Another compelling post “From The Front Porch” of Ruby Sales, co-founder of The SpiritHouse Project:
During the Southern Freedom Movement we used the term freedom high to refer to participants who flitted from action to action without planting their feet in any community. Instead they sought the thrill of the moment. Therefore their work did not bear fruit.
Today freedom high seems to describe what I am observing as activists move from one action to the next without planting their work in community.
Without community grounding movements cannot take root or grow. Nor can actions become a movement without grassroots political education and the birth of leaders who grow out of the body of the masses. Otherwise the actions create elites who perpetuate the status quo by claiming to speak for the people while keeping ordinary members silent and invisible! It is easier for members of the White ruling elite to target and take down individuals but it is harder to take down a community that is united in action.
Movements do not create hierarchies or icons who stand above the community. Rather they create strong members who stand side by side with each other in community recognizing that it is the source of strength, power, hope, will and reason that we stand and have a space to be somebody. Without the grounding of community , we would all be dust under the feet of the ruling elite.
