This piece was originally published by Root. Rise. Pollinate! on Medium with Inspirators Hope Chigudu, Rudo Chigudu, Julie Quiroz and Susimar Gonzalez Martinez.
INSPIRATOR: one who invites and infuses our imaginations with practices that uplift and motivate a (r)Evolution of Being.
When was the last time you asked yourself, and your co-inspirators: What does love have to do with our work to transform the world? And, how is love reflected in the organizational systems and structures we create and operate within?
The moment we choose to love, we begin to move toward freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others. ~ bell hooks
If our work is ultimately about organizing our communities towards freedom and liberation, where and how do we practice this? Drawing inspiration from our ancestor, bell hooks, what wisdom might we surface and amplify so we are pollinating beloved communities rather than defensive, fractured, loveless work spaces and ways?
Root. Rise. Pollinate! set out to explore love as integral to freedom and liberation during our second Inspiration Session, Embodying Love in Organizing and Organizations. Our four Inspirators — who call Southern Africa and Puerto Rico home — wove their experiences of love in organizing and organizations into a story that lifted up belonging, interconnection, and creating new ways of being.
We rarely talk about love as the purpose of organizing and organizations, yet when we shine light on what truly creates living, adaptive containers for our belonging and work, it is often love.
It’s love that ignites our fire. When we do the work, we wake up, even in the worst times, because we are driven by something stronger within us. And that something stronger is usually love. When our fire threatens to go out, we invoke the spirit of love, or it invokes us, and we wake up. And once again, we do what we have to do. ~ Hope Chigudu
In addition to being our motivation, love can also be the what and how of our work — love as action. Love as a practice.
The practice of love can transform our workplaces into communities. When we no longer see work as a place to simply grind, be productive, or compartmentalize we reconnect to our work as life and a web of relationships. The practice of love can guide and nourish our work by reconnecting us to purpose and diminishing fear, competition and dominance. Practicing love in action creates conditions for hope and imagination to blossom, and for conflict –an inevitable facet of life– to be generative. The seeds we plant to create loving organizations and organizing, by way of our daily interactions, ripple out.
Growing opportunities for unconditional love in our organizations and organizing
In the Embodying Love in Organizing and Organizations Inspiration Session, our inspirators shared their own experiences of practicing love in action.
Sharing a story from organizing with a network of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color birth workers, Julie drew on the practices and lessons about unconditional love that she had been exploring in herself and her relationships. She was energized to discover that unconditional love can exist, and be modeled, in organizing across differences. When a larger white-led organization — with a track record of marginalizing communities of color — approached their network, they decided to “flip the script.” Rather than dismissing them, they invited the large organization to play a specific role in a BIPOC-led campaign. This invitation elevated the need to recognize the existing leadership of people of color in the field, while still opening a pathway for the organization to show up authentically as part of a larger movement for justice. Julie felt energized to feel how “love as the practice of freedom” allowed her to imagine and help create possibilities for useful collaboration, and to turn potential conflict into opportunity for growth for everyone.
Rudo shared a story of how, in the midst of her young son’s life-threatening illness, community members showed up to support her, even as the organization she worked for prioritized restrictive policies and procedures over love. New and old feminist friends from across the world, known and unknown to Rudo, pooled resources to support treatment for her little one and care for Rudo’s other children when she had to be away. She reflected on this humbling, transformative experience as one of feminist organizers ‘reaching across borders of all kinds to give and to hold and to love’.
The work of loving requires space and attention. It happens as we lead ourselves and our communities with our hearts, minds and bodies ‘set on freedom”. This can be so, even as we tend to all that life brings, including atrocities and discomforts.
Returning to the question: What if love is the guiding force in all of our efforts to build power and transform society?, we created this collective poem:
Calling Love to the Center
When love is at the center of all of our organizing
When love is the anchor for freedom and imagination
When love is the foundation of all of our conversations about change
When we generate self acceptance, collective care, and energy
When our memories expand to include our ancestors’
When we tend to structural love over structural violence and wounding
When we sing songs of love and liberation
When our grief, anger, and rage sit together with deep compassion
When we expand our hearts, softly, fiercely, reaching to and receiving each other
- We evolve in our dance of connection, understanding and dreaming together
- We rise, guided into the unknown, with unstoppable love as energy
- That heals and grows ancestral wisdom in our lifetimes.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This article is part of our new initiative: Reports from a (r)Evolution of Being.
In late 2023 Root. Rise. Pollinate! held our first two Inspiration Sessions, ‘Governance for Collective Thriving’ and ‘Embodying Love And/With Power Within Our Organizing and Organizations.’ Inspiration Sessions are space for feminist changemakers to come together to learn and share new developments and exchange narratives that shape understanding and strategies for transformative feminist praxis. This work is part of our project, Reports from the Revolution of Being — a place to tell stories of the future, the big transitions we need to make, and how these transitions are unfolding now.
This article is part of a series of posts, over the next few weeks, draw on reflections we shared with participants after each Inspiration Session and also highlights new reflections and invitations into transformation drawn from the wisdom and experiences of our ‘Inspirators’ who currently call home India, Kenya, Puerto Rico, South Africa, the United States, and Zimbabwe.
Visit Root. Rise. Pollinate!’s project page, REPORTS FROM A (r)EVOLUTION OF BEING
KRISTEN ZIMMERMAN is a writer, artist and world-builder based in Oakland, California. They are currently an Adjunct Professor at California State University East Bay, teaching narrative illustration and comics. They hold an MFA in comics from California College of Arts, and a B.A. from Brown University. Kristen co-founded and directed numerous projects that apply world-building practices to real-world transformation, including: Root. Rise. Pollinate!, The Transitions Network, Decolonize Race, Movement Strategy Center, Youth In Focus, and Community LORE. Their writing and comics have been published by Autostraddle, The Reverb, Movement Strategy Center, Electric Squeak, the Gender and Development Journal, and other outlets. Before children, they worked as a producer for Pacifica Radio (KPFA), covering cultural affairs. Their debut graphic novel, Ten Thousand Beloved Communities, was published in 2023 by Beloved Communities Press. Some of their happy places are hanging out with their modern queer family, training in zen, spending time in nature and making really good food with friends.
RUFARO GWARADA is committed to a world animated by unhu (ubuntu)—the understanding that collective and individual wellbeing are one and the same. She is a mama, writer, International Coaching Federation certified coach, facilitator, and organizer, with more than 15 years working for gender justice, migrant rights, African-led solutions for Africans, and utilizing art and cultural expression as conduits for healing, liberation, and joy. Rufaro is co-director for Root. Rise. Pollinate!, founder and principal of Pamuuyu, a coaching and consulting practice, and cofounded culture-shift initiatives Wakanda Dream Lab and reSet. Rufaro is home in Zimbabwe, Oakland, and Sacramento, California, with Sangha, on the dance floor, and among creatives and those who strive for liberation of all peoples. connect on LinkedIn
SHAWNA WAKEFIELD is committed to cultivating joyful, trusting relationships for loving power. She is a facilitator, teacher, and strategist who helps social justice leaders and their groups infuse complex work and lives with care, compassion, and ease. She is a mama, embodiment practitioner, and adjunct professor on gender, race, power and international development. She has a master’s degree in public Administration from Columbia University, School of International and Public Affairs. She worked for Oxfam for a decade, the United Nations, and for smaller, grassroots organizations working for immigrant rights, gender, racial and economic justice. She speaks English. connect on LinkedIn
featured image credit: Morgan Petroski, 2019
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