In Portland, Oregon, a small group of knitters set up lawn chairs outside an ICE facility and did something disarming: they calmly kept knitting. The point was not to pretend politics were not happening. It was to show that everyday life and community care still exist, even when leaders try to paint a city as a battlefield.
According to Cecilia Nowell at The Guardian, these knit ins spread fast, and they helped fuel a wider wave of craftivism across the United States. People shared patterns, raised money for food banks, and found a low barrier way to show up. That matters, because fear can be isolating, and isolation is what makes harmful policies easier to push through.
Craft is not a substitute for organized action. Still, it can be the on ramp. When you stitch beside someone, you talk. Then you swap rides, share contacts, and keep coming back, even when the news is exhausting. That social glue can be the difference between a moment and a movement…