I’ve been thinking about writing and activism—which one is “better” for a person to do, a person with limited time and energy, a person in a pandemic, a person living in a country where basic voting rights are not at all secure. I don’t know why I’ve been thinking about it like this—as in one or the other. Except for the obvious fact that there are only 24 hours in a day, even a strange pandemic day, and everyone I know is exhausted and demoralized. What “should” people do? I’ve been thinking about that.
Renowned writer, historian, teacher, and activist Larry Goodwyn thought it was clear that activism was of the highest order. Here’s his son Wade, articulating his father’s view:
When I left my position as an organizer…in exchange for a job as a reporter…I had no illusions that I wasn’t abandoning the good fight. I knew I was. Kitchen conversations [with Larry] taught me that political revolutions don’t happen through reading or watching TV or listening to NPR…In the world as it is, political transformation occurs as a result of…organizing.[1]
That seems clear enough. Except who will tell others about the organizing? Tell it as a narrative rather than only as a series of organizing to-do steps? If people are to continue the work, someone has to tell the story of what has happened so far. Organizing then telling about what happened—they’re complementary acts. Why do I keep pushing myself to compare them, decide which is better?
Does it matter what makes a person happy? When I registered voters then helped turn out the vote for the Senate Run-off last year in Georgia, it was joyful work—even before we got the results we’d wanted. And how about those results? Rare! Amazing! Afterwards, I felt like I wasn’t done until I reported back. Not at length. Just a kind of: I was here with hundreds of other people, we did this, it was like this: https://medium.com/dukeuniversity/a-blue-georgia-on-my-mind-5085cb45c296. That writing felt joyful, too.
In the past when I’ve organized voter registration and canvassing drives, people routinely ask to do something other than go door-to-door. They really want to help! They care deeply! They just don’t want to approach strangers. So they ask for other jobs—baking muffins for hungry canvassers, maybe. Would people who hesitate to knock doors want to write about what’s happening instead? Strangers (a.k.a. readers) are also involved in writing; you just don’t have to see them, face-to-face.
Poet and activist Audre Lorde described herself as “a rough place on the chin of complacency.”[2] I love that image, and I think it applies equally well to activism and writing. The same challenging attitude is required for both.
Ojeoma Oluo, author of So You Want to Talk About Race and Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America, begins a recent blogpost with lyrics from the 90s R& B vocal group En Vogue: “Free your mind and the rest will follow.” Oluo goes on to say:
Y’all, that’s pretty much never true. Don’t get me wrong. We need to be aware…But there’s like 5000 many more steps between changing our mindset and changing the world.[3]
Writing can make people aware. But the 5000 many more steps are organizing—with people you know and people you don’t know. For some, this will be uncomfortable. I think we have to do it anyway. More of us than have done it before, more of us than just those who are professional organizers.
This is a long haul. We have to take turns, and we have to rest. A friend of mine from long ago used to sign off from every encounter—whether written, in person, or on the phone—with: “do good things.” I loved this when he first said it, and I love it now because it’s both open and specific. Most of us have an intuitive sense of what feels like a good thing. If organizing doesn’t feel like a good thing to you yet, I urge you to keep trying. Read some stories about others then jump in. You are wanted, you are needed.
Notes
1 Wade Goodwyn, “Family Politics: Son of a Little-d Democrat,” People Power: History, Organizing, and Larry Goodwyn’s Democratic Vision in the Twenty-First Century (Gainesville, University of Florida Press, 2021), 103.
2 Audre Lorde, A Burst of Light: Essays (Ithaca, Firebrand, 1988).
3 Ijeoma Oluo, “Free Your Mind,” Behind the Book blogpost, January 21, 2022.