Laura, I started this comment when I read your pieces on white allies, but I think it works better here.
After 50 years of experience, I’d learned a lot about activism (and organizing). Simply put, activism is volunteer work. Most activists are not paid, and the rewards are few to none. Harder still, activists often find their civic work has compromised their jobs, or businesses, or taken a toll on their families. If an activist is too visible, their employers or clients often find reasons to fire them. Activists also fund most of their own work. As their efforts grow more successful, activists must find sponsors, write grants, or host fundraising events to fund progress. In a nutshell, successful activism depends on learning how to work with unreliable volunteers, ever changing circumstances, and lousy budgets.
Activists who prove their mettle are invaluable. In my circles, we called them super-activists or grasstops (meaning grassroot leaders). Eventually, super activists are worn out, nickel and dimed to death, and struggling to hold jobs and families together. When that happens, the super activists are “ripe” for the picking – and in danger of being co-opted.
If a super-activist gets co-opted, their expertise and networks benefit the elites that pay them – not the grassroots. They often take other activists who followed them, with them. The dictionary definition explains the dangers of co-opting.
Co-Opt
1. appoint to membership of a committee or other body by invitation of the existing members.
"the committee may co-opt additional members for special purposes"
2. divert to or use in a role different from the usual or original one.
"social scientists were co-opted to work with the development agencies"
3. adopt (an idea or policy) for one's own use.
"the green parties have had most of their ideas co-opted by bigger parties"
When I was first approached by elites, I held out until I was ready. It took eight years more experience, and six months of intensive training, but eventually I was ready. By the time I entered the “elite” circle, that paid me for my work, I was well prepared to hold my own. Three years later, my elites had used their connections to change a critical land-use law in our state. As an activist, it would have taken us another thirty years to do that on our own.
No, I am not bragging. I am saying that activists need to get as serious about our work, as we are our education, jobs, businesses, and families. Activists need education, training, tools and leadership of our own – and that won’t happen, unless we build it ourselves. Laura, within this context your observation makes so much sense to me, I will repeat it.
“Whiteness also manipulates and privileges ordinary individuals within its group in such a way as to rarely leave room for them to realize they are, in fact, tools being used to achieve the evil goals of keeping elites uber-wealthy, safe from rebellion, and segregated from common people.”
