Sustainably Living the Activist Life part 6: Unseen Labor

Here in the northern hemisphere, spring has finally arrived, and not a moment too soon. This past winter was long in so many ways. Watching the scenes from frigid Minnesota of citizens braving subzero temperatures to stand up for their communities in the face of the brutal assault of ICE was both heartbreaking and motivating.

Each time ICE invades one of our cities, we learn things and we share that knowledge so that the next community that is targeted has more information and is better able to protect its citizens.

One of the things that struck me most powerfully in Minnesota was how much unseen labor went into defending their neighbors. People drove their neighbors' children to school, people provided food for those afraid to leave their homes to shop, people opened their cafés and gave away food and drink to keep protesters warm, people paid rent for those unable to safely go to work. And these acts of service and love haven't stopped simply because the ICE presence is reduced. Not gone, mind you — there are still about 1,000 ICE agents in MN — but reduced from the 3,000 there at the height of the assault.

The media has moved on, but the community hasn't.

We have been conditioned to focus on the big event or the person who's the face of a movement or a moment. But there is so much work that happens way behind the scenes, work without which there would be no movement or moment.

One of the tasks of our time is to break that habit of only acknowledging the headliner, only seeing the star, while failing to recognize how many people there are doing their unheralded bit that makes the work of the star possible.

If we look around at our own lives, we can identify the people and their various roles, their differing archetypes. The focus this month is on bringing the unseen labor and those who perform it to the fore. Not simply to acknowledge them, though that is important, but also to recognize that those in the spotlight don't do things solely on their own. We are working to build strong, resilient communities, and that doesn't happen without all roles being filled and all contributions being appreciated, including yours.

Where are you on the scale of seen vs. unseen labor? If you're more on the seen end, you likely get acknowledgment for the contribution you are making. If you're tilted towards the unseen end of that spectrum, it is more likely that your contribution is not readily recognized. This isn't about scorekeeping; it's about recognizing that there is so much that happens beyond our conscious notice and that each bit of effort moves us closer to the goal of building strong, vibrant, and resilient communities.

Let's take a look at how creativity, ritual, and commitment come into play in bringing awareness to the unseen labor performed by so many in our communities, often including us.

Creativity:

Again, it can be easy to miss all the unseen labor that people perform — it's called "unseen" for a reason. Truthfully, many of us don't want to be the focus of attention. We just want to do what we can and not bring notice to ourselves. That's cool. We each get to do our activist work in the way that makes the most sense for us. And it's still good to have awareness of all the pieces that keep the work moving forward and the people doing that work.

Take some time this month to create a visual representation of your group or a campaign you're working on. What are some of the invisible roles? For example, who keeps the group calendar updated? Who is printing out material for your meetings or creating the PowerPoint slides? If your group has an office space, who's keeping the bathroom stocked with toilet paper and the kitchen stocked with tea and coffee? Who cleans up after meetings?

Create a visual ecosystem of your group or campaign, and highlight the invisible roles to bring a more focused awareness to all the behind-the-scenes work that makes it possible to accomplish the group's goals.

Be sure to include yourself in this map. Often we do a lot of unseen labor but brush it off as nothing. If you wouldn't say it was nothing if someone else were doing it, it's not nothing.

Ritual:

This is super simple and deeply meaningful. Make it a habit each week to acknowledge and/or check in on someone doing an unrecognized task. We all want to feel that what we are doing matters, and someone expressing gratitude lets us know that what we are doing is, in fact, seen and appreciated.

Invite your group to recognize the unseen laborers in some way. It doesn't have to be anything big; a batch of cupcakes as a thank-you goes a long way.

Commitment:

Take on or redistribute one back-end task: child care, transportation, emails, food, meeting minutes, or follow-up, to name a few.

Doing anything over and over can become tedious. Some people like the stability of fixed tasks, but don't assume that. Check in and see if redistributing the work would rejuvenate an individual or the group as a whole. Often, fresh eyes can bring new and better ways of doing our work. But even if we maintain our current systems, shifting tasks from time to time can keep people from feeling burned out.

I want to close this by saying that yes, there is a lot of craziness in the world right now and it can feel overwhelming, but we are making progress. We have had more success in pushing back against this autocratic regime than we likely would have predicted a year ago. And a lot of that progress is due to unseen labor by probably hundreds of thousands of people, if not more.

We keep doing the work, we keep building bridges and stronger communities, and we keep doing the next right thing. That's how we achieve our goal of a society where everyone gets to live a life of dignity.