This is a love letter to the Scottish land itself. And to the power of poetry and place.

The Corbenic Poetry Path lies just a short distance outside of Dunkeld, the gateway to the Scottish Highlands. It is open to the public, and is curated – and cared for – by the amazing people who run the Corbenic Camphill Community, a residential care facility for adults with learning disabilities.

It is a path that winds through woodland, across a field, down to the river, and back up to the road again.. punctuated by small acts of poetry.

Sometimes, fresh and crisp and sometimes weathered and gently worn (not unlike me … and how I’ve changed over the nine years since I first came here).

Early in the walk, the poem “Field Holler” invites you to consider what it means to feel at home, in a place.

Field Holler

Today I stand in a field and shout

It is good to stand in a field and shout

To stand somewhere you can call your own

Somewhere you can find a place

Somewhere you can call home

And shout

Last week, this poem hit home different, for a few reasons.

First, in the intervening years, I’ve learned something about neurodiversity (ND), and also about masking* – the conscious modification of instinctive and natural ND behaviour in order to meet mainstream (non ND) expectations around social interaction – and in that journey, I’ve come to accept that we all “mask” in different ways.

And sometimes – like last week – what I’ve got deep inside me, is a shout.

These last few weeks, I’ve had lots of thoughts: Big thoughts. Angry thoughts. Afraid thoughts. Ashamed thoughts.

And instead of shouting, I have been mostly silent.

There are many different reasons why we choose to stay silent, but one very significant reason for people who sit further from power, privilege and social norms – is because speaking your truth (or being your true self) runs a greater risk of direct retaliation just for being you.

And by retaliation, I mean actual emotional or physical harm to individuals.

Today, in the UK (including Scotland) people are harmed, every day, simply because of who they are.**

This has always been true, but for years, we all agreed this was injustice, and it needed to end…now, unless we start making a radical change in how we respond, we can only expect more harm, for more people.

And the end point: everyone – without exception – loses something of themselves, and of the better part of their humanity.

So what’s the answer?

For me, it’s the same as always… (even as I need to remind myself):

Find your field – the place where you feel like you can really be you

Make your mark – shout, or dance, or write poetry, or just lie on your back, flat against the earth – claim your place, breathe deeply, remember that you belong

Bottle the magic – not sure why I have fireflies in mind (summer, childhood), but try to find ways of bringing back the goodness of being you in a place where you belong, to ground you, in your work to do the radical change

…

When you get back, here are some places you can start to make a difference in Scotland, today.

Get marching at the Scotland Demands Better rally on 25 October – a family-friendly rally against poverty, and for a future Scotland where every household can thrive and prosper

Join the Women Against the Far Right Scotland campaign – to make sure that women’s rights are never weaponised by the far right against migrants, and keep the focus on a safer Scotland for all women

Join Let’s Change the Act – the campaign to decriminalise abortion in Scotland and secure women’s reproductive rights

…

Thanks for dropping in again on The Long View – I hope I brought you something useful, and brightened (rather than burdened) your day!

Do you have a favourite “field” (either literal or figurative) where you go to do your shouting, and find your peace?

Would love to hear about that (or shout outs for other campaigns or actions that are about welcome, and not exclusion) in the comments!

* On masking, I’m not seeking to minimise the effort and exhaustion that comes for some ND people when they have to mask in order to get on, or even survive. The effort is most likely enormous, unfair and sometimes quite destructive. I’m just saying that empathising with “masking” is accessible to all of us – because none of us are living, breathing 24/7 models of what socially expected behaviour looks like. For an autistic perspective on masking, here is a video from Andrew Burnett on what masking feels like, for him

** In my devotion to academic rigour, I started to research and summarise a series of 2024-25 statistics here, to support my point. Then it got too depressing, and I stopped. If readers would like to share what you know about how individuals and communities are harmed because of identity – racial , gender, religious, social class and so on – you are welcome to do so, in the comments.

Banksy’s newest work shows a judge, in a traditional wig and gown, using a gavel to strike a protestor lying on the ground below him, holding up a blood-spattered placard. It appeared a day after the Met Police arrested nearly 900 people at Parliament Square protesting in support of the proscribed group Palestine Action.

Defend Our Juries, who organised the protest, made this statement: “Among the 857 arrestees were vicars and priests, war veterans and descendants of Holocaust survivors, retired teachers and healthcare workers,” and accused the police of making “many false claims” to justify arresting peaceful demonstrators with signs that read: “I oppose genocide – I support Palestine Action.”

Speaking for the Met Police, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Claire Smart, issued this statement: “You can express your support for a cause without committing an offence under the Terrorism Act ... we have a duty to enforce the law without fear or favour. If you advertise that you are intending to commit a crime, we have no option but to respond accordingly.”

But what if, (hypothetically) all possible ways of expressing your support for a cause become an offence under the Terrorism Act?

“But that could never happen,” you might protest.

How certain are you? And what exactly do you know about the process for proscribing an organisation as a terrorist group under the Terrorism Act 2000 – an act that was widely criticised when passed as putting forward too broad a definition of “terrorism” and too few mechanisms for holding the state to account for abuse of those powers?

You be the judge:

• Here is the explanatory memorandum prepared by the UK Home Office and laid before Parliament, with the draft order for proscription of Palestine Action (PA), alongside two other organisations: Maniacs Murder Cult (MMC) and Russian Imperial Movement (RIM).
• Here is the debate in UK Parliament on 2 July 2025, during which MPs raised concerns and sought to differentiate the severity of the evidence with respect to PA as compared to MMC and RIM, and requested the option of voting separately on proscription of each organisation. Dan Jarvis, Minister of State for Security, refused, citing both precedent (this is the way we’ve always done it) and neutrality (refusing to unbundle possibly randomly bundled orders for proscription, somehow demonstrates that we are ideologically neutral).
• Neutrality is, of course, a fiction in matters of politics. And here, finally, is the list of the 385 MPs who voted in favour of proscription, and the 20 MPs who voted against.

The process of criminalising behaviour, and of making your actions – however right or just or private or justifiable you think they might be – illegal, is in most cases, quite clear.

But once your behaviour is criminalised, enforcement against you is backed by the full powers of the state.

The question that a human rights lawyer would ask – and that you should ask yourself (and keep asking yourself) is:

If this law were used against me, in circumstances where I feel I have acted reasonably, and my opponents have acted abusively, would the outcome be fair?

If you feel the answer is “no,” whether or not the law directly affects you today, consider whether – out of self interest, or solidarity – you should nevertheless do something to oppose, or reform, it.

For the record:

• The punishment for supporting a group proscribed under the Terrorism Act 2000, like Palestine Action, is up to a maximum sentence of 14 years imprisonment, or an unlimited fine.
• The punishment for criminal damage – what Banksy’s latest work is being investigated as – is a maximum sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment.
• The punishment for supporting a group that actually commits genocide…this is harder to calculate…for those of you reading this article who are criminal law experts, I’m all ears?

Some final thoughts

This is a picture of the site of Banky’s work a few days later: a foreboding shadow, after the fine detail has been scrubbed away.

There is something that sits uncomfortably, in this picture, and this political moment in the UK. The Met Police, and the justice system – in the name of defending the rule of law, the impartiality of the judiciary, prosecutorial discretion and the integrity of policing systems – being drawn into direct and visible conflict with a growing popular movement, committed to continuing to protest in favour of a cause – regardless of, and sometimes perhaps because of, the criminal consequences.

“When the law is used as a tool to crush civil liberties, it does not extinguish dissent – it strengthens it.” – Defend our Juries

…

If you enjoyed this brief interruption, and would like to continue thinking about the impact of Banksy’s latest work, I can recommend: Banksy’s erased mural: the irony of power by Ángela León Cervera

To learn more about your right to protest in Scotland, and practical solidarity: Scottish Community & Activist Legal Project

To donate to support Palestinians in Gaza: Medical Aid for Palestinians

First published on LinkedIn on 12 September 2025:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/solidarity-pursuit-justice-art-dissent-jen-ang-uwlee

“If you have nothing useful to say, then say nothing at all….”

Silence comes easy to me; the effort of sorting my thoughts, expressing them clearly to others – who won’t understand, or who actively strive to misunderstand – is burdensome.

And TBH, the last few months (from May to August of this year) have been challenging – personally, politically, philosophically.

Last night, I think I hit the bottom of what must have been a long-brewing existential crisis.

And you know what? I feel better now.

I’m ready to talk. So thanks for joining me.

The wisdom of others: finding your own path to defiance

I have not been completely silent, nor entirely inactive.

Some of the time, I have been gathering in my thoughts – trying hard to make sense of the shifting political and cultural landscape that is transforming my work in the UK, and more importantly, upending the lives of family and friends here, in the US, and globally.

And I spent some time hanging out, and recording interviews with some of the most brilliant activists and lawyers I know – to research my fellowship project for the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity and to produce and launch The Lawmanity Podcast

I asked my friends and heroes the questions that are keeping me up at night:

• is the law a barrier or a tool to achieve change?
• what does justice look like to you?
• what advice do you have for a younger you?

After reviewing those interviews, writing up my fellowship project and spending quite a lot of time staring out the window, silently.. here’s what I’ve learned, about others, and my own journey to defiance:

Step 1: Embrace your silence

Everyone is different, but for me – until I have had space to think through everything happening around me – until I can put my own narrative and story to where I am now, what’s happening for me today, and where I hope to be going … I feel uneasy, unmoored, and uncertain.

So Step 1 is: stay still, stay silent, take space.

Give yourself a hug, practice sitting comfortably with who you are, be compassionate towards yourself and others

I do this, because I must. I have a regular morning practice, which requires spending time with me, and for me. Because many years of lawyering and activism has taught me that this work will literally end me, if I don’t look after myself, daily.

And the end of me (or the end of you) is no triumph for any cause that matters, to either of us.

If you need another reason to sit in the sun, and go easy on yourself, here it is: the most consistent, motivated, effective activists who I know … are bold, confident leaders because they are right with themselves – from the inside.

Where to get started? Try this loving kindness meditation with Andy Puddicombe from Headspace or this mountain meditation written by Jon Kabat-Zinn.

Step 2: Encourage your resistance

If you are right with yourself, you start to listen to your inner voice, and trust your instincts.

I think most of us have an inner sense of justice and injustice, which speaks to us entirely separate from the external messages we receive – from friends and family, from work colleagues, from pop culture and social media.

But often, we’re socialised to ignore, or even silence, that inner voice.

I picked up this book, Defy, The power of no in a world that demands yes by Dr. Sunita Sah and read it – more or less – straight through. The author has studied defiance, and importantly, the precursors that people experience and express that lead up to single and sustained acts of defiance.

The book had me hooked at a really simple (and non-political) example of defiance that she shared from her own life – a single, trivial, banal occasion when the author chose not to do what she felt pressured to do. The author demonstrated that we all feel inner resistance, and we all have the ability to tap into the “why” that is causing us discomfort.

So Step 2 is: listen to and encourage your resistance.

Name the thing that is bothering you. Describe – for yourself, but as if you are explaining to others, what exactly is not okay about what is happening, and why you are feeling resistance.

Literally, give courage to your inner voice, but more importantly, ask yourself what a better world would look like.

What are the conditions that would release this dis-ease, and that would allow you to feel an absence of resistance towards this situation, your surrounding world?

Step 3: Embolden your actions

Before we get to step 3, I just want to make really clear that I believe silent reflection, coming to understand your self worth and listening for your inner voice are all worthy actions that already count as potent acts of resistance.

Action does not need to be visible, or effortful or large-scale (in any way), in order to be important, significant.

I also think, as explained in The courage to be authentically you, that our identities mean that some of us carry more risk in being visible, and vulnerable, in our defiance. So what action looks like is going to be different for each of us, and that has to be okay.

But, for me, the last step in defiance does involve doing things, with my mind and my body – and usually, with others or with the purpose of communicating with others.

You will need to negotiate your defiance, on your own terms. But drawn from my interviews with other activists and reflecting on my own decisions, I here are some questions to explore for ideas:

• What do you have the time, resources and energy to do?
• What are you good at? What do you enjoy?
• Where do you hold influence? Who listens to you, and on what (social media or real life) platforms?
• What can you risk and what things in your life are non-negotiable?
• What brings you joy?

Don’t estimate the joy question. Defiance, like any habit, must be rewarding… and yes, of course, joyful

Step 3: make a plan and take step towards defiant action.

Sometimes our intentions fall down between the dreaming part, and the doing part.

So borrowing a little wisdom from the “getting things done” method – I’m suggesting you actually identify and take the first step towards expressing your own defiance in a single, clearly identified action.

That could be:

• text a friend who mentioned a gig, event or action you are curious about joining
• donate £2 to a cause you believe in
• drop in on a campaign group or charity, and ask how you can help
• [your amazing idea here]

That’s all I’ve got for this week. Thanks for reading the Long View – it’s good to be back!

I’d love to hear how you’re sitting with the world this week, whether you have tips for creating silent spaces, listening to your own resistance or getting from planning to action in the changes you want to see in the world.

First published on LinkedIn on 4 September 2025:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-cultivate-defiance-silence-resistance-action-jen-ang-vxx8e

There may be more to say about how it feels to watch one’s native country slide, rapidly, towards fascism; but that is for next week.

For now, I feel we all need a pick-me-up, and so I’m sharing excerpts from this inspiring gem of a letter written by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés in 2001, but still forcefully relevant and moving today:

Mis estimados queridos, My Esteemed Ones:

Do not lose heart. We were made for these times.

I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world now. It is true, one has to have strong cojones and ovarios to withstand much of what passes for “good” in our culture today… Ours is a time of almost daily astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people.

…You are right in your assessments. The lustre and hubris some have aspired to while endorsing acts so heinous against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking. Yet… I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times.

Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because, the fact is that we were made for these times. Yes. For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement.

Do not lose hope in these difficult times

I cannot tell you often enough that we are definitely the leaders we have been waiting for, and that we have been raised, since childhood, for this time precisely.

Look around: you are not alone

…I grew up on the Great Lakes and recognize a seaworthy vessel when I see one. Regarding awakened souls, there have never been more able vessels in the waters than there are right now across the world. And they are fully provisioned and able to signal one another as never before in the history of humankind.

I would like to take your hands for a moment and assure you that you are built well for these times. Despite your stints of doubt, your frustrations in arighting all that needs change right now, or even feeling you have lost the map entirely, you are not without resource, you are not alone.

Look out over the prow; there are millions of boats of righteous souls on the waters with you. …Even though your veneers may shiver from every wave in this stormy roil, I assure you that the long timbers composing your prow and rudder come from a greater forest. That long-grained lumber is known to withstand storms, to hold together, to hold its own, and to advance, regardless…

We all have a heritage and history of being gutted, and yet remember this especially … we have also, of necessity, perfected the knack of resurrection.

Over and over again we have been the living proof that that which has been exiled, lost, or foundered – can be restored to life again.

This is as true and sturdy a prognosis for the destroyed worlds around us as it was for our own once mortally wounded selves.

…Though we are not invulnerable, our risibility supports us to laugh in the face of cynics who say “fat chance,” and “management before mercy,” and other evidences of complete absence of soul sense. This, and our having been ‘to Hell and back’ on at least one momentous occasion, makes us seasoned vessels for certain. Even if you do not feel that you are, you are.

…Believe the evidence of any one of your past testings and trials. Here it is: Are you still standing? The answer is, Yes! (And no adverbs like “barely” are allowed here). If you are still standing, ragged flags or no, you are able. Thus, you have passed the bar. And even raised it. You are seaworthy.

Remembering we are needed

…In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that. There is a tendency, too, to fall into being weakened by dwelling on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails.

We are needed, that is all we can know. And though we meet resistance, we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us, and we will know them when they appear…You have all the resource you need to ride any wave, to surface from any trough.

In the language of aviators and sailors, ours is to sail forward now, all balls out…

How do we intervene in a stormy world?

Stand up and show your soul

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good.

What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take “everyone on Earth” to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these – to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity.

There can be no despair when you remember why you came to Earth

Remember who you serve, and who sent you here

Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.

There will always be times…when you feel discouraged. I too have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it. I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate.

The reason is this: In my uttermost bones I know something, as do you. It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to Earth, who you serve, and who sent you here. The good words we say and the good deeds we do are not ours. They are the words and deeds of the One who brought us here. In that spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall: When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes is an American poet, post-trauma specialist and Jungian psychoanalyst, and author of Women Who Run With the Wolves.

First published on LinkedIn on 9 May 2025:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/we-made-times-letter-young-activist-during-troubled-jen-ang-louxe

It has been a cold and bruising winter – with some light moments (a surprise wedding) but also some dark ones (an unexpected funeral).

This week, the Long View has been thinking about the miracle of ordinary resistance, and what means for individuals to publicly align their actions and words, with their privately held values and truths.

This is clearly on my mind and in the air because:

We are seeing a much more direct and naked use of the law to suppress expressions of identity and allyship – like Hungary banning LGBT+ Pride marches and an Idaho public school teacher being forced to remove a poster from her classroom that affirms: “Everyone is Welcome Here”.

Using the law (to criminalise expressions of identity) and formal processes (like threatening the school teacher with loss of employment) raises the stakes for individual acts of defiance.

Hungarian lawmakers have reasonably (and correctly) calculated that there are a large number of people – LGBT+ or not – who would attend a Pride march if it is legal to do so, but not if doing so will ruin their careers, endanger their families and land them in jail for an indeterminate amount of time.

Similarly, we have to assume that many teachers in the United States – possibly a majority of teachers ordered to do so – have silently taken down posters that encourage inclusion, celebrate diversity and promote equality, in their classrooms.

Not because they do not believe in equality, diversity and inclusion, but because they feel they cannot afford to take a stand on this issue, when the US Department of Education has launched a website for public reporting called the “End DEI” portal.

But ordinary resistance matters – visible acts of joy, celebration of our unique identities and being role models for kindness, compassion and acceptance – are a potent way of directly opposing the erasure of our communities and a false vision of who we all are.

Here are some of my favourite recent examples of brave, beautiful ordinary resistance:

This video by Lady Rampant, law student and Scottish drag queen legend on ‘ripping up the rule book’ and ‘making your own magic’

This movie: Jojo Rabbit (2019), a strangely gentle, sad and yet uplifting film about a little boy in the Hitler Youth who discovers his mother is hiding a Jewish girl in their home

This retrospective exhibition of the work of Everlyn Nicodemus – feminist, activist and artist – at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh. Can’t make it to Edinburgh? Watch this short film instead.

The courage to find, celebrate and embody: you

Something that I have always found funny around “allyship” is that we often assume that we have to talk about others as being different and having different experiences to us, as a way of figuring out to what we can do to support friends and loved ones who face barriers because of difference.

But. Everyone is, essentially, different. And the feeling of being excluded, humiliated and harmed in some way for being different is definitely within the emotional bandwidth of everyone, on this earth.

So too is the potential to draw on that experience, in order to embody a way of living (yourself) and treating others better than you were treated.

I point this out not to minimise or trivialise harm – some people absolutely experience harm and exclusion on a completely different scale to other people.

The core message here is not: everyone suffers equally. Some people suffer a lot more.

But perhaps, only: everyone suffers.

That’s part of being human. But we can ease each other’s suffering. And that’s part of being human too.

(Maybe that is what we should be putting on posters for schoolrooms, next year)

A challenge, if you’re up to it

So here’s some homework, to help you find and embody your own ordinary resistance, inspired by these flagstones that reference the work of Scottish sociologist and geographer, Patrick Geddes.

If you stand in opposition to regressive movements that seek to ban the expression of diverse identities, suppress facts and truth, and narrow the ground for public discourse, you are going to be confronted, over the next five years with a range of opportunities to: act or not act, speak up or not speak up, do or not do.

(Feel like I’m channeling a little bit of Yoda here – to be fair, Yoda is my spirit animal)

So ask yourself these questions, and do it now – so you’re ahead of the curve when you meet that challenge:

Where will I draw the line? What can I risk, and what can’t I risk?

What are the principles, facts and lived realities that I am willing to defend, for myself? For others?

What lessons do people learn when they spend time with me, and near me?

Can I take meaningful action to give comfort and safety to others (privately), even if I cannot take a visible stand (publicly)?

Thanks again for reading The Long View, this week. I would love to hear your thoughts – if you’re up to it, on whether “ordinary resistance” makes sense to you in the current context, and/or your own favourite examples of people who embody “ordinary resistance”

…

Also, and finally… next week will be the end of a whole year of writing The Long View. I’m pondering whether to continue – and if I do, at the same pace, at a different pace, or whether to try a shift to a whole different medium. Suggestions welcome!

First published on LinkedIn on 21 March 2025:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-embody-miracle-ordinary-resistance-jen-ang-zuxbe