Watershed Moments in Minneapolis
Wow, going unplugged for a few days was really relaxing. You ought to try it sometime.
Before returning to our regularly scheduled programming, let me tell you some things I experienced in Minneapolis. I did two events for activists while there, a workshop on stress and grief and a reading of Aftershock focused on planning for high-risk events such as the upcoming demonstrations against the Republican National Convention in twin city St. Paul. Both events left me feeling hopeful and grateful. A couple of days later, I witnessed a remarkable community event that left me feeling even more hopeful and grateful.
The grief and despair workshop was organized by the Animal Rights Coalition which, rather than keeping it to themselves and other animal advocates, went out of their way to advertise it widely to activists of all kinds. And so it was that only about half of the people crowded into a vegan storefront were animal advocates, the remainder including environmentalists, legal advocates for activists, community organizers, and other sundry leftists. That made it all the more touching to me when, practicing empathy, activists were saying “me too” across the circle to those who had shared details of their own struggles with the significant stress and grief associated with trying to make a difference as damaged animals on a damaged planet. I was also touched when a social justice activist said that he was glad people were speaking up for dogs at the pound just as he speaks up for homeless people and when an animal advocate said that she was so grateful to know that social justice activists are working on the problems that she cares so much about but doesn’t have time to also address because nobody has time to work on everything.
The reading and discussion — held at the collectively operated Arise! anarchist bookstore — was attended mostly by people involved in organizing for the upcoming RNC protests but a few animal advocates rounded out the crowd and I was glad to see that. Upon arrival, I could barely contain my excitement at the wonderfulness of the bookstore itself and was almost overcome with glee when they showed me that they had set up chairs in a weedy vacant lot outside the back door for the event. So it was that, surrounded by the weedy evidence of the power of nature to persist even within cities, I and a group of mostly quite young activists talked about the intersections among personal, community, and ecosystemic trauma before getting down to the business of detailing strategies for keeping oneself and one’s comrades as healthy as possible in the context of high-risk activism. In the course of that discussion, I was heartened to learn of the care with which the NorthStar Health Collective is preparing to offer care to activists who come to St. Paul for the demonstrations.
At both events, one or more participants said that a particular piece of information was useful to them, so let me go ahead and share that here. Rather than trying to recreate how I said it at the events, why don’t I just quote from Aftershock:
[Psychologist Carl] Rogers identified three things that every helping relationship must offer: empathy, genuineness, and unconditional positive regard. Empathy is recognition and understanding of the other person’s feelings. Genuineness is being real in the fullest sense of the word. Unconditional positive regard is caring with no strings attached. These three things, offered steadily and consistently, are often enough to effect healing. Even when more is needed, these three things must be present for any relationship to serve as a sanctuary.
Let me expand: Empathy is feeling with another person — really trying to put yourself in their shoes (or the lack thereof) — rather than feeling for them. Genuineness means being honest, present, and who you purport to be. Unconditional positive regard means valuing somebody for who they are, not who you wish they would be or what they can do for you. Together, these three things have been proved to have a healing effect. They may not always be all that somebody needs but they are the baseline that we all ought to be offering each other every day. And — please note! — this doesn’t mean that we always agree or never confront one another about anything. Genuineness might mean saying something that somebody doesn’t want to hear — like “I’ve noticed you’ve been getting drunk every night ever since that open rescue” or “I disagree with you about that strategy.” Empathy and unconditional positive regard help you say such things in ways that lead toward personal or political growth rather than towards conflict and stasis.
Of course I couldn’t spend five days in a city without checking out at least one community event. Lucky for me, my local tour guide knew that the street festival celebrating water and blessing a new drinking fountain in conjunction with the city and state’s sesquicentennial would be something beyond the wildest dreams of a pagan from anywhere outside of the watery city of Minneapolis.
The festival, organized by In the Heart of the Beast Mask and Puppet Theatre (HOBT), spanned a couple of city blocks with a stage and a series of interactive exhibits designed to teach community members of all ages not just why and how to respect and preserve water but also to realize that we, who are mostly water and are always drinking it in and excreting it out, are part of the watershed. Meanwhile, on stage were a series of skits, songs, and speeches culminating in perhaps the most remarkable ceremony I’ve ever witnessed.
Free public drinking fountains are, of course, essential if we want to wean people from those wasteful and destructive plastic bottles. Minneapolis is in the process of installing a series of new public fountains designed by artists. Besides helping to spark that project, HOBT repaired and decorated the drinking fountain within its own building, which is home to numerous community activities. The opening of the revitalized fountain, from which everyone was invited to drink, was the purpose of a ceremony that brought activists, musicians, artists, civic leaders, and community members together in shared appreciation of the water that sustains and flows through all of us.
The ceremony began with some chanting, drumming, and dancing in the midst of which oversized animals — two birds that looked a bit like cranes and two mammals that looked a bit like deer, all an otherworldly white — suddenly appeared within the crowd. The “birds” stretched their wings and their necks before retreating inside the building to stand on either side of the fountain. The “deer,” which must have been people on stilts, walked through the crowd nodding benevolently at everyone before standing on either side of the door to the building, beckoning people to enter. Inside the building, a multiracial Gamelan ensemble played music that sounded like a trickling brook as the people wound around to take their turn drinking from a fountain decorated with spiraling tile in the most beautiful blue. After drinking, people could and did use water-based paint in various shades of blue to make small flags of appreciation to hang from the spider-web of strings that criss-crossed the room.
Doesn’t sound so powerful, now that I type it out. Let me share with you what I wrote in my journal the next morning:
“Yesterday, at the wildly pagan blessing of the drinking fountain in downtown Minneapolis, I was so deeply moved by the ritual that I burst into tears, the water on my face affirming that I am water too.
“Why? Why did it so deeply touch me? First, I think of the archaic symbology: The giant deer with their antlers of branches nodding, nodding, nodding; the oversized white water birds bobbing, bobbing, bobbing; the spiral circling endlessly. The last time I was so deeply moved by such symbols was when I saw them etched into the walls of a cathedral in Lucca and felt the devotion of pagans — so often mysterious by necessity — echoing across the centuries. And there I was to collect the message, a vegan lesbian feminist in 21st century Italy, reading the coded devotion to mother earth left behind by the pagan builders working on a cathedral erected (perhaps by force, perhaps on a site sacred to Gaia, and what about the mules who hauled all of those blocks of marble?) in the process of state formation.
“But here in Minneapolis, which draws its name from sacred waters, it was different. Here, in an overt subversion (or submersion) of state celebration, the pagan elements were at the forefront and regular people were participating with enthusiasm in a public ritual that reconnected them to the underground wells within themselves as well as with the waters of the world.”
And that was my trip to Minneapolis, or at least the public parts thereof. Now it’s back to the sanctuary, back to writing and strategic thinking, for me. I’d really like some comments on the “Now’s the Time” post from a few days before I left, as I’ll be revising that for a handout to distribute at the upcoming AR2008 conference in DC.
August 9th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
[...] and now reprinted in The Nature of Home ) by ecofeminist Greta Gaard (who was responsible for my recent watershed moment in Minneapolis, drawing me to that city and taking me to that event): You believe you are alone. You are afraid. [...]