fear is connected to a sense of powerlessness. there is the fear of danger, pain, loss—physical, emotional, social. part of its charge, I suspect, comes from a doubt that we’ll be able to handle the danger/fear/loss, that we won’t have what we need to meet it. a big part of the more frightening experiences in my life was the sense of feeling trapped, without power to change or respond.
i attended a class on unions and coops on Friday, and got to hear from some of the people who organized the union at REI. the undercover question the whole time was how did you get people to want to participate in shaping their working conditions, how do you help people become aware of their own power?1
one mechanism for disrupting jostling the habitual sense of powerlessness is inviting people into mischief, there’s a whole invisibilia episode about it.2 the conditions we are facing require creative strategies, maybe even silly ones. regardless of the strategy, there’s something deeply energizing to me about mirroring people’s power to them. it’s like the feeling of getting away with something, i don’t quite have the words for it.
at the class they recommended the book No Shortcuts Organizing for Power in the New Guilded Age — which opens with this list:
i particularly love: anger is there before you are — channel it don’t diffuse it, anger and power feel connected…..something about accepting and finding ways to express and move anger seems critical to building power. i think both might live in our hearts.
i also love don’t underestimate the workers, and workers are made of clay not glass. to believe in our capacity for transformation. most of all i love that in order to win you start by getting close and staying close.