I first logged onto the internet in 1998. That year I also stumbled across White supremacist networks, and I backed away from their dumpster fires as quickly as I could. I also kept the lessons they demonstrated for me. Effective organizing requires that people have direct access to information, regardless of their education status, and direct […]
Grassroots responses
I teared up this morning watching a 30-second video of indigenous women singing at yesterday’s Women’s March. An indigenous women's march makes its way down Constitution Ave., to cheers. pic.twitter.com/Z9hH3kfgdx — Matt Pearce (@mattdpearce) January 21, 2017 Deborah Parker, a Tulalip Tribes organizer and policy analyst from Washington, explained to Pearce that she and the […]
Your cloud of witnesses
As many times as I’ve spoken during Black History Month, I never tire of urging people to remember that it wasn’t a single individual or two who created [the 20th Century Black freedom movement], that, as a matter of fact, it was largely women within collective contexts, Black women, poor Black women who were maids, washerwomen, and […]
A look at local history (and other updates)
Earlier this fall, I visited Oakley Cabin, a small wood and clay structure in Montgomery County, MD, that once housed the enslaved house, farm, and crafts workers of a White Quaker doctor. It’s the last of three cabins in that area, and the county has taken it on as a preservation site. Earlier in the […]
Working the substrate
So much of life is invisible: the roots that nourish plants below the soil surface, the nonverbal communication that conveys our thoughts and attitudes, the years of training that go into a 10-second Olympic sprint. It’s so easy to be dazzled by whatever appears, and to miss the substrate that props it up. But the world […]
Recovering from Rejection
Leading from outside of the org chart, or with limited social privileges is a constant apprenticeship in leveraging the seasons for every purpose. We watch for the time when new things can be born and when old things must die. We guard the fields of our organizations, communities, and societies for the right time to plant new patterns and the […]
