How Not To Be An Activist

A friend sent me a link to this blog, I liked the title so I went on to read it. When I'm at work and trying to read, I usually end up talking at the same time but to day I just read and then read it again. It makes perfect sense to me.

I frequently get asked why I do this kind of work and most often I'm at a lost for words to explain but this does it. You can read the rest of the blog at Just a Rez Chick...How not to be an activist.

 

 

How Not To Be An Activist

I never thought of myself as an activist. The first time someone called me an activist, was an internationally well known activist in a message to me on Facebook. She told me to keep up the good work and always stand up for what I believe in. That the life of an activist wasn’t easy. But to keep doing what I do.
“Wow” was what came to mind. “Really? Me? An activist?” I was shocked and honored. I’m a writer who feels very passionately about what I write for. I’m not on the front lines, yet. Legally, I can’t afford to be out there-yet. I have always cared about the wrongs of the world, talking in extent to both my parents about it all the time. I sit home and write about what all the wonderfully courageous people who have crossed paths with me by caring about the same things I care about are doing to make the world a better place. I respect that they care enough about the drinking water of grandchildren they will never meet. Or that they care about the future generations of our little brown Native children and their rights, without even knowing how this world will be at the time. Whether it will be better or worse, but hoping in their hearts, what they do here and now will make it better. Or they care about all the lives lost to alcohol two miles away from the reservation. That they care about a piece of land so sacred and important to The Creation Story of our people that it is considered The Heart Of All That Is, that they would help spread the word via social media. And all the Indigenous people who live in colonized governments who are sending support to the First Nations of Canada by saying enough is enough Idle No More as a globalized, unified movement with a heartbeat so strong, you can hear it like a drum beat in your soul. Like the game Jumanji is buried nearby.

Stuff like this keeps us going

We've been organizing around an issue that is important to the community and that also affects a local family.  Yesterday Holly got an email from one of the family members, which I'm sharing here.  We don't do our organizing so we can get accolades, but wow, it's nice to be appreciated every now and then.

Hope you're well. I've been thinking about you guys lately and I talk about you all the time to my friends, you all inspire me. You stand up for what's right and fight for it. Most people when they see something bad happen they feel bad but don't want to get involved, they stand on the side lines or maybe even walk away and turn their back on it. Not you guys you get right in there and speak up and protest until the right thing is done. It's people like you that have made this country great if it wasn't for people like you there would still be black slaves,women with no rights, and so on and so on. You guys are amazing and my heroes!   I want to be just like you!

Photo from Cheerytomato's photostream at Flickr.

How to support unions after breaking the labor taboo

I know there's been a lot of discussion (most of which I haven't been privy to directly) over the blog post I wrote about building trade union behavior at the Palmer Renewable Energy air permit hearing.  As I suspected might happen, my criticizing unions is of greater importance to at least some union members than the booing and bullying tactics of the building trades.  How quickly someone can move into the enemy camp by breaking a taboo: criticizing unions.

When I sat down to write my blog post, less than 24 hours after the hearing, relationships with unions was not the first thing on my mind.  Poor strategic thinking?  What very much was on my mind was the fear in the eyes of the children sitting in the Duggan Middle School auditorium who had come to talk about their own asthma.  They were bewildered.  They didn't understand what was happening.  I was ashamed that I had asked them to come only to be subjected to booing.  In fact I was furious, and still am.  But everyone who came to oppose the biomass incinerator felt attacked and traumatized-- even we relatively thick-skinned organizers

I admit I don't understand unions very well, beyond an intellectual level.  I've never been in a union, and most of the people in Arise, very low-wage workers, have never been in a union, either.  And yet we have never failed to support the organized labor movement.  Anyone who reads this blog, or my own blog MichaelannLand, knows that.  So a little context to the "Michaelann as enemy to the labor movement" might be warranted. And the rest of the labor movement, beyond the building trades who were present at the hearing, should be asking themselves: who really did harm to the public perception of organized labor on April 5?

At the same time, I could (and should)  have applied that context to my own blog post.  I wrote, " I will tell you that my first reaction was that you couldn't pay me enough for me to ever show up at another pro-union rally."  Well, yup, that was my first reaction.  But intellectually, I have not changed my mind about the absolute necessity of supporting organized labor.  Yesterday at Arise I was trying to explain to Ruben how unions help keep the wages up for everybody, not just union members, by using the fruit-picking story from The Grapes of Wrath.  He understood what I was saying, even though, at the air permit hearing, where he carried around our giant asthma inhaler, he got more than one sneer from members of the building trade unions.

After the air permit hearing, I asked a couple of my contacts in labor to explore three questions: 1. Is there a way that what happened at the air permit hearing could be used to build a bridge between the building trade unions, who often stand aloof from labor's larger struggles, and the rest of the movement?  2. How did the building trades so successfully mobilize at the air permit hearing, who paid for it, and were they likely to do it again at the still-pending city council hearing about PRE's local permit? And 3:  Is there any way that other unions could take stands against biomass? 

If any of these questions get answered in a way that moves us forward, then I'll try to decide if it's worth it to be viewed as the enemy by organized labor (although Stop Toxic Incineration in Springfield and Arise shouldn't be tarred with that brush).. I'm not at all convinced that there would be much discussion among local labor going on at all if I hadn't written what I did, even though I wish I had been clearer about not indicting all of labor.  Too many times our movement, such as it is, avoids tough questions,  fails to think seriously about what divides us, and calls out for solidarity when the foundation is shaky and ill-defined. I don't know why I think it should be any different this time around, but I still have hope.

Solidarity mural: Hands in Solidarity, Hands of Freedom mural on the side of the United Electrical Workers trade union building on West Monroe Street at Ashland Avenue in Chicago, Illinois-- photo from Atelier Teee's photostream at Flickr.