yes, we are in a stormy sea

but we can still chart by the stars and find our way

The good news is that a lot of people are waking up to the fact that this is not good, and naming that we need to do something. But what, how?

Some of us have already been involved with change making/ movement/ activism explicitly, and, while we are definitely struggling to stay afloat given the strength of the waves and intensity of the storm, we don’t necessarily feel surprised that we’re swimming in an ocean.

For others, realizing suddenly that we all seem to be way too far out to see any shoreline is not only surprising, it’s terrifying. (Are there sharks here? I can’t swim that well! How far until a life boat comes along? Lots of people are blowing whistles! Whose whistle means what? Are we just treading water or is there an island somewhere nearby?) These are all valid, unanswerable questions. We just can’t stop by expressing our worry, or we end up like those in official leadership positions who have revealed themselves to be far too in shock of how fast this has gone, too afraid to speak out, or too committed to maintaining the status quo to take action.

So, whether you’ve identified as an activist before, or are new to holding the question ack! what now?, we’re all needed. And the good news is: the stars are with us, twinkling overhead, calling us on our way. And it’s always been us who are the ones we’re waiting for, anyway.

We’re out to sea, that is for sure. You might even say we’ve been shipwrecked, even though we could have seen the iceberg looming. So we’re out here, and it’s quite deep and dark, and damn are these waters cold. But still: we seem to have some life preservers floating around. And some elders who remember how to chart a way by the stars; their ancestors traveled this way before. Some others know these waters well enough to coach the rest of us: they tell us to go limp when the rip tide comes, to find our way back when it spits us out. Some people are strong enough even to pull the broken pieces together and lash them with rope, making us a life raft as we get our bearings. Someone, god bless them, held on to binoculars and can call out to remind us where we’re going.

In the spirit of wow-we-are-currently-very-lost, but-look-there-is-Orion, I wanted to offer a basic ideas as a framework that I hope may be helpful. Making explicit what our language means helps me to ground in where we are together. Language provides the floorboards, allowing us to sit and paddle towards where we are needed.

What is a movement?

Most basically, a movement is made up of many different but values-aligned actions and strategies that people take across sectors, organizations, and individuals towards a common goal. The people who make up the movement are pretty loosely organized, but we are rooted together in that we share a common value set. Together movements win change by sustaining a steady drumbeat towards their common goal of shifting society’s structure or values.

Right now I think a few clear ideas that we are coalescing around are:

1. We value the promise of participatory democracy (even if this country has never been a real democracy) and we believe in moving towards it as opposed to sliding into pure authoritarianism;

2. We stand for people and the planet, rather than profit;

3. We commit to defending human rights for all and decency towards each other.

In one encyclopedic definition, Britannica explains that social movements “result from the more or less spontaneous coming together of people whose relationships are not defined by rules and procedures but who merely share a common outlook on society.”

This is an important element of how movements work: this work is conducted through our personal relationships, and will not be defined by rules or procedures.

Making change is inevitably going to personal, and it’s going to be messy. At times it will be unclear who is in the lead or follow position, especially as we get our strategies going. It will at times be very planned, and at others, will bubble up spontaneously (read AMB’s Emergent Strategy if you haven’t yet!)

Accepting this means that we’re going to need to show up to actions we don’t think are perfectly planned. It’s going to require us to sometimes stick our necks out when we don’t feel ready. It’s necessary to just do it scared.

It’s going to require us to pick up phone calls, even when we’d rather space out because we are tired and just wanted to cook dinner. It’s going to require writing that op-ed when we would rather remain in hiding. It’s going to take us showing up, and showing up again. It’s going to stretch us. We’re going to change. We’re going to get tougher as we work these muscles, and we’re also going to find people we can rely on.

My good friend Adam, a brilliant farmer, visionary and writer, pointed out that “to long” for something means “to be made long.” As we move into our longing for a different world, we are going to be stretched in ways we can’t anticipate yet. The yearning is the guide. The stretch and struggle means you’re in it.

Being part of a movement also requires humility, first by leaving space for other people to lead, but also the humility to hold the truth that we just really don’t ever know what’s coming. There is a piece of all of us that feels defeatist right now: Things are bad. We know what’s coming next. It’s doomsday. (I feel you, I too go there. It’s a lot right now. These feelings make sense!)

But these feelings are not facts. It’s much harder to hold ambiguity, because it requires accepting the power and responsibility that comes with realizing that what happens next still depends on us. What we do next matters. We are shaping what we allow or disallow. We are in a chaotic time which means that power is being contested, new norms are being shaped. We are the people of this place, no matter who is in the White House: we are not passive lemmings: we determine how we show up, and as we change our response we change the conditions on which we’re operating.

I was recently on a (fifty- thousand person strong!) call with Maurice Mitchell, the head of the Working Families Party, who reminded us,

“Public courage has always been the nucleus of social change movements. If you start to feel an ounce of public courage, don’t hesitate. Don’t wait to ask permission. Act.”

We all are presented with opportunities every day now to be brave. As these moments of public courage present themselves and we take them, we create the scaffolding for movement forces to gather behind us and grow. We become the first barnacle clinging on to the rock of our values, and then others can latch on and grow from there. If we believe in protest, we have to protest, even if it feels scary. Use it or lose it.

We have gotten dangerously used to specialization, individualization and professionalization, wherein we believe the weird capitalist idea that one person alone holds the key to perfect and precise strategy which will work for us all. That’s not how a living system works. And we’re an ecosystem, filled with niches and strategies that will work in one place won’t thrive in another.

In reality, movements have always required a partnership between organizations that durably build and protect power and bring people together, coupled with regular, non “movement professional” people who decide that they are the ones they’ve been waiting for, and stand up for something when the moment presents itself.

Unfortunately for those who like me long deeply for one clear plan to emerge: that’s not happening. There will not be one badass strategy that we all can just hop on the bandwagon of. There will not be one leader who we all adore.

There will instead just be us: showing up for each other’s actions, creating our own, gathering in rooms big and small. Trying some things, failing, trying other things again. As some strategies gain public traction, they will be more possible to replicate and gather force. Leaders will emerge in the doing. Trusted voices call out, and we will call back. A variety of strategies all are needed. If you haven’t yet spent time with this small book published during WW2 in small tactics for simple sabotage, I highly recommend it!

I recommend spending time with this gorgeous graphic — which my friend Christine (Tender Warrior!) fleshed out even more recently in a zine that you can download. She illustrates Leah Penniman’s idea that change is a butterfly held up by four wings, all made up of different forms of change making. Where do you feel called to work? All roles are needed.

And, in order to understand movements, we need to understand power: what it is, why we need it, and how to grow it.

So, what is power?

Power has a bad rap. You ask people what they think about when they think of the word power, and they’re likely to say something like I did when I first did this exercise: Rich white people in suits who don’t care about anything other than money. Capitalism. Guns.

But another way to think about power is this: power is the ability to get things done. Think about horse power, or a PTO hookup for a tractor. A plug. Power is just the engine that enables us to achieve our goals. It’s neither inherently good nor bad, it’s just fuel.

As the Rev. Dr. MLK Jr says:

Christine made the above and below graphics that explains our shared working framework of power, (I know y’all she’s on a roll!!) Read the whole “where are we going and how do we get there” zine here. Art gets right to it!

Power is generated by organizing three key ingredients: ideas, people, and resources. Weave together the narrative space, build people power, and flow resources there, and you have a potent combo.

But, what is organizing?

I would be happy to write for a long time about organizing because it’s what I like best: working with people and helping them to do things together. Talking to people one on one and in groups. Asking people what they care about. Texting people back. Showing up at each other’s houses with dinner when friends are sick. Sending relevant articles to those people fired up on that topic. Asking what is keeping your neighbors up at night and listening to their response. Proposing an idea and seeing if people will help you. (I wrote about how organizing is like making music here.)

But the best explanation of what is organizing and why it matters comes from the poet Marge Piercy wrote “The Low Road.” (Again, always: art has always played a central role in change making, precisely because it can cut through a drone of lengthy words and get straight to the heart of the matter.

I woke up this morning craving it with my early morning coffee, the fortification needed to start the day with focus and purpose. I read it aloud this morning. (A friend wrote me back that this poem is sharp and comforting, like holding a jagged rock in your pocket.)

grace_oedel

A post shared by @grace_oedel

In case you’re a text rather than a read- aloud person, here it is:

The Low Road

By Marge Piercy

What can they do
to you? Whatever they want.
They can set you up, they can
bust you, they can break
your fingers, they can
burn your brain with electricity,
blur you with drugs till you
can't walk, can't remember, they can
take your child, wall up
your lover. They can do anything
you can't stop them
from doing. How can you stop
them? Alone, you can fight,
you can refuse, you can
take what revenge you can
but they roll over you.

But two people fighting
back to back can cut through
a mob, a snake-dancing file
can break a cordon, an army
can meet an army.

Two people can keep each other
sane, can give support, conviction,
love, massage, hope, sex.
Three people are a delegation,
a committee, a wedge. With four
you can play bridge and start
an organization. With six
you can rent a whole house,
eat pie for dinner with no
seconds, and hold a fund raising party.
A dozen make a demonstration.
A hundred fill a hall.
A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter;
ten thousand, power and your own paper;
a hundred thousand, your own media;
ten million, your own country.

It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again and they said no,
it starts when you say We
and know who you mean,
and each day you mean one more.

(A quick aside is that I can certainly always finish a pie no matter the number of dinner guests.)

And so, finally, what can we do right now?

First, we can follow trusted organizations that bring people together. Some of the organizations I am a member of or follow closely include Choose Democracy, Working Families Party, Faith in Action, Rabbis for Ceasefire, National Family Farm Coalition, and locally NOFA-VT, L’Chaim Collective, Migrant Justice. There are others, many others, who need people and resources. Find ones that resonate with you and start watching what they’re up to. These are the swimming coaches, the ship captains, who have at least some training in navigating storms. Pick wisely and trust them.

When they ask for volunteers or put out a call for an action, respond. Say you’ll help. Move chairs, sign in volunteers. Get to know people.

Last night I met with a friend and a movement leader who is the director of a local democracy and rights organization here who I trust and know well. I asked her just that: what do you think the core movement activity should be this week?

She suggested that we are at the stage of most needing more sustained public protest, for two reasons:

1) Public protest makes visible our dissent and helps others come out of their fear of being targeted and take action– already people are scared of persecution and DJT saying that protest is going to be made illegal is a clear threat. Again, use it or lose it, and strength in numbers. Get out and make visible your discontent as a first step. This is not an end goal, but it readies the way for more specific asks.

2) Non violent protest has the best track record of success against authoritarianism, which by all analysis we are now living in (or at least a very strong attempt towards which we want to contest).

Public protest also gives us space to practice working together and showing up together, as a way to build our readiness for bigger resistance actions like general strike and mass boycott. (We are definitely going to need those too, but we need more practice if they are going to work.) The 50501 actions (which are being planned in a completely decentralized, no- staff at all manner) are happening- perhaps can you join one?

Some of us also tested out the strategy of boycott last week. We love to see it. I read a lot of think pieces criticizing the boycott, and I frankly feel tired out by that. Yes, let’s critique and be discerning, but let’s also just TRY TOGETHER which means accepting imperfections— and moving forward with our work despite them. We all agree that a one day boycott, without clear asks wasn’t enough. It’s also not failing if something doesn’t work the first time. And failing is also ok, failing is an important element of trying. We can and should refine and continue the boycott.

We can also do resource-spreading, or what I think of as the inverse of a boycott: putting resources towards something you do want to grow. Can you identify a way to invest those funds into your local community? Make a list of the organizations and businesses and people you want to survive in your community, and shift your resources there. What we feed will grow. Remember, we build power through people, ideas, and MONEY. Wherever we put our money grows in power. Choose wisely. For example: It makes no sense to fight Bezos on limiting freedom of the press, and then turn around and fund him with our spending money.

Study movements that have come before. I was up early this morning on the phone with my good friend, a dairy farmer who had just finished up milking. He called me to talk through the tariff impacts on his business and what his plans are, what he thinks we should be doing to agitate. He mentioned that he was reading more history lately and had been thinking a lot about Gandhi’s tactics. Gandhi didn’t protest by marching alone— he marched to the sea to make his own salt as a way of standing up to far more armed powers of colonization. What are the non-violent, earth- rooted, deeply potent symbolic (and material) actions in each of our communities that stand up to dehumanization, pillaging of the earth, and authoritarianism? Let’s be dreaming on that (and again, if we think of one, go ahead and move on it!)

Find ways to sustain your spirit. It is no surprise that most sustained nonviolent movements have been led, or at least buoyed, by people of faith. As my friend Reverend Stephen A. Green, who founded Faith for Black Lives Matter says, “plugging into spirit is the ultimate power source. With this connection, we will never run out of fuel.”

Whatever you want to call it– spirit, source, G-d, the universe, mystery, earth, the small still voice– tending to our sacred selves as a part of movement work that is often overlooked. Finding ways to tend to your relationship with the more-than-material is critical. Without mystery and possibility, folks get bitter, burnt out, nihilistic.

Prayer, ritual, singing, silence, time planting seeds or walking in the woods make a space inside of us, open us up, crack us open, help us to heal.

All these practices remind us of our size (very, very small) and the arc of deep time (very, very long) and the amount of people who have lived in similarly challenging times (most all of the ancestors). Chart by the stars and you start to notice their beauty. Notice beauty and the journey itself becomes tolerable, maybe even joyful.

Surround yourself with a community who can help you remember the stories that matter. The narratives we tell ourselves become real. Take good care of which you allow around your dinner table. Those we repeat become the paths we will trod. Focus on stories of bravery, stories of hope, of persistence.

Practice your swimming, practice your constellations, practice resting when the waves are low. Soon you’ll be strong enough to be the at the helm, steering the raft we’re all roping together with the scraps of old survival stories our people managed to salvage. We’ll all need to take our turn captaining the ship, so that others can rest.

The waves are rising, but so are we.