Dotting the I in activism
/So I've been thinking and thinking about my experience at Split This Rock. Really mulling it over. Here's the thing. The energy, inspiration, and fortitude of the STR milieu was something I'll not soon forget. I met up with several people whom I mostly see online (Mike Northen, Sheila Black, Kathi Wolfe) and got to talk with them about various projects and that was good good stuff! I even shook hands with Sonya Renee Taylor, founder of The Body Is Not an Apology, which has become an international phenomenon.
These were the true highlights of the conference for me. The little personal connections. And I think that these moments were helped along by the fact that STR is relatively small --at least compared to AWP, which has mushroomed out to somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 people.
The bigger picture, though, is what I have been processing for the past two weeks. What do I have in common with the STR community in the larger sense? Do I *belong* there? Should I go again?"
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There was a panel in which one participant described herself as "an accidental activist." She sort of stumbled into it from a very personal place. Another woman on the panel seconded this notion. But then a third woman, whom I respect for her fierceness, intelligence, and creative power, said essentially that [paraphrasing here] individual activity is next-to meaningless. We need to organize on a global scale. We need to act collectively to affect any change whatsoever. Notably, she was the only person on the panel who had been born in the southern hemisphere. Suddenly I felt very small.
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There's a certain cultural (rugged individualism!) and class (I don't *need* a village, thank you) value system that gives birth to my need for this fantasy of independence, when interdependence is the reality.
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As I write this I'm exiting a half-week flare-up of my fibromyalgia. I think the pain / fatigue are diminishing to "normally abnormal" levels, but last week I took a five-hour nap that interfered not a bit with my ability to sleep during the night. Last night I had to ice my back, hips, thighs, and neck after doing one (1) load of laundry. The thought of organizing anything right now besides my sock drawer is overwhelming.
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One can derive warmth, motivation, strength, protection, representation from a community. I would have to say that the only communities in which I have ever felt appreciated and fully integrated were when I went to college and later, graduate school. Not really before or since.
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For comparison, sometimes I don't feel fully integrated into my own skin.
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In the building where we live, I have never met my neighbors though I have made acquaintanceships with the maintenance people. I shake afterwards every time I make small talk.
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At our last house, the neighbors emotionally abused their children and each other. Horrible screaming fights that I constantly wondered if they were leading to something else. Several times I pressed 9-1... but didn't have the courage to press the last 1.
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When I first found the disability community it I felt pride, an upswelling of self-esteem, positive identity.
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When I started using my white cane after a long hiatus, I carried Beauty Is a Verb around like a bible.
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When I started grieving my mother's suicide, I had to put the cane away.
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Infighting: if you're an academic, you spend too much time in the ivory tower. If you're street, you don't have authority to speak on certain matters. If you have disability X, you are less "disabled" than someone with disability Y, and so have less of a right to speak. If you use certain language to describe yourself and your disability, that's traitorous. If you see humor in your situation, you're a sell-out. If you see despair in your situation, you're a sell-out. f you can (and / or do) engage in the act of passing, you're a sellout. If you're too bellicose, that's not cool. If you refuse to be a warrior, why are you here?
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I have sat at the computer too long, probably an entire half-hour, and now the pain is bad again zinging up and down my thighs, throbbing in my forehead. And my eyes are really tired.
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I want to be apart. I want to be a part. I want to partake. I want to part ways. I want, I want to participate.
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My words can go where I cannot. They can stay longer. It will have to be enough for now.
