credit: Dan Meyers, via Unsplash
We are in crisis.* We were already headed toward crises, like climate crisis and growing global authoritarianism. But I had been hoping that we in movements would be able to buy ourselves some time. I imagined trying to use the next few years to prepare ourselves to be in the best possible position to navigate what's to come. Instead, the curtain is likely about to rise, perhaps even before the formal start of $rump's next term.
$rump became the likely 47th president a few hours ago, so I haven't had much time for any of this to sink in. Yet for a long time, as I've assessed the weak position I think the Left is in, I've felt pretty sure that our best way to use what little power we have to position ourselves well for crisis is to intentionally create a culture change - in our movements, and ideally infusing some of what we learn into our wider communities. To put it simply: We need to learn to treat each other well.
This is to keep our movements safe, and make them more effective. It's also the basic building block we need to make our resistance movements more appealing to lots and lots of people who we need to join us.
Here are a few parts of this on my mind tonight - I'll probably revise it. If you're feeling lost, maybe this will give you a good anchor to start with.
One of the first things we need to think about is how to protect each other. This is a regime that, sooner or later, will probably not hesitate to kill activists. We need to learn the best practices we can figure out to keep each other safe, physically and online. We need to distribute funds so that those of us with less money can afford resources for safety, like online privacy tools. We need to get disciplined and consistent in following practices to keep each other safe. (A lot of us, raised in middle class culture, will need to unlearn some of that culture's habits of casually assuming harm won't come to us. That's not going to be helpful or collectively responsible in the political phase we're entering.)
Protecting each other will require that we collectively learn a really important new movement norm: We avoid dividing movements, or making people or groups we differ with vulnerable or isolated. It's been common that groups who aren't fans of each other show their dominance or shore up their turf by dissing each other publicly, or by privately badmouthing each other to other activists. This has to stop. We do have to be thoughtful and share information sometimes. But we don't have room for unprincipled, cavalier tactics where we edge each other out or make tensions public just because. Any gap we leave that allows the state or the Right to repress some of us, or inflame divisions between us, will ultimately harm all of us. (The flip side of this - which is why it's all kind of delicate - is that we also have to behave with dignity and protective boundaries when we are aware of people or groups in the movement who are behaving in opportunistic and harmful ways. Many of us have absorbed from middle class culture to act friendly with everyone, dismiss conflict, and assume we can all get along. But when some groups are intentionally using authoritarian tactics or taking advantage of other groups, that nice, relaxed inclusivity becomes a door that authoritarian factions use to take control of our movements. We just cannot afford these derailments.)
We need to start sharing thoughts with each other about which core values should hold our movement (or the movement of our dreams) together. Historically, the Left had clear values that defined it - even if these principles were different in different phases. Today, I think the Left is held together not by any set of clear values, but by a web of relationships. Our relationships matter a lot to us. Many of us tend to go along with whatever values we see others holding. We depend on keeping those relationships intact by going with the flow, and demonstrating that we have the same good values as others. We get really afraid of messing up or being caught thinking differently. We don't often take time to sit and think about whether a given value that we see people echoing really makes sense for the Left. This void leaves Left space open to being co-opted and deployed in directions we don’t intend, serving goals that are not liberatory. (Take, for example, people who turn protests into a forum to boost the Assad regime. Yuck.) It also keeps us small and weak, because we don't provide people with deeper grounding and Inspiration.
To make it through the coming years, our movements need to grow and become way healthier. Right now, people on the outside watch us treating each other badly, and are like, "I don't want any part of that." Especially people who are motivated by ideals -- not just a desire to belong. Those are people we really want in our ranks. We have an unknown number of days, weeks, months, or years before things get wild. Let's use each day to get better at treating each other well & to imagine what ideas should hold us together.
*To be concise here, I've left out the obvious starting points: that crisis is already a continuous state for some peoples in the US; that the US, and the colonialism it emerged from, is itself the crisis for some of our peoples; that people in war zones and exploited regions of the world that are especially vulnerable to climate disasters are already living the crisis that I imagine us heading toward.
Thanks to Dean Spade for first inspiring me to articulate these ideas.