It is understandable to be hopeless when we’re awake to the cruelty of the world, but other worlds are possible and already exist alongside the pain and devastation in this one. I wrote these prompts for times when you’ve sat with the grief, talked in community, rested your nervous system, and are ready to get rooted in what you plan to do next. I write this from the stance that there are many abilities, thinkers, and types actors needed to create robust resistance & validating ourselves and finding new places to try and plug into can be very helpful.
Make a list of your skills, talents, & things you love to do
(if you’re having trouble think of things your friends or colleagues might tell you you’re good at)
Here’s mine:
community building/ holding a container of community expectations
collective processes/decision making
big picture thinking/ systems thinking
supporting folks through difficult emotions/times
de-escalation
facillitation
event planning/ understanding how environment effects people at events
art (writing, drawing, installation art, video)
connection to land and seasons
herbalism/ working with plants
disability justice
connection to spirit/ spellwork
Next try to connect your gifts to ways that you already are working to resist.
It’s helpful to validate how much you have already committed to trying to use these skills, in order to look at new ways and strategies to connect. To see the sucesses I’ve already had, has been helpful in feeling mobilized to renew my commitments. This can also help me see what skills I’ve been honing for a long time.
For instance, I use my community building, collective decision making, and big picture thinking skills in my youth liberation work to support them in building healthy youth community that can work towards shared goals. I’ve also used my de-escalation skills many times to help protect vulnerable community members in crisis from police intervention. I’ve used my disability justice framework, my connection to spirit and my facillitation skills to offer ‘your body is magic’ with the goal of creating communities of support for disabled folks.
This step helps me to feel a lot less helpless. It roots me in who I am and how I try and move with kindness. Personally I find local community building to be where I find hope in the world so it also gives back to me in that way. It’s important to find places to plug in that renew you, that bring you joy and connection, so that this work is sustainable long term.
I also find that we see resistance as a really narrow definition sometimes called ‘direct action’. As a disabled person for who direct action is often no longer acessible, I resent this framing because it frames those in the streets as the heros and others as invisible support. I dream of communities with diverse tactics that are both long term and short term: where we honor many different strategies. To that end, this last prompt has often helped me to widen my scope and respect many people involved in many types of organizing as part of the resistance.
Make a list of everything you can think of right now that you see as resistance work.
Here’s mine:
youth liberation work/ youth led organizing
media literacy/ tech safety
anti-propoganda analysis
protesting to raise awareness and energy for a cause
protesting to block weapons/fracking/ any materials that support violence
art protests/ making fliers/ wheatpasting
refusing to pay taxes
strikes/withholding labor
mutual aid networks/ connecting communities to resources
union organizing for better working conditions
union organizing for political issues
community gardens/free food programs
food justice campaigns
running community & cultural centers/building community
environmental work to protect our lands
distributing free history and information
reparations
Finally make a plan for how you can further use your gifts and skills to strengthen resistance
Here’s mine
Short term:
make more explicitly political art
commit to a community mutual aid project
do a research project on strategies of different resistance projects and write about them on substack.
Continuing to advocate for better pay and acessibility in my jobs ( I work for myself so I negotiate my contracts)
keep wearing my mask & negotiating covid safety
I did not choose strike or withholding taxes because I am low income and work for myself, but I believe that these two tactics are extremely powerful especially en masse
Long Term:
community garden & herbs on the land I’m on
create a community hub on land I’m on
help protect local lands
help other start their own youth leadership teams as a consultant
I hope this all helps you to find ways to get rooted in your resistance work.
What do you want to commit to in the resistance?
Lets keep this conversation going,