movement phrases to let go: "which side of history are you on?"
11 Dec 2023adrienne maree brown IDed this one in the episode of how to survive the end of the world where she and hala alyan were in dialogue about endurance and genocide.
this is another one of those phases that i feel has gone rotten. i used to see this sign in protest marches a lot. and, like all the other phases of this nature, i see the good side of it. i see what it’s trying to do. it’s trying to activate someone(s) who may not see their stance/behavior as wrong in the moment. but by bringing the moment into a larger, longer arc of time, the viewer might begin to see things differently. and in the most hopeful cases, the viewer might conclude that the side they’re currently on is the wrong side because it looks like other wrong sides in the past.
i think some of the good of this phrase is that it is provocative. have you thought about which side you’re on or what stance you hold about the issue at hand?
and also like all the other phases i think we need to let go of, there are bad sides of it.
- it’s binary. it assumes there is a wrong side and a right side and one can easily (or at least clearly) be on one or the other. but history isn’t so clean usually.
- there are lots of different moments in history where it’s not clear which side is the right side in the moment. at one time you might be fighting alongside folks who feel like the justice-oriented revolutionaries and then once they’re in power, they might turn out to be just a dictatorial as the previous leadership… and sometimes even more so!
some alternative phrases that i think are just as useful but have less frought baseline assumptions:
- phrases that more point to standing on the side of people who are being harmed or oppressed (like desmond tutu’s elephant and mouse quote)
- there is no neutral on a moving train
what other alternatives to this phrase can you think of?
other phrases in this category for me:
- we who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes
- speak truth to power
- don’t mourn, organize (ht sól)
words / writing / post-processing
342w / 12min / 3min