We’ve all heard toxic, disempowering, dream-stomping clichés like
“You can’t fight City Hall”
“We’ve always done it this other way”
“That’s impossible”
“You’ll always be a failure”
“We call B.S.!”
That’s the appropriate response, made famous by X Gonzales, at the time an 18-year-old survivor of the mass murder at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida just three days earlier. That same year, they co-organized (and spoke at) a huge national march on Washington and helped to shepherd through the first meaningful gun safety law in gun-loving Florida in this century.
And we all have to “call B.S.” when anyone tries to destroy our self-esteem, our calling, and our power.
18-year-old X Gonzales (center) gives the “Call B.S.” speech in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, February 17, 2018. Photo by Barry Stock, via Wikipedia.
Like Gonzales, we must embrace our ability to make change and join with others, nonviolently, to achieve that change.
For some, including me, becoming an activist is a way to do that. For others, the path takes different forms, such as being a parent or teacher or health care professional—or, for that matter, an accountant, manufacturer, or prison administrator—and carrying out those duties in ways that build up others, help them achieve those dreams, and help THEM build up others—to build a community, and a planet, based on the worth of every individual. Because to focus only on building yourself up is narcissism, even sociopathic.
This post was inspired by a private note admiring my activism but saying the writer got too depressed to do this kind of work. Here’s s my response, exactly as I wrote it, except I broke it up into more paragraphs and added more specific locations:
I’m sure you make the world better in other ways. Not everyone is cut out to be an activist–it’s a path where 90 percent or more of your efforts seem to be for naught (though often, change IS happening but not visible in the moment).
Because I focus on the positive, I’m able to find the strength to continue. I keep in mind that when I was born in December, 1956, half of the US was still officially segregated and racism still ruled most of the rest. Women and people of color had very few career opportunities. White women were mostly teachers and nurses while people of color were channeled into laborer, domestic, sanitation worker.
Male-on-female domestic violence and casual sexual harassment were considered normal and acceptable. People were still getting fired or even imprisoned for being in a same-sex or interracial relationship. There was close to zero awareness of pollution, climate change and making our ecosystems more resilient. Decent food was very difficult to find. And the last well-known nonviolent revolution had been in India almost a decade earlier.
Except that OFFICIAL segregation had ended, most of that was still true on October 15, 1969, when one casual comment within a speech at the first Vietnam peace demonstration I ever attended set me on a lifetime path of activism. Yet, in 53 years–a nanosecond in geologic time or even in human history–all of that has shifted. So things ARE getting better because of activism.
The other thing that keeps me going is the knowledge that MY OWN ACTIONS have made a difference several times.
Here are my top three: 1) I founded Save the Mountain, the group that kept a particularly offensive luxury housing development off the Mount Holyoke Range [Hadley and South Hadley, Massachusetts, USA] a mile and a half from my house. Even experts within the environmental movement locally had given up hope. I went in with the attitude that we would win–but even I thought it would take us five years. We did it in just 13 months–because all of us worked on different pieces where we had expertise, and because we had mass support from area residents.
2) I was one of the 1414 people arrested on the construction site of the Seabrook [New Hampshire, USA] nuclear power plant in 1977. By the time the last of us was released two weeks later, a national safe energy movement had been born, most of it adopting the nonviolent resistance techniques and consensus decision making that we used in Clamshell Alliance here in New England. Here’s a link to an article I wrote about the lasting shifts in the culture that movement created: https://greenandprofitable.com/40-years-ago-today-we-changed-the-world-part-4-shifts-in-the-culture/. And while we ultimately lost the battle to keep Seabrook from being built, we basically put a halt to the development of new nukes (unfortunately, we have to fight that battle again–but keeping these unsafe and unnecessary monsters off the drawing boards and out of the power grids for nearly 40 years is a pretty good outcome. And this time, I have great confidence that we will win.)
3) My work in local electoral politics [Hampshire County, Massachusetts] has helped to bring about a lasting progressive majority and a series of four progressive mayors in a row in Northampton, and this April took back the Hadley Select Board again after losing to a Trumpian majority in 2021 when we couldn’t find anyone willing to run. I think we’ve taken control of the board three times. Two for sure.
Again, I recognize that my path of activism isn’t for everyone. Neither is my parallel path of working within the business community to spread the message that solving our biggest problems, like hunger, poverty, racism, othering, and even catastrophic climate change and war, can be a profit path for business.
But each and every one of us can find our personal way to make a difference, to brighten the light for all of us, and to help bring into being the planet we want to pass on to subsequent generations.
If this post inspires you, please post a comment about what you’re already doing, or what you will start doing.
It’s easy to get discouraged when we look around and see all the problems. But it’s also crucial to see our progress and celebrate our victories. The massive outpouring following the murder of George Floyd is one recent example of a people’s movement that made change. His murderer, a white cop who would have been expected to get off, was convicted, and many communities have been grappling with the role of police.
Nonviolent peace demonstration in Britain
I am 65 years old and have been an activist for 52 years. In my short time, I’ve seen people’s movements achieve many victories for human rights, for the planet, and for ending poverty. Yes, the pace is too slow. But yes, the wheels of positive change are turning. When I was a child, segregation was still the law in the American South and in openly racist apartheid regimes like South Africa and Rhodesia. If women worked, it was mostly as teachers, nurses, and domestic. Lesbians and gays were completely marginalized and ridiculed–and bisexual or trans people were invisible. People with disabilities were often warehoused in horrible institutions. Agriculture was so focused on overprocessed foods with the nutrition stripped out and chemicals put in. Most people had never even heard about the environment and concern around climate change was almost unknown–while factories spewed toxins into the air and water. The UN Sustainable Development Goals would not be written for decades. Nuclear power and fossil fuels were all that people thought about for energy, and no attempt was made to conserve or recycle.
WE, THE PEOPLE, CHANGED ALL THAT! And we can do it again and again. We may not live to see the change we want, but we CAN make a difference when we work together for change. If future generations have better conditions because of our efforts, our work is not for naught–just as the work of people in the 1980s, 1970s, 1960s, 1950s, and all the way back for centuries made things better for us.
Knowing that moving the business world is crucial to leverage change, I’ve focused much of my career as a writer, speaker, and consultant on showing that when business chooses to operate in ways that make a difference for such issues as hunger, poverty, racism/othering, democracy, war, and catastrophic climate change (to name a few), they can succeed financially as well. I’ve set up a website at https://GoingBeyondSustainability.com to provide resources for that transition.
On the activist side, I’ve been involved with many causes over the years, and have had a few victories, including starting the movement that saved a mountain threatened by a disgusting real estate development. Because we always had the mindset that we would win, we did, and it was quick–just 13 months. My current main cause is immigration justice–but all the issues are related and we have to seem them holistically.
George Lakey, activist and author (most recent book: Viking Economics)
George has been a hero and mentor of mine ever since I first heard him speak around 1977. His presence at Movement for a New Society’s Philadelphia Life Center was a big part of why I moved to that community for a nine-month training program in nonviolent action, back in 1980-81.
He argues that this is our moment to break out of reactive protests and into big sweeping social and environmental demands. He notes that the LGBT movement was one of the only progressive movements to gain traction under Reagan—because its agenda was so much bigger than just fighting cutbacks. Twenty and thirty years earlier, the Civil Rights movement accomplished sweeping social change as well.
So instead of defending the weak centrist gains of the past 30 years, we go beyond and organize for our wider goals. We refuse to play defense against DT’s shenanigans and instead take the role of pushing for a new, kinder, people- and planet-centered normal. With direct-action campaigns that link multiple issues, such as Standing Rock, and with alternative institutions like the Movement for Black Lives, we create a nonviolent invasion of deep social change (this is my metaphor, not George’s).
In short, we think bigger—and act bigger. and instead of crawling to the politicians, we force them to court us as they see us come into our true power.
The Republican attack on what George calls the “medical industrial complex-friendly Affordable Care Act” (a/k/a Obamacare) is a chance to bypass the witheringly bureaucratic and unfair insurance system and push for real single-payer, Medicare-for-All plan of the sort that’s worked so well in Scandinavia (he explores the Scandinavian social safety net in his latest book, Viking Economics)
The Standing Rock Water Protectors have linked multiple issues into a coherent whole: clean water, the environment generally, the rights of indigenous people (among others)
Movements around creating a meaningful safety net, such as the $15 per hour minimum wage, can reach disaffected white working class voters as well as people of color; when those who voted for DT on economic grounds realize he has betrayed them, we can win them over (I would add that this will only work if we have mechanisms in place to defuse the racism and nativism that DT used to attract them, and have meaningful ways to integrate the lesson that all colors, races, and religions can be allies to each other and are stronger together—and Lakey does point out that the United Auto Workers has been successful organizing on these unifying principles)
I could add a lot to George’s list. As one among many suggestions, let’s push to not only end all subsidies to the fossil and nuclear industries but let’s push for a complete transition to clean, renewable energy—whether or not we get any help from the government.
Read his essay. Come back the next day and read it again. Then share it with friends, social media communities, and colleagues and discuss how you personally and your group of individuals with shared positive purpose can make these changes happen.
*Why did I replace DT’s last name with stars? And why do I call him DT rather than by his name? Because I am doing my best not to give him any search engine juice. I don’t want him showing up as “trending” or driving traffic to him.
