Leaderless

It’s not how it sounds

It’s a little painful to realize that, at least for the past few years, I’ve been known as “cynical” towards social change movements. I’ve proclaimed it about myself even. I’ve learned that while, yes, at times my expressions are far more cynical and negative than they need to be—very often what I’m expressing comes from a deep and wide experience in working in and being in demographics of people that today’s justice movements have hardly even begun to notice, let alone understand how to listen to or be with.

Though I still think it’s imperative to discern when I’m just being cynical and when I’m genuinely behind what it is I have to say. Which is why I let some time pass in between the second Women’s March and this writing. I’ve used that time to read, to listen, to sit in reflection, to show up more fully to the work I’m invested in and care about, and to be mindless about the whole thing in order to let my thoughts and processing form their own webs, conclusions, and ideas within myself. In creativity theory this sort of unconscious processing has been called “magical synthesis”.

I didn’t need academia or an acclaimed scholar to give a name to this process for me to know that it works. I’ve been trusting it and using it for years. However, discovering that there is a name and legitimate support for this process gives me grounding, affirmation, and certainty that there’s a reason for my long pauses of time without the need for me to question if I’m just lazy or slow. I don’t have to spend my time in “magical synthesis” simultaneously convincing myself that it’s worthwhile time to take.

Because that’s what tends to happen with things that we know to be real but exist without being named: they cause confusion, uncertainty, second guessing, and disorientation. And this is the problem with calling any organization or movement “leaderless”.

This was a phenomenon—and problem—that also happened during the suffragette movement. The idea that relationship and full ownership of the cause grew widespread and this concept that no one should be named as in charge of the movement took hold. But decisions still had to be made, actions still had to be planned, and calls still had to be communicated. So what actually ended up happening was that the people who made sure these things happened remained unnamed and in turn became more of an exclusive group, largely separate from the wider population of suffragettes, making it more challenging for participants and caused frustration when they didn’t know where to go to ask questions, give grievances, or even to offer more of their time and energy.

This is very much what I’ve been seeing in this next phase of the women’s march/resistance. Attempts to downplay the role of the leaders and uplift the responsibility of the whole community has stifled the intensity of the movement’s direction, purpose, and connection. Personally, I’m in an interesting position where I both have close proximity to organizational CEO’s, founders, lifetime organizers, self-employed entrepreneurs, and the like, as well as deep roots and relationships in communities of low-wage jobs, service work, rural living, and liberal but relatively inactive lifestyles. In the past year, I’ve witnessed—and felt—the distance between these two groups grow wider.

To be clear, I acknowledge that there’s a lot of criticism of this movement and my hope is to write this piece as a with-the-jet-stream observation and nudge rather than a “Stop, wait! You’re wrong!” kind of piece. With that, here are three key observations I’ve noticed especially in this past week that I believe could have been improved had leadership been fostered and communicated rather than theoretically canceled:

1. There was no real invitation to participate.
   If I didn’t work in social media, I would have had no clue that the Women’s March even happened—and I’m definitely not alone in that. This is a relational issue, a communication issue, and an issue of having a narrow inclusivity of demographics. With the focus of this year’s actions being on getting out the vote it seemed like an impeccable opportunity to test GOTV tactics. One thing lacking in leadership is the opportunity to practice so in order to actually turn up the vote this year it would seem the push to get people to the streets could have taken similar approaches: knock on doors. text. call your friends. invite your neighbors. I truly believe that the symbolism and energy of a mass gathering to the streets has immense power and there is no shortage of articles out there right now making sure that everyone knows that. So I’m not sure why there was—at least not to my awareness—no strategy put in place and delegated to people to help “Get out the march”. I think when we get into our echo chambers we not only surround ourselves with like-minded people and allow our beliefs to go unchallenged, but we also make a lot of assumptions about how our friends and family are doing in relationship to the action. We become dependent on the idea that what’s shared on social media will be enough information to persuade people to show up and we fail to connect with our people in the ways that these social justice movements preach that we should be doing. We challenge ourselves to read things that come from opposing beliefs and to recognize when we need to step back and let others be the faces and voices of the movement. But can we actually dare to ask a person, one on one, to show up for a rally and truly listen and be with them as they communicate their hesitance or refusal without trying to persuade or convince them? Beyond sharing a meme about the need to honor low-income people who can’t take a day off, and people with anxiety/depression/disability who can’t show up, can we actually go in the reverse and go out of our own ways to be with those people, truly witness and understand their existence and role in this world rather than the idea that their role means that they can’t show up to our idea of “what democracy looks like”?
2. “It felt more like an attempt to replicate a really good party than an actual political action”
   I’ve heard this, or a version of this statement, several times now from march attendees. Yet, from other people, who I guess I’d have to call CEO’s, founders, and politicians since this movement is “leaderless”, I’ve heard how this year was so moving, powerful, and on point since it had/has this direct mission of focusing on the 2018 vote. Again, it’s glaringly easy to see two distinct groups in this movement whether we call them leaders and followers or not (and “followers” are necessary and brilliant but I’ll save that talk for another post). Leaders attended brunches hosted by politicians of the “in crowd” and followers either had to work, take their kids to practice, or took photos of their favorite vagina poems on cardboard. Clearly, these events that highlight and feature only certain people before and after the main event are an example of how the people in charge become a part of a more exclusive method of participation and power. Should people care that they know about these things if the point is to simply show up as one for love and justice? Well sure. But then why do these exclusive meetings and events need to happen in the first place? In the same way that a child’s outbursts or chronically poor behavior are more likely a result of trauma or some other underlying problem rather than simply being a defiant child, I believe that adults also grow frustrated, challenging, and even turned off by happenings more because they aren’t fully informed of what’s going on rather than because they’re selfish or feel a sense of entitlement. But you can’t truly communicate to people the purpose of political brunches or invite-only after-gatherings if leaders don’t exist unless you’d rather tell the message of insider exclusivity. Rather than being clear about who’s who in the decision making and relationship building process, these events that occur separate from the march itself come across as mere social and economical hierarchy while the lowly march attendees leave the streets perhaps spiritually fulfilled but wondering who’s going to tell them what to do next to actually make an impact (and also if they would have had more fun/made more impact by taking the same friends they showed up to the march with to their own brunch party and game-planning session). In addition to these evolving models of exclusion and separation, without articulating to people how these events occur, the path for ambitious activists to take their skills to the next level gets symbolically brushed away. It’s one thing to value the need for everyone to show up in politics, but another to hold roles of power that, without a name, also leave no trace of guidance so that others can strive to put their skills into the same, or similar, positions of power.
3. Responses to any criticism about the Women’s March have largely been from the perspective of an “organizer”.
   This is the pot on the fire in which I began hearing and believing that I’m a cynical person rather than someone who has valuable thoughts, insights, and experiences that are important for creating a diversely informed and inclusive political evolution. There is a purist valuing of the role of community organizers at the core of this movement which I find very contradictory to the ongoing message of how we need to listen to marginalized people and bring their voices to the center. This article specifically targets critiques and questionings of organizers of the movement by naming them as “political immaturity that continues to stunt the growth of the American left.” The writer actually states that doing nothing more than communicating that the movement isn’t radical (i.e. inclusive, diverse) enough then “you are not a serious organizer”. What this writer fails to even consider is that the majority of people who are speaking out or not showing up because they don’t see themselves in this movement are not organizers. I seriously have been actively engaged in conversations about justice and daring to speak up when it’s scary and voting and participating in civic issues my entire life and only in the past couple of years even learned that the title “community organizer” is available as a full-time job (the irresponsibility and contradiction of which is another post I can’t wait to dig into). Imagine a doctor listening to a patient complaint and then responding with “well obviously you aren’t a serious doctor then”. It doesn’t even make any sense. Which brings me back to this concept of leadership/leaderless-ness. Because one of the foremost basic things to learn in the study of leadership is how it differs from management. You can have great managers who have poor leadership skills. You can have brilliant leaders who suck at managing. And you can have any expression in between. What’s important is that we know who we’re working with. Organizers are not leaders. Organizers are managers. But I think as our communities come to value this idea of going leaderless we allow the expectations and models of leadership to fall under roles of a different name. So when your role is to be a manager but you’re being held to as standard of performing with excellent leadership, then any criticism will of course feel personal whether we’re talking about an individual, a group, or a symbolic entity. But if one can instead improve their leadership behavior and skills but hold steady in the fact that their actual job and responsibility to the people is to manage, then feedback can be information that’s as good as gold and a contribution to the overall vision rather than feel like a nag at the choices and actions of a few. With all this requires that we also name and acknowledge and value the role of followers. Not everyone is going to be an organizer or a leader or even a participant. And we don’t need to convince them to be, nor accommodate them so that they can go out of their way to join us in our outlook. Leaders and organizers need to do better to witness—and even participate in—what the majority of the people live like every day in order to make this movement better. Enter: Viola Davis.

I mean, among these endless lists of resources and toolkits and 500-page books of activist analysis, I honestly believe that people should watch shows like The Office, Scrubs, Shameless, and the like not just for entertainment or a mental break but while holding this idea that these shows are actually quite realistic representations of real life for millions of people. Exaggerated and ridiculous? Totally. But that doesn’t make them an unrealistic example of the types of people we’re calling “not serious” or “cynical” or “disengaged”.

As someone who has lived the life of “just trying to survive” I’ve been justifying these past few years, in which I’ve been deemed a cynic, by blaming it on my need to simply take space and heal. While the need to heal is true, I think I’m also just trying to find a way to have my real existence and the existence of so many people I love dearly, to be seen and valued for their role in this movement even if it doesn’t look like organizing people or sharing the most woke stories on facebook, who show up 100% every single day in deep, interdependent relationship, whose lives are an ongoing effort of advocating and facing resistance.

These people are leaders. And they often go unseen, unnoticed, unknown, and unheard in their own fields of work so I know that they are desperate for leaders who have power in real social and political change to understand their work and their worth. But they’re definitely never going to cross the bridge into the realm of the marching, door-knocking, petition signing, GOTV style of activism and social justice if they don’t even know who the leaders of those realms are. Because they’ve already got enough on their plates in the name of love, justice, and living on the margins to try and figure out how to be heard and valued in yet another field that says “we care about you and what you have to say…as long as you do it our way”.