From my recent work in the labour movement, a quote to inspire you in your work for social change:
Howard Zinn: ”Ž”To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we… see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places–and there are so many–where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”
I’m in Prince George today and tomorrow working with the BC Government Employees Union in a great regional conference that is looking at forging the links between unions and communities. There is much organizing capacity and heart based action in the labour movement and much need on the ground here in the north of the province. Putting one to work on the other is a huge and easy capacity building thing to do.
So today a cafe on where we can go to work in community to make a difference, and tomorrow a short Open Space for people to ground action and make some plans to get out there.
Share:
October 19, 1990 in Peterborough, Ontario was a dark and cold autumn day with sleet falling and grim grey cloud. The only light at all was the fact that I met my beloved partner Caitlin Frost that day. Here is my anniversary poem for her.
On a sleet driven day
when the sky split into a million bits of darkness
and rained down on the groggy morning
I could never imagine
that what was falling
was me for you.
May you all know the love I have been lucky enough to be blessed with.
Share:
Lots of travel this week. During the time I was away in Ontario working with labour educators from a number of Canadian unions I heard a great line from a Canadian Auto Workers educator that sustains him when he is challenged while doing good work: “You don’t always have to like th emembers, but you have to love them.”
I was reflecting on that line this week after I hosted an Open Space on Bowen Island, in my home community to provide a space for my neighbours to discuss a proposal to turn some of Bowen’s Crown Lands into a National Park. The proposal has received a mixed reception among islanders, but there has been some outright hostility as well. This week, a guy I consider a “howyadoin’?” friend, lambasted me for running a meeting that appeared to be “a ruse to appease the public.” I informed him that I was hosting the meeting all on my own, without anyone paying me to do so that a variety of views could be heard. His response was still negative, but in the end, like my friend in the Auto Workers, I had to conclude you don’t have to like your fellow islanders, but you have to love them.
And God love them.
Share:
A lovely little passage from a book I am reading at the moment, that describes the allure of living with shadow. We are captivated by fog.
I fell to dwelling upon the romance of the fog. And romantic it certainly was–the fog, like the grey shadow of infinite mystery, brooding over the whirling speck of earth; and men, mere motes of light and sparkle, cursed with an insane relish for work, riding their steeds of wood and steel through the heart of the mystery, groping their way blindly through the Unseen, and clamouring and clanging in confident speech the while their hearts are heavy with incertitude and fear.
— Jack London, The Sea-Wolf
Share:
What it’s like to fly with Peregrine Falcons & Gos Hawks: