MLK Day Part 1: Activism & Postponed Urgency
The fears behind “It’ll take longer than my lifetime.”
‘I do not want to die.’ Beneath these words, a prayer, ‘I want to live.’ Yet, beneath even these words, a protest, ‘I want to be free to live.’ — JVB
I have come across, within both myself and others, patterns of hesitance. By my observation, these patterns usually emerge out of anxieties that surface from conversations on the daunting depth and breadth of radical social justice work.
Anxieties from facing — either for the first or 100th time — the list of changes our society and world must undergo for us to all be free. The systems that must be dismantled. The institutions that must be dissolved. The power that must be redistributed. The ‘isms and ‘phobias — and their compounded intersections — that must be addressed. The alternative futures that must be built. This work, this demand, and this future is no easy task.
Overwhelmed, then, by the sheer amount of work necessitated, there is this — what almost feels like second nature — response of, “Well, this will take longer than my lifetime.”
Besides acknowledging this evident truth, this response also attempts to alleviate one from the pressures to ‘figure it out’ or work towards the changes one wants to see to completion. I have also used this phrase as an indirect or subtle cop-out to avoid the terrifying sense of obligation or responsibility to fight for all those minoritized and exploited by our systems of oppression.
That said, I am not interested in speaking to the irony of the generations of “woke” individuals who recited this same narrative. Or the many lifetimes that have indeed passed with very little radical progress to show for them.
Instead, I am more curious and invested in unpacking what else potentially lies behind or plays into this response. What hidden fears undergird our anxieties that produce such a response? How might we be socially conditioned into such a response?
Therefore, here, I pursue a better understanding of what potentially drives others, and myself, into this narrative, this pattern of hesitance — or what I later name below as postponed urgency.
Nor Neat, Nor Pretty, Nor Quick
It is true; radical activist work has no interest in mere reform — we call for liberation. We see the white supremacist, settler colonialist, and imperialist investments undergirding reformist work and want none of it. Because of our investment in revolution, we have buckled in for the long road.
Pat Parker, a revolutionary feminist, in their powerful speech of 1980, speaks to the truth of how “revolution is not a one step process” of “you fight — you win — it’s over” (2015). Revolution takes years. It is “not neat or pretty or quick. It is a long dirty process” (Parker, 2015).
Yet, if we understand revolution to take years — potentially more than a lifetime — what, then, sparks my concern with such a response of ‘Well, it’ll take longer than my lifetime’?
Three main things concern me: First, our tendency to postpone our sense of urgency regarding social justice work — postponed urgency; second, how we have become socially conditioned into distorted understandings of time and change; and third, how these understandings have either misconstrued or conditioned our fearful and anxious responses towards revolutionary change.
What Do I Mean By Postponed Urgency?
I deploy this phrase to describe the process of one releasing themselves of the sense of urgency — be it their prioritization, determination, or persistence — towards radical social justice work. It is the (conscious or subconscious) desire to treat this work or the ability to accomplish this work as less urgent, as there is a preset notion of a limit of what can be accomplished within your lifespan.
Alongside this logic of postponed urgency is impossibility. Because this work is impossible to accomplish within my lifespan, it does not make sense to work hard towards something not physically possible.
Yet, as Pat Parker so powerfully declared, a “revolution is possible” (2015). No, it is not neat, pretty, or quick, but it is most definitely possible. No, you may not see all the fruits of your labor in your lifetime, but this does not undermine this work’s urgency and the deliberacy that is needed to accomplish it.
Also, whoever said change was supposed to be neat, pretty, or quick?
Oh, wait, maybe your history textbooks did…
Cited Sources:
Parker, P. (2015). “Revolution: It’s Not Neat or Pretty or Quick” In Moraga, C., & Anzaldua, G. (Eds.) The Bridge Called My Back (pp. 238–42). State of University of New York Press.
