Tags
#resistance, 350.org, Brightflame, movement, moveon, organize, resist, rise, united we stand, unitedwestand, wicca, witch
Resist. A slogan; a hashtag; a non-profit co-founded by Noam Chomsky; half of Rise & Resist, the name of a newly formed NYC group. The Resistance.
Perhaps like me, you are among the millions using #resist as a rallying cry–a call to action. A way to find your people. Yet, something about that word has been bothering me.
Words carry energy and have power. What is resist’s energetic? It’s creating a hard stop. A barrier. We certainly will need to do that. Yet we want to keep our energy flowing. Thus, I propose for our rallying cry and intention Rise & Connect rather than Rise & Resist.
Feel the difference in the energy between those two concepts.
Picture our collective movement: the full, glorious, intersectional sum of all the justice and environmental movements. Picture our movement expanding, brightening, connecting. Forming a beautiful, flexible web that will support us all. That will be resilient in its redundancy, that will organically resist harm, just like the mychorrizal networks in the soil that connect trees through a complex web, enabling them to share resources, cooperating so that the whole forest thrives.
Picture the web of our movement resilient in its ability to adapt, to flex, to wrap around.
Picture that web, rather than a hard barrier that opposing forces can push against, to bounce off of, to amplify their power and effect. Pushing against a web, just gets you stuck. The web absorbs and lessens the energy of opposition.
The concept of Rise & Connect passes my test for what will feed us and not feed the narcissistic, dominating entity that has seized power in the U.S. Narcissists thrive on attention of all sorts. Even the attention of being resisted. They grab the energy, and turn it to their purpose. Let’s not feed the beast!
footnote: to be clear, resistance is necessary. I am talking about the words we use, the intention and the images we hold.