Category: People Helping People

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Democracy, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Ethics in Government, Ethics-International, People Helping People, Politics, poverty, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , ,

A remarkable document came out of the G7 summit. It’s a blueprint for creating a just, fair, and environmentally viable world. Leaders of the world’s most powerful industrial economies are coming together in unity and releasing a document that I agree with almost all of. Among other things, the G7 Charlevoix  Declaration:

  • Affirms the rights of minorities (including indigenous people) and women
  • Positively addresses the conflict between Israel and Palestine, tension around Korea and Iran, Russian power grabs, and even the misery inflicted by Daesh (a/k/a the Islamic State)
  • Calls for worker protections
  • Promotes sustainable and democratic health care, economic growth, and even tax structures that benefit all
  • Has strong language urging protection of the earth and its resources

Really, the only place where I have concerns is in the endorsement of “WTO-consistent” trade policies. My understanding is that some of the World Trade Organization’s policies abrogate citizens’ and countries’ rights, including the right to enforce strict environmental and labor laws, allowing companies to sue if they find these laws burdensome. However, the citation above is almost 20 years old, and more recent documents from the WTO itself deny that claim.

With nearly 50 years as an activist, I find it utterly amazing that the “Leaders of the Free World” can agree on a document of such scope. We could actually call it revolutionary. The leaders of nations–and, in other forums, many leaders of major corporations–are agreeing to a manifesto of people’s and planetary rights. I’m not really used to having them on my side.

This photo released by the German government sums up the US president's attitude.
This photo released by the German government sums up the US president’s attitude.

And of course, the fly in the ointment was the disgraceful behavior of the “world leader” who happens to be in charge of my own country right now. The barrage of in-person pouts and Twitter nastygrams including repudiating the statement he signed make me embarrassed once again that this cruel, mean-spirited, and incompetent person supposedly represents me. Sigh!

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Customer Service as Marketing, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, Innovation, People Helping People, privacy, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , ,

I started answering this question on Quora but ran out of room.

First, it does make a difference. Little things add up.

For instance, where I live in the northeastern US, many people turn the water on full blast and leave it running the whole time they’re brushing their teeth. So in many of my speeches and interviews I talk about a way to brush your teeth that uses teaspoons instead of gallons: turn the water on a trickle, wet the toothbrush, then turn the water off until you’re ready to rinse with another trickle. Let’s say that this saves even just one gallon of water each time.

Child brushing teeth (FreeImages.com)
Child brushing teeth (FreeImages.com)
If someone hears my message and lives for another 40 years and brushes twice a day without squandering that huge amount of water each time, that one person has saved 29,200 gallons. Now, if I can influence just 50 people a month and I talk about this for the next 19 years until I’m 80, that means a total of 332,880,000 gallons saved. And if just one person in each of those 50 goes on to influence just ten of their friends, the total savings become astronomical.
More and more places around the world are discovering that water is extremely precious, so eventually this will become the common best practice for brushing teeth.
And this is only one of hundreds of easy lifestyle changes we can make. Click here to see how to get your hands on 111 of them.
Second, it changes the way you look at the world. You start looking holistically, seeing connections among things that appeared random and unconnected to you before. Who knows—maybe you’ll be the person to make the next big scientific breakthrough in sustainability because of that shift in your thinking ;-).
Third, it changes the way you feel. You see yourself as someone who can make a difference in some small ways that add up to big ways. Guess what: Ordinary people can change the world–but only with a mindset that their actions make a difference. What’s more ordinary than a seamstress? Think about a seamstress named Rosa Parks. How about a high school student? Just in the last few weeks, a group of them in Parkland, Florida sparked a new national movement and managed to get a few restrictions on guns passed into law in Florida after decades of failures on this issue, less than one month after 17 of their schoolmates were murdered in a school shooting. What about an electrician working in a shipyard? That would be Lech Walesa, who led the movement to kick the Russians out of Poland and became its president. I personally started a movement that saved a local mountain.
I’ve been speaking and writing about this for several years. If you’d like to know more, check out my award-winning book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (endorsed by Seth Godin, Jack Canfield, and many others) and my 15-minute TEDx talk, “Impossible is a Dare!” (click on “event videos”).
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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Business-general, Consumer Issues, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Entrepreneurship, Ethics in Government, General Commentary, Innovation, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, People Helping People, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice, Technology, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Under the guise of protecting small business from frivolous lawsuits, the House of Representatives just gutted the Americans With Disabilities Act—a major piece of civil rights legislation signed by George H.W. Bush. I have to say, I’m on a LOT of small business discussion boards, and I haven’t heard any business owners screaming about hardship. Small businesses in pre-ADA buildings are exempt unless they do major renovations.

Kangaroo electric wheelchair car—One way to rethink transportation for wheelchair users
One way to rethink transportation for wheelchair users

It’s up to us to make sure the Senate doesn’t follow along. Contact your Senators and let them know this is a vote where you will hold them accountable. And if your Rep was one who voted Aye, give them a piece of your mind too.

Of course, we’ll be tempted to argue on the basis of compassion. But remember who we’re dealing with here. These people have a long history of NOT acting out of compassion, often of doing the opposite. So compassion arguments “ain’t gonna cut it.” We have to get to them on the things they will listen to: costs to taxpayers, personal hardship to them, and of course, voting and campaigning for and donating to their opponents.

For 15 years, I’ve been making the dollars-and-sense business case for going green and building social entrepreneurship into business, which means I have some experience discussing issues with people who are predisposed to oppose my position. So let me offer some talking points I think they’ll actually listen to:

  1. Don’t Waste My Tax Dollars: How dare you make it harder for productive citizens to work, just because they have disabilities. If you think I want my tax dollars squandered on welfare payments to people who could have had a job until you made it impossible to get to work, you’d better think again.
  2. Don’t Hurt the Economy by Hurting Disabled People: For new construction, it’s really easy to design in ADA compliance from the ground up. By allowing builders to take shortcuts because you took away the teeth of this legislation, you’re encouraging them to stop designing in ramps and wider doorways, setting aside parking, making elevators disabled-friendly, etc have you noticed how many people with disabilities who in pre-ADA days had to sit home and be a burden have gone on to start job-creating companies making our economy better (like the personal-transportation vehicle for wheelchair users in the photo—designed by a wheelchair-using Texas woman)? There’s even an organization of disabled business owners that was named one of President George H.W. Bush’s 1000 Points of Light. Do you really want the blame for squashing that on your shoulders?
  3. Protect Our Veterans: Do you realize that veterans have much higher disability rates than the general population (due to war wounds), and that many have a hard time finding work and frequently start their own businesses? Thus, many of these job creators are veterans.You are hurting the people who served our country and defended our freedom.
  4. Pointless Government Meddling: The ADA has been around since 1990. Most public buildings are already accessible. This is bringing in the government to break a system that’s working just fine right now, and that has enabled millions of people to be productive members of society. And if buildings are allowed to come online without meeting current ADA code, it will be expensive to retrofit them later, when (not if) this weakening of the law is repealed.
  5. Personal Inconvenience to the Senator (this one takes a wee bit of research): I noticed that [name a family member of theirs with a disability] uses a wheelchair [cane, walker, seeing-eye dog, whatever]. Do you really want to be called away from important Senate business every time [name]has to go to the bank? How do you think I’m going to feel as a [business owner, manager, productive employee supporting my family] if I have to leave work to help my Aunt Mary do things she could have done for herself until you put obstacles in her way? And what’s going to happen to you, 20 years from now, when you may not be able-bodied yourself?
  6. Vote No or You’ll Organize to Defeat the Senator During the Next Election: Don’t just pledge to vote for your Senator’s opponent. Say you’ll be willing to campaign and fundraise for someone who understands that disability rights are important. If you’ve voted, donated, or  volunteered for your Senator in the past, be sure to let them know.
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By Posted on Posted in Consumer Issues, language, People Helping People, Technology, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , , ,

Let’s finally bury the terms “wheelchair-bound” and “confined to a wheelchair”!

For someone whose legs don’t work or don’t work well, a wheelchair is a device of liberation, opening up many places s/he couldn’t reach otherwise. With the aid of a wheelchair, a person with walking disabilities can run errands, walk in the park, hold a job that might be otherwise unavailable…

Language, too, can be liberating, instead of restricting. How about “uses a wheelchair” or “is in a wheelchair”? The way we frame things influences how we and others perceive them—that’s the secret of marketing, of politics, of education, and of changing the world. Let’s market the idea that people with disabilities can be strong, healthy, active participants in society, not bound to the furniture.

And while we’re at it, let’s do a better job of making more things accessible to people who use wheelchairs. That means more curb cuts, wider doorways, and wider bathrooms. It means rethinking transportation of people with disabilities,

Kangaroo electric wheelchair car—One way to rethink transportation for wheelchair users
One way to rethink transportation for wheelchair users

changing the ways we wait in lines, and of course, how we design wheelchairs. It means thinking about the field of vision of someone whose head is several feet lower than a standing male adult.

And also it means being much more accurate in our descriptions of just about everything. Example: If you run a restaurant and the bathroom is a 24-inch-wide sliver of space on the main floor with barely enough room for a standing human to turn around—or worse, down a steep flight of steps and a narrow hallway in the basement—don’t describe your restaurant as wheelchair-accessible, even if the front door is barrier-free.

Fix things so your place of business really IS accessible. As Boomers age and our bodies get less reliable, this makes good business sense, because more of your customers will continue to be able to visit your business.

Note: I am able-bodied. I wrote this in response to seeing a “wheelchair-bound” comment from a marketing friend in his late 50s. My views on this have been shaped by:

  1. My experience in my early 20s as a paid organizer for an elder’s rights organization
  2. Seeing the incredible things that people with disabilities have been able to accomplish when society accepts them as people who can contribute and doesn’t treat them as a burden—and noticing how much more that was in evidence after physical barriers began, slowly, to be eliminated once  the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 took effect.
  3. Hosting a meeting and discovering that someone who wanted to attend couldn’t come because I lived at the time in a second-floor walk-up
  4. 6 years in my 30s and 40s as an official city-appointed member of the Northampton, Massachusetts Commission on Disability, dealing with such issues as how local theaters could provide access to people with mobility impairments
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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Corporate Social Responsibility, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Green Business, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, Innovation, People Helping People, Politics, Social and Economic Justice, Socially Responsible Investing, Technology Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Seize the opportunity!

Tragic as it is, the wipeout of Puerto Rico’s fossil-based infrastructure via Hurricane Maria creates a powerful opportunity to do it right the second time. With its vast solar and wind resources, why not make this sunny, breezy island the pilot project to develop 100% renewability in buildings for a populous island—using microgrids to build in resiliency, so if part of the system goes down, the rest still delivers power?

A storm-damaged pier. Courtesy freeimages.com
A storm-damaged pier. Courtesy freeimages.com

There’s already at least one island country we’ve all heard of that is near-100% renewable if you don’t count vehicles: Iceland (hydro and geothermal). Solar/electric entrepreneur Elon Musk has already converted several tiny, obscure islands, like Ta’u in American Samoa, and he says he can scale up to serve the 3,670,243 Puerto Ricans.

Of course, converting PR to renewables requires the re-invention of funding. We need mechanisms that allow a bankrupt country (technically part of the US) to front-load a huge infrastructure and then repay out of savings even when many pressing needs will be competing for those funds. The private sector won’t step up if they don’t have complete confidence that they’ll get paid back. Eco-economists, this is your moment!

But also, justice demands that a big chunk of financing come from outright grants, from the US government and various foundations and disaster relief agencies—just is occurred in storm recovery after other superstorms like Katrina, Rita, Sandy, and Irene. Even the heartless occupant of the White House, possibly the least compassionate and least competent man ever to hold that office, must not be allowed to marginalize Puerto Rico just because the population is Latina/Latino and the language is Spanish.

And wouldn’t it be cool if someone (Elon Musk perhaps?) stepped forward to fund a switch of the vehicle fleet to non-carbon-emitting sources? If the island had solar on every sunny room, it would be easy enough to supply the vehicles as well.

In some ways, converting the entire island to clean, renewable, resilient energy would actually make rebuilding cheaper and easier. Fossil fuel infrastructure is expensive, complex, and subject to environmental catastrophe. But if the money that would have gone to build tanker ports and refineries went to establishing on-island solar panel factories and training installers and to bringing in the raw materials to make millions of high-efficiency panels to deploy in every neighborhood in the Commonwealth, it’s doable.

I’m not the only and certainly not the first to say this. In addition to Musk, Time Magazine, Renewable Energy World, safe energy activist/author Harvey Wasserman, the deep-story news outlet Democracy Now, to name a few, have all said this is possible and desirable.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, People Helping People, Politics, poverty, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

My heart goes out to all those impacted by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, the flooding in Bangladesh and other parts of Asia (not much in the US news but also very severe), or the out-of-control fires in the American West (a friend in Oregon told me, “the whole state is on fire. I can’t go out of my house because of the smoke.”

Every bit of research I’ve seen concludes that all these catastrophes are far worse than they would have been without human intervention. Humans have raised the temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico through our industry, agriculture, and architecture, and those warmer waters vastly increased the severity of the storms. And because of numerous social choices over decades if not centuries, disaster impacts tend to fall most heavily on those who can least afford it.

Storm Flooding. Photo by Gabriel Bulla, freeimages.com
Storm Flooding. Photo by Gabriel Bulla, freeimages.com

This pattern has been increasing dramatically since at least 2005, starting with the Asian typhoon and continuing through Katrina and Rita, Irene and Sandy, and now Harvey and Irma. Humans have built flood-vulnerable buildings in low-lying places where flooding, sooner or later, is inevitable. So not only are the storms more severe measuring just their force, but they impact the human-built landscape where that humanscape ignores nature’s principles.

To think of it another way, the planet is fighting back against the human assault. The planet doesn’t really care about humans as a species, or even individual ecosystems. The planet just wants to survive, and it acts to protect the “macro-ecosystem”: the planet as a whole. It has already survived extinctions of millions of species, including some that were the dominant lifeforms before earlier, non-human-caused catastrophic climate events. If humans are wiped out and cockroaches rule the earth, Earth won’t care.

But we care. We want a world whose treasured heritage and powerful promise we can pass on to many generations.

Please talk to your friends, colleagues, neighbors, and especially your legislators. Help them understand that human-caused catastrophic climate change is real, and that *there are things we can do to mitigate the impact and even reverse the terrible trends.*

We can take individual actions, from switching to organic foods and eating less meat to insulating our homes and workplaces and using LED lighting. And we can also take action as a society. With no help from the US federal government, individual cities and states can still participate in the Paris Accords (and many have). For bottom-line revenue-building and expense reducing reasons, companies can design buildings that create at least as much energy as they use, from clean renewable sources (and many have).

But still, government must have a role: in funding not just disaster relief but preventive measures such as dam inspections and humane ones such as fair labor practice enforcement (both stripped of much of their funding by the current administration). In encouraging clean energy. In understanding that foreign policy needs to factor in who uses what resources in which ways, and that domestic policy has to focus on creating jobs in industries that will remain relevant (unlike, for instance, coal and nuclear, neither of which are economically viable in the current world).

I could go on for much longer, but I’ll just say, thanks for listening, talk to your network, write letters to the editor, and contact your legislators.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Copywriting, Democracy, Diversity, Environment, Events, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Peace and War, People Helping People, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

There are hundreds more I could honor. These 10 are all people I knew personally. I chose them somewhat randomly, basically who came top of mind first. I am grateful to all of them even if the interaction was painful when it happened.

  1. My mom, whose commitment to racial justice extended to desegregating the apartment building we lived in. She was also a tester for the Urban League, making sure that when a black family was told an apartment was already rented that it was really rented—by applying to live there.

    Walking my mother, Gloria Yoshida, into her 65th-birthday surprise party, 1998
    Walking my mother, Gloria Yoshida, into her 65th-birthday surprise party, 1998
  2. The speaker I heard when I 12, at my first peace demonstration, who told me the Vietnam war was undeclared—and brought my false reality crashing down around me.
  3. The idiot who made me sit in the children’s section of a movie theater with my full-price adult ticket (also age 12) and gave me my first experience of discrimination-based injustice (for being part of a class of people). I started a boycott of that cinema that has now continued for 48 years, and thus had the first experience of recognizing that I had power to change things.
  4. Mrs. Ehrlich of the Bronx High School of Science English Department in the 1970s, who believed the lie I’d told that I had turned in an assignment. Horrified, she said she’d never lost a student paper before. I felt intense guilt and realized that my action had hurt someone innocent. I’ve done my best not to repeat that and to take responsibility for my actions even when I don’t like the consequences.
  5. My first grade teacher, Mrs. Gross of Westchester Day School in the 1960s, who recognized that I was already a good reader and sat me in the back of the room with a 4th grade geography text while she inflicted Sally-Dick-and-Jane on the rest of the class. I still love reading, still love maps, and that was probably the first time I recognized how fascinating the world is, how people lived so differently in different parts of it.
  6. The college classmate who yelled at me that I was extremely and consistently selfish. It hurt like hell at the time, but on reflection, I realized he was right. And I changed my behavior! (Years later, I went up to him at a reunion and thanked him. He didn’t even remember the incident.)
  7. Dr. Jeffrey Lant, who was the first person to help me discover you-centered, benefit-focused marketing.
  8. Dean Cycon, CEO of Dean’s Beans, who combined the strongest moral compass and the best sense of humor of any business owner I know. (I never got to meet the late Ray Anderson; he might have topped Dean in his commitment).
  9. Maggie Kuhn, founder of the Gray Panthers, who started a whole social movement after mandatory retirement forced her out of a quiet job within the Presbyterian Church.
  10. Pete Seeger, who was probably the first to show me that the arts could change people’s minds and create action for social and environmental justice.
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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Environment, People Helping People, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
In the run-up to the enormous Boston counter-rally against white racism, someone complained that nonviolence is ineffective and passive—and mentioned his desire to go out and slug a few Nazis. This provoked an extended discussion with several people participating. By the time I saw the thread, he had actually said he’d welcome the chance to get trained in nonviolent action.
That thread sparked a desire in me to do some education about the history and power of nonviolence (I wish it were taught in schools!):
First, I totally support this activist’s decision to get nonviolence training. Every person should have nonviolent conflict AND nonviolent de-escalation in their toolkit, and especially every activist.
 
Second, it’s important to understand the enormous difference between active nonviolent resistance and passivity. Nonviolent resistance has been a successful tactic for centuries, and even Forbes noted that it’s typically twice as effective as violent tactics. It’s been used to great effect by:
  • Gandhi and the struggle for Indian independence
  • Martin Luther King, Jr., and the American Civil Rights movement
  • Activists of the Arab Spring
  • The safe energy/no nukes movement in the United States, Britain, and Germany
  • The students who mass-rallied in Tiananmen Square, Beijing
  • A large majority of the South African freedom fighters who reclaimed their country, and the many Eastern European movements who reclaimed theirs

The first recorded example I’m aware of goes all the way back to the Old Testament Book of Exodus: the midwives Shifrah and Pu’ah refused to carry out the Pharaoh’s order to murder all the newborn Hebrew boys. Nothing passive about this! Those two women risked their lives to create resistance to a murderous dictator’s “ethnic cleansing” plan.

Yes, there are some who practice nonviolence in ways that do nothing more than mildly irritate the power structure. But Gene Sharp has documented something like 193 active nonviolence tactics that are actually effective in creating social change, and he was writing in the pre-Internet era. I recommend his From Dictatorship to Democracy as a very readable introduction. It talks about how to get rid of dictators, nonviolently.
 
Sharp and many others have documented effective nonviolent resistance to the most oppressive totalitarian governments, including the Nazis, Stalin’s Soviet Union, the extremely repressive British colonial government in India…
 
Third, I have personally participated (and sometimes organized) numerous effective nonviolent actions with a vast range of scope, tactics, and goals. In one case, I was the only person doing the action on Day 1, and I watched the tide turn by Day 3.
 
The single most effective of all the actions I’ve been part of was probably the Seabrook nuclear power plant construction site of 1977. The state was forced to feed and house 1414 incarcerated protestors, most of whom did “bail solidarity,” refusing to post bail and becoming an enormous financial burden on the state, which also had to pay the salaries of the National Guard reservists who guarded us in their armories. They finally released everyone after 13 days.
 
Not only did we bring both the NH government and the power company to their knees, but by the time we all got out, a national safe energy/no nukes movement had sprung up, copying our structure, tactics, and goals.
And this movement managed to essentially freeze out nuclear power as an option in the US. Richard Nixon had called for 1000 nukes in the US, but I don’t think the number ever got past 104, nearly all of which got their permits before the Seabrook occupation—and all before the Three Mile Island (TMI) accident two years later.
 
Directly and indirectly, that movement can take credit for:
1) media coverage of TMI, Chernobyl, and Fukushima accidents while earlier accidents had been ignored;
2) a national and global shift toward safe energy consciousness, leading to much wider development of solar, deep conservation, and other clean energy technologies;
3) numerous new methods of organizing that were used by other active nonviolent movements such as Occupy and Standing Rock (both of which managed to last for many months despite enormous pressure)
Nonviolent occupiers approach the construction site of the Seabrook nuclear plant, April 30, 1977. Unattributed photo found at https://josna.wordpress.com/tag/anti-nuclear-movement/
Nonviolent occupiers approach the construction site of the Seabrook nuclear plant, April 30, 1977. Unattributed photo found at https://josna.wordpress.com/tag/anti-nuclear-movement/
 
I write in more detail about some of this in part 4 of the four-part series I did this spring, reflecting on the 40th anniversary of the Seabrook action: https://greenandprofitable.com/40-years-ago-today-we-changed-the-world-part-4-shifts-in-the-culture/ (if you want to read the whole thing, Part 1 is at https://greenandprofitable.com/40-years-ago-today-we-changed-the-world-part-1/ , and each part has a link at the bottom to the next one)
 
And fourth, nonviolent resistance works better than violent resistance. If we engage in violence, we play to the strengths of the opposition. The government has highly trained military and police forces able to inflict extreme violence on us. The fascisti have less to lose in attacking a violent mob and of course the police will be far less interested in protecting us from violent attackers if we ourselves are violent. The public loses sympathy for us and supports the repression.
But if we maintain nonviolent discipline in the face of violent attacks, the public swings rapidly to our side, and some even start thinking about how they can help the resistance. They may not put their bodies on the line, but they can be powerful allies in 1000 ways, if not chased away by political purity hawks who want all or nothing and forget that they, too, evolved their commitments over time.
 
Change happens when we reach a tipping point, when these folks have enough voice that they cannot be silenced, and enough influence that mainstream populations start to support them. And as noted above, throughout history, history, far more struggles for justice have been won in this way than through physical violence.
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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Diversity, Environment, Events, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, People Helping People, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

This Facebook Live video by Brené Brown, “We need to keep talking about Charlottesville,” posted August 15, might be the best thing I’ve ever come across on how to combat oppressive language without heaping guilt and shame on the other person, building bridges instead. I’d known her name but not her work. This video made me a fan. Strongly recommended.

She has an unusual perspective: a white anti-racist raised in the South, often mistaken for black by people who hadn’t met her, on the basis of her full legal name.

Can we create a world where these girls will be judged "not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character"? Photo by Anissa Thompson, freeimages.com
Can we create a world where these girls will be judged “not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character”? Photo by Anissa Thompson, freeimages.com

I’ve been saying for many years that guilt and shame are not effective in making change (and in my work to create social change in the business world, I do my best to harness other motives, like enlightened self-interest). The example she gives of the young man confronting his father shows exactly why they don’t work. Not to confront racism or other isms, and not to protect the planet.

Brené is a better communicator than I am. As I engage in dialogue with “the other side,” I will do my best to remember her communications lessons, and those of Van Jones, whose wonderful riff on how to talk to Tea Partiers I wrote about several years ago.

For more of Brené Brown, visit her website.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, language, People Helping People, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

In the aftermath of the Charlottesville Massacre (a massacre that kills one person is still a massacre in my opinion, if deliberately intending to harm many—19 were injured by the madman’s car), an activist friend posted a cry for help. This is a piece of it:

…how can I fight this if I’m scared? And if I’m scared and it immobilizes me then who else will be able to face that fear and take action? And we must take action. We white people must take action. We must be at the forefront of this fight. With our sisters and brothers of color.

All my life I have fought for justice, for people, for equity. How do I step up to this fight with my full self and do what has to be done? How are you doing it?

Here’s what I wrote (slightly edited):

Singer, actor, activist and athlete Paul Robeson. Courtesy NY Public Library Digital Collections.
Singer, actor, activist and athlete Paul Robeson. Courtesy NY Public Library Digital Collections.
It’s OK to be scared, and then do the work anyway—that’s what courage is. I know you already know this, but maybe others reading here will take inspiration.
The times in my life when I’ve done this, and there have been several, have been among the most meaningful moments of my life. But I’m no great hero—and the times when I failed to step up and do the right but scary thing are some of my few regrets. Here are two successes and one failure that I’m thinking about in particular.
1. In 1975 and 1976, I ran the Gay Center (that’s what we called it back then) at Antioch College. I left when the semester was over and began a summer-long hitchhiking trip. A few weeks later, on July 5, 1976, I stopped by for a short visit. I still had the Gay Center key and was crashing there. During that visit, some creep threw a rock through the center’s window, wrapped in a vile hate-speech note with a swastika drawn on it. I not only went to the police [and the campus authorities], but I wrote a letter to the school paper, including the full text of the foul note, and called out the perpetrator. Nobody offered any protection [nor did I request any] and I kept sleeping there until I pushed west.
2. When the US bombed Libya in the early 1990s, I called up [local peace activist] Frances Crowe and asked her where and when the demonstration would be. She said she didn’t know of one. I said “noon at the courthouse.” I was out there by myself the first day, and the passers-by were hostile enough that I was worried for my safety. But I was back the next day with a handful of others, and the day after that with about 20 folks, and I watched the tide turn. By that third day, supporters passing by far outnumbered hostiles. I felt my actions had made a real difference.
The regrets are mostly about not having the strength to verbally interrupt oppression. I’ve gotten better at this over the years. Many of the incidents were when I was a child or teen and didn’t have the strength or the skills to do this in a positive way. But I particularly regret one incident in 1986 when I should have been able to think and act differently: I failed to interrupt a neighbor’s racist comment. We had just moved in next door and I was in his living room at that moment, getting acquainted. I let the comment go by as if I hadn’t heard it. 31 years later, I still feel shame about that.
As an activist for more than 40 years, I’ve been very lucky. I’ve really only risked my life or serious injury a dozen times or so. I’ve never had to spend time in a real jail; my one and only arrest (Seabrook, NH, 1977) was part of a movement too big for the state’s corrections system, so I spent a week in a large National Guard Armory room with 700 other comrades and we made it a school of nonviolence theory and practice.

But my greatest successes bore no personal risk. I faced no serious repercussions when I started the movement that saved our local mountain, or when I set the wheels in motion for the first nonsmokers rights regulations in the city where I was living. Nobody was going to crack a nightstick over my head while I was being paid to organize the Gray Panther chapter in Brooklyn, NY.

I realize just how privileged my place of activism has been when I think of the nonviolent warriors who fought for their rights in places like Nazi Germany, apartheid South Africa, and the American South in the 1950s and 1960s. I think of my long-dead friends and comrades Dave Dellinger and Wally Nelson, who served had time in prison for refusing to fight in World War II. I think of another dead friend, Adele Lerner, who came to the US to escape the Nazis and who was present at the Paul Robeson concert in Peekskill, New York that when the Klan attacked—and who was responsible for a lot of my political and cultural awareness in the early 1970s.She turned me on to Leadbelly (who’d been a friend of hers), Malvina Reynolds, and real cheese, to name three among many. I think of labor organizers, LGBT activists, and so many others who gave their lives so that my generation could have our freedom to protest. Their actions give me the courage to continue to work for a better world.
And I think about the power of ordinary people to step through the door that cracks open for a moment, to step into their greatness and change the world. The seamstress, Rosa Parks. The shipyard electrician, Lech Walesa. The activist serving a life sentence, Nelson Mandela. The humble priests Daniel and Philip Berrigan, who spent so many years in jail for direct action against the military. These and many other heroes put their lives on the line in a way I never had to.
Mind, I’m not beating myself up. I’ve chosen a path of “easeful activism” (as my yoga teacher might call it). I’ve found plenty of ways to be an effective agent of social change without getting beaten, killed, or thrown in jail. I haven’t found it necessary to be a martyr, but I deeply respect those who do. And I am prepared if the day comes where I am called to do as much or more. I will not allow fear of my own death to keep me from doing the right thing. I will continue to follow the path of nonviolent action for deep social change.
impact in the world? Please post your comments below.
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