Lessons on Movement Building from a Movement Kid
Suggestions on how to do it without getting in your own way
Now that I’m 35 and “old” in a lot of young people’s eyes, I am simultaneously very, very excited for the movements that young people are building and also concerned that paranoia and orthodoxy will lead young people to undercut their own movements. I was born into a movement family and spent my childhood traveling between movement spaces on two continents. Here are some things I learned growing up in the movement and in the almost 19 years since I’ve been away from home and developing independently as an organizer.
In all things
— Ask yourself what is strategic to say and do in the moment and what will work in the long run
— ask yourself what you’re for, not just what you’re against (thanks to Ayinde Jean-Baptiste for first putting this challenge to me)
— recognize that change involves sacrifice, that’s just the nature of the beast
— recognize that you will almost never be working in an ideal scenario where everyone you know/like/care about agrees but you can’t do nothing just because doing something is hard
— you can disagree and still love each other (as Son of Baldwin says)
— know that assuming the worst of everyone who tries to join you in getting work done will likely produce the worst, least useful outcomes
— know that it’s okay to be afraid but that allowing fear to run the show will never bring about the change we need
— know that total silence is rarely/never the right response to injustice. But be strategic in how you communicate, what you communicate, to whom you communicate and when.
“Your silence will not protect you.”
Audre Lorde
— recognize that when people have experience with tactics or scenarios that you don’t, listening to them is a valuable use of your time
— recognize that Movement Elders do have things to teach even though they are not always right about how those lessons should be used
— respect that movements are about working together and even when you feel vulnerable movements are still not always about centering yourself or your agenda
— remember movements can have many centers and as Kiese Laymon says, be leaderful
— definitely feel comfortable letting people who have had more social capital than you know *when* they have done something harmful, but be prepared for the possibility that they can be useful to you
— know that sometimes you will be wrong too and being vulnerable and/or marginalized in certain ways is not a magic bullet against critique/does not mean your tactical suggestions are the best ones
— be aware of the logical conclusion of treating people like emotional punching bags
— be prepared for conditions to shift and to re-evaluate your beliefs
— remember that the political spectrum is a circle (thanks to Colin Newman for first framing this for me); you can be both against capitalism and for autocracy
— be wary of being for autocracy, authoritarianism and its vanguardist cousins
— remember that there can and will be many heroes, and you won’t always know their names.
Don’t accidentally COINTELPRO yourselves by spinning out in paranoid rejection of movement building which takes hard work, a willingness to build/trust others, a willingness to be wrong, a willingness to grow, a willingness to believe that people from a range of contexts can truly be in this with you, and a willingness to believe that your concerns aren’t the only ones that matter.
Having shared what might sound to some like tough love the final message I want out there is: keep going, even when they’ve got you thinking that you can’t win. If it is not your generation, you will be a generation that keeps the movement alive so that another one can take the baton. I’m grateful to come from a community that helped set the stage for today’s incredible movements. ❤
