New Year, New (Liberatory) Perspectives
What We Can Learn from Emergent Strategy
Happy New Year! I hope this finds you well in all the ways of your heart.
I know I'm not alone in finding the lead-up to 2025 to be overwhelming. Doom-filled, scary. The very air is heavy with uncertainty. And the tone from media, whether social or traditional, posits: What on earth are we in for? Or really, what else are we in for as we continue to watch the world absolutely fail Palestine, Sudan, the Congo, Haiti…
While these feelings aren't unnatural, it's necessary to interrogate what value they hold and, more importantly, what those feelings pull us toward and away from.
"Let this radicalize you rather than lead you to despair."
– Mariame Kaba
Feelings of despair, while understandable, that threaten to overtake our thoughts and paralyze us into inaction or cynicism must also be viewed as a(nother) theft of our natural birthright. We are more than these systems have declared and constantly attempt to reduce us to that drive these emotions.
Emergent Strategy offers a way to break the paradigm and initiate the shift in thinking necessary to reclaim ourselves and our time (word to Maxine Waters).
I've been thinking about this sentence and found a lot within it to unpack: "Emergence emphasizes critical connections over critical mass, building authentic relationships, listening with all the senses of the body and the mind."
"...critical connections over critical mass…"
If I'm honest, the emphasis on building community scares me. It's not that it doesn't feel right and makes so much sense as an essential piece of the solution for all that ails us. It's that it feels intimidating. How do I create and prioritize community? How do I find the time, space, and energy in between all my (racial capitalist) obligations that have me out here scratching and surviving with an incessant dearth of time to care for myself and my immediate family? It's a worry I've carried for some time.
Reframing my thoughts to consider "critical connections over critical mass" frees me from thinking about how to do all the things at once. It allows me to reconsider what is meaningful in terms of creating community. We can't ever over-emphasize the extent to which racial capitalism forms and frames our thoughts and ideas. Knowing that most of us have spent most of our lives steeped in its institutions and values, it will take our ongoing attention and commitment to deprogram ourselves from all the ways it infects our senses. There's always another wrinkle to unravel.
"And for your information, you Lorax, I'm figgering on biggering and BIGGERING and BIGGERING and BIGGERING…"
– Dr. Seuss, The Lorax
I realize my thinking about community was guided by the idea that having a "critical mass" of influence or interaction is necessary. That the small steps I have been taking didn't count because they weren't big enough in scale or influential enough. And that's because of the chokehold racial capitalism has on my/our thought patterns.
Dr. Seuss taught us the dangers of more, more, always bigger, newer, improved, better. The Lorax was a warning to reject the incessant drumbeat of racial capitalism.
Rejecting that mindset and focusing instead on "critical connections" is a way to reject racial capitalism (which I am always and always interested in) and, more importantly, tap into depth, soul, and spirit. Our very selves and each other.
"...building authentic relationships…"
Authenticity. I'm not going to riff on all the ways racial capitalism devalues and even punishes authenticity. I could, though. But more useful is to consider all of our existing authentic relationships and pour more of ourselves into those connections. In silently worrying about how much I wasn't doing and how much I felt I needed to be doing, I was seriously discounting the communities with which I am deeply, lovingly, and authentically engaged.
For one, this space allows me to share a commitment to language that advances abolitionist thoughts, ideas, and dreams. Then there is a community I've belonged to since 2021 led by Dr. Shaquinta, who does powerful work helping Black women find liberation through self-care, self-trust, and self-accountability.
She has created a space where I and others can authentically show up as our whole selves. In a uniquely vibrant and affirming space, we support, challenge, and learn from and with each other. On New Year's Day, we had a co-cooking Zoom session where we made greens together, an effort I was super excited to lead and honored to be trusted with such a storied and treasured dish to our community. Who's making the greens is almost up there with who's making the macaroni and cheese!
The other authentic relationship I have been building, especially since moving to Pennsylvania, is my relationship with the natural world. Shortly after I moved, I attended a Zoom talk with two of my favorite writers of all time, Alice Walker and Kiese Laymon. Having long been obsessed with magical realism as a literary style, I submitted a question to Alice Walker about its importance as a technique for writers. Her answer both surprised me and resonated with me. She didn’t even mention writing, but instead talked about the inherent magic in nature. To paraphrase, she said something like….”Magical realism is all around us. Just go outside.”
What she shared aligned with an undeniable pull to go hiking and spend time among the trees, marveling at them and wondering what they were trying to teach me. Just as important as any other relationship and more than worth nurturing and growing, I understood that I was being called to be in community with the earth and myself.
And now, reading Emergent Strategy, I see what Alice Walker described as magical realism and my own wonderment in what adrienne marie brown writes about trees.
"Oak trees don't set an intention to listen to each other better, or agree to hold tight to each other when the next storm comes. Under the earth, always, they reach for each other, they grow such that their roots are intertwined and create a system of strength that is as resilient on a sunny day as it is in a hurricane."
She furthers the point that our connection to nature is not separate from our connection to each other, but rather, it is an authentic relationship we should build as we work to build community and grow towards each other.
"...listening with all the senses of the body and the mind."
In building essential relationships, particularly with ourselves, it's important not to discount, push down, or silence the messages we receive from ourselves. There has been a growing* movement towards a deeper acknowledgment of the importance of the body in our liberation work and spaces. To learn more about this, check out the session on Somatic Abolitionism by Richeal Faithful from the 2022 upEND Movement convening.
*For the record, it is important to note the long tradition of emphasizing the importance of healing our bodies as essential to our liberation.
Equally important is tapping into intuition, the voices that often quietly nudge us in directions beyond our conscious framework. It can show up as messages from beyond, from our ancestors reminding us of forgotten or discarded practices and wisdom. Again, Alice Walker:
"I know what it feels like to be supported by ancestors. I lean on them all the time… Let's just call it sort of a "feeling." You know, it's just sort of a feeling that they are very much present, that these are the people who have gotten me as far, you know, in life as I am and that they're there."
As I always do, I spent the first day of the year thinking about my maternal grandmother, Grandma, who was born on New Year's Day in 1920 in Hiseville, Kentucky. Lately, she has felt more present than ever, as I mentioned last month in this post. And I've been wondering whether I'm leaning into memories or if she's whispering to me, and I've found a way to listen? Is there even a difference? The way her wisdom drops into my spirit at random and also at just the right time makes me think it's the latter. I'm pushing through a certain amount of discomfort at writing any of this, which is yet another reminder of how we are taught to discard what is our birthright. What should feel natural and normal. What Indigenous cultures have valued since time immemorial.
To bring that idea back to the community connections that will be our biggest superpower, it is essential that we share stories about the ancestors to help normalize our experiences and disrupt the intentional devaluation of ancient wisdom. The more we speak on it, the more we strengthen critical connections that will disrupt fear and lead us to embrace and discover how to move ever toward liberation.
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Register today for our Zoom call on Thursday, January 30, at 6pm ET. We'll be back next week to share more as we continue to explore Emergent Strategy and what it can teach us about the moment we are in.
Happy New Year!
connease