Happy Black History Month
A WORD FROM IRIS
These days my collaborators, clients, neighbors, friends, and all of us who believe in building a just nation and world are experiencing a range of heavy emotions. On top of daily acts of corruption, mismanagement, and cruelty from the current Administration, we’re dealing with impacts on our day-to-day lives – from job losses and workplace intimidation, to soaring food prices and fears about the future.
I want you to know I see you. We are not wrong for continuing the work of our ancestors and pushing this nation forward. We are not wrong for insisting that our workplaces and institutions root out and repair the inequities baked into their norms and policies. Most importantly, we are not wrong for highlighting how dire things become when our efforts get derailed.
Justice and liberation work are still vital. If you are still in a position to do this work directly (either in professional or public capacity), while staying safe, get creative. Be stealthy. Organize, participate in direct action, support aid efforts, and protect the most-targeted people around you if you can.
If you are less safe, stable, or able to agitate directly, allow yourself to receive support and protection from those who can. Know that even interpersonal or anonymous acts of kindness and care can be resistance. Whatever your circumstance, remember that we keep us safe. What’s one thing you can commit to doing – within yourself, your home, your community, or your organization/workplace – to resist?
CELEBRATING BLACK HISTORY
The past is full of lessons we can use in the present to shape our future. This Black History Month let’s remember:
• There have always been safe ways to sustain and resist. While rebellions and escapes made the news and history books, enslaved people also undermined the system in subtle ways. Work slowdowns and sabotaging tools or crops, for example, were common tactics that made significant impact, while being hard to pinpoint (and therefore hard to punish).
• Collective organizing works. This spirit of collective resistance continued through and long after Emancipation. In the 1940s, an organizer named Robert Black and his people working in North Carolina’s tobacco factories would respond to unreasonable quotas by overloading the machines, knowing the repair process took days. And when the Black women preparing tobacco leaves by hand in these factories had trouble keeping up with the pace, the Black men harvesting the tobacco would pack the delivery baskets more loosely so the women would have less work to do.
• Our labor is a tool for resistance. Through the 1960s, Black and brown domestic workers resisted abuse or wage theft by collectively refusing to work for certain white families, or threatening to quit just before their employer was hosting guests. For more about these strategies, read this article – and take a page from the playbook by collaborating with others to redirect power in your organization.
• Economic boycotts work. The Montgomery Bus Boycott, as famously catalyzed by Rosa Parks’ civil disobedience, was successful because it was well-planned, widely sustained, and because it nearly bankrupted the bus company. Today we can look to Starbucks, McDonald’s, and Target to see how boycotts still work. Consider shopping locally and/or bartering within your communities whenever able.
• It is revolutionary to reject despair. All forms of systemic oppression and the people who perpetuate them count on our fear and exhaustion. The more we feel powerless, confused, and isolated, the easier it is to deprive us of rights and freedoms. Stay encouraged. Remember that liberation work is a marathon, not a sprint, and that if we can envision a future where justice is centered and protected, that means it is possible to create. Lean into joy, rest, and solidarity – the way we always have.
Pictured: Us- resisting, organizing, resting and centering joy all Black History Year long