I thought I’d better answer my own question here! It’s ironic to post this today - I wrote it a week ago and lined it up for publication, and now it finds me feeling incredibly drained and overwhelmed, due to a lot of behind-the-scenes advocacy this week. That’s a fundamental part of my autistic experience: my energy levels are wildly inconsistent, and that means I don’t show up in the same way that others can. But that’s because I’m often working hard on things that I don’t post on here. I also process things very slowly and like to look at all angles and read deeply before I declare on anything - that means I’m always a week behind everyone else. At least. Probably a year.
So anyway, I’m be reading everything today and not saying much, but it’s lovely to hear from you all 🙏
Just coming back to add... The way we raise our children is also a form of protest. Maybe one of the most important ones, even if largely invisible and very gradual. But if the only the way we participate in protest is by refusing to perpetrate the old, unhelpful cycles within our own families, to raise kind, compassionate human beings - that is good enough. More than good enough, actually.
Thanks for starting this conversation – and I have just upgraded so I can join it as it feels important. Especially as I lie in bed, wide awake at 5.55, my ND brain buzzing with that heady mix of ideas and anxiety, my body too tired to get up.
I think about the topic of activism A Lot. I care so much about social issues but, like you, I can't sensorially tolerate traditional protests and marches. They are too draining. So I've been thinking for a number of years now about how I can use my skills – writing, nuance, observation, connecting the dots – to protest differently.
One of my ongoing projects is to draw attention to the tactics that are being employed by those in power to divide and exhaust us. I wrote about these tactics here a couple of years ago:
This post was recently imported from Medium, hence the lack of engagement, but even on the original post the engagement was limited. Do feel free to share it as the topic needs more eyes. But I am aware the essay format isn't exactly accessible, and some of the covid references feel dated (unbelievably). So now I'm working on an idea to use video and storytelling to bring this idea to a wider audience ahead of the next general election, so we can highlight these tactics, break the cycle of manufactured outrage and allow more nuance and care to rise to the surface of political discourse.
But your prompt has got me thinking: is traditional protest *itself* a way for those in power to keep us permanently exhausted? I do think there's something to be said for the people that lead us tending to thrive within chaos and conflict. Maybe that's a discussion for another time...
‘Is traditional protest *itself* a way for those in power to keep us permanently exhausted?’
Oh my days 🤯 yes!
I spent a year trying to be in that space and it was so hard and I really think it achieved very, very little.
Now I’m focusing more on my community. Trying to make small changes there. Writing to my MP. Setting up a support hub for women. Working in this way feels more accessible as an autistic woman and I can see the difference happening.
I absolutely love this - as a neurodivergent exhausted home educating mother of two neurodivergent teens I feel this keenly. I work in the sober community and have used tech and writing, my books/ podcast etc to plug away at trying to change cultural narratives. I guess I also am protesting by home educating. I’ve used my training to change within organisations- like a stealth activist haha. I love that you shine a light on the equity of protest- Thank you. Kate x
Thanks Katherine. Activism doesn't have to be taking to the streets, although that's great and I wish more people would! But I appreciate it's not possible for everyone. A great deal of activism can be done from the comfort of home online, such as writing letters to my local MP's and council, relevant ministers and businesses, signing petitions, sharing content which raises awareness about a particular issue etc.
I have only recently gone to one physical protest against a fossil fuel project in Australia. I'm ready to go to more. But I've had CFS and so have very limited energy plus it means travelling into Sydney to do so, taking time off work etc. It's not always possible for me. So I do most of my activism online.
Sometimes I get Chat GPT to draft my activism letters for me to speed things up, then I re-read and add in a personal touch, especially at the start. If it's for a local member who I voted for I start by saying essentially that I voted for you and this is what I, as your constituent, would like. Just now I have an email which has been sent to me from my local council responding to me about a climate crisis matter I raised with them.
PS - Re straws: sure some people need them. I have a friend with MS and he brings a stainless steel straw around with him. The same as I do with my reusable coffee mug. Win win!
Being both AuDHD and having ME/CFS my physical activism days are well and truly over. In my ‘youff’ I joined Greenpeace and CND, wearing the badges with pride; had heated arguments in the 6th form common room; cried tears over seal pup culls; forced recycling upon my parents etc etc etc. We lived rurally and I had no personal transport so big physical demonstrations in big cities were a no-no.
Now as an aged, silver haired, disabled person my activism is confined to signing petitions, ‘liking’ threads, funding (a small bit only) some places and people, and mainly spouting my mouth or fingers off for all who will listen on the days I have energy and brain power. I still have my pin badges and display them with pride. I believe we just all do the best we can with the resources we have at the time. I literally can’t demonstrate in the outside world, but when I have the energy and the fight I can try to influence others, and it’s actually worked a few times now. Gone are my shouty, screamy days, and reasoned argument, listening and caring for the other person’s viewpoints in order to understand how discombobulating change is, have creeped up on me in my old aged wisdom.
It’s very strange this ‘wisdom’ that is forced on me by a lack of fully functioning mitochondria and a weirdly wired brain. My ‘oomph’ is tethered and tamed. The adrenaline spikes that oomph caused squashed and not allowed to maraud my nervous system. The highs are gone and replaced by middle of the road sensibleness. It allows a strange clarity of mind I’m not used to as well as engendering a sense of calm. It’s rather annoying too. I want to screech and yell and I can’t.
I wrote a poem a long time ago, it’s on my barely used Wordpress site (https://3redcabbageheads.wordpress.com/category/poetry/page/6/) but I’ll pop it here too, hope that’s okay. It explain a lot about how it felt and still feels as a cisgendered white woman living in a reasonably decent country (at least 40 years ago) with privilege.
The Right to Fight
I want to be Black,
To be Asian or Afro-Caribbean,
I want to be Irish,
to be South African or Nicaraguan.
I want to be gay,
or lesbian, or bi-sexual.
I want to be underprivileged
Tortured, beaten, threatened.
Not
Because of some
sado masochistic quirk,
But so I can shout
With justification
About the anger I feel,
About the injustice I see,
About the violence,
About the waste,
The uselessness of it all.
Then people won’t look
Seeing only the middle-class, privileged white, I am
Written a long, long time ago when I first began to really understand middle class, straight, white privilege, and finding that some people assumed that because of that privilege I didn’t have the right to fight.
This is such an interesting topic. I don’t think you’re alone in feeling that the polarising discourse doesn’t leave much space for…liberation and humanity. I wonder if it's less about neurodiversity and more about clearing a space and developing a practice - more challenging in that very polarised political zone - to each find our own form of creative expression of what matters, to find authentic connection (internal and without), and to support each other in that? I read "Wintering" as very much about this process. Those of us who are lucky enough not to have yet fallen between the political cracks in a radical way, are so lucky, it feels like a choice to engage with the suffering of others. It is a choice to engage. Perhaps people who identify as neurodiverse, despite perhaps other forms of privilege, are more likely to have a deeply felt sense of what it feels like to be dehumanised by others. Still, I don’t see that our definition of activism needs to be so diminished that it has to be a prescribed set of activities, be defined by existing groups, be performative in a specific way (but an interesting question of whether it does in some sense need to be performative?), or lead us to burnout and hysteria. The polarising discourse surrounding most conflicts and maybe especially this most recent one, doesn’t leave much space for exploring responses of vulnerability, grief, or confusion, except to weaponise these feelings. The starting point must be something to do with keeping our powers of empathy, creativity and imagination not only intact but functioning as superpowers. I truly believe that all authentic expression can be a meaningful political act. Flower arranging could be done as a form of activism!
Such an important subject. I often feel like I don't do enough, even though I care passionately about many things. And sometimes I care too much and burn myself out with anxiety so I have to distance myself and pretend it's not happening for the sake of my own mental health.
And I have found it harder and harder to attend protests (it's more the physical limitations as I live with chronic pain rather than the sensory/autistic ones for me... plus yes, as a single parent or an ND child I can't afford to get arrested!). I found in the past that having my camera with me (I'm a photographer although not a news photojournalist) and documenting the protests I go to, makes it easier for me to attend and engage - and then share what I saw (that is also a painful pattern as I've seen the right to protest deteriorate massively over just the past few years here in the UK).
I've been working on a long-term art/book project around intergenerational trauma and the wounds we carry, and although it's tied to my own family history in Russian Empire/Soviet Union, all of my reading applies very much to many other world events, including the current conflict. I find that's a form of activism too, making sense of complex narratives and presenting them in an interesting and unexpected way for others to engage with without them feeling like they are being lectured.
I think we all need to do what we do best. Writing. Sharing photographs. Making art. Talking to friends. Sharing information. Inching the needle forwards.
In terms of resources, I really like following Layla F Saad, an autistic author who eloquently writes on decolonisation and healing from collective trauma: https://www.instagram.com/laylafsaad/
This has been on my mind greatly with The Voice referendum taking place here in Australia tomorrow. I'm not good at protesting on social media and know that falling into the vortex of commenting on news sites will only result in stress for me and change nothing. My way of protesting is to write letters to people in power.
I talk about this with students a lot, and a resource I have found helpful is this social change ecosystem map -- there are lots of roles & ways to contribute to social change, and if protest/direct action isn’t in your wheelhouse, there are other ways! https://buildingmovement.org/our-work/movement-building/social-change-ecosystem-map/
This is an important conversation. It relates to the drive I’ve had to create neurodivergent spaces. If the spaces that exist aren’t accessible to us, what would it look like to create spaces that are? Also, what if we weren’t working so hard to just exist in spaces and could set about solving the world’s problems?
I wasn’t planning to share this just yet, but you’ve inspired me to hit publish on Neurokind - a Substack zine for neurodivergent folks to share their art (in any medium) and amplify causes we are passionate about. http://neurokind.art
I feel this completely as a neurodivergent human with few spoons. I am in a place of exploring what it looks like to participate in daily activism...in my relationships, at work, at the grocery. I have been focused for so long on what is visible and what is seen on social media which left me feeling like I wasn't doing enough. I'm feeling into what it looks like to create ripples of change in the smallest of ways and interactions like asking for accomodations at work or letting someone know what I need or supporting someone during a difficult time. It's not grand or fancy or even noteworthy to some but I feel it's hugely important. In our age of technology it feels so easy to feel like we have to support every cause, especially those across the world, and I'm trying to remember that what I can control and have capacity for is enough.
Sacred activism. Is showing up and holding up your part of the sky. Writing, talking, sharing, posting however it looks for you for me is sacred activism, stretching the box of possible. sharonblackiemythmakings's profile picture
'It's the people who I think of as the 'mythical misfits', then, who kickstart the transformation of the world, and who begin to imagine more sustainable and meaningful ways of living. Today's mythical misfits ... are rejecting a culture which values neither intuition nor imagination, which values neither the living land nor its non-human inhabitants. They're deserting the stagnant institutions, and creating communities which celebrate life rather than destroying it. When the great blazing bonfire of a culture goes out, what remains are a few individual flames. When those individual flames come together, we can kindle a new fire. That fire's name is enchantment.' Sharon Blackie
I view how I choose to parent and homeschool, an ND preteen, my protest. It’s been very isolating and bombarded by unsolicited advice. Many of those moments have given me time to witness and focus on what I value...that my son has a base skillset to navigate the world in his own healthy way. It also provided the opportunity for very interesting conversations...
I also view how I am exploring my own neurodiversity and my deep connection to place, as a protest. I started a substack that is sensory infused with photography and audio sounds from nature. I grew up with a camera in my hand and felt this was a creative way to use this platform.
I’ve never been able to handle the intensity of being in a crowd of protestors. But my experience has been that the real protesting happens in the follow through, when no one is watching and there are no cameras. And that is where the world needs people too...to be making all the small choices and decisions and shifts to send ripples out...knowing that we’re in it for the future generations of all creatures and the Earth....
Hello Katherine, Thank you for asking this, and I would love to be in dialogue about this. I'm a sociologist who studies + teaches about social movements, and I've been spending time learning about the much broader history of community organizing that is a counterpoint to the current tradition of mass protest (in the US at least). The African-American civil rights movement is often (again, in the US) held up as the first mass protest movement, and its gains are often understood to be the result of mass protest. But in reality, that movement was based upon deep, long-standing community organizing in each local city, in each context. Black folks were deeply organized, in their churches, in women's clubs, in economic empowerment organizations, in informal networks, educational associations, etc. That community organizing was already pushing back - had been pushing back -- and when the strategic nonviolent campaigns came to town (Selma, Birmingham, Montgomery), they drew upon that incredible networked base. The Montgomery Bus Boycott is portrayed in the US educational system as "Rosa sat down, and then everybody had a boycott and then they won." It doesn't acknowledge the roles played in that movement, and the fact that JoAnn Robinson -- a professor at a black college in Montgomery, had built a Women's Citizen Council with a phone tree that reached thousands of women in hours. That's how you can build a boycott with 98% participation that lasts over a year. (I could go on and on, it's so inspiring).
But when we don't understand the base of community organizing that underlies mass protest, all we see is the protest events, which are way less accessible (it seems to me) than community organizing. And then those protest events are seen as the thing, when in reality, they are best used as strategic add-ons to ongoing campaigns with real goals and real strategy.
The best resources I've seen on this come from Daniel Hunter "Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow: An Organizers Guide" -- he tells a lot of this history, and even more important, talks about roles in movements and how multiple roles are necessary.
Another inspiring read is Gal Beckerman's The Quiet Before, which identifies the power of cultural documents - books, movies, writings - to spark cultural consciousness for change.
And a fascinating history that delineates organizing from mass protest, with examples from all over the world: This is an Uprising, by Mark + Paul Engler.
And lastly, I've been very moved by the work and story of George Lakey, who is now in his 80s, who trained as an organized under Bayard Rustin (black gay man who brought nonviolence to Martin Luther King and probably the most brilliant organizer in the civil rights movement), who is a Quaker, and does activism rooted in Quaker values + practices. Close groups of people, choosing the roles that work for them (obviously not assuming this would work for everyone, but very very thoughtful). His book How We Win (2018) explores some of the campaigns he's undertaken with groups of colleagues.
Clearly I could nerd out for a long time, but will stop for now.....
I thought I’d better answer my own question here! It’s ironic to post this today - I wrote it a week ago and lined it up for publication, and now it finds me feeling incredibly drained and overwhelmed, due to a lot of behind-the-scenes advocacy this week. That’s a fundamental part of my autistic experience: my energy levels are wildly inconsistent, and that means I don’t show up in the same way that others can. But that’s because I’m often working hard on things that I don’t post on here. I also process things very slowly and like to look at all angles and read deeply before I declare on anything - that means I’m always a week behind everyone else. At least. Probably a year.
So anyway, I’m be reading everything today and not saying much, but it’s lovely to hear from you all 🙏
I’d also like to recommend this piece by Satya Robin from earlier this week: https://open.substack.com/pub/satyarobyn/p/people-are-really-upset-with-me?r=6f2w5&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
Just coming back to add... The way we raise our children is also a form of protest. Maybe one of the most important ones, even if largely invisible and very gradual. But if the only the way we participate in protest is by refusing to perpetrate the old, unhelpful cycles within our own families, to raise kind, compassionate human beings - that is good enough. More than good enough, actually.
Thanks for starting this conversation – and I have just upgraded so I can join it as it feels important. Especially as I lie in bed, wide awake at 5.55, my ND brain buzzing with that heady mix of ideas and anxiety, my body too tired to get up.
I think about the topic of activism A Lot. I care so much about social issues but, like you, I can't sensorially tolerate traditional protests and marches. They are too draining. So I've been thinking for a number of years now about how I can use my skills – writing, nuance, observation, connecting the dots – to protest differently.
One of my ongoing projects is to draw attention to the tactics that are being employed by those in power to divide and exhaust us. I wrote about these tactics here a couple of years ago:
https://open.substack.com/pub/hayleyjdunlop/p/heres-how-we-re-being-trolled-by-those-in-power-a1142b65ce7?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1rtyf
This post was recently imported from Medium, hence the lack of engagement, but even on the original post the engagement was limited. Do feel free to share it as the topic needs more eyes. But I am aware the essay format isn't exactly accessible, and some of the covid references feel dated (unbelievably). So now I'm working on an idea to use video and storytelling to bring this idea to a wider audience ahead of the next general election, so we can highlight these tactics, break the cycle of manufactured outrage and allow more nuance and care to rise to the surface of political discourse.
But your prompt has got me thinking: is traditional protest *itself* a way for those in power to keep us permanently exhausted? I do think there's something to be said for the people that lead us tending to thrive within chaos and conflict. Maybe that's a discussion for another time...
‘Is traditional protest *itself* a way for those in power to keep us permanently exhausted?’
Oh my days 🤯 yes!
I spent a year trying to be in that space and it was so hard and I really think it achieved very, very little.
Now I’m focusing more on my community. Trying to make small changes there. Writing to my MP. Setting up a support hub for women. Working in this way feels more accessible as an autistic woman and I can see the difference happening.
I share more about my thoughts on that here, for anyone interested - https://open.substack.com/pub/postpartummatterscic/p/rising-up-rooted-for-women-and-girls
Revolution doesn’t have to be loud ❤️
Activism gets to be slow too ❤️
I absolutely love this - as a neurodivergent exhausted home educating mother of two neurodivergent teens I feel this keenly. I work in the sober community and have used tech and writing, my books/ podcast etc to plug away at trying to change cultural narratives. I guess I also am protesting by home educating. I’ve used my training to change within organisations- like a stealth activist haha. I love that you shine a light on the equity of protest- Thank you. Kate x
Thanks Katherine. Activism doesn't have to be taking to the streets, although that's great and I wish more people would! But I appreciate it's not possible for everyone. A great deal of activism can be done from the comfort of home online, such as writing letters to my local MP's and council, relevant ministers and businesses, signing petitions, sharing content which raises awareness about a particular issue etc.
I have only recently gone to one physical protest against a fossil fuel project in Australia. I'm ready to go to more. But I've had CFS and so have very limited energy plus it means travelling into Sydney to do so, taking time off work etc. It's not always possible for me. So I do most of my activism online.
Sometimes I get Chat GPT to draft my activism letters for me to speed things up, then I re-read and add in a personal touch, especially at the start. If it's for a local member who I voted for I start by saying essentially that I voted for you and this is what I, as your constituent, would like. Just now I have an email which has been sent to me from my local council responding to me about a climate crisis matter I raised with them.
PS - Re straws: sure some people need them. I have a friend with MS and he brings a stainless steel straw around with him. The same as I do with my reusable coffee mug. Win win!
Being both AuDHD and having ME/CFS my physical activism days are well and truly over. In my ‘youff’ I joined Greenpeace and CND, wearing the badges with pride; had heated arguments in the 6th form common room; cried tears over seal pup culls; forced recycling upon my parents etc etc etc. We lived rurally and I had no personal transport so big physical demonstrations in big cities were a no-no.
Now as an aged, silver haired, disabled person my activism is confined to signing petitions, ‘liking’ threads, funding (a small bit only) some places and people, and mainly spouting my mouth or fingers off for all who will listen on the days I have energy and brain power. I still have my pin badges and display them with pride. I believe we just all do the best we can with the resources we have at the time. I literally can’t demonstrate in the outside world, but when I have the energy and the fight I can try to influence others, and it’s actually worked a few times now. Gone are my shouty, screamy days, and reasoned argument, listening and caring for the other person’s viewpoints in order to understand how discombobulating change is, have creeped up on me in my old aged wisdom.
It’s very strange this ‘wisdom’ that is forced on me by a lack of fully functioning mitochondria and a weirdly wired brain. My ‘oomph’ is tethered and tamed. The adrenaline spikes that oomph caused squashed and not allowed to maraud my nervous system. The highs are gone and replaced by middle of the road sensibleness. It allows a strange clarity of mind I’m not used to as well as engendering a sense of calm. It’s rather annoying too. I want to screech and yell and I can’t.
I wrote a poem a long time ago, it’s on my barely used Wordpress site (https://3redcabbageheads.wordpress.com/category/poetry/page/6/) but I’ll pop it here too, hope that’s okay. It explain a lot about how it felt and still feels as a cisgendered white woman living in a reasonably decent country (at least 40 years ago) with privilege.
The Right to Fight
I want to be Black,
To be Asian or Afro-Caribbean,
I want to be Irish,
to be South African or Nicaraguan.
I want to be gay,
or lesbian, or bi-sexual.
I want to be underprivileged
Tortured, beaten, threatened.
Not
Because of some
sado masochistic quirk,
But so I can shout
With justification
About the anger I feel,
About the injustice I see,
About the violence,
About the waste,
The uselessness of it all.
Then people won’t look
Seeing only the middle-class, privileged white, I am
And won’t question my right to fight.
©T.Chennell 2017 (actually written around 1985)
Written a long, long time ago when I first began to really understand middle class, straight, white privilege, and finding that some people assumed that because of that privilege I didn’t have the right to fight.
Anyway, spoons are spent. A good discussion.
This is such an interesting topic. I don’t think you’re alone in feeling that the polarising discourse doesn’t leave much space for…liberation and humanity. I wonder if it's less about neurodiversity and more about clearing a space and developing a practice - more challenging in that very polarised political zone - to each find our own form of creative expression of what matters, to find authentic connection (internal and without), and to support each other in that? I read "Wintering" as very much about this process. Those of us who are lucky enough not to have yet fallen between the political cracks in a radical way, are so lucky, it feels like a choice to engage with the suffering of others. It is a choice to engage. Perhaps people who identify as neurodiverse, despite perhaps other forms of privilege, are more likely to have a deeply felt sense of what it feels like to be dehumanised by others. Still, I don’t see that our definition of activism needs to be so diminished that it has to be a prescribed set of activities, be defined by existing groups, be performative in a specific way (but an interesting question of whether it does in some sense need to be performative?), or lead us to burnout and hysteria. The polarising discourse surrounding most conflicts and maybe especially this most recent one, doesn’t leave much space for exploring responses of vulnerability, grief, or confusion, except to weaponise these feelings. The starting point must be something to do with keeping our powers of empathy, creativity and imagination not only intact but functioning as superpowers. I truly believe that all authentic expression can be a meaningful political act. Flower arranging could be done as a form of activism!
Such an important subject. I often feel like I don't do enough, even though I care passionately about many things. And sometimes I care too much and burn myself out with anxiety so I have to distance myself and pretend it's not happening for the sake of my own mental health.
And I have found it harder and harder to attend protests (it's more the physical limitations as I live with chronic pain rather than the sensory/autistic ones for me... plus yes, as a single parent or an ND child I can't afford to get arrested!). I found in the past that having my camera with me (I'm a photographer although not a news photojournalist) and documenting the protests I go to, makes it easier for me to attend and engage - and then share what I saw (that is also a painful pattern as I've seen the right to protest deteriorate massively over just the past few years here in the UK).
I've been working on a long-term art/book project around intergenerational trauma and the wounds we carry, and although it's tied to my own family history in Russian Empire/Soviet Union, all of my reading applies very much to many other world events, including the current conflict. I find that's a form of activism too, making sense of complex narratives and presenting them in an interesting and unexpected way for others to engage with without them feeling like they are being lectured.
I think we all need to do what we do best. Writing. Sharing photographs. Making art. Talking to friends. Sharing information. Inching the needle forwards.
In terms of resources, I really like following Layla F Saad, an autistic author who eloquently writes on decolonisation and healing from collective trauma: https://www.instagram.com/laylafsaad/
This has been on my mind greatly with The Voice referendum taking place here in Australia tomorrow. I'm not good at protesting on social media and know that falling into the vortex of commenting on news sites will only result in stress for me and change nothing. My way of protesting is to write letters to people in power.
I talk about this with students a lot, and a resource I have found helpful is this social change ecosystem map -- there are lots of roles & ways to contribute to social change, and if protest/direct action isn’t in your wheelhouse, there are other ways! https://buildingmovement.org/our-work/movement-building/social-change-ecosystem-map/
This is an important conversation. It relates to the drive I’ve had to create neurodivergent spaces. If the spaces that exist aren’t accessible to us, what would it look like to create spaces that are? Also, what if we weren’t working so hard to just exist in spaces and could set about solving the world’s problems?
I wasn’t planning to share this just yet, but you’ve inspired me to hit publish on Neurokind - a Substack zine for neurodivergent folks to share their art (in any medium) and amplify causes we are passionate about. http://neurokind.art
I feel this completely as a neurodivergent human with few spoons. I am in a place of exploring what it looks like to participate in daily activism...in my relationships, at work, at the grocery. I have been focused for so long on what is visible and what is seen on social media which left me feeling like I wasn't doing enough. I'm feeling into what it looks like to create ripples of change in the smallest of ways and interactions like asking for accomodations at work or letting someone know what I need or supporting someone during a difficult time. It's not grand or fancy or even noteworthy to some but I feel it's hugely important. In our age of technology it feels so easy to feel like we have to support every cause, especially those across the world, and I'm trying to remember that what I can control and have capacity for is enough.
I highly recommend Shannon Downey’ Badass Cross stitch for another approach to activism. https://open.substack.com/pub/badasscrossstitch?r=4lm0l&utm_medium=ios
Sacred activism. Is showing up and holding up your part of the sky. Writing, talking, sharing, posting however it looks for you for me is sacred activism, stretching the box of possible. sharonblackiemythmakings's profile picture
'It's the people who I think of as the 'mythical misfits', then, who kickstart the transformation of the world, and who begin to imagine more sustainable and meaningful ways of living. Today's mythical misfits ... are rejecting a culture which values neither intuition nor imagination, which values neither the living land nor its non-human inhabitants. They're deserting the stagnant institutions, and creating communities which celebrate life rather than destroying it. When the great blazing bonfire of a culture goes out, what remains are a few individual flames. When those individual flames come together, we can kindle a new fire. That fire's name is enchantment.' Sharon Blackie
I view how I choose to parent and homeschool, an ND preteen, my protest. It’s been very isolating and bombarded by unsolicited advice. Many of those moments have given me time to witness and focus on what I value...that my son has a base skillset to navigate the world in his own healthy way. It also provided the opportunity for very interesting conversations...
I also view how I am exploring my own neurodiversity and my deep connection to place, as a protest. I started a substack that is sensory infused with photography and audio sounds from nature. I grew up with a camera in my hand and felt this was a creative way to use this platform.
I’ve never been able to handle the intensity of being in a crowd of protestors. But my experience has been that the real protesting happens in the follow through, when no one is watching and there are no cameras. And that is where the world needs people too...to be making all the small choices and decisions and shifts to send ripples out...knowing that we’re in it for the future generations of all creatures and the Earth....
Hello Katherine, Thank you for asking this, and I would love to be in dialogue about this. I'm a sociologist who studies + teaches about social movements, and I've been spending time learning about the much broader history of community organizing that is a counterpoint to the current tradition of mass protest (in the US at least). The African-American civil rights movement is often (again, in the US) held up as the first mass protest movement, and its gains are often understood to be the result of mass protest. But in reality, that movement was based upon deep, long-standing community organizing in each local city, in each context. Black folks were deeply organized, in their churches, in women's clubs, in economic empowerment organizations, in informal networks, educational associations, etc. That community organizing was already pushing back - had been pushing back -- and when the strategic nonviolent campaigns came to town (Selma, Birmingham, Montgomery), they drew upon that incredible networked base. The Montgomery Bus Boycott is portrayed in the US educational system as "Rosa sat down, and then everybody had a boycott and then they won." It doesn't acknowledge the roles played in that movement, and the fact that JoAnn Robinson -- a professor at a black college in Montgomery, had built a Women's Citizen Council with a phone tree that reached thousands of women in hours. That's how you can build a boycott with 98% participation that lasts over a year. (I could go on and on, it's so inspiring).
But when we don't understand the base of community organizing that underlies mass protest, all we see is the protest events, which are way less accessible (it seems to me) than community organizing. And then those protest events are seen as the thing, when in reality, they are best used as strategic add-ons to ongoing campaigns with real goals and real strategy.
The best resources I've seen on this come from Daniel Hunter "Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow: An Organizers Guide" -- he tells a lot of this history, and even more important, talks about roles in movements and how multiple roles are necessary.
Another inspiring read is Gal Beckerman's The Quiet Before, which identifies the power of cultural documents - books, movies, writings - to spark cultural consciousness for change.
And a fascinating history that delineates organizing from mass protest, with examples from all over the world: This is an Uprising, by Mark + Paul Engler.
And lastly, I've been very moved by the work and story of George Lakey, who is now in his 80s, who trained as an organized under Bayard Rustin (black gay man who brought nonviolence to Martin Luther King and probably the most brilliant organizer in the civil rights movement), who is a Quaker, and does activism rooted in Quaker values + practices. Close groups of people, choosing the roles that work for them (obviously not assuming this would work for everyone, but very very thoughtful). His book How We Win (2018) explores some of the campaigns he's undertaken with groups of colleagues.
Clearly I could nerd out for a long time, but will stop for now.....