accompaniment (staying power)

this general strike is a practice in accompaiment - our commitment to stay with each other.

a beautiful grove of Monterey cypress at Land’s End in San Francisco.

“Why are we here if not for each other?” - Claudine Rankine

I started to write this months ago.

I was halfway through writing this before that Wednesday in early December when a man exited the train and collapsed on the platform at my stop. I started to write this before myself and three other people arranged ourselves around the man to see what we could do to help.

The man, conscious but incoherent, laid face-up on the cold train platform with a terrified look in his eyes.

When he fell, the two people behind him immediately dropped to a crouch to inspect the damage of the fall on his body and to console him. His fright forced his eyes wide open, nearly unblinking, and locked on the couple as he looked between them.

“Hospital.” he said, in a small slurred voice that sounded as if it was coming from above ground and not right in front of us.

Next to me, a guy with jet black hair that he had to keep pushing back from his face while on the phone 911. I stood close enough to be helpful as he repeated some of the questions coming from the dispatcher, “Is he in his 50s?” he asked me and the couple.

We looked down. “70s.”

What entrance are we closest to?

“17th and 4ve”.

He answered a few questions before he hung up and said, “That was the first time I’ve had to call for help ”.

“You did great.”

The man in his 70s, underdressed for the cold weather and biting wind characteristic of a New York winter, had sores on his face. His exposed ankles were swollen and full of more sores that continued down to the tennis shoes that were halfway laced in order to accommodate the feet that were too big for them. His body displayed wear that comes from having to sleep outside regularly.

With the knowledge that the paramedics were on the way, the four of us shifted our weight into a comfortance stance for the wait.

The man babbled “hospital” repeatedly. His words stretched from his mouth and down the length of the tunnel in hopes of pulling in help.

It had been about fifteen minutes since the person beside me had gotten off the phone with the dispatcher. As time stretched on, the man on the ground started to say, “Don’t leave me.”

The man who had crouched down on his right side, held his hand and repeated over and over, “We’re not going to leave you. We’re not going to leave you.”

Suspended in this arrangement of people, I was struck by this commitment. From one stranger to another.

“We’re not going to leave you.”

The paramedics arrived and moved the man from the platform to a gurney and then carried him up the 20 or so stairs from the platform to the street as the four of us followed behind. They hoisted him into the ambulance and closed the door.

Without more to do, myself, the couple, and the young man said a quick goodnight and walked away in different directions. Our goodnight made time resume and we were back in Brooklyn, headed home or wherever else we were going before we had come together.

I was struck by many things that night but mostly, the social contract we had silently but decisively had entered into when we stepped off the train to see what we could do.

We had made a commitment to see it through. A commitment to stay with each other.

This is accompaniment.

——————

I started to write this in June 2025 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. During an opening plenary at the Wellbeing Project’s Hearth Summit, Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb spoke of her solidarity with Palestine and other movements for dignity and liberation. Accompaniment, she said, is our ability to stay with each other. It is to say “I will accompany you on this journey of life”.

Her words sparked curiosity in me about practicing accompaniment in my personal commitment to liberation & dignity.

So, I started to write about accompaniment because, as with most things, I write first to understand and then to embody. Three years ago, when overwhelm threatened to immobilize me, I wrote about steadiness. At its best, writing for me is an incantation. Writing for clarity penetrates my psyche, gets in my bones, and becomes a practice.

As I wrote about steadiness, I became steady.

Unknown to me then, becoming steady increased my capacity to meet this current moment with a reliable and practiced sturdiness. Steadiness taught me to be with myself and in the company of my own pain, sorrow, need, and joy. It taught me a form of self preservation that has allowed me to reach deeper and outward without completely losing my footing.

Steadiness taught me that if I commit to my inner work, I might be able to meet others – to meet you – with enough space to accompany you in yours. I practice steadiness not as a fixed state but one that requires attention, maintenance, and devotion.

I can sit with you in the terribleness, discomfort, and pain because I have sat with my own. I am able to commit to staying with you because I am committed to staying with myself.

As the chaos, distress, and grief of colliding crises compound and come closer and closer to each of us, so does our need to be with each other. To stay with each other.

Accompaniment isn’t trying to fix, solve, or even fully understand another’s experience but a commitment to just walk alongside them in it. It is putting our bodies alongside others to demonstrate to each other and to those who wish us harm that we are not fighting this fight alone.

As I.C.E, at the direction of the federal government continues to abduct and execute members of our communities, we have to practice our staying power. As the U.S. continues to show us its centuries long commitment to facism, racialized terror, and creating chaos for control, we must find our staying power. With ourselves, with our communities, and for those we do not know.

May we find the power to stay with each other with the increasingly terribleness.

May we meet each other with an unshakeable presence and decisively sign a social contract of accompaniment.