Movement Without Marches: First Meeting Reflections

It was great being with everyone who came out last night to discuss and I hope we can continue to dialogue here as we go along.

I went home to find this amazing poem, which made me think more about the connections that we feel in togetherness without the obligation to announce this togetherness to an outside group. When the author points to a movement without marches, I feel that she is hinting at something deeper, that definitely can manifest through marches and protest, but lives beyond it. It reminds me of that slippery term culture. It reminds me of those priceless shared connections that can only come from deep listening and awareness.

Jeff Chang, wrote: "Culture is the space in our national consciousness filled by music, books, sports, movies, theater, visual arts, and media. It is the realm of ideas, images, and stories -- the narrative in which we are immersed every day. It is where people make sense of the world, where ideas are introduced, values are inculcated, and emotions are attached to concrete change. Cultural change is often the dress rehearsal for political change. Or put in another way, political change is the final manifestation of cultural shifts that have already occurred."

Favianna Rodriguez, follows this up years later, saying "Think about culture as rain readying the crops."

When I think about the type of solidarity, the type of love, that is needed to be able to manifest the change, better, the joy that we want to manifest in the world, it has to follow something grander than policy changes. Yet, I don't think that it something that can be professed, only lived. Drake, the rapper says, "You can't live life and hold the camera at the same time." Maybe what these Black women are attempting to show us is that we gotta put down the camera in organizing to conjure a different, deeper, all the more collective power. Something that can be recognized on something as simple as a bus ride, as this poem, this story, beautifully shows us...

Continue reading for the poem.