Reflections on Issue Eight
Beyond Wedom vs Theydom
Thank you to everyone who had a chance to read Issue Eight over the past week. For those who haven’t, the reflections from other readers below may be a good starting point, or you can read Beyond Wedom vs Theydom first.
The Understory reflections between issues are intended to share thoughtful comments from readers that expand upon and challenge parts of the previous issue. I am immensely grateful for the comments added this week, and hope they provide further value for you in thinking about the implications of the enemy narrative in our lives and for building the climate change movement.
As Shared by Dory Lerner (my sister)
“The civil rights movement (and even now when it is taught via an oversimplified approach) is often looked at as a dichotomy of approaches to fighting segregation and inequality. Most often people teach it through the lens of a Master Narrative which emphasizes two styles of leadership and action, nonviolence vs. violence (also taught as Dr. King vs. Malcolm X). But the movement went so far beyond that. It wasn't ever that simple actually. To be more accurate, it could be stated that the two schools of thought (both of which were working towards the same end of equal rights) would be nonviolence vs. self-defense.
Truth be told, the only reason these theories are taught this way is that during the movement, I imagine people thought it would break down its strength by pitting one leader against another, regardless of their common goals. White segregationists were trying to polarize people fighting for the same cause to minimize their capacity to create change. I think this speaks to where we are today, as well. If we cannot learn to establish common goals and work towards them together, instead of alienating each other from conversations and planning sessions, then we will never make headway in alleviating climate change. We should all have the same goal, but the question is how can we get everyone to see that our goals are aligned? The work of achieving those goals cannot begin until we do. King and Malcolm X recognized that and therefore decided not to tear each other down but instead to lift each other up...The only way to make gains is for all of us to do our part, on various levels to step up.”
Dory draws our attention to the semantic distinction of Malcolm X’s message of “violence” versus “self-defence,” one which I had not previously considered. While “self-defence” as a term still echoes paradoxes for us today with police brutality as addressed by the Black Lives Matter movement, there is a turning inward embedded in this concept, whereas “violence” is a purely external aggression. Peniel Joseph’s recent book, The Sword and the Shield, seeks to write the historic record with the commonalities and positive influence between Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, rather than draw further distinctions between them. What Joseph and others have made clear is that the leaders were unified rather than distinguished in their purposes.
“Also, I would like to note one other principle that we can take away from the Movement and particularly from the Birmingham Children's Crusades and that is the power of youth to bravely create change. When adults may be fearful, overly pragmatic or even just stuck in their ways, young activists can stand up and rise to the challenge. They can overfill jails to fight Bull Connor and segregated Birmingham. They can face biting police dogs and rise up after being knocked down by the power of fire hoses. They can sing louder after being mistreated and beaten by jailers. Youth have a phenomenal ability to face obstacles with innovation and courage...Let's not rely on young people to do the work for us but we should amplify their voices and encourage them to lead the charge on creating a more environmentally responsible and forward-thinking society. Greta is a great example of youth leading change, as is Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, who is an advocate, leader, activist and hiphop artist.”
The discussion around the role of youth in building our movements is a really important one, and not yet addressed in any of The Understory issues to date. The thousands of children who were trained in non-violence for the Birmingham Children’s Crusade were pivotal to the explosive impact of Birmingham on the nation’s consciousness. I had not considered the parallel to Greta and other youth leaders in the climate change movement. My feeling is that while we are incredibly fortunate to have youth leadership like Greta and Xiuhtezcatl, we should also be embarrassed by their prominence and necessity. The fact that we have needed Greta to shame us into consciousness is a failure born from an inability to reconcile our capitalist impulses with a healthy living planet. We can heed Dory’s warning to amplify youth voices and bodies, but not rely on them or thrust them into further danger.
“I would like to highlight that there were many brilliant thought leaders outside of King and Malcolm X, who had so much wisdom to share. John Lewis, of blessed memory, is one of those exceptional leaders. He knew, as James Lawson and Bayard Rustin did, that nonviolence wasn't just a means to an end, it is a way of life. Similarly, being more thoughtful about our consumerism, our footprint and making sustainable choices are the same way. They should be part of our ethos and our way of life, not just an issue for politicians and business leaders to dispute. Finally, just as racism and ending segregation were/are not a political issue, but rather are a moral issue, so too is it a moral issue that we take responsibility for our earth, as it is the only one we have.”
Thank you for the additional inclusions of James Lawson, Bayard Rustin, and John Lewis. I feel remiss in not mentioning John Lewis specifically, as listening and reading his words over recent weeks following his death have been incredibly moving. I would encourage anyone interested in what Dory is referring to as “nonviolence as a way of life” to listen to John Lewis being interviewed by Krista Tippett. I was encouraged to hear Biden directly quoting Lewis about hate in his nomination speech. As a side note, I intend to write a future issue on the multi-faceted ways of understanding love, partially inspired by Lewis’ “beloved community.”
See Dory's comments in their entirety and add your comment to hers
As Shared by Robert Loeb
“I think your analogy of the civil rights struggle to climate change is interesting in a positive way. I agree we vs. them is a very bad way to operate. I just watched the Democratic National Convention...it was very positive on Biden (maybe 75%) with some appropriate Trump bashing (mostly factual). I think next week Republicans will spend 90% of their time bashing Biden with falsehoods trying to scare their base and moderates...We are in a terrible time of we vs. them. It’s never been worse. Trump people don’t even see what we see. All Trump voters aren’t racist but all racists are Trump voters. Climate change is a very serious issue but not as serious as four more years of Trump...If Trump wins again...It will be hard not to be we vs. them...struggle vs war.”
As many of us have tuned into the U.S. convention this week and will likely do the same next week no matter where in the world we live, it can feel as though the U.S. is hanging by a thread. And particularly for those who live in a country where the national tenor has shifted dramatically in a short period, I imagine it is difficult not to feel at times like it is a war rather than a struggle. A war of principles and values rather than one of different viewpoints on issues. And when the very facts of a society are contested by its members, how can a country reweave its tattered tapestry?
While I neither profess to be an expert on U.S. politics nor want to politicize The Understory, the issues that Robert identified are ones that we all face in varying degrees in all of our communities and nations. We are hardwired to consider dangers immediately in front of us as disproportionate and more threatening than those further away, even if the scale radically differs. What the struggles of Gandhi and King remind us is that while they faced political opposition, their struggle was one of consciousness that superseded any individual politicians (even the ideological ones). This ability to transcend candidates, media headlines, and short-term policy decisions in favour of the values we most cherish for our communities, nations, and living planet nurtures a different conversation internally and externally.
The atrocities Gandhi and King faced were immense. But, in the end, they knew the struggle was a moral one and one that could only be won with love. They loved their respective countries deeply and everyone who lived within them, regardless of political affiliation, religion, and actions. It was in this deep love that they found the resilience to constantly renew their struggle for a nation that would be better for everyone. In Gandhi’s case, that was two nations.
Benedict Anderson reminds us “the nation is imagined because the members of even the smallest nations will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.” The nation is an “imagined community” of wedom and theydom. To embrace nationhood, we also embrace the concept of “deep, horizontal comradeship” with those who live within its boundaries. And it is upon us to choose whether that is a comradeship of solidarity or of division.
As Shared by Peter Tavernise
“Community of exclusion is the easiest, and therefore most often default mode for humans, because it allows us to forge, and perpetuate, group identity and cohesion with the least amount of effort by setting clear criteria for who is in and who is out. By contrast, community of inclusion is difficult, messy, and requires personal awareness and interpersonal work that takes time, and that in Western dominant culture is neither taught, nor valued. This is without getting into critiques of Empire, which perpetuates the former at the cost of the latter form of community by its nature.”
Reading Peter’s comments in combination with the others was one of those moments where I thought to myself, if only we could get together around a table and chat about this together.
Peter reminds us that communities of exclusion are the default mode, particularly for Western societies. I was particularly struck by the comment about having not been taught how to build communities of inclusion, nor do we have many references for it in our daily lives. There is a parallel to the civil rights movement here as well. There was a recognition that training civil rights activists in a different worldview of how to nurture love while enduring hate would be vital to them individually and to the movement. And so organizations within the civil rights movement set up training schools across the United States, particularly concentrated in the American south, where they trained activists in the philosophy and discipline of nonviolence. John Lewis recounted the significance of that training with James Lawson, particularly the role-playing to ready themselves for sit-ins—what Lewis refers to as “social drama.” Before they took their first action, they had done the internal work to be ready to model a community of inclusion.
Without models to learn from by example or places to be trained in other operating worldviews, how can we shift the default from communities of inclusion from communities of exclusion?
See Peter’s comment in its entirety and add your comment to his
As Shared by Deirdre Joyce
“I believe that climate change is fundamentally a cultural issue rather than a rights and wrongs issue. It's about developing a narrative about change—positive change about the way we live today from a social and cultural perspective and articulating the benefits of a new cultural shift, which is to begin to live within the new climate paradigm. This means adapting and improving our living conditions (think planning for climate resilience), improving our productive practices (think products, innovation and technology) and improving our social relations (think sustainable communities, business relations and education and equality). Effective and responsible resource management (planet, natural resources and their uses) is critical to transitioning to a new paradigm.”
If climate change is a cultural issue, how do we reconcile the shift required across a world of multitudinous cultures who all share the same living planet? Cultures are reflective of where we draw the boundaries between groups. And so we live with the dichotomy of a largely boundaryless world when it comes to the effects of climate change, yet behaviours, policies, resources, etc. are shaped by geographic boundaries and group distinctions that define our respective cultures.
Deirdre’s comment sent me researching the boundaries of culture. In Intercultural communication: globalization and social justice, Kathryn Sorrells writes there is a reciprocal relationship between culture and place. This is what enables cultures to thrive, both in their iteration and by being passed to subsequent generations. Quoting the philosopher Edward S. Casey from his essay in Senses of Place,
“Given that culture manifestly exists, it must exist somewhere, and it exists more concretely and completely in places than in minds and signs. The very word culture meant `place tilled` in Middle English, and the same word goes back to Latin colere, `To inhabit, care for, till, worship.` To be cultural, to have a culture, is to inhabit a place sufficiently intensely to cultivate it.”
For Casey, a thriving culture required physical rootedness that paralleled the very land-based connection discussed as part of Indigenous ways of knowing in Issue Seven. So even though travel, technology, global finance, and homogenized languages have displaced cultures from their original locations, it is important for us to acknowledge and resist the flattening of cultures, even if it would make the stories and behaviour change necessary to mitigate climate change a whole lot easier.
See Deirdre’s comment in its entirety and add your comment to hers
I hope this week between issues provides the space for further discovery and reflection. Go forth and make a difference in the week ahead. See you next Saturday with Issue Nine.
Adam