Fighting fascism: Democracy doesn't come easy

The rallies and marches for democracy across the United States on April 5 were absolutely amazing!

Consider what it takes for 5.2 million people to gather in public places in crowds at the same time, and have almost no incidents of disruption. There were counterprotests and MAGA provocateurs specifically trying to incite trouble, both in big cities and in small towns like ours.

But in almost all cases the organizers of the rallies and marches calmed these situations, using hard-won, conflict-mitigation techniques that many of us have been practicing for decades. In just our little town in Eastern Oregon, we put together a team of eight people tasked with keeping our crowd of 300 people calm and avoiding engagement with counter protesters. We had another team of just four people discouraging people from crossing streets against the lights. This was hard work, but people in the crowd listened to us, and we pulled it off without any incidents or injuries.

Even here, there were MAGA supporters who turned out with open-carry guns and large trucks burning tires to try to intimidate or provoke conflict. One driver sped through a crowded intersection and put many people at risk, but because of our careful traffic group, no one was in the street when they weren’t supposed to be, so no one was hurt. Another time, a driver forced their way onto a crosswalk against the light, while people who had the right-of-way were crossing. Our people stayed calm.

If this happened in a tiny, rural town, I can only imagine what it was like in larger cities, like New York, where crowds filled major avenues for 20 blocks and the police were largely absent. It was all on volunteers to keep the cross streets flagged and avoid traffic accidents. This isn’t simple. It takes training, and it didn’t happen overnight. This took huge coordination and a ton of hard work by thousands of volunteers.

And we’re going to have to do it again and again. This is not even close to over. We’re standing on one of those knife-edges of history. The United States will go fully fascist or it won’t. Even if we are headed for an authoritarian period, will there be lively community resistance or an intimidated and lethargic populace too beaten down by economic blows to push back? Those are the questions of our times.

As a journalist, I got to witness pivotal moments like this for some other countries, seeing some countries get sucked into totalitarian regimes and seeing others gain health care, stronger democratic systems and better safeguards than we have in the US. I’ve known for decades that American democracy was under threat and that we are not immune to coups or authoritarian tactics.

anti-fascist protest - image by Arie farnam

The philosophy of American exceptionalism has been a problem when it comes to the US doing military things overseas that we wouldn’t want other countries doing. But it’s also a problem when Americans think we won’t ever have coups or wars or authoritarianism because we are the definition of democracy. We don’t have a special destiny to be the greatest democracy. We have to fight for our democracy like everybody else.

Europe and Canada do have better health care, stronger democratic systems, better safeguards and less inequality, largely because they have updated their laws to face modern threats to democracy, such as massive corporations, billionaires and AI engines that can manipulate what people see on the internet. If we want to have what they have, save our democracy, prevent full-blown fascism and take back our country, we must accept that we are not immune or destined to be a great democracy.

We are now in a historic struggle for democracy. It will necessarily have many facets. Economic boycotts that target companies complicit in authoritarianism and abuses of democracy and human rights are part of it. Organizing, running for office, showing up to talk to legislators, as well as calling and writing to politicians will play a role. There may come a time when we can muster a general strike, the type of thing that has brought an end to political coups in other countries.

But massive demonstrations are still the backbone of a pro-democracy resistance to authoritarianism. Public events like this “demonstrate” undeniably the numbers of people who are willing to make personal sacrifices and take risks to demand rights and democracy. They also form community bonds.

The mainstream media tends to downplay demonstrations as merely “a way to send a message” to leaders, as if they are nothing more than another form of calling your representatives. But public rallies and marches do more than send a message and the message they send is more than the one most people think they are sending. It isn’t just about telling politicians, “please do X, Y and Z and stop doing A, B and C.” Many people may say these things in the crowd and be quoted as such in newspapers. That’s good and important. But the greatest message being sent—the message that can’t be denied with lies and spin—is the level of commitment the population has to broad topics or issues.

Extinction Rebellion made a big deal out of a statistic about 3.5 percent of the population rising up and that concept has spread to other protest movements today. The idea is that historically there is no instance in which more than 3.5 percent of the population became highly activated against a regime or for a major change and change did NOT come. Some people have taken this to mean that a small minority of the population could force a change, even on a recalcitrant majority. But that isn’t really what the statistic means.

The 3.5 percent is an estimate of what percent of a population has to be willing to go out to public rallies and protests regularly, especially in the face of repression, especially if it is dangerous or costs them inconvenience or risk. It is not because that 3.5 percent can change things all on their own. It is what those gatherings “demonstrate” about the level of commitment and vehemence in the population.

The US population has overwhelmingly supported progressive policies for decades. A significant majority of Americans have supported gun control, universal health care, education, reproductive rights and all kinds of other progressive policies for as long as I can remember. Those policies have not become law because of the anti-majoritarian elements of the US electoral system (such as the electoral college, gerrymandering and "lobbying” aka legalized bribery) as well as because of the corporate sponsorship of the two major parties.

Despite majority opinion being significantly at odds with policy for decades, no shift has come for a wide variety of reasons—lack of awareness, media obfuscation, apathy and hopelessness, prominent among them.

In addition, the population may hold those majority opinions but many people may not hold them strongly enough. Political and social scientists look at what happens when popular commitment to something rises in a population. When people are willing to make sacrifices or take risks for a set of needs or beliefs, even less democratic systems (such as authoritarian coups) can be overcome. That’s what the 3.5 percent rule is about.

And we are well on our way to seeing 3.5 percent or more of the population become engaged. But it isn’t enough for that number of people to come to one demonstration. It will require a longer commitment. It will require sacrifice and risk, because that would mean that a large majority of the population agrees with those who are out demonstrating, not just sort of agrees, but agrees vehemently and that more and more people are willing to lay down personal stakes to make a change. That is when even a less-than-democratic regime will change, whether it wants to or not.

I talk to friends in democratic countries in Europe regularly online, and they are really worried about us. They often say I’d better get out while I can, as if the US is one of those destabilized countries I used to report from. But the reality is that Putin is threatening my second country, the Czech Republic. If Ukraine falls, Europe will be fighting for their lives as much as they did in World War II.

These are the times we are living in—wherever we are. We never wanted it to come to this, but we are facing an authoritarian epoch. There are people being disappeared off the streets in this country for no crime greater than participating in a peaceful protest. Legal immigrants or citizens can officially be rounded up without due process if anyone “suspects” they may be undocumented. There are states where some of my neighbors, who are citizens, have been declared illegal because of medical and gender differences. Our civil service is being gutted and replaced by racist loyalists.

We are facing the fight of our lives. 

Last week before the big protests, there was a swarm of messages on social media, claiming to be “urgent safety information” about the protests. But it was actually lists of people who shouldn’t protest because they’d be at risk. This included immigrants—who really are at increased risk and we should be getting out there doubly to stand up for them—but also saying people of color shouldn’t protest, children should never come to protests (even those that are family friendly and have kids’ activities), and that people with any kind of medical condition or older people shouldn’t come to protests.

It became clear that these posts actually weren’t trying to help. They were being spread by some progressive accounts but also by accounts that were usually pro-MAGA. They started to spread things about turning your phone completely off—not communicating with anyone. There are protest strategies for people involved in civil disobedience that entail not using the internet or not even bringing a phone during specific direct actions. But having crowds of people in the streets without a means of communication helps no one but those who want chaos and violence.

In the end, the protests were peaceful and calm across the nation, amazingly so given the numbers. We saw a microcosm of it in our small town, with a few counterprotestors, some people attempting to intimidate. But we were lucky all around, and online reactions showed that local hardliners seriously underestimated the potential of these protests. In Baker County, the next county over, there was a somewhat smaller protest but they had 50, mostly armed, counterprotestors show up, likely because there was an article in their local paper about the protest a few days before.

That tells me that we too will soon face a lot more reactionary response. There are paramilitary groups all over this country, but especially in rural “red” counties like ours, that would like nothing more than to cause disruption and violence at anti-Trump events. We have a lot of work ahead. And there will likely come a time when just protesting isn’t enough. A general strike is a very likely necessity down the road and civil disobedience that entails real risks and personal sacrifices will be necessary if we want real change.

But with these tools and with the level of commitment that is palpable among us, we do now have the ingredients for change, possibly for change that will do more than just reverse the most recent atrocities. We could see change that repairs much more and allows us to truly join the “prosperous and democratic nations” of the world, at last.

Have I lost the fire?

An old acquaintance popped up recently telling me about demonstrations against the latest distant war and asking what I’m doing about it. There was a time when I would have been in the thick of it, full of hope, anger and the fire of passionate creativity.

I distinctly remember being twenty something and making pacts with a different friend to never let the fire of passionate activism, creativity and adventure go out. We swore to kick each other in the pants if the other ever wavered. But she’s gone, and I’m afraid I may have lost the fire.

What I didn’t know in my twenties was that soul-sucking, creativity-sapping hard times don’t always come in the form of tear gas, night sticks or bullets. As bad as those things are, there are things that will make you beg for something as easy to fight as a clear and distinct bad guy. And I’m not even talking about the inner demons of mental illness or the parasites of addiction. I managed to avoid those, though life has taught me a lot more compassion for others who didn’t slip the traps.

Image by Arie farnam - a porch railing holding pumpkins with candles inside portraying a pentacle and the word peace in different languages

I had freedom—just enough money to make my own choices and set my own course. I had transferable skills. I could go where I wanted and didn’t have to worry about the needs of others very much as I did. I mistook that privileged existence for deep caring about activism and great creative talent. It’s a common misconception.

Twenty years ago, I got sucked into the black hole of health problems which gave way to family responsibilities which led to worse health problems and much heavier family responsibilities. That’s what happened to my fire. It was buried under a mudslide and I’m still trying to find out if there are any smoldering embers left.

When I was in my late twenties, I gave up my last chances in newspaper journalism to lead antiwar protests. This isn’t something I’ve made a big deal about publicly. Potential employers wouldn’t see it as admirable, after all. I couldn’t stay in journalism and lead protests against the war in Iraq in a major international city at the same time. Journalists have codes of objectivity that preclude that sort of thing and no employers would allow it.

As a twenty-something, I don’t think I entirely thought through the potential consequences of that choice. I had a hot fire in me. I was watching the world explode with protest over a war based on lies, pushed by the questionably elected administration of my home country. It wasn’t happening in Prague yet, and the groups willing to try were marginalized and vulnerable to cheap attacks about supposedly being anti-American. I wasn’t just one more body in the streets for a protest. I was an American who also spoke the local language. Who could more credibly make the case that the protest was about human rights, rather than about being ideologically against the United States?

At that moment and in that place, there was a reasonable hope that I could make a real difference by joining and even leading the protests. The professional sacrifices felt worthwhile. Over the next two years, I was often cast into the role of negotiator between various factions. I had an acquaintance from my old political reporting who ran with the Czech Communist youth organization and friends in the staunchly anti-Communist student block. In a European capital city like ours, numbers of protesters mattered in terms of national policy and relations with the US. I worked to get both sides to come to events, while leaving their antagonistic or self-aggrandizing political banners at home.

Since my negotiating skills proved moderately handy and my rudimentary Arabic had once calmed a tense situation on the first day of our protests, I was also assigned as the negotiator for the Czech and international blocks in discussions with the local Iraqi dissident groups. That wasn’t easy, but it definitely gave me a sense of purpose and of my usefulness in the moment.

My primary counterpart on the Iraqi side was a guy named Ahmad. We worked together closely for months, and then his brother was killed by American soldiers in Iraq in a case of mistaken identity. The incident brought the war home to us. We swore it wouldn’t impact our budding friendship.

That was the last time I remember people losing their jobs or academic opportunities in the US over antiwar protests. Even though I had to make some sacrifices in my own career, I wasn’t directly fired or discriminated against for political reasons. But at the time, there were cases of suspension on college campuses as well as jobs or tenure lost in a variety of places because of people getting involved with antiwar protests.

Today the situation appears even more extreme, not just for people working in media but also in academia, law offices and even completely unrelated industries. I’ve lost track of the prominent journalists who’ve lost their jobs or been forced to resign. The pressure on college professors and students is intense, with even the entirely nonviolent Jewish Voice for Peace organization suspended at universities.

I can’t help but follow the news. People talk about shutting it out. I could just as well shut out thousands of people being killed in my own country or in my extended family. I don’t see the people under the bombs as foreign or as strangers “caught up in ancient enmity.” I’ve been too close. I have PaIestinian and lsraeli friends. I’ve also been in villages under shelling. I’ve had to hide huddled on the floor between the beds while renegade paramilitary forces out for revenge tore apart the neighborhood and bullets struck the gutters and wall just outside my window.

The news of the real world isn’t something I want to be able to shut out. But this time, there isn’t anything I know of that I can do that will matter. I’m in a small rural town where most people have very sparse information about what’s happening and have formed their opinions mainly based on the leaders they are used to listening to. And while the United States is involved in a significant way, another American speaking up about it in this case isn’t going to make a lick of difference, especially not out here in the sticks.

My heart goes out to those friends of mine who are personally affected. Every war is terrible. Innocent people always end up dying by violence, starvation or preventable illness. This war is even more heartbreaking than most to me because of the particularly intractable background and the fact that I know people on both sides of the conflict, none of whom have any realistic possibility of doing anything as individuals to help the innocent people being killed or to move toward peace. The Jewish people protesting the war in the US have the most chance of active agency at the moment, and they are doing admirable activism and often paying a heavy price for it.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, I spent the first few months volunteering to aid refugee evacuations because I had language and map-reading skills that were sorely needed. When Extinction Rebellion appeared to have a real shot at changing high-level European climate change policies, I dropped everything and was willing to get arrested and work with people who I didn’t always get along with to save lives. I wish there was a clear thing to do to make a difference right now. Even better, I yearn for a bad guy whose demise would actually be helpful.

Maybe it’s a symptom of growing up more than of the actual situation. I have realized my own futility. There is no way to win a war like this, and I have neither a useful identity nor any skills to put toward in the cause of peace or to aid the survival of individuals, even in a small way. But I did swear to hold onto the fire, and I wonder where the passion of my activism and creativity has gone.

I have a few little embers, barely glowing in the palm of my hand—the idea of going back to college and getting a master of fine arts degree. It may not help the world much, but it would give me a bit firmer ground on which to stand and from which to do useful and helpful things. But of course, this means entering the world of academia, and in my case, applying for scholarships, at a time when the silence required for career success is at odds with my conscience.

A recent ACLU open letter to colleges and universities across the United States criticized the penalizing and suppression of antiwar student groups during the scouring of Gaza, saying “It echoes America’s mistakes during the McCarthy era.” Students have lost competitive fellowships and job offers over peace-oriented social media posts. The only PaIestinian member of Congress was censured for words of heart-felt compassion for the victims of violence on both sides.

We all stand at the wall now in our own individual ways. We are forced to choose. Who will stand up, speak up, lose their voice, go to jail or lose opportunities as a result? Who will duck their head and hope to speak up more effectively another day? This is one of those times history will ask about.

I nurse my little embers. My fire is not burning brightly now. I’m barely hanging on. So, I change Ls to Is and Is to Ls to avoid the roving bots of censorship and academic blacklisting, I reach out privately to comfort grieving friends and I swallow back the hot words of protest.

Marginalized groups in XR: Will you come or will you go?

Macrocosm

Storm winds are surging within the climate justice movement Extinction Rebellion. Just as in a physical storm the clouds and waves are occupied with their own internal turmoil and any given droplet of water within them is both ineffective and blameless by itself.

In October, a small group in London claiming to be part of Extinction Rebellion mounted an unpopular action, blocking a subway station by gluing themselves to trains and climbing on top of trains during rush hour. The rationale behind such actions is similar to the actions blocking bridges and road traffic. The point there was not so much to be against cars as an unsustainable form of transportation. It was simply to sound a high, loud alarm.

The message of XR blockades is “STOP! Just stop business as usual! Pay attention! There is nothing as important as the climate crisis now!”

The reasoning behind it is that the warnings given by scientists, saying that we have a very limited amount of time left in which we can realistically avert massive disaster and uncountable deaths from hunger, storms and extreme heat, are real.

And we either believe that a consensus among ninety-nine percent of the world’s scientists is a serious matter, that facts are real and the laws of physics actually do apply to us, or we don’t. If we believe those things, there isn’t really any other common sense response than to do whatever it takes to bring about changes that might just be able to save millions of lives.

Photo by Arie Farnam

That’s the intention. Extinction Rebellion hasn’t distanced from the group of activists who carried out the London subway blockade because the rules of the movement are also real. If someone subscribes to the ten principles of XR, including non-violence, refraining from shaming, mutual support and challenging power structures, they can call themselves Extinction Rebellion. That is what the London subway blockaders did.

But the vast majority of XR members voiced vehement objections to the action. Some simply felt that the movement shouldn’t target reasonably carbon-light transportation alternatives, such as rail transport of any kind. After all, subways and light rail are the kind of things we need to be moving toward, even if Extinction Rebellion refuses to put out exact specifications for solutions.

The movement insists that a people’s assembly—chosen through a jury system, rather than through a heavily financed election—should decide how we move forward to solve the climate crisis. But rail transport is one of the non-controversial assumptions about what that solution will have to entail.

Others have more complex reasons for their complaints. The trains blocked in this particular action happened to come from some of the poorest parts of London, full of immigrants and ethnic minorities on the way to minimum wage jobs with harsh tardiness policies.

Extinction Rebellion is not immune to the accusations leveled at most environmental organizations that it’s a place for middle-class white people to work out their rebellious streak and generalized anxiety. Extinction Rebellion has made an effort since the beginning to keep a permanent focus on inclusion, but this action felt like a slap in the face to a lot of people of color.

One of the ten XR principles is “We accept everyone and every part of everyone.” It’s supposed to be inclusive and the small print talks about inclusion of every kind of vulnerable group. But some people of color have expressed that they don’t feel nice and cozy and safe when they hear this principle. Instead they immediately wonder if the white supremacist parts of some people might be included in that blanket acceptance statement.

There are other principles that point toward inclusion and much of the in-depth but technically non-binding structural documents that make up the DYI systems to set up XR branches in every city around the world go into detail about cultural sensitivity, inclusion and recognizing the different experience with police that people in vulnerable groups may have. Extinction Rebellion tries, but it is still an attempt at sensitivity by a bunch of white people.

“Rebels”. (as XR members call themselves) have employed a popular chant over the past year when police intervene to force an end to a blockade. “Police, we love you! We do this for your children!” has echoed in every English speaking country as well as quite a few where the words are foreign. In Prague, the Czech rebels at our October blockade yelled it in thickly accented English, while police hauled away 130 of our friends, injuring some.

And yet, black people back in the UK, where Extinction Rebellion started, and across the water in the US have said essentially, “Ahem, that’s not going to work for us.” Love just isn’t happening in the relationship between black people and the police in the UK or the US, where random police interactions with black people wind up with way too many black people dead. Most black rebels in these countries are not even sitting on the blockades and getting arrested.

While white rebels risk a night in jail, a fine and a misdemeanor record, black people risk their lives just walking or driving, let alone poking the police bear. It is less that black rebels don’t want to say the chant as it is that it sounds like white people wallowing in white privilege.

Now, after the Autumn Rebellion, many XR groups online and off are tackling the issue of inclusion. I’m glad they are because I see this as the Achille’s heel of this movement, which has achieved a great deal in one short year. If Extinction Rebellion fails to fuel massive public demand for climate justice at every political level, it will be because we fail the inclusion part.

That isn’t just because we should be good people or that we need the numbers that vulnerable groups could provide by joining us. It is most importantly at the core of what has made XR successful so far. We should include people of color, people with disabilities and all the other vulnerable groups not for their sake, but for everyone’s sake. Everyone has some vulnerability and it is when we see those more vulnerable than us truly included that we can fully commit our energy, time and resources to this kind of effort. Inclusion isn’t just for those we shouldn’t exclude.

When it is there, it permeates the entire culture. When it isn’t there, no one is safe, and social interactions are a constant battle of individuals trying to stay in the center of the herd, furthest from exclusion.

Microcosm

When I first joined XR, I was glad to find that no one made much of my disability. They were happy to try to accommodate my vision impairment by letting me know who was who, and I was so grateful to be treated a bit better than the immediate social stereotyping and dismissal that I encounter on a daily basis in society.

But as time went on and more and more people joined XR, I have watched that early focus on inclusion fade and thin. New people often come from a non-activist environment and they bring with them the exclusionist assumptions of the wider society. Those who have been there longer are tired and desperate to reach some kind of tangible goal. Inclusion starts to feel like a luxury we can’t afford.

I have been reticent to write openly about the difficulties I’ve run into with exclusion within XR over the past few months, because i too am focused on the ultimate goal. But the events of recent weeks around the world have convinced me that we must talk about these things openly. Because it is exclusion that will take us down.

It is not a luxury. It’s the heart of the matter.

There may be a few exceptions, but by and large the people who join XR are open-minded and informed. They are people who believe in science enough to put their regular lives on hold and do something about a crisis that for most of us—in white-majority countries at least—is still largely theoretical. They are also demonstrably people who take personal responsibility and eschew laziness, because rather than simply talking about the crisis, they are doing something.

These factors mean that even though XR has people from both the political left and the political right, most are already tolerant, nice people. They don’t think of themselves as racist, ablest or otherwise exclusionist. Many even consider themselves actively anti-racist or anti-ableist. And a lot of them feel like this should be enough.

But as with the London subway blockade and the police chant, it clearly isn’t. For me, as the only significantly disabled person in my local XR group, I have to agree. My group has been wonderful in consciously working to include me. I truly appreciate that, and yet I know that most people with disabilities in my place would have left long ago and I am constantly close to leaving the group myself.

I asked a friend who uses a wheelchair to join and she just laughed ruefully. I couldn’t really argue. The group says they want a person in a wheelchair at the blockades because it would make for good press photos, but no one has ever even mentioned the fact that we’ve never held a meeting in a place that was even remotely wheelchair accessible. They want a person with a wheelchair as a prop, not as an organizer.

There are two categories of issues I can identify that cause me to feel excluded in the group even without the issue of physical accessibility. which given the conditions isn’t really their fault.

First, there is a tolerance for intolerance, as that principle about accepting all parts of everyone implies. While most people are inclusive and welcoming, there are those who are not and the group not only tolerates them but insists that I must tolerate them. If I speak up, even very discretely about exclusion and hate directed toward me, I am told that the urgency of our goal demands that I tolerate it and don’t rock the boat.

Second, there is a lack of understanding about the effects that exclusion in the wider society have had on me and a marked lack of tolerance for any reaction I have to social exclusion.

In one prominent example, a person in a position of power in my group decided early on that she did not like me. Her explanation focused primarily on communication issues, specifically that some of my texts were too long. Being a writer, I can be a bit wordy, but when I can, I go back and edit. Written communication usually isn’t a problem for me.

But in this case, we were using a phone app for daily communication within the group. I can’t type on the tiny phone screen very well because it is too small for me to see, so I was dictating my texts. This meant that my texts were especially long. When we speak, we naturally use more words than when we write. To add to this, editing on my phone in extremely small print is next to impossible for me. Yes, blind people use audio interfaces that make it technically doable but it is excruciatingly slow. Sometimes i do spend literally hours editing a few texts for the group to make things readable. But most of the time, with my work, household, children and all, I didn’t have time. I just dictated texts and sent them, oral vagueness and all.

So, the dislike this person initially developed toward me was based on something that was a symptom of my disability. She is a person steeped in European good manners and social justice thinking. I am certain that she would never intentionally exclude a person over a disability or some other irrelevant trait. But she did—likely obliviously—develop her antipathy for me over something that was part of my disability.

She and the rest of the group chose to call it “a difference in communication styles,” and despite my explanations, refuse to see it as disability related or reconsider her conclusions. When she initially adopted her negative view of me, I was utterly confused. We had, only one day before, had a wonderful conversation in which she told me that I would be working with her closely and expressed a lot of support for my work in the organization. And then suddenly, I was cut off from communications and told that she no longer wanted to work with me.

She later said that my reaction shocked her. After a lifetime of social rejection and even complete isolation for years at a time, I don’t take abrupt, unexplained rejection well. My first reaction was to cry, then to try to defend myself and later to bargain. For so many people with disabilities social rejection is a real visceral danger and I am no exception in that.

It is understandable then that my reaction came across as out-of-proportion and overly pushy to someone who felt she was simply setting some boundaries with an annoying individual who writes overly long texts.

But here’s the thing. After many months of informal exclusion, I was forced to accept an agreement in which we would be sensitive in our communications with each other and I would stay away from powerful roles within the organization in order to minimize contact between me and this person in power. This was the only way i could stay in the group at all.

That may sound like a reasonable compromise, and it did to most of the local XR rebels. But imagine if this had been a black person instead of a person with a disability. Imagine that someone expressed dislike of a black person because of the way they spoke or dressed or some other cultural attribute and started excluding that person. Imagine then—it isn’t hard at all—that the black person got intense and up in that person’s face because they have been excluded and dismissed way too often by white people, and subsequently that the those in power limited the black person to low-level roles as a means to avoid further conflict.

Realistically, most black people—and most people with disabilities—would not get intense. They’d just leave. That is ONE of those reasons that there are so few people from marginalized groups in XR and similar organizations. But it is not at all difficult to imagine this scenario, because like me, some black people stay and fight.

Now, in the scenario with the black person most anti-racist white people are now educated enough to see the problem and to call this exclusion. We aren’t perfect yet and i’m sure this does happen in Extinction Rebellion to black people. But very few abled people are informed enough to see the same situation clearly when the issue is disability. For whatever reason, that’s just the dynamic.

The end result is that, if I want to continue to be part of Extinction Rebellion, I have to constantly bump up against the antagonistic walls set for me, where I am not allowed to take on national roles in the group. And I have to constantly see the XR messages urging us to put people from marginalized groups in positions of power and to feel their hypocrisy.

There are a very few people of color in our local group as well and none of them have significant roles. I don’t know them well enough to discuss the reasons why personally. But the fact is that our group has the option of putting people with disabilities or people of color in visible and/or powerful roles and it doesn’t. In fact, it has barred a person with a disability from national roles, based on symptoms of the disability and post-traumatic responses to social exclusion.

We’ve got a problem.

And I—like many other rebels from marginalized groups—now have to decide day by day if I stay and fight for the soul of this movement I believe holds our best chance for the future or if I let it go and take care of myself.

Remember why: A note from my past self in Extinction Rebellion

This post is time travel. It’s a message from the past.

Really. I am writing this in mid-August. The sun is hot. The days are slow and lethargic. The Czechs call this season “cucumber season,” because in our short growing season mid-to-late August is the only season when cucumbers are ripe and so many people spend their time pickling.

My pickling cucumbers all died of mold, so my children will go without pickles this winter. Such is life.

But the other thing about this season is anticipation. And this year that is more true than ever before. We’re working up to what we grandiosely call “the Autumn Rebellion.” It is supposed to be a massive worldwide uprising of people demanding truth, justice and action to avoid ecological disaster.

Creative Commons image by Carl Nenzén Lovén

In London, Paris, Berlin and other western cities, it is supposed to bring transport and industry to a screeching halt. It is supposed shake the major state and corporate structures to their foundations and wake up their CEOs and legislators to the crisis. In smaller and less progressive places, like my own Prague, it is supposed to be the first major rallying cry, the days of love and courage with crowds of protesters, arrests and media coverage.

That’s the plan.

In the midst of a cucumber season with no cucumbers, I am filled with a bit of trepidation. Every day brings a fresh wave of new Extinction Rebellion volunteers. More than anything else, I fear they will be disappointed. They have finally risen, most for their first time doing anything even remotely activist. It’s the first real rising of public demand for change in a generation here. There were small protests, sure, but nothing that captured the hearts and minds of regular people beyond a committed (eccentric) few.

Beyond that, I am putting in far too much time and effort, more than is good for me. And I’ve already encountered some of the social ostracism I dread in any kind of group situation. I can’t help but look ahead with hope and anxiety side by side.

What will the first weeks of October bring? Will our dreams be realized? Will real change come at last? Will it be worth all the effort and sacrifice? Will anything happen at all?

That got me to thinking about sending a message to my future self. Because I know how hard it can be—in the midst of things—to remember the most basic reasons why we throw ourselves into something like this. I could so easily get caught up in worry, get freaked out over failures or be torn up over social rejection. So, if that’s the case, I hope this may help.

Here are the reasons I am doing this:

1. All last winter I was so depressed I couldn’t move. Every day I took a nap for an hour and a half or two hours because nothing seemed worth it and my body and mind were saturated with grief and despair. When I found Extinction Rebellion that changed overnight. Finally there was something worth doing.

2. I wasn’t in it to win. When I first joined in April there were ten active people in the entire Czech Republic. They were nice people, but I didn’t really think they could have hundreds or thousands of people active by the autumn. Neither did they. They just said that because it was a sort of goal to put out there. “A thousand people in the fall,” that’s what they said. But I was in it for the moment, for those ten and for whoever came each day.

3. My role in Extinction Rebellion quickly became that of hearth mother. I am among the older members and that’s a new experience for me, the first time I’ve ever been considered “old” by any standard. I also know how to cook. It’s fun to bring cake, carrot sticks and homemade hummus to a meeting and hear the cries of genuine gratitude from a dozen twenty-something vegans who can’t get a decent meal most places in this city. All of my work has been about feeding the earth defenders, holding hands, nurturing, reassuring, even hugging, as well as teaching empathy and first aid. And no matter what happens in the end, that endless, nearly invisible work will have gone on the same way a mother’s nurturing work goes without guarantees, just because it is needed.

4. We knew that a thousand people wouldn’t change government climate policy, even in one tiny little Eastern European country. We were doing it because it was the only reasonable and logical thing to do. We did it to be able to get up, look at ourselves in the mirror and not sob with shame and rage.

5. So, now we have 250 active rebels and it’s August. While I was a raw recruit in April, I am now considered a hardened elder and as such I have to play politics and fend off criticism. But I still have to get up every morning and look in the mirror. So, my reasons haven’t changed that much.

Some people have great hopes for this fall. All around the world people are gearing up and hoping for a massive uprising to force governments and corporations into real action, so that we can survive climate change.

I am among those who hope. I cannot help it. But at the same time I know that no plan survives contact with reality and that things could go haywire in a dozen different ways. It could be far bigger than we expect. It could get ugly with police or football rowdies or impatient drivers. It could be depressingly apathetic and small. We don’t know.

I also know the foibles and imperfections of humans. Extinction Rebellion has built a structure meant to foster a regenerative culture with equity, inclusion and ethics at its core. But still the people running it are just as human as the rest, coming from and living in a society that is toxic, ego-driven and unethical. Will this structure, which looks so good on a flip chart, hold? Will we live up to our ideals?

This is my note to my future self. Keep to your values. Welcome each one. Defend the vulnerable. Stand in your own strength. Seek authenticity.

Remember your reasons. Remember that we do this beyond hope, not for what it might bring in the future but for our self-respect here and now. Don’t lose sight of empathy. non-violence and love.

I will publish this at the midst of it—just before the full moon—when I will likely be too busy to write. It will be a note from the past to myself and to all those working hard the same way.

P.S. This is present-day me again. I’m glad for the reminders. There are now 400 organizers. If they all bring a friend or two, we’ll have a thousand at the big event on Saturday. But the most famous Czech pop singer has died and his memorial service will compete with our actions for media coverage. A massive soccer match will draw six thousand drunk Brits and who knows how many drunk Czechs to the city. And the local Extinction Rebellion group is fractured by factions banning this or that person, including me, from key information channels. Much of it looks like utter chaos. And yet, I have vegan chocolate cake, a fresh batch of hummus, camping chairs, a tent and first aid supplies. Come what may.

A line drawn in stone

What precisely separates Extinction Rebellion from Nazis, Stalinists and other massive, disruptive movements?

There once was a young man named Thomas who grew up in poverty and without hope, until one day a leader and a movement came and gave him hope and something to fight for.

He marched and demonstrated for a better future. He worked alongside others like him and felt the thrill of idealism and the bond of solidarity.

But his movement was the Hitler Youth. And as an old man he gave me a warning.

In another time and another place, there was a seventeen-year-old girl named Marie who followed a more decentralized, grassroots movement. She too had seen hardship and despair all around her. This movement wasn't just against something. It was for something--for equality and justice.

She knew hope and was willing to die for her cause. As an old woman living in the ashes and rubble of the Soviet Union, she showed me the Stalinist pins she collected that year she was seventeen.

Creative Commons image by Eric Wüstenhagen

After decades passed and the world changed, there was a young student of nineteen named Jan, idealistic, yet savvy. He'd studied all of the history and he knew to be on guard against power-hungry leaders. He beat the pavement and struggled none-the-less.

His band of anarchists and revolutionaries organized a few anti-globalization demonstrations, kept their independence and managed not to fall into the pitfalls of the past. But finally bickering and exhaustion took them down. Jan left his ideals behind and joined the exploitative world of unsustainable business-as-usual he had once raged against.

Again time rolled by and now there is a sixteen-year-old girl named Josefina wielding hope against despair. There is a movement and a stark black symbol on a flag.

This time the fight is not just against poverty, hunger and injustice, though it is about all that. It is a fight for our very lives, for the last hope of a future where our children will even be alive.

If there has ever been a worthy struggle, this is it.

All around the world, people are rallying and demanding change. I have been in activism for thirty-odd years and I have never seen a movement grow like this, doubling in weeks, raising people out of quiet backwaters in the middle of a sweltering, lazy summer to come to meetings and organize action.

i was sixteen when I met Thomas and I didn't judge him because he had never been in it for hatred and he regretted it. And because I too wished for a movement that would give me hope. I only knew I didn't want to fall for something corrupted as he had and idealism seemed a discredited thing for a lost generation.

I was twenty-five when I sat with Marie and I had been an activist but I didn't feel I belonged anywhere. A lot of my friends said they just weren't joiners, but I wanted to be a joiner. I just didn't see anything worth joining.

There were causes and activist organizations, but many of them had all the warning signs of cliquish social exclusivity, abuse of power, cult-like dynamics, unreliability, lack of accountability or demands that were either too watered down and vague or too specific and exclusionary. Even Jan's movement, though I personally liked him, had many of those flaws.

Now, I am forty-three and I stand in awe next to Josefina on the front line of an Extinction Rebellion blockade. This is where I make my stand.

Here in the Czech Republic an internet meme recently appeared showing the XR hourglass symbol with the caption: "The Nazis had the swastika. The Stalinists had the hammer. The climate-ists have this."

And most of our rebels just laughed at it. They made fun of it and passed it around on the internet as a joke. "Haha. How twisted!" But I didn't laugh.

What is it exactly that separates us from the early Nazis or Stalinists or other "idealistic" movements that went bad and turned to genocide?

We either answer that question unequivocally or we have no right to call the likes of Josefina to stand with us.

We are vast and incredibly fast growing. We are uncompromising in our convictions and we're willing to do almost anything to achieve our goals. We are willing to disrupt the lives of ordinary people.

We demand sacrifices for the greater good and for the future. We are done talking and discussing. When climate deniers come along and want to engage us in a long discussion about the science, we send them a few documents and then block them on social media if necessary.

Ain't nobody got time for that. We are in a fight for our lives and the lives of our children.

So, what is it? What makes us the good kind of massive, disruptive mob?

We are non-violent. Sure, we are, but not every climate activist is. And many an idealistic movement started out declaring non-violence. We like to talk about Gandhi and the US civil rights movement. And those are good examples but not every social movement that starts out non-violent ends that way and some end up simply being the non-violent wing of something that goes bad.

So, I don't think it is a laughing matter to ask this question. We ourselves say we are facing the very real likelihood of massive death, caused by climate change. Is it so hard to imagine that in ten years, as the crisis deepens and great numbers of people are thrown into desperation for survival, that our massive, coordinated movement could become a force for hurt?

It is not hard for me to imagine and that is why I am determined to put my energies into a safeguard.

Non-violence is a good start. But it is the concept of Regenerative Culture, developed over generations of activist experience, from the US civil rights movement to the anti-nuclear blockades in the UK, through the anti-fracking movement to today's Extinction Rebellion, that makes this movement different.

As my readers know, I'm mostly blind and I've seen my share of social exclusion and bad human behavior in my time. When I walked into my first Extinction Rebellion meeting, I had my doubts and skepticism. I'd seen enough examples of flaky, egotistical and/or slapdash activist groups to be wary.

And that first meeting blew my mind. Not only were they organized but there was a welcoming and friendly atmosphere that I have rarely encountered in groups of any kind. I didn't know it then, but that atmosphere was no accident caused by the people in the room just happening to be well-adjusted and nice.

It comes from a consciously developed and conscientiously implemented practice called "Regenerative Culture," which incorporates social inclusion, mutual support, conscious awareness, rigorous non-violent communication training, social sustainability and self care.

The concept of Regenerative Culture is not a nice, fluffy extra added onto Extinction Rebellion activities to make good atmosphere at meetings and sing songs during blockades. Instead it is the bedrock on which the foundations of the movement have been laid.

That is why we are different and as long as we don't ever lose sight of it, it will guarantee we don't go either toward tyranny or toward dissolution. At its core, Regenerative Culture is that line, a line that must be drawn in stone, not in sand.

The fact is that everyone thinks they are the good guys. Thomas thought he was just reaching for hope. Marie thought she was standing for justice. Jan was convinced that his activist group, not the one next door, was the only hope for social justice.

And in Extinction Rebellion we are equally convinced that we are right. We have now ninety-nine percent of climate scientists saying we are correct that human activities are destabilizing our climate, that this will have devastating and lethal effects and that we have a few short years to change course. We have reason to be staunch in our convictions.

The difference lies in how we treat one another first and second how we treat others.

The elements of Regenerative Culture are:

• Non-violence in action

• Non-violent communication

• Respectful behavior toward all, including those who insult, jail, beat or kill us

• Mutual support materially and emotionally

• Acceptance of everyone and every part of every one

• No shame and no blame

• Rotating roles of power

• A focus on amplifying the voices of underrepresented population groups

• Self-care and prevention of burn-out

It is impossible to convey the entirety of Regenerative Culture in one post. I will be posting more about this, including this week’s post on conflict resolution in groups for inclusive resistance, social justice and environmental defense here.

Talking to journalists:

A guide for direct action participants

If you are part of a direct action you may be approached by journalists. Whatever the goal of your action, you have some sort of message for the public. Your main target may be the government or a company but your second target is ALWAYS the public. Journalists are a stand-in for the public, whether we like it or not. Therefore, it is very important to know how to get your message across to journalists.

Before your action consider these things:

1. Do you want all participants to talk to journalists or will you politely redirect journalists to your organizer?

2. What is the most important goal of your action? What do you want? Make sure you can say it easily in one or two sentences.

3. What is your message for the public? Remember that when you talk to journalists, you are also talking to average, uninformed people listening to or reading a news report. Some of them will actually want to know your message and support you. Treat them kindly.

When journalists approach you, try to figure out what kind of press they are. There are three types of press:

Creative Commons image via Pixabay

1. Friendly press: Those who already agree with you or share your values, even if they don’t know who you or your organization is specifically. They will help you if they reasonably can.

2. Hostile press: Those who have already set their minds against you and your values or which view your organization negatively for political, financial or other reasons. They will use whatever they can against you, including your silence or dismissal. 

3. Uncommitted press: Those who have not openly taken a side for or against you and which may either be indecisive or trying to appear objective. There are no objective people. We all have sub-conscious assumptions and values. Uncommitted press will usually try to listen to your message, but they owe you nothing and they are often most interested in controversy and shocking details.

How to talk to the different types of press in order to get your message across to the public and to your specific targets through the media:

Friendly press

These journalists may happily publish your message and even specific information like your demands or the date and location of your next public event. It is important to be concise and clear. Keep your details in order and have your main message in written form to give to them. You cannot assume they know when the big action day is, no matter how much you have publicized it.

You don’t need to pander to them, but don’t take them for granted either. If you have time, you can give them interviews and even include some of your personal feelings.

It is better to avoid talking about organizational problems or internal conflicts. Uninformed people are always your audience and if you portray your organization as disorganized, it takes credibility away from your justification for disruptive direct actions. Finally, note that some hostile press might pretend to be friendly press in order to make satirical reports about you.

Hostile press

There are different types of hostile press. They may politically disagree. Their owners or major advertisers may be financially against your goals. They may be frightened and conservative with a lot of false assumptions about you. It is easy to think you should not talk to hostile press at all. However, it is important to remember that if they have come out publicly to talk to you they will probably publish or broadcast something from your action. And ultimately when you speak to them, you are speaking to their audience.\

If you react angrily to a rude and offensive journalist, thousands of people watching the video of your reaction will feel that you are angry at them or disrespect them. So, don’t engage too much with hostile press. They will use just about anything they can against you. Give your two-sentence statement of what you want and then a one sentence message for the public. Repeat it if they ask you for more. Be polite but firm.

Uncommitted press

These journalists may have false assumptions about you, your organization or your cause gained from those who are hostile toward you or simply from information confusion. If they state something incorrectly or show an incorrect assumption, resist the temptation to give a frustrated or irritable response, even if you have heard it many times.

Remember that uncommitted press may know very little about your goals or message. They may jump to false conclusions without meaning to. They will often be looking for what is most shocking and outrageous. You can use that to your advantage at times with creative actions, but it can also hurt you if what they get stuck on is some trash that fell out of your bag.  

Be ready to state what you want clearly in two sentences. Add a one sentence message to the public if you can. Avoid talking about organizational problems or disagreements within your movement. If asked about another faction that is pursuing the same goals as you, it is best to be vaguely supportive and avoid criticizing other groups, beyond stating your clear differences, such as, “We are non-violent. They may have similar goals but because they do not abide by non-violence, they are not part of our movement.”

Uncommitted press thrive on controversy and they will often look for controversy within your movement, which can be very harmful to your outreach and your message to the public. If asked to give personal feelings, you can state your emotions. “I’m sad.” “I’m very worried.” “I’m so angry!” Psychology tells us that if ordinary people hear you state your emotions starting with the word “I” they will be naturally empathetic. It is much more difficult when you have to accuse someone who is doing harm. It is good to start it with “I,” such as “I am angry that….” or “I am sad that our prime minister won’t do anything about this crisis.”

Finally:

Look at the camera, rather than the interviewer when possible. Avoid using words you wouldn’t want a six-year-old you loved hearing. And enunciate, particularly in crowds!

Trust... or the art of life amid crisis

I know how to trust.

Really I do. When I was younger, I traveled all over the world, met people who I didn’t share a language with and trusted them with my safety. I told people my story, my life, my vulnerability. I got rejected a lot or found that my story wasn’t important. And still I kept on being “naive.”

My children seem to be trying to train me not to trust. Since they grew out of toddlerhood and got past the stair gates, they have been getting into things, raiding the cupboards for slime-making ingredients, sneaking treats before dinner, hiding their dirty clothes and jumbled toys in the most ingenious places to avoid cleaning their rooms and memorizing my phone password every chance they get. I have learned that part of trust is trusting that kids will try to get sweets. electronics, dangerous chemicals and matches as soon as your back is turned.

Trust, in reality, means that if I give my first kid money to go to the store and buy bread and an ice cream, there is likely to be an armload of the worst junk food coming. If I give the money to the other kid, the money has a 50 percent chance of being lost on the way to the corner shop, but if it doesn’t get lost, the bread will come back along with a receipt for the devoured ice cream. Or at least the receipt will start the journey home.

But then again either might not happen. Nothing is guaranteed.

After many years break from community life and activism, I have joined an activist group again, this time focused on demanding emergency action on climate change from governments and corporations. It is a decentralized organization and yet one focused on coordinated, efficient and sometimes even risky action. It is also incredibly diverse, spanning the political spectrum and socioeconomic ladder. I sit next to students, psychologists, IT professionals, teachers and fast food employees in meetings. We don’t know each other and in order to accomplish the enormous task before us, we must trust each other.

I have to trust that our fellows will:

• do what they promised, so that I can do my part in the work without having to wait too long on them,

• not betray confidences to those that might stand against us,

• forego temptations to pursue personal agendas that might harm our cause,

• be honest,

• care,

• and not make careless mistakes that may endanger us all.

It is no small thing. I can see why a lot of people say they aren’t “joiners.” I am still more “naive” than most and the initial trust is not that hard for me. I trust that almost all of my fellows are good, conscientious and kind. I also trust that they are overwhelmed and busy. I trust that they will make mistakes and forget important tasks. And I trust that someday one of the few who are not conscientious will turn out to be an informant planted by institutions bent on bringing us down.

I am certain it will happen. But I also know that worrying about it will do little good.

After all this, you’d think I had trust down. But I don’t.

Recently someone in authority within the organization came to my group and asked us to do something that sounds like it could destroy much of the gains we have made over the past weeks. This person did not give details and insisted that authority and the traditions of the organization dictate that we must abide by these decisions.

I am confused. This is supposed to be a decentralized movement. How then, can we find ourselves under direct orders, required to follow instructions without understanding the reasoning? And part of the answer given is that things are bigger than we can see in the international movement. There are urgent actions needed for our goal and like soldiers on the front lines, there are times when we have to take orders as a matter of survival. Our mission to avert climate change is a matter of survival after all.

So, I am in a crisis of trust.

It would be immensely comforting to have a leader I could trust implicitly and automatically. That’s what my fiction is about. If you’ve read the Kyrennei series… well, I wish I had a Jace McCoy. But I don’t. We almost never do in the real world.

The reason Jace McCoy in the story—and his co-leader Dasha, for that matter—is so trusted and has the unswerving loyalty of J. Company is that he has been successful where so many others have failed. He has survived 40 years of guerrilla warfare against an immense foe. His gambles have almost always been right and he is a brilliant strategist and tactician. His people know that.

But they weren’t born knowing it. Each of them went through a process of becoming so loyal, including Aranka Miko. And in the end, he proves that her trust is warranted, no matter the cost to him personally.

Okay, that’s fantasy fiction. But that is why I wrote it. As dark as the Kyrennei series seems on some levels, it is actually a comforting fantasy to many. It is about the hope that we could have such trust among us in crisis.

And today there is no doubt that we are in a crisis of survival. I remember reading about the greenhouse effect in third grade science class in 1985. And now climate change is at the door and very little has been done since I was a kid to avert the looming disaster. Reports coming from scientists are increasingly desperate and our daily lives are being affected in ever increasing ways.

So, we need people willing to take risks and go into a massive struggle. We may not have a Jace McCoy but we do almost have a J. Company. There is one group that has achieved significant real results in forcing governments to take urgent action and that is the growing international movement of Extinction Rebellion. The structure and principles of this organization have been tried… maybe not for forty years, but they have been tested and have come through better than any of the many other organizations that have attempted this task. There is even a real-world sixteen-year-old prophetic voice of hope, just as in the my fantasy.

And yet I know that people are terribly imperfect. What I see right in front of me is a community movement poised at a fragile moment in new country and a leader with a heavy-hand and a plan that doesn’t make sense and doesn’t appear to follow the Extinction Rebellion model faithfully. And I am asked to believe that this leader is the genuine article. But I’ve only been with them for a few weeks.

Trust does not come easy this time, not even for me.

The morning after all this cames down I ventured outside to take a break from the messages online that bring troubling news. It’s chilly and bright with a stiff wind dropping the last of the blackberry blossoms.

And there in the duck house I found a miracle that I only thought might possibly occur. Baby chicks.

You see I have big black hens of the Australorp breed and I love them for many reasons. They’re hardy, have good homing instincts and they lay a lot of beautiful, large eggs with pale shells that come in handy for spring painting as well as eating. But they have one problematic breed characteristic. They are bad mothers. Apparently some people don’t think so, but my hens have shown absolutely no interest in sitting on their eggs in three years.

So, early this spring when one of the Indian Runner ducks that guard my vegetable garden against slugs started brooding and sitting on eggs, I replaced her eggs with the Australorp eggs. I have no male ducks, so she wouldn’t be able to have any ducklings, no matter how hard she sat on her duck eggs.

It was a fly-by-night experiment and I didn’t really think it would work. I also miscalculated how soon to expect the chicks and so I was completely unprepared for their appearance. The duck pen had not been secured and the chicks scattered out through the large holes in the wire fence into the empty lot next door. The adoptive mother duck could not follow them and she was frantic, calling them and flapping her wings, but the chicks ignored her.

I went out and waded through the knee high patch of giant nettles to herd the chicks back into the pen. Then I spent the next two hours shoring up the pen and catching stray chicks, which I could hear but couldn’t see because I’m ninety percent blind.

It would have been comic had anyone been watching me gingerly chase baby chicks around the yard while being careful not to step on those that stopped and curled into little gray balls. Oh yes, Australorp chicks are not handily yellow. They’re gray.

When I finally had everything that peeped contained, I peeked inside the coop. One of the chicks had fallen into the large water dish meant for adult ducks and was struggling to get out. The mother duck, thinking she had a duckling on her hand, was watching fondly, apparently assuming it was time for him to learn to swim.

I reached in to help the poor little chick out of the water but the mother duck struck at my hand with the speed and force of a rattlesnake. I jerked my hand back with a yelp of pain. I talked to her soothingly but continued to watch the chick, which was not drowning but should not be in cold water at all. Finally I made another attempt and earned a nasty bruise for my trouble.

Despite all my help in rounding up her adopted babies the mother duck was nowhere close to trusting me.

But my faith in the powers of life and mother nature was somewhat restored, even so. I could now ponder my own situation a bit more philosophically.

In some ways, I am like the mother duck. I have found something I passionately believe in and I have young, timid volunteers lining up with desperate hope in their voices. And anyone who looks like they might threaten that is libel to get bruised. I’m not particularly in the mood to take chances.

The tough little Australorp chick managed to get him or her own self out of the water dish and snuggle back into the mother’s warm feathers. He was still alive the next day.

I rigged up a small water feeder for the baby chicks in hopes that they would stay out of the adult water dish and made sure they had chick food. Each day I visit them several times, because the mother duck tends to accidentally upset the baby water container.

She doesn’t seem to be putting the chicks into the water as she might with ducklings. She’s keeping them warm and protected from the cold spring wind. And now she only hisses at me when I reach in to change the water and food containers.

Trust comes hard in these times. But I still believe in it, at least in theory.

An antidote to environmental depression

All I had to go on was a vague and anonymous Facebook notification. I followed my Maps app to the address but got lost when some of the Renaissance-era buildings weren’t numbered. A young Vietnamese immigrant with a child on her hip set me straight.

Finally, there was a sheet of paper taped to the mail box of a building in a narrow Prague street. A large Dagaz rune (which Ralph Blum called Breakthrough) tipped sideways was printed on the paper and repeated on one of the doorbells. It’s supposed to be a stylized hourglass, but my first impression was of the rune and a surprising good omen.

I rang, but there was no answer.

I gently pushed and the heavy wooden door creaked open. Inside was a dim hallway, like so many in the ancient city. A decorative railing ran around a spiral stairway and light filtered down from sunbeams coming through windows somewhere far overhead.

I passed a young man with long hair to the middle of his back, but then hesitated, glancing back at him. Prague is the kind of place where one might find new friends in a dimly lit stairwell.

“Are you with us?” he asked softly in Czech, addressing me in the informal grammar reserved for close family and friends..

Image via Pixabay

“Probably.” I grinned, “if you’re the meeting.”

“Go right up,” he nodded and the welcome in his voice was again almost shocking to my battered nerves, accustomed to the acrimony and judgement so rampant in today’s society.

The sunlit room upstairs was filled with more of the same, open hands reaching to bring me into the circle, smiles and enthusiastic voices. I had come prepared for cynicism, long arguments, social cliques, power trips, poorly hidden political agendas and all the other problems that have plagued activism circles for decades. This friendly reception was already more than I’d hoped for, but would it turn out to be just a shiny package for the same old dead ends?

I took a seat and watched as the meeting unfolded. Someone took the lead but then quickly passed the speaking role to another. Everyone was introduced in 10 minutes. The agenda was on a board with precise times that were kept without strain. Plans and methods were explained with professional clarity as well as with heart. We broke into groups to discuss specific projects.

I have rarely seen an activist meeting run so well, reaching goal after goal with no sense of rush.

Activism? Who has time for that nonsense these days, you might well ask.

The focus of this group is no mystery—taking real, practical action to force government agencies and industry to behave responsibly on the climate crisis. It was nothing short of our survival at stake and for once the activist proposals were not merely about leaflets or poetry slams or rallies. The work on the table was practical resistance to destruction.

Instead of being frustrated by a long, acrimonious meeting and incremental pace as I had in countless community organizations before, I had to question whether or not I was ready to jump into this swift flowing stream.

This was my first Extinction Rebellion meeting—out on the expanding fringe of the movement in Eastern Europe. And I had to hand it to them. Excellent organization. Solid tactics. Laser-focused goals. And the flexibility to learn in a new country.

Image via Pixabay

I have been struggling with deep environmental depression for years now. And a lot of that really is environmental—as in ecological. I grow my garden, hoard rain water, ride the train, recycle, try to speak up and all that. But it is clearly ineffective. For the past few years, I have looked for organizations to join off and on, but they were either inaccessible, just plain lazy or more serious about their donor’s goals than the real work at hand.

Keeping hope had become a chore. And a lot of serious environmentalists today have a lot of unpleasant things to say about hope.

So, is Extinction Rebellion just a bunch of well-organized naive idealists?

I might have thought so from just the one meeting. But deeper research reveals a strong foundation in realism and practicality. The movement is spread through local talks or lectures that summarize the status of climate science, describe the mounting effects of climate change and then outline the demands and strategy of the Rebellion. It’s a surprisingly anti-inflammatory, technical lecture to spread a revolution.

But even with level-headed words the scientific conclusions are pretty depressing. At the end of the talk, an opinion is given about whether or not we can still avert the worst effects of climate change even if we can generate the “political will.” The scientific jury seems to still be out on that. But there are plenty of reasons to believe we might not be able to stop a climate catastrophe that will seriously endanger our way of life and civilization no matter what we do today.

In the context of a motivational talk, this isn’t a logical way to convince masses of people. We are told that political and industrial leaders are ignoring the crisis and our best hope is to force them to pay attention and act through non-violent civil resistance. Yet we don’t even know whether or not it is already too late for them to avert disaster before they’ve even meaningfully started.

Still it’s real and honest.

Why do anything if the cause may well be hopeless? The Extinction Rebellion response is a question, “What does it mean to be human today?”

For me, it is about the quality of whatever life we have left. I have a choice. I can either live in a fog of depression and anxiety or I can do what needs to be done because it needs doing. Taking steps in the right direction is the only way out of depression I know of.

If that isn’t exactly a rousing pep talk, then so be it. Maybe the Rebellion is already rubbing off on me.

To my newfound co-conspirators in rebellion, I’ll give you some fair warning. I’m socially awkward, even a dork. I don’t do modern fashions. I can’t recognize faces and I can’t run as fast as I used to. I sometimes speak before I think and my daily life is pretty rugged at the moment.

But I have been in this kind of struggle before. I know about walking miles to distribute fliers and about herding cats. I know about long nights and the times when a lot of work goes for naught. I’m worth having around. I pack a good herbal first-aid kit and I’ve usually got food if you’re batteries are running low.

I have also always wanted to end my conversations and posts this way:

Love and courage! .