As I started to write this I realized that last night I reached the halfway point of this Challenge (50 days done, 50 days to go). So, today starts the 2nd half of the Challenge.
Recap of the past week
In Week #7 I had two goals: (1) reduce computer use (with a gradual cessation of specific computer activities), and (2) use that freed up time to do something that contributes to local and global movements for survival and liberation. I already wrote quite a bit last week about the reasons behind these goals, so won’t recap that context here.
What I learned this week: The short answer — it can be a lot easier to refrain from doing an activity (even an entrenched habitual activity) than to actively do something outside my comfort zone. The long answer — read on!
My computer reduction plan for the week went mostly as scheduled. I went for 7 days without Netflix, 6 days without Facebook, 5 days without checking the news, 4 days without email, 3 days without YouTube or any other form of online entertainment, 2 days without internet sleuthing, and most of the final day completely unplugged from the computer (I ended the week’s challenge at 6:30 PM as without the ability to do any of the other stuff, I ended up unplugging a day early). There were two minor “life happens” glitches – did a quick internet sleuth when my sweet spouse needed help with something that could not be sorted out via phone, and computer problems prior to a planned Skype meeting required I shoot off a quick email to let my long-distance colleague know I’d be late. As I know already that it’s pointless to be perfectionistic, I didn’t stew about either of these.
The experience of being unplugged was really pleasant. I was shocked by how much time it freed up (a good reality check on how much I have been using the computer lately). I was also surprised by the cessation of the feeling that I am never doing enough to keep on top of things, always feeling pressed for time and rushing through each task – which speaks to the emotional and mental fatigue that comes from information overload. Definitely I enjoyed life a lot more the less I was plugged in.
As for using my freed up time to do something that contributes to local and global movements for survival and liberation…FAIL! This was a really interesting experience as it is the first time since this Challenge started that I totally hit a wall. Without the computer, I could not think of more than a couple things that I could do. And even of the few things I had planned out, I did not do most of them. Before I get into what I think was going on with that, I want to first identify the things that I did do, as there are some amazing initiatives that I hope readers will consider supporting:
- Community Tool Shed (CTS): For many years a member of the Lekwungen community has invited Indigenous people and allies to work together in reinstating the Kwetlal (camas) food system. This food system has endured over 150 years of colonial impacts, and today the 5% of the remaining Kwetlal food system remains threatened and weakened through the suppression of cultural roles, land fragmentation, and proliferation of invasive plant species introduced by colonial settlers. Through the CTS participants come together for a couple hours once a month to help restore and caretake the Kwetlal food system, learn about the impacts of colonialism, and learn about traditional food systems and the land. This month we met in Meegan (Beaconhill park) and removed Scotch broom and English ivy. I’ve known about the CTS from its inception in 2011 but this was my first time actually participating.
- Unist’ot’en coastal tour: As mentioned in Challenge Week #4, for the past six years Wet’suwet’en people from the Unist’ot’en clan and allies have been maintaining a community in Unist’ot’en yintah (territory) that is directly in the path of planned oil and gas pipelines that are opposed by grassroots Wet’suwet’en people. The Unist’ot’en camp is, in the words of the Unist’ot’en Declaration, “an expression of the continuing and unbroken chain of occupation and use of our territory by our clan”. This past week Unist’ot’en hereditary chiefs and the official camp spokesperson have been travelling in Coast Salish territories to share their experiences and also raise funds to support the camp. I had planned to go to the local event but was overwhelmed after having a bit of an adventure getting home from visiting sweet spousey’s campsite 28k from where we live, and decided to spend the night at home and just send a donation separately.
- Equal Justice Initiative: From a friend’s book suggestion, this week I read Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson. The book is a beautifully written, heavy and important indictment of the prison-industrial complex and capital punishment, and the ways that racism and poverty tie into both; and also tremendously hope-filled stories of grace and compassion from the individuals and communities most affected. The author founded and still works for the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), and wow – the EJI does amazing prison justice, economic justice, and anti-racism work, including litigating on behalf of prisoners who have been sentenced to death, youth in prison, people wrongly convicted or charged with violent crimes, people living in poverty who have been denied effective legal representation, and others whose trials are marked by racist bias or prosecutorial misconduct; working with communities that have been marginalized by poverty and racism; advocating for reform of the criminal justice system; and raising public awareness about the impacts of mass incarceration, excessive punishment, and the ways that the prison-industrial complex both reflects and re-entrenches systemic oppression. As a starting point I donated money to the EJI last week and this week plan to work through the EJI’s other posted suggestions for ways people can get involved.
- Catalyst Project’s Anne Braden Anti-Racist Organizer Training Program for white social justice activists: This 4 month political education and leadership development program is designed to support the vision, strategy, and organizing skills of white activists in becoming accountable, principled anti-racist organizers building multiracial movements for justice. I first learned about the program in 2013 when a dear friend and very inspiring activist, organizer, and all-round amazing human being took the training. The program’s course reader is publicly available and I had hoped to, at minimum, use some of my time this week to start reading from the 2015 reader. But I didn’t do this – instead I read 2 other books: Plastic-free: How I Kicked the Plastic Habit and You Can Too, by Beth Terry (who runs My Plastic Free Life, a great online compendium of resources) and re-read The 100 Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating by Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon.
Some reflections on these efforts: honestly, I’m disappointed in myself, and also curious about why I took this route. Having identified in last week’s post so many potential issues I could have learned more about and found ways to contribute to, why didn’t I actually do anything on most of them? Why, if I wanted to learn more about plastic, didn’t I look at social justice and survival issues relating to the plastic industry? There are many resources I found in a quick Google search, e.g., Van Jones on the link between the concept of disposability of plastic and the white supremacist ideology of disposability of certain groups of people, the Center on Health, Environment and Justice factsheet on the disproportionate location of PVC plants in low-income communities of colour, or the PBS documentary on North American/European countries dumping toxic plastic waste in Ghana, China, and India. Why then did I focus on a book that deals only cursorily with the intersections between social justice and environmental justice? Ditto re industrial agriculture – reconnecting food with place is super important on so many levels but why did I go with a book that is mostly a personal foodie journal by two white people, and a book I’d already read to boot (and how freakin twisted is it that I did that right after taking part in something specifically about Indigenous food systems?!).
There are some obvious answers:
- Individually: I’ve been racist and buying into white-supremacist thinking (dismissing, marginalizing and trivializing the expertise of Indigenous people and people of colour; positioning white people as more central, knowledgeable, and relatable to me; and not being consciously aware of this process).
- Systemic: On a systems level what I just described about individual thinking applies as well to who gets coverage in media, library $ allocation for book purchases, etc.
Both of these are I suspect true to some degree. But I think that in large part the answer comes from what I wrote in Week 6: “I was also reminded this week of how my race and class privilege gives me the option to decide if, when, and how I put time and resources into supporting certain survival/liberation movements, and the obscenity of that privilege when so many people are fighting every day for their lives and the survival of their loved ones.” That it is uncomfortable, painful, and challenging to confront the reality of one’s own privilege is not news to me, but my resistance to following through on it was a bit of a surprise.
I often clarify my own thinking by reading other people’s writing, so started by reading Noor Al-Sibai’s piece Privilege Discomfort: Why You Need to Get the Fuck Over It, and was struck by this:
It’s an enormously uncomfortable feeling to sit with — to be accused of racism by one’s simple existence, by the accident of birth and genetic pigmentation, or accused of sexism by being comfortable with the male gender one was assigned at birth. Most white people and men choose not to continue that line of thinking….But the fact remains that it is the discomfort and isolation of the privileged that stops them from recognizing and doing something about the oppression of others. I could lament all day about how difficult it has been for me to come to grips with my white privilege, but that struggle is nothing in comparison to the oppression faced by people of color.
That moment of discomfort and isolation is so essential to becoming a better ally and to becoming a better person, because it’s at that moment that, consciously or not, the privileged person recognizes that their whole entire life is based upon a system of inequality that is inescapable and wrong. It’s at that moment that the majority of “liberals” become turned off to race, gender, queer and disability theory. To look at oneself and claim that “I benefit from institutional racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and ability-discrimination” isn’t exactly a walk in the park.
And it’s at that moment that we must remind ourselves that as dissonant and uncomfortable and perhaps even painful as it might be to admit that we perpetuate oppression simply by existing, it’s a hell of a lot easier than actually being oppressed.
Buddhist practice gives me lots of tools to work with resistance to a feeling of discomfort, to just be with it (not hanging onto it and not pushing it away), and the curiosity to investigate it and try to understand it more deeply. I haven’t used any of those tools this week. What I’ve done instead is to fill up my time with something that is less challenging and more comfortable, to try to move back into ignorance, to fall asleep again. Without the computer to give me busy-ness (and simultaneous feeling of accomplishing something), this pattern has been more exposed.
In Why it’s so Hard to Talk to White People About Racism Dr. Robin DiAngelo describes “white fragility” — stress/discomfort experienced by white people as a result of a challenge to the belief structure, cultural norms, expectations, centrality, control, and sense of entitlement that white people have (often unconsciously) as a result of living in a white supremacist society; and a corresponding push back when challenged through withdrawal, defensiveness, crying, argument, minimization, ignoring the challenge, or otherwise seeking to regain “our racial position and equilibrium”. As an antidote to this harmful brittleness Dr. DiAngelo suggests:
- Being willing to tolerate the discomfort associated with an honest appraisal and discussion of our internalized superiority and racial privilege.
- Challenging our own racial reality by acknowledging ourselves as racial beings with a particular and limited perspective on race.
- Attempting to understand the racial realities of people of color through authentic interaction rather than through the media or unequal relationships.
- Taking action to address our own racism, the racism of other whites, and the racism embedded in our institutions — e.g., get educated and act.
Although the content above is specific to racism, and there are unique features of each type of privilege/oppression that bear examination and consideration, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend similar strategies for cisgender people wondering how to deal with their transphobia, or straight people wanting to work on their homophobia.
And this brings me to the other element that this week’s experience pointed out for me — the importance of real life relationships. It is telling me to me that this week’s fail was during a week where, through my reduction in computer use, I could not do online activism. At this point, having been away from in-person activism for so long, I rely completely on the internet to hear about things that are happening and mostly on the internet to participate. Through Facebook I’m starting to be able to put names/faces to some local activists but do not have actual real life relationships with people who are doing local Indigenous resurgence, anti-colonial, and anti-racism work; although I kinda sorta know what is going on with anti-poverty work through friends who are involved in those movements, it is still not a real personal connection for me — in contrast with earlier decades of my life, none of the people in my life now are struggling with homelessness, addiction, imprisonment, criminalization, or working in the survival sex trade, and there is no immediately visible street community in the suburban neighbourhood that I live in. We’ve lived in this neighbourhood for 8 years and although it is one of the most mixed I’ve experienced in Victoria in relation to language, ethnicity, and culture, I only know my most immediate neighbours by name, and they are white, relatively affluent people. If someone asked me what the immediate survival issues are in our community, other than very general responses like “colonialism”, I honestly wouldn’t know. Showing up for one Community Tool Shed is the first real-life thing I’ve done to connect with local Indigenous survival and resurgence efforts in almost a decade.
So, reality check – I am a total beginner again, and need to continue to press myself (and set up accountability) to actually take the many uncomfortable steps necessary to move forward. And when I get uncomfortable, try to catch it as quickly as possible and do something constructive with it instead of staying stuck.
Looking ahead to the next week
I’ve been sitting here for an hour now staring at this screen, Googling various search terms trying to find local groups doing work on survival issues and figure out what the heck to write here.
Dr. David Leonard offers this pith advice in Challenging Racism and the Problem with White “Allies”:
I focus on words like those articulated @prisonculture, ‘JUST DO THE WORK. Don’t talk about, “reflect” on it, pontificate, Just ACT. That’s it.’ And while doing the work, be accountable.
This is a totally unsatisfying way to end this post. I want to have a plan, or at least a framework for what to do next. But I really am at the starting point, and don’t know what to do other than the very next step. So, my plan is this: reach out to the people who I know locally and have some kind of activist relationship with. Explain where I’m at, where I want to get to, and ask for help. Do some more searching. Be open and see what comes up. Don’t spend all my time on the computer.
And what about you?
I would love to get feedback from you. What do you think of all of this rambling? What resonates with you, and what doesn’t? Are you trying your own sustainability initiatives and if so what are you learning?
Have a great week!
stand up eko 
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