Writing the Mythology of Activism

The country is deep into this contentious election, and the Omni folks working on the Choose Democracy Project locally are hard at work plotting how to respond to the vivid possibility that our democracy might be collapsing around us.  Watching an online training last night, led entirely by 20- and 30-something young people, brought back memories that might be worth a story.

I’m remembering being a teen in a small, conservative city in Missouri.  The options for working-class girls were limited to wife / mom / secretary, with some teachers and nurses scattered through the population.  When I picked the wrong thing in my 7^th grade assignment to “write about what you want to be when you graduate” the teacher heaped public scorn on my essay about being a landscape designer and told me “be practical” in heavy red pencil.  Wish I’d saved that essay.

By the time I graduated there was a new wind blowing through the land.  There were these stories on the news about weird people my age.  Men were letting their hair grow long.  They were “dropping out” of something.  They embraced strange religions. They lived in communes.  In California they were having sex in public parks. They seemed to be protesting war all over the place. 

My parent’s and their friends despised these freaks, even though we’d never really seen one except on TV. Who were they? What planet did they come from? Why were they destroying our way of life?

Then this poster appeared on the news.  The poster read:  “We are the ones our parents warned us about.”  With a shock I suddenly saw the human being under the shaggy hair and realized this was somebody just like me. Probably my age.  He had parents who disapproved of this behavior and he chose to do it anyway.  That was astounding and inspiring!

There’s so much more to that story from 50 years ago. Most of us have a story of our initiation into counter-culture that deserves to be shared. We should talk about that sometime.  It’s part of our mythology. 

And beyond our personal stories were the truly mythic characters.  Martin Luther King Jr. carries the biggest banner of course. But there are so many more who led through that tumultuous time before this one.  They stepped out of the role their families and their culture expected and took a different route against great resistance. And without supporting framework to nurture them through it.  They just stepped out the door of expectation and did not go back.  At least in some ways.

I guess marijuana culture was the main supporting framework.  The commune idea was supposed to stand in for supportive family, but it was hard to build caring community, coming from the authoritarian, rugged individualist culture we’d been bred to.  We needed a new experience of community that included acceptance of women’s place as leaders, and experience of Black and Brown cultures of community before white people could see how to build that kind of thing sustainably. We’re still struggling through that.

Looking at the young activists last night on the screen, as they gave expert advice on organizing massive protests, and protecting themselves from attacks by police and right-wing radicals, I got another shock of realization about the sweep and direction that time has carried us over these 50 years.

The authoritarian system is fighting its final battles now. But it won’t give up without using every weapon it has.

Progressive activism of the 1960’s had brilliant leaders fortunately, but we were babes in the woods in tackling the machinery of authoritarianism.  It was our fortune that the system was so complacent it had no tools to combat an attack from within — like having its own children turn against it.  We now live to see that there is no limit to the violence this system will use to protect itself.  To maintain system power, it seems a small price to murder its own children, wreck its own democracy, and destroy its own planet home.

Someday the children of these children – these young people leading movements right now – will have hero stories to tell about their ancestors in activism.  In this moment, it’s hard to say if they’ll be stories of victory or anguish… Star Wars or Hunger Games.  But we agree that a system that eats its young is a system of death that can only pretend to be “pro-life” by preaching what it does not practice and hiding its real functions from view.

There is no future in a culture of death.  No future for the fullness of human-beingness now struggling to birth itself into the inter-being teacher Thich Nhat Hanh describes.  We are born to do this though.  Watching a new generation of leaders step into their power affirms to me that what is happening is not a hopeless floundering against the unbeatable forces of darkness.  Something different is happening here.

At some point in the past 50 years a shift happened.  At some scale foundations were laid. A vision was ignited. Great leaders rose up — some who have not yet been acknowledged but they followed the call.

What happens next?   Breathlessly we wait for the Nov 3 election. 

“Breathless” is a metaphor for this time.  In the midst of a pandemic that stifles the breath of its sufferers, the final words of a dying Black man become the watchwords for everyone:  “I can’t breath.”  Under the knee of a system that crushes the breath of life out of everyone and everything it touches we can be certain that there is no turning back now.  

All of creation is longing for the place where together, we can breath pure and free.  

This is a time of mythic possibility.  Let’s not be afraid of it.  Let’s embrace it together, whatever ol’ thing happens. The work that must be done must be done together. Old / young.  White / Black.  Immigrant / native.  Educated / uneducated.  Women / Men / Queer of whatever beautiful gender.  Our work is to work together no matter how challenging that is.  Together is the way of power and love that we are born to and it’s worth the challenge of finding the right path.

All of creation is longing for the place where together, we can breath pure and free