Activists - In It For The Long Haul??
Something is going on in the activism scene. People I’ve seen at Balcombe, Manchester, Million Masked March, Occupy and Anti Corruption Marches are appearing less active. Makes me wonder: are we becoming too diluted with the growing numbers of new groups trying to save us all? Are we burning out? Are we becoming disenchanted?
Marches are growing in frequency, yet smaller in numbers. This leads to people feeling like no-one cares, which isn't true. Many good people do care, they just have far too much to care about and limited time and resources to do it. At some level, the organisers carry a certain amount of blame. They spring up daily, so interested in being our next saviours, they don’t stop to look at what others are doing already and how they can shape current groups with their fresh ideas. They want to be in control, to be our leaders, which is diluting the causes too much. For example, I could already have three protests in London and a new one pop-up for the same day, meaning each protest has a handful to a few hundred protesters, instead of thousands. Now I understand this when the issues are different, for example fracking, animal rights, anti-cuts, reform. But what about when they are all the same: anti-corruption. It’s insane. Can you imagine what we'd gain if we lost the ego, the brands and united under our common goal for change, and marched as one?
This is where I hope the Wave will be different. We invited all people/groups seeking change to join us at our launch. We planned to meet up with ongoing protests throughout the 24hour period. On www.waveofaction.org you can list and search events and interact with other activists. You can hashtag anything #WaveOfAction we will pick it up and share it. With Wave we can all fight our own battle, our own ways, yet unite and show our strength in numbers online with a single hashtag. It is a well-promoted, worldwide movement, supported and made up by a lot of Anonymous and Occupy around the world, that in itself brings a wealth of experience, and, along with other groups, huge resource of knowledge. With supporters such as Russell Brand and Lee Camp, it is growing daily. The only downside to Wave I see is the short time span and the huge impact it could have. Extended, it would grow from strength to strength, that is why here in the UK, we have extended it and we call on the rest of Wave to do the same.
I feel Wave has recognised and addressed ‘activist burnout’ beautifully, with its spiritual inclusion. Seeing disillusion in the eyes of many long-term activists, bombarded with issues from cuts and benefit reforms, stolen children, fracking, corruption, poverty, Atos, stupid laws, National Service Bill, wars, isms, under-working, water cannons… I could go on and on... Is it any wonder we feel we are not getting anywhere? That we are drained or angry? We must look after ourselves, and each other, and spiritual well-being is a great place to start.
Remember we are not only activist, we still have the stresses of life to contend with, including working, commuting, finances, families. It’s simple to see how we can easily suffer from activist fatigue. It doesn’t matter if we are at home activist, feeling all our news sharing and petition signing is falling on deaf ears, or if we're frontline activist waning from months of fighting. We mustn’t lose our enthusiasm, our passion. We are making a difference and are very much needed in the fight for change.
As activists, we have to remember the changes we seek are huge, frustratingly slow and, on a global scale, our actions can feel insignificant. But we must not allow ourselves to feel helpless and lose hope. Yes, our work is meaningful, important, urgent, but we must accept sometimes we will hit setbacks. We must learn not to let this take away from the good work we have already achieved, not to be too hard on ourselves and others. We are all just people trying to make our world a better place.
We can’t allow our cynicism of others to drag us down. It can be easy as an activist to class people as awake and asleep. This creates detachment and social divide. It can impact on our treatment and behaviour towards others and play on our minds, ultimately becoming self-destructive. There is a lot to be said about the quote:
“Your mind is a garden. Your thoughts are the seeds.
You can grow flowers or you can grow weeds.”
Negative thoughts plant negative actions. It’s time to turn away from what doesn’t resonate with us, and focus on what does. What will create the change we need?
We must learn to look after ourselves, take time out enjoy life and nature. Meditate regularly, do what we need to sustain ourselves, love ourselves, before we can give our best to activism. We must make time to interact with the real world, go out with friends, start local community projects and meet like-minded locals, spreading the message in our local areas as we go. We must learn to incorporate our activism into our daily lives, especially with the rising cost of travelling to protests. WaveOfAction aims to build a network of local events and groups. Awakening the masses is a big part of wave and I truly believe getting back to basics and reaching out to our neighbours plays a huge part in our success in gaining change. Can you imagine the change we would bring if we all boycotted, bartered and swapped as a collective?
Get together more and celebrate your victories. Learn to compliment others on theirs, however small – everything counts. We need to remember to boost moral and drive, in moving forward. Remember this is a long haul ride. Such massive change is not going to happen overnight, it’s going to take time to break the bad habits of generations.
The best thing we can do as activists is to love and have fun with it xxx
Some More Interesting Reading
How To Keep On Keeping On: Sustaining Ourselves in Community Organizing and Social Justice Struggles by Jen Plyer
In the context of everyday injustices like poverty, racism, heterosexism, colonialism and ableism, community organizing is often carried out with a strong sense of urgency. While this urgency is understandable given the intense struggle for basic survival on the part of those living on the streets, struggling with HIV/AIDS, coping with gender-based violence, facing police brutality, and/or facing deportation, it is often accompanied by a marked disregard for the question of long-term sustainability. Social justice work often takes a detrimental toll on activists; I have witnessed – within the political and community groups I’m a member of in Toronto – organizers paying for their activism with their emotional, mental, and physical health. Instead of figuring out ways to take care of ourselves and each other, social justice groups lose brilliant and committed activists to burnout, disillusionment and poor health. As a result, movements are plagued by fragmentation, lack of reflection and discussion, and ‘wheel reinventing’ that keeps them from moving their agendas forward. http://uppingtheanti.org/journal/article/03-how-to-keep-on-keeping-on/
Emotional self-management for activists - Chris Barker, Brian Martin and Mary Zournazi Corresponding author: Brian Martin, bmartin@uow.edu.au
Extract:
It is important for activists to be able to deal skillfully with their emotions, a process we call emotional self-management. Done both individually and collectively, this can help activists to be more effective and to help create the sort of society they believe is desirable. One approach to skillful management of emotions is through the concept of mindfulness, which involves paying attention to one's state of being. Activists have much to gain by moving from negative emotions to ones such as "joyful hope."
THE MOVEMENT ACTION PLAN
Abstracted from Moyer, Bill. The Practical Strategist: Movement Action Plan (MAP) strategic theories for Evaluating, Planning and Conducting Social Movements. Social Movement Empowerment Project, San Francisco, 1990.
Over the next decade, Bill would be involved in SCLC's Poor People's Campaign in Washington (1968), nonviolent blockades of arms shipments to Bangladesh (1971)
and to Vietnam (1972), support for the AIM Indians occupying a trading post in Wounded Knee (1973) and a nuclear power plant blockade at Seabrook, New Hampshire (1977).
It was during the non-violent blockade of the Seabrook nuclear plant, which
involved the participation of more than 1000 individuals, that Moyer recognised the need for social change activists to understand the dynamics behind movement success, and in particular, to address the contradiction that activists often percieve the normal signs of campaign progress as signs of failure
The Movement Action Plan (MAP) is one of the tools developed by Bill to achieve this end, and has been used to train hundreds of activists, most notably in Australia,Canada and across Europe.
http://www.thechangeagency.org/_dbase_upl/practical_strategist.pdf
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