Author: El Wilson

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El Interviews Mylo: Part 2

This is part 2 of an interview I conducted with my From the Ground Up cofounder, Mylo. You can read part 1 here. 

Also, there are references throughout the conversation to a Black Lives Matter protest Mylo and I participated in the day before this interview took place.

Mylo wearing a maroon maks, maroon boots, and a dragon onesie in front of a river on a fall day.
Mylo at their half-birthday celebration in October of 2020.

E: One of the things I write about on the blog a lot is how some of the principles behind how religious organizations are run can be very useful for building activism communities, especially in the sense of how… like almost everyone we saw at the protest yesterday was under 30. Right?

M: Mhmm.

E: How do you envision From the Ground Up and/or activism communities at large functioning better or in such a way where we don’t just have a bunch of 20-somethings? Because, I don’t think we will fix anything with that little slice of the population. 

M: That’s a good question. What does it have to do with religion?

E: Churches are really good at providing childcare and doing things that enable people over 30 to do stuff. 

M: Yeah, that’s interesting. I guess that is a barrier. I mean that’s interesting because I think there’s a lot of reasons why there aren’t a lot of people in their 30s and 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s who are going to protests. But also, I’m sure that there are people engaged in organizing who aren’t going to protests who are in that age group that you just don’t see. 

This guy that I bumped into.. Did I tell you about this? I was going for a bike ride, and I stopped at a little free library that was in front of a Jewish community center called Havurat Shalom. This guy who was maybe in his 70s was just like “Hey! What’s up?” and started asking me questions. He worked there. He said, “I’m really involved in the Defund SPD movement and tenant organizing in Somerville.” And I thought, this is this cool 70-year-old Jewish man doing organizing in Boston. And normally I don’t assume that people in their 70s are organizing. Anyhow, that was cool. I feel like I really want to talk to him and have him answer this question.

So, you know I am a little bit uncertain about how I feel about protests, marches, rallies like this idea of to show support you’re going to walk for five miles and drive around a lot. And I was so mad yesterday when the person said, “Can you all go faster?” And I thought Are you fucking kidding me? Can we go faster? I think we’re going at a great pace. Clearly, my friend here is in a wheelchair and just… what? Do you want this to be accessible at all? I was so angry. 

I think we need to have events that… I think giving access to childcare is a great idea. The first campaign I ever worked on was a childcare campaign when I was in college. It didn’t go that well…

E: [giggles]

M: Swarthmore. Anyway, I also think that a lot of older folks feel very alienated from younger folks because they feel like we’re so hung up on language. If you say the wrong word, you’re cancelled. And I think that makes people not want to be involved. 

I don’t really know though. I think outside of that I have to think about this more. What do you think? Oh, I can’t ask you. 

E: Sure you can, I guess. It doesn’t surprise me that the old man you met was working out of a religious institution. They are very good at doing organizing across generations. I know that we don’t think of Evangelical Christians as activists because they are “the enemy” or whatever, but they are so good at it. They know how to do it with children and with 85-year-olds. They just know, which is why they are so effective. 

M: I know that as part of her work with the JLC, Emma [Mylo’s girlfriend] works with the social action committees of different synagogues, and they all have one. Even my mom works for the Bridgeport Mission, which is a very religious organization. The organization helps house women and children that are coming from households with domestic abuse. I think that a lot of religious organizations are doing that day-to-day, make sure that you’re fed, make sure that you have housing kind of work, whereas a lot of folks in their 20s are caught up in this intellectual… like Marxism, what is the right term, we’re the revolution, let’s make sure everyone has the right perspective, but aren’t doing as much of the “like do people have food?” 

That’s why I want to learn a lot more about the Black Panther Party, so I’m reading the autobiography of Assata Shakur. They were trying to play both roles of making sure people’s basic needs were met and also putting forward a platform with a long term vision. I think that’s really important because I think I find it frustrating that so many of the people we want involved… if we want like people of color, working parents to be involved in organizing there needs to be a way for them to be involved that aren’t many, many hours of work or very intensive. You need to be able to fit with people’s schedules and their lives and support their kids. They have to feel like their lives are going to get better soon and not like one day after the revolution. 

Yeah, good question. We should keep talking about this question.

E: Where do you hope you and/or FtGU will be in five years?

M: Well, everyone knows I want to be really famous.

E: [rolls their eyes]

M:Yeah, no. Where do I hope to be in five years? That’s a good question. I don’t know. I feel like I never know where things are going. You know what I would like? Here’s something I was thinking about: I think that right now there’s all these social justice organizations in Boston. There’s Defund SPD. There’s FFC. There’s FTP. There’s MAAPB. I want to feel like, in five years, that we’re one big community. Like those orgs, plus all of the climate change orgs… I want it to feel like there’s an organizing hub in Boston, and everyone knows each other, and likes each other, and supports each other. And we’re not fucking competing for the same collection of people. That’s the thing I’m trying to figure out. We’re all organizing in different ways for different issues, but there really is no point in there being like four racial racial justice/defund orgs. Like why? [laughter] It doesn’t make any sense. And then they’re like “oh, there’s a protest” and there’s another protest and another protest. That’s not forward momentum. You need to have a protest and then pull people in to your org to be doing something. 

So I think what I want is for all of the orgs to be working together, and also for there to be ways to get involved that are very easy and clear. And that can be different depending on what you can do. Because right now I’ll ask to join a thing and they’ll say “You can volunteer.” And you don’t want to volunteer; you want to be in it. You want to be part of this community of people. I want to be part of that shift in Boston where it feels like there’s an organizing community, and it’s constantly growing. People want to be a part of it. Rather than like, “Oh someone died, and now I have to organize and go to a protest so that my Black friends think that I’m woke.” That’s the mentality that I find frustrating. 

So I don’t know if I want FtGU to get really really big or if I want it just to be that connecting glue between different organizations. And I want to be taking care of myself and eating three meals a day and really buff, and I want to be taller.

E: That won’t happen.

M: Says who?

E: [laughs]

M: I was thinking of buying a house in Maine, but then I couldn’t be organizing in Boston. Maybe I could though. Those are all of my thoughts. 

E: Yeah… to wrap things up, I write a lot about how I could not do this without you. I am wondering how you view the way that you and I are very different… We have similar outgoing personalities, but I think we’re very different in the ways we do work. How do you think we work as a team?

M: Good question. One of the many things I really appreciate about you is that you care enough about this to do it even when it’s not easy, even when you’re really tired, which self-care? I mean it’s hard to find balance, but both of us do this work even when we’re wiped out sometimes. I think that sometimes we have to tell each other to stop. That’s important. But mostly it makes me feel like you actually care, and you’re not just doing it for the points. You’re not just doing it this week.

I think in terms of how we work together, I think we both work really hard. I know that you’re my warrior. 

E: [makes noises of emotion]

M: I push you to try to go for stuff sometimes, even though it might not be great or perfect, and I think you try to make sure I don’t do anything really dumb. 

E&M: [both laugh]

M: Because I’m always like, “I had this great idea in the shower, let’s do it all today.” And that’s fine sometimes. It’s fine to mess around, but you do have to be careful. I think you help me make my good ideas into better ideas. And then so much of it is in how do we get there. I think I’m getting better at the follow through part, but you’re also very good at it and good at figuring out how to get into the details. 

I feel like people don’t understand that organizing isn’t just about showing up at the protest, and it’s not about having a protest or having a meeting. It’s about all the little things like what questions are going to be asked, who’s taking notes, are we going to do breakout rooms, how are we gonna collect people’s contact information. There are just so many little pieces that if you really think through them well it can make an event go really well. If you don’t think through them at all, you came together and you talked, but did anyone get anything out of it? Are you moving the movement forward at all? I don’t know. 

I think that both being able to have a lot of good ideas and build on each other’s ideas, and also put them into action is something that we do well together. 

E: Thanks Mylo!

M: You’re very welcome! 

Mylo, a half-Black non-binary person wearing a hoodie.

El Interviews Mylo: Part 1

My first year as an Emerson College grad student is coming to an end. I’m so overwhelmed by finals that my Diet Coke consumption is up 150%, so instead of writing a blog post, I interviewed my From the Ground Up cofounder, Mylo about the history of From the Ground Up — how it transitioned from being a failing newspaper to the thriving community it is today — as well as where we’re going. Enjoy part one!

E: So, who are you?

M: My name is Mylo, and I’m a co-founder of From the Ground Up. 

E: Okay, what is From the Ground Up?

M: It’s basically a community of people who — I would say some activists, some don’t think of themselves as activists — who all want to both try to imagine what our future world would look like and also take action steps within our lives to make that happen. So, it’s really anyone who wants to be doing good things for the world and like making the world and themselves better. 

Mylo, a half-Black non-binary person, wearing a hoodie, running their fingers through their hair.
Our favorite From the Ground Up cofounder, Mylo.

E: Amazing! How do you balance the activism component of From the Ground Up with the community component of From the Ground Up?

M: Oh, I think it’s really hard. I feel like I want all of the meetings whether they are meant to be just for connecting and having fun or meant to be doing organizing or taking action to still feel… not necessarily fun, but nurturing, like you’re being seen as an entire human and not just as another body that can do activism. And it’s important people feel like they’re able to play to their strengths and grow in the ways they want to grow and that they’re not all forced… we’re not gonna say “Well, everyone has to phone bank.” or “Everyone has to flier.” or “Everyone has to post on social media.” You get to do something that makes you feel good that you love doing. I really love having people just talk together and get to know each other and connect. Though, at the same time, it’s the case that through organizing and through pursuing a goal with other people, you connect with people a lot and get to know each other really well. Sometimes I feel like I need to, especially now, shift more towards activism because that’s what people are here for, not just to be people but to do good work. But what is that? Is community building just activism in itself? I think so. 

E: I agree. Why did you start From the Ground Up?

M: I started From the Ground Up because I found the news to be very disheartening and useless. Like there’s a bunch of shit happening in DC. Like, I can’t do anything about it. It’s really disempowering to read these horrible things that are happening that you can’t affect. 

One of the huge catalysts was that for two years I lived in Boston, and I would always pass by these people who seemed like they were homeless who were selling newspapers. And I would always pass this guy who was doing that at the Whole Foods near where I worked. And I would always just walk by him because I was always on my 25-minute lunch break. But eventually, there was a time where I wasn’t that stressed or busy, so I just stopped and said, “Hey, what is this?” And he said, “Oh, this is Spare Change. People can buy the paper for 50 cents and sell it for two dollars. And you get to take the difference, the $1.50. It’s a newspaper about people who are experiencing homelessness in Boston.” It was a lot about housing and housing rights and poems that people wrote. I bought one and thought I can’t believe I just walked by this person for a year and a half and didn’t stop just to say “Hi.” I think a lot of people just walk by because they don’t know what it is, which I think is bizarre. How could you live somewhere for two years and not know that this newspaper exists? You just haven’t heard about it.

So I wanted there to be a newspaper that would lift up the things that you can do within your community to make a difference, and not just go on about all the things in DC or other countries that you can’t really change. I wanted all of the articles to end with a list of those actions.

I was learning a lot of strategies for how to talk to people or how to have hard conversations or ask for things. I had a lot of ideas that weren’t in the mainstream. I wanted to both get my own ideas out there without having to try to get published by a traditional paper and also have a place for other people to have a platform to put forward random ideas that they have without there being a whole process of like “Oh, is your writing really good?” If you have a good idea, we’ll help you edit it and then we’ll publish it. 

So that’s how it started. I felt like so many people want to be more engaged in activism, but they don’t know what to do. I wanted to answer that question. 

E: How did it transition from mostly a newspaper to mostly a community? 

M: Well, for a while it was just me, and then it was just us. Then, I started texting a bunch of people, and some people were actually interested enough to actually come to a meeting, and so we all met at the library. That was really fun! I was really anxious leading up to it, but then it was really great, and we were all getting along so well. That was in February 2020. I think?

E: Yeah.

M: That felt really good. And then we met another time in March at a coffee shop to do work and write articles about COVID. That was the last time I ever went to a coffee shop. And then I didn’t know how to maintain that group of people during the pandemic. I thought we could all meet outside, but I didn’t initiate that, and I was stressed and overwhelmed. The point is that for a long time I was overwhelmed and didn’t know how to maintain a community online during a pandemic. And then you and I were meeting every week and trying to write a bunch of articles. That was super overwhelming and didn’t feel like it was sustainable nor like it was really going to get us anywhere. Then, I took a long break and read Pleasure Activism and a lot of other books, and it was really helpful. 

Then when I came back, in September… I mean at various points you said we had to have meetings, and I wanted to, but I was so stressed. I couldn’t pull it together. But once the school year started, I had to get over that anxiety of hosting meetings online because I had to do it for my job [as a high school math teacher]. I was doing it for my job. I think it was in October finally… You sent me an article that was about community building and content marketing or something. I saw that at the right time where I was also in an emotional place to be ready to host a meeting online and knew how Zoom worked well enough. And finally, I was like “Yeah, let’s just host a meeting.” I texted a bunch of people and was like, “Do you want to come to this meeting?” And I guess some people said yes. I added all of their emails to it, and it was a community. I don’t really remember how I did that. 

E: I have no memory of how.

M: And you were like, “I don’t know if anyone is going to come.” And then, what, like eight people came? I think. It was a good-sized group.

E: Yeah.

M: I think we had ten people at the first meeting. Then, people kept joining…

Stay tuned for part 2!

A black outline of a sprout growing in three stages.

The How Part 5: This is Gonna Take Awhile

The following post — like many of my favorite vlogbrothers videos — is divided into parts. 

Part 1: Be patient 

If your goal is to grow your activism-based community beyond the friends in your favorite group chat, patience is more than a virtual; it’s a necessity. No amount of networking, emergent strategy, nor content marketing will make your metaphorical tree sprout overnight. Relationships build over time. People trickle in. Internet influence accumulates slowly. A single post might go viral, but a community won’t. 

Part 2: What to do when you inevitably run out of patience

Communities can become stagnant. While exponential growth is not necessary for any community’s success, without any growth, most groups will dissipate down to nothing. Plus, patience isn’t worth much without persistence. Here’s some tips for how to deal with a community stuck in its infancy:

  1. Host events open to the public. I recommend events — such as live streams — that require little interaction on the part of the audience. This way, no one will feel intimidated, and if they like what they see, they will be motivated to join.
  2. Use social media and brag openly about your work. I talk about this in a previous post for a reason: If no one knows your community exists, no one will join. 
  3. Encourage your current members to invite their friends.
  4. Build bridges with other activism-based organizations and attend their events. Most of FtGU’s recruitment happens when Mylo — who is even more extroverted than I am — attends protests or online social justice events and connects with people there. 
  5. Vary your events. Not everyone is going to be interested in the same activities. That’s a good thing! It helps us and our activism be more well-rounded. To diversify your community, diversify what your community does. 

Part 3: What to do when your efforts are too successful

Suddenly finding yourself with 100 people asking to join your community is exciting but also poses dilemmas. You don’t want to let every random stranger into your community. You want to make sure that not only are potential members a good fit personality and political-viewpoint-wise, but also that they also have the time and energy to give to the community. 

To do this, you need an intake process. FtGU’s is a simple 3-step affair:

  1. A potential member fills out an online form. The information from that form appears in a Discord chat run by our intake team — a subgroup of FtGU members in charge of the intake process. 
  2. The intake team emails the potential member and schedules a meeting. During the meeting, two members of the intake team interview the potential member about everything from their availability to how they handle conflict. The goal is to have an organic conversation and avoid it feeling like a job interview. It’s not one. We don’t want to weed out as many people as possible. Instead, we think of these conversations as a form of match making: Is the person a good fit for FtGU? Is FtGU a good fit for the person?
  3. If the interviewers determine that the person would make a great new member, and the person still wants to join, they attend their first community meeting! 

FtGU’s intake process isn’t ideal for every community in part because it depends on having enough members to have a separate intake team. You must devise a system that works for your community. Regardless of your system, it is important to have it in place before you are swamped with requests. The longer you wait to intake people, the more likely they are to lose interest. 

Part 4: I have to end this post somehow

Patience, persistence, and passion are key whether you have a waiting list of 526 potential members or you haven’t seen a new face in six months. Ultimately, different communities thrive at different sizes at different times. Focus on quality not quantity. If your current members are happy and thriving, you’re doing your job, even if there’s only two of them. 

The How Part 4: Let’s Get Ethical

Just a heads up: This post includes mentions of sexual assault and descriptions of manipulative relationships.

In the Spring of 2018, I sat down with an assistant dean of students — Oberlin College’s version of a guidance counselor — with a list of several dozen possible core values and narrowed it down to my top five: diversity, resilience, creativity, happiness, and love. It was a practice, she said, often used to help survivors of trauma regain a sense of self.

The words Creativity, Diversity, Empathy, Happiness, Love, and Resilience listed in rainbow colors.
After narrowing down my values, I made this poster to hang on my dorm room wall. (I added a 6th to make it gay.)

Earlier that school year, my favorite creative writing professor, Bernard Matambo, had been forced to resign after it became clear that he had sexual relations with at least one, if not multiple, students. Fortunately, I was not one of them. However, this did not mitigate the fact that Matambo manipulated all of his students, even the ones he didn’t have sex with.

As my academic advisor during my senior year, it was his duty to send me a code that allowed me to register for classes. He didn’t. The day of registration, I tracked him down until I found him meeting with another student outside the creative writing building. This was such a common problem among his advisees that we formed a Facebook group chat to trace his physical location during registration time. Yet, the effort was worth it. All of our interactions were incredibly rewarding. He made me feel like the most promising young writer on the planet. I told him more about my mental health than I had ever told anyone. He validated all of it. He didn’t have a single psychology degree and yet was the best therapist I’ve ever had. This cycle of deprivation and satisfaction left me standing in my kitchen, mere weeks before his resignation, saying to my roommate, “I think he’s taking advantage of me.” Hence, I found myself three months later crossing off values from a list until what remained resonated with me.

I tell this story not because I think a predatory professor is going to invade your community but because centering your community around a list of values is a practical, disaster-prevention tool. My core values function as decision guideposts when trauma rears its ugly head. Rather than making decisions driven by fear, I center my choices around diversity, resilience, creativity, happiness, and love. Furthermore, it’s important to remember that people as toxic as Matambo are rare, but individual instances of exploitation are common. You are less likely to fall prey to manipulation (or accidentally become a manipulator) if you make decisions guided by values. 

Below I’ve listed a few values that Mylo and I came up with when discussing the fundamental ethical principles behind activism-based communities, but you should sit down with your community and create your own list.

  • Accessibility: Keep physical and financial barriers low. A community that isn’t built for everyone isn’t built for anyone.
  • Dialogue: Differences and disagreements are the product of diversity. Healthy discourse is vital to activism.
  • Interdependence: Communities that depend on each other thrive. No human is truly independent. Emphasizing independence leads to competition.
  • Compassion: People break things. People are broken. Compassion is the first step on the road to recovery.
  • Diversity: We can’t build a world for everyone if anyone is excluded from the conversation.

In your quest to build activism-based communities, you will have to make difficult choices, sometimes under stressful circumstances. Centering your values doesn’t mean making the ethical choice will be easy, but it will be possible.

Two multi-colored hands reaching for each other.

The How Part 3: So You Want to Build an Activism-Based Community from Scratch.

I’ve said it before, and I will say it again. I will say it until winter ends in Boston at a reasonable time of year. (It never will.): Building an activism-based community from scratch is one of the most difficult things you’ll ever do. It takes creativity, hard work, and for the stars to align in your favor. 

But, at least for me, it continues to be extremely rewarding. It channels my frustration and leads to me meeting interesting people from a variety of backgrounds. Besides, I couldn’t imagine my life without my FtGU partner Mylo much less without access to their Spotify account. 

I’m not going to give you a step-by-step guide. Guides like those are written by experts. There are no experts in building these kinds of communities in these strange times. Instead, I’m going to list some do’s and don’ts, things I’ve learned by some trial and lots of error. 

Don’t

  • Do this without a partner. First off, you don’t want to become a cult leader. Secondly, building a community can be lonely. Mylo and I spend several hours a week planning, brainstorming, and worrying. If we had to do that alone, it would be incredibly isolating. There is no one I can talk to other than Mylo who knows exactly what this feels like.
    Plus, Mylo and I balance out each other’s flaws. Mylo says that without me they would give up, but without Mylo, I would be too afraid to get started. 
  • Make all of your friends community members. Okay, if you don’t recruit a few of them, building a community will be next to impossible, but reserve a few for venting. There’s going to be lots of venting.
  • Spent all of your time in disaster-prevention mode. In an interview with Bitch Media the activist Walidah Imarisha said,

    “In radical movements, we so often fight against something instead of building something else. We absolutely have to do it, but we don’t want to spend all of our energy just challenging what is. We really have to cultivate our ability to dream what will be and to make it a reality. That’s how all significant change has happened.”
    Avoiding disasters is important, but solely thinking about potential problems is miserable. Imagine the community building and activism you want to be doing. And when problems inevitably arise, you’ll already know what you want the solution to look like.
  • Fear the internet. Tweet. Instagram. Blog. Show the world what you’re doing. They’ll either want to join or follow in your footsteps. 
A screenshot of Mylo and El meeting via Discord, both smiling.
Mylo and I during one of our infamous Discord meetings.

Do

  • Ask for feedback regularly. I don’t care how many psychology degrees you have or how many packs of tarot cards you own. You can’t read minds. If you do something disastrously wrong, your community will either lash out at you or disappear altogether. Don’t let it get that far. Hold yourself accountable every step of the way.
    Surveys are a great strategy, but don’t forget about everyday conversations. Even briefly asking someone for ideas for future meetings can lead to them hinting at things they’re finding lacking.
  • Brag. Now is not the time to be humble. If you show enthusiasm and pride in what you’re doing, others will want to join.
  • Think about money. Regardless of whether you’re building an actual 501(c)(3) or if you’re simply gathering a small group of friends once a week, resources will be spent. Keep track of both the time and the money you invest in your community from the outset. You may never want to fundraise, but if you ever experience financial hardship, you’ll need to know how much it costs to keep your community afloat, even if it’s merely $30 on weekly pizza. 
  • Practice honesty with your community and with yourself. If you’re going through a rough time because, hypothetically speaking, you had an ovarian cyst explode, don’t pretend you’re okay. Communities exist to support each other. Let yours support you.
  • Take notes during meetings. Trust me on this one.
  • Share opinions. Activism-based communities work best when people discuss divergent viewpoints. People won’t go to a protest if they don’t know why they’re going. The FtGU community read and discussed the books How to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical Guide by Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay as well as Difficult Conversations: How To Discuss What Matters Most by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen. We knew we weren’t going to agree on everything, so we researched strategies on how to discuss our differences productively.
    Political and practical views often diverge, but avoiding challenging conversations only leads to resentment and miscommunication. Talk with your members. Facilitate discussions between members. Never hide your truth.
  • “Start being brave about everything, driving out darkness and spreading light as well.” ~ my favorite saint, Saint Catherine of Siena
Hands of different skin tones resting on a tree trunk.

The How Part 2: When Your Community is Due for an Upgrade

After you’ve weighed the pros and cons and made the vital decision about whether to find an activism-based community, enhance an existing community, or create a community from scratch, it’s time to take the next steps. That’s fairly simple if you’ve found a community: contact them and go through their intake process if they have one. But if you’re enhancing a community or building one of your own, it’s a bit more complicated. Never fear! The How Part 2 is here!

This post focuses on how to enhance existing communities. Organizations vary in both their structure and member makeup, so these steps aren’t meant to be taken as a precise guide. Instead, think of them as vague directions coming from someone with a visual learning disability who still needs Google maps to go to the grocery store down the street. That’s, in fact, what they are. 

How to enhance an existing political community to include more community building

  • Approach the leadership of your organization, unless of course you are a leader in your organization and have already approached yourself. Make the argument to them that your org would benefit from some community building. Send them my blog posts. Or, better yet, point our specific instances within your particular organization which would have had better consequences if folks were closer to one another. Data is useful. Stories are more effective. 
  • Plan social events with some sort of structure. Although unstructured events can be fun and build relationships, there’s a strong risk that the discussions will turn political if there is no clear alternative. So, run a game of Among Us or Blood on the ClockTower or a group workout. That way, community members will have to discuss something other than the upcoming protest or last night’s newstory.
  • Once COVID is over, provide drinks, alcoholic or caffeinated. People like to have something to sip during awkward silences. 
  • Encourage others to plan their own social events. People are invested in the things they create. Hopefully, this creates a positive feedback loop leading to more and more events. 

How to enhance an existing community to participate in more activism

  • Have an honest conversation with yourself before you act. How unified are your community’s political values? To be clear, they don’t have to be perfectly aligned. You might believe that the downfall of capitalism is necessary to curb the climate crisis whereas another member of your community believes that government restrictions will suffice. Both of you would be comfortable attending a climate change protest. However, if your community is extremely politically diverse, incorporating political activism may not be the best move. Instead, you could focus on charity work like raising money for Child’s Play. 
  • Pull out the tea and finger pb&j sandwiches (I hate all other sandwiches) and host a book club that reads books about political issues. Activism begins with education. And if the members of your org aren’t a particularly politically charged bunch, start simple. No communist manifesto necessary. If You Come Softly by Jacqueline Woodson is a YA book that is political and also leads to everyone balling their eyes out. I highly recommend it. 
  • Invite your fellow members to volunteer for a political organization. This is logistically easier than attempting to organize your own event and shows the members of your organization what activism looks like and how rewarding it is. 
  • Remember that protesting isn’t the only option. Protestors need to be fed. Voters need to be called. Activist organizations need fundraisers. Choose activities that fit your organization’s needs and capabilities. 
  • Don’t make it miserable or overly time-consuming. One or two events a month is enough. If people aren’t invested and the work is too difficult, they’ll stop. Be more patient than persistent. 

None of this is easy. Humans are strange and unpredictable creatures. Unforeseen problems arise. Go slowly. Breathe frequently. Incremental progress is still progress.

Next week, I will discuss the preliminary steps involved in starting your own activism-based organization and embrace the opportunity to brag about my accomplishments.

The How Part 1: Your First Big Decision

Assuming that my last blog post convinced you that activism-based communities are necessary for activists’ survival, you’re probably thinking, “Oh $#!+, I don’t have one of those.” Deciding how you want to gain community is the first step to solving your conundrum. Luckily you have three options. I will list them all in order of ascending difficulty and describe the pros and cons of each of them. Read on comrades!

Option One: Find a Community

The Pros

  • This one is listed first for a reason. Once you’ve found a community, the rest is pretty easy. You will have to put effort into becoming an active member and time into building relationships and learning the norms of the group. But the logistics should be done for you.
  • A bonus perk is that you’ll learn community-building skills from the leaders of the group. The best way to understand communities to join one.

The Cons:

  • Thriving activism-based communities are hard to find, and finding one that fits your needs may be next to impossible. There are options. In big cities like Boston, cooperatives are popular (but that involves moving), the Sunrise Movement has hubs around the country (but that’s geared towards young folks), and there’s always From the Ground Up (but that’s just me humblebragging). But none of these may be what you are looking for. That’s the issue.

Option Two: Enhance an Existing Organization

The Pros:

  • If you’re already a member of a thriving activist organization that doesn’t have a community element or a community that should really be doing more political work, now is a great time to improve your organization! With already established relationships and structures, this is far easier than trying to create a brand new community. In fact, in the weeks after the 2020 BLM protests, a member of my Harry Potter and the Sacred Text group organized meetups for non-Black members to educate ourselves so that we could practice better allyship.

The Cons:

  • Easier does not mean easy. You’ll have to change or add to the existing structures within your organization. This could mean holding additional meetings, reevaluating leadership hierarchies, and/or disrupting routines. While some members of your organization may be all for it, others may be resistant.
  • Activism organizations that have never built community or community organizations that haven’t participated in activism may have a lot to learn. Communities that aren’t explicitly political will need to adapt to having political conversations. Activist organizations that don’t build community will have to learn to have conversations outside of politics. Don’t be surprised if these changes don’t happen overnight.

Option 3: Build Your Own Community

The Pros:

  • We need more activism-based communities. Period. More and more people are turning to their jobs to build community out of desperation. And, despite recent election wins, we still need political action. By building an activism-based community, you will be part of the solution.
  • You’ll gain all of the leadership skills you’ll ever need.
  • You can start by inviting the friends and comrades you already have. It’s a great way to enhance existing relationships. 
  • It will be the most rewarding experience of your life. From the Ground Up has changed everything for me. Everything.

The Cons:

  • It will also be the most difficult experience of your life. It’s a lot of work. It requires social skills, logistical skills, and balancing idealism with practicality. It’s a 24/7 job. 
  • You might fail.

That may seem like the worst possible note to end on, but failure is part of the process. And I don’t mean that in the Edison-failed-10,000-times-before-creating-the-lightbulb way. (In fact, he probably tried closer to 3,000 times, but no one really knows.) I mean that the very act of trying is an act of political resistance. Even if you don’t find a community to join, or the community you work to enhance resists, or the community you build falls apart, trying involves imagining that community is possible and worth fighting for. As adrienne maree brown put it, in her book Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, 

“I believe that all organizing is science fiction—that we are shaping the future we long for and have not yet experienced. I believe that we are in an imagination battle, and almost everything about how we orient toward our bodies is shaped by fearful imaginations. Imaginations that fear Blackness, brownness, fatness, queerness, disability, difference. Our radical imagination is a tool for decolonization, for reclaiming our right to shape our lived reality.”

adrienne maree brown

Imagine a community that reimagines the world. It’s the first step towards liberation. 

Why I Build Community Part 2

Psssst… this is part 2. You can read Part 1 here.

I almost died a month ago. And, no, it wasn’t like a falling air conditioner missed my head by a few inches. An undiagnosed ovarian cyst ruptured. Internal bleeding ensued. My diaphragm couldn’t expand to its full capacity because there wasn’t enough space in my abdominal cavity. Twelve hours after Instagramming my workout, I struggled to breathe. I wouldn’t recommend the experience.

A photo of El, a bit scruffy, looking uncomfortable. Over them are the words 'On Saturday morning, a large ovarian cyst exploded inside of me, my ovary was torn, and my abdomen filled with blood. One emergency surgery later, and I'm letting my neck beard do its thing.'
My Instagram story a few days after my ovarian cyst exploded.

After an emergency operation, blood transfusion, and four days in the hospital, I am recovered except for some lingering bruising. My recovery was made possible by dozens of people including:

  • my father who picked up his phone at 5 am and advised me to go to the ER, dealt with the health insurance company, and sent me puppy photos 
  • my roommate who called 911
  • my mother who talked with the surgeon (who, as it turns out, had never treated a transgender patient before)
  • my hockey coach and his wife who cared for me for five days in an AirBnB after I was released
  • their family who brought us food
  • Mylo who ran From the Ground Up independently for several weeks while I recovered
  • my other roommates who carried my stuff and helped me walk up the stairs into my apartment when I finally returned home
  • Emerson’s Student Accessibility Services who emailed all of my professors after I contacted them while high on pain killers
  • my professors who didn’t fail me
  • the parents of the children I tutor who gave me time off
  • the makers of Esme and Roy, the television show that kept me sane through it all

My biggest fear before moving to Boston in September of 2019 was not making any friends. This is a common problem for people in their 20’s. (This video about making friends as an adult has over 1.1 million views.) But when shit hits the fan, we need a lot more than just friends to cope. To recover I needed parents to help navigate the health system, adults with the resources to care for me, understanding bosses and professors, and a town with an ambulance service. I focus on community building rather than on individual relationship building because diverse social networks are vital to our survival. 

This is especially true for activists. It shouldn’t be surprising to hear that burnout is a real problem. Although research is ongoing, I couldn’t find clear data on the percentage of activists who experience burnout. Most of the articles focused on cooperate workers’ burnout rather than activists’ or even teachers’ because, well, capitalism. But burnout among activists is a real problem. Vice, NPR, and Bustle have all reported on it. Activism is taxing work that doesn’t pay well if it pays at all. Plus, many activists experience vicarious trauma. I know this feeling. Every time I read a story about police murdering a disabled person or about vulnerable folks with disabilities still waiting to be vaccinated I have to remind myself to breathe. I am relatively privileged as a white disabled person with perfectly functioning lungs, but these stories remind me that society considers bodies like mine to be disposable. 

Activism burnout is not merely a mental health problem. Erica Garner, Eric Garner’s daughter, died when she was only three years older than I am. According to the New York Times article linked above, five BLM activists died between 2016 and 2018. Stress takes a toll on our bodies. Activists break apart bit by bit even as we create the world we want to see. 

How do we prevent this? Self-care is important, but community care is crucial. This isn’t a new concept. The documentary The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution showed how the Black Panthers fed over 20,000 breakfasts to children per week as part of their free breakfast program. Our movements should mimic the world we want to live in. This means giving members of our activism communities and their children access to basic necessities.

My ruptured ovarian cyst wasn’t caused by burnout. That was merely bad luck. Yet it is an example of the fact that self care only goes so far. No amount of self care would have saved my life last month. My community, in the narrowest and broadest sense of the word, stepped up and rescued me when I needed them the most. Having structured communities is important for everyone. But those of us fighting for a better world must weave ourselves a community safety net so tight that nobody slips through. 

Why I Build Community Part 1

If you haven’t read my last post, check it out! It provides crucial context for this one.

Here is everything the church did for my parents (besides supposedly handing them their ticket to heaven):

  • free/affordable childcare twice a week after school, plus several weekends per year
  • free/affordable food, one meal per week for them, three for me
  • professional emotional support during hospitalizations 
  • younger parents they mentored
  • older parents who mentored them
  • recognition of my father’s military service and support throughout his deployments
  • weekly social gatherings
  • access to a small library of religious texts
  • free musical education

Below is a small chart of how the three organizations I’m actively a member of at the moment (sled hockey doesn’t count because pandemic) do/don’t fulfill these needs for me:

A diagram of El's needs which reveals that From the Ground Up, Emerson College, and Harry Potter and the Sacred Text only fulfill five out of the seven needs they could.
Yes, I know the key is as large as the diagram. My fine motor skills are as wonderfully disabled as I am.

Religion’s success is no accident. Any organized community that provides this range of services to its members will likely succeed. Christianity provided my parents with a built-in safety net. Despite the fact that our congregation had well under five-hundred members, it served as a source of a financial, emotional, and logistical back-up. 

Christianity, and other religions, filled this role for centuries. As Casper ter Kuile, a co-founder of the Sacred Design Lab and the Harry Potter and the Sacred Text podcast, put it in an interview, 

“So, in 1920, or 1880, or however far you want to go, you would have been, let’s say, a member of a Catholic Church, and you would have not only received your moral guidance and social connection but also a place for your kids to be educated. You would have had a shared ethnic group because you were part of the Italian Catholic Church. You would have had access to health care and education and mutual aid societies.”

But for most of us, it’s not surprising that Pew Research indicates that the number of people participating in religious life is dropping. (If you’re under the age of 45, how many of your friends go to church every week?) Ter Kuile believes that millennials replace church with a thousand different organized communities from CrossFit to fandoms. Yet, these communities lack the intergenerational and safety-net benefits provided by organized religion and are fundamentally built around capitalism. We have a country that’s becoming less religious during a time where the financial and social structures organized faith provides are vital. 

Americans, as a whole, have struggled to fulfill our social needs for the past decade. Even before the pandemic, studies indicated that loneliness was on the rise. According to an NPR article, a study conducted by Cigna indicated that Americans’ loneliness rose 13% between 2018 and early 2020. COVID exacerbates this problem. The Harvard Gazette cited a study showing an 11% increase in loneliness since the beginning of the pandemic, with levels as high as 61% in adults between 18 and 25 years old. This is a mental health crisis. Not only do we know that loneliness has physical health effects, but America is running headfirst into a mental health crisis. 53% of American adults report increased mental health distress according to a report by CBS. 

Of course, I don’t believe that replacing every Walmart with a cathedral would solve anything. (Although, I wouldn’t be opposed to Targets taking their place.) I don’t believe that god provided the free childcare my parents needed. People did. Lots of loving, kind, if not ableist, people. And the world has the same number of amazing people that it did a decade ago.

We need community right now. The U.S. government needs to serve the national community that it’s supposed to protect. We need to draw upon mutual aid funds. We need to check-up on the mental health of our friends, neighbors, and family members. But these are merely short-term solutions. In the long run, we need to build more inclusive organized communities that serve us all. Best of all, these communities can be designed to do activism work that serves the most vulnerable. But you’ll have to wait until my next post to read about that. 

How Christianity Made Me an Atheist Activist

Just a heads up: This post includes descriptions of ableism. 

Between the ages of nine and fifteen, the Presbyterian church tried to turn me into a respectable Christian young lady. They failed miserably on all counts, but they inadvertently prepared me to be the atheist activist I am today.

I spent a lot of time at church growing up. On Sundays, I sipped fruit punch after service, watching adults sit around around plastic tables and bond over suburban struggles. During weekend youth retreats, I crawled through rocky creek beds, waking up to sore arms and sermons. And every week, I attended Mission Mondays — a program designed to instill the importance of service into teens and preteens. 

Each week, we had a different mission. One week, our Christian education teacher read us Genesis verses about being stewards of the Earth on the bus on the way to a wildlife rescue where we would build houses for injured owls. A few months later, I sorted clothes at a women’s shelter while learning about the struggles of new mothers. And when there was nothing else to do, I soaked the church’s nursery toys in bleach. I didn’t bother with gloves. I wanted to feel the sting of service long after the evening meal. 

I loved it all. But when it was time for me to be confirmed and made an official member of the church, I refused. I loved my sponsors, both of whom were wise, older women. But I had stopped believing. Congregation members told me that God made me disabled “for a reason.” And that reason was clear: I existed to inspire them. One congregation member informed me that I helped him “move on from [his] mother’s death” every time I limped through the sanctuary. For the middle school Easter reenactment, I was dressed as an angel, given no lines, and made to walk in front of the entire congregation as they all clapped. I was the invisible child everybody stared at. 

Back then, I didn’t know what ableism or inspiration porn was. (Side note: I don’t actually like the term “inspiration porn.” It stigmatizes sex work.) My parents told me that people treated me differently because they assumed I had an intellectual disability. I brought my Honors Chemistry homework to church. It made no difference. I was never going to be a real member of the church even if I were confirmed. Members were meaningful voices in the community. My voice was too disabled to be heard.

El as a preteen dressed as an angel. Their arms are raised. The sun shines behind them.
A photo of the infamous angel incident.

My remaining Christian faith eroded throughout high school. I learned enough science to fill the void god occupied. I experienced the horrors of puberty and realized that I wasn’t going to grow to be the strong woman my mother imagined. Stella Young’s Ted Talk gave me the social model of disability and the church member’s behavior seemed far more appalling. I grew to love my twisted, spastic, queer, little body, and the godless world I lived in. 

Yet, my Christian upbringing still grounds me. I believe, and take great pleasure in, building my life around serving others. I am eager to pour 100 hours per week into advocating for racial, economic, and climate justice. I understand the framework of an enduring faith community and utilize this knowledge to collectively build a loving, resilient activism community. I inspire others, not by being disabled, but by fighting for liberation in an ableist world. 

In January 2020, Mylo reached out to me about helping them lead From the Ground Up because I could manage a budget and write articles. They wanted to build a community that advocated for justice and did so without becoming miserable. I was unemployed, broke, and directionless. I hated all of my 148595837570 potential career plans. But I suddenly saw the light the Christians talk about. Even two months before the pandemic, my struggles and the world’s problems seemed insurmountable. Yet, here was this flawed, ordinary person trying to make a difference. They believed, with far more conviction than many Christians, that the fight for goodness was worth it. I couldn’t resist the temptation to join.

I did not lose my faith when I became an atheist. I will stay up all night writing blog posts, spend hours every week with community members on Discord, research nonprofit fundraising until the librarian runs out of resource suggestions, and create joy every day. I don’t believe that a god will save us from the climate crisis, economic inequality, nor any of the other problems threatening our existence. I have faith that we will save ourselves.