#collective-knowledge-and-resistance

#collective-knowledge-and-resistance

"Once the Declaration of Independence is issued by Congress, then it kind of changes the calculus. Then, both sides are putting pressure on Native people to join one side or the other."

"We have a great opportunity in our movements to learn how to be opponents without being enemies," says Tanuja Jagernauth. This perspective emphasizes the importance of maintaining respect and understanding even amidst conflict.

Tonika Lewis Johnson's Folded Map Project connects residents known as 'map twins' who live on the same street name but miles apart, revealing structural inequality and personal commonality.

A chief tenet of liberation is the freedom to define oneself while being accorded the rights and privileges established and guaranteed under law and social standing.

Losing staff could be detrimental to the projects we worked on, and there was a growing dissatisfaction with how meetings were run. These mostly one-sided discussions left the quieter half of us feeling pushed aside, like our thoughts didn't matter much. If things stayed this way, I worried the good people on our team would start quitting one by one.

The United Nations resolution categorically states that slavery is the gravest crime against humanity, emphasizing the need for global acknowledgment and action.

During World War I, women in Russia went on strike. They demanded "bread and peace." Among the results of their four-day protest: the Czar abdicated and women gained the right to vote. This bold strike began on Feb. 23, 1917, according to the Julian calendar then used in Russia. That date translated to March 8 in the Gregorian calendar that much of the world uses.

The labor of this kind of organizing was invisible and deeply exhausting. In a precarious workplace, where a so-called 'performance review' could amount to job loss, organizing meant building a bridge while standing on it.

Real change rarely happens through debate or persuasion. Instead, transformation grows out of relationships, shared struggle, cognitive dissonance, and practice. Together, Kelly and Lewis explore what organizers can learn from the science of neuroplasticity, the role of rupture and confrontation, and why movements need to focus less on 'changing minds' and more on creating conditions where people can unlearn harmful beliefs and step into collective action.

In the environmental nonprofit sector, "centering frontline voices" has become a familiar slogan, often detached from how decisions are made or resources allocated. It appears in grant proposals, conference agendas, and organizational values statements. And yet, too often, those voices are still positioned as illustrative rather than authoritative-invited to animate strategies already decided, asked to translate lived experience into language legible to funders, or flattened into narratives that travel more easily than the truths they carry.

It's common knowledge that we are awash in misinformation that can have severe negative consequences for society. When people hold false beliefs about the safety of vaccines, the outcomes of elections, or the causes of climate change, it is much more difficult for them to make responsible decisions on behalf of their families and communities. It is tempting to respond to this challenge by insisting that expert scientists know best and to dismiss those who challenge the experts.

When I enter a museum, I'm not looking for what's on the walls, I'm looking at what's behind them.

The U.S.'s political landscape - and our daily lives - are increasingly shaped by repression and violence, amplified by a media cycle designed to keep us fearful in the present, uncertain about the future, and depleted. Exhaustion is not a side effect of this system. It is one of its core tools. Last year, I wrote that Donald Trump's attacks were designed to exhaust us. Over the past year, I've watched communities build movements and adapt their organizing under this reality.

Art, at its very best, reminds me that there is a world out there that I not only belong to but trust - perhaps even love. Sandra Vázquez de la Horra's beeswax-dipped drawings of erupting women, mystical landscapes, and hallucinatory flora in The Awake Volcanoes at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, did just that. Oh, that old mystery of finding oneself reflected in the material fragments of someone else's private imaginary.

"Are you okay?" These were Alex Pretti's last words, said to a woman after ICE agents had tackled and pepper-sprayed her. Videos from bystanders show Pretti holding up a phone, attempting to document what was happening before he himself was pepper-sprayed, wrestled to the ground, and killed by those officers. He lost his life not for committing violence, but for documenting it, and stepping in to protect someone facing it.

"We will continue to move and pass down things, meaning that when they try to erase us, as long as we stay present, they can't,"

There's a myth in our society that real change requires force, strength, and domination. We celebrate athletes, CEOs, and politicians who crush their opponents. But history tells a different story. Lasting social change has often been triggered by humble people whose weapons were passion, principle, and an unwavering commitment to justice and the truth - not the truth we see on TV or read in print media, but rather the truth that we feel deep inside ourselves.