Eat the Elephant

Join us tonight 6pm ET!

In this second week of 47’s administration, I’m reminding myself (again) that all the chaos and confusion is by design. Now, knowing this and moving accordingly is a different thing. On Tuesday, a day dominated by 47’s threats to cut federal funding that would leave so many vulnerable people in peril at some point, I got caught up in my emotions and felt my nervous system frazzling. As anxiety pulsed through my body, I knew I needed to move all the feelings I was feeling OUT. So I stopped, turned on some music, and danced. I rarely dance. And I’m not great at it. But it worked. I felt better because of the physical experience and because I’d listened and centered care instead of panic and dread. Our bodies are sites of liberation, too. (An invitation to move your body if you haven’t yet today!) ⬇️

“Let’s dance, let’s shout, shake your body down to the ground” – The Jacksons

Bodies and boycotts

Before Tuesday, I had been consumed with thinking about boycotts. Who knew that had been impacting my nervous system, too?

From @pat.radical.therapist on IG (this whole thread is 🔥)

I had a lot of pent-up emotions in my nervous system because I’d spent much of the weekend immersed in conversations about the Target boycott. I started out excited and curious.

The responses were generative. I was able to situate what I was seeing as a fast and furious reaction to the way Target had played in Black people’s faces, yanking their DEI program after developing a reputation for supporting Black creators that fueled a solid following from Black consumers. As a fervent critic of capitalism, I was geeked at the idea of a boycott (any boycott) and the notion of the working class moving toward solidarity.

But I was questioning the, well, target. Why not Amazon? They’re anti-union (although this did happen! Center City Whole Foods workers vote in favor of unionizing), a destroyer of small businesses, major contributors to the climate crisis and so much more. Plus, I couldn’t stop thinking about Bezos, who had “sat his narrow behind up there on inauguration day” (my Grandma popped in with that description) cavorting with Trump.

Of course, he wasn’t the only oligarch on the front row, but to me, our reliance on Amazon made it a “prime” target for a boycott.

One person pointed out how difficult an Amazon boycott would be, and another co-signed pointing to the prevalence of Amazon Web Services (AWS) which accounts for much of its revenue, and the seemingly intractable presence of AWS in our online lives.

Meanwhile, tensions heightened when celebrity influencer Tabitha Brown weighed in on the Target boycott:

“The thing that concerns me the most—and I want you to hear me and hear me well—if we all decide to stop supporting said businesses and say, ‘I can’t buy nothing from there,’ the business who were affected by the DEI ban, what that does is you take all of our sales and they dwindle down.”
–Tabitha Brown, quoted in The Grio

There’s a lot to this story that I won’t tackle here. But people were taking sides and getting ugly. What I noticed most was the seemingly intractable nature of capitalism in our lives and relationships. I wanted us to slow down and not be so rash. For one thing, history tells us boycotts are coordinated, sustained actions that often start small but grow through consistency and commitment. I wanted us to focus on strategy. However, I quickly learned not everyone had the same perspective.

From Bluesky. User’s name redacted because my goal isn’t to call out or shame.

Yikes. But this reaffirms why history and political education are integral to liberation. We must have an informed political analysis and understanding beyond what we see, know, or our individual experiences.

Emergent Strategy is instructive here.

“For successful movements, we need to develop strong, action-oriented communities that understand that their analysis and work cannot be limited to one struggle.”
– adrienne marie brown

Emergent Strategy is a push to think differently, which is critical in this moment, and a framework we can use to disrupt the way things “are.” (In our minds as much as in our lives.) It’s a way to reckon with what we have been doing (that obviously isn’t working) and offers a new approach.

“Rather than narrowing into one path forward, Octavia’s leaders were creating more and more possibilities.”
– adrienne marie brown

Through this lens, it’s clear there won’t and shouldn’t be one boycott or any single solution, which led me to think about elephants, which I often do anyway because they’re magical and an excellent example of how we should strive to be in community and care for each other. But specifically this:

“There is only one way to eat an elephant, one bite at a time.”
-South African Bishop Desmond Tutu

Elephants

*First things first. As much as this proverb offers a useful metaphor, it evokes a hunter paradigm, and I shudder to think of elephants, a majestic animal (my favorite), as prey. And because I hate the thought of elephants being killed, instead, I imagine that the elephant being eaten is a very, very old elephant who lived a long life and died after a beautiful life awash with love. After the mourning period, humans searching for sustenance happen upon her body, which is well past the period of farewell rites and rituals from her loving kin. It is only then that she is eaten.*

What if we thought of boycotts and other ways to disrupt the capitalist machine of Empire as elephants that we must figure out how to eat for our survival? After all, these death-dealing corporations are an enormous outsized presence in our lives. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be eaten. I realized people were taking a tusk-to-tail approach in conversations about boycotts, rapidly discarding ideas that did not tackle taking down the whole corporation (elephant) at once. Eat the rich! Right?

That’s at least part of why people were/are frustrated, or throwing up their hands, or attacking each other. As difficult as it is to witness, I also know this is the messy work of bringing us closer together and toward an understanding that the way forward is to move together in solidarity. I’m confident we’ll figure out how. One bite at a time.

In the meantime I’m looking forward to our meeting tonight. Let us know what you’d like to discuss in the comments. See you soon!

In solidarity and love,

connease