Jess Banks schools you.

The first place to experience 12:00 am on January 1st is Kiribati (pronounced “Kiribas”), 19 hours ahead of New York. Samoa and Tonga are next, and then the new year comes to New Zealand. As long as Darling Husband and I lived in the US, we’d call our New Zealand family to wish them a Happy New Year early in the morning on December 31st. 

But we had other motives, too. We were also calling for a preview of the new year to make sure it wasn’t kicking off in catastrophic form. This was especially important on December 31, 1999, of course—we needed to make sure planes and banks weren’t crashing because of Y2K. But the stalwart Kiwis were able to reassure an anxious world that the coders and engineers had staved off disaster with their superhuman efforts. Every year, they were like a lighthouse, signaling that it was safe to come forward, at least for the next few hours as we stayed up to watch the ball drop in Times Square.

Now that we live in New Zealand, we’re the ones signaling ahead with Facebook posts saying, “Come on in, the water’s fine!” Of course, we don’t know any better how the new year will turn out—we don’t even know how the rest of January 1st will turn out when we wake up in the morning. But there’s a certain pride in being the one to send that hopeful message back across the time zones to loved ones. I like the thought of manning that lighthouse through the rolling countdown to midnight around the world.

The thing about lighthouses, though, is that they’re stationary, fixed in place. As Anne Lamott says, “Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save, they just stand there shining.” As hopeful and helpful as they are, they can’t actually rescue anyone directly. And even if they shine as hard as they possibly can, they can’t stop some ships that are moving too fast towards the shoals that will rip them open. They can only stand there, illuminating the horror.

As we prepared to move to New Zealand in late 2018, I grappled constantly with my anxiety about abandoning my activism. I was regularly in the streets with Black Lives Matter Minneapolis and other organizations, usually wearing my neon marshal’s vest. I was interwoven with the wider net of marshals and organizers, all of us looking out for one another as much as we looked out for the protesters within the protective perimeter we upheld. But that net depended on reliable, committed people who showed up. I struggled with the feeling that I was a weak link because of my disabilities. Too often, pain rendered me unable to move and react with the agility and endurance required of someone serving as a marshal. I manned the phone lines with the jail support response team, and I used Signal and Twitter to relay messages. Sometimes, it felt like enough.

Moving away felt like abandoning the net entirely. I wrote about how persistent that feeling has been in part 1 of this series. But when I raised this fear with a good friend in the movement, she had this to say: “Things are probably going to get worse, and folks are gonna need safe places to bug out, with safe people to catch them. You’re not leaving—you’re going to establish a lighthouse.” This gave me the reassurance I needed to leave with a measure of peace. 

More importantly, it gave me a way to be useful even at a distance. For years, I’d experienced the always-bizarre phenomenon of meeting complete strangers who’d drawn information or inspiration from my social media posts, making me aware that my reach was far greater than I realized. I knew how to leverage that visibility to boost the signal at home, even from around the world. I learned to work the time difference to my advantage, covering the night shift in America by the light of the New Zealand day.

I’ve also served as a lighthouse in the way my friend described, catching people as they take the leap to our shores. Some of those have been the children of friends who came for study or travel, reassuring their parents that they were in safe hands. But a few have been refugees from the powerful threats faced by today’s America. One friend put me in touch with a mom in Texas who was sending her trans son ahead of her by a few months so he could start nursing school in a place free from the guns and threats brandished at their home every day. For all of these people, we do the same things: pick them up from the airport, feed them, get them a new SIM card, give them a crash course in how to pronounce Maori place names so they can get around. To each of them, I’ve given a pounamu necklace as a token of welcome and blessing from the land where they now stand, one they can take with them wherever they go in the future.

I haven’t caught any of the folks from home yet. They’re still there, in the fight that rages more fiercely than ever. The light I project, searching the waves, picks out their names and faces as they crest on reports from the front lines. But stationary as I am, I can’t reach out and scoop them from the dangerous churn. I don’t know how many of them would actually accept rescue and relief. I struggle not to feel irrational rejection that more of them haven’t come within reach, where I could give them shelter and rest for a time. 

All I can do is stand ready and shine as hard as I can, for them and everyone else. If things keep going the way they are, I know more people will need to find safe harbor. I don’t imagine catching people like a superhero, and I neither want nor expect gratitude for it. Long-time activist Brian C. Johnson says in his book The Work Is The Work, “When its light and the boat’s need come together, the boat’s crew lifts up song for the lighthouse. But the crew’s appreciation does not make the lighthouse any brighter.” 

The thing that does make my lighthouse brighter is the sense of usefulness and purpose. I know what it is to fling myself into the dark, like a trapeze artist far above the unforgiving ground. Over and over, the spotlight follows them as they let go of the trapeze before the next one has come into view. I’m between trapezes even as I write, waiting to see if I’ll catch or fall. I feel the hot beam of fear and doubt burning me as I wait, suspended and reaching with my whole self.

This world has plenty of spotlights that highlight every motion and risk and mistake, following and searching greedily for the drama of the fall. I’m happier to be a lighthouse whose beacon waits in place to welcome, beckoning with a steady shine. 

Activism is in my blood. I’m not sure how it got there—it certainly isn’t genetic. My family has always been more about service, which is good and fine and I’m about it too. I grew up around my grandma and my mom holding church rummage sales, teaching Red Cross swimming and first aid classes, and leading Girl Scout troops. I learned a lot from that, and I gained a healthy appreciation for the warm glow you get from helping others. But that was never enough for me.

I’ve always been driven to take action when I see something wrong. Every time someone asks me when I started causing trouble (good trouble, as John Lewis called it, I’d like to think), I think of something earlier: “Well, in high school I organized…oh wait, when I was in junior high I went to the city council about…wait, does that thing I did in grade school count?” I’ve since discovered that the activist in me may actually just be the autism in me–neurodivergent people are often characterized by a strong sense of justice and empathy that compels them to challenge unfair systems that harm others. Just think of Greta Thunberg, who often speaks about the connection between her autism and her activism.

I’m no Greta, but I’m proud of my place on the front line of movements that matter to me. Whether it was in the halls of power or the streets, I like to put my body and my voice where showing up matters. And I’ve found the very best people I’ve ever known in those places. That’s not surprising—it’s easy to find friends when it’s a self-selecting group who share your values and passions. And if things get risky, as they sometimes do if you’re challenging authority, there’s probably a fair bit of traumabonding to seal those friendships.

Leaving friends behind was easily the hardest thing about moving to the other side of the world. (Well, leaving so many books behind was hard too, but at least we could pack up some of those and take them along.) I also really struggled with the feeling that I was abandoning my post before the fight was won. I worried that people I respected and cared about would feel that I was quitting the work, that I wasn’t as committed as I said I was. 

I’ve continued my activism in new ways down here. But my heart is still divided. If you asked me where “home” is, I’d still have to say America. Watching those friends I love—and so, so many others—fight for the soul of that home is wrenchingly hard. And one of the hardest parts of that is that I’m not there, shoulder to shoulder with them.

This has intensified to a painful extent over the last two weeks as ICE invades my home, kidnapping and terrorizing people around Saint Paul and Minneapolis. I know the suburbs and street names in the news reports. I remember the sights and sounds and smells of places like Mercado Central and Karmel Mall. I belong in the pictures of 10,000 people marching down a frosty Lake Street and linking arms in front of the Whipple Federal Building. I want a whistle to warn my neighbors. I feel chants and songs trapped in my throat. I need to be there. I need to fight.

Watching the world from down here has often inspired what feels a lot like survivor’s guilt. For months at the height of the pandemic, we were free of masks and fear—easy enough for a remote island nation of only 5 million people. Even when the disease was running rampant, we weren’t traumatized by numbers of deaths in the tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands, then over a million. And in the midst of that horror, I witnessed the enraging tragedy of George Floyd’s murder on a street I’d driven hundreds of times. The need to be there, to stand with my community and my activist comrades, kept me up at night like it does now. I went to the solidarity protest here in Auckland because abusive, unaccountable police culture is a global rot. But I didn’t help to shut down a highway or marshal a march, and I felt that inaction in my bones. It was a wrong feeling I couldn’t right.

In a choir, you keep singing to cover others when they need to breathe, just as they keep singing when you breathe. Activism works the same way: others show up when you can’t. There’s no gap when someone leaves—the line is never really broken. That’s been a comfort, but it’s also been an ache. I’m glad there’s no hole where I used to stand, because that would leave the people I care about exposed. But I can’t step up to give them a rest when they need one, no matter how much I want to. Saying “I’m with you in spirit” isn’t too different from offering thoughts and prayers. That’s never going to feel like enough, no matter how much of my heart is behind it. 

I need to learn to treat myself like I treat others who have to step back because of circumstance or self-care: with the grace of unconditional forgiveness and appreciation from what they can do with what they have, from where they are at that moment. Here is where I am, and I need to have faith that I’m doing good work and so are they. We’re fighting the same unjust systems on different fronts. And when we win, we’ll meet in the middle and embrace.

I attended an event hosted by Aotearoa Educators Collective recently. They screened the excellent documentary “Multiple Choice”, directed by Ted Dintersmith, which explores the unique execution of combined academic and vocational training at the John Handley High School and Innovation Center in Winchester, Virginia. After the film, a panel of guests addressed the ways the movie’s message related to the current shifts in Aotearoa New Zealand’s curriculum under the current right-wing government. 

After some discussion of the ways education has been used as a political football (both in terms of knocking it all over the field as well as point-scoring opportunities), an audience member asked the guests, somewhat desperately, how to keep politics out of educational policy. I jolted in my seat as my brain shouted out, “You can’t!” 

Now, I have about 45 years experience at masking these intrusively loud opinions (okay, that’s entirely debatable—I know plenty of people who’d say I’ve never mastered that skill completely), so I was able to mostly keep my mouth shut. I did whisper to my companion, “That’s the wrong question,” but otherwise held my tongue until my chance to contribute to the discussion.

I absolutely get where this person was coming from. It seems wildly illogical that educational content and funding get shoved back and forth by every change in the political winds—why shouldn’t enough money for schools and teachers with the highest standards be a nonpartisan issue? Why don’t education experts and subject specialists design curriculum that everyone can agree does the best job of helping kids learn what they need to be good citizens with a bright future? I mean, it only makes sense! Why does politics have to enter into this at all?

I regret to inform you, however, that politics is all over this and always will be. Politics is about deciding who a government should serve and how best to collect and distribute resources to perform that service. The differences among parties and politicians come from the different answers to all the things that go into those decisions: taxation, budgeting, social programmes and services, among many others. As long as there is disagreement about these things, politics is going to influence education.

The current right-wing government believes that if corporations are doing well, New Zealand is doing well. Corporations want lower taxes, government subsidies, and access to more resources to expand so they can raise their profits. Those profits flow to their C-suite leaders and shareholders, not the workers or communities who provide the material and labour that actually generate wealth. 

That labour is where education comes into the picture. If the corporations, and the government that prioritises them, want schools that churn out labourers that are most easily jammed into the system as widgets to keep the gears turning, that’s the kind of education policy you’re going to get. It’s going to be light on critical thinking so workers can be more easily influenced and exploited by both corporations and politicians, and it’s going to be heavy on standardised testing so workers are accustomed to low-creativity tasks and politicians get sound bites about success or crisis.

Why would politicians want a crisis in education, you might be asking? Fair question. The answer is that crisis provides more opportunity for change than success does. Naomi Klein’s analysis in The Shock Doctrine looks at government regime change and opportunities for economic exploitation, but the same principles apply to other places people operate on the “move fast and break things” ethos. It’s harder to drum up a sense of urgency for continued improvements when things are going well than it is to make sweeping revisions if it seems like the system is failing. This serves the corporate masters who are served by messaging that education needs to be continually pared back to just literacy and numeracy because we’re not meeting those basic standards. How do we know we’re not? The testing regime whose data are analysed and publicised by the same politicians who benefit from them–there’s no incentive to do anything but report small gains to claim success, but continued failure to keep the crisis motivation for increased change. As education expert Diane Ravitch says, “Public education is in a crisis only so far as society is and only so far as this new narrative of crisis has destabilized it.”

It also serves the idealogues who feel that a broader, inclusive, creative kind of education violates the social norms that their sense of nostalgia for a time when “the right people” were in charge of things. Make no mistake: “back to basics” always means means back in time. Testing shows that kids aren’t learning to read very well? It must be all the Māori words in their primary school curriculum. Statistics show that fewer students are succeeding at university? It must be the focus on inclusion and applied cross-curricular learning instead of sticking to the Western Classics. 

Even the fatigue among educators serves the political mission of the current right-wing government. When curriculum is constantly changing, teachers have less time to create thoughtful lessons that challenge their students to think critically. That leaves them open to two corporate interests: curriculum factories that churn out ready-made material that a teacher only has to read out, and the AI tech lords who offer their products as the answer to a time-poor profession—just put in the concept you need to teach tomorrow, and AI will produce a full lesson plan, complete with activities, slides, and assessments. And so what if the fatigue and lack of agency drives educators overseas or out of the field entirely? There are always more low-quality workers who are happy to get paid to read out their soulless scripts and create another generation of low-quality workers to succeed them. It even degrades the quantity and quality of future educational experts who might develop the critical evaluative skills to challenge the status quo and offer up innovative strategies to expand the possibilities beyond the narrow parameters they’ve been sold.

There are only two ways I know of to combat what every educator feels is a backwards slide. One is agency. If teachers have control over their classrooms, they can choose the best way to teach their students. If that means spending a little longer on one concept to make sure everyone gets it before moving on, they can make that decision. If that means changing something that hasn’t been working or feels out of date, they can make that decision. If that means having a stronger voice in school policies, that’s their choice too. People who feel like they have power over their work find more joy in it, and their standards and performance rise accordingly. Teachers will never have enough time for everything they want to do—that’s as much a part of the job as running out of whiteboard markers and fighting with the printer. When you’re empowered to think creatively, ideas pop up faster than you can catch them. Teachers are eternal tinkerers—a good lesson can always be better, can reach more students, can make more connections. We can only get better at the job if we have the freedom and agency to act on those innovations and improvements.

The second way is the answer to the question at the beginning of this essay: it’s politics. It is not unprofessional for educators to engage in political activities when politics determines what they’re told to teach and what resources they’re given to do it with. We should expect teachers to have opinions on how to draw the best results out of their students—they’re the experts, in the classrooms where learning does or doesn’t happen every day. As they say in community organising circles, if you don’t have a seat at the table, you’re probably on the menu. Much as the current right-wing government may want to tell us otherwise, it’s not a conflict of interest for educational experts when they get involved in policymaking. They’re the people we want making the curriculum, based on the best evidence-backed methods, even if they include things the people in power don’t feel serve their corporate or ideological priorities. 

And the only way to guarantee we have a government that puts those people in charge is to make sure voters elect the people who agree that it’s the government’s job to provide schools that give every child the best, most fulfilling future. That means taxing the people who can most afford it to fund public services like the education system. That means making a budget that adequately equips every school with the resources it needs to support its children, generation after generation, not year-by-year. That means paying teachers like the essential experts who are entrusted with our most precious resource, which attracts the best, most dedicated people to the profession. That means investing in research to keep education effective and responsive to changes in the world, whether that’s new technology or economic shifts. 

None of this happens on its own. It all depends on politics. There’s no way to disentangle political motives, actions, or speech from education. And we need to stop wasting our time and energy trying to. 

The flop-preventative “sleevie” headband. If you weren’t alive in the ’90s, I can’t help you.

I’ve been an activist since high school. Administrators made a rule that t-shirt sleeve headbands we used to hold back floppy skater hair were the same as hats (and therefore forbidden) when worn by boys. We organized a direct action to have all the girls wear them for one school day, and we delivered a letter to the front office threatening a Title IX suit for gender discrimination.

They reversed the policy.

I’m also a political junkie. I prefer issue politics, which build bridges of common values across otherwise insurmountable obstacles, to electoral politics. But my values compel me work in that arena too.

Here’s my problem, though: I have a chronic pain disorder, as well as various mental health issues, which combine to keep me from being as present physically as I want to be. Marches and rallies, door-knocking and phone-banking, they can all be too much for my health. Missing those things leaves me feeling ineffective and isolated from the people and experiences that contribute to a sense of connection that’s even more of a reward than the actual work.

But there are things that people with physical and mental disabilities can do to contribute meaningfully. Here are some of the ways I try to have an impact with what I’ve got.

1) Advocate for disability accommodations in political and activist spaces. There’s a real effort right now to make social justice movements intentionally inclusive. Elders and youth share power and responsibility more evenly. Folks commonly state their pronouns during introductions. Translators are frequently available. But disability issues are often left out of consideration.

So contact campaigns and groups and find out if their meeting places are disability accessible, to make them aware of barriers like stairs and narrow doors (common in churches, which provide cheap locations for large groups). Reach out to protest organizers to request march details so you can participate at the beginning or end locations. Help them devise routes that are safer for low-mobility attendees. Convince them to provide sign language interpreters and crisis support for folks who may be anxious in large crowds or triggered by the presence of aggressive law enforcement or counter-protesters.

2) Share information and messages in social media spaces. Some people brand this as “slacktivism,” but there are countless movements that wouldn’t have the global reach and organizing power they’ve achieved without Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Tumblr. Share livestreams, amplify hashtags, invite people to events, and aggregate links and facts so people can find centralized information.

3) Volunteer from home. It’s still standard for people to go to a central location to make calls in support of a campaign, but there are plenty of tools out there now that allow people to do the same work from home with a laptop and phone. Even patch-thru phonebanks, one of the most highly effective tools for getting people to take a simple action like send a message to their legislators, can be done from home. If it’s difficult for you to get to an office, ask the campaign to set you up to work at home. Data entry is equally valuable and accessible at home.

4) Raise money for the cause. This one feels impossible sometimes, because disabled people are so often under- or unemployed, or on a fixed income. But we have the same networks of friends, family, and acquaintances, and the values we share with those people can motivate them to donate. Surprisingly often, the only thing that keeps them from doing that is that no one has asked. Explain why you think it’s important, connect it to your shared values so they see their self-interest in it, and ask them for an amount that would be meaningful. Sure, some will say no, and that shouldn’t make you shame or failed. But you can’t know unless you ask, and people will surprise you all the time.

5) Create things. Your contribution to an effort can be measured in time, treasure, and talent. If the first two are difficult because of your physical and financial resources, you need to know that the third is just as valuable. For example, an army moves on its stomachs, as the old saying goes. Campaign workers and volunteers basically live on junk food, pizza, and coffee, and anyone who brings in a crockpot of anything healthy and homemade becomes their favorite person.

Art is just as important. Striking graphics, clever memes, and meaningful signs and banners are essential to the visuals that move people to action. Stories are the most compelling tool we have change hearts and minds on an issue, so write about why these things matter so much to you. And if you’re gifted enough to draw, paint, stitch, or craft objects that others might want, you can accomplish more of #4 with your skills.

You know what feels really great?

Walking down the very middle of a street.

No, really, I highly recommend it. The first time I ever did it, I was in the company of about 1 million other people streaming down the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue in 2004 as part of a demonstration of support for women’s choices in reproductive health care. I’ve also enjoyed many of Minnesota’s fine thoroughfares this way: Nicollet Mall, Hennepin Avenue, University Avenue, Snelling Avenue, I-35, to name a few.

Most recently, I strolled back up Snelling Avenue at a leisurely pace, following the peaceful and successful #BlackFair demonstration. I was still working in my marshal role, but I only had half as many people to look out for. So I was taking up as much space as I felt like, because nobody gets a lot of opportunities to stretch out on this planet, and I’m not one to let them pass me by.

I complimented a fellow marcher on her excellent sign, and we got to talking about the action and what else we were setting aside from our busy lives to participate. I asked what brought her out, in her walking cast boot, and she replied simply, “Activism is my self-care.”

Deep inside, I heard the resounding chime of the Bell of Truth, because I agreed so strongly with that statement. Activism is my self-care too. That’s true despite the physical toll that direct actions have on my thoroughly unreliable body; I would spend Sunday in bed recovering from Saturday’s events.

But as the meetings for #BlackFair and planning for other actions kicked into gear earlier that week, I noticed the immediate impact it had on my depression. The mental and social engagement of planning with old and new friends blew through that dark bank of clouds like a brisk wind. I found myself not only excited to keep building the movement, but the sunshine woke up other parts of me that had slept through the long, sad summer. I made plans to pick up some cloth to make crafts for friends; I opened files for the book I’m writing and started building sandcastles of plot again.

Community organizing in the movement is good for me in other ways, too. I don’t really just attend demonstrations as one of the crowd anymore—I’d much rather put on my oh-so-stylish neon vest and work to keep people safe and supported as they take part in the action. This is one of the few things I will admit to being good at, that gives me any sense of pride in my competence and skill.

I like to joke that, “I don’t marshal; I mother.” That’s more true than people realize. I don’t just come ready to redirect traffic or crowds, I come with the Mom Bag loaded for bear: full first-aid jump kit, snacks and drinks, tissues, sunscreen, even bubbles for the little (or not-so-little) ones. It takes all lanes of my busy, pattern-seeking, autistic brain occupied to be constantly scanning the crowd and the environment for potential hazards and those needing help. And solving problems big and small—from checking in with mobility-challenged participants to de-escalating people seeking to disrupt the demonstration—gives me the feeling of protecting and emotionally supporting my Beloved Community. 

And I laugh with joy when I see people really getting into a chant, or when we’ve got a sound system on the back of a truck to pump out the jams for a dance party in the middle of an intersection. I see them participating with their whole bodies and souls in acts that center marginalized people and help them take up that space and sound on the planet to which each of us is entitled. It fills me up with powerful hope for the future, and energizes me to create more of those spaces that so strongly affirm every person’s beauty and dignity.

Image courtesy of MPR News (http://images.publicradio.org/content/2015/01/19/20150119_mlkmarch19_53.jpg)

But I realized that I haven’t been IN those spaces for many months now, maybe years. I run the edges, solve problems, help where needed, which is so absorbing that, when I see photos after the fact, I don’t even have any memories of people doing those things. I don’t always get to link hands with everyone and participate in the powerful chant by Assata Shakur that reminds us of our duty to fight for freedom, to love and protect one another. And when “Alright” by Kendrick Lamar starts blasting from the speakers and everyone dances, I’m usually standing stock still in a crosswalk. Last time this happened, I faced down a muscle car driven by an angry white dude who hit the gas three blocks away, to screech from 45 mph down to zero only six inches away from my shins, looking me in the eyes the whole time.

I’m the one with the text on the back of my shirt. Photo credit: Chris Juhn.

I hope nobody in that circle of wild, glorious dance really noticed that car, or even me. I hope the music and empowerment blinded them to everything but the other beautiful faces in that crowd. I hope the people I help when I marshal only remember someone kind, not my face, not even my hair.

But I’m not sure if I’ll ever feel missed or wanted in those crowds. And I’m not sure if who I am—the depression, the self-esteem, the knowledge that I’m not who the movement is for (or should be about)—is even capable of dancing to the words “We gonna be alright.” I’m not sure what this movement would mean to me if I could.

On December 28, I turned 40. This came as no surprise, even to one as math-impaired as me.

It’s virtually impossible to throw a birthday party on my birthday, since everyone is exhausted from Christmas and saving up energy for a big New Year’s Eve blowout (if they’re even in town). There’s even an Old English word for it: symbel-werig. It means “feast-weary,” and that’s what everyone is on my birthday.

The worst it ever got was my 18th birthday. My parents had dinner theater tickets, and my brother was at his friend’s house (after his birthday, the day before mine. No, really.). My sister and I were home alone. She made a Pyrex bowl of raspberry Jell-O and stuck a taper candle in it. We watched Schindler’s List. Whoop-de-doo.

For the big one this year, though, I decided that nothing said “me at 40” like riding rollercoasters. Thanks to Nickelodeon Universe, the indoor theme park in the middle of the Mall of America, it’s actually possible to do this in a Minnesota winter. Also, yay for half-price unlimited ride wristbands from 5-10pm. There was the entertaining possibility that I’d get a mall security escort because I’d been a marshal at the #BlackLivesMatterMOA protest two weeks earlier. I planned to lure him onto rides, in case I felt like chanting anti-oppression slogans on the loop-de-loops. Alas, no joy.

Rolling over the odometer also made me think about what can happen in just one decade of living. I don’t feel older, or even different, just more like the person 30-year-old me hoped to be eventually. Still, I learned a lot of lessons in the last 10 years, so here’s the top 10 lessons I learned in my 30s.

1) Having a second child is nothing like having the first. I had my first son when I was 28, and my second one when I was 32. Instead of throwing up 20 hours a day for 5.5 months, I threw up 24 hours a day for 7.5 months in my second pregnancy. My labor couldn’t have been more different, too. And you needn’t look any further than this blog for how different the boys are from one another. Motherhood: what a weird, wonderful ride.

2) The key to my kid is the key to myself. When I was a kid, my parents and teachers told me I was “socially backward” because I was intellectually advanced. Slamming doors and balloons popping gave me migraines. I preferred the company of adults. And I recognized a lot of these traits in my older son; we joked that he inherited those traits. In fact, what we both were was autistic. Learning that unlocked memories and mysteries that plagued me my whole life, and understanding those helped me translate the world for my kid. We’re all so much better for knowing ourselves.

3) Intersectionality is everything. I’ve felt this way forever, but didn’t know there was a word for it until I read a Flavia Dzodan blog post that introduced me to the term, coined by UCLA prof Kimberlé Crenshaw. I also didn’t realize it was such a controversial idea until I started advocating it. How is this difficult for people to understand? We are all so many different people, and all of our selves are bound together when it comes to liberation. How can you be a feminist who excludes trans women? How can you be anti-racism and simultaneously suppress the contributions of women? How can you demand an end to oppression but hold planning meetings that are inaccessible to disabled people? In Flavia’s words, “My activism will be intersectional or it will be shit.”

4) Don’t move without a safety net. I learned this one the hard way. In Minnesota, you have to be a resident before you can apply for state health insurance. We had paperwork ready to go the day we moved, but we encountered a four-month wait. We’d saved money for an appointment to get me set up with bridge coverage for my fibro and depression. What I didn’t do was research doctors—the one I went to refused to continue the treatment plan I’d had for over a decade. The decompensation that happened without my prescriptions resulted in a summer lost to pain and despair, ultimately landing me in the hospital. Lesson learned? You cannot overplan for your medical care when moving–your life literally depends on it.

5) Family is what you make it. I grew up so close to my family that I refused to even consider moving to New Zealand to be with my Darling Husband, because I couldn’t imagine going so long between visits with my parents and siblings. But after I called out my family about 4 years ago for treating my autistic son like crap and undermining our parenting, everything changed. My brother and sister still won’t talk to me for hurting my mom, even though she and I are fine now. Thankfully, we’ve built a family of friends, old and young, near and far, who more than make up for the love lost. All that’s left to mourn is the continuity.

6) Sharing knowledge is more than the letters after your name. My grad school department kicked me out in 2005 because my area of study didn’t match their idea of subjects that build a “world-class history program.” Despite that, I have 15 years of teaching experience, and knowledge that I use everyday—with my kids, with other kids, with other adults, and in my organizing. Teaching is my vocation, plainly put. Even if the flood of post-recession Ph.D.s makes it unlikely I’ll get a college job again, I’m always looking for ways to share what I know in engaging ways.

7) Caucusing is hazardous to your health. Until we moved to Minnesota, I’d always lived in states with primary elections, so I was extremely excited to attend my first caucus on February 2, 2012. It was weird and idiosyncratic and strangely wonderful; I was too hyped about democracy to sleep until midnight. At about 1:00 AM, I woke with abdominal pain. By 5:00 AM, it was worse than labor, and Darling Husband took me to the ER. I had acute pancreatitis, caused by a gallstone. I spent a week in the hospital, and they surgically removed a bag of rocks from my gut. I now view caucuses as highly suspicious and potentially life-threatening.

8) I am committed with my whole heart and soul to equity. This isn’t about rights, or even history. It’s about empathy. If anyone’s potential is oppressed for who they are, then my potential is also less. I see the beautiful humanity in everyone, and want for them the joys I’ve found and the opportunity to be all of themselves. And yes, I’m willing to block traffic, invade public spaces, and commit civil disobedience to make this happen. I consider it a sacred duty.

9) Together, we win. I’ve never been very competitive, and I always plan for failure so that, as Lloyd Dobbler wisely advised, “…everything’s kind of a pleasant surprise.” But with the campaign for marriage equality, and against Voter ID, and for a new anti-bullying bill and a higher minimum wage, guess what I discovered? I like to win. I like it almost as much as the conversations and organizing it takes to come out victorious. These efforts and the folks I’ve met in them evaporated any cynicism I had about the potential of people power. I highly recommend it to everyone.

10) It’s never too late. I didn’t intend to really go balls-out for the last year of my 30s, but I accidentally did. I learned and performed burlesque dance, even in this imperfect body. I got two big tattoos, the first I’ve ever had. I went to a national convention for community organizers. I shut down highways, corporate offices, and the largest mall in America. I made my kid’s middle school change their negative, reactive response to common autistic behaviors, and re-centered them on positive reinforcement that nourishes all children’s education. All this with my physical and mental limitations. It’s never too late to do important things, and if you forget that, just ask me for a reminder.

A lot of the social justice work I do is about making spaces–everything from housing to the whole of Minnesota–more welcoming to people whom society often forces out. Sometimes, that’s practical stuff, like urging schools or cities or events to offer gender-neutral bathrooms where trans*/gender non-conforming folks can feel safe. And sometimes, it’s more abstract, like working against police profiling and brutality toward people of color in their own homes and neighborhoods.

The basis of that work is education and empathy. I read, I listen, I ask questions, so when I walk into a new space, I see the ways that place values and welcomes all different kinds of people and their needs. And I also see the ways those spaces exclude and isolate people, which makes a good starting place for effecting change.

So I’ve attended community meetings, planning sessions, trainings, and seminars. I regularly participate in protests, which might include rallies, marches, and sit-, stand-, or die-ins. And the saying in the groups where I organize is that, “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth debriefing,” so I’m learning how to observe what does and doesn’t work well, and share constructive feedback.

But it’s possible for a space that’s been engineered with great intention to include a typically excluded group to unintentionally exclude a different group. Some feminists say they don’t feel safe from patriarchy and misogyny if trans* women are included in the space (I happen to think they’re wrong, for the record). Often, queer people of color feel uncomfortable in the largely white LGBTQ activist movement. Class barriers manifest often in community meetings, where those with more income and education assert themselves as more worth listening to than their less privileged neighbors. We all need to do better, even if we think we’re doing the right thing just by showing up.

As I see intersectionality championed in the powerful, new spaces we’re constructing, though, we’re missing the mark on disability. I’m physically and neurologically disabled, thanks to the Wonder Twins, fibromyalgia and autism. I’m not the most restricted person at a gathering, but I do face barriers that others don’t. I’m also used to being in the company of someone with more intense disabilities, though, so I’m attuned to obstacles so I can help them negotiate our environment.

And the new movements need to do more. I’ve had to choose which breakout session to attend based on which didn’t require me to climb a flight of stairs. I’ve had to leave valuable trainings early because the bright lights and unchecked noise level wore me out. I’ve also sat through meetings which taught me nothing because I couldn’t hear or see the speakers. And I’ve both hurt myself trying to keep up, or just fallen out completely, with marches that followed a route and went at a pace that left all but the able-bodied behind.

And I’m full-sighted. I’m not in a chair. My lungs and heart are strong. I have 40 years of coping skills to manage sensory input. I hear exceptionally well. If I can’t keep up, who else is bejng left behind? And what knowledge and wisdom are we losing when they’re abandoned?

I have a lot of thoughts about accommodations and modifications to make the spaces where real, radical, revolutionary change is happening accessible to all disabled people. I’ll probably break them into separate posts.

But I’m asking each of you who reads this to spend a bit of time thinking and examining your surroundings with renewed curiosity. Think of the physical gestures that literally embody the movement: raised fist, raised hands, bodies marching and lying down. Imagine that you can’t make those gestures in solidarity. Think of the speaker whose voice and insights you most want to hear in the world. Imagine the flight of stairs that keeps you from getting to see them. Imagine seeing that person but not knowing what they’re saying.

How welcome would you feel? How valued? How powerful?

If the answer is “not very,” well, the revolution’s got to change.

I’m in the midst of a fundamental transformation, and it’s time for me to say to all the people whose rights I’ve worked to protect and expand:

I am not your ally.

This may come as something of a shock, given all the hours I’ve put in at phonebanks and lobbying and trainings and rallies. Yes, those are your bumper stickers on my car, your emails in my inbox, your scripts still invading the dreams in which I try to persuade talking dogs to call their legislators.

And no, I’m not giving up on activism. Far from it–I’m more committed than ever to bringing new people into the movements for safe schools, racial justice, gender equity, livable wages and housing, quality health care, and all the other things I care about.

But I’m not your ally anymore.

See, if I were your ally, I wouldn’t have a stake in these fights. I’d only be working for others; that work would have no appreciable impact on my own life. And it may seem like that to some of you who watch me flail around for the common good. After all, I married the person I love with no legal impediments. In fact, I even helped him immigrate, with no risk that he would be questioned or rejected or quota’d out of consideration. I’ve only had two, thoroughly planned pregnancies. I’ve been incredibly lucky to have reasonably affordable health insurance coverage for all but four months of my life. I’m white. I’m highly educated. I’m employed.

I am the veritable picture of privilege. So why can’t I be your ally?

I can’t embrace that title anymore because it’s mistaken. It suggests that I don’t benefit from the changes I help create. And that just isn’t true.

Better wages improve my economy. More affordable housing in safe, diverse, closely knit communities improves my family’s living conditions. Schools that foster the dignity and abilities of every child improve my kids’ education. The dismantling of the prison-industrial complex lifts an unfathomable burden from my society. High-quality, truly accessible health care keeps me alive. Environmental conservation preserves my planet, and by extension, the most sacred part of my soul. Broad civil rights for communities of color and LGBT people protect my own rights to vote, to speak freely, to exercise my most fundamental human aspirations. Autonomy, safety, and respect for women’s choices, bodies, and lives guarantee my own ability to live fully into myself.

I’m not an ally because your rights are my rights. Your liberation is my liberation. Your safety is my safety, and that of all I love.

I don’t know the word for what I am, but I am in this with you all the way. And I won’t stop working until we are all free and whole together.

UPDATE: A darling friend from church came up with what may be the correct answer to my dilemma: the word “ubuntu.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu defines it thus: “Indeed, my humanity is caught up in your humanity, and when your humanity is enhanced mine is enhanced as well.” You can read more of the interview that yielded that quotation here. Yes, I know it’s also a computer term, but apparently the name was chosen deliberately to claim that friendly, collaborative, interconnected effort. So, ubuntu, y’all.

Of all the readings I might have expected to be assigned during Weeklong, Thucydides (my old nemesis from History grad school) wasn’t one of them. Yet there it was, the chapter on the Melians, an island nation drawn into the Peloponnesian War, in our prep materials. Reading it in the context of how we act on our ideals in the face of a practical threat was enlightening, but I couldn’t see how it would apply to our training.

My confusion grew when I showed up at the first session Monday morning, and the group leader (Don, from the night before) asked who had participated in a Melian Debate before. Was this to be some kind of quiz in the form of a reenactment? I didn’t raise my hand with a few other folks who indicated this was new territory, figuring anyone who’s read that same passage at least five times before should fare okay.

Don lined up teams of four debaters, named them Melians and Athenians, then set them to argue their respective positions. The only rule, he told us, was, “I can interrupt.” He occasionally retired people from the line-ups and called new folks. Then he made the teams switch allegiance and argue the other side. Everything seemed like an academic exercise until he started sending people out of the room.

I wasn’t called until the end, so I sat there, half my brain trying to psychically will good points of argument to the various players, the other half frantically scanning for a pattern to Don’s interruptions. I couldn’t find one. People who hardly said a word were sent from the room. People who engaged ferociously for their side stayed for long minutes, then returned to the audience. No rhyme or reason.

Apparently, others started questioning Don’s calls too, because a group from outside the room came back in with the intention of disrupting the debate. They proposed sending an assassin to kill the Athenian delegation. Don responded by announcing that the Athenians start destroying Melian villages. The escalation of urgency drove both teams into ever more retrenched arguments, despite being increasingly uncertain what the end game or victory even looked like. Finally, Don called a halt to the exercise, about three minutes after I joined the Melians.

Then came the moral of the lesson: This wasn’t about winning or losing. In fact, the reenactment of the debate wasn’t the point at all. What really mattered is how we reacted to power–namely, Don’s power. The way we responded, individually and collectively, to Don’s commands revealed how we generally respond to people in positions of power. Almost all of us simply followed orders. We sat down when Don said to sit down, we left the room when he said to go, we grew agitated and desperate when he started giving “reports from the front.” None of us questioned his choices, and when a group did try to take back some control, they were disorganized and ineffective, ultimately still responding to the artificial emergency and not Don’s role in it.

We felt terrible. Because, deep down, we hated knowing he was right.

I didn’t find out as much about my own responses to people in power because I wasn’t called into things until the very end, but maybe that’s its own lesson. I tend to wait until I either see something that needs to be done, or I ask for jobs from people who seem to have a sense of the larger plan. When I’ve initiated my own plan of action in the past, I’ve been slapped down by people who don’t like a different way of doing things, or my take-charge attitude, or not vetting my plans according to the “proper channels.” And I’ve let those unappreciative responses intimidate me from being more of a self-starter.

People in power have absolutely no interest in making room for people out of power at the table, so you have to be willing to build your own power with other people until they have to take you seriously. We can’t wait for authority figures to ask our opinion, or sit down when they tell us to. For a room full of activists determined to buck the system and change the world, facing such undeniable proof of our less-than-commanding attitude toward power was an unwelcome Monday morning wake-up call.

I arrived at National People’s Action‘s Weeklong Leadership Training on Sunday evening. Northfield is a scant hour’s drive south of the Twin Cities, and the St Olaf College campus is lovely, trees and limestone block buildings with a neo-gothic flair. I fully plan to sneak into Boe Memorial Chapel and sing a few bars to hear the famous acoustics.

This week is based on agitational training. It’s an in-your-face style of interaction between the session leader and the participants that helps break down barriers and the lies we tell ourselves to avoid doing difficult things. I didn’t think I’d ever participated in it before, but it turns out we agitate ourselves and others in our lives every time we won’t settle for the easy answer or the surface explanation.

For us, our formal experience of agitation started right off with introductions. We didn’t get challenged on our names, preferred gender pronouns, or which organizations we’re here with, but everything else was fair game for Don, that evening’s facilitator. “Why?” was the most common question, of course, but he was pretty brutal with his assessment of some people’s answers. “Sounds like typical liberal white guilt to me,” he told one woman who was waffly on why she does anti-poverty work. “Why do you do this work if you don’t know what you get out of it? You’re just wasting everyone’s time,” he told another attendee.

If it sounds harsh, it was. Don relentlessly went after a few people, taking five minutes or more to challenge them, their motivations, and their commitment to the kind of work we’re all here to do this week. It seemed even more arbitrary because his pursuit of a few people early on left less time to go after people toward the end who, it seemed to me, had even shakier answers than those initial targets.

The way I see it, his job was like someone saddle-breaking a horse. This week is designed to be uncomfortable, and he needed to set that tone. Agitational training is designed to keep us in tension, and to propel us forward with greater power. It’s never easy to soften people up for that kind of experience, but Don definitely had a boxer’s knack for bodywork.