Part I
When I was 23 and just starting to stoke my nascent activist fire, I went to hear Howard Zinn speak. I owned a copy of A People’s History of the United States, and though I had never made it all the way through the book (and still haven’t — I’m still waiting for my People’s History Book Club to materialize), its cover was worn and dog-eared. At the talk, I sat leaning forward, slack jawed, absorbing Zinn’s stories about teaching at Howard University during the civil rights movement, working with SNCC (student non-violent coordinating committee).
I only remember one thing that Howard Zinn said that night, though. Toward the end of the question and answer session, a scruffy young white guy raised his hand and asked for advice. Zinn had given activism his all. What advice did he have for young people who want to be activists, but who may not be ready to give up everything else — their comfortable lives, their employability, etc? I scuttled to the edge of my seat, all the better to hear the response. I had been wondering the same thing: how did he commit to his values so intensely that he would give up everything else to pursue what he believed was right?
Howard Zinn nodded. “You have to decide for yourself,” he said, “how close to the edge you’re willing to live.” Some people are comfortable living on a razon-thin line. Others need more than that to feel secure. And wherever you find yourself, there are ways you can act.
Part II
A few years ago I had a debate with my friend T. In a nutshell: I was wrestling with the challenge of wanting to live “more closely aligned with my values.” I could see all sorts of places where my actions were incongruent with the way I’d like to behave in the world, in terms of how I chose to shop, how I chose to eat, how I chose to interact with other people.
T. argued that the way I choose to live is inherently aligned with my values.
I contemplated T.’s point, and then said, “Well, I have conflicting values, then.” I want to support manufacturers that don’t use sweatshop labor AND I want cute, cheap clothing, for example.
No, T. responded. I don’t think so, she said. What you do reveals what you value.
I didn’t really understand that then. But I understand it now.
Part III
Today I was reminded of my 18-year old self, reading Gretchen Rubin’s post about not performing random acts of kindness, over on the Happiness Project blog.
When I was 18, I made myself an anklet with little chimes and a big full moon charm and some purple beads. I wore it all the time. I also bought a flowy dark purple dress, which I loved and wore whenever I felt like scooping the whole world up in my embrace and dancing barefoot in the trees. Which only happened once a month or so; I aspired to be an earth-loving moonchild, but I couldn’t keep it up full time. My friend M. gave me a sticker or poster or something that said “Practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty.” And although some part of me liked the idea of random kindness, even then, something about the sentiment didn’t feel quite right to me, though it took me a while to figure out what.
Gretchen’s post suggests performing more targeted acts of kindness. She explains that random acts can backfire, making people suspicious of the randomly kind actor. But that isn’t why I don’t like the “random acts of kindness” meme. Actually, there are two reasons that it irks me. The first: please, do be kind, and not just randomly. Strive towards being kind of everyone, all the time, and especially towards people that repel you because they trigger your unconscious prejudices.
The second: Sure, it is lovely to feed someone’s parking meter. But it’s better to work towards creating a world where we don’t need cars that isolate us from each other and degrade the environment. It is generous to buy a sandwich for a person who is homeless; but it is noble to become involved in political action that eradicates homelessness and hunger. There’s something about the plea to “practice random acts of kindness” that suggests a sense of largesse, of charity. “Go on, be kind,” the bumper sticker tells you, “bestow your generosity on others. You can afford to be kind! Especially you, yes, you with the big honking SUV. You can definitely afford to practice a little random act of kindness. So go on, do it. It will make the world a better place, and you don’t need to give anything up, or see the world any differently. All you need to do is be a little kinder.”
Once I saw a bumper sticker that counteracted the “random acts of kindness” sentiment with something like “Practice systematic acts of organized resistance.” There, that’s a more nourishing statement. And you can still be kind, even as you’re involved in system-changing community organizing.
Part IV
V., A young friend of mine, is involved in community service through her youth group and church. She is striving to be a leader, she tells me. She’s organizing charity drives and fun activities that get families involved in raising money for charitable organizations.
“I admire you,” I told her a few days ago, and V. was pleased to be recognized, though she is deeply motivated by her own sense of Christian service and commitment to making the world better.
I struggled to find a way to communicate, without denigrating V.’s efforts, that I believe that charity approaches can do harm as well as good. I don’t think I did a very good job at expressing why, though. “I think that given the choice, I would put my volunteer efforts towards creating system change,” I said. “You know, ‘give a person a fish, and the person is fed for a day; teach a person to fish, and the person is fed for life,’ right?”
That might be true, but it doesn’t really get to the heart of the matter. What does, though, is the following quote, attributed to a collective of Aboriginal activists from the 1970s in Queensland, Australia:
“If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
To go at a problem with an attitude of helping can help in the short term. But in the long term it doesn’t shift the relations of power between the people being helped and the people helping. Actually, it entrenches those power differences. You are the person who has the capacity and resources to help. I am the person who needs help, and we’ve proven that because now you’ve helped me, and I’ve been helped, and things are a little better for me, and you feel good about having done your bit. So you go along your way feeling pretty satisfied, and nothing changes in any fundamental way.
But to go at a problem with an attitude that our liberation is bound together — although we have no guarantees about what the outcomes of that struggle will look like, the process of that struggle starts to create the world we want to live in. If we can recognize that the conditions of the world affect us all — that inequality makes the world less safe, less kind, less stable, less just, for all of us –then we might be more motivated to be involved in changing the conditions under which we all live.
“The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.” – Jane Addams.
“…while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.” – Eugene V. Debs
Part V
Lately I have again been thinking about my role in making the world a better place.
When I moved to Canada in 2005, I wanted to find a way to do anti-racism work as my job. And in a some sort of small way, I have succeeded at that: I work at a university, finding ways to get profs to think about teaching in more inclusive ways, using more diverse content, valuing their students as whole human beings, fostering social responsibility and a sense of citizenship whether they’re teaching physics or french or engineering or fine arts. Yet I feel so far removed from being an activist these days. I don’t get involved on the ground, I don’t even get all heated up about issues, most of the time. My vegetarianism has been slipping. I think less than I used to about how much I consume. I’m not as picky about where I shop.
I feel like I have a lot of unanswered questions: How close to the edge am I willing to live? What does it look like for me to be kind, systematically? And involved in making change, systematically? How is my liberation bound up with the liberation of people affected by my actions (of consuming, of voting, of working, of socializing…)?
And what makes walking the talk difficult — for me, anyhow — is that I can’t just answer those questions once and be done with them. I have to keep answering them, in new ways, every day. Hearkening back to my very first post, it is a practice, not a project.
My values are showing, like it or not.
