by bfp
So the past few months have been life changing for me. And I’ve realized something: I don’t think I can ever do “normal organizing” ever again. Not out of bitterness or frustration or anger or spite.
But because I am in the best place I have ever been in my life.
——
What is accountability?
It is the question I’ve been struggling with for months. Basically since the nola clinic thread.
And because I am at a point in my life where I feel really secure about asking questions of myself that may not have answers, I let that question come into my life “what is accountability?” and I’ve spent a *lot* of time working through it.
Over and over and over again, as I worked through this question, I kept coming back to several facts.
Accountability is not something that is done alone. I am not accountable to Mary Jane while she can do whatever she wants. And vise versa.
Accountability happens in organizing communities–but organizing communities often exist outside of the communities they are organizing around and with. Which creates the effect that individuals are accountable to people within a chapter of an organization–but can go months without talking to their closest friend–because there isn’t the time.
The closest friend is supposed to understand that. The organizer has got more important stuff going on. Saving the world.
but…
Do you know how much easier it is to ‘be accountable’ to somebody who excepts you to show up to their meetings or attend a rally or get a specific job done than it is to be ‘be accountable’ to a partner that expected you to do the dishes when you got home or kids that only know how to say how much they miss you by screaming at the top of their lungs and hitting their sibling?
—-
Do you know how many organizers I know who are incredible amazing 100% on the ball never make mistakes organizers–who are always the calming presence and everything a group needs to feel hope again–and who are working on their forth partnership? Or haven’t talked to their best friend in years? Or whose kids won’t talk to them? Or don’t know anybody outside of the organizing community? etc?
Is there anything wrong with being partnered four times? No. Is there something wrong with not talking to your best friend? No. Is this an attempt on bfp’s part to be guilt provoking and shaming? No. Is this an attempt on bfp’s part to say that maybe the Concerned Women For America have a point? Noooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!
Rather instead–something I have learned is that “accountability” within organizing communities has really low stakes. Such low stakes, that it isn’t really even stakes at all. That organizing is a “job” to far too many people (and it’s *encouraged* to be a job by both 501c3′s and radical organizers alike–under the idea that organizing is so often underpaid, under recognized, under appreciated, etc and a way of bringing recognition to the work of organizing is by treating it as a “job”)–but in pushing organizing to be a job–the byproduct is often that a sense of distance works its way into the work. You don’t have to get too close to people, you can schedule people into your day rather than being inconvenienced by their immediate needs, you can “be too busy” for messy irritating family events…
And I don’t want people to feel guilty here–so I will admit–every single one of those things? I have done. The only reason I recognize what is going on so well is because I myself have done every single one of those things.
And as I have been focusing so much on my health for the last year, I started to realize, not only have I used organizing as a way to avoid my personal relationships–but one of those personal relationships has been with myself.
—
How often have I sat in this chair, and refused to listen to my body talking to me?
Aching hips.
Aching hips.
Hello, hello can you hear me?
Aching aching aching hips.
Sore knees, sore knees, please don’t cross us please don’t cross us SORE KNEES…
back
throb
back
throb
back
throb
throb
Just one more minute, I said! Just one more minute!
—-
Why do I hold “accountability to community” so high, when I’m not even accountable to myself? When I don’t even know *how* to be accountable to myself?
—-
I don’t think I can ever do “normal” organizing ever again–because for the first time in my life, I have courage. Not steady courage, not fierce courage, not unwavering courage–It is courage that with just the right wind, could be blow into pieces.
The courage of commitment. The courage to say–for the first time in my life–as long as you want me here, I am never going to leave. I will stay no matter how frightened I am of your love, no matter how strangled I feel, no matter how scared I am. I am committed, and I will sit with those feelings and work through them–maybe by myself, maybe with you. But I will work through them.
Because I love you.
Just as you are.
—
But the thing I have discovered, you can’t say these words to everybody. You don’t have the energy to do that. And the reason why I (and I think many women in general) are so scared shitless or so burned out is because they aren’t in a place or have never had a place where they could decide on their own in their own way who they want to be committed to and how.
They haven’t had the space or the right to decide the “terms.” And they’ve had the terms forcibly, violently and horribly imposed on them.
So they NEED that space, that distance that “normal organizing” provides. And in the best of circumstances, that type of organizing can provide a way to learn to trust in courage. To trust commitment.
—-
For me, that type of organizing was beneficial–but also helped me to continue the distance I had created between my own body. Paradoxically, it also pushed me toward remembering and reintroducing myself to my own body–my body eventually screamed so loud (louder than my kids!!!) that I couldn’t ignore it like I could’ve if I had a steady low burner sort of job. And so I stopped ignoring myself and said hello.
And breathed deep the smell of courage.
—-
Creating a community where my kids are safe (by creating community with tias and saying hello to my body and remembering what my best friend’s phone number is) is more important and more radical to me than sitting in a room for hours at a time talking about “where are we going to get the money.”
I say that not to disparage the sitting in the room folks. Because god only knows that I have used the services that they have provided me more often than not. I only recently have I even considered–who are they ignoring so that they can organize entire communities against violence? What sacrifices are they making so that I could rest and change my life? And it makes me so incredibly fucking horribly sad that in ‘normal organizing’ you have to fight so hard to get the time to be accountable to yourself–that you literally have to forget the needs of others so that you can take care of your own.
I am saying it instead to note–there is honor, there is radicalness, there is accountability, there is love and community and organizing–by nurturing courage.
By nurturing the courage to finally stand up and say hello to your aching body.
And that nurturing can happen in the organizing rooms of your local chapter–or it can happen in your parents back yard. And some day if we’re lucky, it’ll happen in both places.
- Share
August 14th, 2009 at 7:51 am #
This post calls to mind how I feel about microactivism. You see, I feel that everyone should do what they can and not extend themselves one bit more. There is this tendency to believe that we must submit ourselves entirely and yet the cost to different bodies is never factored in. We know that the cost to the world is high, but what about the individual? I think part of the problem is what we perceive organizing or radical work to be. Why can it not be as simple as donating a book to the local library on gay families that they would otherwise not have purchased (note: something I have done), or refusing to purchase something we know to be made from slave labour. I believe we privilege a certain form of organizing because the world is designed for able bodies.
August 14th, 2009 at 8:23 am #
this post really resonates with me. i’m not an organizer, but i am just moving into a place where i decide to whom i want to be committed, and how, and it’s so liberating, and so, so scary at the same time. newly realizing that i don’t “owe” someone my thoughts, presence, support, patience in the face of their willfull ignorance just becasue they “love” me. i’m also moving into a place where i’m trying to develop a relationship with my body that is not exploitative or abusive, but where i listen to it, respect what it tells me, and use that information in my caretaking decision about my body. also incredibly fucking hard.
life brought me to the realization this had to happen; as i was trying to figure out if it was possible, and how to do it, i had also just discovered the feminist blogosphere, and more importantly, your blog, renee’s blog, lisa’s blog, blackamazon, sooooo many others. seeing so many amazing, powerful, real women discourse around these issues that i’d been dealing with mostly alone was so, so restorative.
thanks.
August 14th, 2009 at 9:45 am #
i am not an organizer, but the idea of listening to your body and the courage that comes from that really resonates with me.
August 14th, 2009 at 11:53 am #
Really good comment renee, and a powerful one in terms of what do we percieve to be “organizing”–but I think I disagree with you about “why can’t organizing be a purchase or donating a book”–the reason being that to stop systematic violence, you need to 1. dismantle the system and/or 2. replace the system. And individualized actions will not do either of those things. Well, individual action may dismantle a system–or maybe more appropriatly, *dishevel* a system–(aka castro taking over cuba), but it can’t *replace* a system–not one that will be acceptable and agreeable “to the people/masses.” And I think that’s a GOOD thing that an individual can’t replace the system–i won’t want a system set up where only one person got to decide what was what, you know?
So, anyway–you need to have mass critical action in order to undo/replace a system–and for me,I think you can have mass action by people doing things like committing purposefully and intentionally to each other. I mean, how many people don’t have any idea who their neighbors are, or only know them well enough to say “hey” in passing? What would happen if we DID know our neighbors on a first name basis? Such that we said, no matter what happens, I am always going to be here for you? Because I know you will always be here for me? and by “being here” I don’t mean to imply “I will always love you”–I mean–if your car breaks down, we’ll figure something out together, if Jimmy beats me, we’ll figure somethig out together.”
How many people don’t call the police on an abusive neighbor because “it’s not my place”–and yet at the same time, they don’t know the abuser or the victim well enough to help out without calling the police? To me, right now, my answers lay in joining a mass base of people who are through not listening to their bodies. Because capitalism has insisted that people become disconnected from their bodies. That people put their bodies into their work–so that, like Marx said, others can *literally* consume workers bodies. We are cutting off energy in our bodies–and just handing that energy over to “boss” or “corporation” to do with as they please. and none of us can understand why everything hurts all the time. And why we’re addicted to so many things as a well to self-medicate the pain.
So my question is not so much, why can’t I just donate a book–but more–why can’t we see how hugely fucking radical it is to listen to our bodies? WHen we’ve literally been trained for decades–for centuries for some of us–to ignore everything our body says and pick that last cotton ball or that last tabacco leaf or….
And if millions of us start listening to our bodies and saying–I’m not doing that because that doesn’t FEEL GOOD–that FUCKING HURTs, in fact–what would happen?
I don’t know–but sure would LIKE to know. And I want to know what would happen if we learn how to recognize the people that we can commit to–and learn how to connect to them. I want to know what would happen if we all know the name of every last person in our apt building or our neighborhood–and we were all up in each others businness–and the entire neighborhood knew that Jimmy was beating his kids again.
I guess I’m saying, how can what so many of us are already doing in our lives–raising kids, walking in the neighborhood, cooking dinner, etc etc etc–be mobilized into a massive grassroots critical mass action?
August 16th, 2009 at 9:05 am #
yes. yes. and yes!
August 16th, 2009 at 2:49 pm #
But the point is that by listening to our bodies and not pushing ourselves we have to re-evaluate what we see as activism. Instead of it being attending a protest, I suggest that it become a series of small daily acts that respect the limitations of the person while still promoting political beliefs. I think that we have an all or nothing approach when it comes to activism which leads to individuals either burning out or some not attempting at all. That is why I see is if the best that you can do is buy a book then that needs to be understood as a radical act. If we all act simultaneously in small ways on a daily basis there is I believe the potential to disturb that which we have normalized.
August 18th, 2009 at 1:18 pm #
As I move into a period of my life where I will need to put theory and ideas into practice in new ways (and omg how that scares the shit out of me), where I need to find “a job”, this post will always be in the back of my head, I think, prodding me to be conscious of the choices I’m making and who I am listening to and what compromises are being asked of me. So thank you, yet again, bfp.
August 19th, 2009 at 10:28 am #
Right, totally. The only thing that I want to be careful of is that lots of times, people use this “why does it always have to be something big?” logic to do individual actions like–not shop at wal*mart. WHich–I don’t have a problem with–but it doesn’t *mean* anything if the rest of the people in your community are ALSO not shopping at wal*mart and they are aware of WHY they are not shopping at wal*mart and WAL*MART knows why the entire community is not shopping there, you see what I mean?
I agree totally 100% with you that small daily acts that respect limitations and promoting beliefs is 100% awesome–and I also agree that we have an all or nothing approach–I’m just saying take it one step further–and make it so that there is a base of power–a grassroots organizing effort–of millions of people doing small daily acts! You see?