Diverse Islands of Coherance

How do we integrate diversity of actions into the ecosystems of our movements for liberation?

Remember how I talked about diversity being the root of our resilience in a post about our plant relatives the other day?

We need to remember that this diversity needs to be the way that we embody movement strategy as well.

I had somebody recently chastise me for not being radical enough in my writing for liberation. This is a troubling pattern that I'm seeing is that even amongst the growing solidarity to call for human rights, there are still people squabbling about the " right way" to go about this.

As one of my farmer mentors once said, there are a thousand ways to stack hay.

Enduring movements are diverse, multilayered ecosystems where people are working on many growing edges to make deep cultural systematic changes. Some folks are incredible Frontline responders and disrupters, some of us are storytellers and bridge builders, some of us are advocates and policy changers, some of us work with youth, others within their spiritual communities. Etc. We need all of us, growing literacy and strengthening the relationships that help us grow enduring solidarity towards this new world we are birthing.

Cree activist Clayton Thomas Muller once shared an important analogy with me about organizing and cultural shifts; instead of pushing and pulling on any social issue like it's a big blue whale that we care trying to redirect ( the whale being the example of the bigness of the externalized dominant meta-culture), he reminded us to see this meta-culture ( of which we are getting swept into through our bondages into capitalism/colonial rule) as a big school of fish which is roughly the size and scale of a big blue whale but made up of millions of tiny fish moving as one meta-culture body.

That school of fish is moving in one direction, but at any one time there are 10-15% of the fish swimming in the opposite direction but getting carried with the direction of the flow of the large group. They represent us, who are working diligently in a diverse number of ways towards overall system change. These " upstream swimmers" are creating friction to those around them, and slowly but surely more fish start swimming in the opposite direction. This signifies the relational way of organizing, we don't aim to try and shift or change those who are deeply entrenched in their beliefs who we don't know, but we work to create enduring change within our little pods, families, neighborhoods; it's participatory and on a human scale and embued with empathy and compassion. It's grounded in liberatory struggle because we don't have to necessarily put ourselves in harm’s way by wasting time and energy by arguing with those who are actively harming us, but we recognize we are all in this group project we call Earth together, and nobody is disposable. We engage in growing trust with those around us despite our subtle differences; I have neighbors who see things very differently than me politically, but we've forged amazing friendships and support around everyday activities like firewise burn piles, and that forges new human pathways to begin to grow solidarity and share our perspectives in a way that doesn't perpetuate " Emu's folly" of saviorism or superiority thinking.

Yet I do have elders who always remind me the most direct way to enduring change is to have the courage to feast with your enemy as a means toward enduring peace. Again, a million ways to stack hay, so to speak.

We have compassion for those swept up in the colonial/capitalist biases who are also held hostage by it, we look for the fertile edges, the cracks in the walls of the prison of capitalist realism, ways we can grow the surface area of solidarity by leaning into this relational means of organizing and offer new narratives, new pathways, new imaginations of what could be true in this world.

At some point, as more people start turning and swimming in the opposite direction, there is a critical mass where there is a fairly instantaneous shift in the direction the entire school of fish is swimming. We are starting to see the decades of relational organizing happening right now, we are at that messy transition point where we are breathing and pushing to doula this new world, and now is not the time to squabble and in-fight on the " right" way to freedom.

We all know in our bones (folks on the left and right and everyone in between,) that this system is not working but for the very few 1% elite ruling class. We can make a giant shift in the meta-culture towards healing the overlapping catastrophes, and we are well on our way to shifting the direction humankind is heading in. We are witnessing the death rattle of empire. But let's not blow it at this transition point because we are giving in to lateral violences at this critical moment of solidarity.

When I see people getting rigid in their views on how best to make change, I remember that movements are a big human organism, an ecosystem in transition, and we need a diversity of pathways toward this change.

I love Deepa Iyer's frameworks for the diversity of roles in movement work, and how we all tend to the different growing edges of cultural growth in different ways.

" The Social Change Ecosystem Map is a framework that can help individuals, networks, and organizations align with social change values, individual roles, and the broader ecosystem. It has two components: shared values embodied in the yellow circle in the middle; ten roles that people and organizations often show up in when they are participating in social change efforts. These are premised on an ecosystem concept, that we are more effective and more sustainable in our social change work when we build connections with others."

What gifts and roles do you contribute to the current liberation movement? Feel free to add ones beyond the 10 that the Social Ecosystem Map identifies, let’s stretch our radical imagination of what a diverse movement looks like…name them in the comments below.