Why Are We Marching Anyway?

Whatever the cause – whether it’s a No Kings Rally or a display of LGBTQ+ Pride – there are numerous personal reasons to march, protest, and demonstrate. Some are based upon our own self-worth and personal values while others are guaranteed to produce frustration, burn-out, and bitterness in the long run.

Further, if we take on leadership roles – particularly for demographics with a history of being marginalized and demeaned in a culture – various conscious or unconscious expectations we’ve attached to leadership, whether healthy (for us) or unhealthy, are likely to eventually surface. 

Sociological observers can almost predict the problems that result when anyone takes on activist leadership of oppressed groups who have a history of hurt and pain. So many movements and institutions seem to run into leadership issues when they're at their greatest strength. And the result is many of those issues cripple the very movements. 

People aren’t used to examining their own past unhealed hurts and pain that are likely to be triggered when they don’t get from their leading the emotional needs that probably haven’t been fulfilled by their other pursuits either.

It’s also not unusual that those similar unmet, unexamined personal needs aren’t likely to be met by the activism of the non-leading participants.

It’s so easy to use activism as an addiction. Instead of just finding the personal fulfilment that it activism can bring, activism can function personally as a substitute for real emotional and psychological healing of one’s past hurts, unmet needs from childhood, real fears and discriminations one has encountered, and the scars that have been covered by other forms of coping rather than healing. And so many activists who use activism this way, therefore, believe that examining them is foolish or a waste of time.

We are a society that promotes coping mechanisms – corporations make tons of profits from them. They know that the more we get used to coping, the harder it is to heal. And whatever our choice for coping is easily comes to function for us as an addiction.

That’s why a life of healing requires an inner journey as much as an outer journey. Healing includes both the work of looking inward to examine and confront our conditioned reactions and expectations while also taking back our power by fighting outward to end the structural, cultural dynamics that are hurting us and those we love.

When I hear older generations such as mine complain that younger ones don’t appreciate all the work that “we have done” to make it possible for them to live without the struggles of their elders, I not only hear a lack of understanding of what younger people have to deal with but the unhealed complaint that we aren’t being recognized or thanked enough.

I also don’t hear a recognition of what generations before them are leaving them in terms of the remnants of the so-called “American dream” of which earlier generations took advantage. We have brought them to this point in our nation’s history. We have gotten our Social Security, Medicare, and other programs that politicians of our generations are threatening. 

When I asked one of my college students why they aren’t angry with the fact that my generation might be the last to benefit from such programs, one answered: “Well, I just figure they won’t be there for us.”

“Why doesn’t that get your generation so angry that they want to burn down every 'oldies' radio station?” I asked mostly in jest to make my point. “My generation is having the party and yours is going to pay our bill.”

With all we elders have done, we also haven’t left them a hopeful future. So much of what they've experienced from those in charge of the place has been disappointing and regressive. And even our attitudes toward a future of aging haven’t been hopeful for them either.

The fight is now there’s - and you’d be surprised at how many realize it in spite of all the complaints we elders brandish about. Maybe we are the ones who, caught up in our unhealed hurts and pain, aren’t listening, especially if we’re among the complainers.

Healthy activism isn’t done to get attention needs met, recognition, rewards or soothing and sufficient accolades. It's not done so we get profusely thanked.

Healthy activism isn’t done because we need to have followers more than they need such leadership. 

Healthy activism isn’t done as pity work for “those needy people” with any expectations of their appreciation.

Healthy activism isn’t done to gain paying memberships for our organizations or to increase  our following.

The work we do might not even come to fruition in our own lifetime. As the old rabbinic saying goes: “If you have a dream that can be fulfilled in one lifetime, it’s too small.”

These might become side benefits. (Wouldn’t they be nice, after all?) But if they come, it’s as pleasant surprises, not to fulfill our needs. If we ‘re expecting that we now deserve these byproducts, plan on bitterness and burnout.

No. Healthy activism is something we realize we must do because it’s us holding onto and expressing what we value. We are for a cause because we value it, because it speaks to us. From our very being, it’s what we must do.

We are active to end what is hurting us, but we also value the fact that everyone will benefit.

Though I am thankful so often just because someone is doing something for a good cause no matter what the reasons or how imperfectly it’s done, I’d wish that our activists would thrive personally in the process, grow more and more in touch with their selves and true fulfilment in their work – not destroy themselves or threaten the progress of our movements in the process, expecting to be rewarded in some way for what they have done beyond the satisfaction of working toward dreams that affirm our values.

Living with conviction is of value in itself and to ourselves – and will be to all of us. It’s satisfying regardless of the timing of the outcome, any recognition of our work by others, or some other reward.

Popular author Harold Kushner summarized this succinctly: “When you do a good deed, you don’t need a receipt. You are the receipt.”