago, Minneapolis, and Washington, DC, have all sent officials to observe Oakland’s model for preventing gun violence. There’s a lot of work to be done, but it’s a promising argument for why investing more in social services can make us safer. Read my full investigation here.

If the grammatically grotesque tweets, bizarrely unhinged speeches, and wrecking-ball words of a certain president wear you down day after day, week after week, you might want to search your memory, and the news archives, for a time when the presidency was synonymous not with a disorganized, myopic mind but with a historically informed one. Today is Friday. The week was not easy. The news was chilling, but the energizing eulogy by former President Barack Obama for John Lewis was a bright light. If you missed it, here you go. Have a healthy, safe weekend, and take your recharge where you can. Drop a line to recharge@motherjones.com to share weekend wisdom and stamina-building words of your own.

Mother Jones illustration; courtesy of Sylvia Baldenegro

On Tuesday night, less than two weeks after I wrote about Carlos Martinez, a literal poster child for DACA who had spent the last 11 months at the Eloy Detention Center—where he lost DACA and fell ill with COVID-19—he was released from ICE custody. Martinez made his release public Wednesday on Facebook by posting photos with his parents at their Tucson, Arizona, home:

Thank you God!!! After spending my last 355 days in an Immigration detention center, I am finally free and back home with my family. After 30 years living in The United States fighting for a Green Card, I have won my case and it is an honor to be called United States Permanent Resident. God works in mysterious ways.

Martinez was one of the first people in Arizona to get DACA back in 2012. That year and again in 2015, Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) brought a large poster-board portrait of Martinez to the Senate floor to help illustrate the need to protect Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals from Republican efforts to kill it. Martinez, 38, has been living in the United States since he was 8 years old. He came with his brother and his parents. He excelled in school, got multiple degrees from the University of Arizona in computer engineering, and worked for IBM. When I spoke to his parents for the story, his father’s words stuck with me: “I felt so proud to see my son graduating from the university. Imagine how that feels as a parent—it was beautiful to see my two sons graduate. And now it’s too painful to go to this jail and see my son in a brown uniform with all the other people in prison. Imagine that.”

And this whole nightmare happened because of a poorly thought-out decision to take a brief detour into Mexico last August. Martinez drove south to his grandmother’s hometown, realized what a big deal it was that he left the United States, and 45 minutes later he was back at the port of entry trying to explain what had happened. 

Last time I talked with Martinez, he’d called me from inside the ICE detention facility and told me he wasn’t giving up. I tried calling his parents house on Wednesday to see if I could catch him and hear how he was feeling, but nobody answered. I guess they do have a lot going on at the house right now.

Mindy Kaling and Maitreyi Ramakrishnan celebrate the Ganesh Puja episode of their Netflix show "Never Have I Ever"Screenshot from Netflix/YouTube

The coronavirus pandemic has given me so many opportunities to experience new things: worrying that my face mask might fall into the toilet; making (and burning) multiple loaves of bread; and binge-watching television shows with total delight.

My deep dive into TV has produced amazing finds, including The Great British Bakeoff, Fleabag, Unorthodox, MasterChef Junior, Dave Chapelle’s 8:46, The Good Fight, and, possibly my favorite, Never Have I Ever, produced by Mindy Kaling of The Office and The Mindy Project. Forty million households watched Never Have I Ever in its first four weeks, and this probably includes you, so I won’t go into great detail, but the basic premise is that Devi, a nerdy Indian American teenager in a Los Angeles suburb, is determined to have sex—and a boyfriend, in that order.

Devi is played by Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, who landed the part after an open audition with 15,000 other submissions, and she is brilliant. Devi, her mother, and their family and friends are a panoply of neuroses, awkwardness, humor, pain, and love.

I’ve been a fan of Kaling’s work for a long time, but NHIE is different—and not just because I was a nerdy Indian American girl living in American suburbia, who, incidentally, was too scared of my parents and myself to think about having a boyfriend or sex in high school. NHIE captivated me because, by the end of the first episode, I knew I could let my guard down.

Some of you will know the “guard” of which I speak. It’s a protection, but really it’s a nuisance. Anytime I go anywhere—a restaurant, theater, concert, classroom—or watch anything, part of me is always keeping track of how many BIPOC there are, and how, onstage or on TV, they are being portrayed. My attention to it is not conscious anymore: Once my internal security system is on, unless and until my subconscious feels comfortable with the representation, I’m holding my breath.

Before I started watching NHIE, I’d heard enough about the show to expect several Indian and Indian American characters, but that alone isn’t usually enough to disarm my security system. The first few scenes have brown and white characters, and the next few have Black, Asian, Latino, Indian American, and Indian immigrant characters, plus multiracial characters and people who live across or outside the limited shorthand labels of race. About 15 minutes in, I realized there is deep inclusion, and not just racial; there are characters across religious identities and sexual orientations and abilities and disabilities. That’s when it happened: The part of me that holds my breath—constantly counting and surveying—released. I felt it happen, and it was glorious.

In each episode, there are progressively more people meeting, mixing, interacting, and scrambling our familiar concepts of representation. We get to meet who we are.

I am glad NHIE is in the world. It posits that it is possible to be anti-racist—and for a super nerdy Indian American girl to have a boyfriend in high school—at least in Mindy Kaling’s imagination. Deep breath.

One of the longest-running and most mythologized (and best) music festivals in the world had its plug pulled by the coronavirus pandemic, but it’s adapted creatively: Tonight’s Newport livestream on Instagram features bassist Christian McBride and violinist Regina Carter, whose full range of tones, textures, and time signatures is consistently energizing. Carter evokes so many sounds—joyful, mournful, contemplative, vigorous—and makes it swing. Beyond the bebop and virtuosic blues she’s known for, try “N’teri,” which is endlessly replayable.

Tonight’s party starts at 7 p.m. ET, and Friday at 8 p.m. ET is kids’ night with McBride, singer Melissa Walker, and organist Joey DeFrancesco. Friday’s set is probably locked in, but Christian, can you and Joey consider a spin of “A Change Is Gonna Come,” called to mind by Jack McDuff’s timeless rendition of Sam Cooke’s original? The national movements for change, and new listeners of all ages, could use the historic refresher, and who can say no to McDuff?

Sneak peek here.

I’d never really been a proud American—until Donald Trump was elected president. Let me explain.

By the time I understood what it meant to be American (besides being able to buy a Coca-Cola sweater and Guess jeans in middle school), I was tuning in to Ronald Reagan talk about “trickle-down” economics. Even as a preteen, I knew that “trickle down” as an economic policy sounded suspiciously off. I now know it was delusional.

In college and law school, when I was in India or anywhere other than the United States, I would go along with the standard conversations: “Yes, Americans are embarrassing”; “Yes, the US government has caused tremendous harm across the globe”; “Yes, many Americans are racist”—feeling relief and superiority in my ability to use my Indian heritage as a way to deny my American identity. Looking back, my embarrassment about America was in part a reflection of how I felt in this country.

As I grew up, I constantly walked a tightrope of acceptance and rejection—of being seen and not—in everything I did. I hated that tightrope and the elements of the country that created it.

When Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, I exhaled a sigh of relief. Electing a Black president—now there’s something to be proud of. As elated as I was, I still felt like Obama won in spite of Americans, not because of them. I was proud of President Obama and his family, but still very suspicious of America.

On November 9, 2016, the day after Donald Trump was elected, I was openly crying at work, my stomach in a permanent double knot. I kept asking “Why?” and “How could this happen?” My feet wanted to walk, but I had nowhere to go. A whole-body shutdown.

Now I know why. The election of Trump broke my heart. It turns out I had loved the United States from the beginning. The fact that America was not enthusiastically ready to love me or the people I love back made my feelings easy to ignore. There is a lot of pain in loving something so flawed—a country so far from what it aspired to be and what it could be.

During his presidential bid, Sen. Cory Booker said, “If America hasn’t broken your heart, you don’t love [America] enough.” On November 9, 2016, my heart was hammered into small pieces, and I knew I loved America more than ever.

To love my country is not to unconditionally accept it; it means working toward what is just. Because I love America and Americans, I am willing to fight to make the idea of America real, make democracy real, make justice real. I will not give in to cynicism or anger, and I will not give up.

Rep. John Lewis’ legacy is a guiding light: America, you’re mine and I’m yours. Together let’s build a more perfect union, till death do us part.

I’m a latecomer to the microblogging and social networking service Twitter but firmly aware that all the trappings and opportunity costs are real—an attentional quicksand, with bargain-bin goodies and top-shelf prizes. I fully support taking a clean break, never again to look at—what’s that? Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong?

@ArmstrongHouse is a treasure, the lively account of the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Queens, where Louis lived for 30 years, and it’s a National Historic Landmark open to the public. @ArmstrongHouse reminded the world yesterday that July 23 marked a key moment in music history:

Can’t let the day pass without mentioning that the recording of “Ella and Louis Again” commenced on this date in 1957! Here’s the original 2-LP gatefold cover, featuring some beautiful color photos by Phil Stern. Listen now and improve your mood instantly! pic.twitter.com/FFGL1tqIzX

— Louis Armstrong (@ArmstrongHouse) July 24, 2020

The video-sharing site YouTube also has us covered: Listen to all of Ella and Louis Again to welcome your weekend. If you haven’t joined microblogging Twitter or video-sharing YouTube, don’t feel you have to; this weekend can be absent of each (for two minutes).

Tipping generously is essential in a galaxy where pay structures, working conditions, and health care access aren’t equitable or sustainable, but as Recharge boosted back in May, many customers are stepping up: the $1,300 tip for an 18-year-old Texas server; the Arkansas worker landing a customer’s entire $1,200 stimulus check; the bakery workers scoring a $1,000 tip in Florida. The tectonics of tipping haven’t shifted since the pandemic’s onset (notwithstanding this week’s news that Danny Meyer’s restaurants are ending their no-tip policy), but big tipping continues. On today’s menu, $105,000 in crowdfunded tips for the barista harassed by a maskless customer blathering about her right not to wear a mask in Starbucks; $93,000 for the server who stood up to defend customers on the receiving end of drunkenly spewed racist comments from another customer; the $3,000 tip on a $124 tab for a New Orleans bartender. There’s the $1,600 tip on a $99 tab in Ottawa; $1,000 on a $43 tab at a New Jersey restaurant; and $330 from one server to another for a single pub dinner. A pizza delivery worker welcomed $100 on a less-than-$30 tab. 

If you’ve got tips about tips, or ideas for improving the underlying labor conditions and pay structure more sustainably, send solutions to recharge@motherjones.com.

This Sunday marks the ADA’s 30th anniversary, with a host of celebrations, conversations, and demonstrations in store, from livestreams to parties, protests, and new projects. An open Zoom is scheduled to talk about opportunities for students with disabilities across campuses and in sports, hosted by the City University of New York, and the National Center on Disability and Journalism’s “30 for 30” campaign is going strong @ASUNCDJ and #NCDJ30for30—with story prompts on NCDJ’s site. The New York Times’ disability section is newly available in audio and digital Braille, with improved alt-text, and has its own style guide.

The landmark legislation’s anniversary is an occasion for questions that need answers even and especially when the occasion isn’t shared: What does a more equitable, accessible world look like, and how can we create it in the face of systemic injustice during the coronavirus pandemic? A timely conversation worth returning to is Nelufar Hedayat’s #DearWorld Live episode about coping constructively with health challenges in isolation. (Hedayat, who also hosts the Course Correction podcast, co-presented yesterday’s global debate on socialism and whether the pandemic is a catalyst for radical change and new pathways to equality.)

Also check out About Us, a recent collection of essays about disabilities, and share stories of your own at recharge@motherjones.com.

I was wondering yesterday if I’ll ever mosh again. Or, more to the point, if we’ll ever mosh again. Will the pit ever open UP? By the time the pit does OPEN UP, will my old frail bones (and fully developed mind) be comfortable colliding with the youths at some half-assed punk show? (Do I have to do the thing where I go, “Obviously this is low priority”?) Ahem: Obviously this is low priority.

But I was thinking this was because I don’t—and never did—really like moshing. I wouldn’t choose it. It often happened, and I was there, and then you’re moshing. A lot of going to live shows was basically like this—a collection of not good but very fun stuff: your favorite artist reduced to the quality of LOUD; new friend, call him stranger A, sweating on you; paying $7 for a beer that tastes like plastic.

Do you miss that too?

If so, I’ve been finding a balm in scratchy live performances of artists I like. I find in them a dose of the unexpected. And, as I live increasingly online, I find in them a respite from ill-fitting perfection in the optimized spaces I traverse digitally.

One of my favorites for this is Ryley Walker—an artist who uploads a ton to Patreon. You can pay a few bucks and join me. I’ve enjoyed “Live at Shibuya 7th Floor, Tokyo, Japan” and “Live in Paris @ Mona Bismarck American Center June 1 2017.” Walker interlaces his songs, sometimes long acoustic riffs, with chitchat that I find amusing. It’s nice to hear a human, you know?

Or you can listen to a few examples of Bob Dylan singing terribly, which I enjoy. Here’s “Pancho and Lefty,” and this concert from 1984 has horrific quality, and he just stops playing a song at 19 minutes for no reason. Great. I don’t want to be fully pleased at the moment. For me, there’s a certain cheeriness in seeking out the random and slightly broken but tolerable.

That’s the good news I got for you. Sorry, the real news is…hard to mine at the moment.

Three boosts to enter the week:

Letter by letter. “Will you be my pen pal?” “My name is Pattie. Please write me.” “My name is Berlene. I am your pen pal! Please write to me.” Nearly 20,000 letters have poured in, answering the calls of a North Carolina senior center’s residents after they posted photos to Facebook of hand-drawn signs in search of connection. Four months had passed since visits were discontinued, and the outpouring of support from letter writers continues.

Political pen pals. On his birthday today, Zac Lee Rigg—raised in Malaysia and Indonesia and living in Los Angeles—tells Recharge, “Tell everyone I’m aging and I’m not ashamed of it.” (He’s also producing some of the most consistently brilliant, historically informed, justice-driven videos on The Internet. But can he single-handedly defund the United States military?)

No one’s pawn. It’s International Chess Day. Alongside the game’s popularity runs a history of human rights campaigns and political problem-solving, highlighted by the United Nations’ livestream today, “Chess for Recovering Better.” In the mix: superstars Viswanathan Anand of India, Levon Aronian of the United States, Hou Yifan of China, and Vladimir Kramnik of Russia. Hop on. The event was inspired by Mher Margaryan, Armenia’s UN representative, to “promote fairness, equality, mutual respect, and understanding among nations.”

Reeling from Lorrie Moore’s withering review of my generation in the New York Review of Books via a Sally Rooney takedown—is Moore right? Is she dead wrong? Is it both?! Why am I weeping?!—I needed a boost.

So I went to Ben Fountain, who wrote Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (which I loved) and who has a new short story in the Oxford American called “Cane Creek.” It’s lovely. It’s also about death. I felt, again, wrecked by a writer; sentences like this tore me up: “If asked, she would have said this was what she knew from fifty-five years of life, the distillation of everything she’d learned from parents, teachers, lovers, books, three children, one miscarriage, and a problematic marriage of some thirty years: when someone dies who you are close to, their death brings other things close for a time.”

I needed, instead, the cheery old-person bliss. Or something close to that—whatever it is that makes a writer the kind of person who can describe something horrific with bubbly curiosity, or pinpoint the world’s failings with a laugh. My main sources for this are Mel Brooks, Oliver Sacks, and Studs Terkel. I decided to look through the Mother Jones archive to see if we have any good stuff in that vein in the dusty cupboard. I found something much better than I even expected: a 1995 interview with Terkel—the famous oral historian, radio interviewer, and seeming mensch of the working class.

First of all, it begins with him hating on the internet! I love it. It’s very 1995. And, I think, still probably right: 

The trouble with me and the Internet is that it’s about facts and figures and information. But without the flesh and blood and the breathing that goes on, who am I talking to? What do they look like? Is it a multitude? Are there 25 people there? Who is that scraggly kid? The old woman there with a cane? That part–the human touch, that’s what’s missing.

The whole interview, and Terkel’s dogged obsession with the idea that everyone—everyone—is a person with a story to tell, especially in America, made me hopeful. And it made me miss strangers. Do you remember walking around, bumping shoulders, someone talking loudly within 6 feet so you could overhear their stories (and gossip about it at a bar, also within 6 feet)? That was great! I miss it. Some days I miss it with an unhelpful pang. Some days I miss it by pretending that any feeling of dismay midlockdown is dumb. Some days I indulge and miss it by complaining to my friends in ways that are annoying.

Someone like Terkel would probably listen to me, and you, and all of us, with a glint of recognition and ask, if we could, to say just a little bit more about that.

Form a single-file line to the left, keep 6 feet apart, fix your face masks (over your mouth and nose—it’s not a chin guard), and apply hand sanitizer before partaking in the good-news grab bag that replenishes each time you click Beautiful News Daily. It bills itself as a source of “unseen trends, uplifting stats, creative solutions—a chart a day from @infobeautiful.” The browsable stock is here; the refreshable grab bag is here. Mileage will vary.

For a while now, Mother Jones’ editorial style guide has included an effective workaround for references to the NFL team in Washington, DC, whose name is a racial slur: “Refer to the NFL team in DC as ‘Washington,’ ‘Washington’s NFL team,’ or ‘the Washington [Redacted].’” Our guideline, like the team name itself, is due for an update as good news and hopeful headlines come in: The team is officially dropping its name after decades of public pressure from human rights campaigns, including petitions, protests, and lawsuits. The search for a new name and logo is on.

One of the leaders whose organizing laid the groundwork for the change is Carla Fredericks, an associate professor at the University of Colorado Law School, who directs the American Indian Law Clinic and is faculty director for First Peoples Worldwide. “We’ve waited a long time for this,” she told CU Boulder Today. Read more about Fredericks and the historic milestone, and share ideas for new names at recharge@motherjones.com.

Granted, the most meaningful way to support front-line workers during the pandemic is to reduce its scope and improve the underlying conditions and disparities that heighten workers’ risks in the first place. But creative gestures of gratitude have their place, including the latest: drone formations. Hundreds of drones filled Seoul’s sky in a creatively choreographed showcase to recognize health care and other essential workers. The drones boosted messages of hand-washing, physical distancing, and mask-wearing, and encouraged everyone to keep diligent as the pandemic stretches on. Browse the photos of the display above the Han River, and share your ideas for how to continue supporting front-line workers at recharge@motherjones.com.

As movements for justice and human rights continue to expand across the United States, coalitions for change are mobilizing worldwide on the strength of protests that are getting results, including in Cairo. Egypt’s capital was named the most dangerous city in the world for women in a recent Reuters poll, and pernicious street harassment is a familiar feature of daily life for Egyptian women, 99 percent of whom have been sexually harassed, according to a United Nations study within the past decade. But the #MeToo movement is growing as more women find paths for action and accountability. Three days after an Instagram page went up with dozens of women’s accusations of assault and harassment by an elite university student, police arrested him—a rare result. Before that, a historic conviction was issued by a judge who sentenced a harasser to two years in prison, and Egyptian celebrities are speaking out against harassment in a video campaign by the Egyptian National Council for Women.

Egypt’s #MeToo movement isn’t new or unfamiliar to many people in the United States who see patterns of resistance and strength across countries, but the movement is reaching new milestones, with support worldwide. If you have family, friends, or personal insight into Egypt’s reckoning with street harassment, and stories of community-driven change, let us know at recharge@motherjones.com.

After this marathon week of fireworks, and last week’s, and those of every week and minute, the inspiring words of Alicia Garza are both timely and timeless. Garza co-founded the Black Lives Matter movement when she wrote “Black lives matter” in a Facebook post almost seven years ago, and she’s featured in an insightful, wide-ranging interview this week by NatGeo’s Rachel Hartigan. Since launching the Black Lives Matter Global Network with Opal Tometi and Patrisse Cullors, Garza has rallied and amplified the voices and lives of countless people who drive change, bearing witness to what has changed and what still needs to. Her interview touches on the construction of the phrase “Black Lives Matters,” the basis for maintaining hope, the ways a movement for change can stay its course, and the unifying threads of collective action. Catch it here, and have a safe, healthy, strengthening weekend. Let us know how you plan to, and stories you’d like boosted, at recharge@motherjones.com.

In case you missed the insightful investigation and analysis by Becca Andrews on the historical harm of the name “Ole Miss” and the growing movement toward “New Miss” at the University of Mississippi, catch it here. Becca’s high-impact reporting has energized an effort by artists and designers to create “New Miss” gear, with proceeds going to Black Lives Matter Mississippi. In response to her piece, “The Racism of ‘Ole Miss’ Is Hiding in Plain Sight,” a boost of recognition from the Mississippi-born author and creative writing professor Kiese Laymon, amplifying the article’s “beyond incredible” historical framing and research.

More good news on the education front: A class-swapping spreadsheet is making the rounds among hundreds of students who are voluntarily giving up spots in in-person classes to protect international peers from ICE during the pandemic. The initiative began at UCLA. Many other colleges are joining in solidarity. H/T Rachel Sumekh.

And if Cornel West is right (he is) that “justice is what love looks like in public,” give his latest livestream a spin. He speaks with Tanzila Ume Habiba and Chandrashekhar Azad on Sheedi, Dalit, and Black solidarity, in a powerful Equality Labs conversation.

Reach us at recharge@motherjones.com if you have story tips about community strength, resilience, and justice.

Bunsen Peak, Yellowstone National ParkVenu Gupta and family

My parents came to the United States from India in 1973. I grew up believing that camping equaled two things: (1) being outside in the sun and therefore getting darker, a cardinal sin (colorism, anti-Blackness, all of it) and (2) living in a way they tried to leave behind when they came to America: many people in small spaces, dusty, dirty in areas, and few amenities, according to my parents. Needless to say, I did not grow up feeling at home outside of my house. People who were “outdoorsy” felt like a niche group of exceptionally fit white people, beyond my reach.

Something changed, and now I can’t get enough of being outside. Walking my neighborhood in Chicago, spending time in the Northwoods of Minnesota, hiking (actually hiking!) in the Badlands, and even trying to find home in a canoe.

Right now, my family and I are in Montana, spending a month in a very small town about an hour outside of Yellowstone National Park. People we greet here in this town, all of whom are white, are friendly but look at my big, loud brown family with confusion, like we must be lost. We’re not; we’re exactly where we belong.

The more time I spend outdoors in my city, my state, my country, the more I realize that I’m entitled—personally and politically—to more than just my little plot; I’m entitled to more than just the physical spaces where some people feel comfortable with who I am; I’m entitled to all of it, as long as I respect nature and respect other people. And, so are you.

More and more, BIPOC are reclaiming their connection to nature and the solace, comfort, joy, and peace of mind that it provides. Native people, of course, have stewarded and celebrated natural resources and public lands from the beginning. Natives Outdoors was founded by Len Necefer in 2017 to amplify images of Indigenous people on the trails and aboard boats, and it’s grown into efforts to restore tribal rights in the outdoors.

Rue Mapp, founder of Outdoor Afro, calls nature the “great equalizer.” Outdoor Afro “celebrates and inspires Black connections and leadership in nature.” GirlTrek is a national health movement supporting Black women as changemakers—through walking anywhere and everywhere.

Ambreen Tariq founded @BrownPeopleCamping in August 2016 to celebrate the National Park Service’s centennial. Ambreen is a South Asian American immigrant and a Muslim woman who uses storytelling to examine privilege and power in the outdoors.

LatinoOutdoors promotes the outdoors as a welcoming and inclusive space—for sharing and celebrating knowledge and experience.

For me and my family, we are taking small, brave steps to finding home in the outdoors, working to nourish ourselves and nature around us as we go.

If you have stories about your experiences as BIPOC in the outdoors, share them at recharge@motherjones.com.