With the turning of this year's Torah cycle, my dad and I started learning Parshat Hashavuah. Each we we kinda riff off some themes from the weekly parsha. This week is Parshat Noach and the story of the flood, and we read Avi Killip's piece on climate change. Thread.
On the call he raised the question of how someone can convince people who may have different values or priorities to take actionable steps in a certain direction, even if that is hard, uncomfortable, expensive, etc.
This afternoon, a somewhat simple answer came to me, so I wrote the following to him...
I think it's Activism.
I think it's Activism.
That's kinda the whole point of activism-to get people to act on something that they otherwise might not. But even as more of a foundation to that, it's to get people to see that they have an interest in what happens.
A core principle of community organizing is that people act in their own self interest. So you have to help them see themselves in the issue that you are working on. And sometimes, you need to disrupt things to get people's attention.
I saw an interesting take on some non violent direct action that took place a couple of years ago. Black Lives Matters activists blocked a highway in CA in response to police shootings of unarmed Black people.
A lot of the drivers were obviously upset, and some people were critical of these tactics. But I saw someone write something to the effect of,
"if you were sitting in your car, traffic is stopped, and you feel frustrated and powerless, and like you didn't do anything to deserve this," maybe use that as an opportunity to empathize with Black people who have been victims of police violence, their families and communities.
Or Black parents who need to explain to their teen kids that they can't wear hoods on their sweatshirts or walk around certain neighborhoods, because that is somehow justification for being shot.
With something like climate change, you would think that would be somewhat easy, since we all live on the planet, but I think that's where the emotional road block that people hit comes in. We want it to feel far away, and that we aren't actually part of the story here.
Like Noach, we might need to actually feel the water on our feet to know it's really happening.
A little after we spoke, I saw this clip from the group @XRebellionUK, from a protest in London over Sukkot. In it, a rabbi gets arrested as part of the protest, and he explains his calculation.
You can see that here:
and here:
As we encounter the story of Noach this year, may we not have to wait until we feel the water on our feet.
Shabbat Shalom.
Shabbat Shalom.
@threadreaderapp unroll
