Communal rituals + cultural resistance make movements sustainable
Tips to navigate repression & preserve collective health
Effective activism will be met with excessive repression. You’re seeing it unfold on livestream. Brave college students are putting themselves on the line for Palestine and the empire is attacking them with everything its got— violent militarized police shooting students with rubber bullets, beating them up to a pulp, tear gassing them, ripping off hijabs, slamming heads on concrete, tazing immobilized/ incapacitated students, AND at the same time, university administrators are criminalizing students, suspending/ expelling them, evicting them leaving them unhoused, and subjecting them to cruel disciplinary actions which involves grueling hearings or proceedings that are nothing short of police interrogations and investigations. This is also what community members face if they’re carrying out bold direct actions that truly threaten the oppressive, genocidal status quo.
How do you get through it all without losing momentum? How can you keep going when all of these powerful brutal institutions and their foot soldiers are against you? The answer is simple— community. But today, I want to give examples of what that can look like in practice. This is for both students and for non-student community organizers who want to sustain movements as though they are marathons rather than sprints.
I’ve been hyper-focused on helping students that are organizing for Palestine for the last couple of weeks. Apologies for the delay in getting newsletter pieces out. I did want to try something different— instead of writing one long newsletter piece for y’all, I want to try sending medium or shorter pieces out. Let me know if it is more accessible, readable or if you have any other feedback!
PS- If you’re a student organizing for Palestine or a community member doing direct actions + supporting students and need guidance on strategy, input on coordinating an effective/ cohesive response to repression (including university disciplinary actions), or navigating emergent conflicts & problems, feel free to reach out! I’ve been or am in your position so happy to help in any way I can. Reach out to trusted local community organizers as well! You can message me here, email me at ayeshakhan0993@gmail.com or DM me on IG but we’ll communicate eventually over signal.
Here are two tools you can intentionally use in your encampments, during your direct actions or after while you navigate the inevitable repression and backlash that comes with this work-- rituals and cultural resistance.
Rituals — create intentional containers to process grief, loss, pain and fear in community
I was a student in this exact position a decade & some ago at a time when fighting for a free Palestine was far less normalized & acceptable. The moment we launched our divestment campaign, we were met with a s**tstorm of repression from every direction— university administrators, police/ feds, other students on campus bullying us, zionist groups doxxing us, wealthy institutions suing us, etc. We wouldn’t have survived it if we didn’t have each other.
Coordinating direct actions to attempt to dismantle colonial/ capitalist systems is a jarring, difficult process and repression is traumatic
We have generations of movement knowledge to dip into that inform us of the challenges we will all encounter in our fight for liberation. There are also effective intergenerational healing tools. We can take proactive steps to be better prepared. Whether you’re a student encampment or a direct action focused community collective, this work will TEST all of us. So create containers to process the difficult, heavy, jarring emotions that will inevitably rise to the surface like grief, sadness, fear, disappointment, rage, envy, all of it. Not addressing the trauma associated with this work head on leads it it spilling over and negatively impacting the collective. When we don’t hold space for sorrow, anger and fear, these emotions will begin to define our decisions and actions. We are human. We will fall apart when we are shoved into a stressful pressure cooker. It is a kindness to ensure we have spaces to intentionally fall apart so that we can pull each other back up and gear up for the next fight.
Repression on its own is traumatic. It is designed to break your resolve and commitment to the collective. It’s draining & exhausting. It will also make you vulnerable to external and internal threats & stressors. Examples of external threats: pressure/ intimidation/ harassment/ targeted attacks from university admin attempting to use “divide & conquer” tactics, ego-driven bad faith actors, infiltrators from state intelligence agencies, etc. Examples of internal threats: infighting, frequent unresolved unnecessary arguments, individualism driving people to act selfishly compromising the group’s safety, people dropping out, burnout, excessive paranoia seeping into decision making, etc.
Repression will trigger your individualistic tendencies, push you towards your ego & embolden the cop/ capitalist/ colonizer in your head. Getting tased, tear gassed & hit with rubber bullets is not just painful physically but it is traumatic on every other level (esp considering the most marginalized face the worst forms of state violence). This is a noble fight that infuses our lives with meaning but it is not easy. Arrests, incarceration, police raids and any repression from the state are especially traumatizing. Long, dragged out criminal proceedings and court trials are designed to drain the life out of us. They can go on for months & years. It’s a lot. I’m navigating all of this right now & I did as a student. Actually as I write this, there is an incessant tremor in my right hand. These muscle spasms have worsened in the last year, intensified & become persistent during periods of intense repression. It’s a small example among a sea of unavoidable consequences but it’s telling. Don’t underestimate the toll that such repression can take on your body, mind, soul— individually AND collectively.
Don’t be stuck in “problem solving” or “crisis coordination” mode
Organizing in the west is often disproportionately fixated on productivity, jargon-filled political education, theory and strategy while relationship building and culture are deprioritized. In the middle of actions, people are focused on problem solving, operating on little to no sleep, anxiety riddled, hoping from task to task, meeting to meeting, phone call to zoom call. While strategy and meticulous logistical coordination are crucial to navigating repression, the most important tool we have is each other.
Create, commit to & sustain intentional rituals to process emotions
Your direct action campaign, encampment, building occupation, etc are all more sustainable if your group can oscillate between messy states and “we have our s**t together” states. You need containers where falling apart IS the goal. I remember how cathartic it was to even cry together as a group, vent, express our fears openly and help each other move through it. If we’re not sharing our worries, we’re burying them within us and that means it is only a matter of time before we explode or it all spills out into the collective. You need to pull it together by allowing yourselves to fall apart during rituals where you will be held, validated, affirmed or guided through the crisis.
For example, repression breeds paranoia and illogical, unfounded, often self-centered fear which gets people to think of the self more than collective. Under pressure, trapped in a mix of fear/ paranoia/ guilt, individuals (especially those who are new to all this) may be quick to abandon the group, snitch, act out, constantly raise issues to talk the group down from escalating actions (even if it is the right necessary move), ignite frequent discord, frame those taking more militant actions as “unsafe bad organizers” in an effort to paint themselves as “good safe organizers”, etc. The reality is paranoia is inevitable and fear is something we will all experience when the state is coming after us. It is okay to be afraid. It is okay to feel like you cannot go on anymore. It is okay to have the cop/ capitalist/ colonizer in your head be really loud. But you don’t have to let it guide your actions or decisions.
What is the antidote to fear and individualism? Communal rituals!
Rituals (with your homies) make life worth living
Why rituals? A ritual implies there is some intentionality put into committing to doing something together, consistently. There has to be some collective agreement that you will do X at Y frequency. Create dedicated containers to processing difficult emotions together— it’ll preserve the long-term health of your collective. Here’s some suggestions or examples:
Talk it out. Create daily rituals like facilitated group check-ins and beginning/ end of the day debriefs
Keep each group under 10-15 people so folks can contribute. Catalyze emotional, vulnerable, intimate discussions with guided prompts or questions. Ask people to explicitly share how they’re feeling, their worries, concerns, fears, and also hopes, dreams and sources of joy. Ask people to share what they’re scared of and happy about. Explicitly validate and affirm each other when things do go well and when people make helpful contributions to the collective.
Have grounding rituals that intentionally recenter the group’s focus on the things you are fighting for
Group huddles are a simple and valuable tool to refocus your attention on the things that matter. They are a space to pull your s**t together, take deep breaths in community and hold each other close to remind each other of your purpose, of the communities you’re fighting for, of the love you have for community and land. Create a list of clear points of unity, goals and demands if you haven’t already and make sure to repeat these shared agreements out loud in the huddles.
Example of a grounding huddle our collective uses: Someone facilitates and starts by reading each line of this Assata Shakur quote multiple times while the group repeats it back: “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.” Then the facilitator starts chanting “Free free Palestine” in a quiet voice, like a whisper, while gently patting the left side of their chest (over the heart) matching the beat/ tempo of the chant. The group responds and mirrors the facilitator. Gradually, the volume of the chant increases getting louder & louder, getting more ferocious and energetic as people start banging on their chests harder while also stomping the ground rhythmically. After you get the loudest, the facilitator then does the inverse, lowering the volume and intensity of the chants and body movements. Stomping returns to gentle tapping as shouting returns to whispers ending in a silence that is held for a minute. You can hear each other’s breathing return to baseline as heart rates drop.
The above example can be adapted in many ways— you can rotate facilitators and each person can read a different inspirational mantra at the beginning (either a revolutionary quote or something they thought of). You can switch up the chant itself and the bodily movements that go along with it. The idea is to start slow, quiet, firm and build up energy till you’re chanting at the top of your lungs, connecting with the ground with as much ferocity as you can muster and preparing for battle. The goal is to repeat words that ground the group in what you are fighting for while making contact with your body and the earth to allow the energy to flow through all of you. It also helps you return to your body when you’re dissociated. Some elements of this ritual or huddle I’ve learned in previous organizing spaces. But the pairing of chants with tapping/ stomping/ banging chest or other motions is inspiration that comes from me observing similar rituals and battle cries in my communities where people use dancing, humming, singing, swaying, stomping, screaming/ howling, and other bodily movements in unison to ground each other and hype each other up.
Side note: If you would like to build together in 1 on 1 sessions (group, family, couple options are also possible) but have financial constraints, remember that you can email me & we will work something out.
Don’t just have “discussions”, move, draw, dance, sing, cook, walk, climb, do manual labor together. Create non-verbal, more creative rituals that include art, creativity and body movement.
Some people co-regulate by venting and talking things out. Others need more non-verbal, physical grounding tools to ease out of dissociation and access their emotions or allow themselves to truly “feel everything” before they can verbally express feelings. Talking for me is often an unhealthy coping mechanism. I get stuck overanalyzing things because it is easier than feeling the devastation, pain, fear and losses that come with doing this work. However, when I’m dancing, singing, making art in community, using my hands to cut up vegetables to prepare a meal, doing manual labor of some sort in community… that’s when I feel my emotions rising to the surface allowing me to access, express and articulate them more thoroughly. Otherwise, in a “discussion” type setting, I’ll fixate on logistics, recount details or facts, list everything that sucks, etc without ever expressing my emotions. Sometimes, it’s easier for me to talk while I’m moving my body in some manner IN community. The community component is important because alone, body movement or not, I can get stuck in my head. Use your body to interact with your ecosystem and do it together. You’d be surprised how much more vulnerability we can access when we aren’t just sitting around & talking but doing something together.
Do communal chores, build things together, cook/ clean/ eat together and build intimacy through these intentional community care rituals. Dedicate time consistently to just being together.
Cleaning the encampment as a group, cooking & eating together, build barricades/ posters/ banners/ tools together— these are all rituals. Divide labor and rotate responsibilities but commit to taking care of each other and devise some sort of structure to make it equitable. When we pour time, energy and labor into doing something that is contributing to caring for the collective in some capacity, the actions themselves become medicine. The repetitive movements, silence as people sweep alongside each other, holding or carrying something heavy together, any moment where you are doing labor together in unison is a moment of vulnerability and intimacy. It is similar to why engaging in direct action together is inherently a healing practice. It allows us to channel our rage, grief, and pain into changing the conditions that bring it about. It is decolonized medicine. How does collective action and labor heal us? I think that is beyond human comprehension and collectivist communities are more than okay with honoring & accepting that.
Also, make sure to assess the level of familiarity group members have with each other. Do you know each others context, background, childhood etc? If not, then communal chores and mundane tasks are great low-stress, casual opportunities to intentionally talk to each other.
Do y’all have any other rituals that have worked for you and your collective? Any other ideas? I just wanted to cover some key points so I’m sure there’s a lot more out there! Feel free to comment if you think of anything.
Cultural, religious traditions — engaging in them allows you to focus on what you’re fighting for more than the systems you’re fighting against
Encourage folks in your group to intentionally practice their cultural, religious traditions in your encampments or as part of direct actions and especially before/ after. We are more than the suffering, trauma and violence that is inflicted on us. Our communities, their beautiful ancestral traditions that span generations and thousands of years— that is what we’re fighting for and focusing on that intentionally GENERATES energy that will keep your movement fueled.
Focusing on what we're FOR, more than what we're against helps us build relationships
Organizing direct actions, protesting, strategizing… if you’re just doing all that without creating space/ time for cultural practices and community building, then know that it will eventually drain and exhaust the group. Let us not forget that fighting against violent systems, intellectualizing the suffering they inflict, analyzing colonial violence, studying genocidal systems and devising tactics to fight back… all of it is traumatizing even if you’re not viscerally aware of the impact it has on you in the moment. It might even be a familiar coping mechanism because that is how many of us have survived. Culture, however, is ancestral knowledge. It is who our communities are. It is what these violent systems want to eliminate— our connections to each other, the land and the life-sustaining traditions that have emerged from the relationship between humans and land.
The mere act of praying together, engaging in our cultural rituals, sharing them with each other… that is how we keep our communities at the center of our movements. Solely engaging in militant organizing without culture is an approach that centers colonial/ capitalist systems and makes them the center of our universe which is unsustainable. Our communities have always known what can sustain us in our fight for liberation— we just have to humbly observe, listen, and pay attention so that we see cultural traditions are tools, weapons and tactical advantages. We actually have something worth fighting FOR.
The empire’s foot soldiers, feds, infiltrators, they are all selfish motivated by individualistic colonial desires. They gain validation from exerting power over others and seek to dominate & conquer which is a hollow source of motivation to be honest. At the end of the day, that is why cops are intimidated by a large group of dedicated, militant protestors with barricades who advance towards them. Their motivations come from a very shallow, self-centered place.
You may have seen videos of students dancing dabke or doing tatreez at the encampments, sharing culturally resonant meals together, among other ancestral traditions— these rituals center the communities we’re fighting for, reminds people of the “why” behind their sacrifices, and supplies them with the energy to keep going. They got this. You got this. Just be intentional in creating communal infrastructure that helps you and your collective be resilient.
With care,