One difficult aspect of this liberated vision is the grief we experience upon realizing we haven’t attained it. This is a reasonable reaction to the world’s suffering — to the unnecessary pain, harm, or other afflictions we could’ve avoided if we or those before us acted differently. But we can’t affect what the human condition *was* before us, before we were even born, and we can’t reverse the course of human history; we can only influence what it is and what it becomes. When we’ve sat with our grief and can openly confront how things truly are, then we can work to change them. What comes with our vision and our grief that it doesn’t align with the current state of things is the call to act: to make our vision into reality. Yes, we are not free yet — but what are we going to do about it? Liberation responds to the material conditions of un-freedom and, with that being the case, it requires that we make change. Liberation *is* change.
Now, caveat #1: You could go into your neighborhood or your friend group or your family and find plenty of people who certainly agree that change is needed. It’s a whole other task, however, to imagine even what you’re building towards and how you will get there. And when you or your group comes up with that, then you have to actually convince others to make it happen.
Next, caveat #2: Supposing you *do* convince some others, there’s no hard guarantee that the change you’re making — the vision you’re building towards — is really what’s needed or actually improves anything. Even if you plan carefully and think long and hard about it, you could make things worse, sometimes in ways that won’t be apparent to you.[^1]
This is why I say that liberation specifically needs *radical* change, driven by a cycle of action and reflection. It’s a process that requires time, effort, care, intention, curiosity, and adaptability. I say “radical” because to transform people’s material conditions you have to examine their root causes and strike there. This is the same sense that Angela Davis uses when saying that “radical simply means grasping at the root” (echoing Karl Marx). This process requires a balance of action and reflection: action because without action, nothing is achieved and reflection because without reflection, the work lacks direction and intent. They’re connected like this because as you act and reflect, you learn and adapt — and this actually loosely derives from Kolb’s experiential learning theory. Learning goes hand in hand with making change; in the process of change-making, you are also transformed.
I’ve written a little bit here about what our orientation to change as liberationists might be, but not about what actions actually come with liberation as a struggle. There are countless ways to spell it out but I’ve made a non-exhaustive list of just *some* broad ideas for what to do:
1. Building — collective power, coalitions, shared agendas, visions, alternative systems to nourish and support communities, communities based in solidarity and care
2. Centering — change and building power, the marginalized/oppressed/disenfranchised, the human condition, material conditions, actions rooted in shared goals, a set of well-informed principles, and deeply held values
3. Learning from others and teaching others — deepening your own and others’ understandings, sharing what you’ve learned with potential companions in the work, critically examining
[^1]: (There is, actually, another caveat. Caveat #3: Change is inevitable and will happen no matter what.)
