One of my favorite Christmas presents from this recent holiday is this license plate (above). I’m going to put it on the front of my car, so it always leads.
In the past, the word resistance has conjured tension in my body. It can feel stiff and unyielding. And, as I dive deeper into its meaning and place now, I realize its true meaning and the action of this meaning is not always so effortful.
Resistance, as defined in the dictionary, means: (1) the refusal to accept or comply with something; (2) the attempt to prevent something by action or argument; and (3) the ability not to be affected by something, especially adversely.
For a little more than a week, the United States has watched key elements of its democratic experiment plundered and cast aside in service of a rising white men’s oligarchy. The large-scale dismissal of long-term federal government funding, support and even employees alters the direction and heart of our democratic dream. This dream has manifested in real life as far from a true and perfect democracy but has been a decent attempt to create a society that ensures human rights. The unfolding “hypocrisy democracy” we are living in heralds big loss: a loss of human, women’s, LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, Disabled, Immigrant, Planetary and all its sentient beings’ rights.
Much of what is happening violates laws. Of law, Martin Luther King wrote this while in jail in Birmingham, Alabama:
“How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the Brat to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”
As I contemplate King’s words, I sense a different kind of resistance rise in me, “fluffing” up my flesh, not constricting it. I feel the warmth of Konysans—the Haitian Kreyol word for deep embodied knowing – of what’s right. No doubt, no questioning. Every cell, bone, breath knows what’s right and just.
When I teach, I speak about embodied justice as the reclamation of our own timing; our own rhythm or beat. One of many ways to consider justice is our ability to inhabit our body— be our bodies, and our movement – in ways we choose. This is our right, and this right is always governed by moral law. Many, many human beings (and more than human beings) have long suffered persecution and loss of rights due to oppression and abuse of power, especially since massive global colonization began. Today, this suffering is amplified.
Practically, in our every day, justice means the right to food security and nourishment. The right to rest and privacy. The right to congregate with people we choose to be with, to dress, worship, dance, move, work and play as we choose. And I believe it also means the consideration we give regarding how the ripples we make affect and change the environments we move in, and the “occupants” of those environments we interact with. We honor ourselves and respect others simultaneously. Embodied justice is reciprocal.
As I prepare to resist, I reflect on my mixed and dynamic ancestry. And I reflect on my ancestors who suffered because they were immigrant, Indigenous, poor, marginalized by society, and who resisted. On my mother’s side, ancestors arrived in Jamestown, Virginia and headed South but moved to the Northern United States during the civil war as resistance to the horrible practice of human enslavement. My grandfather was an immigrant from Poland who was not formally educated and was a brilliant farmer. He endured prejudice and cruelty, called degrading names and as a result, changed his last name from Jacubowski to Jacobs to protect his family. When he died, his wife had divorced him. Because his family lot is in a Polish Catholic cemetery, he was not allowed to be buried with his family members. Now buried solo in a lonely corner of the cemetery, his true name, which he reclaimed, is forever emblazoned on his headstone. My maternal grandmother was an amazing cook and one of the only rural Michigan locals who opened her home to Chinese laborers, who were often mistreated in those times. She rented them rooms and fed them meals, always kind. After my own mother died, I learned she had quietly advocated for LGBTQIA+ rights in her retirement community in a very conservative area of Pennsylvania, always inviting newly arrived Queer couples to her home for a “proper turkey dinner” and assuring them of their place there, and in her own home.
On my dad’s side, his Indigenous father was mistreated by his wife’s family, and eventually by her. Still, when one of his children fell on a coal burning stove and medical doctors could not “fix” his hand, he snuck his son out of the house and took him to a “Pow Wow” as they then called it, where he was healed. My own father was a corporate businessman and a renegade within that community. He always pushed back against unethical practice and was legendary for his integrity and ethics in business. He descended from a long line of settlers who began rejecting the destruction that colonization wrought on the wilderness and retreated deep into the land to live more reciprocally with nature and its more-than-human inhabitants.
Resistance is the heart of these small, personal, uncelebrated actions. These are compassion-fueled, self-respecting and dignified compassionate right actions. Resistance can be subtle and remain very powerful.
It will take time to figure out the more emboldened acts of resistance I, or any of us, may want to engage in. For now, I remember my Ancestors as resistance against erasure. I connect to the local community of business owners, many of them immigrants, who work in the building where my refugee mental health clinic is. We check in on each other, strategize for ourselves and our clients, and I assure them of my support as resistance against division. I let all my clients know what their rights are, remind them to make ample copies of their legal documentation as resistance against misinformation. I check every day regarding the businesses abandoning their DEI policies and practices and boycott them. I choose to only give my money to those who protect those policies as resistance against corporate greed. I check on the neighbors, friends, colleagues who rely on food or housing assistance to make sure they are ok as resistance against isolation.
These are small and impactful beginnings that will become the clear path to bold and compassionate right action and pave the way for effective resistance.