Home for the Activism: A Holiday Story
By: Miles Boucher
Tags: Christmas, Activism, Family, Holidays, Politics

The year is finally wrapping up.

It is difficult to write about the holidays because it can mean something different to so many. It may be a time of joyful return to familiar haunts and celebrations with family (chosen or biological). It may be a time of obligation, duty, or pain for others. It might be a festival with community, or a time of isolation. It could be a combination of any. Regardless, the holidays whether it be Christmas, Hannukah, Saturnalias, or Yule can be trying for anyone, but especially the marginalized among us: the misgendering of the trans, the emphasis on romance for the a-spec, the financial burden on the poor.

Going ‘home’ for the holidays (if you are fortunate to have a familial home or are connected to family) can be dangerous, even hostile. So what can we do?

Photo by James Barker on Unsplash

Burn Out.

It is one of the single worst killers of an organization, a movement, and an individual. With our current news cycle tragedies, atrocities, and scandals only last for a brief moment before they are extinguished by the next. The attention span of the world is becoming less.

Sustaining our anger in the face of overwhelming political and economic opposition is proving tiresome. I’m tired constantly! It’s a challenge and something that is hotly discussed among activists.

In the 2020 call for proposals the Pedagogy & Theatre of the Oppressed Conference states:

We also ask: How do we sustain popular power over time — in the face of exhaustion and the pains of defeats? We hope to explore the possibilities of (and the need for) joy and happiness inside struggle.

Thankfully, the PTO Board acknowledge that there needs to be a method for overcoming exhaustion. One of my fellow activists put it this way:

If your movement is tied to a single leader, a ‘hero’ or a ‘martyr’, then it is doomed for failure. For as soon as they are removed through pressure, attack, or exhaustion, then the movement falters. You have to have a plan for how the movement survives its members.

Or another way to put it:

The single most important unit of the movement is not the individual, but the group.

What can we do?

Celebrate

Many cultures have a solstice celebration. The hemisphere passes through its longest night and the days start getting longer. It was sometimes known as Sol Invictus: The Indomitable Sun. It was a recognition of passing through the hardest and least abundant times into another year of plenty.

In that tradition, I have had a very interesting year to celebrate:

As a practice, I have been writing blog posts a year ahead of schedule. This way I would have a year of work already laid out ahead of me. Admittedly, it has been difficult (I just barely got this one in on time; *stares warily as New Year’s approaches*), but we did it!

This year I…

was accurately diagnosed

moved across country (again)!

applied for academic jobs in several states & was briefly employed as a professor

finally worked in New York City!

got a board position on an international conference

Yet despite my new career and living accomplishments, I couldn’t help but feel helpless. Like all of this was in spite of me rather than because of me…

This was partially due to the nature of my successes, which were independent of each other: moving across country meant foregoing my position as a professor, applying is not the same as accepting, my board position is volunteer-based. In the end, I see the good that I am doing, but feel like I can’t take care of my chosen family any better despite years of trying.

Undoubtedly, my mental illness plays a part in that equation, but that doesn’t exactly help. It’s like knowing your phobia is an irrational fear. It doesn’t matter that you know your response is irrational, you still experience it.

So celebrating is not enough on its own, but it is still important. It is a necessary skill where we must market ourselves for everything, but it is also a life skill in that it is necessary to overcome our negativity bias. If you only ever think the worst of yourself, then there is no hope for a difference in your life, so it is important to celebrate the good side of a bad situation.

Restore/Recuperate:

Many of us work hard. Too hard.

According to one study, Medieval peasants had approximately 100 days off annually, which meant that while they suffered enormous financial hardship, a full third of their year was spent without labor (though perhaps not in leisure).

According to another study, Bob Cratchitt made more than the current minimum wage in the United States.

Finally, as early as 100 years or more, philosophers like Bertrand Russell and Henry George believed that people work too much, that a reduction in the amount of labor necessary was essential to a well-functioning society. The IWW believed as early as the 1920’s that the ‘full-time’ work week should be reduced to as little as 20 working hours.

In agrarian societies, it was necessary to allow for a fallow year, where the nutrients in the soil were allowed to repopulate. This is also necessary for people as laborers, as creatives, and as artists. The simple recognition that you work hard and that you need time to just be shouldn’t be radical and yet…When our worth is constantly tied to labor is it really so surprising? Every day we sell our working strength and then when we take the time to recuperate, we are taught to feel like thieves rather than salespersons.

An important note on recuperation: When conducting a recent study, one of the things believed to be the most effective for treating sickness is fresh air. Hospitals where patients stay for long periods of time prove to be breeding grounds for their own bacteria and prolong ailments. It was such an inversion of the accepted model that in order to conduct the study, the researchers had to pry open windows that had been nailed and shuttered for decades.

An important note on restoration: Restoration is not the same as relaxation. When applied to movement theory, people who are generally heavy, have repetitive or back-breaking work need some form of break in their routine that is light, relaxing, or ceases the monotony. Conversely however, those with light, bouncy, or non-repetitive motions in their labor might require heavy, forceful, or sharp movements to contrast. Restoration is about providing what is needed/absent in repetitive routines and are individualized to the ‘mechanized’ movement of that person’s body.

An important note on unpaid holiday labor: While it is important that everyone experience rest and relaxation, this is not always possible for everyone at all times. This can and should be understood by an entire community. Much of the work in a typical United States home might be conducted by women or AFABs. This might continue into the holidays with the hanging of decorations, the cooking of the meal, the setting of tables. This is not everyone or everywhere or even all the time. However, it can be highly detrimental because it means an entire subset of the family never experiences a form of rest during the holiday season. Working together in order to achieve equity during the holidays can be difficult, but is necessary for a radical transformation of society.

Radical Acceptance:

Accepting who you are, what you have accomplished, & what you have done both bane and boon is arguably the nature of therapy. Learning who you are at this moment, who you would like to become, as well as the methodology for how to get there is therapeutic.

Radical acceptance of yourself is important and cannot be emphasized enough. A good way to go about it is through therapy. However, as many marginalized have learned through experience: the institutions of medicine and government often are designed to deny or destroy us rather than reflect or enjoy us. Even if your therapist isn’t racist, transmisogynistic, bigoted, amatonormative, monosexual, or ablelist it does not mean that you have access to their services.

Practicing your activism during the holidays can be dangerous, especially if you are dependent on family for finances, shelter, or food. Nevertheless, there are methods like extending understanding, compassion, or acceptance to family members that can radically alter the dynamic in a household and lead to transformation.

In the end, no one should be a hero. No one should have to endanger themselves. It is all about perspective and circumstances. If someone just wishes to go home, forget about the movement for a while, have some fun with family, and enjoy then more power to them. That is okay! I know vegans who go home for the holidays and partake of turkey and other animal products. Why? Because it is unrealistic for their family to produce a totally separate meal for them and they know it. They respect their community. I give them no grief for it. We are all doing all we can.

As a final thought on accepting where you are, might I recommend a post I published earlier this year: Fear Setting: Goal Setting Done Right in 5 Easy Steps.

It explores a method for creating meaningful goals in an easy method that can be done alone or in a group and is a lot of fun. Because I think that is important when making new systems, if we want people to accept them or us, it should be fun for all involved.