Mastodon

mackenzian

Keisha E. McKenzie | communication | systems | social good

organizing

By

Be proactive

NASA shot of the earth at night. The atmosphere is visible: a thin bright line circling the arc of the planet that's visible. In the background: pitch black. The planet is mostly blue with flecks of yellow and white light and lines from city lighting. Which continent is not clear.
Photo credit: NASA

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 access to their peers and their peers’ work, regardless of their location. 

It’s true that the open web can bring us information, misinformation, and disinformation. Stories—true, false, and garbled—transit the planet in hours.

Used strategically, the open web also allows strong non-local communities to connect and stay connected, and to share ideology, strategy, and encouragement. Weeks of synchronous face-time become unnecessary. And so does the prior approval of conventional institutional gatekeepers.

White supremacists have used the internet to their benefit for more than twenty years. They’ve been building capacity and diversifying tactics quietly and persistently for all of that time, and they went into overdrive in 2008. Last decade, information-dense online networks cracked open my isolation, got me reading material I’d probably not have discovered on my own, connected me to non-local people I’d otherwise never have met, and so helped to save my life. All this means is that the same connecting tools can provoke great evil and great good.

The internet is a connecting tool we can and should use for good. But if we don’t value online organizing, and cede digital ground to supremacists and malevolent profiteers, we’ll lose.

Across the United States, in religious traditions like Adventism and beyond, people are busy working for justice without the full-throated support of their administrations. They need the social internet to find, encourage, and amplify one another.

Other people are busy actively promoting the ideologies and theologies that keep Othered communities marginalized. They, too, use the web to find, encourage, and amplify each other. Some of those committed to injustice were so moved by their digital connections that they traveled nearly 2,600 miles to join the Charlottesville rallies.

At the same time, in Virginia this week as in Missouri three summers ago, local people’s social media feeds and live streams have kept non-local advocates in the loop. Their proactive communication connected people across state lines and time zones and opened lines of financial, tactical, and moral support long before conventional powers surfaced with the banal concern for “both sides.”

People committed to justice must master the open web and build proactive information networks. We need to combine concentrated offline organizing with the decentralized online work of so-called “keyboard warriors.”

Ultimately, we get to choose whether online organizing will work for us as well as it has for White supremacists. We’re more than twenty years behind, though, and working defensively, ad hoc, in isolation, and in suspicion of non-local people will not suffice.

If you want people to be able to find you in a world that values information, you’ll have to shake off the shadows and say something… in public… something both a “friend” and an “enemy” could find if motivated to search.

In an information culture, what can’t be found might as well not exist.

My mother taught me this verse when I was a child:

The codfish lays ten thousand eggs;
The homely hen lays one.
The codfish never cackles
to tell you what she’s done.
And so we scorn the codfish,
while the humble hen we prize—

Which only goes to show you:
it pays to advertise.

This verse isn’t about clickbait or working purely for praise. It’s not even about the hard work of deciding which meetings or actions need to be made public and which should be held in confidence or reported only on the day of.

It’s about the strategic value of a trail, a record of building mass, and markers of community tipping points.

What happens, a mentor once asked, if you stop a war before it happens? The only answer he accepted was “No one will ever know you did it.”

I still believe that’s the right answer for some change work. I now understand it’s the wrong move for other kinds. If colleagues are to find each other despite pacifying propaganda, institutional resistance to innovation, and the raw isolation of feeling like the only one in a group with questions, atypical opinions, or something to lose, we can’t all do super-secret silent shadow work.

Someone has to stretch their neck and become more visible. In some contexts, that someone is me. In other contexts, that someone will be you.

We’ll just have to be bold about it together because we can’t get to a more just world on our own.

By

Grassroots responses

A roadside billboard ad features Nestlé's Ice Mountain spring water bottling plant. Trees below the ad are orange and red.
Photo credit: 9 and 10 News, MI; © Heritage Broadcasting.

I teared up this morning watching a 30-second video of indigenous women singing at yesterday’s Women’s March.

Deborah Parker, a Tulalip Tribes organizer and policy analyst from Washington, explained to Pearce that she and the other indigenous women and men who had traveled from other nations had come together to “make sure that the indigenous woman’s voice is not forgotten.”

They’re concerned about water integrity, the sacredness of tribal territories, and the safety of women across this continent, and they have been organizing with several other tribes and nations to see those concerns addressed and resolved by the United States government.

A few years ago, Lakota organizer Matt Remle wrote about multi-nation grassroots coalitions that formed in Seattle to challenge a pro-colonization school curriculum and the observance of Columbus Day. They mobilized over several years, lobbying city council members, drafting resolutions, preparing alternative to current curricula, and insisting on the value of their own perspectives.

“We are simply part of a larger movement being fought on the local grassroots level,” Remle wrote, “to not only abolish Columbus Day, but see our communities rise up and assert our own voices on our own terms on issues of importance to us.

“We sought to show the power our communities possess when we come together unified under the belief and knowledge that what we do today is both work to heal past generations and lift the spirits of our future generations.”

I see a lot of people asking one another “what’s next” post-Women’s March. I had the same question for myself after the People’s Climate March three years ago. What has to be next each time is multi-issue, multi-demographic active solidarity. It doesn’t matter which issues we each start with, but the principle of the network of mutuality means that my individual zone of responsibility begins right where I’m standing and each issue and community I open up to eventually connects with others.

#NoDAPL + gross state neglect of human services in Flint, Michigan + corporate presumption + unchecked privatization = Nestlé hoping the State of Michigan will allow it to pay $200 per year so it can bottle 400 gallons of water per minute, and make billions in sales profits. Meanwhile, Flint still has no clean water supply.

Nestlé is essentially appropriating what is a common good for their personal corporate utility.” —Jeff Irwin, November 20, 2016

The public comment period on this proposal was extended from November 3, 2016 to March 3, 2017. This means a few more weeks for Michiganders to make it clear that Nestlé should not be able to pump water out of the ground, especially while some state residents remain thirsty.

What you can do

Submit a comment to MI’s Department of Environmental Quality by March 3: Email Carrie Monosmith at deq-eh@michigan.gov, or write to Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, Office of Drinking Water and Municipal Assistance, P.O. Box 30241, Lansing, Michigan 48909.

Materially support the work of the Indigenous Rise coalition: Donate through the Native Americans in Philanthropy website.

By

Your cloud of witnesses

A young light-skinned man leans toward the camera. He is out of focus. In sharp focus is his baseball cap, which reads 'Love your neighbour.'
Photo credit: Nina Strehl

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 cooks. These were the people who collectively refused to ride…

[King] transformed in his relationship with that movement, He did not see himself as a single individual who was going to bring freedom to the masses.” —Angela Y. Davis

As I’m going through my 2016 calendar and noting the major events and experiences I had, I’m noticing just how many of them involved other people.

So far, all of them involved other people. My work experiences. My relationships. My interactions with relatives. Even my insights won in the quiet of the Arizona desert.

All of life happens with other people. How smoothly we progress in life also depends on other people.

The 20th Century freedom movements that Davis addresses in Freedom is a Constant Struggle depended on people acting in cooperation with others, not acting unilaterally as if lone heroes.

Learn from them by taking another look at the dreams and goals you have in mind for 2017.

Who are the people you’ll need to work with this coming year? Which communities will you need to grow with? Which collective resources will you draw from and contribute to?

There’s always a cloud of witnesses that co-creates with us. Factor them in as you plan.

By

A look at local history (and other updates)

The Porch: A slow conversation about beautiful and difficult things. White text on a lavender-blue background. A black-lined rocking chair is to the left of the text.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 fall, I took a little time to tour and write about it.

A new subscribe-to-access publication, The Porch Magazine, has just published that article. The writers and editors behind The Porch are designing it to hold space for slow reading, careful thinking, and hopeful engagement with the world around us. I think we’re going to succeed. Subscription funds pay for staffing, operations, and writing; that’s it. The only way we’re growing rich from this is in spirit!

My own newsletter subscribers get a weekly digest email of my informal writing and the occasional update from me. If you’d like to get that in your inbox, let me know. The next subscriber-only update posts Friday now I’ve snatched a few moments to write it!

By

Working the substrate

Substrate (noun): a substance or layer that underlies something, or on which some process occurs, in particular. * the surface or material on or from which an organism lives, grows, or obtains its nourishment. * the substance on which an enzyme acts.
Image via Google.

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 below the surface matters, and to resolve problems, we have to work that substrate.

Working the substrate might mean not reacting to others immediately, but first reviewing the experiences and assumptions that precipitate their choices and behavior. How did they get here? How did you get here? What’s the wider story, and how can your responses take that wider story into account?

Working the substrate might mean re-evaluating the way an intractable community debate has been framed, and emphasizing what’s possible rather than just what’s been consistent. Is a “problem” group really the source of the discord? Are there new ways you could perceive your contributions and responsibilities as you engage other group members?

Working the substrate might mean transcending the call to conversation entirely in favor of taking action with and for people who are actively harmed and under-served. What does the dialogue circuit require of you? What could you accomplish if you focused less on explaining to the doubtful and more on focused on acting with the willing?

Deal with what feeds the obvious—or work around it, and watch how what grows changes.

By

Recovering from Rejection

"I dream of your freedom / as my victory / and the victory of all dark women / who forego the vanities of silence..." —Audre Lorde, For Assata (New Brunswick Prison, 1977)

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 right time to reap their harvests.

We mourn together in so many ways. We curate reading lists and freedom soundtracks like #BlackJoyPlaylist and threads of children being carefree and cute. Sometimes, we even dance.

Most of all, we navigate two of the hardest seasons: “a time to keep silence, and a time to speak.”

I stopped writing a few years ago. I stopped again earlier this year.

And I started writing again about six weeks ago after renewing my commitment to my own voice.

For so many people in my demographic groups, it’s easy to default to silence, to reserve our thoughts, to hold back our stories, to disclaim our experience, to diminish our expertise. It’s what we’re taught to do, and we’re tagged and punished in so many ways if we don’t do it. But the entire game is vanity.

Polite silence does nothing to forestall violence, abuse, discrimination, or marginalization. The calm civility we’re trained to cover fear, fatigue, and frustration with doesn’t produce change and doesn’t reduce harm. It’s vanity.

Ending my silence doesn’t necessarily mean explaining and teaching. It doesn’t mean sharing with people who’ve proven unwilling to receive. It’s about releasing the old habit of denying what I bring with me when I show up in the world, because I’ve shown up in this world, because I’ve shown up as my organic self and not as a fungible Tetris piece.

For me, forgoing the vanities of silence is to release the hope that the status quo might grow a conscience. Knowing that there’s a time to speak, build, cast away, gather, and sew means I need not stop the clock while committees decide how tepid their statements about shooting victims should be. I need not stop the clock while people parse the distance between compassion and approval or between plain speech and divisiveness.

I need not stop the clock for any reason.

Forgoing the vanities of silence is to shift creative attention from the way things are towards our own zones of influence, responsibility, and control. We take seriously the saying, “When you tell me ‘No,’ it doesn’t mean I can’t do it; it only means I can’t do it with you.” Here—wherever we are—we talk with those who do respect our work and we build alternatives to the way things are with them.

The smallest of seeds, yet it grows into the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches. Small seeds. Simple actions. Local contexts. Shelter for all.

Which reminds me of how I first heard about an organization I now advise. About five years ago, the staff of one of its programs submitted an advert to a magazine, a Christian, ostensibly progressive magazine. The ad wasn’t edgy. It was subtle and traditional and focused on hospitality.

And that’s why the publication’s rejection turned my head.

Wait, I said to myself. So we can cut off our extremities and shave down our corners, and they still won’t make space for us? Then why do we go through all this torture to fit? We can stop it right now.

In my own life, I didn’t stop it right now, not entirely. I spent a great deal of energy for a few more years cortorting myself to fit expectations, environments, and communities that weren’t designed for me and wouldn’t grow with me.

But as I grew anyway, that organization’s case became an Ebenezer for me. While the organization’s staff recovered from that rejection and uncovered and led from their unique vision for faith organizing, I came to recognize my vision and value too.

Today we work together to amplify the whole Church, not just shattered pieces of it, and we’re seeing the spaces we’ve created making room for “the birds of the air.” Working for others’ freedom is our victory, just as Lorde dreamed.