The important question the movement raises, one that I hope we all take a moment to consider is, “what would it take to make us take to the streets in protest?“

I’ve written here before about our cultural disdain for those who take direct and public action to live out their personal values, whether it’s through making statements that confront some untruth or injustice, being a community organizer, or holding up a sign in the rain on a street corner.

Practicing what we preach is hard, and fear of change is sometimes paralyzing, so it’s no wonder that we can become confused, resentful or even outraged when someone does stand up for what they believe in, especially if what they believe in is different from our own views and beliefs.  It’s vulnerable, difficult and even embarrassing to put ourselves out there in front of complete strangers, let alone to do so for hours, days, weeks and months at a time; no wonder we sometimes look at the OWS folks like they’re a little crazy.  ”There are civilized ways one is supposed to handle these things,” we say.  ”Standing in the street can’t accomplish anything.”

But whatever you think of Occupy Wall Street protesters and their demands or non-demands, whatever good or bad things you think of when you hear the word “activist,” please, PLEASE ask yourself this question: “what injustice would need to occur for me to drop what I’m doing and take action against it?  What would make me protest in the streets?”

Would some great harm brought upon your family members, your children, your loved ones be enough?

Or would it take someone who makes decisions about your paycheck, your pension fund, your tax dollars being caught red-handed stealing or maliciously misusing those funds?

How about an imminent threat to the land you live on, or the public spaces in your community where you gather with friends, take kids to play, the places that define your environment?  What if you found out someone was poisoning your water supply or putting harmful chemicals in your food?

Sure, maybe at first you go to a co-worker, or the police, or a lawyer, or a judge…but what if they didn’t see it your way?  What if they didn’t bother to help you?  What if they actively tried to stop you?

Is there something that could happen that would feel important enough for you to take action?  Today, right now?  What does it look like?

The Occupy Wall Street movement is a group of people who have decided that something has happened in their lives, in their world, that merits protest and other forms of direct action.  They’ve decided that “the civilized ways one is supposed to handle these things” aren’t enough, or aren’t working.  Some line has been crossed, and so they’ve decided to cross their own lines, making themselves vulnerable and uncomfortable and maybe a little bit embarrassed.  We don’t have to agree with where that line is to appreciate that they’ve found that clarity for themselves.

And if you can’t think of anything that would cause you to take action, then what do you stand for?

A few thoughts on how it went, and what’s next:

This was a very unifying, clarifying event for me.  It knitted together elements from all facets of the “save the world” efforts I’ve put my time and energy into thinking about and acting on over the last ten years.  From organizing national conferences around Daniel Quinn’s books, to attending regional conferences about Peak Oil and community-based solutions, to helping with other statewide efforts to promote sustainability efforts, and then to more locally focused efforts such as local food issues and the 100-Mile Radius Potlucks, to lending my skills to local entities like the Cope Environmental Center, trying to make my own life more sustainable, to identifying and confronting the very personal fears around sustainable living – the notion of facilitating a community transition to lower energy usage (and all of the amazing social, cultural, educational, political, and personal opportunities that come with it) serves as a nice umbrella for all of these.  Better yet, it’s presented in terms of possibilities and better living, true homeland security, and returning to community values of days past – these are ideas that transcend political boundaries or ideological conflicts…they’re just about doing what’s needed to survive.

The purpose of the event was to equip each of us with the tools and support to initiate transition efforts in our own communities. It was successful in that – from getting more up-to-date information about the data points of Peak Oil, to a cornucopia of documents, slides, and links, to some hands-on practicing of training/conference facilitation tools, it was a broad coverage of community organizing skills.  There were also plenty of useful stories of success and failure from other participants doing all sorts of interesting things (Chicago, West Virginia, Pittsburgh, etc.) and the added bonus of deep wisdom from fellow-participant Peter Bane, who publishes Permaculture Activist magazine.

For me, I was certainly there with an eye on how I could help Richmond, especially as this community seems to flounder about in asking “what can we do in the face of economic collapse and other global crisis?”  See exhibit A, today’s editorial in the Palladium-Item (“Region needs targeted, local development strategies“), which tries to tell us what we need, but offers no practical advice on how to do it or why it would help, at least not beyond the same old same old: tax abatement incentive packages.  As I’ve said before, without a driving vision that informs the hunt for more jobs, we’re just treading water.  And as I told the EDC when they invited me to speak to their board, we’re overlooking and underestimating the importance of “going local” – building a self-reliant community instead of looking for more imported resources (jobs or otherwise).

I think I’m more ready now to be a part of spreading that message a little more effectively.  This training helped me see an approach and find a tool-set that makes some practical next steps clear, and provided the clarity, inspiration and motivation to make it real for me again.

If you’re in the Richmond area and are interested in talking more about how this city can transition to a more self-reliant, resilient way of life, I hope you’ll make contact with me if you haven’t already.  And if you’re elsewhere and want to learn more about the Transition movement, there are trainings happening all the time, or you can bring one to your own community.

It was simultaneously a good and bad thing today to see that there are plenty of people talking about U-Washee outside of Richmond.  A little more than a month ago, The Bilerico Project put up a great commentary with photos and really calls Richmond out for not taking action on this, but also ties it to larger trends of racism in the Midwest:

The laundromat is, literally, built on racist stereotypes of Chinese people and no one gives it a passing glance. It’s 1940′s era cartoon stereotype mascot, what Margaret Cho calls “feng shui hong kong fooey font,” and the extra “ee”s at the end of words in the business’s name and posted notices all combine to form one hellish timewarp into a past America most areas have forgotten but we tend to accept as typical – and no one utters a peep.

Then there’s the long line of commenters below the post essentially shaking their heads at us.  This is played out across comments from elsewhere in the blogosphere and media on U-Washee, all wondering why Richmond citizens aren’t outraged.

I wonder that too.  As a community that is usually at least no more willing to wear our racist tendencies on our sleeves than other Midwestern towns, and that sometimes rises to the challenge of confronting racism more directly, it seems like we would not want to let this pass.

Heck, if only for economic development reasons, you could make a case that it’s really bad for a city that’s struggling economically to even risk the possibility of offending a businessperson considering locating an operation here.  In recent years, we’ve spent non-trivial resources developing relationships with contacts, governments and corporations in Asian countries (not that Asian people should be the only ones insulted by this).  But if you drive someone on out to our industrial and business parks, you’ll get to see U-Washee along the way

Here’s what I can suggest for action, perhaps in order of escalation:

• Contacting the management and/or owners of U-Washee directly and asking them to remove the U-Washee branding and signage
• Raising awareness of the racist imagery through letters to the editor, talking about it with your peers and family, other media exposure, etc.
• Facilitating a community conversation about race and racism in the context of the U-Washee branding
• Notifying the various local organizations that might feel it is within their purview and/or mission to address this
• Asking Richmond’s Mayor and Common Council to issue statements condemning the racist imagery

I don’t want Richmond to be known for things like this, do you?

Flash mobs are interesting to me for a few reasons:

They’re usually groups of strangers who don’t necessarily have anything else in common, coming together to do something out of the ordinary for just a few moments.

They tend not to be activists protesting anything, and generally aren’t trying to make any particular statement beyond an artistic one.

Participants in flash mobs make themselves vulnerable to the surrounding passers-by. In the “freeze frame” versions, they’re sometimes photographed, touched, pushed, even hit. But they are putting themselves out there to be a part of something bigger than what one person can do alone.

Most notable is the wide range of reactions that the mobs get from those who aren’t in on the action. Some people have that “wow, is this the end of the world?” look on their faces, while others are just in gleeful awe that their understanding of the space around them has been challenged. Still others go about their business, pretending not to notice, or in some cases, are actually oblivious.

I’d like to think that I’m aware enough of what’s going on in the world around me that if all of the sudden people stopped moving in mass numbers in a public space, I would notice. (Depending on which M. Night Shyamalan movie I’d seen recently, I might also run like hell.)  I also really appreciate the notion of creating something totally unexpected, something that redefines reality, even if just a little bit.

As we head into Election Day here in the U.S., I find it worth thinking about the power of mobs of strangers to create unexpected outcomes in our public life, and the choices that the people around them make about whether or not to notice, or to care.

What part will you play?

You can watch more Flash mobs on YouTube.

Here’s an interview PBS did with Goodman about her arrest, including video from the scene:

It wasn’t problematic for me because the attack was being used against candidate Barack Obama, although I didn’t find it to be an effective or useful expression of concern about his qualifications. Instead, I think that it was just plain insulting to the many people in communities across the world who devote their time and energy to making their local communities better places to live. Further, I think it was a hypocritical and problematic assertion given some of the other selling points being used to present Palin and McCain to voters. Here’s why:

Community organizers are people who look at the concerns and opportunities in their neighborhoods, cities, counties and regions and ask, “what can I do to make good things happen here?” They connect people with resources, people with people. They make the case to decision-makers so that better decisions can be made, though they don’t necessarily wait patiently for the machinations of government when they can be more effective using grassroots methods. They take pride in the place they call home, and aren’t afraid to acknowledge its shortcomings while presenting the case for hope in the future.

Community organizers are the thorns in the side of people who block progress by clinging to “the way things have always been” and “our best days are behind us.” They ask “what about the suffering among us?” and “how can we do more with the resources we already have?” Community organizers are the old timers, go-getters, entrepreneurs, social butterflies, visionaries, and humble leaders that serve as cornerstones in the circles they traverse – often unrecognized, but not in it for the recognition.

Are you sure you want to laugh at community organizers? Are you sure you want to paint them as people who aren’t qualified to be leaders?

I suspect that Sarah Palin and others thought laughing and finger pointing was appropriate because “Community Organizer” is a title that doesn’t fit very well into the patriarchal, bottom-line focused hierarchy of status and power that comes along with national politics. It’s like “Stay at Home Mom” or “Poet/Writer” or “Homemaker” in that all of these ways of spending time are still seen as somehow less worthy than “CEO” or “Mayor” or “President.” They don’t pay as well, you can’t list out your accomplishments as judged by some globally accepted standard, and they don’t command as much awe and respect from the workaholic, instant gratification culture that only cares about how many people you can get to do your bidding at a moment’s notice.

And so it was easy to throw the pitiable “Community Organizer” up there next to the all-important “Mayor” and laugh and point.

“Of course a Mayor is a better station in life than Community Organizer! Of course Mayors always get more done, are better leaders, and because they have an official job description, of course they’re more accountable and effective!” But when you stop to think about it, most of us can say with some certainty that this is a false narrative, and that in any given town, the Mayor (or State Representative, or Senator, or President) can be as incompetent and poor at leadership as anyone else. In fact, there’s that old adage that someone who can get themselves elected to a given public office perhaps isn’t actually qualified to be there. I don’t think all or even most elected officials fall into this category, but the point is that there’s no generalizing or assuming. Especially not when you’re talking about someone who might get to control nuclear weapons.

I was also surprised to hear Palin make this laughing comparison and then hold up “Hockey Mom” as a bullet point on her resume. Like Community Organizers, Hockey Moms (and sometimes Dads) tend to be people who put passion, love and energy into supporting their children, attending local events with enthusiasm, being involved in the local school system, building stronger communities, and holding it all together through the highs and lows. Surely Hockey Moms want to know that their lives and the way they spend time have worth and importance in our culture even though they too do not fit into a narrow corporate structure of how human lives are valued? It’s disingenuous to hold up one kind of non-traditional life choice as laughable while rallying around another, and it just reminds us how scripted and fake the rhetoric is.

If you read this blog regularly, you know that I don’t spend much time hoping that the federal government will Do Something to make my life better. Indeed, I think most of us know that if we want to experience change in our lives, we actually have to go out and make that change happen ourselves. When I see someone who has devoted their time and energy to not only changing their own lives for the better, but also reaching out into their community and organizing for change that benefits others, I stand in awe. I do this because I know it is these among us who play a big part in actually making progress possible – people who inspire and lead, who bleed the blood of their neighbors and who celebrate loudly when joy comes to their town. This is the stuff that strong communities are made of, the stuff that makes bloated government even more unnecessary and in the way.

I can only assume that anyone who would look down on this and laugh so condescendingly is just scrambling get to the top of the power and wealth pyramid as fast as possible, no matter who they have to step on, and I see no honor or integrity in that.

For me, if my life were being remembered by friends and family, and the most that could be said was that I acted passionately for the benefit of my community, I would have lived a life that mattered.

If you’re more apt to learn and benefit from an hour-long video than you are from 240 Kilobytes of text on Wikipedia, then I commend On Our Watch to you as a great overview of the issue – you can watch it for free online. It covers the origins of the conflict, the horribly lacking role of the United Nations, and the oil interests, global economic interdependencies, and cover-your-ass politics that have allowed other international players, including the U.S., to stand idly by.

Of course, once you’ve done that, you can take action to bring awareness of the genocide to others and encourage your congressional representatives to play a part. (Apparently, Mike Pence gets a “grade B” for his role, co-sponsoring and voting in favor of most Darfur leglistlation, but not being a champion of the cause. Richard Lugar gets an “A”.) There’s a Save Darfur action group in Oxford, Ohio, just down the road. You can make sure you don’t have investments using firms like JP Morgan, Franklin Templeton, Fidelity Investments, Capital Group (American Funds), and Vanguard, which themselves invest in companies (especially PetroChina) that help fund the genocide. And so on.

Hmmmm. It’s easy to write a blog entry with all these handy links. It’s easy to encourage action in response to a humanitarian crisis. It’s hard to know what to actually do that will make a difference. In recent years I’ve become even more skeptical of the notion that people in power will respond to even the most impassioned pleas from the citizenry. Whether it’s a decision on a local level about moving the BMV branch office to a ridiculously inconvenient location, or a national decision to invade another country, or an international coalition of the unwilling when it comes to genocide in Africa, one has to wonder what it takes, how many voices have to be shouting for recognition day in and day out, before it really matters.

As a high ranking U.N. official noted in the documentary, when the world looked at what happened in Rwanda and Srebrenica and said, “never again,” we actually only meant “we hope it never happens again,” not “we will do whatever it takes to keep it from happening again.” I suppose that’s why it’s all too easy to be ignorant of a “conflict” so far away, so not dependent on the decisions I make every day. The despair of “what can I do?” quickly becomes another layer in the cocoon that protects us from the horrors of the things we think we cannot change. And then we have the conversations in our heads like the one in a favorite scene from The Constant Gardener:

Justin: We can’t involve ourselves in their lives, Tessa.
Tessa: Why?
Justin: Be reasonable.
Tessa: There are millions of people. They all need help.
Justin: That’s what the agencies are here for.
Tessa: Yeah, but these are three people that we can help.

All of the world’s tragedies are played out through the hurt and death that affects each individual life involved. We can and do aggregate that hurt into statistics and documentaries and high-level overviews, but always to the detriment of the person sitting in a refugee camp or a prison or a gas chamber, asking how we could let this happen to them. I suppose that only when we find a way to relate to our fellow humans, even those most distant, in a way that does not lump their suffering into a larger narrative, will we be able to drop what we’re doing and take action. But, it is also likely not even possible for most humans to let that dark awareness in, let alone live with it daily.

So, what does that world look like, where acting to help others out of an immediate sense of humanity and injustice is common and healthy, and how do we get there? When will be able to say “never again” and mean it?

The essence of radical simplicity, of the gift/generosity economy, of natural community, and of natural entrepreneurship, I think, is needing less. Needing less makes us, as individuals, members of enterprises, communities and societies, more self-sufficient, and more resilient, and allows us to give more with the ‘excess’ time, energy and money that we have by virtue of needing less.

Dave goes on to list a few ways that needing less in everyday life might manifest itself. Perhaps obvious to some, overly abstract to others…a pleasant reminder for me.

• Number of US citizens (non-military) killed by terrorists in 2005: 56
• Amount spent by US government on War on Terror in 2005: $136 billion
• Number of people worldwide who died of hunger in 2005: 8,000,000
• Amount spent by US government on aid to world’s poor in 2005: $4.9 billion

(Sources: US Dept. of State; The End of Poverty; Congressional Research
Service)

When I was in College, where I learned that world-views which can be expressed on hip bumper stickers are the ones you really want to internalize and live by, I saw one that said “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” I really liked it at the time, because it highlighted the curious and nearly universal practice of going about our daily lives while really awful, horrible, disgusting things are happening all around us.

“Yeah,” I thought, “people should be more angry! If they were, maybe they would do something about all the problems.” And so when I thought about how to make a change in the world, I thought it meant making people aware of and outraged about all of the bad stuff happening, so that they would “do something.”

It turns out, people generally know about the bad stuff happening, and we still generally make the same kinds of choices every day. It turns out that bad outcomes can happen despite the good intentions of good people. So I’ve figured out that just seeking to inspire outrage may not be the best or only approach (at least now that I’m out of College and have less taste for bumper stickers), even though I may still feel it deeply myself.

And yet, the numbers above are compelling. Our fascination with breaking and imprisoning non-human life is fascinating. Our unwillingness to take advantage of the mechanisms of democracy or defend the checks and balances of the same is compelling. Our ability to sidestep the underlying issues of population growth and pollution is fascinating. Our quest to send our children into twelve years of mind-numbing redundancy is amazing. And the list goes on. One starts to wonder what or who it might take for things to be different. One starts to wonder where the lines are. But it’s never about wondering what external forces will swoop in to the rescue, because all of us have a part to play.

And so I keep paying attention. I write. I connect. I speak. I act. I create. I frame and re-frame. I question. I try to live out my values. I seek out others who do the same. It’s not really enough, and never will be given what this version of humanity has wrought, but it’s what there is for me, for now.

As it’s sometimes said about charitable giving, I think you have to give your time and energy “until it feels good.” But in the end, it’s not about the number of organizations you’re involved in or the number of hours you’ve spent giving of yourself. It’s about whether or not you’ve made a difference in the lives of those around you.

I’m grateful for having a life that allows me to give of my time, and I’m grateful for those moments when it does seem a difference is being made. Thanks to the Richmond-Wayne County Chamber of Commerce for their recent award honoring my service with their Legislative Committee.