I have come to understand myself as having roughly two “specializations” or focuses when it comes to the radical thinking that I most enjoy: popular education/political development and structures for political organization. The reasons why I have these focuses are 1) I believe that the left heavily—almost pathologically—overemphasizes social analysis and so I prefer to keep my head tilted toward vision and strategy, 2) my visions and strategies continuously tell me that revolutionary work is fundamentally educational in nature, and 3) I believe that building dynamic, healthy, high-capacity organizations is perhaps the most critical factor in the success of that revolutionary work. I adore thinking about education so much that it has become my day job. I am so gaga for all things organization that organizational daydreaming is one of my favorite free time hobbies.

You can imagine, then, how baffling and tantalizing a puzzle it is for me that the U.S. left has such a spotty history with building revolutionary organizations. I’ve been writing about this a lot lately, and I just wanted to share some notes about different aspects that I’ve been thinking about.

—

When I was 12, in Oak Harbor, Washington, I was playing ball tag with my best friend when I witnessed his neighbor charge out of his house yelling, and then brutally kick his dog in the ribs with steel-toed boots. I cried almost instantly. I didn’t care that my friend might see me and think I was weird. This was wrong, and I cried. I then called my mom to tell her and get advice. She gave me the number for some animal control and welfare organizations on Whidbey Island, which I later called, and then she paused and praised me for how sensitive a person I was. This was a defining moment in my identity development. I was a sensitive person. I defended an animal and I wasn’t afraid to cry when things weren’t right.

In Guatemala, in the present day, our family has two dogs that no one pets or plays with, which serve simply as night guards. There are four or five other dogs who come to hang out and socialize, steal some food, kill a duckling, or go to the bathroom. Along with all the rest of my family, I yell for them to leave. I curse and complain with the chorus. When one of the men in the family came charging out with a leather belt to scatter them yelping, I said nothing. In fact, I think I was happy that he was taking care of a problem. When one of their dogs got in a fight and its tail got infected, I don’t remember feeling anything. I merely nodded in the affirmative as the family predicted how many days it would have left.

What happened to me? If I am still a sensitive person, and supposedly still a dog lover, how is it that I let myself become so desensitized?

A surface analysis might just attribute this to individual personality changes, growing up, getting jaded—that something changed in me on an individual level. But I believe this has far more to do with the overwhelming power that human culture has to both submerge and unearth our best selves. In this case, I didn’t just magically become less sensitive, I changed to conform with a culture that expected a far less sensitive—and more violent—relationship with animals. For the most part, I have prioritized my family’s smooth (read: with minimal conflicts or controversies) acceptance of me over my love of animals. It’s just one example of the situational moral and emotional shifts we make all the time to fit in with our surrounding cultures.

I think these dynamics are important, perhaps even key, to building a winning revolutionary politics. People rarely change, for better or worse, as isolated individuals. We change as cultural participants. Prison guards may or may not enter their jobs with previous violent or sadistic conditioning, but you can bet that almost all of them retire as worse human beings. Insurrectionist and individualist anarchists might wax poetic about the liberation of individual desires and the destruction of a barcode based existence, but they sure do tend to talk and dress and party all the same as each other. John Brown wasn’t just individually moved as a white person to violently resist slavery, he came from an intense American masculinity that melded with an intense church tradition that told him slavery was a sin. We are social beings, cultural beings. Our best and worst human potentials, our heroism and our villainy, unfold out of our common cultural pools. This doesn’t have to be seen as a problem. It’s just a feature of our common humanity. If we want a revolution, we must revolutionize our cultures. Revolution is cultural change.

But here is where many radical people get into a sort of chicken-and-egg debate cycle. How can you change a culture without transforming the material conditions within institutions? But how can you change institutions without changing the cultures of those within them? Round and round we go, and so many of our movements harden into positions that are either mechanically focused on institutional organizing at one end of the spectrum, or exclusively spiritual, counter-cultural, navel-gazing at the other end. Our way through these debates is the synthesis of the opposing positions. Yes, revolutionary work, at any level, is cultural—even spiritual—change. But institutions, through their accretion and solidification of social traditions and relationships, are the engines that generate culture. In fact, what makes any institution viable is its ability to create and sustain a specific pattern of social behavior—a culture. To try to change culture outside of institutional change is like continuously mopping the floor of a flooded house without ever thinking to turn the faucet off. Thus, revolutionary work is counter-cultural, even spiritual, work, but it should be grounded in the concrete realities of both existing and alternative institutions, not just diffuse culture building that lacks institutional ties.

This is why I’m so passionate about the organizational questions facing revolutionaries, and why I’m so baffled by how awkward the left is about handling them. I believe that explicitly revolutionary organizations are crucial vehicles for changing culture. They are the missing link between external organizing and internal process. However I see too many people who see them as either unnecessary, or as something for the far-off future, or as some kind of necessary evil.

I imagine the totalitarian and bureaucratic legacy of Marxism-Leninism is a major culprit in this, but I observe that leftists are hyper-wary of organizational projects—especially anything beyond single issue or campaign work. It’s like we go into the work holding our nose, or dipping our toes in, not wanting to get too close or too deep. I imagine, like my dog example, that we are worried about creating a culture which dehumanizes us, which, in the name of efficiency, strips us of what we love most about our radical selves. Certainly, building any organization carries this danger. We can become organizational robots, puppets to the mass line that so many party-builders of the past have become. But guess what: avoiding organizational questions doesn’t change that danger, it just makes the acculturation process more chaotic, informal, and implicit. Anti-organizational milieus can be just as conformist and dehumanizing. In fact, I would argue that our lack of organizations makes radicals far more vulnerable to the acculturating tendencies of the dominant culture. We just get good at hiding it when we go to parties, meetings, and fundraisers.

When we try to avoid organizational experimentation, we do avoid some dangers, but we also miss out on huge transformative opportunities. See, the institutional nature of organizations can be just as much of an asset as a liability. By institutionalizing practices that are liberatory, reflective, compassionate, inspiring, and rooted in ethics of solidarity, we have the potential to accelerate the process of cultural change way beyond what any informal scene or milieu can offer. People change faster, and more profoundly, when they are changing within a group that they are committed to, and that is committed to them.

I know this, because I’ve experienced it in quite an unlikely place: the small high school where I teach. Officially, I work for the State, in an institution that is unquestionably part of a large and problematic bureaucracy. But, damn, the intensity and quality of the collaboration that our school has been able to generate is thrilling. It’s some of the most satisfying work I’ve ever done, I relish it every day, working face to face, building a culture with people who don’t even share my politics or interests. The cohesiveness of the institution, our collective commitment to its mission, and the humanizing work structures that we’ve built allow us to build a culture that makes us better teachers, and better people. Why is it so hard for leftists to build organizations with that same dynamic?

I am optimistic about our ability to create organizations that hold radical values and visions at their core, and which institutionalize practices of both mutual aid and mutual inspiration. In fact, I don’t think it even has to be as hard as we make it. Like I said earlier, I think the left’s overemphasis on social analysis—a process of breaking society and people apart with our sharp radical scalpels—actually also makes it harder for us to come together. By relaxing a little, softening our edges a little, and just getting together to do some pretty good work around some pretty good ideas, I think we could get so far. I want to see us experimenting so much more with new organizational forms!

Sometimes simplistic identity politics are just easier than actually thinking about the realities of power and relationships. Over the years, I have been served well by facing potential conflict by just bowing, acknowledging the depth and obscenity of my privileges, and asking for readmission to the good graces of my more marginalized friends or comrades. Not manipulatively either, I’m talking genuinely believing that my privileges simply make me more wrong than people who’ve faced more violence, or trauma, or exploitation. The formula that this approach provides can ravage one’s sense of agency and self-worth, but it eases tension, and it allows one into all sorts of spaces where one would not normally be invited.

The problem is, those kinds of politics aren’t just simplistic, they are dangerous. They are patronizing and flat. The truth…god!…the truth is just so much harder and messier.

I’ve been here in Guatemala for almost two months, which is actually one of my longest consecutive stretches yet. In that time, I’ve spent nearly every moment in this same house with my family. That much time in close quarters with between 12 and 23 people? You don’t need an MTV reality show to know that things are going to get real. Pet peeves. Petty and not so petty conflicts. Days without speaking to certain people. Sulking, simmering, then later singing together. Always, at least one person is having a bad day or is feeling sick, and on a good number of days that includes me.

This is to be expected from any extended family trip, I know. Especially with in-laws. But how does one manage that when the landscape of culture and power is as freaking weird as it is in our case? What does it mean when your in-laws feel comfortable teasing you all day long, playing with you, but when they are actually angry with you, they say nothing because they know that you are their sole provider? You have the power to cut them off at any level you want, from luxuries like cable and ice cream, all the way to electricity, health care, and food. How does that not just totally screw up the authenticity of a relationship? How do I handle, at the same time, that Glendi and I have all this power and responsibility, but I also feel like I’m never allowed to say “No” to anything, because then I will be a hoarding, cheap, privileged gringo? What happens when I know I’m being lied to or manipulated, as sometimes happens?

Tonight, I crossed the line from playful family banter to being a North American ogre, and I just don’t know how to process it cleanly. I don’t usually write about details like this, but this time I feel like I was sufficiently in the wrong that it won’t embarrass or shame my family to share it. I need to write this out, and maybe it can help some others in my life have a little window into the constant, exhausting complexities of our family situation.

Here’s the story.

In rural Guatemala, the word agua doesn’t mean water. In reference to beverages, it means soda. If you want to drink actual water, you need to ask for agua pura. The Guatemalans I know almost don’t drink plain water at all—usually only after playing an intense sport or if they are sick or something. With their three meals a day, they drink sugary coffee, sugary packaged juice (like Tang or Kool-Aid), sugary soda, sugary boiled water, or a sugary corn-flour water that they make. They think plain water is a very gringo (or canche, which literally means blonde-haired) thing to enjoy. They think it tastes bad, and they often make jokes that it’s more for animals to drink than people. I know this, I’m used to this, and I’ve been fine weathering 6 years of constant comments about how weird I am for what I prefer to drink at the table. I’ve always been a big water fan.

Fine. This has been fine for years, and mostly I’ve just been fine with boiled water from the family well.

Then comes the baby, and in consideration for her baby stomach and our decision to not give our baby coffee and sugared drinks, we started buying big jugs of pure water. The whole family could access them, but the family still made constant comments that they were for the baby and also for me, because I prefer water to coffee and other sugary stuff.

Two jugs a week, supposedly only being used by a few people, because no one else even likes the stuff.

Over time, I start realizing that the two jugs are being finished in 2-3 days, with me accessing a tiny portion of the water. I’m playing basketball with the family every day, and I’m drinking almost nothing. My pee is almost always yellow, often dark yellow. Some days I’m only drinking 2 or 3 coffee mugs of water in an entire day that includes almost 2 hours of intense basketball. I can’t find water because it’s being used for juice packets, or because everyone else is drinking pure water as well.

When the water is gone, few people even mention it. They go back to their sugared coffee and sugared boiled water etc. The baby doesn’t have pure water to drink and neither do I. Not until the next delivery in 3 days, or unless we go out and buy more from the local stores.

Okay, context set—from my perspective, at least. So, here’s what happened tonight.

It was dinner, just a few hours ago. Chile Rellenos. Delicious. The family, as usual, is drinking sugared coffee. I have my bag of pure water, which we had to buy earlier today because there wasn’t any water and no one had said anything for a few days—I don’t like to be demanding here. Suddenly, I see one of the teenaged boys asking for pure water instead. At lunch, I had noted that 4 other family members had drunk from the bags of pure water along with their coffee also.

In the sarcastic, even caustic style that I see my family tends to use, I said loudly to the whole table, “Ah, I see how it is. Whenever there’s no pure water here, no one cares, no one complains, and I just go without water for days. But when we finally have water, everyone suddenly wants it. You all finish it in two days and then I don’t have any water any more!”

I was smiling. For me, this was a family nit pick, not actually something that’s a huge deal for me. My family, however, was not smiling. The teenager pushed his pure water away in a “never mind” gesture. Glendi left the table, her food untouched, and sobbed in her bedroom. One of the twins later ran to his bed—which I share with him—and cried for 20 minutes.

Glendi told me that I was bitter and yelling and that I hugely insulted her family, claiming that pure water is only good enough for the gringo and that no one else should be able to have it, not even the young ones. The twin, crying and crying, told me that if he had millions he could buy all the water he wants, but since he’s poor, only the rich, proud gringo gets to have the water.

With one side of my mouth, I apologized for hurting feelings and being insensitive. With the other side of my mouth…immediate defenses. I explained that my tone was an attempt to use the family’s sarcastic style, and that I actually was mostly just ribbing on them for what I saw as hypocrisy. I told them that of course I’d actually prefer for them to drink pure water, but if they want to, then we should buy enough for everyone, or we should boil enough, and all it would require is spending less money on powdered drinks and sugar…that it was an issue of family priorities, and pure water is only a priority when it’s in the house—for me and the baby’s consideration—and when it’s not in the house it’s not even an afterthought.

Nothing. They went to bed angry and hurt. See, I crossed a line of class and culture that is so hard to uncross. I exposed myself as privileged and as an outsider, and that’s just how it goes. Here’s what I let slip from my mind: although I am one of their sole providers, it is highly humiliating and insulting for me to ever criticize their consumption decisions, especially with the kids and especially with life-affirming and healthy things like water. I understand how they read what they did into my words, and I understand how there were so many other ways that I could have broached the subject. I also understand my reasons. It feels so messy to me.

This particular situation will clearly wash over after a few days. The family will probably whisper and gossip about it for awhile when I’m not around. It will probably make it to some circles of aunts, uncles, and in-laws. Can you believe what Jeremias said?

That’s fine with me. I think it’s important for my family to be able to be mad at me. It’s healthy and authentic. However, I wish we could talk about it more openly, rather than either speaking in sarcasm or in broad class strokes.

That’s the thing, though. How do we talk about this stuff openly? Because the need for money is so constant, because Glendi and I are always giving so much, there are so many little screw ups or moments like this, so many reminders of the one-sided nature of our situation, so many examples of how the power dynamics distort the fullness of our relationships. I don’t know how to navigate to a place where we discuss this openly and healthily. For example, why didn’t I just use my abundance of conflict resolution and even teaching skills to just directly address my frustration about water weeks ago? (seriously, I sometimes don’t know where the hell so many of skills go when I’m down here!)

So hard, so sad, so confusing. And I just end up feeling really bad about myself, while still also feeling unheard.

I wish I knew more people with these same unique family dynamics, but I still haven’t had much luck. I could really use more people to talk to about this.

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been writing every day but, with the exception of a few spontaneous poems, little of it has been showing up on this blog. That’s because I’m finally earnestly putting my energy into a couple of bigger writing projects that have me really excited. I’ve been preferring to keep my head down, working quietly until these pieces are further along.

One of the pieces that’s really pushing me is an attempt to develop a more sophisticated and articulate synthesis of some of my favorite ideas about revolutionary strategy and organization. I’ve been thinking and writing about these topics for years, and I’ve never attempted to publish or even share any of that writing beyond this page—which has an average of just 16 readers! Now I’m ready to change that, as hard as it feels sometimes.

One thing that has been encouraging to me in the last couple of weeks is the recent report, “More Than We Imagined” by a grassroots research/listening project called the Ear to the Ground Project. The authors of this slick report interviewed more than 150 committed activists about the state of the movement, and what the authors have to share is quite encouraging. You should read it. It’s a pretty quick read.

There’s a lot to process in the report, but here are just two things that stood out to me:

1) This report provides a little window into just how much the U.S. radical left has matured in its ability to handle complexity, diversity, and disagreement. For far too long, I believe that the left the world over has been pinned to the ground by a certain antagonistic and polemical style of idea-building that has its roots in the cantankerous personalities of Marx and Lenin. That approach to disagreement has done significant damage to our ability to build a meaningful movement of movements, and it’s something that we don’t talk about enough. One of the many things that I really appreciated about David Gilbert’s memoir of the Weather Underground Organization, Love and Struggle, was that he explicitly named this phenomenon for the problem it is. However, this report shows a healthy, optimistic, and cooperative orientation that is becoming increasingly common on the left.

On page 20, the authors even state, “We originally planned to map out various ‘camps’ to show the central debates within participants’ responses; however, distinct camps did not emerge. Instead there was a high level of consensus. This was a surprise to us. This is not to say there are not differences, but the differences arose in degrees of emphasis rather than outright disagreement.”

This is extra good news because my read of the report is that it skews pretty clearly to the post New Communist Marxist side of the left—especially toward a particular tendency of activist-of-color-led Marxism-Leninism that has brought us a ton of the current campaign and base-building formations we see across the country. To see that the U.S’s most dynamic and powerful Marxist tendencies are demonstrating this kind of dialogical style is great for the entire U.S. left and it should really be acknowledged as a milemarker toward a more sustainable revolutionary current in this country.

2) When asked to identify movement weaknesses and challenges, respondents said:

-60% said that our current organizational forms are insufficient.
-50% said the movement is fragmented.
-33% said that our movement and organizations are not “at scale.”
-33% said we lack a clear, inspiring vision of the world we are fighting for.
-32% said that our grassroots organizing and activism lacks a shared long-term strategy.
-30% of participants said that the culture of the social justice movement is too negative,
and reproduces destructive practices we’ve learned from the broader society.
-25% of participants said that the disproportionate power of foundations and donors in the 501(c)(3) system is harmful to movement building efforts.
-15% of participants said there is a lack of investment in grassroots organizing in key communities and sectors—namely in the South, in African American communities and in rural areas.

The authors also point to four problematic dynamics related to building a better movement culture:

-Self-marginalization and “localism,” or thinking too small
-Racist and patriarchal practices within the movement
-The movement does not act like we plan to win lasting and fundamental change in our communities, workplaces or the world
-We have an inability to have healthy dialogue, debate and disagreement

While it’s always tough to hear a list of problems and challenges, I find these observations highly validating. I think participants in this research project really are highlighting some key difficulties that we face, and I think so many of these problems are interrelated. As I am arguing in my upcoming piece about organization and strategy, I believe that issues of resources, political culture, self-marginalization, lack of “revolutionary confidence,” and fragmentation actually have a lot to do with the first problem mentioned—our lack of experience and experimentation with more dynamic and open organizational forms. I think the organization question, which really unfolds into a bigger question of our daily movement practices, has so many things to offer us on all these counts—if we are willing to go beyond the old ground of party-building, non-profits, cadre groups, and collectives.

I’m running out of internet time, so that’s all for now, but I’m so excited about writing, reading, and thinking these days!

August 2013, 14 Months Old

Here in the Caserio, they keep thinking you’re a boy.
After the correction, always the short pause,
then the question,
“Why no earrings?”

My love, forgive me,
but how could I welcome you here,
with a ritual so full of metaphor
for so many things to come?

To hold your head in my palm as I sing,
those same songs that help you sleep,
while another hand
quietly rubs the ice that numbs you.
To leverage this smile and soft voice that you know,
as the needle tears through.
To see you scream, as I pat and coo,
as this thing
that has nothing to do with who you are,
or who you could be,
this thing that was mined and made
by hands we will never know,
becomes a part of you.

This thing they will know even before your name.

Almost there, almost complete.
Here, just a little clasp
to keep your body
from pushing it away.
And here, babe,
just some dabs of alcohol,
because this thing is want to bring infection.
But after a few days, look!
All better. So pretty.
Your skin has grown
around the thing.
Adapted to the lifeless and cold.
As if it were natural.

It isn’t.

My love, forgive me,
but I figured that this world
will try enough enough on its own
to stab you,
puncture you,
and tell you that’s who you are.
I didn’t think it was a father’s job
to help it along.

All well-worn trails radiate calmness,
where so many boots, and shoes, and sandals,
paws, galoshes, and fleshy summer toes,
have worked the earth down into rounded edges,
like the dulling of a knife.
The line is almost fuzzy, out of focus,
between the smooth and clean undulations
of brown clay
and the unkempt edges of grass, forest, jungle.
It suggests an unspoken collective contract
between thousands,
that by asynchronously walking this same ground,
–you earlier, and me right now–
all those messy things might be held back,
kept in their place.

These are the properties that trails have.
They are social relationships, set in slow motion.

And just as the same path
can hold its rough, yet unmistakable integrity
as it grazes green fields,
then cuts deserts,
dips into seasonal creeks,
or polishes down the jagged rocks from other years’ avalanches,
it can bring the same familiarity
to fashion and fad,
to rituals of control.
To horror. To loss.
Just as the disparaging dinner table remark,
the offhand comment about your body,
is easier to take when it’s not the first,
so is each bloody sidewalk,
diabetic death,
wad of safety money rolled into newspapers,
made so much softer, even soothing,
by the rhythm of its repetition alone.

“It’s okay, my friend,”
the trail always whispers,
“you are not the first to see this thing.
Just keep going.
I need your lone, humble tread,
to make it easier for there to be a next time.”

A quick family update, by the numbers.

These days, there are 23 of us in Glendi and I’s orbit of family responsibility:

-Glendi, me, and Amanecer (3)
-Mariana (19), Ivan (16), Josue (14), Juan Jose and Jose Juan (both 10)
-Isabel (22) and her husband, Oswaldo
-Walter (23), his partner Gaby (23), and their newborn, Mario David (4 months)
-Mario (26), his wife Estefany (20), and their daughter, Genesis (4)
-Ines (37), her husband Oswaldo (40?), and their children Celeste (17), Anavi (15), Alan (12), Pamela (10), and Melany (5)

We are the complete providers for 12 of these people, and we have regular backup responsibilities for the other 11–especially regarding emergency expenses and healthcare.

In the last two years, we have lost two immediate family members–Glendi’s parents–and we have gained two babies and two new spouses/partners.

In the last year alone, beyond the health crises and deaths of Glendi’s parents, we have struggled to help our family with:

-Adopting the four youngest siblings so they can eventually live in the U.S. with us
-Two lay-offs and chronic unemployment
-Violent extortion for multiple thousands of dollars (twice)
-Robbery at knifepoint in a bus
-A piece of rebar through a kid’s foot
-A piece of corrugated metal stuck in a scalp (that was me!)
-Scarlet fever
-Life-threatening post-childbirth sepsis
-Multiple staph infections (potentially MRSE?)
-Ongoing type-2 diabetes
-Stage 1 uterine cancer
-Potentially hereditary liver problems causing systemic allergic reactions

Since I joined the family in 2007, and with the tremendous help from so many great friends and family members, our positive material impact has included:

-Building 1 1/2 new houses on the family property
-Building a store that ran for a year
-Buying two used cars (the first of which was stolen at the hospital), for safer and cheaper family transport
-Buying a motorcycle for Glendi’s brother to commute with
-Getting internet into the house
-Building the family’s first septic tank, shower, and two toilets (thanks to all who donated!)
-Buying two additional plots of land for agricultural produce and our eventual school
-Getting two family members graduated from secondary school, and one into college so far!

Sometimes it’s so easy to get lost in the details from week to week that I forget just how much we’ve done together, how much we’ve been through. Sure, a lot of this stuff is painful, but it’s all punctuated with so many hilarious and loving moments. I feel so honored and fortunate to be a part of this family, and to be able to help in the ways that I am able…which is never enough.

At around the same time that I read the news of George Zimmerman’s acquittal, 4 people were shot just up the road from the house here in Guatemala, as they were commuting in the same truck that Glendi’s siblings usually take to go pick coffee. A 7 year-old girl and her 16 year-old brother died in their mother’s arms. A man who was shot in the groin ended up losing both of his legs. If Zimmerman’s trial sent the message that black lives don’t matter—which it did—then what of these campesinos, whose deaths will not even lead to an arrest?

There is a connection here, between what is happening in Guatemala and what happened to Trayvon Martin in Florida—which itself is just a brutal extension of the profiling and violence that youth of color face across the United States. There are layers of lessons here, but to see them all we have to go beyond the easy conclusions about race and fear. We have to be willing to step beyond simple liberal outrage and even self-identification with Zimmerman’s fears of black masculinity. Of course, there is truth at that level, but if we want to just wallow there we might as well just loop Ludacris’ scenes from the movie Crash over and over on top of the cable news coverage and we’ll have all the in-depth analysis we need. People across our planet have been taught to fear black people. Yes, it’s absolutely true. I am absolutely included. But that is not all this is about.

What Zimmerman did wasn’t just the tragic overreaction of a scared and damaged man, and his acquittal wasn’t just a lone aberration of justice. Zimmerman’s trial was a personalized example of a deep yet unspoken U.S. doctrine: that disproportionate and deadly force is entirely justified in order to defend American comfort from even the slightest rumblings of The Other. Trayvon Martin was an outsider in a gated community, and he made Zimmerman uncomfortable. When Zimmerman acted on that racist discomfort and confronted Martin, Martin did what no Other is allowed to do, he responded naturally with appropriate defensiveness to a threatening and abusive person. That is, Martin stepped out of his place, and Florida law gave Zimmerman the legal right to defend himself—which is to say, defend his sense of entitlement and comfort—and he killed Martin right there.

Those of us North Americans who live comfortably in our privileges find it easy to shake our heads and pout our lips. We can cry for Trayvon and we can wear black solidarity hoodies. We can wring our hands and acknowledge the fearful Zimmerman that lives in all of us. I personally have no qualms with these responses. I must and will acknowledge my own racism and my place in propping up such a racist order. But let’s be real. What Zimmerman thought he was doing for his neighborhood is basically what happens each time our country sends out a drone strike, sponsors a coup, or authorizes an ICE raid. Self-defense. Standing our ground. The comfort levels of those that matter must be defended, at all costs to The Other.

What Zimmerman did was scarcely different from what the powerful have continued to do to Guatemala since well before 1954: strike out at even the slightest sign of justified self-defense with completely disproportionate brutality. The consequence of Zimmerman’s actions and acquittal is a U.S. environment where the lesser value–the Otherness–of black people’s lives has been re-affirmed, even by legal institutions. The simmering consequence of these same dynamics in Guatemala is that Glendi’s friends, neighbors, family members all have been touched by countless deaths that no one outside of these communities even cares about. They are just another permanent Other on the world stage. They pick our coffee and our bananas, but they are easily replaced.

If there is any truth to the connections that I’m making, then any calls for post-trial racial healing and introspection ring hollow without a far deeper soul-searching. If we are so interested in healing, are we willing to relinquish our comforts so that we can take our bloody boot off the necks of half the planet? Are we willing to stand down our drones and our bases and militarized police forces?

No? Am I being too extreme, too rhetorical? Then how convenient, and how useless so much chatter about one trial in Florida.

Stand still,
Let me scrub that brackish line
Where something rose and then receded.
-The Weakerthans, “Watermark”

Sometimes it’s almost comforting how predictable my patterns of self-sabotage are. Just as I’m gearing up to not only write more, but also to pursue avenues towards polishing and publishing my writing, the voice steps in and tells me, “Jeremy, there is nothing new under the sun, and even if there were, it sure as hell won’t be coming from you. Sit down and shut up.” They are some damn strong psychological shackles. Damn strong. Looked at with a little bit of distance, it’s actually breathtaking how intently, how systematically that voice scrambles to pull out every possible piece of evidence to shut me down.

There is a prison strike in California happening right now, Jeremy. There is more revolution happening in Egypt. It’s history in the making. You aren’t doing shit about it, so anything you have to say about anything is clearly coming from the sidelines. Come back when you’re actually in the game.

Jeremy, do you see all these other articles and blog posts you are reading? You see those little numbers that are strewn all over the place? Those are called footnotes—and you don’t ever use them because you are a fucking wannabe who just spouts stuff from the top of your head with no grounding in any real discourse.

Jeremy, don’t you see the thirteen, fourteen, twenty-six errors that you’ve made down here in Guatemala today alone? Who are you to have anything to say about justice, equality, change? You can’t even maintain a great conversation at the family breakfast table.

Really, my friend? You are going to write about how relationships are key to movement building? Ha! Let’s have a look at your own scattered husks of starved and roach-infested friendships, the zero birthdays you remember on Facebook, the trail of forgotten promises.

I don’t know why this voice hates me so much. I don’t know what I did to deserve its rancor, its unremitting bile. I try to be grounded, I try to remind myself of all the other people who share their writing, warts and all, and to recognize that they are doing just fine after the fact. Almost robotically, I chant through all the reasons why I think I am good, am worthy, do have something to contribute. This voice doesn’t give a shit. This voice knows all the ways to rip apart any rational argument I might have.

A little while ago, I read a book called the War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles, by Steven Pressfield. It’s got quite a following, and that’s because it’s like this nice, compact Art of War aimed at that little voice. Pressfield calls that little voice “Resistance.” Here’s a sample of what he says about it:

Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.

A little later…

Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work. It will perjure, fabricate, falsify; seduce, bully, cajole. Resistance is protean. It will assume any form, if that’s what it takes to deceive you. It will reason with you like a lawyer or jam a nine-millimeter in your face like a stickup man. Resistance has no conscience. It will pledge anything to get a deal, then double-cross you as soon as your back is turned.

Although one reading of Pressfield can basically feel like “Pull Yourself Up By Your Bootstraps: The Book,” through a more flexible, politicized lens–with a conceptual toolbox for things like internalized oppression–the War of Art felt like the feminist “click” that many women describe as an experience during the women’s liberation movement—the realization that your reality is not just yours. It’s shared. It’s collective. Could other people have this voice, with this intensity? Could it be that I’m not alone in this self-hatred?

I feel buoyed for a spell. I feel held. I take another dozen steps forward. I have 5 separate drafts for 4 different posts, plus a grant application for a larger project, all right here on my computer desktop. I hook up the little 3g wireless modem we have here, use our little bit of data left on it to read a few more articles on other blogs—damn you, Miami Autonomy and Solidarity for being so damned awesome—and then the voice winds right back up.

This is one of the hardest parts, something that I’ve also been noticing in other readings like David Gilbert’s striking reflections about ego in his incredible memoir, Love and Struggle: this voice turns the people and places that should feel like comrades, the highest sources of inspiration, and it turns them into the most threatening enemies.

I feel so lonely so often, so surrounded by critics waiting to take a bite out of me. Even here in Guatemala, where the urgent reality of both my privileges and my opportunities, where my actually quantifiable impact on 22 other people’s lives, is constantly impressed on me, I become so tempted to just give up. Pick up your 3DS and play some more Mario, Jeremy. There’s nothing to see here. Revolutionary work is too hard.

Tonight, right now at 2am, at least, I chose to turn on this computer instead.

If you are going to keep attacking me, you ugly and brash and overhyped broken record of a voice, then I’m going to at least expose you. The very least I can do is call you out into the open and see how you will do in the sunlight. You aren’t me. I’m not that mean, I’m much too loving to have produced you. So, go now, back out into the world where you came from.

This little light of mine…I’m going to let it shine.

The day that I finish writing a piece about how difficult it is when people have different ideas and intentions about winning, this awkwardness happens:

Here in Guatemala, the whole family is gathered in the living room after enjoying some amazing homemade tacos. All 23 of us are crowded there, laughing and gossiping. The twins are finishing up a game with the chess board that we gave them and I taught them how to play. Somehow the talk gets around that my brother-in-law–a 40-something manager of a large coffee finca–knows how to play chess. He confirms it, and I’m excited! Usually, the rural Guatemalans I’ve met are wicked skilled at checkers, but don’t know chess.

The family starts rallying us to face off each against each other. They set the board up in the middle of the room. Some of the boys start taking bets. Who’s gonna win? “It’s a battle of the minds,” one of my sisters-in-law says.

The tension is high, the whole family is staring. I make my first move, a pawn two spaces forward. He concentrates. Moves his pawn…diagonally?

I pause. The twins–who have been enforcing the correct movement rules on each other for days in order to get them memorized–look at me with their heads cocked. What’s going on? I ask him how his understanding of chess’ rules allows him to move like that. He giggles and takes the move back. Honest mistake.

Except it continues. Knights moving diagonally. Pieces double-jumping other pieces. Even pieces capturing my pieces from halfway across the board.

He’s playing checkers with the chess pieces…at least some variant of checkers.

I don’t know what to do. There is a growing history here of Glendi and I having to step in and help their family make ends meet–helping cover debts, pay for hospital visits, bringing gifts that he can’t afford to give his kids. There’s embarrassment there about needing so much help, as a man responsible for his family.

He claimed proudly that he knew chess. I really don’t want to embarrass him right now, with all his kids watching, betting, cheering–to pause and explain how each piece is supposed to move, or to tell him he’s playing a totally different game. Instead, we awkwardly play this hybrid monstrosity, chesskers. And before it get’s too painful to figure out what winning actually means, I choose to make a series of silly moves and then resign with the shake of his hand. The family won’t let me live it down. “You got beaten!” “Our dad crushed you!” Later, the twins whisper, “That wasn’t actually chess, was it?”

What was I supposed to do? Usually I prefer being blunt in the face of cultural misunderstandings like this, but when it’s so built up, so tied up in being about our intelligence and level of education, and when there is already a touchy power-dynamic developing given our roles in the world, I didn’t know what else to do. Letting him win and letting them chide seemed like the best of all the awkward options.