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Title: The Importance of Support:
Author: Anonymous 
Date: Fall 2008
Language: en
Topics: community, solidarity, Ashanti Alston, prisoner support, health, prison
Source: Rolling Thunder Issue Six http://ayoungethan.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/support.pdf

Anonymous

The Importance of Support:

The Importance of Support

Building Foundations, Creating Community, Sustaining Movements

How do we develop anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist movements that

are capable of maintaining and expanding over the long haul? The

infrastructures we create in the course of our political work are key to

unlocking the answer. If our infrastructures are to succeed and deepen

our movements, we need to abandon the pervasive separation between

politics and “personal” life and ground our movement activity in

everyday practices of mutual aid and support—both in times of happiness

and in times of hardship. This article looks at the latter of these:

reflecting on how we can develop models for providing each other with

compassionate, nurturing support through tragedy, trauma, and hardship.

Integrating support efforts into daily organizing is a crucial element

of working for change. Such efforts are foundational parts of radical

infrastructure building, both in explicitly political contexts and in

more personal contexts. Trauma, tragedy, illness, and other forms of

hardship are things that everyone experiences throughout their lives.

However, activists engaged in the intentional construction of radical

infrastructure often handle these in ways that are at odds with our

stated intentions and our efforts to create better lives and a better

world.

The conversations and experiences that have helped shape this article

involve personal experiences with death, illness, chronic pain, and with

state-sponsored murder, repression, and imprisonment. Some of these are

a direct result of the systems we struggle against; others are an

everyday part of life. Support work isn’t always intuitive; we draw from

complex skill sets, character traits, experience, and privilege or lack

thereof. Developing effective models of support is imperative for making

our communities relevant and desirable, both to ourselves and to anyone

we wish to join our movements.

In recent years, there has been increasing discussion within

anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian communities of support for those

facing illness, trauma, and serious personal hardship. Zines such as

Counterbalance (Seattle), The Worst (New York), and Support, as well as

the recent publication of pattrice jones’ book Aftershock: Confronting

Trauma in a Violent World, have helped develop conversations on support.

Organizations like The Icarus Project and the multiple support

committees for Green Scare indictees and prisoners provide a few

examples of solid support efforts based in everyday life experience and

overt political organizing.

As participants in anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist communities

for over a decade, we have personally experienced the benefits and

deficits of our radical communities’ support efforts. Since we count on

these communities for fulfilling non-hierarchical and anti-oppressive

social relations, we’ve dedicated ourselves to building infrastructures

that work to support these relationships—as a way to improve our daily

lives and support our and others’ resistance efforts. Both of us have

felt the need to give support and be supported by our loved ones and

comrades, particularly in recent times. Sometimes our experiences with

support have been positive, but other times there has been a lack of

support—or a lack of understanding of the need for support. Some of the

attempts at support we have experienced have even been harmful.

The instances when we have felt seriously let down by our friends and

political allies for their failure to provide tangible support, or to

show true compassion and understanding, have raised serious questions

for us about movement sustainability, especially at moments of low power

and energy. At times the disparities between what we’ve experienced and

the potential of anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian communities has

been maddening. We need to constantly ask ourselves: who are we and what

do we really stand for as communities based in resistance, if we can’t

support each other in times of need?

We feel that our communities are more relevant, useful, and sustainable

when we are collectively capable of providing support. Likewise, they

are more inviting and inspiring when they model forms of mutual aid that

are practical and consistent. Support work builds solidarity,

strengthens our bonds, and deepens the integration of our politics into

our lives in ways that are crucial to the struggles we engage in.

Support over the long haul is particularly important. This means

figuring out how to provide meaningful support throughout the duration

of hardship—though the need for support, what it looks like, and how

long it is needed will vary from situation to situation. In many

experiences, it seems support is strongest immediately after a traumatic

or tragic situation. We have experienced our communities to be

impressively good at this: we throw benefits, we join our friends at

their hospital beds or at their court hearings. But what happens six

months or two years later? Are those support efforts maintained? Too

often the answer is no. After the overt urgency of a situation subsides,

it can become harder to determine what sort of support is needed, and

the attention of people we need support from sometimes begins to drift

elsewhere prematurely. This responsiveness to urgent situations is

useful and even inspirational, but we need to build on this to be

stronger in providing support more generally. Support over the long haul

means that we must sustain our support efforts for as long as our loved

ones and comrades need them.

Anarchists and explicitly anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist

communities can learn a great deal from the history of radical support

work. Such work has been crucial to organizations like ACT UP, as well

as the civil rights and women’s liberation struggles. ACT UP provides

one example in which support work was quite literally a matter of life

and death, and the organizational functions that activists engaged

in—from massive research initiatives to directly politicized forms of

mutual aid —teach valuable lessons about the potential of radicalizing

care and building political activity with support work at its center.

It’s been our experience in radical communities that we often attempt to

figure out everything for ourselves—reinventing the wheel as if no one

came before us. Learning the histories of these movements and the

experiences of those who participated in them can inform and guide our

work today.

Finally, although everything is political, it is necessary to remember

the importance of support work beyond explicitly political

activity—though at their roots, we must understand the

interconnectedness of the two. It is important to support our friends,

families, and allies simply because we love and care about them, because

they are integral parts of the social webs we inhabit, and because they

are crucial to our daily existence. Support is something we all need

when we’re going through tough times.

An Injury to One is an Injury to All: Why Support Matters

Becoming physically ill and experiencing trauma are isolating; only the

person with the illness or experiencing the trauma can feel the pain

specific to them. In a context where most of us lack access to adequate

health care and often have to devise creative ways to get what we can to

make it through, our communities play important roles for navigating

these experiences in the day to day. Even for those with insurance, the

healthcare system is still terribly isolating, alienating, and

disempowering, characterized by professionals who are often callous and

cold. Here as well, our communities play necessary support and

stabilizing roles on an everyday level.

For those facing state repression, enduring the legal process and penal

system can be a nightmare. The struggle to get through costly and

lengthy legal battles is a traumatizing experience, and when imprisoned

comrades finally leave the prison system, they carry with them

stigmatizing records and severe emotional scarring. Others spend their

lives behind bars and die inside the prison system. In the case of

comrades who are serving life sentences, the challenge for our support

efforts is to help create community for those whose lives have been

stolen from them, who are trapped in a place that offers very little

beyond pain, isolation, and misery. They need and deserve the support of

their friends, comrades, and community on the outside to help them make

the most of life in the face of such a horrible reality.

“The issue of solidarity, taking care of each other, creating structure,

making our own reproduction as people, as activists, the issue—the

political issue—is as important as the issue of fighting outside.” This

was Silvia Federici’s response when we asked her about building

sustainable movements. She has pointed out elsewhere that “the analysis

of how we reproduce these movements, how we reproduce ourselves is not

at the center of movement organizing. It has to be.”[1]

Silvia is a movement fixture and an elder with important insight. She

played an important role in the feminist movement in the United States

during the 1970s. She helped found the Wages for Housework campaign and

has written extensively over the past four decades on the intersections

of gender and class exploitation. From her experiences in women’s

liberation struggles, Silvia developed the concept of self-reproducing

movements. “The women’s movement put on the agenda the fact that a

self-determination struggle, a liberation struggle—it’s also a struggle

that immediately raises the question of the reproduction of the

community, and without that reproduction of the community being part of

the struggle, the movement will die.”

Self-reproducing movements are intentionally grounded in the day-to-day;

they are founded on a micro-political base and develop cultures that use

the everyday as a space of activism to expand overt political struggle.

Long- and short-term support work is crucial to building movements

capable of acting on this terrain. The idea of self-reproducing

movements is one useful way to conceptualize the need for support work.

Much of the usefulness of support work comes down to building community

engaged in everyday forms of solidarity, as opposed to charitable

approaches. In our conversations, Silvia emphasized what this might mean

for sustainability: “... if you are a movement, what is it that people

do? What is the necessity? That has to be put not only [on] the level of

personal goodness—you know, “I’m willing to help ...” [so you] spend two

hours at someone’s bedside ... That has to be seen as part of political

work—that kind of solidarity, and that kind of help. As long as that is

seen as some sort of charity or personal favor, it will not work. You

know, people will do it for two months ...”

Support through State Repression

Daniel McGowan was grounded in a small but strong activist community in

2005 when he was arrested for his involvement in Earth Liberation Front

activities. His support committee took the name Family and Friends of

Daniel McGowan, signifying the connection of multiple communities

directly engaged in supporting him. Family and Friends of Daniel McGowan

illustrated various positive elements of proactive and tangible

emotional and general support: participants helped raise funds,

conducted a massive outreach campaign, helped Daniel with graduate

school, helped him to prepare to serve his sentence, and much more.

Jenny, Daniel’s partner, was a key force in his support committee. Not

coming from an activist community, Jenny faced state repression with a

group of people largely new to her:

<quote>“Daniel and I kept pretty separate social lives and, though I

always knew what he was working on and I was acquaintances with many of

his friends, I never felt like I was very involved in the activist

community. I think one of the most helpful things that came from this

community was the solidarity offered to me. It was very comforting to me

to have groups of people come over to keep me company. It was also very

important that there was no judgment placed on the situation and that,

although no one really knew how to solve the problem, everyone was

willing to try to figure it out. At times it was like we were all in it

together. That is something I didn’t feel at all from my friends outside

the activist community.”</quote>

Ashanti Alston went through the prison experience himself. A member of

the Black Panther Party during the 1970s in New York and New Jersey, and

a soldier of the Black Liberation Army during the 1970s and early 1980s,

Ashanti speaks passionately about the importance of connections in

struggle:

<quote>“Support from the political community was small, but it doesn’t

matter in the sense whenever there’s like ... even this small core group

of supporters being there for you and demonstrating it through letters,

or you know they’re carrying on their political activism—it helps to

keep your spirit up so that you can do this everyday experience in

prison; even when the everyday turns into every year. For me that

political support, and that family support, and that social support

coming from your significant communities ... is really important

...”</quote>

Thadeaus was Brad Will’s roommate when Brad was murdered by Mexican

paramilitaries in 2006. Because of the depth of Brad’s involvement in

New York City’s radical communities, the response to his murder was

particularly intense, and people relied on each other to get through it:

<quote>“... when Brad died, no one had to deal with it alone if they

didn’t want to because every night or every day there was something

happening in relation to Brad’s death: there were meetings at

Bluestockings, there were meetings in Brooklyn on how to respond and how

to protest—because it was also a very political death—so that was

helpful too, and it was also like, you didn’t need to know Brad to be

involved. You didn’t need to have ever met him or ever heard him. Just

the fact that he was an anarchist and he was murdered—or if you were an

anarchist or even sympathetic to those ideas, you might have felt like

you should’ve been part of some of that stuff ... Lots of people flew

in—and traveled to New York, people rallied together. People were just

there for each other and I feel like that was really good.”</quote>

When our comrades face state repression, whether it be imprisonment or

murder, personal support among family and friends is crucial for getting

through. Ashanti’s personal experience highlights this: “My biggest fear

when I did time was that I was gonna come out OK, but I was gonna come

out cold and not able to laugh any more. I’m a jokester, I’m silly—and I

always felt like, if they change that about me, I might come out but

I’ll think that they won in another way. I’m still silly ... But things

like that became important. The letters mean a lot. The conversations on

the phone mean a lot. Loved ones, your relationships—whether it’s family

or your significant others, it means a lot. Those things help keep you

going.”

Part of the state’s goal in repression is to send a message to future

dissidents to deter them from engaging in resistance efforts by

demonstrating the intensity of punishment people can expect if they

engage in such efforts. Our support for those faced with state

repression can send the message that our movements take care of our own,

and that we have each other’s backs—no matter what the state dishes out.

Daniel McGowan has written about how some political movements have

created infrastructure for supporting their prisoners during and after

imprisonment: “The Irish republican movement has a group called ‘Welcome

Home’ (translated from Irish) that exists to provide support for

recently released political prisoners beyond the initial rush and

euphoria of release. This work isn’t glamorous, but it’s necessary.

Finding decent housing and jobs, helping people comply with parole and

probation, setting them up with clothes and some money when they get

out—these are all things our communities can and should do.”

A concrete program like the one Daniel describes is helpful on two

levels. First, it provides for the basic needs of those released from

prison and reduces their isolation. Second, this program offers a

concrete model that demonstrates how we, as a movement, take care of

those who find themselves in harm’s way. In demonstrating our capacity

to support our friends through state repression, we can make it less

intimidating for people to consider engaging in activities that entail

considerable risk.

Overcoming Paralysis: Challenging Ourselves to Provide Better

Support

It can be hard to know how to support or even interact with a loved one

or comrade who is experiencing hardship, loss, or pain. It can also be

hard to ask for support or to let other people support us. However, it

makes us more effective activists and makes our communities more

inviting when we take care of ourselves and those close to us.

It seems best to assume that when people are not being supportive it is

a result of their own uncertainty regarding how to discuss illness or

trauma, or because of the impact of past scars or current events that

make it too much for them. Although it may sometimes be simple

selfishness, it seems more often than not it is these issues or simply

lack of skill that keeps us from adequately providing support. Indeed,

it’s fairly rare for activists to present workshops on how to give

support—particularly long-term support—around health crises. Usually,

these are things we learn on the fly, sometimes while supporting others

with whom we have unhealthy relationships or poor communication. We

rarely have the vocabulary to discuss stigmatized issues like illness,

particularly when the illness is life-threatening or leads to long-term

health struggles.

When a person experiences intense hardships that are so different from

the day-to-day experiences of their peers, a major disconnect can

develop between people who otherwise have much in common, particularly

if their peers do not work to maintain an understanding of what they are

going through. The expectations of the person experiencing the hardship

may need to change; the ways in which they enjoy each other’s company

may need to shift. In order to hold onto our relationships and truly be

there for friends in need, we need to be open to such changes and

sensitive to what others are experiencing. Otherwise, we risk losing our

connections with others and creating more isolation around those already

experiencing intense hardship—and in a political context, we weaken our

movements.

David has been active with punk and activist communities for some time.

For the last few years he has been supporting his mother through severe

illness. As a result of the overwhelming amount of support his mother

has needed, David has sought support and help from wherever he could

find it. In particular, he looked for help from friends in his primary

networks—the punk and activist communities.

When we spoke with him, David reflected on the disconnection he felt

from his peers as he engaged in supporting his mother: “Some of the

people I lived with would say to each other, ‘David’s not fun,’ because

I was so overwhelmed with everything, and would just come home and look

upset. There were people in the house that criticized me for being upset

and who criticized me for asking them for help because it was bringing

them down. That was the opposite of what I looking for, because I felt

overwhelmed and I needed help—and getting a negative response for

expressing that made me feel like I needed to keep it to myself and that

made me feel more alone. Since I was hearing this from people I was

living with I couldn’t not be around them, which made it even harder.”

Being neglectful and failing to show sensitivity to the hardships our

friends and comrades are experiencing is hurtful and damaging. This

behavior prioritizes selfish desires without taking others’ needs into

account. To build strong bonds of support and solidarity, as well as to

be good friends to those we care about, we need to make a commitment to

learn from our mistakes and strive to act in accordance with our

expressed politics; otherwise, we fail those we care about and make our

politics appear to be for the sake of identity alone.

David shared an experience with the inconsistency he experienced between

his friends’ politics and their everyday actions: “Living in a punk

house at the time, with people who identified as anarchists—I remember

feeling like they were not prepared to deal with a situation where

someone actually did need support. And when I did ask they treated it

like more of an inconvenience to their punk lifestyle than an

opportunity to express the values they profess to hold.”

No matter how hard or how much of a downer it may seem, there is a

serious need to talk about illness and trauma—both when it first occurs

and over the long-term. Hiding it by avoiding discussion increases

feelings of isolation for the person facing the illness. It’s also a

disciplinary mechanism: by intentionally avoiding discussion we increase

feelings of shame, let those facing hardships know that their problems

aren’t important, and send the message that they should be silent about

their needs.

Adequate support means not just being receptive to what someone asks

for, but approaching the other person about what they need. Jenny helped

illustrate the importance of initiating communication by describing her

own situation: “There were definitely times I felt extremely alienated

and alone because friends weren’t talking to me about what I was going

through. I think that some people thought I just didn’t want to talk

about it. That was really hard to deal with because it came off to me

like they didn’t care ... the times when those who assumed it would be

better to back off and wait for me to talk to them about it seemed to

only hurt.”

Another friend we spoke with, Ben—a 27-year-old with a long history of

involvement in radical communities—has been struggling against cancer.

Discussing his experiences receiving support, he also emphasized the

importance of communication: “The best thing you can do is to ask, and

to just talk to the person ... if someone is your friend and they’re

dealing with a situation where they need support ... [in general] the

best way is to ask the people most directly affected.” Jenny also spoke

to this: “It’s always better to surround the person going through this

situation and ask them how they are, how they’re feeling about

everything and initiate a dialogue.”

Ben continued: “We have this fear about saying the wrong thing to

someone who’s going through illness. In thinking of all the things that

people have actually said to me—of all the thousands of words that have

been said to me dealing with this issue, there’s only like one or two

examples where I thought, ‘Oh, you know what, you just said the wrong

thing.’ When you think about ... all the people [who] had the emotional

investment and were willing to actually offer something in terms of even

just words as that small level of support, it’s overwhelming that such a

large amount of people, even if they weren’t very articulate, still

managed not to say the wrong thing. My point with that is that that’s a

really overblown sort of fear, that fear is really bullshit and that

saying something is always better than saying nothing ...”

Part of being supportive in a truly helpful way means being responsive

and listening to what the person needing support wants. It is not

helpful, and may be harmful, to put your desires for how to support

someone before the desires of the person wanting support. It’s not an

easy road to navigate. Ben spoke to this point: “A lot of times you feel

like absolute shit. And when I feel like shit, at least with this

particular thing, I don’t feel like talking, and I don’t feel like

seeing people ... I don’t find it helpful to just get on the phone with

somebody and say, ‘I feel like shit,’ and talk about all the ways I feel

like shit. And I feel miserable and talking about all the ways I feel

miserable is not helpful. I feel like people knowing that those times

happen, and don’t just happen one day but happen for two weeks at a

time, and knowing that there’s a reason that I’m not calling them back

and understanding that, is really helpful.”

Support needs to be tangible, consistent, and voluntary if it is to be

helpful. At its best, support work is proactive and creative.

Responsiveness is crucial, but so is taking initiative. Ben found that

instances where people anticipated needs were “really meaningful, really

important and really surprising.”

One of the worst things we can do is make the person we’re supporting

feel like our support for them is a burden. In cases of illness and

state repression, it is a sign of seriously misplaced priorities, or

ridiculously constrained resources, to make those suffering feel like a

problem. David touched on this: “If I am in a situation where I need

support and if I have to put a bunch of my energy into soliciting

support and then feeling like I am putting people in a situation they

don’t want to be in—that’s going to make me feel worse. The thing I

learned and have learned repeatedly is that supporting people can’t be a

reactionary thing. You need be proactive to provide meaningful support

to someone.”

Consistency and taking initiative are particularly necessary for

long-term support work. Often, in moments of extreme urgency,

communities come together to support an individual through a specific

situation. However, support tends to decrease rapidly, even if it is

needed for long periods. Long-term support efforts mean that we need to

maintain discussions with the person needing that support. Likewise,

those being supported need to increase their capacity to express their

needs and desires—and the ways we interact with them should help make

that process easier for them. When we engage in support efforts we also

need to be honest with ourselves about what we’re able to take on, and

be honest with both the person facing illness or trauma and the larger

community.

This last point is particularly important in activist cultures, where in

trying so hard to put our ideals into practice we tend to over-commit

ourselves. This sometimes has the effect of creating cultures that

celebrate burnout or simply ignore it. In Aftershock: Confronting Trauma

in a Violent World, pattrice jones makes an important point on this:

“The ability to go without sleep or work without taking a lunch break is

often mistaken for a measure of dedication. In consequence, social

movements are much smaller than they ought to be, simply because so many

people burn out or become convinced they don’t have what it takes.”[2]

Health needs to be a community priority if we’re going to sustain

ourselves and movements; we need to see setting limits and having clear

communication as crucial to sustainability and the support work

necessary for it.

We have experienced that activists often create cultures amicable to

flakiness, and when our resources are strained—or when we’re not honest

with ourselves or those within our community about what we can and

cannot do—the most common response is to simply flake out. Creating

serious resistance movements means lowering our tolerance for what

amount to cultures of irresponsibility and rhetoric. This goes for all

of our projects, but is particularly important when it comes to the

issue of support—especially support that relates to life or death

situations.

Being consistent and living up to what we promise to do are crucial for

providing the person in need of support with some sense of security over

the long term. When we can’t come through on our promises, we need to

learn to be accountable for our shortcomings. Such accountability is

part of a process that benefits everyone involved, and acknowledges our

basic humanity: we make mistakes, even when we have good intentions.

When flakiness becomes dominant and consistency is lacking, it can be

directly harmful to the person facing illness. Ben spoke to this point:

“You know, there’s a real fear when you get sick that people are going

to drift away ... and to start to think that that might be happening to

you is terrifying, it’s absolutely terrifying to think that people might

be drifting away and that not only might you need to be facing this

situation with much less support than you thought you might be equipped

with, but also just the absolute pain that’s involved in seeing people

leave you ...”

The Weight of the World: What Holds Us Back

Our social conditioning can cause us to act in ways that, though

unintentional, end up being problematic to those who need our support

and understanding. Our conditioning can also cause us to act in ways

that are unhelpful to ourselves and those trying to support us as we

endeavor to navigate our own trauma and hardship. In addition to

challenging ourselves to provide better support, we can also serve

ourselves by learning how to open up emotionally and better recognize

our own needs.

Thadeaus reflected on his own socialization as it related to his

experience of hearing the news of Brad’s murder: “Well, I felt pretty

devastated when I found out. I was in the midst of DJing a party and it

was on the Friday before Halloween and a friend came up and told me, and

there wasn’t really much I could do. He had pictures with Brad dead,

with a bullet hole in his chest. I don’t know, I don’t think I asked him

to show them to me, but I wish he hadn’t right then. So I went home

after that, and I cried on the way home—and it was raining out—and that

was the first time I’d cried in years. The type of household I grew up

in, it wasn’t OK to cry, not just boys—but especially boys, not even my

sister was allowed to cry, she doesn’t cry either. So like crying’s not

something I do or know how to do. Somehow that night I knew how to do

it. Like, the second I got on my bike I started riding home by myself

through the rain.”

As activists we struggle with racism, internalized gender oppression,

and other issues in our political work and our interpersonal dynamics

within our organizing structures. Struggling against and overcoming

these traits of the dominant culture are crucial to how we deal with

emotional and physical trauma.

Ashanti reflected on his experiences with issues surrounding masculinity

while he was in prison:

<quote>“I remember one experience in particular with a brother who I

would talk to a lot about love, relationships, and stuff like that—as I

was learning about those things. He was in a relationship with a woman

on the streets, and they had just had a baby. Whenever he talked on the

phone he was real cold and harsh telling her, ‘when you coming up, bring

this and bring that.’ But as we talked, and as me and his relationship

grew, I saw him grow, where he began to reflect on his machismo, the

sexism, how hard he was being on his partner... And I’m getting ready to

walk back to the cell block, but he’s on the phone and he’s crying. And

my man is a boxer, a heavyweight boxer, but when I talked to him about

it later he was telling me that he finally just had to admit to himself

how he was being harsh on his partner, and whatever the conversation

was, he just decided he’s not gonna be this macho person. And whatever

it was, my man was cryin’ on the phone. I’m like, cry on. The kinda

thing now I affirm, rather than just, ‘oh you a boxer, you a fighter, we

need you in the revolution.’ It’s this—really understanding that this

new man, new woman thing is like—we gotta really begin to practice this.

So inside it helped us to be able to survive that. But I think it also

helped us develop better relationships with family and other folks on

the street, where they began to sense that maybe it was not always just

political stuff, too.”</quote>

Ashanti relates this to present day support for those facing state

repression:

<quote>“And so like even today, like when I talk to Daniel McGowan and

Andy Stepanian from the animal folks, who are now political prisoners,

it’s around the same stuff. Like they’re getting ready to do time, they

know they’re getting ready to do some prison time—but my advice is

always around the same thing, you know: remain human, develop

relationships; the relationships you got with people, really appreciate

them. But really don’t get into the macho thing about doing this time.

Recognize that it’s gonna be hard, it’s gonna be some hard days. But you

gotta draw on some strengths that you may not normally draw on. However

you identify them: spiritual whatever, you know. But you also want to

recognize that you’re a loving human being. And you want that too. I

don’t care what the conditions are inside, figure out ways to keep

nurturing that. Through your relationships with family and political

community, but you also gonna find folks inside who are kinda on that

same page. And those are people that you kinda wanna develop relations

[with] inside, cause you gotta figure out ways to stay human.”</quote>

Throughout our own experiences, we’ve noticed that we commonly keep our

problems and stress bottled up for fear of burdening our loved ones.

Ashanti touched on this as well: “... You need someone that you can talk

to, you cannot bottle up emotions just to keep saving other people. Let

them make the decision if they can handle it. Don’t you just make it all

for them, you gotta figure out how to stay healthy...Sometimes you can’t

express that to the folks who you may even be close with inside.”

As political activists sometimes it feels as if we carry the weight of

the world on our backs. The degree to which things are fucked up in the

world can result in mental and emotional devastation, but we have found

ourselves keeping our own problems to ourselves, thinking that—relative

to so much horror and atrocity—we have it OK. How can we complain when

things could be so much worse? In other situations, we keep things to

ourselves because we know our family and friends have enough problems

and hardships of their own, and we don’t want to add to their burdens.

Ashanti continues on this subject: “Sometimes you know you need to get

in with someone else, whether it’s family, loved ones, or some of your

close political companions and say ‘hey,’ even if it’s them coming up

for a visit, there needs to be time when you just like, ‘man, such and

such happened to me, this counselor... this guard, that judge, whatever,

I’m sick of it. This fucking shit, just... ’ Hey, it’s out. And those

who are with you, they help you process that ... you always want to help

them. Sometimes, you know, let people help you too. Let them also make

that decision.”

We do ourselves a disservice when we dismiss our own needs and emotions,

and we do our larger communities and movements a disservice as well. We

need to be concerned with our own mental and physical well-being if we

want to be effective activists, effective supporters, and generally

positive people.

Day to Day Life: Modeling A Better World

We desire a world better than this one: a world that is more thoughtful,

more caring, less isolating, a world that celebrates and nurtures

community. Our movements are spaces for practicing new ways of relating

to each other, spaces to model relations based in compassion and

practical forms of mutual aid, for building and expanding resistance. If

we can’t love and care for each other here and now our movements will be

easily destroyed and unsustainable. On the other hand, if we are able to

develop a culture of mutual support, this new way of relating to one

another will make our resistance to the dominant culture even more

inviting.

It is important to see the community aspect of support work. We are

woven into social webs; each member of our communities has a role in a

support chain. It is common in many situations for the person facing

illness or trauma to choose primary supporters; those supporters will

also need support. While the issue of illness is often very personal, to

the extent that it is appropriate and comfortable, our communities need

to expand and open dialogue to make issues like illness less stigmatized

and more open for discussion and assistance.

Our politics and our commitment to radical change are put to the test in

hard times. We’ve learned—personally, and through the experiences of

those who have benefited from support through tragedy and hardship—that

when meaningful, concrete support has been present in times of need, it

has created an important sense of community. Such community can help us

get through the most painful and difficult situations. These moments

when we are able to provide and really come through for each other

underscore the best that our communities and movements have to offer.

To share feedback, give input, ask questions, or initiate other

correspondence with the authors of this article, please write:

theimportanceofsupport@gmail.com

Do’s and Don’ts to Consider in Providing Support

Common Mistakes and Problematic Behavior to Avoid

At worst, these behaviors will destroy a relationship and add more pain

and hardship to an already unbearable situation. We rarely have the

intention of hurting someone else or making things worse, but our

culture often perpetuates these unhelpful practices. Part of building

alternatives is recognizing ways in which our behavior is problematic

and working to overcome problematic tendencies.

DO NOT:

Make people feel like their need for support is a burden: The thought of

burdening you adds to the burden of the person who needs support, which

only makes an already horrible situation worse.

Assume everything is OK: It’s not helpful to avoid the subject of

someone’s illness or hardship because of nervousness about saying the

wrong thing, or because you don’t want to talk about things that aren’t

fun. Saying something is almost always better than ignoring the obvious.

Assume your friends will ask for support if they need it: Many times

people are unable to ask for help as a result of their own character, or

because of shame or any number of other factors. Do not assume that

because people don’t ask for help they don’t need it.

Use someone’s tragedy or trauma for friendship capital: Providing

support to get into someone’s good graces or to impress them or others

is disturbing and gross. Opportunism around trauma is a sad reality that

exists in radical communities as well as elsewhere.

Things To Do and to Keep In Mind

Here are some important considerations to guide your support efforts and

your interactions with those in need of support.

DO:

Be consistent: This is one of the most important things, and a

foundation for providing concrete and meaningful support. There is a

place for one-off gestures of support, but consistency is key to playing

a primary support role, and to reducing the isolation of hardship.

Volunteer: Effective support needs to be voluntary. Real support is not

doing a favor or acts of charity. Real support is genuine solidarity

extended because you share a community, because the well-being of your

family, friends, and comrades is bound up with your own. Make yourself

available, ask how you can help, be there voluntarily. Don’t wait to be

asked—that may never happen.

Be proactive: Take initiative and try to anticipate needs. Maintain

awareness: Remember what your friend is going through, especially when

you are together; let this awareness guide how you interact and how you

speak. Be sensitive and remember the context. Everyday greetings and

vocabulary might not be appropriate.

Follow-through: Keep promises, do what you say you are going to do, and

check in regularly. If you don’t hear from someone for a while, remember

that through the hardship, it might be up to you to initiate contact.

Take responsibility for maintaining contact and communication.

Make your support effort a priority: Check your priorities: do they need

to be rearranged to adjust to new circumstances of supporting someone in

your life?

Ask questions: Speaking about needs and feelings might not be easy for

people you are supporting. Ask questions to meet them halfway, and give

your friends opportunities to share their thoughts if they’d like to.

Share the work: Whatever your friend is going through is probably

affecting all aspects of life: housework, food, rides, and other things

that might have little to do with the immediate issue but need to get

done anyway. If these things can be taken care of by someone else, it

will certainly take some of the weight off.

Coordinate and organize: Providing support is not always an easy thing

to know how to do, and it can be hard to find a starting place. Work

with the person you are supporting and others to figure out what people

can do to help; coordinate to make sure that tasks are completed and

responsibilities are distributed.

Do what they need you to do: not what you feel should be done.

Let them decide the terms of their support: For instance, when they need

support and what they need. This may mean making personal sacrifices to

meet people where they are at. Change your expectations of those you’re

supporting in accordance with their specific situations.

Be honest and be accountable: with the person you’re supporting, your

community, and yourself about what you can or cannot do. Making false

promises and flaking out builds distrust, weakens our bonds, and weakens

our movements.

Know your own limits: it’s important to recognize our own limits and

considerations when trying to provide support in order to sustain our

own health and not overextend ourselves. It’s important to try the best

we can, but important not to beat ourselves up for making mistakes or

not meeting certain expectations. The best we can do is try and learn

from our mistakes, while letting our past experience guide our future

efforts.

[1] pattrice jones, Aftershock: Confronting Trauma in a Violent World, a

Guide for Activists and Their Allies. New York: Lantern Books, 2007.

[2] pattrice jones, Aftershock: Confronting Trauma in a Violent World, a

Guide for Activists and Their Allies. New York: Lantern Books, 2007.