Wednesday, September 30, 2009

hat's off

To all you radical community organizers out there: I don't know how you do it. Seriously. There are days where I am just floored at what fantastic things you are doing. And that may be in addition to working full-time, raising a family, fighting legal battles, caring for close friends and fam who are sick and/or elderly (which may even include you), and dodging near-constant threats of violence, rape, sexual assault, deportation, foreclosures, layoffs, and a whole horror house of, well, horrors.

I don't know how you do it but I suppose that's why you're here, in the now. You show us what can be done. You dare us to dream of the impossible. You implore us to have vision, strategy, and clarity. You give us time, oh, so much time, to grow and to learn, to make mistakes and to fail, but your patience is matched with a great urgency that is fierce to behold. You make us powerful. You make us greater than who we are alone. You raise the bar for us. You do a lot, and I don't understand it, but you're here, in the now, demonstrating that it can be done, and that there's no reason the rest of us can't do the same.

And you have my very sincere respect, from the standpoint of one who could have gone there with you, many times. You have my appreciation, as someone who did not fully appreciate you at one time, back when the ease of my transitions into similar--but NOT the same--activity gave the lie that I could somehow claim a piece of your experience, that I could own your terms. An activist, an agitator, a social worker, a networker, a trainer, a facilitator, a nonprofit employee; I have been all these things, useful in some way, perhaps even respectable, but not more, and not inclined for more anyway. Yet I have claimed 'community organizer' as my profession throughout. I even hang onto the terminology as I match it with my roles as a 'writer and researcher.' These are lies, these are lies I have been telling myself, these are lies I continue to tell. But I do nothing to stop claiming what I can't claim.

I understand, though, that my lie is not solely based in insincerity. I am not doing this merely to water down and make useless a powerful profession, though I understand I am having that effect. I am also not doing this just to console myself for how little I really know about organizing and how much less I have actually done in organizing, though I understand that a whole helluva lot of us are doing this, patting ourselves on the back and saying "I'm doing what I can" while the world burns and communities dissolve and lives end before they should.

My lie, as far as I can measure, comes from an intense desire to be such a person. To live an incredible life as you are, radical community organizers. And I know how I can get when that desire is strong enough--it will push me to that place whether I like it or not, it will give me the necessary courage and risk and trust to accept the responsibility I have longed to own. But it seems I have been content to wait for that push. It seems I am pussy-footing around, ducking into a nonprofit here, applying to a school there, telling myself "in a year...in 5 years...in 10 years...I have all the time in the world, I'm patient, I still need to grow, I still need to learn," a mantra for inertia (the NON-moving kind). In the face of general despair and a fear of applying myself to the hard, hard life you lead, I retreat and devote my talents to avenues I already recognize will be failures. I want that certainty more than the possible failure of the unknown world being created from your efforts. I find my stupidity in that regard incredible, and yet unsurprising. When our very survival is always in question, stupidity can be an appealing option.

But I also know that not everyone desires to be a radical community organizer. All around me are people trying to find their way, how to contribute, and at this time--despite what the economic forecast says--there are a great many open positions that need to be filled. We need teachers, we need food growers, we need builders, we need mentors, we need caretakers, we need artists, we need lovers, we need community elders, and we need kids, lots of kids. So not everyone needs to be or has to be a radical community organizer. It need not be everyone's lot. And yet, despite all my putting off and delaying and waiting, I cannot shake the notion that this is my lot, this must be it. I have no way of knowing for sure as I have never tried it, never even tasted it. But I see you all in your element. I see you at work. And that desire just builds, and builds, and builds. It can't go nowhere forever. You, of all the people the whole world ever, must surely know: it can't go nowhere forever.

So my hat's off to you, radical community organizers. I don't know how you do it. And perhaps I am not supposed to know. Perhaps I will find out. Perhaps I will be there with you, in it, making it happen. Perhaps.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks as always brother. Glad to be in this community with you. Plus I owe you a call re: logistics!

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  2. Thanks Bao! I'm amazed you're remembering the call, I just assumed it would happen after the baby arrives. Up to you. Best of luck in the last few weeks!

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