“every member of the community holds pieces of the solution,
even if we are all engaged in different layers of the work”
– adrienne maree brown, in Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds
If you want a thriving yard that attracts a range of birds, bees, and butterflies, then you make sure there is a variety of plants. You don’t want them to be all the same color or height, or for them to all bloom at once. If you want rabbits to visit, you make sure there are tall grasses for them to use as cover. Too much of just one thing might look unified, but it’s ultimately boring and offers little in the way of enrichment.
Sometimes, people hold narrow ideas about what counts as or can be effective as change making, as advocacy, as activism. Voting, petitions, marches and rallies, boycotts. You will even hear beliefs in expectation about how every single advocate “should” communicate.
A few years back, when it seemed that everybody was marching in the streets, one of the most powerful things I saw was the recognition that rallies were not the only tool in the box.
(The image below is similar to what I came upon at the time. This is not as detailed as the one I recall, but it still makes the point.)
As someone who was staying the hell away from crowds at the time, I needed to be reminded of this. There was a lot of “why isn’t everybody out here right now?!” — something that felt like a silly attempt at a guilt trip, especially since this was coming from people who had only in June 2020 just begun their involvement with Black Lives Matter, not showing their own faces at the marches that began years earlier.
It is important that everybody do something.
It is important that everybody do something that best uses their skills.
It is important that the thing someone chooses is with enthusiasm.
Burned out and uninspired advocates help nobody.
When I talk about organizing or social justice, most people are quick to say that what they do does not fall into those categories, that they don’t think of themselves as organizers or activists. Once you scratch the surface and ask about how they have volunteered themselves, you can see that they are engaged in activism. They just hadn’t allowed themselves to think of it as such.
Who reporters like to talk to is the person holding the megaphone or the signs. There’s a good photo. It makes for a tidy story.
But, even those involved with protests aren’t always at the protests, and their contributions may be unrecognized: providing childcare, creating public transportation directions, allowing their home to be used as a meeting space, making available face masks and Covid tests. It’s important that the myriad ways a person can contribute are recognized, somewhere, not for the sake of someone’s ego, but for the practical reason that if the giver does not think their efforts matter, what are the odds they will continue to give of their time and energy.
In recent months, there have definitely been some rallies I have chosen to refrain from participating in because the organizers’ message moved away from a call for ceasefire and safe return of all hostages, and into something that felt like choosing up sides in a football match. I sat these out. That’s not the same as becoming apathetic and inactive. My action took other forms because silence in the face of genocide is unacceptable. Having had that reminder of the spectrum of action has been helpful. A rally might be where someone feels useful, but also useful is donating to humanitarian aid organizations and finding ways to build community here at home.
Don’t ever let anyone convince you that a garden of one flower that blooms all at once is the most favorable kind. It’s not.
Climate Possibilities is a series about climate mitigation, along with resilience, resistance, and restoration. It’s about human habitat preservation. It’s about loving nature and planet Earth, and demanding the kind of change that gives future generations the opportunity for vibrant lives. Doomers will be eaten alive, figuratively. All photographs are taken in Hartford, Connecticut unless stated otherwise.
