Rolling Rocks

I went into this session feeling on the brink of tears, not totally sure why – some combination of physical pain from my wrist, the unfolding sad conflict at my new house, and some feeling about how so many of my hopes and desires were wrapped up in the room, swimming somewhere among the 50 people sitting around me - and to have my needs exposed to be so vulnerably dependent felt heavy. For lots of different reasons, as I found out later, many people had trouble being present that day. Maybe that’s just the rhythm of this type of program – as we ease (or not) out of the brimming excitement about coming here and beginning this long awaited and settle into the real work/journey of it.

ROLLING ROCKS ROLE PLAY
Well the trainers threw us into a really dynamic role play called Rolling Rocks. This was not the awkward two person skits ad libbing things they’d never do in real life – but 40 people in 5 groups with missions, running around unraveling a complicated scenario, trying to think what would they really do, and facing the constant interruption of politicians, reporters, and cops, in addition to the other groups. I was assigned to be a social service agency in this town where for some reason falling rocks were killing/injuring more and more people everyday. Other groups were: a group dedicated to figuring out the root cause of why the rocks were falling, a student group from the nearby town, and then unbeknownst to these three groups were a group of workers from the town at the top of the mountain, and then a fifth group made up of a corporation called Richy Rich.

I don’t know how useful it is to go into all of the details, but the main point was that we each had our way of tackling the program, and only over time and through connecting with each other did we realize that there was a corporation that was actually paying workers to roll rocks off the mountain and onto our town because the corporation wanted to run us out and build a resort. This may all sound cheesy and oversimplified, but in the moment it felt like real life put in fast forward. There was the tension or suspected tension between the social service agency (called a band-aid) and the social change organization, there were the privileged outsider college kids who had resources but no direct connection to the town, there were the workers in another town, oppressed by the company, desperately needing jobs, and unaware of the effects of their work, and the company trying to divide and conquer by tossing around funding through their disguised foundation offering grants to keep agencies quiet. There was the mayor, who always offered vague support but never came through, and called a town meeting that tried to take up time from groups strategizing. There were arrests of leading activists and threats to shut down our alternative community meeting.

Putting things into these simplified caricatures really emphasized how all these forces are going on in real life and its hard to see them when you’re in it. Information on the real causes only came out when we talked to the other, unfamiliar groups. The college kids, put in the place of privilege, really needed to come meet the groups in the affected town (or affected population), and figure out what was going on internally before they could figure out how to support. And we all know about corporations that create foundations to fund local non-profits, which I’m always conflicted about. For my social service clinic, we somehow didn’t get the grant, and because we lacked resources we were forced to reach out to other groups for help. That was how we learned of the deeper situation at hand and were able to work together to defeat it.

REFLECTING ON EFFECTIVENESS
Really, everything after the role play was something of a blur. One salient exercise asked us to reflect upon the time in our lives where our organizing work felt most effective, and what were the elements that pushed it toward success. This wasn’t the freshest for me, as I have often reflected privately and personally about being part of Umoja, which was by far the action that made me feel empowered consistently for 6 months and had me truly believing that we could win. Well I’ll be real, I don’t really think things like “we can win,” but I really did feel empowered and like I was part of something powerful and it’s good to figure out why that was. I have tended to attribute a lot to the expose on housing money corruption that came out in the main media, which was true and circumstantial. And the model that I found so powerful of white anarchists following the lead of a powerful black movement , but when I’ve given workshops talking about Take Back the Land, I’ve always fallen short on how to tell people to replicate it . Like, you just gotta have the luck of media exposes and a strong POC movement. But theres gotta be more, an analysis that’s more replicable.

Because I had already done some analysis on why it was so powerful, this gave me a chance to really think about what others were saying. Things like: the people organizing together were truly friends or at least expressly appreciated each other, the work provided tools to other groups that had a better sense of what they wanted to do, using creative images, being willing to take risks – meaning not becoming paralyzed when you’re not sure what’s the best or “most anti-racist” thing to do, but giving it some thought and then trying something.

THE READINGS
This session’s readings focused a lot on organizing strategies, in a way more general than what I expected. In that it wasn’t solely focused on racism, but was built on a foundation of anti-racism. I had a quick blast of several feelings – disappointment that it wasn’t being addressed more directly, lucky that we were getting this extra education about organizing skills, then epiphany that anti-racist organizing isn’t just sussing out demons but unlearning and then relearning a new way of being that is totally infused with justice.