This is a Call to Organize
Collective liberation will not be won by individuals.
TL;DR: find and join your local chapter of SURJ and attend tonight’s Mass Meeting for White People: Recommitting to Racial Justice.
A year ago, I was newly back on Zoloft and a few weeks into therapy after multiple emotional breakdowns since the lockdown began, and George Floyd was murdered by police outside Cup Foods in Minneapolis.
I had only lived in Los Angeles for six months after living and working in Minneapolis for ten years, and this tragedy was hurting my community - or rather, what used to be my community. I didn’t feel like I could claim it as such any longer since I wasn’t in Minneapolis. Not only was I unable to be with my people in Minneapolis when they most needed support, but also, after living in a new city for six months, I realized for the first time that I didn’t have any semblance of that community in Los Angeles.
I hate that the latest police killing had to feel deeply personal to me for me to engage. That sucks, it makes me question how I’ve viewed myself and my ability to empathize, it feels gross. I’ve also learned that making the need for collective liberation deeply personal is part of the work, though I didn’t learn that until a few months later.
From June to August I decided that I was past my own mental health issues (lol), and thank god, because now it was time for me to be an activist (lol). I read a bunch of books, watched a bunch of documentaries, listened to a bunch of podcasts, followed a bunch of non-white voices on social media, and even casually shamed my white family when they cancelled a zoom call for brunch by replying “I sincerely hope you’re as committed to anti-racism as you are making plans with friends” and then not engaging any further (honestly, yikes, me).
Unsurprisingly, I quickly got burnt out, because I took on the impossible task of solving racism by myself and was then shocked when it wasn’t fixed by the end of the summer. I felt extreme guilt for feeling burnt out, knowing that I was brand new to this work and despite now understanding the weight of systemic racism, I was still very much benefiting from that system as an able-bodied white person. I felt stuck.
A friend shared an upcoming orientation event for White People 4 Black Lives, a white anti-racist collective and activist project, part of a Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) and in alliance with Black Lives Matter-LA and the Movement 4 Black Lives. I attended the virtual orientation with hundreds of other white people, and I learned about personal stake and collective action, two concepts that fundamentally changed my perspective.
Personal stake is simple in theory: identify why you, personally, are fighting for abolition. But getting to one’s own personal stake can be complicated, especially if you are a white person who believes that you are not directly impacted by police brutality or systemic racism, or that you cannot and should not ever center yourself in this work.
Jesse A. Myerson wrote an excellent piece digging further into this concept and some of the historical consequences of white altruism in 2018, “White Anti-Racism Must Be Based in Solidarity, Not Altruism”. In that piece, Myerson writes:
“Time and again, white people acting as allies in other people’s ‘progress’ have not just failed to address racist power relations; they have entrenched white dominance. Altruism cannot be the basis for white anti-racist action. There’s only one thing that can: solidarity … Only when white people come to see that our own liberation is bound up in the liberation of others can we achieve solidarity and have a basis for white anti-racism that does not produce the colonial outcomes generated by altruism”.
When I first learned about personal stake, I balked, believing that would mean centering myself, a white person, and the internet had told me that was wrong and selfish and another marker of my white privilege. And truthfully, even now I feel a lot of guilt about talking about myself. But when I gave it some more thought and discussed it further with people I came to know in the collective, it made sense.
When I try to do something hard simply because “I should” or “it’s the right thing to do”, I almost never stick to it. When I have something to gain from doing something, I stay invested until I’ve done it. That’s how I’m wired, and it’s how humans are wired - we do what’s in our own best interest. And the fact is, ending a culture of white supremacy is in every single person’s best interest - we just need to help more white folks see that for themselves.
My own personal stake in ending white supremacy and state violence is rooted in mental health and my very unhealthy relationship with work. After an incredibly difficult year for my mental health, I was only able to come out the other side healthier because I had a full-time job that provided me the healthcare benefits I needed to find a psychologist and psychiatrist, the salary I needed to afford the $275/session until I hit my deductible, and the flexibility to allow me to take an extended paid leave to focus on my mental health. Without those things, it’s not too far off to say that I might not be here. I was having public meltdowns over small issues like my seatbelt not working in my car. I was screaming at my partner. Someone could have called the cops on me during one of these meltdowns, and I would not have been met with the care and compassion that I needed. I only had access to the support I needed because I had a full-time job that, by the way, was actively contributing to my deteriorating mental health because capitalism and white supremacy culture had conditioned me to tie my self-worth with my productivity, and my productivity was unsurprisingly a struggle amidst a global pandemic and uprising. It is unacceptable that access to mental health care - to all health care - is not readily available to everyone, regardless of income or employment status.
I have been able to articulate my personal stake in this work through the support and community of WP4BL. I came into that space expecting to be an observer for a long time, a bit intimidated by the passion and commitment of the folks leading the training, and not really sure how I would fit into this work. I joined an accountability team project, and I got to know other members of the collective personally. By the end of that project, I felt like the folks in my group were among a select few people in my life around which I could fully be myself.
I joined another project, and I began taking on leadership roles myself, reaching out to bring more white folks into the work. Before I knew it, I had a community in my new city, and it was one that supported and challenged me in equal measure. I’ve been able to learn practical skills to de-escalate and reduce harm. I’ve been able to have thoughtful discussions about police and state violence with close family members. I have reworked how I think about solving problems and leadership, shifting from individual actions to collective action.
Collectivism is a direct contrast to individualism, and individualism is our cultural default under capitalism and white supremacy. The American Dream is rooted in pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. The War on Poverty implies that being poor is a personal choice and/or failing, not a consequence of a vastly unequal distribution of wealth and resources under a capitalist system. White supremacy and capitalism thrive within a culture of individualism because it keeps us isolated, unorganized, and unaware of our collective struggles.
The consequences of a culture of individualism are real and dire: people are afraid to ask for help, because if they need help, they must be failing as an individual, and so they struggle internally, believing that they are indeed a failure for not succeeding, which can lead to depression, anxiety, substance dependence, and suicide. It also makes it much easier to accept demonization and criminalization of substance dependence, mental health crises, and houselessness. If we believe that each individual has the full power to take care of themselves if they only have the will to do so, and then marginalized populations disproportionately struggle, it offers an explanation for white supremacy to those unable or unwilling to recognize that it's a failing of the systems we’ve built.
In Freedom is a Constant Struggle, Angela Davis writes on optimism for the future:
“What has kept me going has been the development of new modes of community. I don’t know whether I would have survived had not movements survived, had not communities of resistance, communities of struggle. So whatever I’m doing I always feel myself directly connected to those communities and I think that this is an era where we have to encourage that sense of community particularly at a time when neoliberalism attempts to force people to think of themselves only in individual terms and not in collective terms. It is in collectivities that we find reservoirs of hope and optimism”.
Collective activism allows us to imagine, stand up for, and build a world that is best for everyone, not just the powerful few. Communities offer a place to connect, learn and unlearn, stumble and make mistakes, and grow. And collective action works. According to Professor Erica Chenowith’s research, only 3.5% of a population is needed for a successful nonviolent campaign, and nonviolent campaigns are twice as likely to succeed than violent insurgencies.
As we remember George Floyd’s murder and the uprising that followed last year, don’t forget the urgency that we felt in that moment. There is still much work to be done, and it won’t happen without collective action. Tonight (May 27), SURJ is hosting a Mass Meeting for White People: Recommitting to Racial Justice. This work is ongoing, and community support is necessary - I hope you can join.