There were a lot of complicated things that happened for me during this last week. I participated in C3’s lectures on Wednesday and early Thursday, which included the movie “Who’s Counting? Marilyn Waring on Sex, lies, and the global exchange” and a guest lecture by Sarah Eltantawi on the Iraq war. On Thursday I observed the protest and walk out. I read the first chapter (written by Joni Seager) of the book Dangerous Intersections about the connections between military activity and climate change, and a chapter from Sister Outsider called “Transforming Silence Into Language and Action”. I read various commentary on the Women’s March and the Pussyhat movement. I read an article on the way Martin Luther King’s legacy has been misappropriated as a way to control the content of current protests.
I felt like I was present in an important moment. And I felt like I was absorbing all that was going on around me, even when I didn’t know exactly what to make of it.
Since school started this year I have felt so much expansion in my worldview. I have learned a lot about allyship, advocacy, and activism. I am taking in information every single day, especially in the last few months, about how to be critical and how to be involved and engaged, how to be inclusive, how to lead and when it’s most important to give space to other voices.
I haven’t figured out how all the pieces fit together yet. I haven’t figured out a way to turn all of the things I’ve learned and all the things I feel connected to and all the things I want to contribute to into a solid course of action. A stable idea of how exactly I can best fit into the world around in a meaningful way.
There are people around me who have, or who are comfortable getting involved with action even if they don’t know how it fits yet. I can’t jump in with both feet yet, and part of me feels guilty for that and another part knows I will be next to useless until I feel stable in my knowledge. (Not static, because I don’t ever want to stop learning, but stable enough to stay strong.)
One of my questions for this quarter was why it is important to learn about social justice. What the connections are between activism and education.
Education, either from a somewhat traditional course of reading and writing and thinking or from a hands on, peer spread, or community based learning, has been incredibly important to me in finding out more. It’s taught me how to find information and use it. It’s taught me how to look at things critically. It’s given me a place to be comfortable and pushed me past my comfort zone.
My education has given me tools for putting small details and small pieces together within a bigger picture and make connections that are of vital importance, yet not always made.
At a simplistic point, activism is education. It’s spreading information that is unacknowledged, hidden, or silenced. It’s broadening minds.
Education and activism are entirely tangled. They benefit each other. This quarter, in part, is about expressing in more depth and detail that tangle, and that benefit.
On Saturday, the day after the Inauguration, I attended a Drag Show. Its theme was superheroes and shedding secret identities to become your true self. The organizers of that show were people I went to community college with, who I met through the GSA (Gay-Straight Alliance) on campus. At that club, we were usually lucky if ten people showed up at a time.
When I got to Evergreen, I attended the LGBTQ Welcome reception. I wasn’t expecting it to be so well attended, and when what felt like sixty or seventy people showed up it was incredibly overwhelming. It was a very overwhelming amount of people, and there wasn’t the space or time to get to know anyone slowly. I am a very white human, I am very straight passing, my personality is quiet unless I’m with people I’m close with, and I don’t have the confidence to take on the powerfully open aspects of personality that I so admire in others. With these things together, I don’t expect to be trusted, I don’t expect to be much more than on the outskirts of any communities, especially when I am new.
So in many ways, the small community I had at community college was more than what I was able to find at Evergreen. And when I go back and interact with those people, it feels comfortable and familiar.
Last Saturday was a charged day. It was a powerfully emotional show. I watched with my partner fighting exhaustion and being overwhelmed by social stimuli and at the same time being a part of a community that was celebrating its strength, venting its frustrations, and charging itself for a fight at the same time.