Organizing Based on Longing and Desire

by Sue Frankel-Streit
Maybe it's a conspiracy. Though Southerners on New Ground (SONG) has been around over 15 years, and I have been in the South all my life, I'd never heard of SONG until I decided to participate in an organizing workshop organized by some friends in Richmond. I've been a bit disillusioned with organizing lately, and a bit burnt out on resistance, not to mention a bit traumatized in my personal life. I think that's why I felt the spirit tugging at me to spend three days learning about an organizing method created and used by some members the long-oppressed and incredibly resilient Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (GLBTQ) community. The goal of the weekend: To provide local activists the tools for intersectional analysis political education, and broad-based organizing based on longing and desire.

Based on longing and desire? I've participated in and facilitated a lot of organizing workshops over the last 20 years, and I've never heard of basing ourselves in longing and desire though that is, of course, what we do.

Right off, the SONG school set itself up in a way that resonated with my battered, scattered spirit. First of all, the facilitators were three women, black, white and Latina, members of the GLBTQ community. Not who I usually see in the front of the room. They began by setting up an altar carving out a space in the room, they said, to hold our longing, fear and grief. All were invited to place something there; invited, but not mandated (nothing in the whole workshop was forced, and we were repeatedly invited to trust our bodies and our feelings in deciding to participate in any given part).

After introductions (name, why here and gender pronoun you use in reference to yourself), we spent time mapping the current landscape of our personal and communal land, work, body and spirit. Throughout the weekend, we referred to this map, and to these four planes, in analyzing our organizing and relationship building tools.

We worked by telling each other stories - about what our ancestors did in hard times, about power, about organizing, about community. We analyzed power - what is it, who has it in which settings, how to reshape it. We talked about leadership - what it is (and who decides what it is), who has it, how to share it. We worked by acting together and by sitting by ourselves drawing pictures. We made space for full translation between Spanish and English, so each person could speak and understand in their most comfortable language. We took deep breaths together and we held each other's pain.

We broke open the whole package of conflict and "conflict resolution" for individuals and communities. We went to places I've never heard these discussions go: How does conflict feel in your body? How do power dynamics play into conflict and its resolution? What about transforming
conflict instead of "mediating" or "resolving" it?

We acted out personal and communal conflicts and tried to help each other become better listeners, more sensitive speakers, more critical thinkers.

I hardly knew any of the participants in the Richmond SONG School, and I was so wiped out by the end that I didn't even get anyone's e-mail address. But I know that I have shared deeply and learned profoundly from an incredible group of often marginalized organizers and courageous human beings. I'm humbled and inspired by people who can bring their whole selves to a circle of strangers and be honest and vulnerable. As far as I'm concerned, that's leadership and that's power. And SONG's facilitators were adamant that every aspect of our time together was geared towards communal organizing for liberational social change.

As the school ended, I thought back on a story one of the facilitators shared when we first gathered. After Katrina struck, she said, "If you didn't have someone's cell number in your personal phone, or know where their mama lived, you couldn't find them". Offices were underwater. Rolodexes were underwater. If you didn't have a personal connection to another organizer, you couldn't find them. What they learned from Katrina, and from listening to the hearts of 100 organizers in the wake of Katrina, was that Southern organizers longed for a movement replenished with healers, for lasting relationships in the work, for critical thinking, and for collective structures. SONG's school is a response to those longings.

My response to SONG is to accept the challenges they put out: that taking care of yourself and your relationships is taking care of the movement; that I am needed and opting out is not an option. And that real, effective, long-lasting organizing means making yourself vulnerable to your companeras and staying in touch - breathing together. Breathing together is, after all, what conspiracy is all about.