Use it

In my work with, within, and adjacent to social movements, I’ve often felt cynical. I’ve felt that the discourse about their importance has, at times, run ahead of their real impact.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing like pressing your hands hard against the wall - the wall of power - and pushing. Whether you are sneaking anticapitalist pamphlets into the Whitney, fleeing police kettles in 2020, partying amongst the trees in Atlanta, or inspiring a whole blockade of orca-suited climate warriors, it is a glorious feeling. Pushing, hard, is the only way to truly feel the resistance, and all the more special with comrades by your side.

We have made progress. Or at least, my sense of the discourse says that there has been some sort of impact. But no matter how much I think about the complexity of the world, the butterfly effect of speaking up for what we believe in, of standing up to power, and no matter how strongly I’ve felt power’s resistance - when I’ve stepped away, and looked at the results, it has been hard to tell that we accomplished anything at all. I mean, the Whitney kicked out one guy, and left the rest of its war-profiteering board members alone. The George Floyd uprising was inspiring, and so very real, but left us exhausted, disillusioned, and with just as much policing as before. Stop Cop City is an inspiration in so many ways, and animates much of my work, but all the same, the training facility’s construction is well on its way. And all that a “summer of heat” for Citibank seemed to accomplish was majorly pissing off their security guards.

For those of us that have been through a few movements, even watching from a distance or on the news, cynicism is rational. And, anyway, we are getting older, or have gotten older, and maybe we even have kids and cats and mortgages and environmentally-conscious investments to keep an eye on. We aren’t students or precariously-employed urban part-time workers anymore (or, at least, we are trying not to be). The theories that enticed us in our early twenties are just that - theories. What’s that proverbial definition of insanity, again? Why would we sacrifice what little time we have to “resist” when it won’t make any difference anyway?

When I feel that cynicism, that callousness, that simple, honest, reasonable exhaustion, I return to the words of Mariame Kaba, and her assertion that hope is a discipline:

It’s less about “how you feel,” and more about the practice of making a decision every day, that you’re still gonna put one foot in front of the other, that you’re still going to get up in the morning. And you’re still going to struggle […] It’s work to be hopeful. It’s not like a fuzzy feeling. Like, you have to actually put in energy, time, and you have to be clear-eyed, and you have to hold fast to having a vision. It’s a hard thing to maintain. But it matters to have it, to believe that it’s possible, to change the world.

For me, it is about pairing hope with rigor. Hope, in that we must keep our eyes on the horizon. Rigor, in that we must be serious and critical in everything we do. Part of this, I think, is looking with honesty upon our past work. The thought strikes me: there are some times where hard work is “worth more.” They say that “luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity,” and I wonder if there have been times where all our hard work and preparation went nowhere, not because of a failure on our part, but for a lack of opportunity. These “failures,” then - on behalf of working people, on behalf of communities of color, on behalf of the entire planet - are not failures but rather steps forward in our march toward justice. Preparations, in wait for the right opportunity.

Today, I believe they risk pushing us too far. Yes, we face unique challenges, but they are also, to lean on a terrible cliché, unique opportunities. Their attacks on our trans family, on our migrant neighbors, and on our (still deeply flawed) system of democracy itself (among other things), show the depth of their immorality. And their undermining of our economic lives says to the people loud and clear: the elites do not care for us anymore - if they ever did.

It’s time for us to take this opportunity and our long preparation, and make our own luck. Much was made of a “lack of resistance” to Trump in the first couple months of his presidency. Some began to wonder if we still had it in us. Now, we are starting to see that we do. The burgeoning movement against Tesla, the resistance of Columbia students, the occupation of Trump Tower - and all the conversations we are now having with one another. That is where we begin. They have broken the status quo, and seek to create a new one, but many worlds are possible, including the ones of our dreams. We must open our minds, and close our fists, and remind them, that no matter how hard they push us, we will always push back.

Look closely -

The anger is brewing, in the deep.

As it rises, it will grow.

And then, it will be up to us

To use it.

~

Some readers will be wondering where to begin. Here are some random options that came to mind. Do what speaks to you:

• Find a mutual aid group on instagram, and volunteer, and make a friend
• Look for fliers at your leftiest coffee shop
• Make a protest sign and go into the street, or at least put it in your window
• Host a teach-in
• Talk to your mom, or grandpa, or friends
• Give money and food to that homeless guy, and say hello
• Save some vacation days
• Watch something from Solidarity Cinema, with friends
• Talk to your mom, or grandpa, or friends, again
• Show up at a politician’s office, with questions
• Start a radical fiscal sponsor (that’s what I’m doing, and it’s a bit specialized, but there’s always room for more)
• Boycott zionists and wannabe-oligarchs
• Write a song
• Buy and distribute antifascist stickers in your town
• Check for fascist ones and tear them down or scratch them out, before covering them
• Make a zine, under a pseudonym, and leave copies all over
• Guerilla gardening
• Start a neighborhood plot

I only spent like five minutes writing this list! Enough, I hope, to get you started. I trust you to do the rest.