When You Live Your Values Every Day, There's No Need for Activist Guilt.

Responding to reader questions about decision fatigue, organizing tactics, and the shame of never doing "enough."

I received several all-too-relatable questions about ~activism anxiety~ in the ol’ Tumblr mailbag this week, and I thought I’d take a moment to synthesize my answers and various reader responses to them here, because they get to the heart of a lot of pervasive struggles that the Palestinian liberation movement is facing these days.

Our first question comes from an anxious Autistic person who isn’t quite sure they’re doing enough, or choosing the correct organizing priorities in a world where they can’t do it all:

Anon, the decision fatigue and pervasive guilt that you are describing is unfortunately all too common, especially among left-leaning neurodivergent people who use social media. There are so many causes and actions demanding our attention every single day, and numerous social justice “influencers” stand to personally gain from telling us that they alone know the exact actions we must take against systemic oppression.

Being faced with so many competing demands and guilting messages can easily throw a person into a state of choice paralysis that does absolutely nothing to advance any liberatory cause. For example, I have heard from numerous Autistic people that they find it nearly impossible to select a Gazan fundraiser to contribute money to, because so many families are facing starvation and illness, and it feels morally wrong to identify one as the most worthy.

Of course, the reality that selecting literally any Palestinian family’s fundraiser is a morally superior act to hemming and hawing for days over whom is the most deserving of help. Your individual choice of whom to give aid doesn’t honestly matter; all that matters is that you decide to join the millions of steadfast supporters of the Palestinian cause who are giving aid, and to trust that others will fill in the gaps that you can’t. I have an Instagram post about this particular topic, which you can read here:

drdevonprice

A post shared by @drdevonprice

As for the broader question of where to invest one’s energy when there are so many genocides happening and so many oppressions that need to be fought, here is my take: when we get swept up in not being able to "do it all" or freeze up with complete inability to choose any cause to work toward because we can't decide which one is the “most worthy,” we are operating out of a highly individualistic framework that positions the self as the agent of change.

It might not feel like it is a self-centered perspective, but it's exactly the kind of isolated, self-as-savior, systems-ignoring outlook that a culture of capitalism and rampant Christian moral Puritanism conditions us to adopt (even if you are not Christian).

Thinking of ourselves as individual moral actors leads us to focus constantly on the righteousness of our actions and purifications of our souls, instead of the tactics and collective work that will actually lead to lasting, material improvements for oppressed peoples. Replacing a systemic analysis with personal feelings of shame does nothing but make us feel terrible and keep us isolated from the larger movement. I have a whole book about this line of thinking and how to resist it, btw.

Like you, Anon, I have felt overwhelmed with my inability to "help everyone" or address every single cause on the planet before, and frankly the solution was to get over myself and realize that I have a very limited ability to make a difference, and that I have a duty to simply do my part, not do it “all.” I have to trust that I am but one small, relatively insignificant human and that I am surrounded by literally millions of other humans who care and will pick up their own small part of the work as well.

Ultimately it doesn't matter that I select the absolute optimal ideal place into which to put my energy, because frankly I am not important. I just need to show up and do whatever it is that I can to fight injustice, build community, and resist settler-colonial, capitalist empires. There will always be plenty of work left for the next person to pick up.

It was absurd main character energy to expect myself to do everything or to be able to "save" people. And yet that was exactly the kind of moral burden I was putting on myself for a very long time. And it led to periods of intense overcommitment followed by burnout, spreading myself to thin, and most crucially, failing to attach any of my furious efforts to the work of an enduring, tightly knit COMMUNITY.

A focus on individual effort makes us neurotic, alienated, self-focused, lonely, confused, conflicted, and forever putting our energies into initiatives of limited value with limited potential for payoff. Instead, choosing one little lane to do our own bit of work in -- literally ANY lane, so long as it is accessible and motivating to us and plays to our strengths -- will mean that we are actually making a difference consistently and connecting to others who are taking part in the work too.

We must do this work not to morally purify ourselves, which is not possible, but because we see something worth doing and we decide to get up and do it. The arena in which you choose to make a difference can be literally anything from donating to people's Gofundmes, to sharing other people's fundraisers with custom infographics, to feeding your neighbors, to blowing up a pipeline. It literally does not matter which particular choice you, specifically, make, only that you do something and keep at it at the pace that is sustainable for you, recognizing that literally millions of other people are all around you doing their tiny part too.

Our next question comes from a trans feminine person who is rightly frustrated that traditionally feminine-coded forms of community care aren’t typically credited as “activism”:

Anon, I share many of your frustrations 100%. It irritates me massively that fundamental community-building work like feeding people, helping them get their meds, providing childcare, and looking after our neighbors is not seen as THE most essential task a person can be doing. No movement can last without an extensive and carefully maintained support structure, and the destruction of capitalism and settler-colonialism are really only worth fighting for if we have an alternative way of living waiting on the other side.

Revolutionary groups like the Black Panther Party understood that armed resistance wasn’t the only important way to fight the state — in order for a movement to grow its numbers and find a shared clarity of vision, it first had to meet the community’s physical, medical, social, and mental health needs so that they were no longer reliant upon employers and a government that exploited them. And as anarchists like David Graeber have frequently written, anarchy is a thing you do — with every choice we make every single day of our lives, we decide whether to recreate capitalism or to unmake it. Every single time that we choose to give our neighbors food or tear down the walls of private property, we are unmaking capitalism in our own small ways.

So on balance, I agree with you Anon that we need to get better at conceptualizing care and community work as important elements of organizing. My only quibble is that I think we need to move away from needing the work we do to be acknowledged or seen by others as activism at all.

I believe that even the concept of "activism" creates an artificial divide between ourselves as actors and the people framed as "receiving" our support, which positions us as "above" them and as sacrificing something in order to help them. It is better, I think, to view ourselves as all completely interdependent as a matter of course, and mutually so.

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We help one another and lean upon each other because we need to, and because that is what being a living human social animal means, not because it is some noble, moral obligation that costs us. Lots of people who would never consider themselves activists or even remotely political do far more to uplift their communities than your average self-identified “activist” will ever do, and they do this because they genuinely recognize how interdependent we all must be. We can abandon the idea of "activism" as this separate, difficult, optional sacrifice that only the sufficiently committed make.

I am generally with you Anon that most popular definitions of activism ignore the role of mutual support and community care work at their peril. But I think that rather than reframing caring for other people as activism, it would be better for us to abandon the idea of activism as somehow separate from the motions of everyday life at all. I don’t find the term activism useful at all anymore personally, and I haven’t for quite some time. It only obscures and alienates what's really going on when we take care of one another and our world.

When people truly have a shared class consciousness they take care of one another because they know they must do so, not because they think it will earn them recognition or make them a good person — and I think that sadly, far too many activist-types are still prioritizing their own self-image and feelings of goodness over what serves the collective.

This brings us to our third and final question of the day:

Anonymous says:

From experience this past year with the student protests for Palestine, being inept and unable to do much (out of inexperience, lack of capacity, general stupidity) really came with a huge shame that I wasn’t doing enough.

I understand the point about pushing ego aside and having to be ok with being clueless for a while and helping where you can, but seeing the folks I cared about getting brutalized by police or receiving suspensions and taking on psychological and physical scars while I’m bumbling around like an idiot... it feels rather stupid and cowardly if the way that I’m contributing is less intense, and I can’t imagine that these folks who are sacrificing so much would want cowards to constantly hang around.

I’ve also felt that there was judgement among folks about people who couldn’t go as hard, and I understood that judgement (the apathy from the student body was super frustrating) but also felt that judgement on myself.

I did exactly what you said happened in the past, about overextending oneself and then getting burnt out…and I understand that I need to let go of this idea of the individual needing to do something dramatic to matter, but its hard to escape the shame when others around you are doing so much while you can’t match that energy.

I guess I’m just worried I’m trying to justify not doing as much… I understand the point of all this isn’t to make people like you, its to further the cause (Palestinian liberation, in this case) so this is all moot lol. I still feel it, but I understand staying focused and to keep working through this.

Thank you so much for this vulnerable message, Anon. I understand that it can feel like negligence to not be suffering the same consequences as some of your peers who are getting arrested and beaten by the police, and that in many activist communities, there is extensive pressure to over-extend oneself and truly prove that you are willing to suffer for the cause.

Suffering is moralized in many organizing spaces, and ease or happiness are viewed with suspicion, because so many exhausted and traumatized people feel the moral urgency of the present moment and expect everyone to give what they have been able to. Unfortunately, this outlook is an extension of cultural Christian moral Puritanism. It’s a byproduct of the colonization of our thoughts, and our individualistic isolation, and is not productive.

I think it is really important for you to understand that a lot of the showier, bigger, riskier actions that others around you are taking for Palestine are actually NOT effective and are actually HURTING the movement.

Getting arrested is not a smart move for an activist to take if it can be avoided -- once police have you arrested, they have your name, your address, your finger prints, access to your phone, information about your close associates, the ability to tail you, and a ton more access that will put yourself and anyone else that you organize with at risk. Each additional arrest increases the odds of facing serious charges, and with it fees or jail time -- all of which takes you out of the movement and unable to do shit.

Getting arrested is overall a net COST to the movement, and yet certain organizing groups like Jewish Voices for Peace and the Party for Socialism and Liberation either plan for or actively ENCOURAGE activists to get symbolically arrested all the time. They do this for the optics, and because they are not genuinely invested in radical action that will meaningfully disrupt the status quo.

Groups like the JVP generally have positive intentions, and I think, and their tactics vary from city to city. But many chapters are ultimately led by liberal normalizers who are widely criticized by Palestinians for wanting only a ceasefire, not a full decolonization of Palestine. Meanwhile, the PSL is a straight up cult that abuses its members, takes credit for actions it didn't plan, uses megaphones to take control over crowds, and then leads them into police kettles and mass arrests.

Just last week I witnessed PSL organizers sweeping into a decentralized action, taking over the attention of protestors with megaphones, and leading organizers out of a blockade they had formed on the streets and into a narrow, barricaded sidewalk where they quickly became surrounded by the cops and got arrested. I had to bail the second I saw the paddy wagon rolling up, but many of my comrades weren’t so lucky and didn’t escape.

A few months ago, both the JVP and the PSL collaborated with campus administration at Northwestern to prematurely end a successful, massive encampment for Palestine — 18 “representatives” of the encampment whom NONE of us selected to speak for us voted in favor of tearing up the camp in exchange for…a committee being formed to conduct research to generate a report on university investments beginning time in the autumn semester, and a meager increase in funding for Palestinian clubs. This happened after the police had sieged the encampment numerous times.

Unfortunately the PSL and the JVP have a massive presence on most college campuses and have infiltrated many Students for Justice in Palestine groups and pushed for those groups to get arrested, cut shitty deals with campus administration, and just generally undermined the revolutionary momentum of the movement all around.

The PSL in particular will preach to unseasoned student activists that they must hand all of their time, attention, and the safety of their bodies over to their organization, isolating them from other community members and leading them into constant exhaustion, with only a few tepid performative protests as the end result.

Getting your head bashed in by the cops is similarly not helpful to the movement 99% of the time. I am all in favor of destructive, disruptive, and radical action, but it has to be done intelligently and carefully to actually target the levers of power.

Standing around on a lawn for two hours and getting arrested does nothing by itself to liberate Palestine or even push for divestment -- in fact, it gets you out of university administrators' hair, rattles the crowd a ton, and actually increases the odds that an encampment will have to disperse a lot of the time. It would be far better to put that energy into destroying a weapon manufacturer's warehouse, blocking a boat en route to Israel loaded with arms, crashing a Democratic Party fundraiser, or simply pivoting and then taking over a campus building a few hours later. Anything that really fucks with the war machine's money and their processes is superior to falling onto one’s sword.

Sometimes an arrest can't be avoided, because the cops get the drop on you and there was nothing you did that made yourself especially vulnerable. Sometimes the impact of a big, disruptive action is so weighty that the people facing arrest decide that’s an acceptable cost. But what is an acceptable risk for another person to take should never be determined by a self-appointed authority figure or an organizational culture of self-martyrdom and guilt. We must act autonomously, bravely, and supportively, standing by one another in our various risk profiles and tactical choices.

Do not for a SECOND tell yourself that the work you are doing is worthless because it's not tinged with suffering and danger and bodily harm. It is a Puritanical Christian myth that the only things that matter are activities that cause suffering. Suffering is not moral. Sacrifice is not moral. The impact of our actions is what matters, not how hard those actions were to do.

Some of the most impactful organizing work in the world is easy and feels pleasant, because it turns out that humans desperately crave being around one another and being able to help one another, and we miss the ability to do so in our everyday lives.

Feeding people, watching people's kids, driving people to the hospital, letting a suicidal person crash on your couch for the night, setting up a community library, giving poor trans people your clothes, performing jail support, talking to the unhoused guy outside your apartment who is agitated — these are impactful, far-reaching actions that bring a whole lot more good into the world than having your skull split open by a cop because some self-appointed protest organizer on a megaphone told you to keep pushing back when your group was outnumbered.

We are not just trying to destroy settler nation-states, we are trying to build a decolonized world in its wake, and that begins by becoming more interdependent, collaborative, patient, steadfast, and gentle — with one another and ourselves. Telling another activist that they must be doing more and suffering more is simply an extension of capitalism-brain.

In the world we are fighting to create, every effort is enough, and every person is a cherished member of the collective, no matter what they do or do not contribute.