focus
hello blogosphere,
long time no see.
i've been thinking/reading/talking a lot about, y'know, the world, and the problems in it for... oh, a few years now? maybe my whole life, but certainly more markedly in the last few years.
but an extra lot in the past months and weeks. and i've been feeling unfocused and overwhelmed. i have identified areas of 'activism' that speak to me the most, but am beginning to feel that just identifying them isn't enough. i need to allow myself to focus on those, sometimes at the expense of energy output into other areas of political/social interest/concern. i believe very strongly in intersectionality and do not intend to ignore that by focusing my thoughts and actions; i remain committed to gaining understanding of and taking into account intersectionality in all of my work/life. there is just too much to focus on it all whilst remaining a happy and functional human being. i won't be much use to any cause if i'm not happy and functional, right?
so, focus. every day i am effected by food and food security. i cannot avoid it, and have no desire to. food excites me, inspires me, feeds me (duh), deeply concerns me, is central to my long term goals, and is what i choose to primarily utilize in my healing. food has the power to heal land, bring together communities, heal people and animals, and drastically change our social, political, and economic systems.
but how can we use food as activism without stepping dangerously close to simply opting out, and not moving forward? as much as i am compelled to stop eating factory farmed food and growing or at least knowing most of what i eat, i don't believe that that is enough to change the world in the ways i think are necessary in the very immediate.
here i have to remember my recent trip to mexico in order to remain inspired.
in oaxaca, mexico, a group called unitierra does work through the means of learning/sharing in order to effect major (positive, and community identified needs... i'll get to this more later) change in communities (many indigenous). they do this in two ways primarily: 1) they go to communities (not just "leaders" of communities) and ask them what their primary concerns/needs are. so let's say the community identifies that many women are suffering from sometimes fatal respiratory conditions because of poorly made/ventilated cooking stoves. unitierra then seeks to find someone who knows how to build efficient, off grid, safe stoves and organizes a workshop with that person in the community in question. the workshop is in someone's home, so that by the end a family in the community actually has a new stove. everyone in the community is invited to attend the workshop (i attended one, too) and the folks whose home the workshop takes place in is subsequently obligated (or at least encouraged) to lead more workshops making stoves in other peoples homes, and potentially in other communities that have identified the same need. they are also more than encouraged to adapt the design as they work with the stove every day...
and 2) members of communities around mexico (and sometimes canada and the us) who have identified a skill needed in their community that they would like to bring home may come to oaxaca where unitierra sets them up with someone working in that trade. the 'student' becomes an apprentice until they feel confident in their new skill (usually a few months) and then return to their community. in many cases the 'students' are also given diplomas, because although at unitierra's roots there is an understanding that formal education and it's symbols are a sham, if a diploma will be useful to the 'student' then it is ridiculous to refuse using that tool on an ideological basis.
unitierra does more than this, and i certainly don't claim to understand it all, but these are the things i was witness to.
it is learning through networking, friendship, and sharing. it is non-colonial in that needs are never identified by an outside source and it is radical in that the subsequent empowerment, autonomy, and benefits greater than simply having a new stove are functions of spreading really strong rhizomes. it is root up.
this example gave me some hope about the potential that daily life changes have in creating autonomy and undermining systems of control and oppression.
even with this inspiration and hope (in the zapatista sense of the word, not the derrick jensen identified problematic one) i still bump up with problem of whether or not personal activism is enough... or, as dj puts it, is the world (the real, physical world) better off because i was born? i think what i am missing is how to make the personal public. what unitierra does is directly impact peoples lives on a day to day scale, but it is not just personal, it is definitely in the public sphere. in that way they are walking out and walking on.
while i struggle with these questions of how to move from personal to public in my day to day activism, i strive to not become obsessed with questions like dj's. it's an important thing to keep in mind, but can be debilitated as well. instead of being paralyzed by the hugeness of the tasks at hand, today i'm going to plant some seeds.
there's another point of activism that i am equally passionate about lately, and it's a harder one to know what to do with.
mining. i have a visceral response to mining. whether it's images of the tar sands, camping on a mountain in transylvania that will soon be leveled, or chatting with folks in oaxaca about the mine that has and is destroying their community, each of these instances makes me feel sick. i feel as though i am being mined into, my insides dug out with each barrel of oil or ounce of gold or silver...
but i live in vancouver. i benefit daily from tar sands money, i move every day through the city where fortuna silver (of the mine in oaxaca) is based, and i am not directly impacted negatively by these projects. i cannot make anti-mining activism a daily part of my routine the way that i can with food security. for now, i haven't figured out a way to effectively fight mining projects, even the ones in bc, while living in a way that is healthy for me at this time (if i start talking about my health and why it limits me we'll be here a while, so i'm going to ask you to just trust me on that one).
i've decided that (loosely) food security is my every day activism, and anti-mining is my solidarity activism. but i don't know how to be in solidarity in a meaningful way.
so i'm searching. i have framed things this way (every day vs solidarity) because i believe it will help me on that search, that journey to figure out how to be effective in both my every day and my solidarity activism, but, quite clearly, i still don't really even know what those distinctions mean.
what i know is that these are the life long journeys that, at least right now, i want to commit to.
okay, that's what i have in me right now.
i may write more about the mining projects in oaxaca and transylvania.
i won't get too into it because it's really emotional and overwhelming, but one of the folks who i met in oaxaca, Bernardo Vásquez Sánchez, was recently killed in relation to his activism against the mine. he was the second outspoken person against the project who has been murdered this year.
please read dawn paley's article about it on vmc.
http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/story/another-activist-murdered-organizing-against-canadian-mine/10243
this kind of thing is not the exception, it's the rule. similar things happen around the world very regularly.
fortuna silver has their headquarters in vancouver. if you're interested in making their work lives a little less comfortable (or at least less quiet) please let me know.
if you have thoughts about personal activism or effective solidarity please share.
long time no see.
i've been thinking/reading/talking a lot about, y'know, the world, and the problems in it for... oh, a few years now? maybe my whole life, but certainly more markedly in the last few years.
but an extra lot in the past months and weeks. and i've been feeling unfocused and overwhelmed. i have identified areas of 'activism' that speak to me the most, but am beginning to feel that just identifying them isn't enough. i need to allow myself to focus on those, sometimes at the expense of energy output into other areas of political/social interest/concern. i believe very strongly in intersectionality and do not intend to ignore that by focusing my thoughts and actions; i remain committed to gaining understanding of and taking into account intersectionality in all of my work/life. there is just too much to focus on it all whilst remaining a happy and functional human being. i won't be much use to any cause if i'm not happy and functional, right?
so, focus. every day i am effected by food and food security. i cannot avoid it, and have no desire to. food excites me, inspires me, feeds me (duh), deeply concerns me, is central to my long term goals, and is what i choose to primarily utilize in my healing. food has the power to heal land, bring together communities, heal people and animals, and drastically change our social, political, and economic systems.
but how can we use food as activism without stepping dangerously close to simply opting out, and not moving forward? as much as i am compelled to stop eating factory farmed food and growing or at least knowing most of what i eat, i don't believe that that is enough to change the world in the ways i think are necessary in the very immediate.
here i have to remember my recent trip to mexico in order to remain inspired.
in oaxaca, mexico, a group called unitierra does work through the means of learning/sharing in order to effect major (positive, and community identified needs... i'll get to this more later) change in communities (many indigenous). they do this in two ways primarily: 1) they go to communities (not just "leaders" of communities) and ask them what their primary concerns/needs are. so let's say the community identifies that many women are suffering from sometimes fatal respiratory conditions because of poorly made/ventilated cooking stoves. unitierra then seeks to find someone who knows how to build efficient, off grid, safe stoves and organizes a workshop with that person in the community in question. the workshop is in someone's home, so that by the end a family in the community actually has a new stove. everyone in the community is invited to attend the workshop (i attended one, too) and the folks whose home the workshop takes place in is subsequently obligated (or at least encouraged) to lead more workshops making stoves in other peoples homes, and potentially in other communities that have identified the same need. they are also more than encouraged to adapt the design as they work with the stove every day...
and 2) members of communities around mexico (and sometimes canada and the us) who have identified a skill needed in their community that they would like to bring home may come to oaxaca where unitierra sets them up with someone working in that trade. the 'student' becomes an apprentice until they feel confident in their new skill (usually a few months) and then return to their community. in many cases the 'students' are also given diplomas, because although at unitierra's roots there is an understanding that formal education and it's symbols are a sham, if a diploma will be useful to the 'student' then it is ridiculous to refuse using that tool on an ideological basis.
unitierra does more than this, and i certainly don't claim to understand it all, but these are the things i was witness to.
it is learning through networking, friendship, and sharing. it is non-colonial in that needs are never identified by an outside source and it is radical in that the subsequent empowerment, autonomy, and benefits greater than simply having a new stove are functions of spreading really strong rhizomes. it is root up.
this example gave me some hope about the potential that daily life changes have in creating autonomy and undermining systems of control and oppression.
even with this inspiration and hope (in the zapatista sense of the word, not the derrick jensen identified problematic one) i still bump up with problem of whether or not personal activism is enough... or, as dj puts it, is the world (the real, physical world) better off because i was born? i think what i am missing is how to make the personal public. what unitierra does is directly impact peoples lives on a day to day scale, but it is not just personal, it is definitely in the public sphere. in that way they are walking out and walking on.
while i struggle with these questions of how to move from personal to public in my day to day activism, i strive to not become obsessed with questions like dj's. it's an important thing to keep in mind, but can be debilitated as well. instead of being paralyzed by the hugeness of the tasks at hand, today i'm going to plant some seeds.
there's another point of activism that i am equally passionate about lately, and it's a harder one to know what to do with.
mining. i have a visceral response to mining. whether it's images of the tar sands, camping on a mountain in transylvania that will soon be leveled, or chatting with folks in oaxaca about the mine that has and is destroying their community, each of these instances makes me feel sick. i feel as though i am being mined into, my insides dug out with each barrel of oil or ounce of gold or silver...
but i live in vancouver. i benefit daily from tar sands money, i move every day through the city where fortuna silver (of the mine in oaxaca) is based, and i am not directly impacted negatively by these projects. i cannot make anti-mining activism a daily part of my routine the way that i can with food security. for now, i haven't figured out a way to effectively fight mining projects, even the ones in bc, while living in a way that is healthy for me at this time (if i start talking about my health and why it limits me we'll be here a while, so i'm going to ask you to just trust me on that one).
i've decided that (loosely) food security is my every day activism, and anti-mining is my solidarity activism. but i don't know how to be in solidarity in a meaningful way.
so i'm searching. i have framed things this way (every day vs solidarity) because i believe it will help me on that search, that journey to figure out how to be effective in both my every day and my solidarity activism, but, quite clearly, i still don't really even know what those distinctions mean.
what i know is that these are the life long journeys that, at least right now, i want to commit to.
okay, that's what i have in me right now.
i may write more about the mining projects in oaxaca and transylvania.
i won't get too into it because it's really emotional and overwhelming, but one of the folks who i met in oaxaca, Bernardo Vásquez Sánchez, was recently killed in relation to his activism against the mine. he was the second outspoken person against the project who has been murdered this year.
please read dawn paley's article about it on vmc.
http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/story/another-activist-murdered-organizing-against-canadian-mine/10243
this kind of thing is not the exception, it's the rule. similar things happen around the world very regularly.
fortuna silver has their headquarters in vancouver. if you're interested in making their work lives a little less comfortable (or at least less quiet) please let me know.
if you have thoughts about personal activism or effective solidarity please share.