two in two days

That’s the num­ber of com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers I’ve had break down to me in the last 48 hours, ex­haust­ed and feel­ing aban­doned and un­sup­port­ed af­ter giv­ing every drop of them­selves to the com­mu­ni­ty and dif­fer­ent or­ga­ni­za­tions.

It’s a heavy lift right now. We’re work­ing out hun­dreds of years of op­pres­sion, a spir­i­tu­al awak­en­ing, a new gen­er­a­tion of emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence, the great res­ig­na­tion, and a planet’s weight in PTSD from iso­la­tion, grief, and mis­trust and that’s just Mon­day and Tues­day.

This ain’t for the weak of heart. And the folks on the front­line are get­ting their ass­es kicked dai­ly. And a lot of them make it look easy be­cause they’ve learned how to take a punch.

Well, it still hurts just be­cause you don’t see them cry. We all have work to do for a bet­ter world dai­ly. Go tell the homies you see them. Make sure peo­ple have what they need.

Peo­ple aren’t trans­ac­tions.

1.  com­mu­ni­ty
When­ev­er I meet a new or­ga­niz­er that i’ll be work­ing with, I ask them their fa­vorite cof­fee place and how they take it. I try to fig­ure out what their diet looks like dis­creet­ly (do they eat meat, eggs, or cheese?).

This is so I can show up to ac­tions with cof­fee and a break­fast sand­wich. Not only does this make sure that peo­ple get fed phys­i­cal­ly, but as the per­son who put all the time and en­er­gy into or­ga­niz­ing some­thing so small can feel sooooo big.

Give your or­ga­niz­ers their ros­es at all times. If shit means some­thing to you then let ’em know. Folks have lit­er­al­ly giv­en up fam­i­lies, friends, ca­reers, and more for some of this work. Some come home to emp­ty hous­es. Feel­ing seen and ap­pre­ci­at­ed isn’t why to do the work, but it is part of how it is sus­tained emo­tion­al­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly. We got­ta make sure that our com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers nev­er doubt how with them that we are.

2.  com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers
“No” is the biggest part of self-care. You have to tru­ly un­der­stand that as your en­er­gy, pa­tience, love, and com­pas­sion are drained so is your ef­fec­tive­ness in lead­er­ship.

This is why self-care and self-pri­or­i­tiz­ing is cru­cial. It feels self­ish at times, but you can’t pro­vide a spark and charge to the move­ment that you don’t have.

Right now i’m prac­tic­ing a step-in step-out ap­proach be­cause I know my men­tal health is still work­ing to come back from a cou­ple years of iso­la­tion. This is part of the rea­son that the re­cent First Church of Po­et­ry was only a two month ac­ti­va­tion. It is also why there were dif­fer­ent speak­ers every week.

Don’t over­com­mit. There are a lot of us do­ing this heal­ing work and we can pick up where oth­ers leave off, but we can’t af­ford to lose peo­ple to burnout.

We also need to con­tin­ue push­ing for what we know we are worth. There are heal­ing ef­forts go­ing on in this city that are HUGE and are be­ing nick­el-and-dimed by peo­ple in per­ceived pow­er. Make sure you sup­port each oth­er.

Also go ahead and raise your rates be­cause every­thing else is go­ing up. Say­ing no doesn’t make you in­ef­fec­tive in the work, say­ing yes when you don’t have ca­pac­i­ty does though.

3.  or­ga­ni­za­tions
If you keep vam­pir­ing our com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivists even­tu­al­ly you’re go­ing to run out of pow­er sources for your org. A lot of you aren’t out here. Pe­ri­od. We see who is. It’s not too late to be though.

We’re wait­ing for you. You can have “build­ing,” “em­pow­er­ment,” “mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties,” and all the buzz­words in your mis­sion state­ment and it doesn’t mean shit if you’re not ac­tu­al­ly show­ing up on a hu­man lev­el for em­ploy­ees.

A lot of you are act­ing like we’re not re­cov­er­ing from glob­al trau­ma right now and you look like the cap­i­tal­ists you claim to be work­ing against.

Some of y’all are down­right op­pres­sive to your em­ploy­ees, just xe­rox­ing the same abuse of the Amer­i­can cul­ture while claim­ing to cre­ate change. Do bet­ter.

I worked at one of the city’s lead­ing arts non-prof­it in­sti­tu­tions in lead­er­ship for over a decade and let me tell you that there was nev­er a time when one of us was left to do the dirty work with­out sup­port from the rest of the team. Be­cause there was real love and com­radery that was built through gen­uine love and sup­port.

That’s what most of y’all are miss­ing. You work to­geth­er but you don’t love each oth­er.

Only this work isn’t fix­ing pipes or build­ing cars fam. This is war. And idk about you. But i’m not march­ing into a war with (and es­pe­cial­ly not FOR) peo­ple who don’t want to pro­tect me.

Take care of us y’all. We all we got.

I love you and you can’t do $%!? about it.

 

—an­dru de­f­eye

Flom­mist An­dru De­f­eye is the Guer­ril­la Poet Lau­re­ate of Sacra­men­to. Copy­right © 2022 An­dru De­f­eye.

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