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The first place to experience 12:00 am on January 1st is Kiribati<\/a> (pronounced “Kiribas”), 19 hours ahead of New York. Samoa <\/a>and Tonga<\/a> are next, and then the new year comes to New Zealand. As long as Darling Husband and I lived in the US, we\u2019d call our New Zealand family to wish them a Happy New Year early in the morning on December 31st.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n But we had other motives, too. We were also calling for a preview of the new year to make sure it wasn\u2019t kicking off in catastrophic form. This was especially important on December 31, 1999, of course\u2014we needed to make sure planes and banks weren\u2019t crashing because of Y2K. But the stalwart Kiwis were able to reassure an anxious world that the coders and engineers had staved off disaster with their superhuman efforts<\/a>. Every year, they were like a lighthouse, signaling that it was safe to come forward, at least for the next few hours as we stayed up to watch the ball drop in Times Square.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now that we live in New Zealand, we\u2019re the ones signaling ahead with Facebook posts saying, \u201cCome on in, the water\u2019s fine!\u201d Of course, we don\u2019t know any better how the new year will turn out\u2014we don\u2019t even know how the rest of January 1st will turn out when we wake up in the morning. But there\u2019s a certain pride in being the one to send that hopeful message back across the time zones to loved ones. I like the thought of manning that lighthouse through the rolling countdown to midnight around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The thing about lighthouses, though, is that they\u2019re stationary, fixed in place. As Anne Lamott says, \u201cLighthouses don\u2019t go running all over an island looking for boats to save, they just stand there shining.\u201d As hopeful and helpful as they are, they can\u2019t actually rescue anyone directly. And even if they shine as hard as they possibly can, they can\u2019t stop some ships that are moving too fast towards the shoals that will rip them open. They can only stand there, illuminating the horror.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As we prepared to move to New Zealand in late 2018, I grappled constantly with my anxiety about abandoning my activism. I was regularly in the streets with Black Lives Matter Minneapolis and other organizations, usually wearing my neon marshal\u2019s vest. I was interwoven with the wider net of marshals and organizers, all of us looking out for one another as much as we looked out for the protesters within the protective perimeter we upheld. But that net depended on reliable, committed people who showed up. I struggled with the feeling that I was a weak link because of my disabilities. Too often, pain rendered me unable to move and react with the agility and endurance required of someone serving as a marshal. I manned the phone lines with the jail support response team, and I used Signal and Twitter to relay messages. Sometimes, it felt like enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Moving away felt like abandoning the net entirely. I wrote about how persistent that feeling has been in part 1 of this series.<\/a> But when I raised this fear with a good friend in the movement, she had this to say: \u201cThings are probably going to get worse, and folks are gonna need safe places to bug out, with safe people to catch them. You\u2019re not leaving\u2014you\u2019re going to establish a lighthouse.\u201d This gave me the reassurance I needed to leave with a measure of peace.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n More importantly, it gave me a way to be useful even at a distance. For years, I\u2019d experienced the always-bizarre phenomenon of meeting complete strangers who\u2019d drawn information or inspiration from my social media posts, making me aware that my reach was far greater than I realized. I knew how to leverage that visibility to boost the signal at home, even from around the world. I learned to work the time difference to my advantage, covering the night shift in America by the light of the New Zealand day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve also served as a lighthouse in the way my friend described, catching people as they take the leap to our shores. Some of those have been the children of friends who came for study or travel, reassuring their parents that they were in safe hands. But a few have been refugees from the powerful threats faced by today\u2019s America. One friend put me in touch with a mom in Texas<\/a> who was sending her trans son ahead of her by a few months so he could start nursing school in a place free from the guns and threats brandished at their home every day<\/a>. For all of these people, we do the same things: pick them up from the airport, feed them, get them a new SIM card, give them a crash course in how to pronounce Maori place names so they can get around. To each of them, I\u2019ve given a pounamu necklace as a token of welcome and blessing from the land where they now stand<\/a>, one they can take with them wherever they go in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I haven\u2019t caught any of the folks from home yet. They\u2019re still there, in the fight that rages more fiercely than ever. The light I project, searching the waves, picks out their names and faces as they crest on reports from the front lines. But stationary as I am, I can\u2019t reach out and scoop them from the dangerous churn. I don\u2019t know how many of them would actually accept rescue and relief. I struggle not to feel irrational rejection that more of them haven\u2019t come within reach, where I could give them shelter and rest for a time.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n