-Lucinda Garthwaite, ILI Director

I was living in Maine on March 27, 1997, when the state legislature passed An Act to Protect Traditional Marriage and Prohibit Same Sex Marriages. The Maine House of Representatives voted 106-39 for the bill. The Senate voted 24-10.

Riding to work on the bus the next day, I read the news in the morning paper. Gay and Lesbian activists were quoted, vowing to fight on, but mostly I read others’ joyful disdain. I remember reading the words, “scum” and “perverts.” One man was quoted saying he wished we would all just move to some island and die.

I always sat near the front of the bus on that ride to work. From that vantage point, it was easy to look up at the bus driver’s mirror and see myself there. I remember looking up that morning at my own face, trying to see what someone could see that would make them call me scum, would make them want me to disappear. 

When I think of that morning, I remember bewilderment first. I felt like a pretty good person, doing pretty good work in the world.  I had family and friends who loved me. My first impulse was to ask someone, Why do you hate us so much that you want us gone?  But then I got angry, wanted nothing to do with those people. In fact, to be honest, I sort of wanted them gone.

For a long time, I stuck with my people - I mean people who thought like me, who shared my ideas about the world, its history, its injustices. People who shared my politics. I was pretty attached to believing that everyone should think like my friends and me.

I don’t believe that anymore. I’ve learned since then that totalitarian, fascist, and anti-democratic ideas sprout from all along the political spectrum, nourished just as well by Left and the Right. I’ve accepted that the inevitable, confounding, necessary diversity of human experience makes it impossible, even dangerous, for everyone to think the same way.

But I still want more and more people to thrive, and behave in ways that others can thrive. I still want ever more peace. It takes lots of company to make that happen, so I can’t only stick with my people.

Activists, organizers and writers Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba bring this point home when they write, “To create movements, rather than clubhouses, we need to engage with people with whom we do not fully identify and may even dislike. . . .  put simply, we need more people.” It’s too easy, they suggest, “to demand ideological alignment or even affinity when seeking to interrupt or upend” injustice.  Not only does that create “clubhouses” instead of movements, they argue, it “lends an advantage to the powerful that’s not easily overcome.”

When I re-read that line, I take a sharp breath. It seems to me that my tendency, and the tendencies of those I consider to be my people, to insist on alignment, to deplore those not in alignment - in many cases wishing them gone - has indeed helped to feed a dynamic that’s not easily overcome. 

Because being deplored feels awful. I felt it that day when I looked in the bus driver’s mirror. I retreated then to my own, and I fought hard for years for my way of thinking.  But where did that get us?

Hayes and Kaba argue that the most critical tool of movement building is engagement with others, especially with those with whom we disagree. In that context, they write, “We will sometimes be uncomfortable or even offended. . . There will be other times, of course, when we have to draw hard lines, but if we cannot organize beyond the bounds of our comfort zones, we will never build movements large enough to combat the forces that would destroy us.”

I was struck  by a thought, reading that last paragraph:  Our work at the ILI is, at its core, about driving change so that more people thrive in ever more peace. Whether we’re in schools or organizations, or publishing books, or this newsletter, our work is movement work. We create relationships, offer resources, respond with compassion, teach personal practices,  build systems that draw hard lines against bigotry and violence.

But we do not insist on ideological alignment, or shared socio-political analysis, because forcing people to abandon belief and perspective, to abandon their people, does not make them feel welcome. Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba call this kind of decision strategic, and I do too. There is too much violence and injustice in the world to keep driving people away from movements for thriving and peace. 

I never want to be the reason someone looks in a mirror and wonders why I hate them, why I want them to disappear.  I don’t want to be that unkind, but it’s more than that; hate doesn’t work, engagement does. I can’t be part of the change I want if I’m spitting out the windows of my clubhouse.