Living on protest sites and taking part in different movements,
we experienced some of our most
empowering and liberating moments,
but we also went through some of our hardest times,
despairing, exhausted, and unable to go on any longer.
We saw similar issues cropping up in those around us,
people burning out,
having difficulties dealing with internal conflicts,
or with coping with the trauma of repression.
And despite trying to create better ways of living,
we often seemed to
repeat the same dysfunctional patterns
of mainstream culture.
So we set out on a journey around questions like:
how can we effect deeper, more radical change
and how can our movements grow wider,
more diverse, and more resilient.
It turned out to be quite a long journey,
as my health crashed and chronic sickness called for healing
and forced me to change my plans and priorities.
Anyway, here it goes,
this is what people had to say:
We had structures in the trees,
at 60 metres above the ground, some of these structures,
and we did what we could,
but we knew they were coming to evict the place,
and then you do what you can also,
which means we were going in every night,
to put another structure in front of the distance of the road
that they’d arrived that day,
and the road ended up being 4 kilometers,
so in the end it was every night for 3 weeks
that we were going out and continuing to block this road.
And at some point in that time something breaks
because you’re not sleeping and you’re putting all of your energy into this,
and trying every day to invent new ideas of new ways
to stop the progression of these machines and this road,
and also having to deal every day with the intensity of the police
coming to evict the place again and...
yeah, that was quite an intense thing to deal with.
At that point something inside me did break
and I had to leave, I could not stay there any more.
I’ve been more involved, not so much in direct action,
more in the longer term engagement with social change,
in two big projects.
One was the teaching of the English language to women immigrants in Nottingham.
And then what I was more intensely engaged in
was working on a project where we worked
with children and youths in the area.
It was great working with kids,
very quickly there were ties
built between the kids and us.
At first it was a lot of energy, a lot of vigour,
a lot of we know what we want to do,
and that’s been going on every day for 9 months quite intensely,
but then slowly the energy starts lacking
and that started showing itself more and more
towards the end of my engagement with the project,
which then resulted in my burnout as well.
We took on a lot of just physical work
along with wanting to be in in the fight as well
and doing the work centred around that,
you know it just added up, and-
It got really hard
because we were doing waste, compost...
composting toilets,
and we were doing donation,
organising donation distribution,
as well as being active on the frontlines
and living on the frontlines,
and living under police surveillance,
and having teargas thrown at you,
and being shot with rubber bullets,
and being shot with metal canisters and flashgrenades,
it’s just a lot.
As well as worrying about your water.
Some of the campaigns that I’ve been involved in
caused a lot of grief and pain,
which has led to a loss of energy,
especially the work in the West Bank in Palestine.
And going backwards and forwards between the UK and Israel
over 20 or 30 years,
because I’ve got some Jewish relatives
and Jewish friends that live in Israel,
I’ve noticed how aggressive Israeli society has become.
So oppressors also suffer,
it also has an impact on their society,
and I’ve seen how factionalised [Israeli society has become]
and how the changes have occurred in the Palestinian villages as well
as they’ve become enclosed and oppressed
and occupied.
Some of the things I witnessed and a lot of the stories I’ve heard
made me really upset
and I realised I was beginning
to lose my compassion for Israelis
because all I was seeing
was the idea of rather fanatical Jewish settlers
and the unpleasant things they were doing,
very dangerous things,
I saw the death of a Palestinian man
who was stoned by young Israeli settlers.
So all of those things made me
really lose hope for a while and get very depressed,
and I found when I was telling people stories
I was crying,
and I thought that was the time now to stop that work.
Let me out, let me go,
I can' t stand it anymore,
can' t see it any longer,
this terrible narrowness
this pressure I feel
all these obligations.
I was burning out,
I felt a number of emotions,
some of which I didn’t quite understand,
like tired, getting gradually more and more fed up.
Very sad and despairing and angry
I felt unusually stressed,
my inner monologue was unusually crazy.
I started getting sick more often,
I remember having colds that just didn’t stop,
the colds they just didn’t stop.
I struggle with headaches quite a lot, so they really got out of hand
Lost the regard for myself as well,
so I stopped caring even more about myself and my body,
started eating really shitty food
and more coffee, more cigarettes,
just to keep myself up.
I was sick,
my body couldn’t handle all the work
and all the thoughts any more
So that I was losing the capacity
to come up with fresh ideas and get fresh energy.
Became really cynical towards everything,
became really questioning, too doubtful about stuff
It’s a feeling that you don’t want to experience, anyone wants to experience,
it’s like just being useless,
knowing that you have to do that and that,
and maybe having the time to do it
but just didn’t have the energy to just get up and do the things,
even simple things.
I felt empty, I felt drained, I felt disappointed, I felt stupid
Insomnia, started sleeping less and less,
you know feeling depressed,
and like, aww I have to get up, I have to get up!
It's crazy, this burden is crushing me
not a single thing in this world makes me happy
am I depressed?
or am I just doing miserable like most of the people?
I have a knot in my breast
I want to breathe breathe, but don't get any air.
And then I got a panic attack once,
and that started happening with the anxiety then,
that panic attack was the start
of a period where I got to know more about anxiety.
Confused about what’s my purpose,
whats my role in everything,
just didn’t know anymore who I am.
Pessimistic,
and I started feeling angry with everyone and everything,
with the project, with the kids,
with myself, mostly with myself,
for not being able to do it any more
So irritable,
I really wasn’t able to have an interaction with anyone properly
You can just go and go and go and go,
and be on that one path of going going going going,
and then at some point you break and become destructive,
and you break down a whole group that’s working with you,
even if those guys are healed.
Probably due to my manner
alienated a few people in doing so,
which is a shame, hopefully they’ll be forgiving.
I look back on it now,
and I was really toxic,
plus we were dealing with
our depression and all of our anxiety
in a horrible way:
we were drinking, really hard,
and that’s not a way to cope,
especially for us as indigenous people.
What I mean by burnout is...
I don’t want to name it a disorder or something
because I don’t like the medical terms
for things that happen with us,
because I think it’s a completely normal thing to happen,
if you are storing a lot of difficult emotions
and a lot of difficult experiences,
it’s completely normal that you are being affected by it.
There’s a tendency for people to think
that if they’re not suffering from chronic fatigue
or deep emotional trauma,
then they’re not really burnt out,
but there’s a whole range of experiences
that I would define as burnout,
and indeed every individual’s experience is unique,
there’s a whole series of factors and experiences
that come together to create burnout.
...let me go,
I can' t stand it anymore,
can' t see it any longer,
this terrible narrowness
this pressure I feel
all these obligations.
Its a gradual process,
it's very hard to get out without professional help,
then you're finished,
you don't have energy left for anything.
We wanted to look for ways to support ourselves through burnout,
or help us prevent it,
ways that we can apply ourselves.
So we went to Drimlabarra herb farm in Scotland,
where we met Maureen who’s a herbalist.
Most associated conditions with somebody experiencing burnout
are often inflammatory based conditions.
Herbs that really help with that
are anti-inflammatory herbs in general.
One of the main ones is liquorice root,
and this root is incredibly sweet as you probably already know
and the sweet taste helps cool and moisten
a dried up and hot fiery constitutional type or condition.
It’s also an adrenal gland restorative
and it’s a root, so it’s also important about grounding you,
because when you get burnt out,
although you feel heavy in your body
and need to sleep a lot and rest a lot and recuperate,
there’s also maybe a spaced out experience
of not knowing where you’re going any more,
you’re kind of rudderless, you’ve lost your drive, lost your direction.
So root medicine really helps you get grounded again.
OK we’re going to go and meet the most basic herb
that everyone’s heard of,
and if there’s one herb you can drink every day
to try and keep stress away then this is it,
and it’s as simple as that, let’s go and meet it.
So here you go, this is chamomile,
and you can’t get much more common or garden than that.
This is a major anti-inflammatory, so again,
for any kind of acidic buildup in the system.
It helps with relaxing the mind for sleep,
it’s useful for any anxiety.
Next to it here we’ve got nettle,
you can’t get much more common than that as well.
There’s no excuse for not drinking nettle tea basically
because it’s everywhere.
And this is really high in minerals.
It’s a kidney restorative,
so if there’s a lot of fear
the emotion of fear is stored in the kidneys,
so it really helps with nourishing that aspect
of putting yourself in a dangerous situation
and the fear that can go with that.
So here are two really basic everyday herbs
that you can integrate either as food or as tea
on a regular basis
to just try and keep everything at an even keel,
and particularly if you know you’re going into a stressful situation,
you really need to make sure that these friends
are with you on that journey.
It’s also important that you make sure you get the right nutrition.
You really need to make sure that your system
is kept in an as alkaline state as possible,
and the easiest way to do that is to make sure
that your diet is based on fresh vegetables,
fresh fruits, fresh produce,
particularly vitalistic living food like sprouts.
Another really important factor to have on a regular basis
is to make sure you’re getting lots of minerals,
either through herb teas or through seaweeds
or through your food.
In Spain we found a different approach to our questions,
an approach that’s particularly focussed
on the context of social movements.
This is Ecodharma,
a community in the Catalan Pyrenees.
Part of the ethic of Ecodharma is the inseparability
of social change from personal change.
It’s not possible to change the world
without being conscious of
also having to change yourself.
They run different courses around this theme.
One of them is Sustaining Resistance.
We began to offer the Sustaining Resistance work
to help to increase the capacity
of activist networks to gain longevity.
What we’re seeing over the decades
is that the activist movement,
the social and environmental movement,
are losing so many people through burnout.
What happens is people come in young and fresh
and so enthusiastic and passionate
about being part of this change
and yet they just get incredibly burnt out.
So one of the main incentives was
to support people to stay in activism long term,
because I think movement building is something that takes a long time.
Important social movements might seem occasionally
to spring up out of nowhere,
because social processes are so complex,
but generally it’s on the back of often generations and generations of work
So we need that continuity in our social movements
if we’re going to effect the kind of radical changes we want.
So one part is helping individuals
being sustainable, being more effective.
A second part is because the actual cultures
of some grassroots activism
seem to work against themselves.
If we’re not getting to know who we are
and getting to understand what makes us behave in the way we do
then we just end up playing out the same behaviour
that’s part of the problem.
That’s the work that Sustaining Resistance is doing,
is going well if we’re holding these tendencies inside us
if we’ve got this psychological and social conditioning,
how do we do the quite profound inner work
and the work of mindfulness and raising awareness
that helps us both individually
and collectively begin to change that.
This is not about Ecodharma being the experts
and having this superior new vision,
you know I’m still very much there with it,
and the reason I feel able to name it
is because it’s something I’m still working on.
What I found useful about the course in Ecodharma
was the focus on the emotions.
And it’s kind of tricky,
because on the one hand I had a lot of resistance
against doing hippie stuff,
and of course speaking about emotions and expressing your emotions is hippie stuff,
so on the one hand I had this hippiephobia in myself,
and on the other hand I just felt a real need
to express the pain I had in myself,
a pain for what’s going on in the world,
and how shit I feel about it,
and how much I want to change it,
and a pain for not being able to do it
and feeling helpless and tool-less and stuff like that,
so this was a really strong thing for me
that it’s actually OK to speak about our emotions
and express it
and it’s also something that unites us
because we all have this pain inside,
and if we are able to deal with it in a good way
then we are able to do much more.
We offer a few tools for inner work.
One of the obvious areas are practices of meditation.
We also work with tools that help people
to honour stronger, more difficult kinds of emotion.
Strong emotion arises, painful emotion arises,
and we don’t have the tools to deal with that so we just push it away.
And I think that contributes a lot to burnout.
And when we push those feelings away,
we also disempower ourselves.
If I’m constantly in a defense mode
of pushing things out and in opposition to things,
then it depletes me of my energy
and I’m not resilient in that state.
And my experience is
as I get more able to be in relationship with things
without shutting down and having to get into conflict with them,
I have more energy.
That’s what meditation has done for me,
it’s kind of created a container
within which I can experience more and more
of what’s arising, joy, suffering, whatever it is,
without getting overwhelmed or shutting down
or running away, or… going nuts!
And I’m so happy that I now realise,
and that’s exactly what I want to say,
that it’s completely normal
to be upset about what’s happening to the world,
and that it’s actually healthy to feel that.
A third area that we work on a lot is realising
that self awareness and inner work has to happen
in the context of our relationship to other people.
When we’re working on ourselves, working on our own tendencies,
we’re almost bound to have blind spots,
and we really need to work with other people
to cut through those things.
So we look at how can we best give each other
useful feedback,
useful critical but supportive feedback
to help us bring awareness to our own tendencies
and to transform those tendencies.
We look at what kind of quality of communication in our groups
is going to be helpful for people to really grow
and develop as individuals.
We did quite a few of our interviews at Ecodharma,
which has continued to grow since our visit with a new programme, the Ulex Project.
But also elsewhere, skillshares, gatherings and courses
continue to sprout up
and people are doing all kinds of things to make their groups more resilient.
But why is it that so many of us are burning out in the first place?
Personal factors that can contribute to burnout are:
if we don' t deal with our fears,
they rule us from the unconscious
and that takes a lot of our energy,
People who tend to perfectionism
are also at risk of burnout
also if you tend to negativity,
it strengthens the likelihood of burnout,
its all factors that add up,
there's not only one reason
but rather a complex mix of reasons.
It’s important that we recognise these tendencies
and find a way to deal with them.
And like I say, just the lack of any other activity,
I wasn’t drawing or making music,
even my connection with nature,
I was living outside
but I wasn’t exploring or getting out
and experiencing and feeling that connection with nice places,
I was just connecting with the land as this thing that was just being destroyed.
Not being able to say no to things,
so I just took and took and took responsibilities on.
Taking too much on
because there’s so much to be done,
and when there’s so much to be done
it’s quite hard to say no, isn't it?
More personal factors,
people who have an obsession with control.
I wasn’t prioritising looking after myself,
I was putting myself second or third or fourth
behind organising a gathering,
getting people to the site,
doing an action, stopping this thing,
they were all right there,
and looking after me was not a priority.
Another attitude that can be linked to that
is how can I think of my own personal needs
when I’m working with people who are so oppressed,
downtrodden, experiencing so many difficulties themselves
and I’m privileged, white, Western, northern European,
and therefore my needs are irrelevant.
I’ve heard that attitude expressed quite strongly
over the years of working.
When I walk through the forest
and then through the open cast mine
and see all the destruction
and consider the effect it has for climate change,
I always think we would actually
have to do everything right now!
really, we would have to
blow up a lot of things right now.
It's a natural impulse
considering all the shit we are faced with,
wherever people fight
that maybe leads to the fact that
in some activist circles there is a norm,
like the person who gives their all is cool
but that isn't necessarily so sustainable
or its probably difficult for most people
to mobilize so much energy,
to throw themselves so much into their fights,
and at the same time to consider their own limits.
I think there’s a lot of things within activist culture
that encourage people to burn out,
I think that there’s a lot of heroising of people that do a lot,
of people that take really big risks in the actions they take,
that are involved in all of the different movements all of the time,
and are always there at every action, every demo.
I think there’s probably quite a lot of macho culture contributes to that,
like yeah we’re going to fight, we’re hardcore, we’re on the frontline,
we’re doing all this great stuff
and you can’t admit that either
you’re not actually being that effective
or that you can’t cope with that.
What contributed to my burnout
was a certain machismo,
like if you’re seen on all the demos,
if you’re squatting a lot people will think more of you.
We really feel that our personal worth
is measured by how much we do
rather than who we are.
in our society there is a tendency to value having a lot of things
everyone wants a nice car and house...
we as alternatives, activists, whatever, we say no no no that's not good,
so what do we do? We value doing, action,
not exactly work,
because as good alternatives we are against work
but we place a lot of value on direct action.
So instead of valuing being we value doing,
we don't value having things, so it's an improvement,
but if in the end one day we're unable to do anything,
are we still worth something as alternatives, activists?
Decisive group factors that contribute to burnout:
firstly that conflicts are carried out too harshly
or that the conflict culture is not effective.
The infighting that happens within the movements,
that people’s egos get in the way of the objective.
Many problems in our groups
have their roots in bad communication
where people start arguing with each other
and conflicts remain unresolved,
because we don’t create spaces to resolve conflicts,
to talk about them and reflect,
because that’s not action! Right?
And actually there are many tools
for dealing with conflicts, understanding how conflict develops
and how we can resolve it within our groups.
There are many participative methods
based on values like empathy and compassion.
For example, meditation is very important for me.
Meditation is a tool that allows you
to understand how your mind works.
It creates a window of consciousness
between your thoughts and your actions.
It's important that we communicate well with each other
communication is another factor
in group processes
that contributes to burnout.
but its not only the amount of communication,
but also the way we communicate;
if we talk past each other,
its extremely frustrating.
I found it very difficult
to say to my friends or my colleagues in my groups
what I felt was going wrong
and if someone said something at some point
that didn’t make me feel good
I didn’t know how to speak about that
and I just kept things inside me
and emotions and fears and angers,
and because of that I started
not to meet with people any more.
And that tires people out in group processes
that' s why constructive approaches
concerning group communication,
for example using nonviolent communication,
or having more clearly structured groups
through things like facilitation,
are very helpful to establish a more constructive
communication culture within the group,
and that strengthens our resilience,
our collective power to resist.
Exposure to violence
and experience of violence,
either towards yourself
or towards people that you care about or that are around in your life
is undoubtedly a major aspect of burnout.
You know Native Americans, we suffer from some of the highest forms of Post Traumatic Stress "Disorder"
I think they did a study and twelve year olds suffered from PTSD
as much as veterans that served two tours in Iraq did!
And it’s just that reservation lifestyle.
We grow up in some of the poorest, toughest communities,
and at that we have to live on those frontlines,
at that we’re fighting for our way of life,
and we’re fighting for our resources, what little resources we have.
Yeah we’re still oppressed by the powers that be
even though some are still in denial,
Even when a man with a badge and a pink assed face
goes and kills a child
And the whole city is crying,
start the whole damn city on fire!
On top of the day to day trauma,
we’re also living the trauma
of losing a pipeline fight.
Shit’s fucked up over here?
Well shit is fucked up over there
I think I’m starting to notice a common theme
wherever I go shit is fucked up everywhere
Free Puerto Rico, Free Palestine
Brown Black Liberation is on my mind
Peace and love sometimes so hard to find
and I don’t know why…
And we’re just trying to hold shit together,
and that’s where the ceremonies come in, that’s where our prayer comes in
because that’s what keeps us strong throughout this.
I know that I love you, even if I might not know you,
I love you, even if I might not hold you,
I love you, even if we might not make the connection in person
and might not show you.
When I think about our activist culture,
I see a lot of people exposing themselves
to difficult situations, to traumatic experiences, to violence,
and not really dealing with it,
not even wanting to admit that
these situations effect them
and that these experiences are traumatic.
I’ve seen a lot of people just burning out because of that,
because they wouldn’t work with their traumas.
I find it very important that we create structures
for people on actions or protest camps
and other such places on the frontlines
who are burned out or traumatised,
that we create structures within other left-wing projects
where those people can recover.
I think it’s really meaningful and revolutionary
when we take time to deal with trauma and emotional first aid,
as well as with the traumata that we have inside
due to societal oppression and power structures,
because when we encourage a healing process,
when we make that possible,
I am convinced we will develop a great strength to act together.
There being differences
in the amount people can contribute to the group,
and people getting burnt out because they’re doing too much
and not feeling like the responsibilities of the group are shared
and that the work is shared.
We are tired, and we don’t take much holiday,
because on an occupation, it's often the same people,
and in the organisation, it’s often the same people
And that can also be self-inflicted,
in that feeling that you’re the only person that can do something
can often mean that other people aren’t being given
the space to step up and take on roles.
If someone who can do something well
works together with someone who wants to learn,
then when one person wants to stop, someone else can take over
Lack of consciousness about exploitation and oppressive structures,
who has how much privilege?
Also in activist circles
we have been formed by this world
and its exploitation and oppression mechanisms,
and they work through us
even though we reflect about them to some extent,
which is an important thing for us to do
and if we do it less,
then power and hierarchy structures arise
and some people who are born in a more privileged role
assert themselves more easily
than others who were born with less privilege
and its tiring for people who work in these groups
if they don't feel solidarity in their own group,
if the oppressive structures from
society continue in those groups,
if for example a person is being
discriminated against in society
and because of that has less possibility of contributing,
and if the same thing happens in the political group it's really fucked up.
I hear sexism doesn’t exist in the scene,
I think we overestimate ourselves a bit,
Because we are all conditioned by society,
we’ve internalized forms of oppression
autonomous spaces are often just a mirror of them,
a mirror that nodody breaks.
I have the feeling incredibly often,
and I think other people who are black or POC often have this feeling too
that we’re somehow not welcome here,
or us and our perspectives are often not recognized.
Many people of colour have the opinion
that the structures in environmental movements
are not created in consideration of them
and don’t fulfill their needs.
One experiences resistance here extremely often,
it’s like other people speak in the meeting about
some subject or topic and everyone is quiet,
but when I speak up about racism, then I hear
how people in the background start grumbling,
I notice how people are like “do we really have to speak about this AGAIN” and whatever.
I think the left scene is no exception
in regard to all forms and mechanisms of oppression,
and we still have a lot of work to do together to change that.
The position I am in:
a man, white,
from quite a comfortable upbringing,
went to school, received lots of education,
all that brings me into a privileged position,
where I notice that I myself
have integrated so many processes of oppression,
and indeed it's stuff that I reproduced a lot
in the first years of my activism,
and so hurt a lot of people,
whether that’s my family, my friends,
the people with whom I started squatting.
To have this hindsight
and to notice how easy it can be to harm someone.
Then I realise: I don’t want to be me!
I would like to move on,
become more… mature, maybe?
Being aware, and having some knowledge about that,
it’s probably the first step.
Staying on the level of being aware,
that’s for sure not enough for me.
The second step is challenging your privileges
and solidarity with people, with oppressed people,
with people who don’t have the same privileges.
Changing the world leads inevitably to changing ourselves
When do we smash the schema?
The one that promotes the law of the strongest, demands us to stamp on the weak
When do we smash the schema?
Prestige and Power structures that exists within ourselves.
Power’s problematic in our groups
because in any group there’s power,
there’s people who are more charismatic,
there are people who have more dominant tendencies,
there are people who have more experience,
there’s people who have more confidence
and people who have less of all of those things,
and there’s many different factors
that contribute to whether people feel
like they are on the mainstream of a group or on the margin of a group,
and what people feel their position is
within a group.
And I think to bring those issues out into the open
within our groups
really helps us to try and equalise things,
to try and equalise power,
to try and share power, to try and make sure
we are having power with other people
rather than power over other people.
We didn’t have formal leaders or co-ordinators
or I don’t know what word to use for that,
but there was still some sense of informal hierarchy.
And for 8 years that seemed to work,
but at some point things just exploded
and it got to a point
where we didn’t have arguments
but we just made personal attacks
If we aren’t able to reflect on how these ways of thinking,
these hierarchy and power structures exist in our groups,
then we can’t change them.
For that we need space where we can think about those things,
and talk about them in a different way, talk about the process.
So it’s important to open these spaces,
to talk without judging and feeling judged,
with more empathy and a willingness to learn
about our own processes,
if we want to create the world we want to see.
And all the time we were just reacting to the things that were happening around us.
We didn’t have a plan or,
well I don’t like this word, but “strategy”.
And doing that I found myself in a situation
where I couldn’t see any results.
Social change is very complex.
It’s not possible to use a linear, reductionist way of thinking
to understand social change,
otherwise we get frustrated and burned out,
because a lot of the things we do don’t have the results we want.
This way of thinking prevents us from understanding what we have actually achieved.
Another problem in groups is that we can be very task focussed,
that we’re always thinking about the issue that we’re trying to deal with,
that we’re always trying to think about the action that we’re planning
rather than the relationships in the group
and what makes us work together well or the process by which we can collaborate best.
One of the things I find crucial in order to continue,
is to celebrate the things we’ve done,
and in my experience I’ve done it too often,
that when i was finished with something that was really great,
then we thought about what we could have done better,
and we still have to do this and that
and not at all focussing on what we've achieved and what's beautiful
and to celebrate that together.
another important thing is to spend more time in nature
and with beautiful things
just like a dog!
What do you want Loki?
Make sure that you enjoy your own life
because otherwise your campaigning can be coming from a dead point,
from a place of despair and dread
rather than through joy and compassion,
so there is an importance in doing inner work
as well as outer work.
Not being hard on myself,
judgemental, the perfectionist kind of stuff
its good as it is
and that its ok to be kind towards myself.
Because when you go down, you can’t help anyone,
you have to focus on yourself, serve yourself
rest,
accept that your body needs that love and compassion,
and eventually you’ll be able to come back
and apply that to external situations as well.
So for us, a lot of us,
we were going back to our ceremonies,
we were going back to learning our language
and hearing our songs
and healing in those spaces
of asking our original medicine people for help
and that really helped a lot.
We’re lucky that our ancestors fought
for us to have our ways
-our people now fought too
-and our people now are fighting to hold on to our ways.
For the people here who don’t
have that sort of connection,
to wake up in the morning and give thanks
doesn’t take an entire protocol
-it doesn’t take much to give thanks
it doesn’t take much to recognise that everything is sacred.
To realise that we all have to live in balance with everything,
it doesn’t take that much.
I really advise to all the little warriors
to live as much as possible in Nature,
to go there all alone
and to live long moments of silence in Nature
that's our best fuel,
along with friendship of course.
Today the roses sang to me,
on a gray day.
Their colours screamed:
look, there is more than just fear and pain,
they caught my eye
under cold and gray clouds.
I would like to be one of them
and not live without seeing.
And i think as an activist,
normally you're really busy with all the wrong things that happen,
and if I'm only busy with all the wrong things that happen in the world,
I get really sad and depressed,
so sometimes I try to focus myself and try to also see
people or initiatives who are working on solutions
and I really try sometimes to balance between these stories
because otherwise I cannot continue.
It's about remembering
that there is still amazing things
that still survive in the world,
even if this one place that you've concentrated so much energy
no longer exists,
theres still so many other things that are amazing
to be able to go and appreciate
and to go and be a part of.
I’ve seen places where the trees have been felled,
and after 2 years everything is green again and renews itself.
I also notice the little flowers
that grow through the pavement.
They are so fragile and thin,
but they can survive even the concrete.
I want to be like those flowers.
To try and find space for being in my body,
so i've been taking up sport.
a yoga sequence
With yoga that’s another thing that’s really helpful
because so much trauma is carried in the body
so by opening the body in different ways
there’s a lot of releasing.
We burn out a lot because we're just in our heads,
we're kind of negating our bodies
and forgetting about the things that enrich us in our lives.
I mean for me, I love music,
I put all my anger and my frustrations out on music.
For us it’s healing
to be able to write our words down
and use hip hop as a vehicle for social change.
Some concrete strategies are to have
a regular rhythm concerning eating and sleeping.
For me I needed some stability,
I realised that I’d been living
in quite precarious circumstances
where your home is under threat,
and where your community is quite transient,
and so I was like I want a home for a while
and to be in one place
and to grow vegetables and see that through a season,
Especially eating healthy,
I went back to eating a plant-based diet,
I stopped drinking alcohol, that was huge for me.
Doing a lot of meditation and yoga and music,
and just taking a lot of time on my own to be alone and reflect.
Sometimes you have to find freedom all alone
that's just how I grow, solitude,
but I feel like I'm with everyone
I am everything...
So for me it's a dance, it's a balance,
it's through the inner work
that we've been really exploring here,
i find that really helpful
to learn about my own wellbeing
and learn about when its good to say no,
when its time to just take a break,
get some sleep, rest,
look inside, feel into
what is the right direction for me to take,
the right work to be doing,
cos i find if i dont take that time
to check in with myself
then i will just be out there doing it all, rraahhh,
until KABOOM
If we take the time to listen and understand,
we can be more effective.
I don’t want to just hit the air any more,
and just get tired and lose energy.
Only if I am conscious of who I am,
what talents I have,
what experiences have allowed me to live,
and take the time to find the decisive point
where I can hit the “one inch punch”,
I think that’s a term from karate or kung fu,
one strike that defeats the enemy.
And the first enemy that we have to defeat
is the neoliberalism in our heads,
in my own head, with all its values.
Maybe do less work, but more effective,
spend more time reflecting and evaluating our work and our actions
but not only about our actions but also about us and our emotions
It's really important to have check ins with yourself,
something very easy to forget
when you're in the middle of doing everything else
and just basic stuff,
remembering to eat and sleep
and to have showers sometimes.
When there’s so much to be done I can very easily wake up
and go straight into my computer’s open
and start working,
or not switching off at the end of the day,
taking my computer to bed and working.
I think maybe setting up some clear boundaries.
Delegate more,
get rid of all the power, I could say,
I accumulated during the years,
which doesn't feel good now at all,
so just let others help you,
trust the others around you
that they can also do the things
you want to see happening.
Allowing other people to support me
For some reason as soon as activists become parents
they kind of withdraw from activism,
which is actually a pity.
I think it’s good to see
that activism is not only about
being on the barricades and fighting,
but there are many different roles
within activism
and some of them are very physical and others are not.
But I think that it’s important
that different roles
are supportive towards each other.
What’s also important to me
is that we think about how we care for people
within our activist structures
and how we support each other
and create structures to do that
with things like shared economies,
so that it’s no longer just an individual burden
how to stay healthy or take care of ourselves,
but that we carry this burden together,
so that it becomes less heavy.
On the long term, I think if we really
want a social change to happen
we need to think of different elements
we need to provide for ourselves
to be able to build an alternative society,
one of those is in general health care
but also care for others and for ourselves.
To me its clear that environmental destruction
is happening in a very fast rhythm
and because of that we want to have these results,
like OK, I want next year to stop this goldmine,
or I want in five years to stop something
and I think thats not helpful,
to have this linear, this industrial way of thinking,
that we need a result now
for me it becomes more clear that it's more important to think on longer term
and to build stronger communities
and stronger groups and stronger movements.
We have to work on our groups,
reflect, change our way of thinking,
and work on ourselves,
to deconstruct the model of thinking with which we have grown up.
If we don't learn to be more empathic and compassionate,
to develop a more systemic and longer term way of thinking
it will be difficult to have a sustainable activism,
an activism as a way of life.
I would really like for people to be active
because its their life and they love it
and they get pleasure from it.
Because if we do it hoping to reach the whole world,
that everyone comes to a demo or an occupation,
we've already lost from the beginning
and so we get disappointed,
we drink alcohol, take drugs.
We see our friends burn out too,
and they get toxic, and I can see it now,
I can see the build up, I can see when it happens,
and it’s really sad when it happens
because it effects a whole effective group,
and these people are very knowledgeable,
and very useful,
and tactical, and it’s just hard.
I think it’s also incredibly important
that people stay longer in political movements
because with every person who burns out
and leaves the movement because they can’t go on
an incredible amount of experience and knowledge gets lost.
I know that I can’t do this my whole life
when it’s basically all the time like “I sacrifice myself”
and the more you sacrifice yourself the more heroic you are,
but rather it’s also about enjoying what you do.
The more creativity we can find in our own work as activists,
the more attractive thats going to be to other people,
the more we're going to be able to build wider, more inclusive movements.
I want the movement to be more diverse,
and I want to learn about diversity and oppression within our groups,
and to think about ways of dealing with that
in a way that supports people and that is kind.
One of the things that helped me the most was to see examples,
to see people who manage more or less
to put in place practices that are non-exclusive and non-oppressive
while still being tolerant towards others who still commit mistakes.
I think it’s important that we don’t just start thinking
“oh, the organisers are bad, they should do this or that”,
but rather to take a good look at oneself,
educate oneself critically about racism.
Just to be a bit more conscious
and to be sure to support people
with their needs.
I dont desire to be an activist again in that way
and to be so defined by activist identity and culture.
Kind of build our self confidence for our intrinsic worth
rather than for our identity within the group.
I think I’m trying to find other ways to do that stuff
and to be rooted in people and place
and more connected with the rest of the world and society,
There are not so many people
who are really dedicated to bring a change,
so I think we need to take really good care of these people, and take care of each other.
We'll make it, we'll make it,
and we are not alone
we'll help this messed up world back onto its legs.
We need a whole lot of strength and force
but I want to see the power tremble
and that you laugh again.
And if times are difficult
and you don't know what to do,
well then just take a break and rely on your people!