A friend of mine told me that he and some friends at his Church keep bumping into this kind of inner dilemma: 1) We’re privileged. 2) We feel guilty about that. 3) Yet we know that we’ve got to get involved in some kind of grass roots activism with others who are less privileged than we are, in order to address the great issues of our day. 4) What should we do?
Rarely unwilling to tell other people what to do, as distinct from figuring out what I ought to be doing myself, this is what I told him:
1) People who worry about taking action just because they feel guilty should go back to Go and pick up a Get Out of Jail Free card.
2) Everybody should do something. Hell, at least recycle Pepsi cans, as long as you don’t delude yourself that that’s making a real difference.
3) Everybody should try to do something in concert with others wherever possible. Being part of your congregation’s ecojustice team is better than sitting around at home depressed and just recycling Pepsi cans.
4) Everybody should be wise as foxes, if not innocent as doves, whenever possible. Thus some have started, I would like to believe, Pepsi-can support groups. Some Pepsi-can support groups, I would like to believe all the more, have picketed their neighborhood banks demanding that those establishments divest from Exxon.
5) Then all Pepsi-can support groups that are working together in Maintown, USA, can network to form a nationwide action coalition with other like-minded local groups, to do stuff on the same day, say, like parade, with demands, in front of multiple U.S. House of Representatives members’s local offices. Carrying signs perhaps, like this: Recycle Pepsi Cans – Support Eco Justice. That could be a start.
6) Along the way, everybody, isolated individuals and working groups and larger coalitions, will also give first priority to looking for a kairos moment — a rare opportunity to make a big difference. Remember when 100,000 people marched in Manhattan against climate change? It could happen again. Even in cities all across the USA.
7) How’s all this ecojustice activism going to get started? One possibility: wild-eyed old people, many of whom could be religious, will finally get it together to work together. Bill McKibben has started a national project just like this; I go to his on line meetings the way others go to AA meetings. We seniors, I wager, will finally get over our Sunday School guilt and finally decide that we’ve had enough and then line up to block the Southeast Expressway, carrying this banner: Stop Business As Usual – Save Our Planet Now. Or something like that.
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.