To Choose Between?

-Lucinda Garthwaite, ILI Director

Like so many in the past two weeks, I’ve been scrolling way too much. I skim five different newspapers online. I listen to podcasts. I glance at front page photos on grocery store news racks that I usually ignore. A couple of days ago, one of those photographs – of a Ukrainian mother and children killed by mortar as they dashed across a bridge, their small pet unscathed in a carrier nearby --  nearly brought me to my knees.  I got back to my car, put my head on the steering wheel, and cried.
 
Later that day news came from a friend that people of color escaping the violence in Ukraine are being ignored, or worse, refused when they reach the border. Not everyone in those lines of people holding signs of welcome will invite Black and Brown refugees into their homes.
 
I think of the complicity of consumption and disingenuous geo-politics that have fueled this war. I see that the bias of the media is driven by the bias of its consumers, of which I am one. I read about the unthinkable invasion of a sovereign nation, as I sit in my office on land invaded and stolen from - a sovereign nation.
 
 I understand that I am haunted by this particular war, in great part, because those bombed out neighborhoods look like places I have lived. Because teenaged skate-boarders with three days of training are on their bellies with automatic rifles behind sandbags in Kyiv. Because ten miles down the road from me, my beloved teenaged nephew rides his skateboard to school.
 
I have been haunted not nearly enough by other boys fighting other wars who remind other women of their beloveds. I sit with accountability for that.
 
Back and forth; but this, but that. I have been struggling this way with myself since this invasion began. Such struggle is useful when it leads me to clarity, leads me to change, not so much when it ties me in knots.  So I’ve been working to think myself free.
 
Everything you just read of my struggle has to do with liberation, liberation from violence, from inequity and injustice, liberation to thrive. In response to the news from and about Ukraine, I’ve been struggling to land on the perspective/position/analysis/action that aligns with liberation.
 
But in my close-to-frantic search I almost forgot that liberation has two conditions, singular and ongoing, and there is no need to choose between the two.
 
Singular liberations are observable events or obvious shifts. It's clear to see that something definable has ended or begun. In the long, collective, global, haul, though, liberation doesn’t work that way.  It’s never-ending.  Its essence is change.
 
Like all change, liberatory change is a river, winding and rewinding its way through the course of human history, meeting obstacles, carving switchbacks, changing direction but always, always urging itself toward the sea. To join that change requires constant, critical attention and thought, revealing and confronting past and present violence, injustice and inequity over and over again.  That work is never finished because there will always be obstacles, including and arguably most of all in the complex, flawed nature of human beings.  
 
Singular liberation requires a different kind of response, sharply time-sensitive, and focused on singular success, the end of a particular violence, confinement or threat, and in the meantime immediate relief and support to its victims.
 
If I close my eyes I can see that river. I can also see boats on fire. I don’t have to choose, I mustn’t choose, between tending the river and the fire. If I can help put it out, I will.  If not, I’ll do all I can for those on that boat. Neither action will stop the river from flowing, but if I do nothing, I’m left with a river of fire[1].
 
In the interest of liberatory change it is critical that I pay attention to the hypocrisies (including my own), sharp injustices and  systemic failures exposed by this war. That I stay alert to where my attention and the resources of my community and country go as this war continues, and as its context evolves. That I watch for and respond to threats to liberation in other parts of the world, and here in the U.S. 
 
In the interest of singular liberation, I’ll support the Ukrainian people and others living in Ukraine as they struggle to evacuate, survive and resist this invasion.  
 
I’ve been thinking but-this and but-that, when really, as so often is true, the right word is and.



————

(1) And. . . I know this is not a tidy metaphor. (I’m not even sure there is such a thing.) I’ll keep thinking, and please if you’d like to, add your thinking in the comments below