Nobel winner Wangarai Maathai died on Sunday, 25 September. She leaves a bountiful legacy. This week, I am thinking of the paths she chose, the adversity she faced, the courage she lived, the dedicated Hummingbird she was. 

She inspires me to nurture my passion to seek clarity of my values and live by them, to work hard, to wear bright colours, to smile, to laugh, to give and receive constantly, to share, to think and do.

I thank her.

"I will be a Hummingbird" - the video.

Since 22 August, which kicked off the DC part of my US travels, I’ve been having a lot of comparative discussions about the UK and the US. They began with a brown bag talk I gave at The Praxis Project and carried on into coffees with researchers and conversations with Londoners who are now living Stateside. In fact, they carried on in Staunton, Virginia where I stayed with a couple who just moved here from London. They included a lunch with the Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Studies. A lot of these conversations keep bringing me back to the topics of moral courage, divisions between people, and self-awareness.

I was not in London - in my Bethnal Green neighborhood (in the US, and doing US spelling) - when the riots happened. Thus, I write what follows fully aware that many people will think I am on very shaky ground and want to respond with 'You weren't here - that's all easy for you to say, but you weren't here.' And, in fact, people I said this to over here did say that. Yet, those same people also suggested that my observation wasn't without merit. With all this in mind, here's what I'm thinking...

The Turkish and Kurdish shop owners in Dalston, Hackney are now famous for their collective stand against the looters. They stood in front of their shops, some with brooms and rocks in hands, ready to defend their livelihoods. I read that in Whitechapel and Bethnal Green damages were limited because the local Muslim communities (of Bengali and Somali backgrounds)  - like their Dalston counterparts - also stood ground.  Immigrant communities (I won't get into the problems with articles like that of Cristina Odone's Telegraph piece, Immigrants love this country more than we do) have been hailed for their sense of responsible community not just in relation to self-preservation, but as a demonstration of commitment to Great Britain. 

Putting aside discussion on patriotism, I thought/think "Well, good on ya" when it comes to people who stood up against the violence (let's also put aside that some people perhaps were ready to fight violence with violence). But I've been wondering (as I guess Odone was, too, but coming from a different angle): Where was everyone else?

I did see in the media that occasionally a brave passer-by to the riots stopped to try and persuade looters of their madness. Again, good on ya - especially since as a lone individual that was a risky act. And, yes, I know that in places like Hackney pro-social tweeting, e.g., #riotscleanup, led to hundreds of people coming out with their brooms. They also organized a street party one Saturday to show solidary and support local businesses. Initially, I was really excited by that - and I still think it is great. 

But I'm wondering: what if all the people who turned up to clean up and to celebrate their neighborhood, had turned up on the same street (heavily hit by the riots) in hundreds in defiance of the violence? What if hundreds had stood in solidarity with the Dalston shop owners? One person suggested to me that the 'immigrant' communities had the advantage of having the community infrastructure to mobilize and support each other. He suggested that other people, e.g. progressive middle class types, lacked this. To which my response was - that's not true, people got it together to do clean up the next day and to organize a street party.

And here's what I haven't mentioned yet - my sense is that those involved in East End cleanup were predominantly the educated, middle class folks - people like myself and many of my friends (see, for example, Matthew Brown's article).  

People were breaking shop windows and setting cars alight - people did die during the riots (sympathies to their families). So it is right to say to me 'You weren't there and it was dangerous.' Yet, wouldn't it have been less dangerous if the number of people standing in defiance were significantly higher? And also, isn't that - at the end of the day - what moral courage entails: risk-taking? 

It is no light decision to put one's self in harms way. If I look in the mirror and wonder what would have I done in that situation, I know what I would like to think I would do - but I cannot honestly say for certain that my ideal would have translated into practice.  Yet, I do not think this moots my query: Why didn't we see more moral courage during the riots - more people putting up a non-violent stance against the violence and destruction?

To note: I do remember reading somewhere that some people wanting to take a stand felt it was hard to know what to do in terms of relating to the police. I guess the police were probably trying to clear areas and encouraging people to stay away. Thus, it might have felt as though the police were a barrier to creating any counter-demonstration to the rioting. This raises questions about the relationship between civil society and the police - and the challenges of managing that relationship during civil unrest, particularly when peaceful demonstrations against the State transform into violence. Under such circumstances, peaceful demonstrators might feel uncomfortable allying themselves with the police, and vis-versa. 

But I want to go back to this idea of moral courage. Because thinking about who did what during the rioting, has got me thinking about what we all do on a day-to-day basis when it comes to standing up for others. And, in fact, I wonder how many of us really believe that standing up for others is really the same as standing up for our selves - a harm to another person, is a harm done to me. I wonder this, because I feel that we - progressive people wanting greater equality and justice - can often be complicit in our movement. And, yes, I include myself in this - what beliefs do I have and choices do I make that reinforce inequitable and destructive cultures, systems and structures? How is my passivity contributing to the injustices that surround me? How can I be more morally courageous? When does it make the most sense? How do I balance that fine line between courage and foolishness that I suspect exists?

And all this brings me back to the US. Because our President is getting a lot of criticism - including from his own party. In the conversations I've been having about the riots in Britain, we've also talked about this. And a few of us are thinking the same thing: the progessive left in the US has let the President down. After he was elected we did not sustain the momentum to do on the ground what we wanted him to do in office – change and strengthen our democratic culture. I've been wondering, for example, why more people weren't out on the streets in protest of the inane Congressional deliberations over the national budget/deficit. Instead, many Americans watched coverage on the television and became hugely frustrated about it all - but we did not really do much, did we? I'm not even talking about having moral courage here - I'm talking about switching from passive to active. What could we have done? Well, that's another subject to consider.

I'm in Chicago now, and in one of the last discussions I had on these topics, I was told about how activists here have become really interested in UK Uncut. They want to create a similar movement here and have been in contact with UK Uncut to learn more about how the US can create a movement to challenge the banking industry.  I think that's great - I'm all for a bridging of activist communities across the Atlantic and love what UK Uncut has been doing.

But when I think of UK Uncut, I think of a story I wrote about previously - which feels like it brings me full circle with this post. Kurdish and Turkish shop owners in a mixed-income area stood with their brooms ready to defend their livelihoods. Thinking particularly about the East End, it feels like we need to do more to build bridges between people like the local shop owners and the types of people who came out with brooms post-rioting and/or who are likely to be connected into the UK Uncut world (I suspect they are one and the same).  I think growing these connections, building these bridges involves greater reflection and self-awareness about our movement. How do we relate to one another? What does our ethical commitment to each other look like on a day-to-day basis? What are we doing to see each our selves and one another more clearly? How do we support one another? 

Maybe my friend was/is right – maybe our (middle class progressives) social networking is very limited – our bonds and social capital are weak, particularly when it comes to extending our ethical commitment beyond our social and economic circles.  Which is why, maybe, moving forward we might want to do some inward focusing to strengthen our outward activities. As one friend back in London once asked at a dinner party I hosted: "Why is it that we only ever talk about poor people having to grow community?" 

I was at a gathering recently of about a dozen or so lefties - I'm sure everyone in the room would agree to the broad label. 'Broad' is definitely the operative word; the spectrum of beliefs within this group was interesting, if not highly entertaining and provocative. We talked about the recently publicised 'boy banned from wearing corn-rows hairstyle to school' issue; female genital mutilation, the movie MATRIX (which seems to have a very important social-philosophical message for some), national identity, human rights principles - are they really universal?; sexuality; sexuality in the workplace and more. We came from diverse backgrounds, a range of national, ethnic, racial and religious identities were in the room. I suspect we all came from similar class backgrounds, but cannot confirm that.

It was a social happening - which means people were laid back and felt comfortable (as far as I could tell) being honest – so honest that we had plenty of arguments.  These arguments included not just loud voices, but dismissive tones, talking over each other and other similar forms of communication. So, why am I sharing this? I am sharing this because of a reminder I took from it: we who call ourselves 'progressive' are a hugely diverse lot and while we can put aside our differences to focus on coalescing around broad shared values and judgments/critics about the 'opposition' we also might serve our selves well to be delving into how and why we disagree with each other, exploring how we move together when engaging with the more controversial areas. In short, I’m calling out for us to have greater ‘movement' awareness.

A social movement requires a shift, motion - as the word 'movement' suggests.  A key question: 'How are we moving? Applying the physical movement work I do to social movement, I see how we can think of ourselves as inhabiting three spaces (thank you, Ya'Acov and Susannah for this!): our deep internal space (what we are engaging with inside ourselves), the space immediately around us (how we start to move outwards, while still focused internally on what's alive inside ourselves), and our wider space (how we move further outwards, giving awareness to and interacting with our surrounding environment). I'm inclined to call these spaces (I'm using different terminology than Ya'Acov and Susannah) internal, intermediate, and expanded. We are constantly moving within and between/across all of them. 

Thinking about this has got me reflecting on this space we call 'progressive' - and how we move within it, individually and collectively. I'm considering how each of us moves within our inner space, our intermediate space and our expanded space - and how we connect them all. I ask myself: what's alive and moving internally, and how does this take form when I move in my intermediate space, and finally what shape does my internal movement take when I open it up into expanded space? Do I integrate with the movement around me? Do I carry on my movement regardless of what surrounds me? Do I find myself losing my sense of internal movement and become completely absorbed by the movement of others - and unconsciously imitate them or react to them without conscious agency of what I'm doing? 

How do these questions apply more collectively? What I'm thinking here is that if we are trying to grow a progressive movement, we all (whoever 'we' are) could benefit from reflection - in order to understand more clearly how we actually are moving - separately and together. When doing physical movement work, we come to awareness - for example - of repetitive motions we get stuck in, of movement we resist, of when we forget our inner and intermediate spaces and get totally absorbed by others in the expanded space. What might we gain if we apply the same practice - awareness - to our social movement, focusing firstly on the inner space and than moving outwards into the expanded space where we consciously connect (or not, as the case may be) with our 'progressive' peers? 

In working with our movement in this way, we can gain awareness of how we are moving – firstly among ourselves. We also can create the opportunity to transform our movement – reshape it, so that it flows more freely even while we are negotiating shared space with others. We can become aware of our patterns in negotiating shared space - constructively and destructively. We can explore new ways of moving and opening up our opportunities for engagement with our selves and others. Then, with this experience and awareness alive within us, we can expand out into wider, more challenging spaces, e.g. involving the ‘opposition’.

In doing so – expanding outwards - we would take with us a deep understanding of our movement. As a result, I believe, we will become stronger and more empowered ‘movers and shakers’.