Freedom Is a Long Distance Struggle
What does “freedom as a long distance struggle” mean in this moment? That was the question I originally intended to write about, but as I did, the writing took on too many dimensions for a single, short piece: freedom as a long distance struggle meant everything from building intergenerational relationships to mentoring youth to self-care and joy as a central concern of movement activity. The topic ventured into the spiritual, as it entailed shifting away from reacting only to specific moments to cultivating long-term visions and understandings of interconnectedness, and developing the practice of freedom as a way of life. I began visualizing these points and many others as nodes in a web, and fantasizing about tracing them in movement history: perhaps a thought for a much longer, future project.
My desire to write about freedom as a long distance struggle arose from a Facebook post I wrote shortly after the murder of George Floyd:
“This moment is building off of foundations laid by Black Lives Matter seven years ago. There are huge networks of pre-existing organizations and leadership and ideas to serve as a foundation for this moment; because of that moment. Black Lives Matter also led to a surge of interest in White antiracism, and now we’re seeing the effects of that. Today, we have large networks of White antiracist organizations and leadership that we didn’t have seven years ago. We have years of large numbers of White antiracist people talking to friends and family, moving people slowly into less racist or antiracist positions. We have years of resource creation to facilitate White antiracist growth — much of it created by Black and Brown people — which is today blowing up online. There’s an important lesson here: foundations are crucial. The slow moments; the years when nothing seems to happen are crucial. I think of the civil rights movement, which tapped into all the activist experience of WWII. All that preexisting leadership and experience from Black workers organizing during the war and Black soldiers organizing when they got home from fighting Nazis was huge, even if we rarely hear about it. I think of the years after the Montgomery bus boycott, when half a decade passed without another mass protest… but folks were building foundations. Rustin was teaching King. Lawson was leading workshops. Baker was mobilizing the grassroots. Levison was raising money. None of that was seen from the outside, and only the moments of high drama are taught. But the people building foundations knew how important it was. Moments of change only happen because foundations have been BUILT. That’s an important lesson for the long haul.”
When I wrote those words in early June, America was in the thick of the uprisings, and it seemed like all the commentary on WHY THIS TIME was missing an analysis of movement foundations, and thus missing a basic analysis of how movements work; and thus missing lessons on how we can get better at building movements. (Since then, heroes of mine such as Rebecca Solnit have weighed in on this.) It wasn’t so much an analysis of how this moment arose that I was interested in: my words were future oriented. The lesson was: build foundations. Think about foundations. Orient yourself towards foundations and not just moments. And in thinking about this moment, learn lessons for future moments, based on what needs to happen in between the moments.
Ultimately, people only pour out into the streets for so long. Media attention and viral hashtags only last so long. The corresponding political pressure only lasts so long. Once the protests thin and movement energy wanes, people can feel disillusioned… or simply be unsure of what to do and how to stay involved, and thus drift off. But such waning is simply a different moment. It is an inevitable moment. When such moments arrive, we can react with disappointment or with (often unconscious) disengagement. Or, we can be grounded in knowing that the spans of time between the peaks of movement action are just as pivotal in terms of producing change. We can cultivate the practice of freedom as a long-distance struggle… freedom as a way of life, involving mentorship, humility, self-care, intergenerational community, and deeper levels of strategy and spirituality.
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