I’ve been too busy to check in with BFP about our collaboration for the last couple weeks. I’ve been too busy to get my car smog-checked (that, along with half a dozen other things, keeps sliding off the end of my to-do list every day, so that now I’m about to have expired tags). I’ve been too busy to write to the make/shift writers I need to write to to say, yes, this idea you have shared with us sounds wonderful and we’d be happy to publish it and please do go ahead and work on a draft of this many words by this date. I’ve been keeping up with my walks and other exercise, and mostly getting enough sleep, but I’ve been too busy to make follow-up phone calls as quickly as I should have on a fundraising effort I’m working on, although it’s really important to me. And I’ve been too busy to send the e-mail I should have sent the day after a meeting last week, to keep the ball rolling on a media-justice event a few of us are trying to organize. I’ve been busy juggling paid gigs for a bunch of different clients, because it’s not the kind of economic moment for a freelancer to be turning down paying work, no matter how full my plate is. I’ve been busy getting the next issue of make/shift through production. I’ve been busy dealing with maddening bank and health-insurance bureaucracies. So I haven’t had time to cook, and I’m behind on reading and responding to submissions, and I owe my friend two articles for his wonderful Web site that I’ve had no time to write, and I etc., and etc., and etc.
And none of that is the point.
All that up there? That is the distraction from the point. Because the point is more like this: (after the jump)Someone I love, the other half of one of the most important relationships of my adult life, told me last week that it seems like I’m too busy for her, and it’s been feeling like that for a while now, and so maybe we should just let it go.
That, and this:
In the last few years, I hear (and participate in) a lot of talk about self-care and sustainability in activist circles. Conversations that weren’t happening at all in political communities I was a part of 10 years ago are now commonplace, substantive, and centered. Yet I’m not sure how much that talk has turned into changes in behavior. I mean: almost everyone I know is overloaded, tired, close to burnout, most of the time.
****
Walking with my friend Hilary this past Thursday, I kept catching myself doing this performance of a dragged-down posture, leaning low and forward for a few steps, like I was going to drag my fingers along the dirt path as I walked, in a dramatic expression of how tired and overwhelmed I felt. Meanwhile it was a beautiful afternoon, and I was outside in it at 4:30 on a weekday, and almost all of the things I was feeling overwhelmed by (as a group) are things I love and find meaningful and fulfilling. So then I kept straightening up from that dramatic dragged-down posture and saying — I know, I know, it is ridiculous to feel weighed down by a life that is full of awesome people and projects. I’m just tired. It’s just been an extra lot lately. I’m tired. It’s maybe too much of it at once, but really I know it’s all good.
A couple years ago, a really rad person I know was cooking in his bright little kitchen and talking about how he’s been feeling this “too much” feeling for years — always rushing, always like there’s not enough time in the day, always overwhelmed. I said something about how, well yeah, even when it’s really good stuff — projects you love, people you love — at a certain point it’s just too much for one person to do. And he said, no, I’ve actually been thinking about whether that’s part of the scarcity mentality that makes capitalism work. Even as my life fills up with really great stuff, instead of feeling enriched and satisfied by this abundance, he said, I stay stuck in this mind-set of scarcity — not enough time, not enough balance, struggling struggling struggling … the feeling of struggle being so much more familiar than the feeling of calm, of satiation, of peace.
A lot of the time I do feel all this differently. Life feels full of substance, meaning, inspiration, love, learning — and then one project gets a little bigger than anticipated, or one new to-do tips the balance, and suddenly it piles and piles and … I’m tired. I’m overwhelmed. It feels like I’ve forgotten, again, how to balance gracefully.
Talking about this with Hilary on our loop through the mountains this past week, I remembered saying so many of the same things to the same person on the same trail a year ago. And within this one single walk this past week that is part of a circling and circling series of walks, Hilary kept having to reel me back in from listing all the calls I had to make and e-mails I had to send and sentences I had to edit and errands I had to run and etc. to remind me, again, that all that was beside the point, that the point was:
One of my closest friends had just written to say, maybe you’re too busy, maybe we should just let it go.
The point right now is not the to-do list, it’s love.
***
Why do we do activism? Why do we engage in social-justice movement?
I think it is about love. I think it is about radically loving and being unable to accept violence, whether it is the violence of war or the violence of rape or the violence of poverty or the violence of displacement or …
So why do activism in a way that is more violent than loving? Surely it’s a kind of violence to put production ahead of people, to fail relationships while successfully meeting deadlines.
What kind of justice, or peace, can grow without strong relationships at the root?
***
To be clear: I don’t want to suggest that a simple change of mind-set will allow us all to re-feel overloaded lives as easy ones, or that we are individually responsible for this overloadedness. Many of us live in a context in which meeting basic needs requires many hours of hard work, and on top of that most of us don’t have collective structures to share childcare, housework, and more. Our overwhelmedness is in many ways structural, not something we’ve individually created, nor something we can individually change.
I know that.
What I’m hoping for is that we can collaborate to change that structure together in ways that concretely center love, and self- and mutual care.
I don’t mean it as a slight when I say that lately it seems like we talk about self-care and sustainability within activist circles more than we actualize these ideals. I mean to acknowledge us for having conversations we weren’t having several years ago, and to trust that we are collaboratively working to create better ways, and to understand that that is a big challenge that will require a lot of unlearning of messages of productivity and industry we’ve internalized, and that it will take time.
And meanwhile, sometimes some of us buckle, break, lash out, cry from exhaustion, have little left to give, little left for love. And I hope in this meantime we can love each other in those moments, too, and try to make them a little less painful.
***
In a beautiful piece of writing called “Bringing Down” (which will be published in the new make/shift due out this week), Jen Benka says, ”it is possible that resistance to poetry and resistance to political participation in the United States have been rooted in the same fear, and that this fear has been, in part, one of feeling deeply; and that this fear has been, in part, one of assuming responsibility for the interconnectedness of our lives.”
Why is it so often easier to plunge into “projects” than love? To get things done before/in the way of getting close?
Maybe I’m misunderstanding the poem, but I think I disagree with Sharon Olds and that disparaging-or-lamenting thing about getting “fucked senseless” being “The American Way” in “The Solution.” I think the desire to sometimes have one’s brains fucked out is not a bad thing –
I wish we’d all get down out of our heads and our plans and into our hearts and our bodies and the present moment a lot more.
**
No, I don’t know what Frantz Fanon would say about this seeming opposition I’ve set up between violence and love. And I certainly am not meaning to offer some kind of facile (and insidiously/maskedly violent) liberal fantasy of universal love as if we are, or the world is, uncolonized. And also I want to bring in, put together with all the rest of this here, some stuff about intimacy and consensual violences.
I may not be ready to write this essay yet. I may need more time. You’re watching me spill out some notes for it, and a lot of this still needs processing. Or maybe it’s just right that all this isn’t processed yet, that there is a spill creeping out in a bunch of different directions, some aspects bleeding into others, some looseness, some lack of conclusion, all this uncontained.
**
I’m also thinking about normative models of relationship/love and how those are still too often privileged even within social-justice movement, especially within the professional-activist/nonprofit-industrial-complex model.
I’m thinking of my friend who works full-time-plus in a feminist organization telling me how the people in the office who have norm-abiding relationships (monogamous, two-party, sex+cohabitation+shared finances+&c., whether hetero or same-sex), and/or who have kids, are given a pass on going home early, while the single, or polyamorous-and-not-cohabitating, or non-parents, are expected to take one for the team, stay late, come in on Sunday. Of course, it is a good sign of progress that parents’ need to balance work and childcare is recognized in ways it didn’t used to be. But it is a problem if we only recognize nuclear-family-based relationships as worth considering when we think about respecting our coworkers’ work/life balance.
I’m thinking of my friend who wrote me this past week to say it seems like I’m too busy for her, and maybe we should just let it go, and how everything in me revolted against that idea, and how much it matters to me that she and I have built a friendship on a queer foundation that doesn’t categorically privilege certain types of relationships above others. I’m thinking of how much friendship matters.
(Have you read this piece Yasmin Nair wrote about friendship and love, last Valentine’s Day?)
**
A different rad person I am just starting to know said something the other night about relationships as the foundation of social-justice movement. If we’ve struggled with each other, healed with each other, loved each other deeply and fully, through all kinds of everything (am I drafting a rewrite of “richer-or-poorer”?), we are so much tighter-woven, so much less impervious to attacks by the Right or the greedy or whoever else might want to weaken our movements. If there’s trust and substance and depth and complexity to our connections with each other, our movements are stronger. Also: if there’s all that, if we’re loving each other while we organize, we’re starting to embody, to live, the visions we’re collaborating to realize. They’re already here.
So why do I keep slipping (back) into this space where it is easier, or seems more pressing, to get things done than to get close? Partly of necessity (work has to get done cuz bills have to get paid; political and creative projects do entail the doing of things; etc.). But, stop, that’s not addressing the question. I’m not trying to suggest we should just be hanging out and fucking and relationship building and crying on each other’s shoulders and, voila, that’s gonna pay the bills or that’s political action. I started to answer as if there were a real binary here, as if work and love are mutually exclusive. Ask again. Why do I keep slipping (back) into this space where it is easier, or seems more pressing, to get things done than to get close?
Why can’t I balance those things more consistently? Why can’t they be better interwoven, more simultaneous?
Yeah, capitalist/productivity culture. Yeah, ridiculous cost of living and demand to work tons of hours to make ends meet. Yeah, technology and culture of more-more-more, now-now-now (smartphones and all that). Yeah, individualism/isolation and heteronormativity and the privileging of the atomized nuclear family. Yeah, various cultural/community contexts I’m living within that are about products over people, speed over substance, stimulation over feeling. Yeah, I know, all that.
**
The point is, TB, I love you, and I love us telling each other, years on end, so many silly and serious things as we bumble and glide, glide and bumble, through our days. I love how much we’ve asked and figured out about gender/queerness alongside each other, how there are certain mountain trails that are layeredly marked with all the conversations we’ve had on them, how (I hope) we are in this together for the long haul, how … you’re right, we do have something more intimate than can be shared in a blog post, and I love that that is true and also want to make that sort of thing known, in public space. You know, like straight people do with those weddings I get so cranky about. I like knowing you’ll laugh at that line right there, and maybe you’ll ask me again if I’ll shut up and show up if you ever decide to get gay-married, and maybe you’ll say something about how you’re not even necessarily with me on all this tying-it-to-political-activism I’m doing, and …
..
Hilary and I found a little rock-and-stick sculpture on the trail this week. It was holding a key. She took a picture of it. It was charming because it was real and uncontrived (by us, at least), but it’s making me laugh how much that is exactly the kind of neat/obvious symbol I don’t want on this walk.
**
If we’re making change for love, how can we make love — of ourselves and each other — the real root from which all the rest springs?
- Share
March 16th, 2009 at 10:09 am #
Why is it so often easier to plunge into “projects” than love? To get things done before/in the way of getting close?
and
I’m thinking of how much friendship matters.
You know, the conversations about self-care thatI’ve been reading on the Internet are so refreshing to me, because those aren’t the conversations I’ve been hearing or having in the circles I move in, and as a result I’ve just been dropping out of the more-and-more things-to-do vibe and doing the things that nurture my soul now. I’m not any less busy; in fact if anything I’m even more busy. But it doesn’t feel that way, and that makes all the difference in the world. I got tired of putting myself last all the damn time, and feeling mentally drained and physically exhausted and spiritually empty.
I think one of the things that keeps us in that loop of “doing more” is because that is how most adult relationships are formed—if you aren’t hanging out with family or friends you’ve known all your life, you’re probably hanging out with people you’ve either met through work or through some other work-like activity.
It takes time to build and nurture relationships. More time than most of us have, considering we have to work to pay bills too. I know that I’ve been on the treadmill of doing this-that-and-the-other because of attempts to build friendships, and what ends up happening is we get a lot done, but don’t get to spend that quality time we’re really looking for. That relaxed, easygoing time.
March 16th, 2009 at 12:26 pm #
So I’m reading this and thinking of all the things I wanted to respond to, things it made me reflect on and remember, and then I get to the end part where you’re addressing your friend directly, and the mention of Hilary and the key, and then all of a sudden I start crying. Could you put a warning midway through all your pieces maybe, cuz it’s not the first time, and I’m at work for pete’s sake.
p.s. I love this whole thing.
March 16th, 2009 at 3:48 pm #
March 16th, 2009 at 4:09 pm #
Thank you, La Lubu and Joan and SA. I’m feeling all kinds of raw and sad today after writing all that and putting it out in the world, and I appreciate your comments a lot. Love to you. J
(Also just realized there are, like, 4 people in my life with the initials TB – so if any of you other TBs are out there reading this and feeling like, um, this seems like an odd thing for Jess to say to me – sorry, that “you” part’s not meant for you.
March 16th, 2009 at 6:21 pm #
This really spoke to me in so many ways; thank you. I liked your analogy with poetry – I have been avoiding poetry for that very reason – and in fact was reminded of one of my favorites before I reached that sentence, “What Work Is” by Philip Levine…
March 17th, 2009 at 1:53 am #
This is gonna be scattered, but c’est la vie…
Oh the ways in which this speaks to me. Sometimes I feel like we should all just make lists of the ways in which our lives parallel each other.
I had this conversation with my best friend of eight years nearly a year ago before I moved to India. She and I had been drifting for so many reasons, and we had our own little reunification moment, our “coming clean” moment of honesty and purging of hurt and statement of our reliance on each other and commitment to prioritize each other in our lives. Funny to me now that we’re on opposite sides of the globe how close she feels to me at all times.
We forget that balance, at times, means removing things from the scale. And that the world is not in our singular hands, but in our collective hands. There’s no scarcity of ideas. Why not share them? It doesn’t have to be *me* doing awesome shit. And that awesome shit doesn’t need to be done *right now*. I think there’s a sense of urgency, and change takes so much time. It’s easy to forget that because we get clouded by our desire for instant gratification and our impatience. I also wonder how much of this is wrapped up in our need to feel in control of things, and how that need for control is a product of our environment and upbringing. I get most freaked out when I feel something is out of my control and have to work to remind myself that control is always an illusion.
Being involved in activist work provides an enormously convenient excuse to ignore our needs and the needs of those we love. Because it allows us to say that “changing the world” is more important, as though the two are unrelated. Organizing a rally is concrete. Love is so obtuse. How do we measure love? How do we measure the results of love? How do we know what love looks like even?
How do we prioritize love? We start by making the conscious choice and effort to do so. The choice part is easy. The effort part is difficult. And sometimes we have to sacrifice things that we want in order to do so. And that is tricky in itself since we don’t know the outcomes of that sacrifice. And sometimes the outcomes that we expect are not the outcomes that we get. I think that’s a kind of faith that we have to have in each other. And having faith, particularly for non-religious folks like myself, is hard to do.
Love can be violent too. Many people destroy themselves and others in the name of love. Love of God. Love of country. “If you cared more about the work, you’d do XYZ.” That love is destructive. How much love is enough? How much is too much?
And I think this is related to what you wrote earlier about vulnerability. We think we’re supposed to be so self-reliant and independent. That’s the American way, no? I think prioritizing interdependence is key, but to do that we have to trust each other and be able to be vulnerable even when it’s not comfortable.
*End Babble*
March 17th, 2009 at 11:41 am #
i had just come back from an hour walk through the city when i read this. and it is heart stopping.
–no, I’ve actually been thinking about whether that’s part of the scarcity mentality that makes capitalism work. Even as my life fills up with really great stuff, instead of feeling enriched and satisfied by this abundance, he said, I stay stuck in this mind-set of scarcity — not enough time, not enough balance, struggling struggling struggling … the feeling of struggle being so much more familiar than the feeling of calm, of satiation, of peace.—
why are we addicted to scarcity and never satisfied?
and this:
—I think it is about love. I think it is about radically loving and being unable to accept violence, whether it is the violence of war or the violence of rape or the violence of poverty or the violence of displacement or …
So why do activism in a way that is more violent than loving? Surely it’s a kind of violence to put production ahead of people, to fail relationships while successfully meeting deadlines.
What kind of justice, or peace, can grow without strong relationships at the root?—–
i am a mother. and i think about this. how so many times i have to get these emails out, respond to this, work on this project, etc etc etc…and there is my daughter getting cranky cause i am not spending the time with her that she would like. and i claim that this all about creating communities that center love and caretaking and yet i seem to think that i cant take a moment for producing to well showing love. what are my priorities? and why?
March 17th, 2009 at 12:08 pm #
Maia,
So much of what you’re saying here is resonatingt:
“i think about this. how so many times i have to get these emails out, respond to this, work on this project, etc etc etc…and there is my daughter getting cranky cause i am not spending the time with her that she would like. and i claim that this all about creating communities that center love and caretaking and yet i seem to think that i cant take a moment for producing to well showing love. what are my priorities? and why?”
… being honest about where we are meaning to do/create a different kind of world but still on the inside, in the too-often-still-secret “private” spaces, not always there yet. And I really don’t mean that as a criticism of us in a self-flagellating sense, but just, like, let’s look at it, and let’s see how much of it is our having internalized oppressive ways of living, and how much of it is stuff that is about external necessity (paying bills, etc.) that really will take big, collaborative structural change to address, and how can we face it together honestly, out in the world and at home, with all the different ways it plays out in all our different lives, love at the root?
Thanks for your words (these and so many others!)
March 19th, 2009 at 8:26 pm #
@jess.
yes. like i have to check myself. in my desire to produce produce produce. i know that it is partially because i am a mom and i was told i wouldnt be able to well live my life and make art and write and travel and be an activist and organizer…once i became a mama. and i rejected that. but at the same time i feel myself trying to *prove* that i can do it all.
one of the best things i read once said that motherhood is a relationship not a job.
and if i talk about building revolutionary community of love but i am bringing in that community those same values i claim i am rejecting in dominant culture…then what the fuck am i doing?
i mean i need love. i do this because of love. not so that i can *prove* a damn thing. and it can be so hard to remember that when i am looking at my resume.
thanks for this piece. gorgeous piece.
March 19th, 2009 at 10:40 pm #
Actually, that looks like my nightmare.
I find this emphasis on “radical love” to be really oppressive and superficial. We cannot be BFFs with everyone we work with just cos we have common goals or political analyses or we’re working together. Expecting that we will be is a recipe for hurt, drama, and betrayal, not to mention the very alienation, cliqueyness and exclusivity that are caused by capitalism in the first place.
My first rule of human interaction is to not shit where I eat. To not sabotage myself by expecting people to be better than they are by entrusting them to not stab me in the back when it would be the most efficient way to get things done.
Because really, the struggle deserves better from me than for me to expect a campaign to sustain me. It’s too important to burden with my insecurities and shames.
If a radical women of color blog is not a space where the projected internal coherence and integrity of social movements is challenged, by the evidence of women’s lives, then where is? I mean, conflict isn’t just a by-product of tensions over ideologies and identities, it’s a basic method for getting ‘activist work’ done. You sit in a circle and argue, and eventually come up with a plan to deal with whatever problem you see. Why add the extra element of interpersonal drama to that already fraught method? Why romanticise what is often nasty, petty, brutal, and anything but “nurturing” or “caring”?
Lucky you. When I brought up capitalist work ethics I was told “it’s different if you’re a revolutionary”. I was going to retort, but I wondered why bother? I don’t have to deal with socialist entryism 24/7 (and thank all the gods for that), so I shouldn’t have to argue against it 24/7 and label that “love”. Especially when I have 50-60 hour work weeks ahead of me.
It’s great that you’ve managed to make friends/have sex with people that you organise with. Really. But projecting that onto others as a goal and dressing it up in romantic language is centring your privilege, and I resent hearing it from a white woman. I’m too brown, female, queer, and contrary to walk into a space and expect people to love me.
March 20th, 2009 at 4:40 am #
Firefly, I’d like to thank you for your response—it resonated with me probably more strongly than the original post did.
I don’t know how other people are identifying “radical love”. I don’t know that I have a definition for it, either. I’ve never termed it that way, though I find the phrase interesting. If I have to define it for myself, I guess I would have to say: a love that goes as deep as blood, bone and marrow; a love that transcends the superficial; a love that can withstand anger, fear, arguments—and even sometimes betrayal.
I’m a member of a labor union. Only 7% of people in the United States are members of a union. The labor movement has taken huge hits here, and some if it—hell, a lot of it—is our own damn fault. (and I’m desperately trying to stay on point here, because I could easily spend the next two hours typing up Everything That Is Wrong With Business Unionism….) My Local is fairly small; slightly over 800 if you count retirees (closer to 600 or so working members). The Building Trades are a small world; we operate on the basis of geographic jurisdiction as well as labor-oriented jurisdiction. What that means is, if you aren’t constantly on the road all over the United States, you tend to work in the same general areas, and see the same general people over the years.
That’s been my experience. I’ve only worked in three states, and out of, oh–twenty-some Locals. If people don’t remember my name, they at least remember where I come from. Small world. I’ve seen the same faces, even in other Locals, for years.
And I’m not BFFs with most any of those people. Including people in my Local. I can just about count on one hand the number of brothers and sisters who’ve seen the inside of my house. Hell, when I first entered the Local—damn!—when Sister Susan Eisenberg wrote the book “We’ll Call You if We Need You” about the experiences of the first women entering the construction trades, I felt vindicated. I thought, “This wasn’t my imagination. This shit happened to me, too! It wasn’t just me; it was systemic!”
I’ve had every damn thing happen. I’ve had everyone get up in unison and silently walk away from the break table and put their backs to me when I entered the room. I’ve been called every name in the book, had rumors spread about me, had lies told, had lies told on my apprenticeship reports, been screamed at (with the full-on vein-popping and spittle treatment) in an attempt to make me say or do something I could be disciplined or suspended for, I’ve had my work sabotaged, my truck vandalized, tools stolen, you name it. Every see the film “North Country”? Like that.
I had allies, too. Not many, at first. And many of those were backchannel allies—too afraid to stick up for me publically. I swore when I was enduring that shit that I’d bury the motherfuckers, eventually. And some of them, I have. (and unfortunately, I’ve buried just as many allies—sometimes it seems the no-good motherfuckers live forever, while the good people in this world check out early).
What never ceases to amaze me, is that some of the “no-good motherfuckers”, have turned around. It happens. And some haven’t—some, we keep the peace by keeping a grudging distance. I’m not the forgive-and-forget type. I don’t think of that as a moral failing; I think of it as a survival skill.
But regardless, we have a bond inherent in being members (brothers and sisters, we still say, even when we hate each other) of the same union. We don’t really have the luxury of it being otherwise. At the end of the day, we’re living the same lives, under the same pressures, with a hell of a lot of the same circumstances. We have more in common with one another than we have differences. The smart people, the ones that aren’t the no-good mf’s, recognize this. The others are just being willfully ignorant.
The road makes strange bedfellows. Going “on the road” mostly means that there is no work in your home Local, and you have to travel to find work. You travel on your own dime (unless you’re lucky enough to get what we call a “portability” gig—the contractor can take a limited amount of workers—in the IBEW it’s 4—into another Local’s jurisdiction. Then, the contractor pays for the travel. I’ve lucked into that a few times in my pre-motherhood days). So, when you’re broke and trying to save travel expenses, you sometimes can’t help who you’re traveling with. And a lot of windshield time (and/or late evenings before turning back to your hotel room) means you get to know another person pretty well.
Most of my road buddies are dead or retired. One in particular was the bane of my existance during the last portion of my fourth year and throughout my fifth year of apprenticeship (that was before I went on the road). He was my foreman, and number one with a bullet on my Fuck-You list (that’s the list of people you immediately give a big, hearty “fuck you!” to after “topping out”, or becoming a journeyman). Oh fuck, I did not want to be buddied up with him. But the contractor I was working for transferred me to a different job—they thought they were doing me a favor by putting me with someone else from my home Local. I’d have rather stayed sweating my ass off in the middle of summer at the brass foundry.
But there we were. Almost ten years had passed since we last worked on the same job. And our lives had changed position—his, and mine. I got to see how a lot of his previous assholish behavior was the combination of an old-school attitude toward apprentices (“toughen’ ‘em up”) and the result of hurt/pain/betrayal and being in the position of the underdog. He lashed out at people he thought represented a threat or potential source of betrayal. We worked together, and he became one of my strongest allies. In fact, after 9/11, he intervened with the chief of police of a certain small town to keep me from getting stopped all the time on my way to work. I never would have thought he’d be one of the people I miss, but I do.
Point being, that when I think of the bonds that are forged in movement, I’m not thinking of being best friends, or even having much in common in our personal lives. I’m thinking of the ways in which we are coming from a common place as working people; how we live in the same kinds of neighborhoods and endure similar kinds of struggle—-and how we all have the axe of unemployment hovering over us, the axe of workplace injury and disability, the axe of early death from the shit we’re exposed to, the axe of trying to keep our families together and being crunched between generations and trying to do everything at once with so little time and who the hell knows if I’ll even have a job next week…..
Yeah—you’re not going to be buds with everyone you join hands and resist with. Not possible. But the act of looking out for one another, for standing together—that’s a practice, not a feeling. So, when I think of a definition for that nebulous concept of “radical love”—I think of it as a practice; something you do, not something you feel.
And I don’t even know that “love” is the right word for it. I’m open for suggestions, though.
March 20th, 2009 at 6:57 am #
fuck. I just erased an entire fucking HUGe message. I’m very angry right now. ARGH.
Anyway. the short, somewhat angry version what I was saying in my previous message (angry because FUCK wordpress!!!!):
I actually am not sure what “radical love” is. I think that I’ve spent the entire time at this blog contemplating it. I have no definite answers. I’m feeling my way around the mess, just as much as the next person is. If i’m leading people to believe that radical love is “BFF” sweet Jesus, may I change how I reflect!!!!! I’m actually thinking much more along the lines that you are FF. That we can’t all be BFF. That insisting that we’re all best buds actually leads, as you say, to those repressive exclusive sort of spaces.
This here stood out to me:
because I think this is where I’m basing the crux of my thought. I don’t believe in “campaigns” any more. I used to. But I don’t any more. I think campaigns are something that is quick, easy, done over a short period of time, and then we all move on. As I’ve become a more cynical and bitter organizer–I think that model of organizing is *fraught* with what you note, FF–exclusivity, earnest “let’s all just get along” shit–etc.
Where I think the answers are is in sustained, sustainable, *changing the world* organizing. Organizing isn’t even the word for it really. Building a new world. (which is too unweildy, but whatever). Building *something* new. long term, *decades* type change.
And to do that kind of organizing, we have to move past the BFF model of exclusivity–and really get underneath the surface. We have to recognize that crazy fucked up narcissist BFP will ALWAYS be crazy fucked up narcissist BFP and stop trying to change her. That the point is not to change BFP. changing BFP–forcing her to stop talking about her chin hairs–that will never “change the world.” So why pretend otherwise?
But maybe reaching into a more divine space within ourselves–(and by divine, I *dont’* mean, GOD, or ALLAH, or BuDDHA, I mean something more worldly, less definitive…less singular) we might be able to learn to “radically love” (or recognize the divine in) the neighbor we hate.
I’m not thinking I’m making sense here, because like I said, I really almost don’t *know* what “radical love” is–that I’ve spent the entire time at this blog trying to figure out what it means–if anything.
But I guess–I’m thinking of this latest fight between women of color about “big girl panties.” I’m thinking about how I figured out halfway through that the point is not to make renee and BA get along, or for all of us to sit in our corner and get hateration on for renee or to sit in our corner and scream “you’re a drama queen” at BA–but to recognize that fights like that are going to happen–and that’s ok. And the thing is not to make sure everybody loves each other–but to make sure that when the hateration comes against one of us *all* of us responds.
I did an interview with Renee the day that all this stuff sort of blew up–and I said at the time–and maybe this is what I think “radical love” (that beginning of it) is–that a living thriving fully developed community is going to have long lasting continuous quarrels. that I am *always* going to find my next door neighbor’s fucking dog that won’t shut the fuck up to be irritating. That I will squirt water at it just to piss it off and make me feel better. And my neighbor will come screaming at me and we’ll sit and fight with each other–but when the KKK comes up the street with their burning cross–my neighbor and I will forget about the dog–and keep each other safe. And we may be fighting the whole time. And it may make me physically sick to have that fucker and his fucking dog in my house. but I do it anyway, because that’s the way it should be.
Is that radical love? to me it is. it’s not *all* that radical love is–but it’s the start of it.
but I think that we’ve been programmed to *think* “love” is the weak ass shit it is when it comes to working on a “campaign.” that if we can’t all share our souls with the person sitting next to us, then there’s no use in organizing.
I don’t know.
Maybe–recognizing that I will *always* be fighting with my neighbor, and
, but rather instead, finding ways to *negotiate that* whereby neither me nor my neighbor are looked down upon or otherwise kicked out of the community–is radical to me and based in love–because I’m sick and tired of people trying to change me? because there’s nothing *wrong* with me hating that fucking dog? And there’s nothing *wrong* with him *loving* it? That it is possible for more than one emotion to exist in the world at a time? Do you see what I’m saying here? I’m not sure I’m explaining it….that instead of wanting to “fix” everything that’s wrong with everybody–we make the space to say–it’s *ok* for you to be the way you are and it’s *ok* for me to be the way I am–because that’s the way the real world is? we’re Never going to get 100% of us to all agree that porn is bad–so rather than spending all our time trying to convince every woman that porn is bad–thereby insinuating that there is something *wrong* with this woman that needs to be changed–we instead look for ways to recognize that the *woman* is not the problem, that the *porn* is not the problem (except on a more superficial level), but that the way we *react* and *treat* the woman who watches porn (or engages in porn) is the problem?
or maybe on a less loaded topic–my neighbor is not the problem–the dog is not the problem–*i* am not the problem–it’s how we all *react* to each other that is the problem. Does the community allow me to silence him? Do I put rules in place that make it so that people with dogs can’t vote in upcoming votes?
You see?
I’m sorry if I’m making a mess of this explanation. As I said at the beginning–I’m still struggling through this whole idea of “radical love.” I know what it is when it’s slapping me in the face (for example, the woman who stood in front of Israeli soldiers to prevent them from shooting protestors in back of them)–but when it gets to smaller things–to everyday living–it gets murkier, harder. and maybe that’s the point, I guess. That you start big and use big ideas to start thinking about smaller harder things.
Anyway. I look forward to hearing what Jess has to say. Now, I gotta scoot to work!
(also, I t hink for me, the most definitive idea of what “radical love” is, is this post about Michigan and the previous linked post about woc fighting. It’s easy to stand up for shiny beautiful love–it’s much harder to love the ugly nastiness. It’s much harder to say I don’t care if Michigan is a waste dump of pollution and violence–it’s *worth* it to me because *life* is there–and life is *always* worth it. We all know we’ll work for shiny beautiful love–but will we work for the homeless man drowning in an ice puddle in the worst part of detroit michigan? And what does it say about us that so many of us say “no”? And what kind of “new world” is it supposed to be if we continue to say no?—I think for me “radical love” is brimming over with pain. It starts in pain. It starts *with* pain. If that makes sense.)
March 20th, 2009 at 7:52 am #
also, I wanted to say really breifly too–many people look at “love” as being impractical to the movement. but I have to ask, why do we assume that impracticality? As if it’s not a practical conscious choices being made to incorporate a “reason” for all of us to be working together?
I mean, for example–”shared ideals”–how far is that going to take us? “shared ideals” is often turned into ‘group think’ which is often turned into “you don’t question or challenge anything because otherwise you’re not “one of us’”–when we literally need world wide movements–what kind of arrogance is it to assume that *our* “shared ideals” are so profound, millions of people are going to sign on and agitate for change?
Thinking about love–radical love–critical love–it’s so important to me–because it provides a practical solution to the fact that millions of people are never going to agree on what “shared ideals” means. but millions of people *can* agree that the person standing right next to them is a divine being worthy of certain human rights? Which brings us to problematic legal issues such as the geneva conventions, as well as problems with who is considered human and who has power to be considered human who doesn’t–etc–but I am thinking more and more that investigating the road of “divine humanity” has more practical sense than “shared ideals.”
March 20th, 2009 at 8:18 am #
Morning, everyone.
Thanks for this discussion.
Some thoughts:
I certainly wasn’t trying to say we should all be BFFs, or all be romancing each other. I realize the original post threw a whole bunch of different pieces together in an admittedly unprocessed way, and what I was trying to do with that was ask,
What does it mean if I am showing up at all the meetings, checking all the action steps off my to-do list, and meanwhile failing at caring for/giving to people? What does it mean to put all those projects that are in service of “the people” or “the movement” ahead of/instead of specific, actual humans I’m in relationship with? Not to say that I want to suggest the model of putting my personal BFFs or lovers or whomever ahead of/instead of activism, but that I want to see a movement in which those things aren’t opposed to each other, in which we’re not choosing between them, in which our emotions and bodies and loves (of various types) are as important as our projects and to-do lists.
That’s one piece.
The other piece is, I *do* want to know what it might mean for a movement, and for the people in that movement, to center self-love and mutual love in our organizing – not in an insular/exclusive way of only organizing among your BFFs and lovers, but in a way where we don’t have to leave our hearts and bodies at the door when we enter that meeting room or pick up that clipboard.
…thinking about an activist/organizer named Carmen Morgan, who I talked to about her work with a group called the Women of Color Giving Circle a few months ago, and her saying that, in organizing, we need to “acknowledge our humanity” – not immediately writing it off if someone needs to miss a demo because her kid is sick, or because a relationship that means a lot to her is hurting and she needs to attend to it, or etc. – “if that’s not there,” she said, “we’re just emulating the structures that already exist.”
It feels to me like, if we can’t bring heart/body — broadly/critically/non-normatively defined “love” (maybe I just mean mutual caring/giving?) — into our movements, in terms of the way we respect each other’s heart/body needs as integral and in terms of the way we regard and care for one another within movements, then we are indeed replicating structures that already exist — structures of professionalism, of productivity, of white supremacy and capitalism and patriarchy that privilege projects over people, productivity over process, etc.
But, yeah, do not mean in any way to imply that we all could or should be BFFs or lovers with everyone we organize with (although I’ll admit that I do really value deep emotional bonds with people I closely organize with on long-term/core projects, while also valuing different kinds of connections with people I work with on different kinds of projects) —
in fact, I think the kind of radical love I’m trying to find/embody/learn is precisely the kind that might create
“a space where the projected internal coherence and integrity of social movements is challenged, by the evidence of women’s lives”
For me, feeling around for what “radical love” might be, lots of struggling questions came up …
Thank you for sharing your critical and illuminating thoughts.
March 20th, 2009 at 8:35 am #
Also (upon re-reading BFP’s comments), I feel like all sorts of things she’s saying are pointing toward a really inspiring definition of “radical love” that really gets at the “root” piece of “radical”. For instance,
“a living thriving fully developed community is going to have long lasting continuous quarrels. …
And the thing is not to make sure everybody loves each other–but to make sure that when the hateration comes against one of us *all* of us responds.”
[and here, to me, she is referring to simplistic/superficial/fake "love" - let's-all-get-along "make sure everybody loves each other," as distinct from this more radical love where we all respond when someone is attacked/oppressed]
and this!:
“… it is possible for more than one emotion to exist in the world at a time….that instead of wanting to “fix” everything that’s wrong with everybody–we make the space to say–it’s *ok* for you to be the way you are and it’s *ok* for me to be the way I am–because that’s the way the real world is? we’re Never going to get 100% of us to all agree that porn is bad–so rather than spending all our time trying to convince every woman that porn is bad–thereby insinuating that there is something *wrong* with this woman that needs to be changed–we instead look for ways to recognize that the *woman* is not the problem, that the *porn* is not the problem (except on a more superficial level), but that the way we *react* and *treat* the woman who watches porn (or engages in porn) is the problem?”
There’s so much more, but she said it all right up there, maybe I don’t need to keep quoting at length with my lack of HTML quoting skills!
It’s feeling to me, at this moment in the conversation, like there are a couple different threads of definition of “love” –
there’s this idea of radical love as “a practical solution to the fact that millions of people are never going to agree on what “shared ideals” means. but millions of people *can* agree that the person … right next to them is a divine being worthy of certain human rights”
and there’s also this question about who we are in movements, and how we can bring our selves to movements in ways that don’t ask us to leave behind the love in our lives (of friends, of partners, of lovers, of children, of … ), to sacrifice love in our lives for a movement … I think we’ve seen movement after movement ask for that of people, and it’s lead to a lot of burnout and pain and unsustainability.
Maybe the original post was a mess for trying to put those two things into the same conversation, but I do want to think about/feel them together, relatedly — if it’s possible to do that without making it sound like I’m suggesting movement-as-cult-of-BFFs/lovers-with-no-boundaries
!
March 20th, 2009 at 9:57 am #
I don’t believe radical love = anything to BFFs.
My BFF’s don’t need radical love. They’re already IN me. The hearts within my heart, my BFFs are the ones I am wildly in love with.
In the case of activism, feminism, organization, Movement – radical love is not to get along or be able to throw our arms around each other. I think, for me, (at least today) radical love is being able to honor the life of someone else, their struggle and BE in the same movement with them. I think that recognizing the space of difference between two people and not letting that spew hate is critical to radical love. I don’t believe it’s about that space turning into sameness or false pretense that we’re all going to even LIKE each other, but that space can be radical love of acknowledging that you and I may have nothing in common. We might view everything in the world differently but when it comes to my life being before yours and your life being before mine, that we can take one inch, to say, I’m not here to be your confidant, but I can look at you and see your tiredness, your family…I can look over your shoulder and see you’ve got a LIFE behind you that motivates you, shapes you, drives you. And even if we’re at odds with just about everything else, if we can just keep a space open so we can ALWAYS see that and honor that…HOLD that space of radical love, we might find we’re able to work together much better and breathe easier if we focus on the spaces we negotiate with one another instead of trying to pretend we’re all going to agree and get along.
Someone close in my life often tells me that he doesn’t like a lot of people, but he has to love them. “Love” meaning = choosing to see past our initial surface like/dislike tendencies, envisioning the possibilities of engagement with this person, working and utilizing difference instead of trying to merge them, listening to their LIVES and not presuming their words, and actually quieting your own racing thoughts so you can actually be present to a person across the table, world, street and their ideas.
Today, that’s radical love for me.
March 20th, 2009 at 2:16 pm #
Jess, you wrote:
Okay, this is not going to be easy.
I was involved pretty deeply for a couple of years with an organization. I won’t even talk about the specific focus but it was, very broadly speaking, policy change related to a specific functioning of racism and working with the community affected by that situation.
I left it. And I am going to try to write about why, because …. I appreciate Fire Fly’s comment and feel like it bring out some real grounded truths that I have seen/experienced.
Fire Fly writes:
Okay, so. For some time I thought that the organization was primarily focused on what it said was its focus, the issues/policies and the community that it said it cared about.
And I clung to that view of what was going on. I clung to it very hard. Until what was going on was so plain and in my face that I had to let it go.
Wow this is hard to write about. Holy crap it is hard to write about.
Okay, blunt. I will be blunt.
The organization had at its core a group of women whose activist relationships with each other went back decades. Only one of these women was actively involved in getting done the day to day work of the organization. Others didn’t do so much for the organization’s actual day to day needs, but had power based on the relationships.
And there was this one member of the organization’s inner circle, a white woman (the only white woman in that historically-based inner circle, actually).
She and another member of this core group, Chicana, were partners/lovers. They were harming the organization in ways I won’t get into details on, but will say that they were supporting and perpetuating white supremacy in relationship to the organization and in the local movement the organization was part of.
There was a period of time when various people were emailing and talking about how to get this to stop. Lots of energy and focus. I saw it as relatively simple if the focus was on how to stop the harm long enough to sort things out.
But as it turned out, the relationships trumped everything. All the personal deep painful stuff was so entangled in those relationships that nothing made sense in relation to the claimed work of the organization.
It turned out there was no way to stop the harm, at least not during the time I was there (I keep holding out hope that this will be changed somehow and maybe I don’t know about it).
Anyway at the time there was no way to hold these women accountable because stripped down to the bare bones, (this is my assessment, but also others’ — I am more harsh about it though) the organization was primarily based not on what it claimed to be about — policy change work, a particular community. Instead it existed primarily to serve the friendships and relationships of the core group.
Even so, it got a lot done and I am sure it still does. How it got things done day to day is another related issue, whose backs things fall on …. generally not the ones who were and maybe still are doing the harm.
But anyway, I saw it, actual grounded situation: when it came down to a choice of having the organization and its work harmed or not, when it came down to standing against white supremacy functioning in this process or not, the actual enacted priority in this actual situation was not to stop the harm — it was to preserve and attend to the relationships.
Really, what I would say now is that this organization exists more to serve the personal needs of some of its participants than to do what it claims it is about. And I suppose if it would just adjust its claimed priorities to its real priorities that would make sense to me. If it said: “The primary mission of this organization is to serve the needs of this core group of activists whose relationships and activism together goes back decades, and the secondary one is this policy and community work.”
Anyway. I did not have an opinion one way or another about friendship/relationship-based activism before this experience. But this was so ugly, so horrific to me, I just…
Okay.
There’s a question I want to ask and some things I want to say about that question. I don’t know how to ask it right so it may be clumsy but I am going to try.
How much of this “radical love” you speak of actually exists and is functioning in practice that you can experience and work with — and how much is it just basically an idea or a concept that exists somewhere in some future or somewhere else other than enacted practice?
It’s like, you could look at the situation I described and say “well, that’s not true/real radical love. If it was it would not have been bad like that.”
Which reminds me of how some Christians will say that bad actions by other Christians are because those other Christians are “not really Christian.” It’s all in the definitions and not in the practice.
Because to me the question isn’t the definition. It is in what is actually happening in the name of “love” and relationships in actual practice — and isn’t that relevant? and how is it relevant?
If this “radical love” thing is mostly not focusing on how things are functioning in practice, if it’s mostly an idea at this point in time and/or in your experience and context — then you get insulated from what actually occurs when seeking to put connection/relationship into practice in these movement contexts.
If that’s what is going on then: You can write about it with no hard accountability to the practice of it and how messy and nasty it can be, avoid the struggle with the underneath that makes it so messy and nasty in some situations. You leave yourself the option of doing it by definition (responding to what is ugly with “well, sure but that isn’t true ‘radical love’ as I am talking about it”).
And that place of insulation allows ungrounded statements of words It could lead to romanticizing or unreal wordplay IMO. When it’s largely in the “imagination” then the real hard stuff can be minimized or put aside for later and what do you do when letar comes — or maybe it never does, I don’t know.
But this context we’re in is quite nasty and there is no easy way to get around how nasty things get, whatever ethos and structure we try. “Love” can be just as ugly and oppressive as distance and professionalism in this context.
I am sorry if this is all (or in any part) too harsh.
March 20th, 2009 at 2:43 pm #
not at all michelle, I love where this conversation is going. I’ve actually be *dying* to get pushed like this, so I am very grateful that people have not been afraid to ask the hard ass questions!
I’ve seen radical love in action–the AMC, for instance–they’ve taken some really really harsh, very public criticism–and some how managed to work with it without getting all defensive and nasty. I don’t know how they do it–(i’m on the advisory board, not the inner circle who deals with the critiques), I am the sort of person who gets very very defensive, very hostile, and usually winds up running away or hating the person who made the critique. part of what I’ve been trying to work through in these walks series.
so I’ve seen that. and I admire it soooo much (others who work within the sphere of radical love–the zapatistas, incite!, sista II sista). and think it’s SO vitally necessary–but the so important thing that you brought up–that issue of openness and accountability–that is something that is worked into the very foundation of the AMC. for example–they have whole week long sessions on how to interpret feedback from people at the AMC and how to start the inner work to take on what they can, etc. I personally think that radical love builds accountability into it’s working model. how could love be anything else but accountability? right? and I think openess is the only way to achieve accountability–i mean, to return to the thing with the dog and the neighbor….
ok, we could either say–oh, we all love each other and let’s try to get along and stop fighting….and then there’s not way to set up a method of accountability between me, the neighbor, the dog and the community–OR we could all admit–we’re not going to love each other—and that shouldn’t even be the fucking goal, is to get everybody to love each other.
and if we all admit that–that we will never all love each other–and that’s NOT THE POINT–we can start getting to work seeing where we can pull situtations that have been hidden by the guise of “love” out into the open and interrogating those situations as they deserve to be interrogated.
Which in turn, is not accepting the “weak” bff love–but is instead relying on the bigger, more important, more necessary love–which is aknowledging that we will never all love each other, we will never all sing kumbya together–but we will “love” each other enough to protect each other’s right to…..x. you know? so we will love my neighbor enough to create community rules that prevent me from some how barring him from voting in local elections, right? because in protecting him from me, we are protecting me from him–we are loving in a bigger way–does that make sense?
I am a Huuuuuuuge fan of community accountability. but you can start building up methods of accountability until we all somehow get on the same playing feild and everybody is acknowledged as an equal, I *think*. I’m not sure, but I think.
and I think–again I’m not sure–but I think that the way to get everybody onto that same level playing field is to ask in a pracitical sense that is not dependent on changing peoples minds–what can we connect on? because we can’t have all those huge juicy important and necessary arguments until ground rules are put out there first–where rules of accountability are written down and agreed to– how to argue, how to agree, how to disagree, etc.
can we start fighting in a productive way with somebody/people who we don’t have openness and agreed to ground rules with? you know?
All the horrible fights I’ve been a part of–no. I don’t think you can. just look at how most white women react to women of color–the get up, walk away and push the ignore button. so we’re having the messy argument–but nobody is listening and it’s killing us woc. but if we start at a different place–like, for example, the place where jess and I started at–where I called *her* and she agreed from day one–I am in your space, you set the agenda–I am following you–I feel perfectly comfortable and fine telling jess–listen. that’s not ok.
In the spirit of openess, that happened just tonight. I told Jess that her questioning what her role is in this space feels like it’s questioning MY judgment in inviting her into the space. that I shouldn’t have to constantly second guess myself–and when people question why Jess is here, it’s questioning MY decision making abilities. and because we’ve had prearranged understanding of how to work together–my critique was not meant w/traditional deaf silence or “that’s not the way I *mean* or *intend* or *want* it be”–rather instead, she said, I hear you, and you’re right.
how many months worth of fights would that five minute conversation have taken up in blogland?
you see what I mean?
March 20th, 2009 at 2:49 pm #
also–I wanted to add michelle–I’ve *worked* in situations like what you’re talking about here–and I’m *totally* not gonna pull the “but that’s not really christianity” bullshit on you. What I’m going to say instead is that is assimilation and ‘reform’ at it’s best. it’s not building something new–it’s creating a campaign.
like, part of why the AMC is so freaking successful at radical love, and imagining new ways of thinking–is because they are accountable to the city of detroit–to the people of they’re communities. which *requires* that they listen to the community or they lose relevancy–and on a practical level, they lose money. if people in the community stop coming–they basically shut down because they have no way to support their work. but they basically spend the entire year working with people in detroit, having tons of conversations w/orgs in detroit, with schools, with youths that are organizing–they are building a new model of living. they are not trying to reform anything, because, well, there’s nothing to reform. Detroit’s shot to hell. they have no choice but to build something new. and because of that–and because they recognize that they can’t rebuild detroit by themselves–that they need an entire city to be mobilized, which equals millions of people–they have no choice but to be accountable to the people they “serve”–
March 20th, 2009 at 2:55 pm #
Michelle,
Thank you so much for this comment. It is so, so important.
I too have been in activist organizations where personal relationships damaged the group’s political work in really awful ways, and also where the group’s stated mission turned out to be really removed from what was actually guiding/motivating its members (whether that was a personal-relationships thing or something else). Actually, I’ve been in this kind of situation several times, in several different groups. I got out of doing “collectives” altogether for a while because of a series of experiences with really dysfunctional collectives, where all kinds of deep, difficult personal issues got all mixed up with group political work in gross, damaging ways. It’s motivated a policy for me of now choosing to do committed collective organizing specifically/consciously with people who have some experience and analysis around how problematic those dynamics can be.
This conversation is hard, but I’m so glad for the space you, Fire Fly, BFP, et al have opened up to really clarify and flesh out some stuff that I threw around in, yes, a very hopeful-vision, throwing-shit-out-there way.
I hope hope hope there is a way to define and enact radical love within movements that does not mean dumping personal stuff on them irresponsibly or in a way that warps the purpose, but that does allow us to have compassion for all of each other, and to develop deep bonds (of many different sorts with each other). I hope there is a way for activism to involve love, and for us not to have to shut off our emotional selves to engage in political work – because I do think the reason we engage has a lot to do with those emotional selves, with heart.
I can say that, yes, I am involved in political projects where relationship building, love, is centered, that I think are doing that differently from the kind of dumping and dysfunctional stuff I think you’re describing. This collaboration with BFP would be one of them, make/shift would be one of them. The concrete specifics of those are both different, and in neither case is it about the co-organizers being BFFs or romantic partners in conventional definitions of those terms, yet there is a real commitment to relationship building, and to centering love of each other and the communities we are accountable to and part of in the work.
Your comments are not too harsh at all (at least, not as far as I’m concerned). I thank you, a lot, for opening up space to clarify and flesh things out and move the conversation/walk on important paths it needs to go down.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:22 pm #
and one last thing–how do we *get* to that practical space where we can have the long messy *productive* fights with each other–if we don’t *first* say–*I love myself*?
I mean, it all has to stem back to love. how can u insist that you be treated like a human being when you fight unless you love yourself? and again, I’m not tlaking about, I take myself to spas regularly–but the *love* yourself–like, I have a right to exist in this world kind of love.
at one point–as I think FF knows–I had a freaking nervous breakdown because I just couldn’t understand why do people disagree with –which meant WHY DON’T YOU LOVE ME????? If I recall correctly, I had seen an episode of sopranos and was horrified to see myself in tony’s daughter, sitting on a bed crying until the wee early morning hours because she couldn’t figure out what it *meant* (WHAT DOES IT MEAN) that her boyfriend disagreed with her. does it mean he hates her? Does it mean he loves her, what does it MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAN?????
the *only* reason–and I mean the *only* reason I am at the point I am today–where I can hear a person who calls for accountability or who disagrees with me or whatever–is because I said, I am having a nervous breakdown trying to force myself to be everything to everybody. I love myself too much to kill myself trying to be everything to everybody. And I took a break from blogging and then wound up here at flipfloppingjoy–where I’ve accomplished SO much more work–done SO much more satisfying things–and am FAR happier–because I centered love for myself. It is SO much more sustainable for me to be in this current state of mind, where I only act out of love and compassion for myself first and foremost, and for others–I can’t live through the years and years and years of horrible fights with white women that achieve *nothing*. You know? I can’t do it.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:55 pm #
so i guess what I’m trying to say is I ending the abusive cycle of bff weak love by centering *radical* love for myself. if that makes sense.
March 20th, 2009 at 6:17 pm #
Thank you to everyone in this discussion.
I feel like BFP is saying things about radical love that don’t necessarily have to do with *personal* relationships. A friend of mine told me once, and I’ve tried (with varying degrees of success, of course) to live by it ever since: “You don’t have to like everyone, but you do have to love everyone.” To me that posits an idea of love as, the word that comes to mind is “divine” but I’m not really comfortable with that word though it might work for some people – and maybe the word I want is human, or humane. Loving other people just because they are other people, but also loving them fully AS other people, who have their faults & their strengths just like anyone. And who deserve to survive.
I guess I believe love, first of all, is way too vague a word! & to me radical love isn’t necessarily at all connected to any more “particular” kind of love. It really is just loving someone because they are alive and human and you share a planet with them, which sounds simple, and maybe is simple but can also bring complications, because I think once you make that commitment then you become, like BFP has said, accountable. It becomes, I guess a responsibility or a duty, maybe, to try and meet that person where they are, try and work with them in a way that is mutual, try to listen when they are upset even if you are also upset.
and I think maybe where personal, particular forms of love come into this is ideally they can sort of serve as a model, or a framework. Like I can think of a few friends where I can say to them or vice versa, “hey you fucked up” and because we love each other, we know it might sting to hear that but it’ll be okay. (BFP – I TOTALLY USED TO BE THAT SOPRANOS GIRL, completely unable in a romantic relationship to deal with the possibility that everything could not be perfect all the time and that didn’t mean we loved each other any less, and maybe meant we loved each other more).
because it’s true – if you don’t have that stable footing, then disagreements & frictions threaten to or actually do erupt and destroy things, and even if they don’t are worse because you know that they can. But if you make the choice to commit to love (recognizing everyone is human & some days it’s a lot harder than others) then it becomes safer to disagree or not get along.
ugh I’m totally fried right now & feel like I’m not making any sense – basically
-I believe in loving people even when you don’t know or like them
-I believe this concept is important to what I think MLK termed the idea of a Beloved Community, a community as truly communal
-I think love – as distinct from personal affection or BFF-feelings or whatever – is frankly necessary in order for disagreements to happen productively. sometimes it can & should coexist with those personal disagreements, sometimes maybe it shouldn’t. But I guess I defer to Madaleine L’Engle on this who said love isn’t a *feeling*. It’s not an emotion. It’s more a state of mind, maybe.
March 21st, 2009 at 5:01 am #
BFP and Jess,
I actually think you’re trying to say a few things with the concept of “radical love,” some of which was in Jess’ post some not.
First of all, a lot of what you’re describing about putting aside differences or even just sitting with them to fight bigger battles seems like plain old solidarity. I think Lubu’s story illustrates it really clearly. And like Michelle, I’m not into semantic smoke and mirrors… and personally I don’t think the concept gains anything from being called something else; I actually think it loses more than it gains.
Secondly, I still think Jess’ post romanticised relationship-building and the internal politics of friendship groups to an unrealistic degree. I don’t think that the “no, ‘radical love’ really means [this]” sentiment changes the content of the post itself, which focused a lot on how important it is to build relationships with people you’re organising with, and ignored the many negative aspects of relationship-building and how those affect activism. And I don’t think that responding to those issues by raising “but my experience has been positive” really addresses those problems either.
Third is self-care. I think self-care is important, but conflating it with all the other things muddies the waters. Of course solidarity, self-care and relationships are important and they do relate to each other. Tossing them all into a single concept hasn’t illuminated anything for me, though.
Fourth, you’re talking about a specific kind of methodology for dealing with conflict. This is really unique and important, I feel (so again, lumping it in with the other things in a clunky and ambiguous term is really not working for me). It’s very rare to talk about the ways that we actually go through conflict, or even discussion and disagreement, and deal with it in radical organising. How dissent can contribute to a changed process for organising, and shape a more effective outcome that’s more inclusive and reaches further.
I actually really don’t like the term “radical love”. I think it’s confusing and a bit trendy, to the point where the word ‘radical’ it’s being emptied of its meaning — people can stick “radical” onto pretty much anything and it really devalues the potential of the term for describing a political ethos. And while I think it’s absolutely true that all the things you’ve talked about are interrelated, I don’t see the point in lumping them into one single term/concept.
March 21st, 2009 at 10:12 am #
I’ve really enjoyed this conversation, because I’ve been struggling with clarifying some of my disquiet with these discussions.
Here are some thoughts.
1. I disagree that campaigns are useless. I think campaigns can be incredibly transformative and empowering, as long as everyone understands that the point is not to just fight for Alinskyite reforms, but to build something larger.
2. I just don’t see those spaces that are building something bigger outside of campaign-with-something-larger-behind-the-community/organization/movement model. Maybe that’s just where I’m at, but I haven’t seen it in DC or Buffalo or North Carolina, not really– except ones that are incredibly exclusionary, inaccessible, use a lot of money and are alienating.
I also like the breakdown that Fire Fly provided of terms… part of my disquiet is that I have trouble with “big” ideas and get very overwhelmed, and I couldn’t engage with these discussions before.
I think these conversations are really important, and it’s absolutely necessary to have self-care and build personal relationships.
I guess the issue that I’ve been having is I do think that organizing in other ways (including campaigns with a larger focus behind it) is useful, and I cannot apply a lot of the “radical love” concepts in a concrete way to that organizing. And maybe the way of organizing that I’m still trying to figure out how to do is not needed, but I’m not convinced, mostly because I haven’t seen anything better that’s accessible to a larger group of people.
It kind of seems like fair trade stuff to me, in a small way. Fair trade stuff is nice, you support a small niche market. But the co-ops and alternatives in that market aren’t blossoming out to the rest of the market and don’t really effect it at all, and through creating those small niches you aren’t really affecting the larger market and may in fact be helping to inhibit structural change through its example.
March 21st, 2009 at 1:20 pm #
It’s really great to read everyone’s different ideas and thoughts and reactions.
It seems like a lot of people are craving more concrete, specific conversations about some of these themes. Would people be into intentionally sharing some more of the concrete stuff? What’s worked and what hasn’t in our various experiences of integrating relationship-building/love with activism/organizing?
If so, is this comments thread a good space to do that? Or should we do it in different space/s, since, as Fire Fly has pointed out, the original thread was much more about a somewhat abstract vision/hope/imagining than about fleshing out what that hoped-for stuff looks like in the concrete and the specific. What do you all think?
March 21st, 2009 at 1:33 pm #
Also, yes, in response to this:
“I actually think you’re trying to say a few things with the concept of “radical love,” some of which was in Jess’ post some not.”
I think you’re completely right about that, Fire Fly. I think BFP and I (and other people) are trying to work out a whole lot of different things in relation to this concept, and we’re doing it publicly, as we go, thinking and questioning and feeling through a lot of different ideas, alongside each other, and we’re bringing all sorts of different personal and political experiences to the evolving conversations as we do that. That’s a lot of why I’m excited by how this thread has evolved in the comments, and really grateful for your critical responses – because the original post wasn’t even remotely meant as a manifesto or end-all prescription, but as, Here’s some stuff that’s floating around for me, emotionally and intellectually, in my personal/political process as an activist/organizer/person/friend/etc., and I’m throwing it out there, and, yeah, my personal tendency *is* sometimes to do these sort of sweeping idea-based imaginings where I’m trying to see the relationships between all sorts of different threads that seem to me might relate in a fruitful way … and in this case, in the context of this thinking-together-as-we-go project, it was intentionally not tied together, but lots of threads thrown out for documentation of a moment and for group discussion …
So, yes, absolutely, we are trying to say a whole lot of different things, and differently from each other. I feel excited to be in conversation with a lot of other people in a sort of collective discovery/discussion process. Many thanks to you for participating in a way that really fruitfully complicates the discussion and calls for accountability and harder thinking-through and more.
March 21st, 2009 at 3:07 pm #
It seems to me that some of that has already been done in this discussion; I would hope that would be used as appropriate in such a discussion if it happens.
Here is my own personal reaction on reading the questions:
If the approach is to let the concrete experience aggressively make, shape, and lead analysis, that could be interesting, IMO. That is — if it is words/analysis grounded in concrete experience.
But if the approach is to use the concrete experience in other ways, it could get less useful.
The initial post here starts out from valuing relationship-building/love — which to me does set up a more top-down approach where experience functions in relation to ideas/analysis, rather than vice versa.
Not only that, but there is some confusion for me in the description even now. Compare the two statements:
This part seems to equally include what’s worked and what hasn’t. Leaves open the possibility that love/relationship-building is not useful for activism/organizing.
But then there’s this:
This is a substantially different project IMO than that first sentence I quoted. This to me says it’s about using the concrete to serve the abstract (hoped-for).
So to my eyes, the first statement could lead to various conclusions, based on actual concrete experience.
But the second says it’s about using the concrete for what is “hoped-for.” That is likely to encourage selective use of the concrete to serve the imaginings of what is not actually occurring but exists in the hoped-for realm.
All of this is just IMO ad please please anyone reading this please take it as specific and use it only if it seems more broadly useful to others.
Because I am someone who does not believe that anyone can imagine their way with words into change. That’s a hard and deep bias I have. Words are of use to me only as servants to concrete experience and practice.
I know there are perspectives out there that say that word-based imagination can usefully be in charge in some situations. I am absolutely opposed to that perspective, but my opposition is just that — mine and mine alone.
Anyway, I would ask that my perspective please be placed subordinate to what others have to say if/when there is a difference in approach or priorities. Because my capacity and will to be involved in the discussion is limited in any case, for reasons having nothing to do with anything here.
March 22nd, 2009 at 4:23 am #
i am a mother. and when i first read jess’s piece that was what came to me: my motherhood. and how central my love with my daughter is in my organizing.
and i have followed the ensuing conversation fascinated. wow. there are all these permutations and experiences i hadnt perceived. so thanks to everyone for that. i will be thinking about this conversation for a long time.
that said: when i say ‘radical love’ what i mean is ‘radical caretaking’. caretaking for me is concrete action. taking care of myself. taking care of others. not because i like them (often i dont, hell, there are enough times in the day i dont like my daughter, but i take care of her…does that make sense?) but because they are another human being and they deserve to be whole too.
when i think of radical love. i think of being a birth assistant for working poor african immigrant teenage moms. and loving them. even though i may not particularly like them. not the kind of folks i want hang out with on a saturday aft. but loving them tenderly through an incredibly vulnerable moment of their lives. and that creates a bond between us. and yes they yelled not nice things to me in their final moments of labor. and they resent me because i am a stranger, not their boyfriend, not their mom. but because we have been really vulnerable with each other…the quality of the relationship is…more human(?)
and i think about working in the villages in palestine. and how there are these settlers coming to attack us internationals. and the palestinians are taking care of us. and we are taking care of them. and frankly i dont like everyone in that village either. but we are still putting our lives on the line for each other. and frankly maybe we are all a bit ‘idealistic’ but that barely begins to explain why we would do that for another. and we are not bff. we barely know each other. but we are living. and taking care of each other. because if we dont we are all screwed. does that make sense?
and it was in this village that i really learned what i now call: radical love. because this village centered relationship-building and maintaining. we sat in meetings for incredibly long times because everyone has to feel heard and considered and everyone has to be on board with the next decision.
i guess i learned that you take care of folks first then they trust you.
i dont do organizing anymore that doesnt center relationships/caretaking. i just dont think its worth it. any organizing that doesnt have a place for my relationship with my daughter is bullshit.
cause the villages in palestine would love for me to do the work with my daughter by my side. or one of the families would take her if i needed to go in the field w/o her.
and if your organizing doesnt center care-taking then i wonder what the fuck are you organizing for?
as lex asks:
what’s (radical) love got to do with it?
everything.
March 22nd, 2009 at 5:54 am #
and i wanted to say something as well about the difference between public love and private love.
i cant remember when i first read about this concept, but it is like:
‘public love’ is the love you have a people, for your people.
‘private love’ is the love you have for a person. it is more intimate.
and i feel like alot of this discussion is about what is the relationship between public love and private love. which should be centered when?
and i am thinking about how when i joined this progressive organization the founder told me that he had made a choice not to have children in order to dedicate himself to activism. and how much having children would detract from him giving everything to the cause. how he saw this private love (motherhood) as detracting from this public love (activism).
and i am thinking about how when we were at the zapatista women’s encuentro, the zap women would stop and talk to my partner (white male) because he was holding a baby. and that was amazing because there were all these international boys feeling ‘left out’ because they were at an encuentro but the zap women weren’t talking to them.
to me that was a moment of radical love. a moment when public love and private love support and uphold each other. and to me that is the point of all my work. not so much that a white boy talks to zap women.
but that love is centered in the work.
March 22nd, 2009 at 7:30 am #
I’ve been traveling visiting fam for the past few days, so I am exhausted and going back to bed in about–ohhhh, three minutes!
but I wanted to acknowledge how great this conversation is and that I will be coming back to it when I’ve gotten some rest–
and ALSO, that I am soooooooooooo with you maia. I may not know *exactly* what radical love is right now–not enough to put it adequately into words–but I want to back up a bit and say that I very very deliberately chose the words “radical” and “love” to describe what path I was wondering down.
It wasn’t just a cool sounding thing to me, it came from months and years of lived experience where “love” and discussions about “love” have been mocked, blown off, called too “pussy,” mocked, called not practical, not realistic–etc.
And I wanted to consider that, and wonder why a love that is NOT BFF is so consistantly written off by women and men alike. Why, when the root of so many of our problems stem from the very simple and effective animalization of the “other”–and the animalization of the other is *based in hate* or *based in complete lack of human connection*–why is the opposite emotion of lack of human feeling or outright hate–LOVE–considered “not practical”? (or any of the multitudes of other *sexist* terminology?)
Why are men telling me that reacting to violence with love is being a pussy? Why are women telling me “love” is not practical?
Hate is practical? Objectification is practical? Or maybe hate and objectification are what we *know* how to do?
I resist the idea that each of what I am thinking of can be broken down into individual ideas that already have a name. first–for the practical reason that how many sistas eyes glaze over with “this is not relevent to me” when you say “self care”? How many women look at self care as if it is something that only “THEY” need–because self care carries the stigma of “pussy”–or “womanly” or something that is not practical and takes time away from the cause?
but second–because I think there is real fear of “love.” I think love, as maia says so beautiful, is stemmed in vulnerability (and again, I’m talking about bigger, more divine love)–It’s stemmed in allowing an experience–a *person* into your life that you may not want there. It’s stemmed in becoming vulnerable–and good lord god–what fucking *right* to any of us–bitches, faggots, N*ggers, Spics, aliens, have to be *vulnerable*? What right do we have to be vulnerable–and what practical value does it serve when Obama might get shot any damn way, because that’s what happens to our brightest hope?
You know what I mean?
March 22nd, 2009 at 7:36 am #
This is a great conversation, a productive conversation, and I’m glad I got involved in it. I tend to hang back and observe more at first; get my bearings before jumping in. I’m glad I took the plunge because as jess has said, hearing so many diffferent perspectives and the play between the abstract and concrete is revealing.
i guess i learned that you take care of folks first then they trust you.
maia, yes!! Yes!! That, ‘xactly. That is what I was trying to say in my example above, yet you said it more succinctly. What Fire Fly said about plain old solidarity is—correct, but only partly so. It starts out as plain old solidarity, and relationships with most folks you’re organizing with stay on that level.
But as maia said, the action of solidarity forges bonds over time. Bonds that are deeper than merely knowing we’re coming from a similar place or working toward similar goals.
One thing I’ve learned over the years, was that I have to allow room for those incongruous relationships to develop—the bonds with people I never thought I had anything in common with. Because over the years, you do develop an almost familial relationship (with all that entails, the good and the bad. more on that later!).
Friday night was union meeting night for me. The last item on the agenda at our meetings is “good of the union”. That’s where people might remind others of things going on in the community, or things happening in the lives of members, reminders to go vote, or asking for donations for people in need. One brother stood up and asked for a donation to a fellow in another union whose teenage son was killed (whether that was a mere hit-and-run or outright murder is still up for grabs). Now, that’s solidarity. No one else in the room knew that kid, or his father—but it’s just what you do.
But I was thinking about this conversation through the course of the meeting. The brother who stood up—we’ve got a long and colorful history. He was the very first JW (journeyman) I worked with, in his father’s shop. A family shop. Three brothers, the old man, and the handful of the rest of us. I used to call it “The Family Feud, Inc.” because of the epic displays of dysfunction.
There was a time I hated that man. I mean, hated. With every single fucking fiber of my being. And I didn’t think we had one damn thing in common besides both of us being members of the same union and working for the old man. But.
That was twenty years ago. I worked for that company for less than a year the first time, and came back for another stint a couple years later. By then, I learned a lot more and gained a grudging respect from this man, but I was still the target of his anger for reasons completely unrelated to being on the job. Completely unrelated to me.
Flash forward a couple more years. He apologized to me. I mean, really apologized. He waited all night to do it too—we were both volunteering for a community event that needed electricians, and all of us that volunteered went out for drinks. He waited until everyone else left, until he could get me alone to say what he needed to say, and it wasn’t the alcohol talking. That was the first of many conversations we would have. He is the only brother in the Local who ever apologized to me—I’ve had others who did so more or less through their actions, or who apologized to me via others—but he’s the only one who found his words and did it to my face.
I can’t really say a whole lot about it without revealing private matters—I’ll do that for myself, but not for him. Let’s just say that I discovered that my original assumptions about him were wrong. We never did work on the same job again (and probably won’t), but we have worked together within the union on both an official and unofficial basis. And the relationship we have now isn’t one of mere solidarity, nor is it one of simple friendship. It’s—familial. That’s what happens over the years. It can’t not happen over that length of time, unless you isolate yourself. Not that one necessarily develops a deeper relationship with everyone—just that it can happen between the most unlikely candidates.
Which brings me to michelle’s point, about how enmeshed relationships, even to the point of toxicity, can really throw a wrench into the workings of an organization. I’ve never experienced personally the dynamic she described, but I have seen that, and refused to get involved in certain organizations because of the dynamic she described—where the work being done revolved around a little fiefdom to the detriment of the declared work of the organization and most of the other people in it.
I think it’s necessary to have above-the-board ground rules on ccommunication, transparency and structure in order to mitigate those tendencies—because in any organization, certain people will be the indispensable worker bees and some others will gravitate towards the…power positions; the ones that get more visibility and authority.
So, when bfp talks about accountability and ground rules and laying it all out from the beginning—that makes perfect sense to me. We don’t all have the same ways of communicating. Misunderstandings will develop. Hell, I find it so damn hard to communicate on the printed page! That’s why I hang back so much in the blogosphere—in my Local, I’m thought of as kinda being “Encyclopedia Brown” ‘cuz I read a lot, use a lot of $10 words, and can do some on-paper wordsmithing at times. Inside, it’s really difficult. I rely on a helluva lot of nonverbal and semi-verbal communication to get my point across. Add in the various nuances that we invariably bring to any conversation, and damn! it’s tough.
I also hesitate to get involved in these conversations because I’m a trade unionist, and that’s seen as more establishment, not radical. I reject that, because I’m Old School with my unionism. I think people really underestimate the effect of the Palmer Raids and such on the development of unionism in the U.S. There’s a lot of fuck-up-ed-ness in what passes for the labor movement in the U.S.
But one of the things I think we do right is having structures that limit the effect of personal relationships. Of course, how operative that is in any individual union or Local is directly related to how democratic it is, how power is shared and transferred, and how diverse the group of people within the power structures of the union or Local is. But having rules for communication, having a chain of command/responsibility that everyone understands, having elections, having to negotiate different jurisdictions of work within the same Local—all of that serves to help keep a ground floor that people can work with (at least, I feel that way about my Local. I’m well aware that not every Local functions that way.)
Whew! It’s about time for me to shut up now! But I have to say something about this:
and if your organizing doesnt center care-taking then i wonder what the fuck are you organizing for?
because I agree with it, and disagree with it at the same time. I feel that the most unions (including mine) give a lot of lip-service to care-taking, and sometimes even do some of it well (such as taking up collections or donating money to members or others in need). But. As a mother (and a single mother at that—as in, no co-parent. My daughter’s father is dead, and before that he was in-and-out of jail for meth. He became addicted while she was still in the NICU. I feel the pressure of trying to find that balance because I don’t have a safety net when it comes to time commitments), I have been profoundly disappointed by the gulf between lip-service to family and resistance to accommodating members with families when it comes to union work.
So why do it? Because I don’t want it to be that way. Not for me, not for anyone else. For me, working within a (sometimes) hidebound institution is making a difference in how that institution evolves. My presence and participation can change that institution. Probably by increments, but change is always slow at first. It isn’t easy for me, and I get bitter, angry, resentful, etc. It almost feels….well—no, let’s just say it does feel, like a physical pressure. A weight. I feel the fight not metaphorically, but actually in my body and mind. I worry about that. I think that type of thing contributed heavily to my mother’s breast cancer (and I’m almost the age she was when she was first diagnosed, so there’s that).
But I can’t really do otherwise. As in, I still get a big kick out of the fight, too. I think I’m uniquely situated to be one of the change-agents (envelope-pushers? barrier-breakers?), because I’m a loner, an only child, I never have fit in anywhere I’ve been, I’ve never really had many friends so I don’t know what I’m missing by not having many now, I grew up in an abusive alcoholic home so the kind of penny-ante candy-ass bullshit that gets handed out at work or in the hall is strictly amateur class to me, I don’t really give a shit about visibility or credit as long as the work gets done (not saying everyone should feel that way!! not at all. just describing my personal attributes that I think help me out for where/when/how I’m fighting). I wouldn’t know who I was if I didn’t have the struggle.
I know I’ve helped other women in the Local, and I’m helping to change the attitudes and practices for the men, too. I’m seeing the change—-saw some of it in action at Friday’s union meeting in a really beautiful way, in fact.
I don’t begrudge anyone for saying “the hell with it” when it comes to organizations that don’t center caretaking. We all need a break sometime, or we reach our breaking point. Just trying to explain why I’m doing it. I’m not up on the cross or anything like that—I’m just one tenacious underdog who still likes the fight. There may come a time when I won’t, but I’ve got about another twenty years before retirement and I’m just getting my second (third? fourth? nth?) wind.
Peace.
March 22nd, 2009 at 7:45 am #
Btw, regarding the multitudes of organizations that are “building new worlds” as opposed to running campaigns–there are SO many of them–see Andrea Smith’s book, Conquest to start delving into them. Also, my former blog, brownfemipower.com covers a lot of them. But Andrea’s book is a much more thorough resource. Also, while there is *definitly* this type of organizing going on within the U.S.–*outside* of the U.S. is the place to really look for these “build new world” models. Particularily indigenous communities that have *literally* had to rebuild their communities from brick one.
They don’t live under the illusion that those of us in the U.S. do–that have had to deal directly face to face with “the giant”–and their communities have been literally completly wiped out. But if you look at groups like the Zapatistas, that have rebuilt devastated communities–they very specifically name *love* as their very first building brick–or dignified rage–the first manifesto began their journey of recognizing each member of their community as necessary and vital, and it’s only gotten more in depth since then.
When you are rebuilding a community, you have to build an ideology to live by. Preapproved rules that everybody agrees to live by. And by “rules” I don’t mean–don’t shit on my front lawn–but the person standing next to me is just as valuable as I am because we all came from the same place–or we all are interconnected–and I am as dependent (or *vulnerable*) on the person standing next to me as s/he is on me.
The AMC confronted this reality at the last meeting I went to. They researched existing structures of community dependence and found that one existed in nature that represented the values we all most wanted to build on. I have the pictures of the explanation–I can post them later. but it was, again–a *practical* investigation into “impractical” things, like community dependency, love, growth, self care, etc.
Ok. now, my three minutes have turned into fifty–it’s time for me to go back to bed.
but who am I kidding, I am going to post those pictures first.
March 22nd, 2009 at 8:01 am #
but second–because I think there is real fear of “love.” I think love, as maia says so beautiful, is stemmed in vulnerability
BOOM! That’s it! That’s the resistance to love—because it makes us vulnerable. And most of us have experienced the (public) brutality directed at people perceived as vulnerable, as well as the (private) attacks from those who love—or used to love—us.
So when I was writing up above about what attributes I think make me situated for being the battering ram, I sure the hell wasn’t trying to say I’m a badass. Quite the opposite, because I’m resistant to opening myself to that vulnerability. That I had to learn to make room to being open to it, at times. To learn discernment about being open, rather than continue my MO of just being hard and closed because I thought that was more effective. It wasn’t.
And I’m not “BFF” with the brother I mentioned above. I’m sure his cell phone number is around here in some notebook or another, damned if I know where. We almost never have any contact with one another outside of the hall—-we’re just there a lot. But the fact that we were once vulnerable to one another against all odds does inform our work in the union. I don’t know how. I’m still learning what it means to trust. It’s not easy for me. But I think knowing that capacity is there—it affects my dealings with other people now; knowing that vulnerability can mean something more than pain.
March 24th, 2009 at 3:41 am #
Okay, so this is my rather weak contribution to this conversation, which I’ve been following and feeling unable to respond to, but a friend sent me this link a moment ago and I feel like it’s directly relevant to so many of the points y’all have brought up, and maybe it’s one of those funny coincidences that I’m supposed to share.
March 24th, 2009 at 6:47 am #
Thanks for that link, Mandy! I’m going to go read that now. (Hooks’s writing on love has certainly been in the influencing subtext of a lot of the writing here, I think.)
March 24th, 2009 at 12:00 pm #
I cannot read through all of these comments, I wish I could.
But I did read a few and the post.
Thanks Jessica…so much here to ponder on. It’s amazing.
I’m ruminating on all of this. I especially have something to say about relationships, love, being a mama myself and this productive/scarcity mentality, working in a non-profit, and paying the bills.
I also wish I could write you a more substantive comment, I’m at work and resisting to be online to read everything that there is to read. how much does blogging contribute to this as well?? know what I’m saying.
It’s complex, we have no blueprint, outside and within non-profits here in the US. Cost of living is high, isolating communities, mental health, god how do we get there?? how do we measure sustainability?? how do we measure accountability? how do we measure without the scarcity mentality?? I just have more questions..
March 24th, 2009 at 12:25 pm #
Fabi,
Thanks for this. I look forward to thinking and feeling through lots of these amazing questions with you …
Love,
Jess
March 28th, 2009 at 6:21 pm #
I’ve found this to be a good jumping off point to think about the role of non-profit’s co-option of social justice. I particularly like how the writer never lets the fact that we need to be held accountable to the members of society that are valued least slip from view.