Had a great extended yammer online with
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riderofkarma on Skype last night. Her girlfriend also made an appearance; if she thought there were any sane people on our family I'm sure she's convinced now we're all loons. Which we are.
J and got on the topic of activism. I don't know where she gets it from, but Ma was an amazing activist. For her the focus was her children's schooling. She was involved with the PTA from before I entered school, eventually being given a lifetime membership. When there was an issue at our school--affecting her kids or not--Ma was there to take it on. And while she's always capable of righteous indignation, she also built a lot of relationships. I'm sure that any new principal was told "make sure you get on well with Pat E." Though I don't doubt to some extent it was to avoid her wrath.
My friends still refer to "Mrs. Egan's withering glare," and they've only seen my watered down version of it.
My sister, J's mum, has done almost as much at school and an incredible amount at the community level. She's taken on polluters (and won), city hall's abandonment of working class neighbourhood playgrounds and parks (and won), and racism and homophobia. She supported bilingual kindergarten for any English speaking or Spanish speaking kids whose parents wanted to encourage bilingualism. And she made sure her local school board's budgets got passed when they faced plebiscites--even if it meant holding a second vote. K's a fierce woman.
I've been mostly involved with queer stuff, with a bit in mental health and substance abuse. My motivation hasn't changed over time: my degree of self-honesty has. When I was 25 it was all about injustice. Now it's mostly about injustice, but it comes from a personal sense of outrage. When I was 25 that outrage was just rage. All-consuming, and I very nearly was reduced to ashes: gay + Irish Catlick + alcohol = time bomb.
In my early 20s I did community work because I felt compelled to. I also like the sense of moral certitude--and righteousness--it gave me. It also countered my self-loathing as a young queer man--if I had to be a fag I was gonna be an exemplary one. Didn't quite make it though.....d'oh!
Until I got sober my job was my livelihood and my activism my work. I did what I need to do to almost be financial solvent. My spare time was spent organizing, providing peer support, and taking turns shrieking about injustice with my activist comrades. There were many transformative moments--the 1987 March on Washington perhaps the greatest--when I felt an intense sense of hope rather than anger. But in hindsight the ranting and raving occupied more time than the social justice work itself.
When I bottomed out regarding alcohol I cleaned slate: anything I did whilst drinking I dropped, including activism. 18 months later I got back into and could feel the rage, since there was nothing in my body to dull it. It felt shitty, unproductive, scary, despairing. But I honoured my commitment to the project at hand and eventually learnt to work on the inside whilst doing good things on the outside. And I did a shitload of service in my recovery community. A place that proved both gentle and critical at a time I so dearly needed it.
But once I felt confident I could be an activist without self-immolating, I couldn't ignore those around me who couldn't. One after another, sometimes weeks or months apart but eventually, other activists crashed and burned. Some ended up in the psych ward, some loaded, others took themselves out of the game. And when they did, they nearly received applause. "Her whole life was about justice, she was a true warrior." or "he never stopped going toe-to-toe, taking on each and every fucker." Yeah, but they ended up dead. Who won?
It was this scenario--when someone who dedicated pretty much all their waking energy to activism and then killed themself--that I could make no sense of. Until I realized it had been happening to me towards the end of my drinking...on the night of my last drunk, in fact. I normally drank to the point of blackout, but that last night I remember calmly thinking "I should jump off the Burrard Street Bridge." Or go back to Numbers." Not with anguish or outrage or even self-pity. It was a decision. A decision.
So the next time I saw a comrade starting to spin out, I did something about. Sometimes, if we had rapport, I'd lovingly challenge them about what they were doing, what was happening, and how they felt--and where it might end up. Other times I initiated a dialogue within our group to consider how much anger is too much, when does outrage become counter-productive, or how do you ask for help if it all starts to feel overwhelming?
My niece the lovely J (hey J, tell your mother I'm still snarked out that I didn't get to be the gawdparent of any of her 7 kids. even if I'm a heretic) was talking about Prop 8 and marriage rights: she lives in the Bay Area; this is so personal to her. And to me. She shared a lot about what motivates, what angers her, what saddens her. And I shared some of my experience too. Mostly we talked about taking care of self.
At 44.9 I finally understand that you have to take care of yourself if you want to make a sustained and substantive commitment to activism. It's a marathon--no, it's a triathlon--not a sprint. And the way you finish those sorts of races is by training, practicing, taking care, and using every support you can to be your fittest.
And that means taking care of each other too.
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