Sharing voice... Internal criticisms on movement building

I'm finding that the opportunity and the challenge in progressive movement building is sharing our voice.  Many times people find a home and a vehicle for change in their personal lives and the lives of their communities and families, through making their struggle with space and place in this country visible.  Progressive activists are those who come to this work bringing our stories, our struggles, our optimism, but where does it get twisted?

I think we talk a lot about the change that we seek.  We create these incredible strategies many times  with limited means for doing what needs to be done.   Doing so  under impossible circumstances related to resources, time, and the still maintaining and growing ability to fight off continuous attacks to protect our right to live.  It can be stressful but what can create even more stress related to this movement is the way in which fellow activists and employers  take care of each other.

Is our culture amongst each other and within progressive institutions reflective the values that guide our work?  Its a rhetorical question but one that warrants much reflection.  One thing the opposition to progressive movement has is a tight network and they come from a shared value position.  If we want to win this has to change.

I think, maybe some people are afraid of activism because we are dealing with these heavy topics related to our bodies and our lives.  Fighting the fact that we are trying to protect our lives from this way of life, that our oppositional anti forces believe is the most moral and ethical way of living life.  Then, we have our internal challenges in working together.

Really,  what is this all about? We talk about these values connected to the work we do and how those values guide how we do it, but are we reflecting those values among the progressive individuals and within the institutions and community that we create?  Or is it just a reflection of our values and not the practice.

On my best days as an organizer, grassroots activist I see progress and solidarity in our voices and how we transfer those values into the ways in which we treat each other within our movement and its institutions. Just because we are in unison with social justice framework, we come from it bringing our valuable individual voices and that must be respected.  There is no honor in being burned out from challenges within our movement when we have so much we're fighting for to protect our lives and our communities who benefit from the social change of our collective activism.