The Unexpected Effects of Activism
We never know who we will reach — or how.
Sometimes, when we’re lucky, we get to witness the effects of our activism; when our candidate wins an election or a piece of bad legislation gets defeated, for instance. Other times, we put our words and actions out into the world and just trust that they have some good effect. I have a tale to tell about a couple of times when I have been lucky.
I live in a smallish capital city of a Midwestern state, both solidly right wing. It has been hard finding other progressive activists here. The largest employer in town is the state government, and the state legislature has been known to bully state workers. They monitor Facebook pages looking for evidence of left-leaning political expression, and have gone so far as to cut departmental budgets to eliminate positions in retaliation. So state workers cannot risk public activism, and neither can the self-employed, for it is the community at large that polices them.
Since I am retired and without family to worry about, I am free to express myself without concern for consequences. I have demonstrated in small groups of three to five people, with only one other person, and — plenty of times — alone. In some of these circumstances, we (or I) have been surrounded by an angry, shouting mob, and have had the police called on us multiple times for no reason. I have been thrown out of the Independence Day Parade and called out by name in the letters to the local newspaper. When I recall how timid I was as a young adult, I have a good chuckle, because none of that bothers me now. It does, however, make it hard to recruit a crew!
A few years ago, I went on a tour of multiple cities outside my own state with a band of revolutionaries for a few weeks. We organized and demonstrated and got arrested for civil disobedience, experiencing some gratification when a federal court decision that we aimed to influence went our way. It was an exhilarating experience, and upon my return home I felt the weight of the work that remained to be done here. I decided reaching out one-on-one wasn’t sufficient, so I created an art installation. We have a charming downtown area with a six-block-long main street. Using poster board, I made gravestones for women whose stories I found online. They had died for lack of access to safe, legal abortion. Each stone told a woman’s story: her name, age, circumstances, and the liberty-restricting law that had led to her death. Having installed three “stones” at the foot of each tree, from a low limb I hung a coat hanger — a symbol of dangerous self-serve abortions pre-Roe v. Wade — and from a ribbon dangled a pen, with an invitation to passersby to write their feelings on the paper covering the coat hanger.
When I recall how timid I was as a young adult, I have a good chuckle, because none of that bothers me now.
Days later, I was on a bus when a young woman spotted the Keep Abortion Safe and Legal button on my bag. She began to tell me what she had seen downtown, how she had been affected, how one story in particular had made her cry. I was blown away by the great cosmic coincidence of running into her, a stranger, and being gifted with the recounting of her experience.
I recall that story now, because magic has happened again. While participating in a peer-to-peer texting campaign with Resist Here, I lucked into an assignment with the March to Confront White Supremacy from Charlottesville to D.C., linking activists along the route with time and location information so they could join, and connecting people who had food or accommodations to offer along the way with the organizers. While I would have preferred to be on the march myself, organizing was surely the next best thing! I followed along on Facebook and Twitter as the marchers stood their ground in D.C., erected and then toppled a mock statue of “living confederate monument” Jeff Sessions and dedicated Impeachment Square.
Serendipity struck last week when an acquaintance I had not seen in years introduced me to another of her friends, a local woman who had quit her job and gone on the Charlottesville to D.C. march! We had little time for exchanging stories that day, but I look forward to doing so. It is as if the fruits of my labors have been presented to me in the flesh.
I am reminded of a quote by the late, great Molly Ivins, a Texas newspaper columnist who covered the legislature with acidic humor:
“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
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