Back in the early 2000s, I was doing a lot of neighborhood based organizing against the war in Iraq. My partner and I brought our kids with us to meetings and protests, and our house was often full of people planning the next action.
One day, our 11-year old daughter got very frustrated with me. “Mom,” she said, “there’s a war going on and all you do is hold meetings.”
Out of the mouths of babes, right?
How often have we felt the helplessness and frustration of facing an array of atrocities, which can only be matched by an array of responses that feel in no way adequate. Like holding a meeting. Again and again and again.
Fast forward to 2024, and we are slip-sliding to climate catastrophe, witnessing a genocide in Palestine, and being gobsmacked by extreme, ever-increasing (and deadly) inequality. And what is there to do about any of this? Sometimes the best thing – the only thing – to do: attend another meeting.
I know they can be frustrating. They can be badly organized. The agenda is too rigid, or even worse there’s no agenda at all, and the tyranny of structurelessness allows the numbskulls to take over. We spin our wheels, dutifully note next steps, and spend half an hour trying to determine the next meeting time. We shake our heads sadly. There is an emoji for that, right? If so, we surreptitiously text it to a friend with a small cry of desperation that echoes my daughter’s incredulity. “What am I doing here?”
That has happened to me plenty of times. But I’ve also been at meetings that effectively organized campaigns, that gave “each one” a chance to “teach one,” that sparked new and creative strategies, and that – perhaps most importantly – broke the isolation that so many people experience. These meetings I believe are more numerous than the duds, but even if they are not, it’s still on us to go to the meeting.
Why? Because a meeting is a chance for people to put their minds together, and there is literally no other way to develop a grassroots response to the empire’s exploits. Meetings can change lives and save lives by sharing the most mundane information (so… I have some rights as a tenant?) to the more momentous (so… this is what solidarity feels like?)
Some examples:
- Jewish Voice for Peace has been holding “power half-hours” (by Zoom) every day since the Israeli invasion of Gaza. With thousands of views on youtube and hundreds in attendance, these daily check-ins have given activists a way to feel grounded and connected with others across the country focused on raising the social cost of the U.S. supporting Israel’s crimes in Palestine.
- At a recent anti-eviction protest in Medford (organized by City Life/Vida Urbana), tenants talked about forming a union to fight their corporate landlord’s enormous rent increases. At first, people were scared to meet in public places. So a tenant opened his small one-bedroom apartment for the meetings to take place, and neighbors crowded in. “We continue meeting to keep up our campaign against the landlord,” he said, “but we also meet because we’re like family. We get together every week, so people remember they’re not alone. Now we know about each other and care about each other. We call each other just to say, `How are you feeling?’”
- At this same protest in Medford, one city councilor after another spoke against the landlord. They used strong, anti-corporate language that you don’t usually hear from elected officials. “What’s the deal with this overwhelmingly progressive city council in Medford?” I asked one of them. I wasn’t expecting an actual answer, but she had one: “Talk to him,” she said, pointing to a guy in the crowd. He’s with Our Revolution. So I did, and I found out that a few years ago, a small group of people set out to change the political landscape in this town, and they’ve succeeded through relentless door-knocking and organizing – all launched at, you guessed it, meetings!
In Lord of the Rings, Gandalf tells Frodo we don’t get to pick our historical moment, but we do get to decide what to do with the time given to us. In our historical moment, our work is to go to the meeting. The meeting isn’t effective? Work with others to improve it. The meeting isn’t inclusive enough? Change it so it is. The meeting is boring, no fun, too sleep-inducing? Make a rule against endless droning (and enforce it!), share food with each other, sing a song. The meeting is irredeemable? Give up on it and find a better one.
The thought of another meeting may make you roll your eyes. But whether it’s genocide occuring halfway across the world or your community getting eviscerated by greedy landlords, another meeting is exactly the appropriate response. Get together with others. Figure out what to do.
Cynthia Peters is a volunteer organizer with City Life/Vida Urbana in Boston. She has written for ZNet and other publications, and she is a longtime activist in the city. Her day job is editing an adult literacy magazine called The Change Agent.
Cynthia Peters is the editor of The Change Agent magazine, an adult education teacher, and a nationally known professional development provider. She creates social-justice-oriented materials that feature student voices, along with standards-aligned, classroom-ready activities that teach basic skills and civic engagement. As a professional development provider, Cynthia supports teachers to apply evidence-based strategies to improve student persistence and develop curriculum and program norms that promote racial equity. Cynthia has a BA in social thought and political economy from UMass/Amherst. She is a long-time editor, writer, and community organizer in Boston.
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