Decompiling Oppression #52
Sam McVeety
I've been thinking a lot about if and how to mark the occasion of entry #52, and with it, the passage of two full years since I started this project. If I let inertia lead me, I could delve into another topic of interest, and yet, moving uniformly forward and leaving the occasion unremarked (or just mentioned in passing) also feels somehow not right. Coincident with these musings is the week off I took after #51. I was grateful for giving myself permission to rest, occasioned by the first chance in years to spend time with my family.
In trying to sort out these thoughts, I recalled a revelatory conversation I had with my coach (the inimitable Sarah Carr), where she named the polarity between being and doing, or alternatively, between growth and celebration. If we spend all of our time focused on growth and doing, where is the space for being and celebration? Perhaps unsurprisingly, there were no results when I went back and searched the archives for the word "celebration".
I'm also reminded of the oft-repeated saying in equity work that "it's a marathon, not a sprint", or sometimes intergenerationally, "it's a relay race, not...". I wondered: when you're running a marathon, where does celebration figure in? An obvious answer is that you celebrate after you're done with the marathon... but what if the marathon is your whole life? I realized that some of the dissonance I was feeling was that I was approaching this project in the same way that I would run a marathon -- with a specific pace in mind, holding as closely as possible to that pace for the entire duration. What's left out? (Listening to my body, for one.) But also celebration along the way.
Recognizing the need for being and celebration, I still feel tension from my whiteness. All the way back in #1, we talked about how inaction can feel as easy as surrendering to gravity. Fundamentally, I think this tension comes from a fear of stopping. If I pause a project like this, will I have the strength and initiative to start again? (And when is it time to say "no" so I can say "yes" to something else?) Arguably, naming this fear makes practicing stopping and starting all the more important. If we have the experience to tell us we can resume, then maybe we can trust ourselves more to rest and celebrate along the way. I want to trust myself, and yet I still struggle to.
If I can take that leap of faith to trust myself, I also want to reflect on the past two years, and what my journey has been like. I started with the intention of taking risks, and turning thought into action. One thing I want to celebrate is learning more about circle practice. With the support of Huayruro, I took tiny first steps towards this, with the support of seven colleagues who spent six months sitting in circle, trying to better see each other, so that we might avoid harming each other in the future, and learning how to talk about harm that may have occurred.
I'd like to write much more about this experience in circle, but briefly, it convinced me more than ever of the need to create systems of accountability that allow for multiple truths, and that adversarial systems with binary winners and losers only heighten our inability to truly understand each other. I'm curious to explore this kind of radical empathy more deeply. One conversation about this newsletter delved into how to do classroom management for adamantly far right students. I suggested, tentatively but curiously, to recognize the fear that might underlie some of their beliefs, and offer the kind of services that would be designed to explore the trauma here. This is fraught territory -- harm is real, power is real, and "both sides'' is a frequent distraction. And: the need for repair is also real.
Elsewhere, my husband and I have radically changed the way we think about moving wealth, using Edgar Villanueva's framing around reparations and healing. We have tried to live and act according to our conviction that the "rainy day" is now, and that holding back until we judge that aid is "really" needed is really a form of paternalism and white supremacy.
Amongst all this, I'm aware of the constant undertones of my own positionality, of race, gender, ability, and other identities. Corroborating the lived experience of many, one study found that leaders engaging in diversity-valuing behavior can be negatively evaluated if they are from non-majority identities themselves, whereas white and/or male leaders are not punished.
Looking forward, what can we expect to see? Well, probably more algorithms stuff. With family members on permanent disability benefits, we'll be going there, and looking at why they are marked as "worthy" by a system that leaves so many others behind. I also feel like I could spend an entire year just talking about Minor Feelings. Thank you for joining me this far. You've also done something; taken some steps. Sit with that, and figure out what celebrating would mean to you. When you're ready, I'll be here. To the journey ahead.
Here are this week's invitations:
Personal: How do you balance being and doing, growth and celebration in your own life?
Communal: How can you help others around you acknowledge and name their growth, and find personally meaningful ways to celebrate?
Solidarity: Support the Montana Racial Equity Project and their work towards equity and justice for historically marginalized, disenfranchised, and oppressed peoples in Montana. In building community with them, MTREP provides a beautiful example of balancing growth and celebration.
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