Category: Organizer Essays

The #MeToo movement has been a game changer, empowering many people affected by sexual harassment and assault to step forward with their stories, raising the social consciousness of how utterly pervasive rape and sexual assault are in our culture. But coming forward with stories of abuse is only the first step. Next, it is important for community organizations to respond effectively. Here are some tips that may help organizations you are involved in support the victims of sexual misconduct:

• Decide on a community process to address sexual misconduct in advance. This will give organizations an opportunity to begin larger conversations about misogynist culture with an eye for prevention as well as response after the fact.

• One practice is to have designated consent counselors in your organization: several people who are generally trusted and are willing to listen to people who have experiences or concerns they want to share.

• Believe victims. Our society is deeply misogynist and tends to discount narratives that attack men. The fact that accusers have often become the subjects of scrutiny and attack themselves also makes coming forward a very difficult thing to do. For this reason it is very important to treat any accusation seriously.

• Avoid punishment-based language. Threats of violence in defense of accusers is not necessarily helpful or desired and can actually perpetuate a kind of sexist paternalism.

• Once someone has stepped forward with accusations, its important to take steps to make sure that they continue to feel safe in community spaces. This may mean banning someone for a time or removing someone from a position of power while the accusations are addressed.

• Having a process for addressing accusations that respects the accuser and echoes the values of the organization is crucial. There are several models for Restorative Justice processes that are available online. Talk about the pro’s and cons of different systems and decide ahead of time what works for your specific community/organization.

• When there is no process to handle sexual misconduct, women are often the ones who get hurt–cis and trans alike–so having a great community process in place is the best way to help your community be safer and more inviting to people of all genders!

• Consent culture is the solution to leaving behind the capitalist rape culture that harms so many victims–women, people of color, the poor, and the ecology. Compost capitalism and may consent culture bloom!

One of the joys of life is a good conversation; one where ideas flow and you really feel like you understand and are understood by another person. When we fail to have good conversations, we often end up feeling isolated and misunderstood. When we think about communicating better, we typically focus on saying things better but the reality is that really good conversations are had by people who know how to listen.

10 Tips for having better conversations

1. Don’t multitask. If you are listening to someone, give them your full attention. If you are distracted by worries, to do lists or your phone, you won’t be fully present.
2. Don’t pontificate. If you want to talk about an idea without being challenged or interrupted, write a blog, or a letter, or a slingshot article. A lecture can be interesting in the right context, but it’s not a conversation.
3. Try not to repeat yourself. We tend to say things over and over again, especially when we think they are important or feel they aren’t being understood. It’s not a useful way to engage another person.
4. Don’t equate your experience with the experience of others. They are not the same. Relating to someone else’s story is important but if you are always turning the focus back onto yourself, you aren’t demonstrating that you understand their experience.
5. Don’t get lost in the weeds. A lot of extra details when you are telling a story can be confusing and, in the end, the people you are talking to rarely care about the details nearly as much as how an experience has affected you or is relevant to the conversation at hand.

6. Do use open ended questions. Questions like “What was that like?” often yield far more diverse and interesting responses than questions like “Did you have a good time?”
7. Do say so if you don’t know something. Be honest with yourself and clear with others about the limits of your knowledge and the line between certainty, opinion and educated guesswork.
8. Be as brief as you can be while still getting your point across. Often, the more we talk, the less people hear what we say.
9. Go with the flow. Many thoughts come to us when we are listening to another person talk. Let them come and go. If they are important they will come back, but if you try to hold onto them, you can be distracted from the conversation at hand.
10. Listen to the person you are talking to. It sounds simple but can be very hard, especially if you disagree with them about something. Pay attention and be present so that you can go where the wave of the conversation takes you, rather than be trying to pull it back to shore.

(adapted from Celeste Headlee)

Making radical spaces and communities as inclusive as possible is an on-going project that can take many forms. Here are some tips on making it easier for people who become parents to stay involved, or to at least stay in touch with their non-parent friends:

1. If you want to see your parent friend, offer to meet them at a playground, not at a cafe. Make some coffee and bring it to the playground. Parents spend endless hours at playgrounds with their kids — mostly alone or with other parents. You might think your new parent friend is too busy to see you, but they have plenty of time so long as you meet them half-way.

2. You can start your dinner or party at 6 pm not 8 pm. Parents hear an 8 pm start time as “I’m not invited” because many have to do kid-bedtime around then.

3. You can offer to go to a parent’s house rather than making them come to you. You may have less stuff to pack up and less transportation issues. Just because you visit a parent at their house doesn’t mean they are expecting you to take care of their kids. Parents like having adult interactions even when it is harder to get out.

4. If you’re serving food, make sure there’s something the kids can eat. It’s best to ask the parents what the kiddo is eating that week (it tends to change often).

5. You can make the extra effort to provide reliable childcare at bookfairs, meetings and events. The key is making it reliable so parents can trust the childcare — it starts on-time, the kids don’t escape. Childcare is skilled hard work not an after-thought so it helps if you have toys, art supplies, games and a safe and clean space.

6. Protests can have a parent / kids block to make it more fun and inclusive. If there isn’t one, parents may find it easier to go to a march if non-parent friends come along.

7. It is okay to be more interested in hanging out with your parent friend than their kid. It is okay if you would prefer to talk about something other than diapers, naps and birthday parties. It might even help the quality of conversation to say so right up front. Your parent friend is unlikely to be offended if you don’t relate to kids, don’t want to have a kid yourself, or find kids and parenting boring. The parent knows better than you that sometimes kids and parenting are fucking boring.

8. On the other hand, kids and parenting have something to teach us about the human condition. If you’re not going to be a parent, you can still hang out with friends’ kids from time to time. Kids needs lots of adults in their lives to inspire and love them, not just biological or adoptive parents. Kids also have the same needs for respectful attention as big people.

 

Non-fiction

How To Change Your Mind – Michael Pollan

Confessions Of A Recovering Environmentalist – Paul Kingsnorth

Braiding Sweetgrass – Robin Wall Kimmerer

Becoming Animal – David Abram

The Manifesto of the Happily Unemployed – Guillaume Paolo & The Collective

Corrosive Consciousness – Bellamy Fitzpatrick

Walking on Lava – a Dark Mountain Project Anthology

Robinson Jeffers Poet & Prophet – James Karmen

Worshipping Power: An Anarchist View of Early State Formation – Peter Gelderloos

Revolution of the Ordinary – Toril Moi

Compañeras: Zapatista Women’s Stories – Hilary Klein

Black Against Empire – Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin Jr.

Making Kin Not Population – Clarke & Haraway eds.

Desert – anonymous

Against History, Against Leviathan – Fredy Perlman

Against the Grain – James C. Scott

The Drone Eats With Me – Ateh Abu Saif

Fiction

There But For The – Ali Smith

NW – Zadie Smith

Indecision – Benjamin Kunkel

The Road From Damascus – Robin Yassin-Kassab

Southern Reach Trilogy – Jeff VanderMeer

Directed By Desire – June Jordan

Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston

Homuncula – John Henri Nolette

New York 2140 – Kim Stanley Robinson

Stone Junction – Jim Dodge

Letters Of Insurgents – Nachalo & Vochek (Fredy Perlman)

Parable Of The Sower – Octavia E. Butler

Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand – Samuel R. Delany

The Word For World Is Forest – Ursula K. Le Guin

lots ‘o free anarchist zines & books – theanarchistslibrary.org

Zines

KerBloom

Black Seed

The Broken Teapot

Collectively publishing a hand-drawn organizer in these dark days is a leap of faith — but it is not an act of foolishness. We have to step back to appreciate that what may seem like a moment of imminent doom may open a window for revolutionary change that we can’t see coming yet until it arrives.

Such moments call for courage, luck and inspiration. The decaying corporate/capitalist institutions rule through division, isolation, fear, violence and hierarchy. But humans don’t want to be divided from each other, from our emotions, or from the earth — we powerfully want to unite, to live in freedom and to survive.

This organizer is one of many scattered islands of counter-culture that exist not to resist, but to re-create. Settling for resistance means we are weak — it lets out oppressors pick the issues and timing so we can walk into their traps and fight on their terms. When we hatch new values focused on cooperation, kindness and love and establish do-it-yourself projects that bring us pleasure, joy, excitement and wonder, then the system has to resist us and our ideas, not the other way around.

It’s time to stop wasting time serving a system that is finished and instead do our own thing. We’re growing our power; staying with the trouble and taking care of our community in our own ways and on our own terms. It’s time to get off our knees and let go of our fear of collapse, chaos and the unknown. We hope you and your friends can use the organizer to help fight a battle for tenderness and solidarity against hate and fear. Together we are fierce.

This is the 25th time we’ve published the Slingshot organizer. Its sale raises funds to print the quarterly, radical, independent Slingshot Newspaper. We distribute the newspaper for free everywhere in the US, often at the places listed in the Radical Contact List. Let us know if you can be a local newspaper distributor in your area. Also please send us content for the paper. Thanks to the volunteers who created this year’s organizer: Abby, Amanda, Amy, Bernard, Carah, Carolita, Cleo, Dov, Eggplant, Elke, Fern, Fil, Francesca, Georgia, Hannah, Jenna, Jesse, Joey, Jonathon, Julia, Jutta, Karen, Katie, Kermit, Korvin, Lew, Melanie, Nina, Rachel, Sara, Taylor, Terilyn, Wyrm & those we forgot.

Slingshot Collective

A project of Long Haul

Physical office: 3124 Shattuck Avenue Berkeley, CA 94705

Mail: PO box 3051, Berkeley, CA 94703

510-540-0751 • slingshotcollective.org

slingshotcollective@protonmail.com • @slingshotnews

Please download our new free Slingshot Organizer smartphone app

 

Printed in Berkeley, CA on recycled paper

 

Anti-copyright.

 

All volunteer collective – no bosses, no workers, no pay.

FICTION

Stranger in a Strange Land—Robert Heinlein

To the Finland Station—Edmund Wilson

Infinite Jest—David Foster Wallace

Letters of Insurgents—Fredy Pearlman

No One Belongs Here More than You—Miranda July

Dangerous Visions—ed. Harlan Ellison

Les Guerilleres—Monique Wittig

God Resigns at the Summer Meeting and Other Plays—Nawal El Saadawi

Treasure of the Sierra Madre—B. Traven

Without a Glimmer of Remorse—Pino Cacucci

Death Ship—B Traven

Perdido Street Station—China Mieville

Stone Junction—Jim Dodge

The Sally Lockhart Mystery—Phillip Pullman

Android Karinina—Leo Tolstoy and Ben H. Winters

Bread and Roses Too—Katherine Patterson

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies—Jane Austen and Seth Grame Smith

ZINES

East Village Inly—Brooklyn NY

Ker-Bloom!—Pittsburgh, PA

Punk Punk—SF, CA

Geneva13—Geneva, NY

No Gods No Mattress—Berkeley, CA

Eat the State—Seattle, WA

Dreams of Donuts—Oakland, CA

NON FICTION

A Thousand Plateaus—Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari

Empire—Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt

The Coming Community—Giorgio Agamben

The Art of Not Being Governed—James C. Scott

The Space Between Notes: Rock and the Counter-Culture—Sheila Whiteley

Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound, and Imaginary Worlds—DAVID Toop

Women of the Arab World—ed. Nahid Toubia

Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution—Arif Dirlik

Resistance: An Indigenous Response to Neoliberalis—ed. Maria Bargh

Fearful Symmetry—A Study of William Blake—Northrop Frye and Nicholas Halmi

Zami: A New Spelling of my Name—Audre Lorde

Worshipping Walt: The Whitman Disciples—Michael Robert

Off the Wall: Political Posters of the Lebanese Civil War—Zeina Maasri

Introduction to Civil War—Tiqqun

Although of Course you End Up Becoming Yourself—Dave Lipsky

Heart Sutra—Red Pine

Lies my Teacher Told Me—James W. Lowen

People’s Park Still Blooming—Terri Compost (shameless self-promotion)

 

It can seem so attractive to just give up and say “fuck it” when we’re confronted day after day with the grim reality of our world today. Staying emotionally engaged with the ongoing industrial destruction of the environment and with pervasive human suffering from war, inequality, isolation, and misery is overwhelming. Many around us are concluding that we’re doomed—they’re giving up on the future and retreating from the struggle for a different world. Whether it’s reeling in terror about global warming, peak oil, 2012, or a coming plague, people are checking out. It can be hip to be cynically dispassionate about our world’s certain doom and the human race’s role as a cancer on the earth.

Corporations and mainstream culture cultivate this attitude because people who’ve given up make better consumers. Mainstream culture depends on a vicious cycle in which economic relations focused on individualism and seeking private profit create psychological conditions of isolation, loneliness, and meaninglessness that in turn support those same economic relations by reducing people’s ability to resist or change the system. Thus system requires constant competition and economic growth as ends on themselves, which in turn increases human impact on the environment. On a finite planet, industrial capitalism has reached the point where its ecological impacts are unsustainable, so without some change, we may in fact be doomed.

Under capitalism, each individual acts selfishly to maximize his or her consumption. A huge part of modern consumption is the quest for ever-more privacy and individuality—private cars vs public transit, houses in the suburbs vs apartments in town, packaged fast food vs group meals, a TV set for each bedroom. All of this privacy comes at a huge environmental cost. But even more costly is the psychological fallout. The more successful an individual gets, the more lonely, isolated, and meaningless their life tends to become. When you only know how to seek satisfaction through consumption and individuality, you’re constantly dissatisfied—always going in search of the next thing as soon as you realize that what you just got doesn’t make you happy. Each new degree of privacy and individuality you achieve leaves you feeling more alone, afraid, and dependent. And the more meaningless your life feels, the more you want to consume to cope with the emptiness, increasing your ecological footprint.

We refuse to participate in the system’s collective suicide. The best way to respond to the terrifying capitalist rush over ecological cliffs is to replace a sense of despair and passive resignation with courage, action, and empowerment. That means fully facing and feeling the depth and seriousness of the ecological crisis, the grinding poverty, and the war and injustice dished out by the system. Rather than turning away in despair and fear, we have to learn how to hold this scary moment in our heart, look deeply, and approach it anew. How can any of us summon so much courage? As individuals, we’re small and weak in a sea of negativity. But just as the individuality of the system makes its participants powerless and scared, when we join together with others and struggle for a different future, we are empowered.

The alternative to consumerism, individual privacy, corporate ownership, and ecological catastrophe is a new set of priorities and human interactions—sharing, collective living, cooperative work. These values and actions also create a feedback loop that makes these alternatives more powerful the more they are used. Psychologically, the more your cooperation with others to get what you need, the less alone and passive you feel. As you increasingly get to control your own destiny as an active participant rather than as a passive consumer, viewer, and employee, your self-confidence and courage builds. When you seek satisfaction inside yourself, in your relationship with other, and as part of all life on earth, your life fills with meaningfulness, engagement, and love. And as one’s life focuses on things that do not cost money and do not come from corporations, your ecological and social footprint declines. Your life connects more with those around you, and you become less dependent on sweatshops, global transport networks, and high tech gadgets.

It is crucial to keep in mind that the trappings of the seemingly solid and permanent system are in fact temporary and fleeting. Some of us can feel left behind when we try to compare ourselves with people who are successful within the mainstream society. But the socially acceptable life path you are expected to take—employment and consumerism—is not intrinsically part of the human experience or even necessary. As we increase our involvement in alternatives to the system, we alter our consciousness. We realize that social interactions that seem “natural” are in fact created by powerful people to serve their interest. It doesn’t have to be that way. We can get together and create a new reality. And we don’t have to be doomed or afraid.

 

It’s becoming harder and harder to find healthy, natural foods. Even staples like bread have a virtual novel of artificial ingredients. One way we can take back our lives and stay healthy is by avoiding all the engineered food pushed by the industrial food machine. Reading ingredient labels is a great way to avoid putting poison into your body. It makes sense to be leery of items on an ingredient list that you don’t recognize. The less ingredients on the list, the more likely it is actually “food.” One way that people choose to eat healthier is to go vegan.

Following is a list of food ingredients that may contain animal products and are therefore not vegan. If you’re trying to be a vegan or are cooking for someone who is vegan, you’ll need to avoid products containing these items. Many people choose a vegan diet to combat speciesism, boycott factory farming, decrease their carbon footprint, for a healthier life, or for other reasons. Hopefully this list can help beginning vegans, someone shopping for a vegan household, or someone who would just like to make the occasional cruelty-free choice.

Albumen/Albumin—protein from egg whites

Aliphatic Acid—can be derived from animals

Ambergris—from whale intestines

Amino acids/Alanine—protein from animals or plants

Artificial flavor/colors—can be animal-derived

Aspartic acid/Aminosuccinate acid—can be animal derived

Aspic—can be animal derived

Bee pollen—from plant matter collected on bees’ legs (legs often torn off in the process)

Beeswax/honeycomb benzoic acid—can be animal derived

Bonechar—animal bone ash

Bonito—dried flakes from fish

Calciferol—can be animal derived

Calcium stearate—a mineral from hogs and cattle

Caprylic acid—can come from cow or goat milk

Carmine/Cochineal/Carminic acid—red pigment from the crushed female cochineal beetle

Casein/Caseinate/Sodium Caseinate—milk protein

Cerebrosides—fatty acids and sugars in the covering of nerves

Chitosan—fiber from crustacean shells

Cysteine—amino acid from urine and animal hair

Ergocalciferol/ergosterol—can be animal derived

Fatty acids/Fish liver oil/Fish oil—can also be from marine mammals as well as fish

Food coloring/dyes—pigments from animals, plants, or synthetic sources

Gelatin—protein from cows and pigs

Ghee—a milk derivative

Glycerin/glycerol—can be from animal fats

Honey Isinglass—internal membranes of fish bladders

Isopropyl Palmitate Lactic Acid—from blood and muscle tissue

Lactose—milk sugar

Lanolin/Lanolin acids—from the oil glands of sheep

Lard—fat from hog abdomens

L-Cysteine—an amino acid from animal hair

Lecithin—can be from animal tissue or eggs

Lipase—enzyme from the stomachs and tongue glands of calves, kids, and lambs

Lipoids/lipids—fat from animals or plants

Marine oil—from fish or marine mammals

Marshmallow—gelatin

Methionine—can be from eggs or casein

Milk protein—from cow milk

Monoglycerides—from animal fat

Musk—secretion from some mammal genitals

Myristic acid—acid in animal and vegetable fats

Natural flavor/sources—can be animal derived

Oleic acid—from animal or vegetable fat

Omega 3/fats/oils—can be animal derived

Panthenol/dexpanthenol/Vitamin B Complex Factor/Provitamin B-5—from animal or plant sources

Pepsin—from pigs stomachs

Polysorbates—from plant or animal fatty acids

Rennet/rennin—enzyme from calves stomachs

Shellac/Resinous Glaze—can be resinous excretion of certain insects

Spermaceti/Cetyl Paimitate/Sperm Oil—oil from sperm whales or dolphins

Stearic acid—animal fats and oils

Tallow/Tallow fatty alcohol/Acetylated Tallow/Stearic Acid—rendered beef fat

Urea/carbamide—excreted from urine and other bodily fluids

Vitamin A—usually animal derived

Vitamin Bs—usually animal derived

Vitamin Ds—usually animal derived

Whey—from milk

White sugar—can be filtered with bone char

Worcestershire—usually contains anchovies

 

Good sex, in our opinion, is an act of mutual aid. Every person, regardless of gender, is responsible for contributing to the wellbeing and pleasure of their partners and themselves. We must explore and know our own desires and learn to speak them. We must hear and respond to the desires of our partners (even if that means accepting refusal gracefully). This means finding the words to express how we like to be touched, spoken to, tied up, and cuddled. Fucking is any raunchy act, and all of it requires consent. Getting explicit permission, however vulnerable and scary it may seem, is a great turn-on. What better than knowing that your partner really likes it when you touch them that way, talk in that voice, or use that prop? What is better than knowing you can ask for anything, and will at least be considered respectfully? There is no way that we or our relationships can grow if we don’t find safe spaces in which to explore.

If you have never spoken during sex, or asked permission, or blurted out your desires, feel free to start small. Most people hear compliments well, and appreciate encouraging suggestions. However, it’s equally important to discover the boundaries of your comfort zone (often situational) and speak them as well. Starting off with “this feels so good” or “I love it when you…” or “I’d like you to spend the night if you’re interested” is fantastically brave. If you’re not there, work on moaning—just get yourself vocal. Steady yourself for disappointment (and delight), and enjoy the benefit of good communication. You may find out that a lover has fantasies they didn’t share or they may entrust you with a story of trauma that is a gift to know and share the burden of. Often, people’s boundaries are related to past experience, and creating a safer “right now” can help some people to open up closed doors. Reading your partners’ nonverbal cues is equally important, as is verbally checking for consent about each different act in which you may engage. There is no implicit consent to touch someone’s genitals because you have kissed them, or to have intercourse because you’ve had oral sex. I once met a couple who’d been together for three years and had never said a word in bed. He didn’t know that she’d never come and she didn’t know how to ask for what she wanted! If your partner tenses up or cries or is unresponsive, it’s really important to stop, check in, and support what they need. Remember, all of us have triggers, and not everyone is capable of communicating when they’re reliving trauma. Don’t restrain your partner unless it’s part of consensual play, and check in before you lock the door (this can be a subtle act of power). Be honest about any risk factors you bring, such as Sexually Transmitted Infections, whether you have unprotected sex with other people, and if you have allergies to glycerin or spermicide (in lube) or latex. Details make all the difference.

It’s also important that we take care of our community and help out our friends. Sometimes people are too hurt, distracted, or intoxicated to be concerned with their wellbeing. At the very least, we should directly check in with them about what they want and expect, and possibly act to get them to a place of lower risk. It’s also important to confront people (in a supportive way) who act aggressively, because they may not understand that what they are doing is possibly assault. Rapists in prison admit to an average of 11 acts of assault before they are convicted. They are either okay with what they are doing, or don’t believe that there’s anything wrong with it. The reality is, it’s a habitual behavior. Better to find out and help before it’s a problem situation. Putting people in prison or exiling them from scenes will not stop sexual harassment. We need to find ways to address the behavior without destroying the person.

While being so direct about sex is outside of most norms, it transforms sexual experiences. When we are sure that we agree with our partners about expectation and desire, there is no fear to distract us—only pleasure and humor. The most important part of speaking our desires is realizing that they are ours to fulfill—not our partners’. It’s much less pressure to offer someone a choice (“would you like to come home with me or would you rather hang out here?”) than a request (“would you come home with me tonight?”). Too often, it’s easier to say yes than to explain “yes, I want to come home with you but I’m nervous because I haven’t been with anyone since…” If we allow for slow and comfortable intimacy, we are likely to experience it more fully and joyfully.

So, if you are often the initiator of your sexual experiences, experiment with patience and let someone else take the lead. Even if it means being alone more often, you may find that you enjoy yourself more when you have partners. If you are less likely to initiate sex, think of ways you could safely ask for intimacy. Having the support of friends could make it easier to approach that really great someone. It’s our responsibility to create new sexual expectations based on good communication that not only reduce the likelihood of sexual assault, but affirm that sex is normal and necessary. This begins with teaching children healthy ideas about their bodies and believing people when they share stories of sexual assault. Consider it turning on the lights. There are endless ways for us to end our internal oppression and explore healthy, better sex.

 

Imagine a garden bursting forward in a riot of color, smell, and prickliness. Some plants are humble-looking but bountiful, and others bring beauty and joy to those who look at them. Each plant has its own unique relationship with the earth, and natural affinities emerge among the seeming chaos of competition for space. Some years we pour enormous amounts of energy into seed-saving, layout, planting, and care, only to watch the plants whither in an unexpected drought. Other more forgetful years we dine on tenacious volunteer tomatoes and peaches that have planted themselves unexpectedly. Keeping some weeds for salsas and ground cover is useful, but if we let them go to seed there will be no end to the invasion. Once we harvest the fruits of our labor before the cold comes, the bed lays fallow, dormant, lying in silent fecundity for the return of warmer months.

Just like the garden, we must treat ourselves and others with vigilance and respect if we want to bear the fruit of revolution. Demanding too much or too little can sabotage our own intentions for growth. Luckily, there are many opportunities to weed out unproductive emotions and behaviors and compost them into the rich, fertile foundation of a world beyond oppressive consumption.

There is a common pattern in activist circles in which individuals follow an arc of becoming radicalized, participating in street demos and community organizing with full force for years. Then they hit middle age and find religion, get a “real” job, or begin to raise a family of their own. They leave behind the lost hope that our little pockets of activism have the ability to create anything lasting or meaningful. They shed their subcultural ties and step back into the system where they left off.

We can break down this dichotomy of self-care vs. political involvement by more consciously incorporating ideas of emotional support and wellness in movements for change. Ideally, our political work should nourish and strengthen our personal life. But when overwhelming stress saps away creativity, it’s natural and healthy to create space for others to involve themselves while you take some time to recharge. The world we are fighting for is not a distant perfect revolutionary utopia, but a flawed and human-sized hodgepodge of interests fluctuating in the here and now, so we might as well support each other while doing it. If we expend our energy criticizing the efficacy of others’ projects or charging into unstrategic battles with the police, we will exhaust the energy and passion we need for the tedious day-to-day work of movement-building. Someone who can prepare a simple meal with love and kindness may be doing more for world peace than someone who screams and shouts hateful words in collective meetings.

Our emotional maturity has a profound impact on how we relate to others. For example, racists, rapists, and cops reproduce the violent relationships that were modeled to them as children. A true revolution must develop compassionate ways to deal with our most dysfunctional and damaged members and seek to create a fabric of continuity and health for each other and future generations to come.

Life is long, and sometimes we lose sight of what we are trying to do, whether it’s as small as giving yourself permission to love completely, or as large as the emancipation of all beings who live on Earth. In these moments, the most important thing to do is to stop doing and start being. Taste the air moving through your body. Send the writhing roots that live in your feet deep down into the core of the earth. Move your body to the pulse of your deepest and most ineffable self. Allow your mirth and creativity to gush forward in all directions. When that seemingly impenetrable line of storm-troopers advances on the crowd, the face of allies in your community and our nonhuman brothers and sisters will give you the strength to shout “I love you, you’re beautiful, now CHANGE!”