Recently, I was listening to Palestinian Queer Activist, Ghadir Shafie, who said: “One of the best things you can do to expand hope right now is to expand and maintain your own integrity, because that is the only thing you can control.”
And: “Think about what you can do, not what you can lose.”
In a moment when all of us in US movements for justice are overwhelmed by losses – of funding, civil liberties, for some of us – our jobs, homes, and colleagues and family members – Shafie’s words have brought me immense comfort and resolve.
They’ve helped me affirm what I know to be true: Rockwood’s shift several years ago to center BIPOC feminist leaders and amp up intersectional approaches to securing justice and caring for our communities was crucial and prescient.
Over the past 5 years especially, we’ve been part of a “changing of the guard,” through which BIPOC women especially have taken on key roles in non-profit organizations, public service, corporate leadership, and electoral politics. Rockwood alum have been a huge force in this transformation and redistribution of power.
While everything seems to be crumbling around us, we have to remember that the past 40 years or more of constant struggle has brought us to this tremendously challenging moment. It’s the immense power we’ve built that the authoritarians are pushing back on, decrying and belittling the vibrant, more just worlds we’ve built – the communities we’ve resourced, the legislation we’ve passed. So many of the wins of the last decade were unfathomable to us at the start of our work, and yet we delivered them.
So, let’s not forget ourselves as missiles are lobbed daily into the painstaking order we’ve rebuilt. Instead, let’s think about what strategic opportunities lie in the rubble. What needs rethinking as we consider rebuilding? What needs discarding? Who do we need to bring into the circles of resistance we’ve been cultivating? What has been left out all along that needs to be at the helm of our next campaign, or zoom call, or morning meeting?
We don’t have easy answers, or a prescribed path out of this mess, but we do know how to pivot when moments of opportunity present themselves. I feel certain we are creating those moments of opportunity now, even as we flail about, and sometimes blame each other for how bad things have become, and how fractured our resistance appears. Everything always looks chaotic and unproductive – until it doesn’t. Until our work adds up and comes together and we find yet another opportunity to press forward, to take care of each other, to win.
As Rockwood alum, adrienne maree brown has said: “small is all.” Let’s start with ourselves, with Shafie’s charge to expand on our own integrity, and to build where we have influence or control. Let’s keep reminding each other about what we are doing, and what we can do. Because – and I say this with enormous gratitude and hope – we have each other. And that’s everything.
Darlene
CEO, Rockwood Leadership Institute
