{"id":52022,"date":"2022-04-01T20:36:01","date_gmt":"2022-04-01T20:36:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wagingnonviolence.org\/forusa\/?p=52022"},"modified":"2022-04-14T17:39:23","modified_gmt":"2022-04-14T17:39:23","slug":"why-we-need-to-shift-from-crisis-mode-to-sustainable-organizing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wagingnonviolence.org\/forusa\/2022\/04\/why-we-need-to-shift-from-crisis-mode-to-sustainable-organizing\/","title":{"rendered":"Why we need to shift from crisis mode to sustainable organizing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As we in this part of the world are entering the spring season, it seems like a good time to consider the cycles in our ongoing struggle to become Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s beloved community. Just as King\u2019s political strategy and moral concerns evolved and even shifted radically during his life, most of us involved in justice work have experienced growth in our consciousness. I\u2019m personally starting to understand how movements work, and why they change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I recently had the opportunity to reflect on my time with Occupy Wall Street as the Fellowship of Reconciliation was creating a documentary film on the 10th anniversary of the movement. In September 2011, I was starting an internship with FOR, and through my involvement with a student group from Union Theological Seminary, called the Protest Chaplains, I became one of FOR\u2019s on-the-ground respondents to the Occupy movement. When asked in the documentary<\/a> about the most enduring takeaways from Occupy, I shared about how the experience radicalized me politically and how its \u201cending\u201d taught me about the ebb and flow of mass movements.<\/p>\n\n\n

Previous Coverage<\/h6>
  • \"\"<\/a> An oral history of Occupy Wall Street, 10 years later<\/a><\/li><\/section>\n\n\n\n

    Having now lived through and been part of several movement cycles \u2014 such as the War on Terror protests post-9\/11, Occupy and the Movement for Black Lives \u2014 one thing that I\u2019ve noticed is the frustration and disappointment experienced by many people, especially those who are relatively new to justice work and organizing, when the initial energy and momentum that catapults a movement dissipates after the first few months. In meeting spaces that become increasingly smaller week after week, I\u2019ve heard lamentations about how people have stopped coming out to protests and actions in the same numbers as they did just a month before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Furthermore, in our age of social media there is no end to the judgments levied against the \u201cvirtue signaling\u201d of people who move from sharing links for mutual aid, protests and rallies to posting photos of their pets. (I remember that once the uprisings of 2020 became quiet, one friend on Instagram called out people for \u201ccos-playing\u201d<\/a> activism \u2014 that friend has also now transitioned to mostly posting photos of his dog.) We aren\u2019t always attuned to the reality that mass movements have rhythms that change over time; the question becomes, how can we live into those changing rhythms with intention and purpose?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In certain circles there is an increasing awareness that powerful, sustainable movement work must be more closely attuned to the natural world. There is a growing consciousness that for us to continue to organize for the future we need to be able to be aware that movements are always made up of a series of peaks and valleys, and that we need to be intentional about how we are operating in any given cycle. In his article \u201cMovements and leaders have seasons \u2014 it\u2019s important to know which one you are in\u201d<\/a> on Waging Nonviolence<\/em>, the movement leader and trainer Carlos Saavedra talks about the need to think about cycles of leadership strategically by recognizing the \u201cseasonality\u201d of movements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The real test of a mass movement\u2019s success is not in how many people show up to protests, but in the ways that people become internally and collectively transformed by the experience.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

    Saavedra describes four seasons of leadership: winter (rest, individual and collective reflection), spring (exploration, risk-taking and experimentation), summer (high energy and maximum activity) and fall (harvesting the \u201cfruits\u201d of organizing and activism, celebrating victories). Movements and organizations need to go through these seasons just as individual leaders do. Saavedra suggests that we often don\u2019t recognize this need because of the dominant culture\u2019s focus on overproduction \u2014 we have internalized the message that to be effective we must always be doing more, working harder, never stopping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Author and strategist adrienne maree brown also writes about how movement work benefits from an alignment with processes in nature; in her brilliant book “Emergent Strategy” brown talks about biomimicry as the way we learn to be in right relation to the difficult work of changing systems and changing ourselves. As brown tells us, \u201cInstability has become a defining feature of our times\u201d; adaptability<\/em> has become a necessity for us to continue powerfully in this work. brown\u2019s affectionate descriptions of how starlings fly in murmuration, fish shoal in schools, and bees swarm provide a guide for how we can agitate for change sustainably; starlings, fish and bees all move in harmony to one another towards a collective purpose at specific times of day or year. They have cyclical processes of productivity and rest \u2014 and the ways they move together allows for safety, communication and support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The organization Movement Generation<\/a>, out of Oakland, California, which brown cites in her book, has crafted a statement about our need for adaptation by classifying the instability of our world into \u201cshocks\u201d and \u201cslides.\u201d The sudden shocks (acute climate events, uprisings, white nationalist violence) and the gradual slides (rising sea levels, rising unemployment, rising food and housing costs) require different responses and modes of being. I think that too often we as \u201cmovement people\u201d respond to every crisis, whether shock or slide, in the same mode. We operate as if there is only one unchanging, never-ending season \u2014 what Saavedra calls the \u201ceternal summer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In my current work as an organizer with POWER Interfaith<\/a>, I\u2019m finding that we are in a spring season in the movement, not just literally but organizationally. The Trump era created a climate of perpetual crisis response mode for POWER, with leaders organizing solidarity actions: at the Philadelphia airport following the so-called Muslim ban 2016; a \u201cPhilly Is Charlottesville\u201d march in the wake of the Unite the Right rally in 2017; and a rapid response following the police murder of Walter Wallace in 2020, among others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In 2021, our work turned inward, to evaluate how we would continue to organize powerfully now that we weren\u2019t constantly putting out one dumpster fire after another. Here in Philadelphia, we\u2019ve begun a citywide listening campaign with the recognition that during the pandemic our member congregations have become disconnected from one another and that we as an organization need to realign ourselves with what matters most to our people. We\u2019re in a season of exploration and stretching ourselves, as we\u2019ve committed to having 1,000 one-to-one conversations over the next three months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n