Camp Pipe Out: Towards A Social(ist) Ecology
by Grey Perry
This past summer members of Metro Detroit DSA joined other activists in northern Michigan to agitate for shutting down Line 5, the Enbridge pipeline running under the Straits of Mackinac that threatens irreparable harm to the Great Lakes ecology.
Dubbed “Camp Pipe Out,” this action was organized by Water Protectors with a two-fold purpose: to create a secure location from which activists engaging in direct action to Shut Down Line 5 could launch their movements, and to create an intentional community built on principles fundamentally opposed to the systems of racial capitalism.
In this article I’ll address this second purpose of Camp Pipe Out: fostering a social(ist) ecology that doesn’t just strengthen our movement but needs to be a central component of it. (For more on the existential threat posed by Line 5 and the movement to resist it, see DSA comrade Joanne Coutts’ excellent piece posted earlier this year.)
Social(ist) Ecology and Vision
As a social worker I am deeply interested in social ecology, the relationship between living organisms to each other and their surroundings. I am interested in this partially because I see humans as endlessly fascinating, beautiful beings, and partially because attention to social ecology is crucial to building a movement that can win. Building a social(ist) ecology means asking and answering questions about a socialist vision: When we win, what will our new world look like? How do we want to feel, act, be in our new world, and what are the conditions that make this feeling, acting, and way of being possible? How will we know when we get there? How can we practice new ways of being with ourselves, one another, and the planet, right now?
By now, we all know what happens if we get this wrong. Personally, I have stopped reading the IPCC’s climate reports because I know what they say. We all know by now what the stakes are. I am now more interested in marine biologist and climate activist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s vital question: What if we get this right? We know what we need to run away from. What we need to better articulate is what we want to run towards..
As leftists we are accustomed to saying “No.” We fight hard against the conditions and systems that make life unlivable for many people. We are expert-level refusers and deconstructionists. We are accustomed to speaking in ways that convey how very, very bad things are — so bad in fact, that if we do not act now, soon no action will matter. The systems we are up against are so vast and powerful that it can feel like we spend most of our time reacting to one catastrophe after another. It feels necessary every time, and it is exhausting. Nervous systems stay activated. Anxiety, depression, cynicism, and despair abound. Our most fearless and brilliant comrades burn out. The jails stay full, the planet is still on fire.
What perhaps we are less well-versed in is our practice of saying “Yes.” And who can blame us? Living under this hegemonic system where white supremacy and capitalism are the air we all breathe, it’s challenging to imagine a different oxygen source. And yet, changing the world requires that we have the courage to dream of other possibilities, and the audacity to bring them into existence.
Building Sites of Belonging and Connection
I helped organize the feedback listening sessions from Camp Pipe Out. One of the things that struck me most was how moved people were by experiencing the Camp itself. What people spoke of most frequently were not the protests or direct actions that came out of the Camp, as impactful as they were. They spoke about the community meals, the time spent by the fire together, laughing and talking with one another under the stars. It was the relationship-building that remained imprinted on their hearts.
These were the moments that motivated them to ask, “So, what’s next?” The question I heard them asking underneath this question was, “How do I get more of this?” I kept hearing from people how much it meant to them to be with like-minded people, working together and contributing to a community. They mattered, and they felt that they mattered.
This felt-sense of belonging is an antidote to capitalism’s effects on our bodies and souls. It transforms people and therefore transforms the movement. It is not the whole answer and it is a crucial ingredient. It gives people something to run towards.
Racial capitalism is a corrosive force. It is an apparatus of disconnection. It separates people from the planet, people from other animals, people from other people, people from their labor. It also separates us from ourselves. If we are concerned with building a better world, then we must build spaces that foster (re)connection. We must build spaces where people can practice being with ourselves, each other, and the planet, differently. This work is about shutting down pipelines and it is also about building a new culture of being and relating.
What is it like to listen to someone with your whole body? To be both present with another being while also being present with yourself? What is it like to notice your impulses and urges that are part of how you have been conditioned into white supremacist capitalism — the contraction, the stricture, the shrinking; the activation, the impulse to dominate, control, dismiss. What is it like to notice these impulses and not react to them? What is it like to slow down enough that doing something differently becomes a choice? Where can you practice this new way of being with others in collective, knowing you are held and supported in your sincere efforts to change?
Camp Pipe Out was not a socialist utopia. There were snags and mistakes, and there was interpersonal harm. Attempts are now being made at repairing harm, at accountability that is non-carceral and restorative and transformative. We fell into old traps, old ways of being. We fell into old conditioning. This is also the work: failing, learning with humility, repairing, and trying again. It is not the mistake-making that makes us different from the capitalists, but the way we respond to our mistakes and to one another’s raw edges will set us on a different course.
Practicing Hope
Doing movement work requires that we be brave and fundamentally hopeful. I am not talking about bravery and hopefulness as feelings but rather as practices. I could not be a social worker, a socialist, a Water Protector, a lover, or a friend if I did not practice hope. To engage with a practice of hope is to embody a daring, wild kind of love. It is a love that animates, that insists on our continued living. It is a love that sees the goodness in all things so clearly that abandoning them becomes an impossibility. It is a love that understands itself as relational, as interdependent, as necessary, as a creative force. Practicing hope means we love ourselves, each other, and the planet enough to dare to create the conditions necessary for change to occur.
We all have our moments where we are gripped by despair and grief — that is okay; that is a normal, healthy response to our reality. Grief, after all, is the price we pay for love. To feel grief and rage is to attest to your own aliveness. And we cannot stay in despairing moments collectively. When we allow ourselves and one another to be caught up in the trap of reactivity, we are distracted from working toward our visions.
We must cultivate these visions and defend them with the same fervor with which we refuse our own annihilation. We must do the work of bringing them into being on a variety of scales with a cacophony of tactics and strategies. We must get comfortable messing up, learning our lessons, and trying again. We know what our ‘Nos’ are, and we must also “run full tilt towards what we love.” We must be brave enough to try to get this right.
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