being and building otherwise: a conversation between Lani and rashné, part 2
This is a continuation of the conversation we began, using Harsha Walia’s Undoing Border Imperialism, to explore organising spaces, interdependence and relationship building.
Part 2 picks up on the theme of slowness and preparedness in organising, as well as the necessity of centering relationship-building in a world of scarcity and precarity.
This is not a “polished piece.” And, of course, it doesn’t reach some kind of end point but we hope that it can serve as a something to continue from...
Also publised at Sideways Times. Follow Lani at @BestLani.
Lani
I really love what you said and made me think a lot things I hope that some of it makes sense.
Slowness and responsiveness also relates to building as well as being: the current system forces us to be reactive because it is full of scarcity and fear. We are built to be both reactive and responsive, I think, but the responsiveness is the element which allows us to build. What does it look like to really build together?
One of the principles of disability justice that came out of a group of disabled people of colour in the States emphasises collective liberation: what does it really mean to move together, to be responsive together, and not be simply reactive? I feel there are a lot of times when I'm trying to organise with people that I feel, and probably am, slower than others. I can be both slower and faster - perhaps we all can be.
Sometimes I think that it doesn't look like much to be slow, that you can't really "see it" - perhaps it is more of a feeling. I know that for me access is more of a feeling; it's not so much about whether I can get into a building but how people react, how people are flexible, how people see me. Like you said, if you slow down, you can often see better. Learning to really see each other seems to be part of the work. Being doesn't always mean being slow and I often really don't know how to be collective about that. I guess it's about holding each other. But how does that look? It doesn't always look like waiting. It would mean grappling with deep-seated feelings of loneliness and grief and also fear. I think that both disability justice and healing justice work can see some of this.
I hear what you're saying for yourself in terms of being selfish and needing to find people who nourish you and to let go of those who don't.... And the fact that this is lonely work. It made me think about how much it is possible for me to create those spaces by being different. Not necessarily letting go but holding gently, giving space. How much do I have the resources to not get sucked in by negative energies or situations (as I do have a lot of resources in this power structure!)? Perhaps this is about the ways that we are connected.
From the moment we are born we are betrayed - born into a world that does not meet our expectations, even when we are born into the arms of people who truly love us we are disappointed by them and betrayed by them in small ways which are painful and enormous ways which are painful. This conversation is also making me think about the way that we learn and unlearn patterns of behaviour and intergenerational trauma. There is a lot of talk about the importance of vulnerability, about how we do not know how to be loved, about how we cannot bear it and that the only way we can do it is to actually show that vulnerability.
rashné
Our conversation makes me think, on the one hand, of something obvious - that to be in community is to be in relationship. And we often do describe organising spaces as community. On the other hand, precisely because to be in relationship requires a certain kind of work - of building intimacy, of making oneself vulnerable, of holding some form of responsibility to one another - we may actually tend to place a separation between this organising community and other relationships, i.e. relationships outside and beyond organising 'communities'. I know I have been guilty of this for certain. And of course, in the context of facilitation and mediation, we see that there’s various groups needing support around “accountability”. But isn’t this all about learning how to be in relationship?
As you say, this is possibly because we are constantly living within a dynamic of scarcity. There's too little time, too little energy. And so what we have we use on cultivating (hopefully) nourishing private lives. In a previous blog post I wrote: “Precarity, then, is a concerted strategy to disallow collectivity and solidarity. In this circumstance, the fight against precarity must be the fight to create and maintain the conditions for solidarity.”
This brings us back, of course, to capitalism. And to lies, too, maybe. But if scarcity and precarity is what disallows us from forming organising communities as relationship - not just as places of action, of work - then surely a critical political task is to do precisely that, i.e. build organising spaces as relationship?
This is what I mean when I talk about the misuse of decoloniality. Oftentimes in organising spaces we talk about being in community, building community. But if we were to actually try to practice this, it would require a radical - "decolonial" - rethinking of what politics is, of what our work is. But I’m not sure we do that. We take up ideas without really thinking through what it is to practise them. So, perhaps we are building our own "alternate" web of lies?
I think all of this is quite related to disability justice - please correct me if I am wrong. The way I understand it is, disability is constructed around these very notions of scarcity, precarity, of a certain kind of lack (and speed/slowness being an aspect of that lack). I don't want to make some kind of simple comparison between those that identify as disabled and those that don't, but I do think it is necessary to ask ourselves about all the ways in which we have been disabled by colonialism and capitalism. What kinds of sense of wholeness - or fullness may be a better word - have we been denied? And do we refuse to recognise, because to do so would be too dangerous?
Thanks for reading this far - hope you liked it. We’re hoping to keep the conversation going so we’d love to hear your thoughts too; if you want to pick up on any of the themes, feel free!
