Activist Exhaustion

In the summer of 2004, I interviewed Mandy Carter for the now-defunct Southern Voice (which has pretty much been replaced by the Georgia Voice, same staff, new management). That summer was full of 'aha!' moments, which I told her about in 2006 when I picked her up from the airport for a speaking engagement. In that first interview, she talked about learning to use her privilege to do meaningful activist work. I had to try not to splutter in disbelief when I asked her what kind of privilege she had as a black lesbian in the South. In response, she gave the example of immigrant rights issues. As a U.S.-born citizen, she could march, speak, argue, and push for immigrants' rights without fear of deportation or prosecution of herself or her family.

Though it's embarrassing to admit, that was the first time I'd ever thought about immigrant rights. It was after the first introduction of the DREAM Act but before it would become a major policy priority, and before the assault on immigrants would make Arizona's SB 1070, Georgia's HB 87, and similar state legislation part of the national conversation. In the run-up to Georgia's passage of HB 87 and now in its aftermath, I have done nothing to fight it. I've barely even spoken about it. Every time I hear of my friends doing strategy meetings or going to protests, the first thing I feel is tired (and the second is relief that someone else has the energy for it).

It's been nearly two years since I felt like I did any real activism. I do some work here and there, mostly in the arenas of sexual orientation and gender, and mostly at or with my alma mater. I like that work, and my job has become my major center of activism. I get to do a lot of strategic planning that works towards sustainable, empowering services for low-income senior citizens in Atlanta, but my work isn't actually organizing. It's policy in a way because I get to decide what sort of programming we propose to do with public funding (and we're a major supplier of publicly funded senior services in the area), but it's very peripheral, very intra-system, and mostly single-issue focused.

I live my personal life in a way that feels radical to me, building and maintaining relationships in ways that don't fit the misogynist, heterosexist ways I was trained to. I love fully and in ways that make me vulnerable; polyamory has become a greater part of how I live my life. I have a DIY ethic and I'm learning and doing more every day. But those things are the outcomes of activism; they aren't activism itself. I don't quite know how to get back to activism; I don't quite know what I'm looking for. Sometimes I think school is the answer, or part of it, but I doubt it will be the answer if I'm doing school part time while working full time. And still, every time I think about what it might look like, all I can picture is a tiny drop in a huge bucket and an overwhelming sense of fatigue.