Bodhisattva Demonstrators, Bodhisattva Infiltrators
Whether explicitly designed to highlight spiritual perspectives, like last week’s Stop the Frack Attack demonstration in Washington, DC, or simply exemplifying deep courage and compassion, like immigration rights activists who infiltrated detention centers and risked deportation to expose wrongdoing, the work of the bodhisattva always has heart.
Later this year and next, we’ll be offering some more structured resources and courses around spiritual activism and the path of the bodhisattva. But for now, I’m curious to know from you: how do you define spiritual activism? Do you see it happening in your part of the world? What role, if any, do you think it ought to play?
No Frack Photos by Hendrik Voss
Viridiana Martinez, a DREAM activist held in the Broward Transitional Center in Pompano Beach, Florida.
Kimberly
Thanks for this post, Katie!
As you’re preparing materials on spiritual activism, how are you all defining it, if you’re defining it at all? Just curious.
I had a conversation with folks forming a new collective or network in Austin and a good number of us said we aren’t organizers. I noticed that some people “organize” with visible infrastructure (some get paid for it, for example) and some of us are “just artists.” I’m kidding about the last phrase, since I’m one of the latter.
I can’t say how I define spiritual activism, or whether these two examples you provide fit my definition. But I can say that I spend a lot of time listening, thinking, talking with and making things with people in ways that honor actions such as Viridiana’s. I try to receive and build upon that kind of work as part of my own spiritual practice.
On that note, I learned this today:
Viridiana’s and other NIYA organizers’ actions can draw our critical attention not only to the U.S. government’s failed promise to release people held up in low-priority detention cases but also to the complex morass of ICE partnering with private prisons — a big concern across the South (http://catfishforlunch.wordpress.com/2012/08/02/viridiana-niya-vs-geo-private-prisons/).
Shout out to my friends at Grassroots Leadership & to the Undocubus stopping by Austin today.
Someone reminded me recently that another way to understand upekkha is “inclusiveness,” as well as equanimity. As non-discriminating attention to all things. I think that’s an important “abiding” to help us understand how power works and how to use power to our chosen end. To not close off from things that don’t seem to fit into a definition, but to absorb them too, somehow. Maybe spiritual activism is being queerly promiscuous.
xo k
Katie Loncke
Mmmmm! Yes! Inclusive and queerly promiscuous! And absorbing more things without dressing them up as what they are not, in an effort to justify including them. I would love to come up with stories and examples of when this is helpful.
One small anecdote that comes to mind, where upekkha and nondiscriminating inclusiveness helped me out a lot, happened just yesterday, during the organizing I do to try to build eviction-free zones in oakland. From the time I woke up, everything seemed to go wrong. My task was to call people to remind them of their duties preparing for an evening doorknocking session in East Oakland, and from the first few responses I learned that some people had changed the time unilaterally without telling others, and the new person prepping the maps hadn’t received proper training, etc. I set aside other work and spent the afternoon trying to mop up the mess. Which would have been extremely annoying and frustrating, except that in the morning I had also read an article by a comrade in Seattle talking about the need for more skill-sharing and teaching among radical organizers. We don’t automatically know how to do all this stuff. Reading his piece helped me let go of annoyance around the mistakes, and focus my energies on helping to integrate them as part of the learning process. More information. Useful!
Anyhow, I’m also excited to hear more, sometime, about this new collective/network in Austin! Sounds exciting.
Thank you for this mind-heart-expanding connection between dharma and ‘politics,’ as I define them for myself. :)
hugs aplenty,
katie
PS: for anyone who wants to check it out, here’s the link for more info on the UndocuBus !