Remaining Steady in Your Fight for Collective Liberation

“I want to wake every morning into love where love is the question of how I’m going to help you get free whatever that means whatever it needs to mean” -Saretta Morgan

For those of us living in bodies that are constant targets of state violence. For those of us who have experienced genocide and are descendants of survivors of genocide. For those of us who have been forcibly removed from our homelands. Those who are systematically cut off from power, resources, and stolen from but continue to survive. For those of us who come from enslaved people. Those who know so many who have not made it but continue on. We understand the necessity to have a constant and steady practice toward a free, just, and joyful future. 

The journey toward collective liberation and freedom demands a practice of steadiness. A commitment to finding the ground beneath you and staying firmly rooted for the long game. Resisting and undoing centuries of colonial, imperialist, and genocidal devastation isn’t a short-term project. And if you’re in your body and paying attention, it’s impossible to not feel the deep grief that comes from witnessing this. It’s impossible to not feel overwhelmed.

I offer steadiness as an antidote to apathy. 

Steadiness keeps us in constant motion toward freedom. Steadiness because it’s harder to gain momentum from a standstill. Shifting paradigms, and building new worlds, takes stamina. Steadiness is defined as “the quality of being regular, even, and continuous in development, frequency, or intensity.” 

Steadiness is a strategy. 

It’s actively taking up the work for collective liberation and freedom in every aspect of life. In the big. In the small. Making it routine. Grace Lee Boggs offered, “That is how change takes place in living systems, not from above but from within, from many local actions occurring simultaneously.” 

I invite you to practice steadiness in your fight for freedom and liberation. To ground yourselves in reality while reaching for the possibilities. And to use that power and knowing to propel us toward a new world. 

What does steadiness look like?

Steadiness is continually educating yourself; not with the expectation to know everything but to be in a practice of constant expansion.

Steadiness is taking the time to understand the link between the global struggles for freedom and liberation. To understand that Gaza is Sudan is Haiti is Congo. 

Steadiness is knowing what resources are available and how to mobilize them before they are needed. 

Steadiness is a long-term commitment to redistributing and ceding power and dismantling what doesn’t serve the whole. 

Steadiness is seeking out and being in communities of accountability and growth.
Steadiness is having systems of care to surround you and help keep you buoyant in the work. 

Steadiness is giving attention to the deeply transformative ways people are resisting, building power, and finding joy. 

Steadiness is working to understand and offer up the skills, networks, connections, and influence that you can leverage. 

Steadiness is making long-term investments to individuals, movements, and communities. 

Steadiness is committing to building and sustaining authentic, transformational, and reciprocal relationships across movements, communities, and alliances and not just reaching out in times of crisis. 

May your steadiness increase your lung capacity. Let it teach you how to use your breath to pace yourself for the long game. To keep yourself rooted and firmly planted for the new world to come.