Loving Rage Loving Fury: Reflections on Boston

Activism...To protest or not to protest

Note: This post has been written, revisited, rewritten and now it's just going to be raw and unedited.

I started this post on August 17. It is now September 7 and I'm not sure I'm in much of a different place than I was before. Let me begin by saying that I have a lot of questions. Questions without answers. Some rhetorical. Some I'm hoping to unearth. But I'll start here, with the one in the forefront of my mind. What does it mean to be an activist? I keep struggling to call myself an activist. Is an activist someone that just works toward change or creates change? Does it matter? Should it matter? Can one be an occasional activist or does it need to be consistent? What does a real agent of change look like? So many questions..so many.

Bee sent this article to Dana and I a few weeks ago: "Love Needs Fury to Defeat Hate".

I have been reflecting a lot on what the author writes. Specifically these two paragraphs:

"This love is fundamentally distinct from the hollow variety peddled by those who seek to silence and regulate dissent and defiance. It does not limit itself to the rhetorical or symbolic but extends into the material. It is not a love that imagines itself apart from other emotions, even those most often considered to be separate from love. It is a love that demands that we protect people from white supremacist violence by any means necessary and that uses our fear to alert us, our fury to mobilize us, and our grief to heal us. These complexities do not taint our love, but rather, mature it from sentiment to something capable of guiding us through terrors — a bond which holds us fast to our purpose, a vow which keeps us true to the cause of liberation.

Perhaps the greatest irony of the demands to “fight hate with love” is that these axioms are most frequently directed at those who already do. To fight hate with love necessitates an understanding of what that hate truly is. The hate we are facing is not the product of some biological essentialist factionalism or misunderstandings born of innocent ignorance — it is the legacy of the violent ideologies that form the foundation of these United States and that have organized the global distribution of power for more than 500 years. The hate we are facing is white supremacist, capitalist, cisheteropatriarchal, and ableist. To combat it, we must anchor ourselves in love for the people targeted by these systems: Black, indigenous, Asian, colonized, poor, working, houseless, undocumented, migrant, refugee, queer, trans, nonbinary, women, femme, non-Christian and with disabilities. "

Bear with me. My thoughts may diverge but I will try to make a point, or at least I hope I will.

I've been feeling a lot of things. Fury being one of them. Recently the flames of my fury seem to burn brighter and feel all consuming. Love.... Well, I think that has been more complicated. In the context of the article I feel the love for those targeted by oppressive systems. Working in allyship is always a process but that love I can wrap my mind around and embrace. However, Boston was tricky for me. It made me question the love and connection I feel toward fellow activists. I had a moment where I looked around at the thousands of people that had accumulated there and wondered what their motivations for being there were. Was it the "right thing to do"? And if so, why? Were they there to fight the "bad guys"? Did they/ did we understand that shouting at the "free speech" folks, shaming and taunting them didn't lead to any type of discussion that would perhaps plant ideas to reconsider old beliefs? Did it undo a system of oppression that leads to hate groups? I don't know. I don't think so. But it doesn't mean that it didn't do something or have some kind of impact. And I don't want to stand on my soap box and claim to know or do better than those I was standing with. But I wondered. I had questioned my own involvement up until we left that morning for the rally. And I'm still questioning how we could have shown up differently. When I think about the sentence above that says "to fight hate with love necessitates an understanding of what that hate truly is," and knowing that the hate is systemic, how many of us are working to collectively dismantle those intersecting oppressive systems? (Inhale, exhale). This is no easy work. That's no simple question.

So, while I'm glad I "showed up" I feel an even greater task of doing the harder work-having those hard conversations with people that challenge them (while also challenging myself) to think about why things are the way they are, why we we think the things we think and what would a country that was actually equitable and inclusive look like. It's good to "show up," but consistently showing up feels like the task we need to take on.

I feel lost writing I'm not even sure what I am hoping to get out of this. Maybe find connection with other aspiring activists to show up in a way that is meaningful. I don't want recognition. I just want those I love to know that I will do anything to fight for their freedom. The fact is, doing the everyday work, when one has privilege, is hard. It requires a heightened awareness. So, let me be clear, that "hard work" is nothing compared to what it is like to navigate micro and macro aggressions on a daily basis. By hard I mean that it has to be something one is committed to and I screw up on that all the time. Why am I writing this? Why am I writing this? I want to show that vulnerability is important, as is humility in this work. I want to show that I don't have the answers. I am trying to connect with and learn from others that know more than me. I want to be part of the change.

#protest #Bostonfreespeechrally #activism