I’m going to admit it: after six weeks of the dumpster fire that is Hamilton politics since Pride, I’m starting to get a little shagged out. The drama continues this week, with Hamilton achieving the dubious distinction of having the highest rate of reported hate crimes in Canada. The Mayor was unavailable for comment… which of course sparked a wave of derision on Twitter.
Following that, the CBC ran a story on one of three separate complaints to the OIPRD regarding the police response — or rather, lack of one — to the attack on Pride. They mayor’s office released yet another boilerplate statement “Hamilton for All“, presumably not understanding that “all” is increasingly seen to include Nazis and Fascists.
Then the news broke that Hamilton’s university, McMaster, had approved the McMaster Dominion Society as a student club… despite numerous warnings that they were a white supremacist organization. When the story broke publicly (including screenshots of overtly racist discussions on the club’s Facebook page) the student union at the university hastily suspended the club which was still in its probationary period. Apparently there’s been a recent a trend of hate groups recruiting on university campuses, which should concern us all.
Oh, speaking of hate
groups: Chris Vanderweide, the infamous “helmet guy” who
got some incredibly
lenient bail conditions last week, has been promoting a so-called
“anti-bullying rally” with his Northern Guard neo-Nazi
buddies at Kitchener’s City Hall on Saturday. Timed to coincide with
(and take credit from) the weekly Food Not Bombs soup kitchen for the
homeless, Vanderweide’s event is evidently billed as one which will
give out food to homeless people and resist the bullying of “thugs
who yell and scream and do malicious things usually.”
Clearly,
self-awareness isn’t Chris’ thing.
Combined with his “anti-thug” rhetoric, Vanderweide has also started spinning himself as a devout Christian who only wants to love others. How he reconciles that with beating LGBTQ+ people with his helmet I don’t know; he’s clearly either being cynically disingenuous or deeply stupid. In either case, one of his singularly few bail conditions is that he’s not allowed to carry weapons, so if Helmet Guy shows up wearing anything on his heavier than a baseball cap I suggest someone at the anti-fascist counter-protest sends a photo of it to the parole board. Let’s face it: Vanderweide is a violent chud with has zero impulse control who isn’t very good at recognizing long-term consequences; breaching his parole, even as lenient a parole as he’s been granted, is pretty much inevitable.
And that’s where we’re sitting as of Friday morning, 26 July. By all accounts, the Wednesday night debrief hosted by Hamilton Pride went well and was productive; I now regret that I didn’t attend, because I could really use some positive energy. As I said, after six weeks the whole situation is starting to wear on me, badly. And that’s just the local scene, not even factoring in the rest of the horrifying news coming from around the world; climate disaster, Trump, a manhunt for murderous Nazi teenagers in Canada, whatever the fuck is going on with Maxime Bernier and the PPC. And so on.
Sometimes you have to step back a bit. One of the things I discovered the hard way during my first round at being an activist is that I don’t have very good self-care skills. I joke about it (in fact, the name of this blog is a bit of gallows humour) but the truth is I’ve never been very good at prioritizing my own well-being in the face of oppression. I’ve always — and realizing this was a genuine personal breakthrough, by the way — I’ve always had a vanguard/martyr complex which puts me in the forefront caring for everyone else while preventing me from backing off and making sure I’m okay. (It’s a pretty common failing in the street medic community, actually.)
But self-care is, in its own way, a radical act, as well as a necessary one.
First and foremost is taking care of yourself physically — regular sleep, quality food and, above all, hydration. As an old friend cynically commented to me recently “one must maintain the husk”, and having gone through a round of kidney stones, I tend to agree. If you’re not taking care of yourself then you’re a liability to others. Simple as that.
As well as all that hippy-dippy health-food stuff, I personally recommend kicking back and taking some “me time” in the form of a glass of something and a cigar, but your own personal ritual may vary. My spouse, for example, doesn’t like cigars or hard liquor but suggest a hot bath and a glass of wine and she’s all over it.
Second, take time away from the damn computer. I try and force myself into a weekly hike (weather permitting) in order to have a few hours where I’m not able to constantly stare at one screen or another. This summer it seems like hiking is just trading trolls for ticks, but at least with ticks you can pull them off and crush them relatively easily. (I hate ticks. Hate them.) Getting out into nature, even if only for an afternoon, is a hugely effective way of charging my batteries… although my above comments about hydration also apply when hiking.
If you have to, step back for longer than an afternoon — a few days, even a few weeks. As I advised a friend: after twenty years as an activist, trust me, the fight will still be here when you get back. The trick is to have people stepping forward and stepping back all time time, instead of everyone pushing at one hundred percent and burning out at the same time — another friend compared it to singing in a choir; you try and vary when people take a breath rather than the whole bunch gasping at once.
Third, community involvement… and not just on a screen or at protests and demos. This one is something of a challenge with me, particularly as getting into Hamilton during construction season is a hassle, but it’s worth doing. There’s a reason that a lot of social activism involves things like coffee hookups and benefit concerts — healthy communities require social interaction beyond organizing for defence and reform.
Being too isolated from the community is a huge problem for many activists, and it lends itself to two massively damaging behaviours: believing that you’re carrying the whole resistance on your shoulders and getting caught in an echo-chamber which skews your understanding of the world. The first causes burnout but the second can cause fanaticism. With social media, especially, it’s very easy to get yourself into a feedback loop with a small group of like-minded strangers and the next thing you know you’ve gotten disconnected with the larger world and are making bad decisions because of it.
Quick aside, if you look at alt-right social media spaces, the feedback loop problem is glaringly obvious. The paranoia and xenophobia just builds and builds and builds to the point where they can simultaneously claim to be “good people” while advocating mass murder. Feedback loops in leftist online spaces tend to be more subtle, at least in their outcomes, but it’s definitely not a healthy headspace to be in.
Fourth, and most importantly, remember that you have a life and loves outside of activist spaces. Practice hobbies (I do leatherworking, as an example), get outside, cuddle your dogs (or cats, or guinea pigs or iguanas, whatever,) spend time with your significant other(s). Be okay with asking for help and support. It’s important to have something more than just the struggle in your life. We all exist in networks of friends and families, and its important to build relationships which nurture and ground us… while remembering that those who are supporting us need their own supports in their own ways. Sometimes that support can be dramatic — such as a jail solidarity action — but more often it’s quite subtle, a cup of coffee with friends or a conversation about something innocuous.
The old proverb of an ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure definitely applies.
None of this is particularly new or unique, of course. I’m not presenting this information as some sort of profound revelation or discovery. This is stuff that people in activist spaces have been saying for years… but it’s one of those things that I personally had to learn the hard way. And frankly, I’m writing this as much to remind myself as to inform other people.
This ended up being a shorter post than normal, but I have to duck out and get to the farmers’ market. We’ve got house-guests this weekend and it’s berry season in the Niagara; I’m looking forward to a couple of days away from Twitter and Facebook and having some good old-fashioned friends-time.
