Love. Power. Passion & Justice
“…one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites, polar opposites, so that love is identified with a resignation of power, and power with a denial of love.
…Now, we got to get this thing right. What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and that love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love. And this is what we must see as we move on.
Now what has happened is that we’ve had it wrong and mixed up in our country, and this has led Negro Americans in the past to seek their goals through love and moral suasion devoid of power, and white Americans to seek their goals through power devoid of love and conscience. It is leading a few extremists today to advocate for Negroes the same destructive and conscienceless power that they have justly abhorred in whites. It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our times.”
— -Martin Luther King Jr. Excerpt from “Where Do We Go From Here?,” Address Delivered at the Eleventh Annual SCLC Convention. 16 August 1967, Atlanta, Georgia.
Of Then & Now
I know we must always look at quotes in their context, that we cannot simply idolize or canonize leaders and forget the human messiness they embody too. We can easily tend to simplify history. King himself was an imperfect human and it is not fair to simplify his work, his growth, his failings, and his interconnection of social justice issues into simple quotes and leave it at that.
Yet, there is learning here and I think on these words because someone like King, and many other Civil Rights activists, offered the same wrestling of thoughts and questions we still now face in regards to challenging power structures.
To me, there are many questions, some like “What is winning? What is victory? What is mission accomplished? How do I know am fighting the good or right fight? What will lead to success?”
This follows what I wrote about in Fire Power & Love — how the “fire” is already here and how we “do not have the spaces and tools readily at hand” to tend to to it as we move with conflict, hurt, trauma, and challenges to power structures, if we state we have common goals.
A Lesson
When I was in grad school there was one class that offered a tangible emotional experiential reflection on this. It was our Conflict Resolution class, large parts of which were done as role plays. We basically took case studies, role played facilitating them to get to an ideally agreed-upon resolution, and debriefed and reflected on the process and learning.
We had been told ahead of time by the professors that even though we were role-playing, people became really invested in it, that the emotions were very real, and that dealing with those impacts required awareness of how that played a role in the process. “Some friendships were ended because of stuff that came up in these role-plays” our professors shared.
I thought “but it’s pretend right? I get taking it seriously, but THAT seriously?”
Then came my first role-play where I was a lead facilitator. I thought I was playing it cool, sticking to the role, covering all the bases, playing it by the book so to speak. Then one party (a fellow student playing the role) stated “I can’t continue like this, you’re clearly not invested in helping me here.” It began to go downhill from there.
I was a little shocked.
Later in our debrief we sorted through it. I had centered myself, easily getting caught up in my own emotional reaction, and was thinking basically “what did I do wrong? Did I not ask enough questions? Did I give too much time to one party? Did I miss a piece of information? Did I confuse someone’s position for an interest? Was I not helpful enough?”
The “answer” though was rooted in the lived experience and emotional reaction of my classmate. She stated “no, I think actually you did all of that pretty well. But I noticed that you didn’t write what I said up on the board. It was like you ignored me. I just wanted you to write what I said on the board. And you kept not doing that. Then I was just done. If only you just wrote what I said on the board…”
I wondered why she didn’t just say “it’s important to me that you write what I said on the board” during the role play. But that was not the point, This is why we were both in the class, with learning in mind, and why we worked hard to make agreements about how we were going to ensure we could distinguish learning and other emotional responses. What role we could come back to as peers and friends after the role play especially if it got emotionally deep, taxing, and perhaps even destructive.
There were a lot of lessons from that class, and keeping them all in mind was a challenge. Thus classmates came up with a handshake and phrases to help with the basics:
“Soft on the people
Hard on the problem
Fixed on the end goal
Flexible on the means”
This helped remind me about how to keep centered, how process is separated from outcomes, how to stay open to difference, and that we are still very real humans with very real reactions and emotions.
Mind you, that doesn’t mean it is a simple formula that automatically resolves things. But it was an important layer for me moving forward, knowing that messy environmental problems are messier because it is not about simple data and information and running it through a Rational Person Model. It includes values, emotions, lived experience, and the effects of being in an environment — — the role of a Reasonable Person Model for example (a model I learned from my advisers in grad school as well).
Which brings me to how, combined with my spiritual learning and growth, I’m doubling down on love.
I know, I know, love itself is not exactly a set of tactics, strategy, or even action plan with implementable steps. But if I can maintain it as a path, it can remind me from what place I am planning, what steps guide my actions, and the purpose of the tools to use.
Principles
To start, I refer back to the King quotes to connect love as a valuable component in justice-oriented work and relationship to power.
And I am reminding myself of some lessons I’ve picked up over the years as I think about tools, tactics, and strategy.
First, that social justice activists and community leaders have had to long deal with the question of what it means to work and lead in solidarity.
One strong set of principles, which if you’re not familiar with then it is a good place to start by learning them, are the Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing. They were drafted after a meeting on December 6–8, 1996, in Jemez, New Mexico for the “Working Group Meeting on Globalization and Trade.” The meeting was hosted by the Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice “with the intention of hammering out common understandings between participants from different cultures, politics and organizations.”
In short they are 6 Principles:
- Be Inclusive
- Emphasis on Bottom Up Organizing
- Let the People speak for Themselves
- Work Together in Solidarity and Mutuality
- Build Just Relationships Among Ourselves
- Commitment to Self-Transformation
Collectively they are powerful and offer checkpoints for when we come to work together — and when we ignore these I feel is when things fall apart or struggle more than needed. For example, we can set up a space as much as possible to be inclusive and accessible but if we do not honor a commitment to self-transformation, we hit that wall pretty quickly.
Another set of principles offer ways to have collective impact beyond the resources at hand. They are about not just looking at the impact we have as individuals and organizations, but as a network, and I would argue as a working community as well.
The 4 Network Weaving Principles are:
- Mission before Organization
- Trust, not Control
- Humility, not Brand
- Constellations, not Stars
They are another set of collectively simple and powerful research-backed principles that focus on ensuring the work exists and survives beyond individuals and organizations, that it is centered on long-term trust-based relationships, and that we are setting up networks with shared purpose.
Collaboration for Collective Liberation
I also want to be clear that leading with LOVE is not the same as being careless with boundaries, putting up with injustices, or simply “turning the other cheek” every time.
For me, if we are using a tag like “Community Over Competition” to set forth an ideal that we can indeed be stronger together, that diversity is not division, and and that competition ultimately undermines the collective work through individual ego-driven gains, then I understand the need to ground practices in the reality of our experiences along with the ideals of our visions.
For this I draw two lessons from analysis of Game Theory and setups like the “Prisoner’s Dilemma”.
The first is an idea based off of “Tit for Tat” (“When you first meet another player, co-operate. Thereafter, choose the response that the other player chose when last encountered”) and how we can still lead with the presumption of best intention and offering compassion while acknowledging that harm and hurt will not be simply accepted. However, what is found is that the most successful strategy in Tit for Tat is not simply to match what your opponent is doing but that you can add forgiveness for increased impact. It is summarized as:
“be nice (never the first to defect), be retaliating (willing to defect), be forgiving (willing to attempt to regain trust by breaking a defection cycle), and [be] non-envious (not specifically attempt to outscore individual opponents).”
Particularly interesting to me is how the act of cooperation is supported through adaptive evolution but that it also does not solely rely on inaccurate “social Darwinism” tropes. Yes, it recognizes we are the product of evolution, AND there are some special attributes as humans that we can lean on beyond just our biology:
It’s neither simply “an eye for an eye” or “turn the other cheek” but a combination of both, with compassion and forgiveness as a tilting factor.
How does this translate to LOVE? Well I think love doesn’t mean a simple capitulation to “soft” or pollyannic emotions. Love is also fierce, protective, and boundary setting for self and others. I think it is why many of us engage in this work, the PASSION of why we get so emotionally invested, and reactive.
But love is also a practice of surrender, acceptance, flexing, and release. Of not holding on to things too tightly that we get caught up in the trappings of the ego.
And to me love is a basis for how we can interact with and relate to each other in building meaningful connections within power structures, or at least acknowledging the the idea of a “pecking order” is not set up to bring out the best in ourselves and each others.
The experiment here was simple. What works better? A team of “average” dedicated hard-working chickens or a team of highly productive “super chickens”?
The results were telling:
“…what [the researcher] found at the end of the experiment pretty much amazed him and I think amazes most people who hear the story, which is the average flock was doing very well. They were all really plump, fully feathered, very healthy and, importantly, they were more productive than ever. And the other flock — the superflock — all but three were dead…The rest had pecked each other to death.”
This has been used as a basis for examples and models for our interactions in work spaces and organizations.
As the author notes in one example:
“…oh, sure, we have lots of superstars in music. It’s just they don’t last very long. It’s the outstanding collaborators who enjoy the long careers because bringing out the best in others is how they found the best in themselves. And when I went to visit companies that are renowned for their ingenuity and creativity, I couldn’t even see any superstars because everybody there really mattered…”
The main point with that is the great need for connectedness between people. Whether the success of being “successful” is found in eliminating the competition or by working together. The building of social capital, of trust.
Which goes back to the Network Principles of “Humility before Brand, Trust Not Control, and Build Constellations Not Stars” — and what my theater workshop instructor would say “If everyone here focuses on making your partner look good, then you all succeed because everyone looks good, rather than focusing on yourself.”
And when we get stuck in those hard spaces, how deep and full are our wells of trust to get us through?
The Self Work- Squeezed Like An Orange
Now back to a last crucial piece: How we work on ourselves as individuals. This aligns with the Jemez Principle of Commitment to self-Transformation.
It’s a deceptively simple radical question, and crucial to the movement. It also points at King’s line about seeking and using “the same destructive and conscienceless power” that you abhor in the oppressor. That takes some time to sit with it, and do self-work.
For me, it has meant letting my unfolding and learning in Spirituality to provide guidance, along with the learning and support of mentors, past and present, in living and ancestor form.
To be clear, I’m not talking about religion — and this is not the space to debate specific beliefs over others. I will simply ground Spirituality here on the root of the word: Spirit.
To me that means the work that grounds us in Divinity as we move with our very human lives in this reality. The work to stay in alignment to higher powers and ideals beyond the biology, more than the physical sum or our parts. Yes, it is the space of faith, but still grounded in practice. It is not empty beliefs without actions.
It’s messy, it’s hard, it’s gooey, it’s dirty, it’s challenging, it’s uncomfortable, it’s very very human — and so very needed.
It’s the work for radical acceptance, of activist self-care, of Ancestral healing, of how “Decolonization Starts Inside You” — -things that will not always be captured in an agenda, not clearly communicated over email, or summed up in one pithy inspirational Instagram quote.
But it is one of practice and habit. Of living. With self, with others. If we are all up for self-love and love of community, how do we react to self and others when the pressure is upon us?
When we are SQUEEZED, what comes out?
The metaphor is one commonly offered by the late Dwayne Dyer, about what should you expect if you squeeze an orange.
The questions are annoying simple:
- “If were to squeeze this orange as hard as I could, what would come out?”
- “Do you think apple juice could come out of it?”
- “What about grapefruit juice?”
- “Why? Why when you squeeze an orange does orange juice come out?”
And so on and so on.
It does not matter as much WHEN the orange is squeezed, WHERE the orange is squeezed, HOW the orange is squeezed, WHO squeezes the orange, or perhaps even WHY the orange is squeezed.
The question is still: What comes out?
When anything other than love comes out, it is a point of reflection and consideration. For me it is about what I have allowed to be inside, and what role the Ego is playing.
Forward
So here we are and here we go.
Movement building and system changing is messy, it’s non linear, it’s challenging, it is individual and collective. And if it is the work we seek to undertake, it is a set of agreements and values we have to constantly affirm and reflect on. To see what comes out when we are squeezed…and why.
Returning to my question of “how do we build systems of healing”, or as Adrienne Maree Brown puts it “Communities of Care” I think the such systems/spaces/communities are crucial to the emotionally taxing work that is this call of collective liberation.
Adrienne poses the ask to:
“make a commitment to people to be more honest with each other, heal together, change together, and become a community of care that can grow to hold us all.”
Simply put, but once again it takes work. Work that begins with self, that threads in others, that weaves us together.
That beyond the fire, we look at the work that continues, and the healing still needed to regenerate. Thinking back to our nature lessons and ecological principles too, the learning offered there too, from Madre Tierra and our Ancestors, First Truths. As Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer of “Braiding Sweetgrass” notes:
“[Sweetgrass] is also a healing plant, and the way that it heals is so interesting. Ecologically, it is a healer of broken, open land. It’s a pioneer species that comes and binds up the soil with its rhizomes. But it’s also a cultural healer, a spiritual healing plant as well.”
I think about that when I think about love and healing. Healing through love given our passion on seeking justice, and the aligned and just use of our power in the face of unjust power structures.
And when I find myself with one of those small moments of doubt, I remember something as simple, magical, and profound as this:
You’re the product of 14 billion years of cosmic evolution. A stardust spirit incarnate linked to ancestral divinity and guidance. A quantum manifestation of billions of cells pulling together for a common purpose with the ability to use consciousness and thought to affect your interaction with reality. You’re a future ancestor. Fucking act like it. I love you.
