So many of the conversations that take
place during Shake! planning and delivery engages with the discussion of what
our motivations for activism are? Is there a space for ‘feelings’? Should we be
motivated by love or anger? Do they even stand in opposition? If not, then how
do we find the balance?
“So often activism is based on what we
are
against, what we don’t like, what we
don’t
want. And yet we manifest what we focus
on. And so we are manifesting yet ever
more of what we don’t want, what we
don’t like, what we want to change.
So for me, activism is about a spiritual
practice as a way of life.
And I realized I didn’t climb the tree
because I was angry at the corporations
and the government; I climbed the tree
because when I fell in love with
the redwoods, I fell in love with the
world.
So it is my feeling of ‘connection’ that
drives me, instead of my anger and
feelings
of being disconnected.”
-
Julia
Butterfly Hill
“Those
who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want
crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and
lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The
struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both.
But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never
did and it never will.”
―Frederick Douglass
―Frederick Douglass
What are your thoughts?
