Practice You
On resilience through harrowing childhood assault, sharing pain as a service to others and the medicine of the story.
CLEAR ALL
Activism can be a source of healing but may also come at the expense of re-traumatization, burnout, and frustration.
Ella Baker (1903–1986) was an influential African American civil rights and human rights activist. For five decades, she worked behind the scenes with people in vulnerable communities to catalyze social justice leadership.
Activists and change agents, restorative justice practitioners, faith leaders, and anybody engaged in social progress and shifting society will find this mindful approach to nonviolent action indispensable. Nonviolence was once considered the highest form of activism and radical change.
In 2010, former gang leader turned community activist Big Mike Cummings asked UCLA gang expert Jorja Leap to co-lead a group of men struggling to be better fathers in Watts, South Los Angeles, a neighborhood long burdened with a legacy of racialized poverty, violence, and incarceration.
Yes, we must radically transform policing in America. But we cannot stop there. We must transform the pervasive systems of economic and carceral injustice that are choking our common life.
The Good Ally is an urgent call to arms to become better allies against racism and provides a thoughtful approach, centering collective healing, to do so.
“Even with these health consequences, we can see the benefits of taking a stand because people are fighting for what they believe in and protecting people’s lives,” Sumner said. “I don’t think the answer is to stop altogether. It speaks to how critical it is to engage in self-care.
Instead of relying on systems that have consistently failed the most vulnerable in the protest community, Mullan encourages a shift toward community-based care.
To truly achieve an equitable, fair, and greener future, we must defend Black lives and our climate future, together.
Activists and leaders cautioned that the path toward racial justice remains long.