activism – Page 4 – Shannon E. Williams

The Women Have Arrived

February 9, 2017March 4, 2017 smirkpretty

bread-puppet-washerwomen

The women arrive carrying ceramic bowls of muffins and popcorn. They introduce themselves and shrug out of winter coats, peel the backs off name tags, jot words on green post-its and find seats around the room.

We set up the easel, the flip chart, the clipboards, the jar full of pens.

We share our names, our role models in the movement, the things that make us smile.

After skimming Parker Palmer’s Circle of Trust touchstones, we give a collective nod to a tenor of inquiry and welcome.

Then we begin.

Continue reading “The Women Have Arrived” →

activism, community, Take Action

Action 5: Cultivate Community

January 30, 2017 smirkpretty

youth-voices-mural

He will do much more damage before he departs the scene, to become a subject of horrified wonder in our grandchildren’s history books. To repair the damage he will have done Americans must give particular care to how they educate their children, not only in love of country but in fair-mindedness; not only in democratic processes but democratic values. Americans, in their own communities, can find common ground with those whom they have been accustomed to think of as political opponents. They can attempt to renew a political culture damaged by their decayed systems of civic education, and by the cynicism of their popular culture.

– Eliot Cohen in The Atlantic, January 29, 2017

Several weeks back, I put out a call to resist. It’s becoming clearer that our current charge qualifies less less as resistance and more as straightforward civic engagement. The parade of atrocities now pounding from the national stage and into our neighborhoods took shape during our many years of ignoring the duties of democratic participation.

Yes, we call our senators and representatives now every day. Indeed, for every call we make, another citizen rings up Congress and tells the senator to stop obstructing Trump’s march towards a great America. We must call and call again. But calling fails to rise to the standard of resistance. Calling to ask a representative to speak up for human rights qualifies as an act of basic civic responsibility.

Continue reading “Action 5: Cultivate Community” →

activism, Children, Parenting

Inauguration Eve: Make Like a Tree and (Be)lieve

January 18, 2017 smirkpretty

klimt-a-arvore-da-vida

He asks. I fumble. Events crash past, plowing under a vocabulary both dated and outgunned. My words like vestigial limbs grasp at an extinct terrain.

As we drive the short distance home, NPR wallops us with our nightly load of federal ordure. The new Congress just voted to pave the way for a repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Our representatives exhumed an old law which will allow them to slash the pay of any federal worker down to $1. In a stage play of quasi-constitutionalism, those who ask the toughest questions wield no power. The men in charge anoint a public opponent of civil rights as the nation’s Attorney General and an oil tycoon as Secretary of State.

Continue reading “Inauguration Eve: Make Like a Tree and (Be)lieve” →

activism, Determination, Take Action

Action 4: RESIST

January 3, 2017January 4, 2017 smirkpretty

bread-puppet-resistance

Abandon plans for a democratic agenda. Abandon hope for democracy at all. The leadership of this country has shed any pretense of discourse about how best to govern. Our leaders will seize, gut, silence, and reign. They will topple any established checks on their force, and they will dispense with explaining themselves. They will have no need to defend the twisted truths they spun as they advanced through a weakened democratic system into the control tower. Why explain? Why defend? They now execute reality.

Continue reading “Action 4: RESIST” →

activism, Uncategorized

Action 3: Out Your Lunch Box

November 22, 2016November 22, 2016 smirkpretty

tupperware

Remember when water bottles and travel mugs were weird anomalies? When you had to clip your cup to your rucksack with a carabiner and then ask for special permission to fill it from the soda fountain?

Now even briefcases come with mesh pockets for portable hydration. Monday through Friday in every office in America, a rainbow of screw-top coffee mugs and metal-glass-plastic reusable water bottles clutters every working surface.

Far better than cluttering landfills, yes?

So what’s stopping us from doing the same with our food containers?

Continue reading “Action 3: Out Your Lunch Box” →

activism, Take Action

Action 2: Pick up the Phone

November 18, 2016 smirkpretty

vintage-phone

It’s old school. It’s unsexy.

It takes under five minutes.

And it’s effective.

Use this call sheet as a script to make a call to your representatives on issues of concern. Adapt it as you see fit.

Notice that the call sheet has tabs across the top. In addition to scripts, you’ll see lists of representatives and other tips. This sheet is merely a template created in the first week after the election. As events unfold, the language and issues will change.

I’m embarrassed to admit that for all decades of armchair commentary — indeed, I still consider myself “radical” despite my unexceptional suburban existence — I haven’t actually picked up the phone to talk to my senators or representatives in a lifetime and a half.

Yesterday, I made the calls. The action was straightforward and very simple. It took no more time a walk down the hall to fill up my water bottle, and arguably went much further to quench my thirst.

activism, Take Action

Action 1: Who are your Representatives?

November 16, 2016November 16, 2016 smirkpretty

congress-photo

Find out who represents you in the US Senate and House of Representatives as well as in your state legislature. It’s easy to look them up with the Find your Elected Officials tool created by Common Cause and the Sunlight Foundation.

Make note of who your representatives are. Take a few moments to find out how they have voted on immigration, education, reproductive rights, environmental policy, health care, protection of marginalized groups, and other critical issues.

Most importantly, make note of their addresses and phone numbers. Bookmark them in your browser and program them into your phone. The only way they’ll be responsive to us is if we start putting our concerns in front of them.

Image: Library of Congress

activism, Take Action

Act Now

November 15, 2016November 15, 2016 smirkpretty

Here is a small selection of things that don’t work:

Wearing black
Fretting
Posting “Joe Biden: White House Troublemaker” memes (although a giggle is good medicine)
Wearing a safety pin
Returning to safe, familiar, more-or-less neutral patterns of work and social life
Conflating the expression of feelings with action
Rehashing outrage and fear in casual conversations with friends and family who agree with us
Repeatedly checking social media to watch horrors as they unfold
Waiting to see what else he does before doing anything ourselves

Here is what does work:

Asking the next question: What action will we take today — this very day — in the service of justice and our common future on this planet?

Continue reading “Act Now” →

activism, Determination

The Power you Have

November 12, 2016 smirkpretty

procession

Are you willing to use the power you have in the service of what you say you believe?

-Audre Lorde

We’d scheduled a White House tour for the morning after the election. My 10-year-old son was already excused from school for the day. Through the night, the red stain bleeding across the map tangled me into a knot of sleepless apprehension. It drew tighter every time I reached for the phone to pull up CNN. As the unreality of our new president crystallized into fact, fear of what will happen to our nation, to my neighbors and our shared home — and the uncertainty about how to be a mother through it all — metastasized from compulsion to obsession.

Continue reading “The Power you Have” →

activism, community

Dear School Board: You’re Getting The Transgender Thing Right

July 14, 2016October 15, 2018 smirkpretty

Dear Fairfax County School Board,

Please don’t stop. You’re getting this one right. When you decided in May 2015 to add “gender identity” to the non-discrimination policy, you took a step that will put our schools on the right side of history. You’ve been facing some pretty loud resistance to the decision, and I want to tell you that those voices are not the only ones out here. Also here are parents who are thankful that our kids go to schools that recognize the dignity and worth of all people. Continue reading “Dear School Board: You’re Getting The Transgender Thing Right” →