Navigating Our Roles in Disrupting for Good

Over the years, I have signed up for the mailing lists of several organizations doing great work. I regularly receive thought-provoking and inspiring articles in my inbox. 

A few weeks ago, I received three emails highlighting three very different articles

• Calling People Forward Instead of Out: Ten Essential Steps in the Nonprofit Quarterly
• Direct Action As Strategy from Mob Lab
• Solidarity and strategy: the forgotten lessons of truly effective protest in the Guardian

Now, if you’ve been here long, you know I have a bit of an ongoing internal struggle with the tension between trying to engage decision makers in meaningful discussion and marching in the streets as changemaking strategies. 

Not that either are good or bad, right or wrong, effective or ineffective, but more a question of which style is more good/right/effective for me? If systems change requires the full spectrum from delegating at city hall to chaining ourselves to trees, where do I fit? What is my role and where do I bring the most value?

A small, committed group changes the world, yes, but what is the group DOING, Margaret Meed?? 

Invitation to meaningful conversation
On the one hand, we have this invitation to meaningful conversation (the Calling People Forward article is based in the issue of racism but I see the principles applied more broadly):

Calling out leads to cancel culture; cancel culture is ineffective and divides us further. Today we have to commit to graduating beyond that perspective to move in the direction of our vision, so we can stop fighting against racism and finally end racism. 

Here are two questions you can ask yourself as a litmus test prior to having a difficult conversation: Do I want to “be heard” or do I want to be effective? Do I want to create a bridge or widen the divide? Prior to each interaction, you must be brutally honest with yourself about your true intentions because they will impact the outcome of the conversation dramatically. If you are not ready to show up to the conversation without shame, blame, and guilt, you might want to reconsider speaking at all. To end racism, we must use our language to move us in the direction of our vision.

Or as Professor Greg Walton is quoted in Charles Duhigg’s new book, Supercommunicators, “You’re inviting people to participate and learn, to take responsibility for improving things.” A couple of paragraphs later, Kiara Sanchez is quoted as saying the aim is not to “neutralize the discomfort, but rather give people a framework for persevering through it.”

Organizing for direct action
And yet, you cannot deny the impact of direct action:

• A two-year campaign by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International has convinced all 10 provinces to stop allowing their jails to be used by the Canadian federal government for migrant detainees - a practice that has seen thousands of migrant detainees (not convicted criminals), including asylum seekers, survivors of war crimes, and children, to be held in jails, often for months. IN CANADA, you guys. Come on. 
• A sustained Palestine Action campaign against a Tamworth factory has seen it taken over by new owners who have cut all ties with Elbit Systems and the arms trade to Israel.
• The Loblaws boycott in Canada started yesterday and seems to have a lot of traction, and it will be interesting to see what the impacts are.

As the Mob Lab article reads:
There is a mainstream media-propagated image of direct action tactics as always being aggressive, damaging, or desperate: images of people being chained to bulldozers or throwing buckets of red paint at factories come to mind. But direct action tactics can be as diverse and creative as the wide expanse of the human mind, and artists are often the ones imagining new ways to convey or communicate a message.

Then, I was nodding along heartily while reading the Solidarity article, which notes that those with extreme wealth are able to exert control over politics, and that while the power of the many should be able to win over the power of the money, it only works if the many are organized. 

People getting organised is what brought down slavery and Jim Crow, outlawed child labour in the US and elsewhere, and overthrew the legal subjugation of women. If it wasn’t for people acting in concert, universal suffrage would not exist, and neither would the eight-hour workday or the weekend….and the article goes on to list more examples.

But then:
Scholars have since documented the way the late 20th century was, for the activist left, characterised by a shift to a shallow, professional and often philanthropically funded model of “advocacy”, one that elevates self-appointed leaders and elite experts to speak on behalf of constituencies to whom they are not directly accountable. Rather than organising people to fight for themselves, these groups promote professionals who attempt to exert influence inside the halls of power. Instead of protests, they publish white papers; in place of strikes, they circulate statements; instead of cultivating solidarity, they seek access to decision-makers.

These kinds of elite strategies can occasionally produce positive results, but the approach is often counterproductive, and certainly not democratic. This top-down approach puts its faith in the persuasive abilities of a tiny few, and denies the fact that politics is a power struggle – and that engaging and organising more people gives your position more leverage.

Ummm…I publish white papers. And seek access to decision makers. I run coalitions. 

Hello? Am I the problem?

Reading stuff like this makes me feel uncomfortable. Am I a sell out? Am I diluting democracy?

Cue my insecurities!

I have a bit of imposter complex about my role advocating with and for communities I am not part of based on my lived experience. 

I also have a strong desire to always approach this work in a posture of solidarity over saviourism. 

I know that the big justice wins over the years have rarely come from asking politely. 

I also acknowledge the reality that over the years I have built the relationships and the skills that allow me to bring the stories (and where possible, the storytellers) from community to policymakers to show them the impacts of their actions (or inactions, as is sometimes the case), and I feel this is a privilege that comes with responsibility. I also can point to important systems improvements as a result of this approach.

Both/And?
Today I re-read that paragraph and noticed the “instead of” and “in place of.” 

I like to think that what I do would be more accurately described as protests AND white papers, strikes AND statements, cultivating solidarity AND seek access to decision-makers.

So maybe it isn’t either/or, it is both/and? Or maybe different approaches work better depending on the issue?

These are the questions and tensions I’m mulling over right now, and I’d love to hear from you: are you thinking about these things too? How do you decide your role or your approach in disrupting the harmful systems you are in? Comment below or send me an email if you like.  

Thanks as always for reading.