Insights for Change is our new series to pose questions and share short insights (our own and others’) for thinking creatively about faith and social change. They may be full-baked, half-baked, or just a pile of raw ingredients to play with. We hope they start conversation or inspire ideas. We invite you to add your own thoughts, experiences, and ideas to the mix.
In 1980s Poland, an anti-Soviet social movement emerged out of the merger of several trade unions into the first independent labor union in a Soviet bloc country. The union, named Solidarity, became a broad movement across Poland, mobilizing millions of people in dissent against Communist rule. The government responded by declaring martial law in December of 1981 and ultimately banning the union in 1982. At that point, the movement went underground. Solidarity is credited with helping bring about the fall of communism in Poland. And in 1990, its leader, an electrician named Lech Walesa, became Poland's first democratically elected President since 1926.
On a recent call, a friend of mine in Poland shared his take that the innovation of the underground Solidarity movement in 1980s Poland was that it basically ignored the tanks on the streets that threatened political repression. While the tanks rolled, the people went about building their own underground civil society, which then became the foundation for democratization. Surely they couldn’t actually ignore the threat of the tanks, and Solidarity continued to organize protests against the government even after they went underground. But I think my friend meant that they did not let the tanks steal their focus. They didn't just act against something, they built something new. Underground, they built the structures for a democratic society.
We live in a time with a lot of tanks on streets, literally in some places, figuratively in others—attention-grabbing, epic dramas playing out in our midst. Climate change, police shootings, a pandemic. These things demand, and deserve, our focus. As another friend recently shared, where there is fire, you need firefighters. And let's be honest, one doesn't have the luxury to ignore a tank that is rolling over one's body or a fire burning down one's own house.
At the same time, as my friend noted, if everyone's a firefighter, then nothing gets built. You need the builders as well—those who see the tanks and fires but also see a future beyond them and create the foundations and structures that will allow that future to emerge
American psychologist Rollo May wrote: "Whereas moral courage is the righting of wrongs, creative courage, in contrast, is the discovering of new forms, new symbols, new patterns on which a new society can be built."
There will always be a need to right wrongs and fight against forces that threaten to destroy people and planet. And… if all our focus goes to what we're fighting against, it's easy to forget what we're building toward. Someone once told me that he felt the leader and board of a progressive national U.S. social change organization struggled during the presidential terms of Democratic presidents because there was "no fight."
Maybe we should ask ourselves, what would we do if we weren’t in a fight? If we close our eyes and ignore the tanks for a minute, what is the future we envision? What are the social structures, systems, and institutions that future needs, and how do we start building them now?
It is certain the tanks and fires will keep coming at us, making it all the more important for us to maintain clarity of purpose. By nature of believing in what transcends and connects us all, many people and communities of faith have vision for a more just, equitable, peaceful world, where both humans and planet flourish. Can we use that clarity of purpose to imagine and build the structures for that world to come about?
Photo by drmakete lab on Unsplash