This is a review of some of the work I’ve been involved in during my life, prepared for a presentation.
War and the draft
The Smog Vision (1971)
Volunteer Service Mission
Riley Hospital for Children
Kheprw Institute (KI)
Racial Justice
Pipelines
Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL)
Prairie Awakening/Prairie Awoke
First Nation-Farmer Climate Unity March
Working together
Wet’suwet’en
Mutual Aid
Quaker Indian Boarding Schools
Wisconsin Coalition for Justice in Palestine
Great Plains Action Society
“To survive and cultivate meaning, amid so much collapse, we have to change everything — and we are going to need each other.
The path is plagued with difficulty. At other times, I’ve found myself adrift in uncharted territory — grappling with a question, a feeling, or a trauma that no one around me seems to understand.
I also minimized relationships with people whose politics move them only to theory and not action, or who prioritize critique over engagement. In Let This Radicalize You by Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes — Kaba shares a story of critiquing a movement space, only to have an elder ask, “What have you built?”
However, for now, I have maintained active relationships only with those who understand that action is imperative and that movements require that we fight on multiple fronts. We have to understand that everything we do is both important and not enough.
Hayes, Kelly. Read This When Things Fall Apart: Letters to Activists in Crisis, AK Press. Kindle Edition.
